First victim of sibling rivalry / TUE 1-1-19 / League that used red white blue ball for short / Hammond writer of Wreck of Mary Deare / Famous collie of radio tv film

Constructor: Gary Cee

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium (3:14)

THEME: PASSABLE (61A: Barely adequate ... or what the starts of 17-, 26-, 37- and 50-Across are)— first words of aforementioned themers can all fit into familiar phrases following the pattern "pass the ___":

Theme answers:

• HAT TRICK (17A: Three goals in a single game)
• TORCH SONG (26A: Its lyrics tell of unrequited love)
• TIME SIGNATURE (37A: Music staff notation)
• BUCK TEETH (50A: Reason to get braces)

Word of the Day: Hammond INNES (39D: Hammond ___, writer of "The Wreck of the Mary Deare) —

Ralph Hammond Innes, CBE (15 July 1913 – 10 June 1998) was a British novelist who wrote over 30 novels, as well as children's and travel books.

Innes was born in Horsham, Sussex, and educated at Cranbrook School in Kent. He left in 1931 to work as a journalist, initially with the Financial Times (at the time called the Financial News). The Doppelganger, his first novel, was published in 1937. In WWII he served in the Royal Artillery, eventually rising to the rank of Major. During the war, a number of his books were published, including Wreckers Must Breathe (1940), The Trojan Horse (1941) and Attack Alarm (1941), the last of which was based on his experiences as an anti-aircraft gunner during the Battle of Britain at RAF Kenley. After being demobilized in 1946, he worked full-time as a writer, achieving a number of early successes. His novels are notable for a fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of places, such as in Air Bridge (1951), set partially at RAF Gatow, RAF Membury after its closure and RAF Wunstorf during the Berlin Airlift.

Innes went on to produce books in a regular sequence, with six months of travel and research followed by six months of writing. Many of his works featured events at sea. His output decreased in the 1960s, but was still substantial. He became interested in ecological themes. He continued writing until just before his death. His last novel was Delta Connection (1996). (wikipedia)

OK look there is no reason for BEANER to be here. No one who follows baseball even calls it that, anyway (it's a "bean ball"), and, especially for anyone who grew up on the west coast, BEANER is an out-and-out pejorative (against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans). I get it if you, personally, didn't know that, or don't care, or aren't offended, or whatever, but here's the thing: this is not a tricky corner. BEANER is not *needed* to hold things together. And since you couldn't say it's exactly *good* fill, I don't understand how you don't just fix the corner. You know you're going to offend some people with the fill you've got, the puzzle is not worsened by the fix, ergo, Fix It. It's ... it's very, very simple. Here's the very brief Twitter exchange I *just* had on this issue:

Now I'm going to ask you to do something I've never asked you to do (hell, it's something *I* never do unless someone really insists): read another crossword blog. Specifically, xwordinfo. Y'all who think I just don't like WS or have it in for him or whatever other nonsense, you need to see what happens when Jeff Chen, a very friendly, very loyal NYT crossword critic, the writer of a blog that is pretty much a second house blog (along with "Wordplay"), a writer who oh by the way is also a person of color, tries to suggest to the editor that maybe, possibly, he might consider changing 2-Down from BEANER to annnnnything else. Please read Jeff's comments on this puzzle now. In full. I'll wait. . . [wavy lines, time passes] . . . Done? OK. If you're not going to read his comments, here's the most relevant part:

"Will and I had a dialogue over BEANER; an offensive term slung at people from Mexico. I wondered if it might be a West Coast / East Coast thing, so I alerted Will about this. He thought about it but decided that since there is a valid dictionary definition, people would have to just ignore the secondary meaning."

That "since there is a valid dictionary meaning" defense allows him to avoid dealing with so much. Soooo much. I hope you can see how frustrating it is for so many people of good will to try to get the editor to make decent decisions. That is as close as you are ever going to see Jeff Chen come to giving Shortz the middle finger. Over 2/3 of his write-up is dedicated to this asinine and racist editorial decision. Look: there is no excuse for BEANER. It's not even a good baseball term. And AMEN gets you MEANER and NET ... which is objectively better even before considering the racial slur angle. It's so hard to understand the mindset of someone who gets good advice and just shrugs it off, especially when that advice is aimed at avoiding giving offense to people of color. I would love to be using this space to talk about the more puzzley aspects of this puzzle: its workmanlike but totally serviceable "first-words"-type theme, its occasionally interesting but highly uneven fill quality (SAREE? I'm SAREE, no). But here we are with a completely gratuitous BEANER in the 2-D slot, and the only reason it's here is because the editor is (A) negligent, (B) incompetent, (C) deliberately cruel, or (D) so completely egotistical that he doubles down on even his dumbest decisions. My wish for the new year is that solvers start demanding better editing. More thoughtful editing. More inclusive editing. I'm not going to get the regime change I think the NYT Crossword needs and deserves, but if voices besides mine were getting in his and the NYT's ear more, maybe things would be slightly better. Maybe. This BEANER thing ... right in the teeth of good, considered, friendly advice ... I don't know, you guys. It's mind-blowing. Also, exhausting.


Here's hoping 2019 is full of much better puzzles. By all kinds of people. For all kinds of people.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS I had a great wrong answer: faced with TOR-HS-NG at 26A: Its lyrics tell of unrequited love, my sincere first reaction was TORAH SONG. I really should know my Bible better.

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