Land 1954 Kirk Douglas sci-fi role / SAT 8-20-16 / Colorful ornamental with trunk / Dark brown quartz sometimes sold as gemstone / 52rd state quarter locale

Constructor:Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium


THEME:none 

Word of the Day:Capriole(53A: Capriole => LEAP) —

n.

1. An upwardleapmade by a trainedhorsewithoutgoingforwardandwith a backwardkick of thehindlegs at theheight of theleap.

2. A playfulleap or jump; a caper. (thefreedictionary.com)

This is all very competent and also dull. AZALEA TREE METAL STAMP ADJECTIVE NOUN. There are several longish answers that feel very improvised and iffy: SAY YES TO, ONE IN FORTY, IN THIS WAY. There's virtually nothing current here—not the proper nouns, not the slang. Not many GROANERs, I'll grant you that, but mostly this feels like a very professionally made placeholder of a puzzle, one that could just as easily have been published 10, 15, 20 years ago. The cluing is appropriately tricky—puzzle was on the easy side, but not by much. But ... I just can't get excited over SMOKY TOPAZ. Again, adj / noun, stone I've never heard of, shrug. ART BOARD! (20A: Backing for a cartoonist) It's a thing, but .. not an exciting one. Maybe my failure to be terribly entertained is AGE-RELATED. Maybe if I'd lived in the era of RUMBLE SEATs, with ANSON Williams and Ron Howard and the gang at Arnold's, I might feel differently. (Note: I probably meant Potsie and Richie, not ANSON Williams and Ron Howard) (Note further: RUMBLE SEATs were already dated by Potsie and Richie's time)


24A: ___-on-Thames (regatta site)

Some of the clues are pretty clever (1A: Like a Navy seal => WATER TIGHT), and some seem to be trying a little too hard (30A: Girl's name in which the last three letters are equivalent to the first? => IONE). Some were way too easy (25D: Four-for-four Super Bowl-winning QB) (43D: Edmond ___, the Count of Monte Cristo), but mostly things were just ... OK. Here's how you blow a Saturday corner wide open without even trying: get a high-value letter at the beginning of a long answer (today, "J" from JOTS), and then use that letter to plunk that long answer right down into the middle of the formerly empty quadrant (JOE MONTANA).

From there I got RAHS (wrong, it was YAYS), TMI, STONE AGE, INFANT. Usually it just takes one long answer in a quadrant falling for that area to turn from tough to easy. As you can see from that last screen shot, I had ISSUED for 39A: Came (from), which was easily the thorniest thing in the whole grid. With --SUED in place, ENSUED didn't even occur to me. Those initial two letters were the last things I filled in / changed.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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