Psychedelic stuff from Evergreen State / TUE 2-12-19 / Belgian river to North Sea / Navigate like whale / Magician's name suffix

Constructor: Tom Pepper

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:41)

THEME: state code + word = new word  — words that begin with state codes are clued as if they had something to do with the state:

Theme answers:

• WA (Washington) 'SHROOMS (17A: Psychedelic stuff from the Evergreen State?)
• DE (Delaware) BRIEFS (26A: Underwear from the First State?) (this one feels cheap, as "DE-" is a common prefix that could come before sooooooo many words)
• NE (Nebraska) WAGER (28A: Gambler's action in the Cornhusker State?)
• VA (Virginia) MOOSE (40A: Forest animal in the state nicknamed Old Dominion?) (awkward that this clue doesn't follow the pattern...)
• AR (Arkansas) BITER (49A: Mosquito from the state nicknamed Land of Opportunity?) (the cleverest of the lot)
• CO (Colorado) MEDIAN (51A: Highway divider in the Centennial State?)
• CA (California) NOODLES (64A: Pasta from the Golden State?)

Word of the Day: NEW-AGER (see 28A) —

[Sorry, does not exist; Google keeps asking me "Do you mean 'new age'?" Also, when the first page of hits for your search returns PDFs from the Christian Research Institute ... not a thing. We've all been conned into believing this is a thing. It is not. Never was. It was a dumb "new" way to clue the bad fill AGER and somehow it stuck, but only in the world of crosswords. Let's exile it.]

Here is a good example of a how dudes ruin (or at least mar) a simple theme by Trying Too Hard (TTH). The instinct to *cram* the grid with themers (to show ... what, exactly?) is always (always) a bad one. Why? Because doing so will always put increased pressure on the fill. Themers are set in place, and the grid is built around them. When you set a ton of themers in place, the possibilities for fill get quite restricted. Every additional themer brings with it more limitations on what the rest of the grid can do. I think here, the last one or even two themers were totally unnecessary. I know it's hard to imagine what *isn't* in the grid, but with five great themers instead of seven OK ones, you would be less likely to endure an endless string of crosswordese and junk like ACER and INI and S'IL and AHL and ELSE'S. I think the grid might also have been cleaner if the puzzle weren't trying to flex with those very-long, completely non-theme Downs in the NE and SW. I love long non-theme Downs for the sizzle they can provide, but at the end of this one I had ughed at fill far more than I had oohed at those long Downs. I get that you wanna show off, but cleanness matters in early-week puzzles. Trust me, you would not have missed that seventh themer, and you would have noticed the grid ensmoothening.


I'm also just a little irked that I couldn't grasp the theme at first because I couldn't understand how ROOMS were "Psychedelic" .... "WASH .... ROOMS ... I don't get it." That was me. Because of course WASH. is a perfectly acceptable and common abbr. for the state of Washington. And ROOMS is a complete word. Thus I ended up trying to do something like NEBAGER at 28A: Gambler's action in the Cornhusker State? and even after I wrote in the correct answer, I didn't really stop to figure out how it was right. Only picked up the theme gimmick, finally, at the "Colorado median."

Five things:

• 12D: "Whatever!" ("SEE IF I CARE")— had CARE and wanted "I DON'T CARE," which wouldn't fit. "I DO NOT CARE" seemed a bit too formal
• 35D: British throne? (LOO) — one of my least favorite things in crosswords is having to decide between LOO and LAV. My other least favorite thing is this specific, old clue (and most toilet metaphors, frankly)
• 8D: Reply to "Who's there?" ("IT'S ME") — could've been "IT IS I," I suppose, but thankfully clues usually indicate the hyperformality on that one
• 1D: Whimper (MEWL)— had the "M," wrote MOAN, perhaps because MEWL is a word I have only ever seen in crosswords
• 14A: Defense in a snowball fight (FORT) — well if you've got a lot of lead time, I guess, but most snowball fights are not (in my experience) planned such that you would have time to engage in massive infrastructure projects in advance

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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