1965 film starring George Segal that was set in a P.O.W. camp / WED 4-10-24 / Traditional crustless fruit pie / First U.S. Secretary of War / Popular Italian entree, informally / Al Jolson's actual first name / Word derived from the Arabic for "lot" / Semiotician's interest

Constructor: Bill Thompson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: broken spells — words meaning (roughly) "spell" are "broken" inside longer answers (i.e. they are split into two parts that then bookend the longer answers):

Theme answers:

• CHARM (39A: Spell that's "broken" by 17-Across)
• CHICKEN PARM (17A: Popular Italian entree, informally)
• HEX (11A: Spell that's "broken" by 23-Across)
• HENRY KNOX (23A: First U.S. Secretary of War)
• POX (65A: Spell that's "broken" by 49-Across)
• PENCIL BOX (49A: Container in a kid's backpack)
• CURSE (37A: Spell that's "broken" by 59-Across)
• CRASH COURSE (59A: Intensive study program)

Word of the Day: KING RAT (42D: 1965 film starring George Segal that was set in a P.O.W. camp) —

King Rat is a 1965 American war film written and directed by Bryan Forbes and starring George Segal and James Fox. They play Corporal King and Flight Lieutenant Marlowe, respectively, two World War IIprisoners of war in a squalid camp in Singapore. Among the supporting cast are John Mills and Tom Courtenay. The film was adapted from James Clavell's novel King Rat (1962), which in turn is partly based on Clavell's experiences as a POW at Changi Prison in Singapore in the latter part of the Second World War. [...] Forbes was unhappy with what he felt was a misleading ad campaign. He said the film "made little or no impression in America, although it was given long and impressive reviews by the top-line critics — but I remain convinced that whatever chance it had was thrown away by run-of-the-mill and basically dishonest exploitation. Now it has become a cult film on the university campuses, but in 1965 when it was first shown Vietnam was still a clean war, and the American mass audiences were unlikely to take kindly to such a cynical view of human behaviour. It had no happy or heroic ending and said some unpopular things about the American dream. The real audience, the audience for whom it was intended, stayed away." (wikipedia) (my emphasis + extreme LOL)

• • •

I admire this puzzle's ambition. I don't think the theme quite works, in that the spells are technically "broken" by gibberish ("ICKENPA," "NRYKNO," etc.), not the whole of the longer theme answers, but insofar as those answers feature one part of the "spell" up front and the other part in the back, I suppose the clue phrasing is close enough. Eight answers makes for a very dense theme, and the grid definitely shows the strain in places (particularly the areas where the theme answers are closest together), but overall I thought the theme was handled reasonably well. The more fixed answers you have to begin with, the harder it is to fill your grid cleanly, and *eight* is a lot of fixed answers. But you handle those short "curses" by getting them as far out of the way as possible (HEX and POX tucked way back in highly sequestered corners, and CURSE and CHARM parked off to the side), and then you've got some room to lay down the long stuff. There's still theme material all over the place, but as a constructor you've got a little room to breathe. The grid we end up getting could be cleaner, but it's OK. You make the compromises you gotta make to pull off your theme, and hopefully those compromises aren't fatal. Today, I don't think they are. The execution may be only so-so, but the theme concept is well above average, so I'll take it. More credits than debits on the ledger today.

The theme answers were not forced, which is one of the things I liked about the puzzle. I don't really know who HENRY KNOX is (to be perfectly honest), but he's obviously an important historical figure, and his name rings a bell at least, and that's fine. The other themers are universally familiar things, though I do have a question about PENCIL BOX, which is "Whose child?" and (follow-up) "What year is it?" Do kids' backpacks still contain PENCIL BOXes!?!? If so, I couldn't be more thrilled. I have several pencil boxes in my desk drawer here, I love them. Pencils rule. But I thought "kids" were moving away from writing by hand generally, and even if they are still writing by hand, the PENCIL BOX (as a kids' school accessory) seems old-fashioned. Maybe it's an art thing? Are they colored pencils? Anyway, that answer felt slightly dated. Not INK WELL dated, but ... about halfway to INKWELL. I'm seeing kid-branded PENCIL BOXes online, so obviously kids still use them. I just wonder about what percentage actually have them in their backpacks on any given day. Also, I wonder how many tuxedo cats are named OREO (53D: Popular name for a tuxedo cat). Citation needed.

