Japanese for finger pressure / SAT 4-11-15 / He struck Caesar like a cur / Big letters in bowling alleys / Mauritian money / Rule ending in 1947 / Renowned 1920s raider / 1990s collectible

Constructor: Martin Ashwood-Smith

Relative difficulty: Easy


THEME: none

Word of the Day: Bandar SERI Begawan (35D: Bandar ___ Begawan (Brunei's capital)) —

Bandar Seri Begawan /ˌbaːndə sɨˌriː bɨˈɡaʊən/ ba(h)nd-ə sə-ree bə-gow-ən (Jawi: بندر سري بڬاوان ; Malay: [ˌbanda səˌri bəˈɡawan]) with an estimated population of more than 200,000 (in 2014), is the capital and largest city of the Sultanate of Brunei. (wikipedia)

I always (and I mean Always) forget where Brunei is. So the map is for me than it is for you. I mean, you can look at it if you want, but my principal edification target is me. I solved on paper today for some reason. I think I just got sick of screens. Sometimes it's nice to be able to look back over a grid and really See where you screwed up (erasures, write-overs, etc.). Or where you got annoyed / aggrieved (note all the little :( faces and "?"s and what not on my grid). I missed the ACPT this year, so I haven't had to solve on paper in a long time, but I'm headed to The Indie 500 Tournament in D.C. on May 30, and since tournament solving is always done on paper, I kind of need to get back into paper-solving shape. It really is a different beast in a lot of ways, though the harder the puzzle gets, the less important the difference is between on-screen and paper—on-screen is much faster when you're dealing with easy puzzles. But ANYway… paper! I like making little marginal annotations as I go. I usually do this after I print out a completed puzzle, but it's kind of nice to record my notes as I solve, rather than retrospectively; more … authentic, somehow.


I thought this puzzle was fine. As quadstacks go, totally average. It has all the usual infelicities in the short fill, but somehow today these are not offset by charming / interesting stack-answers. BEATING A RETREAT has a bit of life, but the rest are common-letter-heavy snoozers. I thought SALES ASSISTANTS was a joke among constructors, as it is oft-used and saturated in 1-pt Scrabble tiles. Maybe I'm thinking of a different phrase, but SALES ASSISTANTS is close. *All* those "S"s enable soooo many plurals. Makes filling a grid like this soooo much easier (not easy—but easier). ALTERNATE ROUTES has about as much charm. NO INTEREST LOANS. Seriously, these are all phrases from a tedious business meeting where people sit around a conference table and vie to impress the CEO w/ business speak jargon. What did we NET? How do we lower our TAX liability? Do we still have that fleet of SSTS in Bandar SERI Begawan or did we sell those? CAN TEEN consumers get their parents to say YES to buying them this year's hottest fashion, "UTE RAGS"? Where's PAT? Get PAT in here. She'll want in on this."ETC.

Here's a recent New Yorker cartoon with (yet another) bullshit grid.

Have you noticed how incapable advertisers / cartoonists / all humans are of depicting American crossword grids accurately? Dear editors: here are the Basics: 1. all-over interlock (i.e. no unchecked squares) 2. no answers of fewer than three letters 3. rotational symmetry (or some kind of symmetry). Please share with any friends you have who are or might some day be responsible for the visual representation of American crossword grids. Thanks!

Here's another bad one:


And another:


So at this point, it looks like I'm a collector.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld