MTV competitive reality show featuring children of pop stars / MON 6-23-14 / English racetrack site / Ladies service org since 1850s

Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME: YO-YO TRICKS (26D: what 5-, 7-, 10- and 15-Down all are) — all clued in non-yoyo-specific ways …

Theme answers:

• ROCK THE CRADLE (5D: MTV competitive reality show featuring children of pop stars)
• AROUND THE WORLD (7D: Where Phileas Fogg traveled "in 80 days")
• FLYING TRAPEZE (15D: Circus act above a net)
• WALK THE DOG (10D: Do a chore with a pet)

Word of the Day:"ROCK THE CRADLE" (5D: MTV competitive reality show featuring children of pop stars) —

Rock the Cradle is an MTV reality show in which the offspring of R&B, pop, and rock stars from the 1980s and 1990s vie in a six-week singing competition. The show debuted on Thursday, April 3, 2008. [and ran for … one season, for a total of … six episodes …] (wikipedia)

I can't really blog adequately tonight because of the post-World Cup exhaustion I am currently experiencing. My house has never, ever been that loud … and it was just me and my wife (and the dogs occasionally running for cover because they thought we were angry, which, to be fair, we sometimes were). Also, I am currently distracted by the neighbor kid who is recently out of school and apparently has decided to dedicate this summer to dribbling a basketball for 4-5 hours a day directly outside my office window. Fun times! Anyway, the puzzle—played very choppy for me. I thought I was well on the slow side, but I still finished under 3 (if just barely), and that's a pretty normal Monday time for me. Still, grid *is* choppy, dominated by 3- and 4-letter words. This means the only grid interest is in the theme answers, which are OK. I have to call foul on "ROCK THE CRADLE," though, at least as clued. How a show *that* short-lived, *that* marginal, is allowed to be a *Monday* theme answer is beyond me. Way beyond me. If you can have [Do a chore with a pet] (however awkward) as a theme clue, then you can have [Do a chore with a child], right? The central themer is basically a glorified partial. So while I wouldn't say I WAS ANGRY with this puzzle (49A: Saw red), but it mainly just sat there … being a puzzle … but, again, I'm probably not the best judge of anything right now. My heart has stopped pounding, but the searing memory of that late goal lingers.


Are there *non*-flying trapezes??? That phrase really only makes sense because of the song with the daring young man, right? Otherwise, it's a redundancy (of sorts), unless, again, there are various trapeze types of which I am unaware.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld