Cause of a Richter scale blip / TUE 9-10-24 / Straightforward and unadorned, as literary prose / Basic plot lines? / Philadelphia landmark named for the 35th president, in brief / If's partner in computer logic / Three Stooges laugh sound / Three-pointer in hoops lingo / Highest kicker in Texas hold'em

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Constructor: Daniel Bodily

Relative difficulty: Easy


THEME: CONSONANTS (51A: Group whose members are represented completely (with no repeats) in 21-, 26- and 43-Across) — circled squares in those three answers represent a complete set of the CONSONANTS in the English language:

Theme answers:
  • HEMINGWAYESQUE (21A: Straightforward and unadorned, as literary prose)
  • EXECUTIVE BOARD (26A: Corporate management group)
  • JFK PLAZA (43A: Philadelphia landmark named for the 35th president, in brief)
Word of the Day: JFK PLAZA (43A) —
 

LOVE Park, officially known as John F. Kennedy Plaza, is a public park located in Center CityPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The park is across from the Philadelphia City Hall and serves as a visual terminus for the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The park is nicknamed LOVE Park for its reproduction of Robert Indiana's 1970 LOVE sculpture which overlooks the plaza, one of three located in Philadelphia. 

Despite municipal bans and renovations designed to limit the activity, LOVE Park became one of the most famous and recognizable skateboarding spots in the world in the 1990s and 2000s. (wikipedia) 

• • •

And sometimes "Y"! No one ever says that about CONSONANTS, I guess because "HMNGWSQXCTVBRDJFKPLZ and sometimes Y" is a less catchy and much less useful slogan. Still, interesting look today for "Y," which I always mentally group with the vowels (a habit reinforced by my daily Wordle habit, where "Y" is often a later-guess "vowel" (after I've eliminated other, more common vowels)). Here's what I'll say about this theme: it makes for some interesting longer answers. I mean, EXECUTIVE BOARD is never gonna be anything but snoresville, but HEMINGWAYESQUE and JFKPLAZA really liven things up. Those have some pop, some juice. I liked HEMINGWAYESQUE because it reminded me of the funny part in Wordplay where Trip Payne has so much trouble coming up with ZOLAESQUE, and when he finally gets it, he shouts out "Oh, Good God!" (politespeak for "are you ****ing kidding me!?"). I generally disdain the "pangram" as a puzzle-constructing feat ("Hey, look at me, I put all the letters in the grid!" "Did that make the grid better?" "No, but ... look at me!"), but if you're gonna do a pangram, this is the (or a) way to do it: with some kind of core rationale. Inside the theme answers, it's each of the CONSONANTS, exactly once. Add vowels as needed ... and all the vowels are, in fact, needed. Cool cool. 


But here's another thing that I'll say about this theme: that revealer is about as anticlimactic as they come. Like, "Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine" anticlimactic. I was expecting ... I don't know what. Wordplay? Punning? Some clever turn of phrase? But no, it's just the most literal description possible of the letters in the circles. Felt like someone explaining a joke to me. I don't know how else you could "reveal" what's going on in this puzzle, but I have to believe there's a better way. I think the worst part is that the clue just ... explains it. There's nothing to "get." Not so fun to get spoonfed the meaning of the theme, esp. in a puzzle that was basically spoonfeeding you Every non-theme answer in the grid—the difficulty level was sub-beginner throughout. I have two little orange scritches on my print-out, indicating the most minor of hesitations: I had "I'M ON" instead of "I'M UP" (29D: "That's my cue!"). I hesitated at ERI-A, unsure of "C" v. "K" (26D: Novelist Jong); I didn't get ACTUAL instantly off the first "A" (in today's puzzle, that counts as a hold-up); and ditto AXING, which was the last thing I put in. Otherwise, I filled this one fast as I could type, with the themers the only resistance (and not much of it).


A third thing I'll say about this puzzle is that it ended up being way better (way way better) than I thought it was going to be when I started out in the NW, which was a disaster. Well, that may be hyperbolic, but not very. I stopped dead in my tracks after just three entries, thinking "dear lord is it gonna be one of *these* days." The crosswordese comes fast and thick and unallayed:


And I took this screenshot *before* I hit RASTA (the very next answer into the grid). A spate of crosswordese up front is a very bad omen for the overall quality of the fill, so I was very happy to see the puzzle pull out of the nosedive. The short stuff keeps coming at you, but its quality at least gets back to acceptable, inoffensive, average, mediocre (which is about all that 3-4-5s can do, for the most part—not induce groans or eyerolls). I'd never heard that young Einstein failed MATH, so I missed that misconception. I always hesitate when spelling NYUK, because the Stooges say it more than spell it (22D: Three Stooges laugh sound). I'm teaching five Hitchcock films this semester (Rear Window the first week, Vertigo this week ...), so PSYCHO has been much on my mind ... but then it often is—I've probably watched it more than any movie besides Dazed & Confused, which I watched roughly weekly during the years 1994 and 1995 (I watch PSYCHO at least once a year, every Halloween, but it's gonna take a lot of Halloweens to catch Dazed). I like "NOT V" today because it seems like something someone might hastily and mistakenly say in reaction to the claim that all the CONSONANTS are represented in the theme answers today: "All of them!? Ha! NOT V! Oh, wait, there it is, nevermind."


Only one "?" clue today (27D: Basic plot lines? = X AXES). That is ... very low. I don't know what the average is, but one is ... light. I'm not exactly begging for more—when those clues miss, they can be painful—but they would've / might've given this grid some much (much much)-needed bite. Clues didn't really seem to be trying today. Kinda flat, overall. But there's a certain cleverness to the theme, which I liked, and the longer non-theme answers (LAST WISH: STAMPEDE DJ BOOTHS ... what a weird last wish!) are more than ADEQUATE (11D: Good enough).


See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

71 comments:

Bob Mills 5:35 AM  

Neat idea. I got CONSONANTS early in the game, and its connection with the circled squares, so finished it in short order. My only (brief) problem was having "aver" instead of AVOW, so HEMINGWAYESQUE didn't become clear at first. Very enjoyable puzzle'; my compliments to the constructor.

Conrad 5:53 AM  


Very easy. One overwrite: @Rex I'M on before I'M UP at 29D. No WOEs, but I did have to look twice (or three or four times) at XAXES (27D) before I got how it correlates with "Basic plot lines."

Son Volt 6:04 AM  

Not too much nuance to be concerned with here - but cute and serviceable I guess. The revealer is a little simple as the big guy highlights. Still not a fan of the circles.

Guy Clark

Liked DJ BOOTHS and STAMPEDE. LAST WISH and ADEQUATE are both pretty dreary. The X-AXIS string is cool. Needed crosses for ICHOR.

Pleasant enough Tuesday morning solve.

ACE

SouthsideJohnny 6:45 AM  

DEGAS is famous enough in his own right, and is pretty much a CrossWorld staple, so this is just a misdemeanor - but crossing PPP with a foreign word or phrase is just asking for trouble in my book.

I agree with OFL that the revealer kind of laid there and didn’t contribute much, but that may have been a benefit due to its simplicity. I did get a warm fuzzy when HEMINGWAYESQUE jumped out at me - I’m not a student of literature, so it was kind of neat that a) I recognized it, and b) I actually knew what it meant.

kitshef 7:15 AM  

Hand up for IMon before IMUP. More like a Monday than a Tuesday. Terrible theme. ICHOR and SEISM are some serious old-time fill.

But ... any grid with FERN gets lots of extra bonus points.

Andy Freude 7:17 AM  

@Southside 6:45, ditto on the warm fuzzy when HEMINGWAYESQUE dropped in. But that feeling dissipated as I then dutifully filled in the short stuff above the central part of that answer. Thought for sure Rex would comment on the overly segmented grid.

This was one of those puzzles where I ignored the theme, got to the revealer, said, “Oh,” and kept going. Not enough effort (thankfully) to get the full Ovaltine reaction.

Lewis 7:39 AM  

At first, I thought the reveal meant that the theme answers EACH had non-repeating consonants, and my reaction was, “So what?”

Then I saw that it meant that all the consonants were in those three answers, with no dupes, and my reaction was, “Hah! Cool! And look – it’s a pangram in three answers!” It gave my wordnerd brain a happy jolt.

A worth-it day brightener for me.

And the hits kept coming. Lovely rhymers WASABI and HOBBY. Scrabbly letters outside the three theme answers: Z, K, X. A huge parade of schwa-enders – RASTA / KAMALA / ESPOSA / ERICA / ZETA / ELSA / ELBA / MOMA and even TORAH.

All Daniel’s 11 puzzles have been themed, and he is a high-level coder, according to Jeff Chen. Today, he combined theme and coding to wonderful effect, IMO – performing a terrific language trick.

I just love terrific language tricks. Thank you, sir, coming up with this!

Anonymous 7:41 AM  

I think the theme was undercut by the circles, as they made it too obvious what was going on by the time the reveal showed up. Leaving them out would’ve made it all pop a lot more, and not made it any more difficult.

Anonymous 7:46 AM  

A little surprised that OFL makes no mention of the lovely center of this puzzle. But looking forward to the debates tonight!

I.M. Hip 7:50 AM  

NO TV has pretty much become an anachronism when clued as a punishment for kids. It might merit a shoulder shrug from a kid, but hardly anything more.

Joe R. 7:55 AM  

I misread the clue for 54D as “The ‘N’ of TMNT” and happily threw down NInja off of the NI that I had in place, and then was very confused when the crosses didn’t work. 😆

Diane Joan 7:59 AM  

I also had “I’m on” before “I’m up” and then “quake” before “seism”. After some corrections and a misspelling of an entry, I continued onto the crossword fun! I’m looking forward to the debate tonight but doubt it’ll be as fun!

P. Apa 8:02 AM  

In the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. I did the crossword with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette. The puzzle was busy with consonants and vowels doing their work.

thfenn 8:44 AM  

XAndy before XAXES was one do-over but the crosses fixed that pretty clearly. Still think XANDY is a much better answer - those are your basic plot lines, not a bunch of XAXES. shoeS before HEELS was another. I suppose I know wedges aren't shoes, but was sure pumps were, and didn't know the name referred to the heel. So that one's on me. SW was tough as I also don't really think of those sayings as mottos, but the downs sorted things out quickly.

KAMALA front and center on the day of the debate had a nice look to it.

pabloinnh 8:47 AM  

I actually notice that all the uncircled letters in HEMINGWAYESQUE were vowels, but did not keep a list of the circled consonants in the other themers, too much work. Anyway, the revealer was not a surprise.

I have been to the JFKPLAZA but did not know its name, WASABI was our consequence for any bad words said by our boys, and I was delighted that the pet answer was OWNER and not mommy or daddy.

Today's crossword classic has to be ICHOR, MIA for some time now. Welcome back.

Impressive construction indeed, DB. The once-only aspect could not have been Done Better, and thanks for all the fun.

jberg 8:48 AM  

I didn't much like this one. A theme that has to be explained, and which I would never notice on my own--I guess if I had paid attention to the circles while I was working, but I seldom do that. And is HEMINGWAYESQUE really a word? It's such an ornate term, it contradicts itself. And while associations and non-profit organizations often have an EXECUTIVE BOARD, I don't think it's a corporate thing.

Then those stacks of 4s and 5s at the top and bottom of the grid, connected only by the theme answers, make for a really boring solving experience.

Also, I just looked up JFK PLAZA, and according to Wikipedia it's officially name John F. Kennedy Plaza, and popularly referred to as LOVE Park. So JFK PLAZA seems a bit of a stretch.

Well enough ranting from me, I'll go read the rest of you.

RooMonster 8:51 AM  

Hey All !
We'll, with my brain cells diminishing, I couldn't figure out what the Theme was sayin'. Maybe it was the way the Revealer clue was written. But, coming here for the RexPlation, now I am in awe! A Pangram in three entries, without a repeated CONSONANT, in answers that are real things, not just jibberish. Wow!

I'm going to guess JFKPLAZA was the inspiration for this one.

Impressive construction, with the left/right symmetry, and coming up/finding the three entries that have all the CONSONANTS once. Goodness.

Just a J and Q away from a Double-Pangram. It's actually close to a Triple-Pangram.

So, really enjoyed the idea of this puz, and the execution of it. This is probably the best TuesPuz of the year, with today being the lowest?worst? day of NYT puzzledom.

Happy Tuesday!

Three F's
RooMonster
DarrinV

jberg 9:01 AM  

Well, the early commenters seem to feel that HEMINGWAYESQUE is a good word, so I'll withdraw that complaint. And some of the words in the 4 and 5-stacks are nice in their own right (who doesn't love ICHOR?) But I didn't enjoy it much.

Me too with NYUK and ERIX/kA hesitation, but Rex and I parted ways at ACTUAL.

Lexicological question: WYATT Earp was a law-enforcement official; does that count as a "gunslinger?"

EasyEd 9:04 AM  

HEMINGWAYESQUE and a pangram in three answers, not a bad start to a Tuesday morning. Also liked Rex’s find of a Superman cover featuring Mr. MXYZPTLK, although if you look closely, the cover artist spelled the name MXYXTPLK. Wonder how that got by the proof-readers…

Michelle 9:29 AM  

Similar experience here. Also thought of Wordplay and Payne when Hemingwayesque went in and had to write over I’m On with IM UP. Makes me wonder how many brains across the entire nation have the exact same experience when these puzzles are solved.

Elision 9:33 AM  

I've lived in Philly for 16 years and it took me most of the crosses to get JFKPLAZA. Then I thought, ".... do they mean Love Park?" So yeah. When people say "JFK" they're talking about the boulevard.

Whatsername 9:36 AM  

Nice one! An appealing theme concept and something different, which I always appreciate. Not much in the way of difficulty or challenge but that’s okay on Tuesday. With it also being a Tuesday on which Vice President KAMALA Harris is very much in the news, this MANIAC Cat Lady was delighted to see her in our puzzle as well.

Anonymous 9:37 AM  

I couldn’t remember how CONSONANTS was spelled so at first I had CONSONeNTS which gave me eXES instead of AXES. Had a DNF alert and took me forever to figure out the mistake.

Greater Fall River Committee for Peace & Justice 9:37 AM  

I have an ICHOR story. I was once selecting a password for my Harvard University account, and tried something with 'clavichord' for a first pass. And those snotty Harvard robot techies came back with 'can't use, this phrase contains the common word ICHOR.' Common Word?? And clavichord itself did not trigger them? Sheesh.

egsforbreakfast 10:09 AM  

Not to be a nit picker, but in order to make this a first-rate theme, shouldn't all of the non-circled squares have been devoid of CONSONANTS? Difficult? Yes! But the purists will demand it!

Did anyone else have trouble with 55D? Just AXING.

My mother (not MOMA, which is a cultural attraction in mid-Manhattan) had a ferocious paddle (actually a piece of grip-friendly driftwood) that was occasionally used to bring us into line with the expected behavioral norms of our generation (we didn't have a TV, so NOTV would not have been effective). It was painted, by her, with a terrifying tribal face, and was called the Kwakiutl Demon Exorcisor. It was, in retrospect, amusing to see how we would demonstrably self-flagellate to try to stave off the dreaded whack of the KDE . I bring it up only because EXECUTIVEBOARD made me think of it for the first time in decades. Today it would be called child abuse, but it certainly made us rethink whatever behavior had brought it out.

I can't decide whether this theme is more MEH or MID, but I do respect the pangram-in-three achievement. Thanks, Daniel Bodily.

Gary Jugert 10:11 AM  

Oh dios mío, silencio por favor. I haven't been in a post office for maybe 15 years, and when you move, dealing with the fumes of that once hallowed institution is part of the fun. Yesterday, I stood in line in front of two old white guys loudly running down their Fox News, right-wing bumper sticker bullet points and eagerly agreeing with each other on vaccines, Putin targeting Albuquerque with nukes, killing every Hamas member, and worthless kids these days. Maybe we need a rule: If you're white and male and over 70, you should be required to take a class called, "It's time for you to shut the hell up. Nobody needs to hear what your deluded skull full of mashed potatoes is dreaming up. Go play Barbies with your granddaughter. It's important."

We would obviously make an exception for crossword puzzle people giving their opinions on today's outing. Was it too easy and is the NYTXW going to heck?

Today's theme letterally was a farce. Like who cares? Is this what socialism under KAMALA will be like? 🙃

❤️ XAXES, NYUK

Propers: 8
Places: 4
Products: 2
Partials: 5
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 of 79 (28%)

Funnyisms: 3 😐

Uniclues:

1 Dog training for amphibians.
2 Collecting toad-like toe homes.
3 Hopper amusing itself in stilettos.
4 What I dream the perfect set of uniclues will cause.
5 Nutty bumper.
6 Those making hammer time possible.
7 Crazy, but not really crazy.

1 HEELS FROG HOBBY
2 FROG HEELS HOBBY (~)
3 HOBBY HEELS FROG (~)
4 ACTUAL STAMPEDE (~)
5 DJ BOOTH'S MANIAC (~)
6 GONG TALK STAFF
7 ADEQUATE PSYCHO

My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: Aeries. BIRDS OF PREY HAMLETS.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nancy 10:28 AM  

This Tuesday puzzle boasts a clue that I found baffling enough for a Saturday. I couldn't get it without the crosses and I don't even understand it now: "Dolphin's fluke" = FIN. Perhaps someone will explain?

I also thought the constructor put a lot of care into the cluing. Wonderfully un-Tuesdayish clues for STAMPEDE; ABOUT; X AXES; ENVY; MATH. As to the latter at 56D -- that's a rumor that I certainly never heard!! You?

And HEMINGWAYESQUE is a really delicious answer. Just feel the way it rolls trippingly off the tongue.

So that if the whole CONSONANTS are all there with none repeated conceit rolled trippingly off my back, so what? As is my wont, I ignored the tiny little circles completely and found to my delight that there was quite a nice puzzle there without them. And once again the randomly placed tiny little circle has been shown to be all about the constructor's constructing challenge rather than the solver's solving challenge. But if you give me a Tuesday puzzle this enjoyable, I really don't mind.

kitshef 10:29 AM  

Actually, MXYZTPLK. And that was the spelling in his first ever appearance. Later it was changed to MXYZPTLK. I used this in a puzzle once and went into a bit of a deep dive.

Hack mechanic 10:34 AM  

Clever enough I guess especially with no repeats in 3 answers but it just left me wanting something deeper, a bit more gnarly

Nancy 10:47 AM  

You washed their mouths out with...WASABI???!!!

Anonymous 10:53 AM  

A fluke is the tail fin of a dolphin (and probably other sea creatures).

Steve Washburne 11:10 AM  

Sorry, but JFKPLAZA is not one of the top 100 landmarks in Philadelphia. It might have been in the 70's.

Anonymous 11:16 AM  

Can someone explain XAXES?

Beezer 11:17 AM  

Haha! @Nancy I THINK he is kidding, but I do think that would be a bigger deterrent than soap. I’m currently wearing (brand name excluded) invisible braces (revisiting 1967 in much more pleasant way) and my dentist told me to clean them with liquid antibacterial soap, like Dial. I told my husband the other day I’ve come to look forward to the “clean” taste when I pop them back in after eating and brushing.

Beezer 11:20 AM  

Some people would say Wyatt Earp was a “gunslinger” before he got into law enforcement. This doesn’t answer your question though.

Anonymous 11:20 AM  

Whale, seal, walrus to name a few ;-)

Sarah V. 11:21 AM  

I'm missing something in your comment. In the three theme answers (with circles), all of the uncircled letters are vowels.

