Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: 1138 1971 sci-fi film

Constructor: Liz Gorski

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Element of Surprise" — A CARBON FOOTPRINT puzzle. The "Element of Surprise" is CARBON. What is "surprising" is that when you connect all the Cs in the grid, you get the rough outline of a human footprint. Rest of the theme clues are environmentalist terms or catchphrases

Word of the Day: "THANK U" (48D: 1998 Alanis Morissette hit) —

"Thank U" is a song by Canadian recording artist and songwriter Alanis Morissette, for her fourthstudio album Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998). The song was written by Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard, who produced her previous album. Morissette wrote the song after she came back from India.

"Thank U" is an experimental rock song, which features instrumentals like guitars andsynthesizers. It also features very small portions of synthpop music. The song received generally positive reviews from music critics. The song also received acclaim in the record charts, peaking in the top ten in different countries. An accompanying music video was released for the single, featuring Morissette nude in different streets in New York City. It received generally positive reviews from music critics, but received mild controversy, due to nudity in the video. It was nominated for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 2000 Grammy Awards.

• • •

Yes. Now *that* is a Liz Gorski puzzle. Bold, ambitious, clever, multi-layered. So what if my "footprint" looks more like a drumstick or a lopsided ice cream cone. It's pretty dang close. Getting all the Cs to do that inside an already fairly thematically dense puzzle—one that is very conceptually tight, I might add—is really impressive. This reminds me a bit of her Guggenheim puzzle a few years back, and reminding me of that puzzle is never a bad thing. Fill is astonishingly solid given the thematic constraints. Yes, there's an O IS here and an I AS there and an LVOV over there (113D: Ukrainian city, formerly), but c'mon, besides "THANK U" (I'll see your RICEU and CORNELLU and raiseu) there's hardly anything in either the "Ugh" or the "What the!?" columns. Good clean fun.

Theme answers:

23A: Every chemical element has one (ATOMIC SYMBOL) — this was the one place I got slowed down, very early on, because I threw down ATOMIC NUMBER with such confidence; please note how SYMBOL and NUMBER share -MB- placements.
40A: Worrisome Arctic and Antarctic developments (OZONE HOLES)
69A: Conservationist's catchphrase (SAVE WATER)
94A: Arborist's catchphrase (PLANT A TREE)
117A: Environmentalist's catchphrase (CONSERVE FUEL) — maybe the earlier clue with "Conservationist" in it should've been rewritten. Maybe not.
14D: Atmospheric worries (GREENHOUSE GASES)
42D: Global warming calculation whose shape is suggested by connecting 14 squares in this puzzle in a closed loop based on the appropriate 23-Across (CARBON FOOTPRINT)

Couple of clever clues today in 11A: Pop's relative? (BANG!) and (esp.) 74A: Falls for married women? (NIAGARA). I wish I'd encountered the latter before I already had most of the letters—no Aha moment because by the time I saw the clue, I was really just checking to see if the answer was, in fact, NIAGARA, which is what the letter pattern I already had in the grid suggested. NIAGARA is the black sheep of Ken Burns' "National Parks" documentary, in that it is used as the reason National Parks are needed—no one wants Yosemite, or Yellowstone etc. to turn into "another NIAGARA" (i.e. an overdeveloped commercial hell hole).

Bullets:

18A: 18th-century Russian emperor (PETER II) — not a fan of the "you can guess the name but good look with the random Roman numeral" tsar/king/pope answers, but sometimes you need to stick some Is on to the ends of your LEOs and OLAFs and what not.
21A: Media executive Bob (IGER) — I'd've made this AGER or USER or UBER and/or shuffled some things around or done Anything not to have some random "media exec"'s name in my grid. Hell, I'd've changed him to the "Sopranos"' Robert ILER even, though I think avoiding the odd/crosswordy proper noun altogether, when possible, is usually the best bet.
27A: "Tough-actin'" medication (TINACTIN) — hard to forget this commercial phrase once you've heard it on TV a jillion times.
32A: 2012 Mark Wahlberg comedy ("TED") — pretty sure this is the Seth MacFarlane movie about the teddy bear ... yup.

47A: Popular Caribbean destination, informally (ST. BART'S) — had no idea that was "informal."
51A: "___ 1138" (1971 sci-fi film) (THX) — "Thanks, 1138!"

5D: Dampier of the N.B.A. (ERICK) — I knew it was ERIC-, but was not sure about the last letter (H? K?). I'm guessing many of you were not sure about the whole dang thing. He's not the highest-profile name, but he *is* 36th on the N.B.A.'s all-time blocks list, so that's something.
26D: "Girl With a Hoop" and "The Umbrellas" (RENOIRS) — didn't recognize either of the titles. Still not hard.
38D: 45th American vice president (GORE) — Those guys are harder to keep track of, and (clearly) you can't rely on their number matching up with the pres's (e.g. Obama = 44, Biden = 47)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld