Flamenco guitarist ___ de Lucía / MON 7-7-25 / Mantra for many foodies / Long-running student quiz show / One might read "FASTCAR" / Singer Clark with the 1965 #1 hit "Downtown"

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Medium (i.e. normal Monday) (solved Downs-only)

THEME: STILL ON THE TABLE (58A: Not yet decided ... or an "artful" description for the last words of 17-, 27- and 45-Across) — the last words of the themers are all things one might find on a table ... and in a still life painting??? (I honestly don't know what "STILL" and "artful" have to do with anything at this point)

Theme answers:

• STARTING PITCHER (17A: Player facing the leadoff batter)
• VANITY PLATE (27A: One might read "FASTCAR")
• COLLEGE BOWL (45A: Long-running student quiz show)

Word of the Day: PACO de Lucía (34D: Flamenco guitarist ___ de Lucía) —

[this guy looks cool as hell, god bless the '70s] 

Francisco Sánchez Gómez (Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko ˈsantʃeθ ˈɣomeθ]; 21 December 1947 – 25 February 2014), known as Paco de Lucía (Spanish: [ˈpako ðe luˈθi.a]), was a Spanish virtuoso flamenco guitarist, composer, and record producer. A leading proponent of the new flamenco style, he was one of the first flamenco guitarists to branch into classical and jazz. Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar", and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists".

De Lucía was noted for his fast and fluent picados (fingerstyle runs). A master of contrast, he often juxtaposed picados and rasgueados (flamenco strumming) with more sensitive playing and was known for adding abstract chords and scale tones to his compositions with jazz influences. These innovations saw him play a key role in the development of traditional flamenco and the evolution of new flamenco and Latin jazz fusion from the 1970s. He received acclaim for his recordings with flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla in the 1970s, recording ten albums which are considered some of the most important and influential in flamenco history. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not a fan of this one, mainly because the revealer didn't really land for me. That is, I was left uncertain about what the puzzle was trying to do. I'm assuming, at this point, that the "artful" part of the revealer clue means that we are supposed to think about "STILL" in an art context, i.e. as a reference to still-life paintings, which frequently contain tables, on which might be found the items at the ends of the theme answers: pitchers, plates, bowls. It's just that still-life paintings contain so much more than dishware. There are usually lots and lots of things "on the table"—fruit, flowers ... dead animals of various kinds? Hang on, let me try to find a famous one. OK, here's Cézanne killing it with those peaches and pears

And Manet getting fishy with it

And ... lord knows what Braque is doing here ... I think maybe there's a violin in there somewhere (?)

The point is, some of these do indeed have pitchers or plates or bowls, but "bowl" and "plate" in particular don't feel definitely still-lifey. There's so much more to the still life. Also, you kind of have to connect the dots to get to the concept of still life at all from the available evidence. The revealer should land perfectly, like a pow, ta-da, clarifying all, in (ideally) a clever way. Today's revealer didn't really do that, so much as I love art in my puzzle themes, this one left me a little cold. 

The Downs-only solve was fairly easy and relatively uneventful, despite there being a couple of names that registered a "0" on the "Familiar To Me" scale. The first was Michelle AKERS, who is one of the greatest women soccer players of all time. FIFA's Female Player of the Century (the 20th century, that is). So why can't I remember her name? Very frustrating. Possibly because women's soccer's popularity in this country didn't really get going in earnest until the late '90s (or so my hazy memory tells me). This is her fifth time in the NYTXW, the third since '06 (when I started blogging), so I can't say I haven't seen her name. But I can say that I keep forgetting it. No question of her puzzleworthiness. It's just ... maybe if her name were more crossword-friendly (hello, MIA HAMM!), it would stick. The other name that I didn't know—and someone who is also a legend in his field—is PACO de Lucía. This is his third NYTXW appearance, but it's been 24 years since he's been in the puzzle (designer PACO Rabanne is still the PACO leader at four appearances—before Shortz, PACO used to be clued as a kind of ore (4 times) or as another word for "alpaca" (once)). I'm just glad the letters in PACO were eventually inferable—indisputable—because his name could easily have killed me. 

No other sticking points, though. Wasn't sure about the [Japanese computer brand] at first. Thought maybe ... ACER? ASUS? But those are Taiwanese. SONY is Japanese, but far more than a "computer brand." Eventually, VANITY PLATE gave me the "V" for VAIO. Had some trouble inferring the STILL part of STILL ON THE TABLE, and (relatedly) couldn't come up with EASEL for a bit (after TRIPOD, I couldn't not think of a [Three-legged support]). Still, I was never in danger of non-completion, so maybe I should've rated this something closer to Easy. Whatever. On Mondays, it's hard to differentiate Challenging from Medium from Easy. For me, it's a matter of 30 seconds one way or the other.

More stuff:

• 27A: One might read "FASTCAR" (VANITY PLATE) — that's the best example you could think of for a VANITY PLATE??? That's pretty weak. At least be imaginative or funny. This one doesn't even play with missing letters or numbers-as-letters or anything. To get at the real spirit of the VANITY PLATE, you gotta go big (and, if possible, dumb, or at least ill-advised):

• 43D: "OK, that's enough out of me, sorry" ("I'LL STOP") — this is probably the most inventive thing in the grid. A very real colloquial phrase that I can't remember seeing in the puzzle before ... yep, sure enough, it's a debut. It's amazing that after so many years and so many puzzles, there are still little phrases like this out there to be discovered and deployed.
• 46D: Kaplan of "Welcome Back Kotter" (GABE) — lot of names in this one, and they tend to skew old. Solidly 20th-century, anyway. I grew up in what historians now call the Peak Kaplan Era, which extends from the start of Welcome Back Kotter (1975) to the release of legendary Kaplan-starring basketball comedy Fast Break (1979), which I'm quite sure I saw in the theater (age 10). There are lots of interesting things about that movie (like ... how? and ... why?) but perhaps the most interesting (to me, right now, at this very second) is that it featured the hit song "With You I'm Born Again" by Billy Preston and Syreeta. Talk about transcending your origins. If you are my age or older and paid attention to pop music, you probably know the song, but even I didn't remember it originated in a 1979 GABE Kaplan basketball comedy.

That's it. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Experimental musician whose name sounds like a cry / WED 12-4-24 / Problem for a homeowner or government worker / Connecticut Governor Lamont / You might pick one to get gold

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (a solid 30 seconds above my Wednesday average)

                                   

THEME: Punctuation, Literally — The clues on the theme answers are simple punctuation marks, and the answers are definitions of words that are homophones of those marks.  

Word of the Day: SKEG (44D - Fin beneath a surfboard) —

A skeg (or skegg or skag) is a sternward extension of the keel of boats and ships which have a rudder mounted on the centre line.^[1] The term also applies to the lowest point on an outboard motor or the outdrive of an inboard/outboard.^[A][B] In more recent years, the name has been used for a fin on a surfboard which improves directional stability and to a movable fin on a kayak which adjusts the boat's centre of lateral resistance (it moves the center of resistance relative to the center of effort).

• • •

Theme answers:

• PRICE ESTIMATE (20A: ") - Quote
• STRETCH OF TIME (26A: .) - Period
• MAKE A RUN FOR IT (45A: -) - Dash
• ROCK GUITARIST (56A: /) - Slash

Hey everybody, it's Eli filling in for Rex. I guess technically I'm filling in for Malaika. If you were excited for a Malaika Wednesday (and who could blame you?), then take comfort in knowing that she'll be here tomorrow and Friday. 

I really enjoyed today's theme! As I'm just starting to learn how to construct puzzles, I've been playing around with a few similar concepts to this one. I think this is executed very well. The theme answers do a nice job of not being related directly to the punctuation marks used to represent them (ie - "period" could have been clued as " 'End of discussion'" or something, but they went with a second definition). I feel like "Quote" comes a little close, etymologically speaking, but it didn't bother me. 

Unfortunately, the fill didn't live up to the theme for me. It's not that it's bad, it's just... there. I just solved this a few minutes ago, and I'm already struggling to remember anything outside of the themers. I liked the trivia aspect of the clue on PAAR (62A: Jack who hosted "The Morning Show" and "The Tonight Show"). And when I hit 33A (One-named singer featured on the 2013 hit "Play Hard"), my sparse knowledge of hip hop made me wonder, "Could it be NEYO? Or maybe AKON?" Turns out, the answer was "yes," since there was an identical clue at 66A. That was fun.

(I can't help but feel like David GUETTA might have added some excitement to the grid)

But nothing else did much for me. I wonder if that contributed to my perceived difficulty on this puzzle. Give me a batch of FCC, RSVP, ERS, ALEE, TNUT, SRS, TREE, and ISLA (non Bonita or Nubar category) and I guess I just tune out a bit.

                      

(16A: Dance with hand gestures that can represent ocean waves - totally not sponsored by Moana 2)

So, yeah. Despite an enjoyable, well-executed theme, I just couldn't get excited about the puzzle as a whole. Curse of a Wednesday, I suppose. A respectable effort, just not entirely on my wavelength.

