Fairy tale question / MON 7-22-19 / Strong-smelling cheese made in England / Louisiana's avian nickname

Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (2:51)

THEME: RUM PEL STILT SKIN — clue to the revealer says it all: 61A: Fairy tale question whose answer is spelled out in the starts of 18-, 24-, 40- and 51-Across ("WHAT'S MY NAME?")

Theme answers:

• RUMMAGE SALE (18A: Yard event to clear out the attic)
• PELICAN STATE (24A: Louisiana's avian nickname)
• STILTON (40A: Strong-smelling cheese made in England)
• SKINNY DIPPER (51A: One barely in the water?)

Word of the Day: EUROPA (66A: Mythical beauty who lent her name to a continent) —

In Greek mythology, Europa (/jʊəˈroʊpə, jə-/; Ancient Greek: Εὐρώπη, Eurṓpē, Attic Greekpronunciation: [eu̯.rɔ̌ː.pɛː]) was the mother of King Minos of Crete, a Phoenician princess of Argive origin, after whom the continent Europe is named. The story of her abduction by Zeus in the form of a bull was a Cretanstory; as classicist Károly Kerényi points out, "most of the love-stories concerning Zeus originated from more ancient tales describing his marriages with goddesses. This can especially be said of the story of Europa."

Europa's earliest literary reference is in the Iliad, which is commonly dated to the 8th century BC. Another early reference to her is in a fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, discovered at Oxyrhynchus. The earliest vase-painting securely identifiable as Europa dates from mid-7th century BC. (wikipedia)

This puzzle might very well have been even easier than I've rated it. I say that because I absolutely drove the car into the ditch in one answer—total and complete incompetence and negligence on my part. Some bad luck, but mostly just idiocy (mine, and ironically, at an answer that crosses IDIOTPROOF (30D: Impossible to mess up): instead of coming down the middle of the grid, from left to right, like a normal, I did this dumb thing where I followed a solving path off the end of PELICAN STATE and then straight down the east of the grid via IDIOTPROOF (so proud to get that off of just a couple letters ... insert maxim about pride here). In following this path, I ended up in the position of having to come back into the center of the grid upside-down and backward, i.e. from bottom right toward the upper left. Fine, doable, except what happened was a. when I looked at 49A: Ledger entry on the minus side, I had one letter in place (the final "T"), and b. when I read the clue, my eyes never got past the "Ledger entry" part and I wrote in .... ASSET. So not just wrong, but spectacularly wrong. Couldn't-be-wronger. And if I hadn't had that "T," I probably wouldn't have screwed up and jumped the gun, and if I'd just read the clue to the end, I certainly would've gotten DEBIT. But see "T" write ASSET biff bam boom. And then, predictably, I immediately stalled. No hope for PIPE and BISECT to say nothing of OPED and STUDY. I got so flustered that I couldn't figure out how to clean up the mess and just started up again back in the NW and worked my way back down, at which point the error quickly became obvious. Still, I probably lost 15-20 seconds with that screw-up, which means I *should've* been in the 2:30s, not the 2:50s, and 2:30s, for me, is very fast. Not record, but record-adjacent. But what about the theme!? Was the puzzle good!? Tell me what to think!?!?! Easy. We're getting there.


Lynn Lempel's name doesn't pop up in NYT crossword bylines as much as it once did (back in the mid/late '00s. Back then, Ms. Lempel was averaging 8 puzzles a year or so for a while. Of course back then, the NYT was publishing considerably more woman-authored puzzles (nearly 50% more than now!), but more on that some other time (i.e. the next time I think about it, maybe tomorrow). She has a well-deserved reputation for sparkling M/T puzzles: tight, clever themes, clean grids. This one's no exception. Theme type here is a reasonably common one, and the revealer didn't land for me the way it probably did for others (that question makes me think more Snoop Dogg than Stilt Skin), buuuutt the revealer questions does tie nicely into the theme, in that it forces you to sound out his name (and, uh, keep your first-born child, I guess). In an odd coincidence, I had a stilton cheese sandwich this afternoon. Eeeeeeerie.


Thanks to Christopher Adams for filling in for me last-minute yesterday—it did not occur to me until quite late that going to a concert at night, 90 minutes away from my home, might seriously interfere with my ability to produce the Sunday write-up in a timely fashion. His generosity allowed me to enjoy Blondie and Elvis Costello without that "youregonnahavetoworkwhenyougethome" feeling nagging at the back of my mind all night.

Sometimes when you go to concerts, there are crossword constructors there (Mike Nothnagel says 'hi')

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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