Family nickname / WED 2-24-21 / Indian musical pattern / Part of a nerve cell / Sticky wicket

Hello, all! It’s Clare — coming to you this time for the last Wednesday in February rather than Tuesday. This month has mostly flown by for me. People told me that I’d be bored in my final year of law school, but how can I be bored when they’re keeping me so busy with work? I’ve got multiple actual clients and papers to write and exams to study for and jobs to apply for and just… it’s a lot! Anywho, on to the puzzle!

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Fairly easy

THEME: PARADOX (59A: Logical contradiction … or an aural hint to what are found in 20-, 25- and 45-Across) — Each theme answer has a “pair of docs” in the circled parts of the answer

Theme answers:

• DEVILS DOZEN (20A: “Satanic” nickname for the number 13) 
• THE WHOLE TRUTH (25A: What a witness is sworn to tell) 
• DREADNOUGHT (45A: W.W I-era battleship)

Word of the Day: DREADNOUGHT (45A: W.W I-era battleship) —

The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought, had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts," and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts. Her design had two revolutionary features: an "all-big-gun" armament scheme, with an unprecedented number of heavy-calibre guns, and steam turbine propulsion. (Wiki)

• • •

If this is the type/quality of puzzle I get on a Wednesday, maybe I’ll just switch my official day of the month! I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. The theme (though I didn’t completely get it until after I solved the puzzle) was clever and fun.The whole puzzle felt clean and modern; the clues were creative. I’m not sure how else to say it — it was just a nice puzzle all around. 

Each of the theme answers itself was good, and the added bit of having “doctors” within each answer was a really nice touch. My favorite has to be “Doctor” WHO, which is my favorite TV show of all time. (David Tennant, the 10th Doctor, is the absolute best; and the current Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, is likewise fantastic.) Dr. NO is one of my favorite Bond movies, so I enjoyed seeing this in the puzzle. Dr. OZ? Make that a NO; his pseudo-science strains credulity more often than what I see on the science fiction TV show “Doctor Who.” Still, that’s quite an impressive and diverse array of doctors. 

Having WRAITH (5D: Spooky specter) and HELL (6D: Word spelled with “double hockey sticks”) cross DEVILS DOZEN (20A) was a great start to the puzzle (though I was sort of expecting a Halloween-esque spooky theme with that start). I also really liked the long downs — TWEET STORM (30D: Social media tirade), HOME DESIGN (26D: Subject for House Beautiful Magazine) and the full form of GEN XER (47D: Kid born in the ‘70s, say) are all nice and fresh. 

In a puzzle that was so clean, only two things really stood out to me, neither of which is of much consequence, but I’ve got to put on my Rex hat and critique somewhere in here! First, DEL TACO (37A) isn’t really a competitor of Chipotle, is it? This might just be my take, as someone who is borderline obsessed with Chipotle, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard these two compared before. Second, I disliked having ECG (63A: Heartbeat recording: Abbr.) in the puzzle; there’s no way in this kind of situation to know that it’s not EKG. Google helpfully tells me that ECG is the English abbreviation, while EKG is the German abbreviation, but in the many, many hours of Grey’s Anatomy I’ve watched, I’ve only ever heard EKG, hence my confusion. Luckily, NARCO coming down was pretty easy, so I knew to switch it to ECG. 

My favorite part of the puzzle was definitely the clues. The constructor managed to clue some very typical crossword words in unusual ways, which I really appreciated. Probably my favorite was seeing 61A: Number of seasons played by baseball’s Seattle Pilots as ONE (61D). That’s just such a random — and interesting — clue. (After one season, the Pilots moved to Milwaukee and became the Brewers in 1970.) Then, having UFO (54D) clued as What Venus is sometimes mistaken for, due to its brightness was different. Same goes for PJS (32D: Togs for sawing logs?), TEETH (43A: Effectiveness of a law, metaphorically), ODIN (56D: Husband of Frigg, in Norse mythology), and ETAL (38D: Abbr. after the third co-author, perhaps). PHONE (32A: What’s answered but never asks a question, in a riddle) was also clued in a fun way.

Misc.:

• I can confirm we talk a lot in law school about whether something has TEETH (43D). 
• ZORRO (22D)— I loved watching these movies. I have such a distinct memory of watching the two ZORRO movies on the little portable DVD player I had when I was younger while riding in the car up to Tahoe to go skiing. And who wouldn't fall at least a little bit in love with in-his-prime Antonio Banderas? Or Catherine Zeta Jones, for that matter. 
• While I’ve never actually had GEL (12D) nails myself, I am a 20-something woman who has opened a copy of Vogue before, so I do know what they are! But I learned they may not have much traction among men of a certain age. (Right, Dad?)

I’m 99% convinced that this was a really great puzzle; the other 1% thinks that I’m just in an amazing mood because BTS just performed on “MTV Unplugged” and killed it beyond belief so everything feels right with the world. Because you need your regular dose of the best group on the entire planet, here is a song for your viewing pleasure:

 

And if, like me, you’re a big fan of the Coldplay song “Fix You,” here’s an extra-special treat that *gasp* is better than the original!

 

Signed, Clare Carroll, someone who briefly thought about becoming a doctor but who fainted in the ER on the first day of her internship. (My surgical mask was too tight!!)

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Lyre holder in classical artwork / SAT 12-19-20 / Title woman in 1975 R&B hit by The Spinners / Eponym of European capital by tradition / Callisto's animal form in Greek mythology / Creature whose name comes from Tswana language / Sensationalistic opinion informally

Constructor: Caitlin Reid and Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium, I think (untimed)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: OTIS Williams (1A: Williams who was one of the original Temptations) —

Otis Williams (born Otis Miles Jr.; October 30, 1941) is an American baritone singer. Nicknamed "Big Daddy", he is occasionally also a songwriter and a record producer.

Williams is the founder and last surviving original member of the Motown vocal group The Temptations, a group in which he continues to perform; he also owns the rights to the Temptations name. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was a really nice puzzle. It was built like a Friday but clued like a Saturday, or at least like a semi-Saturday. A Friday/Saturday. A Friturday. Grid has room for a slew of 7+-letter answers but also has an interconnectedness and *flow* that means (for me) never getting truly bogged down anywhere. You can really hack away at a puzzle like this. It's true that part of the cost of having a hackable grid is having a lot of short fill, but if your longer fill is nice and your short fill is inconspicuous, i.e. not spit-in-your-face bad, you'll do fine. It's a very sassy, youngish grid, with a colloquialism that, bless its heart, is almost actually very current. Yesterday we got LIT, and today we get Gen Y 102: TURNT (24D: Excited, in modern slang). Pretty sure this refers to inebriation most of the time, but "excited," sure, by extension, I'm sure that works too. It has a party context. Or so I'm told by my Youth Translator. Speaking of my Youth Translator, I woke to a very excited (but not TURNT ... I don't think) text from my daughter this morning, who had very important news for me:

If I'd been fully awake, I would've cried :) So, parents, if you want your kids to share your interests, the key is a. make it seem awesome (or delude yourself into believing that you make it seem awesome!) and b. never ever push it. I would get her kids crosswords when she was little and she would do a few, but the whole crossword bug never really caught her. Then she went to college, and she started finding different ways to waste time, then her friends got into doing crosswords too, sometimes together, then COVID hit and shutdowns hit and she had a lot more "free" time on her hands ... and anyway, here we are. I have a feeling the pandemic, which has been a mismanaged disaster in so many ways, is going to end up having been very good for people's crossword skills. You take the good where you can find it. Anyway, congrats to the girl, and to everyone who got over the Saturday (or Friday, or Thursday, or Wednesday...) hump during this terrible year.

The colloquialism of the puzzle went beyond TURNT to "BE LIKE THAT" and HOT TAKE and "I'LL BITE" (my fav) and all the way to the so-old-it's-new tweenfluencerspeak of "ADIEU!" and "TATA!" (seriously, kids, please pick these up and run with them, I will love you for it). OTIS / SADIE could've been a dangerous cross, but OTI- can really only be an "S," so Natick averted. Here were the only struggles I had, all of them brief:

Struggles:

• 
  AHEM (5A: Audible nudge) — PSST! went in first, "confirmed" by PLAY at 5D: Preschool recital (ABCS). I played Billy Goat Gruff in my preschool PLAY
• ROLL (25A: Dinner ___) — I had the -LL and went with BELL
• ROMULUS (29D: Eponym of a European capital, by tradition) — hilarious that I had trouble here, since I teach the Aeneid every year, which is all about "where did Rome come from!?" I thought ROMULUS just *was* the eponym. I don't get the "by tradition" here. I mean, if he's not really a historical figure, wasn't suckled by a she-wolf, etc., he can still be the eponym, right?
• BOOMERS (36D: Male kangaroos) — LOL, really? If you say so. I got a strong suspicion that this one was reclued so as not to infuriate a certain (giant) segment of the NYTXW solving audience
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR (35A: Common material for a jacket) — had ABOUT THE A-T- and thought "ooh, good one" ... and wrote in ABOUT THE ARTIST!
• COHOST (40D: Running mate?) — still not sure I get the "?" joke here. Like ... a show "runs" on television / radio ... and if two+ people host that show, they are "running" ... mates? Needs work.
• TUSSAUD (20D: Wax figure?) — I should've gotten this immediately. Instead, I had -SSA- and at one point definitely tentatively wrote in MASSAGE, which ... I'm just gonna assume that a hot-wax MASSAGE is a real thing and not ask any further questions

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Christian bracelet letters / SAT 4-25-20 / Relief pitcher of old / Parenting term popularized by Amy Chua in 2011 nonfiction bestseller / Big-pocketed character on old show / Regional specialty of southern Ohio

Constructor: Andrew Ries

Relative difficulty: Medium (7:46, first thing in the morning)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: DOTS (1D: Simple pencil-and-paper game) —

Dots and Boxes is a pencil-and-paper game for two players (sometimes more). It was first published in the 19th century by French mathematician Édouard Lucas, who called it la pipopipette. It has gone by many other names, including the game of dots, dot to dot grid, boxes, and pigs in a pen.

The game starts with an empty grid of dots. Usually two players take turns adding a single horizontal or vertical line between two unjoined adjacent dots. A player who completes the fourth side of a 1×1 box earns one point and takes another turn. (A point is typically recorded by placing a mark that identifies the player in the box, such as an initial.) The game ends when no more lines can be placed. The winner is the player with the most points. The board may be of any size grid. When short on time, or to learn the game, a 2×2 board (3×3 dots) is suitable. A 5×5 board, on the other hand, is good for experts. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ordinary. Solid, with a smattering of newish / flashy answers, but heavy on the short stuff and thick with a crust of yore. AIKEN OREL OLAV TSLOT ULTIMO MOLTO ECO ILIE MERC ACERB CPO EKES ARNIE TIT ESTD ... and the clues skewed oldenish as well. Quaint and corny and bygone. In short, as I say, ordinary. This is what tickles somebody, clearly, but not me. Not much. But this is not to say that it's bad or poorly made; well, certainly not the latter. If I, or you, think it's bad, today that is much more a matter of taste than demonstrable structural deficiencies. But a puzzle loaded with short fill on a Saturday is bound to be dire. Making four-letter words Saturday-worthy usually involves doing sadistic / bizarre stuff to the clues. Who wants to slog through a small 6x4 section. The grid isn't really built for fun. The middle stack almost gets lost in the noise and chaos of the much-less-entertaining short stuff. Also, I just can't get excited about CINCINNATI CHILI, largely because I don't know what that is (10D: Regional specialty of southern Ohio). But even if I did, meh. Lots of real estate on something that, sure, exists, but has very little else to recommend it.

for after the chili

Even the newish stuff today felt stale. JUKEBOX MUSICALS and TIGER MOTHER and even STAIRMASTER would've been fresh close to a decade ago. They're fine now, but have about as much currency as CAPTAIN KANGAROO, which ... pockets? You're defining him by his pocket size? Weird. (3D: Big-pocketed character on an old show). I watched that dude when I was a kid and his pockets were nothing I took note of. I guess WEIRDBOWLCUT isn't really a strong standalone answer. I wouldn't mind seeing MRGREENJEANS in a puzzle. Anyway, my overall reaction to this puzzle is best exemplified by my reaction to 50A: Model company (CAR MAKER), which was "uh ... sure, I guess." That is, the fill wasn't terribly strong to begin with, and the clues were *trying* to jazz it up but in the end the ahas mostly ended up being ohs.

DOTS / DA CAPO / OREL made the NW a very tough start for me. I sadly got my first big boost from EKES (ugh), because the "K" helped me see DRAKE (35A: Spotify's most-streamed artist of the 2010s), which helped me clean up the mess I'd created in the west, where I'd gone IOTA / INRI / NET instead of WHIT / WWJD / WON. Oh, I should say that WWJD is interesting 4-letter fill (23D: Christian bracelet letters). I like it. What Would Jesus Do? Anyway, it beats the hell out of INRI, which I still don't really know the meaning of. Not many other real snags, once I got going. Had ASIS for PAID (26D: Red stamp word). Oh, and VAC / VOLTO (?) instead of MIC / MOLTO for a tiny bit (44A: Bit of A/V equipment / 44D: Very, musically). Speaking of MOLTO, you already exhausted your Italian musical notation at 1A. Going back to the well here is blecch. Honestly, I think the worst thing in this puzzle or any puzzle is ULTIMO, which has never been said by anyone anywhere ever ever and exists only to be in dictionaries and crossword puzzles. Not sure there's a greater gap between grid frequency of real-word frequency, considering real-world frequency is ~0. "Oh, hi Betty, I haven't seen you since ULTIMO, how are you?" [Betty pretends not to see you, scurries away to ogle lettuce]. /Scene

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Bass-heavy hybrid music genre / SAT 2-29-20 / Bygone parts of newspapers with local gossip / Self-titled 1961 album / Market built around short term engagements / Former home of Seattle SuperSonics / Titular comic strip character from AD 800s

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (untimed on paper)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Paul LYNDE (43D: Paul of the old "Hollywood Squares") —

Paul Edward Lynde (/lɪnd/; June 13, 1926 – January 10, 1982) was an American comedian, voice artist, game show panelist and actor. A character actor with a distinctively campy and snarky persona that often poked fun at his barely-closeted homosexuality, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, the befuddled father Harry MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie, and as a regular "center square" panelist on the game show The Hollywood Squares from 1968 to 1981. He also voiced animated characters for four Hanna-Barbera productions.

Lynde regularly topped audience polls of most-liked TV stars, and was routinely admired and recognized by his peers during his lifetime. Mel Brooks once described Lynde as being capable of getting laughs by reading "a phone book, tornado alert, or seed catalogue."^[4] Lynde once said that while he would rather be recognized as a serious actor, "We live in a world that needs laughter, and I've decided if I can make people laugh, I'm making an important contribution." (wikipedia)

• • •

JANELLE MONAE is the only thing about this puzzle I really liked (7D: Grammy-nominated singer who made her on-screen film debut in "Moonlight"). Oh, I guess I liked SOCIETY PAGES too (20D: Bygone parts of newspapers with local gossip). Otherwise it's a lot of random trivia like KEY ARENA and CROTON RIVER (is every damn river in America fair game now?) and a lot of cluing that is irksome instead of what I have to believe was the intention, which is merely "difficult." It had this weird old-fashioned vibe, like ... who uses WORST as a verb like this? (29A: Trounce) (I had the "W" and wanted "WHOMP!"). In my experience, only the NYTXW. TAMERS are from some bygone idea of the circus (also circuses with captive animals that need to be "tamed" are gross and horrifying). BOYARDEE looks dumb all naked and alone without the CHEF to proceed it. BATE? (30A: Reduce in intensity) Where do you say that? Besides "bated breath," I guess. Still, it's *a*bate. Be honest, you never use BATE. Is "barber" a verb now? "Please barber my hair, Larry!" Odd (26D: Barber => STYLE). Everything about the cluing, and many things about the fill, just felt off. Getting a tough clue should result in a definitive "Ah, OK, right, yes." Not, "Uh ... I guess." I had a series of "Uh ... I guess"es with BATE and BABES and BEEF HOT DOG. "BABES" is fine but seems oddly ... poetic? ... you'd say there are "babies" in a nursery (30D: Nursery contents). Anyway, the clues were not enjoyable or convincing today. They were all, "You could look at this word ... *this* way!" and I just kept shaking my head "NAH."


I listen to music and follow contemporary music reasonably closely and I was not aware FUNKRAP was a thing. I need to look up examples, hang on ... huh ... weird ... when I google [funk rap] the very first hit I get is for G-FUNK, which I *have* heard of. Sigh. If I search your alleged term, the first hit should not be Some Other Term. Now I'm searching for it in quotation marks and *still* getting G-FUNK as the first hit. I am not hunting this term further because the fact that I *could* find it if I tried real hard isn't a very good defense of the answer. If I go to last.fm's list of "top funk rap artists," the first is Digital Underground, but if I look up Digital Underground on wikipedia, the "genres" offered for that group are "alternative hip-hop," "west-coast hip hop," and "funk"." Last.fm lists KMD second among "top funk rap artists"—weird; I own a KMD album and did not know they were "FUNK-RAP." You can't even find the word "funk" anywhere on KMD's wikipedia page. The term "FUNK-RAP" seems really ill-defined and loose—inferrable, for sure (in that everyone knows "funk" and "rap"), but not a very tight / specific genre.


I know that the letters of the Greek alphabet are all fair game, and I'm used to seeing them in my grid, but that doesn't mean I've ever stopped resenting being asked to know the Greek letter *order.* What I'm saying is that if you have to use Greek letters, go ahead, but cross-referencing them to try to be cute is only ever going to be annoying. Can we just turn Saturdays into Fridays? Or find a way to achieve difficulty that doesn't sap the joy from the whole solving experience? Either or.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I found another thing I liked—the clue on ELISION (10D: Something Cap'n Crunch has). That's some wholesome misdirection.

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Mecca trekker / SAT 1-11-20 / Number six in group of five / Beverage option at early McDonald's restaurants / Acrobat's platform / Rationale for dumb stunt in modern slang / Eisenhower's boyhood home

Constructor: Andrew Ries

Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe? ... I did it slowly, on the clipboard, in the comfy chair)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BEER LEAGUE (35A: Recreational sports association for adults) —

A Beer League (North American English) is a recreational league for adults to drink beer and compete in different sports. While the pub league (British English) is a form of sports league actually primarily funded by sponsorships from pubs, taverns and bars. The bars often provide funding for a team's uniforms and equipment, and often a free drink for each player, in exchange for advertising the establishment on the uniform and usually naming rights to the team itself. Beer leagues can be of virtually any sport but are usually amateur and recreational in nature, not being tied to a larger competitive league system, and contested by adults. The consumption of alcohol is often encouraged during the contest, as the actual competition is secondary. This is beneficial to the adults that compete in these beer league events because not only are they supporting a small business but are also getting physical activity, all while being social. For example, in Beer League Hockey, over 174,000 adults play. The primary goal of these leagues is to have "organized hockey in its purest form, unencumbered by money, skill, ambition, fans or advancement." (wikipedia) (did BEER LEAGUE write this???)

• • •

Dutchess, 2002-2019

HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS. It's early January and that means it's time for my annual pitch for financial contributions to the blog, during which I ask regular readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. It's kind of a melancholy January this year, what with the world in, let's say, turmoil. Also, on a personal note, 2019 was the year I lost Dutchess, who was officially The Best Dog, and who was with me well before I was "Rex Parker." Somehow the turning of the calendar to 2020 felt like ... I was leaving her behind. It's not a rational sentiment, but love's not rational, especially pet love. Speaking of love—I try hard to bring a passion and enthusiasm to our shared pastime every time I sit down to this here keyboard. I love what I do here, but it is a lot of work, put in at terrible hours—I'm either writing late at night, or very early in the morning, so that I can have the blog up and ready to go by the time your day starts (9am at the very latest, usually much earlier). I have no major expenses, just my time. Well, I do pay Annabel and Claire, respectively, to write for me once a month, but beyond that, it's just my time. This blog is a source of joy and genuine community to me (and I hope to you) but it is also work, and this is the time of year when I acknowledge that! All I want to do is write and make that writing available to everyone, for free, no restrictions. I have heard any number of suggestions over the years about how I might "monetize" (oof, that word) the blog, but honestly, the only one I want anything to do with is the one I already use—once a year, for one week, I just ask readers to contribute directly. And then I let 51 weeks go by before I bring up the subject again. No ads, no gimmicks. It's just me creating this thing and then people who enjoy the thing supporting the work that goes into creating the thing. It's simple. I like simple. Your support means a lot to me. Knowing that I have a loyal readership really is the gas in the tank, the thing that keeps me solving and writing and never missing a day for 13+ years. I will continue to post the solved grid every day, tell you my feelings about the puzzle every day, make you laugh or wince or furrow your brow or shout at your screen every day, bring you news from the Wider World of Crosswords (beyond the NYT) every day. The Word of the Day is: Quotidian. Occurring every day. Daily. Whether you choose to contribute or not, I'm all yours. Daily.

How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address (checks should be made out to "Rex Parker"):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. This year's cards are illustrations from the covers of classic Puffin Books—Penguin's children's book imprint.  Watership Down, Charlotte's Web, The Phantom Tollbooth, A Wrinkle in Time, How to Play Cricket ... you know, the classics. There are a hundred different covers and they are truly gorgeous. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD.  As ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support.

Now on to the puzzle!

• • •

The grid is really nice, especially through the middle. I am almost never on Ries's wavelength, and often find his clues precious and irritating. Loved this grid, didn't enjoy solving it much. Was put off the puzzle early by TIN (5A: Food drive donation). In the U.S. we definitely donate cans. If you want me to donate to your food drive in Britain, just say so, and then I'll bring a TIN. This is the kind of irritating I'm talking about—trying to make every clue oh-so-cutesily slippery, and as a result, having answers that give you an "oh really?" or "ugh" feeling when you get them. YOLO is no longer "modern slang." People said YOLO for about six months in 2013, I think. This clue is puuuure NYT. "Hello, fellow youths!" And STENOG, what the actual *&%^? I got it pretty easily, actually, as I worked that NE corner from the inside out, and the STENO part was undeniable, and I knew it wasn't plural, so ... just as I've seen "photographer" horribly abbr'd to PHOTOG, so I inferred STENOG. Woof, that is hard to look at. I know several people were severely thrown by that "G"; perhaps you were one of them. "CAL-Mex" is annoying because a. what is that? (I grew up in Cal) and b. it's so *clearly* trying to get you to guess TEX so that later it can go "ha ha, fooled you." This is a 6-year-old's idea of a clue.


IN-APP PURCHASE is one of those answers that is very current and fresh (normally good), but ... adds zero life to a puzzle. Solving that one felt like getting email from a corporation's mailing list. Dry and lifeless and nothing I care about. No one is *literally* "covering" their SECRET RECIPES in a kitchen. Like you'd take your little notecard out and then hover over it all evening while you are cooking with people you somehow don't want to see it!?!? I get it, you wanted to be like "oh, covered ... maybe it's some kind of pot or pan or steam cooker ... or maybe it's something to do with aprons ..." I'm all for misdirection, but the actual answer better make Perfect sense when it emerges, or else boo!


I always feel bad when all my gimmes are crosswordese (or crossword-common stuff), but I guess that's why experience pays. Here's what I knew cold: MRE MIR AGARS EUR ADEPTS ELEGY DEMOTAPES and NENE (that cutesy clue, I liked!) (7D: Double birdie?). I was smart enough to know that I didn't know TEX-Mex but I wasn't smart enough to know that I *did* know ALECK (that is, I thought ALECK was doing the TEX thing, i.e. being the obvious answer that was obviously a trap) (that is, I wanted ALECK but held back because I thought "no way, too easy"). Mistakes, I made a few, and not too few to mention here they are: UNCLEAN for BESMEAR (3D: Dirty, in a way), which led to the *very* persuasive PANE at 33A: Place for a bead (PORE). Considered AREA MAP before ROADMAP (1D: It shows the way). CAN before TIN (obviously). BEET red before RUBY red. . . actually, I think that's all the actual mistakes I made. And I made them all early. Whoops, nope. I made a pretty big mistake with "GO AHEAD" at 40D: "Be my guest" ("GO FOR IT"). Might've put HUTU (?) instead of ZULU at 54D: Origin of some lyrics sung in "The Lion King" but I worked out EMILE ZOLA before that, so mistake avoided (52A: Nominee for the first two Nobel Prizes in Literature (1901-02)). Puzzle could use more feminine energy. There's just poor ALICE down there, all ... still (48D: "Still ___" (2014 drama that earned a Best Actress Oscar)). RUBY could've been a woman, but instead it's a color. Well, at least it wasn't cross-referenced with RIDGE. We can all be grateful for that.


Notes:

• 44A: Acrobat's platform (ADOBE) — ADOBE makes Acrobat, the software you use to read PDFs. So, yeah, not the kind of acrobat you were maybe thinking of.
• 26D: Top of a chain, maybe (RIDGE) — so ... a mountain chain.
• 4D: Rationale for a dumb stunt, in modern slang (YOLO) — stands for "you only live once," in case you didn't know; feel free to go back to not knowing, as you aren't likely to hear it in the wild any more, I don't think.
• 23A: Number six in a group of five (E.S.P.) — you have five senses, and so ESP here is a sixth sense, but it's also not real, so not part of any actual group, so I do not like this ESP-legitimizing clue at all.
• 437D: Finger food at a pastry shop? (BEAR CLAW) — a BEAR CLAW is a pastry shaped like, well, a bear's claw, so I guess the "?" joke here is that when you eat it you are eating ... the bear's fingers? ... do bears have fingers?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Bishop's gathering / FRI 12-6-19 / Power cord? / Low-carb sandwich / Regular at a fitness center

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy-to-Medium

THEME: Themeless

Word of the Day: SYNOD (24D: Bishop's gathering) —

An assembly of the clergy and sometimes also the laity in a diocese or other of a particular Church. Secondarily, a Presbyterian ecclesiastical court above the presbyteries and subject to the General Assembly

• • •

Hello, Crossworld - I am Whit, stepping in to blog for Rex because he's got the Andrew Wyeth blues. I'm a long-time reader of the blog and I started regularly doing the NYT crossword when I stole my wife's log-in information eight years ago. Now we do it together - by which I mean that whichever one of us gets to it first gets to do it. 10 PM Eastern is a battleground in our home, but I won out for Friday. Let's see what Shortz & Co. got up to today.

This is my dog. She's a mutt, and thus, she might very well have some 56A (clue) in her. She definitely has needed 56A (answer) before.

I think this is a welterweight crossword, difficulty-wise. It took me almost twice as long as my best time for Fridays, but far below the overall average. (I always solve on the mobile app.) I blasted through the SE and SW corners before I found myself briefly pickled in the NE. That cost me a lot of time, though I wasn't playing for speed today. (I was playing for you, reader. I put your erudition over my stats. I'm selfless.) I found pockets of cleverness around the grid, and what I found, I liked.

The puzzle is pleasantly light on classic crossword crutches. There's an OVA and an RDA and an ITA, of course, but for small fill, I liked the clues for NUN (31A: One with a habit), SPY (25D: One who bugs another person?), and LOT (19A: Something cast in cleromancy.) I'm not a cleromancer, but this is a far better choice than just rolling the dice on something standard like "Property Unit" or "Crying of ____ 49."

The grid opens up across the middle for some good longer answers. The cluing is very ho-hum, but the grid placement is fun. I'm not a crossword constructor, so I don't know how much this factors into creating a puzzle, but I enjoy patterns and pairings within the grid. I think that's a sign that the constructor, for all their necessary focus on words and letters and word-letter intersections, is attuned to the beauty of letters as objects. I thought the dietary duo of PAREVE and LESSSALT were happy neighbors, plus, look at that pile of Ss. So much fun to see. The answer looks like it's ready to wriggle off the screen. LETTUCEWRAP and LECTURE TOUR have good visual symmetry next to each other - a waterfall of L/E/T/U cascading over crosses like SPORTUTILITY, TUCKS and SINEW. When the grid is full, you get a flush of typographical harmony. The same thing happens with SWIMUPSTREAM and MAKEUPARTIST. The clue for the latter, by the way, was charming: (46A: Dressing room attendant.) It could go a number of directions, but it lands right where it wants to be. I also enjoyed PROFIT and LIE IDLE as capitalist contrasts on the same line. It's said you can't have one while doing the other, but I bet whoever said that was in management.


As I said, none of the clues make me swoon, but I also didn't find myself grinding my teeth. Out of the gate, I thought ADWARS (1A: Samsung-versus-Apple and others) was clunky, but I just excused myself from the NW corner and played with the cool clues for answers like HIPPO and MINER. Way more fun to be had there. Who cares about Samsung and Apple's battle for phone supremacy when you can learn about new, exciting avenues for illegal ivory dealing. I didn't know you could get ivory from a hippo! (Don't deal in legal or illegal ivory. It's cruel to animals and you could never grow the kind of mustache necessary to pull it off in style.)

So, yeah: a pleasant little Friday jaunt. When it worked, it really worked, and when it didn't, it passed from my memory without a blip. Thanks to Rex for letting me pitch-in. I love this blog.

Four Things

• 36A: Power cord? (SINEW) — This was a good clue. I had a few of the downs already so it was obvious when I came to answer it, but I still like it.
• 15A: Containing neither meat nor dairy (PAREVE) This wasn't a word I knew, but it was a word that I immediately recognized as one I'd forgotten. It would have been my word of the day, but it was the word of the day nearly 10 years ago and I didn't want a repeat. PAREVE had its time in the sun.
• 7A: Regular at a fitness center (GYMRAT) — This is a curiously pejorative answer for an anodyne clue, but I like it because I think more things should have the -rat appendage. Do you make your living working in technology? You're a KeyboardRat. Do you like to spend Saturday morning buying produce at the farmer's market? You're a TotebagRat. Do you like to do the crossword each day? You're a kinder, smarter, more attractive person with better posture than your slouching and deviant friends, who are all SudokuRats.
• 56A: Clean, as a lab coat? (DEFLEA) — God-level clue to round out the puzzle. Who cares that it's not a word that anyone ever says. It's a dog thing and I really liked it!

