Tusked savanna dweller / SAT 3-21-20 / Cathedral eponym / We move world sloganeer / we deliver for you sloganeer / Mobile dwelling on steppe / Slangy part of conversation recap

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (3/4 easy, 1/4 Challenging)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: DELTA BURKE (20A: Two-time Emmy nominee for playing Suzanne Sugarbaker) —

Delta Ramona Leah Burke (born July 30, 1956) is an American actress, producer, and author. From 1986 to 1991, she starred as Suzanne Sugarbaker in the CBS sitcom Designing Women, for which she was nominated for two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

Burke's other television credits include Filthy Rich (1982–83), Delta (1992–93), Women of the House (1995) and DAG (2000–01).^[1] She has produced and starred in made-for-TV movies, appeared in the film What Women Want (2000), and had a recurring guest role in the drama series Boston Legal (2006–07). She has also starred in the  Broadway productions of Thoroughly Modern Millie (2003) and Steel Magnolias (2005). (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't really remember anything about this puzzle besides the NW. I think it was easy. Very easy. So easy it's just a blur to me. This is in high, high contrast to the NW, where ... I haven't been that stuck in a long time. There were a total of seven Downs up there that I could not make sense of:

The Downs:

• 1D: Pound sign? (SPCA) — Had the "A" ... wanted ... maybe EZRA? I forget
• 3D: Where the biblical Esther and Daniel are purported to be buried (IRAN) — shrug, if you say so
• 5D: ___ tear (ACL) — this is the very heart of the matter. I, like untold thousands, wrote in ONA here. Because, with no additional info, and *especially* no info telling you you're going to bet an abbr., you go for the most obvious culprit. With ONA in there (fairly securely, in my mind), the Acrosses were all hopelessly gummed up. I think this clue is cheap. Of course an ACL tear is a thing, but so is the pact between solver and puzzle that the puzzle will give *some* indication when an answer is an abbr. Awful.
• 7D: Instrument with a bent neck (LUTE) — shrug, if you say so. Did not know that was a distinguishing feature, and "instrument" could mean bleeping anything, any tool, so I was lost here
• 8D: Proofreader's abbr. (ITAL.) — again with the "hard for hard's sake" cheap trickery. Of course with this clue everyone wants STET or DELE, so let's go with this other thing that is not nearly as tightly associated with proofreading, sure. Boo. Come by your difficulty honestly, you stupid puzzle!
• 9D: R. J. Reynolds brand (KENT) — why the &#$@ are you shilling for tobacco companies. My reaction to this clue was "f*** those guys" and I have no idea what the names of cigarettes are anymore. There are so many things that are called KENT. It's a human name, a place name, part of a university name. But you want Big Tobacco? Again, boo.
• 10D: Attempt (ESSAY) — and the last bit of cheapness ... this. ESSAY and ASSAY can both mean "attempt," so that's fun (narrator's voice: it was not fun)

I see that there was a puzzle world outside the NW today, but I don't remember it. Didn't find it remarkable. Looking it over, it seems fine. But the NW felt blecch, and that's where I spent all my time, so ... there. It's slightly instructive to look back and remember that my brain kept thinking "it's CHARLATANS ... I really wish it were CHARLATANS, 'cause that seems right ... why can't I think of another word that long that means [Fakes]??? ..." Ugh, stupid ONA. Also worth remembering that I actually *considered* ACL at one point but immediately discarded it because of the aforementioned lack of abbr.-signalling in the clue. In summation: NW annoying, the rest of the puzzle way, way too easy. Fill looks good, but the cluing just missed wide in both directions—ugly hard in one direction, blandly easy in the other. Editing is an art! OK, bye!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Rock drummer whose last name is same as his band / MON 7-1-19 / Paul who played Crocodile Dundee / Falsett-voiced Muppet

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Medium (felt easy, but 3:04 is pretty Medium)

THEME: MAKE MINE A DOUBLE (39A: Bar request ... or hint to the letters in the circles) — answers contain alcohol names twice:

Theme answers:

• HARUM SCARUM (double RUM) (17A: Devil-may-care)
• HEAR YE, HEAR YE! (double RYE) (24A: Town crier's cry)
• ALEX VAN HALEN (double ALE) (?) (51:A Rock drummer whose last name is the same as his band)
• LOGGING INTO (double GIN) (62A: Accessing, as a password-restricted website)

Word of the Day: ALEX VAN HALEN (51A) —

Alexander Arthur van Halen (born May 8, 1953 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch American musician who is the drummer and co-founder of the hard rock band Van Halen. The band was formed in 1974 by Alex Van Halen; his younger brother, Eddie Van Halen; David Lee Roth; and Michael Anthony. Warner Brothers signed the band in 1977, and its debut album was released in 1978. Alex and Eddie Van Halen are the only members of Van Halen who have been in the band throughout its existence. (wikipedia)

• • •

Really felt like I was flying through this one, but my time was totally normal. What a bummer. I want to blame the drink I had just before solving—a particularly tasty concoction my wife invented called The West Side (think Manhattan but w/ maraschino liqueur instead of sweet vermouth)—but the drink was probably not the problem. The problem was probably the NW, where I started and where I (in true me fashion) just flailed around like an eel on land for what felt like minutes but was more likely just 15-20 seconds (i.e. enough to take me from a fast time to a normal time). No idea re: HDTVS; more than no idea re: HAHA (?) funny (1D: ___ funny (genuinely humorous)); without "V" no idea re: VOUCH (4D: Give personal assurance (for)); ADD for SUM (5D: Total). Really had to muscle my way out of there with TIRE ALEC AEIOU. Once free of that corner, I went on a tear, but apparently not enough of a tear to make up for the initial fumbling. As for the theme, I quite like it, actually, though ALE is a weird one here—you might conceivably order a double of all the other drinks, because they are liquor, but you don't really order ALE that way. It's like ... pint, half-pint. Still, the core concept works, and the grid is scrumptiously clean! I can definitely accept this Monday puzzle.


There were a few minor hiccups along the way. Confused my Seminoles with my Sooners and wrote in OSU at 9D: The Seminoles of the A.C.C. (FSU). Assumed 34D: Of the highest quality would be a superlative (i.e. something ending -EST) and so took Forever to turn up DELUXE, which was harder to turn up than it might've been because wait what there's an *ALEX* VAN HALEN now? Really could've used that "X." In fact, didn't get DELUXE until I got that "X." Do people still use DSL? I looked at 35A: Broadband letters and honestly the clue just didn't compute, and when I got the "D" it still didn't compute, and when I got D-L the non-computing continued, so I let ELSA bail me out and I moved on. I did manage to remember Paul HOGAN, though, so I'm pretty chuffed about that. OK, that's enough of that.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Obsessive fan in modern slang / TUE 5-16-19 / Mer contents / Belly in babyspeak / Cereal brand wth weight-loss challenge / Mideast royal name / Skill tested by Zener cards for short

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:50 on oversized 16x15)

THEME: THEME (42A: < — What this is for this puzzle) — the theme is "42" (the clue number for that clue):

Theme answers:

• THE MEANING OF LIFE (18A: What the computer Deep Thought was programmed to figure out in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")
• JACKIE ROBINSON (37A: Hall-of-Fame player whose number has been retired by every team in Major League Baseball)
• PRESIDENT CLINTON (56A: He served between Bush 41 and Bush 43)

Word of the Day: STAN (54D: Obsessive fan, in modern slang) —

noun

noun: stan; plural noun: stans

1. 1. 

   an overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity.

   
   

   "he has millions of stans who are obsessed with him and call him a rap god"

verb

verb: stan; 3rd person present: stans; past tense: stanned; past participle: stanned; gerund or present participle: stanning

1. 1. 

   be an overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity.

   
   

   "y'all know I stan for Katy Perry, so I was excited to see the artwork for her upcoming album"

Origin early 21st century: probably with allusion to the 2000 song ‘Stan’ by the American rapper Eminem, about an obsessed fan. (emph mine) (google)

• • •

I should've had more fun solving this than I did. In retrospect, it's a pretty solidly built Tuesday. The theme is simple but well executed—just three themers, but those were all iconic, no stretches, and the reduced THEME pressure gave the grid room to breathe, which meant (for the most part) the fill was clean, and occasionally even interesting. I think my brain just wasn't fully awake and working at capacity when I solved this, so I didn't really get the theme until very late, even thought the *first* thing I thought of when I got THE MEANING OF LIFE was, of course, "42." Somehow, in continuing to solve, that little moment of thought drifted out of my head. I got JACKIE ROBINSON instantly, off the first word in the clue ("Hall-of-Famer..."), and got PRESIDENT CLINTON off of just the [He served...] part (thank you, crosses!), and so I never had occasion to think specifically about "42" again. This made the clue for THEME read like something ridiculous. That little left-pointing arrow ... I thought was somehow referring to the concept of a "clue" ... I don't know. I got it eventually, but it just didn't snap in. I was annoyed while solving at the grid shape, which seemed excessively fussy (with lots of crannies, ergo lots of short stuff) for a puzzle with just the three themers. And some of the fill I encountered early on was off-putting in a way that stayed with me. And then I got to NOE very late and honestly couldn't remember what the last letter was: NOA, NOH ... NOE is super duper crosswordese. Half mad at the answer itself (for adding to my crosswordese gripes), half mad at myself for not getting it instantly. I knew it. I just forgot it. So it's a good puzzle. But I found it frustrating more than I found it enjoyable.


Here are some bad answers I never want to see again. First, ECOCIDE. I have seen this often in crosswords, and literally no place else. Why in the world does it appear in crosswords with such frequency? Well, it's the alternating vowel-consonant pattern, and the beginning and ending in vowels, that makes it so grid-friendly. But like most ECO-things (see ECOCAR), I don't believe it really truly exists. "Environmental destruction" certainly exists, 24/7/365, all over the world, but ECOCIDE is just a no from me, dawg. Another no: TEHEE. "Laugh syllables" in general are The Worst (you know, your HEEs HAHs HARs etc.), but this lopsided weirdo answer has no place in the puzzle or on this earthly plane of existence. And yet people Love to put it in their grids. Whyheee? It's obviously "TEE HEE" when you say it, so why are you writing it like the first syllable is some short-voweled unstressed accidental sound. It's like you meant to say "TEE" but maybe coughed or choked on something? Anyway, here's the kind of confusion that can result when you use this stupid non-laugh:

I don't think HONED is nearly as good as TONED for 35A: In good shape), but I gotta say you are forgiven for believing HEHEE over TEHEE (despite the former's being also absurd). Then there's OBLADI. It's half a Beatles song. It's always terrible. Not as bad as OBLA (which I've seen a whole bunch!), but still, this is some rough fill. Easy to get, but ugly. Again, the alternating vowel-consonant patter proves too seductive for constructors to resist. But resist you should! JOHN was gross (please don't toilet an answer that does not need toileting) (and the clue should say [Place to solve a crossword, *slangily*]—you can't treat JOHN like it's just a normal word, boo!) (and you see how the visual is terrible, right? Keep your toilet-solving habits to yourself). And ONRUSHES just flummoxed me. Another word I never hear / say.  But that's honestly not the puzzle's fault.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I'm gonna get very pedantic here and question THE MEANING OF LIFE. What Deep Thought is "programmed" to figure out?? If I search [Deep Thought programmed] the first hits I get are ... crossword answer sites, i.e. references to the clue for this puzzle. If you actually look at the book, "42" is not offered as THE MEANING OF LIFE. Rather, it's the Answer to the Great Question ... well, here. Just read it. Here's the quote from "Hitchhiker's...":

"All right," said the computer, and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable."You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought."Tell us!""All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question...""Yes..!""Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought."Yes...!""Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused."Yes...!""Is...""Yes...!!!...?""Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.” 

So ... "The Answer to the Great Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything. Not THE MEANING OF LIFE. OK bye.

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Nickname for Cleveland Browns fans / THU 3-28-19 / Subject of Hemingway's Death in Afternoon / Carla 1960s R&B duo

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Medium (would've been Easy if I'd figured out the theme some time before the 80%-done mark...) (6:10) (3:45 am solve, good morning!)

THEME: GIVE ME SOME SPACE (64A: Request needed to understand four clues in this puzzle) — you need to put a space somewhere in the one-word themer clues to make sense of them:

Theme answers:

• FROM WHERE I STAND (17A: Tome) (i.e. To me)
• DECIMAL (30A: Often) (i.e. Of ten)
• POWERLESS (37A: Notable) (i.e. Not able)
• PERSIST (49A: Goon) (i.e. Go on)

Word of the Day: CORRIDA (2D: Subject of Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon") —

noun

1. a bullfight. (google)

• • •

Fell asleep early, woke up Very early (3:30am! Hello!) and then solved this puzzle. If it weren't for the theme answers, I would've killed this puzzle. The only thing that got in the way was the theme, which I didn't understand for waaaaaaay too long, and even after I pieced together the revealer, I still didn't get it, because it says GIVE ME SOME SPACE and there is the letter string "me" in the first theme clue, so I got distracted trying to make that meaningful for a little bit. Went looking at the other theme clues, saw there were no more "me"s, then made a face, then got it (yes, that's a plausible sequence of events). I've definitely seen variations on this theme before, or this kind of wordplay, so my reaction to the revealer was more collapsed shoulders + oof than widened eyes + Oh! Mainly I'm just mad at myself for not figuring out the rather simple theme concept much earlier. Again, really don't like the "ME" in GIVE ME SOME SPACE because it feels superfluous and distractive, from a theme expression point of view. As a stand-alone phrase, GIVE ME SOME SPACE is great, and of course the whole point is that you are repurposing a stand-alone phrase. I get it. It's just weird that nothing happens with "ME," and also weird to imagine that I would "request" something like this. "INNERSPACE" ... now there's a revealer!


