___ regni / SUN 4-5-15 / Home of Faa'a International Airport / Ayatollah's speech / Point of sharpest vision / Schlemiels / Burns's "To a Louse" / Sony video recorder

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Medium



THEME: The Captain Goes Down With the Ship— Theme answers (which are all downs) consist of the names of captains and their ships.

Hey everyone. Happy Sunday to you. PuzzleGirl here with you on this beautiful day. Rex is traveling again so you're stuck with me. Let's just make the best of it, shall we? Today's puzzle is a little weird to me. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying it's different. The theme answers aren't real phrases and they're not even made-up phrases. They're just two (or three) words put together for effect. The words are related to each other, but they don't actually make up a phrase. That seems a little weird to me. That's all I'm saying.

Theme answers:

• AHAB PEQUOD (2D: Example from classic American literature)
• KIRK ENTERPRISE (5D: Example from television)
• NEMO NAUTILUS (10D: Example from sci-fi literature)
• BLIGH BOUNTY (14D: Example from 18th-century history)
• HOOK JOLLY ROGER (52D: Example from fantasy literature)
• SMITH TITANIC (60D: Example from 20th-century history)
• CRUNCH GUPPY (63D: Example from advertising)
• LINCOLN USA (75D: Metaphorical example from poetry)

You know what? Let's not talk about what's weird about the puzzle. Let's talk about what's good about the puzzle. But before we do that, I just want to say really quickly and with as little vitriol as possible that I initially thought RESEE (101D: Watch over) was the worst entry in the grid and then I came across FOVEA (69D: Point of sharpest vision). FOVEA. For real. Have any of your ever seen this word in your life? I know I haven't. That is one ugly entry. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Bullets:

• 1A: White's partner (SAJAK)— Raise your hand if, like me, you wanted STRUNK here. Such nerds.
• 22A: Asian wild ass (ONAGER)— I'm just not going to say a thing about that clue. Nope.
• 29A: Book that needs to be read word for word? (ROGET'S)— Cute clue for the thesaurus.
• 42A: 7/11 product? (QUOTIENT)— I got tricked recently by the clue "1/2" for DATE. And I was tricked by this one too. So I'm starting to get the idea that when there are numbers in the clue, I need to take a step back.
• 51A: Word of regret (SHOULDA)— With S**ULDA in place I thought this was going to be a foreign word. But it's just plain old SHOULDA, as in "shoulda, woulda, coulda."
• 65A: Baseball V.I.P.s (G.M.s)— Oh man I am so ready for baseball season. My team's G.M. has made some moves during the off season that I'm not 100% sure about but that's probably why he's the G.M. and I'm not. Well, that's one of the reasons anyway.
• 89A: Best-selling children's series "PERCY Jackson & the Olympians"— PuzzleSon loved these books. Recommended.
• 100A: Claymation dog (GROMIT)— Couldn't remember this guy's name at first and I also didn't know the name of Cap'n Crunch's ship. I had PUPPY at first, which, if you think about it, is a TERRIBLE name for a ship.
• 102A: Helpful household pets (RATTERS)— I don't know. If a ratter would be helpful to you in your house, maybe it's time to think about moving.
• 118A: "No, you really must!" ("I INSIST!")— For some reason this really tickled me. Probably by favorite answer.
• 7D: "ARE you even listening?"— Well? Are you?
• 13D: Big dos (AFROS)— Not a fan of this clue. #NotAllAfros
• 37D: Affix carelessly (SLAP ON)— Another interesting colloquial phrase.
• 44D: Game center? (TAC)— As in the "center" word of "tic tac toe." Took me a minute.
• 48D: "I got it!" ("AHA!") and 50D: "I *finally* got it!" ("DUH!")— Nice pair of clues to jazz up this so-so fill.
• 74D: Told (BLABBED)— BLABBED is a great word. I want to encourage all of you to use the word BLABBED in conversation today.
• 85D: British Invasion band (THEM)— Never heard of them. (See what I did there?)
• 87D: Kind of ceiling (DEBT)— I can't see this kind of clue/answer pair without being slightly annoyed since someone explained to me why it's just not right. You see, "debt" isn't a kind of ceiling. A "debt ceiling" is a kind of ceiling. And now that I've explained it to you, you can spend the rest of your solving years annoyed about it too. You're welcome.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everybody. With any luck Rex will be back tomorrow.

Love, PuzzleGirl