Rosalinde's maid in Strauss's Die Fledermaus / WED 5-8-19 / Jule who wrote music for Funny Girl / Nickname for Yale

Constructor: Stu Ockman

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:54)

THEME: TABLE TENNIS (37A: Olympic sport since 1988) — circled squares use TABLE TENNIS table and NET (30D: [Item depicted here]) (?) to form the shapes of those things, and then there's also what looks like the path of a ball over the net, which spells the phrase BACKSPIN SERVE. Then in the very bottom corners of the grid there is PING and PONG (63A: With 65-Across, another name for 37-Across). Oh, wow, looks like there's a random ATARI tie-in too (15A: Its version of 37-Across was popular in the 1970s-'80s)

Word of the Day: Jule STYNE (13D: Jule who wrote the music for "Funny Girl") —

Jule Styne (/ˈdʒuːli staɪn/; born Julius Kerwin Stein, December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-American song writer and composer known for a series of Broadway musicals, which include several famous and frequently revived shows which also became successful films, including Gypsy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Funny Girl. (wikipedia)

ATARI

Let's call this what it is: pandering. The crossword editor is, famously, a table tennis enthusiast, owner of a table tennis facility, etc. It's just gruesome that kissing up to the editor with a theme like this one (one that isn't even well executed) actually works. I guess fawning pays with certain leaders. I have no idea how the path of a "BACKSPIN SERVE" is different from the path of any other serve, or if the path depicted here is even representative of a "BACKSPIN SERVE." Likely, that phrase just happened to fit in the requisite number of spaces. It's such an arbitrary, odd phrase, and since it's literally the only thing keeping this theme from being completely boring and rudimentary, its oddness / strangeness / non-iconicness really hurts. There are some decent answers in here, in the bottom (i.e. not theme-dense) part, but that's also where the fill gets inexcusably weak and crosswordesey. SRTA ESTER etc.


Then there's BUSMAN??? Otto is a bus driver (though his last name is Mann). Hail to the bus driver, bus driver, bus driver. . .


BUSMAN ... what is that? I've heard of "BUSMAN's holiday," though I don't know what one is. Looking it up now ... Hmm, per wikipedia: "The phrase "busman's holiday" is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a period of holiday or leisure time spent doing something similar to one's normal occupation, first shown to be used in 1893." OK, but what is BUSMAN? Well, it's a word meaning "driver of a bus," but I wouldn't use it. People don't use it. More importantly, "The Simpsons" doesn't use it (I don't think). Whoa, no. No I'm wrong. I totally forgot about Otto's idea for a superhero called BUSMAN!: 

Otto's idea was that the character would drive a bus by day, but by night fight vampires in a post-apocalyptic war zone. Otto later went to a comic book convention, with the intention of showing his idea to Jack Tate, but it's still unknown whether Tate liked Otto's idea or not. While traversing The Desert Busman picks up various passengers and safely takes them to Garlicville after fighting off the hordes of Mutant Vampires. He also met Busbabewhile escorting the passengers. (Simpsons Wiki)

Looks like Bongo Comics even published an actual issue of this hypothetical comic, thus making it no longer hypothetical, I guess:


NONONO is bad, especially coming after the ridiculous no-no-no non-phrase NO EAR (!?). Loved PLUS ONE, both the answer and the (tough) clue (50A: Unidentified date). But very little else about this puzzle was pleasing. My only real hold-up came in the middle, with the non-clue on NET and the absurd clue on ADELE (34A: Rosalinde's maid in Strauss's "Die Fledermaus"). Other proper nouns in the puzzle didn't trouble me: I somehow remembered both ELSTON and STYNE today. In conclusion: Please let's all agree to a 10-year moratorium on PING / PONG puzzles. Thank you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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