ER role for Paul McCrane / THU 3-21-19 / Soothing succulents / 2008 movie starring Michael Sheen Frank Langella / Swimmer Ian who won three godl medals in 2000 olympics

Constructor: Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:03 just out of bed, which is like a normal 4:00, I think)

THEME: SLASHER FILM (25D: Movie with graphic violence.... or what 17-Across, 22-Down or 39-Down each is?) — DESCRIPTION

Theme answers:

• VICTOR / VICTORIA(17A: 1982 movie starring Julie Andrews)
• FROST / NIXON (22D: 2008 movie starring Michael Sheen and Frank Langella)
• FACE / OFF (39D: 1997 movie starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage)

Word of the Day: Ian THORPE (32A: Swimmer Ian who won three gold medals in the 2000 Olympics) —

Ian James Thorpe, AM (born 13 October 1982) is a retired Australian swimmer who specialised in freestyle, but also competed in backstroke and the individual medley. He has won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by any Australian. With three gold and two silver medals, Thorpe was the most successful athlete at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. (wikipedia)

Gotta be quick as I fell asleep before 10pm last night and have a 7am appointment this morning, wheeee! This puzzle was great. It's always easy to love an easy puzzle, true, but the revealer on this one works mwah, perfectly. "SLASHER" is repurposed, literalized, resulting in what you would otherwise Never refer to as SLASHER FILMs. And the grid has been shaped (and the revealer designed) in such a way that the three films of disparate lengths can still come together in a symmetrical arrangment. The stuff I don't like is small and infrequent and sort of in the "who cares?" category. I'm not spending my time complaining about plural ALOES, is what I'm saying. Damn, I just did! ANYway ... I spelled SAOIRSE correctly, first try, and I think I lost like five valuable seconds doing a little chair-dance of victory! Didn't recognize the actors in FROST/NIXON, so that was the themer that took the longest to come to me (didn't take long, tbh). Totally forgot who Ian THORPE was, and hadn't watched "E.R." since the '90s and didn't recognize the name Paul McCrane and so struggled to come up with DR. ROMANO. "Struggled" is hyperbolic. But I struggled comparatively. Compared to what I did with most other answers. Also, I couldn't get into the SW corner easily, mostly because I didn't look immediately at the clue that finally cracked it all open: 53D: Annual Austin festival, for short (SXSW) (which stands for South By Southwest). Nice to run this puzzle so close to the event (though that's surely a coincidence) (it was last week), and also nice to put SXSW in the actual southwest of the grid.


The only thing that troubles me about this puzzle is why "each" is in the revealer clue. Pretty sure it's grammatically unnecessary. Other trouble spots? Well, MAD DASH was probably the answer that took me the longest, but it was also in the first section I solved. I had UTE for MAV (1D: Western Conference player, informally). I guess butterscotch is ORANGE, but I actually had to go into the SE corner and get some 4s before I could see that OR---- was ORANGE. I solved in AcrossLite, which doesn't do slashes, so that was awkward. But the overall experience was enjoyable. This puzzle had the perfect revealer, which gave me the perfect revealer reaction: "Nice. Good one." That Is All I Want From My Themed Puzzles!!! Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]