Desert of Israel / MON 1-12-15 / Friend of Stitch in movies / Beta preceder / Edvard Munch masterpiece / Illmatic rapper / Seller of Squishees on Simpsons / Disclaimer before some internet comments

Constructor: Jason Flinn

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: blank TO blank — familiar expressions that represent entirety and that follow the pattern "[blank] TO [blank]"

Theme answers:

• STEM TO STERN (17A: All, for a ship's captain)
• CRADLE TO GRAVE (23A: All, for a life insurance agent)
• SEA TO SHINING SEA (38A: All, for an anthem writer)
• START TO FINISH (52A: All, for a race organizer)
• TOP TO BOTTOM (63A: All, for a house cleaner)

Word of the Day: Don AMECHE (67A: Actor Don of "Cocoon") —

Don Ameche (/əˈmiːtʃi/; May 31, 1908 – December 6, 1993) was an American actor, voice artist, and comedian, with a career spanning almost 60 years.

After touring in vaudeville, he featured in many biographical films, including The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939). He continued to appear on Broadway, as well as on radio and TV, where he was host and commentator for International Showtime, covering circus and ice-shows all over Europe. Ameche remained married to his wife Honore for fifty-four years, and they had six children. (wikipedia)

Hi all. It's time for my week-long, just-once-a-year-I-swear pitch for financial contributions to the blog. If you enjoy (or some other verb) this blog on a regular or fairly regular basis, please consider what the blog is worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. In making this pitch, I'm pledging that the blog will continue to be here for your enjoyment (or some other noun) for at least another calendar year, with a new post up by 9:00am (usually by 12:01am) every day, as usual. I'm in my ninth (!) year of writing about the puzzle every single day, and while there are occasions when the daily grind gets a little wearisome, for the most part I've been surprised by how resilient my passion for solving and talking about crosswords has been. It's energizing to be part of such an enthusiastic and diverse community of solvers, and I'm excited about the coming year (I have reason to be hopeful … mysterious reasons …). Anyway, I appreciate your generosity more than I can say. This year, said generosity allowed me to hire a regular guest blogger, Annabel Thompson, who now brings a fresh, youthful voice to my blog on the first Monday of every month. So thanks for that. As I said last year, I know that some people are opposed to paying for what they can get for free, and still others really don't have money to spare. Both kinds of people are welcome to continue reading my blog, with my compliments. It will always be free. I have no interest in cordoning it off, nor do I have any interest in taking advertising. I value my independence too much. Anyway, if you are so moved, there is a Paypal button in the sidebar, and a mailing address here:
Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
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Binghamton NY 13905

And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users.

I assume that worked.
For people who send me actual, honest-to-god (i.e. "snail") mail (I love snail mail!), this year my thank-you cards are "Postcards from Penguin"—each card a different vintage Penguin paperback book cover. Who will be the lucky person who gets … let's see … "Kiss, Kiss" by Roald DAHL? Or "The Case of the Careless Kitten" by ERLE Stanley Gardner? Or the Selected Verse of Heinrich HEINE? It could be you. Or give via PayPal and get a thank-you email. That's cool too. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say so. No problem. Anyway, whatever you choose to do, I remain most grateful for your readership. Now on to the puzzle …

So, Monday. This theme is super-basic, but works just fine for a Monday, I think. The middle answer is a little wonky to my ear because of the anomaly of two words on the other side of "TO," and also because it is not a generalized expression of totality. Actually, if I start to think down to that level, only 3/5 of these answers work. STEM TO STERN, START TO FINISH, and TOP TO BOTTOM are idioms that one might use in multiple contexts, whereas CRADLE TO GRAVE refers solely to a human life, and SEA TO SHINING SEA… that's just from a song, I think. You wouldn't use it idiomatically or metaphorically. Or maybe you would? To refer to widespreadedness? I see how the cluing wants you to think there's thematic consistency (every theme clue following the pattern ["All, to a ___"]). But the set isn't the tightest. And yet it's the two words after "TO" that bothered me most. And the repeated word (SEA). That's an anomaly too. Even so, I'm not terribly bothered.

The grid has kind of a novice, hand-filled quality to it, with a lot of tired, workmanlike short stuff, but I will say this—those long Downs are well chosen. If you have a solid theme and can really stick your two long Downs, you're kind of home free on a Monday, as long as you don't serve up a heaping helping of gunk in the short fill. And while the short fill's far from ideal, it's not terrible. Just ordinary. And I do love "THE SCREAM" and PSYCHOTIC—they give the puzzle not just character, but a  serious, unexpected edge. My main question about this grid, from a constructor's point of view, is "Why weren't the second and fourth themers switched in the original design?" I say this only because that terminal "V" (here, NEGEV) really stands out as a very self-limiting design issue. I mean, it's a relatively inconsequential corner, and the fill there now doesn't stand out as particularly bad, but in general, when building grids, you try to avoid or seriously limit theme answer placement that ties your hands unnecessarily. "V"s are happy in almost any slot except the last one. In the last spot, you instantly limit yourself to abbrevs., foreign words, Roman numerals, and other less stellar stuff, and even that stuff's in short supply. Here, on a Monday, in a little corner, no harm done. But I'd think you'd at least try to fill the grid, initially, with CRADLE TO GRAVE and START TO FINISH flipped. Maybe he did that, and it just didn't come out as well. Entirely possible.


I solved this weirdly, in that I started in the NW and went diagonally all the way across the grid to the SE, without stopping. this is not always the most efficient way to do things, but for some reason, this time, I was able to burst out of that diagonal into the rest of the grid and polish it off fast. Once I got one theme answer, the others offered themselves up easily. Only hiccup was trying to write WIPED and WHIPPED simultaneously in the answer that ended up being POOPED (48D: Plumb tuckered out). I'm not a big fan of cross-referenced clues, but seems like the FETCH clue shoulda/coulda been linked to DOGS somehow, rather than continuing to perpetrate the lie that any dog anywhere is named "Fido."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld