Start behaving more responsibly, literally? / MON 4-1-24 / Former N.S.C. staffer at the center of the Iran-Contra affair, literally? / Jennifer Lopez #1 hit with the lyric "What you get is what you see" / Alpinist's activity, literally?

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Monday solved Downs-only)

THEME: going up — all the themers are Downs that have to be inverted in order to make sense ("literally")

Theme answers:

• FAEL WEN A (3D: Start behaving more responsibly, literally?) ("turn over A NEW LEAF")
• GNITCA (7D: Malfunctioning, literally?) (ACTING up)
• NOOM DAB (9D: Lunar omen in a 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival hit, literally?) ("BAD MOON Rising")
• NIATNUOM (38D: Alpinist's activity, literally?) (MOUNTAIN climbing)
• DRIB EHT (41D: Make a rude gesture with one's finger, literally?) (flip THE BIRD)
• REVILO (48D: Former N.S.C. staffer at the center of the Iran-Contra affair, literally?) (OLIVER North) (... ugh)

Word of the Day: WERNER Herzog (45D: Film director Herzog) —

Werner Herzog (German: [ˈvɛʁnɐ ˈhɛʁtsoːk]; né Stipetić; born 5 September 1942) is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusual talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. His style involves avoiding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing his cast and crew into real situations mirroring those in the film they are working on.

In 1961, when Herzog was 19, he started work on his first film Herakles. He has since produced, written, and directed over 60 films and documentaries such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), Heart of Glass (1976), Stroszek (1977), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), Cobra Verde (1987), Lessons of Darkness (1992), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), My Best Fiend (1999), Invincible (2001), Grizzly Man (2005), Encounters at the End of the World (2007), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010). He has also published over 12 books of prose and directed many operas.

French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog "the most important film director alive". American film critic Roger Ebert said that Herzog "has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular". He was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time in 2009. (wikipedia)

• • •

I was braced for some dumb April Fools trick and well here it is. I think the theme is fine, I guess, but it's a Wednesday-level theme for sure. As a Downs-only solve, this was one of the harder Mondays I've done. You'd think making the theme answers Downs would be a help in a Downs-only solve, but it is not, and it really was not today. When you solve Downs-only, usually you are shooting the (Across) theme answers full of letters until you're able to infer them, and maybe infer the gimmick. But when the themers are Downs, well, you get no help from the Acrosses (obviously), and today, the gimmick was really gimmicky, so not having an assist from crosses really hurt. The theme seems like a reasonable concept. Fine for later in the week, not really appropriate for a Monday, but maybe appropriate for this most annoying of "holidays." The difficulty lay in the fact that every theme answer was "literally" expressing a different form of reversal, so even after I'd gotten the idea (with "BAD MOON Rising"), I couldn't figure out what to do with some of the answers. That is, I couldn't figure out what the missing words were that were supposed to signify "Up." Worst of all was FAEL WEN A, which requires the solver to mentally supply a *lot* of words, not just one word like "up" or "rising," but two ("turn over"), and then the answer itself is not one or two but three words—extremely hard to parse when what you're staring at is _A(E?)(L?P?)W_NA. The other themer that gave me real trouble was REVILO, partly because "North" is a pretty weak "reversal" clue, but mostly because I completely blocked that *&$% out of my brain. Clean erased him. Sent him to the oblivion he deserves. A traitorous lying sack of &*$%. And you want to turn him into whimsy? No. Absolutely not. You need a 6-letter "North" answer? Try ATOKAD instead of inflicting that miserable *$%% on unsuspecting solvers. 

But I can't say I hated the basic concept here. Again, without that OLIVER guy, and later in the week, and with a few terrible bits of fill eliminated from the grid (OWERS???), this puzzle would've made a fine Wednesday. The most intolerable answer, from the perspective of someone who teaches Dante every semester (that is, me), is DANTEAN (19D: Reminiscent of work by the 14th-century author of "Inferno"). I grimaced so hard my face nearly froze. Well, first, I just had DANT- and no idea how I was supposed to fit DANTESQUE (the correct adjective) into just seven squares. Sincerely, I had DANT- and no idea where that was supposed to go. If I have seen DANTEAN ... I don't know when. I googled it and it seems someone somewhere uses it, but DANTESQUE is more than three times as popular as a search term. DANTEAN is defensible, but it was a huge clank in my ears, for sure. On the other hand, I loved CHANDLER, but only because, solving Downs-only, I supplied my own hardboiled detective fiction context. Then I come to find out that it was clued via "Friends." Sigh. I did enjoy that show, and RIP Matthew Perry (who was very good), but I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I would choose that CHANDLER over Raymond CHANDLER. Luckily, for the entirety of the solve, today's CHANDLER *was* Raymond CHANDLER, since the clue existed only in my mind—yet another perk of Downs-only solving.

I was also happy to see the great WERNER Herzog. Kind of startling that WERNER hasn't appeared in the NYTXW in 12 years (!?!?). All those ultra-common letters in a shortish answer and ... nothing? For that long? Bizarre. Looking the grid over now, it actually seems pretty lively for a Monday grid, theme aside. MINIDONUT is nice, and UNCERTAIN and BELITTLE are at least solid. STOUT MOMMY. TREBEK VISION. ARNOLD NAUSEA. None of this is gonna knock anyone's socks off, but it more than holds up, esp. for a Monday puzzle. I guess I come out more on the pro- than the anti- side today, despite my antipathy for everything April Fools-related. The "trick" was actually very gettable, and mostly enjoyable to work out on a theme answer-by-theme answer basis. Cruddy fill was kept to a minimum. Yes. Approved. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Ew, sorry, totally forgot about TADAS (because it was an Across and I didn't really see it). I said there was very little cruddy fill in this grid, and that remains true, but TADAS is 100% garbage. Plural!? LOL, no, never.

P.P.S. Why is "14th century" even in the DANTEAN clue??? [Reminiscent of work by the author of "Inferno"] makes total sense. What other "author of 'Inferno'" is there? It's Dante's Inferno, not Roald Dahl's Inferno or Dr. Seuss's Inferno or Danielle Steel's Inferno. Take out "14th century" and you get a tighter, less awkward clue while losing nothing in clarity.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]