Puppet lady of Mister Rogers Neighborhood / WED 4-29-15 / Limey's drink / Rose song from Music Man / Bear's Wall Street partner / Excels over in slang / Mixing male female characteristics slangily / Dead: prefix

Constructor: Daniel Landman

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: POLYGON (39A: ELK, EARL, LEAK or GEAR, geometrically)— each circled (or otherwise marked) letter in the grid is a VERTEX (or point where two lines converge) in a different kind of POLYGON. Connecting the letters in the the different words in the POLYGON clue will get you different POLYGONs. Which POLYGONs, you ask? Here you go:

Theme answers:

• RIGHT TRIANGLE (20A: ELK, geometrically, in the finished puzzle)
• TRAPEZOID (28A: EARL, geometrically)
• RECTANGLE (48A: LEAK, geometrically)
• PARALLELOGRAM (58A: GEAR, geometrically)

Word of the Day: VERTEX (52D: What each of this puzzle's circled squares represents) —

noun

1. 1. 

   the highest point; the top or apex.

   synonyms:

   apex, peak, pinnacle, zenith, crown, crest, tip, top "a line drawn from the vertex of the figure to the base"
2. 2. 

   GEOMETRY

   each angular point of a polygon, polyhedron, or other figure.

• • •

There's a reason I don't do sudoku. Nobody cares about where the 1or the 8 or the 6 goes in any given section. There's no meaning there. There's nothing to say. In fact, the numbers don't even have to be numbers. My daughter had some version called colorku (kolorku?) where marbles were nine different colors. Same idea. My point is that ELK and EARL and LEAK and GEAR are arbitrary arrangements of letters. The meanings of those words are irrelevant (though it is relevant, I think, that they are words—that adds at least one layer of difficulty / elegance to the whole endeavor). In the end, shapes. Geometry. I like geometry fine. But there's no meaning her. No (real) wordplay. And so if you like drawing on your grid, or are really turned on by shapes, then there's pleasure here for you. Otherwise, the theme is a kind of irrelevance. I never did anything with the finished grid, and just inferred the various shapes base on pattern recognition once I got a few crosses. Theme was more distraction to me than an interesting, intrinsic part of the solving experience. But here, look—in the native NYT app, apparently you can make a pretty picture like this:

[screenshot courtesy of S. O'Neill]

I feel like this puzzle is the prettier cousin of yesterday's puzzle. Or handsomer. Or smarter if those other comparative adjectives are somehow too superficial or demeaning to you. No, I'm going back to prettier. Fill is less constrained by demands of the theme, so there are fewer outright painful moments. But there's not a ton of excitement in the fill either, and with a kinda-just-lies-there theme with straightforward answers, the fun factor was on the lowish side for me today. Uncharacteristically, I think my favorite part was the NW, i.e. the first bit I filled in. I'm lukewarm on ANDRO-, and ACHS is the worst thing in the grid, but the rest of that section, over to FERRET and down to MOAN, is all pretty solid and even unusual in places (from COOING ON A DATE to drinking GROG in a HANGAR in SHAHDOM). Toughest part for me was LIDA. I don't know my "Music Man" songs that well, I guess.  Needed every cross. I also stumbled a bit in the SW, where BACKACHE preceded BACK PAIN, causing problems and even briefly making me reconsider how I was spelling Bear STEARNS. But I had the good sense to pull ACHE out pretty quickly, so damage down there was minimal. A curious puzzle that, for me, was (like all 2D geometrical figures) flat. I give it a B FLAT. Because it be flat.

Greater: SHAHDOM, DOGGONE, BACK PAIN
Lesser: ACHS, LIDA, NENA, GTE, OVO, CRO, LIRR, ETNA, EEK

Good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Facebook and Twitter]

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Chaiken who co-created L Word / WED 11-12-14 / Mexican cigar brand / Baseball hall of famer mistakenly listed in chanukah song as Jewish / Slangy commercial suffix / Playwright who wrote what is originality undetected plagiarism /

Constructor: Daniel Landman

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BROKEN / RECORD (37A: With 40-Across, repeat offender? … or something found, literally, in four rows in this puzzle) — letter string "RECORD" is "BROKEN" (by black squares on four different lines:

Theme answers:

• GRANDMÈRE / CORDS
• EIRE / COR / DESERT
• RACIER / ECO / RDAS
• PEREC / ORDAINING

Word of the Day: HORSE CAR (11D: Transportation in Disneyland's Main Street, U.S.A.) —

n.

1. a streetcar drawn by a horse or horses.

2. a railroad car or a truck for transporting horses.

