18th century pioneer in graph theory / FRI 10-13-17 / Sites associated with innocence project / Lesser player of uncle leo on seinfeld / 1997 film whose poaster shows woman wearing dog tags

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TORTONI (56A: Ice cream treat) —

noun

noun: tortoni; plural noun: tortonis

1. an Italian ice cream made with eggs and cream, typically served in a small cup and topped with chopped almonds or crumbled macaroons.

This is a fine Friday. Fill is fine. Answers are fine. Fine. Adequate. None of the longer answers did much for me—whole NW was kinda dull, and only PILOT SCRIPT and the BERSERK part of WENT BERSERK really gave me any entertainment value. Rest of the puzzle is just mid-length short answers of an entirely forgettable variety. Again, there's nothing offensively bad or lazy or sloppy (well, maybe RIS ...). But there's little in way of KAPOW. The most notable moment for me was having no idea what TORTONI was (I've seen it in puzzles before, but still have yet to encounter it in real life). I also committed the unpardonable sin of writing in an answer without looking at the clue. Had SPIL- and wrote in the ... "L" (?!) (39D: Like milk you shouldn't cry over). So even if I *had* known what TORTONI was, it wouldn't have mattered because my answer ended in -LONI :( My TORTONI problems cascaded into the SW, where I couldn't see any of the Downs leading into that small corner—not REAL, not CONDO, not HOT AIR. So I had to dive in there and rely on IRA / OREIDA to bail me out. Not a great feeling, but you do what you gotta do.


Did you know that WENT BANANAS and WENT BONKERS both fit for 27D: Totally lost it (WENT BERSERK)? Well now you do. I knew it wasn't MOSHO Dayan, but I was not so certain it wasn't MOSHA Dayan, so BANANAS hung in there as a possibility for a bit. Do y'all really know that a czar's SON is called a grand duke?! In what ... nobility scheme are those things even ... things? "Grand duke" sounds like some made-up rank in a white supremacist organization, though it's entirely possible I'm (understandably) conflating Grand Wizard and David Duke. Anyway, SON was hard for me. Most of the rest–not hard for me. I'm mainly amusing myself now by imagining ILLINI as a really dope kind of pasta and IMALONE as a reclusive and melancholy form of sea snail. So it's probably time to call it a night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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