Beverage called tonic in Boston / SUN 1-28-18 / Revere engineer best selling 2013 children's book / Skynet's T-800s e.g. / One side in college football's big game

Constructor: Priscilla Clark and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Surprise Endings" — movies have their last letters changed, creating wacky titles which are clued as if the wackiness is a PLOT TWIST (which is what the new letters at the end of each themer, taken sequentially, spell out)

Theme answers:

• "HUSTLE AND FLOP" (23A: Pimp launches career in rap ... BUT HAS AN EPIC FAIL!)
• "TAXI DRIVEL" (30A: Cabby saves prostitute ... WITH HIS BLATHERING!)
• "I LOVE YOU, MAO" (43A: "Guy makes new best friend ... WHO TURNS OUT TO BE A COMMUNIST!)
• "THE COLOR OF MONET" (56A: Retired pool shark returns ... TO WIN FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST PAINTING!)
• "ABOUT A BOT" (65A: Chap gets life lessons from kid ... WHO'S REALLY AN ANDROID!)
• "BEVERLY HILLS COW" (81A: West Coast officers track wisecracking detective ... TO A BOVINE!)
• "THE BIG CHILI" (90A: Friends gather for a funeral ... AND COOK UP AN ENORMOUS STEW!)
• "SWAMP THINS" (107A: Bog monster emerges ... WITH A NEW LINE OF SNACK CRACKERS!)
• "LICENCE TO KILT" (118A: 007 gets fired ... AND LANDS A JOB AS A SCOTTISH TAILOR!)

Word of the Day: EVIE Sands (37D: Singer Sands) —

Evie Sands (born July 18, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter and musician.

Sands' music career spans more than 50 years. She began her career as a teenager in the mid-1960s, after a rocky start, she eventually found chart success in 1969, before retiring from performing in 1979 to concentrate on writing and production. She experienced a fashionable, UK-led surge in cult popularity beginning in the 1990s and returned to live performance in mid-1998. Sands continues to write and perform. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sunday continues to sputter along miserably. A single letter changed per themer, and the net result is just PLOT TWISTS? When the title is already "Surprise Endings." It was like the revealer was an alternate title, and precisely nothing was interesting or revelatory or even funny. I think THE BIG CHILI and SWAMP THINS land OK, but the rest involve awkward, clunky grammar or awkward cluing or have some other defect that dampens their already meager wackiness. Turns out to be *a* Communist? He's MAO. That's not just *a* Communist. Since Monet actually works in "colors" (many, many colors), "THE COLOR OF MONET" comes off as nonsense. And you track a detective "to a bovine?" There's gotta be a better way of cluing "BEVERLY HILLS COW?" Maybe the detective turns out to *be* a COW? Something. I don't even know what tracking him "to" a cow means. So there's no big finish here, just a big fizzle, and the answers themselves hold little joy. Rest of the grid is average at best. I'm gonna have to go do Evan Birnholz's WaPo Sunday puzzle to get the taste of this one out of my mouth (WaPo beats NYT almost every Sunday—don't believe me, go see).


Found parts of this oddly hard. Had PO- and still had zero idea what 50A: Beverage called a "tonic" in Boston wanted. Maybe because I don't call soda *either of those things*. The idea that the "beverage" was POP? Not a thing that would ever have occurred to me. Not sure why you would clue SCAT as the animal droppings as opposed to ["Shoo!"] but you do you, I guess. ECASH, like Bitcoin, remains ridiculous. EAR WORMS instead of EAR CANDY (20A: Light, catchy tunes). Since the clue for "I LOVE YOU, MAO" was so vague ("Guy makes a new best friend'???) and I've never ever seen "I Love You, Man," that answer and everything south of its back end was harrowing. Couldn't get USO (46D: Grp. with the motto "Until every one comes home"), couldn't get ARIA (48D: Part of a score, maybe) (I had CODA), zeeeero idea about ROSIE (?) (60A: "___ Revere, Engineer" (best selling 2013 children's book)), totally forgot about the "Big Game" in college football (Stanford / CAL), so basically I had none of the MUSCLE in MUSCLE CAR (47D: Gran Torino, e.g.) and what felt like no prospects of getting it. Also [Appropriate] for USURP is pretty tricky (clue looks like an adj.). So, yikes. Rest of the puzzle was pretty normal / easy. I'm done talking about this one. Gonna drink some tea and hang out with the dogs and then watch "D.O.A." on TCM. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. hilarious update now. You know how I said Evan Birnholz's Sunday WaPo puzzle is better than the Sunday NYT on a regular basis? Well, that's true. But it turns out Evan published a puzzle in 2016 With This Exact Theme. I mean, nearly the same title ("Alternate Endings"), and *exactly* the same concept, including the bit where the final letters spell out PLOT TWIST. As you can see, Evan's grid is better, which probably would've made solving his puzzle more pleasant, but, yeah, this is kind of burn on me for touting a puzzle that had already done the very theme I claimed not to enjoy ... bigger burn on the NYT for publishing a pale, note-for-note version of another outlet's recent work ... but a burn on me, nonetheless.

P.P.S. OMG I missed an element in the Birnholz / WaPo version of this puzzle that today's NYT was totally lacking: the original final letters of the movie titles in his grid actually spelled out "CHINATOWN"!!!!!!! (a movie with an *infamous* PLOT TWIST). Whereas the original final letters of the movie titles in today's NYT spell out ... nothing. Unless "WRNYYPLGL" is a thing. So, as I was saying, WaPo > NYT. I can't stop laughing. This is the greatest Sunday ever. It's like Christmas all over again.

P.P.P.S. Go see "Lady Bird." It's wonderful.

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