THEME:EIEIO (69A: Children's song refrain found at the starts of 17-, 26-, 35-, 50- and 57-Across) —
Theme answers:
E STREET BAND (17A: Bruce Springsteen's group)
I FORMATION (26A: Offensive football lineup)
E PLURIBUS UNUM (35A: Phrase on the back of a buck)
I LOVE PARIS (50A: Cole Porter classic from "Can-Can")
O HENRY TWIST (57A: Surprise ending, as in "The Gift of the Magi")
Word of the Day:A.O. SCOTT(32A: Longtime New York Times film critic) —
Anthony Oliver Scott (born July 10, 1966) is an American journalist and film critic. Along with Manohla Dargis, he serves as chief film critic for The New York Times. (wikipedia)
• • •
This is a sturdy, solid, old-fashioned puzzle. Again, as with yesterday's TOSSED SALAD (another old-fashioned concoction), I'm stunned this exact theme hasn't been done before. The reveal is somewhat nice. Not quite an aha moment, but definitely an 'oh, huh, neat' one. But the themers themselves aren't inherently interesting, and ... well, EIEIO is EIEIO, which is to say, one of those things you'd rather not see again in any crossword ever if you didn't have to. Here it's repurposed as a revealer, so that elevates its worth, some, maybe. There's really nothing wrong with this puzzle. Theme-wise, it was just a bit of a shrug for me.
[this is killing me]
Oh, no, wait. Sorry. One thing wrong. O HENRY TWIST? I believe that to be an entirely made-up phrase. OK, not entirely, but mostly. Everyone knows that O Henry stories are associated with a twist at the end—his name is practically synonymous with literary irony. So "twist," "irony," "ironic twist," these are all things I buy as phrases relating to O. Henry. But O. HENRY TWIST I do not buy. The very fact that you had to put an O. Henry story in the clue tells me that it is not a real thing. If it can stand alone as a [Surprise ending], then you don't need the story title, but you do, because it can't. It googles poorly and many of the hits you get add the word "ending" or are otherwise inexact. I see one google books result that says "many critics refer to the sudden, unexpected turn of events at the very end of a story as “the O. Henry twist." There's no footnote on this assertion, however, so I call baloney. It's just not a stand-alone phrase. Not. Veto. I would support OH HENRY TWIST as some kind of modernized version of the candy bar. Like Reese's Sticks. Only Oh Henry. And ... in some kind of twist ... shape.
Bullets:
22D: Globe shape: Abbr. (SPH.) — one of the few clunkers in this grid, which is really very nice overall. Gets a little rough in the SE, and there's an ILSA here and a LBO there, but lots of solid, vivid, interesting answers throughout kept the short stuff from hurting too much.
44A: Gourd-shaped rattles (MARACAS) — had the -AS and wrote in ... CASABAS!
31D: Reporter's contact (SOURCE) — the most elusive answer in the grid for me, for reasons unknown. I had SOUR- and ... no idea.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. my friend Mike Dockins asks "MISERS / SAM??? That gives you SAM and SAME in the same corner. Why not MISERY / YAM"? I have to agree. Why *not* MISERY / YAM. . . MISERY / YAM 2016!
THEME:TOSSED SALAD (62A: Common first course ... or what's literally contained in 17-, 23-, 32-, 44- and 49-Across) — circled squares in the theme answers contain are scrambled versions of the word "SALAD"
Theme answers:
PIÑA COLADAS (17A: Tropical drinks often served with umbrellas)
SALSA DANCING (23A: Spicy ballroom activity?)
DEAD LAST (32A: Finishing eighth out of eight, say)
ROAD SALT (44A: Application to highways before a winter storm)
DOUGLAS ADAMS (49A: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" author)
Word of the Day:"RED"(61A: 2012 #1 album for Taylor Swift) —
Red is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was released on October 22, 2012, by Big Machine Records, as the follow-up to her third studio album, Speak Now. The album title was inspired by the "semi-toxic relationships" that Swift experienced during the process of conceiving this album, which Swift described the emotions she felt as "red emotions" due to their intense and tumultuous nature. Red touches on Swift's signature themes of love and heartbreak, however, from a more mature perspective while exploring other themes such as fame and the pressure of being in the limelight. The album features collaborations with producers and guest artists such as Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol and Ed Sheeran and is noted for Swift's experimentation with new musical genres. Swift completed The Red Tour in support of the album on June 12, 2014, which became the highest-grossing tour of all time by a country artist, grossing over $150 million. (wikipedia)
• • •
Mixed feelings. The theme is so hackneyed that I'm stunned it hasn't been done before. Cursory look through the cruciverb database doesn't turn up anything, though, so ... it's simultaneously original and old-as-dirt. But who cares? I didn't even see the theme. How could I? The puzzle was (until the very very very end) so easy I didn't have time to think about what was going on in those circled squares, or much of anything beyond the nice long Downs. And the fill was smooth enough, and grimace-free enough, that it didn't call attention to itself in either a bad or good way. It just flew by. Short fill is dull in parts, but not ugly. I don't like that the tossed "salad"s are not all broken across two words; PIÑA COLADAS is a yucky outlier in this regard. Should've been chucked. Boo. But overall, the puzzle was fine. I like how timely the puzzle is—at least for me, personally. As I write this, I am at the end of a Very LAZY SUNDAY (29D: Relaxing time after church, say), with a G&T in my rearview mirror and homemade mint chip ice cream (with mint from the garden) waiting for me when I'm through here. Hiked in the woods with dogs much earlier in the day, but the rest of the time I spent organizing my comic collection (which I'd let get disgustingly disorganized over a period of many years) and listening to music. If it were a tad less, uh, sweaty, today would've been perfect.
I thought I was gonna come close to my Monday NYT record solving time (which ... I actually don't remember, though I think it's 2:36. I've been faster on other easy puzzles, but not the NYT). And I would've gotten it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids, by which I mean a Taylor Swift album name I totally blanked on and a "Longtime newsman" whose name I am never going to remember no matter how many times I see it in puzzles. Roger O'NEIL? Sure, why not? Not in my time, but great—his name crossing "RED" meant a hiccup of untold seconds, resulting in a final time of 2:45, which is still fast, but ... it's infinity far from from 2:36, in my experience. I see 2:40s a lot. I see 2:30s virtually never. I have dumb fat clumsy fingers, too, which ... don't do me any favors.
That's all. Stay authentic, colloquially! See you tomorrow.
Kevin Der is a great constructor, which is why I keep looking at this grid and wondering what I missed. I wrote out all the letter changes to see if there was some kind of sequence or hidden message in either the original or the new/wacky letters, but I just got gibberish. I don't fully understand why the letters that were changed ... were changed. Why not THE LUST EMPEROR? Or SILENCE OF THE LAMPS (or LIMBS) (or JAMBS)? A BEAUTIFUL RIND? TERNS OF ENDEARMENT? If the only criterion is a single letter change, it seems like you should've been able to get better humor mileage out of these "adaptations." That said, I thought the answers were pretty cute, and I enjoyed remembering movie titles and figuring out which word would be changed how, so there was definitely some entertainment value here. And again, I would not be shocked to learn that there was some Deep Der Stuff going on in this puzzle that I just can't see.
If you knew your crosswordese, then you had a leg up today. AIT crossing ARHAT! (29A: River islet / 12D: Enlightened Buddhist). Two words I only ever seen in crosswords (OK maybe I've seen AIT in the wild, but not much). You were also ahead of the game if you knew a Slew of short proper nouns. You were also ahead of me, as I knew virtually none of those shorties. The fact that they were densely clustered around RAVE REVIEW, an answer I didn't understand until the very last letter I put in the grid, made the NW by far the toughest section to solve. Let's meet the mystery players:
LIV! (23A: Disney Channel's "___ and Maddie") — you can just stop at "Disney Channel"
PEGG! (57D: Simon of the "Mission: Impossible" films) — OK now that I realize we're talking about the modern films and not the original series (my bad!) I can actually picture this guy. But while solving, I figured he was just some olde-timey actor I'd never heard of.
All that, and the fact that [****] was a baffling clue for RAVE REVIEW (which I assumed would be some kind of plural...), conspired to hold me back up there. But I just left it for last and luckily, once I circled back around, the dominoes fell, however slowly. As far as the cast of mystery players, I also didn't know who ROSEN (44D: Physicist Nathan who postulated wormholes) or EVIE (92A: Daughter in E.M. Forster's "Howard's End") was.
Other trouble spots involved my comical inability to anagram "snake" (I don't think of snakes as SNEAKy, as I nearly step on them all the time in the woods), my layman's understanding of [What stars do] (GLIMMER, I wrongly assumed), and my utter non-understanding of what "sponsorship packages" even means (TIERED? If you say so!). Still, because the film titles were so familiar and the changes to said titles so minuscule, I made pretty good time. Not lightning fast, but better than average.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Hey, Rich and J.T.—I know you send each other emails with the
subject line "FRP," and I know what the "F" stands for. So ... thanks
for acknowledging my fearlessness. XO
P.P.S. Lollapuzzoola, one of my two favorite crossword tournaments, is accepting crossword submissions for its tourney this August. Here's a message from tourney organizer Brian Cimmet: ""Lollapuzzoola, the greatest crossword tournament ever held on a
Saturday in August, is accepting submissions! Our 9th annual tournament
is happening on Saturday, August 13 in New York City — and it could
feature YOU! Do you have a puzzle that is brilliant, clever, inventive,
mildly wacky, curiously strong, and can measure up to the unrehearsed
nonsense of Lollapuzzoola? Send it our way! We'll take a look at themes,
concepts, completed grids, etc. (but don't feel pressured to finish
cluing or filling). Submissions will be accepted until June 1, 2016.