Quick Hits:

• 35D: "___ California" (Grammy-winning Red Hot Chili Peppers hit) (DANI) — As an Angeleno, I feel like I'm supposed to love RHCP. I like the hits just fine, but have never been able to really get into these guys:

• 60D: Online recap letters (TLDR) — I feel like I may be rehashing something Rex has already talked about here (or maybe on BlueSky), but miss me with TL,DR. Just read the damn thing. Nothing worth reading is too long. Nothing not worth reading is short enough.
• 11D: What self-driving cars and spell check are meant to compensate for (HUMAN ERROR) — At the risk of sound like a grumpy old man, self-driving cars and AI are still human creations and therefore inherently error-prone. I love technology, but leaning into laziness and stupidity will doom us all.

Eli posted a Simpsons reference. Drink!

• 53A: ___ dog, food specialty topped with meat sauce (CONEY) — How wide-spread is this term, nationally? I know it's mostly a Detroit thing, but we called chili dogs coneys when I was growing up in Iowa (though my Dad's family came from Michigan, so that may have played into it). Is it midwestern, generally? Am I the weird one here? Rats, now I want a hot dog.

One quick note before I go. If you're interested in solving crosswords outside of the New York Times world, you'd be hard pressed to get much better than AVCX. They're an independent outlet offering full size, midi, cryptic, and trivia puzzles every week, and they're consistently awesome. They're currently running a membership drive, and I can't recommend them highly enough. Check them out at AVXwords.com.

Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Brand of orange crackers / TUES 8-6-24 / Hole in one's head / South American corn patties / Micronesian nation composed of 200+ islands

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare coming to you a little late, for the first Tuesday of August (while hoping Rex is having a lovely vacation)! I’ve been spending essentially all of my free time (and, yes, maybe a little work time) watching the Olympics. The pommel horse guy, the muffin guy, and the two sharpshooters just may have taken over my entire Twitter feed. And then you’ve got Simone Biles doing Simone Biles things. Noah Lyles winning the 100m by five thousandths of a second. American Kristen Faulkner with a surprise gold in the road cycling after a boss move with two kilometers to go. And on and on and on. Watch out for Fiona O’Keeffe in the marathon and Nikki Hiltz in the 1500m (I raced against them both in high school!). I’m gonna be sad when the Olympics is over soon, so I may just have to actually watch volleyball and rugby and cycling other than every four years now. 

Anywho, with that long intro waxing poetic about the Olympics, let’s move on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Daniel Raymond

Relative difficulty: A little harder than an average Tuesday

THEME: Phrases that begin with “as” followed by a pronoun and a verb

Theme answers:

• AS YOU PLEASE (17A: "Any option is fine by me") 
• AS THEY SAY (21A: "Or so the motto goes") 
• AS I LIVE AND BREATHE (27A: With 33-Down and 51-Across, "What a surprise!") 
• AS WE SPEAK (59A: "Currently ...") 
• AS IT HAPPENS (65A: "By a stroke of luck ...")

Word of the Day: NUYORICAN (3D: Many a resident of Spanish Harlem) —

Nuyorican is a portmanteau word blending "New York" (or "Nueva York" in Spanish) and "Puerto Rican," referring to Puerto Ricans located in or around New York City, their culture, or their descendants (especially those raised or currently living in the New York metropolitan area). This term is sometimes used for Puerto Ricans living in other areas in the Northeastern US mainland outside New York state, as well. The term Nuyorican is also sometimes used to refer to the Spanish spoken by New York Puerto Ricans. An estimated 1,800,000 Nuyoricans are said to live in New York City, the largest Puerto Rican community outside Puerto Rico. The Oxford English Dictionary cites this word as evolving slowly through roughly the last third of the 20th century, with the first cited reference being poet Jaime Carrero using neorriqueño in 1964 as a Spanish-language adjective combining neoyorquino and puertorriqueño. (Wiki)

• • •

That was a pretty fun and harmless puzzle. The theme on its own (which really is just connected because all phrases start with “as”) isn’t anything to write home about. And I would’ve loved an “as you wish” in there (“The Princess Bride” being one of my favorite movies and all). But the construction was impressive, with two sets of phrases directly on top of each other, starting on the far left and finishing on the far right. And I really liked how AS I LIVE AND BREATHE (27A) zigzagged through the puzzle and acted as a connector for the other theme answers. Each of the theme answers was generally nice in and of itself. My favorite was probably AS IT HAPPENS (not solely because it reminds me of the amazing movie “It Happened One Night”)

I really liked a lot of the words in the puzzle, which felt fresh. POLYP (13D: Individual coral organism) isn’t a word you see all that often. Nor do you see BOTANIST (53A: Plant biologist, by another name), SENSATE (45D: Opposite of numb), AREPAS (52D: South American corn patties), or NUYORICANS (3D) often. Heck, we even got CHEEZ-IT (10D: Brand of orange crackers)! (I used to love those until my body decided it doesn’t like eating gluten.) BARRE (53D: Ballet rail), RAW TALENT (36D: Innate skill), and TWANG (55D: Southern way of speaking) were nice to see, as well. 

