Poker snafus / THU 4-14-22 / Subject of rationing in the old English navy / Homer's self-satisfied assertion / Yam source historically / Facility often referred to by its first letter

Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar and Narayan Venkatasubramanyan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: FROM STEM TO STERN (56A: Thoroughly ... or a hint for parsing some lowercase letters in four of this puzzle's clues) — you have to read "m" as "r n" if you want to make sense of the theme clues; the theme plays on the idea that if the kerning of a font is bad, "rn" can easily be mistaken for "m" (if you don't know what "kerning" is, see the Word of the Day, below):

Theme answers:

• WHAT A GOOD BOY AM I (17A: Homer's self-satisfied assertion?) (i.e. not "Homer's" but "Horner's..." (as in "Little Jack Horner / Sat in a corner etc.")
• SCOTTISH POET (29A: Bums, for example?)  (i.e. "Burns...")
• SPINNING WHEEL (35A: Yam source, initially?) (i.e. "Yarn source...")
• BRASS SECTION (43A: Place to find a comet?) (i.e. a "cornet")

Word of the Day: kerning (not in the puzzle, though I thought it would be ...) —

In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letterforms, while tracking (letter-spacing) adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters.^[1] In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have a visually similar area. The term "keming" is sometimes used informally to refer to poor kerning (the letters r and n placed too close together being easily mistaken for the letter m)

The related term kern denotes a part of a type letter that overhangs the edge of the type block. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

Holy cow, that revealer! I don't think I've been as pleasantly, joyfully surprised by a revealer in a long, long time. By the second theme answer, I knew what the theme concept was, so I was just working my way down the grid waiting to see how the puzzle would end, i.e. how the revealer would express the theme. In my head, I thought, "well, this involves poor kerning ... so maybe KERNING is in the grid somehow ... that's an interesting word, but ... it's not going to fit in that long final themer ... and it's not part of any longer expression that I know ... so maybe the revealer is going to be one of the shorter answers ... or maybe ... oh, god, it's not going to be some kind of "kern" pun is it, that would be tragic ... maybe there's no revealer! ... ah well, I guess we'll find out eventually ... best to just keep solving and see what happens." Or something like that. This is to say that the concept was simple and I grokked it so I didn't think the puzzle had anything left to show me. And wow, was I wrong. FROM STEM TO STERN is so on-the-money that I was very nearly AGASP (which I thought was a mythical, crossword-only state until today).  They must've started with this phrase and built the puzzle around it, because it is right on the money: it's a familiar idiom that could stand on its own in any puzzle *and* it uses clever wordplay to indicate the theme (instead of just pointing at it) *AND* it's a perfect grid-spanning 15 letters long. This is what's known as "sticking the landing." So much of the pleasure of solving rides on this moment: the revealer revealing. And it is such a pleasure to have a revealer surprise you, especially when you already think you know (or actually do know) what's going on with the theme. Simple concept, absolutely killer reveal. FROM STEM TO STERN took me from Like to Love with one great flourish. The bow on the present, the icing on the cake. Yes, I'll take this.

The theme was deceptively simple. I say "deceptively" because Thursday is not gonna sneak up on me with its tricks. I know it's Shenanigans day, and I can see that the clues are question-mark wacky, so I'm proceeding cautiously, waiting for the booby traps to start springing. But with the first themer, I can see / feel that the answer is going to be WHAT A GOOD BOY AM I ... but then I thought "nope, you can't fool me, stupid puzzle. It can't just be WHAT A GOOD BOY AM I ... because that has nothing to do with Homer! That's not wacky at all. Where's the "D'OH!"? Oh no, it's not WHAT A GOOD D'OH! AM I, is it!?!?! Please say that's not it." The upshot of this wariness is that I left the BOY part blank because I figured that's where the wackiness was going to be ... but then the crosses eventually revealed no (apparent) wackiness at all. Just the familiar WHAT A GOOD BOY AM I. If I'd stopped to think about Where That Phrase Comes From, I might've figured out the theme early. But as it was, I didn't get it til the next themer, which I actually had to squint at to see if it said "Bums" or Burns" ... and then SCOTTISH POET has to be "Burns" ... but the clue (resquints) says "Bums," so ... aha! There it is. That's the theme. Not Homer but Horner, not Bums but Burns, etc. So that was my mini aha. And that was all the aha I thought I was going to get. Which is why the revealer was such a stunning delight. The only fault I can find with the theme is that SCOTTISH POET is not a good standalone answer (any more than BELGIAN POET or PERUVIAN POET is). It's a clue more than an answer. But for the purposes of this particular theme, it's fine. That's the thing about puzzles with clever themes that are elegantly executed—you forgive and even forget the faults of such puzzles very easily.

Five things:

• 1A: Tour de France leg (STAGE) — me, a genius: "ah, I know this one—it's ÉTAPE! ugh, not a great word, but at least I knew it!" And of course ÉTAPE shares three letters with STAGE, so it took me a minute to figure out I had the answer wrong. Very happy to have been wrong, even if knowing the word "ÉTAPE" did make me feel perversely proud for a half second.
• 61D: "J to ___ L-O! The Remixes" (2002 album) ("THA") — this feels like a long and weird way to go for THA (a remix album!?) ... but I like it. The early aughts seem like yesterday and ancient history simultaneously. I have no idea what happened. It's all just a blur of marriage kid house dog job ... and post 9-11 awfulness. Wars and what not. But apparently also J-Lo, which is nice.
• 30D: Caesar dressing? (TUNIC) — me, a genius: "TOGAE!!! ... but why is he wearing more than one ... just Caesar being Caesar, I guess ..."
• 12D: Band with the 4x platinum albums "Out of Time" and "Monster" (R.E.M.) — me, a genius who doesn't read clues all the way to the end: "ELO!" Also me, later: "'Monster' was 4x platinum!? Wow, I love that album but I had no idea so many people bought it."
• 44D: King of Saudi Arabia beginning in 2015 (SALMAN) — I didn't know this, and that made the cross at 53A a little harrowing—[Steps on a scale] could've been FAS or LAS, but in the end SAFMAN seemed ... unlikely. Behold the power of educated guessing!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Bygone Chevrolet division / THU 8-26-21 / Capisce in '70s slang / Jargony rationale for business merger / First space probe to enter Saturn's orbit / Actor Williamson who played Merlin in "Excalibur" / Pink alcoholic drink / Predecessors of Lenovos / Real first name of Spider-Man villain Doctor Octopus

Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: CROSS-COUNTRY (40A: One way to run ... or a hint to four geographical intersections found in this grid) — four pairs of regularly-clued answers cross at a mystery letter that belongs to neither answer; that letter, when entered, forms the names of countries in both directions. So ... when the answers cross, each one turns into a country. The mystery letters are R, I, N, and A, which can be anagrammed to make IRAN, but ... I have no idea if or why I'm supposed to be anagramming at the end, so maybe I'm just seeing things, or trying to make the puzzle do more than it's doing...

Theme answers (the red letters are the extra letters, where the theme answers cross to form countries):

• SURINAME / MALI (21A: It comes first in China, but second in the U.S. / 4D: Bad start?)
• NORWAY / RWANDA (9A: "Not a chance!" / 11D: Title character in a classic John Cleese comedy)
• NIGER / BENIN (68A: Media exec Robert / 58D: Hippie happening)
• PANAMA / TONGA (72A: First airline to complete a round-the-world flight / 57D: Grab by pinching, as an ice cube)

Word of the Day: CASSINI (1D: First space probe to enter Saturn's orbit) —

The Cassini–Huygens space-research mission (/kəˈsiːni ˈhɔɪɡənz/ kə-SEE-nee HOY-gənz), commonly called Cassini, involved a collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini space probe and ESA's Huygenslander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.

Launched aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur on October 15, 1997, Cassini was active in space for nearly 20 years, with 13 years spent orbiting Saturn and studying the planet and its system after entering orbit on July 1, 2004. (wikipedia)

• • •

I really like the underlying idea of this puzzle, but it is really lacking in follow-through. The whole mystery/extra-letter thing just isn't well-explained or coherent enough. These are unclued letters, so what do I do with them? OK, I see a country there ... why? Why this country? Am I even supposed to be rearranging these letters? Because they aren't in any clear grid order (top to bottom or left to right). I guess you can kind of read "IR" across the top and "AN" across the bottom, kinda, sorta, but the puzzle just felt like it fizzled out. Once I got the revealer and figured out what it meant, I enjoyed seeing the countries come into view. But this puzzle kind of lost its identity somewhere. It looks like a meta puzzle (a puzzle that has another puzzle to solve after you've filled in all the squares). If you've done many meta puzzles, then you probably immediately looked to the extra bits (R, I, N, A) to see what you could do with them. You might even have circled them, if you solved on paper (or printed the puzzle out, as I always do). And if you looked at those letters, you probably saw IRAN very quickly. The question was: "Why?" Also, "Is that all?" Metas tend to have titles that hint at what you should be looking for. Also, when you get the meta answer, typically, you *know* got it. There's a tremendous feeling of "Aha!" But here, without a title to point you in the right direction, without puzzle notes, there's no "Aha!" There's just a "huh?" The theme had all these swoops and flourishes but it just couldn't stick the landing. As a solver, I'm just left alone with a bunch of possibly random letters, with no instructions and an eerie sense that either a. I'm missing something or b. that's all there is. Neither a. nor b. is particularly satisfying. 

The only other thing I have to say about this puzzle is: RULY? Truly? (55A: Neat and orderly). I want to say that I am gruntled about ruly, but that's actually the opposite of how I feel ... I think. Is "gruntled" a word without the "dis" in front of it? Because I know RULY is not a word without the "un" in front of it. Come on. Try using it in a sentence today and see if anyone understands what the hell you're saying. "What RULY children you have!" "How dare you!" The grid is oversized today (16x15), in order to allow the revealer to sit securely in the center, so your sluggish time might be partly due to that. I've never heard of CASSINI, a name I am familiar with only when it follows OLEG (a crosswordese legend), so getting started on this one in the NW was a bit of a challenge, despite many of the shorter answers up there coming easily. The MALI / SURINAME crossing wasn't working, obviously, and was made tougher by the fact that MALA- seemed like maybe it was a real prefix ... (?) ... look, you give me four letters, I'm going to assume the answer is four letters long. But I stumbled down to the center, got the revealer, and then the premise was (mostly) clear and everything was easy from there on out. 

the moment I figured things out

Somehow, none of the other country crosses gave me trouble. Nothing else about the grid seems terribly remarkable. Oh, noooooo idea who NICOL Williamson is despite *owning* "Excalibur" on Blu-ray (9D: Actor Williamson who played Merlin in "Excalibur"). I probably do know who he is, at least by sight, but seeing that name come into view was a total surprise. The long Downs in this grid are nice. I need to wrap things up now. Still have work to do before my 8:30am class because it's the first week of school and some big part of me is still in denial. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Smile with one's eyes, per a modern coinage / SUN 7-11-21 / Campania's capital / Law enforcement slangily / Getting amscray under control / McEachem aka the voice of poker / Where Johnny Cash shot a man in song / Bruins legend Phil to fans / Gay city in Cole Porter song / Appetizers filled with potatoes and peas

Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "No Ruse" — familiar phrases with a "roo" sound in them have the "R" dropped, leaving just ... an "oo" sound ... so the resulting wacky answers (clued in the wacky "?" style) feature "No 'R' use" (I think????):

Theme answers:

• BURDEN OF POOF (24A: Onus for a magician's disappearing act?)
• GOOP DYNAMICS (26A: Study of how gels gel?)
• MILWAUKEE BOOERS (56A: Angry Wisconsin sports fans?)
• TAMING OF THE SHOO (80A: Getting "Amscray!" under control?)
• BOOT STRENGTH (110A: Power of a cowboy's shoe?) 
• PENELOPE COOS (116A: Odysseus' wife whispers sweet nothings?)
• YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TOOTH (10D: Dramatic accusation at a dentist's office?)

Word of the Day: IMRAN Khan, prime minister of Pakistan beginning in 2018 (54A) —

Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi HI PP (Urdu: عمران احمد خان نیازی‎, born 5 October 1952) is the 22nd and current Prime Minister of Pakistan and the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Before entering politics, Khan was an international cricketer and captain of the Pakistan national cricket team, which he led to victory in the 1992 Cricket World Cup. He was chancellor of the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom from 2005 to 2014.

Khan was born to a Pashtun family in Lahore in 1952, and graduated from Keble College, Oxford in 1975. He began his international cricket career at age 18, in a 1971 Test series against England. Khan played until 1992, served as the team's captain intermittently between 1982 and 1992, and won the Cricket World Cup, in what is Pakistan's first and only victory in the competition. Considered one of cricket's greatest ever all-rounders, Khan registered 3,807 runs and took 362 wickets in Test cricket and was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. (wikipedia)

• • •

When I started this one, I thought (feared?) I was embarking on another one of those Sunday themelesses that seem to be popping up more and more in recent years. The grid looked really wide open (just giant NW / SE corners, for instance), and I figured that was because themeless grids (Fri, Sat) are often more wide open than themed (without themers to hold you back, you can go to a lower word count much more easily). I rationalized this early mistaken belief by interpreting the title ("NO RUSE") as a kind of literal description of themelessness. "Hey, y'all, no tricks today, just fill!" But then after a minute or two I hit GOOP DYNAMICS and realized I had completely misread the situation. Instead, I was dealing with a pretty standard sound-change theme, the likes of which I've seen on Sunday puzzles since time immemorial, or at least since the early '90s when I started solving (holy cow it's been 30 years now!). In this one, there is "no 'R' use," right? I say "right?" uncertainly because I don't really get the part of the theme where the affected words in the wacky answers *all* have to be "OO" words. What's that about? I ask because my god TAMING OF THE SHOO is so awful. There's no conceivable clue that can make that good. A "SHOO" is not a noun and you cannot do anything to it, even wackily. That answer should've been TAMING OF THE SHOE ... and the only reason I can fathom that it *isn't* TAMING OF THE SHOE is that there is some idea that the "OO" thing is part of the theme. But ... but ... if the whole deal is just dropping the "R," then again, I ask, Why??? Why SHOO?!? (I see that "shoe" is in the BOOT STRENGTH clue, but that can be rewritten). 

Also, why is this dumb JIM MORRISON stuff in here, in huge answers, in parallel positions? How is that related to the theme? Is it? Maybe it's just 'cause I don't really care for The Doors, but what a huge distraction. Go find some Doors puzzle to be in, MR. MOJO RISIN'! Speaking of, thank god that clue said the answer was "anagrammatic," because yikes that part where it crosses IMRAN (?) and DRACO (!?) (49A: Constellation almost above the North Pole) was *perilous*. Proper noun proper noun proper noun, none of them exactly household. Yikes. But the "anagrammatic" part made it all eventually gettable. Still, not sure why the Doors guy is here at all. Does he have a song about "ruses" or something? Baffling. But back to the theme. It's basic. Some of the answers are cute (MILWAUKEE BOOERS, YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TOOTH!), some less so (the SHOO thing, mainly). As for the fill, it seems mainly OK. There are a few high points (really like NPRTOTES as a full answer; same with NERFBALLS; and PALAK paneer and K-TOWN give the grid some short-fill flair). What in the seventh ring of hell (violence!) are MCBITES!?!?! (9D: Chicken ___ (discontinued fast-food snack)). When were those "discontinued"? Were they a proto-McNugget? A McNugget spin-off? [checks internet] Ew, they're like mini-McNuggets ... and they came in chicken and (oof) fish!? Anyway, I SMIZEd at MCBITES (and at SMIZE, tbh) (72D: Smile with one's eyes, per a modern coinage). R.I.P. MCBITES (2012-2013) (though according to at least one internet comment, MCBITES are still alive in Australia!) (or were as of 2020).

