Dolphinfish informally / SAT 2-24-18 / Pennsylvania city where Delaware Lehigh rivers meet / Irvin early cartoonist designer for New Yorker / Italian sculptor Lorenzo Bernini / Hollande's successor

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: REA Irvin (16A: ___ Irvin, early cartoonist designer for The New Yorker) —

Rea Irvin (August 26, 1881—May 28, 1972) was an American graphic artist. Although never formally credited as such, he served de facto as the first art editor of The New Yorker. He created the Eustace Tilley cover portrait and the New Yorkertypeface. He first drew Tilley for the cover of the magazine's first issue on February 21, 1925. Tilley appeared annually on the magazine's cover every February until 1994. As one commentator has written, "a truly modern bon vivant, Irvin (1881–1972) was also a keen appreciator of the century of his birth. His high regard for both the careful artistry of the past and the gleam of the modern metropolis shines from the very first issue of the magazine..." (wikipedia)

Hello and good morning. Surprisingly good puzzle today. I wasn't so sure about it as I was exiting, or failing to exit, the NW corner, where HORS and AVGAS (whatever that is) had me wondering what I was wandering, or failing to wander, into. Turned out my failure to move down into the center of the grid from up top was due to a little (big) misplay there at 8D: Picker-upper (TONIC). Had the TON-, wrote in ... TONGS! Apt! But wrong. But then, when I couldn't get either of those little Acrosses, I pulled TONGS for TONIC, got PACS, threw down SLOGANEER, and was off: ASIN PIGLET AIRPLAY EDDY IDEAS PLODDER, in case you want to know the exact order of progression. My affection for the puzzle picked up when I picked up SLIPPERY SLOPE—"Alright, the puzzle came to play!" I thought. Sometimes a themeless will just ... lie there. All competent and sturdy and sad. But SLIPPERY SLOPE / PAROLE HEARING / BINGE-WATCHING (!) was a delightfully creamy discovery at the center of my puzzle snack. Nice modern clue on MACRON, up the east coast HEADLONG into the SAD SONG. At this point I'm having so much fun that I don't even scowl at the ETALI? pothole. AESTHETIC drops down easily, MAHI slides over, and I clean up the SE in Monday time—I remembered RIAA today, for possibly the first time ever! And AMATI and RAVI just sort of walked over and said, "Hey ... yeah, we don't know why we're here, all out in the open on a Saturday either. But go ahead, take us." And I did. That corner required only my most BASIC SKILLS. Total PRE-K stuff.


Only a couple tricky areas once I jumped down from the NNW. Blanked on SNOPES (a site I know well) and only half-knew COLLET (as with ROSECUT diamonds yesterday, my jewelry knowledge, she is not so good). Those were easy enough problems to overcome. The real bear down there was the basic word SCIENCE, which had such an odd clue on it (32D: Prestigious academic journal). This "very general category as clue for something specific in that category" is a SLIPPERY SLOPE. [Food] = SOUP? I mean, it's accurate, but ... I think I'm just saying that "Prestigious" and "academic" doesn't really narrow this down much. Not that I could name a ton of "prestigious academic journals" ... but neither did I know that SCIENCE was one. I guess the puzzle was so easy that underclued weirdness was considered necessary. OK. I also had a strange amount of trouble with RESHIPS, mostly because I thought 21D: Forwards was referring to a direction ... on a ship. Like, MIDSHIPS? Is that an area on a ship? Fore, aft, ABAFT, ABEAM ... I was looking for something in that category. UPSHIPS? But "Forwards" was a verb, which I realized only after (finally) getting the "R" from REDS (21A: Section of a Crayola box). So it's just ... RESHIPS. My nautical fantasies, dashed.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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