Muse invoked in Paradise Lose / THU 5-18-17 / StarKist competitor / Subject of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard / Island capital named for European royal house

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: WHY (did the CHICKEN cross the ROAD)? (37A: Question raised by four squares in this puzzle?)— four squares contain ROAD in the Down and CHICKEN in the Across:

Theme answers:

• OFF-ROAD (1D: Where all-terrain vehicles go) / CHICKEN OF THE SEA (19A: StarKist competitor)
• ACCESS ROAD (15D: Highway adjacent to a throughway) / CHICKEN WIRE (39A: Coop material)
• ROAD RUNNER (36D: Noted Warner Bros. toon) / PLAY CHICKEN (35A: Risk mutual destruction, say)
• ROAD MAP (63D: Plan for achieving a long-term goal) / NO SPRING CHICKEN (60A: Person getting up there in years)

Word of the Day: SEPTA (4D: BART : San Francisco :: ___ : Philadelphia) —

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is a regional public transportation authority^[4] that operates various forms of public transit services—bus, subway and elevated rail, commuter rail, light rail and electric trolleybus—that serve 3.9 million people in five counties in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. SEPTA also manages construction projects that maintain, replace, and expand infrastructure and rolling stock. (wikipedia)

Enjoyable! It's always easy to exclaim that when you pick up the gimmick almost immediately, but I've hated many puzzles I've figured out early, so I don't think solver's euphoria is clouding my judgment too much. I think my favorite part of the puzzle is the lone, existential, ennui-ridden WHY? in the center of the grid. It is the question I ask most of puzzles, usually with a pained or confused look on my face. "WHY ... is that theme answer not like the others? WHY ... is this plural suffix (!?) in my grid? WHY ... are you doing this to me?" The theme squares were symmetrical, which on the one hand is neat (as in "tidy"), and on the other is totally unnecessary in a rebus puzzle. Part of the challenge is figuring out where those pesky things are. No reason finding one should allow you automatically to find the other. But honestly, in the middle of solving, my brain didn't even pick up the symmetry. It was too easy a puzzle. I don't usually stop and reflect unless I'm getting Pummeled, and the only *real* issue I had today was a totally self-inflicted, not-stopping-and-reflecting wound at 7D: "y = 2x," e.g. (LINE). Had the "I" and the "E" and saw the clue was mathy and wrote in SINE and the ****ing "I" was correct, so I tried to make myself believe that BASE could work for 5A: Assemble in a field, say (BALE), before finally seeing my problem, ugh.


Couldn't work the Acrosses at first in the NE, but then the puzzle threw a "Paradise Lost" clue at me, which is like throwing a hanging curve over the fat middle of the plate. URANIA! (11D: Muse invoked in "Paradise Lost") After that, except for SAT instead of LAY (29A: Was idle), no problems. Nearly came unglued at the end, in the SW, where I threw *two* wrong Acrosses down—for ---IN, I wrote SATIN (instead of SKEIN (59A: Fabric store purchase)), and for ---LE, I wrote STOLE (instead ofSIDLE (64A: Move furtively, in a way) (misread the verb tense, ugh). But URANIA was smiling ... down? ... on me once again, as *both* of those errors ended up giving me correct initial letters, which meant NASSAU was easy (48D: Island capital named for a European royal house), which meant my double-error was actually easily findable and correctable. Win some, lose some, cross the road, move on.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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