[warning: animated food in semi-sexual situations]

Five things:

• 15D: Bands you might listen to in the car? (AM/FM RADIO) — nice (if coincidental) throwback to a theme from earlier in the week
• 51D: Grammy-nominated D.J. Steve (AOKI) — nice alternative to [Golfer Isao]

• 18D: God who "loosens the limbs and weakens the mind," per Hesiod (EROS) — I just read the "God" part and the "Hesiod" part, looked at the letters I had in place, and went with ARES; it's hard to argue that ARES is *not* a plausible answer; all's loose limbs and weak minds in love and war!
• 66A: Total-itarian? (ADDER) — I see what you're doing there, but don't waste your cleverness on a truly terrible word like ADDER (unless you're cluing the snake, then absolutely be clever as heck if you want; but "one who adds," oof, no)
• 27D: Île be there (MER) — now that's what I'm talking about. If you're gonna be clever, stick the landing! I relaughed typing this clue in just now. It's perfect. No, really, I just laughed again, imagining some French guy pointing. It works on so many levels!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Physics Nobelist who co-discovered cosmic microwave background radiation / WED 5-19-21 / Fictional NYC locale on children's TV / Salon brand with 100% vegan products / Family member in rural dialect / Man's nickname that omits -old / Classic film series that anticipated the invention of hoverboards

Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar

Relative difficulty: Medium 

THEME: the beginning and end of the world, per two Nobelists — BIG BANG / PENZIAS on one end, WHIMPER / T.S. ELIOT on the other, and Past, Present, Future marching through the whole thing

The Nobelist stuff:

• BIG BANG (1A: This is the way the world began, per 51-Across)
• PENZIAS (51A: Physics Nobelist who co-discovered cosmic microwave background radiation, confirming 1-Across)
• WHIMPER (71A: "This is the way the world ends," per 24-Across)
• T.S. ELIOT (24A: Literature Nobelist who penned 71-Across)

The traveling-through-time stuff:

• PAST ONE'S BEDTIME (16A: At an ungodly hour)
• NET PRESENT VALUE (39A: Tomorrow's cash flow assessed today)
• "BACK TO THE FUTURE" (64A: Classic film series that anticipated the invention of hoverboards)

Word of the Day: Arno PENZIAS (51A) (Do people call him "ARN"? Is ARN a bonus themer!?) (5D: Man's nickname that omits "-old") —

Arno Allan Penzias (/ˈpɛnziəs/; born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics. Along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, he discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology.

• • •

Quite the rollercoaster, this one. Had one of the weirdest, eeriest, most startling theme-discovery moments of my solving life. Just completely bizarre. So, I start the puzzle, I read 1-Across (as you do), my eyes take in "This is the way the world..." and "per 51-Across," and instantly I write in NOT WITH and then go looking for 51-Across, where I assume I will be writing in T.S. ELIOT. The NOT WITH is from the end of Eliot's "The Hollow Men" ("This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper"), so I assume this is going to be some kind of symmetrical quote thing NOT WITH / A BANG BUT A / WHIMPER, something like that. Only NOT WITH just doesn't work, which causes me to revisit the 1-Across clue and realize I've misread it: it's looking for the way the world began, not ended. So now I'm very disappointed, and I write in BAAS, which is always disappointing, and I dutifully hack at the NW and get BIG BANG, and I'm on my way ... and I drift across the grid ... and then I run into 24A: Literature Nobelist who penned 71-Across, I see that it's T.S. ELIOT, and then I GASP and hurl my computer across the room because it's clearly a witch (I didn't really hurl my computer, although I did exclaim "Oh My God!" pretty loudly). So, to recap: misread the first theme clue and guessed the wrong thing, only to discover that it was the right thing for the last theme clue. So, like this: "Cool, it's T.S. ELIOT ... oh, stupid me, it's not ... wait, it is! Oh My God!" 

