Balm with oxymoronic name / FRI 9-20-19 / Chandler four-term US senator who helped faound Republican Party / Like a novel with roguish adventuring hero / Cloud name prefix / Fashion portmanteau exemplified by wearing yoga pants all day / First name in 1990s rap / Journalist whose mother father sister husband all won Nobel prizes

Constructor: Luke Vaughn

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (on paper, untimed)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ÈVE CURIE (4D: Journalist whose mother, fagther, sister and husband all won Nobel Prizes) —

Ève Denise Curie Labouisse (French pronunciation: ​[ɛv dəniz kyʁi labwis]; December 6, 1904 – October 22, 2007) was a French and American writer, journalist and pianist. Ève Curie was the younger daughter of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie. Her sister was Irène Joliot-Curieand her brother-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Ève was the only member of her family who did not choose a career as a scientist and did not win a Nobel Prize, although her husband Henry Richardson Labouisse, Jr. did collect the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 on behalf of UNICEF. She worked as a journalist and authored her mother's biography Madame Curie and a book of war reportage, Journey Among Warriors.^[1][2] From the 1960s she committed herself to work for UNICEF, providing help to children and mothers in developing countries. (wikipedia)

The SE corner here is fantastic, and I did it last, so this was one of those seemingly rare times when the puzzle ends on a highpoint (and not with me jammed up at the worst / knottiest part of the grid). The rest of the grid was fine, but nothing to write home about. TWITTERATI is still not a thing and by now it's a dated non-thing, not the "fresh" thing you think it is, so please stop. I really haven't missed seeing ENESCU, a crosswordese trickster whose name can also be spelled ENESCO for some reason! (9D: "Romanian Rhapsodies" composer) This ÈVE CURIE person is hilariously uncrossworthy. The way that I know is because of how you have clued her, i.e. in relation to the human beings in her family that people might actually know (not, tellingly, in relation to anything specific that she did or wrote). Nice to see more women in the grid in marquee positions (i.e. in long answers), but who? But as I say, that SE corner rocks, and the fill in general is at least a solid average, so overall positive marks for the constructor.


The editor, on the other hand ... OOF. It's possible that *all* these clues were the constructor's, but it's the editor who has to take the reins and bring the cluing under control, so he's ultimately responsible for the cluing, and yeeeesh. It's bad today. If you're gonna open with two (2) "?" Across clues, they should be, uh, good. Stick the landing! These are Terrible and Merely Bad, respectively. SPEED DATES are "Plays?" Even with pun leeway on High, that is rough. I guess people are making "plays" for ... prospective dates? But then the "matches" would be after the "play" (presumably). The whole thing requires a compass and protractor if you wanna make any clear sense out of it. Bad. I get that a STUB has been "ripped off" of the original complete ticket ... OK, maybe that one's more tolerable (and just tough). Other horrible clues: 25A: Comment like "And now here's Pam with sports. Pam?"("OVER TO YOU"). No, "Over to You" is, itself, a comment. If somehow throwing it to another presenter is called an OVER-TO-YOU (like it's a category of comment) then that is some inside-newsroom stuff. Hated this. Merely disliked 34A: "That may not have been entirely accurate ..." ("I LIED"), which are patently not the same thing. They are in the same large category, but at opposite ends. The "may not" is key here. ASSAULTS are not [Batteries]. That's why the phrase "assault & battery" exists. Because ... they are different. "Oh, well, you see, 'assaults' is here being used in the more general..." [harsh loud buzz sound] sorry, no. You can try to lawyer that one if you want, but it's bad.


Lastly, there were entirely too many names, esp. with clues of the fill-in-the-blank variety, followed by a lengthy-ish description of the thing they did that allegedly makes them puzzleworthy, but it always sounds like just so much special pleading. ZACHARIAH ... he did this thing. LYDIA ... you know, from that other thing? This novelist! That former Mexican president ('s middle name!)! Half a rap name! Now I knew some of these and not others, but but the barrage of blank so-and-so clues for like an assault (as opposed to a battery). But let me end by saying, once again, that SE corner is fantastic. PICARESQUE to ATHLEISURE to CHEAP SEATS is the crossword Tinker to Evers to Chance. Mwah!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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