Group with five #1 R&B hits in 1990s / THU 11-23-17 / Bringer of light in myth / Declaration at end of chess game / Smallpox victims of 1500s / Higher priced burger meat / 1971 double-platinum album for Doors / Bit of doctoral graduation regalia

Constructor: Howard Barkin

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: familiar phrases related to numbers (?) are clued as if those numbers functioned mathematically, resulting in unexpected, wacky answers... 

Theme answers:

• 20A: Halftime show? ("THIRTY MINUTES") ("half" of the "minutes" in the "show""Sixty Minutes")
• 30A: Double feature? ("SIX AMIGOS") ("double" the "amigos" in the movie "Three Amigos")
• 38A: Triple play? ("RICHARD IX") ("triple" the number of the "play""Richard III")
• 50A: Fourth estate? (THREE OAKS) (one "fourth" the number of "oaks" in the estate "Twelve Oaks"(see Word of the Day, below)
•  59A: Fifth act? (THE JACKSON ONE) (one "fifth" of the musical "act""The Jackson Five")

Word of the Day: Twelve Oaks (50A) —

In Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind, Twelve Oaks is the plantation home of the Wilkes family in Clayton County, Georgia named for the twelve great oak trees that surround the family mansion in an almost perfect circle. Twelve Oaks was described as a "beautiful white-columned house that crowned the hill like a Greek Temple," having true southern charm and whimsy. Margaret Mitchell came up with the idea for The Twelve Oaks, and modeled the home after an actual antebellum mansion located in the historic area of Covington, Georgia. The home that was portrayed as Margaret Mitchell's Twelve Oaks in the film Gone with the Wind has been renovated and is now open as a bed and breakfast and event facility in Covington, Georgia, thirty minutes east of Atlanta. (wikipedia)

I like the whole weird, wacky math thing, but switching from fractions to multiples back to fractions seems not just inconsistent but super-awkward. No problem with the "half" part and never even saw the "fifth" clue (because I inferred THE JACKSON ONE easily from crosses), but that [Fourth estate?] clue, yeeeeesh. First, because "fourth" is *an ordinal* (and only a fraction if preceded by "a" or "one"), I had no idea what was going on. I thought there was some kind of series ... of OAKS? ... and I couldn't figure out how "Fourth" got you to THREE ... OAKS. Second, I just had no idea what Twelve Oaks was. None. Tara, I know. Twelve Oaks, hoo boy no. So when I wrote in that "O" in OCTO (not at all clear, as OCTA is also a legit [Numerical prefix]), I just hoped for the best: and bam, Mr. Happy Pencil. But I just stared at THREE OAKS going "whaaaaa .... t?" Then I looked at the [Fifth act?] clue and saw that ONE is a "fifth" of five and then I realized that the original estate must be Twelve Oaks. Then I googled it and voila. By the way, what's a fifth act? Is it just ... the fifth act ... of a play? The other theme clues seem so much tighter / more specific. Halftime is a thing. The fourth estate is a thing. Fifth act ... is about as much a thing as fourth act, i.e. not much of a thing.


But again, as I say, the whole "do some wacky math" thing was reasonably pleasing to me. If it hadn't been for the whole fourth estate debacle, I think this would've played Easy for me. I certainly blew through most of the top part. TAM weirded me out (not a word I associate with regalia) (22D: Bit of doctoral graduation regalia) and ACIDY took many crosses. I haven't thought about JODECI in twenty years, but their name came flying up from the back of my brain (10D: Group with five #1 R&B hits in the 1990s). I had a MAC (intosh, i.e. raincoat) in my closet before I had a VAC (12D: Closet item, for short). The first Shakespeare play I read (after the requisite 9th-grade encounter with "Romeo & Juliet" was actually, weirdly, "Richard II," so (and I'm not kidding here), I wrote in RICHARD VI at first for [Triple play?]. Wanted AS DO I before AS AM I (54A: "Me too," more formally). I don't think SO KIND stands well on its own at all, so I hesitated there for sure. Wrote in BRITISH at first for 44D: "The Office," originally (BRITCOM), so that took some undoing. So there were some struggles, but most of them minor. Mixed bag, this one. I SMILED a little at the math stuff, but found the mash-up of fractions and multiples slightly off-putting and a little confusing.


So hey, maybe you've got a spare five minutes to half an hour today 'cause it's Thanksgiving and all, and how much "togetherness" can any one person stand, am I right? Anyway, please enjoy this baseball crossword that I made, just for you. It's called "Fan Duel." Here's the PDF. Here's the .PUZ. Share it with your baseballier friends. And have a lovely day. Thank you!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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