Hasbro toy that involves pulling twisting / THU 1-11-18 / Line from someone who's been interrupted / George Vermont senator for 34 years / Co-written best seller

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: [Line from someone who's been interrupted]— that's the clue on three themers. The answers all run clear across the grid and then continue on the next line, the idea being that the line has been "interrupted" (said interruption is signified by a hyphen):

Interrupted lines:

• "PLEASE LET ME FIN- / ISH"
• "DO I LOOK LIKE I'M D- / ONE"
• "QUIET, I WAS SPEAK- / ING"

Word of the Day: BOP IT (5A: Hasbro toy that involves pulling and twisting) —

Bop It toys are a line of audio games where play consists of following a series of commands issued through speakers by the toy, which has multiple inputs including pressable buttons, pull handles, twisting cranks, spinnable wheels, flickable switches - with pace speeding up as the player progresses. (wikipedia)

Hello, solvers. It's early January, which means it's time for my once-a-year, week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. To be clear—there are no major expenses involved in writing a blog. There's just my time. A lot of it. Every day (well, usually night), solving, writing, hunting down pictures and videos of various degrees of relevance and usefulness, chatting with folks and answering puzzle questions via email and social media, gathering and disseminating crossword-related information of various kinds, etc. It's a second job. My making this pitch means I'm all in for another calendar year of puzzle revelry with all y'all. I'm excited about the year. I've got my own crossword construction project I want to get off the ground, and I'm hoping to take a more active role (along with some crossword friends) in recruiting and mentoring new and aspiring constructors. But the bulk of my work will be the same as ever: I'll be here with a new post every single day. Solve, write, repeat. Despite my occasional (or, OK, maybe frequent) consternation with the State of The Puzzle, the crossword community continues to give me great joy, and I'm proud to run an independent, ad-free blog where people can find someone to commiserate with, someone to yell at, or, you know, someone who'll just give them the damn answers. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address:

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions (I. Love. Snail mail!) will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. This year's cards are "Women In Science"—Rachel Ignotofsky's beautiful cartoon portraits of women scientists from antiquity to the present. I've heard of a few of these women (mostly crossword names like ADA Lovelace, Marie CURIE, MAE Jemison) but most of these names are entirely new to me, so I'm excited to learn about them as I write my thank-you notes. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD.  As ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support.

Now on to the puzzle!

Yeah, this doesn't really work, for a few reasons. First, the hyphens, which are allegedly what I was supposed to put in those final themer boxes. This is crosswords. I put HIC and NONO into crosswords all the time. I mean, jeez, look at ATEAM (52A: Elite group). Look At It. In the real world, of course, that gets a hyphen. But in a crossword? No. So those "hyphens" are all essentially unchecked squares. Absurd. Further, A-Z is not at all a valid answer to 35D: The whole shebang. You say A TO Z. You do not say "A-Z." And, again, if you solve crosswords regularly (as some of us do), you've seen ATOZ in puzzle approximately one bajillion times. A TO Z, A TO Z, A TO Z. Not only can I not imaging saying "A-Z" (w/o the "TO"), I can't imagine writing it. And please don't tell me the hyphen stands for "TO." It's not HI TO C or NO TO NO, so it's not A TO Z. Lastly, the actual interrupted phrases are kinda contrived (to get all the themers to be exactly the same length). First one reads OK, But second one ... I dunno. "LOOK"? You're talking, not miming. "DO I SOUND LIKE I'M DONE?" is the only plausible phrase. "QUIET, I WAS SPEAKING" ... I mean, fine, but that's just made up. "PLEASE LET ME FINISH" is at least close to a phrase that can stand on its own. The others are inapt and arbitrary, respectively.


I'm gonna start a recurring segment called Fire Your Fill (FYF), in which I order ask all constructors to get rid of some egregious bit of crossword garbage that should've been ice floed long ago. Today's FYF target is ABRA (1A: Start of a magic incantation). I will accept the full incantation, but this arbitrarily lopped-off first part? No. AGRA, yes. ABRA, no. I'm not too fond of ABLUSH either (I had AFLUSH, which really feels more like a thing...) (59A: Visibly embarrassed). And what's with MRI SCAN? Isn't that redundant? Are there MRIs that are *not* SCANs? I did enjoy TALKS TRASH and OPEN A TAB. Those are answers I can relate to. I patted myself hard on the back for remembering BELAY—my nautical nauledge is roughly zero. Never ever heard of BOP IT, so thank god BELAY was in my memory banks. Only made one initial error today: GIST for PITH (7D: Crux).

Bullets:

• 14A: Celebrating Hanukkah, say (JEWISH)— [Jewish celebration] fo HANUKKAH makes sense. [Celebrating Hanukkah, say] for JEWISH feels weird and backward. It's like [Tagging up, say] for PLAYING BASEBALL. Like, the clue is way too specific for the general answer.
• 43A: Square figure? (TWO)— presumably because "2" is the exponent that signifies squaring.
• 9D: Co-written best seller (THE BIBLE)— I hate-like this clue. It's trying So Hard to be clever, so it's hard to stay mad at it.
• 26D: Provider of global support? (ATLAS) — me, at first: "An ATLAS is a book ... how is that 'support'?" Me, later: "Oh, *ATLAS* ..."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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