1914 battle locale / SUN 1-31-16 / Old Southwest outlaw / Title chameleon of 2011 animated film / Bay former US base on Luzon / Pope John X's successor / Explorer for England who mistook Canada for Asia / Nomadic northerner / News sensation of 10/4/1957

Constructor: Yaakov Bendavid

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Message To Buyers" — theme answers are ... messages to buyers? ... notices you might in advertisements or on products you purchase ... but here, reclued wackily (with "?" clues and everything) through reimagined meanings of phrase words (underlined words, below, are given new wacky meanings in their clues):

Theme answers:

• ASSEMBLY REQUIRED (23A: Notice regarding voting in a state legislature?)
• INTEL INSIDE (34A: Sign on the N.S.A.'s entrance?)
• CONTAINS SMALL PARTS (56A: Audition caution for a movie with a cast of thousands?)
• BATTERY NOT INCLUDED (78A: Note on a watered-down assault indictment?)
• NO MONEY DOWN (97A: Offer of free pillow fill?)
• STORE IN A DRY PLACE (113A: Desert supermarket?)

Word of the Day: SUBIC Bay (10A: ___ Bay, former U.S. base on Luzon) —

Subic Bay is a bay on the west coast of the island of Luzon in Zambales, Philippines, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of Manila Bay. It is an extension of the South China Sea, and its shores were formerly the site of a major United States Navy facility named U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay, it is now the location of an industrial and commercial area known as the Subic Bay Freeport Zone under the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. // The bay was long recognized for its deep and protected waters, but development was slow due to lack of level terrain around the bay. (wikipedia)

• • •

It took me a while to figure out what was going on, as the coherence of the theme answers, as a set, is not immediately apparent. For instance, "INTEL INSIDE" is an ad slogan, not a "message to buyers" (any more than "Coke is It" is a message to buyers). So if you're solving from the top down ... it takes a while for the concept to become clear. And even then ... the theme is light (just six answers?) and the answers themselves are often slightly off-feeling. For instance, the most spot-on version of the first "message" is "some ASSEMBLY REQUIRED." I'm sure the some-less version exists, but it's not le phrase juste. "INTEL INSIDE," as I say, is a real outlier, as it's not a "message" at all (it's a slogan). As with the first themer, the fourth has a more classic iteration: "Batteries (plural) not included." Spielberg even made a movie with that title. And I know the last themer as "store in a cool, dry place." So, you could get a lawyer (Lionel Hutz, say (see above)) to defend the phrases as they appear in the grid, but ... you shouldn't need a lawyer.


The fill has many rough moments, and can't come close to making up for the tepid, slightly awkward theme. Stuff one should try Desperately to keep out of one's grid: LEOVI (all LEO + Roman numerals, really), SUBIC (?), KPS (plural? really?), BSED (dear lord), STOL (old-school crosswordese), EEN, OCTA, "TO SIR" (unless it's clued ["___, With Love"]), TER (106A: Thrice, in prescriptions) (er, no, never, not any more, ask a doctor—I did), etc. I was fortunate enough to end on a high note—the highest note in the puzzle, actually: MAN'S MAN! (86D: Masculine icon). Took me a while to get, and gave me a great aha moment. And it was the very last thing I put in the grid. Not much about the rest of the puzzle was very exciting. I will say that with the exception of TE AMO, it's very clean through the middle, which is impressive, as that's a good chunk of white space to handle so smoothly. Seven adjacent 6+-letter Downs in a row there from ASSIST down to RIOTER. I just realized that if BSED had been clued the way people actually *use* BSED (i.e. BS'ed), my feelings on it would've done a 180.


Here's a message from Evan Birnholz, crossword constructor for the Washington Post:

"For anyone who may have missed my earlier puzzles because they weren't available in Across Lite format, they can get all of them for a limited time. Between now and February 8, my first eight published Post puzzles will be available for download in Across Lite format at this link. After that point I'm deleting their folder, and they'll have only the previous four weeks' worth of puzzles as normal. So they'll need to download them soon if they want them."

Evan is doing a great job over there. In just the past month, I've had two Pulitzer-winning writers tell me how impressed they've been with his work. I'm not sure what their having Pulitzers has to do with their puzzle judgment, but I thought I'd just drop that factoid in there as if it meant something. I hope you enjoyed it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Ancient collection of Sanskrit hymns / SAT 1-30-16 / Hungarian hunting dog / Great magician floating lightbulb / Shorts popular in 1920s '30s / River of myth where one drinks to forget / Prize at top of maypole / Sackers in sack of Rome 410 AD / Clothing company whose mail-order catalog debuted in 1905

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson and Brad Wilber

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: RIGVEDA (38D: Ancient collection of Sanskrit hymns) —

The Rigveda (Sanskrit: ऋग्वेद ṛgveda, from ṛc "praise, shine" and veda "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is one of the four canonical sacred texts (śruti) of Hinduism known as the Vedas. The text is a collection of 1,028 hymns and 10,600 verses, organized into ten books (Mandalas). [...] Rigveda is one of the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language. Philological and linguistic evidence indicate that the Rigveda was composed in the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent, most likely between c. 1500–1200 BC, though a wider approximation of c. 1700–1100 BC has also been given. // Some of its verses continue to be recited during Hindu rites of passage celebrations such as weddings and religious prayers, making it probably the world's oldest religious text in continued use. (wikipedia)

• • •

A little too precious for me. Definitely way out of my wheelhouse. Technical terms (BRACKEN?) and magicians I've never heard of (BLACKSTONE) and not just the Vedas, which I have heard of, but RIGVEDA, dishes I'd never eat (VEAL MARSALA), maypole activities (?!) (WREATH), a Puffin relative that looks diminutive but somehow isn't (?) (AUKLET), a stock term I don't know (DAWN RAID), something called CREPEY ... so much of it was arcane to me. This was surprising, as I got the NW instantly—every first answer I thought of was right (well, I went with PAPA before MAMA BEAR, but I went in to the Downs very prepared to change that one).

So I thought it would be easy, if not terribly exciting. But then it got a lot harder, and somewhat more exciting, but not much. I didn't have any experience of "ooh, cool answer." All of the longest answers seem dull. Except VISIGOTHS—that's flashy. I don't know ... it's well made, just not to my taste. With the exception of SIPPY CUP and ME TIME (28D: What isn't working?), this feels more Maleskan than Shortzian in its general sensibility.

[10D: Shorts popular in the 1920s and '30s]

Do people know VIZSLA!? I used to pore over dog breed books, back when I had dog-ownership fantasies, 10+ years ago, before I got my first dog, Dutchess, a husky/shepherd mix we got from a shelter in northern PA, and well before I got my second dog, Gabby, a purebred chocolate lab I got because my friend was like "we're getting a chocolate lab puppy and there are unclaimed female puppies in the litter—you want one?" I mean, really. "Do you want a chocolate lab puppy?" What was I supposed to say??? Where was I? Oh, right VIZSLA? The  *only* reason I knew it (and I had to struggle mightily to bring it to the surface) was because I had gone through those dog breed books cover to cover, and I'd taken those online tests What Dog Is Right For You, and the VIZSLA frequently came up near the top. "How exotic-sounding?" And I haven't seen the name since. Until today. Sounds like a car, not a dog. "Come Experience ... the 2017 Ford VIZSLA!" (because "VIZSLA: It's Everywhere You Want To Be" is too spot-on)

I spelled MASSAD thusly and didn't check the cross and so ended with a PORTA / MASSAD error. I don't like  that cross, but I should've been able to infer that "O" from the clue, 43D: ___-Novo (capital on the Gulf of Guinea). Otherwise, it was fast, then slow, then done, with very few pleasure points. Clean, well-crafted, not for me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Green-glazed Chinese porcelain / FRI 1-29-16 / Relative of Without doubt in Magic 8 Ball / 2008 R&B Grammy winner for Growing Pains / For-profit university with dozens of US campuses / Vehicle that's loaded in Harry Belafonte hit / Watt-second fraction

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe slightly harder than usual)

THEME: none

Important crosswordese:

• Ned ROREM (5-letter composer of crossword fame; he'll bail you out of many spots)

Word of the Day: CELADON (34A: Green-glazed Chinese porcelain) —

[google]

• • •

This isn't very exciting, but it's very clean. Very polished. No wincing at all, which is surprising for a 66-worder. Something about it just feels tepid, despite the flashiness of GENERAL ZOD and the odd-but-pleasingly-retro IT IS DECIDEDLY SO (7D: Relative of "Without a doubt" in a Magic 8 Ball). Hard to keep up that level of excitement and enthusiasm, though, with fill like CELADON and MACLEAN and TREELESS and MAUNA LOA and LEAVENED and WELL READ and TESH and BOREDOM — all fine answers, but nothing to make you really sit up and take notice. The one aspect of this puzzle that really does deserve credit—not just credit, but a medal of some sort—is the clue on CAKE PAN (10D: Battery container?). I had to work that answer letter by bleeping letter, and when I finally got it, I Got It, and it felt good. Worth it. When the struggle is worth the payoff, there's really no better feeling as a solver.


My biggest struggle today was definitely that NW corner. I got nothing on my first pass, and ended up having to back into it via the tail ends of SUNTANNING and "ONE, PLEASE" (I had "---, PLEASE" for the latter and just ... guessed. I bet on loneliness, and won big!). But those longer Acrosses didn't come easily, and without them, I was lost in the NW. The answer that got me started was BONET (5D: Lisa of "The Cosby Show"), and, as happens every time I get a toehold with a pop culture clue, I don't feel good about it. Feels like cheating. BONET OUTER LUNA ERG to (Mary J.) BLIGE. Then I dropped ZOD and went back to save the stranded answers in the NW. The rest of the puzzle just played like a normal Friday for me. I did have to send several longer answers across the grid before I got any real traction (always an issue when there's lots of white space), but once I got the basic latticework going ...

 [note the LEMON error...]

... the surrounding answers started to fall into place. I ended on PAR VALUE, which is fitting, as the puzzle was roughly as exciting as that answer is.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Lumberjack contests / THU 1-28-16 / Mother of Eos Selene / fishy deli order / Former liberal informally / Home of Carthage Palace / Souvenir of Russian trip / Burlesque co-star 2010 / Seeker of elixir of life /

Constructor: Elizabeth C. Gorski

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BALLOON (39A: Party staple suggested by connecting this puzzle's special squares) — if you connect all the "HE" squares (symbol for "helium"), you get a round shape, which I'm guessing is supposed to be a helium-filled BALLOON

Theme answers:

• I CHEATED / ALL HERE
• CHER / HENCE
• SEETHE / ALCHEMIST
• RHEA / HENNA
• THEA / BATHE
• HELIUM (?) / ACID HEADS
• TUNA HERO
• ACHE FOR
• TITHE / THEO 

Word of the Day: DUPLE (33A: Twofold) —

adj.

1. Consisting of two; double.

2. Music Consisting of two or a multiple of two beats to the measure. (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

There's some cool parts to this—I like the improvised "HE"-containing fill, like ACHE FOR and "I CHEATED" and ALL HERE. I've never heard TUNA HERO, only TUNA SUB, but maybe that's regional (58A: Fishy deli order). I also don't believe in ACID HEADS. POT HEADS, of course (they're the ones ON POT). DEAD HEADS, so I'm told (I like how DEAD from DEAD SPOT intersects HEADS, making a little DEAD / HEADS crossing...). ACID HEADS seems over-improvised. It's one of those answers crosswords keeps trying to convince me is real, like ROLEOS and Laura INNES (sorry, Laura; not buying it!). Fill has rough patches, but is mostly lively and fun. The theme as a whole doesn't work that great. You can call it a BALLOON, and I see that there is HElium in those squares, but nothing about the BALLOON says "floating." It's a circle. It's just a circle. So there's nothing very BALLOON-specific (again, besides the HELIUM). Some way to simulate floating, which is to say, some way to simulate a string (for example) would've been nice. Not sure how one would do that. All I know is ... circle is circle is circle. It's a circle. Visually. That is what it is.

[update: apparently there was a string in the paper / pdf. Just not for us lowlifes who solve in AcrossLite or directly on the NYT app. Once again, the NYT fails to indicate this. Here you go]

DUPLE is a ridiculous non-word. I'd've done everything in my power to cull it. Not a big fan of RADO, either, though that, presumably, is a word people actually utter (when, say, they're buying a high-end Swiss watch), unlike DUPLE, which no one ever says ever. DUPLO is a kind of chunk faux-Lego, if I remember correctly. Crossing A NICE with A COLD is kind of an atrocity. Two bad partials ... crossing? Maybe the theme was taxing this grid more than I imagine. Anyway, I mostly enjoyed this. Didn't have too much trouble except for in and around DUPLE. I really need to stop writing that word. It's driving me a little nuts right now.


See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Bikini blast briefly / WED 1-27-16 / Service with bird logo / 2001 Sean Penn movie / Affair that led to Scooter Libby's 2007 conviction informally /

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "THE TIMES / THEY ARE / A-CHANGIN'" (23A: With 38- and 52-Across, 1964 Bob Dylan song ... or a hint to the answers to this puzzle's starred clues) — answers to starred clues are anagrams of TIMES

Theme answers:

• SMITE
• ITEMS
• MITES
• EMITS
• IT'S ME
• I'M SET

Word of the Day: SMOOT-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (1D) —

The Tariff Act of 1930 (codified at 19 U.S.C. ch. 4), otherwise known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff or Hawley–Smoot Tariff, was an act sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and signed into law on June 17, 1930, that raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. // The dutiable tariff level (this does not include duty-free imports—see Tariff levels below) under the act was the highest in the U.S. in 100 years, exceeded by a small margin by the Tariff of 1828.^[3] The great majority of economists then and ever since view the Act, and the ensuing retaliatory tariffs by America's trading partners, as responsible for reducing American exports and imports by more than half. According to Ben Bernanke, "Economists still agree that Smoot-Hawley and the ensuing tariff wars were highly counterproductive and contributed to the depth and length of the global Depression." The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was one of the causes of The Great Depression as foreign trade with Europe as well as China, which the United States had just recently set up an "Open-Door Policy" with, was vital to the economy. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey, I actually kinda like this. The theme, I mean. The fill ... er, that's another story. But the theme really works nicely. At first I ignored the starred clues, and just plowed ahead until I got the Dylan title, at which point I thought ... well, nothing really. Shrug. And then the puzzle was over (about a half minute faster than yesterday!). And *then* I saw what was going on, with the anagrams. So while I wish the puzzle had been a bit harder (so I'd've been forced to notice the theme during solving) and I really really wish the fill had been cleaner (it's quite poor), I think the concept is solid. And he picked up all the anagarms, too, I think. There are I-STEM verbs in Latin, but I don't think that's exactly a crossworthy answer. There are also the MÉTIS (one of Canada's official Aboriginal peoples), but again, not sure it's something you'd expect to see on a Wednesday, or ever. 


The long Downs (IN THE MOMENT, INDIGO GIRLS) are just fine, but I wish the rest (and I mean all of it) had been torn out and redone. ILE DE N-TEST is one of the worst juxtapositions I've ever seen. Multiple RDAS? Multiple ATNOS? A C-TEAM?? IGO GES ESOS ... I'M AT the point where I would rather REOIL ISAO and ELIA than experience This much junk fill again. You gotta gotta gotta polish your grid better than this. Gotta. The last thing you want is to have cringe-worthy fill taking attention away from your worthy theme.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Heroine princess of Mozart's Idomeneo / TUE 1-26-16 / Compton's state to hip-hoppers / Antidiarrheal brand

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: DAVID / BOWIE (35D: With 43-Across, singer of the lyric formed by the first parts of 20-, 24-, 40-, 51- and 58-Across) — A tribute puzzle that spells out the opening lyric of his song "Space Oddity" (1969): "GROUND / CONTROL / TO / MAJOR / TOM"

Theme answers:

• GROUND OUTS
• CONTROL FREAK
• TO TASTE
• MAJOR PROBLEM
• TOMFOOLERY

Word of the Day: ST. LUCIA (4D: Caribbean island whose capital is Castries) —

Saint Lucia ...  is a sovereign island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of 617 km² (238.23 sq mi) and has a population of 174,000 (2010). Its capital is Castries. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a decent, basic Bowie tribute. That lyric certainly makes a nice cohesive unit, and you've got Bowie's name in the middle there, however awkwardly staggered ... Bowie's work was itself so visionary and strange that I can write off any wonkiness as appropriately thematic, I think. Today, we'll just call it "artistic" or "avant-garde." First-words quote themes aren't the most exciting things in the world, but it's a Tuesday, so why not? Very accessible, and gives Everyone a nice "aha" moment, as well as an opportunity to fill in lots of grid real estate very easily. I wrote in TO and MAJOR and TOM without even reading their respective clues — strangely, this did not seem to help my solving time much. I was a little on the high side, even. I blame ST. LUCIA (4D: Caribbean island whose capital is Castries), for which I drew a complete blank (that clue was zero help). Not getting that meant rounding a corner in either direction (into the N, into the W) got somewhat harder. Later, ILIA slowed me right down, because WTF? (37D: Heroine princess of Mozart's "Idomeneo") I just changed ILIA DKNY to IDEA DUTY and already like it better. And then NUMLOCK, yikes (46D: Key near the upper-right corner of a PC keyboard). Have not seen that. My keyboard has a "caps lock" and that's it. So despite the lyrical giveaway, my time was no better than average for a Tuesday. Slightly worse, actually.


I like the loose, colloquial feel of this grid, all those KINDAs and I HEAR YAs and NO LIEs. I also like that you might carry DAVID / BOWIE music on your IPOD NANO, and that Bowie sang about TABLOIDS in "Space Oddity," at least indirectly ("And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear..."). So the theme is basic, and there are rough patches in the fill, but it's hard for me to be anything but pleased with a Bowie puzzle.



See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Finnish-based telecom / MON 1-25-16 / Barrier outside popular nightclub / shish kebab holders

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: CHEW TOY (39A: Puppy amuser ... or the end of the answer to each starred clue) — answer ends are all things dogs put in their mouths for amusement; whether said things actually qualify as "chew toy"s ... I don't know.

Theme answers:

• MASKED BALL (17A: *Party with disguises)
• FISH STICK (3D: *Food item often dipped in ketchup or tartar sauce)
• FUNNY BONE (35D: *Inaptly named part of the elbow)
• VELVET ROPE (59A: *Barrier outside a popular nightclub)

Word of the Day: ANDRE Braugher (5D: Actor Braugher of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine") —

