Duel overseer in Hamlet / MON 1-7-19 / Cheap cigar slangily / Singer with 1961 hit Big Bad John / Bygone monthly for 12-20 set / Egyptian god usually pictured with head of ibis

Constructor: Andrew Kingsley

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Monday) (3:26)

THEME: double vowel progression, For Some Reason ... ?— left side of grid has answers that start PAT PET PIT POT PUT and right side has NAT NET NIT NOT NUT; I have no idea why; my friend Brian notes that there's also BET BOT BAT at the starts of 3/4 of the longer (8+) Downs, but ... that's probably just bizarre coincidence?

Theme answers:

• PAT RILEY (17A: Five-time N.B.A. championship-winning coach with the Lakers and the Heat) / NATGEO (19A: Cable channel with many science shows, familiarly)
• PET CAT (24A: Garfield, to Jon Arbuckle) / NET WORTH (27A: Notable statistic for Jeff bezos or Bill Gates)
• PIT BOSS (37A: Casino floor V.I.P.) / NITPICK (40A: Make tiny criticisms)
• POTHOLES (51A: Road hazards that need filling) / NOT YET (54A: "Be patient!")
• PUT OUT (60A: Peeved) / NUT BREAD (62A: Dessert loaf)

Word of the Day: RUGER (11D: America's largest firearm manufacturer) —

Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc., better known by the shortened name Ruger, is an American firearmmanufacturing company based in Southport, Connecticut with production facilities also in Newport, New Hampshire; Mayodan, North Carolina and Prescott, Arizona. The company was founded in 1949 by Alexander McCormick Sturm and William B. Ruger and has been publicly traded since 1969.

Ruger produces bolt-action, semi-automatic, and single-shot rifles, shotguns, semi-automatic pistols, and single- and double-action revolvers. According to the ATF statistics for 2015, Ruger is currently America's largest firearm manufacturer, as well as the second largest pistol/revolver manufacturer (behind Smith & Wesson) and rifle manufacturer (behind Remington) in the United States. (wikipedia)

Hello! It's the first full week after New Year's Day and that means it's time for my annual pitch for financial contributions to the blog, during which I ask regular readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. As you know, I write this blog every. Single. Day. OK, two days a month I pay young people to write it, but every other day, all me. OK sometimes I take vacations and generous friends of mine sit in, but otherwise, I'm a non-stop blogging machine. Seriously, it's a lot of work. It's at least as much work as my day job, and unlike my day job, the hours *kinda* suck—I typically solve and write between 10pm and midnight, or in the early hours of the morning, so that the blog can be up and ready for you to read with your breakfast or on the train or in a forest or wherever it is you enjoy the internet. I have no major expenses, just my time. As I've said before, I have no interest in "monetizing" the blog in any way beyond simply asking for money once a year. I hate ads in real life, so why would I subject you all to them. I actually considered redesigning the site earlier this year, making it slicker or fancier somehow. I even got the process partly underway, but then when I let slip that I was considering it, feedback was brisk and clear: don't change. Turns out people don't really want whistles and bells. Just the plain, internet-retro style of a blogger blog. So that's what you're getting. No amount of technical tinkering is gonna change the blog, which is essentially just my voice. My ridiculous opinionated voice yelling at you, cheerfully and angrily, about how much I love / hate crosswords. I hope that this site has made you laugh or taught you things or given you a feeling of shared joy, or anger, or failure, or even given you someone to yell at. I'm fine with that. I also hope I've introduced some of you to the Wider World of Crosswords, beyond the NYT. I am passionate about puzzles and I (mostly) adore the people who solve them—so many of my friends, and the thousands of you I've never met. I can't stop, and I won't stop, and I hope you find that effort worth supporting.

Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address:

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905
All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions (I. Love. Snail mail!) will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. This year's cards are illustrations from "Alice in Wonderland"—all kinds of illustrations from throughout the book's publication history. Who will get the coveted, crosswordesey "EATME!" card!? Someone, I'm sure. You, I hope. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD.  As ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support.

Now on to the puzzle!
Well, this puzzle was surprising on many levels. First, I have apparently never heard of [America's largest firearm manufacturer] and an alleged Yankee "legend" (47D: Yankees legend ___ Howard = ELSTON). The former ... well, you probably can guess how I feel about seeing firearms manufacturers in my grid, and how I feel about firearms manufacturers in general. The latter is historically a very interesting figure (first African-American player on the Yankees roster; 1963 AL MVP), but if I've ever seen his name, I forgot it, and "legend" seems a stretch. I know Yankees fans think all their players are "legends," but ... I'm guessing a bajillion solvers, including New Yorkers, will not have heard of ELSTON before. Not knocking him as a player, mind you—he's very crossworthy—but it's very strange to see him on a Monday, in a grid already packed with marginal names (lookin' at you, OSRIC!) (4D: Duel overseer in "Hamlet"). So aside from my ignorance of firearms manufacturers and mid-century Yankees not named, like, MARIS, we have this completely bizarre theme. The grid is groaning under the weight of ten themers (10!), but why P-T / N-T??? I have no idea. It's a stunt with no clear purpose, and it results in a grid that's something close to joyless. Putting so many themers in, and having them be relatively short, means that none have marquee status and all are (mostly) pretty boring. This puzzle is trying to do way too much, and so ends up doing everything poorly. I thought people had learned to stop doing these construction-stunt puzzles. Just 'cause you *can* do two vowel progressions in the same puzzle doesn't mean you should. I've seen regular vowel progression puzzles that worked well, where the answers themselves were original and interesting. I think I made one once. Yes, I did. Anyway, it's not the most exciting genre, but it damn sure doesn't get more exciting when doubled.


That NE corner was just a killer (for a Monday). With RUGER (?) and THOTH (also kind of a ?) (13D: Egyptian god usually pictured with the head of an ibis) and NATGEO (a channel I rarely think of—"science" really threw me off, as I was imagining beakers, not cheetahs) ... with all those in one little place, I was really flailing. Finding out that the corner sucked because of the intense theme pressures (and that NATGEO was itself a themer) was really disappointing. Who the heck is JIMMY DEAN? I know him as the sausage guy, but ... is it the same guy? "Big Bad John"? I know oldies pretty well, so again, this puzzle is baffling me with its excavation of gunky trivia corners. "Big Bad Leroy Brown" is my jam. No idea what "Big Bad John" is. By the way, it's this:


Between the joyless theme and the crosswordese (EL ROPO!) (66A: Cheap cigar, slangily), there was no pleasure here. And Mondays are usually uniquely pleasurable, among the themed puzzles of the week. Very rough. Also "Uncle!" means "I GIVE" or some such. "ENOUGH!" is something you say to kids who won't stop fighting. NUT BREAD is a category of ... bread? I feel like the theme dragged all kinds of gunk into this grid. All the focus on the stunt, none on the solving experience. Mondays should be fun!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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