Physician on TV's Celebrity Rehab / FRI 6-28-19 / Actress Doborev of Vampire Diaries / Ohio town that was first permanent settlement in state / Eyes slangily / Briskly to equestrians

Constructor: Bruce Haight and David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (more Medium) (6:33)

THEME: ugh don't make me say it — black squares are supposed to be birds or bats or some implausible &^$%

Theme answers:

• SPREAD ONE'S WINGS (17A: Become independent ... ... as suggested visually by some of this grid's black squares)
• BATS IN THE BELFRY (57A: Mental eccentricity ... as suggested visually by some of this grid's black squares)

Word of the Day: ELROND (30A: Lord of Rivendell in "The Lord of the Rings") —

Elrond Half-elven is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He is introduced in The Hobbit, and plays a supporting role in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. [...] In The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, Elrond is portrayed by Hugo Weaving.

It's a 'no' from me. Hard no. Those aren't birds or bats. They're just black squares. Astonishing that you'd hang a half-assed theme on such an unremarkable feature of the grid. Especially astonishing that you would allow one of only two themers to contain "ONE'S," which is like a parody of forced 15-letter answers, echoing ALOTONONESPLATE (which is the paradigmatic bad 15). Themed Fridays are ruined Fridays, and this one was especially ruined because its premised is weak and thin *and* there's nothing remotely interesting in the rest of the grid to make up for the weak thinness. Buncha biggish corners with lots of crossing 7s that yield little in the way of interesting. ISINFOR is horrid. ATATROT is horrid. Almost everything else is dull or obscure or both. ELROND is hilariously inconsequential—it's a debut today For A Reason ('cause it's bad and no one cares) (also I just find Tolkien ponderous and dull and the movies way way way way moreso). Had no idea there was a MARIETTA that was not in Georgia. But my ignorances aside, this simply isn't good in anyway. The "whimsy" on display in the "theme" is underwhelming, and none of the fill sizzles. LILLE? Blecch. I do like the words LISSOME and ANODYNE. That is the extent of positive things I have to say about this one. Oh, and the clue on NAMETAG is not bad (39D: Face-saving aid at a reunion).


Is "The Vampire Diaries" still a thing? Do people know actor names from that show?? NINA was entirely crosses. NINA notwithstanding, LEW Wallace and OPIE are conspire to give this puzzle a pretty olde-timey feel, as does the clue on LEFT JAB (1A: The "one" in "the old one-two," maybe). I'm looking around the grid that any answer that anyone could plausibly claim to like. CARLOAN!? EMANATE? ESSENCE? It's not that any of these (or their neighbors) is so bad, it's just that ... you want to build your late-week grid around good fill, not adequate filler. This puzzle has opted to build itself around a two-answer "theme" and three "M"s flying across the grid. Literally nothing about this grid's black squares "suggests" BELFRY, so they couldn't even get the clues right. Continues to bum me out that loyalist white guys get published at such a high rate while women I know have their puzzles routinely rejected because they just didn't "tickle" him (by "they" I mean the puzzles, of course ... man, I hope that was clear). Oh, props to the clue on SENECA, though (47D: ___ Falls Convention (early women's rights gathering))—the one moment during the solve where I was like "oh, cool."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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