Ghostbuster Spengler / SUN 4-2-17 / King who spoke at Kennedy's inaugural ball / Writer who coined term banana republic 1904 / French region now part of Grand Est / Pride parade letters / Fifth-century pope dubbed Great / Stop in sailor's lingo

Constructor:Jerry Miccolis

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME:"Initial Description"— theme answers are APRONYMS:

Theme answers:

• SWAN = SWIMMER WITH ARCHED NECK
• MARS = MOSTLY ARID RED SPHERE
• ATLAS = AID TO LOCATE A STREET
• TRIO = THREE ROLLED INTO ONE
• OKAY = OTHERWISE KNOWN AS YES
• WASP = WINGED AND STINGING PEST 

Word of the Day:ABOLLA(20A: Togalike Roman cloak) —

An abolla was a cloak-like garment worn by Ancient Greeks and Romans. Nonius Marcellus quotes a passage of Varro to show that it was a garment worn by soldiers (vestis militaris), and thus opposed to the toga. // The abolla was, however, not confined to military occasions, but was also worn in the city. It was especially used by the Stoic philosophers at Rome as the pallium philosophicum, just as the Greek philosophers were accustomed to distinguish themselves by a particular dress.Hence the expression of Juvenal facinus majoris abollae merely signifies, "a crime committed by a very deep philosopher." // The word abolla is actually a Latinization of the Greek ambolla (ἀμβόλλα) or anabole (ἀναβολή), for a loose woolen cloak. (wikipedia)

There are lists of these out there. On website. Whole databases of them. I can't take a theme seriously that involved no originality on the part of the constructor. FREE AIR, RELEASE TENSION! See! Not original! I just typed FART into the database and bam! Here, watch: LESBIAN ... "Lady Enjoys Sexual Behaviour Involving Another Non-male"; LEWINSKY ... "Licking Elite Willy Is Nearly Sex! Kenneth Yells." These are no doubt entertaining, but constructors should be coming up with their *own* gimmicks, not lifting others'. Most of the apronyms in this puzzle are either straight out of the database I'm using, or are slightly modifications of the database versions. It's not that hard to make these things yourself. You could even narrow your "clues" to, say movie stars (STELLAR THESPIAN REALLY EARNS EVERY PLAUDIT!), or baseball players (BEEFY OUTFIELDER NEVER DID STEROIDS) or presidents (TWITTER RANTS UNDERSCORE MORONIC PRESIDENCY), or whatever. Now, keeping them under 21 letters in length would be a challenge, but ... I think it's probably doable. And then you might have something. Something tight, contemporary, genuinely wacky, and (above all) *original*.


There were only two trouble spots in this thing—the word ABOLLA (!?!?!) (20A: Togalike Roman cloak), which I think I'd rather have than EBOLA, but only barely, and then the whole SW corner. The latter problem is Entirely Foreseeable wehn you look at the Downs. After the dumb partial AS WAS (?), there's name name name name. CHANG has the same number of letters as STICH (102D: 1991 Wimbledon champ Michael). ORWELL has the same number of letters as O. HENRY (97D: Writer who coined the term "banana republic" (1904)) (I knew the date was wrong for Orwell, but still...). I blanked on the Ghostbuster name (106D: Ghostbuster Spengler) (wanted OTTO ... I think because OTTO Dix <=> EGON Schiele; at least that's the artsy, high-culture excuse I'm gonna use). And I never knew the Préval guy was a RENÉ (107D: ___ Préval, two-time president of Haiti).  So that was very rough. Nothing else about the grid was rough.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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