Comedian Love who co-hosts The Real / MON 2-25-18 / Pittsburgh-based NYSE company / Hungarian composer Franz

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:06)

THEME: TRIATHLON (66A: Race suggested by 19-, 39- and 59-Across?) — themers contain SWIMMING, CYCLING, and RUNNING, respectively:

Theme answers:

• GOING SWIMMINGLY (19A: Proceeding well)
• RECYCLING CENTER (39A: Place to bring aluminum cans)
• OUT OF THE RUNNING (59A: No longer in contention)

Word of the Day: LONI Love (3D: Comedian Love who co-hosts "The Real") —

Loni Love (born July 12, 1971) is an Emmy Award-winning, American comedian, television host, actress and author. While working as an electrical engineer in 2003, Love began to pursue a career in music engineering. She was the runner-up on Star Search 2003 and was named among the "Top 10 Comics to Watch" in both Variety and Comedy Central in 2009. She is currently one of the hosts of The Real talk show along with Jeannie Mai, Tamera Mowry, and Adrienne Bailon, which premiered on July 15, 2013. (wikipedia)

This theme doesn't work for me, for a few reasons. The TRIATHLON segments are weirdly embedded. CYCLING is only part of the word RECYCLING, which has nothing to do with bicycling, which would be fine, but then RUNNING is a stand-alone word and kind of has Everything to do with, uh, running, even if OUT OF THE RUNNING is, largely, metaphorical now. I have no idea what the origins of GOING SWIMMINGLY are, but I imagine they have more to do with swimming than recycling has to do with cycling. It's all just uneven and strange and thin. The fill is OK but not great—just this side of "clean enough" but not-at-all interesting. Feels like something Peter Gordon just tossed off and threw away. Something he could make in his sleep. I tend to like Mondays best, of all the themed days of the week, but this one missed me. Didn't miss bad. It just missed. Another thing that missed: my fingers, in that they couldn't hit the right keys to save their lives. I guess I have had a drink, and it was kind of strong, but it was just the one, and I'm 6'3" 185 so honestly it should not have affected my fingers the way it did. I think if I'd had a way to record "number of typos and rewrites" I would've been able to declare that today, I set a record. Just a horrendous job of filling in squares and moving the cursor around properly. For all I know, this puzzle is actually wickedly easy, even in comparison to Mondays. But my fat drunk fingers did what they did, and we all have to live with the consequences.


I wrote in VILE for UGLY and thus began my wrong answer/rewrite tragedy (17D: Hideous ... yes, it was hideous). Wrote in STAGE for STAIR (5D: Step between two floors). Wrote in GUY for GUS (41D: Fellow .... I stopped reading at "Fellow," that was my problem). Had the -ATHLON part and immediately, without looking at the clue, wrote in DECATHLON. You can see how impressive I was today, right? Brilliant. Couldn't remember if she was TERRY or KERRY or TERRI or KERRI Strug (56D: Gymnast Strug). Thought maybe [Twilight time] was DAWN (!?). Assorted other things slowed me down, mostly notably my recalcitrant sot-digits. "MY EYE!" can kiss my eye, what is that?! Who says that!? What year is it!? What is "The Real"? Who is this non-Anderson LONI? (3D: Comedian Love who co-hosts "The Real"). Is "The Real" that "The View" look-alike I see on one of the TV screens at the gym sometimes? YES? OK. Well, LONI didn't hold me up too much, so I'm not mad at her. Crosses were easy. And now I know there's more than one LONI in the world. Cool.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]