Alpine folk dress / SAT 3-26-22 / Ostinato provider in Ravel's Bolero / Sight from Maui's west shore / Classic song with the line Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci And lots of wavy hair like Liberace / Repeated voice role for Steve Carell / Horizontal group hug session

Constructor: Ashton Anderson and James Mulhern

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Charles ALSTON (38D: Charles ___, artist whose bust of M.L.K., Jr. was the first ) —

Charles Henry Alston (November 28, 1907 – April 27, 1977) was an American painter, sculptor, illustrator, muralist and teacher who lived and worked in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. Alston was active in the Harlem Renaissance; Alston was the first African-American supervisor for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. Alston designed and painted murals at the Harlem Hospital and the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building. In 1990, Alston's bust of Martin Luther King Jr. became the first image of an African American displayed at the White House. (wikipedia)

• • •

The stuff that was supposed to be sassy and flashy just missed me, for the most part. Like, "LATER, MAN" and "REAL ORIGINAL!" both felt ... I mean, they're real expressions, but they just seem a little arbitrary. "LATER, ___" ... MAN, sure, but DUDE, BRO ... GATOR? They all work fine. I don't hate these answers, by any means, but my reaction wasn't "wow, cool." It was more, "yeah, sure, OK." Ideally, you're slangy stuff hits harder than "yeah, sure, OK." I think "CAN I GET AN 'AMEN'!?" is rock solid, the strongest thing in the grid, and therefore perfectly placed in the marquee central position (32A: "Who's with me?"). I really think the clue should have an "!" as well as an "?" since it is a very enthusiastic, rousing question, one that I think of as being shouted or otherwise exclaimed with a loud voice. But still, great answer, nicely placed. I'm also a fan of "SAY NO MORE..." (a perfect little colloquial phrase, first seen last year in a puzzle by, surprise, Nam Jin Yoon, my fav themeless constructor ... or one of them, anyway). I laugh now when I see "MR. SANDMAN" because it appeared in the NYTXW not too long ago and someone, I forget who, one of my readers, I think, told me that they failed to parse the answer correctly and ended up wondering who MRS. ANDMAN was. Oh, yeah, that was the puzzle that had MRS. MAISEL in the symmetrical position (to "MR. SANDMAN"). So that answer amused me. But two other answers did the opposite of amuse me. I find the very idea of a CUDDLE PUDDLE ... I'll try to be tactful and say "off-putting" (34A: Horizontal group hug session). The concept, the cutesy, moist words, just ... yeah, off-putting. And especially off-putting when crossed with the tonally different yet even more off-putting LEPER, which is not a word I would put in any puzzle if I could help it. I had LONER there at first and was very happy with that answer. But the long Acrosses weren't working so I had to pull it and quickly realized it would be LEPER. I'm making a face even as I type LEPER. You can't see it, but you can imagine. I'm also kind of making the face at RES., which I don't think I fully understand. Are "some telephone nos." ... REServed? Ooh, RESidential? That's it, isn't it? Oof. OK. Maybe I'm not going to like RES under any circumstances, then. But I wouldn't have given a thought to so small an answer if it weren't mired in the LEPER CUDDLE PUDDLE (see!? ... off-putting). 

I was lucky to know NONPAREIL and DIRNDL and FIFA, all of which really helped me open up the grid. I did not know ALSTON, even though I feel sure I've heard of him before. His crosses were all fair, though STA. didn't mean anything to me (49A: Bank in London, for example: Abbr.). I'm guessing there's a Bank ... Station? And I'm guessing it's in London. I'm guessing it's a train ... station. Ah, looks like light rail and Underground. Even though I've never heard of Bank STA., there was nothing else that "S" could really be, so that's a fair cross for ALSTON. Also didn't know ILYA—had both IVAN and IGOR in there at some point (47D: Slavic form of Elijah). Hardest thing in the grid for me was probably ASNAP, just because I never expect the "A" (53A: Child's play). Had "LIES!" before "LIAR!" but that seems a perfectly reasonable "error," and it didn't hold me back for more than a few seconds or so. I need ("need") to go watch "All That Jazz" now. Because, well, it's on, and the mere fact of on-ness adds an artificial sense of urgency to which I am succumbing. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Crowdsourced Q&A site / FRI 10-15-21 / Composer Anton who used the 12-tone technique / Main component in the Chinese street food jianbing / Classic neo-grotesque typeface / Candy cooked until it reaches the hard-crack stage / Children's classic originally written in German / Zippy resort rental

Constructor: Ashton Anderson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: jianbing (23D: Main component in the Chi8nese street food jianbing => CREPE) —

Jianbing (simplified Chinese: 煎饼; traditional Chinese: 煎餅; pinyin: jiānbǐng; lit. 'fried pancake') is a traditional Chinese street food similar to crepes. It is a type of bing generally eaten for breakfast and hailed as "one of China's most popular street breakfasts." The main ingredients of jianbing are a batter of wheat and grain flour, eggs and sauces. It can be topped with different fillings and sauces such as baocui (薄脆, thin and crispy fried cracker), ham, chopped or diced mustard pickles, scallions and coriander, chili sauce or hoisin sauce depending on personal preference. It is often folded several times before serving.

Jianbing has seen internationalization in recent years and can be found in cities such as London, Dubai, New York City, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, and Sydney, sometimes with modifications to cater to local tastes. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was decent, but surprisingly, even aggressively quaint. I'm talking most specifically about "SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE!" and "EXSQUEEZE ME?," both things your dad would say, or that you would say only cutesily or ironically. Last person I heard say "EXSQUEEZE ME?" was probably Mike Myers in ... one of the Mike Myers films. Feels like "Wayne's World," but who knows? Anyway, it's thirty years now. There's also the old-timey phrase "KODAK moment" (no one under 40 is going to have any idea what a "KODAK moment" is; I'm not even sure they'll know KODAK at all) (55A: Kind of moment worth recording). And then FLAM, which no non-'50s gangster has said since the '50s themselves. FLAM is only ever acceptable as the surname of FLIM—or of my 5th grade teacher (best elementary school teacher I had by far). Even SLY DOG feels like an ironic and/or bygone expression of non-serious usage. It sounds like one EXGI razzing another EXGI about his sexual escapades (or "sexcapades"). "You SLY DOG, you!" Speaking of EXGI, Nov. 11 is for honoring veterans. Or VETS, if you like. That's why it's called "Veterans Day." It's not called EXGI Day. So your clue is invalid. No, tell your lawyer to sit down, objection overruled, invalid. Case dismissed. An "S" is a double-curve on its own. S-SHAPE feels redundant *for that clue* (31D: Double curve). AGGRO is a UK expression, isn't it? (I got it easily, but never really hear that term here) (6D: Belligerent, slangily). Seems like you could've put a bunch of oath/exclamation-like words before "I HOPE NOT" and passed it off as valid, but "GOD" is probably at the top of the list, so that's fine. You play MIND GAMEs. Plural. Rarely just the one (11D: Psychological trick). When you are out of marijuana, you GOT 0 POT. I like that answer, even if it requires misreading on my part for me to like it.

How is there a name for "ALIEN RACE" when we have never discovered an ALIEN RACE. I assume "xenomorph" was some kind of biological terminology, so that one was hard, even after I got ALIEN. Hardest area for me was probably CREPE WEBERN. I don't live in a big city and none of the Chinese food places here offer jianbing (that I know of), so I was slightly startled to find a French (?) word as the answer there. And WEBERN I've heard of, but could not come up with at all. Between *Anton* Chekhov and Max *Weber* I just don't have room for an Anton WEBERN in my brain (20D: Composer Anton who used the 12-tone technique). And today that dude was blocking the entrance (one of them) to the NW corner, so not knowing him was costlier than not knowing other things. Those other things? I had PART ONE before PAGE ONE (12D: It's just the beginning of the story) (often stories actually start on something like page 3 but whatever). I had ETCHED before EROTIC (3D: Like shunga woodblock prints). I had SCAM and SHAM before the aforementioned FLAM (48D: Bit of deception). TEPEE (?) before AERIE (44D: Home with a view). And maybe MORANI before MORONI (2D: Angel said to have visited Joseph Smith). MORONI visited Smith. MORANI was the angel who appeared to Rick Moranis and told him to take the role in "Little Shop of Horrors." I always get them confused. 

[I stole this WEBERN-related text exchange from Twitter]

All in all, this was not an unpleasant solve, even if it really wasn't exciting to me personally. I actually liked SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE! (in inverse proportion to how much I was put off by the cutesy "EXSQUEEZE ME?"), and "BIG SURPRISE" and HOT START were winners too. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Ancient undeciphered writing system / FRI 11-13-20 / Wikipedia articles that need expanding / Hijiki or arame in Japanese restaurant / Successful shot from downtown in basketball lingo / Prominent feature of babirusa deer-pig

Constructor: Sawyer Tabony and Ashton Anderson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (high 5s, w/ sleep still in my eyes)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: WORD (CLUE) —

DEFINITION

• • •

Would you like your bread singed? I didn't think so. SINGES connotes an unwanted light burning (as when you can't get the gas element on your stove to light and then it suddenly bursts to life, singing the hair on your hands, and hopefully only your hands), whereas "Toasts" suggests an intentional, delicious browning. I guess you could singe marshmallows, but come on, you don't singe marshmallows. You Toast Them. ANYWAY ... I had the -GES at 42A: Toasts, say and eventually wrote in WEDGES ... which, while implausible, seemed, and still seems, way more plausible than SINGES. Happily for me, and you (probably), that [Toasts, say] clue on SINGES is probably my biggest gripe today, as the grid was full of mostly delightful answers and very few of the clues had me wanting to hurl my computer out the window (it's been very warm, so. the storm windows are not yet up). In a perfect world, you probably wouldn't cross WAY and AWAY (see the NW corner), or have NO IRON, NO WORRIES, NO ONE, *and* NO FEES in the same grid, but we live in a postlapsarian world, and so we mortals will just have to be happy with great-but-flawed until the coming of the New Crossword Jerusalem (sorry, I've been teaching Paradise Lost, and I can't stop saying "prelapsarian" and "postlapsarian," and then the weird religious words just follow from there...) (no, seriously, Paradise Lost is just trampling through my brain at the moment; I spelled the [Soup dumpling] W-A-N-T-O-N at first, probably because Milton describes Eve's hair waving in "WANTON ringlets" ... Mmmm, wanton soup ...)

As happens so often, I struggled most with the NW (where I started). Even after getting the front ends of the longer Acrosses, I'M ON A ROLL was the only one of them I could manage to throw down successfully (15A: "Look at me go!"). "LET'S ..." man, that could've been anything, "an outstretched hand" suggesting so many things. I thought maybe the hand was trying to shake yours, or else trying to help pull you to safety after you managed to nearly fall off the face of Mount Rushmore (in addition to reading Milton—watching Hitchcock). And NO WORRIES is clear enough once it's filled in (17A: "You're good"), but if you've only got the first three letters, and you have no idea of the context for / tone of "You're good," then you're left wondering "NOW" what? Add in that I forgot Awkwafina's real first name was NORA (20A: "___ From Queens," comedy series co-created by Awkwafina), and that section became something of a bear. So I floated downstream, down the west side of the puzzle, where I found much less resistance, and didn't actually get back to finish up the NW until the very, very end ("C" in CLEANED was my last letter) (8D: Hit the jackpot, with "up"). 

Five things:

• 35A: Key of Dvorak's "Serenade for Strings": Abbr. (E MAJ.) — this answer is fair enough, I guess, but DMIN and EMAJ and all these musical key abbrs. are really a PAIN in the rear to fill in unless you are one of the few people who know this kind of stuff cold. I got the "E," wrote in the "M," then had to go retrieve the crosses. Actually, I inferred pretty quickly that it was EMAJ, not EMIN because the "J" was in an initial position (where "J"s usually are found), and also wow EMIN is really truly ugly ... I had to have faith that these constructors wouldn't do that to me. Faith rewarded! Paradise regained! (Sorry, the Milton again...)
• 47A: Cousin of "OMG!" ("WHOA!") — I was genuinely concerned that the puzzle was going to try to perpetrate WOAH on me. Have you seen this stylization of the exclamation? It's remarkably, disturbingly, obscenely common among, uh, younger people. Sorry, younger people. I try to love everything you do. But this is a line in the damned sand.
• 37A: "Think so?" ("YEAH?") — among the hardest clues of the day. Intonation is *everything* here, and YEAH is not a word I would normally read as interrogative. I did like the overall slangy, colloquial feel of the grid, "UP TO YOU" was another one that was tough to pick up, but once picked up, felt right (12D: "I'm good with whatever").
• 18A: Excited (ASTIR) — ASTIR is what you are when you first wake up in the morning, EAGER is what you are when you are excited. And of course the first letter I had in place was the "R" ...
• 11D: Prominent feature of a babirusa ("deer-pig") (TUSK) — no idea what animal this is. Still, this would've been easy enough to pick up off the "K" in NIKOLA, if I hadn't typoed STUBS (10A: Wikipedia articles that need expanding) as SRUBS and somehow never noticed (!) ... so I lost a lot of time first working through every cross in RUSK and then wondering what part of the deer-pig body was the RUSK. Actually abandoned the section, went and finished up the puzzle, then had to come back to RUSK to find my error. So I guess the "T" in TUSK was, technically, the last letter I entered in the grid. See, this is why my early-morning solving times are not to be trusted. I'm happiest in the early morning, but I am not my sharpest, that's for sure.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Happy birthday, mom :)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Baby animal in parable in II Samuel / FRI 6-23-17 / Subject of 1984 mockumentary / Edible seed of pumpkin squash / Verdi opera set in fifth century

Constructor: James Mulhern and Ashton Anderson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PERCALE (20D: Bedsheet material) —

noun

noun: percale

1. a closely woven fine cotton or polyester fabric used especially for sheets. (google)

• • •

Expected something a little showier here, but all in all it's decent and clean. The long Acrosses don't really sing, though I do like the juxtaposition in the north, i.e. the idea of someone (I assume drunkenly) twirling in SWEAT PANTS while asking "HOW DO I LOOK?" I finished in just over 6. I don't know if the puzzle was easier or harder or exactly as hard as I rated it because I was aided somewhat in the NW, and mightily in the SE, by that niche knowledge I have only because I solve a ton of crosswords, i.e. by crosswordese. I got a superfast start by guessing AMMO right out of the box (1A: They may make the rounds) and then confirming it with (drum roll) ARNESS! (crosswordese the first) (1D: "Gunsmoke" actor James). And then at the end, in the SE corner, I just had blank space below SPINAL TAP, and got a little panicky. Then I tried ATTILA (42D: Verdi opera set in the fifth century). Now I know squat about opera, and I know zero about ATTILA, but something about the clue jogged the answer loose. I didn't trust it At All, but after stumbling with PHOTON instead of PHASER at 43D: Particle beam weapon, I could see it was all going to work out. Shoulda been able to get GARTH from just the "G"; shoulda been able to get PEPITA from the "PE-" ... but shoulda woulda coulda didn't. ATTILA to the rescue.


Other trouble spots:

• Wanted MU SHU at 2D: Kind of pork, but saw the number of squares and wrote in MOO ... SHO :(
• Had the "B" at the end of 7D: Baby animal in a parable in II Samuel and wrote in BEAR CUB
• Wanted THE KEYS instead of CAR KEYS for some reason (35A: Request to Dad, perhaps)
• Could remember only ASNER and ZOOEY DESCHANEL as Ferrell co-stars in "Elf" 
• Could picture SLUGGO perfectly in my head (I own two fat volumes of "Nancy" comics) but for some reason his name eluded me and it came out BLUTTO (39D: Nancy's friend in the comics). 
• TEST SCORES is boring and annoying because when I had ___ SCORES, I expected something specific. I wrote in PSAT, knowing full well no one puts those on their actual applications (do they?)
• 34D: Arm that's tucked away (COVE) — just brutal. Way harder than anything else in the puzzle.
• DRAT for CRUD (48A: "Oh, darn!")

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Lower leg woe, slangily / FRI-7-31-15 / Turn awkward, as a relationship / "reading room"

Constructors: James Mulhern and Ashton Anderson

Relative difficulty: Easy, I bet, but I was getting up and making martinis and drinking them so it took me an hour

(I do my puzzles on a clipboard, issued forth from a printer with chronically low toner)

Word of the Day: KATY (45A: "___ Bell" (Stephen Foster song)) —

             From http://www.3goodcats.com/katybell.htm:

   Stephen Foster wrote many of the popular songs* in 19th-century America.  I didn't know it when we named our cat, but Stephen Foster wrote the music for an 1863 song called "Katy Bell."  You can listen to it, and if you're as interested as I was, even find the lyrics as well.

---

* - The most famous:  Oh! Susanna; Camptown Races; Old Folks at Home [Swanee River]; My Old Kentucky Home; Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair; Beautiful Dreamer.

• • •

It's like someone rubbed deodorant all over my printer paper because this puzzle is so fresh. AUTOTUNE, GET WEIRD, ONLINE AD and... CANKLES. Look, I know everyone says something like this in their lifetime but I coined the term "cankles." In college. 2005. It was me; I was the first. I am both proud and ashamed because it's really not a nice thing to say at all, but apparently the term has made its way into one of our most prestigious publications. See, there was this girl who was pretty mean and I didn't like her and she had calves that just wouldn't quit in the downward direction. It was before we started Googling everything we think to make sure it's an original thought so I was almost certainly the first person to portmanteau that shit.