[1825–35, Amer.] (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

This would be a great idea if you could pull it off. But this puzzle decided Does Not pull it off. The resulting fill, in theme rows and just All Over, is a disaster. From the crosswordesey to the outright, unequivocally bad (IAL, PSSTS, ORAMA), the damage done to this grid is really inexcusable. If you need a nine-letter word ending in "RE-" how in the world do you end up with French "GRANDMÈRE"? I want to say there are roughly a jillion English words / phrases that would've fit the bill. That's just the first of many odd choices. I call this kind of theme a "canshould," i.e. just because it *can* be done, doesn't mean it *should*. Again, I can imagine this theme concept in different, more experienced hands being pulled off nicely. But in the theme rows alone you've got EIRE, COR, RDAS, and PEREC (?!). And then, hoo boy, the rest of the grid is just drowning in suboptimal stuff. I knew before I got out of the NW that this puzzle was gonna be trouble. Fill problems are probably most intense in the N, with PSSTS PPD SPEE and COR all falling under the to-be-avoided category, but DECI EDUCED ESOS AER ADV GAI ABONE and the aforementioned IAL and ORAMA, not to mention ECO TEAMO INGE ULNA SRS and other ultra-common dull stuff. The grid simply isn't worth the theme concept. Are the long Downs OK? The long Downs are OK. But they are nowhere near justifying this grid. Should've been sent back with a note: "Good idea—send it back with a Much cleaner grid, and I will happily reconsider it." But instead: Good Enough! Run it! A friend of mine just wrote me a message with virtually the identical observation: the proper response to this was, "Good idea, but as is, no."


I just can't get over PSSTS and IAL. It's not like I haven't seen them before, but in a grid already hamstrung by subpar fill … more than one PSST? That just strains credulity. And the only time I wanna see freestanding "IAL" is if Gore ever writes an autobiography with that title.

Bullets:

• 62A: Georges who wrote "Life: A User's Manual" (PEREC) — I have only ever seen this name in crosswords, and Only Ever With This Clue. It's klassic krosswordese. See also SPEE. Old-timey non-fun.
• 63D: No great catch (CAD) — this clue struck me as very odd. I don't think of a CAD as someone you catch at all. A schlub is no great catch.
• 67A: Name hollered in the "Flintstones" theme song (WILMA) — I actually wrote in YABBA. As I drifted off to other parts of the grid, a little part of my brain was going, "You know YABBA's not a 'name,' right?"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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River through Pomerania / THU 2-13-14 / Evangeline locale / City known as Florence on Elbe / 1963 movie with the tagline Everybody who's ever been funny is in it

Constructor: Daniel Landman

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: MAD rebus — four MAD squares in the central Down answer, then one additional MAD square in each quadrant

Word of the Day: ACADIA (7D: "Evangeline" locale) —

Acadia (French: Acadie) was a colony of New France in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine to theKennebec River. During much of the 17th and early 18th centuries, Norridgewock on the Kennebec River and Castine at the end of the Penobscot River were the southern-most settlements of Acadia. The actual specification by the French government for the territory refers to lands bordering the Atlantic coast, roughly between the 40th and46th parallels. Later, the territory was divided into the British colonies which becameCanadian provinces and American states. The population of Acadia included members of the Wabanaki Confederacy and descendants of emigrants from France (i.e.,Acadians). The two communities inter-married, which resulted in a significant portion of the population of Acadia being Métis.

Today, Acadia is used to refer to regions of North America that are historically associated with the lands, descendants, and/or culture of the former French region. It particularly refers to regions of The Maritimes with French roots, language, and culture, primarily in New Brunswick,Nova Scotia, the Magdalen Islands and Prince Edward Island, as well as in Maine. It can also be used to refer to the Acadian diaspora in southern Louisiana, a region also referred to as Acadiana. In the abstract, Acadia refers to the existence of a French culture in any of these regions.

People living in Acadia, and sometimes former residents and their descendants, are called Acadians, also later known as Cajuns after resettlement in Louisiana. (wikipedia)

• • •

There are pluses and minuses to this one. The solve is actually retrospectively interesting, in the sense that I can look back on the first half and be somewhat amused at how the rebus thwarted me. Wanted "MADELINE," didn't fit (wrote in "ELOISE" even as I thought to myself, "The Plaza is not in Paris…") (16A: Title girl in a children's books series set in Paris). Wanted "IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD," didn't fit. I actually flailed a good bit before finally getting my first gimme at ELROY (20D: The Jetson boy), then flailed some more before the next gimme, "PNIN" (9D: Nabokov novel after "Lolita"). got me going in the NE. But after I got the rebus (at MADDEN), the puzzle just deflated, interest-wise. I think the central answer is a cute way to showcase the rebus, but with the rebus mystery gone, there was just the matter of where the MAD squares were going to be. And with only average fill throughout, there just wasn't a lot to ooh and aah over. I loved His AIRNESS. The rest felt a little flat. It's a standard rebus with no real flair—one nice marquee answer, a couple of interesting bits of non-theme fill, and that's about it.


