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Channel: Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle
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Onetime Fandango competitor / SAT 10-8-16 / Bid on hand unsuited for suit play maybe / Cusk deepest living fish / Italian city where Pliny Elder Younger were born / Austrian philosopher Rudolf / Old brand in shaving aisle / Pricing model for many apps

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Constructor:Julian Lim

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium


THEME: none 

Word of the Day:Einstein-ROSEN bridge(25A: Einstein-___ bridge (wormhole)) —
A wormhole or Einstein–Rosen Bridge is a hypothetical topological feature that would fundamentally be a shortcut connecting two separate points in spacetime. A wormhole may connect extremely long distances such as a billion light years or more, short distances such as a few feet, different universes, and different points in time. A wormhole is much like a tunnel with two ends, each at separate points in spacetime. // For a simplified notion of a wormhole, space can be visualized as a two-dimensional (2D) surface. In this case, a wormhole would appear as a hole in that surface, lead into a 3D tube (the inside surface of a cylinder), then re-emerge at another location on the 2D surface with a hole similar to the entrance. An actual wormhole would be analogous to this, but with the spatial dimensions raised by one. For example, instead of circular holes on a 2D plane, the entry and exit points could be visualized as spheres in 3D space. [...] The Einstein–Rosen bridge was discovered by Ludwig Flamm in 1916, a few months after Schwarzschild published his solution, and was rediscovered (although it is hard to imagine that Einstein had not seen Flamm's paper when it came out) by Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen, who published their result in 1935. However, in 1962, John A. Wheeler and Robert W. Fuller published a paper showing that this type of wormhole is unstable if it connects two parts of the same universe, and that it will pinch off too quickly for light (or any particle moving slower than light) that falls in from one exterior region to make it to the other exterior region. (wikipedia)
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Hard to concentrate what with all the drama in the world of presidential politics, but I managed to pry myself away from my stunned, gleeful, and highly animated Twitter long enough to solve this puzzle, and now write about it. Lots of delightful answers today, and shorter overfamiliar stuff was not overpowering—largely innocuous. I didn't get 1-Across straight away, but I did stick an "S" at the end of it and then got SHACK instantly (6D: Take to living together, with "up"). SHACK to MOOLAH to SMIT to Evers to Chance, hooray. And thus the NW began to open up:


I do not know what SKUNK cabbage is. I figured 21A: Kind of cabbage was gonna give me some kind of money slang, like "kale" or "long green" or MOOLAH. But it's actual cabbage, though not the type you eat. The type that stinks, apparently. After I worked out the NW and sent I'M WAY AHEAD OF YOU (lovely) across the grid, the pace picked up considerably (THANK GOD!). Not sure what happened, but somehow I ended up filling in the whole NE and E and then throwing down ROTISSERIE (27D: Game's turning point?), figuring, at first, that it was a sports clue (see "ROTISSERIE League Baseball").


I've barely heard of FREEMIUM and certainly don't know what it means in relation to an app. Many apps are free ... is this some tech-speak way of saying "free"? Oh, wait, here's a definition: "Freemium is a pricing strategy by which a product or service (typically a digital offering or application such as software, media, games or web services) is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for proprietary features, functionality, or virtual goods" (wikipedia). So offer the shitty version of something free, is that it? Or incentivize (sorry) in-app purchases or some other corporate blather that makes my head hurt, is that it? Probably. Anyway, as you can see, it didn't take me much longer to get all of LIMOUSINE DRIVER (58A: One with a long stretch to go?). That is not, how you say, a good "?" clue. See "long stretch," think, *immediately*, "limousine." Not very tricksy. I had SOR as SAR because I invented a mythical "Sisters of the American Revolution" (59D: Young women's grp.). My familiarity with the Toni Morrison corpus, however, bailed me out, and shortly I was finished. Under 8 even with my stopping three times to take screen shots. A very modern, lively, clean grid. Hurray. OK, off to watch Sexual Assailant Cheeto try his best to egest a human-sounding apology noise from his face hole. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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