Soviet workers group / SAT 6-29-19 / Geographical eponym of 1970s-'80s fad diet / Woman who spends money on younger lover in modern lingo / Icon of ambient music

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:12 without even hitting the gas) (first thing in the morning)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: OURBOROS (11D: Ancient symbol depicting a serpent eating its own tail) —

The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a snake or serpent eating its own tail, variously signifying infinity and the cycle of birth and death. // Ouroboros derives from a Greek word meaning “tail-devourer.” While the word is not attested in English until the 1940s, the concept of the ouroboros is very ancient, used across many cultures as a symbol of cosmic harmony, eternity, and the cycle of birth and death.

The earliest known ouroboros symbol comes in a 14th-century BCE Egyptian religious text found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen. The symbol appears in a passage about the origin of the sun god Ra through a union with the death god Osiris, meant to illustrate creation through destruction. Ancient Egyptians also used the ouroboros to symbolize the flooding of the Nile, which occurred in seasonal cycles and was of great importance to ancient Egyptian agriculture and society. Other ancient cultures also incorporated the ouroboros symbol. Norse legend tells of the great serpent, Jörmungandr, who encircles the earth and bites its own tail. Hindu cosmology features an ouroboros as helping to prop up the Earth.

The ouroboros was specifically adopted by Gnostic philosophers in the 2nd century BCE. For them, it symbolized the dual nature of existence, marked by life and death, male and female, light and dark, mortality and divinity, or Earth and heaven. Alchemists notably used the ouroboros, too, to represent the element Mercury, believed to permeate and unite all matter. A drawing of the ouroboros can be found in one of the earliest alchemical texts, The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra, from the 3rd century CE. (dictionary.com)

First, big round of applause for the CLEO / OUROBOROS juxtaposition ("A drawing of the ouroboros can be found in one of the earliest alchemical texts, The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra, from the 3rd century CE."). Surely unintended, but still a nice little easter egg. This puzzle was far too easy overall, with many of the clues coming in at Monday level. See, for instance, ESAI (25D: Morales of "NYPD Blue") and ATTA and DYAN and EXS and ERIN and SELA and MARIA and MAA (tho I did consider BAA there at first) and ARIE (OK, I had ARYA, but it's crosswordese and a total gimme if my crosswordese memory bank had had the light turned on this morning). Gimmes are everywhere. OUROBOROS, long gimme (with an overly literal clue). SUGAR MAMA (great!), gimme. KAZAAM, gimme. ADOSE, AREN'T, UMAMI. The construction of the grid itself is very nice, but this one had no resistance at all *unless* you ran into a proper noun you're unfamiliar with. Or didn't know the French word for "strawberry"—that might've hurt (48A: Crème de ___ (strawberry liqueur)). The only way I got hurt today was by hurting myself (badly) when I blithely threw down HEBREW ALPHABET (!?!?) at 15D: What ends with Adar (HEBREW CALENDAR),"Adar" being another bit of crosswordese that I couldn't place this morning. That one error—the dumb accident of "alphabet" and "calendar" being the same length—probably cost me a full minute. It's the only thing that cost me any time longer than a few seconds today. Didn't like a bunch of the shorter stuff today, but the solid and entertaining longer stuff more than made up for those stray infelicities.


Today's constructor is film critic for "Vanity Fair," so I was def on the hunt for movie stuff (AFI, ALICIA, CLEO, "KAZAAM," CAAN, AT-AT, DYAN). Just now realizing that I have never heard of RENI (5D: Italian artist Guido). But then I (obviously) never saw it, so gettable were the long crosses. Aside from the whole HEBREW ALPHABET incident, my only missteps were small: SNOMOBILE (!) before SKIMOBILE (12D: Winter transport), SCARSBORO (!?) before SCARSDALE (65A: Geographical eponym of a 1970s-'80s fad diet), and then a bunch of letters I couldn't figure out somewhere in the middle of ZAPAT....A (33D: Mexican revolutionary). I was thinking of the (ELIA Kazan) movie! "Viva ZAPATA!"—the ZAPATISTAs were Emiliano Zapata's followers. I always love seeing GALOP in puzzles because I consider it one of the regrettable things I've ever put in a grid myself, and so every time I see it I feel slightly less bad. Mine was even in the same NW section of the grid. I think it might even have been 3D??? (checking ...). No it was 1-Across, and it was a *plural*. LOL. I'm all by myself in the Shortz era with that one. Anyway, if you didn't know GALOP(S), now you know.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. forgot about ARTEL (51D: Soviet workers' group), which was hardcore crosswordese in the pre-Shortz era (Maleska, Weng, and Farrar all leaned on it heavily), but (to Shortz's credit) it's all but vanished in the Shortz era. It's actually funny to see how fast he turned off the ARTEL spigot—it appears a bunch of times in the mid-'90s, in grids that were likely grandfathered in from the Maleska era, and then poof, gone. Well, not gone. But now it disappears for years at a time (this latest disappearing act lasted three years).

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