Physical expression of frustration in modern lingo / MON 12-16-19 / Ending with Capital Faith / Bell-ringing makeup company / Recurring Tyler Perry movie role

Constructor: Howard Barkin and Kevin Christian

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:49)

THEME: ELVES (65A: What the answer to each of the starred clues has)— they do indeed "have" (as in "feature") ELVES:

Theme answers:

• "LORD OF THE RINGS" (20A: *Trilogy set in Middle-earth, with "The")
• RICE KRISPIES BOX (37A: *Container for a Kellogg's cereal)
• SANTA'S WORKSHOP (48A: *Reputed place at the North Pole)

Word of the Day: MADEA (17A: Recurring Tyler Perry movie role) —

Mabel Earlene "Madea" Simmons is a character created and portrayed by Tyler Perry. She is a tough, elderly African American woman.

Vindictive in nature, Madea gets even in a bad crazy way. When asked by Dr. Phil why she felt the need to get somebody all the time, Madea answered: "Well when you gettin' got and somebody done got you and you go get them, when you get 'em, everybody's gon' get got." Additionally, Madea has a tendency to overreact and is willing to threaten to use deadly weapons, destroy property, use physical violence, take on the law, and use any and all means necessary to show up an offending party. Incorrigible in her overreactive ways, Madea has repeatedly landed herself in court (usually before Judge Mablean), anger management classes, house arrest, and even prison. (wikipedia)

This is very very vanilla in concept and execution, but, you know, I like vanilla pretty well. Theme is exceedingly straightforward, but it holds together, and the fill is never repulsive, and it's got a decent longer Down or two, and a funny little bonus theme answer down there with the ELVES in the SE (PÈRE Noël!). So YES, this will do. The shakiest answer—RICE KRISPIES BOX—which would never seem non-ridiculous standing on its own as regular old fill, ends up being actually the most interesting of the themers. It's also one of the few things that caused me to lose time today (a day where I finished in 2:49, which puts my last three Monday times all within one second (!) of each other). The word "Container" in the clue did not convey "packaging" to me but maybe a place you store cereal, or even a cereal bowl. So even though I could see the opening was RICE KRISPIES, I genuinely had no idea what the last three letters were until I went after the crosses. I also had trouble with the DESK part of HEADDESK (5D: Physical expression of frustration, in modern lingo). I always thing of HEADDESK as something you say, a metaphor for how you feel, rather than something you actually do, so "Physical expression" threw me a bit. Worst problem, though, was having the -ER at the end of 25A: Nag, nag, nag (BADGER) and throwing down PESTER. This made DICEY (slightly tough to get under the best conditions) impossible to see. Had to work back up from BAEZ and SLY to fix that little snafu. After that, no sweat until my inevitable confusion of OLAF and OLAV at 54D: Name of many Norwegian kings.


This grid looks almost like a template of late 20th-century early-week grids. So plain. Three long Across themers (three used to be much more common, something closer to the norm), and then a grid divided into nine more-or-less discrete little segments of roughly 3x5 or 4x4. This does tend lead to the emblandening of the puzzle, as there is only So Much you can do with a small corner, and when you give yourself nine of them, well good luck! But as I say, today they are all at least clean, and the grid does allow for a solid quartet of 8-letter Downs. It's not most festive Christmas puzzle I've ever done, but it does what it does just fine. My favorite part of the solve was seeing 47A: One more than bi-, seeing that the answer was three letters long, and wanting only PAN-. Then I realized we were talking muscles, not sexuality, and the somewhat less adventurous TRI- went in. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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