Onetime popular blog that covered Manhattan gossip / WED 7-14-21 / Crime drama set in the midwest / Hayes with three grammys and an oscar / Architect born in Guangzhou / Gold insignia of the armed forces

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: E-READER (38A: Kindle, e.g. ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme?) — author puns where one word in a familiar phrase is changed to an author's name by the simple addition of an "E":

Theme answers:

• CRYING WOLFE (17A: Clamoring for "The Bonfire of the Vanities"?)
• WILDE PITCH (24A: Selling someone on "The Importance of Being Earnest"?)
• TOOLE CHEST (50A: Spot to store "A Confederacy of Dunces"?)
• PEACHY KEENE (62A: Positive review of a Nancy Drew mystery?)

Word of the Day: John Kennedy Toole (50A) —

John Kennedy Toole (/ˈtuːl/; December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969) was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. After suffering from paranoia and depression due in part to these failures, he died by suicide at the age of 31. [...] Dunces is a picaresque novel featuring the misadventures of protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly, a lazy, obese, misanthropic, self-styled scholar who lives at home with his mother. It is hailed for its accurate depictions of New Orleans dialects. Toole based Reilly in part on his college professor friend Bob Byrne. Byrne's slovenly, eccentric behavior was anything but professorial, and Reilly mirrored him in these respects. The character was also based on Toole himself, and several personal experiences served as inspiration for passages in the novel. While at Tulane, Toole filled in for a friend at a job as a hot tamale cart vendor, and worked at a family owned and operated clothing factory. Both of these experiences were later adopted into his fiction. /// Toole submitted Dunces to publisher Simon & Schuster, where it reached editor Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb considered Toole talented but felt his comic novel was essentially pointless. Despite several revisions, Gottlieb remained unsatisfied, and after the book was rejected by another literary figure, Hodding Carter Jr., Toole shelved the novel. Suffering from depression and feelings of persecution, Toole left home on a journey around the country. He stopped in Biloxi, Mississippi, to end his life [...]. Some years later, his mother brought the manuscript of Dunces to the attention of novelist Walker Percy, who ushered the book into print. In 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. (wikipedia)

• • •

This started out looking like it was just going to be a bunch of mildly cringey author puns, which I guess it is, at its core, but those puns end up having a consistency that tightens and elevates things above mere punniness. Wow, that is an awful-looking word, "punniness"—shades of "puniness" but also "penis" and "piss" and "pus." Sorry, good morning, let's start over. Punniness! There's one crucial problem with the theme and that's the revealer—this theme is about E-writers. I, you, we are the E-READERs, is that it? The clue should have at least tried to make sense of how the revealer is supposed to make sense, exactly. Revealer clues really matter, and everyone just bailed out on this one. "A hint to this puzzle's theme?" Well, I guess, yeah, but come on, say more? Give me some of that clever punniness you seem to like so much. The author set is solid; I wonder about the longevity of John Kennedy Toole's fame. He basically has the one famous book. He died the year I was born, so we're going *back* now. Do adolescents and young adults still get that book pressed on them by their parents? That's what happened to me when I was a teenager (I haven't read it since). He had such a strange, sad, short career (see "Word of the Day," above). Anyway, he stands out today as the one writer with by far the least substantial career. The others were prolific, iconic even. If nothing else, this puzzle taught me a way to remember how to spell Carolyn KEENE (not KEANE)'s name—it's the real word ("keen") + E. She's PEACHY KEENE! Such a useful mnemonic. 

Before the theme became completely evident, things didn't look so great. CRYING WOLFE is kind of a shrug of a pun, and the fill up there wasn't exactly promising (REW ETAIL ESL AAA etc.):

But as I say, the theme smartened up, and the fill did even out a bit. GAWKER and EXTROVERT and PET PIG give the puzzle a cool weird energy (the energy of an EXTROVERT with a PET PIG reading GAWKER on her phone at an outdoor cafe in Manhattan circa 2013, I guess), and I really like the way USVSTHEM looks in the grid ([GAWKER reader looks up from phone]: "It's US VS THEM, pig!" "Oink!"). I had trouble getting started in the NW, where OFFS, "FARGO" and FRYER all had clues I couldn't get my head around, and where (ugh) END was the back END of a cross-reference that started somewhere way down at the bottom of the grid (61A: With 14-Down, what "Fin" might mean). The upside-down cross-ref is the worst. Like, I just started, please don't make me go searching the grid for the front end of this clue just so I can get a stupid 3-letter word, please! Weirdly, the only other part of the grid that gave me similar trouble was the NW's symmetrical counterpart, where I wrote in "HOLD UP!" at 59A: "Now wait just a second!" ("HOLD IT!"), which Really affected my ability to make sense of the crosses on those two wrong letters. Also, despite my Ph.D., my job, my frequent teaching of prosody, I had trouble getting to FEET from 69A: Units of poetry. I, like every other rube, probably, was thinking of more substantial units (lines, stanzas, etc.). But no, we're down to the atomic level here with the metrical units themselves, the FEET. An IAMB is a foot. So is a TROCHEE, a SPONDEE, a DACTYL, an ANAPEST (feel free to add allllll of these to your wordlists, constructors). Anyway, sometimes the puzzle throws you a softball and you still absolutely whiff. Ah well.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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Bear in a 2012 comedy / WED 3-24-21 / Kim 7-year-old star of the Golden Globe-winning "Minari" / Comic strip antagonist with massive arms / Semihard Dutch cheese

