Big name in DVD rental kiosks / MON 10-11-21 / Command to the helmsman from Jean-Luc Picard / German river to North Sea / Opening of an article, in journalism lingo

Constructor: Ben Pall

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: blank IT OR blank IT — four phrases that follow that pattern:

Theme answers:

• TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT (17A: "This is my final offer")
• LOVE IT OR HATE IT (25A: Like something that's polarizing)
• MOVE IT OR LOSE IT (43A: "Get out of the way!")
• MAKE IT OR BREAK IT (57A: Having no middle ground between success and failure)

Word of the Day: Muriel BOWSER (49A: D.C. mayor Muriel) —

Muriel Elizabeth Bowser (born August 2, 1972) is an American politician serving as the eighth mayor of the District of Columbia since 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously represented Ward 4 as a member of the Council of the District of Columbia from 2007 to 2015. She is the second female mayor of the District of Columbia after Sharon Pratt, and the first woman to be reelected to that position.

Elected to the Advisory Neighborhood Commission in 2004, Bowser was elected to the council in a special election in 2007, to succeed Adrian Fenty, who had been elected Mayor. She was reelected in 2008 and 2012 and ran for mayor in the 2014 election. She defeated incumbent mayor Vincent C. Gray in the Democratic primary and won the general election against three Independent and two minor party candidates with 55% of the vote. In 2018, she won a second term with 76% of the vote. (wikipedia)

• • •

Only vaguely noticed the theme as I was solving, just enough to have an OK idea of the phrase structure, which turned out to be the whole theme, so maybe my sense of the theme was more than vague after all. Anyway, there's not a lot there, and the four theme phrases are not equally strong, by any means. TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT and MOVE IT OR LOSE IT are unimpeachable, solid, just fine. LOVE IT OR HATE IT starts to skid a little, as it doesn't seem as snappy, and anyway, if I hear "LOVE IT OR..." my brain is completing that phrase with the admittedly horrid but nonetheless stronger ending, "... LEAVE IT," which, of course, you've already used in the "TAKE IT..." answer. But I'm happy to let LOVE IT OR HATE IT stand. It's MAKE IT OR BREAK IT that feels all kinds of off. There are "make-or-break" situations, but you would not use the phrase MAKE IT OR BREAK IT. No you would not. If you google "make or break," you see that it's an honest-to-god idiomatic adjectival phrase, defined by many different sites on the first page of hits, whereas if you google "MAKE IT OR BREAK IT," the only hits you get relate to a short-lived TV show about gymnastics from roughly a decade ago. So the TV show title is skewing the results massively, in terms of total hits, but *all* those hits refer to the TV show, not the phrase as it might be (but definitely is not) used in normal everyday conversation. You're better off ditching the wobbly MAKE IT OR BREAK IT, giving your grid mirror symmetry* rather than rotational symmetry, and making your fourth themer USE IT OR LOSE IT (a very very real thing that is conspicuous in its absence today).

This felt easy, though there were a lot of places where I hesitated or at least screwed up my face with a "really?" expression. I always hear / use "STOP *and* GO" traffic, so I didn't feel that great / confident writing in STOPGO (6D: Halting, as rush-hour traffic). There was a HAIR ___ and an ART ___, neither of which was instantly clear to me, and I have friends who work for RED HAT, so I knew the DVD kiosks weren't called that, but I went with something that sounded kinda like that, which is RED DOT. But the answer is RED BOX. Huh. I've seen those kiosks a ton, never really registered what it was that was RED. The kiosks are red, that's for sure. But BOX, sure, OK, I just used crosses to figure it out (45D: Big name in DVD rental kiosks). Would not have been able to answer Muriel BOWSER off the top of my head, but I have heard of her, so crosses got me there. Haven't watched network TV for years and years, so I'm only vaguely aware of who celebrity judges are on the various pointless awful talent shows that "American Idol" bequeathed to the world. I know Adam LEVINE as the lead singer of "Maroon 5." As a TV judge, not so much (10D: Adam ___, longtime panelist on "The Voice"). I also had -AL- at 39A: Lip service? and wrote in TALK. Seemed right. It wasn't (it's BALM). As you can see, that's a lot of rough patches for a Monday. But the rest of it was so easy that the rough patches hardly seemed to matter. Easy-peasy. I neither loved it nor hated it, though I did kinda hate MAKE IT OR BREAK IT. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*I realize now that mirror symmetry wouldn't work with 14s in a 15-wide grid—all themers would have to be centered, and you can't center 14s unless the grid itself is an even number, 14 or greater. Not sure you can get a 15, two 14s, and a 13 (USE IT OR LOSE IT) to work out symmetrically in a daily-sized grid. Not these ones, anyway. Nonetheless, USE IT OR LOSE IT remains a painful absence, and MAKE IT OR BREAK IT remains simply painful.

