West coast birthplace of John Steinbeck / SUN 1-12-20 / Japan's largest brewere / Judean king in Matthew / Whom a warrant officer might report to informally / Wilbur's partner in old sitcom / Hit playfully on the nose slangily / Hawaiian word that's also common Chinese surname / Reading on dashboard of DeLaurean in Back to Future / Setting for some pickup basketball / Symbol for visocsity in chemistry

Constructor: Evan Mahnken and David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy (9:00, and I've had a little to drink...)

THEME:"State of Confusion" — anagrams of states (well, actually just jumbled state names) appear in the middle of various theme answers:

Theme answers:

• ANSWERING MACHINE (23A: Voice box? [Wolverine State]) (MICHIGAN)
• AFRICAN LION (33A: Safari sighting [Golden State]) (CALIFORNIA)
• SQUIRRELED AWAY (48A: Stashed for later [Blue Hen State]) (DELAWARE)
• PERSUSASIVE WRITING (67A: Editorialist's skill [Mountain State]) (WEST VIRIGNIA)
• SWORD AND SHIELD (87A: Knight's accouterments [Ocean State]) (RHODE ISLAND)
• AVOCADO ROLL (103A: Sushi bar offering [Centennial State]) (COLORADO)
• KNOWS A THING OR TWO (116A: Has been around the block [Evergreen State]) (WASHINGTON)

Word of the Day: DAWSON City, Yukon Territory (4D) —

Dawson City, officially the Town of the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territoryof Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–99). Its population was 1,375 as of the 2016 census, making it the second largest town of Yukon. [...] Dawson City was the centre of the Klondike Gold Rush. It began in 1896 and changed the First Nations camp into a thriving city of 40,000 by 1898. By 1899, the gold rush had ended and the town's population plummeted as all but 8,000 people left. When Dawson was incorporated as a city in 1902, the population was under 5,000.

HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS—this is the last official day of my annual one-week financial contributions appeal. It's been truly thrilling to hear from so many warm, thoughtful, enthusiastic people over the past week, both online and in the cards and letters that have begun to arrive at my house. You all have been especially kind in your condolences for my dearly departed Dutchess (2002-2019). I love this time of year because I get to hear from so many of you personally. I see how much this site is a part of many people's everyday lives, and I cannot begin to say how grateful I am for that, and how lucky I feel. Anyone who contributed any amount will be getting a thank-you from me shortly (if you haven't already), but I'll also just say here, publicly, thank you. My readers and the broader crossword community mean so much to me and my family. 13+ years ago, I stumbled into this bizarre second job of writing about crosswords (every day of my life) and though I may seem "cranky" or "grumpy" or otherwise tired of solving at times, the truth is that whatever you see in the write-ups, whatever emotion, whatever sentiment, comes from a place of genuine passion. I love good puzzles. I love to dismantle bad puzzles. I love conversations about what puzzles are and should be. I live for crossword culture. So I am unlikely to quit this blog any time soon. In the meantime, if you meant to contribute $$$ but haven't gotten around to it yet, here's the PayPal button one more time:

And my snail mail address:

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

Both the PayPal button and my mailing address can always be found in the sidebar of the blog. I do love hearing from you. For now I'll just say thanks, again. I'll keep telling you what I think of the NYTXW, and bringing you news from the broader crossword world that you might find interesting. Here's hoping for better puzzles (and faster solve times) for all of us!

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...


Like last week's Sunday puzzle, this puzzle is straight out of NYTXW central casting. A teeny wordplay gimmick that is mildly clever but not genuinely funny, stretched way, way too thin. At least last week's involved some potential humor, some possibility of a chuckle in the wackiness that results from restressing words, and thus changing their meaning. Here ... it's just the Jumble, but with states. The answers themselves hold the jumbled states, of course, but are not, in and of themselves relevant ot the states, or even very interesting as stand-alone answers (though I do kind of like KNOWS A THING OR TWO, perhaps because it sounds like something a dad would say about himself after you fail to laugh at his GROANER of a dad joke and then roll your eyes at his "State of Confusion" pun...). This is just a trivia test—do you know the various state nicknames? Yes? No? Who cares, the puzzle is so easy it won't really matter. I just saw someone on Twitter say that she shattered her Sunday-best time and still had no idea what the theme even was. That should not be possible. Did you know that if you mix up the letters in "California," and then add an "n," you get AFRICAN LION!?!? No? Hmm. Perhaps that's because it's not at all interesting. (REAL TALK: I didn't know there were other kinds of lions ... well, mountain lions, sure, but ... are there ASIAN LIONS?). This puzzle is filler. It looks the part, and here it is, but who cares?


"SURELY NOT" is a phrase I can only hear being uttered in a state of disbelief. "Absolutely not" or "no way in hell" are [Emphatic rejection]s. Even "Of course not" would work for this clue. But SURELY NOT ... actually, now I'm having trouble hearing *anyone* say it under *any* circumstances. In fact, all I'm hearing is Leslie Nielsen saying "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley":


What the hell is Freedom of the SEAS!? It's like Freedom of the Press meets Chicken of the Sea. Is it a concept? An ideology? A themepark? ... [googles] ... wait, a cruise ship operated by Royal Caribbean, LOL what? Really? We're just supposed to know that? Apparently it was the largest passenger ship (by gross tonnage) from 2006 until 2007, when her sister ship, Liberty of the Seas (ugh, really??) beat her out ... and now Freedom of the Seas is only the 15th largest!? Why are there so many Death Star-sized ships, and more importantly, who the hell is in charge of naming them? Following Freedom of the Seas with Liberty of the Seas is ... the opposite of inspired.

[UPDATE: the first "Freedom of the Seas" site wikipedia listed was the ship, but if you click through "Disambiguation" you'll see that Freedom of the SEAS is also, in fact, a legal concept, which means a. my first instinct was right, and b. never trust Google or wikipedia to give you the whole story! (at least not with their first offerings):"Freedom of the seas (Latin: mare liberum, lit. "free sea") is a principle in the international law and sea. It stresses freedom to navigate the oceans. It also disapproves of war fought in water. The freedom is to be breached only in a necessary international agreement." (wikipedia)]

One of the toughest answers for me in this puzzle was YEAR (52D: Reading on the dashboard of the DeLorean in "Back to the Future"), which is weird since I not only saw that movie when it came out (as a teenage boy, I was the ideal audience!) but I had my photo taken with it when I chanced upon it at a small seaside town in Oregon seven years ago:


Guess I didn't look closely at the dash. Ah well.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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