There were a surprising number of words ending in two vowels in the puzzle — ALUMNAE (14A), MAO (16A), PALAU (12D), PUPAE (40D), and MEA (47D). And it felt to me like other answers had more back-to-back vowels in them than usual, too, but I don’t have the data to back me up on this one. There were also quite a few people in there, too — OSCAR (54D: Witty Wilde), SELA (7D: Emmy-winning Ward), MARA (58A: Actress Kate or Rooney),  SAHL(43A: Wry Mort), ELIA (61A: Kazan who directed "A Streetcar Named Desire"), and ARIANNA (70A: Huffington who founded The Huffington Post). 

My biggest hang-up with the puzzle was probably DASH IT (9D: "Drat!"). I’m not sure I’ve actually ever heard someone say DASH IT (not even my father), so I had “dang it” and thought that was certainly right. Lo and behold, that caused me some issues in the north section of the puzzle. 

We also had a lot of the typical crosswordese that I’m not a big fan of, such as TAT (57D: Bit of ink) (this is in puzzles way too much). Then there was APP (11A: Instagram, for one) and PIC (31A: Instagram post, for short). Did we really need to double up on Instagram clues? We had RAN (68A: Campaigned) and TAN (69A: Beachgoer's goal, maybe), right next to each other, no less. 

Some other words and abbreviations were just meh, like EXEC (29D: Business bigwig), CDC (8A: Org. in "Outbreak" and "Contagion"), PER (49A: According to), PIN (67D: A.T.M. need), and WAS (48A: Is no longer). I also don’t know if 66D: Experiencing little to no amorous attraction, informally for ARO was clued clearly enough. I put “ace” there, which is when people experience little to no sexual attraction toward any gender. But the answer was ARO, which is when people experience little to no romantic attraction toward any gender. I’d say “amorous” in the clue does lead you more toward ARO, but maybe the clue still should’ve been a little more explicit.

Misc.:

• It’s pretty funny to have the SEINE (56D: River through Paris) in the puzzle given all the controversy surrounding it and triathletes being forced to swim in it for their event and possibly getting E. coli. One athlete even said he tried to prepare himself for swimming in the SEINE by microdosing E. coli leading up to the event… which is just… awful. They never should’ve had to swim in the SEINE, and there absolutely should’ve been a backup. 
• One of my favorite restaurants in college was a small Colombian place that was known for their AREPAS (52D). And it very quickly became my favorite place to take friends and family when they would visit. 
• My coworker the other day had to get a copy of a client’s file ready for them, and it was so big that it needed to go on a CD ROM (46A: Obsolescent PC storage medium). She said that she’d never burned a CD before and was excited, which made me (at 28) feel incredibly old.
•  Anyone looking to become a better person might be looking for that GNU EWE (5D and 72A). There’s my attempt at a Dad joke. I’ll see myself out… 
• “TEXAS Hold ‘Em” (32A) by Beyoncé is a phenomenal country song and Cowboy Carter a great album. Please, Grammys, finally give her album of the year for this one. 
• Sense8 (or SENSATE (45D)) was an amazing show on Netflix that lasted a couple seasons before being unceremoniously canceled. It was a unique concept, with 8 strangers around the world being connected to another’s thoughts and actions, and Netflix shouldn’t have canceled it like they do EVERY GOOD SHOW!! Maybe I’ll go rewatch the show once the Olympics are over, and I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.

And that's all from me, folks! Have a great rest of your August.

Signed, Clare Carroll, a medal contender in yelling at the TV

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Very muscular in slang / TUE 2-21-23 / Anthem lyricist with a musical name / 1970s auto that shares part of its name with one of Santa's reindeer / Name for the star on Israel's flag / Dramatic exhalation

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: HIDDEN / AGENDA (9A: With 68-Across, ulterior motive ... or what 21-, 37- and 59-Across each has?) — the letter string "AGENDA" is "HIDDEN" inside three answers:

Theme answers:

• HÄAGEN-DAZS (21A: New York City-born ice cream brand with a Danish-sounding name) 
• VOLKSWAGEN DASHER (37A: 1970s auto that shares part of its name with one of Santa's reindeer)
• MAGEN DAVID (59A: Name for the star on Israels' flag)

Word of the Day: VOLKSWAGEN DASHER (37A) —

The Volkswagen Passat (B1) is a large family car produced by Volkswagen in West Germany from 1973 to 1981. // The original Volkswagen Passat was launched in 1973. The body types offered originally were two- and four-door fastback sedans (that were discontinued in 1981). These were joined in January 1975 by identically profiled three- and five-door hatchback versions. Externally all four shared a modern design, styled by the Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. In essence, the first Passat was a fastback version of the mechanically identical Audi 80 sedan, introduced a year earlier. [...] In North America, the car was called the Volkswagen Dasher. The three- and five-door hatchback and a station wagon model were launched in North America for and during the 1974 model year. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle is like yesterday's puzzle in that it has a well-worn, tried-and-true theme type (in this case, the "hidden" word), but it fails by doing poorly what yesterday's puzzle did so well. Yesterday, the revealer was a real revelation, and all the answers worked beautifully, no stretches at all. Today, the revealer is blah and everything besides the ice cream feels like a real stretch. I know something about stretching the limits of answers to make your theme work: I once made a BEER BELLY puzzle where I "hid" LAGER inside VILLAGE ROADSHOW (a movie production company that has done major work but is not exactly a household name). But my puzzle didn't just hide LAGER over and over and over. There were other beer types. Here, it's just AGENDA AGENDA AGENDA, and there are only three themers, so those "huh?" themers really leave a mark. And today, the biggest "huh?" was VOLKSWAGEN DASHER—in fact, the answer is so "huh?," it essentially *tells* you that it's "huh?" but putting that giveaway bit in there about Santa's reindeer. I didn't know the Star of David was known as anything but the Star of David, so MAGEN DAVID was a shrug. Seems like a valid answer, but the point is that you really have to stretch the bounds of familiarity to make this work, and why? Just to see AGENDA again? Further, the revealer comes too early—the whole thing is given away at the top of the grid. Nothing much left to discover except how in the world there could be two more, non-ice cream answers that fit the bill. I just jumped to the end and then filled in VOLKSWAGEN DASHER (a car I've never heard of) shortly thereafter:

The other way this puzzle doesn't work as well as yesterday's is the fill, which was full of CRUD from the very start. Literally, the very start is where CRUD is, but that's also where ARRANT crosses ENNEAD (!?). When I'm stopping to take a screenshot of the wince-y fill before I've gotten out of the NW, that's a bad sign. But I stopped. Right here.

Did the cruddy NW predict overall cruddiness? Kinda. ATRACE IRINA NTH AGRA OHO AAHED ENID ONIT ACER LEDS EARPS (plural) ... these are not all *bad* but some of them definitely are, and all of them are tired or otherwise crossword-common, and I've only enumerated a portion of the problem here. ORBITING LIBERACE gave me a very nice visual—I like to think of him up there in the sky, just shining and playing away—and GONE AWOL is a nice variation on mere AWOL, but there's not much else here to help get the puzzle up on its feet. The puzzle was easy overall. I have no idea what a KETONE is or what it has to do with perfume (56A: Perfume ingredient), but that was the only stumper (outside those last two themers) in the whole grid.

I watched the 1983 movie version of The Pirates of PENZANCE this past week (I'm trying to watch as many major-release movies from 1983 as possible this year—no reason, just 'cause it's been 40 years and it's something to do). It was ... bad? I mean, I'm sure it's a fine operetta, but the production was cheesy, and even though Kevin Kline was handsome and athletic, the movie wanted me to believe that Angela Lansbury was "ugly" and "old" and had no sex appeal, and my credulity could not stand the strain. I realized while watching it that I know nothing about Gilbert & Sullivan except that modern Major-General song, which I always thought was in "H.M.S. Pinafore" — me, to my wife: "Wait ... they did *two* nautical operas??? What on earth?"). Yesterday's 1983 film was The Sting II, which was also not good (it was supposed to be set in NYC but they kept filming at famous L.A. landmarks, what the hell!?). But it did have my childhood celebrity crush, crossword legend TERI / GARR, in it, so it was highly watchable, implausibilities and inconsistencies be damned. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Don Juan's mother / WED 6-17-20 / 1960s band with car-related name / Company that's RAD on New York Stock Exchange / Longtime director of La Scala New York Philharmonic

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:21)

THEME: FIELD OF DREAMS (53A: 1989 Best Picture nominee ... with a hint to 20-, 24-/27- and 32-/37-Across) — theme answers are kinds of fields (?) that are also things upon which you sleep, perchance to dream:

