Asian metropolis of 28+ million / SUN 11-10-19 / Tennis player with record 377 cumulative weeks ranked No 1 / 1980s auto imports based on Fiat / Speed skater who won five golds at 1980 Lake Placid Olympics / Mughal emperor of India known as Great / Cinematographic innovation of 1970s / Captain played twice in film by Charles Laughton

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium (slow for me, but thematically easy, I think) (11:12)

THEME:"Double Sixes" — wacky phrases with six double letters in a row:

Theme answers:

• BASSI IN NEED DOODLE (23A: Low singers, short on money, draw idly?)
• DOES SAAB BOOKKEEPING (37A: Works as an accountant for a Swedish aerospace company?)
• QUEEN NOOR ROOMMATES (53A: People who share an apartment with a Jordanian royal?)
• ISAAC COOLLY YEEHAWS (75A: Designer Mizrahi shouts like a cowboy in a nonchalant way?)
• SWIM MEET TEEN NEEDLED (94A: Headline after an adolescent at a pool competition is made fun of?)
• ENROLLEES SEEM MEEK (112A: Matriculated students appear to be timid?) (why is "to be" in the clue???)

Word of the Day: WHO (73A: 50,000-watt clear-channel radio station in Iowa for which Ronald Reagan was once a sportscaster) —

WHO (1040 kHz "Newsradio 1040") is a commercial AM radio station in Des Moines, Iowa. The station is owned by iHeartMedia and carries a news/talk radio format.

WHO broadcasts with 50,000 watts, the maximum power permitted for commercial AM stations. It uses a non-directional antenna. WHO dates back to the early days of broadcasting and is a Class Aclear-channel station. With a good radio, the station can be heard over much of the Central United States during nighttime hours. During daytime hours, its transmitter power and Iowa's flat land (with near-perfect soil conductivity) gives it at least secondary coverage of most of Iowa, as well as parts of Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota. It is Iowa's primary entry point station in the Emergency Alert System. [...] 

Future United States President Ronald Reagan worked as a sportscaster with WHO from 1932 to 1937. Among his duties were re-creations of Chicago Cubs baseball games. Reagan received details over a teleprinter for each play and would act as if he were in the stadium, reporting on the game while seeing it from the press box. Many radio stations used this re-creation system until sports networks became more common. (wikipedia)

Extremely not my jam or idea of a good time. The themers weren't so much hard to get as they were dreary to get. Extremely forced. So much so, that any humor is mostly drained out of them. As for the rest of it, it was off my wavelength at every turn. Felt like an enormous slog, despite my enormously average time. There's nothing really to say about this theme. There it is. Six double-letters in a row ... that is ... what those answers all have. No tricks. No gimmicks. No nothing but a bunch of tortured premises and awkward "?" clues. I get that this scratches some people's fun itches, but it just made me itchy. I had no trouble putting most of the themers together, but I had all kinds of trouble with understanding what much of the non-theme clues were going for. There was a GRAIL at the Last Supper? There's such a thing as a MOONBOW?? DELHI has *how many* inhabitants!?!? There's an apostrophe-S in PIRATE ('s) BOOTY?!?! And wbat the hell is up with this absolutely gratuitous Ronald Reagan content? And right under Liz CHENEY? Ugh, yuck, stop. WHO can be so many things? Why this dumb radio station? I mean, you've got WHO crossing HOW, you could've done something clever (or faux-clever) with that. Don't you raise a stink? And at any rate, that phrase is dated. I dunno. I just couldn't find much to enjoy here. It's been a good week up til now, for the most part. Law of averages, I guess. And this puzzle isn't empircally bad. It's just for someone not named me.


So many points of hesitation or bafflement. Clues on ENRON (20A: Case study in many business ethics classes) and DRUMS (10A: Skins, so to speak) and USDA (12D: National School Lunch Program org.) were all rough for me. I thought the cream sauce (29A: Served in a certain cream sauce) was ALFREDO. I don't think DANDY equals [First-rate]. To me, it's good, fine. In fact, fine and DANDY. I had DA-DY in place and even then nearly wrote in DADDY (just 'cause it made a word). Had OH at the beginning of 55D: Cry of dismay (OY VEY!) and so misremembered the dumb cars as HUGOS (sure sounded right) (62A: 1980s auto imports based on the Fiat). Wanted KEEP ON for 66A: Not doff and could not come up with a synonym for "keep" (?!). Wanted the "hay" to be in a LOFT (that's why they call them "hay lofts" and not "hay BARNs," ugh). Forgot Eric HEIDEN existed. Don't think of a simple SHRIMP as a "food item." Found clue on KODAK really hard because film is dead and those ads (and the whole concept of a "Kodak moment") = exceedingly bygone. Something something YALE, whatever (78D: The Collegiate School, today). Calvin / ALVIN, man am I bad at those type of clues (84A: Man's name that becomes another man's name when a "C" is put in front). CHAIR BEDS!?!?! LOL What the hell are those? (76D: Alternatives to sleeper sofas) They sound dreadful. No one literally no one calls "jeans" (a real word!) DENIMS. As you can probably tell, I'm just glad this one is over. See you tomorrow (or next week, if you're of those Sunday-only-type people!).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. the Vox crossword puzzle a. exists, b. has been unbelievably terrible, and c. ditched their regular constructor for a new constructor yesterday and the puzzle was actually good. Here it is (the 9 November puzzle).

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