Crepes in Indian cuisine / WED 6-12-19 / 1933 James Whale sci-fi horror film / Mathematician John who discovered logarithms / Eponym of world's largest tennis stadium / Builder of Domus Aurea / Adan's mate in la biblia / 1938 Alfred Hitchcock mystery / Title meaning commander

Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:31)

THEME: LACK OF CHARACTER (53A: Amorality ... as suggested by 17-, 25- and 41-Across?) — movie titles that suggest that a "character" goes missing or is "lack"-ing:

Theme answers:

• "THE LADY VANISHES" (17A: 1938 Alfred Hitchcock mystery)
• "RUNAWAY BRIDE" (25A: 1999 Garry Marshall comedy)
• "INVISIBLE MAN" (41A: 1933 James Whale sci-fi horror film, with "The")

Word of the Day: DOSAS (13D: Crepes in Indian cuisine) —

A dosa is a cooked flat thin layered rice batter, originating from the Indian subcontinent, made from a fermented batter. It is somewhat similar to a crepe in appearance. Its main ingredients are rice and black gram ground together in a fine, smooth batter with a dash of salt. Dosas are a typical part of the Southern Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil diets, but the dish is now popular all over the Indian subcontinent. Traditionally, dosas are served hot along with sambar, a stuffing of potatoes, and chutney. They can be consumed with idli podi as well. (wikipedia)

The revealer is just a clunker. A huge let-down. A massive disappointment. Anticlimax epitomized. First off, I don't even think LACK OF CHARACTERmeans"amorality"—the latter strikes me as something much more severe than some kind of character deficiency. But mostly the phrase just fizzles. It's weak and old-fashioned and decidedly lacking in pizazz or elan or verve. I had LACK OF and (given [Amorality...]) immediately tried to write in CONSCIENCE. So I got LACK OF CONSCIENC ... There's a germ of a theme idea that seems interesting, but that revealer just made the whole thing go pfft. Not that it was really humming before then. I nearly slammed my computer shut at MALE NAME (4D: August, e.g., but not May or June). Blargh. I was very proud when I saw right through that clue and wrote in MAN'S NAME. Not sure I like either one, but MALE NAME just rubs me the wrong way somehow. Also, "June" is not a MALE NAME, eh?:

June Sheldon Jones III (born February 19, 1953) is an American football coach and former player. He is currently the head coach and general manager of the Houston franchise in the XFL. Jones was the head football coach at the University of Hawaii at Manoa from 1999 to 2007 and was the head football coach at Southern Methodist University (SMU) from 2008 to 2014, before resigning on September 8, 2014. Previously, he coached in the National Football League (NFL): a three-year tenure as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons from 1994 to 1996 and a ten-game stint as interim head coach of the San Diego Chargers in 1998; he also spent 1½ seasons as head coach of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League (CFL). (wikipedia)

And NAIVER?? (15A: Not so savvy about the ways of the world) LOL who says that?? Any sane human would say "more naive." I also didn't like how heavily segmented the grid was, with a bunch of 3x4 sections (i.e. a lot of short fill) and only one fairly narrow way to move from the top half of the grid to the bottom (i.e. right through the center). When I got to J--- at 35D: Don't you believe it! (JIVE) and wrote in JOKE, that pretty much killed all momentum and I had no choice but to head into Empty Territory and try to start over. Hate that. Had to go all the way down to the DTS (hate that, a lot) (59A: The shakes, for short) and build my way back up.


NAPIER (57A: Mathematician John who discovered logarithms) over EX-ALLY (60A: Former friend) is ultra-unfortunate. Obscure over awkward. Down there with DTS and the revealer, those answers really added to the unpleasantness of the last 1/4 of my solve. I'm just glad I knew "THE LADY VANISHES" and had some idea of DOSAS because if you didn't know the Hitchcock film or the Indian "crepes," you could easily have found yourself with "THE LADY VANISHED" / DODAS. Not keen on the fact that "THE LADY VANISHES" gets its definite article, but "The INVISIBLE MAN" has a definite article that has vanished, run away, gone invisible (actually, it's just been stored in the clue). Tiny detail, I know, but when the puzzle doesn't deliver much in the way of pleasure, those tiny details come to the fore. Today's errors included the aforementioned MAN'S NAME (for MALE NAME) and JOKE (for JIVE), as well as TEE (for CEO) (16A: Top of an outfit, for short?) and AVERS (for AVOWS) (18D: Asserts openly). I will never, ever be able to keep "aver" and "avow" straight. I should stop trying and just accept my fate.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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