Piper's son in nursery rhyme / TUE 4-14-20 / Giant of wrestling moviedom / Netflix crime drama starring Jason Bateman / Loco Motion singer 1962 / Italian fashion giant / Bitter brews for short

Constructor: Joe Hansen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: digits — themers begin or end with words that can refer to one of the five fingers:

Theme answers:

• THUMB WAR (41D: Hand-to-hand combat?)
• BODY MASS INDEX (18D: Calculation using height and weight)
• MIDDLE OF THE ROAD (7D: Neither left nor right)
• BOXING RING (32D: Place to duke it out)
• LITTLE EVA (36D: "The Loco-Motion" singer, 1962)

Word of the Day: ECCO (40D: Danish shoe brand) —

ECCO Sko A/S is a Danish shoe manufacturer and retailer founded in 1963 by Karl Toosbuy, in Bredebro, Denmark. The company began with only the production of footwear, but has since expanded into leather production, as well as accessories and small leather goods. ECCO opened its first retail store in Denmark in 1982. ECCO’s products are sold in 99 countries from over 2,250 ECCO shops and more than 14,000 sales points. ECCO is family-owned, founded in Denmark in 1963, and employs 21,300 people worldwide. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is an old theme. It has been done, in one form or another, roughly a billion times. I guess running the themers Down gives it ... something. Some kind of angle. But not much of one. So the concept is not novel, but if you've never seen it before, then maybe it holds some charm. But truthfully I wasn't as put off by this puzzle as I might have been normally because I solved this one in a completely and entertaining way: namely, over Zoom, with my daughter, Ella. I made a video of the whole experience, which you can can watch, well, here, now, if you like:

[when I talk in the video about there being no apparent pattern to the "finger" placement, I meant "beyond the very obvious fingers-in-correct-order arrangement," in case that somehow wasn't clear]

The only interesting thing for me, puzzle-wise, was trying to figure out what the theme answers were going to be. Once we got MIDDLE filled in (from crosses) and then INDEX filled in (Ella got BODY MASS INDEX very quickly), I knew instantly that we were gonna be looking at a hand, and so I just went ahead and filled in the circled squares Without Even Looking At The Clues For Those Answers. This was a bad strategy, as you can see if you watch the video, because both of us just assumed that that final themer would start with PINKIE. If I'd looked at the *clue* before writing anything in, I might've realized right away that the answer was LITTLE EVA (a name I know, largely from crosswords), but because I cockily wrote in PINKIE, when the time came to actually look at that clue, I had no idea who the singer of "The Loco-Motion" could be. PINKIE LEE sounded like someone. But I'm sure I was thinking PEGGY LEE. Annnnnyway, if you watch the video of us solving, you can actually hear the moment we realize that it's LITTLE and not PINKIE—audible unrehearsed simultaneous groans. Yes, it's your LITTLE finger, but ugh, come on, it's the PINKIE. Ella surmised that it's more commonly spelled PINKY, which may be true, but still, LITTLE was not a winner with either of us. That was very easily the lowest point of the solve.


No other points were terribly low. Neither of us liked SHIRT as the answer for [Jersey], largely because "Jersey" just has so many other meanings that eclipse the SHIRT meaning. I can't think of a single instance where I would swap "jersey" for SHIRT. Maybe, mayyyybe when talking about a baseball player's jersey??? I dunno. Seemed off. Otherwise, fill seemed pretty typical. Not wonderful (ITGO?) but not any worse than your average NYTXW. I'd never solved a puzzle with my daughter, nor had I ever watched her solve a puzzle, and I was surprised, both at how fast she got some answers (she's clearly developing her solving muscle) and how certain gimmes for me remain totally mysteries to her (see Kim NOVAK, for instance). She also had never heard of the term D.O.A., and since that initialism crosses EGAL (which she also didn't really know), she might've been derailed by that crossing had we not been solving together. She also didn't get OWNS and LIT nearly as fast as I thought she should, given that she is still a card-carrying member of teendom (for another few months) and I figured that stuff was straight out of her lexicon. She knew both terms, of course—just wasn't as quick on the uptake as the old guy she was solving with.


Hope you found something here to like. I think I should co-solve all Tuesdays with people I like. Maybe Sundays too. Having an entertaining solving companion really helps lackluster puzzles go down easy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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