Multi-time pro bowl tight end Greg / FRI 8-10-18 / Main antagonist in George Orwell's 1984 / Setting for first Mickey Mouse cartoon / Ranch sobriquet / Move to right incrementally

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:59)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Greg OLSEN (5D: Multi-time Pro Bowl tight end Greg) —

Gregory Walter Olsen (born March 11, 1985) is an American football tight end for the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at the University of Miami, and was drafted by the Chicago Bears in the first round of the 2007 NFL Draft. He holds an NFL record as the first tight end in league history to record three consecutive seasons with 1,000 receiving yards. (wikipedia)

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Very much my thing. Easy-Medium Fridays are such a glorious feeling. A nice 5-minute workout. And (on good days), you get to see some new / interesting answers and some quirky clues and just generally enjoy yourself. There's some less-than-great short fill in here, but the longer answers make off the short stuff pretty forgettable. If there's one mild criticism I have it's that man oh man is this puzzle reliant on names. Maybe they're just clustered, so they seemed more prevalent than they were. Or maybe it's that I flat-out didn't know two of them, and so my whole field of attention (is that ... does that make sense?) was drawn to names—that is, I noticed them *all* because I didn't know *two*. Names became an issue, so I saw them, in a way that I might not have seen them had I not gotten tripped up. Most of the names are pretty mainstream, or at least crossword-mainstream. But Ay  ay AYLA, I can never remember her. AUEL, I can remember. AYLA no. But she wasn't the problem. The problem, for me, was Greg OLSEN, who (since he is a *current* NFL player) is new to me as of fifteen minutes ago. The NFL is a garbage on so many levels that I can't watch any more ... which is really gonna hurt me now and again with crosswords, but I guess that's the price I pay for not tacitly supporting racist billionaires or accepting that other people's CTE is a small price to pay for my amusement. I'll take the occasional crossword struggle. I can deal.


Like yesterday, I stumbled badly out of the gate, figuring [Insolent talk] was SASS. I knew better than to actually write SASS in, but still, that's what I wanted. I also wanted "I SEE" for 4D: "You make a point" ("FAIR"). But I nailed APIA, so I give myself credit for that. But the rest of the NW was a bust, so I just moved over to the north and, after whiffing on OLSEN, ran EMIL RELY and ASL, and that got me going. Once I got my footing ... well, I lost it again in the NE. I don't think I've read "1984" since high school. I have almost no memory of it. Same with "Brave New World," which I conflate with "1984." Anyway, the "Main antagonist" of that novel? O'BRIEN? If you say so. That "B" was (fittingly) Brutal for me, as I have never heard anyone call a C-NOTE a "BEN"—sincerely thought it might be CEN, as in "century," as in 100 ... they're Benjamins. What's this informality stuff?


Got very lucky with the longer stuff, throwing down PUT PEN TO PAPER and EMPORIUM and RETRONYM and STEAMBOAT and HANK AARON and "ARE YOU BLIND?" with very little help from crosses. Struggled with LAMEST because I didn't know we were still using that dumb word. I wouldn't write it in at first because I didn't believe it could be right. "Lame" to mean "bad" = kind of derogatory to some disabled people, so I just avoid it. Luckily, English is a big language and there are other words available. My favorite single line in the grid is SINUS ERROR (I've had those before), though iTUNES EST ORA sounds like a really wise Latin saying. Alea iacta est, Carthago delenda est, iTunes est ora, etc., et alii, res ipsa loquitur, sic transit gloria.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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