Global currency market with portmanteau name / SAT 10-13-18 / Nissan crossover named for Italian city / 2016 film whose climax is on planet Scarif / Cartoonist's indicator of nodding / Title for Princess Anne beginning in 1982 / Ancestor of Methuselah

Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (I think I was around 6 minutes (?), but I don't know, 'cause I had an error only *I* could've made (see below), so I didn't notice the clock when I put in the last letter)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ZOE KAZAN (29A: Lead actress in 2017's "The Big Sick") —

Zoe Swicord Kazan (born September 9, 1983) is an American actress and playwright. Kazan made her acting debut in Swordswallowers and Thin Men (2003) and later appeared in films such as The Savages (2007), Revolutionary Road (2008) and It's Complicated (2009). She starred in happythankyoumoreplease (2010), Meek's Cutoff (2010) and Ruby Sparks (2012), writing the screenplay for the last. In 2014, she starred in the film What If and the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, for which she received an Emmy nomination. In 2017, she portrayed Emily Gardner, based on Emily V. Gordon, in the film The Big Sick. (wikipedia)

Very nice work here from Kevin, and I did so well. So so well. Until the end, when I finished but had an error. No Happy Pencil! I knew it had to be in the answer I'd never heard of—49D: Global currency market with a portmanteau name (FOREX). LOL, I can't even guess the basis of the portmanteau, that's how little the actual answer means to me. The problem—and I acknowledge that this is a problem that only I, and possibly other teachers of poetry, had—was that I didn't even hesitate at 60A: Volleyball team, e.g. I wrote in SESTET. The End. That is to say, I ended with FORES for the "portmanteau" ("Formidable Resolution"? "Forbidden Reservations"?). So the "S" should've been an "X." I was worried for a sec that the "F" was wrong, because FATE seems like a really bad answer to 49A: Theme in some time travel fiction. FATE is the main theme in the Aeneid, a mostly non-time travel epic poem. Not sure how FATE is involved more heavily in time travel fiction than in Any Other Genre, so yeah, thought maybe "F" was wrong, but what then? HATE? I mean, it's probably true. Travel through time to kill the person you HATE? Or GATE? "Stargate" is a thing, right? MATE? First mate on a starship, or maybe ... you have to time travel to find a MATE. But the answer was FATE. And the answer was SEXTET. And now this is all that I'm going to remember about this puzzle, which is sad, because I remember enjoying it.


Felt very very easy to start with, because SHONDA was a gimme (1A: Rhimes who created "Grey's Anatomy"), and then NONOS DUDS and ATSEA went right in. Every first guess seemed to be right for me today. KNESSET KESTRELS CORELLI, all just dropping in no problem. ZOE KAZAN is a regular crossword solver, so she'll probably be pretty chuffed today. The SE was the hardest part of this thing by a wide, wide margin, starting with my having no idea what followed the NOT in NOT BAD (33A: Fair). Me: "NOT ... TAN?" And then PIMAS!? Forgot they existed. ISOPOD? Needed many crosses. APERÇU? LOL, uh, I mean, I know the word (solely from crosswords), but yeep. And of course this is where FORE(X) and SE(X)TET were all hanging out, so it was a sandstorm of confusion. So much tentative fill down here that I even second-guessed MURANO, which I *knew* was right (56A: Nissan crossover named for an Italian city), but ... I also kept wanting to call it the "Mitsubishi MURANO," so ... oy. Rough. But again, the first 75% was a rollicking good time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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