Please send your work to brian@bemoresmarter.com" http://www.bemoresmarter.com/
Word of the Day:ATTELET(20A: Decorative skewer for serving hors d'oeuvres) —
n.
1.
(Cooking) a type of skewerwith an ornamentalhandlewhich is usedforholdingfoodsforpresentation at thetable,butnotwhilecooking. (thefreedictionary)
• • •
Constructing software (armed with a sizeable wordlist) can help constructors do really nice things, like running stacked 11s through stacked 11s (as in the center part of this grid). It can also convince you that putting stuff like SUL and THEICE and ATTELET in your puzzle is a good idea. Google didn't even believe me when I told it [define attelet]
I think the good far outweighs the bad today, though. Your marquee answers here are all wonderful, the corners are OK, and the bad parts (ATTELET notwithstanding) are hardly flagrant. So, YIPPEE, I guess.
I tore this thing up thanks to some very helpful letters in very helpful positions. Let's start with the letter "Z"—two of them, actually. First answer into the grid was ZSA ZSA (1D: Miss Hungary of 1936, familiarly). Why did I know that? Dunno. Just did. And I didn't "know" it. It just felt right. And right away—two "Z"s. Two high-value letters. I knew ZOT was right, and after trying A LIFE for 27A: "Get ___!" (A GRIP), I put in PATHS and thus got a grip on the NW corner. Done, and fast. PETE (or, to be precise, PE_E...) was there before I ever saw the clue at 14D: He said "You kind of live and die by the serve" (eloquent!), so no problem there. The most important answer for me in the top half, though, was SELIG (25A: Manfred succeeded him as baseball commissioner). Not only was it a gimme, but it gave me a terminal "G" at 7D: "Morning Mood" composer. I wrote in GRIEG reflexively, and that gave me all the first letters of the Acrosses in the NE. One letter in one easy answer opened an entire section of the puzzle right up.
[So ... "Peer Gynt" composer, really, then ...]
"GALAXY QUEST" (31A: 1999 parody featuring the starship Protector) was a flat-out, no-crosses-needed gimme, and... look at that: an "X" *and* a "Q"! The whole puzzle just flowered out from there. I did have awful trouble, however, with DELUXE MODEL (17D: Provider of more bells and whistles). Got the DELUXE part OK, but the second part ... less easy. Eventually, with DELUXE MO-EL in place, I went with [drum roll] DELUXE MOTEL! Then I went with EATST at 43A: "___ thou no poison mix'd ...?": "Romeo and Juliet" (HADST). Threw that awesome wrong answer out pretty quick, but only at the very end, after starting to run the alphabet at -OPED / -ATST, did I see it was actually HOPED / HADST. The "D" there was my last letter.
Bullets:
IN STIR (18A: Doing time) — I have a vast reservoir of olde-timey expressions no one uses any more, like ... lots of synonyms for "money" and "jail." Speaking of olde-timey expressions: NATTY (38A: Spruced up). Got it off the "N."
HAN SOLO (35D: [Spoiler alert!] He dies in "The Force Awakens") — cute clue, but Monday-easy.
AS TO (48D: Repeated words in a multiple-count verdict) — can't say I like ASTO as fill, but I admire this highly original clue.
STRIPE (12D: IBM logo feature) — that is the weirdest, randomest STRIPE clue ever. I can see the logo in my mind's eye, vaguely, but of all the STRIPE-y things in the universe ... blah. Pretty blah.
Word of the Day:TAXON(18A: Phylum, order or genus) —
In biology, a taxon (plural taxa; back-formation from taxonomy) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and given a particular ranking, especially if and when it is accepted or becomes established. It is not uncommon, however, for taxonomists to remain at odds over what belongs to a taxon and the criteria used for inclusion. If a taxon is given a formal scientific name, its use is then governed by one of the nomenclature codes specifying which scientific name is correct for a particular grouping. (wikipedia)
• • •
Taxon. Tax off. Taxon, tax off ... the taxer. TAX TAX.
