Irish girl's name related to word honor / WED 3-6-19 / Style of yoga in heated room / Hindu's bindi traditionally / 1950s-60s TV emcee Jack

Constructor: Mary Lou Guizzo and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (4:57 — oversized grid)

THEME: in like a LION, out like a LAMB — there's a word ladder (...) that goes from LION to LAMB, and then there are three themers, each of which starts with a relevant season-changing word:

Theme answers:

• MARCH OF PROGRESS (???) (17A: History moving forward)
• WINTER WONDERLAND (41A: Snowy expanse) 
• SPRING HAS SPRUNG (62A: Cry when warmer weather returns)

Word of the Day: Michael PEÑA (14A: Michael who played the title role in 2014's "Cesar Chavez") —

Michael Anthony Peña (/ˈpɛnjə/; Spanish: [ˈpeɲa]; born January 13, 1976) is an American actor and musician. He has starred in many films, such as Crash (2004), World Trade Center (2006), Shooter(2007), Observe and Report (2009), Tower Heist (2011), Battle: Los Angeles (2011), End of Watch(2012), Gangster Squad (2013), American Hustle (2013), Fury (2014), Frontera (2014), The Martian(2015), Collateral Beauty (2016), CHiPs (2017), My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), Ant-Man (2015) and its sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), and A Wrinkle in Time (2018). Peña also had the title role in Cesar Chavez (2014) and plays the co-lead role in the TV series Narcos: Mexico (2018). (wikipedia)

I honestly don't get this at all. Any part of it. It makes no sense. Well, the "in like a lion out like a lamb thing" I get. It's a saying, so why not try to make a puzzle around it, I guess, but why *this* puzzle? Why 16-wide? May see a weird place to start complaining, given how many other problems ther are, but seriously. To make the ladder a true ladder, with 4-letter "rungs" going right down the middle? Is that it? I can tell you that that does not make a word ladder any more appealing (the appeal of all word ladders being permanently set at "zero"). You could put WINTER SOLDIER in the middle, or WINTER [anything] that makes an odd number, and bring the damn grid back to 15 wide. Stagger the stupid "rungs," who cares? As is, you have this conspicuous (and ugly) black "L"s wrapping around the 15s in the NW and SE. Bizarre. Then there's the very fact of a word ladder—one of the least pleasurable crossword theme conceits of all time. Then there's the odd theme answer progression. MARCH answer not about MARCH, but WINTER and SPRING answers definitely about those seasons, and anyway, the adage refers to weather, not the literal seasons. And it's a dumb adage anyway, if you've experienced March in central New York (this last bit is not the puzzle's fault).


What else? The fill. It is inexplicably bad. My printed-out grid is filthy with red ink. Long Downs are fine (the only part of the puzzle I like), but who the hell is NOREEN? I had -OREEN and absolutely no idea, and with the first word in ladder unclued ... solving fun! OXX is to fill what word ladders are to crossword themes, i.e. the worst. ING NOVAE OMOO INRE (!) ALAI (!!) MINIMA ELNINO PAAR APSE TSAR ASADA XIII LALA LEI NAW ASTI SIB AVER ELSA ENID HRE. That there is an assault. A crosswordese / junk fill assault. Maybe change MARCH OF PROGRESS to something snappier—did you all know that was the name of this illustration??

I did not. Anyway, do a different MARCH. Make WINTER and SPRING answers be unrelated to the seasons. Refill the entire grid. I don't know. Do something. This is the longest streak of not liking the puzzle that I have ever been on. 9 days (I'm told—I don't actually keep track of these things). How is the "Best Puzzle in the World" routinely this mediocre? Puzzles should be fun to solve. Fun. And clean. Clean is fun. I CAN'T believe this prestigious puzzle org. can't get its dang act together. It's really, truly, genuinely frustrating and disappointing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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