Movie villain modeled after Ernst Stavro Blofeld / FRI 6-9-17 / Austin Powers car with portmanteau name / Household brand famous for its infomercials / Ginny's brother in Harry Potter books / Famous introduction that was never actually used / Brokerage famous for its spokesbaby

Constructor: Steve Overton

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LUZON (27A: Where Manila is)—

Luzon [...] is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. it is ranked 15th largest in the world by land area. Located in the northern region of the archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, as well as Quezon City, the country's most populous city. With a population of 53 million as of 2015, it is the fourth most populous island in the world (after Java, Honshu, and Great Britain), having about 53% of the country's total population. (wikipedia)

Between the casual sexism and the obsession with a 20-year-old movie franchise I never found funny, I was a hostile solver for most of this, which is too bad, as the constructor seems to have some skill, and that central Down is golden (15D: Not right, sarcastically => YOUR OTHER LEFT). I can't / won't take COEDS unless it is clued in relation to some old movie title or otherwise flagged as old-fashioned. The NYT crossword itself clued COEDS as [Female students, condescendingly] (emph. mine) just three years ago. Other recent clues have included the qualifiers "quaintly" and "in old lingo." But here, in 2017 ... no qualifiers. At five letters long, I confidently wrote in WOMEN. But then (fittingly / ironically) SHEILA proved the appropriate WOMEN wrong, and I knew it was COEDS. This moment happened pretty early in my solve (I had to abandon the NW when I got most of it but couldn't turn the corner), so ... yeah, my experience was colored by this. Negatively. SHEILA is another term I also find slightly condescending, and one I can only hear (in my head) in a man's voice. I wouldn't have reacted to SHEILA alone, but crossing COEDS, it somehow compounds the assumed male perspective. The ensuing "Austin Powers" answers (esp. SHAGUAR, ugh) do the same. DR. EVIL obviously has nothing to do with women, but doubling down on a movie with such juvenile humor and such an objectifying view of women ... yuck. COEDS got the ball rolling ... and then it just kept rolling.


UNODOS / TRES is ridiculous. Cluing MAR as a month, also ridiculous. Mostly, though, the grid is solid, with some notable strong parts. All the long central Downs hold up, as does WASH DOWN. Puzzle felt pretty easy, but ME TARZAN proved particularly stubborn. Trouble started with ENTER ___ for 14A: It'll give you a break. KEY was soooo anticlimactic. A break ... in your document? Pfffff, ok. I guess. Later, when I came back to this section, I just blanked on the Philippine island, as well as the [1972 top 10 hit that ran for 7+ minutes], so getting that section to finally come together took work. Clue on ME TARZAN was brutally vague (7D: Famous introduction that was never actually used). So that answer alone, and its environs, brought the overall difficulty for me back to normal.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. A historical note: COED hasn't been clued as a noun (meaning a female college student) since 2005.

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