Farthest orbital point from moon / SUN 2-2-20 / Lone female argonaut / Fictional protagonist who attends elementary school in Maycomb County / Grace's partner on Netflix / Onetime come hungry leave happy sloganeer / Asian island divided between two countries

Constructor: Brian Herrick and Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy (very—7:21, a new personal record for Sunday)

THEME:"Audubon Society" — not a great title, but the revealer makes up for it: "LADY BIRD" (115A: 2017 film nominated for Best Picture ... or a hint to the answers to the eight starred clues)—themers are all women (ladies) whose last names are types of birds:

Theme answers:

• SHERYL CROW (23A: *"Soak Up the Sun" singer, 2002)
• SCOUT FINCH (25A: *Fictional protagonist who attends elementary school in Maycomb County)
• SIGOURNEY WEAVER (38A: *Actress in "Alien" and "Avatar")
• RITA DOVE (112A: *First African-American U.S. poet laureate)
• PAMELA SUE MARTIN (43D: *Portrayer of Fallon Carrington Colby on "Dynasty")
• TAYLOR SWIFT (49D: *Singer with the most American Music Awards of all time (29))
• MARION CRANE (50D: *Janet Leigh played her in "Psycho")
• CLARICE STARLING (46D: *"The Silence of the Lambs" protagonist)

Word of the Day: APOLUNE (42A: Farthest orbital point from the moon) —

: the point in the path of a body orbiting the moon that is farthest from the center of the moon (merriam-webster.com)

Really feeling powerful this weekend. First I crush the Saturday puzzle while most of the solving world (apparently) struggles with it, then the next day (i.e. today) I set a personal Sunday record by a good 20+ seconds. If only I'd been able to spell LINGUINE correctly (not an -INI!?), who knows, I might've managed to break 7. Puzzle was just easy, but also the themers were all very much in my wheelhouse, or at least my ... I don't know, cultural orbit. I embarrassingly struggled to remember SCOUT's last name (and this was *after* I knew it was a bird theme), I non-embarrassingly struggled to remember PAMELA SUE MARTIN's name (but I *did* watch a lot of "Dynasty" as a teenager, so she rang a bell) and I weirdly struggled to remember CLARICE's last name because I conflated her and a novelist I remembered from my college / grad school days named Clarice Lispector. I wanted CLARICE ... SPECTOR, or something like it. Then I couldn't think of any "S" birds but "swallow" for a little bit. But I finally got there. And anyway, all of this struggle was actually taking place at a pretty fast clip, since wherever I ran up against an obstacle, the crosses were able to get me past it pretty easily. The theme feels very basic, and like something I've done before (and there have, in fact, been bird-last-name puzzles before), but the revealer gives this one a nice coherence. It's far too easy, and a little simple / straightforward, themewise, but that's really the only knock I have to give this one. The theme is tight and well executed, and the fill is overwhelmingly smooth, with only APOLUNE making me go "whaaaa?" and only ON POT making me go "Ok, dad."


I now know what an APOLUNE is but what I don't know is what ... object ... orbits ... the moon? Is this a term we apply to *any* moon, because the Merriam-Webster def says "the" moon, which makes me think our moon, which makes me wonder what objects are orbiting it such that we would have to invent a word for where those objects are in orbit? When I google image search APOLUNE, *this* is the first image that comes up ... it's really not helpful:

As usual, the parts I struggled most with were names. Gave up the NFL a few years back, so TALIB was unknown to me (though I've definitely heard the name) (65A: Aqib ___, five-time Pro Bowl cornerback), and I also didn't know LYN St. James, though she sounds like she's probably worth knowing, if only for future crossword purposes (121A: ___ St. James, first female Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year). I did know RAHAL, though, so that helped (2D: Bobby in the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America). I don't think there was much that stood out as spectacular, fill-wise, but I did like GO ROGUE and "YOU ROCK!" and "NO REASON." This is a really theme-dense puzzle, which means most of the interest lies there. They've designed the grid interestingly and cleverly, so there are lots of longish answers but none of them cross or even really crowd each other, which allows for the fill to be smooth. Usually the denser the theme, the rougher the fill (because dense themes just put a lot of pressure on the grid). The grid was well designed. I think grid design is a really underrated talent.


I did some good non-NYTXW puzzles this week (Patrick Berry's New Yorker was especially good), but I don't really have much for my "On the Clipboard" segment this week, although I do want to shout out the Saturday USA Today by Mark McClain (ed. Erik Agard). Its themer set was MERCHANT VESSELS, MERE COINCIDENCE, and MEREDITH WILSON, which is not exactly stunning, conceptually, until you notice that the title of the puzzle is ... MERLOT. That is an exquisite visual pun. A Mer- lot. A lot of Mer-s. MERLOT. I only wish it had been the revealer and not the title. Oh well. Still intensely clever. Point is, there are lots of ways to make a puzzle (even a very easy / basic puzzle) fun!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. happy birthday, dad

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