This has not been a good week for me where theme answers are concerned. For the second day in a row, I was completely unfamiliar with the central Across answer (today, NET PRESENT VALUE). Then came the double whammy, as I'd never heard of the physics Nobelist either (PENZIAS). So half of the puzzle felt like it was made just for me, and the other half ... didn't. Hence the "Medium" difficulty rating (I didn't actually time myself, so I don't know—it felt generally easy, actually). I like the idea of this theme. The PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE element is interesting and ambitious, but it feels like it muddies things a bit, conceptually. The main problem is the PRESENT, which is just hanging out there with no Nobelist to give it a good quote. Briefly thought "WHERE AM I?" was supposed to be a themer linked to the PRESENT, but the symmetrical counterpart to "WHERE AM I?" is SESAME ST., which ... wait, is that where I am? Is that where we all are? "Can you tell me how to get, how to get to SESAME ST.?" "You're already there, man." "I ... I am?" [achieves satori, ascends to higher plane of existence]

PENZIAS was genuinely scary for me because I knew I was going to require clear and indisputable crosses for every letter of his name. Thank god I knew the words NACRE and TITTLE, and didn't decide to spell PREZ with an "S" at the end (40D: Head of a country, informally). Managed to tiptoe through that minefield nicely. NET PRESENT VALUE I just hacked away at until discernible words appeared. The grid has a lot lot lot of ordinary short stuff, which meant that getting traction on the longer answers was never a problem. The only place I really found that short stuff off-putting was in the SE, at the PCBS / BRER / SES pile-up (ULM's lurking presence didn't help). But on the whole I thought this puzzle was creative and ambitious and whimsical in a pleasant way. I think the clue on PAST ONE'S BEDTIME is pretty bad (16A: At an ungodly hour), in that "ungodly" implies extreme lateness, whereas PAST ONE'S BEDTIME is just a vague, general time period. You'd refer to an hour as "ungodly" if someone woke you up during it, whereas PAST ONE'S BEDTIME has more of a banal "it's getting late" kind of vibe. "I'm sorry, I have to leave your party, it's an ungodly hour" = no. "I'm sorry, I have to leave your party, it's past my bedtime" = yes. What else? Paused at -HEW because "P" or "W," who can say? (58D: "That was close!") Had BIBS before BUNS (37D: Supply at a barbecue). Blanked on BAO (4D: Chinese dumpling), or, rather, conflated it with BANH MI, and so wrote in BAN (!?!?!). They're both so delicious that I feel compelled to apologize to both of them for the mistake. I'm sorry, food. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Conrad of old films / THU 5-26-11 / Looped vase handles / Newsmakers of 1903 / Seaquake sequel / SARS monitor / Williams paint partner

Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: XY AND XX (i.e. HIS AND HERS) (38A: Matching towel set ... with a hint to this puzzle's theme) — four theme answers either begin or end with letter string "HIS" or "HERS" ("HIS" up top, "HERS" on the bottom, as god intended); these letter strings are represented in the grid by the letters XY and XX, respectively, in accordance with the chromosomes of the sex associated with each possessive pronoun


Word of the Day: Conrad NAGEL (43A: Conrad of old films) —

Conrad Nagel (March 16, 1897(1897-03-16) – February 24, 1970(1970-02-24)) was an American screen actor and matinee idol of the silent film era and beyond. He was also a well-known television actor and radio performer. [...] In 1927, Nagel starred alongside Lon Chaney, Sr., Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall and Polly Moran in the now lost Tod Browning directed horror classic, London After Midnight. The film is quite possibly the most famous and talked about lost film ever. // Unlike so many silent films stars of the Roaring Twenties, Conrad Nagel had little difficulty transitioning to talkies and spent the next several decades being very well received in high profile films as a character actor. He was also frequently heard on radio and made many notable appearances on television. From 1937 to 1947 he hosted and directed the radio program Silver Theater. Later on, from 1949 to 1952 he hosted the popular TV game show, Celebrity Time. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well that was an adventure. I was going to put this at "Medium-Challenging" because, while 9:27 is definitely high for me, for a Thursday, it isn't *outrageous*. But then I checked the NYT puzzle site and saw that my time would've placed me third on the leader board, which is ridiculously high for me. The times are pretty abysmal, generally, so this one must really be tough. Strange, because after some initial floundering (of the fairly typical variety), I caught onto the theme (mostly), which actually made solving the bottom half of the grid easier: knowing there are going to be Xs, and generally where they're going to be located, tends to help one along. But even knowing the theme, I found the puzzle slow-going. Middle gave me fits, as UHRY is one of those nightmare names that I see every six months or so but can never remember (despite its looking Nuts) (22D: Alfred who wrote "Driving Miss Daisy"), and Conrad NAGEL means nothing ("nada" + "bagel" = NAGEL) to me.

Most of my solving time must have been spent up top, early on, as I was struggling to figure out the exact nature of the theme. I should say that I really liked the theme, but I have three minor quibbles. First, I saw the central clue, referring to the matching towel set, before I had any theme answers in place, and knew instantly that the puzzle would be dealing with HIS and HER. Note HER, not HERS. I "knew" this because I already had the HER in place in the first theme answer—the first part of HERITAGE. So theme answers would be two-word phrases where first word starts HIS- and second starts HER- (I rationalized this by deciding that the central answer was probably HIS 'N' HER, though to my credit, I decided to hold off on writing that in). I would say HIS AND HER towels, or HIS AND HER anything, though of course the towels would have "HERS" not "HER" written on them. Anyway, that false "HER" in HERITAGE irked me. Next, there's the fact that chromosomes don't exactly suggest possessive pronouns. The equivalence feels tenuous. Close enough, but not spot on. Lastly, and here I'm really nitpicking, I didn't like that there was an XX in a theme answer with KISSES, since normally / conventionally / epistolarily, the KISSES are what should be represented by Xs, not the letter string "HERS." So the whole structure had a wobbly feel to me. But it held up, and with that many Xs, the grid was far from boring (though the "AX" sound probably shows up one too many times), and remarkably crap-free.



