Orwellian drudge / FRI 5-1-15 / Big tech review site / Dunsinane disavowal / Phencyclidine colloquially / Surrey carriage / Youngest of baseball trio / Holman early basketball great

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Calvin PEETE (48D: Calvin of the P.G.A.) —

Calvin Peete, whose life traced one of sport’s most triumphant arcs — a school dropout with a crooked left arm who did not pick up a golf club until his 20s, did not join the pro tour until his 30s, and still became one of the leading players of his era and the most successful black professional golfer before Tiger Woods — has died. He was 71. (from PEETE's NYT obituary, published yesterday)

A writer friend of mine wrote me yesterday:

... can you explain why anyone gives a crap about symmetry in crossword puzzles?  This is a really odd phenomenon, to me.  I don't see how it adds anything except a very faint sense of order and elegance, but it seems to me it comes at enormous expense. 

What expense?  Well, the need, for example, to have "corners," which often mean a lot of short clues or whatever.   Not being a constructor, I am ignorant here, really, but wouldn't all sorts of creativity be opened up if we gave up the rawther stuffy conceit of symmetry?It seems to me to be the equivalent of rhyme to poetry, only way less satisfying. 

I print this query here both because I think it's worth thinking about what purpose conventions serve, and because today's puzzle is itself a convention-breaker. Like rotational symmetry, the 15x15 grid size (Mon-Sat) is a convention. The size convention, though, has at least some practical basis, namely that the crossword, having been (and still, for many, being) a part of a newspaper environment, it must fit within a designated, limited space. Now, as puzzles move increasingly to the digital realm, this size constraint is likely to seem more and more anachronistic—a convention based on limitations that no longer exist. But as long as the crossword is made for publication in newspapers, size will matter. Still—why 15? why not 16? Today's puzzle reminds us of how arbitrary the 15x15 convention is. Expand the grid by one column, and an entire new universe of answers opens up. We sometimes see the wider (or narrower) grid in themed puzzles, where the conceit, or some marquee themer, makes the expansion (or contraction) necessary. But we don't see it in themelesses. I'm not saying we never have, but I can't remember when we have. And today's puzzle makes a good argument for opening the 16 floodgates. Think of all the damn 15 stacks we've seen over the years. Maybe it's not the stack itself that's played out—maybe it's the reservoir of available answers. Actually, I think all long stacks are at least slightly dangerous—they're likely to get you into similar problems with overall fill quality, so maybe my enthusiasm should be slightly qualified. But think of the 16 as a vast reservoir that has yet to be tapped. A precious, non-renewable resource that we can exploit for our immediate gratification. I welcome the New Age of the 16-wide themeless. I am certain to eat those words in the not-too-distant future, but for now, lead on, young pioneer Steinberg. Even if it ends up not being any better than the 15-wide, there's no reason it should be any worse, and if nothing else, it's different. Different Is Good.


That said, MONTE CARLO CASINO has "green paint"* painted all over it. But then, *that* said, the rest of this grid is Fantastic. All the other 16s are Good to Great, and though you have some (predictable) wincers in the short crosses (quoth the raven, MNEMvermore), the trade-off is more than worth it. FEROCIOUS ANGEL DUST livens up the center (which, mercifully, doesn't feature a third 16 stack), the grid even manages to squeeze in some interesting longer Downs like JESUS ALOU and HOT SPRING and JAM JAR, which, OK, isn't "longer," but it's still cool. Only real downside for me today was how easy this thing was. I got Downs 1 through 4 in quick succession, with no hesitation, and that pretty much blew open the top section. From there I found it really easy to send out long tentacles into all the sections of the grid. Here's a pic of my progress just after the 1/3 mark:

I didn't know the "S" is "lasik" was SITU, and I didn't get that "Brit" was a first name, and so I had a brief moment of "???" at SITU / HUME, but otherwise, this thing flew by. After I sewed up the middle, driving down into the bottom was simply no problem at all:

At that point I hadn't even looked at the 16s down below. Look how much of a jump I have on them. Needles to say, they were easy to pick off. So this could've been tougher, but otherwise, it was delightful. Unleash the 16s! (Oh, and if you're so inclined, let me know what you think about the symmetry question I opened with)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"green paint" is the term for a crossword answer that is more arbitrary word pairing than solid, stand-alone answer.

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