Hi, by the way. I'm Lena: the girl who coined cankles. OH HEY LOOK OVER THERE
 
It's a Hawk! It's a Pelican! No, it's a CAGER. Womp womp. Sports terms, especially ones like that, are not readily within my KEN, as you can see here at the point where both my glass and mental wellspring went dry:

HULA SKIRT was my first entry, leading to DRAG SHOW and all those goodies in the NW. Then onto the NE, where everything made a pleasing KERPLOP when dropped in-- except STAY DRY. Why? Because my brain parsed it as a noun, like a "lean-to" and I thought WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? SOME BRITISH THING? "Let us all have a huddle under the stay-dry and sip Pimm's until this thundershower passes." I was still rankled by the time I got to 28A (a tyre may rub against one) and can only think of one word when it comes to Brits and rubbing and it's not KERB, it's "frot." Look it up, as my mother used to say to me. Still does.

Moving right along, I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed this puzzle. Even the little things, like STAB for (5D: Whack). Not that we served KETEL ONE at the fancypants bar (it was that fancy) I worked at a few years ago, but I should have known that way sooner than I did. It would have prevented me from putting in SEASONAL instead of the correct IN SEASON... wow I am getting boring or what?

 Bad fill that peppers you like... bullets!

• KEPI (35A: Gendarme's topper) — Nrrrgh
• TKTS (30A: Times Sq. bargain booth)  — Nrrrrrrrrrgh
• OONA ( 27A: Donald Duck cartoon princess) -- Nrgh

But that's it in terms of what I consider nrrghable fill! A very good puzzle to ring in the weekend.


BONUS: if there's a SNO BALL that has a strong chance in hell...

Signed, Lena Webb, Court Jester of CrossWorld

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Lakers commentator Lantz / SAT 12-13-14 / Mackerel variety on Hawaiian menus / 1958 #1 hit whose only lyric is its title word / Title girl in literature's Prairie Trilogy / Fashion designer Knowles mother of Beyoncé / Anderson of sitcomdom / Kebabs sold curbside

Constructor: James Mulhern and Ashton Anderson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Langston Hughes's "CORA Unashamed" (6D) —

The Ways of White Folks is a collection of short stories by Langston Hughes, published in 1934. Hughes wrote the book during a year he spent living in Carmel, California. The collection, "marked by pessimism about race relations, as well as a sardonic realism," is among his best known works. Like Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman (1899) and Wright's Uncle Tom's Children (1938), it is an example of a short story cycle. […] David Herbert Donald called "Cora Unashamed" — one of the stories in The Ways of White Folks — "a brilliantly realized portrait of an isolated black woman in a small Middle Western town, who stoically survives her own sorrows but in the end lashes out against the hypocrisy of the whites who employ her." That story was adapted into a film of the same name from The American Collection directed by Deborah M. Pratt, starring Regina Taylor and Cherry Jones, and released in 2000. Cinematographer Ernest Holzman won an American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Award, for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Movies of the Week/Mini-Series'/Pilot for Network or Basic Broadcast TV, for his work on this film. (wikipedia)

• • •

Yeah, here we go. Here's Friday's puzzle. Found it. It was hiding. In Saturday's spot. Finished this one several minutes faster than I did yesterday's, borne forward on a fortuitous series of gimme-waves (BUTTOCKS! ANTS ON A LOG! LONI!) and helped along by generally easier clues. Maybe the difficulty difference has something to do with word count. Yesterday's was lower (68, I think, v. today's max 72), and it's just generally easier to find toeholds in higher word-count puzzles. The way this grid is structured, it's basically all toe-holds. No big patches of white. I guess the NW and SE are sizable, in their ways, but they're riven through by so many 3s and 4s that finding purchase shouldn't have been that tough. To its credit, the puzzle kept those 3s and 4s pretty toughly clued. Still, there are just so many ways to come at this one, so many ways to work around whatever impasse you might hit. This is not a bad thing. What's weird, though, is that the fill on this one is actually not as good as yesterday's, overall. I mean, it's not bad, either, but there is a bunch more short junk here (yesterday's grid was pretty damn clean—it was the off cluing that I had a problem with). The only bits that really bothered me was the BAD / EMS cross-reference (EMS is indeed BAD; don't make it worse by forcing me to spend longer with it than I have to) (42A: With 54-Across, spa town on the Lahn River) and STUS ("Lakers commentator"???? *And* others??) (19A: Lakers commentator Lantz and others). And the ridic clue on ONO (5D: Mackerel variety on Hawaiian menus). Most of the other common short stuff is shake-offable, and more than made up for by solid longer fill.


