Foul-smelling swamp plant / MON 10-29-18 / Britcom of 1990s informally / Allahu Muislim cry / when doubled dolphinfish

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:20, which would be slightly on the slow side, but it's an oversized grid)

THEME:"black-and-white animal" — every theme answer has a black-and-white animal in it:

Theme answers:

• PUFFIN BOOKS (19A: Children's publisher whose name includes and black-and-white animal)
• SKUNK CABBAGE (25A: Foul-smelling swamp plant whose name includes and black-and-white animal)
• ZEBRA CROSSINGS (38A: Areas for pedestrians whose name includes and black-and-white animal)
• PANDA EXPRESS (54A: Restaurant chain whose name includes and black-and-white animal
• PENGUIN SUIT (62A: Men's fancy duds whose name includes and black-and-white animal)

Word of the Day: SKUNK CABBAGE (25A: Foul-smelling swamp plant whose name includes and black-and-white animal) —

Symplocarpus foetidus, commonly known as skunk cabbage or eastern skunk cabbage (also swamp cabbage, clumpfoot cabbage, or meadow cabbage, foetid pothos or polecat weed), is a low growing plant that grows in wetlands and moist hill slopes of eastern North America. Bruised leaves present a fragrance reminiscent of skunk. (wikipedia)

This puzzle is a good example of why Puzzles Should Have Titles. It really needed a title or revealer or some kind of clever phrase to pull it all together. Instead, every theme clue is laden with the same cumbersome phrase: "whose name includes and black-and-white animal." It's not clear why you even make a puzzle like this if you don't have a zinger in your back pocket. I like the themers where the B&W animals describe attributes of the answer (i.e. the skunk smells foul like the plant, the zebra is striped like the crossing, the penguin is black & white like the suit); PUFFIN BOOKS and PANDA EXPRESS are just companies with the actual animal in their name in logo. Far less interesting, as themers go. But the main issue here is the lack of revealer or title or wordplay or something. The grid was pretty clean, and I enjoyed the solve. The theme just didn't crackle the way (hypothetically) it might have. I wondered aloud, once I was done, why this needed to be 16 wide—you could've made ZEBRA CROSSING singular and set it right in the middle of a regular 15-wide grid. But the grid would've been badly crammed in that scenario, as the 12s (SKUNK CABBAGE, PANDA EXPRESS) wouldn't have had room to share their rows with other answers, which would've had a cascading, grid-strangling effect. Opening the grid up that one extra column lets things breathe a little. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, lots right with that.


I thought I was flying pretty swiftly on this one, but I did hit a few snags. Sometimes when I'm speeding, I misread clues, or don't completely read them. For instance, I don't think I ever once saw that any of the theme clues had the phrase "whose name includes and black-and-white animal" in them. That is, I missed the basic premise of the theme because I couldn't be bothered to read all that qualifying material. I already had the SKUNK part before I saw that clue, but I had no idea about the CABBAGE part, and since I wrote in ALLAH at first for 22D: "Allahu ___" (Muslim cry) (AKBAR), moving from the NW into the rest of the grid was a little awkward. I then had trouble with the ZEBRA part of  ZEBRA CROSSINGS, because, again, I never really saw the B&W animal part. ONE LUMP was slightly hard to come up with, as that phrase seems very quaint—like, for when you are served tea or coffee on a formal tea or coffee set in some rich person's parlor. I was looking for some more precise measurement (though HALF CUP did not seem sufficiently "small," as "serving"s go). I also wanted UPTICK before UPTURN (47D: Economic improvement). Otherwise, pretty smooth sailing.


Five things:

• 53A: Sharpshooter's asset (AIM)— no idea why brain insisted on processing this as a photography clue. Anyway, I wanted EYE
• 8D: E.M.T. procedure with electric paddles, for short (DEFIB) — as five-letter words go, this one is prime cut. Love it
• 62D: Poet who wrote "Once upon a midnight dreary ..." (POE)— Hey, his name's *in* the clue! :) Also, seasonal reminder: It's Edgar ALLAN (with an "A" not an "E") Poe
• 13D: Accept a bet (TAKE ODDS) — what's the difference between TAKE ODDS and LAY ODDS. No, wait, nevermind, I don't really care...
• GRAB ACADS TESTY (1A, 5A, 10A) — sounds almost like something you should do to a cad if he comes on too strong...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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