Silent dramatic performance to Brits / SAT 8-5-17 / Mace-wielding DC Comics superhero / Word on bouteille de vin

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: NOE Valley (9D: San Francisco's ___ Valley) —

Noe Valley (/ˈnoʊ.i/ NOH-ee) is an affluent neighborhood in the central part of San Francisco, California. // Roughly speaking, Noe Valley is bounded by 21st Street to the north, 30th Street to the south, Dolores Street to the east, and Grand View Avenue to the west. The Castro (Eureka Valley) is north of Noe Valley; the Mission District is east. (wikipedia)

• • •

Look, except for -URE (er...) and PANTO (lol no), there is nothing wrong with this puzzle. Fill is clean, many answers are lively, or livelyish. So why did it leave me so cold. I had neither positive or negative feelings. It was just 7+ minutes of time spent filling in boxes. No laughs, no groans, no joy, no wincing. Something about it feels ... like a facsimile. Like a simulacrum of a puzzle. Like a sample puzzle, maybe in the background of a sitcom or something, and totally feels plausible and real, but ... you don't really care what's in it. It doesn't move you. Like books in the background of remote TV interviews. Whose books are those? Where are these people? Staged libraries? Their own offices? What was I talking about? Oh yes, the totally believable puzzleness of this puzzle. ESTE ENOKI NIGER SNORE. I feel like that stack of words is about representative of the Excitement Level I felt while solving. Lots of "?" clues, all of them fine, none of them great. Several colloquialisms, all of them fine, none of them great. Nothing very marquee about any of the longer answers. Stuff like NTH POWER and EAR DOCTOR feels like it should be NTH DEGREE and OTOLOGIST (or ENT). This puzzle was smooth, polished, somewhat antiseptic. Like a well-maintained Ramada Inn.


Nice clue on PEACE SIGN (1A: Double-digit figure?). Happy to learn (and undoubtedly immediately forget) "pogonologists" (51D: Things studied by pogonologists => BEARDS). My former student Libby Cudmore wrote a mystery novel that revolves around a MIXTAPE (available here). I miss MIXTAPEs. Took me forever to understand clue on BITES (52A: On-line jerks?). The "line" is a fishing line. Also took me a while to understand 53A: Draft picks? (OXEN). Had the "O" and wanted ... OLYS, to be honest. Do they have Oly on draft? In the NW, maybe? Does Oly even exist any more. Not sure. Dumbest thing I did with this puzzle was get JAPAN and then immediately jump over and write in ... [drum roll] ... SUMO. I had already seen the clue and misremembered it as saying [National *sport* of 10-Across]. And SUMO is correct for that imaginary clue. Just not for the actual clue. Only other major muff was HORA for HULA (?) (30D: Dance with strong percussion).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Simpsons sycophant / SAT 7-1-17 / Kanthapura novelist Raja / Place to celebrate Autumn Moon Festival

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Raja RAO (42A: "Kanthapura" novelist Raja ___) —

Raja Rao (8 November 1908 – 8 July 2006) was an Indian writer of English-language novels and short stories, whose works are deeply rooted in Metaphysics. The Serpent and the Rope (1960), a semi-autobiographical novel recounting a search for spiritual truth in Europe and India, established him as one of the finest Indian prose stylists and won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964. For the entire body of his work, Rao was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1988. Rao's wide-ranging body of work, spanning a number of genres, is seen as a varied and significant contribution to Indian English literature, as well as World literature as a whole. (wikipedia)

• • •

It has been a gruesomely humid day and I took not one but two naps—one of them flat on my back on the hardwood floor, one of them (much longer) on my couch, from which I only recently awoke. So I was sticky and groggy, i.e. In No Mood, when I sat down to do this puzzle precisely at 10pm. Not the greatest condition in which to meet the Saturday puzzle. And yet: I crushed it. Two hits: me hitting the puzzle, puzzle hitting the floor. I only came here to do two things: kick some puzzle ass, and drink some beer. So ... I guess it's beer time? I may have screwed that last saying up. Anyway, the puzzle had no chance. Seriously, it was unconscious before it hit the floor. SOBA AMATI REST EDNA THEM—that took about five seconds. And all the answers just kept falling before me. Straight down the west until I stalled at PROST (never was good with foreign toasts, which in my experience are only ever offered by pretentious Americans), then up into the NE easily via LITA FORD and ASHRAMS. Once I got PLIÉ, that section was toast (PLIÉ providing those first letters of the Across stack that PROST should've provided in the SW). Slight hiccup at SEGWAY. Had LANK for 44A: Lean (CANT), which was wrong, but half right, and that let me drop MINERAL and MADERA (having grown up in central California helped there), and those answers let me get back into that PROST corner. Hiccup at the end of AEROLOGY (because wtf). Done at the "O" in RAO. 4:47. Absurd.


