Aperitif with black currant liqueur / WED 1-9-19 / Toyota hybrids jocularly / Otto who worked in Manhattan project

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:56)

THEME: TMI — as in "Too Many 'I's!" ("I" is the only vowel in the grid)

Theme answers:

• all of them?

Word of the Day: Otto FRISCH (41D: Otto who worked on the Manhattan Project) —

Otto Robert Frisch FRS (1 October 1904 – 22 September 1979) was an Austrianphysicist who worked on nuclear physics. With Lise Meitner he advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fission (coining the term) and first experimentally detected the fission by-products. Later, with his collaborator Rudolf Peierls he designed the first theoretical mechanism for the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1940. (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!
Man, 2019 is trying my patience (emphasis on "man"—2019 constructor count to date: 8 men, 1 woman). We had a nice puzzle on Sunday, and then theme-overload, theme-overload, and now this bizarre stunt puzzle that no one could possibly have been asking for. I'm fairly sure this has been done before, with most if not all the vowels. But here we are doing it with "I"— For Some Reason. I finished the puzzle and thought it was choppy and odd and kind of bland, but had no idea what the theme was. Then I saw a looooooooong string of "I"s running on a diagonal through the middle of the grid, and thought the diagonal "I" thing was the thing, but it's not even *that* interesting. It's just ... "I"s. Look at the diagonals in the middle of that grid. 11 "I"s (!) alongside 7 "N"s and 6 "G"s (OK one of those "G"s is a "K," but same diff). I wasn't CRINGING while solving this, but I'm CRINGING now. There's no reason for this puzzle to exist. There are no interesting answers. There is no interesting effect. There's no title or revealer or nothin'. The most "original" thing in this grid is a name I have never seen in my life, the most difficult thing in the puzzle by far. Everything else was easy. And fairly dull. And, just ... so many -INGs.


Really wish there were more to say, but there is decidedly not. Well, maybe five things.

Five things:

• 11A: Bit of bunny slope gear (MINISKI)— what is this? Is it "mini"'cause it's for babies? Dictionary says "a short ski used by beginners or skibobbers." And no, I am not going to look up "skibobbers." I'm just going to imagine they are bobby-soxers on skis. Yes. That works.

• 49D: Toyota hybrids, jocularly (PRII) — No. This is no longer jocular. Though "jocularly" *is* making me laugh
• 37A: With 38-Across, cocktail with lemon or lime (GIN / SLING) — at this point, I though there was some weird black square = ampersand theme and the answer here was GIN [and] TONIC
• 35D: Russian pancake (BLIN)— wow, this looks remarkably dumb in the singular
• 16A: Finalize, as comic art (INK IN)— er ... I mean ... not really. INK is the right answer. The inker finalizes the art. It goes penciller, inker, colorist ... candlestickmaker ... Speaker of the House ... gamma delta ... the Professor and Mary Ann.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]