KEEN EAR and SORE ARM feel very GREEN PAINT-ish to me, i.e. they're kind of arbitrary adj./noun pairings. Yes, they are real phrases, but they aren't exactly strongly self-standing. I enjoyed seeing CLAUDIA Cardinale—a not uncommon feeling among many male movie-goers of the '60s, I suspect. She co-starred in one of my very favorite movies, Sergio LEONE's "Once Upon a Time in the West." Very important precursor to everything Tarantino ever did. Also has my favorite Henry Fonda performance of all time. Sinister to the teeth. Fantastic. Anyway, CLAUDIA is in it. Memorably.

Really strongly considering taking a snow day tomorrow (we're gonna get hammered) and just teaching my classes from home. Why did God create the internet if not to enable me to teach in my pajamas? My God is a loving, super-chill God who wants me to be warm and happy.

[Sid Caesar, 1922-2014]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. The Finger Lakes Crossword Competition will be held in Ithaca, NY on Saturday, Mar. 1, 2014. I'll be there, "judging" or "lurking around" or something like that. Proceeds to benefit the literacy programs of Tompkins Learning Partners (TLP.org). All the info you need here.

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Disney chief Bob / MON 3-18-13 / Basic physical measures / Ruling house of Monaco

Constructor: Daniel Landman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: S.I. UNITS (38A: Basic physical measures ... or a hint to 17-, 27-, 48- and 63-Across) — theme answers are two-word phrases, first word starting with "S," second word starting with "I."

Word of the Day: S. I. UNITS (38A: Basic physical measures ... or a hint to 17-, 27-, 48- and 63-Across) —

n

(Mathematics & Measurements / Units) any of the units adopted for international use under the Système International d'Unités, now employed for all scientific and most technical purposes. There are seven fundamental units: the metre, kilogram, second, ampere, kelvin, candela, and mole; and two supplementary units: the radian and the steradian. All other units are derived by multiplication or division of these units without the use of numerical factors (freedictionary.com)

• • •

This puzzle made me laugh out loud. I don't think I have ever not known the revealer on a Monday. I mean, never ever heard of it!? I just assumed it was one of those weird moments where I don't know something that everyone else does. But since I confessed not knowing it (on Twitter and Facebook), scores of folks have come out of the woodwork and admitted same. I'm sure it's an ultra-familiar term for many, many people, particularly scientists, but my Humanities friends and I were baffled. No big deal, though, as I was able to infer the "I" in S.I. UNITS from just a quick glance at the theme answers. I probably would've guessed "I" even without the theme answers to guide me, but dang if I can ever remember stupid Bob IGER's name. I'm not very impressed with this theme. I haven't tried to come up with "S.I." phrases, but I'm guessing there are many. Or several. The ones that populate this grid ... are not exactly scintillating. But they're fine. They're acceptable. The whole puzzle is acceptable. I did get a bit of a kick out of GRIMALDI (8D: Ruling house of Monaco) and UPTURNED (40D: Like a snob's nose), but most everything else was just 4- and 5-letter OK-ness.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Native Floridians (SEMINOLE INDIANS)
• 27A: Denizen of the least populous New York City borough (STATEN ISLANDER)
• 48A: Clark Kent vis-à-vis Superman (SECRET IDENTITY)
• 63A: Stickler's grammatical no-no (SPLIT INFINITIVE)

Aside from the revealer, there wasn't much in the way of resistance today. MICAH is a slightly tough 1-Across (Book after Jonah), but all the crosses were so easy that it materialized quickly nonetheless. I had the tiniest of hiccups at 10A: Floating arctic mass (FLOE — wanted BERG ... might've written BLOG ...) and at 68A: Board game insert (RULES — wanted BOARD ... which never had a chance, really). My wife is highly dubious that anyone has ever actually written the letters "S.W.A.K." on a love letter (69A: Love letter abbr.). She got it all from crosses and then inferred the meaning ("sealed with a kiss"). I didn't blink. Seen it in puzzles before (but only in puzzles). I guess it beats SDAK.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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