Top-selling app of 2010 / SAT 2-14-15 / 2011 Flo Rida hit with lyric she ain't no rock star but she got groupies / Language introduced in 1995 / Torts course taker typically / Old sitcom family name / Ten Days in Mad House muckraker / Olivia who won Razzie / Group with slogan every child one voice / Parlor product made with iron /

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Olivia D'ABO (52D: Olivia who won a Razzie for "Bolero" and "Conan the Destroyer") —

Olivia Jane d'Abo (/ˈdɑːboʊ/; born 22 January 1969) is an English actress, singer-songwriter, and voice artist best known for portraying the rebellious teenage sister Karen Arnold in The Wonder Years and recurring villain Nicole Wallace in Law & Order: Criminal Intent. […] D'Abo's film debut was in the supporting role of Princess Jehnna in Conan the Destroyer, released in June 1984. Two months later, she appeared in the supporting role of the peasant girl Paloma in Bolero (1984). [whoa, rough start]

From 1988, d'Abo was in the main cast of The Wonder Years in the first four seasons. Her character, Karen Arnold, was the hippiesister. In 1992, she guest starred in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "True Q" as Amanda Rogers. As the recurring villainNicole Wallace, she made five appearances over six years on television crime-drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent. On the Sci-Fi Channel series Eureka, she has the recurring role of Abby Carter, the ex-wife of Sheriff Jack Carter. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is great work once again from Mr. Steinberg. Smooth, sparkling, wide-ranging, fascinating grid. There is one gratuitous bit of pop culture ephemera that I'm not that fond of as a longer crossword answer, but I am sort of fond of it as a song, so … I'm gonna allow it:

[Spin it for your valentine!]

When I saw David's byline, I thought "Oh, yeah, I can do this." Meaning: I tend to be on DS's wavelength much of the time. It's one of the few remaining things that keeps me deluded about how old I am. That, and being vaguely familiar with Flo Rida's oeuvre. But today, I had to fight for my right to party, much more than I usually do with a DS puzzle. But, like yesterday, almost all my trouble came in one section. And, like yesterday, that section was the NE. I started (like yesterday, like virtually every day) in the NW, where, like a bull in some kind of shop, I just crashed my way headlong into the direction of correct answers, making a terrible mess along the way. Maybe "bulldozer" is the better metaphor. You want to know how I brought that section down? (yep, bulldozer is better). Check this out. This is how I uncovered JAVASCRIPT (1A: Language introduced in 1995):

There are fully three wrong answers in there, but that -IPT was enough. SCRIPT! JAVASCRIPT! Unh! [spikes football]. Wasn't long before MAIDENFORM made TINKERED impossible and I realized how lucky that my wrong answer there had that "T" up front. *Maybe* I would've seen "SCRIPT" in all that mess without it, but I doubt it. Wrong answer for the win!

[See your MAIDENFORM "stockist"!]

So, I got out of there and into the center, which proved oddly easy. After flirting with ESPNEWS at 29A: It names an annual Sexiest Woman Alive, I realized that 30D: Like Confucius, often was QUOTED, and the "Q" made ESQUIRE obvious. Whole center done fast. From there I went into the NE but got stuck (more on that later). So I rode the ONE-TON pick-up into the SE, where I picked up NED and spun some DECCA records and then hit another wrong-answer bonanza. I mentally made the [Big name in scales] SELECTO and got CHUM TOKE OPES, 1 2 3. Turns out the scale was DETECTO, but whatevs, I was in business!

[Yes … the NE … we're coming to that …]

OK, so CHUM wasn't right, but once again (third time!) a wrong answer was right enough to get me some much-needed traction. Half-right. Wrong CHUM got me right KARATE CHOP. You take your luck where you find it. Anyway, I was not down there long, but I knew I had to go back to the NE, a move I was dreading because Man was I stuck up there. And look at the layout of that corner—it's really, really cut-off from the rest of the grid. There's just these teeny little one-square gateways in and out of that thing, so if you get stuck, no one's coming to your rescue. You're on your own. And the "P" from PRETEXT did nothing to help me get in to the bottom part of that corner, so I was back fighting with the top, where PETERS (20A: Old sitcom family name) and ORCA (18A: Major menace) were killing me, only I didn't know that. I just knew that *something* was wrong. MASS ONEL ORCA PETERS—I had an error in there (two, it turns out). PETERS seemed like the only name that would work, and wasn't that the name of the family on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (oh man, thank god I at least had the show right)? And I was weirdly confident about ORCA. I kept pulling MASS, even though, in retrospect, it seems the most obviously correct of those four Acrosses. Anyway, eventually I remembered the name was PETRIE (!), and when that didn't crack things with the Downs, some combination of pulling answers out and putting them back gave me a glimpse of this pattern at 12D: Top-selling app of 2010: AN-RY… and then I had the biggest "D'OH!" moment I've had in a while. The ubiquitous ANGRY BIRDS! How did I not know!? Self-loathing … rising. ANGRY SOLVER!

From there, there was just the SW, which proved *so* much easier than its symmetrical counterpart. Went in there like pow pow pow because of my deep knowledge of "blunts" ("deep" in that I know that you smoke them … that's about all I know). So: CIGARS. Then ACME. Then ODIC NORM ELLE. All in about 10 seconds.

Couldn't recall the exact title on the Flo Rida song, then went with CINEMA IDOL (!?!) at 27D: Cary Grant or Betty Grable. So that left only one hope … and it's all I needed. I love waffles, and ice cream, and even though I never order the WAFFLE CONE, it came readily to mind. After that, puzzle was as good as done. Lots of fighting, no wincing—that's a good Saturday. Whoa, wait, what (the hell) is ACI!?!? (58D: Handel's "___, Galatea e Polifemo"). Wow. Good thing I didn't see that, because I would've winced for sure.

Aside from not picking up ANGRY BIRDS earlier, the most annoying failure of the day was not remembering Nellie BLY, a figure I've discussed at length with my wife (who has a Ph.D. in US History and who specialized in the damn Gilded Age, i.e. BLY's time period). Here's the deal. At three letters, and with that clue (31A: "Ten Days in a Mad-House" muckraker), all my brain wanted was IDA Tarbell. Damn you, common three-letter muckraking crossword names! IDA Tarbell and Nellie BLY are roughly the same age and known for very similar things. But the clue was obviously calling for a last name, so, with IDA sitting in my brain and not going anywhere, I was just stuck. Never mind that I was confusing IDA Tarbell with IDA B. Wells (jeez louise, they practically rhyme). Gah. A lot of superficial knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld