The Past from Feminist Standpoint / MON 2-29-16 / Once ubiquitous red fixture seen along London streets

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: LEAP DAY (39A: 2/29/16, e.g. ... or a hint to the circled squares in this puzzle) — circled squares represent holi DAYs (i.e. words that precede DAY in the name of a well-know holiday) that LEAP over a black square, starting in the middle of one Across answer and finishing in the subsequent Across answer:

Theme answers:

• BON MOT / HERSTORY
• LA SCALA / BOREDOM
• NAIVETE / RANSOMS
• PHONE BOX / IN GEAR 

Word of the Day: SHAGGY (49D: Scooby-Doo's pal) —

Norville "Shaggy" Rogers is a fictional character in the Scooby-Doo franchise. He is a cowardly slacker and the long-time best friend and owner of his cowardly Great Dane Scooby-Doo. Shaggy is more interested in eating than solving mysteries. He and Scooby are the only characters to appear in all iterations of the franchise. (wikipedia)

• • •

Never saw the theme, but looking back on it now, it seems solid. Interesting approach to representing LEAP DAY (and on the correct day, hurray). The selected days are all over the map, with the last one ("Boxing") being one we don't even observe in the U.S., but it's still a familiar holiday, so no foul there. I will say that when I finished and then looked up in order to figure out what the heck the theme was, I first saw MOTHERS and LABOR and thought this was going in a very different direction. A birth-related direction. But then I saw VETERANS and ah, yes, right, leaping, days, etc. Got it. I wish novice constructors (and some veteran constructors, hint hint nudge nudge) would study this grid to see what Monday-smooth should be. Clean clean clean. Nothing to make me Wince. Of course there are less-than-ideal entries; every grid has them. But there's nothing forced or obscure or oddly unfamiliar, and yet, magically (i.e. through actual craft and attention and care), the fill is wide-ranging and varied and interesting, and the long answers are not wasted on boring junk: SEX PISTOLS (30D: Johnny Rotten's punk band, with "the") and GROUND ZERO (11D: Where the 9/11 Memorial is), both very nice. Tight theme, clean fill, flashy long stuff—this *should* be the regular, everyday quality of the Monday puzzle.

[TKO!]

Mostly sailed through this (2:44!?) but I had one pretty good ridiculous (and slightly time-consuming) mistake along the way. Put down SHAGGY and then checked out the Acrosses down there in the SE. Couldn't get any of them at first glance, so threw ASST across and worked on the Downs. Faced with S--- at 57D: Edible part of a sunflower, I went with the first flower part I could think of that fit in the spaces provided: STEM. Considering sunflowers grow on giant stalks, I'm guessing the stem is about the *least* edible part of the sunflower. But my brain doesn't operate in reality on Monday puzzles. It operates in the realm of Pattern Recognition. There's very little thought involved. And most of the time this allows me to move very very fast. But some of the time it means I eat STEM. You take the good with the bad, I guess.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Card table cloth / SUN 2-28-16 / Nougaty treats / World Heritage Site in Andes / Queen pop nickname / 1961 space chimp / 1994 bomb based on SNL character

Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Court Jesters" — basketball terms with wacky non-basketball "?" clues

Theme answers:

• 23A: Fly swatter? (BUZZER BEATER)
• 34A: Drool from both sides of the mouth? (DOUBLE DRIBBLE)
• 51A: Tip of an épée? (POINT GUARD)
• 58A: Busted timer? (SHOT CLOCK)
• 66A: Desi Arnaz? (BALL HANDLER)
• 79A: Winning an Oscar for "Norma Rae"? (FIELD GOAL)
• 88A: Acrophobe's term for a route through the mountains? (NO-LOOK PASS)
• 101A: Lament from an unlucky shrimper? (NOTHING BUT NET)
• 116A: Writing "30 and single" when it's really "50 and married" e.g.? (PERSONAL FOUL)
• 16D: Violation of Yom Kippur? (FAST BREAK)
• 79D: Rug dealer's special? (FREE THROW) 

Word of the Day: GIMBAL (52D: Stabilizer of a ship's compass) —

A gimbal is a pivoted support that allows the rotation of an object about a single axis. A set of three gimbals, one mounted on the other with orthogonal pivot axes, may be used to allow an object mounted on the innermost gimbal to remain independent of the rotation of its support (e.g. vertical in the first animation). For example, on a ship, the gyroscopes, shipboard compasses, stoves, and even drink holders typically use gimbals to keep them upright with respect to the horizon despite the ship's pitching and rolling. // The gimbal suspension used for mounting compasses and the like is sometimes called a Cardan suspension after Italian mathematician and physicist Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) described it in detail. However, Cardano did not invent the gimbal, nor did he claim to. The device has been known since antiquity and may not have a single identifiable inventor. (wikipedia)

• • •

I wish the NYT would discontinue this type of theme. It's a non-theme—just basketball terms. All the "entertainment" is in the cluing, so the whole thing feels cheap. You could do one of these with tennis and even keep the puzzle title. In fact, I'm 83% certain I've seen precisely such a puzzle before. The theme is dense, as it often is when the puzzle is trying to make up for the theme's weakness. Conceptually, this seems far beneath what the self-styled "best puzzle in the world" oughta be offering in its marquee puzzle. The clues aren't even that entertaining, honestly. If you're going to do this kind of theme, where *everything* is in the clues, then you should go for broke, pull out all the stops, and other clichés of similar meaning. I mean your clues should be outlandish, brazen, hilarious. These are knee-slappers, at best. Elbow-jabbers. Winkers. Bah. Also, the clue BALL HANDLER was just disturbing to me—no need to go to a clue that asserts / reinforces male dominance like that when there are other ways to get a wacky funny loony "?" clue out of that particular word pairing. Animals have handlers. Come on, man.

[Gutter ball?] (ALLEY OOPS)

Gonna take a wild guess here and say there is No Way that BAIZE was originally in this puzzle (12D: Card table cloth). I mean, that answer hasn't been in any NYT puzzle in 13 years. Yikes. That thing was obviously MAIZE, and then someone caught the MANS dupe at 63D: "Jeez!" (OH, MAN). Because no constructor in their right mind is knowingly, voluntarily going with BAIZE over MAIZE. And yet this decision still makes no sense, as you could easily change NRA to IRA or SRA or TRA, keeping MAIZE and getting rid of MANS. So I have no idea what kind of cluing thinking was going on there. All I know is that BAIZE is desperation fill, and there was absolutely no need for desperation here. GIMBAL has never appeared in the NYT before. Totally new word to me. I guess I just don't understand the taste that's driving this puzzle, or the rationale for much of what's happening with the theme or fill. Puzzle was mostly easy, but then [Popinjay] (???) for FOP crossing [Go through] (?) for EXPEND caused me to just stare at a single blank square for a while. ALECTO is spelled with two "L"s in the translations of "The Aeneid" that I know of, so that answer was not easy for me.

Haec ubi dicta dedit, terras horrenda petivit;
luctificam Allecto dirarum ab sede dearum
infernisque ciet tenebris, cui tristia bella              
iraeque insidiaeque et crimina noxia cordi.

When she had spoken these words, fearsome, she sought the earth:
and summoned Allecto, the grief-bringer, from the house
of the Fatal Furies, from the infernal shadows: in whose
mind are sad wars, angers and deceits, and guilty crimes.

See. Two "L"s. Both versions. But ALECTO is the spelling in the wikipedia entry, so it's legit. Just not Virgilian (and thus, dead to me).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Florida community with portmanteau name / SAT 2-27-16 / Crumbly mideastern dessert / Bomberman console / Czar known for his mental instability / Dinner serving in prodigal son parable / Dwarf planet discovered in 2005

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: HALVA (30D: Crumbly Mideastern dessert) —

Halva (halawa, alva, haleweh, halava, helava, helva, halwa, halua, aluva, chalva) is any of various dense, sweet, tahini based confections of arabic origin, served across the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Malta and the Jewish diaspora. // In global, popular usage it means "desserts" or "sweet", and describes two types of desserts:

Flour-based

This type of halva is slightly gelatinous and made from grain flour, typically semolina. The primary ingredients are clarified butter, flour, and sugar.

Nut-butter-based

This type of halva is crumbly and usually made from tahini (sesame paste) or other nut butters, such as sunflower seed butter. The primary ingredients are nut butter and sugar.

Halva may also be based on various other ingredients, including sunflower seeds, nut varieties, beans, lentils, and vegetables such as carrots, pumpkins, yams and squashes.
Halva can be kept at room temperature with little risk of spoilage. However, during hot summer months, it is better kept refrigerated, as it can turn runny after several days. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty straightforward Saturday fare. Did it right upon waking, at a leisurely pace, and finished about three minutes faster than yesterday, but not so fast it made my head spin. It was easy in the main, with a number of little KNOTty parts that required me to exert effort. Those ended up being the interesting parts, as the marquee answers, while nice and smooth, just didn't grab me that much, and there was definitely an ouchy bit here and there in the shorter fill. Seemed pretty clear from the jump that 1A: Anchor line meant "anchor" in the sense of television news anchor. The clue pretty much screamed "I'm trying to trick you, heh heh heh heh [sneer] [wring hands] [twirl mustache]." Classic misdirection language: clue looks nautical, but both its words have different potential spheres of meaning, and thus it's probably not nautical at all—this is how I think on Saturdays. But what do anchors say? "Dateline ..."? "And that's the way it is ..."? "Our top stories now..."? No idea. As usual, I used short stuff to get me going. Today: SEL (4D: Frites seasoning), but only after completely misreading the clue and writing in ÉTÉ. My brain registered something like "season when you fry in France." After I fixed that, I took an odd series of big steps down into the middle-right of the grid.

UTTER was an obvious guess, confirmed by R-ATA (who knows what spelling you're gonna get?), and then the next few answers after that were obvious. HALVA was such a weird throwback for me. I have a very location- and time-specific memory of HALVA: the San Francisco of my childhood. I remember when we'd visit, there were delis and other shops that would have HALVA bars out where "normal" shops (i.e. shops back home) might have the candy bars (home was Fresno, just to give you some idea of context here) . So I thought, "Sure, I'll try this." And found it both unusual (to my unsophisticated palate) and delicious. But I don't ever remember having HALVA anywhere else (in my entire life) except then and there. And yet, the name, somehow, I remember. Weird, considering it's a pretty damn common dessert and HALVA is surely available in most cities across the country now. For all I know they actually had HALVA bars in Fresno and I just never noticed. Anyway, that is my weird and largely uneventful HALVA story.


Had so much trouble parsing 35D: A host that even with -LEWS filled in I didn't get it. I was taking "A" as some kind of symbol or name or something, not as an indefinite article, and "host" can be understood a ton of different ways, of course. So there was some struggling there, but not much. The only other trouble spot was at the crossing of POWHATAN and SOWED, where I had to run the alphabet (and run it almost all the way—stupid "W"!) to get SOWED, which just did not occur to me at all for 45A: Set in motion. In fact, just looking at SO-ED, I couldn't think of *any* letter that could go there. PAWHATAN I just don't know. Maybe I've seen it before. Probably. But it's a jumble of letters to me, largely. There were other things I didn't know or couldn't remember (THAYER, IVAN IV, TAMIAMI), but crosses made them non-issues.


LEO and LEOPARD in same grid ... thumbs down. Liked freshness of HATERS (2D: No fans) and AIR BnB (48D: Website for budget travelers), but most other fill doesn't shine or surprise or delight that much. This is just a solid, workmanlike Saturday. A fine morning diversion.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Fragile fabric made from certain plant fibers / FRI 2-26-16 / 1991 Scorsese De Niro collaboration / Pioneering labor leader samuel / My response was informally / Yellow-flowered plant procuing sticky resin / Barber five-time Pro Bowler from Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Constructor: Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ALOE LACE (15A: Fragile fabric made from certain plant fibers) —

Hvar: agave or aloe lace

Hvar lace is unique in that the thread is collected from the aloe leaves of agave plants that grow on the island. The leaves are picked at a certain time of the year and are then specially processed to produce a thin, white thread. // The Benedictine nuns in the town of Hvar are the only ones who make the Hvar lace, which is also called "aloe lace". (wikipedia, buried deep, deep in the entry for "Lacemaking in Croatia")

• • •

This seemed pretty good, and pretty hard, but I'm not sure about either judgment because I solved it while watching and Tweeting about the GOP debate last night. Looking over the grid, I'll stand solidly by the "pretty good" part. There were a couple of plant-based answers that were from outer space (ALOE LACE being the more hilariously outlandish cousin of GUM WEED (21D: Yellow-flowered plant producing a sticky resin), whatever that is), and there were a few unfortunate short answers, but otherwise it's mostly vibrant, colloquial, current, and (especially for a 66-worder) smooth. If I went strictly by my solving time, I'd have this in the Challenging category, but I have to factor in my debate distraction, as well as the time I spent getting a couple of mid-solve screengrabs, so ... Medium-Challenging. The distinction hardly matters. It played harder than average. Those NW and SE corners, because they have the little-answer footholds, were easy enough to polish off, but I found everything from the NE to the SW to be Saturday-hard. Thought I was gonna cut into the middle with ease after ESCAPE KEY came effortlessly out of the bottom part of the NW corner, but it got me precisely nothing.

Tried all the Down crosses, came up empty. Never heard of CUT TIME, so I was at a real advantage there (36D: 2/2, to Toscanini). Thought 24D: Noisy recreation vehicles would be some kind of BIKES ... maybe? (no). Had to reboot with SOU (48D: Trifle) in the SW, which got me USERFEES and RAF and on from there. SE was probably the easiest part of the grid for me.

But again those teeny tiny openings into mid-grid made breaking this thing open very tough. Somehow, from -------US, I got BETWEEN US (29A: "Mum's the word"). I think that "N" seemed probably based on my sense that 11D: Adds with a whisk would probably end in "IN" (it did), so I went with it. And then BE PATIENT jumped out from the B-P------ pattern and I had the traction I needed. Love "I'M LIKE" since it's ubiquitous and yet I (almost?) never see it in crosswords. Hate Y'ERS, as no one ever ever ever ever said that. No one even knows what Gen Y is. It goes Boomers, Gen X'ers, Millennials, and then ... Freegans, I think. I forget. What the everloving fudge is Gen Y anyway? Let alone this alleged "Y'ERS" thing. Yikes. I wonder if the fill was originally NEWTON over OXHIDE over TAILED. Not that the resulting ODER or NEDS would be great or even good ... it's just that the NEWTON / NEDS version seems like a more plausible way to go than NEW TOY (kinda "green paint") and Y'ERS (atrocity). But these are minor issues in an overwhelmingly solid puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. wait, who the hell is PA BARKER? (32D: His wife and sons were Depression-era criminals). I keep googling and finding squat. Did anyone actually call this non-criminal guy "PA BARKER?" When I google "pa barker" in quotation marks I get, first hit, some old episode of "The Untouchables" TV show (?), and then a bunch of Pennsylvania-related things. Image search is worse. Just pictures of houses (??). PA BARKER seems pretty spurious. 

P.P.S. sorry I wasn't clear—Of Course I *know* who *Ma* Barker is (please stop sending me wikipedia links). She is famous. She existed. PA BARKER never did. Her husband's name was "George." He was never known as PA BARKER.  These aren't the Kettles, people. Come on.

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Epitome of cool with the / THU 2-25-16 / Style with illusory motion / Cactus flower eaters / Ratio involving height weight for short / Neighbor of Miss Gulch / Insert your least favorite Congressman here / america's diner is always open sloganeer

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: CRASH SITES (49A: Focal points of many F.A.A. investigations ... or a description of 18-, 24- and 40-Across?) — well-known websites "crash" (?) into each other, forming wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style)

Theme answers:

• AMAZON VINE (18A: South American monkey's handhold?)
• YAHOO POLITICO (24A: [Insert your least favorite congressman here?])
• VULTURE GAWKER (40A: Bird watcher upon spotting the rare California condor?) 

Word of the Day: ZOOL (38A: Veterinarian's branch of sci.) —

Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension is a platform game originally produced for the Amiga by Gremlin Graphics in 1992. It was later ported to several other platforms and followed by Zool 2 in 1993. (wikipedia)

• • •

This grid is bizarre. The puzzle is super-low word-count for any day, let alone a Thursday (66), but because of its shape, and specifically its massive black square count (43), it doesn't have the wide-open look you'd expect with a count that low (though those are reasonably open corners, reasonably nicely filled—a certain RHEUMYness in the SAXE-y SE notwithstanding). So style points for originality of grid shape. The theme doesn't quite work for me, though. I'm failing to feel the CRASHiness of the themers. It's more like JUXTAPOSESITES. ABUTSITES. It's just one site name followed by another site name. "CRASH" is a stretch and a half. Further, the site pairs are arbitrary and there are only three. I don't think of VINE as a "site." It's an app ... or a 6-second piece of video I sometimes see on Twitter. Not in the same ecosystem as, say, GAWKER. I also didn't know New York Magazine's Culture Vulture had become just VULTURE, but the name is correct, so no problem there. Seems like you could've made this Sunday-sized if you thought the theme was so great. JEZEBEL SLATE TWITTER BING DROPBOX. Lots of options out there. These weren't that funny—well, cluing on YAHOO POLITICO was decent, but the other clues were dull.


The fill ... IT'S OK. NYT average. Hardest clue for me by far was 36A: "Junk" (HEROIN). I had HERO-- and no idea. Even after I put in all the letters, I stared at it for a second, figuring I'd misread something. Then I got it. Junk. Junkie. H. Horse. Smack. I don't think I've seen / heard "junk" for a while, and we've got something of an opioid epidemic up here. Clue is fine, just baffled me. Had ARUBA for IBIZA (nowhere near each other, not sure what I was thinking) (28D: One of the Balearic Islands). For some reason the inclusion of a monkey in the AMAZON VINE clue threw me off terribly. Got AMAZON fast but was scrolling through monkeys trying to figure out what came next ... also scrolled through potential handholds ... ended up with TITI and RUNG. Neither, obviously, worked.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Popular Bach piece for lute / WED 2-24-16 / College benefactor Yale / Politico lampooned by Fey / Football legend Amos Alonzo / Apple originally marketed to schools / Central figure in Mussorgsky opera / Property recipient in law

Constructor: Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: SUBMERGES (37A: Goes underwater ... or a hint to the answers on the perimeter of this puzzle) — answers on the perimeter are real words that don't fit the clue unless you mentally supply the prefix "SUB-"

Theme answers:

• LIME, URBAN, DUES, STANCE, MARINE, SIDE, TRACT, TEXT, SCRIPT, LETTER

Word of the Day: BOURRÉE (32A: Popular Bach piece for the lute) —

Bourrée in E minor is a popular lute piece, the fifth movement from Suite in E minor for Lute, BWV 996 (BC L166) written by Johann Sebastian Bach. This piece is arguably one of the most famous pieces among guitarists. // A bourrée was a type of dance that originated in France with quick duple meter and an upbeat. Though the bourrée was popular as a social dance and shown in theatrical ballets during the reign of Louis XIV of France, the Bourrée in E minor was not intended for dancing. Nonetheless, some of the elements of the dance are incorporated in the piece. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was pretty painful. I don't think I even understand the theme. That is, I don't get the "merges" part of SUBMERGES. My friend Jesse just suggested "You merge sub with the word in the grid, I guess." Uh ... what? Is that right? I thought maybe (Maybe) the idea was that the SUB edges MERGE into each other ... at the corners ... but that doesn't make sense either, so I guess Jesse's right? The idea of mentally supplying a prefix is being framed as a "merge"? Dreadful. That revealer is borderline incoherent. And why are the answers on the margins, then? What does that have to do with "SUBMERGES"? Baffling. And the fill, man oh man. ENBANC over BOURRÉE pretty much says it all, but LSTS crossing ELIHU says a little more, and then EMAC (!) ESSENES STAGG ouch ouch ouch. Ouch. 2/3 of the parts of M.I.T. in abbrev. form ... I don't understand this puzzle or what it thinks it's doing or what its idea of "entertainment" is. Honestly, one of the grid doctors or Shortz himself had an Obligation to tear out that entire NE corner, from BOURRÉE up (at a minimum) and redo it. 'Cause it's a disaster as is.


Couldn't pick a CITRON out of a line-up. Looks like ENRAPT just means ... RAPT (47D: Totally absorbed), so that was weird. Had LEOTARD instead of UNITARD (11D: Acrobat's wear). Had WAWA / LISA for ECHO / EMAC, and was happier. I'm sorry, I'm still stuck on the very existence of BOURRÉE in this puzzle. Look at that clue. It's got "popular" and "lute" in it. Those words have nothing to do with each other. They shouldn't be allowed anywhere near each other. Popular ... among lutists? Lutenists or whatever they're called? Louts? We are badly, perhaps fatally, stretching the meaning of the word "popular" here. And to have the obscure Frenchism sitting under ENBANC, that's a pont trop loin, mes amis. I asked some of my friends to say nice things about this puzzle, since I appear to be incapable. Lena: "it's [an] impressively open grid for a weds. and honestly I think the theme is neat" (though when pressed she agreed that the revealer didn't make much sense). Patrick: "I liked the clue for ENO" (25A: Composer of music "as ignorable as it is interesting"). I don't know who's being quoted there, but yes, fun clue, and with crosswordese like ENO, a new clue is always welcome. OK, that's enough. Good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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Black flower in Dumas title / TUE 2-23-16 / Beijin'g s river basin / Gentlemen Prefer Blondes blonde / One terminus of Japanese bullet train / HMO doctor designations

Constructor: Elizabeth C. Gorski

Relative difficulty: Wednesday (i.e. Challenging *for a Tuesday*)

