Title dance in 1999 #3 hit / WED 5-27-20 / Tree of the custard apple family / U.N. workers grp / Frasier's producer on Frasier / Big-bottomed fruit / Early 2000s sitcom set near Houston / Bikini blasts informally / Natty neckwear

Constructor: Chris A. McGlothlin

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:00)

THEME: FORGONE (40A: Relinquished ... or a hint to 17-, 23-, 51- and 62-Across) — phrases that normally have "for" in them ... don't. "For"-less phrases are clued wackily ("?"-style):

Theme answers:

• FISH COMPLIMENTS (17A: "Your fins are nice" and "You're a graceful swimmer"?)
• THROWN A LOOP (23A: Done some lassoing?)
• CAN'T SAY SURE (51A: Is unable to pronounce the name of a deodorant brand?)
• OH CRYING OUT LOUD (62A: Actress Sandra emoting?)

Word of the Day: Sammy CAHN (18D: Lyricist Sammy) —

Sammy Cahn (June 18, 1913 – January 15, 1993) was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area. He and his collaborators had a series of hit recordings with Frank Sinatra during the singer's tenure at Capitol Records, but also enjoyed hits with Dean Martin, Doris Day and many others. He played the piano and violin. He won an Oscar four times for his songs, including the popular song "Three Coins in the Fountain".

Among his most enduring songs is "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", cowritten with Jule Styne in 1945. (wikipedia)

• • •

I just wanted to write "AWK" all over this thing when I was done with it. There is no joy to be had in this particular bit of word ... I hesitate to call it "play." "Muckery" is maybe better. Look, you take "FOR" out, fine. But before you go ahead with this idea, you need to ask yourself some questions. First, are the results going to yield the requisite fun, joy, pleasure, or are the results going to be largely clunky phrases that are hard to clue in any kind of sane way? That is, is the feeling of the solver going to be "ooh" or "huh?" or "yuck"? Second, is your revealer good? If it's just a boring word like FORGONE, can you do anything interesting with the clue? No? And no? Then no. I didn't even know FORGONE meant "Relinquished," since literally the only time I or you or anyone uses that word is in front of "conclusion," where it means (I think) something like "already arrived at"—"relinquished" doesn't really swap out in that phrase. I'm not sure I even kn— ... oh, damn. Wait. No wonder I want to spell it FOREGONE—that's the word I'm thinking of. Ugh, wow, your revealer is actually the past participle (!?) of the verb "forgo"!?!?!?!? OK, I'm adding yet another AWK to the margins of this puzzle (and docking myself a few points for not realizing more quickly that I had the wrong FOR(E)GONE in mind). I'm looking at these themers and ... yeah, you can do something with FISH COMPLIMENTS, but the others are pretty strained. I didn't even register that something was missing from THROWN A LOOP. I thought it was some weird variation on THROWN A CURVE. Also, what is it with this puzzle and past participles, yeesh. Between the unfun theme an the ye olde fill, this one didn't do much (for) me.


This puzzle played superweird, in that it was very easy for me *except* for the theme. I flew through most of the grid, but when I got toward the end (in that mess of a SW corner), I realized I was 80-90% done but also still had two themers unfinished. And I only got FORGONE because of crosses, the clue having made no sense to me. The front ends of the last two themers were not at all clear to me, and then the fill around that area, yikes. Semi-forgot Colin JOST's name (56D: Che's "Weekend Update" co-host on "S.N.L."), was unsure as always about COHAN's name, had no idea re: BONER (what year is it?) (44D: Slip-up). And not knowing that the "Actress Sandra" was Sandra Oh, I got super stuck in there. Well, not empirically super stuck, just super stuck relative to the rest of the grid. Did I like any fill. Well, there's nothing longer than 6 letters, so the puzzle's making it kinda hard. I do like the emergence of SWOLE as a regular 5-letter answer (55D: Bulging with muscles, in modern lingo). Otherwise, no. The fill isn't even trying to be lovable. It's just there.


NTESTS :(
NANU :(
ANNUS :(

There are definitely different branches and styles of yoga, but somehow YOGAS isn't sitting that well with me (54D: Hatha and Bikram, for two). COHAN *and* CAHN? In the same puzzle? You are dating yourself *and* not trying hard enough to diversify your fill. There was a time (let's call it, "the 20th century") when Broadway lyricists and composers were like half the fill of any given puzzle and you just had to learn the names or crash and burn. Then, time passed. Things got better. People from different professions were deemed worthy of inclusion in the grid. These days, you get one of those old Broadway guys per grid, tops. That's the rule. It's unwritten, or I made it up, but it's real. Oh, also, you can have OLIO or you can have OLEO, but you cannot have both OLIO and OLEO, and you *definitely* can't have them crossing (!?). And also oh (oh!), you cannot have "oh" in your grid twice. OH, STOP. Seriously, stop with the OHs. I don't care if one of those is a name. Sorry. Rules are rules. Please do better in the future.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. fun fact, if you change MIATA to TIARA, you don't have to deal with LAME, which is a downer of a word, however you clue it.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Title trio of a 1980 Pulitzer winner, Home of Sanssouci Palace, Limoncello ingredient, Lab growth need, Saturday, August 10, 2013

Constructor: Chris A. McGlothin

Relative difficulty: HARD

THEME: Philately

Word of the Day: 45A PARDO  (Longtime late-night announcer) —
Dominick George "Don" Pardo (born February 22, 1918) is an American radio and television Saturday Night Live.^[1]
announcer. He is known as the voice of the long-running late night sketch comedy show.
Pardo is noted for his long association with NBC, working as the announcer for early incarnations of such notable shows as The Price Is Right, Jeopardy!, and NBC Nightly News.^[2] He has been the announcer of Saturday Night Live for all but one of its seasons. He continues to provide voiceover services during the program's opening montage, several years after his official retirement from NBC. [from wikipedia]

• • •

Hello, Rexworld. This is treedweller, filling in for Rex. Mostly filling, anyway. This was one of those Saturdays when my weak areas were exposed and it took a handful of googles to get the whole grid. I eventually used APBS (48D They're issued to cruisers, briefly) to get PUTS THE KIBOSH ON (56A Vetoes), and the whole bottom section soon after, but lack of familiarity with the Pulitzer winners of my youth left me stranded up top and sent me to the interwebs. 
I once collected stamps, but my hazy memory of that time only gave me a lot of bad guesses when it came to the roughly seventeen postage-related clues. And a confident mistake at "odds" for BETS (29A They're often taken on horses) left me struggling to cadge some sleep (instead of CAUGHT A FEW WINKS @ 8D Grabbed some sack time).

But once I got a little traction, the grid steadily filled up and, as with many late-week puzzles, it mostly seems natural and obvious in retrospect. Totally fair for a Saturday, anyway.


Bullets:

• 22D Hiawatha's grandmother in "The Song of Hiawatha" NOKOMIS — Wiki informs me The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem, in trochaic tetrameter, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, featuring an Indian hero. It was a Noko-miss for me.
• 31A ". . . we'll ___ a cup o' kindness . . .": Burns TAK — This was obviously some kind of elision. I had no idea. Turns out, it's from Auld Lang Syne, a song I know about eleven words to — including the three in the title, but not including TAK'.
• 26D Lab growth need DOG FOOD — I totally fell for the feint and was stumped when neither agar-agar, petri dish, nor medium would fit.
• 30D Father of 38-Across/38A Son of 30-Down ARES/EROS — I started out thinking biblically, since it seemed the most likely source of four-letter names, and spent a lot of time trying to make Amos and Enos work before trying the Greeks.
• 39A " ___ wise guy, eh?" SOA — This made me CRINGE (33A Quail) a bit. Tried it for a while as "Oh, a" before abandoning it and getting it from crosses later.

