Constructor: Karen Lurie
Relative difficulty: Medium
![]()
THEME: SPOILER ALERT (20A: Important warning before you answer 32-, 40- and 52-Across)— famous movies appear in the grid as spoilers (i.e. descriptions of the endings, all of which contain characters and verbs that appear in the movie titles):
Theme answers:![]()
***HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS***. Happy Newish Year! 2022! I hope you are holding up during these cold, dark days. It's early January, which means it's time for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask regular readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly.
![]()
2021 was an important year for me, as my blog (this blog, the one you are reading right now) turned 15 years old! [noisemaker sounds!!!!]. That's a lot of years old. For a blog, anyway. 15 is also a pretty important crossword-related anniversary—maybe the only important crossword-related anniversary. The standard US crossword grid is 15x15, and now Rex Parker is also 15! Rex Parker, spanning the grid to give you the constant variety of crossword commentary: the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat (dum dum dum DUM!) The human drama of ... OK now I'm just channeling Jim McKay from the '70s-era introduction to "Wide World of Sports," but I do hope this blog has provided some insight, some entertainment, some commiseration, some solace, some sense of regularity during what are obviously pretty tumultuous and often lonely times. I hope it has enhanced your solving pleasure, giving you something to look forward to even (especially?) when the puzzle lets you down, and someone to celebrate with when the puzzle is wonderful. If it's also given you someone to shout at in disagreement, that's OK too.
How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):
Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905
All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. Last year's thank-you postcards featured various portraits of my cat, Alfie, designed by artist Ella Egan, a.k.a. my daughter. They were such a hit that I asked Ella to design this year's thank-you postcard as well, this time featuring both my cats. And this is the result. Behold this year's thank-you card: "Alfie and Olive: Exploring the Grid":![]()
![]()
This is a very cute idea for a theme. If you're ever gonna put your revealer in the *first* position, this is the place to do it. What's great about the revealer is that it doesn't reveal the gimmick, exactly. Or, if it does, a little, you're still left to wonder what movie is being referred to and exactly how the SPOILER is going to be described. I can tell you that [2003 Pixar animated adventure] was not enough for me to instantly guess "Finding Nemo," so I was relying on the "spoiler" to help me out, which really slowed me down. On the other hand, if you know the movie from the description (as I did with "Kill Bill"), then figuring out the "spoiler" was maybe a bit easier. But honestly I was not expecting the blunt hilarity of the spoilers. The fact that they all simply use words that are already in the title actually baffled me with its simplicity. It's like an anti-trick; I go looking for something complicated, but nope, HE FREED WILLY, that's it, that's the plot. There's a real "why did the chicken cross the road?" vibe to the whole concept. Extremely literal, which made it legitimately funny to me. The titles of those movies are almost spoilers in themselves, the whole concept of "spoilers" for those movies is comically redundant. The movies are all legit famous, too, which is nice. If you're gonna base your theme around proper nouns of any kind, it's nice to keep them right out over the plate where the vast majority of solvers can get at them. This theme is my kind of dumb joke. Approved.
![]()
![]()
![]()
More:![]()
![]()
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- THEY FOUND NEMO (32A: 2003 Pixar animated adventure) ("Finding Nemo)
- SHE KILLED BILL (40A: 2004 Quentin Tarantino martial arts film) ("Kill Bill")
- HE FREED WILLY (52A: 1993 Warner Bros. family drama) ("Free Willy")
Devī /ˈdeɪvi/ (Sanskrit: देवी) is the Sanskrit word for 'goddess'; the masculine form is deva. Devi and deva mean 'heavenly, divine, anything of excellence', and are also gender-specific terms for a deity in Hinduism. (wikipedia)
• • •
A lot of labor goes into producing this blog every day (Every. Day.) and the hours are, let's say, less than ideal (I'm either solving and writing at night, after 10pm, or in the morning, before 6am). Most days, I really do love the writing, but it is work, and once a year (right now!) I acknowledge that fact. As I've said before, I have no interest in "monetizing" the blog beyond a simple, direct contribution request once a year. No ads, no gimmicks. Just here for you, every day, rain or shine, whether you like it or, perhaps, on occasion, not :) It's just me and my laptop and some free blogging software and, you know, a lot of rage, but hopefully there's illumination and levity along the way. I do genuinely love this gig, and whether you're an everyday reader or a Sunday-only reader or a flat-out hatereader, I appreciate you more than you'll ever know.
