Roman magistrate's attendants / SAT 1-12-19 / Onetime California fort / Nickname for Adrianus / Grammy-winning group whose name is an homage to the Monkees / Reader's Encyclopedia classic literary reference

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:01) (personal record by over a minute)*

THEME: TEAM! — just kidding, there's no theme, but there are two TEAMs ... and lots and lots of sports, generally ...

Word of the Day: LICTORS (44A: Roman magistrate's attendants) —

noun

1. (in ancient Rome) an officer attending the consul or other magistrate, bearing the fasces, and executing sentences on offenders. (google)

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!

Wow this was easy. For me. Beyond easy. This was that-dude-playing-golf-in-the-rain-storm-in-"Caddyshack" easy for me—everything was just going in. I could do no wrong. Every clue I looked at turned into an answer. It's like it was written especially for me. I mean, The City I Live In Is In The Dang Clues. I wasn't even focused on going particularly fast, and I nearly broke 4 minutes. My Saturday record (since April '18) is now faster than my Friday record, that's how fast I went. I was within 11 seconds of my *Tuesday* time, that's how fast I went. I'M SPEECHLESS! Figuratively! It definitely helped to have some basic sports knowledge, and this puzzle will break hard along sports knowledge lines. Between two TEAMs (SKI and NFC, what the hell?) and THE ESPYS, and PUT ON A CLINIC and MIRACLE ON ICE, yeah, yikes, it's sports-tastic. But all those things were solidly in my sporty lexicon, and only PUT ON A CLINIC caused me even a moment's hesitation. Just when I was thinking I was getting slower and slower and would never approach a personal record again ... this happens. Completely unexpected and weird. I have many Tuesday times that are slower than this. But I know that we are all only one or two proper nouns or slang phrases away from total destruction on any puzzle, so your experience may be very, very different.


Got POGS and EVOKE right away, which meant ESP and SKITEAM and NOLA and ABLE and most of the NW very quickly followed. I had OVERRODE at first instead of OVERBORE (13A: Domineered). Other than that, fast work up there. If you didn't know GORILLAZ ... that's a generational thing, for sure (15A: Grammy-winning group whose name is an homage to the Monkees). I think of them as a fictional / animated band because of their first famous video from circa 2001, "Clint Eastwood." Maybe they are less fictional and animated now. I really haven't been paying close enough attention.


I went diagonally thru this thing to the SE, where "Y" in THEESPYS gave me SYSTOLE which game me TEAM, MATS, CCUP etc. Shot up through MIRACLE ON ICE (very easy when you've got ON ICE in place). Then PUT ON A CLINIC to VANILLI (way too easy) (9D: Music's Milli ___) and from there the rest of the NE went down, despite BENETS being (to me) not familiar (16A: ___ Reader's Encyclopedia (classic literary reference)). That just left the SW, where LICTORS was the only true "???" in the whole grid, and briefly prevented me from storming the corner. But then God sat in my lap with 50A: New York city west of Binghamton (!!) (ELMIRA), and that whole corner went down fast. Looked at timer. 4:01. Bonkers.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*personal record since I started keeping consistent records, April '18

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