THEME: LAYER / CAKES (13D: With 51-Down, description of the circled answers?) — types of cakes are "layered" atop one another at three points in the puzzle

Theme answers:

• CHEESE (1A) on MARBLE (14A)
• CRUMB (34A) on PATTY (42A) on SHEET (45A)
• CARROT (70A) on SPONGE (73A)

Word of the Day: HAI (2D: Beijing's river basin) —

The Hai River (Chinese: 海河; pinyin: Hǎi Hé; literally: "Sea River"), previously called Bai He (Chinese: 白河; pinyin: Bái Hé; literally "White River"; Pei Ho in Western sources), is a river in the People's Republic of China which flows through Beijing and Tianjin before emptying into the Yellow Sea at the Bohai Sea. [...] Hai He is 1,329 kilometres (826 mi) long measured from the longest tributary. However, the Hai He is only around 70 kilometres (43 mi) from Tianjin to its estuary. Its basin has an area of approximately 319,000 km² (123,000 sq mi). Its annual flow is only half that of the Yellow River, or one-thirtieth that of the Yangtze River. (wikipedia)

• • •

A nifty little theme idea, but I have no idea why this played on a Tuesday. I was a full minute (i.e. a lifetime, over my normal Tuesday time). I almost never encounter answers I have no familiarity with on Tuesdays, and today there were a good handful. Plus the cluing was just vague enough to make me have to work harder than normal to finish this. Not surprisingly, the iffiest parts of the grid are right through the LAYER / CAKES. Everything is defensible, but much of it is sub-smooth. Not surprisingly, many of my struggles were right around the "layers." Didn't know HAI, but didn't struggle much there either, as all the surrounding stuff was easy enough, but PCPS kind of killed me, as I don't really know that term. Physician ... something something? *Oh*, that's short for Primary Care Physician??? Wow. Did not know that. NYT has never used this clue for PCPS. They use plural of the drug PCP, which is of course worse. The moral here, I think, is that PCPS is not great fill. Avoid. Anyway, between that and LORELEI (who what what?) and "outie or INNIE?" and a state nickname I've never heard of (LITTLE RHODY?) and NO SOAP (!?) (I had NO SALE) and BUS MAPS (which is a fine answer, but hard to get at from simple clue, 58A: Aids for some urban commuters), I was solidly into a normal Wednesday solving time. The puzzle felt old in its frame of reference (highly so)—both old-fashioned in fill (so much Latin... and other foreignisms ... and EERO and EOCENE etc.) and older-skewing in its cultural frame of reference (NO SOAP!)—but it was still mostly a pleasure to solve.


Oh, I left out the OTO-for-UTE mistake I made at the heart of the puzzle. Honestly, this is a no-brainer Wednesday, concept and all. Dumas title? Black TULIP? Loved the clue on KLEPTOMANIA (11D: Problem with lifting?), but it was definitely another element that added time. Oh well. This is a pleasant, admirable Wednesday puzzle. I'll just leave it at that.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Onetime stage name for Sean Combs / MON 2-22-16 / Fireplace smoke escapes through them / Presidential Palace in Paris / Fictional Plaza Hotel girl / Indian in many an old western

Constructor: Ed Sessa

Relative difficulty: Medium (i.e. normal Monday puzzle) (3:00)

THEME: DOWN-AND-DIRTY (22D: Done in a quick but effective manner ... or like the answers to the three starred clues?) — themers run Down and are (in various senses of the word) "Dirty":

Theme answers:

• CHIMNEY SWEEP (4D: *One as "lucky as lucky can be," in "Mary Poppins")
• SUCKER PUNCH (24D: *Sudden, unprovoked slug)
• X-RATED MOVIE (9D: *Showing at an adult film theater)

Word of the Day: P. DIDDY (48D: Onetime stage name for Sean Combs) —

Sean John Combs (born November 4, 1969), currently known as Puff Daddy or Puffy, and formerly known as Diddy and P. Diddy, is an American rapper, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur. Combs was born in Harlem and grew up in Mount Vernon, New York. He worked as a talent director at Uptown Records before founding Bad Boy Records in 1993. He released his debut album No Way Out in 1997, which has been certified seven times platinum and was followed by successful albums such as Forever (1999), The Saga Continues... (2001) and Press Play (2006). In 2009 Combs formed the musical group Diddy – Dirty Money and released the critically well-reviewed and commercially successful album Last Train to Paris (2010). (wikipedia)

• • •

Such a nice little theme, thus such a tragedy that the theme cluing has to go and step all over it. First, DOWN-AND-DIRTY isn't clued right. There seems to be some conflation with "quick-and-dirty." "DOWN-AND-DIRTY" conveys neither speed nor expediency. Look it up. No, don't bother. I did it for you:

adj. Informal

1. Intently and fiercely competitive, often unscrupulously so: a down-and-dirty political campaign.

2. Bawdy; lewd.

Why not have an accurate clue? Take the time to be accurate? There is no reason to just be wildly wrong about what the term actually means. Also, why the non-lyrically-supported clue on CHIMNEY SWEEP. "Chim, chimney/ Chim, chimney / Chim, chim, cher-ee / A sweep is as lucky / As lucky can be." A "sweep." It's a "sweep." Not a "CHIMNEY SWEEP." If you are going to use the lyrics to clue the term, then the lyrics oughta bear you out. I know that "sweep" is short for CHIMNEY SWEEP and I don't care. Precision. Also, do "adult film theaters" still exist? Porn is ubiquitous, but are "adult film theaters" even semi-common establishments any more. That clue's not wrong, but definitely needs updating. All this cluing inaccuracy / laziness is galling when the theme is so nice. It's nice. Take the time. Do it right. 

Fill is not good but not bad. Except ASKA, which is in fact bad (not that fond of NETFUL either). Astonishing that FLUES clue didn't cross-reference the CHIMNEY SWEEP clue. I mean, I'm not usually a big fan of the cross-referencing, but those two answers are crying out to each other. I am kind of hung up on CLV right now, imagining that (barring a complete teardown) I'd've gone with CLE. I asked Twitter what they best possible CL_ answer was, and sportswriter Diane Firstman shot back with CLA (Meredith), mostly as a joke, but I looked it up and holy $&%^ that is an actual (former) baseball player's actual (nick) name (CLA = short for "Claiborne," his middle name). Better yet, his real, non-nickname, his first name, is OLISE. If only he had been a major, or even minor star, we could've mined his name(s) for year(s). His early career was incredibly promising. Consider: "He did not surrender a run in 28 consecutive appearances, a span of 33²⁄₃ innings from July 18 through September 12 [2006]. That streak set a franchise record, eclipsing Randy Jones' 30-inning scoreless streak. The 33²⁄₃ scoreless innings also tied Orel Hershiser's mark in 1984 for the second-longest streak by a rookie since 1970. It now stands as the second-longest scoreless stretch by a rookie relief pitcher in the live-ball era (1920)" (wikipedia). Alas. 

 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Egocentric tyrant / SUN 2-21-16 / Augural observations / Wallachian prince who inspired Dracula / Toothy turner / B-roll from Splendor in Grass / DuPont creation of 1941 / Border disputer with Ethiopia / Classico competitor / Pindaric composition / Longtime employer of Helen Thomas / Her fans are called Little Monsters

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Awesome!" — homophone puzzle where "aw" sound stays the same but meanings / spellings of the words containing that sound change (via wackytastic "?" cluing). In every case, spelling change is from "O" to ... something else:

Theme answers:

• BAWDY BUILDING (23A: Burlesque theater?)
• POPCORN PAUPERS (31A: Moviegoers who can't afford concession stand snacks?)
• NAUGHTY PINE (42A: Bad kid's Christmas tree?)
• SHUTTLE CAULK (61A: Sealant used by NASA?)
• STALK FOOTAGE (67A: B-roll from "Splendor in the Grass"?)
• PAWED PEOPLE (87A: Owners of large enthusiastic dogs?)
• CHALK FULL O' NUTS (92A: Writing implement from Planters?)
• THE "MAUDE" SQUAD (106A: Supporting actors in a Bea Arthur sitcom?)

Word of the Day: HELOISE (113A: Legendary lover of Abelard) —

Héloïse (/ˈɛloʊ.iːz/ or /ˈhɛloʊ.iːz/; French: [e.lɔ.iz]; 1090?/1100–1? – 16 May 1164) was a French nun, writer, scholar, and abbess, best known for her love affair and correspondence with Peter Abélard. [...] Beyond the love story they tell, Héloïse's letters contribute one of the earliest, most radical feminist philosophies of not only the 12th century, but even today. Héloïse plainly writes of her disdain for marriage and even feminine life, stating in her first letter, “I preferred love to wedlock, freedom to a bond.”^[18] She is also later quoted with her famous lines, “What man, bent on sacred or philosophical thoughts, could endure the crying of children…? And what woman will be able to bear the constant filth and squalor of babies?" (wikipedia)

• • •

Shakespearian character: O-HEL--. Go.

That is a weird little pattern thingie that I never would have noticed were it not for today's puzzle, and my totally botching 21A: Shakespeare character who says "Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night" (OPHELIA) because I was staring at that precise pattern and only one character sprang to mind: OTHELLO. Weirder still—OTHELLO is in this damned puzzle. Just ... later on (69D: Game with a 64-square board). This little bit of Shakespearean weirdness will be far more memorable to me than this theme, which seems a little Sub-Berry in its ambition and execution. Underdone. PINKBERRY? If you're being corny, yes. It's a simple sound change. These can be OK if they result in killer answers, but these are just adequate, and some of the clues go beyond wacky to just weird and implausible? Hard to imagine a Christmas tree being "bad." Not hard to imagine a car air freshener fragrance designed to make you horny. Do you see what I mean? The cluing just wasn't daring enough, funny enough, interesting enough. And what the hell are "popcorn poppers?" Seriously. My popper knowledge ends at "jalapeño." (LOL I just realized that "popcorn poppers" are simply the machines that pop the popcorn.... yes. That makes sense).


I just went away to have dinner and now I'm back and remember virtually nothing about this puzzle (beyond the theme), which isn't a great sign. Was there actual grass in "Splendor in the Grass?" I think "Children of the Corn" (or even "Field of Dreams") is a far, far, far better movie reference for "STALK FOOTAGE." Because CLOUDSCAPE clue had a "?" on the end, I thought it was a themer at first. "Clod ... something? What?" (46D: Heavenly painting?). I had EMITTED instead of EFFUSED (88D: Gave off), and TORN OUT instead of TORN OFF (43D: Roughly removed). Not much more to add here. A pleasant diversion of a puzzle, but not very very Berry.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Longtime comic strip queen / SAT 2-20-16 / Single-speed two-wheeler / Old TV channel that aired XFL games / Cry after Freeze on 1980s TV show / Defendant in 1963 obscenity trial

Constructor: James Mulhern

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SHIH-Poo (58D: ___-poo (designer dog)) —

