Forward in Florence / THU 4-18-19 / Anago at japanese restaurant / Hand-held console introduced in 1989 / People whose political views are Communist lite / Indian state whose largest city is Vasco da Gama

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy-Mediumish (5:19, first thing in the morning)

THEME: BUTTERFLY (23A: Image formed by connecting this puzzle's circled letters from A to N and then back to A)— also contains earlier stage of BUTTERFLY development (CATERPILLAR) (17D), and the place where the change to BUTTERFLY happens (CHRYSALIS) (51A)

Word of the Day: BONTON (3D: Fashionable society) —

1a: fashionable manner or style

b: the fashionable or proper thing

2: high society (m-w.com)

If you like doing child's-place-mat connect-the-dots after solving your puzzle, well it's a good day for you. If you're like me, and don't like that your puzzle's fill has been mediocritized to enable a child's-place-mat connect-the-dots drawing, then the day is not so bright. That little BUTTERFLY-drawing trip through the alphabet puts more stress on the grid that you probably think, and so we're left with lots of yawner fill and not much else, honestly. Without the drawing, this puzzle is nothing. I mean, CATERPILLAR / CHRYSALIS / BUTTERFLY? Those are your themers? No. That might pass muster in a child's crossword, or [redacted lesser crossword publication], but it's not nearly enough to carry a NYT Thursday. So the drawing is the thing. And I don't come here for drawing. Now there were individual clues along the way that I enjoyed cracking, so it was not a total loss. There's nothing dreadful about this. It's just a puzzle that seems designed to impress, well, children, and people who don't solve often. It's a cheap magic trick that guts the puzzle of it's true pleasures. For me. You are of course free to love it like crazy. I see that people are solving it very quickly, so that always engenders good will. And it is timely (spring!!).


Crashed out on 1A for the second day in a row, but I prefer crashing out to a wrong answer (today) than to a I-have-no-idea answer (yesterday). Faced with [Head on a plate?] I wrote in LETTUCE! Yes, it's absurd that there would be an entire head of LETTUCE on your plate, but that absurdity applies to CABBAGE too. I went through my entire rolodex of egg-shape answers and couldn't find a one that was long enough to fit in 14A: Egg-shaped. OVAL? OVATE? OVOID? OVOID already exists, you see, so why would I or anyone expect that the word OVOIDAL existed or was necessary?? Please "OVOID AL" uses of that "word" in the future, thanks. What the hell is PRE????  (31D: Air traveler's convenience, informally). Pre-what? Pre-boarding??? I know there is that shorter security line that you can either register for or get randomly chosen for. I think it's called TSA PreCheck? Is that PRE? I fly not infrequently, and "PRE" as a thing that anyone says "informally" is a mysssstery to me. It's truly terrible as a clue, because as fill it's already bad, and then you go and make it inscrutable? Bizarre. Clue on PINKOES is absurd, in that it seems to be endorsing the validity of a pejorative that rarely gets used in any credible way nowadays (if it ever did) (64A: People whose political views are "Communist lite"). Hilariously, I had no idea that "PINK" was part of that word because it was RED "lite"? And now I do. So I learned something. One more check in the Asset column for this thing. Still not enough checks.


Hey here's a cool thing that happened to me while I was solving yesterday, courtesy of the legendary Liz Gorski:

Thank you, Liz!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. RHYME is correct for 52D: Pay for play because "pay" and "play" .... RHYME :/
P.P.S. ARS is correct for 58D: Married couple? because there are two R's (ARS!?!!) in "married" :(

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