Mexican state that touches Texas / TUE 5-1-18 / Stanley who wrote Magic Kingdom / Early means of providing light for photograph / Bit of wear for Colonel Sanders

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Easy but with several uncommon answers that might slow you down; also I just botched the SW for dumb personal reasons (4:00)

THEME: ROAD BLOCK (64A: Obstacle ... or any one of  four black squares in this puzzle?) — circled squares spell synonyms of "road" and each is "blocked" (i.e. interrupted) by a single black square.

• SLAVE NUEVOLEON
• SHANGRI-LA NETS
• AIMLESS TREETOP
• PAID RIVERBANK

Word of the Day: Stanley ELKIN (57D: Stanley who wrote "The Magic Kingdom") —

Stanley Lawrence Elkin (May 11, 1930 – May 31, 1995) was an American novelist, short storywriter, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme does what it does just fine. It's very workmanlike, straightforward. Since there are no true themers (besides the revealer), you never real feel the theme. Mainly, the theme serves as a thing that explains why some of these answers are here, specifically NUEVO LEON, the existence of which is news to me. It's a fine thing to be in a puzzle, but as a themer in an early-week puzzle, it's at least a little on the obscure side. But in the end, yes, the circled squares all contain words for "road," and yes, each one is "blocked" by a black square, so, sure ROADBLOCKs. I think the lack of real theme answers made the odd answers stand out. Like FLASH LAMP (?). The word "Early" in that clue (which I assume means "Old") tells you that the concept is not going to be that familiar. "Bygone." Inferrable, ultimately, but something that needed lots of crosses before it became apparent. STRING TIE was also tough, as I kept picturing the damn Colonel and could only see a white suit and white hair and black-rimmed glasses. There is one very, very bad crossing that is destined to Natick at least a handful of solvers today: ILYA x/w ELKIN. Now ILYA is crosswordese, but it's the kind you forget. I routinely forget what string of letters make up that guy's name. And Stanley ELKIN? "The Magic Kingdom"? Who is this clue for? Barely heard of the guy, never heard of the book. It's Tuesday. And you wanna ELKIN w/ ILYA? Yeesh, no. Most of the rest of the puzzle was actually very much on the easy side, though, so the strange (to me) longer answers didn't do too much damage to my time. But then I hit the SW and the wheels came off for understandable as well as stupid reasons.


So I have -----LOCK for the revealer and my brain assumes that LOCK is the last word in the phrase, so [Obstacle] is not helping at all. Then later when I can finally see ROAD coming into view and ROAD BLOCK seemed right, my brain goes "No, ROAD doesn't fit, you need five letters!" But of course I didn't need five letters. I needed five letters when I thought the final word was LOCK, but once it toggled to BLOCK, I needed only four, but try telling floundering solving brain that! That whole SW corner was rough without ROADBLOCK helping out. Clue on DODGE did zero for me (55D: Word before City or after Fort on Midwest maps). Had RECD instead of PAID for 52A: Word stamped on an invoice. I think of PORTS as sweet but not "Strong" (52D: Strong wines). There are so many "Polynesian lands" that are five letters long that I had no hope there without crosses. STEER? So [Part of a cattle roundup] is ... another word for cattle? Oof. Oh, and I wanted 60D: Skier's convenience (TBAR) to be TRAM. Typical trip-all-over-yourself-at-the-finish-line performance for me. The theme seems adequate. Sufficient. I wouldn't have enjoyed it much even without the face plant at the end there. I'm trying to take the face plant out of the equation—since I should've gotten ROAD BLOCK much more easily—but man it's hard.

Hey, big crossword news! The New Yorker has a new weekly crossword puzzle that is going to be written and edited by an all-star team of constructors: Patrick Berry, Liz Gorski, Natan Last, Kameron Austin Collins, and (first up) Anna Shechtman. It's available solely online, for now, which is radically stupid, and presumably they will realize this and put it in the goshdurn printed magazine where it belongs. For now, though, be sure to do the puzzle online every Monday—the current one is absolutely first-rate. Print it out or solve right on the page. They're all gonna be high word-count themelesses, which is basically the best kind of puzzle there is. Great constructors making the greatest kind of puzzle. It's exciting.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. if you are a fan of disgraced crossword constructor Timothy Parker (of the whole plagiarism / Puzzlegate scandal of a few years back), well are you in luck. He *appears* to have an incredible website where he ... does stuff ... including hype himself, hype himself some more, misspell things, and [drum roll] publish alleged fan letters alongside crossword grids that are not actually his but that belong instead to [second drum roll] the New York Times. Seriously. Go here and look. I say he "appears" to have this website because it is (not-at-all bizarrely) written in the Third Person. Also, there is this Amazing video, which is an ad for his crossword website, in which the URL for his crossword website ... is misspelled. 

The ad features German Wilford Brimley, '90s computer tech, and a cat who really deserves much, much better:

I'm told this is not an original video but some kind of video ad template. I don't even know, man...

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]