Epithet for Louis VI / SAT 4-15-17 / Metaphorical rock of Matthew 16:18 / Band that shares its name with film canine / 3D White brand / Org with biennial bids / Sandy who won 1985 British Open / UT's library

Constructor:Peter Wentz

Relative difficulty:Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day:Sandy LYLE(61A: Sandy who won the 1985 British Open) —

Alexander Walter Barr "Sandy" Lyle, MBE (born 9 February 1958) is a Scottishprofessional golfer. Lyle has won two major championships during his career. Along with Nick Faldo and Ian Woosnam, he became one of Britain's top golfers during the 1980s. He spent 167 weeks in the top-10 of the Official World Golf Ranking from its introduction, in 1986, until 1989. Lyle was inducted to the World Golf Hall of Fame in May 2012. (wikipedia)

This felt quite easy, but a few small areas really put their teeth into me for a bit there. No problem entering the puzzle in the NW and heading most of the way through the fat center of the grid. But, bizarrely, the only answer I wanted at 17A: Rich dessert was CHEESE ... TART. And then, since REC hall is not a thing to me and LAKE does not equal [Reservoir] without force ... well, I abandoned that area. The BRICKS part of HIT THE BRICKS took some doing, which left the NE unexplored for a while. When I did get up there, GYM (instead of SPA) crossed with CITY-something (instead of DOGPARKS) slowed me a bit, but JAGR was a gimme (19A: Hockey legend Jaromir), so I fixed things pretty quickly. The two real tough parts were DOTEDU (43D: School closing?), both because I've never seen that written out and because it was "?"-clued, and then lastly because I *still* don't quite understand how 63A: Chips, initially is SPUD. Are we talking potato chips? And what "chips" begin with the prefix SPUD-. Oh, wait. Is it supposed to be that (potato) chips started out (initially, pre-cooking) as a SPUD? God that is awful. Too many things are "chips" in the world for that to clue to read as at all potato-specific. And then add a plural-to-singular clue-to-answer "fake"-out. Torturous. Bad.


Last but not least in the toughness department was the whole SW, where having CAR didn't help get TOYCAR (44A: Place for a decal, maybe). and none of the initial letters on the long Downs did any good. Even getting into the short stuff with LAIR and GRE and AWAG (agag!) provided little help. I finally got the boost I needed from a *wrong* answer: POTHOLE (38D: Unforeseen trouble). That got me the "T" which got me TOY which got me PONYTAIL (37D: Women's World Cup sight). From there, I figured out POTHOLE was actually wrong (it's PITFALL) and voila—I put in the stupidly redundant SHOO AWAY and—puzzle solved! Non-trouble parts were smooth and enjoyable. I thought "THE MECHANIC" (4D: 2011 Jason Statham action flick) was a Christian Bale film, so I hesitated filling in the end (the Bale film is "The Machinist," it turns out). There are no such things as SPACE TOURISTS (yet) so cluing them like they're real is strange, though I love the answer itself (36A: Ones counting down to vacation time?). I like the WHOA SEXY juxtaposition. Makes THE JONESES seem like exciting neighbors to have. No wonder you compare yourself to them enviously (56A: Object of envious comparison). Overall, this was a pleasing, varied, bouncy puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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