1977 horror film set in Newfoundland / FRI 4-8-16 / Grammy-nominated rock band for Epic / Oriental blossom / Restaurant critic who lent his name to brand at supermarket / Club that even god can't hit according to Lee Trevino / Ontario town across from Buffalo

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Howard ASHMAN (39A: "Beauty and the Beast" lyricist Howard) —

Howard Elliott Ashman (May 17, 1950 – March 14, 1991) was an American playwright and lyricist. He collaborated with Alan Menken on several works and is most widely known for several animated feature films for Disney, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Menken composed the music. Ashman and Menkin began their collaboration with the musical God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1979), for which Ashman directed and wrote both book and lyrics. Their next musical, Little Shop of Horrors (1982) for which Ashman again directed and wrote both book and lyrics, became a long-running success and led to a 1986 feature film. The partnership's first Disney film was The Little Mermaid (1989), followed by Beauty and the Beast (1991). After his death, some of Ashman's songs were included in another Disney film, Aladdin (1992). (wikipedia)

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Accidentally fell asleep last night very early, so now I'm up very early, solving and writing. I was excited to see Patrick Berry's name. I always am. He was the Big Name in attendance at last weekend's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, and he is probably the biggest name in crossword puzzles that I had never even laid eyes on (he doesn't usually come to tournaments). I have now laid eyes on him. I did not, however, meet him. I was weirdly too ... I don't know. I'm not good at introducing myself to people, especially famous people whose work I like. The very thought of it fills me with NAUSEA. I mostly just leave them alone and continue to like their work in silence, from afar. Some people's instinct when they see famous people they admire is "ooh, let's go say hi." Mine is "errr, uhh, let's leave." Mostly I was afraid of gushing stupidly. Anyway, despite having corresponded very briefly a couple of times with him, I couldn't really get myself to go over and say hi. Stupid, as he is by all accounts a nice guy. (Note: I was going to put "famous" in quotation marks, because, I mean ... it's the world of crosswords, so come on ... but I didn't, because here, in this world, where you are reading me, he is legit famous. I know you guys understand).


I thought this was gonna play easy. I sat down with the full intent to speed-solve, just to see what I could do. I normally take a more leisurely approach to themelesses, but the ACPT has me FIREd UP a bit, still. Things were going pretty well there for a bit. BON AMI (1D: "Hasn't scratched yet!" product) was a gimme, so I was able to get most of that corner quickly, off those crosses. But coming out of that corner was less easy. Just looking at the grid would've indicated that that was going to be the case. Moving from NW to center is like moving from the kiddie pool into the deep end—or even more unpredictable waters. The SPANISH MAIN, perhaps (18D: Setting of many pirate stories). I managed to throw DUNCAN HINES across (29A: Restaurant critic who lent his name to a brand at the supermarket), and I got the front ends of the others, but somewhere in there everything ground to a halt. I swung up into the NE and dealt with business up there (LAPDOG and the mysterious "K" in KETCH (23A: Fore-and-aft-rigged vessel) being my only real problems), and then I swung down into the SW and cleaned up down there (with an educated guess on the back end of FORT ERIE). But still I was jammed in the middle. It looked like a lot of prepositional phrases were all converging, and I just couldn't work out how they made sense:

Looked like TURNS IN- was running through TALK IN- and GOES ON- ... but only one of those parsings was actually right. You can see in the above picture how, as much as my '90s music knowledge helped me with FAITH NO MORE (easy), my '90s music knowledge utterly failed me with Howard ASHMAN (hard), of whom I had never heard (possibly because Disney musicals are not my thing, but also possibly because ASHMAN died horribly young (41), of AIDS, the year "Beauty and the Beast" came out (1991)). After getting horribly frustrated, so frustrated I stopped speed-solving and instead took a picture of the grid, I got TURN SIGNALS. And ON HAND, and then the center fell. I figured bing bang boom, I'm done. But no. The SE ended up being the hardest damn part of the grid, all isolated down there. I wrote in DIRE (!?) at 40A: Macabre (DARK), and, well, just one *&%^-up like that is enough to kill you in a very toughly-clued little corner like that. And I *had* TRIBUNE. Still, no help. Unpaid interest? for HOBBY? Brtual (good, but brutal). [Rolled item], all I could think of was PIN (rolling .... pin? I had -I-, and that was the best I could do). Wanted WIRE UP for FIRE UP (53A: Electrify). I have no idea what SHIRR means, even after reading the clue repeatedly (45D: Gather together for stitching) (?). Thank god for ARCANA, which began to even things out. But ouch. Very very uneven solve. Easy-ish for 3/4, and then rough. So, Medium.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS here's a nice slide show of some puzzle people from the recent ACPT. You can see what Patrick Berry looks like! Also, what I look like.

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