Diana 1969 Bond girl / WED 4-25-18 / Toffee candy bar / Christian inst in Tulsa / Office inappropriate briefly / Online aid for finding contractor

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:01)

THEME: angles — circled letters both form and spell out angle types, and then there's a revealer clue: 36A: Is an expert on this puzzle's theme? (KNOWS EVERY ANGLE)

Word of the Day: Diana RIGG (10D: Diana ___, 1969 Bond girl) —

Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE (born 20 July 1938) is an English actress. She is known for playing Emma Peel in the 1960s TV series The Avengers (1965–68), and Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones (2013–17). She has also had an extensive career in theatre, including playing the title role in Medea, both in London and New York, for which she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She was made a CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994 for services to drama. (wikipedia)

• • •

Adam Perl writes the crosswords for the annual Finger Lakes Crossword Competition, so I've solved many of his puzzles and worked with him at the tournament for several years now. I typically find his puzzles slightly challenging, in that I just operate on a different wavelength for some reason, but this one actually went down easier than normal, perhaps because the theme had almost no effect on my solve. I finally got KNOWS EVERY ANGLE (after dropping in KNOWS EVERYTHING at first), and then somewhere in the back of my brain a little voice went "uh, so, those circled squares probably form angles or something" but the bigger voice in the front of my brain went "shhh, I'm working here!" Knowing the theme might've helped me a little, but it's more likely that it would've distracted me and taken me out of my rhythm. I usually find that if I try to get ahead of myself and fill in themers early (i.e. before I get to their section of the grid via normal progress), I don't actually gain time at all. I think if I'd been thinking straight, I might've been able to pick up a few seconds in the SW by putting in the letters in ACUTE, but it's just as likely I would've lost those seconds and more trying to figure out what the hell the letters in the SE were doing—I'd've wanted to write in OBTUSE, but of course that's already in the grid in the NW. If I ever knew what a REFLEX angle was, I completely forgot. Thus, keeping my head down and just plowing ahead without much attention to the theme was probably the smart move.


Having the revealer be in a third-person verb phrase is *slightly* awkward, and honestly REFLEX and OBTUSE look identical, so it's hard to appreciate the distinction. It's an OK theme with an OK revealer. The fill gets wobbly in places (ROBT, UNS, PARAS, ALIENEE (the longest crosswordese?), NATANT (!)), but mostly it just gets very old-fashioned and familiar: EER OED ETNA MPAA ATT INT ORU OGEE etc. But the longer Acrosses in the NW / SE keep things interesting, as do the long Downs (loved ANGIE'S LIST in particular) (28D: Online aid for finding a contractor), and PIROGI are delicious (8D: Ravioli relative), so while this puzzle wasn't exactly to my taste, it also wasn't particularly off-putting. It was a puzzle!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Explainers:

• 16A: Kings' guards may be taken in it (NBA DRAFT)—the Sacramento Kings are an NBA team
• 62D: "Towering" regulatory grp.? (FAA)—because they oversee control ... towers ... I assume
• 8A: Legal assistants, for short (PARAS)—as in "PARAlegalS"

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Onetime Ritz rival / TUE 8-29-17 / Brand of candy hearts / Letters on exploding boxes in Angry Birds / Texter's qualifier / Many a feline Facebook posting / Pessimist in Pooh books

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe slightly harder because of the made-up themers)

THEME: TOO CLEVER BY HALF (54A: Overly inventive ... or a hint to the answers to 17-, 26- and 42-Across) — familiar expressions containing numbers have those numbers increased by 50%, resulting in semi-wacky wrong phrases that, well, make the revealer somewhat descriptive of the entire puzzle:

Theme answers:

• THIRTY (instead of 20) QUESTIONS (17A: Classic game needing no equipment)
• FIFTEEN-FOOT (instead of 10-ft.) POLE (26A: You might not want to touch something with this)
• TWELVE (instead of 8) DAYS A WEEK (42A: 1965 Beatles hit) 

Word of the Day: Edward James OLMOS (34A: Edward James ___, star of "Stand and Deliver") —

Edward James Olmos (born February 24, 1947) is an American actor and director. Among his most memorable roles are William Adama in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, Lieutenant Martin "Marty" Castillo in Miami Vice, teacher Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver, patriarch Abraham Quintanilla, Jr. in the film Selena, Detective Gaff in Blade Runner, and narrator El Pachuco in both the stage and film versions of Zoot Suit. In 1988, Olmos was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the film Stand and Deliver. (wikipedia)

• • •

My wife makes a good point, which is that this puzzle might've been a lot more fun if there'd been a way to wackily clue the actual answers in the grid, instead of just having those answers be flat-out wrong. No wacky clues. Just very, very literal clues (doesn't get much more straightforward than [1965 Beatles hit], snooze). I'm not sure if the puzzle is TOO CLEVER BY HALF or just not clever enough. I kinda like the basic concept—I just wish it could've come across in a more entertaining way. There was nothing fun about writing in THIRTY QUESTIONS and going "well, that's wrong." I like that the grid has those long Downs—woulda been easy to clip them (putting black square at end of CROUP and beginning of HORSY), and the grid might've been easier to fill, but we would've just had more (probably dull) short fill. RIOT POLICE and FALSEHOODS give us at least a little flash outside of the theme (even if it is kinda depressing, as flash fill goes).


Most of the fill here is just OK. Maybe, uh, a little over-reliant on the E-words (-FILE, COLI, -BOOK). I struggled a little with slang that was outside my normal range of usage, i.e. TOOTS and CHIN UP. I also thought the [Drilling grp.] at 1D was OPEC (it's ROTC), and [Event name suffix] was a tough clue for CON, so I was very slow out of the gate. What makes a "feline Facebook posting" an LOLCAT? Also, are LOLCATs still a thing? That answer required many crosses for me to understand. Something about it feels off. Also off-feeling: STABLE as a "Kind of income" (44D: Kind of income a lending officer likes to see). Just because an adjective can be used to describe something doesn't mean that the adjective is a "Kind." If my car is parked, if you asked me what kind of car I owned, I wouldn't say "parked" (however literally accurate that might be). Because that would be too clever by at least 2/3.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Onetime English poet laureate Henry James / WED 8-9-17 / Flock loser of rhyme / What Rick called Ilsa / Forbidden fragrance in old ads

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (proper noun issues...)

THEME: "Where a [sounds like a poker hand] can beat a [sounds like a poker hand]" — the answers have nothing to do with poker:

Theme answers:

• CHESS MATCH (17A: Where a queen can beat a king)
• DOUBLES TENNIS (39A: Where an ace can beat a pair)
• SOCK DRAWER (61A: Where two pair beats three of a kind) 

Word of the Day: Onetime English poet laureate Henry James PYE (47A) —

Henry James Pye (/paɪ/; 10 February 1744 – 11 August 1813) was an English poet. Pye was Poet Laureate from 1790 until his death. He was the first poet laureate to receive a fixed salary of £27 instead of the historic tierce of Canary wine (though it was still a fairly nominal payment; then as now the Poet Laureate had to look to extra sales generated by the prestige of the office to make significant money from the Laureateship).

• • •

There is a cuteness and cleverness in back of this theme, but the whole shebang is pretty wobbly, for a number of reasons. The reorientation from poker to a CHESS MATCH is pretty clear, pretty straightfoward. It's a game, the "beat" make a kind of sense, even if you'd never ever say a queen "beat" a king if you were referring to actual chess. But fine. Association between clue and answer gets softer in the next themer, DOUBLES TENNIS, as "a pair" makes no sense here. You only ever serve to one human in DOUBLES TENNIS, and unless it's match point, an ace "beats" precisely no one. Also, association between "pair" and doubles team is not strong. But OK, you're playing a little word game, we'll give you Super Duper leeway. Finally there's SOCK DRAWER, which is both the funniest (if this kind of humor is your thing) and the weakest of the bunch. If I open my SOCK DRAWER and see three of a kind, I still have socks for the day. True, I will have to find that fourth sock by tomorrow, but today I'm good. It's a tie. 


