Bar offering with double triple varieties / WED 5-13-20 / Opposite of legato / High muckety-muck / Family name on Arrested Development

Constructor: Benjamin Kramer

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:30)

THEME: writing increments — last words of themers run from a mere PASSAGE all the way up to an entire OEUVRE:

Theme answers:

• SAFE PASSAGE (17A: Protection offered for a traveler in a dangerous area)
• SORORITY CHAPTER (24A: Group of Greek women)
• MACBOOK (36A: Member of the Apple family)
• FIBONACCI SERIES (50A: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.)
• HORS D'OEUVRE (59A: Canapé, e.g.)

Word of the Day: SYD (65A: Hip-hop artist whose name once ended with "tha Kyd") —

Sydney Loren Bennett (born April 23, 1992), known professionally as Syd (formerly Syd tha Kyd), is an American singer and songwriter from Los Angeles, California. She is a founding member of the band The Internet, and was a member of the alternative hip hop collective Odd Future. Bennett released her 2017 debut solo album Fin, followed by the EP Always Never Home. (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme is wobbly, as no one thinks of those words as a sequence; the units are arbitrary. And most books are not part of a "series." And OEUVRE is a pretty high-falutin' and overly broad place to end up. So it's off, but it's not any more off than a lot of NYTXW themes I've seen. That doesn't make it good, that just means that the theme, here, is not really the problem. Well, unless you're a math person, and then you are probably all knotted up over FIBONACCI SERIES, which several people are telling me is properly a "sequence," not a SERIES. I would not know. I'm just telling you what people are telling me. My main problem there (and a big one) was spelling FIBONACCI. How "B"s? How many "N"s? What is that second vowel?? Awful feeling to know the answer immediately and not know what letters to put where. But anyway, as I say, the theme is not this puzzle's primary problem. It shouldn't have passed muster, but it did.

What really really shouldn't have passed muster is the fill. Let's start there. I hit LLANO (2D: South American plain) in the NW and that is a red flag. A crosswordese red flag. I'm thinking "oh, this isn't going to go well." Sometimes the puzzle surprises you and rights the ship. Today was not one of those times. I quickly thereafter, and in the same small section, hit HAP, and the wheels came off. I didn't even know what to do with HAP. Had the "H" and ... nothing. And then to get hit with INSITU and ADIN and ERG and then ew, ew, ew TOE JAM!!? (10D: Foot gunk). Can't put common body parts in the grid but you can put TOE JAM in there, for ****'s sake!? It's ONAGAIN AONE crosswordese all over the place. It's -CIDE? OPEN-ENDER!!?!??! (12D: Question whose answer can go almost anywhere). -DER? -DER? Don't put "words" in the puzzle that you can't even imagine a plausible context for. Could you really truly not fix that and make it OPEN-ENDED? Were you so wed to, I don't know, VERDURE and AVERY, that you had to inflict OPEN-ENDER on us? Speaking of AVERY ... there are famous people named AVERY. I cannot tell you how laughable and dumb the very clue [Big name in name tags] is. There are no big names in name tags. That is not a thing. Big name in garbage bags, yes, big name in salsa, maybe, but name tags ... is too niche (and too sad, somehow) to qualify for "big name" status in a crossword. Also, Tex AVERY called and said ... well, first he said "What's up, Doc?" then he said "What the hell, man!"


But the worst, the very worst, the king worst thing about this puzzle is 61D: This puzzle's clues have two of them (EGS). Where do I start? Well, let's start with the fact that that is not a thing. Not a thing you can pluralize. Nope. You can't. And how do I know? Well, if it's a three-letter answer, *someone* for sure would've done it before, and, hey guess what?

Yup, EGS is unique (in the Shortz era) to this puzzle. In case you have no idea what EGS even means, it means that there is an "e.g." in one of the clues today (21A: LP, e.g.) ... and then there is another "e.g." in another clue (59A: Canapé, e.g.). Two "e.g."s => EGS. Yeah, I know. How you can't construct your way out of EGS, I have no idea. It's remedial. But what makes this answer the worst, from *my* perspective, was that because it was *so* bad, because it asked me to reflect back on the whole puzzle, and because it was in the *final* clue position, I assumed it was a revealer. It was the last thing I got, and at that point I didn't see the dumb theme sequence, and so I immediately went looking for how EGS contained the solution to ... whatever was going on here. Only it didn't. It did not contain that. So it's EGregiouS fill—really, truly distinguished on that front—and it (to my mind) was posing as a revealer. Bad and fraudulent. Abysmal.

