Six-time all-stary Ron / FRI 9-28-18 / Spy who trades sex secrets informally / Assassin Sparafucile in Rigoletto / User of popular social news site

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:36)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: MT DANA (38A: Peak that marks the eastern boundary of Yosemite Natl. park) —

Mount Dana is a mountain in the U.S. state of California. Its summit marks the eastern boundary of Yosemite National Park and the western boundary of the Ansel Adams Wilderness. At an elevation of 13,061 feet (3,981 m), it is the second highest mountain in Yosemite (after Mount Lyell), and the northernmost summit in the Sierra Nevada which is over 13000 feet in elevation. Mount Dana is the highest peak in Yosemite that is a simple hike to the summit. The mountain is named in honor of James Dwight Dana, who was a professor of natural history and geology at Yale. (wikipedia)

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First things first. That PUGS clue is not a dog clue. It's a boxing clue (11D: Boxers). OK then, moving on: this thing must be Super easy, because I solved it upon waking (at 4:15am, don't ask!), which is not, historically, the most auspicious time for me to solve crosswords, but I came very close to my (recent) record, time-wise. KAC's puzzles can be very hard, but this one was right over the plate, for me. Long answers opened right up, and struggles, where they existed, were minimal. The NE and SW are potentially dangerous, in that the ways in and out of them are Very narrow. This caused me a little trouble at the end, in the SW, where I didn't know MT. DANA (38A) at all, and I had not POWER but PAUSE at first for 44D: Remote button, leaving me to fight my way through that corner starting from the inside. Luckily, BRIT-to-SCEPTER-etc. wasn't too tough a fight. I feel like this puzzle will be easy for anyone who knows the song "BOOTYLICIOUS" (so ... for a lot of people) (30A: 2001 Destiny's Child #1 hit with the lyric "I don't think you ready for this jelly"). I had the BOO- already by the time I saw that clue, but I wouldn't have needed it. Gigantic gimme. But why not? Fridays can be fun and easy(ish) from time to time. Give people a lifeline, throw them a long BOOTYLICIOUS rope. Seems a fine, fair thing to do on occasion. Gives tyros a shot at getting into a themeless. It's welcoming, really.


I have only ever seen HOE CAKEs in Robert Townsend's "Hollywood Shuffle" (1987), but it was memorable enough that that answer posed no problem (15A: Cornmeal treat). I like that it comes right after ARAPAHO, so you reading the Across answeres sequentially you get ARAPOHOHOECAKES. I feel like there's a crossword theme here. ARAPOHOHOHOS. BOGOTATATAS. NOSFERATUTUTUS. COLORADODODOS. Etc. OK, it's not great, forget I said anything. The hardest part of this puzzle for me was actually remembering how to spell SADA (!) Thompson's name (5D: Actress Thompson of "Family"). I wrote in SADE, thinking it was an alternate spelling of Sadie, which gave me MEDIEN at 19A: Highway divider, which, honestly, looked possible. Certainly a better answer than AMBIEN, which was my first guess. Me: "Do they spell MEDIEN like that? I guess it's possible?" But then I sort of remembered that her name was maybe possibly SADA, and I went with that. No idea how I remembered BEHR paint, but it was very helpful in the SE. Only part of the center area that gave me pause was NORSE ___ (36A: Figures in the Edda). I was prepared for virtually any word to go in that blank space, but it turned out just to be a synonym of "gods." I've never seen the word LUNULAR (16A: Crescent-shaped), so I needed every cross there, but luckily those crosses were easy to come by *and* LUNULAR clearly makes sense once you've got it in there—shaped like a (crescent) moon! OK, off to my 6am (!) appointment. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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