Theme answers:

• BLANKET OF SNOW (20A: Winter whiteness)
• SHEET / OF ICE (24A: With 27-Across, slippery hazard)
• BED / OF ROSES (32A: With 37-Across, metaphor for comfort)

Word of the Day: TOSCANINI (23A: Longtime music director of La Scala and the New York Philharmonic) —

Arturo Toscanini (/ɑːrˈtʊəroʊ ˌtɒskəˈniːni/, Italian: [arˈtuːro toskaˈniːni]; March 25, 1867 – January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and of the 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his eidetic memory.^[1] He was at various times the music director of La Scala in Milan and the New York Philharmonic. Later in his career he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–54), and this led to his becoming a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is another one of those themes (like yesterday's) where the cleverness just misses slightly, in a way that has solvers wondering if they actually Got it, or if there's something they're missing. Yesterday, it was the "square" part needed to make any sense of the whole "area" angle ... a logical gap that had to be filled by the reader, but which in some cases never got filled (without explanation) and even when filled was much more likely to elicit a "... huh ..." than a "wow." You can get as clever as you like, but your gimmick better Land, eventually, or else it's a flop. Today ... instead of supplying "square" we have to infer what the hell "fields" has to do with anything. This isn't hard, but it is unsatisfying. There's just too much going on for this to really work. You have the whole bed metaphor thing, which seems like a fine theme, but then there's the revealer, which adds this "field" element, which just makes things odd. The "field" metaphor seems fine for BLANKET OF SNOW, but seems very tenuous when applied to a mere SHEET OF ICE; yes, technically any expanse can be a "field," but ... bleh. There's a cogent core idea here, with the BLANKET SHEET BED set, but the revealer tries too hard and slips and face-plants, imho. I would add this assessment to the fill. Or at least to the NE and SW corners, where the constructor clearly thought he was doing something *good* by putting those "Z"s in there, but woof, no. That is textbook Scrabble-f***ing. The "Z" is not worth INEZ / OZS and the surrounding fill (DOMO, GTOS). Any half-decent constructor can construct that corner cleanly and even interestingly in under five minutes. But some constructors still labor under the delusion that "Z"s (or "Q"s or other rarer letters) will make their puzzles inherently snazzy. The SW corner is even more egregious, as ZONAL is such an awful, painful adjective (57A: Like certain transportation pricing). "Oooh, a clue about transportation pricing! Cool!" said no one. Just make the "Z" a "T" and write Good Clues. Come on.


The rest of the fill is really bad in places, especially the north, which is a minefield of garbage. Like, it's garbage that also explodes. OLEIC REATA OMANI! It's like some kind of unholy incantation used to summon OOXTEPLERNON, the God of Bad Short Fill. DSO APER CPO all ensure that we never get too far without groaning, and then the south is rough too, with the plural DDAYS (always awful) and the semi-archaic "I FEAR ..." really making things not very fun.


Mistakes:

• 6D: Ancient Mexican (OLMEC) — I had AZTEC
• 7D: Rodeo rope (REATA) — I (confidently) had RIATA. So confident am I in that spelling that I've actually had to correct myself twice already while writing this blog post. I guess REATA is the Spanish, and that spelling survives. There's kinship with "lariat" that makes me want the "RI" spelling. For the record, RIATA is roughly twice as common in Shortz-era puzzles as REATA. 
• 16A: Don Juan's mother (INEZ) — wasn't sure if this was gonna be the INES spelling. Lesson of the day is—if it's Don Juan's mom or a hurricane, it's a "Z" 
• 53D: Only digit in the ZIP code for Newton Falls, Ohio (FOUR) — I had FIVE. How in the hell should I know? What a miserable clue.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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The O.W.L. AND N.E.W.T at Hogwarts / TUES 8-27-19 / Magnetic quality / History-making events / "I'm shocked!"

Hello, again! I hope everyone is having a great end to their summer. It's currently already feeling more like fall weather here in DC, though, so at least that's something! I just started my 2L year of law school and am really hoping that everyone is exaggerating when they tell me that I'll basically be worked to the bone this year. Stay tuned!

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: The first name of a female celebrity followed by an adjective that's an anagram of the name.

