1948-94 in South Africa / MON 11-28-16 / Letter-shaped metal fastener / Southern corn breads

Constructor:Kristian House

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME: DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE (58A: Children's game ... or the circled words in 20-, 28- and 48-Across) — embedded in each themer is (in order) a duck, a duck, and a goose:

Theme answers:

• TRIBUTE ALBUMS (20A: "Bowiemania" and "Come Together: America Salutes the Beatles")
• APARTHEID ERA (28A: 1948-94, in South Africa)
• SWORN ENEMIES (48A: Bitter rivals) 

Word of the Day:NADINE Gordimer(50D: Literature Nobelist Gordimer) —

Nadine Gordimer (20 November 1923 – 13 July 2014) was a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel– been of very great benefit to humanity". // Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned, and gave Nelson Mandela advice on his famous 1964 defence speech at the trial which led to his conviction for life. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes. (wikipedia)

Well I thought this was lovely. Very simple, but perfectly executed. Those are, indeed, a duck a duck and a goose, respectively. Plus the theme answers themselves were fairly novel. Clever, neat, easy—I really don't expect much more from my Mondays. Actually, scratch that last sentence, as it implies that doing this sort of thing is easy. If it were, I'd be writing something sunny like this every Monday. The truth is, coming up with a neat Monday theme concept, and then executing it cleanly, is really quite hard. There aren't that many people I trust to do it on a regular basis. Writing easy puzzles of high quality is, in fact, tough. So while I don't expect more from my Mondays than "clever, neat, easy," that actually ends up being a reasonably high bar.


I could've done without ABORC (which I always read as a single word—like some discarded Tolkien creature), and EDUCE (a word that always makes me want to egest my lunch), and ENACTOR (it's a word, but just barely) and PONES (OK in the singular, but somehow grating in the plural). Everything else is clean, though. I have a weird lot of admiration for CROP UP (54A: Appear, as problems). It's just a nice, crisp phrase, and, yeah, it duplicates the "UP" from GUSSIED UP, but that's a pretty minor dupe. Nice to have NADINE Gordimer (anti-apartheid writer) to offset the downerness of APARTHEID ERA. I also like NOGOODNIK. How do you not like NOGOODNIK? It's among the best of the -niks, along with refuse and beat and peace.  I am going to beat it now, so I can eat some more birthday cake. Peace.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]