[You're welcome]
I'm trying to think of things to say about this puzzle, but I'm fantastically distracted by my Twitter feed, which is half live-tweets of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and half animated discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of "High Society" (1956). It's all too enthralling. Allegedly, there's an important NBA playoff game on right now as well, but I haven't heard a peep about it. This puzzle was enjoyable, mostly. West fell fast, east ... didn't. After a couple early miscues (AGE for SWM, ENYA for ERTE) I went sweeping down the west side of the grid pretty easily, then moved into the middle and kinda got stuck for a bit (finished in 6:09, so not *that* stuck, but stuckish). First there was the ON ICE / IN ICE problem (IN makes me wince), then the NE, where ... let's see. I threw AVAIL in and then crossed it at the "V" with ... OVATE. But when the "T" cross was some kind of green (er, that is, 13D: Kind of blue that's close to green), I somehow ... I ... well, I changed OVATE to OVOID and went with NILE. NILE blue. Is that a thing? It felt thingish. It was wrong. MIENS and DENS helped out and things settled down. Really really really thrown off by the word "attraction" in 34A: Attraction temporarily shut down and partly moved to Siberia during W.W. II, so much so that even with LENIN in place I still thought I was dealing with some kind of carnival ride. The LENIN SWING or something.... but it was just his TOMB.
[This video is unrelated to anything in the puzzle. It was on 89.3 The Current (Minneapolis!) as I was writing this, so I just stuck it in here, why not?]
Yucked out at the awkward EMBANK, where -MBAN- did zero for me (PET rock ... cute) (29A: Kind of classic rock?). Thus stuck, I switched to the SE to see what I could do—and bam, off the "O" got "O, PIONEERS," and RIC OCASEK would've been a gimme even without the initial "R" in place. Filled the grid back up to horrible EMBANK, ending with that "E."
THEME: transformative compressions — two-word phrases are clued as if they were "[first letter of first word]-second word" words, "[w]hen shortened." Thus, for example, [When shortened, June 1944 offensive] might clue the answer DORIS DAY (because "when shortened," "DORIS" becomes "D"...). And so:
Theme answers:
VITAL SIGNS (4D: When shortened, winning symbols)
QUICK TIPS (18A: When shortened, ear swabs)
FOXHOLE (24D: When shortened, violin feature)
ONION RING (11D: When shortened, rocket seal)
GUEST SPOT (34D: When shortened, topic in sexology)
Wow, this was not an easy theme to describe succinctly. It's kind of bizarre, in that there's no connection at all, meaning-wise, between the answer in the grid and the "shortened" answer that's actually being clued. There's just this clever bit of wordplay going on, over and over (and in intersecting answers—nice). I found it oddly delightful. Wacky in a way I somehow appreciated. I can even forgive the Absurd Scrabble-f*cking in the SW corner—why is that "J" there? TAJ really really limits cluing possibilities, leaving you only with proper noun / fill-in-the-blank cluing options (here, the banal 58D: ___ Boston (luxury hotel), yawn). TAN or TAB or TAG or TAP beats TAJ any day. Any. Day. It is *bizarre* that there is no "Y" in this grid, because the only way I can understand that corner "J" is if the constructor was actually going for a pangram (i.e. a puzzle with every letter in the alphabet represented at least once). But there's no "Y". There's no Y!!! It's so weird. I feel like there must've been one that got edited out. Wait, where was I? Oh, right. I actually enjoyed this theme, and most of this grid.
TAPAS BARS was both my favorite answer and the hardest (for me) to get. This is partly because of TAJ (?) [shakes fist], partly because I don't think of a BOT as a "harvester," partly because that [Remover of dirt...] clue was doing nothing for me, partly because I wasn't *entirely* sure of the spelling on PAAVO. But I just hacked at it wildly and finally things fell into place. Two other trouble spots were a. in the north where ETAS and SALE were not at all apparent to me. The latter really looked like it would be OPEN, and the former was just inscrutable; and b. in the east, where the BILGE / ASTER / LILT / DEBRIS mash-up was mildly befuddling. Clue on DEBRIS was particularly vexing (30A: Refuse). Other than that, I had TOYS for 10A: Nursery bagful (LOAM) at first, but not many other hiccups. Finished in somewhat under my average Thursday time.
I think QUICK TIPS is the weakest themer here, in that I don't really know what those are. Or, I do, probably, but that answer just doesn't stand alone as well or seem as snappy as the others. I mean, yes QUICK TIPS are a thing the way GREEN PAINT is a thing, but ... HELPFUL TIPS googles twice as well, and no one in their right mind thinks *that's* a great phrase (HELPFUL HINTS, however, would be good ... but I (really) digress). I'm not faulting the answer so much as noting its wobbliness vis-a-vis the other answers. It's good enough—not much else you can do to pick up the Q-TIP reference. Weird, inventive, interesting. FINE!