Signed, Whit Vann, Pretender to the Baronage of the Southwest Corner of Crossworld

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Batman portrayer of TV film / SAT 10-12-19 / Request softener / NyQuil alternative / Bongo president of Gabon for 42 years

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy (6:19 on a weirdly oversized grid (15x16))

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ILENE Chaiken (6D: "The L Word" creator Chaiken) —

Ilene Chaiken (born June 30, 1957) is an American television producer, director, writer, and founder of Little Chicken Productions. Chaiken is best known as being the co-creator, writer and executive producer of the television series The L Word and is currently an executive producer on the hit television series Empire. (wikipedia)

• • •

Bizarre solving experience. Ridiculously easy from the NW thru the center and (eventually) down into the SE (with ELLEN instead of ELLIE being my only hiccup on that entire cross-grid journey) (37D: Woman's name that sounds like two letters of the alphabet). But then I tried to go into the N/NE part of the grid and ... well, it was mainly the N that was the issue, and I forgot ILENE's name and had no idea what kind of -ODUCER was the [One who runs the show]—I thought INTRODUCER, at one point; also, I thought the "show runner" ran the show. ANYhoo, add in the uselessly clued WIDTHS (5A: Halves of some measurements), and that section was a minor timesuck. Things were somewhat worse in the SW, where [Sound around a cradle] made no sense to me (it's an awful, awful stretch to say the DIAL TONE happens "around a (telephone) cradle"; it has nothing to do with the cradle, and cradles don't even exist any more, what the hell). Further, ADVILPM, yikes (40D: NyQuil alternative). I think I tried to make this UNISOM at one point, but it came out UNIISOM (?). I forgot the Big Ten even had "east" and "west" divisions, so I kept reading the clue as having to do with the Big East ... instead of the Big Ten, which I'm very familiar with. I got my Ph.D. from a big Big Ten school. Ugh. DATE NUT, whatever (42D: Kind of bread with chopped fruit). Had to hack at that (spent a good 5-10 seconds trying to think of the answer I wanted, only to have that answer be FRUITCAKE :( Lastly, I had ___ FILTER and while I initially went with LENS, failure to get any of those letters (except the "S") to work made me reconsider. I honest-to-god had SANS FILTER in there at one point (59A: Screen for a shooter). Still, even with all that nonsense, and with an oversized grid, I still came in under average.


Loved the clue on COMMAS (28A: Characters in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World"). I had CAMEOS at first! I did not get the clue on NO PRESSURE when I first solved it (33A: Request softener). I was reading it as a verb phrase—the equivalent of "Ask for Downy" (i.e. request a (fabric) softener). But it's a phrase that softens a request—makes it less urgent. Cool. Forgot Brandon TEENA's name, so I had to steer around that, but as I said, not much trouble getting coast to coast through the middle of this grid. No idea who the Bongo guy is, but OMAR is a name, and it worked, and sometimes that's good enough (67A: ___ Bongo, president of Gabon for 42 years). Nothing in this grid is exactly eye-popping (except SERENA SLAM! 34D: Tennis feat named for the athlete who achieved it in 2003 and 2015), but it's heavy with solid phrases and very low on dreck. I'll take it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Colorado's official state dinosaur / FRI 8-2-2019 / Locks that might not be totally secure? / Ones flying in circles / Zymurgist's interest

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Very Easy (8:29, my fastest Friday time by over three minutes)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: PAPAW (7D: Fruit in the custard apple family) —

Asimina triloba, the papaw, pawpaw, paw paw, or paw-paw, among many regional names, is a small deciduous tree native to the eastern United States and Canada, producing a large, yellowish-green to brown fruit.

• • •

Hi all! Resident radio nerd Matthew here subbing in for Rex — now from St. Louis, where I'm taking a break from pub media and starting a yearlong fellowship teaching math at East St. Louis Senior High! My crossword solving obsession and constructing ambitions — supported in large part by the lovely folks at this blog — have become my de facto ice breaker fun facts, so we'll see how many friends I make among my fellow teachers with my trusty cruciverbalist know-how in my back pocket. To the puz!

I'm surely biased by how little resistance I encountered in this PR solve, but I thoroughly loved almost everything about this puzzle. The grid is wide-open and aesthetically pleasing (contrast with last Friday's, which felt awkwardly segmented). The short fill is all clean and clued on the easier side (looking at you, WAS IOU CPU SYR ... ETC ...), which allows lots of the longer answers to drop right in without any second-guessing. It's a relief to come across a Friday that presents its challenges but doesn't feel like it's constantly out to get you.