Andre Braugher (/ˈbraʊər/; born July 1, 1962) is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Detective Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Street from 1993 to 1998 and again in the 2000 made-for-TV film, Owen Thoreau Jr. on the TNT show Men of a Certain Age, and his Emmy-nominated performance as Captain Ray Holt on the Golden Globe-winning comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm 98% certain Ian Livengood has a dog. A dog that was once a puppy. So I don't know how he figures that a "ball" or a "stick" is a CHEW TOY. "Rope," yes. "Bone," sort of. But the other things are just toys. Things dogs fetch. Things they put in their mouths because it is really their only means of effectively "playing" with any object (what with their tragic lack of opposable thumbs and all...). If your dog is chewing on a stick, there's a good chance he/she will aspirate bark. Not fun, for you or the dog. And if your dog is "chewing" on the ball, two things will happen: that ball will not last long, and it will also get so impossibly slobbery that you will refuse to take it from your dog's mouth, much to your dog's impatience and chagrin (I speak from recent, i.e. this morning, experience). So, to sum up, you can make the argument that all the end-words here are dog toys, but "CHEW TOYs," no. No you can't.  Here's a picture of one of my dogs getting petted by a toddler (earlier today)—luckily my dog is super-good-natured and did not use said toddler for a CHEW TOY:

I have mostly given up on the NFL, but I did watch the end of the Pats/Broncos game, just before solving this puzzle, and am now considering whether sports spectatorship, particularly if it involves tense, down-to-the-wire matchups, might not be an effective pre-solving ritual—I shredded this puzzle in just over 2:30. And that despite completely blanking on ANDRE Braugher's name and (worse) the location of Shanghai (!?). I don't feel that great about the crossing of "HERE" in HERESY with "HERE" in ... well, HERE. I feel even less great about crossing THE and THE in that same center section (although I do love "THE NERVE!" as an answer). Mostly this puzzle is clean, harmless fun. But I'm standing by my CHEW TOY purism. Now please enjoy this picture of river ice that looks like my *other* dog in profile:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Country singer Collin / SUN 1-24-16 / Quorum for Jewish worship / John of Plymouth Colony / Daily schedule for filming / Theodore who directed St Vincent 2014 / Last king of Spain before Juan Carlos / VW head / Soggy computer brain

Constructor: Francis Heaney and Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Initial Turn" — 3-letter first words in familiar phrases have their second and third letters switched, creating familiar 3-letter abbreviations (or "initials"), which results in wacky phrases / wacky "?"-cluing:

Theme answers:

• SDI AND NANCY (23A: Two things on Ronald Reagan's mind?)
• TBA COLA (30A: "We'll tell you what soda we're serving later"?)
• DNA SAVAGE (32A: Brute working on the Human Genome Project?)
• CPU OF NOODLES (48A: Soggy computer brain?)
• CPA GUNS (50A: H&R Block employee's biceps?)
• PDA OF PAPER (65A: Origami BlackBerry, e.g.?)
• RBI TICKLER (68A: Amusing baseball scoring play?)
• GTO MILK (91A: Drink in an old Pontiac?)
• BTU? SERIOUSLY? (93A: "An A/C measure? Are you kidding me?")
• BYO WONDER (104A: Sign in a restaurant that doesn't serve white bread?)
• TMI COOK (108A: Chef who explains in detail how the sausages are made?)
• BYU ON CREDIT (117A: Financial aid plan for a school in Provo?)

Word of the Day: Theodore MELFI (60A: Theodore who directed "St. Vincent," 2014) —

Theodore Melfi (Brooklyn, New York, USA) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for his feature length debut film St. Vincent starring Bill Murray. (This is the Entirety of his awesomely bullshit-free wikipedia page)

• • •

This one threatened to be brutal, but then mellowed out nicely. I spent something like 4+ minutes on the NW alone, trying to figure out what was going on, putting malls in wrong places and misremembering early American Johns (I went with ROLFE ... that's somebody, right?) and forgetting my scant Hebrew etc. I had to go pick up the NANCY of that first themer and then back slowly up before a. seeing there was some play on the movie title "Sid and Nancy," and then b. figuring out what that play was. Nobody likes three-letter abbrs. much—not in crosswords anyway—but I'd file this under "Crosswordese Repurposing" themes, and as such, it's pretty good. The answers were clever, and somewhat tough to uncover. Tough enough, anyway. The fill gets away from them a bunch. Never cross-ref your unfortunate short stuff (ABA, ATTYS). One WALLA is about as bad as multiple MYOPIAS. The far SW corner is a little sour and the broader SE, same. In the latter's case, all I can think is that someone *really* wanted "MEIN HERR," grid quality be damned. That SAR TIERI STYRO chunk is flat-out painful. IS LOYAL TO is pretty iffy. Imagine IS PRETTY IFFY as fill, and you see what I mean. So I wish this had been cleaner. But the theme is entertaining (and dense!), and the toughness level was decent. Acceptable fare, overall.


I was trying to remember the exact number of the [Quorum for Jewish worship] and I was like "I think it's ten" (correct!) "... but this is six letters ending in 'N', so it must be ELEVEN" (noooooooo!). With every passing day, I am less and less able to get a grip on the current pop culture. I find this alarming, as I am someone who pays attention to the news every day, listens to new music, has some awareness of new books. It's movies and TV that are gonna kill me. My watching habits have just atrophied. What I do watch tends to be movies on TCM. I think this has been a great boon for my life, my mental health, my fitness, but for crosswords, er, not so much. This is all to say that I *got* you, Eliza DUSHKU, despite having only the faintest idea who you are. And I got *you*, NATALIE Dormer, despite having no idea who you are (had NA-, guessed), but MELFI, lord help me no. Needed every cross. And I'll just take y'all's word for it that Collin RAYE is a thing.

[RIP Glenn Frey]

I have occasionally gotten questions about puzzles for kids, and while I do know of some books out there that are pretty decent, I want to direct your attention to the Kickstarter project of Eric Berlin, accomplished author (of "The Puzzling World of Winston Breen" and its sequels), and top-tier (TIER I?) puzzle-maker. He's filling the kid-puzzle void (ages 9+) with "PUZZLE YOUR KIDS," a subscription service that gives you two kid-friendly puzzles a week, and, at least twice a year, a puzzle hunt—a suite of puzzles that fit together to tell a story. The weekly puzzles are word puzzles of all different kinds. He's got samples on the Kickstarter page. If you have a kid or know a kid who likes puzzles, or whom you think you can hook on puzzles (I mean, beats drugs, right? Probably?), then you should definitely subscribe, or buy a gift subscription for a curious kid that you know. Eric's very close to funding this project, so please go put him over the top today. That would be great. Thanks.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Shield decorated with head of Gorgon / SAT 1-23-16 / Wife in John Le Carre's Constant Gardener / British port from which John Cabot sailed to New World in 1497 / Player of green alien in guardians of galaxy blue alien in Avatar / City called old pueblo / French city once held by William Conqueror / Real life New York hospital sometimes seen on Law & Order SVU / Stark half brother of Jon Snow / Mythological subject for Leonardo Correggio Rubens

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ZOE SALDANA (21D: Player of a green alien in "Guardians of the Galaxy" and a blue alien in "Avatar") —

Zoe Saldana-Perego (born Zoe Yadira Saldaña Nazario; June 19, 1978), Zoe Saldana (/sælˈdænə/ sal-DAN-ə), is an American actress and dancer. Following her performances with the FACES theater group, Saldana made her screen debut in an episode of Law & Order (1999). Her film career began a year later with Center Stage (2000), followed by a role in Crossroads (2002). She first gained some prominence for her role as Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). // Saldana's breakthrough came in 2009 with the roles of Nyota Uhura in Star Trek and Neytiri in James Cameron's Avatar (2009). The latter film received widespread acclaim, and is the highest-grossing film of all time. Saldana continued her successful career with films such as Colombiana (2011), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). (wikipedia)

• • •

Kameron Austin Collins (KAC) is just so good at this. His puzzles somehow manage to be high and low (check out his biweekly themeless crossword, entitled, fittingly ... "HIGH:low"), smooth and crunchy, peanut butter and chocolate, all at once. The puzzle will be too poppy for some; as someone who has never seen "Avatar," or "Game of Thrones," or a single episode of "SVU," it was almost too poppy for me. But it wasn't. That's the point—I'd get into scrapes, but then crosses would get me out. Miss a TV question, get a basic vocab word, or some slang, or a Renaissance-era exploration answer, or PERFIDY, or what have you. I feel like I can rely on KAC's puzzles to dip into all manner of current things (shows, language, topics, etc.) but not relentlessly. The puzzle roams wide, and is full of surprises. It pulses and breathes and darts. Like the sourdough starter I've been cultivating for the past week or so, It's Alive! Not moribund, the way crosswords have a reputation for being—the way they can, on occasion, still be. There's a reason the American Values Club crossword recently made KAC one of its two new constructor hires. Old school craftsmanship + 2016 woke-ness.* One of the best constructors around, and he's only just started. Look out.


"AH, BLISS"—who says that? I feel like it's a phrase I recognize to be real, but that I can't really place? It feels so mannered and strange. Anyway, I found it hard to parse. Didn't help that I tried to run 4- through 6-Down and only got one of them right. BOY ICER JENNY is all kinds of jacked when what's actually called for is LAD ICER SHREK (you might've thought SHREK's "mate" was Fiona, not Donkey, but ... different meaning of "mate" here...) . At least I knew enough to ditch those answers and try again. Was pretty sure it was SITZ bath (20A), and the "Z" immediately gave me ZOE SALDANA. Without the "Z," I would've struggled to call up her name; with it, boom. Once I built up the NW from there (which took a little doing), I didn't have any major snags the rest of the way, though I did have some ridiculously good guesses. TESSA off the -SA. ROBB off the RO- (despite never having seen "Game of Thrones"). PERFIDY off the P-. LEDA off the -A. There was some awkward over -ING-ing with the KNELLING / EKING crossing (ing ing ing) in the SW. KNELLING in particular was hard to see, given the plural clue (24D: Passing sounds?). And there are at least three plausible four-letter ST-- answers for 42A: Check. I went with STAY. Then STOP. Ended with STEM. Literally ended, in that that "M" was the last thing in the grid. I think the cluing (-ING!) in this puzzle could've stood to be more playful and clever. But the grid is Tight. All in all, a delightful romp. More more more.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"The phenomenon of being woke is a cultural push to challenge problematic norms, systemic injustices and the overall status quo ..."—Raven Cras

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Postwar German nickname / FRI 1-22-16 / Viking girl in How to train your Dragon / Chuck who advised Nixon / Winter wear resembling overalls / Old sandlot game

Constructor: Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: NANETTE Lepore (22D: Fashion designer Lepore) —

Nanette Lepore (born January 1, 1964) is an American fashion designer based in New York City. New York magazine has said that "her gypsy-influenced designs are feminine and youthful. The looks are full of bold colors and bright prints, with ruffles and lace that manage to look good-time-girly but not overly frilly." (wikipedia)

• • •

Finished with facility, aka EASE. Despite the fact that there were a bunch of names I didn't know, and the puzzle seemed to be anchored in a past I never lived in (i.e. that misty time of my ELDERS, when DER ALTE squared off against Chuck COLSON in a rousing game of ONE O'CAT ...), the puzzle proved remarkably tractable. This was largely because the long answers were so easy to get. Got all the long Acrosses with somewhere between zero and three of the answers' first letters. When you can walk across all levels of the grid that easily, there's probably not going to be much that can slow you down. The whole thing felt pretty tepid, for the most part, though I really liked GLUTEN-FREE PASTA, both because it's a modern answer and because the clue was intriguingly inscrutable. [Rice elbows, e.g.] —> "elbows" definitely had me thinking pasta, but ... I was also imagining the elbows of Condoleeza and Jerry and the Owls of Rice U.


Very rare to have a themeless puzzle constructed by a woman. I don't know what the stats are, but I feel like, out of the ~104 themeless puzzles each year, maybe 5 are constructed, in part or in total, by women. I don't know if it's a coincidence (it probably is), but there seemed to be a Lot of women's names in this puzzle: ASTRID, NANETTE, BETSEY, CLARICE, and EVA. Women outnumber men as answers, which ... again, I have no idea how often this actually happens, but I want to say "not often." Wait, no ... looks like there are six men, if you count DANTE (plus DER ALTE, KEL, SWEE PEA (swee' pea was a dude, right?), Lance ITO, and that COLSON guy) (shoulda made that answer COLSON Whitehead, one of whose many virtues is being alive now). Oops, also STAN LEE. So I take back the outnumbering part. But the fact that five women's names *feels* like a lot—the fact that I noticed—tells you something about how low the Expectation Bar has been set. Not much else to say about this one except INATREE will never be not terrible, unless the clue is something involving "K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Golf Channel analyst Nick / THU 1-21-16 / Chocolate treat since 1932 / PC task-switching shortcut / Ford aircraft of 1920s-30s / Outburst accompanying facepalm / It's below C V B N M

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Beyond Easy

THEME: SIDE / BARS (35A: With 44-Across, off-the-record discussions ... or 12 answers in this puzzle?) — the two columns running along either SIDE of the grid contain words that must be followed by "BAR" to make sense of their clues:

Theme answers:

• SNACK / DIVE / SAND
• POWER / OPEN / TACO
• TOOL / CLAM / SPACE
• MARS / TIKI / SALAD 

Word of the Day: Nick FALDO (21D: Golf Channel analyst Nick) —

Sir Nicholas Alexander Faldo MBE (born 18 July 1957) is an English professional golfer on the European Tour, now mainly an on-air golf analyst. A top player of his era, renowned for his single-minded dedication to the game, he was ranked No. 1 on the Official World Golf Ranking for a total of 97 weeks. His 40 professional wins include 30 victories on the European Tour and six major championships: three Open Championships (1987, 1990, 1992) and three Masters (1989, 1990, 1996). // Faldo has since become a television pundit for major golf championships. In 2006, he became the lead golf analyst for CBS Sports. In 2012, Faldo joined the BBC Sport on-air team for coverage of the Open Championship. (wikipedia)

• • •

This took me less than five minutes, and I don't have much interest in spending much more time than that writing it up. It's a theme, and it makes a kind of sense. It doesn't seem NYT-worthy, and it certainly doesn't seem very well conceived, in terms of delivering some kind of pleasurable experience to the solver. At core, there's wordplay, as there often is. SIDE BARS becomes (somewhat) literal, as the left and right sides of the grid have words that must be followed (in your mind) by BAR in order to make sense. SIDE BARS. Fine. But there are three main problems here. One, this is boring. Two, your definition of "side" is pretty arbitrary. Once you move in one column on either side (to 2 and 14, as opposed to just 1 and 15), and you make those Downs "BAR" answer as well, you are stuck in no-man's land, "side"-wise. You've left the true "side" behind, but in every case you've got banks of *three* Downs on the "side" (all of the same length), and you've only decided to "BAR" two of them? This makes your definition of "side" seem particularly arbitrary. Structurally defective, this grid is. One column (along the "side") would make sense. Three would also make sense (since the three columns on either side are *exactly* the same in terms of dimensions). Two ... is ridiculous. Neither here nor there.


Third, and this is the worst part: once you tumble to the gimmick, the grid just fills itself in. Yawn. Here, I'll show you. I pieced together the NW, lucking into PASTA as my wrong answer at 2D: High-carb bite, which gave me the "P" that got me SPLICE that eventually got me Everything. Once SNACK went in, I saw what was going on. Adjacent POWER, same thing. And ... the rest is history. This is what my grid looked like after about a minute:

This is far too much territory to just give away. Far far too much. An absurd amount. The only place I even had to work a tiny bit to get the "SIDE" answers was in the NE, where TOOL bar took me a second. Otherwise ... just fill those answers in. Twitter agrees (well, this random unscientific sampling of three agrees):

 

And it's not like the rest of the grid was spectacular, fill-wise. This whole puzzle feels like something that should've been kept in your puzzle notebook until you'd figured out exactly how to execute in a way that would be clean, special, memorable. This incarnation merely rises to the level of "it'll do." Not NYT-worthy. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Deposits of glacial debris / WED 1-20-16 / Pitch-correcting audio processor / Charles who wrote Peg Woffington / Clearly Different eye care chain / Cross-dressing Streisand character

Constructor: Herre Schouwerwou

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: DRY MARTINI (49A: Cocktail made by combining the ends of 17-, 26- and 38-Across) — theme answers end in GIN, VERMOUTH, and ICE ... there's also a tacked-on answer that's supposed to be a martini-related pun: OLIVER TWIST (60A: Dickens classic ... and, phonetically, two garnishes for a 49-Across)

Theme answers:

• EXTRA VIRGIN (17A: Like some top-quality kitchen oil)
• RIVER MOUTH (26A: Delta locale)
• DIAPER SERVICE (38A: Exchange program for preschoolers?)

Word of the Day: Joe ORTON (29A: "Loot" playwright Joe) —

John Kingsley "Joe" Orton (1 January 1933 – 9 August 1967) was an English playwright and author. His public career was short but prolific, lasting from 1964 until his death three years later. During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies. The adjective Ortonesque is sometimes used to refer to work characterised by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism. (wikipedia)

• • •

I drink martinis from time to time, so I like the way this puzzle thinks. I just ... don't like the way this puzzle executes. At all. First of all, there is nothing, nada, zero about this particular set of ingredients (GIN, VERMOUTH, ICE) that makes a *DRY* MARTINI. It's just a martini. Those are the basic ingredients of a martini. A martini martini. There is nothing—I repeat, Nothing—"DRY" about the martini recipe hidden at the ends of the theme answers. "DRY"ness has to do with the amount of vermouth. The less vermouth, the more "DRY" (you use "dry" vermouth, but more vermouth actually means a wetter martini ...) But, again, without ratios to guide us, who knows what kind of martini we're dealing with? So the whole puzzle is a lie, or at least a misrepresentation. It's important to get these things straight.  Your ingredients say martini, your revealer says a specific kind of martini. Boo. Second, that OLIVER TWIST pun, yikes. Tacked-on and groan-worthy. Also, it's clued Terribly. "Olive or twist?" is a question, not "two garnishes." The "or" makes the clue flat-out wrong. "Olive or twist" is, grammatically, one garnish. "I can't decide if an olive or twist works best in this drink." See, singular. Then there's the ICE answer. I mean ... All the gin in the world won't make the taste of diaper go away. Was there no other ICE-ending answer? A diaper-free one? (A: there were, and are, millions).


The fill has its moments—the one I liked best was the POP MUSIC / AUTOTUNE juxtaposition. Nice. Apt. Other places, not so great. I was grimacing and kind of listing to one side as I worked through the IEVER / NAE / READE section down there. Nothing says "I give up" quite like that clue on PART V (7D: Fifth installment  of a miniseries). And when's the last time anyone drank Sanka, let alone multiple SANKAS (!?!)? A couple answers stunned me, though not in bad ways. I would not have thought MORAINES a common enough word to be in a Wednesday puzzle (23D: Deposits of glacial debris). Can't remember why I know it. Maybe some scary documentary about the impending end of the planet due to ice melt-off? I was also surprised to see AMA, as clued (59A: Online Q&A session). Are there AMAs outside of Reddit? And what does it even stand for? Ask ... Me ... Another? Hang on, I'll look it up... ah, it's Ask Me Anything, and the internet is telling me it's basically *exclusive* to Reddit, so ugh to that. I mean ugh to "online" when you mean "Reddit and only Reddit." "Online" does not equal Reddit, though Reddit is a subset of "Online." This is basically my point about martini / DRY MARTINI, by the way.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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