THEME:JOHNNY ON THE SPOT (38A: Person who's ready and able to help ... or a literal description of four occurrences in this puzzle)— theme answers start with words that are also the last names of famous JOHNNYs, and each of those first words sits on top of an "AD" (aka a radio or TV "SPOT"):
Theme answers:
CASH MONEY (17A: Dough in hand, redundantly)
CARSON CITY (25A: State capital near Lake Tahoe)
BENCH PRESS (52A: Gym activity that works the pectorals)
ROTTEN EGG (64A: Last one in, say) (this clue isn't right—it's "Last one in, in a familiar expression," not "... say"; ROTTEN EGG is not a synonym for "Last one in"—in fact, "Last one in" is only a ROTTEN EGG in that one expression)
[For other possible theme dimension, see P.S. below]
Word of the Day:DARYL Hannah(69A: ___ Hannah of "Blade Runner") —
Daryl Christine Hannah (born December 3, 1960) is an American film actress. She is known for her performances in the films Blade Runner (1982), Splash (1984), Roxanne (1987), Wall Street (1987), Steel Magnolias (1989) and Kill Bill (2003). She is also an environmental campaigner who has been arrested for protests against developments that are believed by some groups to threaten sustainability. (wikipedia)
• • •
The constructor is on social media now bragging (I think) that no one seems to be fully understanding his theme. I have no idea if I have or if I have not, but if I have not, and so many others have not, then maybe the problem lies not with the solvers. At any rate, this puzzle was interesting in that it took a rather pedestrian concept (first words are also last names over various JOHNNYs) and gave it not only a snappy revealer but this unexpected "AD" twist. What's funny / not funny is that the "AD" thing explains / causes some of the grid's crappier (i.e. crosswordesier) moments: ADEE, ADLAI, ADA. I don't understand why JOHNNY itself is not on top of an "AD"—seems like, conceptually, that would've been more consistent / elegant. Instead you've got ATTA under there, which is as bad as anything in the grid (see ADEE). But I think the theme works and I like the little "AD" twist and so it seems like a fine Wednesday puzzle overall.
[DARYL]
I blanked on DRAKE (9A: "Take Care" rapper, 2012), even *with* the "K" in place. I own two DRAKE albums. So that's oddly embarrassing. "Hotline Bling" rapper, I'd've gotten. Had TWIST CAP for TWIST TOP (40D: Resealable bottle feature). I also didn't get FEED at first go round (61D: Farm store purchase) and took a couple passes to back my way into the SW corner (BENCH PRESS and OH COOL not coming immediately to mind). That is the full tally of all my problems. Otherwise, this one was just see-clue-write-answer fast. Bam bam bam (3:36). Faster than yesterday, which was a pretty easy Tuesday. So the whole week is running super-simple so far.
Looks like we got EDINA back, after having to endure that not-famous Minneapolis suburb whose name I've already forgotten this past Sunday. DEANE? Oh, no, right: EAGAN. Blargh. The constructor is a Minnesotan, so EDINA is this puzzle's version of a home-state shout-out, I imagine. See also OH COOL, both because Minneapolis / St. Paul is a cool place to be (I visit my best friends there whenever I can) and because it's *&#^%ing cold there, but if you live there, you're used to it, so when you walk outside in January, you're like, "OH ... COOL. Better put on pants."
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. it occurs to me that you can SPOT someone MONEY (a ten-SPOT, perhaps) and you SPOT someone on the BENCH PRESS and ... I don't know, a CITY (like CARSON CITY) is a SPOT (i.e. a location), and EGG ... uh, something to do with spot? SPOTted egg? Honestly don't see the egg angle. But maybe that's the elusive theme element the constructor is crowing about.
THEME:TAPS (71A: Bugle tune ... or what one does to 1-, 18-, 35-, 43- and 62-Across)
Theme answers:
KEGS (1A: Frat party staples)
PHONE LINES (18A: "Open" things for a call-in show)
SHOULDERS (35A: Places for shawls)
RESOURCES (43A: Coal and natural gas)
MAPLE TREES (62A: Syrup comes from them)
Word of the Day:William BREWSTER(41D: William ___, Pilgrim Father) —
William Brewster (1568 – 10 April 1644) was an English official and Mayflower passenger in 1620. In Plymouth Colony, by virtue of his education and existing stature with those immigrating from the Netherlands, Brewster, a separatist, became a regular preacher and the leader of the community. (wikipedia)
• • •
A bunch of things one can tap. Well, a couple observations: as a list, it's pretty dull, and TAPS is an awkward revealer. Plain old TAP, or maybe some phrase containing TAP that allows for wordplay of some sort, would've made more sense. All the answers are plural ... but TAPS (with an "S") doesn't indicate a plural, it indicates the third person. It looks like, in order to get the [Bugle tune] cleverness to match up symmetrically with something, we've pluralized KEGS, and then ... well, that tips the dominoes and every other theme answer gets the "S." The non-corresponding "S"s between themers and revealer ... they're just awkward. It's mainly the third-person conjugation that clunks. I wouldn't notice this if the theme were at all interesting. Theme feels like something NYT used to publish but doesn't / shouldn't any more. I thought that yesterday about a CONEHEADS theme in the LAT, where all the first words of the themers were kinds of cones, but conceptually and execution-wise, that was a superior puzzle.