I think of LIQUOR UP (17A: Become ripped) as a transitive verb phrase. You LIQUOR someone UP. Or maybe you also get liquored up. Something about the phrasing here, making LIQUOR UP something akin to REST UP or GAS UP, just felt off. I get that you wanted to use misdirection in your clue, but: clonk. KNURL has to be one of the ugliest words in the English language (7D: Small projecting ridge). Linguistically Moreauvian. Unholy offspring of two words that should never have gotten together. I have to boo at STREET MEAT, as I just don't think that's a thing. STREET FOOD (what I put in the grid at first)—totally a thing. STREET MEAT sounds like some kind of sex slang. I'd like to give high-fives to "TEQUILA" (as clued!), HIT ME UP, and JABBER. The clue on CALI is exquisite (25A: City known for its traffic violations). I liked this puzzle, though the [Somewhat] trilogy (40D, 21D, 36A) really saps the puzzle's energy. It's like I'm being encouraged to think, "Meh."


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Ultra 93 vendor / FRI 8-1-14 / Winner of inaugural Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent / First talking pet in American comics / Boorish member of Round Table / First substitute on basketball bench / Indian novelist Raja / It means sulfur island in Japanese / Deity with more than 16000 wives / Catchphrase for paranoid

Constructor: Ashton Anderson and James Mulhern

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AI WEIWEI  (16A: Winner of the inaugural Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent (2012)) —

Ai Weiwei […] born on 28 August 1957 in Beijing, China, is a Chinese contemporary artist, active in sculpture, installation, architecture, curating, photography, film, and social, political and cultural criticism. Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. As a political activist, he has been highly and openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He has investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of so-called "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, following his arrest at Beijing Capital International Airport on 3 April, he was held for 81 days without any official charges being filed; officials alluded to their allegations of "economic crimes". (wikipedia)

• • •

Yes. More of this. All of the Friday puzzles should by these guys, until they run out of ideas and are no longer of any use to me. This puzzle is alive and current and colloquial and wide-ranging and clean. It's got one of my favorite literary characters—the overconfident, incompetent dickhead, SIR KAY—and a phrase I use all the time—DONE AND DONE ("and I mean Done!"—Homer Simpson), and there's hardly a clunker in sight. Whatever little annoyances there are—prefixes or directions or Latin plant names—are a. small and b. holding up tremendous stuff. Use your dull short stuff wisely! I am quite stunned by the three long, adjacent colloquialisms in the NW, mirrored by two others in the SE (as well as AM RADIO, with its superb clue, 37D: Rush home?). There are even clever little touches, like the placement of JAG and TIGE over TAMER (I know lions are usually the big cats being tamed, but I liked the big cat imagery just the same), or the strong noirish feel achieved by juxtaposing TRUST NO ONE and TAKE THE FALL. Then there's the fact that "TRUST NO ONE" is actually a catchphrase from "The X-Files" (see 47A). Nice. I do have one objection to this puzzle, though.  I'm not crazy about AI WEIWEI He's not so well-known yet, and his name is crazily spelled and not inferable. . . Wait, no. That's not my opinion. That's a direct quote from Will Shortz to me and Caleb Madison re: a Sunday puzzle we published a couple years back. My mistake! (See here; mentioned on Buzzfeed here) (Congrats to WS on smartly, if belatedly, coming around on that one)


Had an easier time in the east than I did in the west with this one; or at least I finished the east first. That NW didn't fall for me til late. Didn't know about CUL, despite 7 years of French (2D: French bottom). It sounds profane. "Un film de cul" is a porn film, so … yeah. It's a rough equivalent of "ass," I think, in that "ass" (as well as "tail") can mean "sex" in colloquial American English (he said, sexily over-explaining things). Wanted only ACERBIC (no fit) at 1A: Very harsh (ACIDIC), and therefore didn't get far up there at first. The fact that all those long Downs up there are multi-word colloquialisms made them pretty tough to parse. 



I wrote in GENT at 20A: "I say" sayer (BRIT), only to have GENT come right back around with a bright "cheerio" at 27D: Hat-tipping sort. Could not fathom what the hell 47A: "The X-Files" program, for short even meant … until I could (SETI—Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). SIXTH MAN! THE CLOUD! NEW-AGEY! (which I hear way more often than the way, way commoner (in crosswords) NEW-AGER). Supercool work all around.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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1996 Rhett Akins country hit / SAT 4-5-14 / Cro-Magnon orphan of literature / Debut Peter Tosh album rallying cry for pot smokers / Internet traffic statistics company / Fictional home five miles from Jonesboro / Singer with 1996 triple-platinum album Tidal / Historical figure aka Marse Robert / Lodging portmanteau / While all artists are not chess players all chess players are artists

Constructor: Ashton Anderson and James Mulhern

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (also possibly anywhere from Medium to Challenging, depending on possible pop culture potholes) 

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ALEXA (9D: Internet traffic statistics company) —

Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com which provides commercial web traffic data. Founded as an independent company in 1996, Alexa was acquired by Amazon in 1999. Its toolbar collects data on browsing behavior and transmits it to the Alexa website, where it is stored and analyzed, forming the basis for the company's web traffic reporting. As of 2013, Alexa provides traffic data, global rankings and other information on 30 million websites, and its website is visited by over 8.8 million people monthly. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ah, a nice, palate-cleansing 72-worder with delightful, fresh fill. I needed this. I think this one skews somewhat young, somewhat slangy, and therefore somewhat might annoy somewhat people. Somewhat. But I really liked it, and despite some pretty tough patches and tricky cluing, I managed to move through it with no significant snags. Worst hold-up was probably in the MA BELL / ALEXA section of the puzzle, there in the NE. MA BELL is very toughly clued (8D: Parent company?). And ALEXA … Well, in retrospect, I have heard of ALEXA, but while solving the puzzle, I had no idea. Also, I mysteriously had AYLA as AYER (?), so thank god for I GOT YOU and LILT, which were the only things I could throw up into that section at first, but which ended up being just enough for me to see "LEGALIZE IT" (16A: Debut Peter Tosh album, and a rallying cry for pot smokers). Very nice to cross that answer with REEFER, by the way. Less nice to cross REEFER with FER … but we'll let that slide (mostly).


Taught a lot of sonnets this semester, so at 17A: Scheme for the start of a sonnet, I was like "Well, it's ABBA or ABAB … AB-something, so just write in AB-." And I did. And that was enough for me to get HABANERO (2D: Certain chili), and off I went. I have a Gay TALESE book on the shelf right behind me (I once directed a thesis on the New Journalism), so no problem there. I wanted 32A: U.S. Open champion whose last name is a toy to be one name. One last name. Also, a tennis player. But KITS was a gimme, and TOM KITE came soon after. Got stuck at the exact halfway point (with everything north of the central diagonal filled in, up and around to ROTH / LORNE). Looked at timer and it said 4-something. High 4s. But I couldn't get any crosses, so I was faced with jumping into the abyss. Figured I wouldn't break 10. But then I got AEROBE straight off. Then ORR and ENRICH, and then I was off again. Biggest problem toward the end was unpacking "LUCKY ME," which seemed to take forever. Getting PATTY CAKE (great clue—44A: It involves hand-to-hand coordination) made getting into SE easy, despite my having no idea what CONEYS are (besides rabbits) (45D: Carnival items served with chili). Finished in the mid-8s, without even seeing the clue for PEELINGS (37D: Some kitchen detritus).

[She solves crosswords too. For real. "That's usually how I write a song. I usually have the hook or the chorus before anything else, and I don't know what it's about. And it's like doing a crossword puzzle for however long it takes, trying to figure out the theme of the puzzle.”]

Despite never having heard of CONEYS or "SHE SAID YES," and despite half-forgetting AYLA, I fared pretty well. No need to know or even be familiar with all the pop culture in a puzzle in order to take it down. If people had trouble with this one, I'm guessing it was in and around FIONA APPLE, or in and around PRIMAL URGE (which had a hard/ambiguous clue—5A: Drive to drink, e.g.). Lastly, big ups to the clue on DOOFUS (41D: Tool). I don't think of those words as precisely synonymous ("DOOFUS" implies a kind of affable idiocy, where "Tool" implies at least a soupçon of dickishness), but still, discovering that "Tool" was idiomatic made me laugh.