Anonymous 11:29 AM  

Oops! Seals and walruses do not have flukes. But add porpoises to the "fluked" group!

jae 11:32 AM  

Easy-medium. No WOEs and sped before TORE and me too for IM on before UP were it for erasures.

I ignored the circles and solved it like a themeless. A pretty good “look what I can do” puzzle, liked it.

Beezer 11:34 AM  

Now you mad ME think of the, I kid you not, of the balsa wood “paint stirrer” that my Dad had written in ink…”Beezer’s Butt Warmer”..and which sat out of sight on top of the fridge. The use of the “butt warmer” was formal and mostly done when I was around 5 and had a habit of wandering off unbeknownst to my Mom to other neighbors houses and yards out of her sight. I would call it something like 3 light tap whacks after dinner followed by a short period of semi-shunning (which would include my teenage sister). Maybe THAT is considered abuse today…I don’t know, but I feared the butt-warmer humiliation and shunning and I can only recollect it done a handful of times so I must have gotten the picture.

Bosco 11:36 AM  

Rex got a different clue for 1D than I did. In one of the images Rex shares it shows the clue for 1D as “No more seats sign”, but in the printed version that I was using the clue is “sold out sign”.

Beezer 11:40 AM  

Gosh, I spent the morning replying to people! I very much enjoyed this and it was especially good for a Tuesday (echoing @Roo). I thought there was a lot of good stuff even in the short fill. Also, I have to say…@Rex’s solving experience was pretty much the same as mine today, EXCEPT I’m sure I do not type as fast as he does. Plus…I don’t even try to type fast. So there.

Anonymous 12:00 PM  

@Rex so great to see the Minutemen in your embedded music today! A real nice surprise to hear them before heading off to work

jb129 12:04 PM  

No TV?
Take away a kid's phone - now that's something ...

Anonymous 12:05 PM  

Because the first thing to notice today is all those blasted little bubbles, I ignored them and whatever theme they were supposed to deal with. So it turned out to be an easy little themeless.
Last I knew, RASTA, GRAD and MATH are still "in brief". Einstein's course was called Mathematik, and was not briefened in usage.

jb129 12:09 PM  

@ GaryJ - your Post Office experience - how awful!!! A sign of things to come? OMG, NO!!!!!

mathgent 12:18 PM  

As Nancy observed, the theme didn't enrich the solving experience. But it didn't weaken it, either. Quite enjoyable. Good variety of entries, smart cluing, no junk, only eight threes.

M and A 12:40 PM  

E/W puzgrid symmetry. The Circles. Pangrammer. KAMALA & PSYCHO MANIAC [squarin off to-nite, sport fans].
Looks good, to m&e.

staff weeject pick [of only 8 choices]: FIN. It was kinda a fluke pick.

some other fave stuff: ADEQUATE. STAMPEDE & its clue. NYUK. XAXES clue. PSYCHO. WASABI.

Thanx for the cons on ants, Mr. Bodily dude. None of em bugged m&e.

Masked & Anonymo5Us


... and now a reply from the other side ...
**gruntz**

Tom T 12:54 PM  

Hidden Diagonal Word (HDW) clues for this grid:
1. "You bet!"
2. Days before
3. Minor deviation, as in stock market trend
4. Mononymous vaudeville star in Gold Rush days
5. If's partner in computer logic

Tip of the hat to Mr. Bodily for getting 5 consecutive consonants into a single crossword answer (JFKPL, I'm looking at you).

Nice to see the Roman god of coordinate graphs in the grid today--you know ... XAXES.