The fill had some strong points (DAEDALUS!! SAY WHAT?!), but was also heavy on the unpleasantness. Why on god's green would you *highlight* the fact that your grid has terrible abbrs. in it by giving them the same clue (N.C.A.A. part: Abbr.), as if their presence here were some kind of *feature*. There is no redeeming ATH, there is no redeeming ASSOC, and trying to tie them together with the same clue is like throwing water on an oil fire. If you need ATH or ASSOC, you quietly clue them (separately!) and move on. Imagine how "fun" it would be if you cross-referenced SSW and NNE ... [I'm waiting while you do this] ... yes, cluing ASSOC and ATH this way is precisely *that* much fun, possibly less. Grid shape means that there's a ton of 4- and 5-letter stuff, so no surprise that there's a lot of the old gang ("I, TINA"!), but it leaned toward the UGLY side in many places. ETTU, EZEK? I had maybe one wrong turn in this one: wrote in SUPT instead of SUPE (45D: Apartment building V.I.P., for short). My answer was correct. Just not correct for this puzzle.
THEME:body part of the something — colloquial phrases following the pattern "___ OF THE ___" where first word is a body part:
Theme answers:
BUTT OF THE JOKE (20A: One being laughed at)
HEAD OF THE TABLE (28A: Where Mom or Dad sits at dinner)
NECK OF THE WOODS (47A: Locale)
EYE OF THE STORM (54A: Where it's calmest in a hurricane)
Word of the Day:LIAM Payne(18A: ___ Payne, One Direction heartthrob) —
Liam James Payne (born 29 August 1993) is an English singer and songwriter. He made his debut as a singer when he auditioned as a solo artist for the British television series The X Factor in 2008 with "Fly Me to the Moon" by Frank Sinatra. Though cut by Simon Cowell following judge's house, Payne was encouraged to audition again. He reauditioned as a solo artist in 2010, where he was put into a group along with four other contestants, to form the boy band that would later become known as One Direction. (wikipedia)
• • •
I assume this is a debut (I think I'd've remembered that name). If so, it's a solid one. Very, very Monday. Kind of quintessential—straightforward, simple, clean. No frills, but no gaffes either. I've only got one problem with the theme, and that is that BUTT OF THE JOKE really should've been the *final* themer, not the first. It's got the funniest body part in it (the only slangy one, the only one located below the shoulders), and it makes the perfect "punchline" for this theme. Why would you not put that answer at the bottom (!)) of the grid? Themer order matters, and your final themer should really be the best expression of the theme—it should merit its finality (Merl taught me that). But, as I say, that is the only issue I have. The theme makes sense, and the fill is mercifully clean and even occasionally interesting (HOVERBOARD!). No, wait, I have one more minor issue with the theme—if you ask me [Where it's calmest in a hurricane], I'm going to say "in the EYE OF THE ... hurricane, actually." EYE OF THE STORM is a fine answer. The cluing just struck me as somehow slightly amiss.
There were precisely two trouble parts for me in this one ("trouble" being a relative term, as I finished in 2:39). First, I had fishing in my head when I read 8D: Catch in a net, so I couldn't parse ENMESH at all at first. Needed many crosses. Also, you'll excuse me if I'm not up on all the members of One Direction. [___ Payne] meant nothing to me, though now that I see LIAM in there, that name sounds familiar. I know there's a Harry in there somewhere, and ... sure, LIAM, why not? So there was the problem of ENMESHing LIAM. Then there was just getting a handle on NECK OF THE WOODS. The clue ([Locale]) is so terse and enigmatic that how you were supposed to get from that one word to a 13s-letter phrase was not at all clear. But even after I had N-C-O... I could think of nothing but NECRO-something. But again, this is all happening at pretty high speeds, and a few more crosses took care of the confusion.