I don't have much to say about this one. The stacks are fine. TRASH TALKS (55A: Bad-mouths) and YEAH, SURE (35D: "Uh-huh ... ri-i-i-ght") are the only answers I'm at all excited about. BEN STEIN, SMITHERS, GROHL—you may as well just give me these answers already filled in, the way they're clued. Needed just the "H" for HELENA, just the TV for TV CAMERAS (30D: Soap-making equipment?), just the "C" for COOPER (39D: Mini maker, originally). The SERIA part of OPERA SERIA was probably the hardest thing in the grid for me. Had OPERA and wanted ... something meaning "song"? OPERETTA? Shrug. But crosses filled it all in easily. There's some ugly fill in here (INKA, RAO, SAES), but it's mostly all just ... fine. Fine. OK. Too easy. But acceptable.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Al Capp diminutive / WED 3-1-17 / Unlawful behavior in strict Muslim countries for short / Monster beheaded by Perseus / Autos with charging stations / Sitcom extraterrestrial

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: two-word phrases where second word starts A- imagined as three-word phrases where "A" is a stand-alone word. It's wacky, trust me —

Theme answers:

• STUDY A BROAD (17A: Read up on a woman, old-fashionedly?)
• RISK A VERSE (24A: Take a chance on a work of poetry?)
• TICKET A GENT (35A: Cite a chap for speeding?)
• LEAD A STRAY (48A: Coax a lost dog to follow you?)
• SNIFF A ROUND (58A: Check the aroma of a few beers?)

Word of the Day: Richard BRANSON (12D: Richard who founded Virgin Atlantic) —

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He founded the Virgin Group, which controls more than 400 companies. (wikipedia)

• • •

No. This is D.O.A. Should've been sent back immediately because of one obvious, important defect: TICKET AGENT doesn't work. It doesn't. Does. Not. Say all the other themers aloud to yourself—see how naturally they sound like both themselves *and* their imagined wacky counterpart. Effortless. Seamless. Just fine. But in America (and everywhere else English is spoken, I imagine), AGENT has the emphasis on the first syllable, making the whole TICKET A [space] GENT move absurd, wrong, off, terrible, no. TICKET AGENT and TICKET A GENT simply do not sound the same. Honestly, this is glaring and obvious. It's unbelievable this wasn't sent back for a simple redesign. Repeal and replace!!! PULL A HEAD, TAG A LONG (... actress Shelley?), CLIMB A BOARD, BLOW A PART (miscomb your hair?). I don't even know what to say. He's just tolerating slop now. I guess submissions must be (way?) down.


More trouble: you aren't sidestepping the weird ogley sexism of STUDY A BROAD with your little "old-fashionedly" clue addendum. Further, what is up with the clue on PDA (6D: Unlawful behavior in strict Muslim countries, for short)? That is gratuitous and weird and strange and at least vaguely hostile. Unnecessarily so. Why do you go out of your way to bring "Muslim countries" into your clue for stupid PDA, which is a distinctly American initialism / concept? I do not understand these editorial choices. Beyond that, the grid was OK, though PENSÉE + AMIES = too far down French road. I did enjoy the clue on PAPER CUT (11D: Small slice of one's workday?). Enough about this puzzle. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. this puzzle was super-easy. 30 seconds faster than yesterday, down at my normal Tuesday time.

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Female hip-hop fan / FRII 12-9-16 / Sender of billet-doux / Song sung to Lilo in Lilo Stitch / Virginia Woolf's given name at birth

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Mont Cervin (31A: Mont Cervin and others=>ALPES) —

The Matterhorn (German: Matterhorn, [ˈmatərˌhɔrn]; Italian: Monte Cervino, [ˈmonte tʃerˈviːno]; French: Mont Cervin, [mɔ̃ sɛʁvɛ̃]), is a mountain of the Alps, straddling the main watershed and border between Switzerland and Italy. It is a huge and near-symmetrical pyramidal peak in the extended Monte Rosa area of the Pennine Alps, whose summit is 4,478 metres (14,692 ft) high, making it one of the highest summits in the Alps and Europe. The four steep faces, rising above the surrounding glaciers, face the four compass points and are split by the Hörnli, Furggen, Leone and Zmutt ridges. The mountain overlooks the Swiss town of Zermatt in the canton of Valais to the north-east and the Italian town of Breuil-Cervinia in the Aosta Valley to the south. Just east of the Matterhorn is Theodul Pass, the main passage between the two valleys on its north and south sides and a trade route since the Roman Era. (wikipedia)

