Byron of Mythbusters / THU 9-4-14 / Pop Singer Vannelli / Sherlock Holmes accessory / Game with horns / Orthodox trademark / Loki's brother in movies

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: FLIP ONE'S LID (61A: Go crazy … or a hint on how to enter five answers in this puzzle)— all theme answers are hats, entered into the grid backwards:

Theme answers:

• REKLATSREED (17A: Sherlock Holmes accessory)
• TEMLEH (28A: Biker gear)
• ORERBMOS (31A: Siesta shader)
• EKLUMRAY (47A: Orthodox trademark)
• ARODEF (49A: Sinatra cover)

Word of the Day: ERICK Aybar, 2014 All-Star shortstop on the Angels (29A) —

Erick Johan Aybar (born January 14, 1984) is a Major League Baseball shortstop with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. // Aybar was signed by the then Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as an amateur free agent in 2002 and made his Major League debut on May 16, 2006 a pinch runner against the Toronto Blue Jays. He recorded his first Major League hit, in his first start, on May 20, 2006 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, a single to right field in the fourth inning off of Brett Tomko.

Aybar hit his first career major league home run on September 25, 2007, in a game against the Texas Rangers.

On September 5, 2009, Aybar tied a franchise record for most triples in a game, 2, against the Kansas City Royals.

September 8, 2009, Aybar had his first career walk-off hit, against the Seattle Mariners.

In 2009, Aybar hit .312 (eighth in the AL) and posted the fourth-best OPS (.776) of all AL shortstops.

On November 1, 2011, Aybar was awarded his first Rawlings Gold Glove Award.

On July 10, 2014, Aybar was named an All Star for the first time in his career, replacing injured Kansas City Royals outfielder Alex Gordon. Aybar was hitting .283 with 6 home runs and 45 RBI through 89 games at the time of his selection. (wikipedia)

Pretty clean, pretty easy. Headgear choices are arbitrary, but widely varied in terms of both shape and cultural origin, and variety is the spice of life, or so I hear. Once you get that REK- at the beginning of backwards DEERSTALKER, the theme becomes evident—or, if not completely evident, at least evidently backward. Once you're on the lookout for backwards entries, they're quite easy to find, and since neither the fill nor the cluing is particularly difficult (for the most part), this one should've proved smooth sailing, as "tricky" puzzles go. We (my elitist crossword friends and I) make fun of ONE'S answers on a regular basis, inventing new and more preposterous ones (!) whenever the mood strikes us, so the revealer here made me laugh. That said, I have no problem with it in this context. I'd hate it in a themeless, where, you know, you've got theoretically infinite options, but as a way of conveying the theme, it's ONE'S or YOUR, and though I find YOUR snappier, ONE'S is aptly general in this case.


I had a bit of a rough, albatrossish start, running and flapping my wings in an ungainly manner before the air finally took me. This is to say that I wrote in TSA at 5D: Org. whose annual budget is classified (NSA), and then could not make 1A: Sober work. "CL … CLOUT? … nope … OK, that's an 'A' so … CLEAT? How is [Sober] 'CLEAT'? That makes no … oh" (CLEAN). Then I thought the SAT no-no was answering IN INK (6A: Improper way to take the SAT => IN PEN) (taking it IN PEN these days is very hard to do, as the ink tends to get all over the screen…). After that, only KARI (who?) and ERICK (sp?) gave me any trouble at all. Oh, there was that one typo I had to track down at the end—I wrote in THOR, but somehow, in typing in the answer to 31D: "This is exciting!" I ended up with OO BOY. Luckily, TOOR was relatively easy to pick up with a quick scan of the grid.


MIXOLOGIST is a lovely entry, and I enjoyed remembering GINO"I Just Wanna Stop" Vannelli (though honestly, at first I misread the clue and wondered how I was going to fit MILLI in there…). In all, this was a nice puzzle, and I never felt like I Just Wanted to Stop, ONE'S or no ONE'S.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld