Village of the Prancing Pony inn in Lord of the Rings / TUE 2-18-20 / 1930s boxing champ Max / Storms are brewin in her eyes in a 1986 #1 hit

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:16 first thing in the a.m.—before 5 a.m., to be precise-ish—is very fast for a Tuesday)

THEME: PARALLEL PARKS (36A: Does a driving test task — or an apt description of the five circled diagonals in this puzzle) — U.S. National Parks run parallel to one another in the circled diagonals:

THE PARKS:

• DENALI (Alaska)
• GLACIER (Montana)
• REDWOOD (California)
• ACADIA (Maine)
• ARCHES (Utah)

Word of the Day: Glacier National Park  —

Glacier National Park is an American national park located in northwestern Montana, on the Canada–United States border, adjacent to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The park encompasses over 1 million acres (4,000 km²) and includes parts of two mountain ranges (sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains), over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants, and hundreds of species of animals. This vast pristine ecosystem is the centerpiece of what has been referred to as the "Crown of the Continent Ecosystem," a region of protected land encompassing 16,000 square miles (41,000 km²). (wikipedia)

I have surprisingly few feelings about this one. I think the theme idea is very clever. Slightly odd to see a theme based around U.S. National Parks that does *not* feature either YELLOWSTONE or YOSEMITE (what I think of as the two most iconic U.S. National Parks), but these five parks are all very well known; Glacier was the only one whose location I had to look up, though it's probably more famous than ACADIA, which I know about only because it's in the northeast (like me) and I once looked into going there (still never been to Maine, weirdly). So what we have are five parks, which form a slightly arbitrary but still very solid set, and you cannot argue with their parallelness. So the revealer actually involves wordplay, and doesn't just sit there pointing at the themers like the world's most bored and useless tour guide. If you'd simply described the theme to me, I'd say "sounds nifty" (maybe not in those exact words). But the experience of solving this one was rather flat. The main problem was that the puzzle was soooooo easy that I actually never noticed the letters in the circled squares. Didn't have to. I hesitated significantly only once, when trying to navigate the GARDENED / TERRARIA crossing early on (wanted TERRARIA to be a different word I couldn't call to mind, which I realized, after I was finally done, was MENAGERIE). After getting out of the NW corner, I made one error (AIR for ACT at 22D: Something a false person puts on) but otherwise filled in the grid pretty much as fast as I could read the clues. Is my speed / theme-neglect the puzzle's fault? Well, yeah, kinda. Make people have to notice the theme elements! This is especially important in a puzzle that Doesn't Have Any Theme Answers (beyond the revealer). Solving this was like solving a very weak themeless (weak because the fill is constrained by a theme, which does exist, but is simply invisible to me). I actually wouldn't have minded this as a Wednesday or even Thursday puzzle with (much) tougher cluing.


As for that fill, it's passable. There are definitely unattractive moments (GARS OMAHAN UNS SSA) but I know how hard it is to fill a puzzle with fixed diagonal words / phrases shooting through it. Seems like it should be easier than filling a grid with normal fixed Across/Down themers, but it is *not*. It's harder. The way to look at it is, you might have technically the same number of theme *squares* but the number of *answers* you've now conscripted into your theme scheme goes through the roof. Hardly any answers dont have at least one fixed theme letter in them. This makes building the grid very tough. Normally in a corner you can tear it all out and start again if you don't like it, but once you decide on these themers and this grid shape, you're locked in to those diagonals and they are touching evvvvvverything. It's messy and annoying and frustrating. This is not to defend junky fill at all. Only to explain that filling this grid is probably harder than it looks, and the amount of junk in this grid didn't seem any higher than the amount in any other NYTXW grid. Again, the experience of filling it all in was not exactly scintillating, but I'm actually surprised the grid didn't buckle in a much more visible and alarming way. In short, I've done worse. The theme is conceptually strong. I like CERBERUS (notably untouched by theme letters!) (64A: Dog guarding the gates of the underworld). There's more good than bad here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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