Morty's cartoon pal / THU 7-27-23 / Root in potpourri / Bridge columnist Charles / Actor Werner of Jules and Jim / Designation that's cheaper than vintage usually / Locale of the house depicted in American Gothic / Rea ___ graphic designer who created The New Yorker's typeface and mascot / Showcase Showdown guesstimate / Her first word was Bart

Constructor: Guilherme Gilioli

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: addition — four Across answers are clued as equations, where the Across answer in question is the sum of the two answers that precede it in its row: 

Theme answers:

• CORE = EPIC + CENTER (i.e. "epicenter") (19A: 17-Across + 18-Across = 19-Across)
• VERSE = LIME + RICK (i.e. "limerick") (35A: 32-Across + 33-Across = 35-Across)
• FIND = DISCO + VERY (i.e. "discovery") (43A: 40-Across + 42-Across = 43-Across)
• BIND = CONS + TRAIN (i.e. "constrain") (59A: 56-Across + 57-Across = 59-Across)

Word of the Day: Charles GOREN (37D: Bridge columnist Charles) —

Charles Henry Goren (March 4, 1901 – April 3, 1991) was an American bridge player and writer who significantly developed and popularized the game. He was the leading American bridge personality in the 1950s and 1960s – or 1940s and 1950s, as "Mr. Bridge" – as Ely Culbertson had been in the 1930s. Culbertson, Goren, and Harold Vanderbilt were the three people named when The Bridge World inaugurated a bridge "hall of fame" in 1964 and they were made founding members of the ACBL Hall of Fame in 1995.

According to New York Times bridge columnist Alan Truscott, more than 10 million copies of Goren's books were sold. Among them, Point-Count Bidding (1949) "pushed the great mass of bridge players into abandoning Ely Culbertson's clumsy and inaccurate honor-trick method of valuation."

Goren's widely syndicated newspaper column "Goren on Bridge" first appeared in the Chicago Tribune August 30 1944, p.15. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm writing at a table in the main room of the vacation house ("The Panorama House" in Grand Marais, look it up!). My housemates are playing all kinds of music, loudly, currently "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel, so it's pretty weird in here right now. Not exactly the best writing conditions. Better than earlier, when they were playing Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler, worse than when they were playing Abba and Pet Shop Boys. Still, I am used to writing in total silence, in the dead of morning, so 10pm party time is throwing me off a little. I'll try to soldier on. I was able to solve this puzzle, under similar conditions, very easily.  Very very easily, the second day in a row where the puzzle didn't really seem to be trying to give me ... anything. The theme is a math-ish theme that definitely came as a surprise, when it finally came, but ultimately it felt slight. Only really involves four short answers, even if it does force us to reevaluate the addends in the equations (i.e. the other short answers in the same row as the equation-clued answers). Definitely got an "oh, cute" out of me, and maybe that's enough. But mainly it felt like a blandish themeless, which is not at all what I look forward to on a Thursday. Now my friends are playing Abba again, "Knowing Me, Knowing You," and I'm kind of bopping in my chair and trying hard to concentrate on this puzzle. OK, that song's over now ... but now it's "Jive Talkin'," so I'm back to bopping. It's going to continue like this. I won't give you any more specifics, but just ... imagine. Anyway, the puzzle is OK, but remedial, once again.

The ugliest part, for me, wasn't the theme (which worked just fine); it was the proper noun pile-up near the middle of the grid. Just a grim name mash-up. EDHARRIS is fine, but he slams into GOREN and IRVIN (!?!), who crashes through RICK, who severs OSKAR. It all felt pretty awful. I knew two of these names, kinda sorta remembered another, but then OSKAR and IRVIN were complete and utter ????? Now, as I've said, the puzzle was, overall, a piece of cake, but even so, this name-iness was unpleasant. Too trivia dense, too know-it-or-you-don't, too proper nouny. Too too. Grease is the word, is the word, that you heard, sorry, the music's still playing and it's hard to tune out. 

I wanted LACTASE to be LACTOSE but the latter is a sugar and the clue wanted an enzyme, so ... fine (4D: Enzyme in dairy pills) (no one in this house knows what a "dairy pill" is ... why would you take a "dairy pill"?) (we just figured out that it's just a "lactose intolerance pill"; "dairy pill" is a weird, misleading formulation that none of us has heard of). Not a great word, but a word nonetheless. UPC CODE (10D: Bars for checking people out) is awful since the "C" in UPC stands for ... CODE. Somebody call the Department of Redundancy Department. Not sure why this strikes me as worse than "PIN NUMBER," but it does. Haven't seen ORRIS in a million years and I hope it's a million more years til the next time (29D: Root in potpourri). Extreme crossword vibes. (Update: "Cracklin' Rosie" by Neil Diamond ... '70s flashbacks ... my dad ... earth tones ...). I had some PIE tonight (from Betty's Pies, Northern Minnesota's pie mecca). If there's more to say about this thing, I'm sure you'll say it in the comments. Peace out!  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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