Check you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Birthplace of Natalie Portman / FRI 12-28-12 / Sabre ou pistolet / Failure of imagination per Graham Greene / Like bars that are often near horses / Hard to block jumper in hoops / Quaker makers / Critter with humanlike fingerprints / Brandy alternative / Pale Blue Dot author / Spitfire landing locale

Constructor: Ashton Anderson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: JEJUNE (1D: Dull) —

1. Not interesting; dull: "and there pour forth jejune words and useless empty phrases" (Anthony Trollope).
2. Lacking maturity; childish: surprised by their jejune responses to our problems.
3. Lacking in nutrition: a jejune diet.

[From Latin iēiūnus, meager, dry, fasting.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/jejune#ixzz2GJTWQEBw

• • •

I always forget the meaning of JEJUNE. Something about it suggests "morose" to me. Not sure why. Maybe I get there by way of an association with the immature, particularly teens or tweens, who can be mopey and moody and (another "m" word) morose. Or maybe there's another explanation. Or no explanation. Anyway, I did not find this puzzle morose *or* dull, even though it was a pretty FAST ONE (51A: Flimflam). High word count makes for a very fillable grid, and so there's very little to grouse about here, and lots to admire, or at least enjoy. As you know, I'm not a big fan of the expression JUST SAYIN' (1A: Opinion add-on), but I am a big fan of the idea of someone JUST SAYIN' "ENCHILADA"—you know, for no particular reason—so that juxtaposition redeems 1A in my head (and heart) (15A: Taqueria treat). I'm also enjoying the CLUCKing KOALA (16A: Critter with humanlike fingerprints) and the SCHNAPPS-induced PARANOIA (35D: Brandy alternative + 36D: Theme of "The Tell-Tale Heart") that this puzzle is conjuring up. Nothing mind-blowing here, but nothing icky either. All in all, a light tasty snack.


I got into the grid by way of a run of three-letter Downs—namely, THU, SIS, and ALA. Not that the positive effect of this run was immediate. I couldn't see any of the crossing Acrosses at first, and I even yanked SIS at some point, fearing the answer might be BRO. But I was 50% sure of YALIE (7D: Clinton, Bush or Cheney), largely because it gave me IDES, which I knew was right. Then NAME DROP dropped, with very little prompting (just the "E" in IDES, I think), and the whole NW took shape from there. Learned an interesting bit of trivia about [Natalie Portman's birthplace] and moved on. Nothing else in the grid gave me much trouble except 51D: Quaker makers? I had -EARS and still had no idea what was going on. Finally figured out FAST ONE, which gave me FEARS, which still left me shrugging ... for a few seconds. Then I got it. FEARS make you quake, so they make you (or whomever) into a "quaker." Pretty cute. Had a little more trouble in the NE with 31A: Square for a roll (PAT) (think butter). I wrote in DIE very quickly; then, when the Downs wouldn't work, a little, sane voice drifted up from some dungeon in my brain and informed me that a DIE is not a square but a cube. I blew this voice off at first, rationalizing that a DIE is "square" in a very loose, colloquial kind of way ... but in the end, the thing that is handled on the range was just much more likely to be a something-PAN than a somebody-DAN, so: bye bye DIE. The rest is history.


Bullets:

• 30A: Sabre ou pistolet (ARME) — short and uncommon French word (uncommon for non-French speakers to know, that is). Inferrable, though, to be sure. 
• 53A: "A failure of imagination," per Graham Greene (HATE) — Cool quote by an excellent writer. 
• 63A: Spitfire landing locale (AERODROME) — according to wikipedia, "all airports are AERODROMEs, but not all AERODROMEs are airports." Good to know!
• 64A: "Pale Blue Dot" author (SAGAN) — Oh, right. Earth. Title meant nothing to me, so the answer provided a nice "oh, right" moment.
• 62A: Old car with ignition trouble? (PINTO) — my favorite clue of the day. Made me laugh. I like a clue that forces me to imagine ugly cars bursting into flames. 
• 2D: Like bars that are often near horses (UNEVEN) — wow. Nice misdirect. Never saw the gymnastics angle coming. 
• 28D: Most Atari-playing kids (GEN X'ERS) — I played Intellivision, but ... yeah, this is pretty much accurate. 
• 38D: Hard-to-block jumper, in hoops (FADE-AWAY) — "in hoops" = not needed. I love this answer. Great bit of sports lingo. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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