Vain queen who boasted she was more powerful than / WED 10-3-18 / Presidential perk until 1977 / Where river meets sea / She responds to voice commands / Where Cassiopeia rules prior to her banishment / Rank for Jay Landsman on The Wire

Constructor: Jennifer Nutt

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (maybe easy, but I just woke up...) (4:10)

THEME: POSEIDON (41D: God who banished 63-Across to the sky, as depicted by the constellation formed by the X's in this puzzle's finished grid) — theme answers are basic mythology trivia, and then there are five Xs that I guess look like the constellation CASSIOPEIA —since it's completely non-iconic, I googled it, and yeah, it checks out:

Theme answers:

• CASSIOPEIA (63A: Vain queen who boasted that she was more beautiful than 18-Across)
• THE NEREIDS (18A: Sea nymphs, in Greek mythology) 
• ETHIOPIA (3D: Where 63-Across ruled prior to her banishment)

Word of the Day: BRYCE (48A: Utah's ___ Canyon) —

Bryce Canyon National Park (/braɪs/) is an American national park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller, and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet (2,400 to 2,700 m). (wikipedia)

• • •

[N.B.: I did this write-up under the impression that the constellation in question was POSEIDON—please see POSEIDON clue to try to understand my confusion; anyway, my bad, the constellation is CASSIOPEIA, sometimes 5am blogging goes wrong, sometimes blogging goes wrong period. Good day] I have never heard of the constellation POSEIDON. Never thought out it. I mean, why not, there are scads of constellations, but it's not like the guy comes up as a constellation in regular conversation or (before today) crosswords or anything. I vaguely knew the story of CASSIOPEIA but honestly I mostly relied on the fact that I've been soaking in the world of literature and mythology for decades and all the names (like THE NEREIDS) are super-familiar to me, even when I can't exactly remember why. ETHIOPIA is a new bit of trivia to me. I clearly must not have paid much attention to the CASSIOPEIA myth before. When I finished this puzzle, I thought it was just an assortment of mythical answers, ho-hum. Then I connected the Xs. Still ho-hum, as that constellation pattern means nothing to me. Do other people really know off the top of their heads what the constellation POSEIDON looks like. Good for you, I guess. But it's less than satisfying to finish with what looks like an arbitrary shape drawn on your grid. Google image search confirms the shape's accuracy. But it's just five Xs. Kind of a shrug. But puzzle-wise, this one's still light years better than yesterday's monstrosity. This grid is much cleaner, and at least this grid *has* a revealer. Yesterday's not only lacked one, but couldn't have found one if it tried because the concept was meaningless. Sorry, still not over it. Go ahead and love Broadway all you want, but as a *puzzle*, that was junk. This one, tolerable.


I flew through this one, with hardly any answers slowing me down (weird moment where I wanted Snowden (20A: EXILED) to be EX-PAT and then ran into that same answer later in the grid) (40A: An American abroad). But it wasn't til I tried to get to the SW that I had any trouble, and then I had a bunch of it. It was all concentrated around BRYCE, which I completely forgot. I kept thinking of AYERS Rock, for some reason (better known now as ULURU), and then even after getting BRY- I was thinking BRYER, which is absurd. Didn't help that AUSTERE was very slow to fill in (44A: Like Brutalist architecture)—needed half the crosses easy before I could see it. And then I had an opposite-of-fortuitous mistake that really caused things to seize up: had -EM at 58A: Nonhumanities subjects, for short and wrote in CHEM. Stupid brain processed the clue wrong—it's "subjects," plural!!! Ugh. Anyway, CHEM messed me up good, especially because it added a seemingly plausible "C" to the already impossible-to-spell FUCHSIAS (38D: Purplish-red flowers). Rounding out the trouble was 45D: Handle (SEE TO), which could've been a verb or a noun and could've had a million meanings, so pfft. Changing CHEM to STEM was my final move.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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