Theme answers:

• MELISSA'S AIMLESS (17A: Actress McCarthy is wandering)
• STELLA'S ALL SET (33A: Designer McCartney is prepared)
• LAUREN'S UNREAL (42A: Supermodel Hutton is incredible)
• DARLENE'S LEARNED (60A: Singer Love is erudite)

Word of the Day: LAUREN Hutton (42A: Supermodel Hutton is incredible)

Mary Laurence "Lauren" Hutton is an American model and actress. Raised in the southern United States, Hutton relocated to New York City in her early adulthood to begin a modeling career. Though she was initially dismissed by agents for a signature gap in her teeth, Hutton signed a modeling contract with Revlon in 1973, which at the time was the biggest contract in the history of the modeling industry. (Wiki)

• • •

Overall, I thought the puzzle was alright. I was quite perplexed by the theme until about 20 minutes after I solved it and realized that the second part of each theme answer was an anagram of the first part of the answer. It's a clever enough bit of constructing, and I like the parallelism in each theme answer. Still, the adjectives in the theme answers seem pretty random to be. It's not clear to me why MELISSA McCarthy would be aimless, why DARLENE Love is learned, and so on. Also, this wasn't a big deal, but it was a bit off to have the second part of three of the four theme answers be a one-word adjective and then have 42A end with a two-word adjective: ALL SET.

There were some clever clues/answers in the puzzle and not too much crossword-y fill. I struggled some in the northeast corner, mostly because I really wanted "assign" to work for 13D: Put into different classes instead of ASSORT. And, although it seems like it's a relatively common expression to have a case AT BAR (26A), I'm in law school, and I've never heard anyone — student, professor, or judge — talk about being before a sitting judge in that way.

I do have a bone to pick with 48A: Tennis point just before a win, maybe. I watch a lot of tennis (side note: Federer is the best player of all time; don't @ me), and it took me ages to get to FORTY. I suppose it's technically correct that one person is at FORTY before they win a game, set, or match, but I still don't think the clue/answer really make logical sense. It was a leap to get there, and it could've been clued in a myriad of other ways. I'm not entirely sure what to make of having STEMS  (35D: Things florists cut) and SEPALS (51A: Flower parts) both in the crossword — and crossing each other. It's possibly a clever bit of constructing to have related answers cross; or it's redundant; or it's challenging because I don't know much about flowers, and now I'm supposed to answer two clues about them. I also took a bit of time to get 68A: Likely to zone out because I've always thought SPACY was spelled "spacey." I Googled it, and it seems like "spacey" is the preferred spelling.

All that being said, I did like 2D: Most common commercial name in New York Times crosswords — OREO. It was maybe a bit too on-the-nose, but I thought it was fun. I also liked the clue for LAPEL (65A: Pin point?) quite a bit and enjoyed 52D: POLLY "want a cracker." Likewise, 54A: Contents of hangars as PLANES was nice.

Misc.:

• I am all about Harry Potter being in a crossword (69A)! For those who haven't read (and reread... and reread) the series, O.W.L. stands for Ordinary Wizarding Level, and N.E.W.T. stands for Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test.
• I would've paid big bucks to have REX at 63D: "Toy Story" dinosaur instead be clued as "__ Parker, a crossword puzzle blogger."
• 6A: Hit 2003-07 teen drama on Fox — THE OC. Finally a TV show that's more in my wheelhouse, and I've never even watched it!
• I was recently back in Lake Tahoe in California, and I got to hike up a mountain on my bucket list, and I certainly saw some VISTAS from up there!
• 9D: Home to Xenia and Zanesville, the most populous U.S. cities starting with "X" and "Z" has got to be the weirdest way I've ever seen OHIO clued. But, hey, points for originality! And, I learned something from the solve!

All done! In other words: CLARESCLEAR :)

Signed, Clare Carroll, a slightly nervous 2L

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Pope who excommunicated Elizabeth I / SUN 3-18-18 / Huck Finn possessive / Judas's question to Lord / Term for whole in Swiss cheese / Metallic S-shaped piece

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Taking Your Q" — You don't actually "take" the Q anywhere; You put a "QU-" where a hard "C" sound should be, creating wacky answers, clued "?"-style:

Theme answers:

• QUERY WASHINGTON  (24A: Interrogate a founding father?)
• TRENCH QUOTE (39A: "There are no atheists in foxholes"?)
• BABY QUAKES (46A: Tremors?)
• "HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, QUID" (72A: Comment by a Brit down to his last coin?)
• QUICK BOXER (93A: One knocking out an opponent in the first round?)
• PEACHY QUEEN (105A: Monarch who's fine and dandy?)
• ORDER IN THE QUART (122A: Have a little ice cream delivered?)