How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):
Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905
I'll throw my Venmo handle in here too, just in case that's your preferred way of moving money around; it's @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)
We went back and forth on whether she should add more black squares to make the grid look more plausibly fillable (that's a Lot of white space), but in the end we decided not to crowd the jumping (or hanging?) Olive with more black squares, and instead just to leave the card as is, with the idea that the cats are exploring a grid that is ... under construction. Anyway, this card is personally meaningful to me, and also, I believe, objectively lovely. I can't wait to share it with snail-mailers (and oh, what the hell, if you are a PayPal / Venmo donor and you want one too, just say so in the message). Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Now on to today's puzzle...
• • •
["BADGES?!"]
The puzzle was probably a little on the easy side overall, but, ALAS, I am me and therefore I made things difficult on myself by screwing up a small answer, which led to a big hassle. Once SPOILER ALERT went in, TSETSE was not far behind, and after LIAM went in, I had -A--E at (31A: Interruption), so of course I wrote in ... PAUSE. Yes I took the road less traveled by, and that got me lost, cold and hungry, thanks, Frost. That mistake was compounded by my having no clue about two of that mistake's crosses. 15D: Jump scares, in horror movies (STAPLE) was completely mystifying, as I assumed they were looking for a technical term. I had STARTS at first (since "to start" means, well, "to jump when you are scared," among other things. But then I pulled that and was just stuck. I have to say that the preposition in that clue really really matters, and that if it had been "for" instead of "in," I might've had a shot. I don't know why such a tiny change would've mattered so much. I think the comma (?!) in the clue is telling me that "jump scares" is a type of thing, an example of a thing, not the answer itself, but I dunno man, oof. That hurt. Also I couldn't get SHORES to save my life (11D: They're constantly lapped). Not until I ran the alphabet at the "H" position. I had S-ORES but was stuck because I could not conceive how OHS were "quizzical" (16A: Quizzical cries). I mean, now, if I force it, I can do a "quizzical""Oh!??!" but there is not a tight connection between "quizzical" and "Oh" At All. Having PAUSE instead of LAPSE made the Wonder Woman answer I wanted, which was the correct answer (POWER-POSING), not fit, so I thought "... is POWER-UPPING a thing??" Thankfully I didn't think that for long. All this nonsense because of PAUSE (and an ambiguous clue preposition, and a dubious "quizzical").
Otherwise, the only difficulty came from names, which is absolutely normal for me. 90% of the time if I'm struggling, a proper noun is involved. Today's unknowns didn't slow me down much, but yeesh, ACTON??? ACTON??? ACTON makes NATICK look famous. I also didn't know ELIE Mystal. He writes for The Nation, it looks like. Hard to get a quick read on him as he doesn't have a wikipedia page. He wrote "Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution," which I now want to add to my aspirational reading pile for 2022. So we got a new member of Team ELIE, it looks like. He could be the sole member of Team MYSTAL if any constructor would be so bold. Think about it.
I don't understand why the NW corner is as bad as it is. I mean, it's tiny, so maybe no one cares, but you gotta polish every nook and cranny, and I submit that if your tiny 3x4 section has ANO in it, along with at least two other repeaters, you can do better. Here, I did this in 10 seconds without the aid of software:
I haven't checked the rest of the grid, maybe I duplicated a word, but the point is that every answer in my version is better than every answer in the original. Fight your software! Make things nice, even in the lonely forgettable corners of the grid.
More:
- 4D: Chimichurri ingredient (PARSLEY) — racking my brain to come up with foods starting "PAR-," I wrote in PARSNIP. If your chimichurri is too thin, add PARSNIP!
- 7D: ___ Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd (ABEL) — his new album DAWNFM (6) is so good:
- 19A: "The sweetest joy, the wildest ___ is love": Pearl Bailey ("WOE")— I see this all over the quote websites, but I can't find a source. Pearl Bailey was an amazing actress and singer and writer but I don't know where this is from. I've got a couple of Pearl Bailey albums, and I recently picked up one of her autobiographies, "The Raw Pearl," which I am now gonna throw on my aspirational reading pile for 2022 right next to ELIE Mystal's book.
- 58A: Texas is the largest U.S. producer of these (OATS) — wow, if you wanna make your OATS clue really, really hard, that is one way to do it. Number of connections between Texas and OATS in my brain prior to today: zero. Unless we're talking Warren OATES, who was in a bunch of westerns, some of which had to have been shot in Texas ... yup, here he is in 1982's "The Border," which was set in El Paso:
Seems appropriate to end on a movie note. See you tomorrow.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]