Host Bert of old games shows / FRI 12-28-18 / 1997 Notorious BIG hit whose title lyric precedes strictly for weather / Car that went defunct in 1936 / County east of Devon / Instrument whose name comes from Latin for heavenly / 12 points typographically

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium (though w/ some potentially deadly Naticks* if your Name Game is not *tight*) (5:44)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ALAIN RENÉ LESAGE (54A: "Gil Blas" author) —

Alain-René Lesage (French pronunciation: ​[alɛ̃ ʁəne ləsaʒ]; 6 May 1668 – 17 November 1747; older spelling Le Sage) was a French novelist and playwright. Lesage is best known for his comic novel The Devil upon Two Sticks (1707, Le Diable boiteux), his comedy Turcaret (1709), and his picaresque novel Gil Blas (1715–1735). (wikipedia)

Well this was just way too reliant on proper nouns, which can have the effect of either thrilling you ("woo hoo, I know it, look at me go!") or destroying you ("what... letter... who...?). Sometimes you get to experience both outcomes multiple times in the same puzzle, as I did today. I mean, my first solid answer (after LAG) was LUIS Severino, whom I know a large chunk of the solving population will never have heard of (a large chunk of the solving population is somewhat-to-very sports averse). So LUIS, and later RUY and NOTH and COTY were all on TeamRex and the top half was mostly joy and laughter (though what the hell with the clue on "GOING BACK TO CALI"!?!? If you say those four words to me, there is only one song I am going to start singing, and it ain't by Biggie...):


So yeah I'm doing all right. Master of Names! And then I hit that bottom stack and whoosh and whomp, there go the wheels. I know what Russian nesting dolls are, and now that I see it, I've definitely encountered MATRYOSHKA before, but man, while solving, I was like DOLLS and ... prayer. BABUSHKA DOLLS? No? Oh well. But those dolls are not criminal. Tough, but a fair thing to ask people to come up with on a Friday if crosses are fair. No, the real crime down there is ALAIN RENÉ LESAGE. The clue itself is a bleeping insult: 54A: "Gil Blas" author. Me: "Oh ... right ... he used to be crosswordese back when crossword fill was actually much more terrible because people didn't have databases to help them and they thought that just because a name had been used before you could use it again and so it proliferated like kudzu or MATRYOSHKA DOLLS or whatever ... that guy. What was his name?" No idea. None. I have a Ph.D. in literature—never encountered this guy. I took French for 7 years—never encountered this guy. I cannot overstate how singularly unimportant this guy is. He is reanimated crosswordese. Even knowing that I had seen his name before, I needed almost every single cross. Luckily for me, Bert CONVY was an old TV friend (47D: Host Bert of old game shows), so parsing the stupid French guy's name took less time than it might have. I don't know why you make a relatively lovely grid and then put in a section that is kind of gross, that will almost surely be the only thing anyone remembers. For its grossness.


Five things:

• 26D: "Je vous en ___" (French for "You're welcome") (PRIE) — speaking of "I took French for 7 years" ... totally forgot which PRIX went here :(
• 4D: Many employees of the Lego company (DANES) — this was absurdly hard. Makes sense now, but not while solving
• 23D: Highish bridge holding (TEN ACE) — I know absolutely nothing about bridge except the crosswordese. I felt guilty throwing this down so fast. 
• 9D: Event of 1964 and 2020 (TOKYO GAMES) — This is some pretty serious green paint**. Any Olympic site + GAMES? RIOGAMES? LAGAMES? No. SUMMER GAMES, sure. SOCHIGAMES, uh uh
• 51A: New toy? (PUP) — tfw you get the "?" misdirection ... and still guess the wrong answer (PET)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Natick = unfair crossing, usually of proper nouns (see sidebar for more info)
**Green paint = makeshift answer made up of words that one might say, but that don't really constitute a solid, stand-alone phrase

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