Famous feuder with Jay-Z / WED 5-9-18 / Cut of beef in newport steak / She threw apple of discord in Greek myth / Famed fountain name / Utah town near Arches Canyonlands National Parks

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Challenging (though it's oversized, so maybe more Medium-Challenging) (5:17)

THEME: SEEING DOUBLE (59A: Experiencing a vision problem)— clues refer to a common phrase, but it's supposed to be entered into the grid with one letter doubled, creating totally different phrases (that don't fit the clue at all). Remove the second of the doubled letters, and you get the actual answers to the clues:

Theme answers:

• AMAZING GRACE (22A: Reality TV show, when 59-Across?)
• OVER RICE (28A: Chilled, when 59-Across?)
• VENTI LATTE (38A: Aerate, when 59-Across?)
• DEEP ENDS (53A: "Possibly," when 59-Across?)

Word of the Day: MOAB (69A: Utah town near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks) —

Moab is a city on the southern edge of Grand County in eastern Utah in the western United States. The population was 5,046 at the 2010 census, and in 2015 the population was estimated to be 5,235. It is the county seat and largest city in Grand County. Moab attracts a large number of tourists every year, mostly visitors to the nearby Arches and Canyonlands national parks. The town is a popular base for mountain bikers who ride the extensive network of trails including the Slickrock Trail, and for off-roaders who come for the annual Moab Jeep Safari. (wikipedia)

On the one hand, it's a cute bit of lexical weirdness. On the other, it feels very thin. There's just four? Why those letters? They don't really make a coherent set, or spell anything, or ... anything. SEEING DOUBLE is not the greatest revealer here, either, as you're seeing just one letter doubled. There's just not that snap, that pop, that thing that really brings it all together. The revealer's somewhat loose and weak, the answers in question are OK on their own, but they don't make a terribly (or even faintly) coherent set. The first two themers double across two words (i.e. last letter of first word and first letter of last word are the doubled ones), but then the next two don't. It's weird. I imagine VENTI LATTE was the seed answer, as it's the funniest and most spectacular mutation of the bunch. But it just feels wobblier than it should, execution-wise. As for the rest of the grid, it tries a little too hard to get cute with nonsense (BILGE RAT??), but is overall pretty solid. LSD TABS was nice, and hard to parse.


I started out OK in the NW, and then came down and got as far as PRIX and then nothing. Big Mistake One: Wrote in BUD instead of LOU (49A: Costello of Abbott and Costello). That probably caused more slowness for me than anything inherent in the grid, though I do think having such large, open corners generally makes for a slower solve, even if you aren't face-planting with terrible wrong answers. I thought the ASP was sacred to Egyptians (29D: Sacred creature in ancient Egypt (CAT)). Other than that, I didn't have many mistakes, I just kept struggling to get any real momentum. Both pairs of 7s in the NE/SW were tough for me to come up with, CUE CARD in particular (13D: Line holdup?) (good clue). But the main issues were a. trouble grasping the theme, and b. the BUD-for-LOU mistake. I did have CARTS before LISTS (68A: Shopping aids), but that error was quickly and easily corrected.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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