Cereal with propeller-headed mascot / THU 7-14-11 / St Pete ball field / Art is fruit that grows in man / Histoire de first in popular series

Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley and Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Ps AND Qs (51A: Good behavior ... or a hint to two lines of letters in this puzzle) — diagonal line of black squares cuts across center of grid. On one side is a line of Ps, and on the other, a line of Qs


Word of the Day: QUISP (35D: Cereal with a propeller-headed mascot) —

Quisp is a sugar-sweetened breakfast cereal from the Quaker Oats Company. It was introduced in 1965 and continued as a mass-market grocery item until the late 1970s. Sometime afterward, the company sold the item sporadically, and upon the rise of the Internet began selling it primarily online.

Quisp was initially marketed with a sister brand, Quake. Its joint-product television commercials were produced by Jay Ward, a major producer of animated television series. (wikipedia)

[QUAKE *and* QUISP!]

• • •

An elegant puzzle that I could not find the handle on for the Longest time. In retrospect, I don't really understand what went wrong. I think there were two major problems. First, I simply didn't see or come across the theme revealer for the Loooooonnnngest time. It's in a weird place. I kept thinking I'd stumble on it, but that didn't happen. Once it did, I got it instantly (I could see the Q-line developing at that point) and from then on out, the puzzle felt reasonably easy. The other major problem I had was dropping in ADMAN instead of ADREP at 43A: Madison Ave. figure. This may seem an innocuous little mistake, but it really kept me stuck. Since most of the rest of my puzzle was Very sparsely filled in, I suspected there was some major trick, like a rebus, awaiting me somewhere. So when ADMAN got me DMOP- as the opening of 38D: Enlarged letter at the start of a chapter (DROPCAP), rather than figure something was wrong, as a normal person would, I just charged ahead, thinking some gimmick would pop out later and make it all OK. I mean, the AD clearly worked, so I never questioned the MAN. Otherwise, I was simply, unaccountably out of step with the puzzle at first. GUFF for 'TUDE (5D: Cheekiness, slangily). TURN IN for RETIRE (15D: Call it a day). ERAT for QUOD (26D: Q.E.D. part). REPLY for QUERY (30A: "Who?," e.g.). ONT for QUE (39D: Canadian prov.). TOKEN for SCRIP (20D: Money substitute). BBS for QTS (22A: Oil amts.). Just one of those days.

BIP (7D: Marcel Marceau character) and QUISP were just outside my ken. I live reasonably close to Utica, but a million different Native American-sounding names felt like possibilities for the county name. ITASCA? ITHACA? (No; 16A: County of Utica, N.Y. = ONEIDA). None of the fill or clues were terribly grabby or memorable (except maybe SADISTS—58A: Crossword editors, say). But I liked the elegant simplicity of the gimmick. Fill was mostly solid. Pretty nice work. And a bonus (second) theme answer in MANNERS to boot. Well done.


Bullets:

• 1A: Crew and others (SPORTS) — Me: "Uh ... JS? NECKS?"
  
• 49A: He said "Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant" (ARP) — artist in 3 letters? ARP is a good bet.
  
• 60A: One not with the Church of England (PAPIST) — again, this term is a pejorative and should be clued as such.
  
• 9D: Town on the south shore of Long Island (ISLIP) — I know almost nothing about Long Island, but I knew this.
• 36D: "Histoire de ___," first in a series of popular children's books (BABAR) — "Histoire" and BABAR rhyme, which is how I finally came to terms with this one.
  
• 52D: Ones often calling the shots? (SOTS) — great clue. My first answer: DOCS. It made sense to me at the time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld