Sci-fi natives of planet Kashyyyk / SAT 3-11-17 / Genre akin to indie rock / Piece of glib journalism often written under tight deadline / Repeated lyric in Who's Tommy / Wave function denotre in quantum mechanics

Constructor:Natan Last

Relative difficulty:Easy (beyond easy—I set a new personal Saturday record: 4:36)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day:"ADVENTURE TIME"(53A: Award-winning Cartoon Network series with Finn the Human and Jake the Dog) —

Adventure Time is an American animated television series created by Pendleton Ward for Cartoon Network. It follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (voiced by Jeremy Shada) and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (voiced by John DiMaggio)—a dog with the magical power to change shape and size at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with other major characters, including: Princess Bubblegum (voiced by Hynden Walch), the Ice King (voiced by Tom Kenny), Marceline the Vampire Queen (voiced by Olivia Olson), and BMO (voiced by Niki Yang). The series is based on a 2007 short produced for Nicktoons and Frederator Studios' animation incubator series Random! Cartoons. After the short became a viral hit on the Internet, Cartoon Network commissioned a full-length series, which previewed on March 11, 2010, and officially premiered on April 5, 2010. [...] Since its debut, Adventure Time has been a ratings success for Cartoon Network, with the highest-rated episodes having attracted over 3 million viewers. The show has received positive reviews from critics and—despite being aimed primarily at children—has developed a following among teenagers and adults. Adventure Time has won awards including: six Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, three Annie Awards, two British Academy Children's Awards, a Motion Picture Sound Editors Award, a Pixel Award, and a Kerrang! Award. The series has also been nominated for three Critics' Choice Television Awards, two Annecy Festival Awards, a TCA Award, and a Sundance Film Festival Award, among others. A comic book spin-off based on the series won an Eisner Award and two Harvey Awards. The series has also inspired various clothing items and related merchandise, video games, comic books, and DVD compilations. (wikipedia)

Oh my god I torched this thing. Just set it on fire. I'm not sure I've solved a *Friday* puzzle in 4:36 before, so to hit that on a Saturday is unreal. I tend to be on the same wavelength as Natan, but this was ridiculous. It's a nice, *very* modern grid, with only a small handful of infelicities (EME, LOTI, BEINS). This has Friday written all over it—lots of connectivity in the grid structure, stacks that are easy to crosscut with lots of short answers, pretty easy cluing. I'm looking at the clues and only just noticing that weird streak in the Down clues from 38 to 41 where clues are all one word, all start with "R", and are really two pairs of related clues. If 36D: "Apologies" had been (easily) changed to [Regretful expression], those Downs could've started Regret Regretful Rushed Rush Red Red, respectively. Not that I care about such things. Just noticing. I would like it to be known that I was (to my knowledge) the first person to put WHITE PRIVILEGE in a crossword grid (a couple years back, in the now-defunct Buzzfeed Crossword: see here). Eerily, mine was in the same place in the grid, at precisely 14-Across. That little connection probably helped accelerate my solving speed, but I'm guessing lots and lots and lots of people set personal Saturday records today.


Here's what I remember: first thing in the grid was AS ONE at 1D: Uniform—a ludicrous wrong answer that got me two correct letters. I still don't know what GHOST is (as clued: 12D: Popular word game), but I managed to guess WEE EFT WOLF, in that order, quickly, and the WOOKIEES became undeniable (15A: Sci-fi natives of the planet Kashyyyk). After that, ALIKE and then the long Acrosses and I was off! Not sure about ALT-POP as a thing (the POP was one of the harder things in the grid to suss out; 1A: Genre akin to indie rock), but I got through it without too much chagrin. Next hiccup was whether MARC ended in a "C" or "K." Then whether it was HADJ or HAJJ or what (HAJI). Then, after nailing "ADVENTURE TIME" with no crosses (53A: Award-winning Cartoon Network series with Finn the Human and Jake the Dog), I put in LEED at 46D: Paragraph in the newspaper, say—again, ridiculously wrong. But I wriggled out of that bind quickly and finished up somewhere over near the wonderfully-clued OLD FLAME (47A: Lover of history?). I'm guessing solving experience on this one is going to come down to knowing v. not knowing "ADVENTURE TIME." Fat gimme if you know it, likely baffling if you don't. Still, even if you'd never heard of it, looks like crosses were easy enough to help you infer the answer without too much trouble. Wish this puzzle had lasted longer. But I'll take my personal record and happily move along.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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