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "WHO WORE IT BETTER?" (38A: Question asked regarding two red-carpet photos of those named in the starred clues?) — articles of clothing associated with two ... cartoon characters (?)

Theme answers:

• SAILOR SUIT (17A: *Donald Duck or Popeye?)
• DENIM OVERALLS (24A: *Minions or Mario?)
• FOOTIE PAJAMAS (50A: *Michael Darling or Baby Smurf?)
• TRENCHCOAT (61A: *Inspector Gadget or McGruff the Crime Dog?)

Word of the Day: ALAN Kim (2D: ___ Kim, 7-year-old star of the Golden Globe-winning "Minari") —

• • •

Sorry, I think I'm just too tired to understand this one fully. I don't know why the figures named in the starred clues are cartoon characters. I don't understand the hook—like, what is cartoony about the cluing, or the phrase "WHO WORE IT BETTER?" I keep looking for the pun or the wordplay. Does "red carpet" evoke animation or cartooning somehow? I don't know. I don't get it. I don't have any problem with the fact that cartoon characters are not real and thus can't physically walk down a red carpet. I just don't know why cartoon characters, specifically, are being used. I figure there has to be an angle. But as far as I can tell, no, it's just that the cartoon characters named in the clues both wear the articles of clothing in question. And that is that. I guess people will enjoy remembering toons, or having the clothing similarities pointed out, and maybe that's enough. I just kept waiting for the punchline that never came. Or maybe it came, in the form of the revealer, and I just didn't get it. Other theme things I didn't get: why BLUTO is up there turning the red carpet into a SAILOR-SUIT threesome (7D: Comic strip antagonist with massive arms); why DENIM OVERALLS (it's true, but you would just say OVERALLS); how you spell FOOTIE (considered FOOTEE and FOOTSY); and who "Michael Darling" is (had to look him up—he's a little kid in "Peter Pan," a movie I don't think I've ever seen).

The fill is weirdly weak in this one. Crosswordese-ish fill splattered all over the place. Starting in the north, there's SAO SAABS ASSAM SEI STIEG NRA AREEL ARIA GAL GADOT (even in long form, I think of her as crosswordese now—she's absolutely outpacing a lot of the old-school crossword names in terms of frequency of appearances; she's not at ASHE levels yet, but she's trying) (deep breath) EGAD OSLO LEIS ORCA RIC LAMESA EDAM SOSAD RIO AESOP IFSO ... and those were all *contiguous*. You can then hop to NOLO and ASP ASHE and ADELE ONDVD you get the idea. It's wearying. And it's really, truly wearying to see NRA this week of all weeks, even with the clue that signals opposition to the group. You would never put KKK in the puzzle at all, no matter how you clued it, right? So ... extend the logic, please. Some orgs. are beyond clue redemption. Thank you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Complete set in musical comedy / FRI 2-19-21 / Modern lead-in to speak / Short pioneer in West Coast hip-hop / Pal of Seinfeld and Costanza / Parent company of Gerber and Lean Cuisine

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin

Relative difficulty: Medium (skewing slightly harder depending on how rough the proper nouns were for you)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Dorothy LAMOUR (27D: Dorothy of old"Road" films) —

Dorothy Lamour (born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton; December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American actress and singer. She is best remembered for having appeared in the Road to...movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

Lamour began her career in the 1930s as a big band singer. In 1936, she moved to Hollywood, where she signed with Paramount Pictures. Her appearance as Ulah in The Jungle Princess (1936) brought her fame and marked the beginning of her image as the "Sarong Queen".

In 1940, Lamour made her first Road series comedy film Road to Singapore. The Road series films were popular during the 1940s. The sixth film in the series, Road to Bali, was released in 1952. (wikipedia)

• • •

Had some trouble in the middle of this one, but otherwise, a pretty normal Friday. A little heavy on names, but maybe that's just the SE, where BADU BENES HEIDI and TOO $hort all cross each other just a little bit over from the RAND / O'NEIL cross. LAMOUR and LASSER are old(er) names that might have caused trouble as well (though LASSER is, or was, reasonably common at one point). All of the names are fine, individually. Perfectly suitable for crosswords. There were just a lot of them piled up, which can make solving dicey, as proper nouns are feast or famine for solvers. The NW was, bizarrely, the easiest part of the puzzle for me. Usually, getting started can involve a lot of sputtering, but I went to the little guy early (FAD), and that terminal "F" got me A BIT OF—and thus the first letters of All the Acrosses in that section. LACUNA is kind of a tough word, but it's one I know, so I made quick work of that NW section. It was only when I hit the center that I ran into problems—total stoppage, in fact. See if you can see where my problem is:

Well, ENO, obviously (30D: Singer/songwriter of 1980's "Kiss Kiss Kiss"). I actually had ONO in there at first, but -YLO- looked wrong at 29-Across so I pulled it. I also have NESTEA instead of NESTLÉ at 25D: Parent company of Gerber and Lean Cuisine. That's the real killer, because that's two wrong letters reaching into the empty part of the grid, giving me false footholds. Bad news. Even with the A-K- at the top of 28D: 13, for many (AWKWARD AGE), I couldn't see it (wanted something like "unlucky number"). The only thing that makes me mad at the *puzzle* and not myself is 27A: Modern lead-in to speak (LOL). I've been on the internet for, well, a while, and I don't know what "LOLspeak" is. LOLcats, yes. LOLspeak, no. Lulz, yes, LOLspeak ... can't even imagine. Hang on. Wow, ok, it seems that LOLspeak is the language of LOLcats. The ungrammatical language of cat memes. OK. 

When I googled "LOLspeak," LOLcat came up. I love cats, but the whole LOLcat thing got very old very fast. It all feels very 15 years ago, i.e. a lot less "modern" than the clue believes. I really hope you knew LOLspeak, or knew Dorothy LAMOUR, because that crossing seems maybe tough otherwise. I briefly thought the actress was Dorothy MALONE (just watched "Written on the Wind"), and was very eager to find out what MOLspeak was. But then I fixed it.

I think MADE BANK is my favorite thing in this grid (13D: Raked in the dough). AWKWARD AGE is also nice, even if the clue did flummox me for a bit. And both CEREAL AISLE and its clue are very nice (53A: Way of Life?). Though I talk about her every time I teach the Aeneid, I never think of Helen as a DEMI-GODDESS, but of course she is, just as (technically) Aeneas is a demi-god (mother = Venus). Helen was the offspring of Leda (a mortal princess) and the Swan (aka noted shapeshifter-rapist Zeus). What else? Oh, lots of women in the grid—very noticeable, largely because the norm is the reverse. In fact, men are better represented in this grid than women are in the typical NYTXW grid. Nice to see the effort here to even things out a bit, though it shouldn't just be women constructors who are fixing this issue.

Lastly, if you don't get the clue on VOWELS (37A: Complete set in musical comedy?), it just means that a complete set of the VOWELS (a e i o u and even y) can be found in the phrase "musical comedy." Until tomorrow...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Midge Maisel's father on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel / WED 11-18-20 / Adkins for Adele / Betting game in which you could lose your shirt / Time away from the grind for short / 1974 pop hit with Spanish lyrics / Farm-share program, for short

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Medium, maybe Medium+ because of the rebus element

THEME: TWO PEAS IN A POD (34A: Almost twins ... as suggested by this puzzle's circled squares?) — circled squares contain two "P"s:

Theme answers:

• STRIPPOKER / COPPERTOP
• WRAPPARTY / "I'M HAPPY"
• VIP PASSES / WHOPPER, JR.
• FLIPPHONES / APPLE

Word of the Day: "ERES TU" (48D: 1974 pop hit with Spanish lyrics) —

"Eres tú" (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈeɾes ˈtu], "It's You") is a popular Spanish language song written in 1973 by Juan Carlos Calderón and performed by the Spanish band Mocedades, with Amaya Uranga performing the lead vocal.

It was chosen as Spain's entry in the 1973 Eurovision Song Contest. After reaching second place in the contest, it was released as a single.

This song also has an English version entitled "Touch the Wind" with lyrics by Mike Hawker.

This song also has an Indonesian version entitled "Hatiku" ("My Heart") with gospel lyrics used in Catholic mass. (wikipedia)

• • •

The revealer is fine, but it turns out just putting two "PP"s into squares just isn't that fun. It's a one-note gimmick, and while some of the "PP"-containing answers, like FLIP PHONES, are interesting in their own right, for the most part solving this puzzle just involved a programmatic placement of "P"s in their proper positions.Once you get the trick, it's paint by numbers, fill-in-the-blanks. There's plenty of theme action, technically, but none of it really *feels* like theme action. So you get essentially nine "theme" answers (if you include the revealer), but not nearly that much theme impact. Which means that all that theme material severely undermines your ability to fill the grid well / smoothly, while delivering very little in the way of thematic payoff. Actually, considering how badly the theme material taxes the grid, it's surprising the fill is as smooth as it is. Aside from "ERES TU" (which ... honestly, feel free to delete that bit of ancient crosswordese from your word list annnnny time) and the nobody-wins dilemma of OVOID-or-OVATE at 21A: Shaped like grapes, there isn't too much irksome in the grid ***except*** in the NW, which is kind of a disaster (and, not coincidentally, where I had the most trouble). Let's start with this, because it's the most important issue:

3D: Sign in an apartment window (TO RENT)

No fooling, if you do a google image search of ["to rent" sign] you just get picture after picture of "FOR RENT" signs. TORENT looks like you misspelled "torrent." You have to respect the way language actually works, and not call your lawyer in to try to justify the way you want it to work. It makes everything bad when you do this. THE NETS also makes everything bad, the way most definite articles in sports teams names do (for more badness, see the unsayable and improbably singular NYJET). There is literally nothing to clue the "OH" part of "OH, THAT" (2D: Words following "Which thing?"), which makes that answer, oh, awful. 

You also probably shouldn't cross the exclamation "OH" with the exclamation "OHO!" Oh, no, you should not. I wanted ROT at 1A: Go bad, and I should've followed that feeling, but then I saw that DAISES / AHA worked at 1D: Platforms for speakers / 14A: "Well, looky here!," so I put those answers in and took ROT out, thus ruining three answers in one fell swoop, woo hoo! I can accept RANDR as an answer if you can accept that no one ever really likes to see it, so throwing it into this already heavily compromised corner feels punitive. OK, that's all. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Swahili sir / TUE 10-13-20 / Resource from bog / Bygone days old-style / Follower of face or fork

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:29)

THEME: WIN-WIN SITUATION (57A: Circumstance that's good for everyone ... with a hint to 17-, 25- and 44-Across) — themers have the letter string "WIN" inside them twice:

Theme answers:

• "BLOWIN' IN THE WIND" (17A: Bob Dylan song that was a #2 hit for Peter, Paul & Mary)
• KNOWING WINK (25A: Sly signal)
• TOWING WINCH (44A: Device for pulling a vehicle)

Word of the Day: Jule STYNE (62A: "Gypsy" composer) —

Jule Styne (/ˈdʒuːli staɪn/; born Julius Kerwin Stein, December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-American song writer and composer best known for a series of Broadway musicals, including several famous frequently-revived shows that also became successful films: Gypsy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Funny Girl. (wikipedia)

• • •

Gotta be brief today. Exhausted. Also, either my wife or I seem to have bumped one of the dials on the stove before we went upstairs to sleep (in her case) or solve (in mine) because after I finished the puzzle I printed it out on the downstairs printer and as soon as I opened my office door I could smell gas. Ran downstairs to find the knob clicked (barely) on. So now it's all I can smell and it's making me sick. Windows open, ceiling fans going ... it's just still in my nostrils. Awful. Also exhausted because my cat got neutered today and his post-op has been ... interesting. He has zero chill so of course immediately he's jumping onto counters and chasing imaginary things and well long story short, blood, blood, blood. Not that much, actually, but a little blood looks like a horror movie, frankly. So back to the vet, ice, cone of sadness, and now a very unhappy cat in confinement for 24 hours. Oh, and somewhere in there I baked a chocolate cake. For my wife's birthday (Wednesday). I suppose I could've spent this paragraph actually talking about the puzzle, and then the write-up could've been less brief, but that's not what my fingers wanted to do, man. 

Happy to see the Monday puzzle. Better late than never. No idea what that thing was yesterday, but this puzzle reassures me that someone out there can still make a competent Monday-type puzzle, so I look forward to things being back to normal next week. In the meantime, yes, this theme is just fine. Revealer is original and themers express it well. Not sure how I feel about *all* of the first words in the themers being present participles, but ... no, actually I do know how I feel, which is I don't care that much. A little more variety in word type might've been nice, but it's a pretty restrictive theme. The fill is the fill—bit of a YAWN, listing toward olden (STYNE, BWANA ... ELD) and clunky (ONEBC, NOSTEP, YOS). I had most of my trouble in and around ONEBC, where I had two crosses wrong (one from HIS instead of YOS, the other from BLOTS instead of BLOBS). Also couldn't remember STYNE's name at first. Otherwise, very easy overall. OK, that's it. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Mountain nymph / TUE 9-15-20 / Giant in media streaming / Disney character based on Dickens character / Like gunpowder and seismometer by origin

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Medium (high 3s)

THEME: "KEEP YOUR PANTS ON!" (38A: "Be patient!" ... or advice seemingly ignored by 17-, 24-, 52- and 62-Across) — cartoon characters that don't wear pants, largely because they're all animals, but whatever:

Theme answers:

• PORKY PIG (17A: Who says "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!")
• SCROOGE MCDUCK (24A: Disney character based on a Dickens character)
• WINNIE THE POOH (52A: "Hunny"-loving A.A. Milne character)
• YOGI BEAR (62A: Jellystone Park "pic-a-nic basket" thief)

Word of the Day: ALDO (57A: Brand of shoes or handbags) —

The ALDO Group is a Canadian retailer that owns and operates a worldwide chain of shoe and accessories stores. The company was founded by Aldo Bensadoun in Montreal, Quebec, in 1972, where its corporate headquarters remain today. It has grown to become a worldwide corporation, with nearly 3,000 stores across 100 countries, under three retail banners: ALDO, Call It Spring/Spring and GLOBO. Stores in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Ireland are owned by the Group, while international stores are franchised. The company once operated the now closed or rebranded banners Little Burgundy (which it sold to Genesco), Simard & Voyer, Christian Shoes, Access, Pegabo, Transit, Stoneridge, Locale, Feetfirst and FIRST (which was the American version of Feetfirst). (wikipedia) [the word "handbag" doesn't even appear on the wikipedia page, but I'm sure that's just an oversight]

• • •

Garfield doesn't wear pants. Snoopy doesn't wear pants. Huckleberry Hound doesn't wear pants. Snagglepuss doesn't wear pants. Bugs Bunny? Pantsless. Cartoon animals frequently don't wear pants. And now there's a theme about that, for some reason. I guess that since the themers all wear tops of some kind (???) they seem particularly pantsless. Really seems like a phrase as colorful as "KEEP YOUR PANTS ON!" deserves a better theme than this. These aren't even all different animals. I don't know. Cartoons are fun. The revealer phrase on its own is great. But the connection between them here seems really very forced. But honestly this puzzle never stood a chance because of a fill decision I can't believe neither of the constructors, none of the editors or proofers, no one, vetoed: that is, the OUT / OUTLIE crossing. You cannot just straight up cross OUT with OUT. I mean, if "OUT" were part of a word like STOUT, where the letter string had nothing to do with the word OUT, then fine, but OUTLIE is a compound word, and one of its parts is OUT. And that part crosses ... OUT. I wouldn't put OUT and OUTLIE in the same grid *at all*, let alone crossing one another. I'm now scanning the grid to see if LIE is in there somewhere. This feels like Constructing 101 stuff, which is weird, because no one involved in the making of this is a novice. I honestly thought I had an error, but then everything checked out and I didn't know what to do, so I moved on. And yeah, no error. Just OUT crossing OUT...LIE. That's just not good.

The longer Downs are OK, a little interesting, I guess, but the rest of the full is average or worse. Having to deal with TORIC and ALIA *and* OOP before ever departing the NW is not a fun way to open things. Why would you put a wacky "?" clue on weak fill like SNARER?? (47D: One catching the game?). You make people have to work for something very anticlimactic—never a good thing. I thought HULU was the streaming giant (15A: Giant in media streaming = ROKU). Needed every cross to get ALDO. No other real struggles, and the fill overall ... it's tolerable. Lots of crosswordese if you start to count it up (OREAD ORA OYE INHD and so on), but the theme answers are bright enough as stand-alone answers, and the long Downs are prominent enough, that the short fill doesn't have much opportunity to make a negative impression. I just thought the theme was a shrug, conceptually, and the OUT / OUTLIE cross was a total dealbreaker.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Viking who was first ruler of Normandy / TUE 8-11-20 / Pocketbook portmanteau / Popular shooter in old west / Collaborative online reference

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:30)

THEME: EIEIO (37A: Refrain in a children's song ... or a literal feature of 17-, 25-, 42- and 55-Across) — EIEIO => the vowels (in order of appearance) in each of the themers:

Theme answers:

• DERRINGER PISTOL (17A: Popular shooter in the Old West)
• REWRITES HISTORY (25A: Puts one's own slant on the past)
• PRESIDENT WILSON (42A: W.W. I leader)
• VERMICELLI BOWLS (55A: Vietnamese noodle salads)

Word of the Day: ROLLO (31D: Viking who was the first ruler of Normandy) —

Rollo (Norman: Rou; Old Norse: Hrólfr; French: Rollon; c. 860 – c. 930 AD) was a Viking who became the first ruler of Normandy, a region in northern France. He emerged as the outstanding warrior among the Norsemen who had secured a permanent foothold on Frankish soil in the valley of the lower Seine. After the Siege of Chartres in 911, Charles the Simple, the king of West Francia, ceded them lands between the mouth of the Seine and what is now Rouen in exchange for Rollo agreeing to end his brigandage, and provide the Franks with protection against future Viking raids.

Rollo is first recorded as the leader of these Viking settlers in a charter of 918, and he continued to reign over the region of Normandy until at least 928. He was succeeded by his son William Longsword in the Duchy of Normandy that he had founded. The offspring of Rollo and his followers became known as the Normans. After the Norman conquest of England and their conquest of southern Italy and Sicily over the following two centuries, their descendants came to rule Norman England (the House of Normandy), much of the island of Ireland, the Kingdom of Sicily(the Kings of Sicily) as well as the Principality of Antioch from the 10th to 12th century, leaving behind an enduring legacy in the histories of Europe and the Near East. (wikipedia)

• • •

I can't say I find this quirk that interesting. Nice that they're all 15; that adds at least a little bit of architectural elegance to the thing. But the answers themselves aren't that interesting in their own right, and the fill is pretty tepid, with one of the longer Downs absolutely wasted on the bizarre legalese / partial WHEREFORES. Makes BATH TOWELS almost seem sparkly by comparison. Almost. Just seems like a "huh, interesting" kind of concept, without any grid oomph to make the whole experience more, I don't know, energizing and engaging. I actually do like VERMICELLI BOWLS as a stand-alone answer, but it's offset by DERRINGER PISTOL, which ... those are just called "derringers." It's not that DERRINGER PISTOL is wrong, it just feels oddly formal and slightly redundant. Thankfully, I never saw the clue and didn't have to think about it too much; I had drilled so many of the Down crosses into place that most of DERRINGER PISTOL was in place before I ever even looked at it. 

Felt pretty easy overall, though ROLLO really slowed me down. Despite being very aware of the Normans and the Norman Invasion and the post-Invasion effects on England, I never learned the story of Normandy's origins well enough to keep ROLLO in cold storage for when I needed him. Reading about him, I realize that I have indeed read about him before, but it just didn't stick. His name, specifically, didn't stick. There is only one ROLLO for me, and he lives in the "Nancy" universe:

I had DOLT for TWIT (52D: Nincompoop), but no other missteps, though the SW corner was awkward and sloggy in a way that made me doubt I had it all in order. AYS!?! (61A: Captains' cries). I don't think I get it. The only nautical cry I know is AYE with an "E"—what is this "E"-less AY? That whole corner could use redoing, though honestly it's only AYS that's beyond the pale. I'm actually stunned at how often this answer has appeared in the NYTXW. OK, not often, about once a year. No, on second thought, that *is* too often. None of the really good constructors will touch it. Delete delete delete. Thank you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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Comedian Sherman creator of TV's I've Got a Secret / WED 7-1-20 / Primary ingredient in snack Muddy Buddies / Indian tourist destination / Short-beaked bird / Retweets photo of US gold repository / Uploads photo of government security / Joins Federal Reserve Facebook group

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (a bleary-eyed 4 minutes, first thing in the a.m.)

THEME: SOCIAL CAPITAL (54A: Network of personal relationships ... or a punny hint to 3-, 7- and 11-Down) — themers are all phrases where first part (verb) is an action one might perform on "social" media and second part (noun) is a form of $$$ (or "capital"):

Theme answers:

• FOLLOWS THE MONEY (3D: Joins a Federal Reserve Facebook group?)
• POSTS BOND (7D: Uploads a photo of a government security?)
• SHARES THE WEALTH (11D: Retweets a photo of the U.S. gold repository?)

Word of the Day: Michael NOURI (39D: "Flashdance" actor Michael) —

Michael Nouri (born December 9, 1945) is an American television and film actor. His father, Edmond Nouri was born in Iraq.

He may be best known for his role as Nick Hurley in the 1983 film Flashdance.^[1] He has had recurring roles in numerous television series, including NCIS as Eli David, the father of Mossad officer (later Special Agent) Ziva David, The O.C. as Dr. Neil Roberts, and Damages as Phil Grey. He also appeared as Congressman Stewart with Queen Latifah in the 2006 comedy movie Last Holiday and LAPD Detective Thomas Beck in the science fiction action film The Hidden. He also starred opposite Julie Andrews as King Marchand in the 1995 Broadway adaptation of Victor/Victoria. (wikipedia)

• • •

Good morning and happy July. I am solving / writing early in the morning for the first time in a long time. Once we got the kitten (mid-May), going to sleep early became nearly impossible, as his nighttime routine involved being a terrorist until well after 10pm (and then sleeping very peacefully in a very large dog crate next to our bed for the whole night). In short, I could not just crash out in bed when tired because he is still very much a kitten and will attack all of your parts relentlessly if he is awake and not properly distracted. Sooooooo ... I've been writing at night while P puts the cat through his go-to-bed routine, and then sleeping "in" (which, for me, is ~7am). But last night I finally cracked; just couldn't make it to puzzle time, couldn't imagine being clear-headed enough to write. So I passed out on the couch, then went to bed after cat and wife were zonked, THEN woke up at 4am anticipating my alarm going off (man, that dawn chorus of birds starts Early), then lay there half awake until 5ish. It's now 5:34. You actually didn't need to know any of this. The main point is that I adore my kitty but also am kinda looking forward to the day when he is a giant slug of a cat who will let me just fall asleep at night (if he wants to wake me at 5am for food, that's fine, it's the Getting to sleep that's the issue). He may end up sleeping in his own room very soon. My sister keeps her kitty downstairs in her own room. But OK, right, this is a puzzle blog. Puzzle!


I like the unusualness of this one. The grid shape was weird in a cool way, and despite the choppy grid with lots of short stuff, it often felt (in a good way) like a themeless. The upper middle was by far my favorite part, with WIPER BLADES (29A: They go back and forth in bad weather) crossing ARENA ROCK (6D: Style of music for Pat Benatar or Bon Jovi) and ON THE LINE (8D: At risk). As for the theme, it definitely works, even if it isn't a theme that's going to delight *me* in particular. Financial stuff just leaves me cold, and also the whole revealer didn't land right. Didn't aha me. I had to think about it and then rule in its favor, which is a whole different mental process and feeling. The revealer should be les mots justes, bam, nailed it. This one ... I didn't really like the clue on the revealer, since your "network" of "personal relationships" is, of course, your "social network" (a very snappy phrase—also the title of a movie ... a movie about social media, it turns out). SOCIAL CAPITAL is a fine phrase, but I don't think of it as your network per se. It's something bigger and more ineffable. It's clout, not the contents of your rolodex (omg I wish rolodexes were still a thing, the way I wish pay phones were still a thing ... I watch a lot of old movies). I think it's the uncountable noun "capital" that's throwing me. Anyway, it's all technically defensible. I told you financial stuff just leaves me cold.


There's some junk in the grid but not much, and I didn't get too hung up on it, which is really key if you need to put junk in your grid (and sometimes you do). EAPOE, for instance—an abbr. I despise, but it was easy (53A: "The Pit and the Pendulum" author, in brief). Slammed right through it, no time to brood on its regrettability or make a sad WAH WAH sound in its honor. It helped to know your crosswordese names like EVEL TAYE GOA OCHOA not to mention OTTO and RHEA. And then stalwarts like OKAPI LOOIE SRO ERE OXEYE EASYA IOTA RAE STYE ... it is to the puzzle's credit that these answers are all rendered fairly unobtrusive, so that the longer answers can shine. Only trouble for me today was right out of the gate, with GIFS for PDFS (1A: JPEG alternatives), and then a bizarre struggle just to see LOOT (14A: What might be taken away in a getaway). Sometimes I struggle for what, in retrospect, is no good reason at all. After that, the puzzle actually felt Very easy except for the NOURI / MARTA crossing, which is *kinda* harrowing. I will never remember MARTA (51A: Atlanta's public transport system). Thank goodness NOURI's name has somehow sorta stuck. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Classic comics rallying cry / WED 6-10-20 / Angrily abandon video game / Boundary marking limits of black hole / The ___ Erwin Show 1950s sitcom

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:58 on an oversized 16x15 grid)

THEME: AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE! (62A: Classic comics rallying cry ... or a hint to 18-, 30- and 49-Across) — names of three different Avengers embedded in the themers:

Theme answers:

• ASSISTANT MANAGER (18A: Second-in-charge, as at a restaurant)
• EVENT HORIZON (30A: Boundary marking the limits of a black hole)
• THROW A SPIRAL (49A: Toss the pigskin perfectly)

Word of the Day: The Avengers (62A) —

The Avengers are a fictional team of superheroes appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The team made its debut in The Avengers #1 (cover-dated Sept. 1963), created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby. The Avengers is Lee and Kirby's renovation of a previous superhero team, All-Winners Squad, who appeared in comic books series published by Marvel Comics' predecessor Timely Comics.

Labeled "Earth's Mightiest Heroes", the Avengers originally consisted of Ant-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and the Wasp. Ant-Man had become Giant-Man by issue #2. The original Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him. A rotating roster became a hallmark of the series, although one theme remained consistent: the Avengers fight "the foes no single superhero can withstand." The team, famous for its battle cry of "Avengers Assemble!", has featured humans, mutants, Inhumans, deitys, androids, aliens, legendary beings, and even former villains. (wikipedia)

• • •

This concept is cool, and the revealer is a nice touch (it's also the reason the puzzle is 16-wide). But the thing about the Avengers is that it's a rotating group of characters, so having three feels bizarre. It's a random sampling of three, meaningless as a set (i.e. there's no incarnation of Avengers that is just these three). There is the original set of five Avengers, and it would've been super-cool to see the original band get back together, but a. that would require a bigger, possibly a Sunday-sized puzzle, and b. good luck embedding either HULK or IRON-MAN inside a longer phrase. SHUL KID? HAIR ON MANDIBLE? I don't think the Ideal of this theme is attainable. So we have this, which feels light. Like a meeting with so many absentees that you don't really have a quorum so everyone goes home and you send out one of them Doodle polls to see if you can find a time slot where *everyone* can meet. Like that. Like the idea, like the revealer, saddened by the weak turnout. Also saddened by THROW A SPIRAL, which is definitely a member in good standing of the EAT A SANDWICH Society (dedicated to spreading "[blank] A [blank]" chaos throughout griddom). The fill was just fine, maybe a little above average, with RAGEQUIT (11D: Angrily abandon a video game) ("... or crossword puzzle," it might have added) and BEATBOXERS (9D: Vocal percussionists) being the real highlights.

[I know this isn't the Avengers in question, just roll with it]

First themer I got was EVENT HORIZON and immediately thought, "Oh, sh*t, I made this puzzle before!" Actually, the puzzle I made had Norse gods in it (THOR, ODIN, LOKI ... I forget the last one ... TYR? HEL?). That puzzle was rejected by Patrick Berry back when he was editing the Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle (that rejection was so thoughtful and taught me a lot about the difference between elegant and merely good). It was rejected largely on the grounds that he'd run something similar recently, but I didn't do anything with it. Then the same theme turned up in the NY Sun, in a puzzle made by Joon Pahk. I think I called it "Divine Intervention." Or maybe that's what Joon / Peter Gordon called their version. The whole reason I made my version of that theme was because I had heard that Shortz had never (at that time) heard of HELLO KITTY, that he had in fact told a veteran constructor (female) that that answer was not well known enough to be in the grid. This was in the late '00s (... ... ... ?). So I was like "Must ... Make ... HELLO KITTY ... Puzzle!" And I noticed that HELLO KITTY had LOKI embedded in it, and bam, a theme idea was born. (A NYT version of this theme eventually appeared; you can read about it here) Side note: LOKI is the antagonist in the very first Avengers story arc. Where was I? Oh, right, the THOR answer ... but then I got the ANTMAN answer and it turned out not to be a Norse gods puzzle at all. Which is probably for the best.


Trouble spots:

• 3D: Cover, as a car (INSURE) — definitely did not grasp the idiomatic meaning of "cover" here
• 15A: Dubliner's land (EIRE) — guessed wrong (ERIN), ugh
• 41A: Comedian Martin (DEMETRI) — I know his name, but man do I not know how to spell it. I wanted more "I"s for sure
• 32D: Rise from bed or drop to one's stomach (HIT THE DECK) — I absolutely do not know the meaning of this phrase as it relates to the first part of this clue. Rise from bed!? Yeesh. Also, I was somehow thinking "drop to one's stomach" had something to do with a sinking feeling *in* one's stomach ... or eating something heavy, maybe (??)
• 38D: Affect in a distant, menacing way (LOOM OVER) — also the answer to the question, "Hey, who moved my loo?"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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