Signed, treedweller, on behalf of
 Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Beefy Provencal stew / 4-27-13 / Character in Unforgiven / Old-time actress Bennett / Ed whose entire 18-season career was with Mets / Biblically named Michigan college / Producers sex kitten / Blouse with sailor collar / Great Seal word

Constructor: Chris A. McGlothlin

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DAUBE (7D: Beefy Provençal stew) —

n

(Cookery) a braised meat stew

[from French]

• • •

Half easy, a quarter medium, and a quarter brutal. I have to give credit to CAPITAL U (28A: Character in "Unforgiven")—it completely fooled me, down to the Very last letter I entered in the grid (OLIVET / CAPITAL U crossing). It's a cheap trick, but it worked. That's the one answer that really kept me held up in the NE. That and OLIVET (11D: Biblically named Michigan college)—I went to grad school in Michigan and OLIVET, even now that I see it, only vaguely rings a bell. Also, ALEXA Chung? Hosts ... what? (16A: TV host Chung) Seriously, read this and tell me which of those (all British?) shows I'm supposed to know her from. Overreliance on odd names (ULLA?) (8D: "The Producers" sex kitten) mars this puzzle a bit, though overall I think it's reasonably solid. Nowhere near my wheelhouse, and a bit old-skewing, but interesting here and there. Never heard of DAUBE or NOSY PARKER (I had NELLIE) (25D: Snoop) or MIDDY (42D: Blouse with a sailor collar) or ORDER ARMS (51A: Drill command involving a rifle) or ENID Bennett (4D: Old-time actress Bennett). 'EM ALL (36A: "Bless ___" (1941 hit song)) is up there with the most ridiculous fill of all time. KRANEPOOL / KEVIN krossing might very well kill non-baseball fans (30D: Ed whose entire 18-season career was with the Mets + 30A: 2011 All-Star pitcher Correia). Cross-referenced clues normally annoy me, but today both sets helped. Got EMU from the "E" and then picked up EXTRA LARGE rather easily after that. And CEE-LO / GREEN came together with just one or two letters in place (28D: With 33-Across, "The Voice" vocal coach). I think he's a former coach now. I don't watch, but I think that's right. Anyway, I really hope you knew who CEE-LO GREEN was, because his names' crossing in the dead center of the grid could make things very tricky otherwise. West half of the grid was easy, NE (as I said) was hard, and then the SE was somewhere in between. I luckily got LANI, EROS, and SSTS all on the first pass. ORDO (45D: Great Seal word) and MIDDY and the odd DEXTRAL (37D: Right-handed) kept things tough, though. Eventually found my way out and up to the NE. Had to change CENSOR to CENSER, and, later, DAM to TAP, before doing battle with CAPITAL U / OLIVET and eventually finishing the puzzle.


Very much enjoyed the clue on CINEMA (40D: Its patrons are usually kept in the dark).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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TUE 7-10-12 / Green Acres Con Man / Parseghian of Notre Dame / Riga Native

Constructor: Chris A. McGlothlin

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: AND... — Down answers intersect with Across answers to form common phrases when the word "and" is inserted betwixt the two (as it's clued). If you want to get FAST and LOOSE, you could potentially argue that they form a "+" symbol, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Word of the Day: ARA (4D - "Parseghian of Notre Dame") —

Ara Raoul Parseghian (born May 21, 1923) is a former American football player and coach of Armenian descent. He served as the head football coach at Miami University (1951–1955), Northwestern University (1956–1963), and the University of Notre Dame (1964–1974), compiling a career college football record of 170–58–6. During his 11 seasons as head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, known popularly as "the Era of Ara," Parseghian tallied a mark of 95–17–4 record for a .836 winning percentage. His teams of 1966 and 1973 won national titles. Parseghian was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1980.

Maybe this wasn't the WATD for you, but for a guy who doesn't follow sports (much less college football) and who immediately thinks of bad jokes about "his face sure rings a bell"... this one got me good. I suppose it's better than the alternative clue: "a southern constellation situated between Scorpius and Triangulum Australe."

