Decorative sewing case / THU 6-27-19 / Famous symbol of Cold War / Monopoly token replaced in 2013 by cat

Constructor: Hoang-Kim Vu

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:26)

THEME: CHECK ALL / THE BOXES (9D: With 39-Down, fulfill requirements ... or how to fill four of this puzzle's squares?) — a rebus puzzle with four √'d boxes:

Theme answers:

• 2D: MIC √ / 20A: √S AND BALANCES
• 30A: BLANK √ /33D: √ MATE
• 55A: √POINT CHARLIE / 55D: √ OUT
• 63A: COAT √ / 64D: √ER

Word of the Day: √POINT CHARLIE (55A) —

Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991).

East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneuvered to get the Soviet Union's permission to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop Eastern Bloc emigration and defection westward through the Soviet border system, preventing escape across the city sector border from communist East Berlin into West Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West. Soviet and American tanks briefly faced each other at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the reunification of Germany, the building at Checkpoint Charlie became a tourist attraction. It is now located in the Allied Museum in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin. (wikipedia) (emph mine) (don't lift your clues from wikipedia) ([Cold War crossing] see that was easy)

• • •

While you all were watching the 1st Democratic debate, I was doing this puzzle. Let's start with the objection people are most likely to have to this puzzle, which is that the solver does not, in fact, CHECK ALL / THE BOXES. Obviously you don't check *all* the boxes—what the hell kind of grid would that even be?—but it is a pretty grand claim to put as your revealer when the number of checks your grid actually provides is far more modest. I don't find objections to the revealer that compelling, though, as the revealer clue is pretty specific ("how to fill *four* of this puzzle's squares" (*emphasis mine* obvs)). So CHECK ALL (four of) THE BOXES (in question). It's a common colloquial phrase, which is why it's being used as a revealer, and I like this repurposing of the phrase just fine. Certainly CHECK *ALL* / THE BOXES is superficially misleading, but it's technical inaccuracy is not bugging me nearly as much as the idea that *any* diet can be NO CARB. That is garbage. Carbohydrates are in virtually everything, so stop. Stop. Even the Keto-est diet has carbs. Ugh. I demand that you delete NO CARB from your word lists. It is guilty of deep fraudulence and needs to be punished, thank you. But back to the theme—it's simple and spare, but it works OK. Really didn't like that last √ in the SE, just tucked in there like an afterthought, with the highly unimpressive √ER as one of the answers. But the longer ones are nice phrases in and of themselves. Grid is very tame, with most non-theme stuff being short and familiar. But kudos for opting for simple and clean over complicated and blecch. Also, kudos for FULL OF IT.


As usual, NW was my roughest section, despite the fact that I got the theme *immediately*. AMPS to MIC √. Seriously, took me 3 seconds. Now, I wasn't sure that the √ went there, and even when I knew it did, I didn't know why, or what the revealer would be (I wanted something along the lines of THE CHECK IS IN THE MAIL), but yeah, I've never spied a rebus faster than I did today. But still had trouble in the NW, as I said, because I thought a "sidebar" was legal and wanted AGS (?!) at 1D: Contents of some sidebars (ADS). Also had babies eating puréed PEAR (3D), and honestly no idea what capital was on the Mississippi that followed the pattern S-P---, despite the fact that my daughter practically lives there (she's in Minneapolis at UMN) (well, she's currently in NZ, but that's a whole other story). Had DEBUG before DEFOG, and man that hurt (21D: Clear, in a way). When I locked down that "G," I thought I was good. Other problem area was the SW—zero idea about the "√" at that point (√POINT CHARLIE had a very non-specific clue and took me a while to uncover). Without √, couldn't get 55D, and then 56D: Summon ... well, yeah, no, I don't think of PAGE as a verb much anymore, though of course the concept still exists (in hotel lobbies? airports?). Weird how two little corners can really slow things down. But since I got the theme quickly and the grid was generally easy, the slowness occasioned by those corners was not devastating.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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