The Shih-poo is a small domestic dog. It is a crossbreed between a Poodle and a Shih Tzu. The name Shih-poo is a portmanteau of the two breed names. // Legitimate breed associations such as the AKC, the UKC, and the CKC, do not recognize the Shih-poo, or any other designer cross, as a breed in its own right. However, some major kennel clubs do accept registration of crossbreed and mixed-breed dogs for performance events such as agility and obedience. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty much a textbook Saturday. Normal Saturday solving time, normal (satisfactory) Saturday fill, grid shape, etc. At 72 words (the max), it would've been great if the puzzle could've come in a little cleaner and sparklier. PER SE over ALETA (16A: Longtime comic strip queen) made me kinda sad, as did ESE in a puzzle with MALTESE. But, as I say, it's fine. Just fine. It feels slightly dated, in a specifically "I was an '80s/'90s adolescent" kind of way. Maybe when you were a kid you had a FIXIE BIKE (a concept I grasp, but not a term I ever used or ever hear, despite having one as a kid)* and then as a teen in the '80s maybe you start watching "MIAMI VICE" and "Remington Steele" (starring Pierce BROSNAN), and then OFF YOU GO to college where you get into the music of Kurt COBAIN, buying "Nevermind" on USED CD because, well, you're a poor college student and Napster doesn't exist yet.

[EPIDERMIS]

There were several proper noun gimmes today, which was lucky for me, because I really needed them. Thought 1A: Lives the dream was ___S IT ALL, but IDI helped me put the "IT" in the right place, and thus really got things moving in the NW. Erich Maria REMARQUE, gimme. Never read "All Quiet," but I own a vintage paperback copy, and his name is just really memorable. Kendrick LAMAR (18A: Hip-hop artist Kendrick ___) just won a bunch of Grammys last week, I think (I find that particular awards show, and ... well, most awards shows, actually ... unbearable). His "To Pimp a Butterfly" was a huge critical and commercial hit last year. You'll see him a lot in the future. Not as much as ADELE, but more and more, for sure.


I have heard of internet addiction, but not INFOMANIA (45A: Facebook-checking fixation, e.g.). Seems to have some currency, but as with many MANIA-suffixed words, it's hard to tell if it's supposed to be bad or awesome (see WrestleMania, Obamamania, etc.). Is the "sack" in [Salt sack?] supposed to be a bed? Like ... a sailor (salt) sleeps in a BERTH? Might've been a little too cute for me. But again, overall, just fine. My only real problems were EAR PIECE for EAR PHONE (still think EAR PIECE is better answer) (14D: Bit of Secret Service attire), and SHAR-poo for the damn dog. At one point, I seriously (seriously) considered SHIT-poo. Rhymes with SHIH tzu better than SHIH-poo does, that's for sure. Plus the double-scatological angle just felt right.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*[update: I did not have a FIXIE BIKE, it seems. I had a simple one-speed, which you stopped by pedaling backward. A FIXIE BIKE has no free wheel ... no coasting ... I could coast on my childhood bike, but there were definitely no brakes. So mine was single-speed, but not "fixed gear." Look, if you want to know more, go here. I really don't get it or care]

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Longtime grandmotherly General Hospital actress / FRI 2-19-16 / Town hear Ireland's Shannon airport / Short-beaked bird / NBA coach Spoelstra / Danny's love in Ocean's Eleven / Town near Ireland's Shannon airport / Engineer Gray who co-founded Western Electric / View from UN memoirist / Port alternative

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: composers inside composers — composers whose names end with the names of other composers—so one composer clued as two:

Theme answers:

• 17. & 18A: Italian-born composer (MONTEVERDI) (i.e. MONTEVERDI *and* VERDI)
• 34. & 35A: German-born composer (OFFENBACH) (i.e. OFFENBACH *and* BACH)
• 59. & 60A: Austrian-born composer (SCHOENBERG) (i.e. SCHOENBERG *and* BERG)

Word of the Day: ELISHA Gray (46D: Engineer Gray who co-founded Western Electric) —

Elisha Gray (August 2, 1835 – January 21, 1901) was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Gray is best known for his development of a telephone prototype in 1876 in Highland Park, Illinois. Some recent authors have argued that Gray should be considered the true inventor of the telephone because Alexander Graham Bell allegedly stole the idea of the liquid transmitter from him, although Bell had been using liquid transmitters in his telephone experiments for more than two years previously. Bell's telephone patent was held up in numerous court decisions. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was way outside of my comfort zone, so I ended up with a time well north of my normal *Saturday* time, nowhere close to my average Friday time. To be honest, I only know half these composers. I mean, OFFENBACH and SCHOENBERG and BERG are names that I might recognize as composers if you schoewed them to me, but ... I couldn't name anything by them. Also, I honestly didn't understand the theme for the longest time, and the cluing seemed both trivial and hard. Whole NW was a wash for me the first time around. Only got a toe-hold in this thing because of COLA / COKE. After that, the NE came together pretty quickly, but that helped hardly at all.

Eventually worked up and over to the VERDI part, but ... no idea about the first part. Couldn't remember VERDI's first name, then sort of thought it was "Giuseppe" (which it is), but that didn't fit, and since FIAT (1A: Order) and ENNIS (13A: Town near Ireland's Shannon airport) and TIT (4D: Short-beaked bird) and (obviously) FEMBOT (1D: "Austin Powers" villain) were (at that point) beyond me, I was just stuck. Had to start over completely in the SW, with (I think) LITE EEKS ERIK SANS. That got me the symmetrical counterpart to the part I'd filled in up top, but again, no further. All themers, and both NW and SE, still mostly empty.

