Constructor: Eric Rolfing
Relative difficulty: Medium (i.e. normal Monday)
![]()
THEME: WELL-ROUNDED DIET (37A: Nutritionist's recommendation ... or what the answers to the starred clues make up, to an overly literal person?) — round foods:
Theme answers:
![]()
As usual, the Downs-only solving adventure was unpredictably rocky, but ultimately doable. Well, maybe it is slightly predictable that the longer Downs are going to be the dicey parts of a Downs-only solve. On Monday, short stuff tends to be Very easy to come up with, but the longer the answer gets, the tougher it gets to pick up, so perhaps it is not surprising that the tricky parts (for me) all ended up involving longer Downs, specifically the long Downs that ran down to the bottom of the grid. On my marked-up print-out of the puzzle, I've got absolutely no ink on the top half of the grid. Managed to get BETRAYAL and REFLECTOR with virtually no assistance, and FROOT LOOPS became obvious quickly, and eventually, so did SPAGHETTIOS. But then I hit the middle of the grid and the wheels ... well, they didn't come off, but ... the road got much rockier, or some other driving metaphor. I had WELL-OUND-D---- and all I could think of was WELL-FOUNDED IDEA (!?). That last "A" even gave me the very plausible-seeming AQUA for 42D: Color akin to turquoise (TEAL). Hard to disabuse yourself of the "F" in WELL-FOUNDED when the Down is a. a long one, and b. a long one that really really looks like it wants to be FRACKING (38D: Major Texas industry => RANCHING). But FRACKING ended up giving me too obvious "No"s in the Acrosses: SCAA at 46A: Radio button that's handy on a car trip (SCAN) that's handy on a road trip, and KOE at 56A: Weeding tool (HOE). But of course I didn't have the option of looking at those Across clues, so I just had to pull FRACKING and wait to see what presented itself. Eventually, I brought things back to basics, telling myself "OK, just name industries associated with Texas ..." and after all the oil stuff was out of the way, there it was: RANCHING.
Relative difficulty: Medium (i.e. normal Monday)
Theme answers:
- FROOT LOOPS (18A: *Colorful cereal with the mascot Toucan Sam)
- SPAGHETTIOS (24A: *"Uh-oh, ___!" (classic line in commercials))
- CHEESE WHEEL (52A: *Bulk purchase of Gouda, e.g.)
- DIPPIN' DOTS (58A: *"Ice Cream of the Future" since 1988)
Savile Row (pronounced /ˌsævɪl ˈroʊ/) is a street in Mayfair, central London. Known principally for its traditional bespoke tailoring for men, the street has had a varied history that has included accommodating the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society at 1 Savile Row, where significant British explorations to Africa and the South Pole were planned; and more recently, the Apple office of the Beatles at 3 Savile Row, where the band's impromptu final live performance was held on the roof of the building. [...] Tailors started doing business in the area in the late 18th century; first in Cork Street, about 1790, then by 1803 in Savile Row itself. In 1846, Henry Poole, later credited as the creator of the dinner jacket, opened an entrance to Savile Row from his tailoring premises in Old Burlington Street. Founded in 1849 by Henry Huntsman, H. Huntsman & Sons moved to No. 11 Savile Row with the ending of the war in 1919. During the First World War, Huntsman's was a tailor to the military, producing dress uniforms for British officers. In 1969, Nutters of Savile Row modernised the style and approach of traditional Savile Row tailoring; a modernisation that continued in the 1990s with the "New Bespoke Movement", involving the designers Richard James, Ozwald Boateng, and Timothy Everest. The term "bespoke" as applied to fine tailoring is understood to have originated in Savile Row, and came to mean a suit cut and made by hand. (wikipedia)
• • •
As for the DIET part of that central answer, that was tough because one of the Downs there was a cross-reference clue that referred me to ... an Across clue (67A: With 41-Down, Buffalo's body of water) ... which I was not allowed to read. I could see that the answer to that clue was LAKE, though, which made ERIE seem very likely after TEAL had helped me sort out DIET. Other long Downs that were tricky were "HEAVENS, NO" and, weirdly, SAVILE Row. I "knew"SAVILE, but I kept wanting to spell it "SEVILLE," and since that wouldn't fit, I thought my whole way of thinking was wrong. But once I finally parsed DIPPIN' DOTS from D-PP-DOT-, I figured out how I needed to spell SAVILE, and that was that. The theme seems ... fine? Lots of "round" foods out there, so it's not the most stunning or tight theme in the world, but it's a nice little bit of wordplay. It works. I'm more concerned about the fill, which seems particularly thin / weak. EIRE CNBC RIAL ROI SRO THRU OLAF TRI WII REORG TEM POR ANDI INRE ... it just creaked more than a Monday puzzle should. But there's nothing really terrible here, so again, as with the theme, I think it's fine. It does what it does. A very Monday-shaped puzzle, this one. Could've been worse, is my point. See you tomorrow.