Constructor: Erik Agard, Amanda Chung and Karl Ni
Relative difficulty: Easyish (for me, your guest blogger, 16:58)
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THEME: Tricky Trios— The four across-themers are famous trios, the third and final elements of which are "standing," as in they are standing vertically in the down entries that meet the end of the across entry, as revealed by the final long entry, "LASTONESTANDING."
Word of the Day: Taika WAITITI (98A: Director Taika ___) —
Theme answers:
Everything went so swimmingly time-wise at first as I eyed a personal best under these borrowed bright lights: From the jump, I knew there was some geometric funny business going on in this grid because SNAPCRACKLEANDPOP didn't fit and I was confidently unaware of other breakfast trios that matched my downs. My first thought was ampersand rebus!, but not to be. My second was, pop rebus! Again, rebus rebuffed.
So I puttered around for a while, leveraging some geography bee knowledge with CANADA and HELSINKI and the like, and then stumbled on what was the key to unlocking this for me and what may be the single most beautiful word in the English language: my first name, "Ollie." As in, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a theme answer here and the delightfully bizarre-looking midcentury puppet television show. I have never seen it, but know its name from the VCR cassettes that would mysteriously populate my girlfriend's father's house. That's the beautiful thing about crosswords: They grind rare and bizarre and disparate personal experiences into the tidy answer boxes and you and I feel as though we are connected. Don't we?
Anyway, that made the revealer and rest of the themers pieces of cake and I was cruising to a P.B. that I would brag about at length here when all of a sudden ...
TAKETOTHEHILLS (50D: Flee).
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I wrote everything you could possibly write in here. RUNFORTHEHILLS. HEADFORTHEHILL-oops. HEADTOTHEHILLS. RUNFORTHEHILLL. (That last one was a typo.) It turns out that in my addled mind there were many ways to flee, none of which Agard, Chung and Ni were looking for. Let's chalk it up to an overdeveloped "flight" part of my fight-or-flight response. Fight-or-flight-or-flight-or-flight-or-flight.
The short stuff—I know Rex likes to talk about the short stuff—seemed OK: there's TOK but the clue ("TiK ___" (Kesha hit)) saves it in my book. And the old standards ESL, IRA, SAL, ANIN, but hey, this is a crossword puzzle, and they always seem like old friends to me. Speaking of, my buddy BRIN got his first name in here, too, but clued as the much less famous head of some company called Google? Also there's ASS (___-backwards).
As a journalist in New York, I loved the WYNC shoutout. AFLAC's advertising continues to be highly effective if only for crossword solving. One's liberal arts education does not go to waste with the inclusion of LOCKE. Nor does your misspent youth with KILO, LSD and UNCORK. Or your lamely spent one with LIMESODA.
Anyway, we'll all live to fight (or flight) another day. Thanks, Rex. (And apologies for this blog post in advance.)
Bullets:
[Follow Oliver on Twitter ... if you dare]
Relative difficulty: Easyish (for me, your guest blogger, 16:58)
THEME: Tricky Trios— The four across-themers are famous trios, the third and final elements of which are "standing," as in they are standing vertically in the down entries that meet the end of the across entry, as revealed by the final long entry, "LASTONESTANDING."
