Start behaving more responsibly, literally? / MON 4-1-24 / Former N.S.C. staffer at the center of the Iran-Contra affair, literally? / Jennifer Lopez #1 hit with the lyric "What you get is what you see" / Alpinist's activity, literally?

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Monday solved Downs-only)

THEME: going up — all the themers are Downs that have to be inverted in order to make sense ("literally")

Theme answers:

• FAEL WEN A (3D: Start behaving more responsibly, literally?) ("turn over A NEW LEAF")
• GNITCA (7D: Malfunctioning, literally?) (ACTING up)
• NOOM DAB (9D: Lunar omen in a 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival hit, literally?) ("BAD MOON Rising")
• NIATNUOM (38D: Alpinist's activity, literally?) (MOUNTAIN climbing)
• DRIB EHT (41D: Make a rude gesture with one's finger, literally?) (flip THE BIRD)
• REVILO (48D: Former N.S.C. staffer at the center of the Iran-Contra affair, literally?) (OLIVER North) (... ugh)

Word of the Day: WERNER Herzog (45D: Film director Herzog) —

Werner Herzog (German: [ˈvɛʁnɐ ˈhɛʁtsoːk]; né Stipetić; born 5 September 1942) is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusual talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. His style involves avoiding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing his cast and crew into real situations mirroring those in the film they are working on.

In 1961, when Herzog was 19, he started work on his first film Herakles. He has since produced, written, and directed over 60 films and documentaries such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), Heart of Glass (1976), Stroszek (1977), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), Cobra Verde (1987), Lessons of Darkness (1992), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), My Best Fiend (1999), Invincible (2001), Grizzly Man (2005), Encounters at the End of the World (2007), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010). He has also published over 12 books of prose and directed many operas.

French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog "the most important film director alive". American film critic Roger Ebert said that Herzog "has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons, or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular". He was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time in 2009. (wikipedia)

• • •

I was braced for some dumb April Fools trick and well here it is. I think the theme is fine, I guess, but it's a Wednesday-level theme for sure. As a Downs-only solve, this was one of the harder Mondays I've done. You'd think making the theme answers Downs would be a help in a Downs-only solve, but it is not, and it really was not today. When you solve Downs-only, usually you are shooting the (Across) theme answers full of letters until you're able to infer them, and maybe infer the gimmick. But when the themers are Downs, well, you get no help from the Acrosses (obviously), and today, the gimmick was really gimmicky, so not having an assist from crosses really hurt. The theme seems like a reasonable concept. Fine for later in the week, not really appropriate for a Monday, but maybe appropriate for this most annoying of "holidays." The difficulty lay in the fact that every theme answer was "literally" expressing a different form of reversal, so even after I'd gotten the idea (with "BAD MOON Rising"), I couldn't figure out what to do with some of the answers. That is, I couldn't figure out what the missing words were that were supposed to signify "Up." Worst of all was FAEL WEN A, which requires the solver to mentally supply a *lot* of words, not just one word like "up" or "rising," but two ("turn over"), and then the answer itself is not one or two but three words—extremely hard to parse when what you're staring at is _A(E?)(L?P?)W_NA. The other themer that gave me real trouble was REVILO, partly because "North" is a pretty weak "reversal" clue, but mostly because I completely blocked that *&$% out of my brain. Clean erased him. Sent him to the oblivion he deserves. A traitorous lying sack of &*$%. And you want to turn him into whimsy? No. Absolutely not. You need a 6-letter "North" answer? Try ATOKAD instead of inflicting that miserable *$%% on unsuspecting solvers. 

But I can't say I hated the basic concept here. Again, without that OLIVER guy, and later in the week, and with a few terrible bits of fill eliminated from the grid (OWERS???), this puzzle would've made a fine Wednesday. The most intolerable answer, from the perspective of someone who teaches Dante every semester (that is, me), is DANTEAN (19D: Reminiscent of work by the 14th-century author of "Inferno"). I grimaced so hard my face nearly froze. Well, first, I just had DANT- and no idea how I was supposed to fit DANTESQUE (the correct adjective) into just seven squares. Sincerely, I had DANT- and no idea where that was supposed to go. If I have seen DANTEAN ... I don't know when. I googled it and it seems someone somewhere uses it, but DANTESQUE is more than three times as popular as a search term. DANTEAN is defensible, but it was a huge clank in my ears, for sure. On the other hand, I loved CHANDLER, but only because, solving Downs-only, I supplied my own hardboiled detective fiction context. Then I come to find out that it was clued via "Friends." Sigh. I did enjoy that show, and RIP Matthew Perry (who was very good), but I cannot imagine a circumstance in which I would choose that CHANDLER over Raymond CHANDLER. Luckily, for the entirety of the solve, today's CHANDLER *was* Raymond CHANDLER, since the clue existed only in my mind—yet another perk of Downs-only solving.

