Steel giant founded in 1899 / WED 5-21-14 / Friedrich units for short / Google co-founder Sergey

Constructor: Mike Buckley

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging


THEME: wacky homophones, I guess — two-word phrases are reimagined with homophones in place of the original words

Theme answers:

• PLANE RAPPER (17A: Freestyling pilot?) (plain wrapper??? like "plain brown wrapper" only not "brown"?)
• BANNED LIEDER (28A: Music forbidden in Germany?) (bandleader)
• WHIRLED PIECE (44A: Top?) (world peace)
• HOARSE SHOOS (59A: Throaty dismissals?) (horseshoes) 

Word of the Day: ARMCO (43A: Steel giant founded in 1899) —

AK Steel Holding Corporation is an American steel company whose predecessor, Armco, was founded in 1899 in Middletown, Ohio, United States. In 2007, the company moved its corporate headquarters from Middletown to West Chester, Ohio.

The company derives its name from the first letters of "Armco" and "Kawasaki Steel Corporation," which entered into a limited partnership with Armco in 1989. The company was formally renamed AK Steel in 1993 when it became a publicly traded company. (wikipedia)

Not going to write much about this because I didn't like it and I don't really get it and (consequently?) I don't have much to say. Are two-word homophone shifts like this really that hard to find? Are there none better than PLANE RAPPER? I honestly had no idea what was going on for most of the solve? The phrases are odd and decidedly Not funny. Fill wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good, either. ARMCO just seems awful, frankly. Can't remember ever seeing it. Also it doesn't exist anymore. Hasn't existed for over 20 years. Ugh. I just guessed that "A" because I've never ever heard of Friedrich brand air conditioners, so [Friedrich units] sounded like something sciencey. I thus really doubted ACS, but any other vowel there seemed preposterous.  Just a ridiculous crossing. NW was absolutely disastrous for me too, mostly because I have not heard the phrase GIRLS DORM in a long time. I didn't go to a prep school, and when I went to college, No One would've said "girls." So I just stared at -SDORM for a bit. Also what on god's green earth is "Land o' Goshen!"???? I wrote in EIRE and ERIN … "MY, MY!" For &%^#'s sake, who says that? Tepid theme, tepid fill, weird / dated frame of reference. Not a great experience. The end.


No, not the end. BEWIG!? OK, now the end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld