One-named folk singer / FRI 4-27-18 / Mechanical calculator pioneer / Greek goddess of witchcraft underworld / Cat known as Shirazi in mideast / Showy ballet leap / Mine shaft borer / English industrial city described by Dickens as odious place

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy or Easy-Medium, not sure (5:08)

THEME: no, just that ill-advised 1A/1D nonsense

Word of the Day: ENTRECHAT (2D: Showy ballet leap) —

noun

BALLET

1. a vertical jump during which the dancer repeatedly crosses the feet and beats them together. (Google)

OK, first things first, just *no* to the SEETHING / SEETHINGS crossing. I get it, you noticed a word thing and wanted to show it off, but unless you are using it in some kind of thematic capacity, it's just an eight-letter word and then that same eight-letter word again, with an S. A huge dupe. Ridiculous. And super-duper ridiculous, 'cause a huge chunk of solvers aren't even gonna notice anyway. There's clever, and then there's cute, and then there's too cute. This was too too. Which is too bad, as I liked most of this puzzle. Longer theme answers are interesting, and have a lot of room to breathe, though this grid was oddly heavy on the super-familiar stuff (TTOP KIR EDSEL ERMA EKE etc). ESTO was the only crosswordese that made me audibly gag, but this one just had more HAR INE IRE etc. than I'd expect in a Steinberg 70-worder (i.e. a high word-count themeless from a very experience constructor). Speaking of HAR, god I hate the [Laugh syllable] clue genre. At least four different plausible answers come to mind. I mean, if you can only give me a "syllable," maybe it's not a good answer to begin with and you should do something else.


I hung HEH (pfft) INE NCAA GELT right across the top of the grid to start things off, and that was enough to get ENTRANCE and ETHEREAL and zoom, off I went. First hold-up came trying to get up into the NE corner. Couldn't get PATNESS off the "P" (26A: Smooth talker's quality) and couldn't get either PARIAH (9D: Outcast) or AVANTI (10D: Classic Studebaker) from just their fourth and sixth letters. LAD / LEEDS rescued me from my floundering, and from up there, CABLE TELEVISION came straight down. Wouldn't have another hiccup until ELECTRO, which is not a "dance music subgenre" I'm familiar with. EDM, Electronica, Techno, those I know. ELECTRO sounds oddly made-up, or like it's a piece of some larger genre name. But no, it's a real, if niche, and largely bygone, thing. Anyway, I inferred it from --EC-RO, and that SW corner fell and I was done. I did an American Values Club crossword puzzle as a tune-up for this one, and I remain convinced that pre-solving other crosswords makes your NYT times faster. It's like warming up, but for your brain and eyes and fingers.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey there. What's up? So there's this collection of crosswords, edited by Patti Varol, called "Women of Letters." All-female constructor line-up, lots of familiar names. How do you get it? Screenshot your donation of > $10 to one of many "women-centric" charities (listed on the puzzle website), then send that in to WomenOfLettersCrosswords@gmail.com and get the puzzle pack in return. All relevant information can be found here. Nice way to spotlight a wide array of pro-women organizations while also showcasing women crossword constructors. Twofer!

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