Rock band known for its energy domes / TUE 4-17-18 / Archipelago west of Portugal / Bruece Lee role based on old radio character / Loosening of government controls for short / Giant four-legged combat walker in Star Wars films

Constructor: Wren Schultz

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:01)

THEME: VOWEL (65A: Every other letter in this puzzle's grid(!)) — that's the theme; pretty self-explanatory

Theme answers:

• All of them

Word of the Day: KIWI (57D: New Zealand bird) —

noun

1. 1. 

   a flightless New Zealand bird with hairlike feathers, having a long down-curved bill with sensitive nostrils at the tip.
2. 2. 

   informal

   a New Zealander, especially a soldier or member of a national sports team.

I have no idea how hard or easy this is to do, and I don't really care. You'd never notice the gimmick unless someone told you about it, and it has no relevance to the solving process. I guess if you somehow got really stuck and knew the "every other letter" = vowel gimmick, you could maybe narrow down your letter choices, but in a puzzle this easy, that seems highly unlikely. It's basically a profoundly easy and pretty dull themeless, with a very weak one-word revealer that points out an invisible stunt. If a stunt falls in the woods and there's no one ... etc. I genuinely don't understand this. Or, rather, I don't understand going forward with this when you have no zippy wordplay, no revealer, no phrase that you're reimagining. The punchline is just ... VOWEL. It would be great if the NYT thought for a dang second about what it would be like to solve this thing. You're humming along, it's easy, there's absolutely no discernible pattern or theme but you don't care 'cause you're crushing it, and then you hit dum dum DUM ... VOWEL. And you look at the grid and you see that indeed every other letter is a VOWEL but also it looks like any other blah crossword except w/o the pesky theme, I guess. But at least you got to see ODER and BOLA and ONED and NAGAT, though, so at least you've got that going for you.


I nearly broke 3 minutes on a Tuesday, which hasn't happened for me in a long while. I was half a minute faster today than yesterday. I had almost zero areas of trouble, and very few times when I looked at a clue and didn't know immediately what the answer was. ODER required crosses, but other than that, every answer seemed to just fall before me, without my having to do much of anything. At the very end (NE corner) I lost a few seconds because I hesitated at ___ DEPOSIT (10D: Lode). Figured it was ORE, but wanted confirmation. Then didn't get DEVO at first pass (11D: Rock band known for its "energy domes") and then of course fell in the old COLA / SODA trap at 9A: Pizza party drink (SODA). And so, 3:01. Really, really want those two seconds back. Curse you SODA! I shall never drink thee again ... I mean, I don't drink thee now, but ... moreso!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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