Third Uncle singer / WED 9-19-12 / Expo 74 locale / on Don Russian port 1+ million / Wassily Russian-American Nobelist in Economics / Justin Bieber's genre / For hire org of 1930s / Clay pigeon launcher

Constructor: Michael Shteyman

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: the saying "FOOL ME ONCE (7D: Start of a four-part saying) / SHAME ON YOU / FOOL ME TWICE / SHAME ON ME," I guess

Word of the Day: ROSTOV-on-Don (1A: ___-on-Don, Russian port of 1+ million) —

Rostov-on-Don (Russian: Ростóв-на-Донý, tr. Rostov-na-Donu; IPA: [rɐˈstof nə dɐˈnu]) is a port city which is the administrative center of Rostov Oblast and theSouthern Federal District of Russia. It lies on the Don River, 32 kilometers (20 mi) from the Sea of Azov. In 2012, the city's population was recorded at 1,089,851 (2010 Census preliminary results); 1,068,267 (2002 Census); 1,019,305 (1989 Census).

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Shteyman is a skilled and accomplished constructor. He is also Russian. Now it's one thing to throw some clues in there that are oriented toward your particular background or field of interest or hobby or whatever, but four!?!? Four Russian clues? Including the two most obscure answers in the puzzle? In the same quadrant?—yuck. Ugh.  It's like if I made a puzzle where 4 crucial answers had "Simpsons" or Middle English literature or pulp fiction or Fresno or Pomona College or comics clues (yes, you *would* hate that...), of varying levels of obscurity, in order to balance out, difficulty-wise, an essentially unclued but ultimately boringly easy main theme answer that just fills itself in once you get enough crosses. Difficulty is one thing, totally self-indulgent difficulty is irksome.


Did not enjoy the theme—no clever clue, no ... nothing. Just a "saying" that you had to figure out from crosses. And once you did, as I say, it just filled itself in. No challenge. Just write. Then there's the jarring difficulty contrast of the corners, which were all Thur.-to-Sat. tough, and not in enjoyable ways. The overdose of Russian stuff (ROSTOV?? LEONTIEF??!?!?!) (16A: Wassily ___, Russian-American Nobelist in Economics) just soured me on the whole puzzle. Nothing against Russian stuff, per se, or any country's stuff. It's just ... here ... it's too much of one thing. And so many "?" clues (of varying quality) ... there's a limit, and this puzzle crossed it. (I don't know what the limit is, but I'm gonna say yes, 10, on a Wednesday, is crossing it).

NW was hard for understandable reasons. NE was hard for reasons that are harder to understand in retrospect. But the clues on TRAP (34A: Clay pigeon launcher), ENO (31A: "Third Uncle" singer), ORNATE, COASTER (clue seems to imply *roller* COASTER; 10D: Ride up and down?), ALTOONA (11D: City in the Alleghenies), and even TEEN POP (12D: Justin Bieber's genre) (I would've thought just POP)—none of them meant anything to me. But I think my frustration and annoyance at the puzzle in general was getting to me by this point (the last quadrant I solved) because once I got TINT (9D: Window treatment), and thus the first 3 letters of all the Acrosses, they all became instantly obvious. How did I not see them before? SHAME ON ME.

Good stuff: I was baffled by [Single dose?] until I was done with the puzzle and finally saw the answer (DAT). Very nice clue. Also baffled by [Urgent]. Had E-IGENT and still no idea. Until I did. EXIGENT! Good word. Also, though EARWAX is gross, it's a nice crossword answer (I knew the "cer-" part of [Cerumen] meant "wax," but otherwise, I was stumped). Just had a bunch of email exchanges with readers about the poem "Invictus," which included various movie references, so FREEMAN was one of the blessedly easy answers in today's grid (63A: Mandela portrayer in "Invictus," 2009). Wanted the "For hire" part of the clue at 49A: "For hire" org. of the 1930s (WPA) to be part of some saying (like, say, "Spenser: For Hire"), but couldn't think of one. Had no idea, or forgot, that SPOKANE ever had an Expo (3D: Expo '74 locale). We flew into there on our way to Idaho a couple years ago. It seemed lovely, but we only saw it from the periphery, so, who knows? (besides, presumably, Spokaneans).

Glad this one's behind me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld