Soviet spymaster in John le Carré trilogy / THU 5-15-14 / Actress Green of 300 Rise of Empire / Role played by Baldwin Ford Affleck Pine / US slalom great Phil / Inscribed pillar

Constructor: John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME:"AN I FOR AN EYE" (62A: Misinterpretation of a biblical code … or the key to answering 18-, 24-, 40- and 51-Across) — theme answers are phrases where "EYE" has been replaced by the letter "I"

Theme answers:

• WANDERING IS (18A: What ladies' men tend to have)
• ALL IS AND EARS (24A: Very alert)
• LAY IS ON (40A: Espy)
• "BETTE DAVIS IS" (51A: 1981 #1 Kim Carnes hit)

Word of the Day: EVA Green (5D: Actress Green of "300: Rise of an Empire") —

Eva Gaëlle Green (usual French pronunciation: ​[ɡʁin] as if it was an English word; Swedish pronunciation: [ˈɡʁeːn]; born 5 July 1980) is a French actress. Green started her career in theatre before making her film debut in 2003 in Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial film The Dreamers. Green achieved international recognition when she appeared in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven(2005), and portrayed Vesper Lynd in the James Bond film Casino Royale (2006). In 2006, Green was awarded the BAFTA Rising Star Award.

Since 2006, Green has starred in independent films Womb (2010), Perfect Sense (2011), and Cracks(2011). She has also appeared in the television series Camelot (2011), and played Angelique Bouchard in Tim Burton's big-screen adaptation of Dark Shadows (2012). In 2014, she playedArtemisia in 300 sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire, and will star as Ava Lord in Frank Miller's andRobert Rodriguez's Sin City sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. (wikipedia)

This is a somewhat fancier and more competent version of yesterday's one-note puzzle. Revealer is the joke. Yesterday, pun on "prophet." Today, pun on "i." I definitely liked today's better, but the theme execution is equally strange and weak. How many billion phrases in the English language are there with the word "eye" in them? What links these particular phrases? Anything? The only one that seems at all inventive or interesting is "BETTE DAVIS [EYE]S." Why are the [EYE]s always plural? Just curious. This isn't a fault of the puzzle, but nothing in the revealer seems to require that. Seems slightly odd to have all the theme answers feature the pun word in the plural. I guess it's consistent, but to what end? I gotta believe there are better, more interesting [EYE] phrases out there. But the main point is that there just isn't enough coherence to the theme to make it provocative, snappy, elegant. It's a corny pun, again.


To this puzzle's credit, the grid is pretty nicely put together. A bit gratuitously peppered with Zs, but not in a way that really compromises fill quality. If you want to see how bad the fill was from a couple days ago, just hold it up to this grid, which isn't scintillating, by any means, but which contains what I think should be industry standard quality for a themed / high word-count grid. No ugly variants, no glut of hoary, antiquated short fill, just a nice variety of words and phrases, most of them very much in-the-language. This puzzle was oddly out of my wheelhouse, with many proper nouns meaning nothing to me. Have never read Le Carré *or* Clancy, so neither KARLA (16A: Soviet spymaster in a John le Carré trilogy) nor RYAN (19D: Role played by Baldwin, Ford, Affleck and Pine) (what is "Pine"?) meant anything to me (though if you'd asked me "who created the character Jack RYAN?" I'm pretty sure I would've answered correctly). EVA somebody? Shrug. I watched Season One of "House of Cards" but had no idea KATE Mara was the young actress's name (34A: Actress Mara of "House of Cards"). I still don't get why RITZ is the answer to 21D: Alternative to Premium. Is Premium a cracker? Because RITZ and Premium sound like synonyms. Oh, it looks like Premium is what normal humans call "Saltines." OK then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld