Tarot card that bears numeral XIII / SAT 5-25-19 / Top of Pacific island chain / City sobriquet for New Haven / Hebrew scripture commentary

Constructor: Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (6:21)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Howard ASHMAN (54A: "The Little Mermaid" lyricist Howard) —

Howard Elliott Ashman (May 17, 1950 – March 14, 1991) was an American playwright and lyricist. He collaborated with Alan Menken on several works and is most widely known for several animated feature films for Disney, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Menken composed the music. Ashman and Menken began their collaboration with the musical God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1979), for which Ashman directed and wrote both book and lyrics. Their next musical, Little Shop of Horrors (1982) for which Ashman again directed and wrote both book and lyrics, became a long-running success and led to a 1986 feature film. The partnership's first Disney film was The Little Mermaid (1989), followed by Beauty and the Beast (1991). After his death, some of Ashman's songs were included in another Disney film, Aladdin (1992). [...] On the night of the 62nd Academy Awards, Ashman told Menken that they needed to talk when they got back to New York, where he revealed to Menken that he was HIV positive. He had been diagnosed in 1988, midway through the making of The Little Mermaid. During the making of Beauty and the Beast, the Disney animators were flown to work with Ashman at his home in Fishkill, New York. There they discovered that he was seriously ill. He grew weaker but he remained productive and continued to write songs. After the first screening for Beauty and the Beast on March 10, 1991, the animators visited Ashman in the hospital. He weighed 80 pounds, had lost his sight, and could barely speak. The animators and producer Don Hahn told him that the film was incredibly well received by the press. On the early morning of March 14, Ashman, age 40, died from complications from AIDS, in New York City. Beauty and the Beast is dedicated "To our friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful. Howard Ashman 1950–1991." Ashman was survived by his partner Bill Lauch, his sister Sarah Ashman-Gillespie, and his mother Shirley Thelma Glass. He is buried in Oheb Shalom Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. (wikipedia)

Well this was probably my least favorite Paolo Pasco puzzle ever, and I really liked it—just to give you some sense of how far beyond most constructors this kid is (he's my daughter's age, I get to call him "kid"). ONALEASH was a little wobbly and RATA and ENE, bleh, and who the hell says "DASH IT!" and I just personally hate the phrase "drop TROU" (not the puzzle's fault, exactly) and I have never seen GLADHAND (57A: Insincere welcome) as a noun (as a verb, yes, and GLADHANDer, yes), and ASHMAN strikes me as pretty obscure (only his second appearance of the millennium, and the center stack, though very solid, is not exactly scintillating, and (saving worst for last) ILIADS, plural, dear lord no, the dictionary has betrayed you! (34D: Epic narratives). OK, so on one side there's all that, but on the other side, everything else was delightful and current and smooth and occasionally EDGY, drawing from all over the knowledge spectrum, and some of the clues were so great (don't know if they were Paolo's or the editor's, and I don't care—just glad they made their way to me). Stupid fun clue on DELIS (20A: Establishments whose products might be described by this answer + H), interesting and original clue on NON (56D: Prefix with binary), and great deception all over, including [Push-ups, e.g.] for LINGERIE and [Off in biblical lands?] for SMITE. Honestly, this thing had me at CHRISTIAN MINGLE (8D: Website relative of JDate)—finally, a reason for having suffered through those TV ads so many times. What show was I even watching when the CHRISTIAN MINGLE onslaught happened? I don't remember. But this payoff is sweet.


I was cruising—absolutely shredding this thing in the NW and then down through CHRISTIAN MINGLE—but those three central Acrosses just wouldn't budge. I had the vast majority of all of them filled in before even one of them fell. I'm embarrassed that HAWAIIANSHIRT took so long (33A: Top of a Pacific island chain), but CATE BLANCHETT ... I'm not even sure what movie she won the Oscar for (36A: Only person to win an Oscar for playing an Oscar-winning actress). I thought she won for "Blue Jasmine"? She played an Oscar-winning actress in that? I never saw it. Whoops, nope, she played Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn in "The Aviator," and won Best Supporting Actress for that (she won plain old Best Actress for "Blue Jasmine"). Well, at least I know this trivia for future use now. As for MICHELIN GUIDE, I had considered at least two other kinds of "stars" for the frame of reference (movie, outer space), but neither one was any help (37A: Book of stars?). I didn't get hung up, but I definitely had to labor my way through the middle. And finally the SW was really threatening to sink me for a bit. MIDRASH / MIDROSH??? Couldn't decide, and that vowel is the first letter in ASHMAN, which I didn't know at all. In the end, OSHMAN seemed far less like a name, so "A" won. STOPGO was hard (59A: Congested, in a way). I had STUFFY at first. So I ended up with a good but not great time on this good if not great puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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