Port city at one terminus of Appian Way / WED 1-11-17 / Farmworker in Millet painting / Inflation adjusted econ stat / Infomercial pioneer

Constructor:Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:DNA— a single (?) strand of repeated letters "DNA" runs in a vaguely helical shape down the middle of the grid.

Theme answers:

• WATSON (47D: Co-discoverer of the contents of the circled letters)
• CRICK (4D: Co-discoverer of the contents of the circled letters)
• DOUBLE / HELIX (11D: With 55-Down, form of the contents of the circled letters)

Word of the Day:BRINDISI(36D: Port city at one terminus of the Appian Way) —

Brindisi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈbrindizi] (listen); in the local dialect: Brìnnisi; Latin: Brundisium) is a city in the region of Apulia in southern Italy, the capital of the province of Brindisi, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. Historically, the city has played an important role in trade and culture, due to its strategic position on the Italian Peninsula and its natural port on the Adriatic Sea. The city remains a major port for trade with Greece and the Middle East. Brindisi's most flourishing industries include agriculture, chemical works, and the generation of electricity. (wikipedia)

SPECIAL MESSAGEfor the week of January 8-January 15, 2017

Hello, solvers. A new year has begun, and that means it's time for my week-long, once-a-year pitch for financial contributions to the blog. The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. In making this pitch, I'm pledging that the blog will continue to be here for you to read / enjoy / grimace at for at least another calendar year, with a new post up by 9:00am (usually by 12:01am) every day, as usual. Despite my regular grumbling about puzzle quality, constructor pay, and other things that should be better in the world of crosswords, I still love solving, I still love writing about puzzles, and I love love love the people I meet and interact with because of this blog. Well, most of them. Some I mute on Twitter, but mostly: there is love. The blog turned 10 in September, and despite the day-in, day-out nature of the job, I can't foresee stopping any time soon. The community of friends and fellow enthusiasts are all just too dear to me. You can expect me to be here every day, praising / yelling at the puzzle—independent and ad-free. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address:

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions (I. Love. Snail mail!) will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. This year's cards are "Cookery Postcards from Penguin"—beautifully designed covers of vintage cookbooks, with provocative titles like "Cookery For Men Only " (!) or "Good Meals from Tinned Foods" (!?). Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD.  As I say in every thank-you card (and email), I'm so grateful for your readership and support.

Now on to the puzzle!

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Look, it's either DOUBLE / HELIX or it's not, and this isn't. Double, that is. You can't put DOUBLE / HELIX in your grid and then offer up a DNA strand that, while passably helical, is not in any way double. So the theme is D.O.A. It's a no. Doesn't work. Start over. Further, just putting CRICK& WATSON and DOUBLE and HELIX in the grid isn't very interesting. Add in a lot of cringe-worthy fill (MDLI over ROIS, for example) and you get a phenomenally mediocre Wednesday. I mean, LIBBER / ERO!?!? Gag. Seriously, was there no way to make that NE corner even minimally presentable? The worst part of this puzzle, however, was the BRINDISI / REAL GNP crossing. I've never heard of BRINDISI. It has 88K people—why on god's green should I have heard of it? Consider that ANCONA (another Italian city I've never heard of) has *408K*, and you can see how (comparatively) insignificant BRINDISI is. It's a jumble of letters. Fine, you're desperate, put it in your puzzle I guess ... but make sure the crosses are fair. Are you sure? Real sure? Because if I go to Google and type [real g], *this* is what happens:

That's because the infinitely more common concept / phrase is REAL GDP, not REAL GNP (52A: Inflation-adjusted econ. stat). And so you cross your obscure Italian town with an economic concept precisely at a fundamentally unguessable letter: Congratulations. Thousands upon thousands of people will screw this up, not because your puzzle was clever, or fiendish, or whatever you'd like to believe it to be, but because it was poorly constructed. Obscure towns are tolerable only if all crosses are fair. One of these crosses wasn't. The end.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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