Theme answers:

• 17A: It's celebrated for 30 days each year beginning September 15 (XYPANIC HERITAGE)
  
• 21A: "Take my word for it" ("TRUST ME ON TXY")
  
• 48A: Foiled bites? (XXHEY'S KISSES)
  
• 58A: Newsmakers of 1903 (THE WRIGHT BROTXX)
  

Got a little out of my depth at the AMINO / AMIDOL crossing but pieced it together (9D: part of PABA / 16A: Developing agent in photography). Loved the inclusion of the reasonably recent and controversial phrase "WISE / LATINA" (28A: With 8-Across, Sonia Sotomayor, self-professedly). Only just now realized that the seaquake in 24D: Seaquake sequel was not a movie, but an actual earthquake centered in the ocean. Seems entirely reasonable to me that there would have been disaster films called "Seaquake!" and "TSUNAMI!" I didn't know SHERWIN-Williams was named after actual people, let alone partners (42D: Williams's paint partner). I did, however, know that Thom's last name was YORKE (49D: Radiohead frontman Thom). He sings on one of my favorite albums: PJ Harvey's "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea[quake]."


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

P.S. a message from the future (6/30/11)

P.S. Thanks to everyone who visited the new Facebook page for this website yesterday. I did not expect all the nice comments posted there. Much appreciated. I'll have a "Like" button up on the website soon (or, rather, PuzzleGirl will help me put one up ... she laughs at me when I try to do tech stuff on my own. Literally, laughs). Til then, you can check out the page here. It's a nice place to interact with readers and distribute information and generally goof around.

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Batgirl player Craig / SUN 6-20-10 / Candidate with slogan Come Home America / Fictional hero in search stolen treasure / Bam blurter

Constructor: Todd Gross & Ashish Vengsarkar

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Publishing Trade" — book titles where one word in title is anagrammed to new word, then given a wacky clue (but with real book author's name in brackets at the end)


Word of the Day: ASONIA (2D: Tone deafness) —

Pronunciation: (u-sō'nē-u), [key]
—n. Pathol.
tone deafness.

Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.

• • •

A cute theme, and once you get it, the theme answers are Very easy to uncover (I mean, if you're vaguely aware of reasonably popular book titles). The rest of the puzzle, however, has more difficult-than-average clues, probably to compensate for the easiness of the theme. Much as I love Ashish (and I love him—I've drunk a lot of his wine at the past few ACPTs), there are some rough patches in this grid that I sort of have to grouse about (it's what I do). Two sections in particular have strong wince-inducing properties — the NW, with its obscure ASONIA and SANSEI (4D: Grandchildren of Japanese immigrants), the awkwardness of which is compounded by their intersecting the not terribly famous ANIS; and then the far W, with HAGEN (46D: Tom ___, Vito's adopted son and consigliere in "The Godfather") crossing GARE (really?) (57A: French rail station), and then the ugly NAOH to boot (69A: Caustic soda, to a chemist). Really glad I know French fairly well, because that "G," yikes. When I finished, I thought SANSEI had to be wrong. SENSEI, sure. SANSEI? Well, nothing else works, so OK. ASONIA is so pathology-specific that everywhere I looked on-line for a definition kept asking me if I meant something else? If Google is asking you if you meant ANSONIA, a nothing Connecticut town, then you know you've gone down the obscurity path. "I'm sorry, Dave, your query means less to me than ANSONIA, CT."

Again, theme is witty, and results in an interesting grid shape — that rectangle in the middle with parallel theme-11s as its sides is something I can't remember seeing before. And there was amusement to be had throughout. And yet: all the NAs in the SE were driving me crazy: NANANA (with TRALA already in the grid?) (94D: "Hey Jude" sounds), ENNA (105A: Central Sicilian city), ALANA (which is actually ALAN-A-) (117A: ___-Dale (1902 Kentucky Derby winner)), etc. ETTES is among the weaker plural suffixes you'll ever see (plural suffixes already being an inherently weak class of entry) (91D: Ending with Rock). FATLESS??? (50D: Lean, as meat) FAT-FREE, I buy. Plus, can any meat really be completely sans FAT? Not one iota? A NOTCH is a horrifically long partial (I didn't know 6-ltr partials were allowed) (51D: How much you might kick it up?), and is somehow *not* tied to EMERIL (93D: "Bam!" blurter). BSC, like the BSED of a day or so ago, is not a degree I've ever known anyone to have (100A: Deg. in biology or physics), unless a BSC is equivalent to a B.S., in which case ... why bother with the "C." I know HAN as a dynasty. And an ethnic group of China. And a Solo. Now I know it as a river (17D: Yangtze tributary). Seems obscure. Is capital "R" RockOLA something?? -OLA is bad enough when I have to get it via "payOLA." What of Motor? Gran? Shin!? It appears Rock-Ola made jukeboxes. Remember those?

Of the theme answers, the first one (JOHNNY GOT HIS GNU) was by far the hardest to get—mainly because "ANNIE GET YOUR GUN" was running interference, so I thought the title was "JOHNNY GET YOUR GUN." That, or "JOHNNY TREMAIN." Rest of the themes went in lickety-split, with hardly any crosses needed. "A PREFECT SPY" was probably the next-hardest to get, and it wasn't that hard.

Theme answers:

• 23A: "Carson's Successful Safari"? [Dalton Trumbo] ("JOHNNY GOT HIS GNU")
  
• 32A: "Big Pile of Dirt"? [Charles Frazier] ("CLOD MOUNTAIN")
  
• 58A: "Battle Backstabber"? [Sun Tzu] ("THE RAT OF WAR")
  
• 70A: "Secretive Student Monitor"? [John le Carré] ("A PREFECT SPY")
  
• 97A: "Endless Streams"? [David Foster Wallace] ("INFINITE JETS")
  
• 108A: "Football Team Leaves L.A."? [Ernest Hemingway] ("A FAREWELL TO RAMS") — this title is weirdly plausible. The RAMS did indeed leave L.A. for Anaheim (see the decent, recent documentary about the 1980s L.A. Raiders directed by Ice Cube for ESPN's "30 for 30" series), and then left Anaheim for St. Louis.

• 16D: "Renaissance College Girl"? [Dan Brown] ("THE DA VINCI CO-ED")
  
• 48D: "Head Secretary"? [William Golding] ("LORD OF THE FILES")
  

Highlights of the grid for me include BLUE NOSES (75D: Holier-than-thou types), MCGOVERN (6D: Candidate with the slogan "Come home, America" — tough clue for me), and CORKY (52D: Like spoiled wine, say — none of Ashish's wines were CORKY, that's for sure). Wouldn't have liked either DIS or DAT on its own, but crossing? That was kind of funny. I had FIT and FAT there at first.

Bullets:

• 20A: "Ale" for the underaged (CANADA DRY) — clue threw me, since I would drink this, and I am not "underaged." "For the underaged..." Bah.
  
• 36A: Writer who wrote "A bear, however hard he tries, / Grows tubby without exercise" (A.A. MILNE) — Perhaps the most common full-named author in crosswords.
  
• 46A: British coin discontinued in 1984 (HALF PENNY) — is this the same as a "hay penny?" 'Cause I wanted "HAY PENNY." If you haven't got a HAY PENNY then God bless you.
  
• 90D: Main rat in "Ratatouille" (RÉMY) — tried RENÉ at first. Seemed reasonable.
  
• 92D: Letter of indictment? (SILENT C) — nice letteral clue.
• 24D: Batgirl player Craig (LARRY)
• 37D: Rapper Fiasco (LUPE) — loving the rap clues today, especially this one. Also enjoyed IRV Gotti (106D: Record exec Gotti) and LIL whoever (89D: Start of many a rap moniker): WAYNE, KIM ... take your pick.

[N-word aplenty—you've been warned]

• 38D: Company whose logo contains its name crossing itself (BAYER) — good clue. Pictured it instantly, despite not being a big aspirin-taker.
• 47D: Appliance appellation (AMANA) — "Appellation?" That's a bit too fancy-pants. It's a brand.
• 100D: Fictional hero in search of stolen treasure (BILBO) — completely forgot who this was. Was looking for some Spanish/Portuguese explorer (BALBOA?). Took me several seconds after getting it for me to realize that it's the damned hobbit from "Lord of the Rings." Usually first names require some indicator in the clue. Not here, I guess.

And now your Tweets of the Week — puzzle chatter from the Twitterverse

• @RAWRen2105 One of the answers to my crossword was bulge :')! #immature #sickminded .
• @juliankimmings I swear to God. Pete Poslethwaite (sp) is sat opposite me doing the crossword. either him or a very ugly look alike
• @andylevy Today's NY Times crossword, 44 down clue: "TV's Andy." Answer: "Rooney." #bullshit
• @jen_dytd You know its a bad sign when the only crossword clue you get is Weird Al related.
• @ConfessorEddie I'm pretty sure people only do sodoku because they're not smart enough to do the crossword.
• @the_seashes ps, I think I now want to be Will Shortz when I grow up... but it's not for sure yet. IT'S A BIG STEP.
• @jake_ford Just finished the first crossword in my book. The book said it was EASY, they lied. Or I'm an idiot. I prefer the former.
• @ekingme Almost got hit by a lady driving and doing the crossword puzzle. Twice.
• @JoshuaOst People just do the sudoku because they're afraid of the crossword. Truth.
• @rexparker I've decided to become a rapper. I will call myself MC DVI and rap exclusively about the early 15th century.
• @blacksockies Anyone who can do crosswords can burn in hell #saltytweet
• @theisb Right now, me and @daveexmachina are in a crossword-based war of attrition.
• @BadBrad1929 I am currently watching some guy doing the daily crossword puzzle while driving
• @HebaVsReason The man on the T across from me just started cursing at his crossword puzzle
• @TomPelissero Guy in front of me @ Target Field press box doing a crossword puzzle. Just turned to people next to him and asked, "What's a search engine?"
• @TheCornach Screw you, Will Shortz! http://twitgoo.com/zqzdj
• @Trish252 No this bitch isn't doin a crossword puzzle in church
• @briangrosz Ok. Just figured out the NYT crossword theme. Holy dogfuck that's not nice, Mr Shortz. Not nice at all...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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Conqueror of Northumbria in 946 / SAT 2-13-10 / John who pioneered time-lapse photography / Like Old English coin worth 21 shillings

Constructor: Ashish Vengsarkar

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "You and others" — second-person clues that result in CRUCIVERBALISTS, a CROSSWORD SOLVER, and the FRESH VOCABULARY they (allegedly) appreciate ...

