KIND words / SUN 4-28-19 / Tributary of Missouri / Charlie of Stranger Things / Old SeaWorld attraction /.2002 2019 Super Bowl player / Colonial merchant Sameul after whom famous island is named / Airport whose name is also big brand of nail polish / National chain selling crafts fabrics / Rhyme scheme of rime of ancient mariner

Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Medium (11:36)

THEME:"Words of Introduction" — clues all follow patter [[ALL-CAPS WORD] words?], where the clue itself is a familiar phrase, but the answer is a phrase that comes from treating the ALL-CAPS clue word as an acronym:

Theme answers:

• KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND (21A: KIND words?)
• HEART AND SOUL (35A: HAS words?)
• BELIEF IN GOD (60A: BIG words?)
• RUN OUT OF TOWN (82A: ROOT words?)
• SET A FINE EXAMPLE (99A: SAFE words?)
• BEYOND ALL DOUBT (15D: BAD words?)
• LIKE A SORE THUMB (44D: LAST words?)

Word of the Day: REUEL (98A: Moses' father-in-law) —

[from the "Jethro" wikipedia page] In the Hebrew Bible, Jethro (/ˈdʒɛθroʊ/; Hebrew: יִתְרוֹ, Standard Yitro Tiberian Yiṯerô; "His Excellence/Posterity"; Arabic شعيب Shuʿayb) or Reuel was Moses' father-in-law, a Kenite shepherd and priest of Midian. In Exodus, Moses' father-in-law is initially referred to as "Reuel" (Exodus 2:18) but then as "Jethro" (Exodus 3:1). He was the father of Hobab in the Book of Numbers 10:29. He is also revered as the spiritual founder and chief prophet in his own right in the Druze religion and is considered an ancestor of all Druze. (wikipedia)

Well this is slightly better than most recent Sunday offerings but still nowhere near as enjoyable as the NYT's marquee puzzle oughta be. Astonishingly, this one gets a DQ right out of the gate because of the first themer: KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND. Aside from the fact that it's just obnoxious—obscure and very difficult to parse—it simply doesn't fit the pattern for the rest of the themers. "Koh-i-Noor" is not three separate "words." That is a hyphenated phrase; you can't treat "i' like a separate word. I didn't find the theme thrilling to begin with, but this Koh-i-Noor nonsense doesn't even conform to the theme's own rules. I had KOHINOO- and I was like "Oh, the themers go backwards or there's a code or something, weird." But then I got DIAMOND and the answer looked like [randomletters]DIAMOND but then I remembered some earlier crossword where this diamond came up (never seen it mentioned out of crosswords), and since all the crosses checked out, I just left it. But when I came back to figure out the K, I, N, D of it all, I was like "nahhhhh. nope."SET A FINE EXAMPLE feels mildly forced, BELIEF IN GOD probably couldn't stand on its own in non-theme circumstances, but only that diamond answer is truly egregious. A deal-breaker. Lethal. No idea what people were thinking there.


REUEL? I mean ... the alternate name of Jethro, who isn't exactly well known to begin with. Survey says: oof. Ultra-rare for good reason.

And FETOR? I'm laughing just typing it out, what??? My god. This is its first appearance Since I Started Blogging (i.e. 2006; actually, first since 2004). That ORDO FETOR INTOTO is fetid. It's like the Latin motto of Oz, or Kansas, translating roughly to "Order of the Little Dog Who Rolled in some Animal Carcass or Something." I believe we call credit cards "no-fee," not NON-FEE (lah-di-dah, is that the formal version? Is that how Charles Entertainment Cheese describes his credit card?). And [Tic-tac-toe loser] is always such an unfortunate clue. Up there with the worst of all clues, leaving the solver with "OK, a random string of X's and O's, just not OOO or XXX, This Should Be Fun!" And then there's IVANKA ... man, this one really ticks a sizable number of the unpleasantness boxes. Where is SEE-THRU used? I'm imagining some kind of peep-show Drive-Thru... oh, man, turns out it's used on all kinds of commercial nonsense, ugh. So OK, that one's technically valid. Dumb-looking, but valid. Most of my trouble today came around bad stuff I've already whined about, but I also struggled with one perfectly fine part of the grid: PASS KEY over PLATTE. Just couldn't figure out either of those, and didn't really trust NESTS, so I really had to come at that patch from both sides before I could get it to fall. Otherwise, mostly clean grid, not terrifically difficult, an OK way to pass the time, but not what an NYT Sunday puzzle should be.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Hey, what's the KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND's favorite Simon & Garfunkel song? That's right, it's "Cecilia." Yeah, I don't get it either. Wait, maybe I'm misremembering the riddle. Oh well. Have a nice day.

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