French city near Grenoble / TUE 4-4-23 / 1988 rom-com set in a New England restaurant / Pasta also called risoni / 1972 thriller set in the backwoods of Georgia / Creepy movie doppelgänger

Constructor: Andrea Carla Michaels and Christina Iverson

Relative difficulty: the easiest NYTXW puzzle I have ever done

THEME: "DELIVERANCE" (63A: 1972 thriller set in the backwoods of Georgia ... or a plot point in 18-, 29- and 49-Across) — movie titles that end with things that get "delivered":

Theme answers:

• "MYSTIC PIZZA" (18A: 1988 rom-com set in a New England restaurant)
• "BROADCAST NEWS" (29A: 1987 film set in a Washington, D.C. TV station)
• "ROSEMARY'S BABY" (49A: 1968 horror film set in a New York City apartment)

Word of the Day: ORZO (12D: Pasta also called risoni) —

Orzo (Italian for 'barley'; /ˈɔːrzoʊ, ˈɔːrtsoʊ/, Italian: [ˈɔrdzo]; from Latin hordeum), also known as risoni (pronounced [riˈzoːni]; 'large [grains of] rice'), is a form of short-cut pasta, shaped like a large grain of rice. Orzo is traditionally made from flour, but it can also be made of whole grain. It is often made with semolina, a type of flour made from durum wheat. 

The name orzo is common for this pasta shape in North America, but less so in Italy, where the word means barley. (wikipedia)

• • •

When I say this is the easiest puzzle I've ever done, I'm not being hyperbolic. I've never experienced anything like this. I knew every answer as soon as I looked at the clue. I knew many answers without ever looking at a clue, just by inferring the answer from the letters I already had in place. I never checked a cross. I entered answers as fast as I could read / type. I blinked precisely once. Well, twice: once at 23A: French city near Grenoble (LYON) and then again at 12D: Pasta also called risoni. I actually only hesitated for a second or so before writing in LYON (off the "L") but because I was slightly unsure about it, when I looked at the pasta clue and couldn't immediately think of a four-letter pasta that wasn't ZITI (which didn't work with LYON's "O"), I left it and went to surrounding answers ... which means it stayed unsolved for about five seconds, since after COZY and RYAN, I wrote in "MYSTIC PIZZA" with only a handful of letters, without ever looking at the clue, and then that whole NE corner just filled itself in. I need to be clear about this. I'm not just saying it's easy. I'm saying that ORZO (!) was the Only Answer In The Grid that I didn't get at first glance. At first glance. I was not rushing to finish, but I'm pretty confident that if I'd been timing myself I'd've ended up in the low 2's with this one, which is about as fast as I've ever gone. If I'd been actually *trying*, I might've broken 2 for the first time ever (and probably the only time in my life). "DELIVERANCE" was actually the *first* theme clue I even looked at, all the way down at the bottom of the grid. The short stuff is so easy, and there's sooooooo much of it, that my usual M.O. of "short stuff first long stuff second"  meant that I felt like I could go forever and never even have to look at a themer. I didn't bother to look at any of the long Downs until I had crossed them four or five times already. So the puzzle ... well, it was a blur. As for the theme, I knew the theme answers were movies, and that was all I knew (or needed to know).

If you are my age and love movies, then every title is super duper familiar, which is why, once I knew movies were involved, I could drop in answers without even looking at clues. I came up from "DELIVERANCE," looked at the letters "ROSEM--YSB---" and, well, you can see why clues aren't exactly necessary when you've got that much already laid down. Once I was finished, I went back and read the revealer clue carefully. At first it seemed like maybe you were being asked to know something specific about each movie's plot, but no, not really. All you gotta know is that the last words of all the titles are things that get "delivered." Slightly weird / jarring to make your whimsical revealer a movie best known for its infamous sexual assault scene, but otherwise, the theme seems fine, if innocuous. The movie set here definitely favors the old—the most recent movie here came out when I was 18 (I am .... no longer 18). But the movies are (maybe) iconic enough that their oldness doesn't really limit the puzzle's overall accessibility (not drastically, anyway). The outlier here, familiarity-wise, is "MYSTIC PIZZA." I assume that's the movie title most likely to baffle the under-40 crowd today. But it's an early Julia Roberts movie, so it's not exactly obscure. And, as I say, the rest of the grid is so ridiculously easy that you can whiff on a movie title or two here and still solve this thing without working up too much of a sweat.

The theme concept is cute, though it is truly a one-note affair. The movies are all clued in the dullest, most straightforward way possible. And most of the rest of the puzzle is 3s 4s and 5s. I know because I mowed right through. And you can look at the grid yourself and see how thick it is with short stuff—all of it clued as simply as possible. The grid is clean and the longer Downs are solid, but aside from the movie titles, the grid felt bland—and even the movie titles get a fairly lackluster clue treatment. Easy puzzles don't have to be dull. They really don't. The core concept here is nice, but the overall execution lacks the snap oomph and 'zazz that the best early-week puzzles have. This is very professionally made—it's just a bit of a BORE. But a short BORE! And I do like remembering movies, so it's not a total wash. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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