• • •

It's been a week now, so I'm sure you all know the drill: Rex is in a magical land where it's technically tomorrow and the sheep outnumber people around 8:1, so a group of us have volunteered to fill in (no pun intended) for him until his return. I'm Brian Grosz, the guy on the right who dresses respectably and doesn't clutter his skin with tattoos. And while you've probably never heard the music I make, you've most likely heard my voice reading scripts on TV - which, obviously, qualifies me to write up today's puzzle.

• • •

As with most early week puzzles, I was expecting the theme to appear in the longest answers in the grid, but that prejudice was immediately shattered by the trifecta of cluing in 13A, 14A and 15A. Yes, I grumbled - loud enough to rouse the attention of my better half who was grossly entrenched in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Since I transitioned from paper to my iPad, all that scrolling bumps up my solving time and I was worried about what lay ahead.

Fortunately, things fell into place fairly quickly. Unfortunately, I had been hoping for some kind of pun, alliteration, spoonerism or a even a fleeting modicum of cleverness... but what can I expect from a Tuesday puzzle? A sweater?

Theme answers:

• ON THE SPOT (2D and 13A) - THEN and THERE
• FAMILY (7D and 14A) - KITH and KIN
• GET-TO-KNOW-YOU GATHERING (11D and 15A) - MEET and GREET
• TWO OF LIFE'S CERTAINTIES (25D and 36A) - DEATH and TAXES
• SNACK OPTION (28D and 37A) - CHIPS and DIP
• MEAGER MEAL (31D and 38A) - BREAD and WATER
• LODGER'S FEE (48D and 59A) - ROOM and BOARD
• ALL AROUND (51D and 60A) - NEAR and FAR
• ONE WAY TO PLAY (54D and 61A) - FAST and LOOSE

Nothing too crazy here for a Tuesday. Cross-fill easily got me through any trivia that was beyond me. The thematic symmetry was certainly appreciated from a construction standpoint, seeing as how the typical "long fill is the theme" axiom was broken. I also appreciated that all theme-related answers led off with the Down clue. I'm not familiar with McGlothlin's work, but I'd like to see his later-week offerings and I might become a FAN [22A].

(Also, I can't ever say the words "FAST and LOOSE" without think of the long-running Led Zeppelin fanzine, Tight But Loose - a fantastic way to describe Jimmy Page's guitar playing.)

That said, anyone who attempts to use the term AOLER [56A - Certain Netizen] from here on out will promptly be dragged into the street, covered in bacon grease and set upon by a pack of vicious, underfed Dobermans. My (legally blind) grandmother is the last person I know who uses AOL to access the internet and even she would never refer to herself in such a fashion. I'll let it slide today, but this faux-cabulary will not be tolerated in the future.

Bullets:

• ATLAS [1A - Rockefeller Center Statue] — I've been a New Yorker for most of my life and, as a result, I avoid tourist traps like Rockefeller Center. That said, ATLAS is not the first statue to come to mind; I immediately think of the Prometheus statue in the skating rink.
• LETT [3D - Riga Native] — "Riga... yeah... that's in Latvia. SLAV? Nope..."
• GIN [17D - Play stopping declaration] — This shouldn't have thrown me for a loop, but it did. I spent 12 years of my life in the theater studying Shakespeare and look where it got me: misled on a crossword puzzle, trying to fit EXEUNT into a three-letter space.
• HANEY [18A - "Green Acres" Con Man Mr. ____"] — Crosses are the only thing that saved me here. I can whistle you the theme song but I can also guarantee you that I've never seen a single episode. Should you care to learn more about The Hustler of Hooterville, you can click here.
• REED ORGAN [57A - Harmonium] — A friend of mine owns a hand-operated/portable harmonium, so I really wanted this to be PUMP ORGAN. It's a fascinating instrument to play (and isn't nearly as terrifying as an accordion with all of its buttons and associations to guys named Yankovic). If you want to get technical, a melodica could also be classified as a REED ORGAN.

And on that note, this inked-up nerd who owns 12 harmonicas, 2 melodicas and a child-size accordion should leave you with a video from one of my childhood heroes, Weird Al...

Signed, Brian Grosz, Licensed Reverend and First-Class Misanthrope.

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Pro-Church of England position / FRI 7-1-11 / Winthrop's affliction Music Man / Title girl 1990s-2000s MTV cartoon / Cousins of blackbirds

Constructor: Chris A. McGlothlin

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM (38A: Pro-Church of England position)— word is broken up and rebused across the middle of the grid

Word of the Day: ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM (38A: Pro-Church of England position) —

Antidisestablishmentarianism [...] is a political position that originated in 19th-century Britain in opposition to proposals for the disestablishment of the Church of England, that is, to remove the Anglican Church's status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales. // The establishment was maintained in England, but in Ireland the Church of Ireland (Anglican) was disestablished in 1871. In Wales, four Church of England dioceses were disestablished in 1920, subsequently becoming the Church in Wales. // The question of disestablishment of the Church of England is still current, often tied with the position of the English monarch as "Supreme Governor" of the Church (see Act of Settlement 1701). Those who wish to continue the establishment of the Church of England are referred to as Antidisestablishmentarians. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very hard for me. The times I'm seeing right now at the NYT site indicate that it was blisteringly hard for most folks. First off, you're not always looking for a rebus or trick or theme of any kind on a Friday. So there's that. Then there's the fact that it's just hard. I count at least nine answers that I flat-out didn't know (though a handful of those I'd vaguely heard of and could guess at with some crosses). I'm torn between admiring the puzzle (it's tough and memorable and there are some very cool entries and clues) and a general feeling of "I don't get it." Why that word? Why is it broken up? Is splitting or breaking somehow related to the word's meaning (seems a stretch)? Or is it just that this is a famous long word, so why not put it at the center and dice it and stuff it into little squares?

I had a sense early on that there was a rebus involved (at ARK(AN)SAS, actually / 28D: Home of the 42nd U.S. president), but I already had so much of the puzzle done, with no rebus squares in sight, that I figured Clinton must have some other "home" that ends in the same last two letters as his home state. Eventually, the general impenetrability of the center made it clear that something fishy was afoot (is that a mixed metaphor?), and the undeniability of JUST FOR MEN (I mean, once you get to JUST FOR [one blank square], your options are pretty limited) finally tipped me to the letter-cramming gimmick (8D: Popular hair care product).

Fill is pretty solid, except for that ALER / PLAN C (6D: Alternative fallback position) / HAHAHA patch in the NW. My main objection is to the ENTO- / TOE cross (9D: Prefix with -derm / 21A: It may be pinched). Never ever heard of ENTOderm (!?!?!) (is that when your skin is ... on the inside?), and I have never pinched my TOE (stubbed, sure, but not pinched), whereas I pinched my TIE just this morning before heading out to freshman orientation. It's how I get the knot to cinch up right. ENTO- is a terrible bit of fill anyway—don't call attention to it by getting cute with your crosses.

[Warning: some profanity]

Stuff I didn't know:

• 17A: Florida's ___ Park Race Track (HIALEAH) — Who can forget the THRILLA in HIALEAH!? Classic. (15A: Start of a big 1975 sports event?)
• 2D: An apostle (PHILIP) — of all the PHILIPs... come on. Boo. Boring.
• 23A: Winthrop's affliction in "The Music Man" (LISP) — whose what?
• 38D: Structural piece bent 90˚ along its long dimension (ANGLE IRON) — pfft. Next.
• 50A: London borough with Wembley Stadium (BRENT) — again ... of all the BRENTs. Boring / obscure.
• 65A: Chanel fragrance "pour homme" (EGOISTE) — sounds vaguely familiar, but I needed a lot of help from crosses.
• 39D: Sheet music notations (TABLATURES) — I was trying to make this something like E NATURAL for a while...
• 13D: Story from Joyce's "Dubliners" ("EVELINE") — never read Joyce. Not a word. Weird, right?