THEME:"Rise And Fall" — Circles form inverted "V"s in top half of grid—these hold the names of mountains; circles form "V"s in bottom half of grid—these hold the names of valleys. Two halves of the grid united thematically by central revealer: 70A: Classic song with the repeated line "if you need me, I will be nearby" ... shown symbolically in this puzzle ("MOUNTAIN HIGH, VALLEY LOW")
Theme answers:
Mount SINAI, Mount SAINT HELENS, Mount EVEREST
SILICON Valley, SAN FERNANDO Valley, DEATH Valley
Word of the Day:PIERROT(112A: French mime) —
Pierrot (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁo]) is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of Pierre (Peter), via the suffix -ot. His character in contemporary popular culture—in poetry, fiction, the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall—is that of the sad clown, pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons. Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim, more rarely with a conical shape like a dunce's cap. But most frequently, since his reincarnation under Jean-Gaspard Deburau, he wears neither collar nor hat, only a black skullcap. The defining characteristic of Pierrot is his naïveté: he is seen as a fool, often the butt of pranks, yet nonetheless trusting. (wikipedia)
• • •
The execution here is interesting, with the mountains and valleys ending up in perfect rotational symmetry. I would not have considered this a requirement for this type of puzzle, but it's a nice little touch. I've seen themes where circled squares both form and spell out geographical features before (I feel like a very good early-week puzzle did this once), but the scale and precision of the theme expression here make this one quite different. My only criticism here is with the revealer, which purports to be a "Classic" song. It ... isn't. Or else "Classic" means something I don't understand. If you google the lyric in the clue (in quotation marks) you get lyrics for an Eartha Kitt song from the early '50s. You also get a ton of hits for SEO (search engine optimization) crossword sites (designed to lure google cheaters), which have already uploaded all the clues to *this* very puzzle. You also get some random junk. I've never heard this song. I *have* heard some very famous songs that sound Kind of like "MOUNTAIN HIGH, VALLEY LOW," such as "River Deep, Mountain High" (by Ike & Tina Turner) and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (which contains the lyric "Ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low..."). Both those songs are light years more famous than today's song. Seriously, did *anyone* but Eartha Kitt sing it. When I put the title into YouTube, it understandably wants to give me the two songs I've already mentioned. Not ... this:
It's a real song, so I can accept it as the revealer. But "Classic" is a s t r e t c h.
Proper noun clusters seem like they could've gotten some people into trouble today. I was lucky enough to know (somehow?) PIERROT, 'cause I sure as heckfire didn't know that "To Kill a Mockingbird" cross (MAYELLA) (!?) (92D: Bob Ewell's daughter in "To Kill a Mockingbird"). And thank god I got the wordplay in the clue at 87A: It's least palatable when raw (DEAL), because I had No Clue about the "A" or the "L" cross. EAGAN??? (81D: Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb) LIAO??? (88D: Chinese dynasty of 1,000 years ago) Yipes. That's playing fast and loose with marginal proper nouns. Dangerous. But not too dangerous—not for me, anyway. CELESTA over OCA also gave me some trepidation. The former I couldn't pick out of a line-up 54A: "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" instrument), the latter I know only as a South American tuber, which I assume is not the meaning here (65A: "L'___ del Cairo" (unfinished Mozart opera)). But educated guesses and solid crosses made things work out in the end. No idea who SCHMITT was. Or PROTAGORAS (23A: Greek philosopher who wrote "Man is the measure of all things"). Lucky enough to have OSWEGO in my backyard (broadly speaking) (76A: Upstate SUNY campus site)—that is a name that likely baffled a few of you. But somehow I managed to gambol through this proper noun minefield without any significant damage. All in all, a fine, entertaining, solid Sunday.
Word of the Day:"Rats Live ON NO Evil Star"(8D: Anne Sexton's palindrome-inspired poem "Rats Live ___ Evil Star") —
A palindrome seen on the side of a barn in Ireland
After Adam broke his rib in two
and ate it for supper,
after Adam, from the waist up,
an old mother,
had begun to question the wonder
Eve was brought forth.
Eve came out of that rib like an angry bird.
She came forth like a bird that got loose
suddenly from its cage.
Out of the cage came Eve,
escaping, escaping.
She was clothed in her skin like the sun
and her ankles were not for sale.
God looked out through his tunnel
and was pleased.
Adam sat like a lawyer
and read the book of life.
Only his eyes were alive.
They did the work of a blast furnace.
Only later did Adam and Eve go galloping,
galloping into the apple.
They made the noise of the moon-chew
and let the juice fall down like tears.
Because of this same apple
Eve gave birth to the evilest of creatures
with its bellyful of dirt
and its hair seven inches long.
It had two eyes full of poison
and routine pointed teeth.
Thus Eve gave birth.
In this unnatural act
she gave birth to a rat.
It slid from her like a pearl.
It was ugly, of course,
but Eve did not know that
and when it died before its time
she placed its tiny body
on that piece of kindergarten called STAR.
