Metrosexual satchel / FRI 6-5-15 / Up or down 12 semitones in musical notation / Popular series of 1990s compilation albums / King in Elgar title / Eternally nameless thing / Louisville-based restaurant chain

Constructor: James Mulhern

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging


THEME: none

Word of the Day: OTTAVA (48D: Up or down 12 semitones in musical notation) —

 at an octave higher or lower than written —used as a direction in music. (merriam-webster.com)

This has some nice moments—there's a liveliness to OH GOD NO and FAKE PUNT and SNARKY—but there's also a certain forced hipness. I lived through the '90s and paid attention to music/pop culture and JOCK JAMS rings only the faintest of bells. MONSTER BALLADS and NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC! were all I could think of. I can't see JOCK JAMS bringing a lot of joy to or having much currency with NYT solvers, but I'm not mad at it. Double-J-ness alone makes it respectable. MURSE, however, is absurd in the extreme. It's a non-word. No one but no one uses that word, would claim to own one, etc. Maybe some TV episode or pop culture joke somewhere made the term briefly, unfortunately viable, but please. No. Terrible. MURSE is better as a portmanteau of "male nurse," and it's not good there, either, as male nurses are just nurses.

JACKASS has a "look at me pushing the envelope!" feel that I found slightly off-putting. I use the term all the time (in private), so I'm not (at all) offended by the word, but (and perhaps this will be surprising to you), I'm not a big fan of crassness / coarseness in my puzzles. It's sort of how I feel about public use of profanity. Like, go to town if you're at home, or if just you and your friends can hear, but rein it in if you're in line at the grocery store. Blah blah something about public discourse something about I'm becoming an old man. Whatever. I know JACKASS isn't profanity, but I still wasn't as thrilled as I think I was supposed to be.


Basically you have a super-common Friday grid design today—black X (roughly) through the center with 3-wide L-corners all around (that is, 3 longer Acrosses crossing 3 longer Downs in every corner), and the results are mixed. I'd say the fill is mostly good, rarely terrible, but too often mediocre. Entire NE is entirely forgettable. With exception of JACKASS (which is at least unusual), SW isn't much better—lots of AREAARREARSIERRAERR, which is to say it's mostly the same three letters over and over and over. It's an entirely acceptable puzzle, but I wish there were more stand-out answers, and I wish the fill were somewhat smoother. REJIGGER is not and will never be a thing. Also, TEENTSY does not and will never contain that second "T." It hurts just to look at. POO, also, never acceptable.


Look how terribly I started out. I got so frustrated that I just plowed ahead, bull-in-china-shop style, refusing to stop until I'd traversed the entire grid from NW to SE. As you can see, horrific start suddenly gives way to impressive grid-spanning streak:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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