Reggae persona for noted rapper / WED 1-31-18 / Some wonderful times in Nebraska / Sort of person heavily into eyeliner / Lead-in to mensch / Vitamin brand with hypen between its last two letters

Constructor: Josh Radnor and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium (theme pretty challenging / fill pretty easy)

THEME: PREMEDITATED (50A: Calculated ... or a punny hint to 18-, 24-, 32- and 44-Across) — regular phrases have the meditation chant sound "OM" added to the beginning of them, creating wacky phrases:

Theme answers:

• OMAHA MOMENTS (18A: Some wonderful times in Nebraska?)
• O'MALLEY CATS (24A: Good name for politico Martin's jazz band?)
• OMEN VOGUE (32A: Portentous fashion magazine?) 
• OMITS NO JOKE (44A: Makes an unabridged humor book?)

Word of the Day: En Vogue (See 32A) —

En Vogue is an American R&B/Pop vocal group whose original lineup consisted of singers Terry Ellis, Dawn Robinson, Cindy Herron, and Maxine Jones. Formed in Oakland, California in 1989, En Vogue reached number two on the US Hot 100 with the single "Hold On", which was taken from their 1990 debut album Born To Sing. The group's 1992 follow-up album Funky Divas reached the top 10 in both the US and UK, and included their second US number two hit "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)", plus the US top 10 hits "Giving Him Something He Can Feel" and "Free Your Mind". (wikipedia)

I was really distracted by the little yellow "Note" icon on my puzzle:

These notes often have some extra bit of information about what's happening in the puzzle, what to look for, etc., and I don't read them. I don't want help. I just want to solve the puzzle. But there's always that nagging feeling, as I'm solving, that the note is gonna be *necessary* to comprehending what's going on, so when I get hung up, anywhere, I eye that little yellow rectangle resentfully, like, "this better not be *you*." And I had that feeling several times today, as none of themers would budge. I was cleaning up on the west side of the grid, but I couldn't find my way across to the east because themers were giving me no help *and* the only way to get from west to east is via the themers (those passageways are tiny!). OMAHA [stop]. O'MALLEY ? [stop]. Eventually hopped the center line and did the short Downs that ran through VOGUE, and got OMEN VOGUE (?) but somehow still didn't notice the three "OM"s. In fact, I never saw the pattern until I hit the revealer, and then something weird happened, something good that's supposed to happen all the time but rarely does. Well, two things. A. I had an honest-to-god (non-OM) aha moment at the revealer, and B. it made all my earlier frustration melt away into something like admiration. It's a good theme.


Grid is weirdly crammed with olde-tymey crossword names—LEN, LOM, ERMA, and ... hey, it's ENYA. Haven't seen her yet this year. Welcome back.


But otherwise, the grid is pretty clean. Almost all my struggle with this puzzle came with trying to comprehend the themers. Otherwise, nothing too hard here. Wanted UBER (actually 49A) for AVIS (9A: Company that acquired Zipcar in 2013) and OCTOPUS for OCTOPOD (47A: Multi-armed mollusk). Both O'MALLEY CATS and OMITS NO JOKE were super-hard to parse in part because of the very good but absolutely brutal clue on COVET (28D: Extremely fancy?). I had to get it down to -OVET before I could see what was going on. "Fancy" as a verb! So irritating! But approval must be granted! Grudgingly granted! Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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