Gryffindor who founded Gryffindor House at Hogwarts / THU 6-13-19 / East African native / Sedgwick 1960s it girl / Layer of Italiian muffuletta sandwich / Country that lost quarter of its territory in 2011 / Dweller on Arabian peninsula

Constructor: Michael Blake and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:58, and I was still asleep I think ... so sleepy ...)

THEME: UPPERHAND (58A: Advantage ... or what the answer to each starred clue has?) — answers to starred clues need the letter string "HAND" attached to their fronts to be complete—that letter string, in each case, is directly above said answers (inside a different Across answer):

Theme answers:

• OOH AND AAH / IWORK (20A: *Needlepoint, e.g.)
• CHANDELIER / ICAPS (33A: *Sets the odds for)
• HAN DYNASTY / YMEN (50A: *Plumber/carpenter types)
• UPPERHAND / ED IN (64A: *Submitted)

Word of the Day: WORD (CLUE) —

DEFINITION

I like this theme, and I like the way the revealer has also been incorporated into the theme gimmick (often, usually, revealers stand to the side and point at the theme, but this one joins in, or lends a hand, I guess (I'm sorry). I opened this puzzle while still yawning at 5:30AM knowing that my time was gonna come in slow (but being too tired to care) ... and then my time came in solidly faster than normal, which means this puzzle was Super easy. I just stumbled around answering the fairly simple short answers until theme stuff started to come into view, and then figured out IWORK was missing its HAND pretty readily, noticed there was a HAND just above it, imagined a HAND at the beginning of [*Sets the odds for], which made that answer obvious, changed DAM to VAC (24D: Hoover, e.g., for short), and I was off. After that, I ran into a few clues whose answers I just didn't know or remember at first (SEAN Parker, EDISON as a rival of Westinghouse, EYESHADE as a word for the EYEVISOR that accountants stereotypically wear), but mostly I just filled in answers as I encountered their clues, with only mild ambiguities (e.g. "is it SCAT or SHOO?" (39D: "Git!") holding me back at all.


The longer Downs in the NW and SE add some life and personality to this grid, which is otherwise, like sooooo many NYT grids of late, bogged down with tired short fill. Not so egregious today as it has been recently, but that SW corner really should be torn out and totally redone. I groaned my way through that. I realize that your theme, particularly that "D" in every "HAND," sets you up for some terrible letter combinations in the Down answers (GODRIC, BADPR and DNY being the other examples of D-handling today), so DNALAB was kind of inevitable, and that inevitability almost certainly put tremendous pressure on the corner as a whole. Still, OCULI and CINE and SABE was all a little xwordy / icky / much. Not sure why GODRIC couldn't have been (much more common) CEDRIC. Change it to CEDRIC / CLAD / EERO / ARA and you are not exactly in Beautiful territory but you are Definitely better off than GODRIC / GLAD / OENO (blargh) / ANA. And again, that "fix" took me three seconds. An actual constructor (or editor) actually constructing (or editing) could surely do better.


I would love it if the crossword weren't so obsessed with the suffering of alcoholics, i.e. the DTS (twice this week now!?) (51A: Rehab woes, for short). If you have to use that cruddy fill, there are always Defensive Tackles who could use the publicity. The best thing about this puzzle is being unable to read 44A as anything but HANDY NASTY, which, I mean, put a comma in there and it's a Tinder bio.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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