Fancy term for a long prison sentence / SAT 1-25-20 / Musical family from Cremona / Olden land north of anglia / Pistolet par exemple / One-third of literary trio

Constructor: Stella Zawistowski

Relative difficulty: Medium (7-something, with another minute to hunt down an error)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: DURANCE VILE (55A: Fancy term for a long prison sentence) —

durance vile

A long prison sentence. He's a known criminal, that's why he's in durance vile. (the free dictionary (idioms))

This played very unevenly for me. Struggled to start (I feel like I say this every day—maybe that's just the norm), even though DEFAT was a gimme. Never heard of NEGGA (or "Loving," though now that I look at the movie poster, yes, I have heard of it) (3D: Actress Ruth of "Loving") and couldn't see TRUES from the clue and had no idea what a "lemniscate" is and the other Acrosses were just never gonna come. Then later, the SE corner also ground me to a halt, with its honestly ridiculously obscure DURANCE VILE. But as for the rest of the grid, I tore through it like it wasn't there. Can't believe how easy the NE was (30 seconds, tops, for the whole thing), and since PALAVER is a great word that I enjoy, and TRANSFER was a piece of cake, I also got into the SW easily and destroyed it. So two corners were slogs, and the other two I don't remember because they were so easy. I do like 5/6 of the long Acrosses in this thing, and the long Downs are more than solid, so the bones of this one are mostly good. I just wish the difficulty had been way more evenly distributed, and that DURANCE VILE had never ever shown its ridiculous face. I mean, I couldn't even good a good definition of it. Dictionaries have "durance" in them, and they say "usually in the phrase 'durance vile," but then They Do Not Tell Me What That Is. One of the references for DURANCE VILE at freedictionary.com was a book called "Endangered Phrases," which gives you some idea of its, uh, currency. I think the word "Fancy" is outright horrid here. It's meaningless. Unless ... would you use it at black tie events, when discussing your former broker's prison term? Fancy??? The term and the clue are vile. Because "durant" means "during" or "lasting" in French, I put a "T" where the "C" was supposed to go, figuring that maybe "I Love Lucy" was on (in reruns??) on TBS and the clue was just getting cute (57D: "I Love Lucy" network (CBS)). You have to treat answers that outside-common-parlance as if they were nuclear. It would be great if they weren't in the grid at all, but if you really have to use them: crosses, crosses, crosses. Mind your crosses.


Had the "A" at 19A: Burning feeling (ANGER) and wanted at least three different things, none of them ANGER: I wanted AGITA, I wanted ARSON, and I wanted ARDOR. Weirdly started this solve with LAG SOLES -ING (inferred suffix of 8D) DOWNS WAR, and then just sat there going nowhere for a bit. Then I went and got NEE MOHEL ENT, and things started to move. Worst mistake I made all day was probably EVE forNYE (56D: Dec. 31). I mean, I was close, in that NYE stands for New Year's EVE, but ... no. And since I had EVE running through what was supposed to be DURANCE VILE, well, I wasn't getting any help undoing EVE until I finally changed SLIDE to FLUME at 45D: Water park feature; then, after trying to think of *any* literary EMILs besides the titular character in "Emil and the Detectives," I eventually just got BRONTË and worked backward. EMILY. NYE. OK. Not with a bang but a whimper, as TSE says.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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