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Tumbler locale / THU 9-6-12 / Commandments 1958 hit / Hoffman who co-founded Yippies / Routine with one-handed freeze / I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer / Town in Hersey novel / 2001 Sean Penn film

Constructor: Ben Pall

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: JOINT ventures — there are four pairs of parallel, adjacent theme answers, and each pair shares a word in common. The sharing is represented in the grid by extra wide boxes, in each of which one letter does double duty for two theme answers.

Word of the Day: MARCO Island, Fla. (62A: ___ Island, Fla.) —

Marco Island is a city in Collier County, Florida, United States, located on an island by the same name in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Southwest Florida. It is a principal city of the Naples–Marco Island Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 16,413 at the2010 census. [!?!?!?!?!] (wikipedia)

• • •

A clever idea that played out very, very strangely. This was possibly the easiest theme that I've ever solved, for any day of the week, ever. Figured out the gimmick quickly at TRADE/CIVIL UNION, and all the other pairs fell almost instantly as soon as I reached them. The one exception was the ROTARY part of ROTARY JOINT. That didn't want to come. But the SW corner was done in a matter of seconds, and the SE didn't take much longer. The only thing making this puzzle "Medium" at all was some "hard" cluing (MARCO Island!? What the ... ????) that seemed to be concentrated, for me at any rate, in the NW. I struggled quite a bit with VEG, ELITE, A LIE (?), RUSE, LIEN, LOCK (39A: Tumbler locale), and BELLA (the last one is my bad—I've actually read "Twilight" and should've known that one). Flat-out guessed INSECT (24D: Six-footer?), which is what gave me the traction that allowed me eventually to put that corner away. By contrast, I went through every other corner like it was M or T.

Theme answers:

• 2D: Domestic relationship 3D: Protection for a mechanic, say => CIVIL/TRADE UNION
• 19A: Italian hangout 22A: There's one between the ulna and the radius => PIZZA/ROTARY JOINT
• 54A: Blink of an eye 54A: Nitpicked => SPLIT SECOND/HAIRS
• 33D: Splinter 33D: Routine with a one-handed freeze, say => BREAK APART/DANCE

The one thing puzzling me is the choice of shared words. I can see how UNION, JOINT, and SPLIT apply—the wide answer creates a UNION of two answers, it's a word that two answers hold in JOINT custody, the two answers SPLIT the word between them. But BREAK? That seems to refer to the words that follow BREAK, not BREAK itself. Like ... the word breaks in two after BREAK? Seems incongruous.

Note: part of the reason the puzzle felt (in the main) so easy for me was surely due to the fact that many of the proper nouns were flat-out gimmes, including ABBIE Hoffman (17A: Hoffman who co-founded the Yippies), ARANTXA Sanchez-Vicario, "I AM SAM" (32D: 2001 Sean Penn film), and EZRA POUND (16D: Poet who made radio broadcasts in support of Mussolini). I can see how not knowing even one of those could make things a lot harder. Then there's the crosswordesey proper nouns, which I also knew, or at least had seen before: stuff like ADANO (58A: Town in a Hersey novel) and BARI (38A: Italian city associated with the real-life Saint Nicholas).

