Muse symbolized by globe compass / SAT 4-14-18 / One-eighth set in statistics / Writer who called New York City Baghdad on Subway / Collaborator with Sedaka Cooke on 1964 album 3 Great Guys / Hip-hop radio/tv host charlamagne god

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ALI PASHA (55A: Ottoman ruler referenced in "The Count of Monte Cristo") —

Ali Pasha (1740 – 24 January 1822), variously referred to as of Tepelena or of Janina/Yannina/Ioannina, or the Lion of Yannina, was an Ottoman Albanian ruler who served as pasha of a large part of western Rumelia, the Ottoman Empire's European territories, which was referred to as the Pashalik of Yanina. His court was in Ioannina, and the territory he governed incorporated most of Epirus and the western parts of Thessaly and Greek Macedonia. Ali had three sons: Muhtar Pasha, who served in the 1809 war against the Russians, Veli Pasha, who became pasha of the Morea Eyalet and Salih Pasha, governor of Vlore.

Ali first appears in historical accounts as the leader of a band of brigands who became involved in many confrontations with Ottoman state officials in Albania and Epirus. He joined the administrative-military apparatus of the Ottoman Empire, holding various posts until 1788 when he was appointed pasha, ruler of the sanjak of Ioannina. His diplomatic and administrative skills, his interest in modernist ideas and concepts, his popular piety, his religious neutrality, his suppression of banditry, his vengefulness and harshness in imposing law and order, and his looting practices towards persons and communities in order to increase his proceeds caused both the admiration and the criticism of his contemporaries, as well as an ongoing controversy among historians regarding his personality. Finally falling foul of the Ottoman central government, Ali Pasha was declared a rebel in 1820, and was killed in 1822 at the age of 81 or 82. (wikipedia)

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Sometimes the urge to come up with *Brand! New!* fill should be resisted. Constructors should always be on the alert (ALERT!) for new, current, interesting stuff, but ... well, not ECOLABEL (15A: "Non-G.M.O." or "Dolphin-safe"). I have never been a big believer in the ECO- prefix period (I mean, ECOCAR? Who says that?). I think I'd take all your normal ECO-s (e.g. -logical, -nomical, etc.), and probably -tourism, -friendly ... there are a number that are definitely in-the-language. But ECOLABEL isn't one of them. It's just a label. The label pseudopsientifically psuggests that you are doing something ECO-logical by buying the labeled product, but the label itself is not ECO- and I just don't believe this nonsense is an actual category. ROIDED is also super suspect as clued. "ROIDED out" is an adjectival phrase, but ROIDED as a verb on its own ... I don't know. Simply using PEDs would not be called ROIDing. That word usually implies not just use but a certain kind of effect or reaction, e.g. roid rage. MICROUSB is OK, though I keep parsing it MICROUS B, and I didn't even know that's what my charger was called.


I want to maximally object to DOT CO DOT UK, a garbage heap posing as a monument to cleverness. Like, if you put DOTORG in a puzzle, it would be barfy, and you know it would, so yeah, this DOT CO etc. stuff is nth degree barfy. As if *pieces* of a URL = good xword material. I mean, original, sure, but ... no. Oh, and the single MYTHBUSTER? WTF? (27D: Conductor of science experiments on TV) It's a TV show, and it's plural. One MYTHBUSTER is ... a non-answer. Oh, and the damn "inits." ACA were not "debated" in the 2010s (34D: Much-debated inits. in 2010s politics). Nobody debated the initials. They debated the legislation. Boo. Oh, and do people still NETSURF? On the Information Superhighway, maybe? I got it immediately, but I didn't feel good about it.

["COULD IT BE...?"]

Proper noun gimmes in all corners of the grid made this pretty easy to take down. Robinson CANO, gimme. SACHA Baron Cohen, bigger gimme. Hank AZARIA, biggest gimme. Jessica BIEL should've been a gimme (13D: Jessica of "The Book of Love"), but somehow I confused her and Jessica ALBA and it came out Jessica ABEL (who, it turns out, is a comic book author I know of, so ... that was all very weird). I also did my usual OUZO-for-ORZO screw-up (53D: Minestrone soup ingredient). I usually recoil from bodily fluid clues, but I think the clue on SLOBBER is really clever (8D: Baby pool?). There are lots of good answers here, too, like MASH NOTES and CUBS FAN and CUP OF TEA and FREE-STYLE (esp. as clued) (32A: Like some laps and raps). Started at ALERT (4DD: Reason to check one's phone) and ended at SCAB (52D: Provider of protective coverage), with no major hang-ups along the way.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Hey, if you're looking for another free daily puzzle to fill the void in your miserable life, or the free time in your joyous life, I suppose, here is a site where you can download all the Wall Street Journal puzzles from this year (.puz versions, regularly updated). If you want the .PDF, you can just go to the WSJ puzzle site, but their .PDFs are for left-handed people (grids on the left, wtf?!), so I'm sticking with the .puz.

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