Old newspaper photo sections informally / FRI 1-5-18 / 1980s skiing champ Phil / Spittoon sound / Staple feature of Groucho Marx's you bet your life / Professional wrestling program since 1999 / Southwestern casseroled with cornbread crust

Constructor: Ned White

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Leon AMES (12D: Actor Leon of "The Postman Always Rings Twice") —

Leon Ames (January 20, 1902 – October 12, 1993) was a prolific American film and television actor. He is best remembered for playing father figures in such films as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) with Judy Garland as one of his daughters, Little Women (1949), On Moonlight Bay (1951), and By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953). The fathers whom Ames portrayed were often somewhat stuffy and exasperated by the younger generation, but ultimately kind and understanding. His most famous role came as DA Kyle Sackett from the film The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). (wikipedia)

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This just isn't special enough. It's solid, adequate, but nowhere near what a *NYT* Friday should be. Maybe less time on vanity (i.e. making sure your full name is in the grid—see 9D, 10D), more time on filling the grid with fresh and interesting answers. The stacks in the NW and SE are just OK, and the long Downs are soporific (WHITE SALES ... HEAD COUNTS ... zzz). If NOT SPAM (?) is your idea of modern and fresh, you can have it back. There's nothing particularly bad about this puzzle. It's easy, so people are going to tolerate it just fine. But there's just too much crosswordesey stuff here for how little wonderful stuff there is. Plural KIRS!? "PTUI!"? ACRO ROTOS OPORTO. BAH. IT'S SAD. Yesterday's puzzle was at least ambitious. There's nothing particularly ambitious or thoughtful here. Without the restriction of a theme, a grid should SizZle. If WHITE SALES are your idea of a sizzling time, well, lucky you, I guess.

[40A]

I feel bad for anyone who's never heard of ROTOS (i.e. anyone who was like me before I stumbled on that "word" in a crossword a decade or so ago) (63A: Old newspaper photo sections). I feel bad because it is decidedly *not* gettable from crosses. BOOB fits the clue at 52-Down ([Yahoo]) as well if not better than BOOR, and while BOTOS may look ridiculous, so does ROTOS if you've never seen it before. I almost got crushed by a word I don't really like or understand: STANDEE. I wrote in STANDER, because that is how English normally works. I've never gotten STANDEE. You're a bystandER, not a bystandEE. Is there an analogous verb where the doer gets -EE instead of -ER or -OR? TRUSTEE and TUTEE are both very different. -EE seems passive to me. Something's being done *to* you. But if I stand ... I'm a STANDEE? English, man. Anyway, thankfully, HORSR was manifestly wrong, and I corrected my "mistake." Other hiccups: no idea who that AMES guy is (and I have watched "Postman" many, many times—AMES isn't even one of the three principle actors); wanted CACAO BEAN before CACAO TREE; needed many crosses to get NOT SPAM; needed many crosses to get STRAY (1D: Drift) ... even these mistakes are boring.


I don't understand how 6D: "Dancers at the Bar" painter is an acceptable clue when the title of the painting is "Dancers at the Barre" most places I look (and in my memory). I guess translator has discretion, but ... yeah, didn't like that. Because of "Bar"-not-"Barre," I briefly bypassed DEGAS in favor of MANET (?!). Nothing about the IRENE clue suggests the answer will be a first name. Could just as easily have been ADLER (18A: The "she" in the line "To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman"). It was also super duper weird to see RHINEGOLD spelled like that. I speak no German and know jack squat about opera and even I know it (exclusively) as "Das Rheingold." It's fair enough, it's just kinda pfft, which is my general feeling about the whole grid (PFFT being better than PTUI, but not a lot better).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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