Not the most contemporary of puzzles, but that's OK. At least it has "DARIA," a great and highly underrated cartoon that was technically a spin-off of "Beavis & Butt-head" but is almost nothing like "Beavis & Butt-head" (27A: Title girl in a 1990s-2000s MTV cartoon). Smart, cynical girl trying to survive a modern Riverdale High School (her school's name = Lawndale). Recommended. Is the constructor an older man who really likes his hair, 'cause "A Little DAB'LL Do Ya" and JUST FOR MEN ... that's an odd coincidence.

Bullets:

• 31A: Like many blog comments, informally (ANON.) — when I realized there might be a rebus in play, I briefly considered that the answer here might be A[NG]RY.
• 36A: Cousins of blackbirds (GRACKLES) — black with a weird bluish sheen. We get them on our lawn quite a bit.
• 40A: Creamlike paint shade (EGGSHELL) — big big help. Got this answer off just the final "L"
• 1A: It often contains "lies" (EPITAPH) — absolutely fantastic clue. Just what a 1-Across clue should be. I also enjoyed 60A: Mama grizzly, south of the border (OSA). Are there grizzlies in Mexico?
• 66A: Astronaut's favorite dessert? (MOON PIE) — piece of cake, just like the entire SE corner. Weird contrast to rest of the puzzle.
• 26D: Class with Browning and Golding, say (ENGLISH LIT) — those of you horrified at my non-Joyce-reading will be happy to know that a. this clue was transparent, b. I've read both the authors mentioned, and c. I know enough about ENGLISH LIT to know that there is no one class that would feature both these writers (unless the topic of that class is "random books I pulled off my shelf"). Further, the first man who came to mind when I saw "Golding" was not the "Lord of the Flies" guy, but the Renaissance translator of Ovid. Arthur Golding. You heard me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Harry Shearer's program on public radio / SUN 1-23-11 / One of Sean Combs's aliases / Last-second bidder on eBay / Oscar snubber of 1972

Constructor: Chris A. McGlothlin

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "LETTER OPENERS" — 26 different starred clues each start with a different letter of the alphabet, from "A-ONE" to "Z AXIS"


Word of the Day: R-VALUE (6A: *Insulation measure) —

The R-value is a measure of thermal resistance used in the building and construction industry. Under uniform conditions it is the ratio of the temperature difference across an insulator and the heat flux (heat transfer per unit area, ) through it or .The R-value being discussed is the unit thermal resistance. This is used for a unit value of any particular material. It is expressed as the thickness of the material divided by the thermal conductivity. For the thermal resistance of an entire section of material, instead of the unit resistance, divide the unit thermal resistance by the area of the material. For example, if you have the unit thermal resistance of a wall, divide by the cross-sectional area of the depth of the wall to compute the thermal resistance. The unit thermal conductance of a material is denoted as C and is the reciprocal of the unit thermal resistance. This can also be called the unit surface conductance and denoted by h. The bigger the number, the better the building insulation's effectiveness. R-value is the reciprocal of U-value.

• • •

First thing I noticed was the unusual and very cool-looking grid. The next thing I noticed was the almost complete lack of long answers. Hmmm. Theme was very, very, very easy to gather. It's ambitious (26 theme answers)—but there were a few problems. First, the lack of long answers makes for a somewhat dull grid. There's no humor, no tricks, no ... just not much of anything except the relentless revelation of letter-answers, which are very varied in quality / interestingness. Y CHROMOSOME is fantastic, as is its clue (116A: *Women just don't get it). But R VALUE? S TYPE? They're valid entries, but figuring them out is not entertaining. You know they're coming, eventually, but there's no aha moment, no surprise. Once you gather the theme (quickly), then it's mainly just a matter of plodding through grid. So theme-wise, I wasn't very intrigued. Strangely, though, I thought the non-theme fill was quite great in many places. NO DRAMA! IN DRAG! "LE SHOW!" (77D: Harry Shearer's program on public radio) Very daring. BENAZIR and SEQUOIA, also nice. My favorite answer, for reasons I don't quite understand, was LUMP SUM. Don't recall ever seeing it in a puzzle before. Fresh, and perfectly clued—the one moment in the puzzle (besides Y CHROMOSOME) that really did give me the aha I was craving. Sure, there's a PROSY here and a TERNE there and a HE'D somewhere else, but otherwise the fill was mostly nice. So theme gets not-so-high marks from me, but grid shape and fill definitely get a thumbs-up.


Theme answers:

• A-ONE
• B-MOVIE
• CSPAN
• DDAY
• ESTREETBAND (26A: *The Boss's backers)
  
• FSTOP
• GMAN
• HBOMB
• IPOD
• J-LO (88A: *4x platinum album of 2001)
  
• K-TEL
• L BAR
• M DASH
• NSYNC (42D: *Group with the 2000 #1 hit "It's Gonna Be Me")
  
• O-RING
• P DIDDY
• Q-TIP
• R VALUE (?)
• S-TYPE
• T-TOP
• U-HAUL
• V SIX
• W TWO (...)
• X-RAY
• Y CHROMOSOME
• Z AXIS
  

Did this one on paper in my dining room with my wife and our friend Donna. They were busy doing other stuff, so I'd just call out clues and we proceeded that way. Most clues were easy to get on the first pass. I didn't even have to say how many letters or what crosses there were much of the time. I see a total of four write-overs in the grid. First, Donna said COMIXES and I wrote it in without thinking about whether it was a word or not—real answer was ADMIXES (46D: Mingles (with)). Then I didn't read the clue thoroughly and wrote in IDEA instead of IDÉE at 103A: Light bulb over one's tête? Next, I wrote in SHARD for SHRED (106D: Bit). Lastly, and most scarily, I had MENA at 101A: Actress Sofer instead of RENA at first. I think I got her confused with MENA Suvari (another actress whose first name lands her in the grid from time to time). Luckily, I had heard of ARCO and so could change the "M" to "R." But that cross felt a teensy bit dangerous.

Bullets:

• 24A: Oscar snubber of 1972 (BRANDO) — my partners didn't know it, but this was a gimme for me. Didn't he send a Native American woman in his place ...? I was three, so I don't remember. Ah, here it is: Sacheen Littlefeather. Youtube won't let me embed it, but you can see her (non-) acceptance speech here.
  
• 65A: ___ Mode, female character in "The Incredibles" (EDNA) — did not know this. Seems like a clue meant to toughen the puzzle up, at least a tiny bit (still, easily inferrable from a couple crosses).
  
• 89A: Maurice of Nixon's cabinet (STANS) — I know I've seen him in puzzles before, but I'm not sure how I'm ever going to remember that completely improbable last name.
  
• 122A: Last-second bidder on eBay (SNIPER) — I have been a SNIPER, though I didn't know there was a name for it until I did this puzzle.
  
• 40D: Repeated cry in Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot" (OLE!) — Me: "... HOT?" Then I remembered the opening OLE OLE OLE OLE part.
  
• 58D: 1909 Physics Nobelist for work in wireless telegraphy (MARCONI) — tip of my tongue. Said three different wrong answers out loud before I hit the right one. Sadly, I had to go to Starship to get the right answer...

["MARCONI plays the mamba ...?"]

• 111D: Lead/tin alloy (TERNE) — one of those words I've never seen anywhere but crosswords, and even then, only once (before today)
  
• 87D: ___ Trench (earth's deepest depression) (MARIANAS) — I thought the actual trench was MARIANA. MARIANAS TRENCH appears to be a punk/EMO band from Vancouver...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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