Word of the Day: Kerry Washington (basis for QUERY WASHINGTON) —

Kerry Marisa Washington (born January 31, 1977) is an American actress. Since 2012, Washington has gained wide public recognition for starring in the ABC drama Scandal, a Shonda Rhimes series in which she plays Olivia Pope, a crisis management expert to politicians and power brokers in Washington DC, and also is a producer. For her role, she has been nominated twice for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series. (wikipedia)

• • •

The title doesn't really work. Also, this kind of simple sound-change theme only works if the results are legit funny, and ... I don't know. Seems like the clues could've been a lot more inventive. Again, with Wacky puzzles, go *Wacky* or go home. None of this tepid wackiness. Tepid wackiness is wack. All the "?" clues are actually fairly straightforward. The overall result is a very doable but very dull puzzle. The abundance of "Q"s livens up the grid a little, but not enough (some of those "Q"s are wasted on horrible stuff like ESQS and SEQS (?)). Surprised how easy this played, given how many things I didn't know, or barely knew, beginning with 1A: Big name in computer networking (CISCO). I mean, now that I look at it, yeah, sure, I've seen that. But it didn't come easily to me. Neither did MARACAIBO or MCLAREN or RABE or ROHAN or EAMONN (notice the common thread—all proper nouns). But none of those was anything more than a slight speed bump.


My biggest problems actually came from ticky-tack little bad-fill answers, most notably OSSEO- (!?!) (29A: Bone: Prefix). What the hell? OSTEO-, I know. OSTEO-, I was sure had to be the right answer. I have no doubt that there is some context in which OSSEO- applies, but wow I don't know what it is. I also have no idea about random popes and so when it started with a "P" (63D: Pope who excommunicated Elizabeth I), I wrote in PAUL and then waited for the Roman numeral. Got the "V" and thought, "Sure, why not? PAUL V!" And that's only two letters off, and one of those letters was in the horrid 71A: Suffix in Sussex, where -ASE seemed ... possible? It was finally having TRULTY at 80A: True that made me have to reinterrogate all my crosses. Thus PAUL became PIUS. This is why random Popes are so much fun.


I have so many announcements this week, where to start? First, today was the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition, at which I have been a speaker and judge for several years now. Had a wonderful time, as usual. Congratulations to Jesse Lansner, who won it handily (He's a very fast solver who will be competing at next weekend's ACPT). Lots of people were there because they'd heard me talk about the tournament in the past. One woman—Mickey Schied—was there in part because she heard the episode the "Allusionist" podcast about last year's Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament, then saw that *this* tournament was happening closer to her home, and she recognized my name from that same podcast, so bam, she decides to show up and compete ... and then WIN the Easy Division. Awesome.

 [Jesse and his championship bracelet]

[my wife, Penelope, and Mickey Schied]

So that was fun.

Now for news you can use:

QUEER QROSSWORDS (queerqrosswords.com) — Nate Cardin organized and edited this collection of crosswords made (and edited) entirely by LGBTQ+ folks. 22 puzzles, from established pros as well as newcomers, all yours (in the form of a .PDF) when you make a new donation of at least $10 to the LGBTQ+ charity of your choice and forward the receipt to the editor. Instructions are on the website. I gave to the Southern Tier AIDS Program. Good puzzles, good cause(s), not expensive. What more do you want?

***

Also, this announcement from Ben Tausig, ed. of the American Values Club Crossword (AVCX):

Good chance to try out the best of what AVCX has to offer. You should already be a subscriber, but if you're not ... here, try these.

***

What else? Oh, I was interviewed for a podcast called "Teaching in the Arts"—it's mostly about teaching, but there's crossword content in there as well. Here's a link to the podcast page at iTunes; or you can just listen to the episode on the web, here.

***

Further: in crossword business news, Peter Gordon, ed. of Fireball Crosswords, just announced a 50% pay raise for constructors ($451 / puzzle), meaning that once again his independent outlet pays better than the NYT. The NYT's rates remain shamefully low, given how much profit their puzzles generate. I love that Peter is not afraid to enumerate allllll the ways that making puzzles for him is a superior experience to making them for the NYT.

Also, it goes without saying that if you like good, hard, tricky puzzles (think Thursday themes with Friday/Saturday difficulty), then you should definitely be a Fireball subscriber.

***

And *lastly*: The Indie 500 crossword tournament (Saturday, June 2, Washington, D.C.) is now open for registration. There is a solve-at-home division if you'd like to solve the puzzles but are unable to make it to the tournament in person. This year's tourney is called "Dressed to Fill," and has a theme: FASHION! Check out the tourney home page for all the information you need. I've been to every Indie 500 so far and always have a really good time. The slate of constructors looks fantastic—lots of young faces, lots of female faces (yay!). So I'm excited. Please come and solve and meet lovely people and have a good time.

Enjoy your Sunday. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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