Things got rough for me right where the first two longer themers are closest to each other. Thematic density leads to ... trouble. The primary problem is ... isn't it APPLE BROWN BETTY???? Yes, yes it most certainly is. In fact, "Brown Betty" is the primary name of the dessert and "Apple"is the modifier, so you'd be on way way way more solid ground with BROWN BETTY than APPLE BETTY (?!!?) (21A: Traditional crustless fruit pie). For a brief moment there I thought there was going to be a rebus of some kind, a color rebus (BROWN) or a woman's name rebus (BETTY), or maybe not a rebus, but some other tricky thing going on where BROWN or BETTY was missing or hidden in some way. So APPLE BETTY was a major ear-thud. The crosses there were hard, or ugly, or ugly-hard. AWALK, awful, EXE, ugly, DARENOT, archaic, PAPPY, big spelling yikes, NPRTOTE, ugh, put in TOTEBAG without hesitating. There are other ugly places that were less difficult to work out, like the plural EMMAS (?) crossing the eye-crossingly dull ADRATES, but I was never so stuck (or annoyed) as I was in that APPLE BETTY thicket. The only other thing that truly bothered me about this puzzle came in the HOT MAGENTA thicket, which wasn't really a thicket, but did contain the puzzle's one inexcusably arcane answer: KING RAT. I love George Segal. I have seen many George Segal movies, not just the famous ones like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but deeper cuts like California Split (Elliot Gould!) and The Quiller Memorandum and Fun With Dick and Jane (Jane Fonda!) and Carbon Copy (Denzel Washington!). But KING RAT!? I watch movies and read about movies so I'm sure the title has crossed my field of vision at some point, but hoo boy, why do you drop an obscure movie title like that right in the middle of your Wednesday puzzle? Baffling. When the director himself says the movie "made little or no impression in America," and the movie in question is now 60 years old ... it's possible you wanna move in another direction with your crossword answer.

Notes:

• 19A: Al Jolson's actual first name (ASA) — Al Jolson? Really? This is what's called "underlining your bad fill." I don't know why you do this.
• 42A: Actress Palmer with a reduplicative name (KEKE) — Very much appreciate the "reduplicative name" part, because, while this actress has had a long career in TV and movies, they aren't TV or movies that I've seen (for the most part). 

• 64A: Word derived from the Arabic for "lot" (KISMET) — sincerely, this is the first answer I wanted for the George Segal movie, when I had just the "K" in place (it didn't fit, obviously, but it's the first thing that popped into my head). So weird to have it actually appear in the puzzle!

• 12D: Where runway 9 is always oriented at an airport (EAST) — ??? for takeoff or landing? If it's "oriented" EAST, is it not also oriented WEST? I'm so confused. I guess I don't know what "oriented" means here. Here's a guide to runway numbering. It says it's "simple" but my eyes quickly glazed over. Something about magnetic north ...
• 4D: Game piece? (TIC) — as in, "a piece of TIC-Tac-Toe." Or a piece of STICKBALL, whichever.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Tenor Carreras / TUE 8-17-15 / Kyle Terminator hero / Slave woman in Uncle Tom's Cabin / Rapper born Shawn Corey Carter / First computer company to run ad during Super Bowl

Constructor: Bill Thompson

Relative difficulty: took me longer than a typical Tuesday

THEME: MIDDLE EAST —letter string "EAST" appears in the dead middle of five answers:

Theme answers:

• GONE ASTRAY (17A: *Left the flock)
• STAGE A STRIKE (23A: *Walk out)
• YEASTY (37A: *Like baking dough)
• FEASTS (39A: *Sumptuous spreads)
• ADELE ASTAIRE (48A: *Half of a brother/sister dance duo)

Word of the Day: YAWP (1A: Complain loudly) —

noun

noun: yawp; plural noun: yawps

1. 1.

   a harsh or hoarse cry or yelp.

   • North American

     foolish or noisy talk.

verb

verb: yawp; 3rd person present: yawps; past tense: yawped; past participle: yawped; gerund or present participle: yawping

1. 1.

   shout or exclaim hoarsely.

   • North American

     talk foolishly or noisily.

(google)

• • •

The quaintness continues. I feel like this onslaught of bygone-ish-style crosswords must be meant to enure you, to steel you, to make you resigned to The Way Puzzles Are, by gum! You are getting sleepy, Sleepy! ESPNSTATPATESTEREESE! Harrumph. Again, there was much sighing-while-solving. The theme has in its favor a certain literalness. EAST really is right in the damn MIDDLE of those phrases and words. I also have to give props to the truly high-end Scrabble-f*$%ing there in the west. Squeezed the "J" and "Z" in there near the "K" and got out with no bad fill to speak of (I don't consider OREO bad—common, but not bad). Also, I think I said "that's pretty good" at PERSEUS and ... that might be it, actually. ISEEDEESETASIKEA! PAPASALETA! I'll stop doing that now. After PERSEUS and FOUL TIP, it's mostly just archaisms and foreignisms and over-over-familiar short fill, except when it's not over-over-familiar and instead is straining only half-successfully for some kind of zing (see the NW corner). YAWP WANG APGAR sounds like a supervillain.



I know SUGARPEAs as "sugar snap peas" (10D: Legume with an edible pod). I think. Here's a scene that just took place in my house. Dialogue is recorded here verbatim.

Me, to my wife, who it turns out was almost asleep until I shouted at her from my home office. "Honey, are you asleep?"

"What? ... yes."

"Oh."

"What is it?"

"I have a vegetable*-related question."

"Go ahead."

"Is a sugar snap pea a thing?"

"Yes."

"Then what's a SUGAR PEA?"

".......... never heard of it." 

End scene. Some of the rest of this fill also felt wonky, like SAYEST (which I wanted to be SAYETH) and ATAHALT (which I wanted to be AT AN END). [Everything one can do] seems overly broad for SKILL SET, which always (to me) implies skills *in a specific arena* [looks at puzzle to see if ARENA is in there ... let's see ... ATARI ... ALETA ... nope, surprisingly, this grid is ARENA-free!]. STAGE A STRIKE feels pretty forced. The other themers are fine. Still, this is yet another in a string of puzzles that would put any novice and/or under-60 solver right off. Where is the balance? The quality control? All the progress that the NYT crossword made in the '90s—breaking with a fuddy-duddy, stuck-in-the-past tradition—feels like it's slowly being walked back. A retreat into past standards as opposed to a bold adaptation to the world as it is. Things are in danger of getting cozy, is what I'm saying. Staid and cozy.


This Slate article with the unsubtle title "The New York Times 'Mini' Crossword Is an Utter Disgrace to the NYT Crossword Brand" came out yesterday, and while I don't agree with the basic premise (and never even solved a "Mini" until today), I was happy to be quoted at length, from last Tuesday's blog, discussing the very real rut that the non-'Mini' / grown-up / actual NYT crossword is in.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*[I know, it's really "legume," but I said "vegetable" and I'm nothing if not faithful to the historical record ...]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Band with 2007 #1 album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank / TUE 12-10-13 / 1978 Bob Fosse musical / Annual Vicksburg pageant / Aperitif with white wine

Constructor: Bill Thompson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: M AND M (55A: Plain or peanut candy) — not sure why this isn't clued as a revealer, because I *think* that's what it was probably designed to be. Theme answers are two-word phrases, where both words start with M—vowel progression takes you from MA- MA- phrase up top to MU- MU- phrase down low:

Theme answers:

• 17A: Pen with a fat felt tip (MAGIC MARKER)
• 31A: Aboriginal healer (MEDICINE MEN)
• 36A: Annual Vicksburg pageant (MISS MISSISSIPPI)
• 45A: Band with the 2007 #1 album "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank" (MODEST MOUSE)
• 59A: Pooh-bah (MUCKETY-MUCK)

Word of the Day: MODEST MOUSE —

Modest Mouse is an American indie rock band formed in 1993 in Issaquah, Washington, by singer/lyricist/guitaristIsaac Brock, drummer Jeremiah Green, and bassist Eric Judy. Since their 1996 debut album, This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, their lineup has centered around Brock, Green, and Judy. Guitarist Johnny Marr(formerly of The Smiths) joined the band in May 2006, along with percussionist Joe Plummer (formerly of The Black Heart Procession) and multi-instrumentalist Tom Peloso, to work on the album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. Guitarist Jim Fairchild joined the band in February 2009. Their name is derived from a passage from the Virginia Woolf story "The Mark on the Wall" which reads, "I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises." (wikipedia)

• • •

[DEAR SYNDICATED SOLVERS (if you're reading this on Sunday, Jan. 12, that's you). Please listen to the following pitch. Also, feel free to write me with any comments or concerns. You're well over half my total audience, and yet I hardly ever hear from you. Thanks!]

THE PITCH — [You can scroll down if you've already read it]

So … it's January, the time when I make my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to this blog. Actually, I didn't make the pitch last year. I used last January to raise money for other causes instead (and it was my pleasure to do so). But this year I once again ask you (especially you regular readers) to consider what the blog is worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. As I've said before, as much as I love writing this blog, I treat it like a job— answers and commentary go up every day, without fail, usually at 12:01 am, but certainly by 9am at the very latest. This has been true for seven straight years. I know that some people are opposed to paying for what they can get for free, and still others really don't have money to spare. Both kinds of people are welcome to continue reading my blog, with my compliments. It will always be free. I have no interest in cordoning it off, nor do I have any interest in taking advertising. I value my independence too much. Anyway, if you are so moved, there is a Paypal button in the sidebar, and a mailing address here:

Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905

Maybe I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users. Let's see...

I think that worked. Cool.

For people who send me actual honest-to-god (i.e. "snail") mail, I have this great new set of thank-you postcards that I'm hoping to burn through: "the iconic Pantone color chip design in 100 brilliant colors." Who will be the lucky person who gets … let's see … Pantone 19-2025: Red Plum? Ooooh, elegant. It could be you. Or give via PayPal and get a thank-you email. That's cool too. Anyway, whatever you choose to do, I remain most grateful for your readership. Now on to the puzzle …

Update: I got my first snail-mail donation —look at the cuteness:

• • •

Many of you will never have heard of MODEST MOUSE. You are forgiven.

The theme is pretty simple but at least we get some interesting answers out of it. I'm not sure how legit it is to have "MUCK" be your second "MU-" "word," but I have a hard time disliking MUCKETY-MUCK, wherever and whyever it might appear. MISS MISSISSIPPI is not really much of a thing, any more than MISS ANY STATE is. Also MUCKETY-MUCK and MISS MISSISSIPPI don't just do a vowel progression—their second words basically double-up on the first *four* letters of the initial word. So it's simple and loose. But not unenjoyable. Fill is gunky in places (CAN OF, MCII, etc.), but no more than is usual for the NYT these days. The banks of 6s in the NE and SW are pretty well done. I can't tell if M AND M was rejected as a revealer, or if it's trying to be all … subtle and low-key and cool over there in the sort-of-corner. [Update: I am told that Will Shortz called the MANDM answer "a little distracting" because it looks like a revealer but doesn't fully express the puzzle's theme (specifically, the vowel progression part). But if something's "distracting," then why not change it? Ditch it. Easy fix. Change two letters. Any of you can do it. No sweat. I guess the answer wasn't "distracting" enough to merit minimal editorial intervention.]


Difficulty level felt normal. Took me forever to get BLOUSE, and yet I spelled MUCKETY-MUCK right on the first go. Had TASE instead of LASE (29A: Zap with light), SURE instead of SOME (39D: Certain), TEASE instead of TEMPT (54D: Entice), and (best/worst of all) SPHERE instead of "UP HERE!" (48D: Higher calling?). There are SPHEREs in the heavens. They are higher … than you? And you "call" them SPHERES? I don't know. Felt plausible. Perhaps because I had -PHERE and I thought "S" was the only that made a word (and, technically, I was right about that—it's just that the answer was two words).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Former Saudi king / TUE 10-16-12 / Alcindor : Abdul-Jabbar :: Clay : ___ / Gucci rival / Mural surface / Teatro ___ Scala / Location of Mount McKinley / Buddy of "The Beverly Hillbillies" / Weelwright's tool / ___ the Lip (major-league nickname)

Constructor: Bill Thompson

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Interior designer — names of fashion designers are hidden inside phrases that could potentially be said by people

Word of the Day: GESSO (Mural surface) —

Gesso (Italian:ˈdʒɛsːo "chalk," from the Latin gypsum, from the Greek γύψος) is a white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed withchalk, gypsum, pigment, or any combination of these. It is used in artwork as a preparation for any number of substrates such as wood panels, canvas and sculpture as a base for paint and other materials that are applied over it.

• • •

If the first four Across answers in your puzzle are DORMI, FENDI, ADZ, and EPEES, try again. As a rule of thumb, if your 1-Across is a New York Times crossword debut, try to make it something fun and current, or at least try to avoid it being a partial from a lesser-known Verdi duet. Lame words are fine when they serve as support for stellar banner entries, but ISAO AOKI (whose AO-AO train is admittedly pretty fun) and FARM ANIMALS aren't quite shiny enough to allow for DORMI, EPEES, DEFANG, GESSO, and NUL to all get a free pass. And the ADZ–ZAG–RIA has no excuse in a 3x3 block that fillable.  I was convinced the reason for all this was a pangram (unnecessary Z, showy Q and J) until I saw that there was no X in sight, or W for that matter.

