Overlapping fugue motifs / SUN 7-6-14 / New World monkey / Star in Summer Triangle / Four-time NBA all-star pau / Setting of James Clavell's Gai-Jin / Wolfsheim gambler in Great Gatsby / Initialism in Beatles title / Title name in 2000 Eminem hit / City whose name was source of word sherry

Constructor: Daniel C. Bryant

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Oh, Say…" — buncha facts about "THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER" (65A: This puzzle's theme, whose first notes are indicated by shaded squares); shaded squares (represented here by circles) form a visual representation of the anthem's opening notes as they would appear on a musical STAFF (8D: Locale for this puzzle's shaded squares).

Theme answers:

• FRANCIS SCOTT KEY (24A: Lawyer who wrote 65-Across)
• EIGHTEEN FOURTEEN (30A: Year 24-Across wrote 65-Across)
• BRITISH PUB SONG (40A: What the music to 65-Across was, originally)
• WHITNEY HOUSTON (88A: Performer who gave a memorable rendition of 65-Across in 1991)
• PRISONER EXCHANGE (99A: Mission that 24-Across was on when he wrote 65-Across)
• BALTIMORE HARBOR (113A: Where 24-Across was inspired to write 65-Across)

Word of the Day: Matt BAI (69D: Political writer Matt) —

Matt Bai /ˈbaɪ/ is national political columnist for Yahoo! News. Prior to that, he was the chief political correspondent for the New York Times Magazine, where he covered both the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns. Bai often explores issues of generational change in American politics and society. His seminal cover stories in the magazine include the 2008 cover essay “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?” and a 2004 profile of John Kerry titled “Kerry’s Undeclared War.” His work was honored in both the 2005 and 2006 editions of The Best American Political Writing. Bai is a graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University in Medford, MA. In 2014, Bai appeared as himself in the second season of TV show House of Cards. (wikipedia)

• • •

Happy 6th of July, everybody!


This puzzle lost me at 1-Across, and continued to lose me more and more as that little NW corner filled itself in. I just don't have patience for fill this mediocre/bad any more. I wrote in ADINS immediately (1A: Serving edges), but with sincere hope that it was wrong. No dice. Here is my very smart and very kind tennis fan / constructor friend's best defense of ADINS:

We...e..e...e...ll, no denying it's a strained plural. You can't have a simultaneously co-existing handful of AD-INs, as you can balls, or strawberries, or All-England Club towels. But I suppose you could say, "Federer has not captalized on four AD-INs and is still serving as the length of this game stretched to seven minutes.

Why is there creaky, junky fill in an easy-to-fill little section of the grid? It just shouldn't be. Shouldn't. Be. So theme shmeme, I was already opposed to this puzzle before I'd even begun. First impressions are often right, because if that little NW corner isn't filled well, what are the odds any of the rest of it will be? (A: slim).


The theme consisted mostly of arbitrary trivia about the national anthem. The real thematic coup de grâce was the visual representation of the anthem's opening notes, which is very nicely conceived and executed. Sadly, it causes HEMIC, which is kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul, elegance-wise. There was some longer fill in here that I liked quite a bit: YOKOHAMA, COLD CASH, ESCAROLE, and NEOPHYTE, all lovely. I also like FACTOTUM, a word I never use and rarely see but like nonetheless. Seems like it should mean something completely different, like … a small bit of data or … some kind of sacred object or amulet or something. Maybe I never hear it any more because no one has "general servants" (whatever those are) anymore? Anyway, thumbs up to that SAT word. I read "The great Gatsby" for the first time (true story) last year and I don't remember the MEYER Wolfsheim at all.  And yet I remember the TITI (15D: New World monkey) and Val d'ISERE (29A: Skiing destination Val d'___), so who can say how my brain works?


Not much else to say here. Puzzle was extraordinarily easy. I was done in well under 10 despite knowing nothing about the national anthem besides FRANCIS SCOTT KEY. Oh, I have one other thing to say: let's never, ever do tribute puzzles on off days. Hit the day on the nose or don't hit it at all. Ridiculously anti-climactic to have this arrive two days late.

