Melancholy Musketeer / THU 10-10-24 / Like many Keats works / Swahili honorific / Indian honorific / Lou Grant's wife on "The Mary Tyler Moore" show / "Educated insolence," per Aristotle / Sufficient, informally

Constructor: Grant Boroughs

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "W" OR "D" CHOICE (58A: Author's concern that, when parsed as four parts, provides a hint to this puzzle's theme) — six circled squares can contain either a "W" or a "D" and still work (i.e. still make plausible answers, in both directions)

Theme answers:

• COW / COD (1D: Major food source animal)
• WASHBOARDS / DASHBOARDS (15A: Instrument panels)
• PAW / PAD (9A: Dog leg terminus)
• WITHER / DITHER (11D: Fail to act decisively in the face of a challenge)
• WRY HUMOR / DRY HUMOR (28A: Trademark of deadpan stand-ups)
• WINED / DINED (28D: Lavishly regaled, in a way)
• WELLS / DELLS (33A: Areas that are lower than their surrounding terrain)
• FLEW / FLED (21D: Raced, as away from danger)
• SOW / SOD (52A: Do some garden work)
• PLOW / PLOD (39D: Move forward resolutely)
• WAY AHEAD / DAY AHEAD (44A: What lies before you, with "the")
• WISHES / DISHES (44D: Things listed on a wedding registry)

Word of the Day: WASHBOARDS (15A) 

n.

1.

a. A board having a corrugated surface on which clothes can be rubbed in the process of laundering.

b. Music A similar board used as a percussion instrument.

2. A board fastened to a wall at the floor; a baseboard.

3. Nautical A thin plank fastened to the side of a boat or to the sill of a port to keep out the sea and the spray.

adj.

Having rows of ridges or indentations similar to those of a washboard:washboard abs; a washboard dirt road.

• • •

This one really tries to impress you with volume. Volume volume volume! That is certainly ... a lot of D/W squares. Six squares, twelve clues that have to work both ways (that is, for "D" and "W" versions of the answers). That's ambitious, and it creates a *very* thematically dense grid—twelve themers plus the revealer, with hardly any answers not crossing some bit of fixed thematic material (as a constructor, you "fix" your themers in place before you fill the rest of the grid). So, architecturally, this one is ... really going for it. But the problems of "really going for it" are all on display here, and very predictable. Two big issues: forced cluing and strained fill. As for the cluing, you have to really (really) play on the margins of word meanings at times to make those clues work for both words. DAY AHEAD works great for its clue (44A: What lies before you, with "the"). WAY AHEAD really, really doesn't. WAY FORWARD, maybe? If you were cluing WAY AHEAD normally, you would never, ever use the clue that's used today. In fact, you'd probably go with a different sense of WAY AHEAD entirely ([Leading by a lot], [Up big], something like that). Time and again, one of the two D/W answers works great, the other ... uh, not so much. See especially WELLS for its clue (33A: Areas that are lower than their surrounding terrain), and especially WASHBOARDS for its clue (15A: Instrument panels). I was done with the puzzle and looking up WASHBOARDS before I realized that "instrument" must indicate the musical instrument type of "washboard," the kind played in jug bands, say, which is really just ... an actual washboard, right? The kind used for scrubbing clothes before washing machines came along? I guess WASHBOARDS are "panels" ... of a sort. Still, [Instrument panels] is some ... let's be generous and say "inventive" cluing. Certainly works for DASHBOARDS. But for WASHBOARDS ... I dunno, man. Pushing it.

And then there's the fill. No surprise that it creaks—it's under a lot of thematic pressure. But it really creaks, and that's after the constructor has added not one but two pairs of cheater squares (black squares that don't increase word count, added to make filling a grid easier)—just before ACES and just before PA(W/D), and then their symmetrical equivalents. I had a "oh it's gonna be one of these days, is it?" moment very (very) early on:

You will never (ever) see the word ODIC anywhere but crosswords. I studied Keats and other ODISTs (another crossword favorite), and I never saw the word ODIC in the wild, to my knowledge. ODIC makes ODIST look like everyday language. ODIC. That's what I'd call someone who looked and acted like ODIE from "Garfield." Someone dim-witted and annoyingly happy, with their tongue hanging out all the time. To encounter ODIC at literally step two, that was deflating, and ominous. See also ENUF, and not one but two crossword honorifics (SAHIB, BWANA). Plus, dear lord, HAH and HAH!? HAH HAH!?!? No one says "HAH HAH!" Laugh syllables are already the lowest form of crossword fill, but here you've gone and combined them in some new and unholy way, why!?!? For 19A: Syllables of laughter, I wrote in "HA HA HA," as did all nice normal decent and good people. The fact that those mutant HAHs also crossed DAH (!?) ... it's all a little much. I mean, I know I said laugh syllables are the lowest form of crossword fill, but I forgot about Morse Code. ENUF said (oof, ENUF ... you're killing me, puzzle). 

The revealer itself ends up feeling forced, too, when you read it as four parts. "You have a 'W' or 'D' choice!" It doesn't really trip off the tongue. But on a clunky, hyperliteral level, it works. The whole thing works, but it clunks, and it wasn't particularly fun to solve. Once you get the gimmick, the puzzle actually gets easier, as you can fill all those circled squares, and with "W" and "D" options, you can get all those crosses really quickly. Only trouble for me today came with the whole HAH HAH-not-HA HA HA fiasco. That corner also had PELHAM, which I did not know and would never have heard of were it not for one of the greatest movies of all time, The Taking of PELHAM 1-2-3 (the original, 1974 version, with Matthau). It's about the hijacking of a subway car. Do yourself a favor and watch it. Right now, today. It's perfect. I wish I were watching it right now. But PELHAM wasn't clued via the movie, it was clued how it was clued (9D: ___ Bay, neighborhood of the Bronx), so I was at a loss. I also had LONGEST instead of LARGEST for a bit at 40A: Like the femur, among all bones in the body. The femur is, in fact, that LONGEST bone in the body, so if you faltered there too, you have nothing to be ashamed of. 


Bullets:

• 36A: Toss out (SCRAP) — I wrote in SCRAP but then figured no, it has to be SCRUB, because no way they'd use SCRAP when "SCRAPpy-Doo" is in the clue for UNCLE, which crosses this answer (at the "C") (29D: Scooby-Doo, to Scrappy-Doo). But SCRUB was a bad fit for the clue and the crosses didn't work, so it was back to SCRAP. Bah.

• 30A: Lou Grant's wife on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (EDIE) — we did a complete "MTM" rewatch last year, so this answer made me smile. EDIE is very likable, but ... she's not on many episodes, really. I feel like over seven seasons I saw her maybe half a dozen times? (Looks like it was just five!). But Lou does talk about her a lot. They get divorced! She gets remarried! (spoiler alert). Anyway, this seems like it would be very hard for most people, especially the youngs. You just work crosses and wait for something namelike to appear, I guess. We all have to do that sometimes.

• 60D: Private sleeping accommodations? (COT) — sleeping accommodations for a "Private" in the Army
• 51D: What makes a sticker stickier? (AN "I") — you add the letter "I" to "sticker" and bam, "stickier"
• 20D: Melancholy Musketeer (ATHOS) — I've known ATHOS forever, for crossword reasons, but it occurs to me now that I have never read The Three Musketeers or, as far as I can remember, seen any film version of their story. So this "Melancholy" bit is news to me. I had no idea. But again, I didn't need to—"Musketeer," five letters, ATHOS, moving on ... (the other Musketeers are ARAMIS and ... POTHOS? ... [looks it up] ... dammit, PORTHOS! So close. Ah well, doesn't matter, you're never gonna see PORTHOS in crosswords anyway (well, you might, but it's been 16 years, so don't hold your breath).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]