Word of the Day: ZARF (1D: Cup holder) —

A Zarf is a holder, usually of ornamental metal, for a coffee cup without a handle (demitasse or fincan). // Although coffee was probably discovered in Ethiopia, it was in Turkey at around the thirteenth century that it became popular as a beverage. As with the serving of tea in China and Japan, the serving of coffee in Turkey was a complex, ritualized process. It was served in small cups without handles (known as fincan), which were placed in holders known as zarf (from the Arabic word, meaning container, envelope) to protect the cup and also the fingers of the drinker from the hot fluid. Cups were typically made of porcelain, but also of glass and wood. However, because it was the holder that was more visible, it was typically more heavily ornamented. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm usually not a fan of these winky, self-referential kinds of puzzles. They always come off as a little smug and self-congratulatory ("Aren't we all wonderful people for engaging in this wonderful hobby?"). But this puzzle as ZARF, which I may start using as a kind of "je ne sais quoi," the "X Factor" in a puzzle that makes it likable for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. ZARF almost single-handedly makes me admire this puzzle. It's a word so freakishly fantastic that it seems like it could only have come from some fabulous Seussian creation. And yet it's real. What's also real: RATEL (46D: Honey badger). As I was solving, I just stared at his answer. And stared. And stared, thinking, "That can't possibly be right..." Sounds like a pest control device: RAT + MOTEL = RATEL. These two oddities made the puzzle memorable. Otherwise, it was a decent but not exceptional walk in the park. Ooh, except for EDRED (29D: Conqueror of Northumbria in 946), which I had as a solid ESROD when I finished. Didn't read 34A: Like Cuba and Venezuela, e.g. closely enough, I guess — the "Like" should've clued me to an adjective, but I went with ALLIES. And then I misremembered BEL PAESE (39A: Mozzarella alternative) as BEL PAESO (the cheese best loved by practitioners of BEL CANTO?).

Theme answers:

• 36A: You, e.g. (crossword solver)
• 7D: You and others (cruciverbalists)
• 20A: What 36-Across and 7-Down appreciate (fresh vocabulary)

Did not care for RIDE A STORM (3D: Endure difficulties, with "out") — way too long to be a non-stand-alone answer. Just looks silly sitting there, enormous but incomplete. Again today we had a pair of cross-referenced clues in the same little section, only today, it happened twice (NE and SW). ASIA (11D: It's west of the Sea of Okhotsk) / USSR (12D: Former part of 11-Down: Abbr.) pair was somewhat easier to figure out than the BEER (50D: Contents of a 56-Across) / STEIN (56A: 50-Down holder) pair, perhaps because the latter cross. Too many agcy abbrevs. for my taste today: ICC, NSA, OAS (23A: Charter of Punta del Este grp.) ... Not much else of note. I had IT SO for I TOO (6D: "Was ___ hard ...?").


Bullets:

• 1A: 1968 hit musical with the song "Life Is" ("Zorba") — wanted ZORBA after the -BA dropped into place, but really, really could not allow myself to commit to the "Z" — ZARF!

• 14A: "Caesar, now be still: / I kill'd not thee with half so good ___": Brutus ("a will") — the rhyme made this easy! No crosses needed. Note: these are the words that Brutus utters between running onto his sword (held by Strato) and dying. An oddly theatrical suicide.
• 17A: One making waves in the news business? (radio journalist) — had the RADIO part early, but took a while to get the rest.
• 21A: Gray and others (Asas) — I had TEAS at first.
• 57A: John who pioneered time-lapse photography (Ott) — no idea. Luckily, it didn't matter. I never saw the clue. Checked to see if the OTT I had in place was MEL. It wasn't. But OTT seemed a reasonable name for ... someone. So I moved on.
• 27D: Like an old English coin worth 21 shillings (five guinea) — yes, 21 goes into 5 very nicely. [Looks like the NYT botched the e-version of the puzzle yet again — in the paper, the clue reads (correctly) "105 shillings," not "21."]
  
• 34D: It's sometimes seen in the corner of a TV screen: Abbr. (ASL) — maybe the cleverest clue of the day. ASL = American Sign Language. I wanted TV-G or ESP.
• 43D: Singer profiled in "Sweet Dreams" (Cline) — 80s biopic that is very familiar to me. No problems here.

• 45D: Holder of a "leaf-fringed legend," to Keats (urn) — the Grecian one that he's always nattering on about.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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