Sci-fi knight / TUE 3-10-15 / City in 1960 Marty Robbins chart-topper / Obsolescent bank item / Who said knock you out in an LL Cool J hit / Longtime Nascar sponsor

Constructor: Allan E. Parrish

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Before cars— three theme answers are all two-word answers where the second word is also a term for a wheeled, horse-drawn vehicle…

Theme answers:

• MARTIN LANDAU
• PAPER CARRIAGE
• BATTING COACH

Word of the Day: BABUSHKA (10D: Russian grandmother) —

noun

1. (in Poland and Russia) an old woman or grandmother.

   • NORTH AMERICAN

     a headscarf tied under the chin, typical of those worn by Polish and Russian women. (google)

Weird in a number of ways. The positive: for an olde-timey puzzle (Horse-drawn vehicles! PASSBOOKs! PAPER CARRIAGES!?!) that has clearly been filled without any computer assistance and that is a mere 72 words (on a Tuesday?!), the grid is not terrible. There are parts that are downright smooth. ABEE and APIN are unfortunate, and PARI-, sure, yuck, but overall, that's a lot of white space that has been hand-filled with pretty solid results. You are forgiven if you had no idea what the theme was—especially if you are not a regular solver and/or are under … some age. I don't know. Possibly 120. You'd have to be pretty damn old to have lived at a time when coach types were carriage types were widely, commonly known. I think that you'd actually have to be dead. But many still know them, of course. I know them, and I am well under 120. But I solve a lot. Anyway, the fill is halfway decent, but the theme doesn't work that well for me since I think of LANDAU and COACH as types of CARRIAGE. Actually, both CARRIAGE and COACH seem like general terms, whereas LANDAU seems specific. LANDAUs are fancy. Two facing seats with two retractable / removable roof sections. Like so:

Actually, it seems CARRIAGE is the very general term, and both COACH and LANDAU are types of CARRIAGE. I guess you could argue that, in this puzzle, the general term is in the middle, and the types are flanking it on top and bottom, creating a kind of symmetry. I don't buy that, but you *could* argue it. Anyway, this is close to a non-theme. An easy themeless.


The one unforgivable thing in this grid is GRASSLE (42A: Karen of "Little House on the Prairie"). That answer is 100% absurd. The percentage of people who are gonna be familiar with that name is something close to zero. Well, closer to zero than twenty, that's for sure. Compare that with the familiarity of virtually every other answer in the grid (w/ possible exception of PARI-—also not great). GRASSLE is why you should not be afraid to let computers help you out with filling your grid. The theme here is not demanding: just 37 squares total. So grid should be squeaky, and utterly obscure-actress-free. *Especially* *On* *A* *Tuesday*. GRASSLE is nuts. She played Caroline, the mom—admittedly, a major role. But she has not been in the public eye in any significant way for 30+ years, and even I, who watched that show A Lot, didn't know her name. Yeah—everything in that DIR (29D) / PARI / GRASSLE region (exclusive of themers) should've been torn out and redone. GRASSLE! When you rassle on the grass: GRASSLE! It's such an outlier here … in a tough themeless, maybe. In a much more theme-dense puzzle, perhaps. On a Tuesday in a thin-themed puzzle? No excuse.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld