Transitional zone between two biomes / THU 12-26-19 / Secret headquarters for Bruce Wayne / Comic strip title character who is Beetle Bailey's sister / Classic tune often played by ice cream trucks

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging?? (untimed)

THEME: BOWLING (62A: Sport that is the key to interpreting the answers to 21-, 40- and 56-Across) — you must read "/" and "X"s as bowling symbols in order to make sense of the long theme answers:

Theme answers:

• "/ ME THE DETAILS" ("/" is the symbol for "spare" in BOWLING) (21A: "I've heard everything I need to hear")
• X THE RIGHT BALANCE (40A: Find an ideal compromise)
• XXX IN THE STRAW (56A: Classic tune often played by ice cream trucks)

Word of the Day: SKEG (34D: Surfboard stabilizer) —

1: the stern of the keel of a ship near the sternpostespecially : the part connecting the keel with the bottom of the rudderpost in a single-screw ship

2: a fin situated on the rear bottom of a surfboard that is used for steering and stability (merriam-webster.com)

Truly viscerally did not like this one, so not gonna spend a lot of time on it. Took one look at the grid and thought "ugh, why is it so choppy? why are there all these stupid short words everywhere? this is going to be ugly" and it was. Bad enough to have so many 3-letter words, but then when you try to clue those three-letter words (none of which are or can be good fill) at a Saturday level much of the time ... the result is fussy and annoying. And at 16-wide there was just ... more of it. More JAMERGSHYDOW and YOWFLOYESNEO and on and on. I can't even get to the theme because the rest of this thing is so painful. And then just the dumbness of RIVERSEINE, what, are you writing a poem? (5D: Subject of several Georges Seurat paintings) It's just the SEINE, we call it the SEINE. I hated that ansswer So Much, even more than when I see RIVERPO, which, yes, I have seen, and which is also bad bad bad. Is the theme cute? I don't think so, but maybe you like BOWLING? I don't like that "/" is a symbol that has to be weirdly added to the grid (i.e. you would normally just write ACDC) whereas the "X"s are just those letters (i.e. writing in EXEC here was no different than writing in EXEC any other time). I resented the revealer, because a. things would've gone faster if I'd just started there, and (related) b. by the time I got there, it was a redundant dud of an answer. Also, it's a revealer with no symmetrical theme answer (unless BATCAVE factors in somehow in a way I haven't yet figured out). But the theme isn't what's truly objectionable—the crosswordese-laden trash pile of short fill is. Oh, and ECOTONE (43A: Transitional zone between two biomes), ack, blecch, no ... and it crosses RIVERSEINE too, my god I need coffee to get the taste of this thing out of my mouth.


The only place anyone says "TGIF" is in crosswords, so much so that I now truly hate the expression (58D: "What a long week!"). Why do we pretend people say this? They do not. Do they even say it ironically. Does the restaurant chain TGIFriday's even exist anymore?? At least this grid didn't have TGI, which I have definitely seen (twice this year ... so apparently the restaurant chain *does* still exist, because that is virtually the only clue the NYTX has used for it, [___ Friday's]). What the hell is a XEROphyte? (57D: Prefix with -phyte) Maybe don't just do the dumb twin clue thing (see 72A: Prefix with -phyte) when the word you are imagining is so far out of common usage (unlike "neophyte"). Incorporate the meaning into the clue somehow, so at least the solver can learn something. A XEROphyte is a species of plant that has adapted to live in environments with very little water, which makes sense, as the only XERO- prefixed word I know is XEROscaping, where you replace your stupid thirsty lawn with plants that don't require supplemental irrigation. And LOL it's not XERO-scaping but XERIscaping, oh well. My bad. ELAL AGER NNE GTO OLE ERG (!) ENGR (!!) ERSE (!!!) ELLER (!?!) it truly is relentless, this grid. There are only three real themers here, why is this grid such a black square-ridden, short fill-infested disaster??

May this post-YULE period bring us the joyous grids we deserve! Cheers!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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