Synagogue singer with hokey humor / THU 1-10-19 / Japanese box meal / Oklahoma's Air Force Base

Constructor: Jeff Slutzky and Derek Bowman

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium (the latter for me, but I solved very ploddingly, with sleep in my eyes, so...) (AH ... wait, it's oversized? OK, then def Easy) (5:10)

THEME: TOR! AH ... (68A: Sacred text ... or your reaction upon figuring out this puzzle's theme?) — "TOR" is added to familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily:

Theme answers:

• CAPTOR IN HAND (21A: Kidnapper who gets arrested?)
• BEAT THE RAPTOR (29A: Win a one-on-one game against a Toronto hoops player?)
• "KEEP IT, REALTOR!" (45A: "I don't want this house after all"?)
• CANTOR OF CORN (55A: Synagogue singer with hokey humor?)

Word of the Day: SANDRA Oh (10D: Oh, what an actress!) —

Sandra Miju Oh (born July 20, 1971) is a Canadian actress. She is known for her role as Cristina Yang on the ABC medical drama series Grey's Anatomy, set in the United States, which she played from 2005 to 2014. For her role, she earned a Golden Globe Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She also had a supporting role on the HBO drama series Arliss. In 2018, Oh began starring as Eve Polastri in BBC America's murder-mystery series Killing Eve; for her performance, she became the first actress of Asian descent to be nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama, becoming the first Asian woman to win two Golden Globes. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello! It's the first full week after New Year's Day and that means it's time for my annual pitch for financial contributions to the blog, during which I ask regular readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. As you know, I write this blog every. Single. Day. OK, two days a month I pay young people to write it, but every other day, all me. OK sometimes I take vacations and generous friends of mine sit in, but otherwise, I'm a non-stop blogging machine. Seriously, it's a lot of work. It's at least as much work as my day job, and unlike my day job, the hours *kinda* suck—I typically solve and write between 10pm and midnight, or in the early hours of the morning, so that the blog can be up and ready for you to read with your breakfast or on the train or in a forest or wherever it is you enjoy the internet. I have no major expenses, just my time. As I've said before, I have no interest in "monetizing" the blog in any way beyond simply asking for money once a year. I hate ads in real life, so why would I subject you all to them. I actually considered redesigning the site earlier this year, making it slicker or fancier somehow. I even got the process partly underway, but then when I let slip that I was considering it, feedback was brisk and clear: don't change. Turns out people don't really want whistles and bells. Just the plain, internet-retro style of a blogger blog. So that's what you're getting. No amount of technical tinkering is gonna change the blog, which is essentially just my voice. My ridiculous opinionated voice yelling at you, cheerfully and angrily, about how much I love / hate crosswords. I hope that this site has made you laugh or taught you things or given you a feeling of shared joy, or anger, or failure, or even given you someone to yell at. I'm fine with that. I also hope I've introduced some of you to the Wider World of Crosswords, beyond the NYT. I am passionate about puzzles and I (mostly) adore the people who solve them—so many of my friends, and the thousands of you I've never met. I can't stop, and I won't stop, and I hope you find that effort worth supporting.

Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address:

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions (I. Love. Snail mail!) will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. This year's cards are illustrations from "Alice in Wonderland"—all kinds of illustrations from throughout the book's publication history. Who will get the coveted, crosswordesey "EATME!" card!? Someone, I'm sure. You, I hope. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD.  As ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support.

Now on to the puzzle!

• • •

Let me start with the sorry-to-be-annoying bad news, which is that the revealer is just wrong. It's a very nice thought, a nice try, an interesting way to try to repurpose TORAH, but when you discover something or have a revelation, you either say OHO or AHA, orrrrrrrrr (and this is the crucial part) the "AH" comes first. It does. It just does. Always.

I supposed you can contrive a scenario where the solver says the the three-letter string out loud first and then settles back in her chair and goes "Ah," but that's, well, contrived. It's always "Ah, [thing you discovered / remembered / are surprised by." So the revealer, while amusing in its aspirational wackiness, just doesn't land. I'd sooner by "TOR! AHA!" than "TOR, AH." That said, the themers are amusing enough, and the grid is pretty clean, so solving this was definitely not an unpleasant experience. I just think revealers should work. Perfectly. Actually, the more you ham it up, the more plausible "TOR! AH!" starts to seem. You have to really exclaim them and draw them out. Like, the revelation is so startling that the letter string comes before the Actual Exclamation. Defensible, maybe. Still, not right to my ear.


All of the difficulty was in parsing the themers, which first involved figuring out what the theme was. I had to drop down to BEAT THE RAPTOR before getting it (had BEAT in place, read the clue, knew a Toronto hoops player was a RAPTOR, and just shoved RAPTOR on the tail end of the answer, and then reasoned the middle of the answer from there). Parsing nonsense phrases can add considerable time to your solve, even after you know what the deal is with the theme. Because ... well, nonsense is not something your solving brain toggles to easily, and the longer the nonsense, the harder it is to parse it, understand its syntax, etc. For me the hardest answer by far was "KEEP IT, REALTOR," largely because there's nothing in the clue to suggest that the phrase is meant to be said With The Interlocutor's Name In It, i.e., there is no indicator of "realtor" in the clue. None. I could easily be saying "I don't want this house after all" to my wife or self anyone, really. So even knowing that TOR had to go in there, even having TOR wedged at the end of the answer, without the "L" (from the toughly clued LARYNX—47D: Need to speak) or the "R" (from the "I did not know that" BARONESS—40D: Margaret Thatcher, e.g., in her later years), the only word my brain could see was REACTOR. The fact that there is an implied comma in the answer made things nuts. But most of the rest of this grid was pretty straightforward 4- and 5-letter stuff, so no problem. Best thing about this puzzle for me was the cheeky (and timely) clue on SANDRA Oh (10D: Oh, what an actress!) (she co-hosted the Golden Globes just a few days ago).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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