Predecessors of Transformers / SAT 2-16-19 / Fifth-century scourge / Ovary's place botanically / Rebellious Downton Abbey daughter / Another moniker for Empire City of South

Constructor: Andrew Kingsley and John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:16)

THEME: kiss types and New Age musicians ... or, none

Word of the Day:"GOBOTS" (20A: Predecessors of Transformers) —

GoBots is a line of transforming robot toys produced by Tonka from 1983 to 1987, similar to Transformers. Although initially a separate and competing franchise, Tonka's Gobots became the intellectual property of Hasbro after their buyout of Tonka in 1991. Subsequently, the universe depicted in the animated series Challenge of the GoBots and follow-up film GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords was established as an alternate universewithin the Transformers franchise. While Hasbro now owns the fictional side of the property (character names, bios, storyline), the actual toys and their likenesses were only licensed from Bandai in the 1980s, were not covered by the Tonka acquisition, and are not available for Hasbro use. (wikipedia)

Well that was easy. Really easy. Even answers I didn't really know, like "GOBOTS," somehow came to me as if out of a forgotten dream, or perhaps from a GENIE, I don't know. Weirdly, the answers I struggled with most in this grid were both food items. First, CARPACCIO, which I know, but couldn't quite come up with at first. CARAVAGGIO? No, he's a painter. I blame Thursday's "I PAGLIACCI." And then, WORSE than CARPACCIO even, was (somehow!) PICKLE (39A: It may be made into spears). I had P- then PI- the PIC- then PIC--E and still couldn't see even a real word there, let alone a thing that could be spears. But then I got PANSEXUAL (connected to the DOMINATRIX by a PICKLE, interesting), and had a self-hatred-filled "aha" moment. But I'm being overdramatic. I probably spent time obsessing about PICKLE out of pure spite; I was deeply resentful that every other answer was just bowing to my will, and PICKLE was all "No!" and so instead of bypassing it and just killing it with crosses, I got all "Do as I say!" and thus lost precious time. Most of the rest of the time, I was quite enjoying myself. Very much in my wheelhouse, and very clean, this thing was. From HOTLANTA to the "Simpsons" reference to the MINOTAUR, I was all over this.


I have one major bone to pick, though: since when is BRIAN ENO a [New Age composer]. Here's the list of genres that wikipedia has listed for him:

Now here's the list of genres that wikipedia has for YANNI (34A: New Age keyboardist):

You hear that, NYT: disavowed! Even YANNI's like, "no, what, don't call me that!" Anyway, I have never in my ENO life heard ENO referred to as ENO-thing like "New Age." It's a terrible clue, ENO (En Ny Opinion). Didn't know investment banks had anything to do with IPOs (40A: Job for an investment bank, for short), but I don't know anything about finance, so there's that. Didn't know Walter LANG but figured Fritz LANG was a director, so why not Walter? Very proud of myself for seeing right through 35A: Third character to appear in "Macbeth" (CEE) (as in, the letter CEE is the "third character" in the word "Macbeth"). I kinda think CEE crossing C-NOTE is bad. Like, a stand-alone "C" in your puzzle should mean the written-out letter "CEE" should not also appear in your puzzle, and the C(EE)s definitely shouldn't cross.


Puzzle's with X's are easy to solve. Well, easier than puzzles without X's, all other things being equal. I just know that POLEAXE definitely got me PIXIE CUT and OXO definitely got me PANSEXUAL and FLEXTIME definitely got me DOMINATRIX, all much more quickly than I would have otherwise. X's are fun but they give a lot away. You gotta keep your eye on them.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. 2019 NYT crossword constructor count update:

M: 41
W: 6

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