Deadbeat student at TV's Highland High / SUN 11-4-18 / Torch carrier's announcement / Shiny beetle disliked by fruit growers / Satine's profession in Moulin Rouge / German-Swiss author who won 1946 Nobel in Literature / Greek hero killed by giant scorpion

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (10:36)

THEME: none, somehow... ("UNTHEMED")

Word of the Day: Steve DITKO (37D: Steve who co-created Spider-Man) —

Stephen J. Ditko^[1] (/ˈdɪtkoʊ/; November 2, 1927 – c. June 29, 2018) was an American comics artistand writer best known as the artist and co-creator, with Stan Lee, of the Marvel Comics superheroes Spider-Man and Doctor Strange. [...] During the 1950s, Ditko also drew for Atlas Comics, a forerunner of Marvel Comics. He went on to contribute much significant work to Marvel. In 1966, after being the exclusive artist on The Amazing Spider-Man and the "Doctor Strange" feature in Strange Tales, Ditko left Marvel for reasons he never specified.

Ditko continued to work for Charlton and also DC Comics, including a revamp of the long-running character the Blue Beetle, and creating or co-creating the Question, the Creeper, Shade the Changing Man, and Hawk and Dove. Ditko also began contributing to small independent publishers, where he created Mr. A, a hero reflecting the influence of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Ditko largely declined to give interviews, saying he preferred to communicate through his work.

Ditko was inducted into the comics industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1990, and into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994. (wikipedia)

• • •

This feels like a cop-out. The Sunday pile must've gotten dangerously low and so they picked up the Batphone (Patphone?) and were like "Help!" And of course, when one of the best constructors on the planet gives you a puzzle, it's gonna be very solid. Nothing to sneeze at. A very solid endeavor. But it pales next to a good themed Sunday (an admittedly hard genre to pull off) and it pales next to a themeless Fri or Sat, which are a. harder, and b. generally filled with more outstanding entries than this thing is. I'd put any random Patrick Berry 15x15 themeless up against this, any day. The only remarkable long entry I see here is "ARE WE DONE HERE?," which I love. Other stuff is perfectly fine, for the most part, but there's very little that seems new or daring or even interesting. AS BIG AS A HOUSE I kinda like, despite the fact that it's the kind of phrase that primarily gets used pejoratively. But entries like FOREST GREEN and WIRE RECORDERS doesn't evoke much of anything, and the rest of the (mostly fine) fill just seems like placeholder stuff. Maybe they're experimenting with the "Easier Themeless" genre? I dunno. But it's not really for me. Not bad. But a let-down. A punt.

["... where Mickey Mouse is 88-Across!"]

There weren't really any problem areas. I had a little trouble getting into the west from up above, despite PET SEMATARY's being a gimme. From below I was blocked by TDGARDEN, the name of which I'd forgotten (58A: Home arena of the Bruins and Celtics)—I had the -AR- and kept wanting something-ARENA (despite the fact that "arena" is in the clue). But once I found DITKO (a gimme for me—I'm teaching his work next week) and KATIE HOLMES (49A: Joey Potter's portrayer on "Dawon's Creek"), even that western section opened right up. A little further east, in the upper-middle of the grid, I had a little trouble dropping down from above because I had completely forgotten (if I ever knew them in the first place) every detail about BEAVIS's life. That clue—32D: Deadbeat student at TV's Highland High—meant absolutely nothing to me. LAWMEN, in that same general area, was also hard, in that it's a vague / quaint term as well as a plural that *doesn't* end in "S" (41D: Wearers of white hats). I have no idea what else to say about this puzzle. FIGEATER was weird? (19D: Shiny beetle disliked by fruit growers) There, I said that.


Hey, if you haven't yet backed the Kickstarter for "The Inkubator," you should get on that. "The Inkubator" will be an ongoing, 2x/month crossword made entirely by women—constructed, edited ... maybe even proofread, I don't know. But it's run by two very talented women—Laura Braunstein and Tracy Bennett—and I'm very excited to see the way they contribute to and challenge the norms of the crossword world. They've already totally crushed their fundraising goal, so this project is *going* to happen. Subscribe. Now. Ooh, better yet, subscribe AND buy subscriptions for friends & family, for the various end-of-year Holidays. I still haven't subscribed myself, because I am preternaturally lazy and procrastinative, but I think I'll fix that now.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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