Egg-shaped tomato / MON 11-3-25 / Fleming who was the original host of "Jeopardy!" / Two-time Emmy-winner Remini / Record art space / Overly eager personal injury lawyer, derisively / Film that may have inspired "Sharknado" / Guitarist, in slang / Roaring Twenties style, informally / Morning waker-upper / Not express, as a train

Constructor: Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Easy 

THEME: ACS (65D: Summer coolers, for short ... or a hint to the answers to the starred clues) — theme answers are familiar phrases/names with the initials "A.C.":

Theme answers:

• ACCESS CODE (17A: *PIN, e.g.)
• ALLEY CAT (26A: *Stray feline)
• AMBULANCE CHASER (40A: *Overly eager personal injury lawyer, derisively)
• AL CAPONE (52A: *Gangster a.k.a. Scarface)
• ALARM CLOCK (66A: *Morning waker-upper)
• AREA CLOSED (10D: *Warning sign that might be seen on a chain-link fence)
• ALBUM COVER (30D: *Record art space)

Word of the Day: ART Fleming (24A: Fleming who was the original host of "Jeopardy!") —

Arthur Fleming Fazzin (May 1, 1924 – April 25, 1995) was an American actor and television host. He hosted the first version of the television game show Jeopardy!, which aired on NBC from 1964 until 1975 and again from 1978 to 1979. [...] After leaving the Navy, Fleming became an announcer at a radio station in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Here, he changed his name to "Art Fleming". His radio career later took him to Akron, Ohio, and back home to New York. He was the first announcer to deliver the slogan "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should" for Winston cigarettes. [...] Fleming also appeared in many television commercials, in addition to anchoring the eleven o’clock news on WNBC. He was first spotted by Merv Griffin on a commercial for Trans World Airlines. Griffin thought Fleming was "authoritative, yet warm and interesting", and Fleming was invited to audition to be the host of Griffin's new game show Jeopardy!. Fleming won the job, and hosted the show during its original run of March 30, 1964, to January 3, 1975, and again from October 2, 1978, to March 2, 1979. Rather than describe him as the "host" of the program, announcer Don Pardo introduced him by saying, "and here's the star of Jeopardy!, Art Fleming". Fleming would immediately return the favor and thank Pardo during his introduction. As "the world's greatest quiz show's" first host, Fleming earned two Emmy Award nominations. While he was host of Jeopardy!, Fleming never missed a taping. (wikipedia)

• • •

This doesn't seem like much of a theme. Or, rather, it seems like a theme from thirty years ago. Having phrases with all the same initials is an old and perfectly acceptable theme type, but you expect something more from a revealer these days than just ACS. That is, more than just the initials themselves. There's zero cleverness here, nothing beyond the most rudimentary wordplay. If there were something that made ACS particularly *appropriate* beyond the initials, or if "AC" had been part of a longer, more colorful, more interesting revealer phrase. But as it is, there's none of that. I mean, you could've at least run this one at the peak of summer heat, so that ACS would've felt seasonally appropriate. But instead it runs at the time of year when everyone is finally putting their window AC unit away after weeks of putting it off (just me? seriously, that's on today's to-do list). You can see how this theme type could be done infinitely. An MCS puzzle. A PCS puzzle. A DAS puzzle. And on and on. But why? Conceptually, this is quite flat. What this one lacks in originality it makes up for in volume, with seven (!) theme answers crisscrossing the grid. Are some of them interesting? Yes, AMBULANCE CHASER is interesting, and it knows it, as it has decided to take center stage. The rest are just ... there. ALBUM COVER is nice. But mostly the themers aren't here to be exciting; they're here to fulfill their "A.C." duties and that is all. At least the themers are solid—well, all except AREA CLOSED, that one did not feel ... great. I had AREA and no idea what the AREA was supposed to be doing (or, in this case, not doing). Anyway, AREA CLOSED definitely seems like the weakest themer to me. It's always the seventh themer that trips you up. Thematic hubris. Greek tragedians warned us about this.

I have a little side-eye today for AXEMAN. It caught my attention because it looks like an "A.M." answer in a sea of "A.C." answers and I thought it was probably more elegant not to have any stray two-word phrases that started with "A." but whose second word did not start with "C." But then I thought, no, AXEMAN is probably one word, not two. Which is true. The problem is that AXEMAN isn't how you spell this "word" at all. It's AXMAN. Merriam-Webster dot com doesn't even list AXEMAN as a variant spelling. [actually, if you search "axeman" separately, it does say "variant spelling of AXMAN"—why isn't that variant listed in the AXMAN entry?]. The word is just AXMAN. Like "taxman," without the "t." There have only been six AXEMANs in all of NYTXW history, and today is the first time the clue has swung guitarward (in all other cases, the context is lumber). Eighteen years ago, there was an AXEMEN, plural, that had a guitar clue, but that's the last time anyone heard from that particular plural. What's weird to me is that for every iteration of this word (AXMAN/AXMEN, AXEMAN/AXEMEN) there has, to date, been one and only one guitar clue. All the other clues involve guys chopping trees. More oddly, given that AXMAN is the only correct spelling, and AXMAN is shorter (which means it should have more opportunities to appear in puzzles over time), is the fact that AXMAN does not appear that much more frequently. AXMAN beats AXEMAN by just 10 to 6. And AXMEN beats AXEMEN by 7 to 4. Which is to say that the NYTXW treats them as equally valid. But they aren't. The only good axman is an e-less axman. I'd rather see E-LESS in a puzzle than AXEMAN (that's not true, but it was fun to write). 

As a Downs-only solve, this was astonishingly easy. The only slow-downs came, predictably, on the longer theme answers, particularly AREA CLOSED. I also hesitated at ALBUM cover, mainly because the clue seemed so inscrutable: 30D: *Record art space. I know all those words, but what they were doing in that order, my brain could not compute. It felt like three random words, or like a long lost collaboration between Yoko Ono and Sun Ra: RECORD / ART / SPACE (I'd listen to that album). "Record" has multiple meanings, obviously, and that was throwing me. But not for long. And every other clue I looked at, I got instantly, or nearly so. Maybe I hesitated for a few seconds (at MESA v. YUMA, for instance) (27D: Arizona city or Native American tribe), but a moment's hesitation was the closest I ever got to stuck. 

If I'd been solving the regular way (i.e. using the Across clues), I think I might've been slower, if only because I wouldn't have known ART Fleming right off the bat. The name rings a bell, but he was Jeopardy! host way before my time. I was happy to learn about him, though, as I found his wikipedia bio most entertaining. It seems I have seen ART Fleming before but just didn't remember: "Fleming reprised his role as host of Jeopardy! in the 1982 movie Airplane II: The Sequel and in "Weird Al" Yankovic's music video "I Lost on Jeopardy". Fleming was also often called upon to host mock versions of Jeopardy! at trade shows and conventions." I like '80s ART Fleming. He'll do anything. 

[from Airplane II: The Sequel]

He'll also say anything. This bit is gold. Go off, ART!:

Fleming declined an offer to reprise his role as Jeopardy! host when Merv Griffin began developing a revival of the show in 1983. As a result, Alex Trebek (a personal friend of Fleming's) took the position instead and continued to host the program until his death in 2020. In interviews conducted in the early years of the Trebek version, he stated that he disliked the show's new direction and the various changes that the revival's producers had made. He disapproved of moving production from his native New York to Los Angeles, suggesting to a Sports Illustrated journalist in 1989 that filming in California made the show feel superficial and anti-intellectual:

[Fleming] hates the glitz, the polish. "It's not part of the real world." he says, "it's part of Hollywood." In his day, the show was filmed in Manhattan. "People are more intelligent in New York," says Fleming, a native of the Bronx. "New Yorkers are alive, with-it. They know what's going on in the world. In California there's no mental stimulation. A typical conversation consists of 'I've got a new diet. How's your tennis game? Are those clothes from Gucci?' And then you look at each other."

— Franz Lidz, "What is Jeopardy!", Sports Illustrated (May 1, 1989) (wikipedia)

"And then you look at each other"!! LOL I don't even know what that means, but I love it. Laugh-out-loud-at-4-in-the-morning love it. I grew up in California and I couldn't be less offended. You tell 'em, ART. I miss this kind of harmless regional prejudice. I think I'll let ART have the last word today. "New Yorkers are alive, with-it." Amazing. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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