• • •

Barely there. Nothing horrible here, but nothing interesting either. I mean ... nothing. Not knocking MELISSA MCCARTHY at all (she is Peak Answer here, for sure), but one actress's name just isn't much, pizzazz-wise. Fill is pretty clean for a 64-worder, but it's also phenomenally dull. Also, I'm somewhat surprised this *is* a 64-worder. Feels like 70, possibly because there are so many black squares, esp. toward the middle, chopping the grid up and resulting in a good number of short answers (not as common in low word-count puzzles). But 70-worders actually tend to be cleaner and more interesting than this. I guess the best that can be said is that those rather wide-open corners are not filled poorly. Still, I don't understand the entertainment value of a lower word-count puzzle like this, where the fill is so ... by the book. In a themed puzzle, I'd be satisfied with this fill, because the main interest of the puzzle would lie elsewhere (i.e. in the damn theme). But with themelesses ... you just gotta do better than this. You need some smashing marquee answers. Something.


DENTAL / PICK?? (53A: With 39-Across, teeth-cleaning aid). What on god's green is that? I know what a tooth pick is, and a water pick (pik?), but a DENTAL PICK? Is that just one of them plastic hooks you pick your teeth with? Why are you doing that? If you're out, toothpicks. If you're home, brush/floss. Crossing MARISSA (4D: ___ Mayer, Yahoo C.E.O. beginning in 2012) and MELISSA seems inelegant—not teeth-picking inelegant, but ... those names are 5/7 identical, come on. The only real groany thing in the grid is GOTAS (ugh ... see, groany) (25A: Received high marks). Oh well, at least IT'S OVER, and I got a sub-5 time I can feel good about (before I go to sleep and forget about it entirely).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Cicero's longtime servant scribe / SAT 11-5-16 / Nonprofit Broadway production grp / Archenemy of Optimus Prime in Transformers movies / Blade holder / Pollen repositories

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: COHERER (36D: Device used to detect radio waves) —

The coherer is a primitive form of radio signal detector used in the first radio receivers during the wireless telegraphy era at the beginning of the 20th century. Its use in radio was based on the 1890 findings of French physicist Edouard Branly and adapted by other physicists and inventors over the next ten years. The device consists of a tube or capsule containing two electrodes spaced a small distance apart with loose metal filings in the space between. When a radio frequency signal is applied to the device, the metal particles would cling together or "cohere", reducing the initial high resistance of the device, thereby allowing a much greater direct current to flow through it. In a receiver, the current would activate a bell, or a Morse paper tape recorder to make a record of the received signal. The metal filings in the coherer remained conductive after the signal (pulse) ended so that the coherer had to be "decohered" by tapping it with a clapper, such as a doorbell ringer, each time a signal was received, thereby restoring the coherer to its original state. Coherers remained in widespread use until about 1907, when they were replaced by more sensitive electrolytic and crystal detectors. (wikipedia)

• • •

With the exception of COHERER (!?) and TIRO (??) and ANTA (%&*!) I thought this was pretty good. It was on the easy side, but giant corners provided enough toehold difficulty that I felt sufficiently challenged. Would I like more challenge on a Saturday? Sure. But this was fine. A good Saturday solve, for me—the one that feels best—is the one where I can make pretty steady progress, but am routinely taking wrong turns, or having to work hard to get crosses on pesky longer answers. Clever traps, always welcome. Anyway, this puzzle had enough bite to satisfy, despite providing (now that I look the grid over) a decent number of gimmes. Went to short answer first at 8D: Northumberland river. Four-Letter River Power—activate! Form of ... AVON! No, that gives me a terminal "V", probably wrong. Shape of ... TYRE! (yes, really, I confused the English river, TYNE, with the ancient Phoenician city and birthplace of Dido, TYRE. It happens!). Luckily CASSETTE was a gimme (18A: Walkman insert), so I didn't get bogged down too bad. I was actually tricked by 14A: By hand (MANUALLY) because of how deathly straightforward it is. Who thinks "straightforward" on a Saturday!? Devious.


I got FLAT RATE but took a while to come up with BOX so I decided to swing over and attack the NE before moving down the grid. SMITE, MENAGE, and OMENS were all easy. Then I inferred the STEP part of STEPSONS, which gave me SPINET (15A: Small parlor piece) and that was pretty much that up there, despite the best efforts of TIRO (25A: Cicero's longtime servant and scribe) to mess me up. Finally got the BOX part at the end of the USPS clue, and that "X" made BRER FOX a cinch. Guessed SMUSH up top in that SW corner, (28A: Flatten) and again, no real problems, despite ANTA's best efforts (37A: Nonprofit Broadway production grp.). ANTA and TIRO—not the greatest offensive line (side note: O LINE is a definite thing in football-speak and I'm surprised I don't see it at least occasionally). Or are they the defensive line? Is the puzzle the end zone, or the quarterback? I'm going with quarterback. Solve = sack, not TD. Somehow, more satisfying.


