Gershwin biographer David / SUN 1-26-14 / Merry Drinker painter / Back to Future villains / Li'l Abner's surname / Funeral delivery of old / Movie director who was himself subject of 1994 movie / Title girl Chuck Berry hit / Pop singer Del Rey / Cynic Bierce

Constructor: Daniel A. Finan

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME:"It's All Relative"— Cross-referenced clues (stacked one atop the other) make sense only in reference to each other, i.e. based on their position relative to one another, you (the solver) have to supply the word [under] or [over] to make sense of one part of each answer pair.

THUS … :

• 51D: 3-Down, relatively (BEWITCHED) … which is (literally) [under] A SPELL (3D)
• 6D: 73-Down, relatively (NO WAY, JOSÉ) … which is (literally) [over] MY DEAD BODY (73D)
• 52D: 8-Down, relatively (FEELING THE HEAT) … which is (literally) [under] THE GUN (8D)
• 12D: 93-Down, relatively ("TALK TO YOU LATER") … which is (literally) [over] AND OUT (93D)
• 82D: 14-Down, relatively (SHELTERED) … which is (literally) [under] LOCK AND KEY (14D)
• 42D: 95-Down, relatively (EXCESSIVE) … which is (literally) [over] THE TOP (95D)

Word of the Day: ELOGE (99D: Funeral delivery of old) —

n. a virtual theater seat (I assume)

Wow. I'm not sure there's a puzzle that better exemplifies the discrepancy between concern for theme and concern for fill than this one. Essentially, if your theme passes muster, you can put virtually anything you want in your grid and no one is going to say 'boo.' This is a clever and ambitious theme, but the fill is hilariously bad in many, many places. I say "hilariously" not figuratively (with some kind of dismissive sneer in my voice), but literally, as in "I literally laughed out loud at how bad this fill was—multiple times, LOL, for real." I knew things were Not going to go well in the NW (this is often the case, i.e. I can tell from the NW corner alone how good/bad the entire puzzle is going to be, fill-wise). LAICAL just hurts (more than LAIC, even), as did PIS, ONAN, and esp. KAS. But that's not exactly unusual in its mediocrity. Certainly not sub-NYT at this point. But then I hit TREELET and the wheels came off (55A: Sapling). That answer made me laugh so hard I almost didn't see ODI (!?). TREELET appeared once in a puzzle 13 years ago. Lord knows what *that* guy's excuse was. Hee hee. TREELET. Rich.


And here's the thing—it's a shame. Because as Annoying as I find extensive use of cross-referencing in clues (esp. theme clues), in the end, this theme was imaginative, and air tight. Nice symmetrical alteration between "under" and "over" phrases. Good. But this should've been sent back for refilling. The south is probably the worst part—the part that best exemplifies how shoddy the fill is. EWEN is bad, in that it's an obscure proper noun, but let's say any given section can have a clunker like that. But Right Next to ELOGE? What kind of antiquated nonsense is that. Again, database says some guy used it once (7 years ago), so … fair game! Better care and craft could minimize this arcane / bygone / anything-goes nonsense. But somebody, Somebody, has got to overrule the computer. SLIGO? SEHR? Again, it's not that any one of these answers shouldn't be permissible. It's the constant onslaught of foreign or antiquated or partial stuff that significantly detracts from the pleasure one should be having piecing together this more-than-decent theme. My friend recently made the following chart, and it is crude and unfair, but it gets at a certain general truth:

There is no polishing going on. There is accepting and rejecting based on whether a theme "tickles," but there is nothing between us and IRED, ERSE, etc. A smattering of that stuff is tolerable. A spate, however, is just too much.

The Puzzle of the Week this week was a tough call, with a cute "Monster Under the BED" puzzle by Matt Jones (Jonesin' Crosswords) and a genuinely astonishing, NSFW themeless by independent constructor Peter Broda (The Cross Nerd). But the winner by a nose was Doug Peterson for his Newsday "Saturday Stumper" (themeless). Sunday through Friday, Newsday produces a solid, easy themed puzzle, but on Saturday, woooo look out! Fill gets much more ambitious and the clue difficulty goes to 11. The great thing about Doug's puzzle was how *clever* the hard clues were. [It might cover your elbows] is PASTA SAUCE, [Something found around a tree] is SHOE, [Grades above 86, typically] is OCTANES. Over and over again, the clues fake right and go left. The fill is smooth as hell. I mean "Put Most Themelesses To Shame" smooth, while sacrificing nothing in the way of interesting longer answers (HAD KITTENS, "MARIO PARTY," VOODOO DOLL, etc.). I just love solving Doug's puzzles generally. Always smart, funny, clever—*enjoyable*. No cheapness anywhere. Pick up his book of Easy puzzles here ("Easy as ABC Crosswords"), and check out the Newsday "Saturday Stumper" every Saturday (available, like so many puzzles, via Amy's "Today's Puzzles" page).

In case you missed it, here's my review of Ben Tausig's recent book "The Curious History of the Crossword," which appeared in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Read it here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld