Constructor: Ruth Bloomfield MargolinRelative difficulty: Medium (normal Tuesday, w/ a SW corner that was maybe a *little* tougher than normal)
THEME: Dip it! Dip it good!— Down answers fittingly "dipped" in (i.e. crossing) Across answers:
Theme answers:- Dip a NIB (15-Down) in INDIA INK (17A: You might dip a 15-Down in this before writing something) (not sure this clue needs "something")
- Dip a TOE (25-Down) in the SWIMMING POOL (26A: You might dip a 25-Down in this to test the water)
- Dip BREAD (37-Down) in the CHEESE FONDUE (44A: You might dip 37-Down in this at a dinner party)
- And dip a WICK (55-Down) in PARAFFIN (59A: You might dip a 55-Down in this to make a candle)
Word of the Day: MARSALA (
46A: Sweet Italian wine) —
Marsala is a fortified wine, dry or sweet, produced in the region surrounding the Italian city of Marsala in Sicily. Marsala first received Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) status in 1969. The European Union grants Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status to Marsala, and most other countries limit the use of the term Marsala to products from the Marsala area.While unfortified wine is also produced in the Marsala region, it does not qualify for the Marsala DOC. // Marsala fortified wine was probably first popularized outside Sicily by the English trader John Woodhouse. In 1773, he landed at the port of Marsala and discovered the local wine produced in the region, which was aged in wooden casks and tasted similar to Spanish and Portuguese fortified wines then popular in England. Fortified Marsala was, and is, made using a process called in perpetuum, which is similar to the solera system used to produce Sherry in Jerez, Spain.
Woodhouse recognized that the in perpetuum process raised the alcohol level and alcoholic taste of this wine while also preserving these characteristics during long-distance sea travel. Woodhouse further believed that fortified Marsala would be popular in England. Marsala indeed proved so successful that Woodhouse returned to Sicily and, in 1796, began its mass production and commercialization. In 1806, it was Benjamin Ingham (1784–1861), arriving in Sicily from Leeds, who opened new markets for Marsala in Europe and the Americas. Founded by Benjamin Ingham and later run by Joseph Whitaker and William Ingham Whitaker. Joseph and his brother William Ingham Whitaker inherited vast vineyards and his great grandfather Ingham's banking empire. // In 1833, the entrepreneur Vincenzo Florio, a Calabrese by birth and Palermitano by adoption, bought up great swathes of land between the two largest established Marsala producers and set to making his own vintage with even more exclusive range of grape.
Florio purchased Woodhouse's firm, among others, in the late nineteenth century and consolidated the Marsala wine industry. Florio and Pellegrino remain the leading producers of Marsala today.
• • •
Well first off this is a very good theme. Simple, clever, clear, elegant—just what a Tuesday theme should be but rarely is. There's not much to it, but it makes perfect visual sense, and every set of crosses today is apt, not strained. The only dipping instrument I had some trouble coming up with was
BREAD (haven't had cheese fondue that much since that dinner party my mom took us to in 1979 where we drove home in the thickest, most terrifying fog I've ever been in, so I was looking for the implement (the PRONG? the SPEAR? the ... SKEWR?) and forgot entirely about the food that was impaled on the implement. But yes, you dip
BREAD in the cheese, you dip a
TOE in the pool, you dip a
NIB in ink (still hate the word "
NIB," just creeps me out, but it's appropriate here), and you dip a
WICK in
PARAFFIN. Having crosses be built into the theme can really put a strain on surrounding fill (the more fixed answers there are, the tougher it usually is to build the grid around them), and you can feel the strain at times (especially in the SW, which should probably be torn out entirely and redone, as everything east of and including
ASA is pretty weak), but basically it holds up. The core concept is so well thought out and executed, that the fill just has to stay on its feet for the puzzle to work. And it does.
That SW corner was something of a bear. Anomalous in its difficulty today, particularly in its inclusion of not one not two but three answers that seem to fall on the less-generally-known end of the answer spectrum, for a Tuesday. For me, the issue was
MOVADO (never heard of it ... or, heard of it, but never cared to differentiate it from all the other random "luxury watches" that magazines seem so full of ads for) and
MARSALA (which I know as a chicken, not a wine). I am intrigued by
MARSALA now, as I like sherry (just bought an oloroso yesterday up in Ithaca), and apparently
MARSALA shares many of the same characteristics. I'll ask my friend (and wine aficionado, and former
barback) Lena about this. Anyway, I wanted something like MASSALA (???) here, which, in its one-S form, is a
spice blend common in South Asian cooking. What I
really wanted here was MOSELLE, which is a wine with many of the same letters as
MARSALA that also fit in the allotted space. But MOSELLE is French / German / Luxembourguelese (is that the adj. for them?) and also not sweet, thus wrong for this clue. So those two technically specific M-words made the SW corner tough for me. And if it was tough for me, I can't imagine how tough it was for someone who
didn't know
PHAEDRA, which crosses both M-words and also seems pretty recherché for a Tuesday. My sincere condolences to anyone who foundered in the
MARSALA-MOVADO-PHAEDRA Triangle today.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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