Hardest parts for me where the ones that formed the connective tissue in the middle third of the grid. Not understanding the clue on DECIMAL, I really needed the short Downs but couldn't remember which horrific crossword initialism was called for at 25D: Banned pollutants (PCBS) and couldn't decide on which [Childish retort] to use (it was IS SO) (again, I say: worst genre of clue Ever). Also, the clue on B-SIDE was tough (36A: It's generally not played so much) (and people play B-SIDEs all the time, wtf).

[OTIS] [B-SIDE]

Had STIFF for SHAFT, so that caused a real snarl (41A: Give a raw deal). And then there was the ADA / DEW cross, which was my last letter in the grid, and which I just stared at for a few seconds wondering how any letter could make a [Frost relative] (DEW). Ugh. I was like "... NEW ..." Not a fan of the ADA clue (28A: Palindromic girls' name). There are famous ADAs, you know? Come on.


Oh, and then I finished up with a stupid ERROR because of the stupidest reason, i.e. the olde "Which Plural Is It, Latin or English?" dilemma. That is, I had PUPAS at 59D: Cocoon dwellers (PUPAE). Always check your crosses, kids! [Popular bait for catching striped bass] is not SELS, it turns out. Ugh. Anyway, the theme is fine, the puzzle is fine, but there were issues that made my feelings run to tepid. Oh well. Happy Opening Day!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Multi-time pro bowl tight end Greg / FRI 8-10-18 / Main antagonist in George Orwell's 1984 / Setting for first Mickey Mouse cartoon / Ranch sobriquet / Move to right incrementally

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:59)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Greg OLSEN (5D: Multi-time Pro Bowl tight end Greg) —

Gregory Walter Olsen (born March 11, 1985) is an American football tight end for the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at the University of Miami, and was drafted by the Chicago Bears in the first round of the 2007 NFL Draft. He holds an NFL record as the first tight end in league history to record three consecutive seasons with 1,000 receiving yards. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very much my thing. Easy-Medium Fridays are such a glorious feeling. A nice 5-minute workout. And (on good days), you get to see some new / interesting answers and some quirky clues and just generally enjoy yourself. There's some less-than-great short fill in here, but the longer answers make off the short stuff pretty forgettable. If there's one mild criticism I have it's that man oh man is this puzzle reliant on names. Maybe they're just clustered, so they seemed more prevalent than they were. Or maybe it's that I flat-out didn't know two of them, and so my whole field of attention (is that ... does that make sense?) was drawn to names—that is, I noticed them *all* because I didn't know *two*. Names became an issue, so I saw them, in a way that I might not have seen them had I not gotten tripped up. Most of the names are pretty mainstream, or at least crossword-mainstream. But Ay  ay AYLA, I can never remember her. AUEL, I can remember. AYLA no. But she wasn't the problem. The problem, for me, was Greg OLSEN, who (since he is a *current* NFL player) is new to me as of fifteen minutes ago. The NFL is a garbage on so many levels that I can't watch any more ... which is really gonna hurt me now and again with crosswords, but I guess that's the price I pay for not tacitly supporting racist billionaires or accepting that other people's CTE is a small price to pay for my amusement. I'll take the occasional crossword struggle. I can deal.


Like yesterday, I stumbled badly out of the gate, figuring [Insolent talk] was SASS. I knew better than to actually write SASS in, but still, that's what I wanted. I also wanted "I SEE" for 4D: "You make a point" ("FAIR"). But I nailed APIA, so I give myself credit for that. But the rest of the NW was a bust, so I just moved over to the north and, after whiffing on OLSEN, ran EMIL RELY and ASL, and that got me going. Once I got my footing ... well, I lost it again in the NE. I don't think I've read "1984" since high school. I have almost no memory of it. Same with "Brave New World," which I conflate with "1984." Anyway, the "Main antagonist" of that novel? O'BRIEN? If you say so. That "B" was (fittingly) Brutal for me, as I have never heard anyone call a C-NOTE a "BEN"—sincerely thought it might be CEN, as in "century," as in 100 ... they're Benjamins. What's this informality stuff?


Got very lucky with the longer stuff, throwing down PUT PEN TO PAPER and EMPORIUM and RETRONYM and STEAMBOAT and HANK AARON and "ARE YOU BLIND?" with very little help from crosses. Struggled with LAMEST because I didn't know we were still using that dumb word. I wouldn't write it in at first because I didn't believe it could be right. "Lame" to mean "bad" = kind of derogatory to some disabled people, so I just avoid it. Luckily, English is a big language and there are other words available. My favorite single line in the grid is SINUS ERROR (I've had those before), though iTUNES EST ORA sounds like a really wise Latin saying. Alea iacta est, Carthago delenda est, iTunes est ora, etc., et alii, res ipsa loquitur, sic transit gloria.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Vague threat from Stooge / SAT 5-5-18 / Mr once played by Leslie Nielsen / Made bubbles as ocean wave / Food described in Exodus / 2013 Best Picture nominee with major unseen female character / Geographical hexagon / Unstable subatomic particle