Word of the Day: Taika WAITITI (98A: Director Taika ___) —
Taika David Waititi (/ˈtaɪkə waɪˈtiːti/; born 16 August 1975), also known as Taika Cohen, is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter, actor, and comedian. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his 2004 short film Two Cars, One Night. His feature films Boy (2010) and Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) have each been the top-grossing New Zealand film, with the latter still holding that title as of 2018. He co-directed the horror comedy film What We Do in the Shadows (2014) with Jemaine Clement, which brought him further critical acclaim and recognition. Waititi later directed the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Thor: Ragnarok (2017), which received critical acclaim. (Wikipedia)
• • •
Dear readers, I shall not bury the lede: Rex Parker is not here. He's off gallivanting beneath the bright lights of Broadway in our fair borough of Manhattan, I believe. Anyway, I'm 100 percent sure about the gallivanting part. So, alas, you're stuck with me for the next few hundred words. And now that Mr. Parker has been so kind (i.e., gullible) as to let me alight in his aerie, I would like to pull back the curtain a hair and shed a sliver of light on a trade secret: Rex does the crossword at night. He does tomorrow morning's crossword the night before! You all probably know this already but you see, folks, I didn't even know it was physically or metaphysically possible to do crossword puzzles at night. I barely knew it was legal. My personal crossword-puzzle-solving fuel is a complex and finely orchestrated cocktail that combusts best in the a.m.: the chill air of morning, the harsh light of day, cheap coffee, a cigarette. Yet here I am, in the middle of the night, solving Sunday's crossword on Saturday. I feel very well through the looking glass. Anyway, onward, through the mists.Theme answers:
- SNAPCRACKLEAND[PO]P (23A: Breakfast trio)
- KUKLAFRANAND[OLLI]E (38A: Puppet show trio)
- WYNKENBLYNKENAND[NO]D (64A: Sailing trio)
- PETERPAULAND[MAR]Y (87A: Folk trio)
- LASTONESTANDING (Survivor of an all-out brawl ... or a hint to 23-, 38-, 64- and 87-Across)
Everything went so swimmingly time-wise at first as I eyed a personal best under these borrowed bright lights: From the jump, I knew there was some geometric funny business going on in this grid because SNAPCRACKLEANDPOP didn't fit and I was confidently unaware of other breakfast trios that matched my downs. My first thought was ampersand rebus!, but not to be. My second was, pop rebus! Again, rebus rebuffed.
So I puttered around for a while, leveraging some geography bee knowledge with CANADA and HELSINKI and the like, and then stumbled on what was the key to unlocking this for me and what may be the single most beautiful word in the English language: my first name, "Ollie." As in, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a theme answer here and the delightfully bizarre-looking midcentury puppet television show. I have never seen it, but know its name from the VCR cassettes that would mysteriously populate my girlfriend's father's house. That's the beautiful thing about crosswords: They grind rare and bizarre and disparate personal experiences into the tidy answer boxes and you and I feel as though we are connected. Don't we?
Anyway, that made the revealer and rest of the themers pieces of cake and I was cruising to a P.B. that I would brag about at length here when all of a sudden ...
TAKETOTHEHILLS (50D: Flee).
I wrote everything you could possibly write in here. RUNFORTHEHILLS. HEADFORTHEHILL-oops. HEADTOTHEHILLS. RUNFORTHEHILLL. (That last one was a typo.) It turns out that in my addled mind there were many ways to flee, none of which Agard, Chung and Ni were looking for. Let's chalk it up to an overdeveloped "flight" part of my fight-or-flight response. Fight-or-flight-or-flight-or-flight-or-flight.The short stuff—I know Rex likes to talk about the short stuff—seemed OK: there's TOK but the clue ("TiK ___" (Kesha hit)) saves it in my book. And the old standards ESL, IRA, SAL, ANIN, but hey, this is a crossword puzzle, and they always seem like old friends to me. Speaking of, my buddy BRIN got his first name in here, too, but clued as the much less famous head of some company called Google? Also there's ASS (___-backwards).
As a journalist in New York, I loved the WYNC shoutout. AFLAC's advertising continues to be highly effective if only for crossword solving. One's liberal arts education does not go to waste with the inclusion of LOCKE. Nor does your misspent youth with KILO, LSD and UNCORK. Or your lamely spent one with LIMESODA.
Anyway, we'll all live to fight (or flight) another day. Thanks, Rex. (And apologies for this blog post in advance.)
Bullets:
- 78A: Strip pokers? (AWLS) — I had noooo idea what this meant for an embarrassingly long amount of time.
- 84D: Charlize Theron's role in 2015's "Mad Max" reboot (FURIOSA) — I never saw it but, given the title of the movie, makes sense. OK well I saw 10 or so minutes and got scared and turned it off.
- 63D: Nursing facility? (MAMMARYGLAND)— I get it.
- 13D: In view? (POPULAROPINION)— You see, what this is clue is doing is depending on what the definition of "in" is, and according to Merriam... OK, I'll shut up.
[Follow Oliver on Twitter ... if you dare]