Garden pest / WED 7-25-18 / Letter before Omega / Vietnamese festival / Triple Crown of Surfing / Ancient Anatolian region / Disney villain Jeremy Irons

Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: 6:28 (Wednesday average: 7:59; Wednesday best: 2:17)



THEME: Flipped the Bird— The names of three species of birds are "flipped" and embedded in three long theme entries.

Word of the Day: ICE-T (57D: One of the first musicians to have an "explicit content" sticker on an album) —

Tracy Lauren Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American musician, rapper, songwriter, actor, record executive, record producer, and author. He began his career as an underground rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays; the second hip-hop album to carry an explicit content sticker after Slick Rick’s La Di Da Di. The following year, he founded the record label Rhyme $yndicate Records (named after his collective of fellow hip-hop artists called the "Rhyme $yndicate") and released another album, Power.
     He co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count, which he introduced on his 1991 rap album O.G.: Original Gangster, on the track titled "Body Count." The band released their self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer," which glamorized killing police officers. Ice-T asked to be released from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, and his next solo album, Home Invasion, was released later in February 1993 through Priority Records. Body Count's next album was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late-1990s. Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD Detective/Sergeant Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. (Wikipedia)

There was a comment earlier this week that just giving my time doesn't provide readers with enough information regarding how difficult the puzzle was, so above I've also given my average and best times, as recorded on the iPad app (after solving a total of 1,444 puzzles in this iteration of the app). I hope that gives a little more context. Note, however, that my Wednesday best was for solving my own puzzle, so take that as you may. Looking back over the week so far, this Sunday was 16:19 (Sunday average: 23:02; Sunday best 6:47 [again, best time was for my own puzzle!]), Monday was 4:03 (Monday average: 4:59; Monday best: 3:16), and Tuesday was 6:12 (Tuesday average: 6:29; Tuesday best 3:50). This week, so far, is running just under average difficulty -- for me. I'm required by the Crossword Blogger's Code of Ethics to state that your mileage may vary.

Theme answers:

• [20A: Grand preparations?]: PIANO REHEARSAL (HERON)
• [27A: Things that go bump in the night]: POLTERGEISTS (EGRET)
• [47A: Iconic logo since 1962]: GOLDEN ARCHES (CRANE)
• [56A: Gestured rudely ... or what this puzzle's circles have done?]: FLIPPED THE BIRD

We've got a solid Wednesday, which in my playbook is kinda like a Monday, but a little tougher and/or more off-beat themewise. (If you gotta have a gimmick, save it for Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday.) I generally like themes that take a common idiom (i.e. flipped the bird) and interpret it literally as the basis of wordplay. In a puzzle venue that allows for titles (Wall Street Journal, Chronicle of Higher Ed, Puzzle Society, etc), a puzzle like this might have additional entries and a title -- say "Flipping the Bird" -- instead of a revealer entry. (Having both a title and revealer is kinda like wearing both a belt and suspenders; overkill in most situations but occasionally appropriate.) Flipping the bird, as a hand gesture, has both its own Wikipedia entry -- The Finger -- and its own emoji, which Emojipedia glosses as "reversed hand with middle finger extended."


The fill in the NE corner was last to fall in this grid; somehow I couldn't see COCKY (had BOSSY) over APHID, though my raised bed garden is crawling with the buggers. Interestingly not too many proper names today (other than Word of the Day ICE-T and [54D: TV host Van Susteren]: GRETA); those are usually where I can get a decent foothold; nor did the fill-in-the-blanks help me get much speed. I didn't find the longer down entries to be too exciting, but overall the experience was [33D: Scoring 100]: ERROR FREE.

Bullets:

• [30D: "Oklahoma!" aunt]: ELLER— Unusual to get this character from Oklahoma Exclamation Point! (note: not an error; this is how I say the title of all musicals that have an Exclamation Point!) in a grid; far more common is ADO Annie, who cain't say no.
• [5D: Disney villain voiced by Jeremy Irons]: SCAR— In The Lion King, Scar/Claudius [spoiler alert] murders his brother Mufasa/Hamlet Sr. (James Earl Jones). His nephew Simba/Hamlet (Matthew Broderick) dallies a bit with his pals Rosencrantz/Timon (Nathan Lane) and Guildenstern/Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella), before driving his girlfriend Nala/Ophelia (Moira Kelly) to suicide, avenging his father's death, and dying in a duel. At least that's how I remember it.
• [58D: Rosencrantz or Guildenstern]: DANE— Or meerkat/warthog, what have you.

Signed, Laura, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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