Had the STREET but couldn't come up with the SMART (telling!). Then I misread the clue at 45A: Comment often preceding "Let's" (SHALL WE) to mean "Let's" was the preceding word, so my brain raced through "Let's ___" possibilities. DANCE! SEE! NOT! Ugh. But this corner ended up being pretty easy too because of ANISE (46D: Black jellybean flavorer) and especially MARINERS (50A: Other than the Nationals, only current Major League Baseball team never to have played in a World Series), which I got off the "M" in AMPS, though I wouldn't even have needed that. Baseball fandom made that clue a flat-out gimme. And so I finished on one of those "S"s in STRESSED. The end.

Other screw-ups:

• 1A: Take stock? (SHOPLIFT) — Had the "-FT" and wanted ... COWTHEFT (?)
• 35A: Slow-burning firewood (BEECH) — Had first "E" and wanted ... CEDAR
• 27A: English county whose seat is Exeter (DEVON) — Had "D", wanted DOVER
• 27D: "Why did I do that?!" ("D'OH!") — Had "H", wanted "HUH?" Why did I do that?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Dwarf warrior in Lord of Rings / SAT 8-6-16 / Morse Toto totally / Certain weanling / Scandalous Manet painting of 1863 / Shaggy Scottish dog / Spontaneous public gathering / Red White 2005 rock album

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: NEO DADA (37D: Genre of some of Yoko Ono's art) —

Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. In the United States the term was popularized by Barbara Rose in the 1960s and refers primarily, although not exclusively, to work created in that and the preceding decade. There was also an international dimension to the movement, particularly in Japan and in Europe, serving as the foundation of Fluxus, Pop Art and Nouveau réalisme.  // Neo-Dada was exemplified by its use of modern materials, popular imagery, and absurdist contrast. It was a reaction to the personal emotionalism of Abstract Expressionism and, taking a lead from the practice of Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, denied traditional concepts of aesthetics (wikipedia).

• • •

Yeah, so, somebody switched the Friday and Saturday puzzles this week? Did any of you actually find this harder than yeterday's? I crushed yesterday's time by three minutes (an Eternity). In fact, I was better than my Friday average today, and right around my Saturday average yesterday, so ... Freaky Friday (Saturday). While I do love slaying a late-week themeless (and I really needed this—my times since coming back from vacation have just been Off), this one might've been a little too easy. I solved two other puzzles right before this one, so maybe I was just warm. I've never tested the "warm-up" theory before, mostly because I just conceived of the "warm-up" theory right now. Perhaps there is some merit to it. But FLASHMOB was just a silver-platter gift (1A: Spontaneous public gathering), and gifted 1-Acrosses are often harbingers of Very Easy puzzles. The only place I got any resistance today was in the NE, where who the hell knows Morse code (my most hated of clue devices) and "Stain-free" is somehow metaphorical (SINLESS) and HELEN gets a great / tough clue (18A: Paris attraction?) and why can't I ever remember DHL (today's stab at it: DSL). I also wanted the [Shoulder-to-hip belt] to be a BANDOLERO (sp?), but luckily my erstwhile medievalism / D&D-playing brought BALDRIC back to mind.


I wanted to dislike NEO-DADA ... or, actually, I *did* dislike it (feels ridiculous and mildly made-up), but it's got a reasonable-sized wikipedia entry and Ono is, in fact, listed as one of the artists associated with the genre, so ... OK. Speaking of Ono. Interesting to see crosswordese used in value-added ways tonight, with Ono ending up in a clue instead of the grid, and ELIHU getting the full-name treatment (the only treatment that makes me not cringe at seeing his name in a puzzle). I didn't use JEDI MIND TRICKS to destroy this puzzle, but I did feel like I had a Vulcan Mind Meld with the constructor. I was taking down answer after answer with just one letter in place. PELOSI off the "I"; BUM A RIDE off the "B"; USA TODAY off the "S" (!); OLYMPIA off the "O"; etc. It was just my day. Finally. No great errors. Just OPEDS for OBITS (25D: 21-Down runs them) and STOAT for SHOAT (4D: Certain weanling) (you'd think I'd've stopped confusing the weasel with the pig by now, but no).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Distillery eponym Joseph / FRI 5-13-16 / Sardine relative / Big name in energy bars smoothies / Celebrity with fashion line V / Targets of president Taft / Punch line instrument / Celebrity whose name sounds like drink

Constructor: David Phillips and David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: IMAGINE DRAGONS (14A: Band with the 2012 double-platinum album "Night Visions") —

