Religious recluse / TUE 11-21-17 / Hook's henchman / Wife in Oaxaca / Rare grandfather clock numeral

Constructor: Brian Thomas

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: some kind of car race in eastern Europe?— theme clues are fill-in-the-blank quotes from an imagined car race commentator (?); the answers are all puns on ... ugh, looks like both adjectives related to countries in (roughly) eastern Europe and nouns describing inhabitants of those countries...

Theme answers:

• 19A: "The race has just begun, and it looks like the car from Warsaw will POLE INTO FIRST!"(this pun made Super-awkward by the fact that "pole" is, in fact, a racing term—and one related specifically to the *start* of a race (i.e. pole position))
  
• 30A: "Listen! You can hear the thundering roar as the car from Moscow goes RUSSIAN PAST!"(oh yeah, race commentators say stuff like this *all* the time ...)
  
• 39A: "We're getting close to the end as the car from Helsinki leads the way to the FINNISH LINE!"
• 52: "Wow! The car from Prague ekes out the victory by a nose and takes the CZECHERED FLAG!") 

Word of the Day: EREMITE (22A: Religious recluse) —

noun

noun: eremite; plural noun: eremites

1. a Christian hermit or recluse. (google)

This is brutal. This is a cry for help. This is a regression to times of yore when weak-ass awkward cornball pun puzzles were all the rage. LETT MY PEOPLE GO! The theme is an outright disaster. Why am I listening to a race announcer? Why is this race in eastern Europe? Why are the puns so bad? Why aren't the punning words *&$^%ing consistent in terms of being the same parts of speech?! A POLE is an inhabitant of Poland. The adjective is "Polish." A "Finn" is an inhabitant of Finland. The adjective is "FINNISH"? Your puns are all inhabitants or all adjectives—they are not *&$^ing mix-and-match. I can't believe I'm actually trying to fix this dismal excuse for a theme, but lord in heaven if you're going to commit atrocities, at least show some respect for your craft.


Then of course there was the fill, which just took this from a Tuezday (your typical trainwreck of a Tuesday theme) to a Sooper Tuezday. Once I hit EREMITE crossing IIII (!!!!), I knew I was in for whatever the opposite of "a treat" is. MONTE on its own is dumb (5D: Hustler's game). A [Wound on a dueler] is a SCAR or SCAB—STAB is an action, or should be, esp. on a Tuesday. I think of a single person as a RASTAFARI*AN*, not a RASTAFARI (which is the movement / religion itself) (10D: Person with dreads). Actually, looking over the fill now, it's not so much terrible as it is choked with overfamiliar stuff (SMEE, AVAST, SLOMO, ADIN, OMEN, ESAY, IMAC, etc). But seriously, this puzzle should've been rejected. It doesn't feel sound enough to fly in one of the lesser dailies, let alone the daily with the self-described "Best Puzzle in the World." Why not reject with advice on improvement? Why not wait til the puzzle comes back to you in acceptable shape? Sigh. FLIPFLOP (37D: Switch positions) and SCRUNCHIE (32D: Ponytail holder) are fine answers and don't deserve to be associated with this mess. Good day.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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