How was my Rex Parker impression? Pretty good, right? I bet you didn't even realize it wasn't the king himself until I told you. But I'm actually Milo, or, as my friends call me, "Milo."  I filled in once over the summer but had previously only shown up in guest star roles. Today, Rex is "behind on [his] work" so he asked a college student to fill in at the peak of midterm season. Rex has yet to learn that "behind on work" is a way of life—I have a Math midterm and a Culture & Belief midterm on Wednesday, a French project due tomorrow, a Gov project due today, a Music project due yesterday, and a Math problem set due last Wednesday (oops). In any case, this form of forced procrastination is greatly appreciated.

So, the puzzle. It's a puzzle. Tuesdays tend to be pretty hit-or-miss, with a batting average consistent with the MLB analogy. (Unless we're talking about Raúl Ibañez's post-season batting average this year. That guy's insane. P.S. The Yankees are gonna rally, just you watch.) There's no prototypical Tuesday puzzle, just Monday themes that turned out too messy to be clued at a Monday level and Wednesday themes that turned out so smooth and nice that they got pulled into the Tuesday slot. Since it's a lot easier to fill a grid poorly than well, we get the former a lot more than the latter. This grid falls decidedly into the former category.

Let's start with the theme.

Theme answers:

• FARM ANIMALS (17A: Cows, pigs and chickens) — contains ARMANI, definitely the seed entry
• ALASKA RANGE (24A: Location of Mount McKinley) — contains KARAN, which I'm not familiar with; I (post-solve) Googled SKARAN and ASKARA optimistically first to no avail
• RADIO REPORT (54A: A.M. or F.M. news dispatch) — contains DIOR
• ANKLE INJURY (63A: Sprain, say) — contains KLEIN
• FASHION DESIGNER (38A: One can be found in each of the answers to 17-, 24-, 54-, and 63-Across)

For starters, why the snappy 8 / 8 revealer INTERIOR / DESIGNER wasn't used is beyond me. When I saw the mundane central answer, I went to onelook.com and searched for phrases with "designer" in them, and the perfect answer jumped right out at me. The constructor could have taken the time to do the same so that I wouldn't have to.

Next, if your theme answers are real things (rather than wacky things) then make them fun real things. ANIMAL FARM is a fun theme answer. (Yes, I know it doesn't fit the theme. It's an example.  If your theme doesn't give you good answers, throw it out.) FARM ANIMALS is a little mundane. SARAH PALIN'S ALASKA (if it weren't so long) would be a great theme answer. ALASKA RANGE is a thing, yeah, but that's all it is. RADIO REPORTs happen. One could get an INJURY on one's ANKLE. These are all things. Moving on.

But I'm being a bummer. Blame it on lack of sleep. There was fun stuff in this puzzle. I love BABY GAP, and how often do you get to see both faces of ISAO and AOKI at the same time? And some stuff that I didn't appreciate was probably appreciated by others, as is expected of someone whose mother qualifies for the youngest age category of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. FAISAL is just some dude's name for me (his death having transpired in the year 20 B.M.) and I tend to skip to the next clue as soon as I see the word "Verdi," seeing as the only opera I know much about is R. Kelly's hip-hopera.

(Warning: foul language, offensive plot twist, terrible music and writing)

So anyway. This was a puzzle.

Bullets:

• It's 12:52am
• I have a lot of work to do
• You were probably going to skim the bullets anyway
• Let's call it a post

Signed, Milo Beckman, acting regent of CrossWorld

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Ceremonial military outfit / THU 10-4-12 / Character with tagline Booyakasha / Image on ET poster / WW II general nicknamed bombs away / Director of Witches 1990 / Mobutu Seko African despot / Feature of Mike Wazowski in Monsters Inc / Kato Kaelin portrayer on SNL

Constructor: Bill Thompson

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: ECLIPSE — puzzle note: "The seven circled letters reading from top to bottom describe an event occurring at four locations in this puzzle." Four black squares are "eclipsing" the word SUN (in the Across answer) and MOON (in the Down).

Word of the Day: LEMAY (65A: W.W. II general nicknamed "Bombs Away") —

Curtis Emerson LeMay (November 15, 1906 – October 1, 1990) was a general in the United States Air Force and the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate George Wallace in 1968.

He is credited with designing and implementing an effective, but also controversial, systematic strategic bombing campaign in the Pacific theater of World War II. During the war, he was known for planning and executing a massive bombing campaign against cities in Japan and a crippling minelaying campaign of Japan's internal waterways. After the war, he headed the Berlin airlift, then reorganized theStrategic Air Command (SAC) into an effective instrument of nuclear war. (wikipedia)

• • •

Strange puzzle. Felt hard, though I finished in fairly normal time. I picked up the theme eventually (I didn't read the note, but noticed that the circled squares I had in place appeared to be spelling out ECLIPSE), but finished it without really seeing the full extent of what was happening. I know MOONs and SUNs were involved, but I didn't realize until after I was done that the black (eclipsed) squares were blocking, in each instance, both a SUN and a MOON. This is a very cool idea. The execution is slightly odd, mainly because the blocked MOON is always the full word "MOON" whereas the blocked SUN is always part of a two-word phrase (this confused me early on; I thought the "eclipse" square actually represented the word "SUNDER" at one point, because of the way the theme answers were sundered). Now, the different treatments of SUN and MOON are not surprising. Hard if not impossible to hide moon inside another phrase, let alone break it across a two-word phrase (PRIMO ONESIES? "I'M OONA!"?). So I don't really see a problem with the disparity. I see some not-so-great fill, but nothing terribly out of the ordinary, and considering the fairly demanding theme, I can overlook a "CERO" or "IAMA" here and there.


Theme answers:

• DRES [sun] IFORM / [moon] SHOT
• CHOCOLATE [sun] DAE / "PAPER [moon]"
• GOE [sun] DERGROUND / [moon] LIGHT
• LEAVE [sun] SAID / FULL [moon]

Didn't get bogged down anywhere in particular. I have to believe that someone somewhere is going to get crushed by the MRAZ / ROEG intersection (I want to say "R" is the only reasonable guess, but if you don't know Jason MRAZ, that name seems impossible) (53D: Singer Jason / 60A: Director of "The Witches," 1990). And if you don't know MR. MIYAGI (53A: "Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything" speaker), well you are well and truly ****ed in that corner. That's a lot of pop culture names in one little section. Never saw "Monsters, Inc." but somehow could picture the character in question, so ONE EYE was remarkably easy (47D: Feature of Mike Wazowski in "Monsters, Inc."). Got a couple of theme answers without realizing they were theme answers. "SHOT? ... I guess ... CHOCOLATE? ... does Dairy Queen just serve CHOCOLATE? ... OK." Crosswording experience got me R.U.R. (27A: Classic play whose title is an abbreviation) and ALI G (11D: Character with the tagline "Booyakasha!") pretty easily (the former should be easy for any constant solver, the latter probably a little less so). And I have an odd affection for the highly dated clue on DAVID SPADE (32D: Kato Kaelin portrayer on "S.N.L."), even though I don't remember his portrayal at all. Clue on FERN was hard / nuts (69A: Crayola color since 1998). Aside from LEMAY, of whom I'd never heard, nothing besides the general difficulty of the theme answers slowed me up much.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Hagar's daughter in comics / THU 3-8-12 / Physician with DO degree / Fables in Slang humorist George / Noted Irish crystal / Brokerage firm with talking baby ads / Queue after Q

Constructor: Bill Thompson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BROKEN PROMISE (34A: Moral lapse that is reflected literally by the answrs at 17-, 24-, 46- and 54-Across) — theme answers begin and end with letters that spell out synonyms of "promise"

• VARIETY SHOW (17A: "Hee Haw," for one)
• WATERFORD (24A: Noted Irish crystal)
• OSTEOPATH (46A: Physician with a D.O. degree)
• PERCY SLEDGE (54A: "When a Man Loves a Woman" singer)

Word of the Day: REDWARE (15A: Pottery whose high iron content gives it a distinctive hue) —

n.
Earthenware made from clay containing a large amount of ferrous oxide, giving it a red color.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/redware#ixzz1oUau3g76

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Where's my Thursday puzzle? If this one worked out a little, it might be a Wednesday someday, but Thursday status is pretty far out of reach. The theme was pretty basic ("broken" word puzzles like this are common), with nothing tricky to figure out, and I didn't even have to understand the theme to solve it. And I solved it in a Tuesdayish time. I think it's a decent puzzle. It just doesn't belong on Thursday. Everyone can drop NAVIDAD in right away, and from there you're well on your way, with APE, IRONED, ART, and NSA being virtual gimmes at that point, if they weren't already. PERCY SLEDGE was a gimme. E*TRADE was a gimme. GARDNER was a gimme. RSTU was a gimme. YAO was a gimme. ELYSÉES was a gimme. Too much handed out on a fill-in-the-blank platter. The grid is actually pretty good. Solid, at any rate. That AGR / HOER / HONI part is ugly and could be fixed, or at least somewhat improved. But I really liked ON POT and EURYDICE and AEROSTAR. I also liked the overlong but interesting cluing on stuff like ONO (19A: Lennon reportedly described her as looking like "a bloke in drag") and TED (57A: Pal of Marshall, Lily, Robin and Barney on "How I Met Your Mother") (Will has made an appearance on "How I Met Your Mother" before, so there's a little wink there, probably).