Imagine Dragons is an American rock band from Las Vegas, Nevada. Imagine Dragons' lineup consists of lead vocalist Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee, and drummer Daniel Platzman. The band gained exposure following the release of their debut studio album, Night Visions (2012) and first single "It's Time". According to Billboard, Imagine Dragons topped the year-end rock rankings for 2013; Billboard named them "The Breakthrough Band of 2013", and Rolling Stone named their single "Radioactive" "the biggest rock hit of the year" MTV called them "the year's biggest breakout band". Night Visions peaked at number two on the weekly Billboard 200 and UK Albums Chart. The band's second studio album Smoke + Mirrors reached number one on the Billboard 200, Canadian Albums Chart, and UK Albums Chart. // Imagine Dragons won two American Music Awards for Favorite Alternative Artist, a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance, five Billboard Music Awards, and a World Music Award. In May 2014, the band was nominated for a total of fourteen different Billboard Music Awards, including Top Artist of the Year and a Milestone Award, recognizing innovation and creativity of different artists across different genres. (wikipedia)

• • •

Why can I never remember who's got a gun? I always want JAMIE to have the gun, but then JANIE's got it, but then I remember the Aerosmith video, which featured Alicia Silverstone, who really looked much more like a JAMIE than a Janie, but then I look it up and Alicia Silverstone wasn't even in that video; she was in different Aerosmith videos ("Cryin'," "Crazy," "Amazing"), so I don't even know anymore. My whole world is upside-down. Anyway, JANIE is the one with the gun. That was my one and only hiccup up top. Oh, given that I encountered IMAGINE DRAGONS, I sort of expected the Vanessa in question in 16A: Celebrity with the fashion line "V." (VANESSA WILLIAMS) to skew much younger. That clue had me trying to remember how to spell "Hudgens" (of "High School Musical" fame). It wouldn't have fit. Still, I did consider it. I did not consider SPRAT until the last cross was in. SPRAT is like SMELT and SHAD in that it is an improbable-looking fish word. To me, sardines are related to anchovies and SPRAT is Jack.


As with JANIE, I misspelled SICHUAN at first, but that seems infinitely more understandable. I spell the cuisine SZECHUAN. That didn't fit, so ... SECHUAN? ["incorrect" buzzer sound]. Strangely (to me) SICHUAN appears to be the preferred spelling (at wikipedia, anyway). I spent a long time trying to figure out the trickiness of 13D: Punch line instrument (SNARE DRUM). I thought "punch" was related to the act of drumming somehow ... and "line" was musical (as in "bass line"). It was only after I was done that I realized that the stereotypical punch line follow-up is a rim shot, played (presumably) on a SNARE DRUM. 15D: Little something for the road? (SMART CAR) also baffled me until most of the letters were in. Still, no real problems moving through that NE area. The only place I got stuck in the mud was the SE, where I couldn't come up with AGENCIES (I was thinkingn "apps" or "services" ... somehow AGENCIES seems like a pre-internet word). Speaking of mud (which I was, sort of), I thought 29D: Mud spot? was the best clue / answer pairing in the whole puzzle. Very misdirecty, very accurate (candidates throw "mud" at each other in TV ads, also called "spots"). 'Tis the season.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Medieval steel helmets with visors / SAT 4-9-16 / Mongolian for hero / Steven who co-created Sherlock / Wilber who founded fast food chain / Member of comicdom's SHIELD / 250-year span in Japan's history / California city for which element #116 was named / Ragg Sweeney Todd's assistant / Focus of some high profile 1970s lawsuits

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PIETISM (46A: Old Lutheran movement) —

Pietism (/ˈpaɪᵻtɪsm/, from the word piety) was an influential movement within Lutheranism that combined the 17th century Lutheran principles with the Reformed emphasis on individual piety and living a vigorous Christian life. //  It began in the late 17th century, reached its zenith in the mid-18th century, and declined through the 19th century, and had almost vanished in America by the end of the 20th century. While declining as an identifiable Lutheran group, some of its theological tenets influenced Protestantism generally, inspiring the Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement and Alexander Mack to begin the Brethren movement among Anabaptists. // Though Pietism shares an emphasis on personal behavior with the Puritan movement, and the two are often confused, there are important differences, particularly in the concept of the role of religion in government. (wikipedia)

• • •

A largely unpleasant affair for me, first because it was riddled with obscure proper nouns (MOFFAT?) and esoterica (BASINETS? PIETISM?), and second because it seems to believe "THE BIG BANG THEORY" is so good a marquee answer that the grid deserves to be widened to 16 just to accommodate it. The fake nerdism of that show is unbearable to me. Unwatchable. Barf. But that's just a matter of taste, I realize. The bigger issue is just the overall feel of the grid, which felt either esoteric or just dull to me. Pseudo-current stuff like BROMANCE already feels dated to me, and certainly isn't enough to overcome all the NEB BATOR CCC NYAH SCARERS and blahness of the rest of the grid.


The SW corner may as well have been an entirely different puzzle. That thing is guarded on either end by what for me were no-hope answers. I still don't really know what an AIR CARRIER is or how it's a [Sky line]. [Looks it up] Well, look at that: it appears to be just another word for an airline. Huh. I was thinking something like "aircraft carrier," but ... in the sky? Dunno. AIR CARRIER seems like an awfully wordlisty answer. An answer only a computer could love. Who *chooses* to put that in their grid? Wow. OK. Real gatekeepers of the SW corner, though, were OSBORN (30A: "The Paper Chase" novelist) and TOBIAS (28D: ___ Ragg, Sweeney Todd's assistant) (who and who?) up top, and BASINETS and PIETISM (ditto) down below. For a time, I just had BLTS and AGT in there. I basically just pieced that corner together brick by brick, slowly and painfully. BATOR was the answer which, when it finally dropped, pushed things from stuck to finish.

 

But man, it was a slog, allayed only infrequently by moments of pleasure (I like SHELL GAME well enough, and NO HARM DONE is nice). I read Batman for years and never heard of THE SIREN (?) (38D: Alter ego of "Batman" villainess Lorelei Circe). And MOFFAT at 1-Across??? I don't / can't / won't understand where the pleasure in this thing was supposed to lie. LIVERMORE!? (13D: California city for which element #116 was named) I'm *from* California and that answer left me [shrug]. "Oh, element #116, you don't say ..." [nods knowingly] [remembers he only knows like ten elements by number] [continues to nod knowingly]. That clue was, uh, not helpful. Seriously, whom did that clue help. Does that clue Want us to look at the periodic table? I fail to understand. Not for the first time.


How did I get into the grid? I know you're dying to know. Well, thusly:

[EAR—>OCALA—>GLEECLUB]

Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Green-glazed Chinese porcelain / FRI 1-29-16 / Relative of Without doubt in Magic 8 Ball / 2008 R&B Grammy winner for Growing Pains / For-profit university with dozens of US campuses / Vehicle that's loaded in Harry Belafonte hit / Watt-second fraction

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe slightly harder than usual)

THEME: none

Important crosswordese:

• Ned ROREM (5-letter composer of crossword fame; he'll bail you out of many spots)

Word of the Day: CELADON (34A: Green-glazed Chinese porcelain) —

[google]

• • •

This isn't very exciting, but it's very clean. Very polished. No wincing at all, which is surprising for a 66-worder. Something about it just feels tepid, despite the flashiness of GENERAL ZOD and the odd-but-pleasingly-retro IT IS DECIDEDLY SO (7D: Relative of "Without a doubt" in a Magic 8 Ball). Hard to keep up that level of excitement and enthusiasm, though, with fill like CELADON and MACLEAN and TREELESS and MAUNA LOA and LEAVENED and WELL READ and TESH and BOREDOM — all fine answers, but nothing to make you really sit up and take notice. The one aspect of this puzzle that really does deserve credit—not just credit, but a medal of some sort—is the clue on CAKE PAN (10D: Battery container?). I had to work that answer letter by bleeping letter, and when I finally got it, I Got It, and it felt good. Worth it. When the struggle is worth the payoff, there's really no better feeling as a solver.


My biggest struggle today was definitely that NW corner. I got nothing on my first pass, and ended up having to back into it via the tail ends of SUNTANNING and "ONE, PLEASE" (I had "---, PLEASE" for the latter and just ... guessed. I bet on loneliness, and won big!). But those longer Acrosses didn't come easily, and without them, I was lost in the NW. The answer that got me started was BONET (5D: Lisa of "The Cosby Show"), and, as happens every time I get a toehold with a pop culture clue, I don't feel good about it. Feels like cheating. BONET OUTER LUNA ERG to (Mary J.) BLIGE. Then I dropped ZOD and went back to save the stranded answers in the NW. The rest of the puzzle just played like a normal Friday for me. I did have to send several longer answers across the grid before I got any real traction (always an issue when there's lots of white space), but once I got the basic latticework going ...

 [note the LEMON error...]

... the surrounding answers started to fall into place. I ended on PAR VALUE, which is fitting, as the puzzle was roughly as exciting as that answer is.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Golf Channel analyst Nick / THU 1-21-16 / Chocolate treat since 1932 / PC task-switching shortcut / Ford aircraft of 1920s-30s / Outburst accompanying facepalm / It's below C V B N M

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Beyond Easy

THEME: SIDE / BARS (35A: With 44-Across, off-the-record discussions ... or 12 answers in this puzzle?) — the two columns running along either SIDE of the grid contain words that must be followed by "BAR" to make sense of their clues:

Theme answers:

• SNACK / DIVE / SAND
• POWER / OPEN / TACO
• TOOL / CLAM / SPACE
• MARS / TIKI / SALAD 

Word of the Day: Nick FALDO (21D: Golf Channel analyst Nick) —

Sir Nicholas Alexander Faldo MBE (born 18 July 1957) is an English professional golfer on the European Tour, now mainly an on-air golf analyst. A top player of his era, renowned for his single-minded dedication to the game, he was ranked No. 1 on the Official World Golf Ranking for a total of 97 weeks. His 40 professional wins include 30 victories on the European Tour and six major championships: three Open Championships (1987, 1990, 1992) and three Masters (1989, 1990, 1996). // Faldo has since become a television pundit for major golf championships. In 2006, he became the lead golf analyst for CBS Sports. In 2012, Faldo joined the BBC Sport on-air team for coverage of the Open Championship. (wikipedia)

• • •

This took me less than five minutes, and I don't have much interest in spending much more time than that writing it up. It's a theme, and it makes a kind of sense. It doesn't seem NYT-worthy, and it certainly doesn't seem very well conceived, in terms of delivering some kind of pleasurable experience to the solver. At core, there's wordplay, as there often is. SIDE BARS becomes (somewhat) literal, as the left and right sides of the grid have words that must be followed (in your mind) by BAR in order to make sense. SIDE BARS. Fine. But there are three main problems here. One, this is boring. Two, your definition of "side" is pretty arbitrary. Once you move in one column on either side (to 2 and 14, as opposed to just 1 and 15), and you make those Downs "BAR" answer as well, you are stuck in no-man's land, "side"-wise. You've left the true "side" behind, but in every case you've got banks of *three* Downs on the "side" (all of the same length), and you've only decided to "BAR" two of them? This makes your definition of "side" seem particularly arbitrary. Structurally defective, this grid is. One column (along the "side") would make sense. Three would also make sense (since the three columns on either side are *exactly* the same in terms of dimensions). Two ... is ridiculous. Neither here nor there.


Third, and this is the worst part: once you tumble to the gimmick, the grid just fills itself in. Yawn. Here, I'll show you. I pieced together the NW, lucking into PASTA as my wrong answer at 2D: High-carb bite, which gave me the "P" that got me SPLICE that eventually got me Everything. Once SNACK went in, I saw what was going on. Adjacent POWER, same thing. And ... the rest is history. This is what my grid looked like after about a minute:

This is far too much territory to just give away. Far far too much. An absurd amount. The only place I even had to work a tiny bit to get the "SIDE" answers was in the NE, where TOOL bar took me a second. Otherwise ... just fill those answers in. Twitter agrees (well, this random unscientific sampling of three agrees):

 

And it's not like the rest of the grid was spectacular, fill-wise. This whole puzzle feels like something that should've been kept in your puzzle notebook until you'd figured out exactly how to execute in a way that would be clean, special, memorable. This incarnation merely rises to the level of "it'll do." Not NYT-worthy. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Roman consul who captured Syracuse in A.D. 211 / SAT 1-2-16 / Mass master in brief / Alternative to Goobers / Jamaican jerk chicken seasoning

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Notable crosswordese: 

• ACERB (32A: Sharp) (like "acerbic," only ... with fewer syllables)
• OCTAD (not OCTET, as you originally thought) (47D: Snow White and the dwarfs, e.g.)
• SRO (49A: "Packed" letters) (stands for Standing Room Only)
• ARIE (22A: Part of Die Fledermaus") (never seen this cluing before (German word for "aria," I presume); clue is usually [Singer India.___] or [Indy racer Luyendyk])
• ANAS (8D: Santa ___ (weather phenomena)) (usu. seen in singular form)

Notable recent pop culture:

• "American Dad" on TBS (40A: "American Dad!" airer)

Word of the Day: NESSES (19A: Promontories) —

noun

1.

