New World monkeys / THU 10-24-13 / Singer/actress Lenya / Asgard ruler / Like women in famous Rubens painting / Danced to Julio Sosa music / Chenoweth of Broadway's Wicked / Karina in many Jean-Luc Godard film

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BOOMERANG EFFECT (36A: Unwelcome reversal ... or a title for this puzzle?) — four theme answers run Down and then boomerang back up (in the adjacent Down space); all said answers are things that, in some way, come back:

Theme answers:

• 5D: With 6-Down, mutual relationship (TWO-WAY / STREET)
• 9D: With 10-Down, critical comments (NEGATIVE / FEEDBACK)
• 37D: With 38-Down one who may give you a lift (ELEVATOR / OPERATOR)
• 46D: With 47-Down means of getting home, maybe (RETURN / TICKET)

Word of the Day: ANNA Karina (3D: Karina in may a Jean-Luc Godard film) —

Anna Karina (born Hanne Karin Bayer; 22 September 1940) is a Danish, now French citizen, film actress, director, andscreenwriter who has spent most of her working life in France. She is known as a muse of the director Jean-Luc Godard, one of the pioneers of the French New Wave. Her notable collaborations with Godard include The Little Soldier (1960), A Woman Is a Woman (1961), Vivre sa vie (1962), and Alphaville (1965). With A Woman Is a Woman, Karina won the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival. (wikipedia)

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Seems very solid. I've seen many different puzzles that involve some kind of reverse-entry of answers, but this one is remarkably tight, especially considering that two of the theme answers symmetrically cross the central revealer. Nice construction / dumb luck. Puzzle played pretty easily for me, with the only significant resistance coming in the largish rectangle of answers in the center-east. PAGE-A was a mystery to me. Had -AGE- and couldn't think of anything. WORD-A-day calendars are things that sound familiar to me. But the 365-page calendar is not something I'd call a PAGE-A-day calendar (though I don't doubt it's a calendar type). Anyway, that answer, and PIEHOLE for [Trap] and ARTICLE for [45A: What the Beatles had but Wings didn't?] and ONE B.C. for [End of an era?] (!?) and LOCAL for [What pulls out all the stops?] all gave me fits. Three of those are "?" clues, so no surprise there, I guess. The LOCAL stops at all the stops ... so I'm not sure how "pulls out" is being imagined in that clue. "Pulls out" as in "produces"? As in "watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat"? ("Again?").


No time for extensive commentary tonight. The World Series calls. My first [Paella ingredient] was CORN. Had Square ONE before Square PEG, and LORD before DEAR (2D: Prayer starter, often), and LIE before FIB (57D: Small story). No trouble with TITI (54D: New World monkey). You know you do a lot of crossword puzzles when *that* clue is a gimme. My Google News search turned up many instances of FLOUTER, but they were all from French articles. Don't suppose that word actually gets used a lot in English. Oh, well, they can't all be gold. There really aren't that many clunkers today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Italian P.M. nicknamed Divo Giulio / WED 10-17-12 / Larklike songbird / August meteor shower / Trademark of 1899 that's no longer protected / Floor model caveat / Asgard ruler / Chantey subject

Constructor: Peter Koetters

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: SQUARE / ROOTS (1D: With 55-Across, what the circled letters, reading clockwise, form) — circled letters form squares and contain the names of root vegetables.

Word of the Day: Giulio ANDREOTTI (60A: Italian P.M. nicknamed Divo Giulio) —

Giulio Andreotti (Italian pronunciation: [ˈʤuːljo andreˈɔtti]; born January 14, 1919)^[1] is an Italian politician of the now dissolved centrist Christian Democracy party. He served as the41st Prime Minister of Italy from 1972 to 1973, from 1976 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1992. He also served as Minister of the Interior (1954 and 1978), Defense Minister (1959–1966 and 1974) and Foreign Minister (1983–1989) and he has been a senator for life since 1991. He is also a journalist and author.

He is sometimes called Divo Giulio (from Latin Divus Iulius, "Divine Julius", an epithet ofJulius Caesar). The movie Il Divo tells about Andreotti's links with the Mafia and won thePrix du Jury at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. (wikipedia)

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I had a ROOT canal today, so #$&% this puzzle for real.

Actually, it's a cute idea, though I reallllly feels like something I've seen before. Also, those squares really, really limit the fill possibilities, so you end up with stuff like ANDREOTTI (who? ... not many "EOT" words, I guess) and the much-hated PSEUD (52D: Pretentious sort) and a lot of just OK stuff. Considering the way the theme limits the fill, the fill is actually just fine. About as good as could be expected. I still didn't much enjoy solving it. I didn't even notice / need the squares, except in the SE, where I needed them but they were useless. Actually, the SE was light years harder than the rest of the grid. I was dead-stopped for a while, with only ISPS (a guess), OSU (a guess), DUELS (a near-certainty) and ARA (a certainty) in place. Never heard of ANDREOTTI, so royally screwed there. Couldn't see STATUE or PORTAL at all given their clues. Clue on USUAL meant nothing to me. Not sure why I didn't get SNAILS more quickly—all I could think of was SLUGS. Anyway, that was horribly rough, and everything else was medium to easy.


Liked DEEP SPACE. Had GROUP SETS (?!) for GROUPINGS. Couldn't spell PERSEIDS to save my life. Misremembered EPPIE (ugh) as ESSIE. Tried DEBUG for DEFOG. Went THOR before ODIN. No funlet seeing RUNLET, whatever the hell that is. Forgot that PIPIT was a thing. The whole puzzle is filled with very adequate, very crosswordy answers. Not crosswordesey, exactly, because that stuff rankles, but still very familiar in a see-it-in-crosswords-alot kind of way.

The Roots:

• SHALLOTS
• PARSNIPS
• POTATOES
• RADISHES

Bullets:

• 16A: Word on a lawn sign (ELECT) — Clever. Timely. Stumped me.
• 37A: Trademark of 1899 that's no longer protected (ASPIRIN) — dang, that's a Fri-Sat. clue. A good one, but tough. Needed many crosses. 
• 4D: Greek capital, to airlines (ATH) — I hate ATH, as fill, but as ATH clues go, I'll take this one.
• 59D: Chantey subject (SEA) — never saw this clue. "Chantey" always looks to me like it's spelled wrong. I always expect "Shanty," which is a ramshackle hut, I think. Yes, I'm correct, but it turns out "shanty" is also an acceptable spelling of "chantey."
• 29D: Normandy vessels of '44 (LSTS) — now that *is* crosswordese (a little of which never hurt anyone).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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