More bad:

• 42D: Me, myself and I (EGOS) — no, that makes no sense. Sorry. Yeah, I see what you think you're doing, but uh uh
• 22A: Denim (JEAN) — as with the AVERY clue ... why? So many good JEANs out there. No one uses JEAN in the singular (who is not a ... tailor?) Seriously, Tex AVERY and JEAN Arthur are two of the most amazingly talented people who ever lived and I get name tags and denim!?!?! 
• 60D: Lennon's lady (ONO) — Oh ... no. Don't do this. Please don't do this. I know you like alliteration, but some things you have to let go. Wouldn't have balked too much at "wife," but "lady," yeesh. Ease up on your sexist '60s lingo, Daddy-O. She's famous in her own right.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. SISTERS and CHAPTER have the same number of letters, which I found out today, the hard way :(

P.P.S. [Phat] ... first, wow, just wow. Second, I really feel like if you're gonna go full-'90s slang here, the answer should be DA BOMB.

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Lion in the heavens / TUES 1-29-2019 / Paragon / Orange Muppet / German mark

Hi, all! It's Clare — back for another Tuesday. Hope everyone is staying warm and preparing for what very well could be record lows in much of the country this week! In D.C., I think we're supposed to avoid the worst of it, but I'm still hoping for a snow day, even though in law school they make you make up any classes you miss! I'm also prepping for the Super Bowl on Sunday, and, because I know you all to be smart people, I know you all hate the Patriots as much as I do. Go, Rams!

Constructor: Benjamin Kramer

Relative difficulty: On the easier side

THEME: VOLLEYBALL (57A: Sport hinted at by the ends of 17-, 24-, 36- and 47-Across) — Phrases that end in words that all relate to volleyball

Theme answers:

• LIP SERVICE (17A: Empty talk not backed by action)
• COLBERT BUMP (24A: Boost after appearing on a certain old Comedy Central show)
• TELEVISION SET (36A: Product from RGA or LG)
• GOLDEN SPIKE (47A: Symbol of the completion of the Transcontinental railroad)

Word of the Day: Tatooine (36D: Luke Skywalker's home planet)

Tatooine is a fictional desert planet that appears in the Star Wars space opera franchise. It is beige-coloured and is depicted as a remote, desolate world orbiting a pair of binary stars and inhabited by human settlers and a variety of other life forms. The planet was first seen in the original 1977 film Star Wars and has to date featured in a total of six Star Wars theatrical films. (Wikipedia)

• • •

I thought this puzzle was just meh. While I liked the idea behind the theme, the execution wasn't overly inspiring. VOLLEYBALL wasn't clued very cleverly, and I found it was pretty easy to get the theme description and the ends of the theme answers once I got SPIKE and then SET at the ends of 47A and 36A, respectively. Even just getting the "b" in VOLLEYBALL made me realize the word would most likely end in "ball." It was pretty clever, though, how the themes work in sequence — you have a SERVICE, then the BUMP, SET, and SPIKE. My favorite theme answer was COLBERT BUMP — it's something I haven't seen clued before, and I do always love Stephen Colbert. I would've thought that more of a bump would have come from Jon Stewart's Daily Show, but what do I know?

A lot of the fill was just pretty bland, I thought. Especially the three-letter answers, like: BTW; ITS; BAG; BYE; ODE; BED. Those are all so basic and, frankly, boring. DEER MEAT (12D: Venison) was also dull. And, AS TO (35D: Apropos of) should just be banned from crosswords, in my opinion. (Am I starting to sound like Rex yet?) LEI (55A: Gift for which you might reply "Mahalo") was at least clued a little bit differently this time, which I liked.

There was a bit of international flavor in this puzzle, which was fun. There was QUINOA and OUZO crossing each other in the northwest corner. Then there were COUPE, UMLAUT, and PAELLA all in the southeast corner. Not to mention DEGAULLE (11D: Airport named for a president) and, I suppose TATOOINE, if you count an alien planet as being international.

I found MARLO and ADLER crossing each other to be kind of weird. I've heard of ADLER (15A: Psychologist Alfred), but I've never seen The Wire, so MARLO (5D: Kingpin on "The Wire") took some guessing on my part. The Wire is that show that's always at the top of my "to-watch" list, but I always seem to pass it over for something a little lighter and, more likely than not, for something that I've already seen a million times before. I also struggled in a few random places because I put in the wrong words originally: Had "thin" instead of SLIM for 21A: Slender, which hurt me some at the top; had "blast" instead of BLARE for 22A: Play loudly, as music; and wanted "rew" instead of REC for 8D: DVR button. It took me a bit to get airports like Kennedy and Reagan out of my head for 11D: DEGAULLE and realize that the puzzle wasn't referring to an American airport.

Misc.:

• MACRO: Please don't remind me of my introduction to economics days from freshman year of college. Those were dark times.
• I'm not sure I really need slaves in a puzzles with ENSLAVED (37D: Forced into bondage)
• 54A: Work without __ A NET threw me for a bit of a loop. I kept trying to tie this into current events and really wanted to somehow make this about working without "pay."
• QUINOA — I've never jumped on this trend and don't really have a taste for it, but other people seem to love it... (like, ahem, my sister, who keeps trying to make me like it)
• OUZO — Legit never heard of this before — maybe my tastes just aren't refined enough yet. We certainly weren't drinking OUZO in college.

