Spiral-horned antelope / SAT 2-3-18 / Ethnic group whose name means wanderers / Any man boy biblically / Fancify oneself / Things held in cannonball

Constructor: Sam Ezersky and Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: none

Word of the Day: ALICE FAYE (2D: 1930-'40s film star with the signature song "You'll Never Know") —

Alice Faye (born Alice Jeane Leppert; May 5, 1915 – May 9, 1998) was an American actress and singer, described by The New York Times as "one of the few movie stars to walk away from stardom at the peak of her career".^[2] She was the second wife of actor and comedian Phil Harris.

She is often associated with the Academy Award–winning standard "You'll Never Know", which she introduced in the 1943 musical film Hello, Frisco, Hello. (wikipedia)

I was thinking of Byron Walden (one of today's constructors) just yesterday. If this sounds weird, it is. But I was. I was walking down Court Street in Binghamton, looked up, and saw that one of the buildings was named the "Waldron Building." It looks like this (you can see WALDRON if you look real hard, up top):

I have known Byron Walden for years, and so my brain then started bouncing "Waldron" and "Walden" around. Then started treating Byron's name like some weird theme answer where you move the "R" from his first to his last name, BYON WALDREN, and I mean, why would you do that? But this is what a constantly crosswording brain does when it's idling. It's both stupid and horrifying. Take words, break them apart, move letters around, read them backwards, etc. Your brain just abuses the words it encounters in the hopes of squeezing some kind of puzzle concept out of them. Most of that time is wasted. It's great!


This was a beautiful puzzle that I really enjoyed solving—except. Except for those one or two terrifying seconds at the very end, when I had to make a largely blind stab at the final letter. I soared through almost all of this thing until I finally had it cornered in the SW, but ... then nothing MAP part of AREA CODE MAP not clear (22D: Feature in a telephone directory), COOKED part of COOKED KALE *really* not clear (I eat lots of kale, never heard it /seen its cookedness specified in the title) (49A: Vitamin-rich green side dish). And so this stupid little corner was gonna try to fight me, eh?  Fine, let's go. Wrote in NONET for 42D: The planets, e.g., remembered the Pluto demotion, then couldn't decide between OCTET or OCTAD, but the "O" got me OTB, and I just knew TORII (thank you, OOXTEPLERNON, God of Crosswordese, May His Name Fill Eternity). Bing bam boom I'm down to AIR-AM and KU-U (56A: Front spoiler on a car / 50D: Spiral-horned antelope) . . . and, yeah, there I am. I seriously consider "J" (my brain is doing this by way of RAMJET, which is ... some other crossword thing I've seen). But then I think, "DAM," sure, that's better than AIRJAM, for sure ... I think." And I guess "D" and ... success. But oh, man, AIRDAM / KUDU ... that's pushing it. I mean, EYEHAND was pushing it too, but not in a way that was going to make me tank the puzzle!

I watch TCM like a mad man and was baffled when I couldn't get the '30s-'40s film star, even as her name kept getting filled in. Finished getting it, and still had no idea. Thought, "I have never seen her in anything," but then looked her up and realized I had seen Preminger's film noir "Fallen Angel," and she's in that. Still, though, so weird that her name was a total blank to me, considering I watched 200+ movies in 2017, 90% of them on TCM, 75% of those from the '30s-'40s. There were a few other odd proper nouns here and there (PIBB XTRA? Who drinks that!?), but nothing too obscure. The good longer answers are too many to name; they start with the wonderfully clued HALL PASS (1A: Toilet paper?) and go from there. The "G" in the 9-square was involved in the only two answers (besides EYEHAND) that caused me to make a face: GAPPY, because that's just silly, and GO ASK ANYONE, because of course you would never say the "GO" part. "ASK ANYONE!" Yes. If you add the "GO," you have to GO ASK ALICE.

Started with SERRA because I grew up in California and learned all that mission stuff in elementary school. Then I followed with another California answer: ICE-T. Actually, both those answers just confirmed HOPIS which was what I wanted right away at 1D: Pueblo Revolt participants. The only real obstacle between initial traction and final stumbling over the finish line was TRAVEL BLOG, which I had as TRAVELOGUE and then TRAVEL BOOK before I finally got to where I was going. Thwarted by BLOG. How ... something.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. what the hell is a "cannonball" that holds KNEES? Is it the part of a desk where your KNEES go? Looking up now ... wow. Wow. Man, did I misread that. *You* hold your KNEES when you do a "cannonball" into the swimming pool. Of course you do. I know that. I grew up in California, with a swimming pool in my backyard, and I still didn't understand this! And yesterday I fell on the ice and smashed my knee and wrist. Ugh. The northeast is ruining me.


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