Rear seating compartment in old automobiels / Purple smoothie flavorer / Org that's nearly one fourth Canadian / Portrayer of Mr Chips / Spring river breakup

Constructor: Alex Bajcz

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Preposition Proposition" — verb phrases that are modeled (verb + preposition) are reimagined as hyphenated noun phrases, with resulting wackiness:

Theme answers:

• PULL-UP STAKES (23A: Wagers for a gym exercise?)
• PICK-UP STEAM (33A: Bad thing to see under a truck's hood?)
• WALK-ON WATER (48A: Unrecruited athlete's bottleful?)
• DEAD-ON ARRIVAL (64A: Timely entrance?)
• STAND-IN LINE (82:A Understudy's delivery?)
• PUT-ON NOTICE (97A: Scam alert?)
• RUN-IN CIRCLES (112A: Fight clubs?)
• SET-TO MUSIC (37D: Soundtrack for a brawl?)
• GO-TO PIECES (44D: Compositions often chosen for encores?)

Word of the Day: TONNEAU (20A: Rear seating compartment in old automobiles) —

noun

1. the part of an automobile, typically an open car, occupied by the back seats.

   • short for tonneau cover. (google)

It's a simple concept, and it is ... executed. I mean, it does what it does. More of a "hey ... interesting" -type theme than an "ooooh"-type theme, but OK.  There is a certain (perhaps numbing) consistency to the structure of these themers. The clues very rarely get to the level of wackiness normally required for me to enjoy wacky puzzles. And man oh man, with a puzzle saturated with prepositions (in the themers), it would be great if it were not also saturated with prepositions generally. I mean, yikes and EEKS. You've got PUSH IN, TOSSES TO, FLIES TO, OD ON, not to mention ONA and ATA ... it's a lot. It's possible I missed one. Don't really feel like checking thoroughly. The theme is very dense, which ... why? It's not like I"m clamoring for more of this theme. If you've seen 7, you've seen 9. I'd prefer a cleaner / more interesting overall grid to more theme stuff. Sometimes themes seem to try to compensate for mediocrity with density. I don't recommend this. I recommend starting with a baseline of non-mediocrity. I have nothing much against this puzzle, but nothing much for it, either. I really like PINCHRAN (21A: Replaced someone on a base). Is that weird? Probably. I'm just really into baseball right now, despite my team's being abysmal. Longer fill is normally a chance for a grid to shine, but today there's some really awkward stuff, like MISSES A CUE and STEP OUT OF (more prepositions!), and it just doesn't Do much to enliven the grid. ATE RIGHT, that's pretty good. In-the-language, original. More of that would've been nice.


I flew right through this one, and didn't notice much worth commenting on. I found that bank of Downs up top—APEAK, DISGUSTED, ENCIPHER—pretty tough, first because I forgot APEAK and wrote in ABEAM, second because the clue for DISGUSTED did not really seem like it was looking for an adjective (13D: Saying "Ewww!," say), and third because ENCIPHER ... I'd say DECIPHER, but ENCRYPT. So ENCIPHER just took some patience and acceptance. Your boy ANKA is back for another go 'round. Let's hear more of his pop warblings, shall we?


And now a word about GO OK. In the grid there is no space between GO and OK, and so you get an answer that looks like a racial slur, and while I didn't even blink at this (I was going too fast to think about parsing), lots of people did, in fact, blink:





I know the answer is totally defensible (it's not clued in a racial way, etc.), I think it's reasonable to ditch the answer entirely in the interest of not having an apparent racial slur hanging out in your grid. It's not as if GO OK is such great fill. As Evan Birnholz rightly pointed out to me, you lose Nothing in terms of puzzle quality by going with AREN'T / ROOK instead of AGENT / GO OK. Without having a big fight over this issue, please consider deleting this letter sequence from your wordlist. It costs you nothing, zip, nil, zero, and eliminates a possibility for people's taking offense, or even just being mildly put off. It's not as if GO OK is beloved—losing it is not a hardship.


Also, this from sportswriter / radio host Dan Bernstein, re: 48A: Unrecruited athlete's bottleful? (WALK-ON WATER):


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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