Financial services corp with orange lion logo / MON 10-21-19 / Major athletic event along Thames / Positions one's toes off the surfboard

Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:12)


THEME: THREE ON (36A: Bases loaded ... or a hint to the contents of 17-, 26-, 44- and 56-Across) — "ON" appears three times in each themer:

Theme answers:

• KNOWS ONE'S ONIONS (17A: Is highly versed about something)
• LONDON MARATHON (26A: Major athletic event along the Thames)
• "BLONDE ON BLONDE" (44A: Bob Dylan album that he called "the closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind")
• SECOND HONEYMOON (56A: Romantic getaway for a married couple)

Word of the Day: KNOW ONE'S ONIONS (17A) —

know (one's) onions

To be very knowledgeable or skilled in some area. Primarily heard in UK, Australia. (thefreedictionary.com)

I just don't understand why this cuts the mustard (sorry, needed an idiom to go with my *$&%^ing onions). There are so many levels on which this is ill-conceived and mal-executed. First, the basic expression at the heart of the puzzle, the revealer: THREE ON. It's just ... not. Not a thing anyone says with any regularity. The clue phrase, "Bases loaded," *that* is the snappiest, most in-the-baseball-lingo expression for when three men are on base. "Three *men* on" is actually somehow better than THREE ON. Not saying THREE ON is never said, or is unintelligible. It's just ... limp. Sad to have limp baseball revealer just before the World Series gets underway. So the revealer is disappointing on its face. Then there is the concept. Just ... three ONs. OK, I mean, maybe you can do something with that. Or, maybe you can't, as KNOWS ONE'S ONIONS is grotesque. It's chiefly the ONE'S that makes it truly rank. ONE'S is the paradigmatic garbage possessive in a 15-letter answer. See, classically, A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE (15). You would normally say YOUR if you were actually using it, but since you're just staring at the phrase out of context, your possessive is ONE'S and nobody's happy, and the unhappiness is compounded by the fact that ONE'S was used to pick up one of the three "ON"s. Cheap. Not as cheap as just repeating an "ON"-containing word and also just putting the word "ON" in your themer, but cheap nonetheless—seriously, what is going on with "BLONDE ON BLONDE"? You hide all your other "ON"s but just give up here!? What's most puzzling to me is how a constructor doesn't *agONize* over this type of crap. It should keep you up nights, honestly. Hide all your "ON"s! Jeez. How is that not obvious?


The fill in here is stale and bland. Even potentially cool stuff like HANGS TEN is made kinda off by the verb tense, i.e. HANG TEN! = great, HANGS TEN = ... yeah, OK (9D: Positions one's toes off the surfboard) (LOL one's toes). The whole thing feels off-brand, like an ersatz crossword puzzle. Let's see what else. Well, once again, a NO CARB diet is absolutely positively not a thing (22D: Like a diet that prohibits bread and pasta). Carbohydrates are necessary for life and are everywhere, so shut the hell up, please. LOW CARB, sure, NO CARB, bullshirt. I don't really want to go on. Everything else I have to say about this puzzle is either boring or redundantly negative, so I'm gonna sign off. Peace.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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