South Indian pancakes / FRI 1-12-18 / Rhyming educational proverb / Pastries similar to long john doughnuts / Not halal in Arab cuisine / Attracted to all genders in modern lingo

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HARAM (2D: Not halal, in Arab cuisine) —

Haram (/ˈhɛərəm, ˈhær-/; Arabic: حَرَام‎ ḥarām [ħaˈraːm]) is an Arabic term meaning "forbidden". Thus it may refer to: either something sacred to which access is forbidden to the people who are not in a state of purity or who are not initiated into the sacred knowledge; or to an evil thus "sinful action that is forbidden to be done". The term also denotes something "set aside", thus being the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew concept קָדוֹש‬ qadoš, and the concept of sacer (cf. sacred) in Roman law and religion. In Islamic jurisprudence, haram is used to refer to any act that is forbidden by Allah, and is one of five Islamic commandments (الأحكام الخمسة‎ (al-ahkam al-khamsah)) that define the morality of human action. (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!

Saw the quad stack and thought "ugh." Then saw that the grid had a cool mirror symmetry that was not going to force me to indure* two quad stacks, and my mood perked up a bit.  Stack ended up being so easy that the infelicities it entailed (in the crosses) barely registered, and overall, the solve was fairly lively and entertaining, despite some significant bumps. My favorite thing about this puzzle is the grid design. Going with mirror symmetry on themelesses really opens up interesting possibilities. It frees you up. Above all, it just gives a new look. You see rotationally symmetrical themeless grids hundreds of times, they all look so familiar. Even the low word-count puzzles and the quadstack puzzles, which can be visually arresting, are a *type* by now. But this grid just *looks* fresh. It also looks like a mask, in a way. The fill is hit-or-miss. The long Acrosses are all right on the money, which is as it should be—you don't go all showy like this if you have to include A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE or some other 15-letter junk to make your stack work. ACAKE is not great and ANIF is violence, but nothing else up there is offensive (except THIEL, of course, dear lord, is there no respite?).


I admit to being stumped by some of the non-anglo-american stuff up top, specifically HARAM (which if I knew it, I forgot it) and DOSAS (ditto). I managed ATIEMPO just fine, despite not speaking Spanish. I think that's too long for a foreign phrase that hasn't entered common English parlance (can't think of any such foreignism of equivalent length that I've seen in crossword before), but it's totally inferrable, or was to me, at any rate. EACH ONE TEACH ONE appears to be a concept that came out of slavery, where black people who were denied access to education (specifically literacy) took it upon themselves to teach themselves. Wikipedia's got it as an "African-American proverb." I had no idea.


The only parts of this puzzle that gave me any troublewere EDISON (I had the "E" and just ... blanked) (23D: Motion picture pioneer), PAN (I was like, "ooh, I know this ... it's ... p ... p ... poly?") (27D: Attracted to people of all genders, in modern lingo), and INDEPENDENCE AVE, because I came at it from the back, and it looked like it was going to end with "CONCEIVE" or something like that (58A: D.C. thoroughfare with the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum). Otherwise, this was an easy puzzle. The grid looks great, and I generally enjoyed the nice mix of answers (high culture, pop culture, multiple cultures).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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