Signed, Clare Carroll, brrrraving the cold in DC

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Crumbly cheese similar to feta / WED 12-13-17 / Iron compound found in steel / Unconventional soccer kick / Storied gift bearers

Constructor: Benjamin Kramer

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: MAKE AN ENTRANCE (55A: Arrive with fanfare ... or what the circled squares do?) — circled squares are verbs that at least vaguely describe what someone "making an entrance" ... does*:

***

*UPDATE (2:24pm EST): I did not understand this theme at all. Apparently you're supposed to understand "ENTRANCE" as a verb, and all the circled words are synonyms of "ENTRANCE," despite the fact that "MAKE AN enTRANCE (v.)" makes no ****ing sense at all; anyway, the write-up below was written when I did not fully grasp the theme, though most of what I have to say still stands...

***

Theme answers:

• FRENCH ANTILLES (18A: Island group near Dominica)
• DRIVE THROUGH (31A: Option at many a fast-food restaurant)
• SIDE LIGHTING (40A: Producer of horizontal shadows) 

Word of the Day: TOE POKE (60A: Unconventional soccer kick) —

toe-poke (plural toe-pokes)

1. (soccer) A hard kick to a football with the toe end of the boot. (wiktionary)

• • •

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY, 17, 2018: A MESSAGE FOR THOSE SOLVING IN SYNDICATION (i.e. the majority of my readers):

Hello, from the present (that is, today; actual today, and not one-week-ago or five-weeks-ago-on-weekdays today, like usual)! It's January, which means it's time for my once-a-year, week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. To be clear—there are no major expenses involved in writing a blog. There's just my time. A lot of it. Every day (well, usually night), solving, writing, hunting down pictures and videos of various degrees of relevance and usefulness, chatting with folks and answering puzzle questions via email and social media, gathering and disseminating crossword-related information of various kinds, etc. It's a second job. My making this pitch means I'm all in for another calendar year of puzzle revelry with all y'all. I'm excited about the year. I've got my own crossword construction project I want to get off the ground, and I'm hoping to take a more active role (along with some crossword friends) in recruiting and mentoring new and aspiring constructors. But the bulk of my work will be the same as ever: I'll be here with a new post every single day. Solve, write, repeat. Despite my occasional (or, OK, maybe frequent) consternation with the State of The Puzzle, the crossword community continues to give me great joy, and I'm proud to run an independent, ad-free blog where people can find someone to commiserate with, someone to yell at, or, you know, someone who'll just give them the damn answers. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address:

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

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions (I. Love. Snail mail!) will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. This year's cards are "Women In Science"—Rachel Ignotofsky's beautiful cartoon portraits of women scientists from antiquity to the present. I've heard of a few of these women (mostly crossword names like ADA Lovelace, Marie CURIE, MAE Jemison) but most of these names are entirely new to me, so I'm excited to learn about them as I write my thank-you notes. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD.  As ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support.

Now on to the puzzle!

• • •

It's hard for me to pay any attention to this truly bad puzzle, both because it is truly bad and because Make Alabama Great For Once! Woo hoo! But back to the puzzle, yikes. Let me count the ways. First, the grid is inexplicable. Why is the word count so low? 70 words!?! The fill is sooo bad, why not at least try to make it smoother by taking the tremendous load off those NW / SE corners?! Or just build an entirely different grid. Honestly, this isn't just baffling, it's infuriating. Even if you thought this theme was good (it's not, more on that in a sec), *tell this constructor how to make a more viable grid*! Do your damn job, ugh. This is so disturbing, professionally. Best puzzle in the world? Grrrrr. So FERRITE (16A: Iron compound found in steel) and SIRENE (3D: Crumbly cheese similar to feta) and TOEPOKE—am I supposed to be *happy* with that? And -OTIC, ffs!?!?! It's mind-boggling. Almost, but not quite, as mind-boggling as cluing ORE as [Old Swedish coins]. Is it December April Fools Day? I have no idea what's happening.

[BREAD] [7D: "Cabbage"]

The theme is stupid because MAKE AN ENTRANCE means none of the things in the circled squares, and those circles do not actually MAKE AN ENTRANCE—i.e. they are a fundamental part of the words that they are in. It would've been .... something? ... if you had actually *added* those circled squares into a pre-existing word or phrase and somehow gotten another (wacky?) word or phrase. Then "entrance" would've made at least *some* sense. But they are just *found* in the answers they appear in. They don't "enter." Again, how is no one noticing this? I really dig NFLLOGO as an answer (10D: Imagine on the middle of a Super Bowl field)—it's insane-looking. The rest: shred.

OK, back to enjoying a rare night of hopefulness. Bye all.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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