Puzzle of the Week this week goes to Patrick Berry for his Friday NYT themeless. Its only fault was it was too easy. Otherwise, it's as close to perfect a piece of themeless grid construction as you're ever going to see.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Fin de siècle writer Pierre * / SUN 8-15-10 / Mystery of Vep 1990s Off Broadway play / Blue pixie / Purveyor of nonstick cookware

Constructor: Daniel C. Bryant

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Is There An Echo In Here?" — familiar phrases where last sound is repeated (usu. w/ respelling), creating wacky answers, clued "?"-style


Word of the Day: LOTI (5D: Fin de siècle writer Pierre ___) —

Pierre Loti (pseudonym of Julien Viaud), born 14 January 1850 in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime and died 10 June 1923 in Hendaye, was a French novelist and naval officer. //

Contemporary critic Edmund Gosse gave the following assessment of his work:

At his best Pierre Loti was unquestionably the finest descriptive writer of the day. In the delicate exactitude with which he reproduced the impression given to his own alert nerves by unfamiliar forms, colors, sounds and perfumes, he was without a rival. But he was not satisfied with this exterior charm; he desired to blend with it a moral sensibility of the extremest refinement, at once sensual and ethereal. Many of his best books are long sobs of remorseful memory, so personal, so intimate, that an English reader is amazed to find such depth of feeling compatible with the power of minutely and publicly recording what is felt. In spite of the beauty and melody and fragrance of Loti's books his mannerisms are apt to pall upon the reader, and his later books of pure description were rather empty. His greatest successes were gained in the species of confession, half-way between fact and fiction, which he essayed in his earlier books. When all his limitations, however, have been rehearsed, Pierre Loti remains, in the mechanism of style and cadence, one of the most original and most perfect French writers of the second half of the 19th century. (wikipedia)

• • •

This will be the shortest Sunday write-up I've ever done because it's late and I've been at a tournament all day and I'm in a smallish hotel room now with PuzzleGirl and the great Doug Peterson and I don't have the time or energy to give this a thorough going-over. To be honest, this skimpiness of attention is probably for the best, as when I did this puzzle last night, I Really didn't like. I should say WE really didn't like it, because I kept groaning and then asking PG and Doug "this is bad, right?" And mostly, they had to admit, yeah, not great. Problem started with the theme. SO-SO=repeated word but then SI SI=repeated sound (involving respelling of punned word). So theme felt clunky right off the bat. But then came the fill. I don't really want to enumerate it all, but there was so much that felt awkward, from NAMABLE to UNLEARNT to all the Horrible plurals, particularly of abbrevs. ROTCS? NOLOS??! I'd accept NAZIS and ROLOS, but ROTCS and NOLOS? Ugh. I mean, look at at the NE — SSSSS is super cheap as it is, but to put it at the far end of a block so that it makes Every Answer in that section a plural. That's as good as putting in 5 black squares, as far as I'm concerned. Plus the next block down has ASSETS against the wall and three more Across plurals.

One of my roommates was heard to remark: "... and the grid's not that ambitious. Just has 7 theme answers."

Further, SPINDLIER? Two ILENES? A NW corner that's a literary nightmare crossed with superxwordesey ODA and superweak partial ON IN? It was really hard to get into this one, because infelicities were abounding. There are more, but I don't really want to go on.

Lastly, we don't know what "The Man With the Hoe" is. We think it's a painting, maybe by Brueghel (well, we were half right—it's by Millet). We also don't know what MIMI and Rodolfo are from in that last theme answer. Turns out it's "La Bohème." OK. DICTS. STETS. OTE. ENTOM. TRY AS followed by OR ON. It just goes on and on. I feel bad, but beyond GAY PRIDE, I just couldn't find much to love about this one. I need to stop now. I have to get up earlyish and ENTRAIN so that I can get to Port Authority and get home.

As for Lollapuzzoola 3, the occasion of my being here in a hotel room in Queens, I'll try to give you a full write-up on Wednesday. This was easily the best tournament experience I've had to date. Almost 50% more attendees than last year. Mostly good puzzles. Just a fantastic time. Got to meet a lot of new people as well as hang out with old friends. Perhaps other people who were there will chime in with their experiences. At any rate, more on that later in the week.





Theme answers:

• 23A: Underachiever's motto? ("MAY IT EVER BE SO-SO")
  
• 43A: Majorcan affirmation? (MEDITERRANEAN SI SI)
  
• 67A: Registering a poodle? (LICENSING FIFI)
  
• 92A: Guy holding a Hostess snack cake? (THE MAN WITH THE HO-HO)
  
• 113A: Words of caution from Rodolfo? ("DON'T TREAD ON MIMI")
  
• 16D: Reservation at a Johannesburg restaurant? (TABLE FOR TUTU)
  
• 60D: Landlord's ultimatum? (RENT OR BYE-BYE
  

Bullets:

• 1A: Writer of the short story "The Overcoat" (GOGOL) — familiar name, but not gettable from the clue, for me. This section, this tiny section, kind of brutalized me. LOTI!
  
• 6A: Sitcom with three stars ("M*A*S*H") — a great clue.
  
• 41A: "The Mystery of ___ Vep," 1990s Off Broadway play ("IRMA") — you're kidding, right? Right. Shouldn't "Off Broadway" be hyphenated?
  
• 56A: "The lowest form of humor," per Samuel Johnson (PUN) — I knew I liked that guy.
  
• 80A: Hulk Hogan or Andre the Giant, slangily (RASSLER) — has anyone ever called those guys that name?
  
• 95A: Canadian curling championship, with "the" (BRIER) — made as much sense to me as IRMA. Out of left field.
  
• 101A: Dom ___, "Inception" hero (COBB) — timely! Also, "hero?"
  
• 46D: Blue pixie (SMURF) — easy enough, but had No idea they were "pixies."
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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SUNDAY, Oct. 26, 2008 - Daniel C. Bryant (Old Indian V.I.P. / Internet initialism / African nation founder Jomo / Milo's title partner in a 1989 film)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "All Saints' Day" - "ST" is added to familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, which are clued (with "?")



I have one word written across my test-solving copy of this puzzle: "painful." Resolving the puzzle last night, I realized that I had to give credit to the theme answers, many of which were bright and funny - I particularly like HOLY STROLLERS, ULTRAVIOLET STRAYS, and WHERE THE BOYS STARE. But the non-theme fill made me wince over and over and over. Most of my responses to Will re: the puzzles are very terse - little corrections or suggestions, and sometimes nothing but "this looks good." But on this day - here is the transcript of my feedback (some of which he listened to). Wait, first, the theme answers:

• 23A: Switch in an orchestra section? (exchange of STrings)
• 40A: Pilgrim? (holy STroller)
• 57A: Neolithic outlaws? (STone-armed bandits)
• 77A: Invisible lost dogs? (ultraviolet STrays)
• 96A: Gets fat? (goes all STout)
• 115A: Go-go club? ("Where the Boys STare")
• 16D: Add new connections between floors? (put on STairs)
• 70D: Dieter? (STarch enemy)

OK, now here's my test-solver's response:

Theme answers are just fine - very good in places - but the non-theme fill felt forced throughout. Lots of (to me) obscure or at best marginal proper nouns, odd y-adjectives, and other assorted weirdness. The entire SW feels like it needs a complete rewrite. NAWAB (100D: Old Indian V.I.P.) hasn't appeared in a puzzle in almost a decade - for good reason. I know Bach's Mass in B Minor (125A: Key of Bach's best-known Mass) is super famous (as Masses go), but not giving the solver a reasonable chance at the "B" is harsh. Maybe "B" is the only reasonable guess, but I was leaning "A" for a bit. The letter in a music clue like that should have a reasonable cross.

Other never-heard-ofs:

• KENYATTA (though I like it) - 104A: African nation founder Jomo _____
• LACS (Leman is a French lake?) - 79D: Leman and others
• LEHAR - 4D: Franz who composed "You Are My Heart's Delight"
• DONATI - 49D: Costume designer Danilo _____

Other comments:

• SATINY is OK (21A: Smooth and shiny), but then there's LARDY (43D: Loaded with fat)
• DESERET = Utah? (51D: Another name for 28-Across)
• EXE is real but feels like lazy fill (114A: Devon river)
• Don't understand ARR. clue [note: this clue got changed to one I do understand, namely 83A: Sheet music abbr.]
• How is a TVAD "inside"? (108A: Inside pitch?)

'OME (53A: Kipling's "Follow Me _____") and APLAY (64A: Beckett's "Endgame: _____ in One Act") are just more examples of an overall feel of forcedness. No one of the above answers would be terrible on its own (I don't think). But the cumulative effect is kind of punishing.

Not all BRALESS people "need a lift" (though it's a clever clue - 71D: Needing a lift?) - the idea that women "need" bras might get you some flack.

DERIV = ouch (60D: Word origin: Abbr.)

I thought ALDO RAY was AL DORAY (HA ha) - isn't he more famous for something else? Maybe not. (33D: "The Naked and the Dead" star, 1958) [note: I should add that I had him confused in my head with Mamie Van Doren's erstwhile husband, band leader Ray Anthony]

Don't like clue for NEPALI [clue was changed from 68D: Viewer of the Himalayas to the current, better 68D: Certain Himalayan] - much of the country is *in* the Himalaya range, and "viewer" doesn't seem specific enough (or interesting enough)

Lastly, is STONE-ARMED supposed to mean "armed with stones" or "having arms made of stones?" Either way, it's pretty rough, esp. since most of the other theme answers are so smoooth.

I would post Will's patient and gracious reply, but there are probably copyright issues and plus he always sounds so much more Reasonable than I do, and I really don't want to suffer the comparison this morning. I have to give credit to him as an editor - he genuinely listens to criticism, even if he mostly - and appropriately - sticks to his guns.

Bonanza:

• 10A: Like Arnold Schoenberg's music (atonal) - hmm, let's see. Yes, this sounds like kids noodling with their instruments in the living room ... at least at first:

• 16A: 1990 Literature Nobelist Octavio _____ (Paz) - never read him, but know the name
• 38A: Negative north of England (nae!) - exceedingly common; should be a gimme
• 65A: Crazy Legs Hirsch of the early N.F.L. (Elroy) - Didn't realize a first name was missing, so didn't know what the clue was going for.
• 68A: How dastards speak (nastily) - I would have said SNIDELY:

• 72A: Major-league manager Tony (La Russa) - won the World Series recently with the Cards
• 73A: Be Circe-like (entice) - weird but cool clue
• 74A: Alfred E. Neuman visages (grins) - I highly recommend Art Spiegelman's "Breakdowns / Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@/*!" - a brilliant comics memoir. I mention this here because there is a big section about the importance of "MAD" magazine to Spiegelman's artistic development.
• 85A: First Shia imam (Ali) - good, unusual clue for this common answer
• 95A: Internet initialism (IMHO) - oughta be common to you all by now
• 111A: Traditional symbol of friendship (topaz) - I had no idea. Also a Hitchcock film.
• 12D: Milo's title partner in a 1989 film (Otis) - the year "1989" always scares me - what horrid piece of pop culture offal could it be? It's just "Milo and OTIS," which I confuse with "Turner & Hooch" all the time. Difference - dog dies in the latter.
• 17D: Whitaker played him in a 2006 film (Amin) - he was great / movie was mediocre
• 24D: Menotti role for a boy soprano (Amahl) - becoming as common as NAE
• 32D: Curly conker (Moe) - really great clue
• 36D: Longtime D.C. delegate to Congress _____ Holmes Norton (Eleanor) - hard to clue ELEANOR in a way that is not instantly obvious (i.e. Roosevelt and Rigby are gonna be gimmes no matter how you clue them, probably). So this is an interesting choice of clue.
• 59D: Gene variant (allele) - managed to hold on to this one from a month or so back when it looked completely alien to me.
• 69D: Anatomical cavity (antrum) - new, or newish, to me; feels like it might have been in a puzzle recently. Anyway, I pieced it together.
• 80D: American suffragist honored with a 1995 stamp (Alice Paul) - even with a Women's History specialist in the house, I am terrible at remember names of suffragist and other early women's rights types beyond, let's say, Susan B. Anthony.
• 88D: Cowboy actor Calhoun (Rory) - watching "The Simpsons" is a huge advantage for crossword solvers, I find. Yesterday, JACKANAPES was completely familiar to me from the episode entitled "Day of the JACKANAPES." Today, I got RORY instantly because of the episode where Mr. Burns decides to buy greyhound puppies from the Simpson family in order to (gasp) make a greyhound fur tuxedo. He decides he will spare one little greyhound, and he names it ... RORY Calhoun.
  

• 113D: Sleep indicators (zees) - comics!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SUNDAY, Apr. 6, 2008 - Daniel C. Bryant (1910s-'20s DUTCH ART MOVEMENT)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Sound Moves" [or "Could You Reword That, Please?," if you're doing the puzzle in the NYT Magazine] - familiar phrases are rewritten to form wacky phrases that sound the same as the original phrases but mean something completely different. Wacky phrases are then clued, wackily.

April 6, my sister's birthday. Happy Birthday, Amy! You are scarily old to me now, which is sad, because you are (still!) several years younger than I am.

As for this puzzle: I had an error. That's what I have to say about this puzzle. Never heard of TAPPETS (28A: Motor levers) and SUPR seemed as good an abbreviation as any for "superintendent" (10D: Apt. overseer) so I had TAPPERS / SUPR. I never even considered the "T." Only other letter I was entertaining was "E." So ... that's not good. Flat out mistake. You hate to see that.

Otherwise, I thought the puzzle was just OK. I was not a huge fan of the theme - the wacky phrases were often insufficiently wacky to make the whole conceit work. I had to muck around a lot even to get CLAY MAN EXEMPTION, and things didn't improve much from there. I'm not sure how the title relates to the theme? "Sound Moves?" What sound is moving? Further, MOVING is in one of the theme answers, which threw me, as you usually don't see title words (or versions thereof) in the grid, especially in the theme answers. So ... I didn't think the puzzle was terrible. Just meh. My wife, however, may still be gnashing her teeth. I think I'd need two hands to count the number of times she said "I *really* don't like this theme" last night. Maybe she'll wake up feeling more charitable.

Theme answers:

• 23A: Tax break for Gumby? (clay man exemption)
• 35A: Blessing for a shipboard romance? (sea love approval)
• 56A: Perhaps doesn't believe witty Rogers? (may doubt a Will) - this is the one that really got under my wife's skin, in a bad way ...
• 76A: End-game maneuvers? (key pawn moving)
• 92A: Excavate in the white cliffs? (mine Dover matter)
• 110A: Drab Oriental fabric (gray toile of China)
• 16D: Sketch sewing-kit stores? (draw pin centers) - what in the world is a DROP-IN CENTER? Seems to be a place that provides relief for the homeless, but I can't really tell clearly from a quick Google search.
• 46D: Clown's parade memoir? (my laughter mile) - I think this one's my favorite.

Two words (excluding TAPPETS) completely threw me today. SIMNEL (17D: British fruitcake) and DE STIJL (104A: 1910s-'20s Dutch art movement). The first one, as a word, just looks horrible. What other words even look like that? SIMNEL? It's ugly to the point of repulsive. Sounds bad, looks bad. I checked the crosses a billion times before letting that one go (wife knew it, but she's Kiwi, and they just know some of that British @#$# without really knowing why). DE STIJL was unknown to me until I parsed it correctly (two words), but even then I couldn't have defined it for you. Turns out one of the movements exponents is Piet Mondrian, whose work is very familiar to me (and most of you, probably). Simplified composition, pure abstraction, primary colors (and black and white). I think I had a bedspread in the 80s that was reminiscent of DE STIJL.

