Palindromic Dutch city / THU 9-24-15 / Object seen in Seurat's Grande Jatte / Org with red white blue balls once

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME:nonsense phrases with lots of repeated two-letter segments in a row; actually, five, to be exact—

Theme answers:

• TONTO TO TOTO TOME (17A: One volume in the Encyclopedia of Movie Pets and Sidekicks?)
• LEND A DAD A DADA (27A: Let someone's father borrow this Arp or that Duchamp?)
• I AM A MAMA MAMBA (46A: Statement from the proud snake as its eggs were hatching?)
• THIS IS ISIS, I SAID (58A: Recounting of the time you introduced the Egyptian goddess of fertility?) 

Word of the Day: EDE (25D: Palindromic Dutch city) —

Ede (Dutch pronunciation:[ˈeːdə] (listen)) is a municipality and a city in the center of the Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland. [Note: population 110K...] // The town itself is situated halfway between the larger cities of Arnhem and Utrecht with direct rail and road connections to both cities. There are no connections to any water nearby; however, there also is a direct road connection to the city of Wageningen which hosts a small industrial port on the river Rijn and a direct road and rail connection to the city of Arnhem, which features larger port at a greater distance. The environment is clean and green due to the fact Ede is partly built in a forest and partly on the central Dutch plains in the national park called Nationaal Park "De Hoge Veluwe". (wikipedia)

Not a big fan of nonsense phrases, or prattle, or whatever is going on here. Babbling. There's a pointlessness I don't get, and a sense of humor I don't share. There was some small enjoyment for me in the struggle to parse the damn phrases, but while I enjoy wacky word Play, I don't enjoy wacky make-a-lot-of-silly-sounds. Why five two-letter strings? No reason. Just 'cause. Why are all the strings of sounds contained *inside* the theme answers *except* one? Who knows? I know that the puzzles that the NYT needs most desperately right now are non-rebus Thursdays and Sundays, but I really hope that non-rebus Thursdays can aspire to something more satisfying than this. It's definitely a passable theme idea, and the grid is reasonably well filled, but the arbitrariness and cutesiness are galling and cloying, respectively. Also, I would reclue TONTOTOTOTOTOME so that it referred to a very unlikely double play. Like Tinker to Evers to Chance, only w/ very different players.


There are pluses and minuses to the grid as a whole. The theme lameness is offset somewhat by a plethora of long non-themers in the Downs. But then *that* is offset by some ... I'll be kind and call it "retro" fill. ONEL. AGRI. ADES. A MOI. SITU. OONA. EDE, jeez, EDE!? That is textbook crossword junk. That place is nowhere. Now that I've looked it up, I'm more convinced than ever that it's just not crossworthy. The MATEO / EINEN corner is pretty unfortunate too. But these are the prices you pay (at least today) for long answers like SANTA MONICA and SMOKE ALARMS and NEXT IN LINE slashing down through your themers. I think the trade-off is mostly worthy it today, but then I've got a vast reservoir of EDE-type answers at my disposal. It would be great if puzzles didn't have to rely on that specialized arcana so much. I get that it kind of defines this little in-club of pro solvers we've got going here, but it's boring even for us, and off-putting for younger folks who might otherwise be drawn to crosswords. There's a difference between "obvious" and "obvious to pro solvers." Constructors should be trying as hard as possible to rely as little as possible on the ELIELs and EEROs and DIKs etc. of the crossword fill world.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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