Old Irish character / SUN 8-7-16 / Historic headline of 1898 / Temple of Abu Simbel honoree / Snack brand featured on mad men / Morlocks prey in scifi / Wye follower / Eighth-century pope with sixth-longest reign / Snapchat co-founder Spiegel / Mexican-born golfer Lorena / Accident investigator for short / Locke so-called dean of Harlem renaissance

Constructor:Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty:Easy


THEME:"Anchor Lines"— phrases we associate with news anchors are given wacky, wordplay / pun clues:

Theme answers:

• TOP STORIES (23A: "What's in your attic? Anddo penthouses have better resale value? Find out in today's ___")
• BREAKING NEWS (29A: "Museum officials report a priceless vase has shattered. Stay tuned for the ___")
• DETAILS ARE SKETCHY (43A: "A courtroom artist has been arrested for fraud. ___")
• THE LATEST (66A: "Schools are cracking down on their most tardy students. We'll have ___")
• BACK TO YOU (68A: "Coming up, a pistol dueler tells us his stance. Now ___")
• TRAFFIC AND WEATHER (93A: "After the break, people are leaving the city during winter because of crime. Also ___") (man, this one's weak)  

• FILM AT ELEVEN (111A: "Our camera crew entered a one-hour photo shop at ten. ___")
• STANDING BY (118A: "With more about those defending the accused, our reporter is ___") 

Word of the Day:"BROWN EYES, Why Are You Blue?"(17A: About which it was asked "Why are you blue," in a classic song) —


One of my least favorite theme types. It's executed adequately, but this thing where you just put a bunch of phrases related to some field, any field, in the grid, and then write these wackified clues, always feels ultra-cheap. You can do it With Any Field. Just find eight, say, baseball phrases. Or knitting phrases. Or laundry phrases or auto racing phrases or elk-hunting phrases or whatever. Are they interesting? Who cares?! All the "fun" will be in the totally-not-tortured nutty clues you'll write. This is the floodgates I imagine being opened up when a puzzle like this appears. It's a template of been-done-ness and mediocrity. Do some of the clues make you smile? Maybe. Do some make you cringe or just stare in non-comprehension? Probably. The end. There is no other interest. The fill ... is fill. Not that far below par (though INAS over VOCE over ERES, come on...), but not remarkable in a good way either. I mostly just want to hurry up with this so I can back to watching Olympic coverage of entertaining and/or hilarious sports I only get to see once every four years.

I drove past Natick on this one. Didn't get off the highway (you can get off anytime you like, but you can never leave), but definitely saw how someone might get lost and end up there. Which is to say I drove past the OCHOA / OGHAM crossing and thought, "O, man, that's gonna wreck *someone*." No telling how many, but ... oh, look, first casualty came From Inside The House (my wife, five minutes ago, walking up the stairs with her laptop in hand: "Honey ... I have a Natick"). Should you know Lorena OCHOA? (89A: Mexican-born golfer Lorena) You know, probably. But as with all proper nouns, you really gotta cross them fairly, and there is no way you should be expected to know OGHAM (I sure didn't, and a. I'm a medievalist; b. I've definitely seen it in grids before) (77D: Old Irish character). So honestly, if you don't know OCHOA, there is no way in hell, except by luck, you can infer that "H." And ... I mean, YEESH, what a train wreck that section is. The Natick, plus adjacent ELOI and ONAT. To quote Friday's puzzle, GAH!


Puzzle was very easy overall, despite having a few things ("BROWN EYES," OGHAM, MAENAD, ALAIN Locke, etc.) about which I had no clue. Had PUPPY for POOCH (2D: Doggy); MMA (?) for UFC (55A: Mixed martial arts org.); YIKES for YEESH (70D: "Oh jeez!"); ERICA (??) for ERICH (44D: Actor Bergen of "Jersey Boys"). As you can see, at least two of those are demonstrably terrible guesses. No other problems. Good night and good luck. Courage. Etc.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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