Rabbi Meir who served in Knesset / WED 3-28-18 / Red snapper at sushi restaurant / Ballplayer Rich who started ended his 15-year career as Giant / Soprano Licia who performed hundreds of times at Met / Figs on Stanford-Binet test / Leopold's 1924 co-defendant

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: TEE (59D: End of each word in 17-, 27-, 43- and 54-Across — as well as every clue (and that's a fact!))— just what it says

Theme answers:

• GREAT SALT DESERT (17A: Part of Iran that can get quite hot)
• SAT BOLT UPRIGHT (27A: Sudenly showed interest)
• KEPT QUIET ABOUT (43A: Didn't speak of, as a touchy subject)
• LAST BUT NOT LEAST (54A: "Finally, though as important ...")

Word of the Day: Meir KAHANE  (43D: Rabbi Meir who served in the Knesset) —

Meir David HaKohen Kahane (Hebrew: מאיר דוד כהנא‬) (/kəˈhɑːnə/; August 1, 1932 – November 5, 1990) was an American-Israeli ordained Orthodox rabbi, writer, and ultra-nationalist politician who served one term in the Israeli Knesset. His work is influential on most modern Jewish militant and far right-wing political groups. (wikipedia)

Two issues here. One, I don't really get the appeal of the TEE thing. The themers all ending in TEE is mildly interesting, but ... making all the clues end in TEE just results in tortured cluing. No one is humming along with their solving going "wow, look at how all these clues end in TEE—nice!" It's not even an amazing revelation at the end. More, "Oh *that's* why I had so much trouble interpreting the clues." There needed to be a better way to make this one Extra—to take it from the not-terribly-interesting all-words-in-themers-end-in-TEE thing to the Next Level. The clue gimmick doesn't really do it. Seems like an afterthought to make the puzzle seem (rather than actually be) layered and complex.


So the blahness of the "T" thing is one issue. The next is the proper noun assault. Peter sells an app called Celebrity (see here), a guess-the-name game that he will 100% without a doubt all the time try to rope people into playing at every crossword tournament he attends. He probably does this in real life, in random places, like the dentist's office or subway platforms, for all I know. The game is fun, but that's not the point. The point is: The Dude Knows His Famous Names. And his Sorta Famous Names. Famousish Names. I wonder if this is why he doesn't blink at putting so many marginally famous names in a Wednesday grid. I absolutely did not know three of these names—complete blank stare territory. And two other names (SLOAN Wilson, Rich AURILIA) I knew only because of my particular hobbies / passions (collecting vintage paperbacks and watching baseball, respectively). ADELEH (which I only *just* learned is actually ADELE space H.!), ALBANESE, and especially KAHANE were painful, letter-by-letter, cross-by-cross pick-ups. Brutal. Ugh. I've watched two Truffaut films just this month, but "The Story of ADELE H." ... Adele Ouch, not on my radar. There are a lot more proper nouns in the grid, but most of them seem pretty mainstream. I have never heard of the GREAT SALT DESERT (lake yes, desert no), but at least that was inferrable, unlike KAHANE, dear lord. OMG, I totally forgot about LIL MO, another laughable "???" (20A: Popular early 2000s R&B artist). The TEE gimmick also seems to have forced a NED I didn't know (9D: Nascar Hall-of-Famer Jarrett). So the theme was just there and the spate of iffily "famous" names made this kind of an unpleasant solve.



Maybe a snappy revealer or title (which I really wish weekday puzzles had) could've salvaged the theme; that meager TEE there at the end thuds more than it pops. I don't know. I'm just gonna try to file ADELEH KAHANE and ALBANESE away for future recognition purposes and move on.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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