Bullets:

• 40A: "The ___ Commandments" (1958 hit) ("TEEN") — I'm surprised I've never heard of this. I'm also surprised at how terrible that pun is. Wow ... wow ... this "song" is a phenomenal embarrassment to all involved. It's like young people saying (literally speaking, not singing) stuff Pat Boone would say to you.

• 64A: Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum ___" ("EST") — I just read this, or parts of it ... I wanna say it's quoted in Christopher Hitchens's "Mortality," which seems like the only place I could plausibly have encountered it in the past week.

• 1D: Fictional character who says "I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer" (AHAB) — well who else? Great line, that.
• 43D: Pursue some e-mail chicanery (PHISH) — Nice PHISH clue. I'll take email scam over jam band Any day of the week.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Balcony playwright / SUN 7-10-11 / Paolantonio of ESPN / 1862 invasion battle site / Mount for god Neptune / Fruit for lagomorphs

Constructor: Ben Pall and David Kahn

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "BODY ENHANCEMENT" — familiar phrases have (circled) letter added, creating wacky answers, clued "?"-style; circled letters are implanted in each familiar phrase, *and* spell out IMPLANTS, *and*, when connected, form the unmistakable profile of a (fake?) boob. Just connect the circles in a gently flowing line. It's there. I think. And yet ... it's a bit imprecise ...

[Update: I just got a tweet from ... someone who would know ... and she said: "@rexparker [...] There is no picture. I repeat, no picture." And yet I've drawn a very convincing picture with my circles. Interesting. Roughly half my friends do Not see it / buy it. Other half do. Best comment was from a well-known constructor: "It looks more like what you think it looks like than last week's looked like an ice cream soda."]


Word of the Day: GAUSS (61D: See 88-Across [10,000 61-Down]) —

The gauss, abbreviated as G, is the cgs unit of measurement of a magnetic field B (which is also known as the "magnetic flux density", or the "magnetic induction"), named after the German mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss. One gauss is defined as one maxwell per square centimeter; it equals 1×10⁻⁴ tesla.

• • •

Is the NYT trying to save ink by getting rid of constructor middle initials. Peter A. Collins was Peter Collins earlier this week, and now David J. Kahn is simply David Kahn? Odd. Anyway, Ben Pall is a teenager, if memory serves, so a puzzle about boobs is perhaps not so shocking. It's an odd theme, not very complicated or dense, but oddly effective. I didn't think much of it all until I read the circles and drew a naked lady on my puzzle (best "you have to draw on your damned puzzle to figure out what it's all about"-type puzzle Ever). That drawing almost makes up for the avalanche of unpleasant, OOXTEPLERNON*-pleasing short fill I had to HEC through. I mean hack. Hack through. HEC NOI UTILS SASES BAHS ERI DEMIT ITE REE DAH STER SNEE ISI OCTA, to name a gigantic handful. But a boob in profile is a boob in profile, so +1.

Theme answers:

• 22A: What a poltergeist investigator does? (COUNTS NOISES)
  
• 30A: What the tired waiter provided? (LIMP SERVICE) — that clue could've gone in a Completely different direction.
  
• 40A: Fruit for lagomorphs? (RABBIT PEARS)
  
• 56A: Disorderly poultry workers? (CHICKEN FLINGERS) — I've seen too much footage of poultry "farms" to give this the smile it probably deserves.
  
• 75A: Attempts to climb a mountain range? (TAKES ON THE CHAIN)
  
• 90A: Sad sports headline in a Providence paper? (BROWN BEATEN)
  
• 116A: Churchgoers, sometimes? (PSALM READERS)
  

Cluing felt slightly more difficult than normal, though this was offset by the relatively straightforward theme. Never spell ANTIETAM right (I always go "-TEM") (24A: 1862 invasion battle site). Thought "Mount" in 25A: Mount for the god Neptune (SEA HORSE) was referring to a mountain. I'm a casual but regular ESPN viewer, so SAL Paolantonio was a cinch ... except for the part where I wanted his name to be SAO (45D: Paolantonio of ESPN). Couldn't remember Ron KOVIC at all and had to rely almost entirely on crosses (58D: "Born on the Fourth of July" hero Ron). Went looking for all the usual playwrights with 71D: "The Balcony" playwright and found none. Don't think I knew Jean GENET was a playwright. Not sure I've ever read anything by him, now that I think of it. My favorite clue of the day was 74D: Stale Italian bread? (LIRA). Should've doubled down and gone with [Stale French bread?] for ECU.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*For definition of OOXTEPLERNON, see FAQ (above).

P.S. Anyone who wants to get creative and draw on his/her puzzle is heartily encouraged to send pictures to me at rexparker at mac dot com.

GALLERY:

Image 1: From Jim P. who adds, understatedly: "Doesn't quite work"

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Little Wire gangster / SUN 12-5-10 / Second-largest city in Kyrgyzstan / Polly of literature / Alternative to plata / Pedestal toppers

Constructor: Ben Pall

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "On a Roll" — theme answers are directions, which, properly followed, produce a six-sided die


Directions: CUT ON BOLD LINES / SHADE THE CIRCLES / FOLD ALONG DASHES / USE TAPE ON EDGES

Word of the Day: JEHU (110D: King in II Kings) —

Jehu (Hebrew: יֵהוּא, Modern Yehu Tiberian Yēhû ; "Yahweh is He") was a king of Israel. He was the son of Jehoshaphat, and grandson of Nimshi. // William F. Albright has dated his reign to 842-815 BC, while E. R. Thiele offers the dates 841-814 BC. The principal source for the events of his reign comes from 2 Kings 9-10. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well ... two things. No, three. 1. Puzzles with answers that are instructions = death. Can't stand them. Nothing less exciting than the prose of an instruction manual. 2. "Circles"? SHADE THE CIRCLES?? There are no "circles." There are "O"s. "O"s are letters. 3. So put off was I by this "do some crap to your puzzle after you've finished it"-type puzzle that I completely neglected to care what it was I was supposed to be making. As it's the holiday season, I just assumed that the instructions would have me make a box ... some kind of gift box. And the shaded "circles" would just be decorations on the wrapping paper? Only after I noticed the pattern of the "circles" did I realize I would be making a die. If I'd read the title of the puzzle, that also might have given me a clue.



No problems solving this one except (to some extent) in the OMAR (64A: ___ Little, "The Wire" gangster) / SEPOY (68A: ___ Rebellion of 1857-59) section. I misremembered SEPOY as SAPOY (it was a Word of the Day a while back), and I didn't know OMAR. Because of SAPOY problem, thought Greek god was ARES, not EROS (69D: Gree god whose name is one letter off from 118-Down).

Not much else to say about this one. Straight to bullets, I guess.

Bullets:

• 65A: Old Philadelphia stadium, informally, with "the" (VET) — Something I know without knowing why I know it. Veterans Memorial Stadium. Forget who used to play there. The Phillies? Yes, and the Eagles.
  
• 74A: Alternative to plata (ORO) — I botched this and went with RIO. I know "ORO y Plata" as the state motto of ... Montana? Yes. But why "alternative." ORO *y* plata. Gold *and* silver. Why should I have to choose?
  
• 112A: Some funerary ware (URNS) — "ware" makes it sound like you're going to eat some thing with / off of it.
  
• 91A: Plug's place (CORD) — had -ORD and still couldn't make sense of it. Could think only of hair plugs.
  
• 92A: It's between green and black (OOLONG) — the "between" has to do with how the amount of oxidation. Has anyone tried matcha before? I bought some today. It has to be whisked. I'm a little freaked out by it. But I thought I'd give it a try. One of my readers is a chef who is really into it.
  
• 125A: Pedestal toppers (BUSTS) — BUSTS of Pallas? Just above your chamber door? (speaking of Greek gods sometimes referred to as "Pallas," see APOLLO, 49D: Artemis' twin)
  
• 41D: Polly of literature, e.g. (AUNT) — Do not know AUNT Polly ("Tom Sawyer," it turns out). Could think only of Polly Anna ... Pollyanna.
  
