City in which Glee is set / THU 5-3-18 / Self-deprecatingly titled instructional book series / European nation since 1993 / Casey at bat autobiographer / Bubble-filled Nestle chocolate bar / Word on magnum

Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (mostly because rebuses just take longer a. to uncover b. to fill in) (6:06)


THEME: COMPACT CARS (38A: Easy-to-park vehicles ... or what can be found four times in this puzzle) — rebus puzzle with four car-make squares:

Theme answers:

• AF(FORD) / (FOR D)UMMIES
• PR(OPEL) / R(OPE L)ADDER
• SLOVA(KIA) / S(KI A)REA
• PL(AUDI)TS / G(AUDI)EST

Word of the Day: Roone ARLEDGE (12D: Longtime TV exec Roone)—

Roone Pinckney Arledge, Jr. (July 8, 1931 – December 5, 2002) was an American sports and news broadcasting executive who was president of ABC Sports from 1968 until 1986 and ABC News from 1977 until 1998, and a key part of the company's rise to competition with the two other main television networks, NBC and CBS, in the 1960s, '70s, '80s and '90s. He created many programs still airing today, such as Monday Night Football, ABC World News Tonight, Primetime, Nightline and 20/20. (wikipedia)

There are several things to like about this puzzle, but the theme isn't really one them. Way too straightforward, and I'm almost certainly I've seen this theme before, possibly several times. Just plain, with an obvious revealer. Makes of cars are random. It's just ... find four car squares. OK. Done. Yawn. But I liked much of the longer fill in the puzzle, like DIRT CHEAP and DANCE AROUND and OPEN-AND-SHUT, and especially SMAUG, which you really don't see as much as you should in crossworddom (53A: Tolkien dragon). I'm not too fond of DINGE, though (32A: Griminess). We say things are "dingey," maybe, but DINGE as a noun, in my experience, is a racial slur. Perhaps it's a bit dated, because I think I've mostly seen it in Raymond Chandler novels, but if you google "DINGE" it will appear right up there at the top of the page as the second meaning.

I can think of fairly common words that *can* be used as racial slurs, and I certainly wouldn't to ban those completely NIP is terrible as a racial slur, but it's an ultra-common word referring to what puppies do to your hands or Jack Frost does to your nose. And it means a quick drink. Lots of ordinary uses. When the word in ordinary usage doesn't really evoke the slur, I don't care. But DINGE is just not ordinary enough for me. I see it, I hear slur. There are no other common contexts in which I see / hear DINGE. I'm not really mad at the editor or constructor or anyone. Just talking about the way words can evoke unpleasantness for some people even when they don't for others. Just something to chew on.


I took a while to get the rebus because I thought the [Self-deprecatingly titled instructional book series] was maybe just know as DUMMIES, so I had AFD at 1D: Meet the expense of, and since AFFORD wouldn't have occurred to me even if the answer had been six letters long (odd clue), I just moved on, assuming AFD was part of a theme that would reveal itself in time. But then I plowed down the west side and wanted SLOVENIA (which didn't fit) but then eventually SLOVAKIA, and bang, there's the theme. I thought, "Oh, COMPACT CARS..." And sure enough, that was the revealer.  This is why my reaction was more "Oh" than "Wow!" Had the most trouble parking the AUDI. I could tell there was a themer involved at 54D, but that AUDI square ended up being the very last square I filled in. I had to jump into that SE corner and run the 3-letter Downs after stalling out trying to work my way in through crosses. Luckily, HUG ESE SEL went in bam bam bam. Shoulda got DULLES way earlier (50D: Airport whose main terminal was designed by Eero Saarinen); had the DU- but was thinking city, not airport (dumb) and so could think only of DUNKIRK, which didn't fit (and is, frankly, ridiculous).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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