The List:

• 1A: Rocker Ocasek and others (Rics) - gimme. He's the monstrously tall and gaunt lead singer of The Cars.
• 5A: Dwellers along the Dnieper River (Slavs) - "dwellers" ... that's like "denizens," i.e super crosswordy.
• 10A: "A _____, petal and a thorn (Emily Dickinson poem) ("sepal") - this word's hard enough without its being buried in an Emily Dickinson poem. But since my sister wrote her senior thesis on Dickinson, and it is my sister's birthday, after all, I'll give this clue/answer my SEA LOVE APPROVAL.
• 18A: 1969 self-titled jazz album (Ella) - one of the most common names in all crossword-dom. A beautiful name, nonetheless.
• 19A: United We Stand America founder (Perot) - I knew this instantly. How is that possible?
• 34A: Primitive wind instruments (pan pipes) - Damn, the plural! How did I miss the plural? I had PAN FLUTE here for a while. Oh Zamfir, why do you haunt me so?
• 43A: Architect whose epitaph says "Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you" (Wren) - in St. Paul's cathedral, where Wren is buried.
• 47A: World's longest wooden roller coaster, at Kings Island (The Beast) - noooo idea. It's a good name, though. I like it. And for some of you (... honey) it functions as a nice title for the puzzle.
• 55A: Bridge writer Culbertson (Ely) - why must "Bridge writers" (a marginal field of endeavor if there ever was one) have such crossworthy names. GOREN? ELY? By the way, the song of the year for me, now, is "Eli's Comin'," as performed by Three Dog Night. Between the Super Bowl and the crossword, I've had that damned song in my head for Months. I can't even see the word ELI (and variants) without hearing the song in my head. "You better better hide your heart!"
• 64A: "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" poet (Keats) - gimme for all English majors. Take that, you pampered math/science types, with your ENOLS and TRIVALENTS and TORI and what not.
• 65A: Tribe originally from the Deep South (Choctaw) - family lore had us with CHOCTAW ancestors on my mother's side, for a while. Until genealogical research by my mom proved it false. Now I forget which tribe it really was, so in my head - still CHOCTAW!
• 75A: Enough to hold a lotta iPod tunes (gig) - "lotta," ouch. I guess that was the slang that was supposed to tip you to the slang of GIG (as in "GIGabyte").
• 83A: Zero interest (no desire) - I keep reading this as NODE SIRE.
• 85A: Choice marbles (taws) - whoa, haven't see this word in ages. AGATES and STEELIES I've seen recently. But TAWS has been absent for a while.
• 88A: "Hands Across the Sea" composer (Sousa) - and you thought "Hands Across America" was a failure ...
• 99A: "A Little Bitty Tear" singer, 1962 (Burl Ives) - When I see his name, I think ... Santa.
• 103A: Current gauge (ammeter) - another word that just looks - wrong. It's desperately searching for a proper prefix. SPEEDOMETER and TACHOMETER are laughing at it.
• 108A: Like many "Survivor" contestants (isled) - that's just horrible. "Oh no, don't ISLE me!"
• 119A: Plant swelling (edema) - yes, plants get them too.
• 120A: Communism battler, with "the" (West) - pretty elaborate clue for a simple word.
• 8D: What people are saying, briefly (vox pop) - really? This is a legitimate phrase? "Yo, dude, what's the VOX POP?" That's like the nerdiest version of "The 411" I've ever seen. It's the Latin Club version of street slang.
• 14D: Leader with a goatee (Lenin) - "Goatee" makes me think of Murray, the goateed band manager on the HBO show "Flight of the Conchords," which we are currently watching on DVD, and which I must insist you all see. It's about a two-man band from NZ trying (and failing, completely) to make it in the U.S. They have one fan. All attempts to explain this show will not do it justice. It is uncomfortably hilarious. No laff trak, thank god.
• 25D: Prime minister raised in Milwaukee (Meir) - now there's an epitaph. Classy.
• 37D: Expressed wonder (ahed) - the spelling on that is Killing me ...
• 38D: Hops drier (oast) - one of my favorite little crossword words. Decapitated "toast."
• 39D: "Apologia pro _____ Sua" ("vita") - John Henry Newman's defense of his faith against what he saw as an attack on Roman Catholic doctrine by Charles Kingsley. Also a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

The poet in his lone yet genial hour
Gives to his eyes a magnifying power:
Or rather he emancipates his eyes
From the black shapeless accidents of size--
In unctuous cones of kindling coal,
Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe's trim bole,
His gifted ken can see
Phantoms of sublimity.

• 45D: Crooked (illegit) - again, it hurts. Had ILLEGAL, like every right-thinking person.
• 48D: Twaddle (bosh) - BOSH is also an NBA star.
• 53D: Toweling-off place (bath mat) - true enough. I like this answer a lot. Looks cool in the grid, and it's fairly unusual as 7-letter answers go.
• 67D: Where private messages may be sent? (APOs) - Army Post Offices. Get it? "Private?" Uh huh. Yeah. Cheeky.
• 76D: 1990-'91 war site (Kuwait) - took me an Embarrassingly long time. I had KOSOVO here at first.
• 86D: "The House of the Spirits" author, 1982 (Allende) - thank god for her, because I was a little shaky down there in the SW.
• 89D: _____ law (early legal code) (Salic) - don't why I know this. I just do. Wikipedia tells me this intersting fact ... oid:

The most well-known tenet of Salic law is agnatic succession, the rule excluding females from the inheritance of a throne or fief.

• 97D: Figure skater Sokolova and others (Elenas) - I'm going to have to compile an "ELENAS of the World" list. They seem to be multiplying like flesh-eating bacteria.
• 100D: Steakhouse shunner (vegan) - I don't eat meat, but I eat seafood (occasionally), so I could still go to a steakhouse and have a meal. But I don't. NODE SIRE. The Bloomin' Onion is a pleasure I'll just have to wait til the afterlife to experience. [Cue the choir of angels]:

Hallelujah.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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THURSDAY, Sep. 6, 2007 - Daniel C. Bryant

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: "IT'S REVERSED" (58A: Hint to 17-, 28- and 43-Across) - familiar phrases have "IT" reversed somewhere inside them, creating crazy new phrases, which are clued

This puzzle brutalized me. I couldn't get going at all, and even when I was done I felt like I hadn't made any headway at all. Every single part of the puzzle felt like work. Problems started in the NW where SCOTS (1A: Burns's tongue) was a gimme, as was TRIB (4D: Old New York paper, for short), but I wrote in SHIRT for 1D: Kind of tank (S.C.U.B.A.), and then RAMBLE for 20A: "Blah blah blah blah blah" (babble). Similar disasters followed. I think this Thursday took me longer than any Thursday I've done in a good long while. Not that there's not a lot to like about the puzzle; there is - it just felt deliberately Hard.


Theme answers:

• 17A: Wardrobe malfunction? (untied front)
• 28A: Mood after a military victory? (martial bliss)
• 43A: Where porcine pilots arrive? (landing sties) - figured out STIES immediately but could not for the life of me figure out a phrase that went _____ SITES. "Landing" - it's so basic. Ugh.

There were very few gimmes for me in this puzzle, and then ones I got were odd. I mean, ANTONIONI (11D: Director Michelangelo)? ADESTE (29D: Carol starter)? Those are weird, longish words to be gimmes. But when it comes to small words, damn, this puzzle was cruel. I think ICU (60A: Hospital dept.) was about the only short gimme I had. I'm exaggerating, perhaps, but not by much. Here are some examples of how I tripped all over the short stuff:

• 16A: 3.2 million-member org. with a pi in its logo (NEA) - a familiar abbreviation, but this bit little factoid was unknown to me. Mmmm, pi.
• 11A: Camel's end? (ash) - aargh! Tried to think of a suffix. Camel ... ite? Camel ... well, there's another three-letter word that occurred to me, but which clearly would not pass the breakfast table test. Finally, I decided to write in ELL. Clever, right? Right? Come on!
  
