Oktoberfest exclamation / TUE 10-7-14 / Klugman's co-star on Odd Couple / denied Supreme Court phrase / Lee who led Chrysler 1978-92

Constructor: Mark Skoczen and Victor Fleming

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: TOASTs (66A: 9- 20-, 28-, 37-, 48- or 53-Across) —with each theme answer clued as [Oktoberfest exclamation]

Theme answers:

• "SALUD!"
• "DOWN THE HATCH!"
• "L'CHAIM!"
• "BOTTOMS UP!"
• "CHEERS!"
• "TO YOUR HEALTH!" (which is essentially what "SALUD!" means…)

Word of the Day: "CERT denied" (4D: ___ denied (Supreme Court phrase)) —

"Cert" is short for "certiorari," which refers to the appeal (petition for a writ of certiorari) a party files with the Supreme Court requesting the justices review the case. If the justices decide against hearing the case, they deny the petition. This is usually abbreviated and referred to as "cert denied." (answers.com)

I spent a lot of time today (Monday) in my crossword class (which I teach for the local Lyceum—a "lifelong learning association" for people of roughly retirement age) talking about easy puzzles and grid smoothness. It was very instructive to look at the fairly ambitious theme in the NYT, the somewhat less ambitious theme in the LAT, and the not-at-all ambitious theme in the Newsday, and to see what the fill was like in each puzzle. Newsday had just three theme answers, so the grid could breathe, and Stan Newman is ruthless when it comes to making sure his grids are free of crud. He's probably the most exacting editor in the business on that front. So though the Newsday theme was awfully basic, the fill was junk-free: this made the Newsday a good puzzle for the total novice. The LAT and NYT had a higher thematic bar, and their themes were more or less successful (really liked Monday's NYT theme, btw), but they also allowed so much more dubious short stuff: crosswordese and abbreviations and other less than ideal stuff. There's always going to be some kind of trade-off between themes and fill. As the complexity / density of the former goes up, the quality of the latter tends to go down.


The problem today is that while there are indeed a lot of theme answers, all that really does is extend a pretty dull theme while simultaneously taxing the grid—the denser the theme, the harder the grid is to fill cleanly. The north, with ILIE EELER and *especially* CERT, is just godawful. And since the theme is far from stellar, the bad fill is more intolerable than it might be otherwise. The phrase DOWN THE HATCH is great on its own, but there's really nothing to this theme as a whole. It's a bunch of TOASTs. The attempt to unite them all through the vaguely timely [Oktoberfest exclamation] clue seems forced. If I saw all these theme answers lined up, I would never in a million years think that the thing that unites them is Oktoberfest. Beer, drinking, sure. But "Oktoberfest" is overselling it. The theme is a list, and that list has only one interesting item ("DOWN THE HATCH!"). Without a clever theme, attention turns to the fill, and … that's bad news for this puzzle. To be fair, only the north is truly bad. But too much of the rest of it is truly blah. Yesterday's puzzle had its fill issues too, but the theme sparkled more, and those open corners in the NE / SW were truly wondrous to behold (esp. on a Monday, where one does not expect such things). This puzzle sputters by comparison.

There was nothing tough or tricky or particularly memorable about solving this puzzle. Had no idea about CERT (thought maybe WRIT, but I just waited for the crosses to help me out). Misread [Flight-related prefix] as [Fight-related prefix], which made a Very easy clue much, much harder. Someday someone will invent a better clue for TOFU than the horrendously stale and not terribly accurate [Vegetarian's protein source]. There are carnivores who eat tofu and vegetarians who won't touch the stuff. At least drop the apostrophe "s." Better yet, come up with a non-recycled clue of your own devising. That would be … something. Cluing is particularly stale today. Straightforward throughout. Not surprising for an early-week puzzle, but still, no reason "Easy" has to mean "unimaginative."


Thanks to Annabel Thompson for her lovely write-up yesterday. She'll be back the first Monday of every month until … well, until whenever she wants, frankly.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld