Mystery of McGuffin Manor / SUN 5-24-20 / Sprint competitor / Tech debut of 1998 / Hungry game characters / Style for Edward Hopper George Bellows / Music to hitchhiker's ears / Big launch of 1957 / Leader whose name means literally commander

Constructor: Andrew Chaikin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9-something to fill grid in correctly ... then 5 minutes to read the novel-length notes that were way way way way way less interesting than any novel I've ever read (and I read a *lot* of mysteries) ... then 10 minutes to grumble about how there's no way I'm gonna take the time to figure this stupid thing out ... then about two minutes to figure it out (once I actually sat down with the "Notes" and the grid, ugh)

Puzzle Notes: 

"This crossword contains a whodunit: "Thank you for coming, Inspector," said Lady McGuffin. "The famed McGuffin Diamond has been stolen from my study! The eight members of the staff had a costume party tonight--it has to be one of them: the butler, driver, cook, baker, page, porter, barber or carpenter. They have all been confined to their respective rooms around the parlor [center of the grid]." Can you determine who stole the diamond ... and where it is now? // In the print version of this puzzle, nine sections of the grid are shaded: most of the central area, and eight large regions surrounding the center--the upper left, upper middle, upper right, middle left, middle right, lower left, lower middle and lower right."

THEME: "The Mystery of McGuffin Manor" — a mystery puzzle involving the theft of a diamond ... read the above "Notes" and then follow the weird-ass "clues" in the grid and then solve the mystery, I guess:

Theme answers:

• As you inspect each room, you find staff members dressed as APTLY NAMED CELEBRITIES (25A)
• They're all WEARING NAME TAGS, so you can easily identify them (39A)
• In the study, you find that the thief accidentally left behind an APPLE SWEATSHIRT (85A)
• "You caught me!," says the thief, who then admits: "The diamond isn't here in my room, but it's hidden in THE ONE TO THE WEST OF HERE" (102A)

Soooooo..... the "staff members" / suspects described in the Puzzle Notes (i.e. the butler, driver, cook, baker, page, porter, barber or carpenter) are all actually last names of celebrities, who are clued as [Suspect #1] thru [Suspect #8]. So [Suspect #1] (28A) is COLE so that's COLE "porter," [Suspect #2] (50A) is GERARD so that's GERARD Butler, etc. Annnnnnyway, the "cook" is Apple CEO TIM Cook (65A: Suspect #3), and since the thief left behind an APPLE SWEATSHIRT (sidenote: I cannot get over how dumb a theme answer that is), we can assume that TIM Cook is the thief, and since he left the diamond not in his own "room," but in THE ONE TO THE WEST OF HERE (sidenote: seriously, wtf with these themers...), we should look not in the section where TIM is (the east) but to the "room" west of there (i.e. the "parlor," or middle section), and there you will find the McGuffin Diamond, in that you will find MCGUFFIN spelled out in diamond shape, starting with the "M" at the end of SUM (63A) and proceeding clockwise through all the letters adjacent to the little black "+" sign at the center of the grid:

Full list of suspects:

• ELLEN Page (10D)
• TIKI Barber (13D)
• TIM Cook (guilty!) (65A)
• CHET Baker (101A)
• KAREN Carpenter (115A)
• MINNIE Driver (114A)
• GERARD Butler (50A)
• COLE Porter (28A)

Word of the Day: SEA ROOM (81D: Space to maneuver a ship) —

n.

Unobstructed space at sea adequate for maneuvering a ship.

• • •

NOTE: THERE WAS A PRINTING ERROR in the Sunday Magazine version of this puzzle (digital versions unaffected):

***

OK, so, see, the thing about mysteries is that there is a narrative. Characters are developed. Their identities, jobs, behavior, all that matters. If they're well written, you get invested, even when you know the plot is contrived. There's ... story. A reason to care. There's ... something. As opposed to this puzzle, where there is nothing. This is a nothing. It's not even a good parody, in that it doesn't seem to understand the terms of what it's parodying. First of all, here's the wikipedia definition of McGuffin: "In fiction, a MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself." But here the alleged McGuffin is all that there is. It is the central visual motif. It is the opposite of a McGuffin. In a real mystery, the McGuffin is the thing everyone's chasing so that The Story Can Be Propelled Forward And We Can Learn Things About The Characters. The "characters" here ... are totally irrelevant. TIKI Barber ... sits there. In ... what room is that? Oh, that's the other thing: does this puzzle think it's modeled on the board game "Clue"???! Because the whole "room" thing is totally "Clue" ... and yet in "Clue" there is a murder ("so and so, with the such and such weapon, in the something room," you might guess). Here', there's just a dumb theft. And a .... sweatshirt, was it? Sweatshirt!?!? What in the godawful arbitrary hell is that? It could have been APPLE [anything] but we get ... sweatshirt? And what does WEARING NAME TAGS even mean? Is that just a reference to the fact that the *first* names of the "celebrities" are what appear in the grid? But you already told us that with APTLY NAMED CELEBRITIES, so this WEARING NAME TAGS thing is a ridiculous redundancy. This puzzle manages to ruin crosswords and mysteries, two things I love, simultaneously. I guess that after four (4!) good puzzles in a row, we were due for a regression toward the mean. A hard regression.


It would be cool if the SEA ROOM were just a room in your house that was filled with sea water and like a kelp forest. "What's behind this door?" "NOOOoo don't open that!" But instead it's this dumb thing about room for ship maneuvering. Somehow SEA ROOM got in with SEAWEED already present (44D: Major source of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere). Weird. The grid itself ... I mean, there it is! Not much to like or dislike. The only thing I particularly like is the HYMN / FUNK juxtaposition, mostly because it sounds like a cool new genre of religious music. That's SUM FAR out HYMN FUNK, man" "It's actually ASIAN HYMN FUNK, man" "Whoa ... well turn it up, man." See, I'm inventing dialogue for this damn novel because it hasn't got any. With THE USA, I believe we have had definite article answers in roughly 93.2% of May puzzles (93D: Springsteen's birthplace, in song). The hardest I laughed was when I had CUN- and had not yet looked at the clue, and the most I was confused was by RACER, until finally I realized Sprint was an actual race, not the telecom (7A: Sprint competitor). Here's a good name for a mystery: "ENTER O for 'Omicide" (16D: Intestinal: Prefix). It's like "Dial M for Murder" but dumber. OK bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Get lost of stolen in British lingo / SUN 12-29-19 / Locale of 10 Winter Olympics / Hit 1980s-90s show with TV's first lesbian kiss

Constructor: Andrew Chaikin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:17)

THEME: New Year's Resolutions — themers are just ... New Year's resolutions, but in the clues, they've been assigned to specific kinds of people based on some punny wacky reimagining of the meaning of words in the resolutions:

Theme answers:

• CLEAN OUT THE HOUSE (23A: Casino gambler's resolution?)
• SEE FRIENDS MORE OFTEN (32A: Sitcom lover's resolution?) (so, the sitcom "Friends" ... is the joke)
• GROW MY NEST EGG (51A: Hen's resolution?)
• GIVE UP OLD HABITS (65A: Nun's resolution?)
• WATCH WHAT I EAT (80A: Stalking tiger's resolution?)
• PLAN A PERFECT GETAWAY (97A: Bank robber's resolution?)
• ORGANIZE MY OFFICE (110A: Union activist's resolution?)

Word of the Day: MARCI Klein (37A: Emmy-winning TV producer Klein) —

Marci Klein is an American television producer best known for her work on Saturday Night Liveand 30 Rock. She has won four Emmy Awards. [...]  In 1989, Klein began a 20-year career at Saturday Night Live. As a producer and head of the show's talent department, Klein discovered a number of future comedy superstars, including: Tracy Morgan, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Will Ferrell, Fred Armisen, Chris Kattan, Darrell Hammond, Sarah Silverman, Kevin James, Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, and Ana Gasteyer. She is frequently talked about as a successor to SNL creator and Executive Producer Lorne Michaels.

Klein has been nominated for 14 Emmys, winning four times, once for Saturday Night Live's 25th Anniversary Special and three times for 30 Rock. She has also been nominated for nine Producers Guild Awards, winning three. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is one of those themes where the clues are *everything*—without pitch-perfect clues, you just have a truly boring list of generic resolutions. Sadly, the clues were, as PUNNY clues go, exceedingly straightforward and never funny. At best, maybe you might grin. Mostly, you're just gonna be emitting low, small groans periodically. Do gamblers really ever CLEAN OUT THE HOUSE. A reform-minded U.S. representative might want to do this, but I don't think it's really possible to "clean out" a damn casino. And why would you GIVE UP OLD HABITS. I have many habits that are old that are quite good and I would never resolve to give them up. That's idiocy. You give up bad habits. Making the subject of WATCH WHAT I EAT a "stalking tiger" was just ...weird. Over and over the clues were just, I dunno, fine, or they missed slightly. It's like the NYTXW is afraid to go all in with their dad jokes. When you've got nothing else to sell but your wacky "?" clue, you need to be nuts. Otherwise, we're just methodically filling in boxes and hoping Monday brings more joy.


Tough going early, as I could not figure out ALPS (27A: Locale of 10 Winter Olympics) (I wanted A...SIA?), had no idea who MARCI was, thought SEE 'N' SAY had an ampersand in it (so wanted a rebused "AND" where the "N" was supposed to go), and thought ["Auld Lang Syne" time] was YULE (it's YORE ... is "YORE" in the lyrics? ... huh). But getting started on a puzzle is often the hardest part, and once I got out of there, I didn't experience much resistance until the very end, at the opposite end of the grid (SE), where I did truly (if relatively briefly) struggle with the very hard clues on SIRIUS (90A: Standout star) and LOTTO (96A: Ball game), as well with the overall concept of BEAUTY ICON (which is a rather limited way to see Beyoncé, imho) (74D: Marilyn Monroe or Beyoncé). I was weirdly put off by WINE TASTERS; of course WINE TASTING is a thing, but something about imagining TASTERS as a category seemed strange to me. But then I realized that of course there are people whose actual job is tasting wine, sommeliers and others whose professions require them to purchase and understand wine, and so, sure, that is in fact a category (as opposed to just calling anyone engaged in wine-tasting a "wine taster"). Sometimes I do overthink these things.


Five things:

• 21A: The eyes have it (LASH) — absolutely not. If your eyes have a single LASH between them, ask your physician if Emplyzialash™ is right for you
• 43D: Get lost or stolen, in British lingo (GO WALKIES) — huh. OK. If you say so. 
• 6D: Actress Metcalf who was nominated for an Oscar for "Lady Bird" (LAURIE) — she has Tonys (two) and Emmys (three). Getting nominated for an Oscar is definitely clue-worthy, and yet the clue makes her seem somewhat less Legendary than she actually is.
• 93D: Title heroine of classic 60-Across books (RAMONA) (60-Across = Beverly CLEARY) — now this is my kind of cross-reference. These were very much my sister's jam when she was a kid. My sister currently owns a three-legged cat named RAMONA (after the CLEARY heroine) and here she is:

• 63D: "Same here!" ("SO AM I!") — It should always be SOAMI but since it's sometimes ASAMI I sometimes guess ASAMI and when I'm wrong it makes me dislike SOAMI even more than I would if there weren't an annoying doppelganger answer

Hey, if you want to do a really challenging and clever New Year's-themed puzzle, check out "Vision Quest," a cryptic crossword from Emily Cox / Henry Rathvon at the Wall Street Journal puzzle site (you can print out a .PDF here). Excellent clipboard fun!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Guardian Angel Curtis / SUN 5-27-18 / Bygone Cambodian leader with palindromic name / Query from Judas / Shape of every Baha'i temple / Alias of rapper Sean Combs / Former Nebraska senator James

Constructor: Andrew Chaikin

Relative difficulty: Easy or Easy-Medium

THEME: "21" — "21" = definition for all themers / all themers are 21 letters long (standard Sunday grid width) (there are also assorted incidental clues containing the number "21" throughout the grid)

[21] answers:

• 22A: AGE FOR DRINKING LEGALLY
• 34A: NUMBER ONE ALBUM BY ADELE
• 51A: GUNS IN A MILITARY SALUTE
• 74A: SPOTS ON ALL SIDES OF A DIE
• 87A: WINNING BLACKJACK TOTAL
• 106A: LETTERS IN THESE ANSWERS 

Word of the Day: Curtis SLIWA (69D: Guardian Angel Curtis ___) —

Curtis Sliwa (born March 26, 1954) is an American anti-crime activist, founder and CEO of the Guardian Angels, radio talk show host, media personality, and chairman of the Reform Party of New York State. (wikipedia)

• • •

Grueling. I finished very quickly, but like all painful experiences, it felt eternal. There are several reasons why a puzzle like this is never gonna be a CROWD PLEASER (to borrow a term from Saturday's lovely puzzle). First, definitions as answers ... always dicey. At best, dull. At worst tortured. *Especially* tortured when you have to make those answers fit into 21 squares exactly. Thus the phrasing on precisely None of these seems just right. AGE FOR DRINKING LEGALLY is something ALIENS would say when trying to pass as humans. "We should consume alcoholic beverages now, perhaps from one of the more popular TAVERNS in this urban area. Everyone here is the AGE FOR DRINKING LEGALLY, correct? Splendid!" That, or the never-released sequel to "The Year of Living Dangerously." GUNS IN A MILITARY SALUTE is probably the tightest of the bunch, while SPOTS ON ALL SIDES OF A DIE is like having your pinky sawed off with a butter knife. WINNING BLACKJACK *TOTAL*??? Torturing the English language, you are. Further ... there's nowhere for this puzzle to go. It's just a relentless death march of [21]s. The final themer is kind of a revealer, or a twist, but even it kind of whiffs. "THESE" hardly seems specific enough. Theme answers, longer answers, long Acrosses ... say what you mean. THESE? Everything about the themers is just ... off, phrasing-wise. My only serious probably came in trying to parse SPOTS ON ALL SIDES OF A DIE, and that was largely due to my writing in NECCA instead of NECCO (53D: Brand of wafers).


Then there's the fill. The grid ... it's trying to have a low word count, I think, which is not a great idea. I mean, hurray for ONE TOO MANY and MALEFICENT, but man, overall the fill suffers pretty bad. ELRIO? SNCC? TERNI??? SLIWA!?!?!?! That SLIWA SNCC area in the middle is just dire. And then there's ON A STAR (??), a phrase that should never stand alone. See also Friday-less TGI. And CASE OF, dear lord (73D: Start for every Perry Mason title, wiht "The"). And many more. Too many. CLEA! ITA! GUVS!?!? It's ALOAD, it's ATRAIN, it's ABLAST, it's ... ADLAI! I did this at high speed, but it felt like HI-SPEED (80D: Unlike dial-up internet service, informally), i.e. something ungainly and faux whimsical and sad. QUESTIONS IN A BASIC GAME (21)? NUMBER OF TV'S JUMP STREET (21)? Is it theme? Did I theme? 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Segway inventor Dean / SUN 1-12-14 / Beat poet Cassady / Lama's art that can't last / Warm mask/cap amalgams / Bygone Bombay bigwig / Black cat that packs grass chants Jah / Landmark vassal law act / Flashback halfbacks

Constructor: Andrew Chaikin

Relative difficulty: Easy (except for one cross where, once again, I kind of had to guess)

THEME: "It's Only 'A' Game" — theme answers (and their clues) have "A" as their only vowel

Theme answers:

• "CASABLANCA" (22A: Grand-slam drama that stars Bacall's man)
• "FA LA LA LA LA" (24A: Half an Xmas "Halls" chant)
• "STAR WARS" (38A: Astral saga that has a Darth part)
• A MAN A PLAN A CANAL PANAMA (63A: Fab "backward-gram" a la "Sam, aha! Bahamas!")
• RASTAMAN (87A: Black cat that packs grass and chants 'Jah')
• MAGNA CARTA (106A: Landmark vassal law act)
• BALACLAVAS (108A: Warm mask/cap amalgams)
• ALAN ALDA (4D: "M*A*S*H" star)
• CATCH AS CATCH CAN (28D: Haphazard)
• BAFTA AWARDS (36D: Gala that saw "Black Swan," "Avatar" and "Ab Fab" attract claps)
• BLACK AND TAN (37D: Bar glass that's half Bass, half dark malt)
• SAND MANDALA (38D: Lama's art that can't last)
• ABRACADABRA (39D: "Shazam!")
• ANAGRAMS (81D: Flashbacks and halfbacks)

Word of the Day: SAND MANDALA (38D: *Lama's art that can't last) —

The Sand Mandala (Tibetan: དཀྱིལ་འཁོར།, Wylie: dkyil 'khor; Chinese: 沙坛城; pinyin: Shā Tánchéng) is a Tibetan Buddhist tradition involving the creation and destruction of mandalas made from colored sand. A sand mandala is ritualistically destroyed once it has been completed and its accompanying ceremonies and viewing are finished to symbolize the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life. (wikipedia)

• • •

Before I get to the puzzle: thank you for enduring my annual week-long fund-raising efforts. The best part of the week has been all the messages I've been getting—thoughtful, heartfelt, critical, snarky, hilarious messages. It's been a real treat to have a window into the lives and minds of my readership. I've spent most of the week responding to emails, writing thank-you postcards, and generally being grateful that I've somehow tapped into this weird world of lovely opinionated addicts. My coffee mug runneth over.

Here's one of my favorite reader notes so far—I think you'll appreciate it:

Thank you so much for your blog. I look forward to it. Since my M.A. is in geography and I taught geography, I notice you have quite a void in that discipline. It reinforces my belief that geog. hasn't been a priority in h.s. or coll. :( [Yes, she actually drew the frowny face]

So, in essence: "Dear sir, I love your blog. I notice you are ignorant. This saddens me." I like people who tell it like it is. Fantastic. Seriously, this note is currently hanging on the bulletin board next to my desk.

People who contributed early (last Sun. and Mon.) via Paypal are still waiting on thank-yous (they're coming!). All others should have them by now. And snail mail folks—I"m turning those Pantone postcard thank-yous out as fast as my pen can write them up. Many are already in the mail. So, yeah, thanks a billion for your support. I hope you continue to enjoy the blog for … well, as long as I care to write it, I guess. At this point, I've got no plans to stop.

• • •

The SUNDAY PUZZLE:

I finished the puzzle quickly, without really understanding what was going on. I figured it had something to do with "A"s, but honestly, the puzzle was so easy that I didn't have to take much time to think about it. Some part of my brain thought there was a trick … or that there would be some spectacular revealer somewhere that would explain the fantastically tortured cluing on the "*" clues (no explanation of the "*" anywhere, which is unusual—usually there's a revealer that mentions "the starred clues"). Seeing the famous palindrome across the center had me wondering if the clues were tortured for palindromic reasons … but no. Eventually, I realized that the "A-TEAM" clue (89D: TV/movie group associated with this puzzle's theme?) was simply referring to the fact of vowel exclusivity. The clues are a bonus, I guess. I found them partly humorous, partly painful. The thing is, this theme doesn't really work. Many, many answers in this puzzle have only "A" as their vowel. And the fact that "STAR WARS" is a theme answers is *especially* absurd, as AMAS, RAJA, SATAN, CARATS, etc. all have as many "A"s as "STAR WARS."


Some of the answers themselves are fabulous. Love the grid-spanner and its central cross, CATCH AS CATCH CAN. SAND MANDALA is a beautiful answer even though I had no idea that's what it was called (I knew of the concept, but that MANDALA / KAMEN crossing was just an educated guess) (68A: Segway inventor Dean ___). There are colorful answers here and there, and, with very few exceptions, the overall fill is decent. But conceptually, it's a bit of a train wreck. The cluing is especially weird. "Grand-slam" has nothing to do with "CASABLANCA." "Fab" has no place in a clue for a palindrome. I did smile at the clue on RASTAMAN, though. It's daring, if nothing else.

Proper noun round-up (not all of them, just some … notables):

• NEALS (32A: Beat poet Cassady and others) — don't know this guy, but I've never been big on beats
• CLU Gulager (43A: Gulager of TV's "The Virginian") — essential crosswordese. Know him from '64's "The Killers"
• Susan ISAACS (93A: Best-selling novelist Susan) — no idea. Seems very successful, just not on my radar
• PALOMA Picasso (13D: Picasso's designer daughter) — handbags, maybe? Nope, looks like jewelry design, primarily. How do I know her name? I just do. Probably because of crosswords.
• LALO Schifrin (16D: Score creator Schifrin) — more essential crosswordese. The list of films and TV shows he has scored is staggering. Everything from "Rush Hour" to "Rush Hour 2" (seriously, though, his resumé is eternal)

Now it's time for the PUZZLE OF THE WEEK: this week, despite my deep affection for Patrick Berry's Friday themeless (NYT), the distinction this week goes to Peter A. Collins for the first Fireball Crossword of the new year: "Call It In The Air" (1/9/14). I can't say enough about Fireball Crosswords, a weekly puzzle edited by Peter Gordon. Peter is a fantastic, meticulous editor, and his puzzles are good-to-amazing, week in and week out. The new year of puzzles just started, so please do yourself a favor and go subscribe. Anyway, Peter Collins's "Call It In The Air" is tough and playful and complex and has some fantastic theme answers. I won't spoil it for potential subscribers. If you don't mind its being spoiled, you can read about it here (at crosswordfiend.com).

Fun fact about Fireball—when word got out that the NYT would (finally) be raising its rates from $200 to $300 per 15x15 puzzle (still well below what the NYT should be paying, but an improvement for sure), Peter Gordon immediately raised Fireball's rates to $301. He's completely independent, produces a superior product, and continues to pay the best. Hard not to be a fan.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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