I was also happy to see the great WERNER Herzog. Kind of startling that WERNER hasn't appeared in the NYTXW in 12 years (!?!?). All those ultra-common letters in a shortish answer and ... nothing? For that long? Bizarre. Looking the grid over now, it actually seems pretty lively for a Monday grid, theme aside. MINIDONUT is nice, and UNCERTAIN and BELITTLE are at least solid. STOUT MOMMY. TREBEK VISION. ARNOLD NAUSEA. None of this is gonna knock anyone's socks off, but it more than holds up, esp. for a Monday puzzle. I guess I come out more on the pro- than the anti- side today, despite my antipathy for everything April Fools-related. The "trick" was actually very gettable, and mostly enjoyable to work out on a theme answer-by-theme answer basis. Cruddy fill was kept to a minimum. Yes. Approved. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Ew, sorry, totally forgot about TADAS (because it was an Across and I didn't really see it). I said there was very little cruddy fill in this grid, and that remains true, but TADAS is 100% garbage. Plural!? LOL, no, never.

P.P.S. Why is "14th century" even in the DANTEAN clue??? [Reminiscent of work by the author of "Inferno"] makes total sense. What other "author of 'Inferno'" is there? It's Dante's Inferno, not Roald Dahl's Inferno or Dr. Seuss's Inferno or Danielle Steel's Inferno. Take out "14th century" and you get a tighter, less awkward clue while losing nothing in clarity.

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Double the speed of sound / THU 7-14-22 / Kirin alternative / Seeking a dry Italian wine / Actress Alexander of Living Single

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium

THEME: H2O (69A: Fire fighter, familiarly ... or a phonetic hint to this puzzle's theme) — simple letter swap: "H" goes "to" "O," wackiness follows:

Theme answers:

• AFTER SOAVE (18A: Seeking a dry Italian wine?) (from "aftershave")
• MARCO MADNESS (29A: Fervor over Senator Rubio?) (... "March Madness")
• FIRESIDE COAT (46A: Blazer worn next to a blaze?) (... "Fireside Chat")
• POD PROGRAM (59A: TV show about a group of whales?) (... "Ph.D. program")

Word of the Day: Roger KAHN (66A: Roger who wrote "A Season in the Sun") —

Roger Kahn (October 31, 1927 – February 6, 2020) was an American author, best known for his 1972 baseball book The Boys of Summer. (wikipedia) // [On A Season in the Sun (1977)] In 1976 Roger Kahn spent an entire baseball season, from spring training through the World Series, with players of every stripe and competence. The result is this book, in which Kahn reports on a small college team's successes and hopes, a young New England ball club, a failing major league franchise, and a group of heroes on the national stage. (Google Books)

• • •

There are a lot of "ugh"s and frowny faces in the margins of this one. The theme itself is so slim that the funniness payoff needs to be big, and it isn't. This is a simple letter swap—a theme as old as the hills. Very 20th century. And I don't mind a throwback theme if you can do something great with it, if you can make your tiny changes yield genuine LOL wackiness. But these answers are all pretty limp. I don't know how hard it is to find words that will let you change them into other words by making an "H" an "O," but I'm guessing pretty hard. Still, you gotta do better than AFTER SOAVE or POD PROGRAM. You especially have to do better than AFTER SOAVE and POD PROGRAM when the rest of your grid is so lumpy and stale. This was one of those where I knew I was in for a rough ride before I even got out of the tiny NW corner. TAD ASAHI OHOHOH REHEM OMANI is *not* promising stuff, especially when that section of the grid isn't even compromised by a theme answer. And sure enough, the short fill continued in this vein, despite the theme's not being particularly dense or otherwise tricky to pull off. TAD and SLEW and ALOT. If we could find ATON and SCAD, we'd have a Crosswordese Amounts basketball team! You've got General MEADE and his STENO and of course MNEMENEMEMEMENMO or whatever Her name is, wow, yeah, and then the TEA RAT, yuck, those are the worst, I take my tea without rats, thanks. OMNI ANNO ONIT NAW. Truly an onslaught. You get one good longer answer, "I CAN'T EVEN!" and you get Natalie PORTMAN (who I forgot ever won an Oscar, sorry, Natalie, my bad), and then you get, what, HONOREE? CAR LOAN? Somebody named BEA HERO? Oof, BE A HERO, that has some big EAT A SANDWICH energy (BE A HERO! EAT A SANDWICH! There's your new slogan, delis of the world! It's all yours!). The only difficulty in this puzzle was coming up with the themers, which are somewhat hard to see when you don't know the gimmick yet, as the grid phrases are nuts and the base phrases can only be grasped after you've filled in the grid phrases. Beyond that little bit of resistance, the grid doesn't put up much of a fight. 

I thought the muse was MNEMO (41A: Muse of memory), which is what happens when your brain crosses "mnemonic" with Mets outfielder Brandon NIMMO. Actually, MNEMO is just the first five letters of "mnemonic," so it felt right. Wrong. Ah well, SLEW to the rescue, I guess. I had trouble with DEAF because I didn't know what the "signers" were signing (I figured contracts). I had trouble with NONRANDOM because the clue just doesn't seem correct (35D: Like the results of loaded dice). The "results" of dice throws ... are they truly random? Obviously your odds of throwing certain numbers are greater than those of throwing other numbers, but I'm probably confusing mathematical concepts here. Anyway, whatever the clue, kind of hard for me to like NONRANDOM. I thought KAHN was a songwriter and "A Season in the Sun" was a song from some musical. This despite owning Roger KAHN's "The Boys of Summer." Last little screw-up came at the very end, where I figured the [Valuable diamond] was ICE. But it was ACE. You know, playing cards. 

Probably shouldn't have clued PORTMAN via the Oscar, since "Oscar" is part of EGOT (57D: Feat for a performer, in brief). And was there no other MARCO you could've gone with in that MARCO MADNESS clue!? I mean, just the weakest, bootlickingest twerp there is in the Senate. Let the former president just push him around. I mean, I almost had respect for him when he was "calling Trump a "con artist" and saying that Trump is "wholly unprepared to be president of the United States" but then he gave the bully all his lunch money and told him what a great man he was. Anyone with integrity and self-respect would've broken with his party. But no. Huge embarrassment. It's bad enough I gotta suffer through the resurrection of Reagan/Bush propagandist Peggy NOONAN (36A: Political columnist Peggy), but to have her crossing Rubio, ugh, it's A LOT to take in one puzzle. I know the puzzle feels very strongly about right-wing representation, but show some restraint. Anyway, I hope you digital solvers didn't have 2 much trouble entering the "2" into the grid today. And I really hope you enjoyed this a hell of a lot more than I did. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. good morning to my readers in São Paolo, Tel Aviv, and Beirut. I see you! (Google Analytics is fun sometimes ...)

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Guinness classification / TUES 6-29-21 / Daft Punk or the White Stripes / "Downtown Abbey" title / Sorcerer's concotion

Hello! It’s Clare for the last Tuesday in June. Hope everyone had a great month and is surviving this insane heat wave. The AC in my apartment was off for a period today, and I thought I might just melt. Although, watching the track and field Olympic trials that just wrapped up put things in perspective and made me feel a tad bad about my complaining. Imagine running 25 laps around a track when it’s 105 degrees. No, thank you! I’ll stick to mainly staying indoors to study for the bar and venturing out into the 100-degree, humid weather only when it’s absolutely, positively necessary.

Anywho, on to the puzzle!

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: A word is literally in between “the” and another word, to create a thing or phrase (ex: “jack” is in the middle of “the box,” to give us “Jack in the box”) 

Theme answers:

• THE JACK (in the) BOX (17A: Toy with a spring, literally) 
• THE NIP (in the) BUD (24A: Put an early stop to, literally) 
• THE BE (in the) WAY (31A: Interfere, literally) 
• THE UP (in the) AIR (40A: Undecided, literally) 
• THE PIE (in the) SKY (48A: Unrealistic, as wishes, literally) 
• THE BACK (in the) DAY (55A: “Years ago …,” literally)

Word of the Day: TAMIL (50A: Language from which “curry” and “catamaran” come) —

Tamil is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is the official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and an official language of the two sovereign nations, Singapore and Sri Lanka. In India, it is also the official language of the Union Territory of Puducherry… One of 22 scheduled languages in the Constitution of India, Tamil was the first to be classified as a classical language of India and is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. (Wiki)

• • •

You know it’s a rough puzzle when you have to sit there for 10 minutes thinking about what the theme was and how to explain it. Besides, it makes for a fairly boring theme when, after you get the trick, you can write in the first word of all the theme answers. And all those words are “the” — I don’t particularly like seeing “the” in the puzzle at all, let alone six times. The only nice thing I can say about that theme is that at least as much as people overuse “literally,” it was refreshing to see “literally” be used in the correct way in the puzzle. 

With 17A, “Jack” is in between “the” and “box” in the sense of the puzzle construction, just like with the toy, where the “Jack” is actually inside of the “box.” But, that’s the only theme answer where this is really the case. An argument could be made that for 46A, the “pie” is actually in “the sky,” but I’d say that’s flimsy. It just seems like there’s no rhyme or reason with the answers that were selected for this theme, and some uniformity could have helped tie everything together. My least favorite of the theme answers by far was 31A. I’m not entirely sure why, but I had a visceral reaction when I saw THEBEWAY in the puzzle — it looks and feels ugly. 

On top of the theme, I found a lot of the fill to also be challenging. It felt like it skewed toward a puzzle later in the week or, at the very least, to an older generation. That’s fine, but it made for a particularly hard solve for me when I didn’t know the JACOB K. Javits Convention Center (18D), STACY Keach (23A), Timothy LEARY (30A), Willy LEY (34A), Norman MINETA (52A), or TOD Browning (63A). I stalled a fair amount in the southeast corner because of MINETA and TOD and the long downs — 43A: "Can we move forward?" as IS IT A GO, in particular. 

With 2D: Release, as a trailer, I never got it out of my head that the clue was referencing a movie “trailer” and not a vehicle, so I got stuck there. I don’t think anyone in history has ever called something an ENOTE (8D: Online memos). They’re “notes” — adding an “e” to the front of something doesn’t make it a real online thing. I really disliked 24D: It goes up during takeoff for TRAY. The TRAY on a plane goes up before takeoff — not during takeoff. (I’m pretty sure everyone has heard those announcements a million and one times from flight attendants.). Also, I don’t think anyone in the last decade — at least — has used the slang REEFERS (38D). 

I guess if I’m looking for something nice to say about the puzzle… I liked the words ELIXIR (32D) and TOXIN (9D) because they felt fresh. The clue/answer for 29A: Greek god whose name sounds like a zodiac sign as ARES (or, “Aries”) seems a bit fun. And, as someone with running-induced ASTHMA, I did get a bit of a chuckle out of 46D: It can take your breath away. (That is, admittedly, some dark humor on my part.) 

Overall, though, this puzzle felt like a slog to me. To put it in perspective, I’d rather go study for the bar for four hours than do this puzzle again.

Misc:

• This may be a small gripe, but I think that Kamala HARRIS (36A) could be clued for her own accomplishments, rather than her place next to a man. 
• I’m not sure what it says about me that my first thought (and one I couldn’t get out of my head for a bit) for 32D: Sorcerer’s concoction was “poison” rather than the much more benign ELIXIR.
• Well, I really can’t think of anything more to say about this puzzle. So, to get back to the track Olympic trials, everyone should watch Sydney McLaughlin set a world record in the 400m hurdles. Her run was incredibly impressive. [The race starts at 2:31]  
  

Signed, Clare Carroll, AC lover

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Puppeteer Lewis / MON 7-27-20 / Boozer's binge / Trojan War king

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium, Medium, somewhere in there (2:50)

THEME: "Hi there!" — theme answers all begin with "hi" sound, with that sound (the first syllable) spelled differently each time:

Theme answers:

• HIKING GEAR (18A: It may include a backpack, boots and a water bottle)
• HAIKU POEM (24A: Japanese verse with 17 syllables)
• HIGH END (39A: Expensive, as a product line)
• HEIGH-HO (41A: Seven dwarfs' cry as off to work they go)
• HEIDI KLUM (52A: Supermodel and longtime "Project Runway" host)
• HYBRID CARS (61A: Toyota Prius and Honda Insight)

Word of the Day: Haiku (24A) —

Haiku (俳句,[...] is a type of short form poetry [ed.: hmm, right there in the definition, interesting] originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a kireji, or "cutting word", 17 on (a type of Japanese phoneme) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a kigo, or seasonal reference. However, modern haiku vary widely on how closely they follow these traditional elements. 

• • •

The Friends of Will / Boys Club power is relentless. Over and over and over we get puzzles that reek of last century, that are minimally competent but that don't bring any cleverness or currency, that just take up space, and in doing so continue to groom solvers to expect that "this is just the way puzzles are." I am all for a good, simple sound-based puzzle. Why not? I've seen same-sound, different-spelling puzzles before (a bunch). Make the answers fun, make your grid sparkly, give us a surprise here or there, and you're good. But this puzzle does none of those things. It crowds the grid with themers, none of which are that interesting, two of which are really too close IMHO to be truly *different* "hi-" spellings (HIKING, HIGH-END ... just a long "I"), and one of which is absolutely, puzzle-murderingly not a thing. I direct your attention to HAIKU POEM. Just ... gaze upon it ... in all its luminous, absurd redundancy. To state the obvious: a haiku is, by definition, in all cases, a "poem." There is no need to specify POEM, as there is no non-poem form of haiku. There is no HAIKUPROSE or HAIKUESSAY or HAIKUOPED or HAIKUDOG. So here you have someone who (wrongly) thought, "I need another 'hi-' answer" and then (much more wrongly) thought "I got it, HAIKU POEM!" You'd almost have to hate words to do this kind of thing. So ... the old-fashioned, very well worn concept that *might yet* be done in a pleasing way is instead driven into the ground and lit on fire. NEATO!


The one site of relative slowness for me today was in the NE and E, starting with JOCK, which feels both too slangy and caricaturey to fit the straightforward clue (10A: Varsity letter earner, say). You can letter in bowling, you know that, right? But sure, JOCK. Not getting that one straight off meant I couldn't just fire off the Down crosses. And even when I worked that corner out, I couldn't see OVERNIGHT for some reason (11D: Like some FedEx or DHL service). Clue is reasonable enough there. I just ... I had the OVER- but a couple of the NIGHT crosses were also proving problematic. First, MSN (27A: AOL alternative), which ... is that still a thing? Is AOL? Again, please see my first paragraph, where I talk about this puzzle's belonging to the last century. Speaking (again) of last century: "Snow White!" I had trouble with the spelling of "HEIGH-HO"—tried to write in HIHOHIHO, but ... thwarted by an insufficiency of boxes. But I worked it all out and came in with a pretty average Monday time. Only other place I even hesitated was at MOOSE (55D: Glacier National Park sighting) because of vagueness and "OH, GEE!" (67A: "Well, golly!") because of not knowing what the hell Wally or the Beav or whatever were going to say before "GEE" (I thought maybe "AW"?). Feel the freshness! I gotta go. Take care.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Ridge formed by glacial streams / THU 4-16-20 / Country/rock singer Steve / Repeated word in Ten Commandments / It's snowy in Florida

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Challenging (6:59)

THEME: DROP ME A LINE (69A: "Don't be a stranger!" ... or what you have to do three times in this puzzle) — Three phrases containing "ME" don't actually contain the "ME" because the "ME" has been "dropped" to the next row (creating nonsense answers where the "ME" gets dropped, so that's fun...)

Theme answers:

• "KISS / KATE" (33A: With 35-Across Cole Porter musical) ("ME" dropped down a row to SHA(ME))
• "THANK / LATER" (42A: With 44-Across, "You can wait to show your gratitude") ("ME" dropped down a row to THY(ME))
• HAND- / -DOWN (54A: With 56-Across, clothing item for the youngest in the family) ("ME" dropped down a row to NO TI(ME))

Word of the Day: ESKER (5D: Ridge formed by glacial streams) —

: a long narrow ridge or mound of sand, gravel, and boulders deposited by a stream flowing on, within, or beneath a stagnant glacier (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

It's late and I don't have the energy to go into all the problems with this one. The worst part for me was that it combined two things that I find really unenjoyable: the [With such and such-Across...]-type clue and the answer-that-is-wrong-for-its-clue (today, all the "ME"-containing answers). Couldn't make any sense of clue phrase "You can wait to show your gratitude" (who in the world would ever say those words?), and since I had GETS BY instead of DOESOK (yuck) for 6D: Manages, I didn't have the "K" I needed to see "KISS," which might've helped me figure out "KISS (ME) KATE." Speaking of KISS crosses, CAPEESH is just bull****. That is a variant spelling and should be clued as such. The actual spelling (CAPISCE) fits perfectly, so, yeah, I resent the hell out of that. Here, check out the dictionary, it's fun:

note "variants" and "less commonly"

Mostly I found the revealer deeply unsatisfying and, from my standpoint, contradictory. I have to raise ME, not drop it, to make sense of the puzzle. Raising ME makes sense of the answers that are missing it *and* makes sense of the answers into which ME had been dropped (dropped, you'll note, by the puzzle, not by me ... I cannot "drop" the ME ... where would I "drop" it from, there are only black squares above the ME). The ME has been dropped in the grid. I do not do the dropping. Because *raising* the ME makes sense of *everything*, this is why DROP ME A LINE absolutely does not work as an explanation of what I "have to do." I see that the revealer is defensible, but a. it's at best ambiguous, and b. just does not account for the gibberish answers that result from the dropped "ME" — SHAME Na Na?! Not even a wacky "?" clue for that? And, more ugh, the dropped ME doesn't create a new phrase, just a phrase with a gap, *whereas* the answer that *receives* the ME (SHAME, THYME, NO TIME) is new ... and completely inappropriate for its clue. So everything is just a mess. Also, the fill is terrible in this. SOARERS (52D: Eagles and hawks, typically) (?), III ESKER NAG NAG (without third NAG??), HIES THEA AHN ANTIS (!?) ILE. It's just rough rough rough and stale all over. EWW, indeed. 

Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Old Renault / MON 11-18-19 / Jerry's gal pal on Seinfeld / Comment made when itching to leave a dull party / Nearest target for bowler / Clucked in disapproval / Santa Monica landmark

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Medium (2:55)

THEME: animal-y phrases — themers are familiar phrases that have a first word that starts with an animal and ends in "Y":

Theme answers:

• DOGGY BAGS (17A: Containers for leftovers)
• BULLY PULPIT (25A: Prominent position from which to pontificate)
• CATTY CORNER (44A: In a diagonal position (to))
• PIGGY BANK (58A: Savings repository for a kid)

Word of the Day: LUANDA (40A: Capital of Angola) —

Luanda, formerly named São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda, is the capital and largest city in Angola, It is Angola's primary port, and its major industrial, cultural and urban centre. Located on Angola's northern coast with the Atlantic Ocean, Luanda is both Angola's chief seaport and its administrative centre. It is also the capital city of Luanda Province. Luanda and its metropolitan area is the most populous Portuguese-speaking capital city in the world, with over 8 million inhabitants in 2019 (a third of Angola's population). Among the oldest colonial cities of Africa, it was founded in January 1576 by Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais, under the name of São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda. The city served as the centre of the slave trade to Brazil before its prohibition. At the start of the Angolan Civil War in 1975, most of the white Portuguese left as refugees, principally for Portugal. Luanda's population increased greatly from refugees fleeing the war, but its infrastructure was inadequate to handle the increase. This also caused the exacerbation of slums, or musseques, around Luanda. The city is currently undergoing a major reconstruction, with many large developments taking place that will alter its cityscape significantly. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm gonna try to keep this simple, which will not be easy, as there are so many issues with this puzzle I want to scream. Or at least speak quite sternly. First, it's a Monday and we are subjected to a 72-worder ... why? To be clear, 72 is a word count you'd expect to see on Friday or Saturday. It's *low*. Themed puzzles are almost never that low ... For Reasons. Namely that the theme already exerts a pretty strong pressure on the grid, and keeping your word count up around 76 or 78 (the max) keeps that pressure from overwhelming the grid and forcing you to use junky fill. 72 words on a Monday is a completely unnecessary stunt, one which we all pay for in the form of, let's see ABBR ORONO ERG ERNO GIAN (!) INRE ASPERSE YORBA LECAR (dear lord) TSKED ALBEE *and* AGEE (somehow) YAPAT and INE. And that's only the obviously regrettable stuff. Yes, it's true, I *am* having fun shouting "YORBA LE CAR" to myself as I pretend to be a character in a crime film who speaks some kind of imaginary pidgin English, but that kind of whimsy only takes you so far. It's bonkers to not go for a higher word count and cleaner fill, esp. considering the longer fill here isn't any great shakes—unless "MY, IT'S LATE" pushes your "Fresh!" button. Does it!?!?! Does it, you monster?!


I don't know how I feel about the theme itself. It's a Monday, there are animals whatever. What I *do* know about this theme is that, with the exception of a single letter, it is *identical* to one Liz Gorski did ... last century. Seriously, 1999. A long time ago, but still in the Shortz era, though, and ... look, if you're making a puzzle, and especially if you are, you know, *editing* a puzzle, you can run your themers through a database real quick to see if they've been used before, and if so, if they've been used in *exactly* the way that you were planning on using them. The idea that Will did this to Liz ... a constructor whose name you don't see in the NYT any more (maybe you should wonder about that...) ... and that this guy, with this dated, warmed-over, last-century junk heap, is getting paid many many times over as much as Liz ever got paid for a daily (remember, he's getting the *veteran* pay rate, and getting it for essentially copying a woman's (grrr) work from two decades ago. It's insulting on top of insulting. If you're gonna do something that someone else has already done, at least improve it, modernize it, Something! I mean, YORBA LE CAR, for GIAN's sake! Sigh. Fire everyone. Burn it down. Rip it up and start again. The NYTXW needs new leadership, and even people inside that org. know it.


Ok, that's all. Liz Gorski rules. Gorski now, Gorski forever (check out her themeless puzzles at the New Yorker puzzle website every fifth week or so!) (or get her easy themed Crossword Nation puzzles by subscription, sent to your Inbox every Tuesday). Byeee.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. It's "kitty-corner" and it will never not be "kitty-corner" #TeamKitty
P.P.S. here's the Gorski grid—there's some shaky fill in here, too, but this is *20 years ago*

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Old Seattle sports headline / WED 10-9-19 / 1980 sci-fi thriller / Internationally popular French comic book series since 1959 / Milton Berle's longtime sponsor

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Challenging (high 5s, then another minute or so half-heartedly tracking down wrong squares / typos)

THEME: ALTERED STATES (34A: 1980 sci-fi thriller ... or a hint to the answers to the six starred clues) — answers to the six starred clues are all anagrams of states (of America):

Theme answers:

• SHOT AWNING (17A: *Storefront cover that's totally busted?)
• RANK BASE (26A: *Army camp that stinks to high heaven?)
• SONICS WIN (27A: *Old Seattle sports page headline?)
• TEEN SENSE (42A: Appetizer bowlful?)
• REAL AWED (50A: *Super-impressed?)
• RACIAL INFO (57A: *What the census provides, in part?)

Word of the Day: LATEEN (46D: Triangular 48-Down) —

A lateen (from French latine, meaning "Latin") or latin-rig is a triangular sail set on a long yard mounted at an angle on the mast, and running in a fore-and-aft direction.

Dating back to Roman navigation, the lateen became the favorite sail of the Age of Discovery, mainly because it allows a boat to tack "against the wind." It is common in the Mediterranean, the upper Nile River, and the northwestern parts of the Indian Ocean, where it is the standard rig for feluccas and dhows. The lateen is used today in a slightly different form on small recreational boats like the Sailfish and Sunfish, but is still used as a working rig by coastal fishermen in the Mediterranean. (wikipedia)

• • •

The good news is that I had the privilege of solving a *great* puzzle tonight. Sadly for all of us, it wasn't this one. Please, if you don't subscribe to the American Values Club Crossword Puzzle already,  first of all, you are actively engaged in self-harm—subscribe immediately—and second of all, spend the one dollar American and buy the latest puzzle, "Bursting with Pride" (by Sid Sivakumar), a la carte (do it here). I did it earlier this evening and in addition to just being a solid puzzle, the theme (once I finally put it all together) made me smile. Genuinely smile. It's clever and lovely and everything the NYTXW should be on a regular basis but mostly is Not. I'm making this comparison to night because I did these two puzzles almost back-to-back, and the distance between them felt chasmic. Is that a word!? It is now! This one felt so old, old in all the bad ways, the old fill, the old frame of reference (old basketball teams, old TV references, rivers and rivers and sailing terminology and SSA and IDI my god make it stop!!). And the theme ... sigh, like yesterday, the revealer is a great answer on its own. Really happy to see that movie in the center of my grid. But the theme concept, the theme execution? Who cares? Who Cares? It's just anagrams of state names?? The phrases aren't funny and the anagramming was tedious—and I'm generally pretty good at anagrams. I honestly had no idea what was happening until, let's see ... I don't know, it might've been toward the end when I was almost done but Still Didn't Have *THREE* themers figured out. Basically every themer crossed by the Milton Berle (...) answer, I was like "?" No joke, I had KEEN SENSE, REAL AVID, and SOCIAL INFO as theme answers at various points in my solve. Eventually saw the "Tennessee" anagram, and then got the "Delaware" one, but still was not getting RACIAL, ugh. Just ugh. I was struggling, and with a theme I cared less than nothing about.

11D: J.Crew competitor (L.L. BEAN)

The thing is you can probably turn *most* state names into wacky phrases, can't you? NINE ATOMS. COOL ROAD. Uh ... NAVY SIN PANEL. The list (probably) goes on. Why these states? Why? Just ... states. Because. Anagrams. Because. Blargh. And then the relentless beat of the hooves of crosswordese demons bearing down on you, AKELA! ELBE! EMBAR! IDI! SSA! ONEL! There's no joy, no lightness, no cleverness. Just a dreary trudge to the finish line. Worse, there's a promising revealer, squandered. AGAIN.


Five things:

• 4D: Lakeside rental (JETSKI) — took me way too long to get this. Was imagining the *side* of a lake, not the lake itself. Wanted something like "cabin."
• 21A: Facial hair for Uncle Sam and others (GOATEES) — the pluralizing here is so awkward. You pluralize the people ("Uncle Sam and others") ... and expect the facial hair to come along for the ride? Every other GOATEES clue I'm looking at pluralizes the hair formation itself. I feel like the answer here should be in the singular still. Not convinced that saying it's "for" "others" makes it plural. Boo. 
• 47D: Milton Berle's longtime sponsor (TEXACO) — first time I had this answer all filled in, it read KIXACO. And why not? What do I know about Milton Berle-era TV sponsors? (A: little)
• 51D: Tense with excitement (WIRED) — first time I had this answer all filled in, it read VISED, and reader, I believed it was correct.
• 5D: Vitamin also known as riboflavin (BTWO) — never ever Ever written this way, of course, but whatever. I wrote in BTEN, which is very much My Bad. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. this puzzle was so distractingly bad that it made me overlook the cool comics answer, ASTERIX, of which I very much approve (53A: Internationally popular French comic book series since 1959)

P.P.S. who thinks of the damn hotel room PEN as an "amenity"!? ("well lah-di-dah, a complimentary writing implement, my stars!") (43D: Hotel room amenity)

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Bo's'n's quarters / WED 4-10-19 / Computer image file format / Baseball rarities nowadays / World capital at 9350 feet

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy? Easy-Medium? (solved on clipboard, not really sure)

THEME: DOUBLE HEADERS (35A: Baseball rarities nowadays ... or a phonetic hint to the starts of 17-, 26-, 48- and 57-Across) — first words of themers are homonyms for a numbers; taken as a progression, the numbers "double" with each step:

Theme answers:

• WON ON POINTS (1) (17A: Was barely victorious, as in boxing)
• TOO DARN HOT (2) (26A: Cole Porter song from "Kiss Me, Kate")
• FOR A CHANGE (4) (48A: As something different to do)
• ATE LIKE A PIG (8) (57A: Opposite of "consumed daintily")

Word of the Day: FOCSLE (52A: Bo's'n's quarters) —

noun

noun: focsle

1. the forward part of a ship below the deck, traditionally used as the crew's living quarters.

   • HISTORICAL

     a raised deck at the front of a ship. (google)

• • •

First the obvious, which is that this puzzle should've run yesterday and yesterday's puzzle today (if it was run at all, which it shouldn't have been, IMveryHO. I didn't time myself today but the only trouble I had (ironically? fittingly?) came right off the bat with REBUS (1A: A ewe for you, say). I wanted some equivalent of homonym, which I still can't tell apart from "homophone," tbh. Looks like "homophone" is a type of homonym, but where the words are spelled differently, not just pronounced differently or with different meanings. So you're always safe saying "homonym." But I digress. Besides REBUS, only the terrifically ugly FOCSLE caused me even a moment's pause. Had no idea what the theme was until I was finished. As soon as I had that AHA moment, I let out a sound like a tire deflating, which made my wife (in the next room) laugh, because she knew *exactly* what caused it (she'd solved last night, while I was asleep on the couch). There is very much a "that's it?" quality to this theme. Nothing disappoints me quite like a disappointing baseball-themed crossword. Even the clue on DOUBLE-HEADERS was disappointing. It's not wrong, it's just ... there's nothing in that clue that refers to what a double-header *is*. Who cares if it's a "baseball rarity nowadays"? Give me a baseball-specific clue, please. [Twin bills] would've worked. This puzzle was not bad so much as it was blah. Limp, listless, dull. Something that might've seemed interesting in the 20th century, of if you'd not done many puzzles before. Do some constructors get preferential treatment because they've been at it for so long? I can't believe that in all the rejected puzzles made by young people or women there wasn't something more interesting than this.


I guess there were a couple other answers that gave me slight pause. I know the term BITMAP, but I don't really know what it is, so I got it easily enough, but I wrote it in thinking "well I've heard of this thing ..." rather than "ooh, I know this!" Also, no idea who TESSA Thompson is. Which, now that I look her up, seems impossible. She's been in a lot of stuff. I really gotta start watching "Westworld"...


Bullets:

• 25D: Forest giants (SEQUOIAS) — wanted REDWOODS, which is accurate and fits. But that "Q" was easy to pick up from QUOTAS (31A: Target numbers)
• 7D: World capital at 9, 350 feet (QUITO) — speaking of "Q"s ... I always hesitate with this clue because I think it might be LAPAZ or SUCRE (both Bolivian capitals, both way way up there, elevationwise)
• 43D: Lonely place (THE TOP) — Had THE and filled the remaining spaces (mentally) with all kinds of stuff (THE BAR? THE HOP? THE MET?) before getting TOP from the crosses. 
• 58D: ___ of Good Feelings (ERA) — LOL this reminds me olde-timey crosswords, when this ERA apparently meant something to someone, and also when this ERA would be used to clue the terrible partial ERAOF. To Will's credit, he's only had ERAOF in his puzzles three times in 25 years. Weirdly, pre-Shortz editors clued it "ERA of Good Feeling," singular. The plural "feelings" version appears to be more correcter.
• 49D: A Lion, but not a Tiger, informally (NFLER) — ban NFLER, NBAER, NHLER, NLER, ALER and all dumb sports -ERs. Also, go Tigers! (baseball!)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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You can't bring in crazed antelope Mr Glass / WED 12-5-18 / Organization honored on October 24 / Suffering caused by reader prejudice / Beekeeper of filmdom

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: I don't know, I just sort of gave up ... probably on the Challenging side because of the gibberish

THEME: UNITED NATIONS (35A: Organization honored on October 24 ... and the theme of this puzzle) — "nations" all shoved together ("united"), and then reimagined as a wacky phrase:

Theme answers:

• "IRA, NO MANIC ELAND!" (17A: "You can't bring in a crazed antelope, Mr. Glass!")
• CUB ALE BAN ON (23A: Wrigley Field's beer boycott goes into effect?)
• MA LIES TO NIA (50A: Mother isn't straight with actress Vardalos?)
• PERUSER BIAS PAIN (57A: Suffering caused by reader prejudice?)

Word of the Day: ALAN KING (37D: Comic who said "If you want to read about love and marriage, you've got to buy two separate books") —

Alan King (born Irwin Alan Kniberg; December 26, 1927 – May 9, 2004) was an American actor and comedian known for his biting wit and often angry humorous rants. King became well known as a Jewish comedian and satirist. He was also a serious actor who appeared in a number of movies and television shows. King wrote several books, produced films, and appeared in plays. In later years, he helped many philanthropic causes. (wikipedia)

• • •

Don't think I'll write much about this one. There are so many obvious problems that it just seems cruel. But a few words before I go. First, when you're dealing with a holiday, or a commemorative day of any kind, it's best to run the puzzle on that day. Barring that, then *near* that day. This is especially true of a day no one knows or cares about. I'm now realizing the whole irksome thing of running an October 24 puzzle on December 5 could've been avoided simply by choosing One Of Probably Infinite Other UNITED NATIONS Clues Available To You. Or, you know, by running this puzzle on the actual date of October 24 ... which was ... Also A Wednesday (!) OMF#@$#$@. Wow. OK. Then there's the theme itself, which is so gibberishy and involved so much repronunciation that it felt more like torture than pleasure. I finished with a typo at ISM (I had IST ... you can guess how thrilled I was to make a typo on that delightful bit of fill) (5D: Suffix with ideal), because my brain was parsing it as "IRA, NOT A NICE ELAND!", which admittedly seems ridiculous, but really ... I mean look at this puzzle. Who is it to tell me what's "ridiculous"? Anyway, figuring out those themers was a chore—one made infinitely more tedious by the dodgy fill that runs through the veins of this entire thing. All I have to do is direct you to column 6 (the ISM column). Just read down. ISM ULEE ESME. There should be some alarm that goes off on your puzzle any time you get a crosswordese bingo in your grid like that. Red lights. Sirens. Sirens that scream "ISM-ULEE-ESME! ISM-ULEE-ESME!" The works.


Someone I know got so annoyed at this grid that they made a whole new one:

This is the extremes to which some solvers will go to find amusement when the crossword lets them down so badly. I like the new grid. Its main problem is that it still contains all the dumb theme stuff. Thank god for crossword Twitter and the #NYTXW hashtag—they are a solace on days like this. Pain is easier to bear when it's shared:

(note: @AVCXWord is the American Values Crossword and @bewildering_ly is the Twitter handle of Will Nediger, whose (free) indie puzzle site is here. OK, back to the tweets...)

OK, then, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld (Twitter @rexparker / #NYTXW)

PS what the hell is up with the clue on STARVE??? (45D: Eschew rather than chew?) Presumably if you're "starving" you just don't have *&^#ing food; you're not "eschewing" anything. This is a clue from someone who has plenty of food and never thinks about, I don't know, the 85K children (to date) who have starved to death in Yemen. "Eschewed"!? And all for a stupid pun?! Amazing. You could've saved this clue for FAST, where it would've been, you know, appropriate.

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