Please note that by this point I had managed to ditch the incorrect DR. EVIL but had decided that ORFF was one of the composers, and maybe the center themer was ORFF 'N' BACH (?). Oy. Also, note the BAA (as in "BAA BAA, black sheep"). I have never thought of "BYE" as a "cry," so ... yeah. I was just screwed. What are the roman numerals of Pope Benedict? No idea. Did you know POPE FRANCIS fits in that space? It does. Pulling teeth, I tell you. Pretty sure that TIE RODS was the answer that finally got things going in the NW. The SE was definitely the last thing to fall. GORSE ELISHA TESS ANNALEE ... I couldn't do anything with this puzzle. I think the concept is cute, but between my not really knowing so many of the names, and some occasionally icky answers like SRIS and OBLADI, and the pretentious faux-Latin plural SYLLABI (41A: Class lists?) (I am a longtime hardliner on this issue: #TeamSyllabuses), I just didn't enjoy myself much. Today, though, I think the problems are mostly mine, not the puzzle's. My struggle with composer names is especially ironic tonight, as I literally just got home from ... the opera. The first opera I've ever attended in my life. The director (Warren Jones) is a reader of this blog and offered me tickets to opening night and I thought "Sure, why not?" Got to see Menotti's "The Telephone" followed by Bernstein's "Trouble in Tahiti"—really wonderful, funny mid-century stuff ... but none of it helped me solve this puzzle.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Mandrake the Magician's sidekick / THU 2-18-16 / Land of ancient Ephesus / Rarest of 50 state birds / Devastating namein 2005 news

Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "I"s — Black squares form two large "I"s, which act as the letter "I" in the Across answers that run into them and extend away from them.

Word of the Day: LOTHAR (47D: Mandrake the Magician's sidekick) —

Mandrake the Magician is a syndicated newspaper comic strip, created by Lee Falk (before he created The Phantom). Mandrake began publication on June 11, 1934. Phil Davis soon took over as the strip's illustrator, while Falk continued to script. The strip is distributed by King Features Syndicate. [...] Lothar is Mandrake's best friend and crimefighting companion. Mandrake first met Lothar during his travels in Africa. Lothar was "Prince of the Seven Nations", a mighty federation of jungle tribes; but forbore to become king and instead followed Mandrake on his world travels. Lothar is often referred to as "the strongest man in the world", with the exception of Hojo — Mandrake's chef and secret chief of Inter Intel. Lothar is invulnerable to any weapon forged by man, impervious to heat, cold and possesses the stamina of a thousand men. He also cannot be harmed by magic directly (fire bolts, force bolts, spell incantations). He can lift an elephant by one hand easily. // One of the first African crimefighting heroes ever to appear in comics, Lothar made his first appearance alongside Mandrake in 1934 in the inaugural daily strip. In the beginning, Lothar spoke poor English and wore a fez, short pants, and a leopard skin. In a 1935 work by King Features Syndicate, Lothar is referred to as Mandrake's "giant black slave." When artist Fred Fredericks took over in 1965, Lothar spoke correct English and his clothing changed, although he often wore shirts with leopard-skin patterns. (wikipedia)

• • •

An old gimmick, and one that was very easy to pick up. I've seen this done with other letters ... I seem to recall a Sunday-sized puzzle with a giant "H" in it. I'm sure the black-squares-as-letters thing has been done many other ways as well. Is there a phrase or concept or anything that is being illustrated here? The "I"s have it? Seeing "I" to "I"?  Once you pick up the gimmick, then it's just a matter of solving the puzzle as if it were a themeless, with the letter "I" provided for you a hell of a bunch of times. That's it. Seems a bit cheap to use the "I"s as first-person pronouns twice. As for the fill, it's pretty gunky, though perhaps not as bad as I'd expected. I don't understand why (some) constructors don't take the time to learn to polish their grids, but the bigger mystery is why the substandardly filled puzzles keep getting accepted and run without the "fixing" they need. There was "fixing" in the cluing, of course. There always is (see the MAZ clue, for instance—no way that's the constructor's, for a host of reasons) (9D: ___ Kanata, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" character) (original clue was probably something like [1960 Pirates World Series hero, familiarly]). But -ICAL and -ENCE in the same grid? That's criminal (actually, either one of those suffixes on its own is pretty bad). ERST TOG CRU? WHO'S EFTS? SRI EEO? On and on. The central crossing wants to pass itself off as winky and self-referential, as opposed to just two more tired bits of fill. Sure, why not? Knock yourself out. But overall this puzzle has a general concept with no specific sense of purpose (i.e. it's just "I"s ... just ... 'cause), and the fill is a problem.

[ridiculously good]

I didn't have much trouble with this one, though I did have to work a little due to a few mistakes, most notably TO-DO for TOUT (14D: Ballyhoo) and IODIZING for IONIZING (17A: Like some radiation). I don't think repetition of little words matters much, but three ITs, two of them on top of one another (IN ITSELF, IGNORE IT), seems a little much. Kate BEATON is a wonderful, popular comics artist—she has been all over the NYT "Graphic Books" bestseller list for her collections "Hark, A Vagrant" and "Step Aside, Pops" (with both books reaching #1). Her work is amazing and I have at least two t-shirts and one refrigerator magnet designed by her and you should definitely check out her smart and hilarious comic-strip takes on literature and history. Like, now. This is all to say that seeing BEAT ON clued as 49D: Pummel was very, very disappointing.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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