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy, maybe creeping toward Easy-Medium (6:17)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ABDUL Aziz bin Fahd, Saudi prince (7D) —

Abdul Aziz bin Fahd (Arabic: عبدالعزيز بن فهد بن عبد العزيز آل سعود‎) is a Saudi Arabian Prince and member of the Royal House of Saud. [I read his whole wikipedia bio and don't really get why he's puzzle-famous except for his family and wealth—there are lots and lots of puzzleworthier ABDULs out there...]

• • •

Woo-hoo! High word-count themeless once again! Keep 'em coming! Despite a few weakish moments (ADOZE!? SPUMED!?), this one popped and crackled and largely won me over. The hardest stuff for me ended up being the math / coding / digital lingo (no surprise), but even those I got pretty easily; after a very rough start in the NW and N, I tore through the grid with very little resistance. Started by slogging through the top of the grid with very little to show for it. SNUG UGANDA POGO, fine, but not much else. Actually *wanted* SPUMED (1D: Made bubbles, as an ocean wave) but couldn't convince myself it was a word. Ended up having to jump out of that corner and over to the northern section, where I promptly plopped down UDON at 15A: Japanese bowlful (SOBA). How sad that the answer that finally began to turn the tide for me, the one that allowed me to get some certainty underneath my feet, was was the Leslie Nielsen movie Mr. MAGOO (8D: Mr. once played by Leslie Nielsen). Put him next to ENO, and you get MUON DOOMS ADAM etc. Moved over to NE where I still wasn't quite out of the woods: threw down END TIMES easily but had LIP (?) for HIP at 9D: Axilla : armpit :: coxa : ___, and had zero idea what 9A: Minds could be (HEEDS). Had to fill in the east and then work back up to get DIGERATI (12D: Tech-savvy group) and finally HEEDS. After that, once I corrected OH, MAN to AW, MAN (30A: "Geez, that just ain't right!"), the jets came on and Zoom: I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR, to this puzzle! If you could see my marked up grid (I print it out and write all over it), you would see that the top half is awash (not AGAPE or ADOZE, but awash) in trouble-spot annotations, but the southern hemisphere is almost totally clean.

[Wonka actually says "Good day, sir! ... I said good day!" But the bastardized version of the expression in the grid certainly has currency]

So there was struggle up front, but then END TIMES went down with just one letter in place, and then WHY I OUGHTA went all the way down with just WH- in place and then I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR went clear across the grid with just -SIR in place (37A: "Take a hike, bub!"). Slow start offset by incredible luck with the longer answers. Should've been similarly fast with HIGH-FALUTIN' (a word I enjoy), but I couldn't get the last letter in T-PPED (46D: Gave a little extra). I was like, "TOPPED? That ... doesn't seem right." Then I ran the vowels and hit "I" and thought "Oh. Sure, OK." Then zing, HIGH-FALUTIN', and a bit later, zong, GET UP AND GO. Top half felt like regular Saturday, bottom half felt like record-breaking Saturday. More like a Wednesday. I'm grateful for POE Dameron (59D: ___ Dameron, fighter pilot for the Resistance in "Star Wars" films) because without him, I would surely have clung to MANNA at 62A: Food described in Exodus (MATZO) much longer than I did. May the Fourth be with me! (I know it's the fifth, but I solved this on the fourth, so the stupid pun stands!)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Sticky-leaved plant that feeds on insects / TUE 4-3-18 / Gil Blas writer / Mag mogul with mansion / Ben Adhem Leight Hunt poem / War-torn Syrian city

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Medium (or Brutal, depending on how well you know certain names...)

THEME: THINK QUICKLY (67A: To understand this puzzle's theme, read the ends of the answers to the starred clues and ...) — the ends of the answers to the starred clues sound like the letters, Q, U, I, C, K, L, and Y, respectively:

Theme answers:

• NETFLIX QUEUE (18A: *List for some binge watchers
• "YES, YOU!" (25A: *Response to "Who, me?")
• "MY EYE!" (29A: *"Balderdash!")
• DEAD SEA (40A: *Lowest point on the earth's surface)
• MARY KAY (43A: *Avon competitor)
• KAL EL (53A: *Superman's alien name)
• "BUT WHY?" (57A: *"For what reason, though?")

Word of the Day: LASSE Hallström (75A: "Chocolat" director Hallström) —

Lars Sven "Lasse" Hallström (Swedish: [ˈla.ˈsɛ ˈhal.ˈstrœm]; born 2 June 1946) is a Swedish film director. He first became known for directing almost all music videos by pop group ABBA, and subsequently became a feature film director. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for My Life as a Dog (Mitt liv som hund) (1985) and later for The Cider House Rules (1999). His other celebrated directorial works include What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and Chocolat (2000). (wikipedia) [Note: he's married to double crossword threat LENA OLIN]

• • •

[d. LASSE Hallström]

I think this is pretty cute, and, thematically, well executed. Streets ahead of lots of weekday themes. It's simple, neat, tight. The revealer actually reveals something. Theme: approved. There's one major OOF here, though, and that's the names. There are going to be boatloads of people who struggle mightily, guess, and possibly even wipe out entirely (on a Tuesday?!) because of the names. I can already see people shouting on Twitter about the HALAS / LASSE cross (say that three times QUICKLY!). They are both absolutely fair game for crosswords, but mayyyybe not crossing one another. But there were lots of other only sorta famous names, like Ned YOST, or TITUS (who was emperor for only two years). And then there were the monsters from the bottom of the crosswordese trunk that you still keep in your attic for some reason: 36A: "Gil Blas" writer (LESAGE) and 51D: "___ Ben Adhem" (Leight Hunt poem) (ABOU). These would be horrifying if I hadn't been doing crosswords for 25+ years (when they roamed the grid freely); as it is, they are merely laughable, in that those clues literally make me laugh out loud, mostly at the idea that the names "Gil Blas" or "Leigh Hunt" would be some kind of *help* at getting an answer. It's like when you look up a word, and the definition contains a word you don't know, which you then have to look up—that's what those clues are like. Gil what? Leigh who? And then there's the SUNDEW, whatever that is (50A: Sticky-leaved plant that feeds on insects). Lots and lots of opportunities to fall on your face because of not-terribly-familiar names, though the HALAS / LASSE cross is the only name pitfall that seems potentially lethal to me.

[d. LASSE Hallström]

[d. LASSE Hallström]

The puzzle is over-sized at 16-wide, so if your time was a little on the slow side, that's probably, or at least possibly, the reason. I found it fairly Tuesday-easy overall, and ended with a solidly Tuesday+ time (the "+" is with the adjustment for grid size). Biggest struggles were really mundane things. Could not wrap my head around IN THAT (16A: Because). Needed virtually every cross there, and one of those crosses was UNQUOTE, which, while really nice, was also clued kinda hard (7D: Ending "). I briefly thought the clue was incomplete or otherwise messed up. Other strange slow-down occurred at the intersection of GAG (20A: Bit of a comic) and ROGUE (14D: Animal that has strayed from the herd). First problem there was putting in HAM before GAG. But even after I took HAM out, I wasn't sure about either GA- or RO-UE. Was really looking for a more, I don't know, "herd"y word than ROGUE (also ROGUE seems more like an adjective than a noun). And GAG seems more like a [Comic's bit] than a [Bit of a comic] (i.e. that clue is doing some late-week misdirection on a Tuesday). After that, it was only SUNDEW that slowed me down in any way. Again, really enjoyed the theme, but the names were kinda out of control (and I say this as someone who actually knew them all) (except SUNDEW) (whatever that is).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Ron nine-time all star from 1960s 70s Cubs / SAT 3-3-18 / Riesling alternative familiarly / So-called Father of Zoology / Wire stickup man

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Ron SANTO (19A: Ron ___, nine-time All-Star from the 1960s-'70s Cubs) —

Ronald Edward Santo (February 25, 1940 – December 3, 2010) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) third baseman who played for the Chicago Cubs from 1960 through 1973 and the Chicago White Sox in 1974. In 1990, Santo became a member of the Cubs broadcasting team providing commentary for Cubs games on WGN radio and remained at that position until his death in 2010. In 1999, he was selected to the Cubs All-Century Team. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2012. (wikipedia)

• • •

Aha, so this is what happened to my Friday puzzle. It got lost and ended up on Saturday. Yesterday took me over 10 minutes, today: just over 6. As I said yesterday, yesterday was a Saturday. Today is a Friday. Both are fine puzzles, but slotting them on their proper days would have been ... let's say, nice. But I covered the manifestly commercial reasons for the mis-slotting yesterday, so—moving on. This puzzle was lovely, I thought, though we have to talk about the terrible, godawful cluing decision that the editor made on 1A: Display, as an image, using only a small number of different tones (POSTERIZE). That was not the constructor's clue. And I knew immediately after I got it that the clue wasn't the constructor's. No way. No one, least of all Damon (who makes pretty fresh puzzles, I think) is going to clue POSTERIZE in that clunky, technical way (I'm told it's a common command in Photoshop (?!)—all I know is that the clue is essentially lifted from wikipedia). No, POSTERIZE is basketball term. A common, nay, ubiquitous basketball term. It means "to dunk on someone in a way that is worthy of being depicted on a poster" (see picture, left). Google it and then hit "News" and look at all the articles, all of them about basketball, none of them about Photoshop. Search it in Twitter and see a pretty dense stream of basketball tweets. 100% basketball tweets. As a basketball term, it is dynamic, current, totally in-the-language, original, fantastic. With this (again, truly ugly) clue, it's pretty blah. Also, TONE is both in the grid (37D: Shade) and in the clue for 1A. Seriously, the editorial override on 1A was a terrible call. Should've been STETTED.


There is one pretty ugly part of the grid: it's then NE, where crosswordese ARHAT crosses crosswordese STETS and supercrosswordese TARAS (!?). MOL is up there too. Rough, rough, rough patch. Rest of the grid has a stray clunker or two, but largely stays clean. I flew through this with very few problems. Most trouble was right up front. ARKS for 1D: Bible supporters, often (PEWS). USDA for 2D: Org. with inspectors (OSHA). But R.E.M., IPO, and ZORA Neale Hurston were all gimmes, and I fixed the NW from there. "R.U.R." = gimme. ALI / ZAIRE = gimme. "SAY, SAY, SAY" = gimme. Slow spots included the SCENE in NUDE SCENE (43A: Hot take?), Ron SANTO (I have a real baseball blind spot from Maris's 61 to Fisk's home run, which seems to include almost the entirety of SANTO's career), and the last letters of EDER (9D: Linda of Broadway's "Jekyll & Hyde"), SALUD (30D: "Gesundheit!"), and SHIRE (12D: Ending with Oxford or Cambridge), respectively (for that last one, I honestly wrote in SHIRT).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. 15A: Way out in space is a Great clue for ESCAPE POD.

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Velvety growth / "The Simpsons" bus driver / The void / Subjects of the Second Commandment / Barfly

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: real, REAL easy (personal best Thursday for me)

THEME: INITIALLY (54A: At the start ... or how the first two letters of each starred clue relate to the answer?) -- clues for themed answers only make sense when their first two letters are broken off as initials, at which point they become dead giveaways, basically.

Theme answers:

• RYAN O'NEAL (17A: Roman of Hollywood?)
• LINDA EVANS (24A: Legal acting in a 1980s prime-time soap opera?)
• MARIE ANTOINETTE (34A: Malady of French history?)
• ROGER EBERT (46A: Regent of film criticism?)

Word of the Day: ROLFE (46D: John of colonial Jamestown) —

John Rolfe (1585–1622) was one of the early English settlers of North America. He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony of Virginia.  (wikipedia)

• • •

AND he married Pocahontas!  How does that fact get lower billing than the tobacco thing, or Rolfe being "of colonial Jamestown"?  I'm not a big fan of defining people by their choice of spouse, but I do think a fair rule is this: if you marry someone, and Disney makes a movie about that person 350 years later, you get to be "Mr. Pocahontas" thereafter.  Yes, I realize this means that by 2340 or so, Jay-Z will be known exclusively as "Mr. Beyonce."  I am fine with that.

Anyway: hi, everyone!  Pleased to meet you and Happy February!  I'm Ken Walczak.  I usually write about booze or yammer about David Lynch on the Internet, but tonight I'm filling in for Rex while he catches up on [/consults notes] screaming into the void.  Oh wait, sorry.   I mean, "screaming into OBLIVION."  My mistake. 

I breezed through this one, and even shaved a few seconds off my personal best Thursday time, thanks to a pedestrian theme (Rex notes that the initial gimmick has been used before, and less than two years ago, by the NYT) that revealed its secrets super quick.

Man, that theme, though.  The first themed clue--"Roman of Hollywood?"--juts right out on to the thinnest of ice.  I mean: it's February 1, 2018, during that brief hopeful window between Oscar nominations and the Oscar telecast, but also right smack in the middle of #MeToo and #TimesUp and a burgeoning awareness about the horrible deeds of horrible men in every industry but famously and perhaps especially in Hollywood ... and the most famous crossword puzzle in the country chooses a clue that will surely elicit, for many people, the immediate first guess: "Polanski."

As in: Roman Polanski, the director whose films have won eight Academy Awards, six of them after he fled the United States to escape sentencing after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

Gross.

And then RYAN O'NEAL, the answer that apparently could not have been clued any other way than with "Roman of Hollywood?", because Ryan is after all a "man of Hollywood" with the initials R.O., crosses ... OGLE.  "Roman of Hollywood?" + OGLE.  Very gross.

