Madame of 1960s Vietnam / TUE 10-31-17 / Practice condemned in Ninety-Five ThesesSelf-title #1 pop album of 2001

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Reformation Day 2017—500th anniversary of the "Ninety-Five Theses" 

Theme answers:

• PROTESTANT (17A: With 24-Across, movement resulting from the "Ninety-Five Theses")
• REFORMATION (24A: See 17-Across)
• ALL SAINTS CHURCH (36A: Building where the "Ninety-Five Theses" were posted)
• INDULGENCES (47A: Practice condemned in the "Ninety-Five Theses")
• WITTENBERG (58A: City where the "Ninety-Five Theses" were written)

Word of the Day: Madame NHU (59D: Madame ___ of 1960s Vietnam) —

Trần Lệ Xuân (22 August 1924 – 24 April 2011), more popularly known as Madame Nhu, was the de facto First Lady of South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963. She was the wife of Ngô Đình Nhu, who was the brother and chief-advisor to President Ngô Đình Diệm. As Diệm was a lifelong bachelor and because she and her family lived in Independence Palace together with him, she was considered to be the first lady. // Known for her harsh and incendiary comments that attacked and severely denounced the Buddhist community of South Vietnam and the strong American influence and presence in the country, she had to live in exile in France after her husband and her brother-in-law, Diệm, were assassinated in 1963.

• • •

I waited 500 years for *this*? The world's most boring tribute puzzle? Man, I'm gonna go work up my own 95 crossword theses and nail them to the door of the NYT.


A bunch of related words arranged symmetrically. No playfulness, no cleverness, no thoughtfulness. Just a cynical attempt to exploit an anniversary. I am currently teaching English literature of Renaissance / Reformation, so the themers were all pretty dang easy (except for ALL SAINTS CHURCH, which I blanked on). The rest of the grid seemed easy, too. I have no idea how my time ended up perfectly average. I'm guessing the slowdown had something to do with the only answer in the grid I had to pay any attention to (not coincidentally, the ugliest thing in the grid): NHU (59D: Madame ___ of 1960s Vietnam). Wow, NHU? Who NHU!? Between that and the adjacent CEREAL, with its jaunty / befuddling "Post" clue (46D: Post production?), I kept putting in and tearing out the first two letters of 62A: "It's all clear to me now!"). NHU even had me unsure about the [City where the "Ninety-Five Theses" were written]. Who the hell is Madame NHU? Please don't tell me I should be "happy to learn something." No, you should be sad that your constructor had to resort to such junk fill, because I assure you, he didn't put NHU in here so he could teach the world about her. Desperation, man. That's the only reason you're ever gonna see NHU. I thought "I've never seen that before," but apparently she appeared in a puzzle during the first month of my blog's existence (Oct. 2006). I'd like to thank the NYT for giving me 11 NHU-free years. I will always remember those years fondly.


Gotta run. Happy Halloween.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. it occurs to me that many solvers may not know what INDULGENCES are, so here:

In the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, an indulgence is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins". It may reduce the "temporal punishment for sin" after death (as opposed to the eternal punishment merited by mortal sin), in the state or process of purification called Purgatory. [...] By the late Middle Ages, the abuse of indulgences, mainly through commercialization, had become a serious problem which the Church recognized but was unable to restrain effectively. Indulgences were from the beginning of the Protestant Reformation a target of attacks by Martin Luther and all other Protestant theologians. Eventually the Catholic Counter-Reformation curbed the excesses, but indulgences continue to play a role in modern Catholic religious life. Reforms in the 20th century largely abolished the quantification of indulgences, which had been expressed in terms of days or years. These days or years were meant to represent the equivalent of time spent in penance, although it was widely taken to mean time spent in Purgatory. The reforms also greatly reduced the number of indulgences granted for visiting particular churches and other locations. (wikipedia)

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