The fill is where this one gets rough, and occasionally unbearable. There are too many proper nouns of dubious fame here. Yes, constant solvers will have seen LEHAR and BEHAN and BINET, but probably Only In Crosswords because they get Overused because of their odd letter patterns (esp. those first two—having LEHAR and BEHAN in the same grid should cause it to implode or otherwise collapse; they're essentially the same name to me, the "holy crap I have -EHA- in my grid how do I make it work!?" (REHAB would of course be the ideal fix, but ...). Crossing BEHAN and BINET is just cruel. LEHAR and BEHAN are both known for precisely one work apiece. You gotta be better at handling proper nouns. Crossword addiction can convince you that today's names are far, far, far more commonly known than they are. Also, I grew up in CA and have never heard of the EEL River, so that is a beast of a clue (57A: California's ___ River). Also, a word about *&$&ing PYE: Literally no one knows who Henry James PYE is. I have an English Ph.D. and have been around English Ph.D.s most of my life, I've barely if ever heard of him. He was "poet laureate" over 200 years ago. He wrote nothing anyone has heard of. I love this line from wikipedia: "As a prose writer, Pye was far from contemptible." It is both stupid and sadistic to clue PYE this way.

Other slowness came from ONE instead of YOU in the central Down answer, and CRAFT instead of CARVE at 34A: Sculpt. Very choppy grid meant lots of short stuff meant less-than-lovely answers, most of the time, though GO TO THE DOGS and LAME-BRAINED are winners, for sure.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Bikini blast briefly / WED 1-27-16 / Service with bird logo / 2001 Sean Penn movie / Affair that led to Scooter Libby's 2007 conviction informally /

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "THE TIMES / THEY ARE / A-CHANGIN'" (23A: With 38- and 52-Across, 1964 Bob Dylan song ... or a hint to the answers to this puzzle's starred clues) — answers to starred clues are anagrams of TIMES

Theme answers:

• SMITE
• ITEMS
• MITES
• EMITS
• IT'S ME
• I'M SET

Word of the Day: SMOOT-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (1D) —

The Tariff Act of 1930 (codified at 19 U.S.C. ch. 4), otherwise known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff or Hawley–Smoot Tariff, was an act sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley and signed into law on June 17, 1930, that raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels. // The dutiable tariff level (this does not include duty-free imports—see Tariff levels below) under the act was the highest in the U.S. in 100 years, exceeded by a small margin by the Tariff of 1828.^[3] The great majority of economists then and ever since view the Act, and the ensuing retaliatory tariffs by America's trading partners, as responsible for reducing American exports and imports by more than half. According to Ben Bernanke, "Economists still agree that Smoot-Hawley and the ensuing tariff wars were highly counterproductive and contributed to the depth and length of the global Depression." The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was one of the causes of The Great Depression as foreign trade with Europe as well as China, which the United States had just recently set up an "Open-Door Policy" with, was vital to the economy. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey, I actually kinda like this. The theme, I mean. The fill ... er, that's another story. But the theme really works nicely. At first I ignored the starred clues, and just plowed ahead until I got the Dylan title, at which point I thought ... well, nothing really. Shrug. And then the puzzle was over (about a half minute faster than yesterday!). And *then* I saw what was going on, with the anagrams. So while I wish the puzzle had been a bit harder (so I'd've been forced to notice the theme during solving) and I really really wish the fill had been cleaner (it's quite poor), I think the concept is solid. And he picked up all the anagarms, too, I think. There are I-STEM verbs in Latin, but I don't think that's exactly a crossworthy answer. There are also the MÉTIS (one of Canada's official Aboriginal peoples), but again, not sure it's something you'd expect to see on a Wednesday, or ever. 


The long Downs (IN THE MOMENT, INDIGO GIRLS) are just fine, but I wish the rest (and I mean all of it) had been torn out and redone. ILE DE N-TEST is one of the worst juxtapositions I've ever seen. Multiple RDAS? Multiple ATNOS? A C-TEAM?? IGO GES ESOS ... I'M AT the point where I would rather REOIL ISAO and ELIA than experience This much junk fill again. You gotta gotta gotta polish your grid better than this. Gotta. The last thing you want is to have cringe-worthy fill taking attention away from your worthy theme.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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1955 Julie London hit / WED 12-24-14 / Old New Yorker cartoonist William / Return of Jedi dancing girl / Maserati competitor

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: geographical puns — three answers all have symmetrical pun equivalents:

Theme answers:

• CRY ME A RIVER (17A: 1955 Julie London hit) / CRIMEA RIVER (62A: Certain waterway to the Black Sea?)
• GO-BETWEEN (33A: Intermediary) / GOBI TWEEN (44A: 11- or 12-year-old Mongolian desert dweller?)
• PARASAIL (21A: Glide, in a way) / PARIS ALE (55A: Left Bank quaff?)

Word of the Day: "CRY ME A RIVER" (17A: 1955 Julie London hit) —

• • •

1955 Julie London hit!!? This clue alone says everything about why this puzzle skewed hard for me. You know, there was a much bigger (and *much* more recent) song with this same title. It hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2002. But I guess 1955 is closer to the typical NYT solver's comfort zone. Still. Somehow.

[2009 Justin Timberlake hit]

Between not knowing Julie London's work and having MAJOR for MACRO and the tough clue on TIME (4D: Cons do it) and the so-horrid-I-didn't-trust-it APAIR, that NW corner was a bit of a bear for me. Also, I had no real idea what the theme was until near the very end. Actually, I had half this puzzle filled in before I had a single theme answer (I mean, before I had a single "?" theme answer in). I don't know what a NATAL chart is. EPEE relates to sign language? No idea. I actually think the theme is kind of cute, but virtually everything about this puzzle skewed older and well out of my wheelhouse.

The fill here is less than strong. The Scrabble-****ing (in NE, SW) is mysterious. I don't really understand it. I mean, I do, but I don't. Actually, the SE corner almost makes me wish there'd been some Scrabble-****ing over there. It looks like a bunch of anagrams of the same word, over and over. Lots of subpar stuff here = OOLA, APAIR, ARIP, ENEROS (!), QEII, NOBIS, the SITON / SETON crossing … it was all a bit of a slog. But I did kind of dig the geographical puns, in retrospect.

Gotta go because my computer is gonna die and I don't have my charger :(

Happy Christmas Eve.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I'd've liked APAIR if the clue had been ["Grow ___!"]

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Missouri city familiarly / TUE 10-14-14 / Starr of old comics / How Titanic was going before it struck iceberg / Bygone communication

Constructor: Adam Perl

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Adjective-to-verb — nouns / noun phrases are reimagined as verb phrases related to various professions:

Theme answers:

• TRADE SECRETS (20A: What gossip columnists do?)
• PLOT POINTS (36A: What mathematicians do?)
• HANDLEBARS (42A: What bouncers do?)
• COVER STORIES (56A: What literary critics do?)

Word of the Day: Missionary Junípero SERRA (8D) —

Junípero Serra Ferrer, O.F.M., (/dʒuːnɨˈpɛroʊ ˈsɛrə/; Spanish: [xuˈnipeɾo ˈsera]) (November 24, 1713 – August 28, 1784) was a Spanish Franciscan friar who founded a mission in Baja California and the first nine of 21 Spanish missions in California from San Diego to San Francisco, which at the time were in Alta California of the Las CaliforniasProvince in New Spain. He began in San Diego on July 16, 1769, and established his headquarters near Monterey, California, at Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo.

The missions were primarily designed to convert the natives. Other aims were to integrate the neophytes into Spanish society, and to train them to take over ownership and management of the land. As head of the order in California, Serra not only dealt with church officials, but also with Spanish officials in Mexico City and with the local military officers who commanded the nearby presidios (garrisons).

Fr. Serra was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 25, 1988. Beatification is the third of four steps in canonization (sainthood). (wikipedia)

• • •

Old-fashioned but solid. At first, the fill had me thinking I was solving a 25+-year old puzzle, but when I hit the themers … well, I still felt that way, but not in a bad way. Concept is cute and charming. I suppose this theme has many possible permutations, but I can't think of any good ones off the top of my head. BOOK MARKS [Schedule Spitz and Twain?]. FLOOR BOARDS [Astound governing bodies?]. I'm sure I could do better given world enough and time. My suggestions don't really work with the whole [What ___s do?] clue angle, anyway. Oh well. It's 5 a.m.—you get what you get. As I say, the fill is a bit crusty, but at least the longer Downs are sturdy. TREETOP, SUBTEXT, and (especially) HIT THE ROOF are quite nice. Tuesdays are the hardest days to pull off, which I never would've thought before I began writing this blog a billion years ago. It's a kind of no man's land. So often the theme isn't smooth enough for a Monday and isn't clever enough for a Wednesday and so … Tuesday! So I think a simple and unassuming puzzle like this on a Tuesday is just fine, or at least not objectionable. I gotta believe that northern section could be done up a little better than HEHE EVA SERRA ATA … and that ADOPE is entirely unnecessary down below … but for some reason (perhaps because it's so early) I'm not terribly annoyed by the fill. Theme cute, long Downs interesting, satisfaction reasonable.