I particularly enjoyed the cluing on the mid-length answers — there's a lot of 6- to 8-letter stuff in there, and clue-wise, there are a *lot* of winners. Doubling up on "Put on the line" with both AIRDRIED (16A) and WAGERED (34A) is some A+ wordplay™.  "Character raised in 'Rosemary's Baby' " (APOSTROPHE (36A)) made me smile. All told, there are also a bunch of places where answers could go either way (read: ORCHESTRA in for MEZZANINE at 44A) that I just got lucky with whichever option I was able to throw down quicker.

All of the 11-letter downs get high marks in my book, but most of all STEGOSAURUS (23D: Colorado's official state dinosaur). If you know any dinosaur fun facts, PLEASE SHARE IN THE COMMENTS because animal fun facts are the best fun facts (besides crossword-adjacent fun facts, of course ... right?)

Re: dinos, I learned a bunch from this episode of 99% Invisible ... and ... of course ...

You're welcome, and you're welcome.

Bullets:

• 48A: BBQ offering (BURGER)  — As a native Texan, it is my obligation to say that the circles in the Venn diagram of burgers and barbecue don't overlap. That's it. That's the bullet.
• 22A: Important thing to know, if you will (ESTATE LAW) — Estate law sounds incredibly boring, but I enjoyed its place in this puzzle entirely thanks to brilliant cluing.
• 5D: First podcast to win a Peabody Award (2015) (SERIAL) — Podcast love! I have never listened to Serial, but I am pretty sure that everyone I have spoken to in the last four years has recommended it to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• 57A: Ill will (RANCOR) — Before I knew that this was actually a ~word~ found in the ~real world~, I knew from my definitely very cool ~children's Star Wars encyclopedia~ that Jabba the Hutt's grotestque, carnivorous cave giant from Episode VI is called a Rancor. I almost led with this as Word of the Day for this reason, but hey — I did have to leave y'all something to look forward to.

TGIF, Matthew Stock, Mos Eisley Cantina bandmate of CrossWorld

P.S. Shoutout to my two intrepid friends who made their crossword competition debut at BosWords last weekend! Proud of y'all.

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Coinage of 2000 / SAT 6-8-19 / Sleepy stil / High-quality coffee variety / Oxymoronic break

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:48)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SULU Sea (33D: ___ Sea, body of water between Borneo and the Philippines) —

The Sulu Sea (Tausug: Dagat sin Sūg; Chavacano: Mar de Sulu; Cebuano: Dagat sa Sulu; Hiligaynon: Dagat sang Sulu; Karay-a: Dagat kang Sulu; Cuyonon: Dagat i'ang Sulu; Malay: Laut Sulu) is a body of water in the southwestern area of the Philippines, separated from the South China Sea in the northwest by Palawan and from the Celebes Sea in the southeast by the Sulu Archipelago. Borneo is found to the southwest and Visayas to the northeast. (wikipedia)

• • •

Solid, if somewhat tepid, and very easy. The long stuff didn't shine as much as I'd like, and there's some glaring bits of crosswordese like INRI and ADEN and EELPOT (not fond of ODE over ODED, either), but in the main the puzzle holds up well, and it's hard not to like an extremely crushable Saturday puzzle. Yesterday's puzzle was dicier in the short stuff, but much better in the long stuff, and so I liked it slightly more. But yesterday had that terrible, almost disqualifying TOLTEC / FATHA cross, and it had NAPERY ... nothing that bad or wacko here. This one was certainly smoother, but more ho-hum. It's all such a tricky balancing act. The hardest parts for me today were the last four letters of DEVELOPMENT HELL (7D: Long gestation for a film, informally) (I had DEAL, and the "E" and "L" were correct, so the error stuck), and then the NERF / ERAS crossing. NERF War is not a term I know (or, now, like ... at all). NERF War is a nothing burger to me, and also it is like "nothing burger" in that I hate it as a term. Anyway, that cross was rough for me. Aside from some struggling to get ahold of the SW corner, I didn't struggle much anywhere else.


Wrote in CAREE- at 3D: Proceed wildly (CAREEN) but then pulled up short because CAREEN and CAREER both fit the clue.

m-w.com

• Crosswordese you should know: INRI, ADEN, EELPOT (the entire vocabulary of eeldom, really), URAL (esp. that "Risk territory" bit)
• Proper noun watch: NOLTE, MITZI, PEALE, ATWOOD, SHREK, NOLTE, DAMON ... and yeah, even PEALE, knew 'em all. Was gonna say "Why go with N.V. PEALE (45D: Norman Vincent ___, best-selling motivational writer) over the far more famous and current Jordan?" but Jordan is PEELE, not PEALE. Clue on SULU was the one proper noun clue that threw me. REILLY seems like the hardest name in the grid (41D: Ignatius J. ___, protagonist in "A Confederacy of Dunces"), but if you've read the novel (as I did, long ago) that name's a gimme. Overall, the names were handled well. No bad crosses.
• Tricky clues: 
• 25A: Sleep still? (CEL)—because a still pic of Sleepy (from "Snow White") would be an animation CEL
• 11D: Local leader (UNION REP)—because "local" is a noun here meaning "local branch of a trade union"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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