Albanian cash / FRI 4-24-15 / Gershwin musical whose name sounds like approval / Bank with landmark tower in Dallas / Charley who caught Warren Spahn's 1961 no-hitter / Three words that best describe Grinch in song / French Facebookers connections / Queen Revenge Blackbeard's ship / Otto's preceder / South American rodents / Rosa lilla tulipano

Constructor: Joe Krozel

Relative difficulty: Challenging


THEME: none

Word of the Day: Charley LAU (41A: Charley who caught Warren Spahn's 1961 no-hitter) —

Charles Richard Lau (April 12, 1933, in Romulus, Michigan – March 18, 1984) was an Americancatcher and highly influential hitting coach in Major League Baseball.

He was signed by the Detroit Tigers as an amateur free agent. After spending three seasons with the organization (1956, 1958–1959) he was traded (with Don Lee) to the Milwaukee Braves for Casey Wise, Don Kaiser, and Mike Roarke. After the Baltimore Orioles purchased him from the Braves in 1962, he adopted a contact hitter's batting stance (feet wide apart, bat held almost parallel to the ground). That season he had a .294 batting average with six home runs and thirty-seven runs batted in.

After hitting .194 in 23 games, he was sold by the Orioles to the Kansas City Athletics on July 1, 1963, hitting .294 in Kansas City and having a batting average of .272 in 92 games. On June 15, 1964, he was traded back to the Orioles for Wes Stock. On May 31, 1967, he was purchased by the Braves, now located in Atlanta, and on November 27, 1967, he was released by the Braves.

On April 28, 1961, Lau caught the second of Warren Spahn's two career no-hitters. (wikipedia)

[opens puzzle] [sigh "stunt grid" sigh deep sigh pffffffffff … OK, shake it off, Rex. Shake It Off. You can do this. Clear eyes, full heart, solve puzzle!]


Some good things did happen. After falling flat with DOGWOOD at 1A: Tree with white flowers, I got LEKS (not proud) and PDS and remembered that CATALPA was a kind of tree (that I've seen only in crosswords, but still…). So crossword info retrieval system was in nice working order today. Also, very early on, things looked very promising when out of the blue, what did I see but a genuinely interesting, bold, entertaining 15: STINK, STANK, STUNK! (17A: "The three words that best describe" the Grinch, in song). I liked that so much, I took a picture:

This ended up being the highest of high highlights in the puzzle, but at least it happened. Ironically, the answer that STINK, STANK, STUNK the very least in this puzzle was … this one. After that, I just had to hunker down and fight my way through what I knew was coming: odd names, old names, weird plurals, foreignisms, and whatever VETOER is. Oh, and I played a little game with myself called "Where's the ONE'S"—any time you get a ton of 15s in a puzzle, there's a good chance you're gonna get yourself at least one ONE'S, and today did not disappoint. "Where are you ONE'S … I know you're out there … come on out, I won't hurt you …" And then bam! There it was:

Good ole ONE'S.

What did I learn? I learned that CONDIMENTS come in AISLEs now, and that Juli INKSTER spells her first name without an "e" (which makes me stunned that she hasn't appeared more as four-letter fill).  I learned that "OH, KAY!"… exists. I learned the Italian plural for "flowers" (39D: Rosa, lilla or tulipano) (FIORE). I don't think I learned anything else. But I did get the chance to test my seldom-used run-the-alphabet skills, which was the only was I managed to finish this puzzle. You see, came to a crashing, screeching, seemingly terminal halt at the very end when it came time to sew things up in the SW. Neither of the 15s computed and mystery names and "?" clues were conspiring to keep me baffled. Here's what I was staring down:

Now, you can see that I've got an error in the crosswordese plural name (ugh Ugh UGH) at 28D: Writing brothers Leon and Abraham (EDELS). So that's problem 1. Problem 2 is failure to parse TRINITR-T… I'm thinking "trinitron"… which was a Sony product, maybe? A television brand? But that makes no sense. Problem 3 is Charley who? and problem 4 is the inscrutable (to me) "?" clue on 2D: One doing the rounds very quickly? Eventually I figure out the EDERS/EDELS problem, but that just leads to Problem 1B: making sense of the "?" clue at 35A: Subtractions from divisions? Nothing makes sense. I finally figure out that 3D: Something to level with is TNT, and I think it's TRINITROTOLUENE, but since that doesn't result in immediate finishing of puzzle, I'm not sure. In the end, I have to run the alphabet at the second letter in 35A: A--LS. And just as I'm despairing, as I near the end of the alphabet, the "W" slips in and my brain goes "nope WAIT A MINUTE!" And then AWOLS WEAPON LAU the end. I assume anyone who struggled struggled in this same place or not at all, but maybe you got stuck around MITA and PACAS or up in "OH, KAY!"-ERMA'S-land. Who knows? Well, you do. Anyway, I struggled, I won, now I move on.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Hey check out this nice newspaper profile of my monthly guest blogger, Annabel Thompson.

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