Restaurant cook on TV's Two Broke Girls / FRI 3-16-18 / Fictional queen of Arendelle / Hepatologist's study / Product introduced in 1984 with ad titled 1984

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy (with a detour into Medium territory because I made one stupid mistake that it took me far too long to undo)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BEALE Street (42D: Memphis blues street) —

Beale Street is a street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, which runs from the Mississippi River to East Street, a distance of approximately 1.8 miles (2.9 km). It is a significant location in the city's history, as well as in the history of the blues. Today, the blues clubs and restaurants that line Beale Street are major touristattractions in Memphis. Festivals and outdoor concerts periodically bring large crowds to the street and its surrounding areas. (wikipedia)

HEMOPHILIA *and* ULCER *and* HEROIN ... Kind of a downer of a day at Crossword General Hospital. Beyond that, I thought the grid was pretty delightful. Pretty clean, with some interesting, lively answers. There's very, very little in the way of obscurity here, and the whole thing played very easy *except* for the part where I tried to come out of the west into the center / bottom of the grid. I should've just kept going right across the top, swept down the east coast, and then backed into the center and SW corner. In retrospect, that would've been pretty easy. But instead I tried to come through the VEGETARIAN / WINEMAKER nexus and got bogged right down. Why? Well, you kind of need VEGETARIAN and WINEMAKER to catapult or slingshot or other action verb you into the new sections of the grid if you're coming out of the W/NW.

And things looked good. Had VEGE- and WINE-, nice head starts on the front ends of both those answers. So what do I do? Well, first, and worst, I drop VEGETABLES into the grid. This doesn't *quite* feel right, but it fits. And then with WINE-, I ... just don't know. Since the clue is looking for an "authority," I am not not not thinking a wine producer. I'm thinking a wine aficionado, a wine enthusiast, a wine ... lover!? It fits. And that, my friends, is how you drop the ball. Hit the easy overhead smash into the net. Fumble on the five yard line. Again, choose your metaphor. I eventually figured it out (MIKES to -MAKER to MESONS, huzzah!), but given how fast I did the rest of the puzzle, that VEGETABLES fiasco took me from what would've been something like a record time to something like average.


Some of the cluing I could've done without. I have "F.U." written next to 14A: Partner of 5-Across (FREE) (it is not the "partner" of EASY as EASY is defined in its clue, 5A: "Calm down, ace"; so boo) and again at 4D: Where you might hear someone say "Duck!" (POND!? That scenario is preposterous. What are you, hanging out with sheltered 3-year-olds?). Clues on BIDEN (34A: 2017 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom) and CHARON (44A: Largest moon of Pluto) were just [shrugs]—you gotta be able to do better than boring trivia clues like that. CHARON is the damned ferryman! Do some punning or wordplay or Something. My worst moment of the day (after The VEGETABLES Fiasco) was having -ARDEN at 40D: Make a bed? and having absolutely no idea what word that could be. I still can't see anything but HARDEN, even with GARDEN clearly written in there).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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