East of Eden girlfriend / SAT 4-8-17 / Bonehead to Brits / Fictional mariner also known as Prince Dakkar / Gordon Gekko Rooster Cogburn / First century megalomaniac / Component of pigment maya blue

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: NETIZEN (30A: YouTuber or eBayer) —

noun

noun: netizen; plural noun: netizens

1. a user of the Internet, especially a habitual or avid one. (google)

• • •

Ugh. Another day, another 62-worder, another whiff. Why do people still do these low-word-count affairs? I mean, Patrick Berry, OK, I can see him giving it a go, but honestly, your best-case scenario is usually something like this—adequate, dull, gunked up in places with crappy fill, and lacking in anything you'd call a stand-out / marquee / original answer. Or, I don't know, maybe WWIIVET is original in the strictest sense of the word, but it's not good. And there's so much bad fill, and then a few sad attempts to dress up the bad fill in a frilly frock and pass it off as something besides bad fill. ABRA will never, ever, ever be good, no matter who you say she (?) is (46D: "East of Eden" girlfriend). Nope, still a fragment of a magician's incantation. And DEADHEAD means what now? [Ineffective pill]? I know *two* meanings of DEADHEAD, and that ain't one. NE-O 1 and NE-O 2 are here, as well as ANIL and DONEE and other over-familiar faces (and whatever AERI- is). There is much here that is sturdy, that holds up, that does the job, but only if you consider the "job" to be "appearing crossword puzzle-like" and "not being a total face-planting disaster." It's mainly a snooze.


"XKCD" is here solely to get internet nerds talking on the internet about this puzzle (first thing I thought when I got it, and not fifteen minutes later, the internet nerds had already come out with whatever the equivalent of "First!" is these days, happily spoiling the puzzle for their handful (or tens of thousands) of Followers). But that's also a crowd that probably thinks "spoilers" are for olds or luddites or something. Anyway, it's a fine comic, but the blatant bid for internet attention here seems sad ... although I would hope that same crowd that reads "XKCD" would *jeer* the stupid, dated NETIZEN. Somebody should jeer it. It's jeer-worthy. It's '90s chic, i.e. not chic at all.


So this was much easier than yesterday's (finished in just over 1/2 the time yesterday's took me) (told ya so), largely because OPED NERO ETA, all side-by-side, were all gimmes. I had OH HI and PSST at 1D: "Hello ... I'm right here" (AHEM), but once I got the triad of gimmes, one little wrong answer didn't hang around long. Had a little trouble in the SE in and around ABRA (bec. WTF?) and EAT A SANDWICH I mean ROB A BANK (?). SW was the hardest for me, as I wrote in FILLMORE off the -ORE (instead of THEODORE) (40A: President between two Williams). NEMO was the gimme that got me out of a jam down there. FOLK ART and LEST helped as well. Make themelesses Enjoyable again! That is all.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Sorry, back to NETIZEN again. That clue—eBayer, really? For your eHeadache? eNo.

P.P.S. Updated, 1:13pm just gonna leave this ... here:

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]