Less SORELY vexing, but still notable: 24 across.  We all love Linda Evans (speaking of which, Wonder Woman: 28 fewer nominations than films by Roman Polanski) but "legal acting" is ... not a phrase.  Not a thing.  Is the alternative "illegal acting"? #LegalizeActing!  No.  Maladies, regents, Romans: all nouns one might use in a clue that would be intelligible on its own, i.e. without this "initialism" gimmick.  "Legal acting" is not.

[EDIT: It's been noted that Lynda-with-a-y Carter was Wonder Woman in the 1970s and that Linda Evans was on Dynasty and that I am an idiot.  All three things are true!]

Qualms about the theme aside, the fill was solid overall.  It would have been pointless to expect sparkling answers in the scrawny 3 x 4 corners (NW and SE), but nothing there was truly awful ... and ECHELONS, OBLIVION, PRETAX, and STEM CELLS all get a ROGER EBERT memorial thumbs-up from me.
 

Other Gripes, Even Though I Liked the Puzzle Overall and Had Fun:

• 19A: Pretend (LET ON) — Webster has "pretend" as a third definition for this phrase, and ... sure/maybe/I guess??!? ... but I cannot think of a single time anyone has ever used it that way in conversation.  Here in real life, "let on" always means "admit" to me.  As in: "he still won't LET ON, but that senator knows exactly what Trump said about Africa."

• 20A: Shoe company based in Southern California (LA GEAR) — Can we retire this one, please?  I have not seen a pair of L.A. Gears on a living human being's feet in more than a decade.  The last athlete L.A. Gear signed to an endorsement contract was, hand to Wikipedia, Ron Artest.  Not even "Metta World Peace" yet!  Famous Original Ron Artest!  Yet LAGEAR, persists, endures, crops up roughly twice a month.  Please stop.

• 22D: Average guy (SCHMO) — I think of calling someone a "schmo" as a bit more pejorative than just calling them "average", and it's a bit odd to see SCHMO clued without a "Joe" anywhere in sight.  NBD, though, as the kids (and constructors needing to fill a 3 x 4 corner) say.

• 39A: Really binges, in brief  (ODS) — Way overused, inevitably clued in some cutesy way like "binges" to evoke "ODing" on potato chips or Netflix.  Invariably makes me think of hard drugs anyway.  Would love to see it ICEd (oh yeah, "clinch" for "ice" also strikes me as odd!) but I do try to set realistic expectations.  

Oh man, this was super fun!  Hopefully Rex lets me do it again some time.

Signed, Ken Walczak, BARFLY of CrossWorld

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Elephant rider's seat / SAT 12-30-17 / Pioneering hip-hop trio / Bayou genre / Subject of Durocher's nice guys finish last sentiment / Matchmaking site available in Hebrew

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Leon CZOLGOSZ (34D: McKinley's assassin) —

Leon Frank Czolgosz (Polish: Czołgosz [ˈt͡ʂɔwɡɔʂ]; May 5, 1873 – October 29, 1901) was an American anarchist and former steel worker who assassinated U.S. President William McKinley in September 1901. Czolgosz was executed just over seven weeks later.

• • •

If you knew CZOLGOSZ without ever having seen the musical "Assassins," congratulations. To me, that name is just someone slamming their face into the keyboard, so that corner was horrendously tough, in a puzzle that was already pretty tough. Pop culture was all beyond me. AL PACINO was in "Merchant of Venice"? OK. Someone named INI Kamoze exists? If you say so. Didn't know Durocher was talking about OTT. Barely knew that Hemingway's old man was SANTIAGO (needed a bunch of crosses for that to come back to me). No idea what ALNICO is (except basically AL PACINO minus the PA). Would not have spelled FOGY without an "E". Point SUR? Nope. An URN is a "base"? Nope. EMU oil? Really? Wow. Poor EMU. Didn't know ANN meant "grace" (???). And on and on. RUN-DMC and KING JAMES were about the only proper nouns on my wavelength today. Oh, and MC ESCHER wasn't too hard. And J-DATE. But overall this was the bad kind of hard—hard because of proper nouns and tenuous clues.


ALTAR BOYS ring bells??

NOT VALID could've gone so many ways but it goes this dumb math way. NOT VALID is something you say about a license or a coupon. [Cracks] [Range] [Snag] are successive Across clues. This is sadistic. Write a clue. Piling up vague one-word clues is not good cluing. Top-level trivia buffs probably destroyed this, as so much of it is, well, trivial. I want something more from puzzles than just "do you know these names?" On the plus side, because I was so slow overall, I had only one real mistake. Wrote in LEANS / NOLO instead of TENDS / DARE (11D: Inclines / 22A: Option for people who can't handle the truth?).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS [Pioneering rap trio with mathematically inspired works?] = RUN-DMC ESCHER

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