Now all us cursed ones falling out after
with our evil mouths and our worried eyes
die before our time
but do not go to some heaven, some hell
but are put on the RAT’S STAR
which is as wide as Asia
and as happy as a barbershop quartet.
We are put there beside the three thieves
for the lowest of us all
deserve to smile in eternity
like a watermelon.
Well, that could've been a LOT worse. When I first see a grid like this my whole being slumps. "What am I going to have to endure this time?" So when you start out with That attitude ... well, a puzzle like this comes out smelling pretty sweet. I count about nine Unfortunate Crosses in the two quadstacks, but out of 30? That's ... OK. Pretty good, even, given the level of difficulty. Again, I'd mostly prefer we just avoid the quadstack altogether, thanks very much, but I've suffered much worse than this in quadstacks—even triple stacks—and the actual stack answers are Good, so ... yes, this one passes. It gets the Martin Ashwood-Smith Quadstack Gold Star Seal of Approval (a thing I'm handing out now, apparently).
[This is how I started: note my trusted quadstack strategy of Quickly Throw in Whatever First Comes To Mind For The Downs and See Where You're At. It worked!!]
I would've changed 49A from LAS to ETS and then clued 50D THEMS as ["___ fightin' words!"]. This is because I hate everything about the word SLAVER and ditto AHEMS (though for very different reasons). To be clear, SLAVER is a word, so it's not empirically bad. It's just a matter of taste. I would rather sail around the unpleasant associations there If Possible. I guess you could change the clue on SLAVER to refer to drool, but gross (you've already got SNOT in the puzzle—why push it?). You could also change SLAVER to SHAVER, but you'd get HAS at 49A right next to *HAD* A HEART OF GOLD, so that wouldn't really work. My way gets you Hall-of-Fame pitcher and fellow Fresnan Tom SEAVER, a saucer full of ETS, *and* "THEMS fightin' words!" It's a winning combination.
[Here I was at the halfway point: just a handful of tiny openings to try to squeeze through]
I laughed at "Boy, DOI!" once I finally figured out it was "Boy, DO I!" "Boy DOI" is much more fun to say. Here is a poem I wrote from the answers in this grid about a beatnik who gets revenge on his square boss by ramming the boss's car with a shopping cart: I'M HIP I HATE I DENT
This one was beautiful, but man was it easy. I had slight misstep at first, entering ROO instead of EMU (4D: Prey for a dingo), and figured this was going to be a typical mildly tough Friday, so I took a screenshot of my first breakthrough:
And then ... less than 4 minutes later I was done. Done done. The whole thing took me 4:44, including screenshot time. Bonkers. Those corners are pretty segmented / isolated, so I figured I'd have at least a little trouble with one of them, but GO FOR THE JUGULAR (NICE ONE!) and ANJOUS meant the SW corner was toast, and then EMERGES and BARE meant the NE was toast, and then TITIS / TEN K meant the SE was toast. And that was that. In each corner, I got the answers that gave me a bloc of first letters easily. That is, BARE gave me all the first letters in the Acrosses in the NE. ANJOUS gave me the first letters of the long Downs in the SW. Those first-letter providers are crucial—way higher-value than other answers. Most answers are far easier to get from a first letter than from any other single letters. Not all. But most. So if you nail the first-letter provider, your time can speed up Considerably. And I got them all, everywhere, today. Hence 4:44. My friend Amy took the 4:44 as a challenge. Her time: 4:44. I had that screenshot handicap, but she claims to have had a brief conversation with her husband mid-solve, so: tie. Which is a huge win for me, as she is one of the fastest solvers in the country.
[My student Clare's graduation cap, all decorated and ready for action this weekend. If you look real close, you can see Joel Fagliano's name on one of the puzzles ... she made sure of this]
This grid is so smooth, so pretty, so polished. None of this look-at-me low word count baloney (which only a few can pull off well). It's a 72-word delight with nary a clunker in sight. One thing: I think GARBED is a clunker, and I don't know why it wasn't GARRET. "A garret is a habitable attic or small and often dismal or cramped living space at the top of a house. In the days before lifts (elevators) this was the least prestigious position in a building, and often had sloping ceilings." I lived in a garret apartment once. Being 6'3" ... it was pretty comical. Anyway, GARBED shmarbed. Other than that, though, there's just the occasional wee bit of crosswordese. Mostly what you get are glorious long answers and solid, shiny mid-range answers. Really nice work. I don't think GO FOR THE JUGULAR (3D: Attack viciously) and THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (12D: Approachable, unglamorous sort) pair well (!!) but taken individually, they are fantastic. Huge props also to REFUSENIK (17A: Order-flouting protester). I just watched a beatnik-themed Roger Corman movie called "Bucket of Blood." Well, that's it for -nik news. Good night.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")