Kaplan of indie rock's Yo La Tengo / TUE 9-14-21 / Ward old political operative / Intl financial giant headquartered in London / Everlasting candy from Willy Wonka / Bygone M&M color / Lord High Executioner in The Mikado / Choco ice cream treats

Constructor: Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (I think ... felt "name"-y and I had more hiccups than usual)

THEME: "KINKY BOOTS" (57A: 2013 Best Musical Tony winner ... with a hint to this puzzle's theme) — the letter string "boots" appears "kinkily" (i.e. mixed up) inside seven answers:

Theme answers:

• GOBSTOPPER (15A: "Everlasting" candy from Willy Wonka)
• BOOSTERS (13D: Some vaccine shots)
• BOSTON POPS (9D: Orchestra once conducted by John Williams)
• NANOBOTS (22A: Teeny-tiny futuristic machines)
• SOB STORY (46A: Tale of woe)
• GUEST BOOKS (26D: Places to sign in in inns)
• LOST BOYS (32D: "Peter Pan" group)

Word of the Day: "IGOR" (56A: 2019 #1 album for Tyler, the Creator) —

Igor (stylized in all caps) is the fifth studio album by American rapper and producer Tyler, the Creator. It was released on May 17, 2019, through Columbia Records. [...] Music journalists have noted that Igor continues to build on the hip hop and neo soul sound established in Flower Boy, while also incorporating R&B and funk influences. Critics have noted the album's use of synthesizers and low-mixed vocals. Thematically, Igor follows a narrative of a love triangle between the titular character and his male love interest. The album employs the "Igor" literary archetype to explore themes associated with love, such as heartbreak, loss, and jealousy. // To help market the album, Tyler, the Creator released the single "Earfquake", which reached number 13 on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming his highest charting single. In its first week of release, Igor debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, moving 165,000 album-equivalent units and becoming Tyler, the Creator's first US number-one album. It was a widespread critical success, being named among the best albums of 2019 in many publications' year-end lists, and won Best Rap Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards. (wikipedia)

• • •

PRESSON

The only thing I don't get is why three pairs of boots intersect. They're not supposed to be boot-shaped, are they? No, those pairs all actually form slightly different shapes, and the final pair (including "BOOTS" in the revealer) don't intersect at all, so maybe (probably) intersection has absolutely nothing to do with the theme. A red herring. Are the kinky boots in "KINKY BOOTS" red? I confess I know nothing about it except Cyndi Lauper is involved, and I adore her. Answers that feature the rearranged letters of "boots" may not sound like much—it's a simple concept—but this is a good example of where the *concept* does not have to be mind-blowing for the result to be pretty delightful. The one big plus: all the kinky-boots answers, i.e. all the themers, are entertaining and original answers. Something about that letter combination produces zingy fill. GUEST BOOKS and BOSTON POPS and BOOSTERS are solid and straightforward, not earth-shaking, but it just gets better from there, with SOB STORY, NANOBOTS, and GOBSTOPPER being real winners. I also liked LOST BOYS, but confess I would've liked it better if the clue had taken the 1987 Kiefer Sutherland vampire movie route. Still, overall, those themers really pay off, and the rest of the grid, though heavy on short fill, is smooth enough, and often interesting in its own right. I declare this puzzle not WACK (5A: Bad, slangily).

Perhaps because "KINKY BOOTS" is a musical, today's grid is chock full o' musical answers of a surprising breadth and, I'm guessing, for a good segment of the solving population, "obscurity." Note the quotation marks. The closest thing to a truly obscure musical clue here today is IRA Kaplan. That clue for IRA is a favorite of Ben Tausig over at American Values Club crosswords, but that's a slightly different crowd, that solver base. Ben's puzzles are often hyper-musical (Ben himself is a musician and ethnomusicologist), so I expect lots of music over there. I don't expect the majority of NYTXW solvers even to have heard of Yo La Tengo, frankly. So, easy for me, but maybe harder or unknown to many of you (I actually never saw the clue because the crosses took care of it, but I *would've* known it had I seen it). I feel like we've seen ROBYN before, and she's very popular, but, you know, not ENYA-familiar, gridwise (20D: One-named singer with the 2010 hit "Dancing on My Own"). Despite seeing that the three-letter B-word for the Michael Jackson song was about a rat, my fingers still instinctively wrote in "BAD." Bad! Bad fingers! The worst musical moment for me was forgetting "IGOR," an album I listened to a lot when it came out, and one whose potential crossword value I definitely touted. He has a new album, one whose name I've also forgotten (it's "Call Me If You Get Lost"), and so though I could picture the album cover for "IGOR," I found the name had escaped me. There's also a RAGA in here, and of course the BOSTON POPS, so I think the volume on music clues was definitely turned up today.

I am never going to remember supermodel names, or most of them anyway, so BELLA was a big shrug to me today (13A: Supermodel Hadid). I also don't know much at all about "The Mikado" and would probably steer clear of it entirely were I cluing puzzles. Its white imperialist fantasies of the "exotic East" have been known to rub people the wrong way, not surprisingly. So, yeah, KOKO? No idea. That whole SW corner was a bit tough for me, as I thought a SPIKE was a SMASH and couldn't come up with "OH, GOD," which to me is far more common and decidedly less old-fashioned and prim than its clue, ["Good heavens!"]. Moments like this, and the preponderance of names in the puzzle, probably meant that I was slower than usual for a Tuesday. I don't time myself any more T through Sat because I now solve regularly at 4:30am and I just can't work up concern (or capability) for speed at that hour. The clock is just not something I want to think about. So I don't. But I am guessing this one played somewhat on the hard side, for a Tuesday. If not, good for you! See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Woman in a 1982 hit who can be reached using the starts of the answers to the starred clue / WED 6-30-21 / Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards / Former fashion retailer so-named for its 57th Street address in Manhattan / Burger chain named for a father and his sons / Video hosting service since 2009 / Anthem whose French lyrics predate its English lyrics

Constructor: Christopher Adams and Adam Aaronson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy but for some proper nouns that will hold people up to wildly varying degrees)

THEME: "867-5309" aka "JENNY" (57D: Woman in a 1982 hit who can be reached using the starts of the answers to the starred clues) — the phone-number title of this apparently universally famous Tommy Tutone song of 1982 is represented by the numbers at the beginning of the seven themers; the song is about how the singer is gonna call JENNY so he hopes she hasn't changed her number, but it's weirdly also addressed *to* JENNY, so either he's already found her, like, on the street, or else he's doing that apostrophe (noun (2)) thing where you address a person (or object, or abstract concept) who isn't actually there. Either way ... for the price of a dime (1982! Payphones!) he can always turn to JENNY by simply dialing: 

Theme answers:

• EIGHT BIT (17A: *Like many old video game soundtracks)
• SIX PACK (19A: *Common purchase for a tailgate)
• SEVEN SEAS (26A: *Sinbad's milieu)
• FIVE GUYS (41A: *Burger chain named for a father and his sons)
• THREEPEAT (54A: *One of two for the 1990s Chicago Bulls)
• O CANADA (63A: *Anthem whose French lyrics predate its English lyrics)
• NINE WEST (66A: *Former fashion retailer so-named for its 57th Street address in Manhattan)

Word of the Day: Ted CHIANG (2D: Science fiction writer Ted with four Hugo awards) —

Ted Chiang (born 1967) is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and four Locus awards.^[1] His short story Story of Your Life was the basis of the film Arrival (2016). [...] Chiang has published seventeen short stories, novelettes, and novellas as of 2019, and has won numerous science fiction awards for his works: a Nebula Award for "Tower of Babylon" (1990); the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992; a Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Award for "Story of Your Life" (1998); a Sidewise Award for "Seventy-Two Letters" (2000); a Nebula Award, Locus Award, and Hugo Award for his novelette "Hell Is the Absence of God" (2002); a Nebula and Hugo Award for his novelette "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" (2007); a British Science Fiction Association Award, a Locus Award, and the Hugo Award for Best Short Story for "Exhalation" (2009); and a Hugo Award and Locus Award for his novella "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" (2010). (wikipedia)

• • •

Well I was a TWEENER (still not a word) in 1982, so this was about as up-my-alley as a theme can get, but when things are up my alley, I always wonder how many other people share that alley. Certainly, the song is famous, but I have no perspective on how famous, since I've had it in my head since I was 12. Is it generationally famous? It would seem so. Or not. I don't know. All I know is that when I got to JENNY I JENNY-uinely laughed (if you're going to pun, make it big and bad, like that). It gave me a real aha and then it got me singing the song in my head and *then* it got me thinking about what a weird premise the song has—talking to JENNY about wanting to call ... JENNY, whose number is apparently written on (bathroom?) walls, but Tommy wants her to know he's like the guys who got her number *that* way ... if only he could get her on the phone and tell her ... which shouldn't be hard ... since he has her number memorized (and so do we now, for all eternity). Dude would be giving off major stalker vibes if he weren't giving off such major silly vibes. Still, as a pop rock song it is extremely catchy, and as choruses go, 867-5309 is not one you're likely to forget. Maybe he repeats it over and over because he has nothing to write it down with and so he's just repeating it the way you do when you want to make sure you remember something, like an incantation. He probably did see her name and number on the wall, and now he's half-drunk and lonely and full of dumb ideas. I feel a little bad for JENNY. Still, though, good song, and the puzzle hits on the two things you definitely know about the song even if you've only heard it once: he is calling JENNY ("JENNY, JENNY, I'm gonna say your name twelve times in this song!") and her number is, well, you know:

[See the little letters in the bottom-right corner of this video? ... 

VEVO! (59A: Video hosting service since 2009)]

The themers themselves were often charming or original all on their own, esp. EIGHT BIT, FIVE GUYS, and NINE WEST (which I originally thought was going to be the revealer ... has there been a NINE WEST puzzle? Seems like you could do ... something ... with that as your revealer). I also like how "O" was represented by "O CANADA"—the whole number-as-letter thing is built into the song lyrics, so it's perfect. Not many hold-ups for me today. Never heard of Ted CHIANG (and I still haven't seen "Arrival" somehow either), but all the crosses came quickly. I had both HEM IN and PEN IN before BOX IN (9D: Completely confine). I had real trouble parsing / grasping PUNTED ON, though now that I see it, it seems just fine for its clue (44A: Kicked down the road, as an issue). Did not and still kind of don't give credence to the spelling on HUNH?, which looks more like a grunt than a question (39D: "Say what?"). I weirdly loved US TOO. Seems like a totally ordinary thing that is also very original (as a crossword answer) (37D: "We wanna join!"). I forgot VEVO was a thing even though I see those letters on videos all the time. This is probably because I see those videos at YouTube, which is the only "video hosting service" I ever actually go to. OK, that's all. Gotta go to a cooler part of the house now since the sweats have started and it's not even 6am. Good day!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

Note: the puzzle is 16 wide, so if you weren't as fast as you thought you were, now you know why, or at least you have an excuse.

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Common golf course grass / TUE 6-8-21 / Doo-wop group with six songs on the "Grease" soundtrack / Precision crafted performance sloganeer / Checkout devices at Dublin supermarkets

Constructor: Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Tuesday)

THEME: Plush — familiar phrases have an -IS word turned into an -ISH word, resulting in wacky phrases, which are clued wackily:

Theme answers:

• IRISH SCANNERS (20A: Checkout devices at Dublin supermarkets?) (from "iris scanners")
• PARISH METRO (34A: Urban area around a church district?) (from "Paris Metro")
• ELVISH LIVES (40A: Claim that a language in "The Lord of the Rings" is not extinct?) (from "Elvis lives!") 
• TENNIS, ANYONE? (52A: Suggestion to friends on when to meet for lunch?) (from "Tennis, anyone?)

Word of the Day: ZOYSIA (48D: Common golf course grass) —

Zoysia /ˈzɔɪziə/ is a genus of creeping grasses widespread across much of Asia and Australia, as well as various islands in the Pacific. These species, commonly called zoysia or zoysiagrass, are found in coastal areas or grasslands. It is a popular choice for fairways and teeing areas at golf courses. The genus is named after the Slovenian botanist Karl von Zois (1756–1799).

• • •

This is a very decent theme, and a good example of how you can get a lot out of slight changes. At its core, this is really just an add-a-letter theme, one of the oldest theme types in the book. Been around for AGES. People are going to experience primarily as a sound-change theme, though, where the -ISes at the ends of the first words turn to ISHes. The changed words give you a kind of two-layered wackiness—the wackiness provided by the "?" clue (where the -ISH word is taken literally), and the added wackiness of a phrase that sounds like someone slurring their speech, like a drunk person in an old movie. I guess if you take the idea of speech-slurring too seriously, the theme could seem slightly cruel, as if it were mocking someone who has a speech impediment or a drinking problem. But let's assume there's no such unfortunate context for the slurring. The word- and soundplay are amusing here, and I just happened to solve in a way where the "aha" ended up having a really big impact, so much so that nearly all the themers fell at the same time for me. Or, rather, when I got one, I was able to immediately see what was going on with all the ones I had already blown past but not completed. I solved down the west coast, never really able to follow the front end of a themer eastward across the grid. I just got the first word of the first themer (IRISH), had no idea what followed, and then kept going down, down, past ELVISH (still no idea), until I practically hit bottom. Then I started following TENNIS- across the bottom of the grid, and after some hacking at crosses, it finally sunk in: TENNISH, ANYONE? ... which was a play on "Tennis, anyone?" ... and boom, five seconds later the grid looked like this:

The "aha" from TENNIS, ANYONE? reverberated across the grid, essentially felling three themers at once. Timber! Speaking of foliage: ZOYSIA! What on god's apparently very green earth is this doing in my puzzle on a Tuesday. I'm almost certain I've seen it before, but probably only once or twice, and not in such a way that it ever stuck, that's for sure. Really really doesn't seem like Tuesday fill. I needed every single cross, and even then had to double-check them all because it just looks like six random letters. No cognates. Nothing to compare it to. Sounds like something you'd name your kid if you were trying to give them an "original" name. This answer contributed a ton to the puzzle's (relative) difficulty level. The theme type was another factor—I really had to hack at my first theme answer to get it to open up. But then there were little things like SAKI (the clue was no help) (1D: "The Open Window" story writer) and OVER (familiarish, but cricket terms ... not exactly front-burner stuff in this country) (2D: Set of six bowls, in cricket); these slowed me down in a way that I'm not usually slowed on Tuesday (I probably would've swapped out SAKI for YETI, but that's just me). 

Couldn't believe a T-BEAM was a real thing, so balked at that (I-BEAM and H-BEAM I've seen; I've also seen a T-BAR, lots of times ... this really feels like my first T-BEAM. I would put T-BEAM on the B-TEAM of letter beams, that's for sure. Don't think I've seen IV BAG before, either. I balked at BAG as it seemed ... too informal? Dunno. I just thought "Oh, what do they call those bags...?" And the answer was "bags." Then, because I couldn't remember if it was NIECI or NIECY, well, that teeny tiny NE corner ended up being way more trouble than most teeny tiny corners ever are. And honestly I struggled to remember who NIECY / NASH was in the first place (16A: With 22-Down, star of TV's "Claws"). First of all, never heard of "Claws." Second of all, when I got NASH, I could instantly picture the actress (she was in "Reno 911!," a show I enjoyed occasionally many years ago). But her first name just didn't come quickly. So this was somewhat more of a struggle than most Tuesdays are, but the theme was delightful enough, and the fill clean enough, that the extra struggle didn't dampen my enjoyment much. DITHERED is a great word. Hard to be mad at a grid that's sporting DITHERED. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Gilbert and Sullivan princess / FRI 5-15-20 / Rapper on the 2001 #1 hit "Lady Marmalade" / "The Great Movies" author / 2015 winner of Best Musical

Constructor: Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Straight of JUAN de Fuca (51D: Strait of ___ de Fuca, waterway separating Washington State from Vancouver Island) —

The Strait of Juan de Fuca (officially named Juan de Fuca Strait in Canada^[1]) is a body of water about 96 miles (83 nmi; 154 km) long^[2] that is the Salish Sea's outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The international boundary between Canada and the United States runs down the center of the Strait.

It was named in 1787 by the maritime fur trader Charles William Barkley, captain of Imperial Eagle, for Juan de Fuca, the Greek navigator who sailed in a Spanish expedition in 1592 to seek the fabled Strait of Anián. Barkley was the first non-indigenous person to find the strait, unless Juan de Fuca's story was true.^[3] The strait was explored in detail between 1789 and 1791 by Manuel Quimper, José María Narváez, Juan Carrasco, Gonzalo López de Haro, and Francisco de Eliza.

• • •

Hi all-- Rachel Fabi subbing in for Rex today. And what a great day to sub! I've said this before, and I'll probably say it many more times, but I friggin love Fridays. Themeless puzzles just have so much more room for the constructor to express who they are and what they care about, and even with the constraints that this *absolutely gorgeous* 66 word grid put on Mr. Adams, his voice really shines through.

And, man, that is a pretty grid. I paused to take a screenshot of the blank grid, giving up valuable clock time, because it's just so lovely. We've got two intersecting staircases through the middle with 3x11s across and 3x11s down, and both sets of 11 are absolutely stunning: MEAN STREETS / BURNT ORANGE / FASHIONISTA run across, and KEPT IN TOUCH / PANTS ON FIRE / RESTRICTIVE run down. Every single part of this central feature is just *chef's kiss* bellissima. I got a little ensnared trying to solve this section because I could have sworn PolitiFact used "Pinocchios" as their measure of truth, but it turns out that is the Washington Post. I also got the second half of ___ORANGE right away but couldn't get past "RUSTY..?" in my head, which slowed me down as well.

With that middle section dominated by the double staircase, the rest of the grid gets pulled a tad TAUTLY, but not so tight that the fill becomes untenable (although there are some rough patches, which is a natural consequence of this ambitious grid design). That said, there are so many flashes of personality and joy in this puzzle that, for me, they greatly outweigh the rougher bits of fill. I'm talking about entries like I'M NOT OK, which I think has become a pandemic mantra for many people coming to terms with our new normal. Similarly, I loved the entry/clue combo on UNPACK (15A: Work through, as feelings), which is one of my favorite overused terms that just means "talk about" (as in, "let's UNPACK the overuse of the term UNPACK, shall we?"). The THOR / CHRIS Hemsworth 1-2 punch (hammer?) was cute as well, and (probably) not just because I am about 2/3 of the way through a pandemic binge of all of the Marvel movies I failed to watch when they were actually coming out. FUN HOME is a beautiful queer musical based on a beautiful queer graphic memoir, and if you have not listened to/seen/read it, I cannot recommend it enough.

Another highlight of this puzzle for me was the excellent wordplay. When I finally parsed (7A: Lines on a record) as CRIMES I may have actually laughed out loud, although I was also a tad grumpy that there was no ? on the clue. Other good ones that also lacked ?'s: (19A: It's used for kicks) for KNEE and (24A: Stand on deck) for BAT NEXT, which I guess maybe isn't wordplay at all now that I look at it again, but going through it felt like a misdirect? Anyways, I liked it. I haven't decided whether or not the clue on MATHLETE (10D: One who's used to adding pressure?) is excellent wordplay or the worst wordplay (I definitely groaned), so I'll let you all hash that one out in the comments.

Ok, now for a few light critiques. Opening the puzzle with LAICAL was not great; it's just not a very good word! Other not-great entries included the bizarre pluralization of LSATS and the even more bizarre singularization of JITTER. Can you have a single JITTER? Seems to me like JITTERs are a package deal. Also TEENTSY... what is that extra T doing in there??? But as I said above, these are all products of the low word count and aesthetically pleasing grid structure, and I think the tradeoff is absolutely worth it. A couple of clues also had me rolling my eyes a bit. The clue on ANI, for one. What, was this puzzle too queer with FUN HOME in it so we couldn't possibly also have ANI DiFranco? (I highly suspect that this was an, ahem, editorial decision). Also the clue on LIE. What is with crosswords and golf?? There are so many ways to clue the word LIE! Here's a Moulin Rouge palate cleanser (ft. LIL KIM) to get the taste of gratuitous golf clues out of your mouth:

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. It's *so* pretty and well-constructed, and despite some fill that was contorted by the grid design, I think it is an excellent themeless Friday. 

PS, if you enjoy Themeless Friday as much as I do, I highly recommend checking out the New Yorker puzzles, which are (almost) always themeless and come out on Mondays and Fridays. I also happen to review them on that other crossword blog, so if you enjoy Themeless Friday *and* my reviews, you could read my write-up of Friday's New Yorker puzzle over there (although that puzzle won't come out until 6am, so that writeup will be up later).

PPS. I just realized I also constructed today's USA Today puzzle, so, um, if you *don't* like Themeless Friday but *do* like me, you could also check that out here. Big crossword day for me, I guess!

Signed, Rachel Fabi, Queen-for-a-Day of CrossWorld
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Farthest orbital point from moon / SUN 2-2-20 / Lone female argonaut / Fictional protagonist who attends elementary school in Maycomb County / Grace's partner on Netflix / Onetime come hungry leave happy sloganeer / Asian island divided between two countries

Constructor: Brian Herrick and Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy (very—7:21, a new personal record for Sunday)

THEME: "Audubon Society" — not a great title, but the revealer makes up for it: "LADY BIRD" (115A: 2017 film nominated for Best Picture ... or a hint to the answers to the eight starred clues)—themers are all women (ladies) whose last names are types of birds:

Theme answers:

• SHERYL CROW (23A: *"Soak Up the Sun" singer, 2002)
• SCOUT FINCH (25A: *Fictional protagonist who attends elementary school in Maycomb County)
• SIGOURNEY WEAVER (38A: *Actress in "Alien" and "Avatar")
• RITA DOVE (112A: *First African-American U.S. poet laureate)
• PAMELA SUE MARTIN (43D: *Portrayer of Fallon Carrington Colby on "Dynasty")
• TAYLOR SWIFT (49D: *Singer with the most American Music Awards of all time (29))
• MARION CRANE (50D: *Janet Leigh played her in "Psycho")
• CLARICE STARLING (46D: *"The Silence of the Lambs" protagonist)

Word of the Day: APOLUNE (42A: Farthest orbital point from the moon) —

: the point in the path of a body orbiting the moon that is farthest from the center of the moon (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Really feeling powerful this weekend. First I crush the Saturday puzzle while most of the solving world (apparently) struggles with it, then the next day (i.e. today) I set a personal Sunday record by a good 20+ seconds. If only I'd been able to spell LINGUINE correctly (not an -INI!?), who knows, I might've managed to break 7. Puzzle was just easy, but also the themers were all very much in my wheelhouse, or at least my ... I don't know, cultural orbit. I embarrassingly struggled to remember SCOUT's last name (and this was *after* I knew it was a bird theme), I non-embarrassingly struggled to remember PAMELA SUE MARTIN's name (but I *did* watch a lot of "Dynasty" as a teenager, so she rang a bell) and I weirdly struggled to remember CLARICE's last name because I conflated her and a novelist I remembered from my college / grad school days named Clarice Lispector. I wanted CLARICE ... SPECTOR, or something like it. Then I couldn't think of any "S" birds but "swallow" for a little bit. But I finally got there. And anyway, all of this struggle was actually taking place at a pretty fast clip, since wherever I ran up against an obstacle, the crosses were able to get me past it pretty easily. The theme feels very basic, and like something I've done before (and there have, in fact, been bird-last-name puzzles before), but the revealer gives this one a nice coherence. It's far too easy, and a little simple / straightforward, themewise, but that's really the only knock I have to give this one. The theme is tight and well executed, and the fill is overwhelmingly smooth, with only APOLUNE making me go "whaaaa?" and only ON POT making me go "Ok, dad."


I now know what an APOLUNE is but what I don't know is what ... object ... orbits ... the moon? Is this a term we apply to *any* moon, because the Merriam-Webster def says "the" moon, which makes me think our moon, which makes me wonder what objects are orbiting it such that we would have to invent a word for where those objects are in orbit? When I google image search APOLUNE, *this* is the first image that comes up ... it's really not helpful:

As usual, the parts I struggled most with were names. Gave up the NFL a few years back, so TALIB was unknown to me (though I've definitely heard the name) (65A: Aqib ___, five-time Pro Bowl cornerback), and I also didn't know LYN St. James, though she sounds like she's probably worth knowing, if only for future crossword purposes (121A: ___ St. James, first female Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year). I did know RAHAL, though, so that helped (2D: Bobby in the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America). I don't think there was much that stood out as spectacular, fill-wise, but I did like GO ROGUE and "YOU ROCK!" and "NO REASON." This is a really theme-dense puzzle, which means most of the interest lies there. They've designed the grid interestingly and cleverly, so there are lots of longish answers but none of them cross or even really crowd each other, which allows for the fill to be smooth. Usually the denser the theme, the rougher the fill (because dense themes just put a lot of pressure on the grid). The grid was well designed. I think grid design is a really underrated talent.


I did some good non-NYTXW puzzles this week (Patrick Berry's New Yorker was especially good), but I don't really have much for my "On the Clipboard" segment this week, although I do want to shout out the Saturday USA Today by Mark McClain (ed. Erik Agard). Its themer set was MERCHANT VESSELS, MERE COINCIDENCE, and MEREDITH WILSON, which is not exactly stunning, conceptually, until you notice that the title of the puzzle is ... MERLOT. That is an exquisite visual pun. A Mer- lot. A lot of Mer-s. MERLOT. I only wish it had been the revealer and not the title. Oh well. Still intensely clever. Point is, there are lots of ways to make a puzzle (even a very easy / basic puzzle) fun!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. happy birthday, dad

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Constructor: Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy (25:22, pretty normal for me for a Sunday)

THEME: MIXED METAPHORS (105A: Some laughable language mistakes - as found literally (in consecutive letters) in 24-, 37-, 55- 75-, and 92-Across)

Theme answers:

• ATMOSPHERE (24A: Aura) 
• BLAST FROM THE PAST (37A: Real Nostalgia Trip)
• FOR THE MOST PART (55A: Generally Speaking)
• CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (75A: Sometime Collaborator with William Shakespeare, per the Oxford University Press)
• PRIMROSE PATH (92A: Easy Way the Might lead to error)

Word of the Day: EPIPHYTE (113A: Organism that grows on another plant nonparasitcially) — An epiphyte is an organism that grows on the surface of a plant and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water (in marine environments) or from debris accumulating around it. Epiphytes take part in nutrient cycles and add to both the diversity and biomass of the ecosystem in which they occur, like any other organism. They are an important source of food for many species. Typically, the older parts of a plant will have more epiphytes growing on them. Epiphytes differ from parasites in that they grow on other plants for physical support and do not necessarily affect the host negatively. An epiphytic organism that is not a plant is sometimes called an epibiont. Epiphytes are usually found in the temperate zone (e.g., many mosses, liverworts, lichens, and algae) or in the tropics (e.g., many ferns, cacti, orchids, and bromeliads). Epiphyte species make good houseplants due to their minimal water and soil requirements. Epiphytes provide a rich and diverse habitat for other organisms including animals, fungi, bacteria, and myxomycetes.

• • •

Hello out there in crossworld! Dan Felsenheld coming to you from Arlington, VA here filling in for Rex so he can take a much needed vacation. I was excited to see Christopher Adams' name when I opened up the NY Times website to download the puzzle this evening. I've done a number of his puzzles and always enjoyed them, they are often challenging and sometimes have math themes. Full disclosure, as a crossword nerd and attendee at various crossword tournaments I have met Mr. Adams a few times and enjoyed chatting with him. It's been a crazy week for me (I was traveling for work and have been unsuccessfully fighting off a cold all week) but it's always nice to sit down with a Sunday puzzle. The grid was extra wide this week I guess because of the theme clues.

My solving experience was actually a bit choppy, I had a few errors along the way that really slowed me down. I can never remember how to spell SEGO (25D: Beehive state bloomer), there is a SAGO palm that also shows up in crosswords but this refers to the cactus instead. I really wanted to put down MOZART for 66A: "A Little Night Music" composer and it took me forever to figure out it was SONDHEIM. For some reason I has put GESTE at 102A instead of GUSTO so that slowed me down a bit. In fact here is what my grid looked like about halfway through my solve:

So I had the top half, mostly (with errors), had a bit of trouble in the middle and was trying to work my way back up. At this point I had figured out that MARTINIS was wrong (I saw Gin and Vermouth and immediately filled in MARTINIS, ignoring the Campari reference) - but didn't yet know that it was supposed to be NEGRONIS instead. I've never had a NEGRONI, but I know Rex is a fan. I "finished" but had at least one error (I use Puzzazz on ipad for solving). Turned out I had several errors, as you can see I had ITALIA instead of IBERIA at 30A, I hadn't yet gotten there but I had PEP instead of PUP which was the last thing I filled in before I finally got the fully correct grid.

Now about the theme - Mixed Metaphors - I have to say I love a good mixed metaphor, they are usually hilarious, "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it", "Now the glove is on the other foot", Barack Obama once said that someone was "Green behind the ears".  George W. Bush was quoted saying "There's an old saying that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again". So while I thought the theme concept was sound, when I think of mixed metaphors I think "they make me laugh when I hear them", and I was trying to figure out what it was about the puzzle that was off to me and it's that there is very little hilarity in this puzzle.  I mean it's cool that you were able to find different phrases that had the letters for METAPHORS consecutively - CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE is an especially great find, but it felt less than elegant when there are letters before and after the METAPHOR string. The themers are all perfectly good fill, in the language phrases that work well on their own, but having the word METAPHORS anagrammed in them,¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm not a constructor, I don't know what exactly could have been done to improve this puzzle, maybe somehow try to work some actual mixed metaphors into the clues for the themers? Somehow ramp up the humor in the clues? I do have to say, to his credit, I had no idea what these theme answers had in common until I got to the revealer at 105A, which is something that I do like in a puzzle. There were a few partials in the puzzle: ORA, THEA, ISAID, SETA, TAI, but these didn't really bother me much.

There were a number of things that I did like about the puzzle. 83A: Place where musical talent may be wasted (KARAOKE BAR) is fantastic. Nice touch having PAX ROMANA (76A: Stable period from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius) right next to HOMO (77A: Man, to Marcus Aurelius). Had never heard of the song RODEO before (not a big country music fan, but I like it)
Clever way to clue IAMB (68D: One of two in "The Grapes of Wrath")

Bullets:

