Ray Charles hit of 1963 / THU 5-22-14 / Taxonomic suffix / Whence word robot / Starbuck's orderer / 2008 TARP recipient / Leopold's partner in crime /

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Easy (for me … looks like Medium-ish for others)


THEME: After all... — phrases with "after" in them are represented in the grid literally, with the pre-"after" part following the post-"after" part:

Theme answers:

• PILL MORNING (for "morning after pill") (24A: Plan B, e.g.)
• ANOTHER ONE THING (for "one thing after another") (31A: A seemingly endless series)
• C I BEFORE E EXCEPT (for "I before E except after C) (41A: Rule contradicted by science?) (my favorite because of how insane it looks) (also, good clue)
• READING BURN (for "burn after reading") (50A: Note to a spy, say)

Word of the Day: BÊTE / NOIRE (13D: With 62-Across, dreaded one) —

(bĕt nwär') 
n.
One that is particularly disliked or that is to be avoided: "Tax shelters had long been the bête noire of reformers" (Irwin Ross).

[French : bête, beast + noire, black.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/b-te-noire#ixzz32PJ7MFwS

I worked with Adam Perl briefly early this year at a crossword tournament in Ithaca to benefit Tompkins Learning Partners. Very nice guy. Made all the tournament puzzle himself, the toughest of which was a brutal tour de force. He should publish it. But anyway, about this puzzle—I liked it. Played very easy for me. Not sure exactly when I picked up the theme, but once I did, all those themers went down quickly. For sheer loopiness, I love CIBEFOREEEXCEPT the best of them all. I know I have said in the past that I don't like nonsense in my grids, but I don't take this as nonsense—it's just a different manner of representing the answer-phrase. And not only do I like PILL MORNING as an answer, I like that it appears in the grid at all. The NYT xword has a history of being squeamish about both bodily functions as well as matters controversial, and this answer is a twofer. Nice to see this normally conservative medium being both current and (however moderately) bold.


Fill here is conservative but clean. Completely inoffensive, with some snazzy bits here and there. ACE HIGH, CON GAME, and DOWN PAT all have a nice, GRIFTery snap to them. I think OTE (33D: Taxonomic suffix) is the only answer that really gets my gote. With that exception, the grid has been nicely crafted to remove all real junk. Very surprised to see the times at the NYT site coming in normal or even slightly higher-than-normal, as this presented virtually no resistance to me. Where is the difficulty? What am I missing? What did I manage to luckily avoid?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld