Lead role in Boys Don't Cry 1999 / SUN 2-25-18 / Nanki-poo's father / Neighbor of Montenegrin / TV demonstrator at 1939 World's Fair / Bygone deliverers / Seaweed in Japanese cuisine

Constructor: Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Letter Recycling"— pairs of intersecting answers with identical clues are made up of the same set of letters:

• IRON AGE (2D: Historical period) / GEORGIAN ERA (22A: Historical period spelled using only the letters of 2-Down)
• ETHAN ALLEN (13D: Revolutionary War hero) / NATHAN HALE (28A: Revolutionary War hero spelled using etc.)
• POTATO CHIPS (36D: Snack items) / PISTACHIOS 
• OUTSTANDING (39D: Really impressive) / ASTOUNDING 
• DETESTABLE (71D: No-good) / DAD-BLASTED
• SCHMEAR (89D: Bagel topping) / CREAM CHEESE

Word of the Day: EGBERT (18D: Grandfather of Alfred the Great) —

Ecgberht (771/775 – 839), also spelled Egbert, Ecgbert, or Ecgbriht, was King of Wessex from 802 until his death in 839. His father was Ealhmund of Kent. In the 780s Ecgberht was forced into exile by Offa of Mercia and Beorhtric of Wessex, but on Beorhtric's death in 802 Ecgberht returned and took the throne.

Little is known of the first 20 years of Ecgberht's reign, but it is thought that he was able to maintain the independence of Wessex against the kingdom of Mercia, which at that time dominated the other southern English kingdoms. In 825 Ecgberht defeated Beornwulf of Mercia, ended Mercia's supremacy at the Battle of Ellandun, and proceeded to take control of the Mercian dependencies in southeastern England. In 829 he defeated Wiglaf of Mercia and drove him out of his kingdom, temporarily ruling Mercia directly. Later that year Ecgberht received the submission of the Northumbrian king at Dore. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle subsequently described Ecgberht as a bretwalda or 'wide-ruler' of Anglo-Saxon lands.

Ecgberht was unable to maintain this dominant position, and within a year Wiglaf regained the throne of Mercia. However, Wessex did retain control of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey; these territories were given to Ecgberht's son Æthelwulf to rule as a subking under Ecgberht. When Ecgberht died in 839, Æthelwulf succeeded him; the southeastern kingdoms were finally absorbed into the kingdom of Wessex after Æthelwulf's death in 858. (wikipedia)

This grid looks like it was architecturally challenging to put together: all themers are part of intersecting pairs, and some of those pairs actually abut. ABUT, I say! There's hardly any part of the grid that isn't affected by / impinged on by a theme answer. It's actually astonishing that the grid is as clean as it is, given how grid-pressuring this theme is. That said, I found it really lifeless, so much so that I just ignored the theme, for the most part. You didn't really need to know that the word pairs used the same letter bank. You could just solve them based on their rather general clues. The fact that OUTSTANDING and ASTOUNDING use the same letters just isn't that interesting. I think CREAM CHEESE / SCHMEAR is my favorite pairing, with PISTACHIOS / POTATO CHIPS a close second, but as I say, it's nothing I thought about (or had to think about, for that matter), as I was solving.

• RODE ON
• WE'RE ON
• ADD-ONS
• BENT ON
• LURES IN
• WADE IN
• IN MIDAIR

Final score: ON 4, IN 3. Good game, fellas.


Trouble spots:

• 31A: Order to go (MUSH) — wanted SHOO or SCAT or something related to fast food
• 34A: Woman's name that sounds like its second and first letters, respectively (ELLY) — solving this was like trying to spell AUGUSTA backward the other day: brain-breaking
• 107A: Bygone deliverer (ICEMEN) — went looking for some folksy, olde-tymey term for OB/GYN
• 120A: "Aw rats!" ("DARN!") — DRAT, DANG, etc. the usual suspects
• 6D: Was dateless (WENT STAG) — had the WENT, went with SOLO
• 47D: Seaweed in Japanese culture (KOMBU) — wait, is this where "kombucha" comes from??? [yes and no: here's an explainer] The only seaweed I know very well is NORI, though KOMBU as crossed my field of vision somewhere before...
• 103D: Lead role in "Boys Don't Cry," 1999 (TEENA) — I saw this in the theater and don't remember it at all, except Swank was in it. But the puzzle was generally so easy that I didn't have to spend any time wondering about this clue; it filled in via crosses very quickly.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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