• 19A: Atlantic City hotel, informally, with "the" ("Taj") - lots of casino names came to mind; this was not one of them. That "J"! The cross didn't help me, as it was equally exotic and out of my comfort zone: 13D: Muslim honorific (Haji).
• 23A: "_____ Time" (1952 million-selling Eddie Fisher hit) ("Any") - such a little word, yet so much trouble for me. The crosses were all eluding me (see my NW problems, above). I actually had CRAIG for CONAN (2D: First name in late-night), and the phrasing on the clue 3D: Over near (out by) just made my head hurt. Had no idea what kind of phrase it was going for.
• 48A: Grand Canyon area (rim) - come on! This is very true, and yet of course I was looking for something much more specific; a proper noun, perhaps.
• 8D: Nickname among major-league sluggers (A-Rod) - again, the phrasing threw me. Sounds like the the "nickname" is something that (only) sluggers use, like it's specifically slugger lingo, as opposed to the nickname that Everyone calls that jerk.
• 44D: "_____ U" ("I Luv") - yeah, how about "I OBJECT!" - does the appearance of a phrase on a candy heart make it valid crossword fill? Apparently.
• 52D: "Cross the Brazos at _____" (1964 country hit) ("Waco") - my first guess. A flat-out guess, and one I second-guessed a Lot. Would have helped if I could have figured out its neighbor, 51D: Smooth (glib). I had SLIM (?) and so ... I don't really want to think about it. Even LAO was a struggle, in that I put it in and thought "that ... doesn't look like a word" (57A: Certain southeast Asian). This struggle in the SW made me lose all the joy I might have had at seeing BOS (63A: A.L. city, on scoreboards) in the puzzle.
• 49D: Anatomical passages (iters) - tough but fair; common late-week crossword fill. Still - not easy without some crosses.
• 42A: Estuaries (rias) - like ITERS, a tough word that lives almost exclusively in crosswords.

Again, I'm not complaining about (most of) those answers - just trying to explain why the solving experience felt like it took a ton of effort. Had a real problem with people's names as well, several of which I (guess what?) had never heard of. The worst of these was 28D: Late editorial cartoonist Bill (Mauldin). It would be tough enough for me to name a living "editorial cartoonist" ... come to think of it, I can't name ANY off the top of my head. So ... MA-LDIN stared at me til the bitter end. But wait, you ask, didn't you have INHUMAN in the cross? That would have given you the "U" - puzzle done! Uh, no. Why? Well, because I know lots of people who TOIL, but virtually no one who @#$#@$-ing MOILs (37D: Work hard). This gave me INH-TAN for 36A: Beastly. I don't even like recalling it now, in the pale light of morning.

Other names I had trouble with:

• 33D: Eleanor Roosevelt's first name (Anna) - had no idea
• 51A: Early English actress Nell _____ (Gwyn) - once I got the "WY" part, I realized I had heard of this person before. Still, that took a while.
• 5D: Artist Frank _____, pioneer in Minimalism (Stella) - thank god for various art books I've read and museums I've visited in recent years. Somehow, with just a couple crosses, this guy's name popped into my head out of nowhere. Stella!
• 22D: Emmy-winning Phil (Silvers) - before my time, but familiar enough

STENOG is possibly the ugliest "word" I've ever seen (25D: Trial position, for short). Lastly, I would call an AGNOSTIC (38D: Doubter) someone who doesn't know, rather than someone who doubts (that person, I'd call a SKEPTIC!!). Word derives from Greek: Agnostos = "ignorant"; gnosis = "knowledge." A woman I know well and love a lot used to call AGNOSTICs "chickensh-t atheists." If you knew this woman, it would make you laugh to imagine such language coming out of her mouth. The kindest, most generous woman I know ... just don't get her started on religion, please.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Great new vintage paperback covers (and commentary) at "Pop Sensation"

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