Derby car material / FRI 2-22-19 / Gimmers are young ones / Hawaii landmark featuring four seven-ton clocks / 1981 novel that introduced character Hannibal Lecter / Grand or demi ballet move / Bessemer process output / Ophidian menaces / Biblical cubit was based on its length

Constructor: Daniel Nierenberg

Relative difficulty: Medium (?) (easy for me until I hit the NE, and then I just stared at blank for something well over a minute) (6:20)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Shirley Temple (11D: Temple, for one => CHILD STAR) —

Shirley Temple Black (April 23, 1928 – February 10, 2014) was an American actress, singer, dancer, businesswoman, and diplomat who was Hollywood's number one box-office draw as a child actress from 1935 to 1938. As an adult, she was named United States ambassador to Ghana and to Czechoslovakia, and also served as Chief of Protocol of the United States. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty tepid stuff for a Friday. Feels like someone's idea of a snazzy puzzle twenty years ago. The things that (I think) are supposed to feel hip and current feel slightly stale (BAHAMA MAMA and BEER PONG, for instance), and the overall grid is pretty bland, with some clunkers here and there (DEFLEA! DEFLEA! he said, pointing at de flea). My colossal solving failure in the NE didn't exactly help improve my feelings about this puzzle. With the exception of the PLIÉ section, where none of the crosses were any help, I thought the puzzle was actually pretty easy. Everything on the west side and the fat middle of the grid went in without much problem. BAIT (1D: Chum, e.g.) and ALDA (2D: "Manhattan Murder Mystery" actor, 1993) were the first answers I wanted, and BAHAMA MAMA went in shortly thereafter. I even somehow got the execrable EOSIN in the SW without too much trouble (thank you, crosses!) (46D: Dye used in some ballpoint ink). Sidenote: EOSIN is crosswordese and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. How do I know the title "RED DRAGON"? Dunno, just do. So I was in good shape.


Then came the PLIÉ disaster (see first three bullets in "Five Things," below). Then came the NE, where a 4x5 section of the grid just sat empty for what felt like ever. Everything north of STAR and SUGAR. Everything east of BEER PONG. The fact that the long Downs both broke at the same place, right between words in a two-word phrase, giving me no ability to infer my way up the grid, ugh that was annoying. But I'm more annoyed at myself. Even though I'm not a million years old, I should've seen right through that Temple clue. But first I thought Temple University, then ... nothing. Temple Grandin and Temple Bledsoe (whose actual name is Tempest, ugh), were the only Temples I could think of. And I should've gotten PEDDLE from the PE- (24A: Hawk) (I wanted a verb meaning "sell," to, I just ... couldn't get past "sell") and I should've gotten BLEED from the "B" (21A: Run). I finally *did* get STEEL from (finally!) remembering what "Bessemer" was related to (13D: Bessemer process output). I had SMELT in there at one point, so ... ballpark? Ugh. Anyway, overall, very lukewarm grid, very amateurish (on my part) solve. Puzzle disappointing, Rex disappointing.


Five things:

• 50D: Derby car material (PINE) — I honestly don't know what any of this means. Is this a "soap box derby"???? What year is it?! Is there a Shirley Temple movie playing?

• 51D: River to the Arctic Ocean (LENA) — I should've just ignored the clue and gone quickly through my 4-letter river Rolodex. LENA is common enough. But I was somehow imagining the Arctic Ocean on the other side of the globe (Antarctic) and thought the river would be some obscure nonsense I'd barely heard of. Early-morning solves can be pretty hit-or-miss, man.
• 43D: Boot covering (GAITER) — answer one: GALOSH (OH YES, GALOSH); answer two: GARTER. Sigh.
• 60A: Goal of meditation (INNER PEACE) — As someone who meditates regularly, allow me to say, no. I acknowledge that this is how it is sold, but ... the very word "goal" ruins everything, and there's no such thing as INNER PEACE. This clue is some gift-shop / techbro version of meditation, and you can have it back.
• 41A: In spite of (FOR ALL) — feels both off and mildly archaic. I keep trying to substitute "in spite of" for FOR ALL in common phrases, and it keeps coming out sounding wrong or meaning something different. Anyway, it's just not good fill. I prefer FOREARM. "One FOREARM and arm FOR ALL!"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Fourth god to exist in Greek myth / SAT 4-21-18 / Currency unit equal to 100 kurus / Teacher of lip-reading to deaf / Wite-Out manufacturer

Constructor: Daniel Nierenberg

Relative difficulty: Easy (mid-6s, but that's with ~30 seconds of "taking screenshots" time—uninterrupted time would've easily been somewhere in the 5s)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Ron KOVIC (46D: Ron who wrote "Born on the Fourth of July") —

Ronald Lawrence "Ron" Kovic (born July 4, 1946) is an American anti-war activist, writer, and former United States Marine Corps sergeant, who was wounded and paralyzed in the Vietnam War. He is best known as the author of his 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film in 1989 directed by Oliver Stone.

Kovic received the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay on January 20, 1990, 22 years to the day that he was wounded in Vietnam, and was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow. This was easy. Eerily easy. I did my usual thing of throwing down all the short Downs I could make fit at first guess in the NW, and then checking to see where I was at with the long Acrosses. Shockingly, with the exception of ITSY for ITTY (ick), allll of my first guesses up there were right, and all of the long Acrosses fell pretty much immediately. Here's my very first pass at the NW:

And then it just Kept Going. This was a very open grid, with lots of ways to get at every corner, so there really was no getting stuck. Once I committed to ORALIST (I might've ... gagged on that one, a little) and -LYSIS (definitely gagged there), moving down into the rest of the grid was quite easy. The only slight roadblocks were: I wanted SURE for SOLD (25A: Convinced) and then wanted NOT ART for NON-ART (21D: Dada, to its critics), which is a non-answer as far as I'm concerned, but that's non of my business, moving on. I probably had more trouble with CLARET than with anything else in the grid, which is really strange given that I know the word. I think of it as wine and not color, I guess. Just couldn't come up with it. Honestly, there's no more resistance in this puzzle. I could've written in GAY MARRIAGE for 58A: Subject of the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges with no crosses if I'd had to, but I didn't even have to do that, as I'd already plunked THE EYE and DIORAMA down there. 

No idea about RIGGS (44D: One of the detectives in "Lethal Weapon"), but it hardly mattered—it just filled itself in from crosses. I actually liked most of this grid, just not the ITTY ORALISTLYSIS up top. BRAE is some old school crosswordese (51D: Landform near a loch), but it felt like an old friend more than a nuisance today. If I'm not being bombarded by crosswordese and otherwise bad fill, I'm remarkably cool with the stray quaint old term. An ETUI here, an ASTA there, just fine with me.

Anyway, today I did not NEED HELP. Everything just clicked. I'm definitely much faster solving at night than solving in the morning. And I've also found that if I do a hardish puzzle right before I do the NYT, it helps a lot. Today's pre-NYT warm-up puzzle was Peter Gordon's latest Fireball Newsflash puzzle; these are always replete with very recent and newsy answers—brutal proper nouns, but always crossed fairly. Anyway, it helped me keep up with some current events *and* got me in fighting shape for this puzzle, which I destroyed.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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