Weird puzzle feature: symmetrical 2-part stacks in the NE and SW—GIVE / AWAY and DOWN / EAST. Nice little dashes of color in the otherwise inevitably drab little corners of the puzzle.

Bullets:

• 35D: Woman who has a way with words? (VANNA) — I like this clue, but this is the kind of clue that makes a puzzle feel old—not the inclusion of VANNA, who is certainly worthy, but the casual ease-of-reference, as if it were 1986, i.e. Peak VANNA. I don't think younger people a. watch "Wheel of Fortune" or b. know who VANNA White is at all. I didn't even know she was still on the show.
• 34D: How the Titanic was going before it struck an iceberg (AMAIN) — this is bad enough fill without your having to remind me of that even worse movie.
• 41A: Missouri city, informally (ST. JOE) — I wanted ST. LOU (is that a thing?). Seemed reasonable. I know the ST. JOE as a "shadowy" Idaho river that runs through my mom's home town (where my grandma still lives).
• 14A: Doctor Zhivago's love (LARA) — feels like a long time since I've seen this piece of classic crosswordese, but I realize now that it's just been a while since I've seen this *clue*: Zhivago's love has been largely replaced by [Newswoman Logan] and [Tomb raider Croft].

Happy birthday, honey. (If you share a birthday with my wife, then yes, I'm talking to you, too.)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Ray Charles hit of 1963 / THU 5-22-14 / Taxonomic suffix / Whence word robot / Starbuck's orderer / 2008 TARP recipient / Leopold's partner in crime /

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Easy (for me … looks like Medium-ish for others)

THEME: After all... — phrases with "after" in them are represented in the grid literally, with the pre-"after" part following the post-"after" part:

Theme answers:

• PILL MORNING (for "morning after pill") (24A: Plan B, e.g.)
• ANOTHER ONE THING (for "one thing after another") (31A: A seemingly endless series)
• C I BEFORE E EXCEPT (for "I before E except after C) (41A: Rule contradicted by science?) (my favorite because of how insane it looks) (also, good clue)
• READING BURN (for "burn after reading") (50A: Note to a spy, say)

Word of the Day: BÊTE / NOIRE (13D: With 62-Across, dreaded one) —

(bĕt nwär') 
n.
One that is particularly disliked or that is to be avoided: "Tax shelters had long been the bête noire of reformers" (Irwin Ross).

[French : bête, beast + noire, black.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/b-te-noire#ixzz32PJ7MFwS

• • •

I worked with Adam Perl briefly early this year at a crossword tournament in Ithaca to benefit Tompkins Learning Partners. Very nice guy. Made all the tournament puzzle himself, the toughest of which was a brutal tour de force. He should publish it. But anyway, about this puzzle—I liked it. Played very easy for me. Not sure exactly when I picked up the theme, but once I did, all those themers went down quickly. For sheer loopiness, I love CIBEFOREEEXCEPT the best of them all. I know I have said in the past that I don't like nonsense in my grids, but I don't take this as nonsense—it's just a different manner of representing the answer-phrase. And not only do I like PILL MORNING as an answer, I like that it appears in the grid at all. The NYT xword has a history of being squeamish about both bodily functions as well as matters controversial, and this answer is a twofer. Nice to see this normally conservative medium being both current and (however moderately) bold.


Fill here is conservative but clean. Completely inoffensive, with some snazzy bits here and there. ACE HIGH, CON GAME, and DOWN PAT all have a nice, GRIFTery snap to them. I think OTE (33D: Taxonomic suffix) is the only answer that really gets my gote. With that exception, the grid has been nicely crafted to remove all real junk. Very surprised to see the times at the NYT site coming in normal or even slightly higher-than-normal, as this presented virtually no resistance to me. Where is the difficulty? What am I missing? What did I manage to luckily avoid?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Racer Yarborough / MON 2-24-14 / Actor MacLeod of old TV / Newswoman Logan / 1957 Everly Brothers hit with repeated lyric Hello loneliness / Maryland home of Walter Reed medical center

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (***For A Monday***)

THEME: LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (39A: Author who created the characters named by the starts of 17-, 24-, 49- and 61-Across) — theme answers begin with names of the March girls

Theme answers:

• JOKES AROUND
• MEGABYTE
• BETHESDA
• AMYL NITRITE

Word of the Day: CALE Yarborough (41D: Racer Yarborough) —

William Caleb "Cale" Yarborough (born March 27, 1939), is a farmer, businessman and former NASCARWinston Cup Series driver and owner. He is one of only two drivers in NASCAR history to win three consecutive championships. He was the second (2nd) NASCAR driver to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated […]

His 83 wins places him at number six on the all-time NASCAR winner's list (behind Bobby Allison and Darrell Waltrip, who are tied for fourth with 84). His 14.82% winning percentage is the ninth best all-time and third among those with 500 or more starts. Yarborough won the Daytona 500 four times; his first win coming in 1968 for theWood Brothers, the second in 1977 for Junior Johnson, and back-to-back wins in 1983 and 1984. In 1984, he became the first driver to qualify for the Daytona 500 with a top speed of more than 200 miles per hour (320 km/h). Yarborough is a three time National Motorsports Press Association Driver of the Year (1977, 1978, 1979). (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme is interesting—I've seen the rough equivalent of this theme before, I think (and recently), but  I still generally like the way the girls' names are hidden inside other words at the beginning of the theme answers. The non-theme fill, however, was another story. It felt very stale, very phoned-in. Also, I can't tell you how badly NESTING SITE (?) tripped me up. Had NESTING- and then … nothing. Could not bring myself to accept SITE, as that did not seem like nearly a tight enough phrase to be a crossword answer. It's not a GREEN PAINT* answer (i.e. a totally arbitrary adj./noun pairing), but it just felt off. Also, while I like that there are four longer Downs, I don't like how much longer the Downs are than half the theme answers. Very strange to have four non-theme answers be longer than two of your theme answers. But the real problem here is the staleness of the fill. Ugh to CALE (never can remember if he's HALE or KALE or what, but since both of *those* are actual words, I should really commit the non-word CALE to memory right now), and OLIVA and ADELA (super ugh) and RAE. Then there's the randomest of Roman numerals, CMVI. And lots of crosswordese like ORONO and EZINE (super ugh). And more fill-in-the-blank clues than you can shake a stick at. Most cluing feels lifted from Cluing Compendium of Yore. So, yeah, the puzzle skews very old. And not old-interesting, but old-tired. Old-dull. Old-"please, not again." There's even "Old TV's" GAVIN MacLeod… see, there's just not *balance* here; bring on the old, the new, the whatever, just mix it up and (above all) show evidence of *care* and *trying*.


Here's what trying looks like:

BIDEN*
AZURE*
JOKES
ADE*T
***

Now it's not Great (I mean, it's still got ADE, so how could it be Great), and admittedly I *tried* for only about 30 seconds, but it's an undeniable improvement on the current NW, nonetheless. BAJA can stand alone, unlike DÉJA. ERE is crosswordese, but sure as hell beats INE. AZURE crushes EZINE. DUKE beats DIKE. I think BIDEN beats DIDIN, but even if you call that a draw (or a downgrade), the overall quality of my revision is better. And I am not a top-flight constructor, and I did not get paid to make this puzzle. So … buttons.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Morning update: I read the clues to my wife as she cooked last night and she (a woman who knows her birds fairly well) couldn't get NESTING SITE to save her life. Even with NESTING in place. It was pretty funny. "NESTING … LIMB?"

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Georg with physics law / MON 12-2-13 / Supposed hints that mislead / Flared dress type

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Little Red Riding Hood" — each word in the title is the first word of one of the theme answers. See also WOLF (1A: Villain in the tale name by the starts of 20-, 32-, 41- and 52-Across), BIG (34A: With 61-Down, description of the 1-Across)  and BAD.

Theme answers:

• LITTLE LEAGUE (20A: "The Bad News Bears" activity)
• RED HERRINGS (32A: Supposed hints that mislead)
• RIDING MOWER (41A: Lawn tractor)
• HOOD ORNAMENT (52A: Jaguar on the front of a Jaguar, e.g.)

Word of the Day: "The Bad News Bears" —

The Bad News Bears is a 1976 comedy film directed by Michael Ritchie. It stars Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal. The film was followed by two sequels, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training in 1977 and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan in 1978, a short-lived 1979–80 CBS television series, and a 2005 remake titledBad News Bears.

The original screenplay was written by Bill Lancaster. Notable was the score by Jerry Fielding, which is an adaptation of the principal themes of Carmen. (wikipedia)

[Warning: child using racial slurs]

• • •

This puzzle brought to you by the year 1989. Or 1975. Or 1967. Solid. Workmanlike. Basic. And not a whiff of this century about it. Indistinguishable, in both theme and fill, from the kinds of puzzles made during the Former Administration. If you like this stuff, great. Have at it. It's certainly not a poorly made puzzle. But it plays like something that's been in mothballs for a long time. The theme phrases are nice on their own. Would be great in a themeless. As a theme, there's just not much to this. Not enough. Not even a symmetrical counterpart to WOLF. BIG and BAD are in totally random places. Shrug. I tore this puzzle up (never even saw the absurdly-placed BIG and BAD)—went so fast that I neglected to check my crosses at the very end and had to search the grid from top to bottom before I realized I'd entered ["Come to PASS"] instead of ["Come to PAPA"].


That will be all, I think.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. from a reader's email last night: "For your write up, note that scuba tanks do NOT contain OXYGEN (at least not more than about 21 percent), they contain air."

P.P.S. more reader mail: "Hello Rex Parker—Sometime in the early 1950s 30 over-achieving fifth graders plus teacher plus several mothers went by New York Central from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central Station, and from there via the 42nd street shuttle westward, and eventually to the New York Times building. We had the official tour, which ended with a question and answer session. Was there anything else we wanted to know, our guide asked. Yes, we chorused, one way or another, could we please meet Margaret Farrar. The guy was nonplussed. Fifth grade or not, we all did the puzzle in the daily paper and sometimes, but not always, the Sunday puzzle if our parents could be convinced to indulge us. Puzzles in those days were divided, for me at least, into three categories, easy, hard, and let my mother do them (the lady who did not only the crosswords but those awful double crosstics with a fountain pen). So except for one awful month in Melbourne, I think it is fair to sat that I have been doing the Times X-words for at least 60 years. Why am I boring you with all this? Because all you had to say about today's big bad wolf puzzle was that it was the stupidest puzzle the Times has ever printed. I like puzzles I can get, but not if I can get them in less than three minutes."

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#1 Alicia Keys hit of 2007 / TUE 12-18-12 / Wonderland cake instruction / Fifth-century invader / Diamond feat / 1950s runner's initials / California locale named for local flora / Bygone despot

Constructor: Adam Perl

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: DOUBLE PLAY (68A: Diamond feat ... and a hint to 17-, 21-, 35-, 47- and 59-Across) — both parts of theme answers are words that follow "PLAY" in common phrases

• FAIRGROUND (17A: Place to see a Ferris wheel) — I don't think I knew the "F" was capitalized.
• DOWNTIME (21A: Period for R&R)
• ROOMMATE (35A: Dorm assignment)
• DOUGHBOY (47A: W.W. I soldier)
• DATEBOOK (59A: You can plan on it)

Word of the Day: ILYA Kovalchuk (40D: The N.H.L.'s Kovalchuk) —

Ilya Valeryevich Kovalchuk (Russian: Илья́ Вале́рьевич Ковальчу́к; born April 15, 1983) is a Russian professional ice hockey left winger who is an alternate captain of the New Jersey Devils of the National Hockey League (NHL). Drafted first overall in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft by the Atlanta Thrashers, he began his NHL career in 2001–02 with Atlanta and was nominated for the Calder Memorial Trophy as league rookie-of-the-year. He is a three-time NHL All-Star and won the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy as the league's leading goal-scorer in 2004 in a three-way tie with Jarome Iginla and Rick Nash. After eight seasons with the Thrashers, he was traded to the Devils in February 2010, and later signed a 15-year, $100 million contract during the off-season. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one was a blur. Except for a few notable sticking points, I didn't remember anything about this puzzle by the time I was done with it. I didn't even give a thought to the theme. But, this being a crossword blog and all, I decided to figure it out—not hard. This is a common crossword theme type (Both Words Can Precede/Follow ...), and one that, but for the revealer, may as well be themeless. There's no apparent connection among the theme answers, so it's unlikely you're going to notice anything about the theme until the end, which is fine. It's one way to do a theme. And this revealer works perfectly—much better than the simple one-word revealer you sometimes get with lesser versions of this theme type (i.e. better than simply having PLAY be the revealer). Coincidentally, I was mulling over a puzzle of this theme type just today. I might make it, I might not. Don't have a killer revealer yet, so ... until I get one, no dice. This type of puzzle isn't worth making unless your revealer is dead on.


Prince - Play In The Sunshine by abelflexes
Got slowed down at REDWOOD because, well, I just did (9D: ___ City, California locale named for local flora). That seems a toughish clue for a Tuesday. I'd say the same about the clue on ANGLE (5D: Matter of degree?)—a clue I rather like. Stumbled a bit at MIDRIB, which always happens with MIDRIB. MIDRIB and I are old nemeses. "MIDRIB!" [shakes fist at sky]. Fun fact: McDonald's introduced the McRib sandwich as a replacement for the MIDRIB, which sold poorly. For no good reason, I struggled with both NEEDY (32D: Clinging, say) and USUAL (48D: Norm). Brain just wouldn't kick out the right answer. And yet ILYA? No problem. I sometimes wonder about the ways that crossword-solving is rewiring my brain. Biggest, most epic fail of the day, though, came at the end. I finished and didn't get the "Happy Pencil" icon, so went looking for my error. Noticed that I had 52A: Distinctive parts of Boston accents as ABS. Thought this ... strange. Then noticed all the Acrosses in the SW were screwed up. Turns out that, with the "A"s in place, I read 53D: Israeli port and wrote in ... [drum roll] ... BASRA. [sad tromBONE] In my defense, I was only [...googling...] 775.2 miles off.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Compound in Agent Orange / WED 11-28-12 / Toby filler / Poet with fanatic's heart / Fictional Flanders Devine / Gumbo thickener / Young newt

Constructor: Adam G. Perl

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Random algebra problem —

• X PLUS Y IS SIXTEEN
• X MINUS Y IS FOUR
• X IS TEN AND Y IS SIX

Word of the Day: BIX Beiderbecke (1D: Beiderbecke of jazz) —

Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer. // With Louis Armstrong, Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s. His turns on "Singin' the Blues" (1927) and "I'm Coming, Virginia" (1927), in particular, demonstrated an unusual purity of tone and a gift for improvisation. With these two recordings, especially, he helped to invent the jazz ballad style and hinted at what, in the 1950s, would become cool jazz. "In a Mist" (1927), one of a handful of his piano compositions but the only one he recorded, mixed classical influences with jazz syncopation. Beiderbecke also has been credited for his influence, directly, on Bing Crosby and, indirectly, via saxophonist Frank Trumbauer, on Lester Young. (wikipedia)

• • •

I have no idea what this is. Or, rather, I do, but don't understand *why* it is. Is this a famous equation? It appears that this equation is in the grid only because it somehow manages to fit into the grid in three symmetrical segments. I didn't even have to do any algebra. The grid just filled itself in, and I'm left with the ... pleasure? ... of reading the world's easiest algebra equation. Yup, it checks out. Now what? Where's the twist? The zing? The "here's why you've been entering an equation into the grid for the past five minutes or so"? Nowhere. Not that I can see. Someone needs to fire the IDEA MAN (50A: Think tank types).


One thing this grid has going for it is Xs. Granted, two of them are wasted on the horrid crosses XED and XOX, but DIOXIN is lovely (probably the only time you'll hear someone say that) (45D: Compound in Agent Orange), and, well, now I have heard of this BIX guy, so I learned something, at least. Love the long Downs, but the fill in general is mostly short and mostly trite (perhaps not the TRITEST, but not fresh, at any rate). Contains two of my least favorite bits of crosswordese: AH ME (which is exactly one tick worse than AH SO), and IRED, which no one has ever said in the history of the world. There was some occasionally interesting cluing, like 68A: Kind of day for a competitive cyclist for REST and 30A: Poet with a "fanatic's heart" for YEATS, but overall this was mostly fairly dull.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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