Early smartphone model of the 2000s / SUN 11-16-25 / Formerly with law enforcement, informally / Castle fortifications / Uncle Sam's land, informally / Frequent question bout the spelling of "Caribbean?" / Conflict that ended with the Treaty of Nanking / Movable parts of record players / Wally ___, astronaut who commanded Apollo 7 / Selina ___, the veep on "Veep"

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Misquoting Shakespeare" — wacky clues lead to imaginary phrases that sound like misquotes of famous phrases from Shakespeare:

Theme answers:

• "GOOD KNIGHT, SWEET PRINCE" (22A: King's assessment of his son the Crusader?)
• "TO THINE OWN ELF BE TRUE" (40A: Santa's view on loyalty for those who help him?)
• "FARE IS FOUL / AND / FOWL IS FAIR" (51A: With 61-Down and 78-Across, "Food at this restaurant stinks, but the duck seems fine"?)
• "TWO B'S OR NOT TWO B'S" (64A: Frequent question about the spelling of "Caribbean?")
• "A NOSE BY ANY OTHER NAME..." (87A: Schnozz, honker or beak?)
• "BEWARE THE TIDES OF MARCH" (112A: Warning to a beachgoer on St. Patrick's Day?)

Word of the Day: Wally SCHIRRA (88D: Wally ___, astronaut who commanded Apollo 7) —

Walter Marty Schirra Jr. (/ʃɜːˈrɑː/ shur-AH; March 12, 1923 – May 3, 2007) was an American naval aviator, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. In 1959, he became one of the original seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury, which was the United States' first effort to put humans into space. On October 3, 1962, he flew the six-orbit, nine-hour, Mercury-Atlas 8 mission, in a spacecraft he nicknamed Sigma 7, becoming the fifth American and ninth human to travel into space. In December 1965, as part of the two-man Gemini program, he achieved the first space rendezvous, station-keeping his Gemini 6A spacecraft within 1 foot (30 cm) of the sister Gemini 7 spacecraft. In October 1968, he commanded Apollo 7, an 11-day low Earth orbit shakedown test of the three-man Apollo Command/Service Module and the first crewed launch for the Apollo program. [...] Schirra was the first astronaut to go into space three times, and the only astronaut to have flown into space in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. In total, he logged 295 hours and 15 minutes in space. After Apollo 7, he retired as a captain from the U.S. Navy as well as from NASA, subsequently becoming a consultant to CBS News in the network's coverage of following Apollo flights. Schirra joined Walter Cronkite as co-anchor for all seven of NASA's Moon landing missions. (wikipedia)

• • •

Gonna be brief because I have nothing good to say about this. A startlingly weak pun theme with fill that made me cringe over and over. This felt like what might've passed for an OK puzzle 30+ years ago, but today ... I can't believe this was accepted. The title of the puzzle isn't even trying, that's how weak this theme is. "Misquoting Shakespeare." Yes. You are doing that. But why? What is the point? These puns are completely arbitrary and not funny in the least. The central one ("FARE IS FOUL / AND / FOWL IS FAIR") is the best of the lot, by far, largely because it's an epic two-parter (three- if you count the "AND") where the quotation sounds exactly like the original, correct Shak. quote. That is, it involves perfect homophones, one in either half of the symmetrical quote, and the quote itself actually borders on amusing.  "TWO Bs OR NOT TWO Bs" is also OK—the clue addresses a very real spelling issue, so ... fine. But the others, oof, they do nothing. They have no wit, charm, sense of humor, genuine playfulness. "Uh, what sounds like 'night,' I know, KNIGHT?" Who cares? The resulting phrase is practically nonsense, and certainly isn't funny. And the remaining three are somehow worse than that. At least "KNIGHT" actually sounds like "night." Why "ELF"??? I mean, if you're going to try a pun there, why not go with "shelf," which is at least closer to "self"? "TO THINE OWN ELF BE TRUE" makes about as much sense as "TO THINE OWN CELL (phone?) BE TRUE" or "TO THINE OWN SELF BE BLUE." And then "A NOSE BY ANY OTHER NAME?" Why NOSE???? Why not HOSE or POSE? Why not BEWARE THE RIDES OF MARCH? Or SIDES OF MARCH? Or EYES OF MARCH, for that matter? These themers today involve only arbitrary minor sound / spelling changes, and (the real crime) they yield almost nothing in the way of humor. I can forgive groaners, but I can't forgive how meek and tepid these groaners are. Try harder! "EAT TWO, BRUTE!" "LORD, WHAT FOOLS THESE TURTLES BE!" "MY KINGDOM FOR A HEARSE!" "LET SLIP THE CLOGS OF WAR!" "NEITHER A BURROWER NOR A LENDER BE!" These are also bad, but they are no worse than what we end up getting. With no guiding principle beyond "kinda sorta sounds like Shakespeare" ... ugh.

["Beware the Eyes of Mars!"]

And the fill—a problem from the start. OK, you're throwing ENOLA and STN at me right off the bat in that little corner in the NW, I've seen worse. What's that? You wanna give me the odd prepositional phrase ON EARTH too? Sigh, OK, you're pushing it, but so far, this is just ordinary crud. But then you try to smack me with a cold fish labeled À LUI and that's it, I'm completely out of the puzzle now. I wrote À MOI in there, which is bad enough, but it's a common kind of bad: a short foreignism that's not the kind of thing you're apt to know if you don't speak the language, but that you see from time to time (less now than in the bad old days of crosswordese, but still, you see it). But À LUI? Check out this À LUI heat chart:

[xwordinfo]

You can see, even Maleska (NYTXW editor 1977-93), whose name is virtually synonymous with the pre-Shortz crosswordese-heavy grid, was like "we should probably take it easy with this À LUI stuff.” And then in the Shortz Era, it practically disappears. 'Cause it's bad. Hasn't been used in nine years. Standards for fill are generally much higher now than they were decades ago, but lately (this week, and esp today) things have regressed. Please understand that if À LUI were an aberration, if most of this grid were cleanly filled, I would definitely point it out (and boo at it), but I wouldn't be dwelling on it. You're allowed some less-than-pretty stuff when you're making any grid, particularly a themed Sunday. But this grid just kept throwing subpar fill at me. I've had enough French to know it, but it's ugly as a piece of short fill, and, along with its crosswordese counterparts up there, really indicative of the direction this grid is going. To wit: OR I comes at you next, and then THE I (!?), and things get EELIER (!?!) in the NE, where we get still more French (FRÈRE) and some EMILE I've never heard of. And then there's a whole ESC / ECONO / OPI / ANE patch. And things go on like that from there. The names in this one also seemed pulled from Crossword Roster of Yore. ODETTE (30A: "Swan Lake" role) and HALAS (91D: "Papa Bear" of the N.F.L.) and SCHIRRA, the last of those being exceedingly tough for anyone who has no real memory of all those early space missions and who was involved when / where. SCHIRRA was the one name that nearly broke me, as I had ABASE instead of ABASH at 96A: Leave red-faced, which gave me SCIERRA, which looked bad, but not much worse than SCHIRRA looks, honestly. And it's not just not enough good stuff or contemporary stuff or fun stuff to balance the puzzle out.

The grid isn't all bad. I'm fond of PARAPETS and WORSE OFF. IN A TRICE is arcane, but not in a way I hate. It's good-quaint. FLASH CARD, GARROTE, TYPIFIED, WESTERNS—the puzzle gets off a few good ones. But mainly it felt like this puzzle was pummeling me with half-baked puns and a whole arsenal of tired, tired fill. I said I was gonna keep it brief, so ... this is "brief" for me. I'll stop. On to the Bullets.

Bullets:

• 21A: Conflict that ended with the Treaty of Nanking (OPIUM WAR) — which one? It's either the OPIUM WARS, plural, or you're gonna have to be more specific. This clue is referring to the First OPIUM WAR, which is the title of its wikipedia page because, again, there were more than one. Specifically, there were two, the first one fought between the British Empire and China, 1839-42, the second between UK/France and China, 1856-60. If you talk about these wars, you talk in the collective (OPIUM WARS), or you specify which OPIUM WAR you're talking about. Because you have to. Because there are two. FIRST OPIUM WAR would be great fill, imho. OPIUM WAR is blargh unless your clue is [One of two 19th-century conflicts between the UK and China].
• 20A: Early smartphone model of the 2000s (TREO) — bygone smartphones? You gotta be courageous enough to delete stuff like this from your wordlist. TREO is a crutch. With every passing day, it's worse fill. There is no rehabilitation until something else comes along with that name, something that is not a long-bygone phone model. When I search [TREO] on DuckDuckGo (which I generally prefer to Google), the smartphone appears nowhere on the first page of hits. Even on Google, I'm getting a TREO Foundation and TREO scented candles before I'm getting (finally) pictures of early smartphones. [Palm TREO] is what you wanna search. Lots of models, starting in 2002, but done by 2008. Seventeen years gone. No one should have to remember phone model names that are that old. TREO has such a grid-friendly combination of letters, I get why a constructor might want to use it, but ... have courage. Throw it in the ocean.
• 76A: No Mr. Nice Guy (MEANY) — really thought this was spelled "MEANIE" ... because it is. MEANY is a Var. (as in "Variant")
• 121A: Movable parts of record players (TONE ARMS) — I move one of these parts on a regular basis, but still never remember this technical term. I think I just call it the "arm," if I call it anything

That's enough of that. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)