[I wanted to post THIS cool video of this song, but it features brief glimpses of breasts and rear end, and sadly I am not in the mood to have prudes flag my blog for "inappropriate" content (again)]

There wasn't much that was unfamiliar to me today. I don't know what a "prompt box" is, but I'm guessing it's a ... box ... where the guy ... oh, it must be beneath the stage / facing the stage, so the CUER can help an actor who has forgotten his/her lines (41A: One in a prompt box). I was imagining cue *cards* and had no idea there was a "box" for that guy. George ADE is nobody to me (50D: "Fables in Slang" humorist George). I forgot HONI, but then remembered (27A: Hagar's daughter in the comics). Her boyfriend is a would-be minstrel named LUTE. Her mom is HELGA, and her mom's confidante is KVACK! The dog is SNERT, obviously. Thus concludes our "Hagar the Horrible" Tutorrible.



Bullets:

• 8D: Faa'a International Airport location (TAHITI) — early guess was TEHRAN. I'm just glad I've never seen FAAA in a puzzle. 
• 30D: Rode a thermal current (SOARED) — recently watched the multi-part documentary "The Life of Birds" with host David Attenborough, and there was a lot about birds riding thermal currents.
• 32D: Old fur trader's locale (FORT) — young fur traders preferred urban loft space.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Group with 1971 3x platinum album Aqualung / MON 2-27-12 / Rhododendron relative / Freshwater duck / High class poetry it isn't / Avian hooter

Constructor: Bill Thompson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: T-LL — yet another vowel progression puzzle

Word of the Day: DOGGEREL (11D: High-class poetry it isn't)

n.
Crudely or irregularly fashioned verse, often of a humorous or burlesque nature.

[From Middle English, poor, worthless, from dogge, dog. See dog.]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/doggerel#ixzz1nXU3WnT4

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A pretty standard example of the form. TALL TELL TILL TOLL TULL. Not much else to say. One thing I noticed is that a couple of Downs cross three theme answers. These theme-crossers are ones you have to lock in early when you're constructing, and they are often less-than-lovely. If a Down crosses three theme answers, chances are there's not a wide choice of potential answers there (for instance, S-I--I doesn't give you a lot of wiggle room; neither does E--L-R, actually). Downs that cross two theme answers are inevitable, but Downs that cross three theme answers are not that common, and for good reason: they give the constructor less play in the grid, less opportunity to make it as lively and bouncy and interesting and good. This is all to say that I was wondering if the grid could've been built differently, in such a way that those 3-theme crossers could've been avoided. But NYT puzzles, esp. early-week, tend to be all about the theme. The fill simply has to be passable, and the fill today is at least average, maybe slightly better. Not too much junk, and some nice 6+-letter fill here and there.



Theme answers:

• 17A: Exhibits pride (STANDS TALL)
• 25A: Betray a lover's confidences (KISS AND TELL) — coincidentally (and this is true) just finished watching the second half of the PBS "Clinton" documentary, minutes before doing the puzzle
• 37A: Symbol of embezzlement (HAND IN THE TILL) — my favorite of the theme answers
• 50A: E-ZPass pays it (HIGHWAY TOLL)
• 60A: Group with the 1971 3x platinum album "Aqualung" (JETHRO TULL)

No real snags today. Some strange moments, like when I saw that an answer started IAM- (??), but then I saw the clue and remembered that movie I had no desire to see with the soundtrack of "Beatles"covers that I own (46A: 2001 Sean Penn movie = "I AM SAM"). Got JETHRO TULL without ever reading the clue (off of "TULL"). Same with ANAGRAMS, which is lucky, because that is one awkward example of an anagram in that clue (38D: "Slot machines" and "cash lost in 'em," e.g.). AZALEA (48D: Rhododendron relative) makes the grid pretty and kind of takes the edge off of the adjacent SUTURE (47D: Sew up, as a wound). Favorite word in the grid, by a mile: DOGGEREL. Sounds insulting, is insulting.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Boon's Animal House buddy / WED 7-27-11 / Indiana Jones accouterment / Visigoth king who sacked Rome / Eerie 1976 movie / City at confluence Ouse Foss

