Composer who's eponym of Helsinki park / TUE 6-5-18 / Lead-in to gender / Nearest target for bowler / Dodges of 1980s / Island off western coast of Scotland / Colorful ocean phenomena caused by dinoflagellates / Neophyte in modern lingo

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:31)

THEME: food-bodied — hyphenated adjectives where pre-hyphen is edible and post-hyphen is body part-related; clues are all one-word adjectives used to describe people:

Theme answers:

• BUTTER-FINGERED (16A: Klutzy)
• MUTTON-HEADED (30A: Stupid)
• HONEY-TONGUED (38A: Eloquent)
• CHICKEN-LIVERED (55A: Cowardly)

Word of the Day: LORELEI (34A: Rock singer?) —

The Lorelei (/ˈlɒrəlaɪ/; German: Loreley German: [loːʀəˈlaɪ, ˈloːʀəlaɪ]) is a 132 m (433 ft) high, steep slate rock on the right bank of the river Rhine in the Rhine Gorge (or Middle Rhine) at Sankt Goarshausen in Germany. / The name comes from the old German words lureln, Rhine dialect for "murmuring", and the Celtic term ley "rock". The translation of the name would therefore be: "murmur rock" or "murmuring rock". The heavy currents, and a small waterfall in the area (still visible in the early 19th century) created a murmuring sound, and this combined with the special echo the rock produces to act as a sort of amplifier, giving the rock its name. The murmuring is hard to hear today owing to the urbanization of the area. Other theories attribute the name to the many accidents, by combining the German verb "lauern" (to lurk, lie in wait) with the same "ley" ending, with the translation "lurking rock". [...] In 1801, German author Clemens Brentano composed his ballad Zu Bacharach am Rheine as part of a fragmentary continuation of his novel Godwi oder Das steinerne Bild der Mutter. It first told the story of an enchanting female associated with the rock. In the poem, the beautiful Lore Lay, betrayed by her sweetheart, is accused of bewitching men and causing their death. Rather than sentence her to death, the bishop consigns her to a nunnery. On the way thereto, accompanied by three knights, she comes to the Lorelei rock. She asks permission to climb it and view the Rhine once again. She does so and thinking that she sees her love in the Rhine, falls to her death; the rock still retained an echo of her name afterwards. Brentano had taken inspiration from Ovid and the Echo myth.

In 1824, Heinrich Heine seized on and adapted Brentano's theme in one of his most famous poems, "Die Lorelei". It describes the eponymous female as a sort of siren who, sitting on the cliff above the Rhine and combing her golden hair, unwittingly distracted shipmen with her beauty and song, causing them to crash on the rocks. In 1837 Heine's lyrics were set to music by Friedrich Silcher in the art song "Lorelei"^[2] that became well known in German-speaking lands. A setting by Franz Liszt was also favored and dozens of other musicians have set the poem to music. (emph mine)

Weird upside-down and backwards sensation of not caring for the theme much at all but loving the grid. Turning all of the themers into body parts with -ED suffixes (meaning "possessed of (said body part)") was an interesting theme cohesion strategy, but BUTTER-FINGERED? There is a candy bar called Butterfinger, and you might call a clumsy person "Butterfingers!" but I don't think I've heard this adjectival form much. "He is like unto one who has fingers made of actual sticks of butter, in that he is ever letting objects fall from 'twixt his digits." There's just something odd about seeing "butterfingers!" in this adj. form. And MUTTON-HEADED? I know I've never heard that. PIG-HEADED and even MULE-HEADED, sure. But MUTTON-HEADED? I'm sure it's valid, but it's not  exactly a bulls-eye. And CHICKEN-LIVERED??? CHICKEN on its own means "cowardly." He was cowardly. He was chicken. Same thing. You're LILY-LIVERED, or even YELLOW-LIVERED (though even there, YELLOW-BELLIED is better...). CHICKEN-LIVERED is absurd. HONEY-TONGUED is the one that lands best, I think, but then I'm a fan of Ralegh's* "Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," so I may be biased.


So the theme felt all kinds of off and wobbly and yet (and this neeeeever happens in early-week puzzles, esp. on Tuesday) I really enjoyed solving this one because the fill was so sweet and smooth and the cluing was totally on point. On Tuesday, I'm usually squirming at least a little because of the fill, which is often overly common, or has been severely compromised by the theme, or both. But this thing was beautiful. Small junky stuff is kept to a minimum and kept marginal, and so we get the pleasure of having SIBELIUS and BUDAPEST and RED TIDES etc. just wash all over us. This grid is clean clean clean. And entertaining. Love the alliterativeness of PROUD PAPA. Love the word PIE-EYED. Very much love the clue on LORELEI. And that wasn't the only wonderful trick clue. 12D: Heat shields? for BADGES! 46A: Expert in calculus: Abbr. for DDS! The clue on MOTHER was a little, er, graphic for my tastes (41D: Person whose inner child has been released?), but it's still very clever. I think SOV. was the only moment of wincing that I experienced today (47D: Part of U.S.S.R.: Abbr.). Otherwise I really liked the grid, even if it was a little LECHEROUS and LEERING.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. this week's New Yorker crossword (by Anna Shechtman) is out and it's something.

*not a typo

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