Icelandic poet Sturluson / WED 9-25-24 / Senokot alternative / Dance counterpart of the Whip / County in northeastern Nevada / Pioneer in show recording / Word after double or day / AIDS researcher who was Time's 1996 Man of the Year / Tool with a bubble / Haitian unit of currency

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (names names names)

THEME: Wall of Sound ... — the answers on the outer edges of the grid are made entirely out of the notes (do re mi fa etc.) of the musical scale. The puzzle has not one not two but three revealers:

Theme answers:

• FULL SCALE (30A: Life-size ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)
• RINGTONES (36A: Phone numbers? ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)
• SIDE NOTES (45A: Marginalia ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)

The wall (clockwise from the NW corner):

• RE DO 
• SO FA
• FA LA
• MI RE
• LA RE DO
• DO DO
• MI SO
• SO RE
• SO SO
• RE TI RE

Word of the Day: DAVID HO (3D: AIDS researcher who was Time's 1996 Man of the Year) —

David Da-i Ho (Chinese: 何大一; born November 3, 1952) is a Taiwanese American AIDS researcher, physician and virologist who has made a number of scientific contributions to the understanding and treatment of HIV infection. He championed for combination anti-retroviral therapy instead of single therapy, which turned HIV from an absolute terminal disease into a chronic disease.

David Ho was born in Taiwan in 1952 and immigrated to the United States in 1965, where he was educated at California Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School (through the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology) before getting his clinical training at UCLA School of Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital.

He is the founding scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, both housed at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. (wikipedia)

• • •

Rare that I wipe out right out of the box on a *Wednesday* puzzle, but that is what happened today, and though no other section gave me quite that much trouble, I did feel like I was working somewhat harder than usual to put the answers together today. Not hard hard. Just harder. There was at least some resistance all over, which I don't mind, but things have been so easy of late, across the board, that today's difficulty felt oddly elevated. Certainly, where the trivia / proper nouns were concerned, it felt more Thursday / Friday / Saturday than Wednesday. DAVID HO seems eminently worth knowing, but know him I did not, and encountering him first thing, in a section where I was already having some trouble (no idea what "show recording" meant, exactly in 16A: Pioneer in show recording—I wanted a person's name; hard (baseball) clue on RETIRE (1D: Strike out, perhaps), that slowed me down. I couldn't even get out of that section smoothly because the primary connecting word (that is, the word that was going to get me out of the NW and connect me to the rest of the grid) was *also* some trivia I didn't know or had forgotten (namely, GOURDE) (24D: Haitian unit of currency). Also didn't know GUTE (at least not the spelling ... GUTT?) and would not have remembered EDUARDO, probably, if I hadn't had a few of those last letters in place before I looked at the clue. I knew SNORRI, but then I'm a medievalist. I'm guessing most of you ... aren't? Twenty-six years since SNORRI's made an appearance in the NYTXW. He is a 12th/13th-century Icelandic poet and scholar who is believed to have written or compiled most of the Prose EDDA (or just EDDA), a very important source of Norse mythology (as well as a stock piece of crosswordese). "He was assassinated in 1241 by men claiming to be agents of the King of Norway." Fun fact!

As for the theme, it's actually quite elegantly done. The words one can make out of the scale aren't exactly scintillating, but the visual created by the *arrangement* of those words is at least interesting, and the triple revealer (!) more than makes up for any dullness in the note-answers themselves. Also, no all-note answer in the grid anywhere *except* the outer edge ... it's a nice touch. Maybe that was intentional, or particularly hard to do, but I like when the constructor keeps the theme entirely inside the theme ... no stray or accidental themers roaming around. And the revalers are pretty good, with clever wordplay all around. There are "notes" on the "side" of the grid, there are "tones" forming a "ring" around the grid, there's a "scale" ... hmm ... that answer doesn't work quite as well; that is, "full" doesn't really express the structure formed by the notes, the way "ring" and "side" do. But you do (eventually) get a "full" scale, i.e. every note from "do" on up and back to "do" again. Side note: I've been so indoctrinated by crosswords to believe that the note is spelled "SOL" that "SO" now looks weird and wrong to me. The fact that the three revealers all fit symmetrically, and that two of them drill directly into the outer wall, makes this puzzle architecturally elegant. Architecturally complicated puzzles can often feel fussy, with theme and non-theme answers alike feeling forced and awkward. Not so today. There's maybe more crosswordese-leaning stuff than I'd like (an ICI, an ESSO, a NAENAE in the ORRIN ODEA, etc.), but on the whole the grid holds up well, with lots of varied and even colorful answers (ANY OLD AVOCADO! ONE-OFF BISTROS!)

Bullet points:

• 21A: Stock quote? (MOO) — that's what the cow says. The cow says MOO. If you quote a cow, that is likely the quote you're going to get. If you got a different quote, I'd be a little surprised. ("Stock" here means "livestock," of course)
• 48A: Tool with a bubble (LEVEL) — Gotta get the bubble in the little liquid tube to sit inside the little marked area. That's how you know you're level. I think most levels are electronic now, but since I don't use levels on a regular (or even irregular) basis, I'm not a reliable authority.
• 55A: :"Toy Story" dinosaur voiced by Wallace Shawn (REX) — I of course knew that REX was the dinosaur in Toy Story, but I'd completely forgotten he was voiced by the great Wallace Shawn. What a career. From Manhattan to My Dinner with Andre to The Princess Bride to Clueless, an absolute delight, that guy.

• 9D: Fan fare? (FRANKS) — fans (of baseball) might eat FRANKS (i.e. hot dogs), which are common ballpark fare.
• 39A: Word after double or day (BED) — Peter really will sneak baseball references in wherever he can.

• 54D: Bowl feature (TIER) — think "bowl" as in "arena." The Hollywood Bowl, that kind of bowl. There are different levels (or TIERs) of seating. This clue actually gave me slight trouble. I had the "R" and ... nope, no help.
• 38D: Senokot alternative (EX-LAX) — eight appearances now for EX-LAX. Still no ENEMA, though. "ENEMA ... talk about great letters!" RIP, Merl Reagle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. this blog is now legally an adult. As you know, it takes a village, so thank you, villagers.

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