Answers:
1. SURE (begins with the S in the gargantuan 21A, HEMINGWAYESQUE, moves to the SE)
2. EVES (the E in 8D, ZETS)
3. BLIP (B in ELBA, 23D--moves to SW)
4. LOTTA (L in LSU, 25A--I know, I know, this wouldn't even qualify as a legitimate Saturday PPP entry, but LOTTA Crabtree has an amazing life story--look her up)
5. ELSE (E in ELSA, clued identically to it's twin ELSE, 13D)

I hear the GONG--time for this MANIAC to leave the stage.

okanaganer 1:08 PM  

Solving down clues only, it was tough at first. Usually this technique is helped by the fact that the theme answers are usually acrosses (true here), well known phrases (umm... sort of), and related by the theme (not at all!). The circled letters follow the theme, but the answers themselves are completely unrelated. Still, I eventually got it done and it was satisfying. Of course, until I got the revealer CONSONANTS I had no idea what the theme was.

I think ICHOR is a Spelling Bee word... it's been a while, though. Speaking of which, QB streak 9 straight!

Anonymous 1:09 PM  

Nevermind; figured out it’s X-Axes

Whatsername 1:23 PM  

An X AXIS is the horizontal line on a graph. The Y axis is the vertical bar.

SFR 1:38 PM  

This puzzle also embedded other references to debates: 43 across and 38 across: JFK and NIXon; 56 across and 69 across: dueling approaches to truth; 35 across: another reason for 'the one we don't mention' to consider NYT without affection.

SFR 1:48 PM  

... and 60 across sets the stage for this evening with a veiled reference to the OK Corral

Beezer 2:13 PM  

Or Nintendo Switch…

SharonAK 2:17 PM  

Hmm, unlike Rex,I thought it hard for a Tuesday.
And, also unlike Rex I rather liked the clue "basic plot line".
Was not so taken with the theme, It just seemed kind of dull. And I needed that totally explanatory revealer to see what was going on.

ChrisS 2:23 PM  

The women in my life definitely use wedges to refer to a type of shoe

Anonymous 2:35 PM  

Rex never said he didn’t like the clue on X AXES

Les S. More 2:44 PM  

Oh, CONSONANTS, how exciting. My favourite part of the alphabet; all the letters that aren't vowels. Because, of course, I have a fave part of the alphabet, don't you?

Oh well, I did like HEMINGWAYESQUE, but I'm not sure it was enough to rescue this puzzle from EXECUTIVEBOARD and JFKPLAZA. On to Wednesday ...

Raymond 2:45 PM  

Right, and anyway in the UK (and other countries which speak English English) it's called MATHS for short (makes sense)

egsforbreakfast 3:53 PM  

Sarah V. I meant that there should be no consonants in the rest of the puzzle.

Liveprof 5:18 PM  

Ichor was not accepted in a Sunday SB.

Liveprof 5:23 PM  

I heard the Einstein rumor. It was comforting.

Adam S 6:19 PM  

"Once and once only" might have worked well as a grid-spanning revealer, with "consonants" somewhere in the clue. Assuming one of the other workable theme sets the constructor found would fit into a regular 15x15 grid.

Beezer 6:32 PM  

Um, I didn’t get the idea he “liked” the clue…so I can see why SharonAK made the comment. I got the impression Rex thought it was “too cute.”

Beezer 6:46 PM  

I had only “heard” he wasn’t a great student…not that he flunked math or any subject. Obviously, he was bored if he made less than stellar grades.

Anonymous 7:34 PM  

I see that so far I’m the only one who got stumped with DAZE/DONG instead of GAZE/GONG. Isn’t there such a thing as a dazed look where you stare off onto the horizon? 😛

ChrisR 7:58 PM  

Why do they call it Ovaltine? The mug is round. The jar is round. They should call it Roundtine.

yadny 8:20 PM  

this is completely unrelated to the puzzle, but it was nice to see the Minutemen appear in the writeup

Anonymous 10:47 PM  

It has been 2 days since our last rap-themed clue.

Today's puzzle had 0 missed opportunities for fill-in-the-blanks rap clues. Huzzah.

Sadly, DJBOOTHS was mistakenly not given a rap-themed clue. For SHAME.

Close calls: Frank OCEAN and TREY Songz often collaborate with rappers.

Bye.

Anonymous 10:50 PM  

Our band could be your life

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