Constructor: Bill Thompson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: NOELS (37A: Seasonal songs ... or a hint to 17-, 25-, 46- and 59-Across) — theme answers are familiar phrases where -EL has been removed from end of word in the phrase, creating wacky phrases, which are clued "?"-style


Word of the Day: ALARIC (62A: Visigoth king who sacked Rome) —

Alaric I (Alareiks in the original Gothic) was likely born about 370 on an island named Peuce (the Fir) at the mouth of the Danube in present day Romania. King of the Visigoths from 395–410, Alaric was the first Germanic leader to take the city of Rome. Having originally desired to settle his people in the Roman Empire, he finally sacked the city, marking the decline of imperial power in the west. (wikipedia)

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After I got the first theme answer, my thought was "Ugh, NOEL, not this theme again." But when I was done, I looked NOEL up on cruciverb.com, and couldn't find a single puzzle that had used NOEL as a theme answer. This seems impossible. Why do I feel like I've done some version of this puzzle not just once, but many times? Weird. Anyway, not much to say about this except the theme feels pretty tired. Half the theme answers are cute (bottom half), the others, not. With so many -EL words out there that are also words (or names) without the -EL (e.g. BARREL, LAPEL, LABEL, CAMEL, etc.), not sure why those first two theme answers aren't better—or why this wasn't a Sunday-sized theme. Fill on this one is interesting in parts—NEAR THE TOP (27D: In second place, say) and RATIONS OUT (11D: Distributes stingily) are interesting phrases—but there really is far too much dreck. ALARIC over RESEEK (!!?) crossing OLE OLE and multiple WANDAS (48D: Stand-up comic Sykes and others) is super-ugly, as is the multiple OCHERS and REALES (9D: Old Spanish silver coins) crossing the never-lovely EDUCES. But, on the plus side, it's a great puzzle if you're a fan of the word "THE" — three appearances!



Theme answers:

• 17A: Groom? (WEDDING CHAP)
  
• 25A: Verbal exchange about a harsh review? (PAN DISCUSSION)
  
• 46A: Demand during a roadside negotiation? (THROW IN THE TOW)
  
• 59A: Stylish Lionel? (MOD TRAIN SET) — "LIONEL" = yet another word that could've been de-EL'd
  

Strangely, the toughest clue for me was 1D: Things to draw (BOWS). Got it all from crosses and still had no idea how the clue fit the answer. It was only as I was about to google [bow draw] that I realized, "Ohhhhh. *That* kind of bow" (i.e. the kind that shoots arrows). Also had a lot of trouble with BOWS's symmetrical counterpart, MTNS (57D: The Dolomites, e.g.). I know Dolomite as a blaxploitation hero. I couldn't tell you what continent they're on, let alone what country they're in. I'm gonna say eastern Europe / western Asia. . . aha, northeastern Italy. Well, that's eastern Europe-adjacent, at any rate. KAHLO is a kool name for krosswords (36D: Mexican artist Frida). SCRAG looks cool, but it's a word I've never seen anywhere *but* crosswords (41A: Skinny sort). Cheri UTERI would be a great theme answer, though I'm not sure for what theme (29D: Gestation locations). I think of moonshine or hooch when I think of the bottle marked "XXX"; I do not think of ALE (30A: Bottle marked "XXX" in the comics). Everyone knows SOOEY is used for calling piggies; less well known is the fact that UIE is used for calling ELANDS (49D: Safari antelopes).

Bullets:

• 1A: Univ. with the cheer "Roll Tide!" ('BAMA) — obvious even without the long-running ESPN College Gameday ad built around this "cheer."
  
• 40A: City at the confluence of the Ouse and Foss (YORK) — "Ouse" looks distinctly French, and Foss I've never heard of, so this took some work.
  
• 50D: Boon's "Animal House" buddy (OTTER) — completely forgot this. Luckily, I got it all from crosses and never even saw the clue.
  
• 10D: Trademark forfeited by Bayer under the Treaty of Versailles (ASPIRIN) — Bayer = German company.
  
• 61A: Leandro's love, in a Handel cantata (ERO) — Like HERO but with an ELISION (21A: Will-o'-the-wisp feature)
  
• CLUEANSWER — COMMENT

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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