Bo's'n's quarters / WED 4-10-19 / Computer image file format / Baseball rarities nowadays / World capital at 9350 feet

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy? Easy-Medium? (solved on clipboard, not really sure)

THEME: DOUBLE HEADERS (35A: Baseball rarities nowadays ... or a phonetic hint to the starts of 17-, 26-, 48- and 57-Across) — first words of themers are homonyms for a numbers; taken as a progression, the numbers "double" with each step:

Theme answers:

• WON ON POINTS (1) (17A: Was barely victorious, as in boxing)
• TOO DARN HOT (2) (26A: Cole Porter song from "Kiss Me, Kate")
• FOR A CHANGE (4) (48A: As something different to do)
• ATE LIKE A PIG (8) (57A: Opposite of "consumed daintily")

Word of the Day: FOCSLE (52A: Bo's'n's quarters)—

noun

noun: focsle

1. the forward part of a ship below the deck, traditionally used as the crew's living quarters.

   • HISTORICAL

     a raised deck at the front of a ship. (google)

First the obvious, which is that this puzzle should've run yesterday and yesterday's puzzle today (if it was run at all, which it shouldn't have been, IMveryHO. I didn't time myself today but the only trouble I had (ironically? fittingly?) came right off the bat with REBUS (1A: A ewe for you, say). I wanted some equivalent of homonym, which I still can't tell apart from "homophone," tbh. Looks like "homophone" is a type of homonym, but where the words are spelled differently, not just pronounced differently or with different meanings. So you're always safe saying "homonym." But I digress. Besides REBUS, only the terrifically ugly FOCSLE caused me even a moment's pause. Had no idea what the theme was until I was finished. As soon as I had that AHA moment, I let out a sound like a tire deflating, which made my wife (in the next room) laugh, because she knew *exactly* what caused it (she'd solved last night, while I was asleep on the couch). There is very much a "that's it?" quality to this theme. Nothing disappoints me quite like a disappointing baseball-themed crossword. Even the clue on DOUBLE-HEADERS was disappointing. It's not wrong, it's just ... there's nothing in that clue that refers to what a double-header *is*. Who cares if it's a "baseball rarity nowadays"? Give me a baseball-specific clue, please. [Twin bills] would've worked. This puzzle was not bad so much as it was blah. Limp, listless, dull. Something that might've seemed interesting in the 20th century, of if you'd not done many puzzles before. Do some constructors get preferential treatment because they've been at it for so long? I can't believe that in all the rejected puzzles made by young people or women there wasn't something more interesting than this.


I guess there were a couple other answers that gave me slight pause. I know the term BITMAP, but I don't really know what it is, so I got it easily enough, but I wrote it in thinking "well I've heard of this thing ..." rather than "ooh, I know this!" Also, no idea who TESSA Thompson is. Which, now that I look her up, seems impossible. She's been in a lot of stuff. I really gotta start watching "Westworld"...


Bullets:

• 25D: Forest giants (SEQUOIAS) — wanted REDWOODS, which is accurate and fits. But that "Q" was easy to pick up from QUOTAS (31A: Target numbers)
• 7D: World capital at 9, 350 feet (QUITO) — speaking of "Q"s ... I always hesitate with this clue because I think it might be LAPAZ or SUCRE (both Bolivian capitals, both way way up there, elevationwise)
• 43D: Lonely place (THE TOP)— Had THE and filled the remaining spaces (mentally) with all kinds of stuff (THE BAR? THE HOP? THE MET?) before getting TOP from the crosses. 
• 58D: ___ of Good Feelings (ERA) — LOL this reminds me olde-timey crosswords, when this ERA apparently meant something to someone, and also when this ERA would be used to clue the terrible partial ERAOF. To Will's credit, he's only had ERAOF in his puzzles three times in 25 years. Weirdly, pre-Shortz editors clued it "ERA of Good Feeling," singular. The plural "feelings" version appears to be more correcter.
• 49D: A Lion, but not a Tiger, informally (NFLER) — ban NFLER, NBAER, NHLER, NLER, ALER and all dumb sports -ERs. Also, go Tigers! (baseball!)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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