• 53D: Rapper with the 1988 platinum album "Power" (ICE-T) — Featuring the single "I'm Your Pusher" (with extensive citation of Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman")

• 71D: Second-largest city in Kyrgyzstan (LJUB... just kidding, it's OSH) — Can't wait to hear how all my readers knew this and grew up there and what not. OSH ... if it's not followed by KOSH, I don't know it.
  
• 89D: Superstate in Orwell's "1984" (EURASIA) — wanted OCEANIA, which is... also right.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. pictures of a finished die and a .pdf of this puzzle are available at "Wordplay" (thanks to Patrick Merrell for the heads-up)

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Corrida charger — MONDAY, Nov. 23 2009 — Longtime N.F.L. coach nicknamed Papa Bear / Funnyman Brooks

Constructor: Ben Pall

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "The BEATLES" (38A: Group with the four circled members) — JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE, and RINGO's names appear in circled squares in four different answers

Word of the Day: DUNNO (52D: "Beats me!") — honestly ... I can't think of anything including here. Oh wait: HALAS (Longtime N.F.L. coach nicknamed Papa Bear) — George Stanley Halas, Sr. (February 2, 1895 – October 31, 1983), nicknamed "Papa Bear" and "Mr. Everything", was a player, coach, inventor, jurist, producer, philanthropist, philatelist, owner and pioneer in professional American football and the iconic longtime leader of the NFL's Chicago Bears.

-----

I did not like this puzzle at all. I also just found out (or heard a rumor, anyway) that this constructor is 14. So ... here's the deal. I'm keeping it short. I have said this before and I'll say it again: I hope Never to see this type of theme again, where the circled letters are non-consecutive and do not even truly appear in order (see, e.g., JOIN THE NAVY, where first "N" is ignored to wait on the second). Second, when they are your Central Answer, you should include their complete name: "THE BEATLES." The clue doesn't even indicate the "THE" is missing. I'm looking at multiple album covers, multiple articles and seeing "THE" before "BEATLES." Perhaps there are contexts (or even recordings) where the "THE" was not used, but it's not standard. I know it's weird to ask for a "THE," but for the sake of elegance and accuracy, I do. The first criticism is a deal-breaker for me, the second just a strong preference. But the grid is cleanly filled and at least interestingly shaped, both pluses for a Monday. So that's all in the way of criticism. Mr. Pall has my (virtual) handshake and my encouragement. If nothing else, this puzzle made me remember BEATLES (no "the"!) music, and that's not bad.

Theme answers:

• 3D: Head out to sea, say (JOin tHe Navy)
• 18A: Athlete trying to pass the bar? (Pole vAULter)
• 26D: Library area (ReadING roOm) — entire name appears as consecutive letters (anagrammed as "INGRO"), stretched across the two words in this phrase. If he could have done that for every answer ... wow.
• 59A: Toxic herbicide (aGEnt ORanGE)

Bonus theme answers:

• 9A: With 46-Down, 1969 album by the 38-Across ("Abbey / Road") — see, there's the "THE"; OK, I'm done with "THE" talk now, honestly. I love "ABBEY ROAD." Dave Zahniser, who writes for the L.A. Times now, I think, introduced me to this album my freshman year of college (18 years after it came out ... my parents weren't BEATLES fans so I had only a vague sense of their catalogue). Dave spent his childhood (late 70s/early 80s) obsessively listening to Top 40 radio in Nebraska, so I remember thinking "ABBEY ROAD" seemed an odd record for him to be foisting on me. But he had good taste.
• 16A: "We're more popular than Jesus now," famously (quote) — ... well, it sure is a QUOTE, I can't argue with that.
• 13D: "_____ Blues" (song on the White Album) ("Yer")
• 48A: "Gonna _____ with a little help from my friends" ("try")
• 47A: Sitarist Shankar (Ravi) — gave George Harrison sitar lessons
• 30A: "Nowhere _____" (1966 hit) ("Man")
  
• 14A: Yoko _____ (Ono) — HA ha. Good one. See ... this is why the circled letters aren't consecutive — All the BEATLES' names are broken up ... OK, kid, *now* I think you're a genius.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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