Legendary snake exterminator for short / WED 4-24-19 / Bynes Channing Tatum / 1953 musical with songs by Cole Porter

Constructor: Evan Mahnken

Relative difficulty: Very Easy (2:56) (personal record)

THEME: SHAKESPEARE PLAY (54A: What the film answering each starred clue was inspired by) — that clue is a pretty straightforward description of the theme:

Theme answers:

• "FORBIDDEN PLANET" (17A: *1956 sci-fi movie with Robby the Robot)
• "SHE'S THE MAN" (22A: *2006 rom-com starring Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum)
• "WEST SIDE STORY" (35A: *1961 musical for which Rita Moreno won an Oscar)
• "KISS ME KATE" (45A: *1953 musical with songs by Cole Porter)

Word of the Day:"SHE'S THE MAN" (22A) —

She's the Man is a 2006 American romantic comedy sports film directed by Andy Fickman and starring Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, Laura Ramsey and Emily Perkins. It is inspired by William Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night.

The film centers on teenager Viola Hastings who enters her brother's school in his place, pretending to be a boy, in order to play with the boys' soccer team after her team gets cut at her school. (wikipedia)

First things first: Shakespeare's birthday was ... yesterday. So, this raises the question: why in the gosh-darned world would you not run this on Tuesday??? Please don't say it has anything to do with difficulty level, because I and virtually everyone I know set personal Wednesday records on this puzzle. This was easier than Tuesday *and* Monday. So you had a perfect opportunity to run this On The Correct Day and you decide, instead, to miss it by one!? This is editorial malpractice. It's just plain stupid. Now, to be fair, April 23 is a mild guess—they only know the date of his baptism (Apr. 26, 1564), but April 23 is the generally accepted birth date. Also, coincidentally, his death date (1616). So off by one day—ridiculous unforced error, own goal, choose your sports metaphor. Further, this theme is soooooo straightforward it's kinda boring. I love remembering easy trivia and torching puzzles as much as the next solver, but this was kind of a nothing. Too easy, not clever enough. And the revealer ... just SHAKESPEARE PLAY? It's terribly anti-climactic. The fill is fine but forgettable.


Here are the only time I even hesitated: I read 30A: Put 10,000 hours into, it's said as past tense and so put a "D" at the end, then convinced myself that DEMIT was correct for 32D: Cancel, as a fine (REMIT); I briefly forgot how to spell SHAKESPEARE (there's a no-terminal-E variant, but that's hardly an excuse); I failed to write in "MY SIDES" (62A: "I'm laughing so much it hurts!") even though that's what the letters suggested because I couldn't believe that was really a thing. That's it. I didn't even see many of the Across clues. I thought I tore through this puzzle because just prior to solving, I had been watching Andy Kravis and Joon Pahk solve a Newsday Saturday Stumper Downs-Only on Twitch, and so my brain felt very very warmed up for puzzle action. But then I saw that everyone did very well on the Wednesday, so maybe warming up by watching the crossword equivalent of extreme sports had no effect. Speaking of solving Downs-Only, there's an article about the phenomenon in today's Wall Street Journal. Here's a link to it, though it's now behind a paywall (I was somehow magically able to read it earlier in the day). It's fun, and I'm not just saying that because I'm in it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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