Garden plant also called stonecrop / TUE 7-23-19 / Facial hair for Sam Elliott Wilford Brimley / Nonsense word in Stephen Foster's Camptown Races./ 1981 hit with lyric we can make it if we try / Compound with fruity scent

Constructor: Kyle Dolan

Relative difficulty: Medium (slightly faster than usual, but it's a narrow (14-wide) grid)

THEME: "JUST THE TWO OF US" (54A: 1981 hit with the lyric "We can make it if we try" ... or a possible title for this puzzle) —the letter pair "US" appears twice in each themer:

Theme answers:

• "EXCUSES, EXCUSES!" (16A: "Spare me your lame reasons!")
• MARCUS AURELIUS (26A: Roman emperor who wrote "Meditations")
• WALRUS MUSTACHE (42A: Facial hair for Sam Elliott and Wilford Brimley)

Word of the Day: SEDUM (41A: Garden plant also called stonecrop) —

Sedum is a large genus of flowering plants in the family Crassulaceae, members of which are commonly known as stonecrops. The genus has been described as containing up to 600 species updated to 470. They are leaf succulents found primarily in the Northern Hemisphere, but extending into the southern hemisphere in Africa and South America. The plants vary from annual and creeping herbs to shrubs. The plants have water-storing leaves. The flowers usually have five petals, seldom four or six. There are typically twice as many stamens as petals. (wikipedia)

• • •

first themer I got

The theme works. The phrasing on the revealer is a *bit* of a stretch, in that it's hard to imagine someone using the "two of ___" phrasing (where the blank is just one word). The "of" wants a "the" to follow it. If I were ordering two plain bagels, I might say "two plain" but almost certainly not "two of plain" (or "two of bagel(s)"). There are two items *in* US, not two USes. Anyway, the idea that "two of us" could mean "two appearances of the letter pairing US" is grammatically a stretch, but we're in puzzleland, where wordplay magic is in effect, so sure, whatever, two USes, grammar be damned. Not super thrilling that one of the themers was just the same word twice—seems a cheap way to get your two USes in there, but "EXCUSES, EXCUSES!" is certainly a legitimate stand-alone phrase, so, as with the somewhat awkward grammar implied by the revealer, I'll allow it. Theme: acceptable. Less acceptable is the grid, which is chock-a-block with crosswordese and a few really unfortunate answers. The best place to see what I'm talking about is the mid-Atlantic section of this grid—everything in the east between the central two themers. That is a hellhole of junk, with the noises UHHUH (tolerable) crossing HEHE (completely intolerable, what is that?), abutted by SEEME, all lost in a field of something called SEDUM (!?). How bad is SEDUM? How completely out of place is that little bit of desperation fill? This is only the *second* time it's appeared in the Shortz era. It hasn't been in the puzzle for *sixteen* years. Thus, though it's possibly I've run into it in some other puzzle, I have never encountered, not once, in the 13 years I've been blogging the NYT. And ... it's Tuesday?? I'll give you SEDUM if you really, really need it. But in this morass of crosswordese, in a not-hard-to-fill grid, on a Tuesday? No. No, I will not give you SEDUM.


Clue on "EXCUSES, EXCUSES!" is bad (stop using "lame" this way, please) (it's especially bad here, as the phrase "lame reasons" makes absolutely no sense—the phrase is "lame excuses," which, again, I wouldn't use at all, but if you can't use "excuses" in your clue, then jeez, change the adjective you use in the grid; don't use the adjective that goes *only* with "excuses") ("terrible reasons?" "terrible justifications?") (be creative, just lose "lame"). LOL at the idea that most "book clubs" really get down to THEMES, like it's a college course or something (6D: Topics for book clubs). I teach English *and* have been in book clubs, and was baffled by this clue/answer pairing. Clue on SOCCER BALL was pretty bad, in that you can score "goals" in a lot of sports, so there's nothing very soccery about the clue (3D: Necessity for achieving one's goals?) (ACHIEVEONESGOAL (15)) (please don't put that in your crossword, thanks). Also, the fact that SOCCER BALL had a "?" clue made me think it was a themer. Confusing. I forgot YODELS existed (haven't thought about them since middle school). I forgot Bizet was a GEORGES (thought the only GEORGES I knew was Seurat). My favorite part of the puzzle was when I looked at what turned out to be the revealer and saw that what I had in place was —WOOFUS. My first thought was "what kind of nonsense phrase is this going to be? DOOFUS WOOFUS?" Alas, no. Even more embarrassingly, I didn't write in the last letter of 14A: Nonsense word repeated in Stephen Foster's "Camptown Races" because I thought the answer might be DOODAW (Like GEWGAW? ... which is *not* a nonsense word, somehow!).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]