Illustrator Wilson famous for his macabre cartoons / MON 12-30-19 / 1940s-'60s singer Frankie / Standard Windows typeface

Constructor: Gary Larson

Relative difficulty: Easy (though my time was normal—I blame drink and (related?) constant typos) (3:04)

THEME: ON A ROLL (40A: Winning time after time ... or where you might find 17-, 23-, 51- or 62-Across) — things you might find on a roll:
Theme answers:

• MARGARINE (a dinner roll)
• HONOR STUDENT (honor roll)
• ALUMINUM FOIL (uh ... usually it comes *in* a roll, but is that cardboard bit in the middle called 'a roll'? OK, then ...)
• MONEY CLIP (on a money ... roll ... though normally if you have in fact made a 'roll' of your money, a clip would not in fact hold it; you'd need a rubber band, like *literally* all the pictures that come up when I search [money roll], here look:

Word of the Day: GAHAN Wilson (18D: Illustrator Wilson famous for his macabre cartoons) —

Gahan Allen Wilson (February 18, 1930 – November 21, 2019) was an American author, cartoonist and illustrator known for his cartoons depicting horror-fantasy situations. // Wilson was born in Evanston, Illinois, and was inspired by the work of the satiric Mad and Punchcartoonists, and 1950s science fiction films. His cartoons and prose fiction appeared regularly in Playboy, Collier's and The New Yorker for nearly 50 years. He published cartoons and film reviews for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. From 1992 through end of publication, he prepared all the front covers for the annual book Passport to World Band Radio. Wilson was a movie review columnist for The Twilight Zone Magazine and a book critic for Realms of Fantasy magazine. [...] In 2005, Wilson was recognized with a lifetime achievement award from the World Fantasy Awards. He received the World Fantasy Convention Award (in the form of the bust of H. P. Lovecraft that he had designed as the award trophy in 1975) in 1981. He also received the National Cartoonists Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Wilson is the subject of a feature-length documentary film, Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird, directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe.

He was an influence on later alternative cartoonists, including Gary Larson [!!!!!!!?], John Callahan and Bill Plympton. (wikipedia)

This puzzle feels about as timely as MONEY CLIP, which is to say it feels like it came from ca. 1985 (the last time I actually owned a MONEY CLIP. It's so generic, so plain, so ... I mean Mel OTT Frankie LAINE Davy Crockett ... it's not even trying to be anything close to current. And it's not like Shortz works that hard to make the clues current. So it feels mothbally. Same with the theme concept. I'm stunned it hasn't been done before. Or maybe I'm not, since ALUMINUM FOIL and MONEY CLIP don't *really* work. Foil comes *in* a roll, or ... just come in rolls, I guess ... and a MONEY CLIP isn't made to hold a literal cash roll. I holds bills folded over once, I think. Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, I guess, but pretty weak sauce compared to most good, tight, sparkly Mondays. I guarantee you one of the other dailies (USA Today, LAT, Newsday, Universal, or WSJ) has a nicer theme than this one today. Too much competition out there right now. NYT should be B+ or better every single day. There are no excuses for this kind of just okay-ness.


Felt like I didn't have to struggle at all, but the timer came out with a very average time, which means I had more trouble (either interpreting clues or just plain typing) than I thought I did. I really did struggle to comprehend the clue on HERE (3D: On earth), which I really despise. The Taj Mahal is "on earth," but it is not [... looks around room ...] HERE, by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe the clue means simply "in existence," but still. Blecch. Every part of me resisted HERE, which meant I lost valuable seconds. I also saw the clue at 15A: 1940s-'60s singer Frankie (LAINE) and could think only of VALLI. I had the "A" from TAR and the "I" from WII, but wanting VALLI made me doubt WII, and so, yeah, I must've flailed for a few seconds there as well. Wrote in ALUMINUM WRAP at first, which, given that "wrap" is in the clue, was a bad idea; and then I wrote in MONEY BELT instead of CLIP, which ... is that more or less archaic than MONEY CLIP? I don't know. Anyway, those erasures certainly cost me time. And then I had a bit of an issue parsing DOORDIE (which always happens with that answer, whenever I encounter it) and INORDER. But in the end, it was a textbook Monday puzzle. Not an up-to-date textbook, but textbook, in its solidly 20th-century way, nonetheless. One big treat was seeing GAHAN Wilson—a great cartoonist who passed away just last month (11/21). I don't think GAHAN is exactly a Monday answer, but the crosses are fair, and since he's one of the greats, I have no problem seeing his name in any puzzle, no matter the day of the week.

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