• 1D: One-named singer with the 2017 #1 Album "Melodrama" (LORDE) — My teenage daughters got me into listening to Lorde (to their embarrassment, bwahahaha), her music is quite good, go listen to it if you haven't
• 110A: Cocktails with gin, vermouth and Campari (NEGRONIS) — Saw Gin and Vermouth in the clue and imediately put down MARTINIS, only to change this later based on the crosses. I know Rex is a fan of these, I've never had one.
• 81D: Russian Rulers of Old (TSARINAS) — I got lucky on this one, whenever I see TSAR(INA), there is always the dilemma, is it going to be CZAR, CSAR, TSAR, or even TZAR. I don't remember seeing TSARINAS too often in the NYT puzzle, I would have to look at that other site that keeps track of these things to know the frequency. Also kudos for having more female representation in the puzzle!
• 115A: Bening with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (ANNETTE) — I love her as an actress, I feel like I haven't seen her is much lately though her IMDB page seems to indicate that she has been steadily working. Forgot she was in "The Grifters" which is such a great film, go out and find it if you haven't seen it.
• 104A: Girl's name that's also a state abbreviation (IDA): No. IDA is only a state abbreviation in crossword land not in real life. This couldn't have been clued this as "Muckraker Tarbell" or African-American investigative journalist and early civil rights leader Wells? 
• 96D: Baby Shark (PUP): I mentioned to my wife (hi Donna!) that the clue was "Baby Shark" and she immediately started singing "do do do do do do" but I won't link to the recently resurgent earworm video, nope, I won't. (but now you all have that song running through your brain don't you?)

You can follow me on twitter @imfromjersey if you want, I rarely tweet but I occasionally respond to others.

Signed, Dan Felsenheld, King (for a day) of CrossWorld.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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ER role for Paul McCrane / THU 3-21-19 / Soothing succulents / 2008 movie starring Michael Sheen Frank Langella / Swimmer Ian who won three godl medals in 2000 olympics

Constructor: Christopher Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:03 just out of bed, which is like a normal 4:00, I think)

THEME: SLASHER FILM (25D: Movie with graphic violence.... or what 17-Across, 22-Down or 39-Down each is?) — DESCRIPTION

Theme answers:

• VICTOR / VICTORIA(17A: 1982 movie starring Julie Andrews)
• FROST / NIXON (22D: 2008 movie starring Michael Sheen and Frank Langella)
• FACE / OFF (39D: 1997 movie starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage)

Word of the Day: Ian THORPE (32A: Swimmer Ian who won three gold medals in the 2000 Olympics) —

Ian James Thorpe, AM (born 13 October 1982) is a retired Australian swimmer who specialised in freestyle, but also competed in backstroke and the individual medley. He has won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by any Australian. With three gold and two silver medals, Thorpe was the most successful athlete at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. (wikipedia)

• • •

Gotta be quick as I fell asleep before 10pm last night and have a 7am appointment this morning, wheeee! This puzzle was great. It's always easy to love an easy puzzle, true, but the revealer on this one works mwah, perfectly. "SLASHER" is repurposed, literalized, resulting in what you would otherwise Never refer to as SLASHER FILMs. And the grid has been shaped (and the revealer designed) in such a way that the three films of disparate lengths can still come together in a symmetrical arrangment. The stuff I don't like is small and infrequent and sort of in the "who cares?" category. I'm not spending my time complaining about plural ALOES, is what I'm saying. Damn, I just did! ANYway ... I spelled SAOIRSE correctly, first try, and I think I lost like five valuable seconds doing a little chair-dance of victory! Didn't recognize the actors in FROST/NIXON, so that was the themer that took the longest to come to me (didn't take long, tbh). Totally forgot who Ian THORPE was, and hadn't watched "E.R." since the '90s and didn't recognize the name Paul McCrane and so struggled to come up with DR. ROMANO. "Struggled" is hyperbolic. But I struggled comparatively. Compared to what I did with most other answers. Also, I couldn't get into the SW corner easily, mostly because I didn't look immediately at the clue that finally cracked it all open: 53D: Annual Austin festival, for short (SXSW) (which stands for South By Southwest). Nice to run this puzzle so close to the event (though that's surely a coincidence) (it was last week), and also nice to put SXSW in the actual southwest of the grid.


The only thing that troubles me about this puzzle is why "each" is in the revealer clue. Pretty sure it's grammatically unnecessary. Other trouble spots? Well, MAD DASH was probably the answer that took me the longest, but it was also in the first section I solved. I had UTE for MAV (1D: Western Conference player, informally). I guess butterscotch is ORANGE, but I actually had to go into the SE corner and get some 4s before I could see that OR---- was ORANGE. I solved in AcrossLite, which doesn't do slashes, so that was awkward. But the overall experience was enjoyable. This puzzle had the perfect revealer, which gave me the perfect revealer reaction: "Nice. Good one." That Is All I Want From My Themed Puzzles!!! Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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