Stalin defier / SAT 12-7-13 / Keel extension / Sportscaster Nathan with star on Hollywood Walk of Fame / Onetime pop star who hosted Pyramid

Constructor: James Mulhern

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SKEG (48A: Keel extension) —

A skeg (or skag) is a sternward extension of the keel of boats and ships which have a rudder mounted on the centre line. The term also applies to the lowest point on an outboard motor or the outdrive of an inboard/outboard. In more recent years, the name has been used for a fin on a surfboard which improves directional stability and to a moveable fin on a kayak which adjusts the boat's centre of lateral resistance. The term is also often used for the fin on water skis in the U.S.A. and for the tail bumpers of aircraft in the US Navy. (wikipedia)

I wish beginning themeless constructors would have a close look at this puzzle, because I think it does a lot of things right. Themeless puzzles are hard to do well. If you don't construct, they seem like they'd be easier because of the lack of theme restraint—you can put whatever the hell you want in them. But the very lack of pre-determined structure can make them a formless mess in the hands of a novice (I speak as a novice themeless constructor myself, having published only one). Your temptation might be to drop the word count, because somehow that's somehow more legit, or cram the grid with Scrabbly letters, because those just look so cool. Problem—you will sacrifice overall smoothness and polish in order to clear your imaginary high bar of Cool. This grid is a 72-worder (that's the max, and thus the easiest to fill) and it's got a couple pairs of cheaters* (weird how many cheaters we've seen this past week…). So he's made it easy on himself—and with very nice results. The grid is a bit choppy and you definitely have a decent fistful of crosswordese in here, but virtually all of it is being used to hold together substantial sets of lovely, long answers. No one's going to care much about your OGEES and you LEOIs when they are proximate to big banks of solid longer answers. I'm tepid on USER NAME, but every other 8+-letter answer in this thing is a winner. BUG ZAPPER, SANDAL TAN, and BOOK SMART stand out, but the most important thing about the longer answers is that even the weakest one is strong. What's the weakest one? HAS NO IDEA? I like that. So I'll take the multiple BAAS and multiple OBIS if the end result is a smooth, interesting, EASY-GOING puzzle like this.


Four proper nouns in a row to start the Downs (all of them crossing three more proper nouns). I didn't have a problem with this, and I think the names today are colorful, but names can definitely get solvers into trouble fast. You know 'em or you don't, and when you don't, you better pray for good crosses. Actually sometimes you know 'em, sometimes you don't, and sometimes you can infer them from the pattern you've got going. I mean, even if you didn't know RA-EAU, I doubt you're going to guess ERMA STONE. Or maybe you would, but you then maybe you know enough about French names to know RAREAU is absurd. At any rate, there are ways to work through thickets of names. I didn't find this particularly thicket very thickety. Had most of my trouble in and around AIRER (because, you know … it's AIRER). Had to change SO FAR AS to AS FAR AS. Had PU-SE and still couldn't see PULSE (16A: Take it as a sign) (cute clue). OLD GEEZER feels redundant but looks too good for me to mind much.ANAIS, KAL and BPOE were all the gimmes I really needed to get my claws into this thing. All in all, an enjoyable 7+ minutes.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*cheater squares are black squares that do not add to the word count. They make the grid easier to fill. Today, see the black square after 1A or before 63A, for example.