Onetime Toronado informally / SAT 6-21-14 / Cigar with clipped ends / Xenophobe's bane / Game in which top trumps are called matadors / Strategic port raided by Sir Francis Drake in 1587 / Sierra Nevada evergreen / Kramer vs. Kramer novelist Corman / Onetime capital of Mughal empire / Onetime resident of White House with cleft palate / Handy talent

Constructor: Brad Wilber and Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: W. C. Handy (22A: Handy talent? => BLUES) —

William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a blues composer and musician. He was widely known as the "Father of the Blues".

Handy remains among the most influential of American songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American form of music known as the blues, he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. While Handy was not the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to one of the dominant national forces in American music.

Handy was an educated musician who used folk material in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from several performers. (wikipedia)

Ooh, a supergroup. Can a supergroup have just two members? I say yes. These are two of my favorite constructors, so when I say it was slightly weaker than I expected, keep in mind that I expect Amazing when I see either of these constructors' names. What I got was solid and entertaining—a nice Saturday challenge—but tepid in places (namely the whole big SW quadrant), with this one odd answer that's irritating me like an eyelash in my eye that I can't get out. That answer is RIS (32A: ___ d'agneau), an answer so … bad? I wanna say "bad"… that I feel like virtually all other alternatives in that "R"'s place would've been better, even ones that result in partials, abbreviations, unlikely plural names, etc. So I've never heard of this lamb dish (clearly). I've also had 7+ years of French and have no idea what "RIS" means unless it means "smile." Is the lamb smiling? Something tells me no. Here's the wikipedia definition:

Sweetbreads or ris are culinary names for the thymus (also called throat, gullet, or neck sweetbread) or thepancreas (also called heart, stomach, or belly sweetbread), especially of the calf (ris de veau) and lamb (ris d'agneau), and less commonly of beef and pork.

Still not sure exactly what "RIS" means, but I think it's a. French and b. not widely known outside specific culinary contexts. I'm torn here, in that the dishes are real things, so "RIS" is clearly a thing (though autocorrect has now turned it into "rid" half a dozen times so far during this write-up). But I'm deeply opposed to not-commonly-known foreign words. Maybe if the clue on OLDS were clearer, I would've simply forgotten about RIS. But it wasn't so I'm talking about this stupid little three-letter word instead of everything else the puzzle has to offer. And I guess this is my point—the last thing you want is to have something off, something rankling, in the connective tissue of your grid. It is apt to leave solvers with a bad taste, and take attention away from the worthier parts of the grid. NONI (also not a great answer) doesn't bother me nearly as much as the crosses are all clear, i.e. that one word, NONI, is not going to keep me from getting any of the crosses. But I had OLD_ and I looked at the clue, 19D: Onetime Toronado, e.g., informally, and I had no idea at first what was even meant. "Onetime" means that OLDS is no longer a brand name? If that's so, then the phrasing seems off. It didn't used to be a Toronado and then become something else or enter some new state of being. I wasn't even sure the thing in question was a car. Was worried this was a historical or a sports clue and the answer was going to be OLD [some letter]. But I took a flier on the car and it worked out. And still I am talking about this little section. . . Gah!


Really liked the NE—in fact, the whole eastern side of the grid is pretty nice. I'm much cooler on the west. NADERITE gets my vote for Most Original Answer of the Day (36D: Voter with a Green button, once). Crosswordese muscle memory helped me get DIONE (44A: Moon of Saturn) and ISERE (45D: River bordering the Olympic host sites Grenoble and Albertville). I wanted SOVIET ERA before STALIN ERA (29D: Setting for "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"). I got Dennis confused with what's his name, the prince … Prince Herbert, the guy who doesn't want to marry, doesn't want to inherit his father's land, but just wants to … sing!


So I had HEIR and even SIRE before SERF (33D: Dennis in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," e.g.). Dennis, you'll recall, is the "Constitutional Peasant"— a Marxist avant le lettre …

TAD LINCOLN sounds like a heartthrob, but I'm guessing he wasn't (18A: Onetime White House resident with a cleft palate). Oh, he died at 18. That's sad.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld