Vocalist for Black Eyed Peas / FRI 2-17-17 / Button hit everything at once in gamer lingo / First Chinese-American cabinet member / Owner of horse Sleipnir / Occasional SNL host to SNL / Hippie-influenced fashion trend / Grace servant in Jane Eyre

Constructor:David Steinberg

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day:STICKY RICE(13D: Staple of Thai cuisine) —

Glutinous rice (Oryza sativa var. glutinosa; also called sticky rice, sweet rice or waxy rice) is a type of rice grown mainly in Southeast and East Asia and parts of South Asia, which has opaque grains, very low amylose content, and is especially sticky when cooked. It is called glutinous (< Latin glūtinōsus) in the sense of being glue-like or sticky, and not in the sense of containing gluten. While often called "sticky rice", it differs from non-glutinous strains of japonica rice which also become sticky to some degree when cooked. There are numerous cultivars of glutinous rice, which include japonica, indica, and tropical japonica strains. (wikipedia)

Not sure how a grid with so many decent entries ended up being so boring, but here we are. The cluing was unimaginative and dull. Lots of vague one- or two-word clues, which added toughness but not zazz or sass. The "?" clues were all duds except 51A: Colosseum crowd? (TRE) (i.e. three is a crowd and the Colosseum is in Rome and the Italian word for "three" is TRE). The one answer that really undid all the good will that other answers had built up was ONESALL. God that is terrible. I mean, terrible. Please, constructors, delete it from your word list now. ONE'S answers are Always bad, but this one feels like King Bad. My brain keeps parsing it ONE SALL and pronouncing it to rhyme with "gunsel." Not only is it terrible, it was at the heart of the section that was most difficult to solve. I needed every cross, but WAIVE and ENABLES were not coming to me due to clue shortness/vagueness, and SGT was even worse because of the TGI trap (20A: Abbr. before Friday). I knew FERGIE so I had only the "G"; I sort of knew that LCD had to be followed by "T," and so TGI couldn't be right, but ... the "G" ... the "G" ... So ONESALL really gunked up everything.


I resent SHADES and HADES' coappearance. Too much shared real estate. [Suffix with magne-] has to be up there with the most ill-conceived clues ever. Completely inelegant and ugh-ly. PISH POOLE! Not to my liking. It's one thing to be able to put together a nice grid, and another thing completely to *write* the puzzle well. With the exception of ONESALL, this grid actually looks pretty good; but it was a drag to solve. No ear for cleverness. Some show-offy gamer and math stuff, and then [Bug] [Tuna type] [Omen] etc. Kinda CREAKY cluing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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