Cathedral of Florence / WED 6-28-17 / Nobelist Pavlov / Garbage-hauling boat / River of France Belgium / Heed coxswain

Constructor: David Kwong

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (just figuring out wording of quote, esp. very beginning, added difficulty)


THEME: 1A: Start of a quip about a whimsical celebrity couple—"HOW I WISH NATALIE / PORTMAN DATED / JACQUES COUSTEAU / SO I COULD CALL / THEM PORTMANTEAU"

Word of the Day: DUOMO (2D: Cathedral of Florence) —

Duomo (English:/ˈdwoʊmoʊ/, Italian: [ˈdwɔːmo]) is a term for an Italian cathedral church. The formal Italian word for a church that is now a cathedral is cattedrale; a duomo may be either a present or a former cathedral (the latter always in a town that no longer has a bishop and therefore no longer has a cathedral, as for example Trevi). Some, like the Duomo of Monza, have never been cathedrals, although old and important. (wikipedia)

I'm clearly missing something, because this joke is not original, and yet ... no credit is given. Not in the clues, and not on the NYT puzzle website (which often publishes constructor's "Notes"). I think this is the origin of the joke (but in the Age of the Internet, who the hell knows?):

It's a cute gag. But the rephrasing for crossword purposes (i.e. the remaking of the joke into a symmetrically divisible joke) made everything a little weird, especially at the beginning. HOW I (as the phrase opening) is oddly quaint—the joke, in a plausible voice, should just start "I WISH"—and that initial HOW I part runs right through the roughest / strangest part of the grid. That one corner created 80% of my trouble. DUOMO!? (2D: Cathedral of Florence) DEWAR flask!? (3D: ___ flask (thermos)) Yikes and yikes. I had EJECT before EVICT (4D: Kick out). So the overlap of odd phrasing (for symmetry purposes) with bizarro fill made things icky from the jump. Then there was the fact that I kept misreading "PORTMAND..." as "PORTMAND AND" (ugh!) and so kept looking for someone's name on the other side of AND. But on the other side of AND was ATED (?), and *that* area was the *second* roughest part of the grid. LYS!?!?! (27A: River of France and Belgium) My brain didn't trust that ALDO was right (25D: Gucci of fashion), and I could Not figure what kind of "range" was in play at 19D: Things having their home on the range? (TEES). Wanted the context to be the stovetop, not the driving range. Phew. Bottom half of grid way way way easier. No issues except singular SCAD (ugh) (40D: Whole bunch). Wanted SLEW (duh).


No more to say. Quote should've been attributed. Fill could've been better. Moving on.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. The themer clue is painfully inaccurate. A "whimsical celebrity couple"? It's a fictional couple. If I have a "whimsical" sense of humor, that sense of humor Actually Exists ... whereas this couple ... does not. Bizarre.

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