Father of Ahab in Bible / 1001 causes of anxiety / 51 cats / Relative of snowboard / Strangely repulsive sort / Composer whose name is Italian for green

Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: something and one somethings ...  — clue is a number of some entity? and the number is a roman numeral followed by that entity, which combined constitute an unclued word:

Theme answers:

• MI STRESSES (17A: 1,001 causes of anxeity?)
• CI STERNS (26A: 101 rear ends?)
• LI FELINES (37A: 51 cats?)
• VI EWINGS (53A: Six members of a "Dallas" family?)
• DI VERSIONS (61A: 501 renditions?) 

Word of the Day: OMRI (14A: Father of Ahab in the Bible) —

The Omrides, Omrids or House of Omri were a ruling dynasty of the Kingdom of Israel (Samaria) founded by King Omri. According to the Bible, the Omride rulers of Israel were Omri, Ahab and Ahab's sons Ahaziah and Jehoram. Ahab's daughter (or perhaps sister) Athaliah also became queen regnant of the Kingdom of Judah. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm still trying to figure out how I solved a Tuesday puzzle with this strange a theme, with all long-Down corners, in slightly under my normal Tuesday time, especially when the entire NW felt like a takeoff disaster. I guess once I locked onto the theme, I took off like a shot. But if the whole puzzle had gone the way it began, this would've ended up Challenging. So the thing about long-Down corners is they are somehow tougher on average than long-Across corners. With the latter, all the short Downs are lined up in a row and you can pick a bunch off and then have at the longer Acrosses, but in long-Down corners, you gotta eyeskip all over to find the short *Acrosses* to help you with those Downs, and that always goes less well. Anyway, today, HOMELAB IMINAWE PRSTUNT were a mini-wall of pain, esp. crossed by OMRI (who?) and "AW, NUTS" (which is fine fill, but toughish to pick up).


That wall of pain was also crossed by the first themer, and though maybe I should've, I did not see the Roman numeral gimmick up front, so I needed Every Single Cross to get MISTRESSES, and even then was like "??? ... Dude, if your mistress is causing you anxiety, maybe you shouldn't have one (let alone one thousand and one)." Somehow the "LI" at the front of LIFELINES jumped out as a Roman numeral after I read its clue (37A: 51 cats?), but even then I wasn't sure what was happening; I got most of LIFELINES from crosses, and after realizing "LI" was the "51" in question, I (of course) assumed it was in play *twice* in that answer (i.e. I didn't see LI FELINES, I saw LI FE / LI NES). That themer is absolutely terrible for that reason. I'm still stunned that you'd go with this theme and then choose an answer that has the Roman numeral in it twice, and both times at the *beginning* of words (LIFE and LINE). Bad form. But I figured out what was going on and from there, the puzzle skewed Easy.


It's always slightly weird to end up with words in the grid that haven't been (literally) clued at all. Bothers some people. Doesn't exactly bother me, but it would be nice if a stronger gimmick were in play here. This one's just ... curious. Interesting. Answer themselves aren't exciting. Grid as a whole is OK, with perhaps too much OMRI (my new word—today only!—for short gunk like GYNT and ETTE and ATTA and OMRI).

Theme has me reparsing all the answers in search of new possibilities.

• [Puts the wrong wig on a performer?]
• [Seabirds whose gender identities match the sex they were assigned at birth?]
• [Long island train routes for shipping iron?]
• ["Get in the competition, mysteriously long-running NBC TV show from the '90s!"]
• [Wetsuit wearer's charged particles?]

Well that was at least as fun as solving the puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]