Country crooner Robbins / MON 6-8-15 / Noted watering hole in Beverly Hills / Coconut-flaked Girl Scout cookies / Old pulp reading

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday)

THEME: Hey, MAN — "MAN" can follow eight different theme answers to make movie titles:

• CINDERELLA (17A: *Glass slipper wearer in a fairy tale)
• I LOVE YOU (25A: *Valentine's Day message)
• REPO (16A: *Seizure in a driveway, maybe)
• DEAD (32A: *Out of juice, as a battery)
• IRON (46A: *Fe, in chemistry)
• RAIN (66A: *Drought ender)
• MARATHON (53A: *26-mile race)
• DEMOLITION (64A: *Job done with a wrecking ball)

Word of the Day: POLO LOUNGE (8D: Noted watering hole in Beverly Hills) —

The Polo Lounge is located inside the Beverly Hills Hotel at 9641 Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California. […] The lounge has been described as "done up in peachy pink (as you might expect), with deep carpets and dark green booths, each booth featuring a plug-in phone. Legend has it that Mia Farrow (and maybe even Marlene Dietrich) was banned from the Polo Lounge for wearing pants." 

Hernando Courtright, who ran The Beverly Hills Hotel in the '30s and '40s, had a friend named Charles Wrightsman, who led a national champion polo team. Wrightsman felt it unseemly to keep the team trophy, a silver bowl, in his own home. Courtright, on hearing his friend's dilemma, offered to display the bowl in the hotel's bar, which was being redecorated at the time. The name for the bar and its lounge sprang from that favor.

The Polo Lounge was seen as the premier power dining spot in all of Los Angeles. There are three dining areas complete with the signature pink and green motif. The photograph behind the bar depicts Will Rogers and Darryl F. Zanuck, two lounge regulars, playing polo. The menu "still offers a classic Neil McCarthy salad, named after the polo-playing millionaire." (wikipedia)

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Hey there. I enjoyed this. Far more entertaining than your average Monday, what with all those long Downs bouncing around and adding entertainment value to a puzzle that already has nine (albeit mostly short) theme answers. I thought the puzzle was playing harder-than-average, but since I came in one second under the 3-minute wire, it's hard to argue the puzzle was anything but Monday-easy—which adds to its impressiveness, in my eyes. Hard to get six long (8+-letter) Downs into an already theme-dense grid and still get it to come out Monday-easy. It's true that there's some meh stuff here, but there was too much hip and swinging stuff for me to pay it no nevermind. (Is that the expression? I grew up in central California, so most of my sense of homespun idiom comes from '70s television and probably can't be trusted.


I had some missteps along the way, despite the fast solve. I had POLO and wrote in GROUND. That answer was wrong in at least two ways. I also got very specific and had TWO EGGS where I needed just RAW EGGS (43A: Cake batter ingredients). That clue is weird, as recipes assume you know the eggs should be raw and so generally just ask for eggs. Probably TWO EGGS. So I stand by my wrong answer. I saw Judd APATOW in a little bookstore in O'Hare back in April. And that is my Judd APATOW story. Just looked up "I LOVE YOU, [MAN]" and despite the fact that it stars both Paul Rudd and Jason Segel (who have been in multiple other APATOW productions), APATOW appears not to have been involved with this movie at all. I would see a movie called "AXIOM MAN," but probably not "CRAP MAN."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I finally got around to doing a write-up of last weekend's INDIE 500 CROSSWORD PUZZLE TOURNAMENT. I proofread it and everything! Check it out.

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