Delilah player in 1949's Samson and Delilah / FRI 6-18-21 / Johnny with 10 World Series of Poker bracelets / Mother of the four winds in myth / People who built the Qhapaq Ñan or "Royal Road" which stretched roughly 3700 miles / Plaything for a Greek god

Constructor: Daniel Larsen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Rebecca LEE Crumpler (52D: Rebecca ___ Crumpler, first African-American female physician) —

Rebecca Lee Crumpler, born Rebecca Davis, (February 8, 1831 – March 9, 1895), was an American physician, nurse and author. After studying at the New England Female Medical College, in 1864 she became the first African-American woman to become a doctor of medicine in the United States. Crumpler was one of the first female physician authors in the nineteenth century. In 1883, she published A Book of Medical Discourses. The book has two parts that cover the prevention and cure of infantile bowel complaints, and the life and growth of human beings. Dedicated to nurses and mothers, it focuses on maternal and pediatric medical care and was among the first publications written by an African American about medicine. 

Crumpler graduated from medical college at a time when very few African Americans were allowed to attend medical college or publish books. Crumpler first practiced medicine in Boston, primarily serving poor women and children. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, she moved to Richmond, Virginia, believing treating women and children was an ideal way to perform missionary work. Crumpler worked for the Freedmen's Bureau to provide medical care for freed slaves. [...] 

She later moved back to Boston to continue to treat women and children. The Rebecca Lee Pre-Health Society at Syracuse University and the Rebecca Lee Society, one of the first medical societies for African-American women, were named after her. Her Joy Street house is a stop on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. (wikipedia)

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This was a solid and enjoyable puzzle overall, which I rarely used to say about a puzzle featuring triple (or quad) stacks. I guess the software / wordlists have gotten a lot more, uh, robust in the past decade, allowing constructors to achieve these constructing feats with a lot less concomitant garbage. Often the crosses on big stacks come out quite poorly—you can definitely see a difference today, in terms of grid taxation, between the upper stack and the lower stack. Things look really good up top, with hardly a thing to make you wince, whereas down below, I'm kind of wincing all the way from WETV through OTOE ORIEL AAS APBS ETS to LES, with even TESSERAE seeming like a bit of a 1-point Scrabble tile cop-out (though I do like the word, weirdly, and mosaics are fun to imagine, so I'll let TESSERAE pass). You can kind of feel that the bottom stack is struggling a little with SLEEVELESS DRESS—soooo many Es and Ls and Ss, just an avalanche of common letters, which generally make grids easier to fill; and yet the short crosses down here are still wobbly. So yeah, in general, things are far nicer up top than down below, which is iffy all the way up to the middle of the grid in the east (EST LSAT BASRA TSAR ETTA AIME). And yet, as I say, it remained pretty enjoyable throughout. SLEEVELESS DRESS has the virtue of being a very real thing, so the E- and S-ridden desperation of it all doesn't come through that strongly. Plus, CARE TO ELABORATE is a 10/10, and ATHLETIC APPAREL at least passes by without incident. Plus, any opportunity I get to remember Hedy LAMARR is always appreciated.

I really liked how this one opened up for me. Blanked on the Bryson book, so started in on the short crosses (which is generally how I attack a long-answer stack). Only took me two crosses to see the Bryson title. There's something slightly exhilarating about not knowing some long answer, getting just a couple of crosses, and then realizing, "ooh, there it is."

This top third of the puzzle then came into view pretty quickly, and I generally liked everything I saw. Dropping "THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E." straight through the heart of the grid gave me the whooosh feeling I really look for on a Friday—all sections of the grid all of a sudden become available. It's like Christmas morning! Well, I guess we didn't often play RUSSIAN ROULETTE on Christmas morning growing up, but you get the idea.

I think I was lukewarm toward the bottom third of this puzzle firstly because the top third was so good, so the bottom just paled by comparison, but secondly because my entree to the bottom third, my in-word, my greeter, if you will, was a completely gratuitous Trump clue: 41D: Trump is named in it (EUCHRE). Don't do that. Don't use that guy in your little cutesy tricksy clues. The clue is clearly worded in such a way as to make me think of the awful man. True, I saw through the awful man to the card game very quickly, but still, a half second thinking about that *&%^ is a half second too long ... the stink lingers. I'M not EASY when it comes to that jackass. And then we get Yet Another Harry Potter Clue just two answers over? (39D: Jason who played Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter films = ISAACS). Yeah, the puzzle lost some goodwill down here for sure. But on the whole, the puzzle holds up. It's 2/3 good, so, majority good, so, good.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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