Model in a science class / SAT 4-18-15 / Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu who found sailing route around Africa / Graham old Kellogg's cereal / Foreign state with capital Panaji / Emperor crowned in 962 / Alternative to Beauvais-Tillé / Boogie Nights persona played by Mark Wahlberg / Like spectacled bear / Metal band with 1994 #1 album Far Beyond Driven / Hawaii Five-O imperative / Big Japanese chip maker

Constructor: Damon J. Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: none

Word of the Day: ORRERY (46D: Model in a science class) —

noun

1. a mechanical model of the solar system, or of just the sun, earth, and moon, used to represent their relative positions and motions. (google)

This puzzle conveniently illustrates the point I made yesterday about How To Build A Themeless Grid. Actually, you can build them all kinds of ways, but if you build them in a way that leaves you with tons of short fill, your end result will likely be less than stunning. Yesterday's went with a half-dozen 15s and not much else in the 6+-letter length category, resulting in some decent 15s (maybe a 2/3 "hit" rate), and then a whole lot of dreck and otherwise forgettable stuff. Today's grid makes for a nice comparison because it's got some of the same issues, just less so. Highly segmented (I always think of these as "bullet-ridden") grid, more 3-to-5-letter answers than you'd really like to see in a themeless, and (thus) some yucky fill issues (I won't list them all—you can see for yourself). But, BUT, the grid is *rife* with answers in the 7-to-12-letter range, i.e. more meaty fill that allows for more wide-ranging, eye-popping, grabby answers. Virtually every 7+-letter answer is at least good, and OKELY-DOKELY, DIRK DIGGLER, BELIEVE YOU ME, SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN, HOW NICE, OH COME NOW… all these are really, really nice. THE CLASH symmetrical with the TEA PARTY! That's what you call running the cultural gamut. Anyway, you can see (I hope) how shifting the grid toward an emphasis on more marquee fill of varying lengths make for a more complex and satisfying themeless puzzle.


I had a little trouble getting started there in the NW. I think I didn't get much of anywhere until I found the NED Flanders clue, and then guessed FIREPLACE / ASH. It was FIREPLACE / LOG, of course—why would use a poker on ash? But FIREPLACE got me traction. Here's my grid early on in the solve (note the TIMERS mistake at 2D: Meet people—not sure why I was so confident, though, to my minimal credit, I interpreted "meet" correctly):

With NED in place, OKELY-DOKELY was a gimme (though spelling it wasn't), and I had a pretty fast solve thereafter. Had ESSE for ETRE, TLR for TSR (it's been decades, now, of seeing that damned D&D clue; you'd think I'd have TSR down pat). I had Louise RAINER starring in the "Phantom Lady" instead of Claude RAINES… oh, but it looks like that's not how you spell Claude Rains (also not how you spell Luise Rainer, btw). Looks like the RAINES in question is Ella RAINES, Whoever That Is. Dodged a bullet there, I guess. Finished with ORRERY, a word I've seen often enough, but never quite remember. Luckily, crosses didn't let me down.

Happy Record Store Day!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I wonder if anyone will go with DARK DIGGLER. I recently watched "Singin' in the Rain" and *still* couldn't have told you there was a LINA in it.

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