1. (archaic) a promontory or headland
2. (capital as part of a name): Orford Ness (dictionary.com)

• • •

Another wickedly easy themeless to help us ring in the new year with a sense of power and accomplishment. Found this one both rougher and more interesting than yesterday's, but only slightly tougher. Saturday really should fight back more. I unlocked this one with YALE (wink!). I didn't go to YALE, but my cousins did, and my ex-girlfriend did, and the editor of the BuzzFeed crossword did, and on and on and on, and YALE is easily the most crossworded-about U. there is, so I know far more than I should about cheers and mascots and what not related to that place. "Light and truth"? Lux et veritas? Just hand me the answer, why don't you? Once I had YALE, KOALA was a cinch (15A: One with a pouch), as was I WILL. And so SKIN TIGHT went boom and then TBS and GRECO-, which made POWER GRAB go boom, and that NW corner was done inside 90 seconds or so. The only thing that gave me pause (and the pause was Considerable) was NESSES. Yeesh. That and ARIE were like shin-kicks of terribleness, especially brutal because the rest of the grid was really quite smooth. Anyway at the 2 min. mark I was here:

The potential Wow effect of HATERS GONNA HATE (37A: Message to critics) was significantly blunted by that same answer's having appeared in a NYT grid just six weeks or so ago. The answers I really noticed were ones that made me stumble a bit. I have never heard someone call a LEFT TURN a "Louie" (9D). I was thinking army ranks, Canadian coins (that's a 'loonie' actually) ... not turns. Not knowing that and not knowing ARIE made the NE by far the hardest section to get into and bring down. But even that wasn't too hard. I balked (and remain balking) at ADEN, YEMEN (62A: Where the U.S.S. Cole was attacked in 2000). I don't think you can just put any city, country pairing in a grid, or city, state, for that matter (I'm looking at you ERIE, PA ... what the hell other ERIE is there!?). But I recently put LUCKNOW, INDIA in a puzzle, so I probably shouldn't judge (in my defense, my answer was thematic, and thus had what I like to call "Thematic Dispensation").


Took me a while to figure out -EST and how it made sense, given the clue (21A: What most adjectives end in?). The "?" tells you some wordplay is afoot, so ... "most" here indicates superlative adjectives, e.g. "most" fat = fattEST, "most" tall = tallEST, etc.). Superlative adjectives end in -EST. I hope your New Year has been superlative. I will see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. NYT's fact-checking appears to have been godawful today. MSN couldn't have "launched" Hotmail in 1996 since it didn't acquire Hotmail until 1997. And MARCELLUS captured Syracuse in 211 BC, not "A.D." World's Best Puzzle! (thanks to readers for pointing out these mistakes)

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Da Vinci Code priory / FRI 5-15-15 / 2000s James Cameron cyberpunk/sci-fi series / Co-star of Greta Garbo in Ninotchka / Two-time mythological role for Anthony Hopkins / She's too cute to be minute over 17 / Hagar creator Browne / Hall of Famer from 1950s-60s Celtics / Chang Harry Potter's onetime crush / Athena's gift to Athens / Legalese conjunction

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Forever ALONE (5D: Forever ___ (Internet meme)) —

[some crap I tried to look up but it was something something 4chan reddit god-knows-what and I couldn't bother, sorry (it appears to be a big dumb ugly face … you can google it yourself, I assume)]

• • •

Memes seem like, nay, are, highly transient phenomena. Sic transit memes. They're also terribly insidery, and, generally, terribly youth-oriented, no matter how apparently widespread. I'm not sure memes make the best crossword clues/answers. In fact, I'm sure they don't. Memes age fast, and when your puzzle takes forever to come out (as the NYT does), it can't handle memes in a timely enough fashion. This one ("Forever ALONE") appears to have originated in 2010, which is like … 1878 in Internet Time. This is all to say I have no idea what "DARK ANGEL" is (looks like something someone who's destined to be forever ALONE would watch…) (1A: 2000s James Cameron cyberpunk/sci-fi series), so I'm old, I guess, but I also don't know what INA CLAIRE is (14A: Co-star of Greta Garbo in "Ninotchka"), so I'm not old enough. THE CARS, I know. Well. I am exactly that old. I am THE CARS years old. The real, real, actual main issue—in the NW, at any rate—is a yucky surfeit of proper nouns. All the long Acrosses, five of the Downs, yuck. I don't like when constructors mistake "names names names" for fresh / youthful / interesting. If you don't vary your fill, and especially if the fill you don't vary is names, you run the risk of having your puzzle become annoying and alienating to a lot of people. I was only alienated by the NW, though. The rest seemed pretty good.


There were some ick-ceptions (™). ATTIRER goes right into the Bad Fill HOF. RERATES = rough. I've heard of TO SCALE, but not IN SCALE. Barfy back-to-back Windows clues at SUITES and NTS :( I still don't believe AD-AWARE's good fill, as it's a specific brand name that I've still never seen in the wild—plus it's crutch fill masquerading as hip fill. AD-AWARE is really just a lot of useful letters and a "W." Puzzle has a good number of Longer Answers That Are Almost All RLSTNEA (see TRESPASSES, STRASSE, RERATES). Other tired stuff = SION (die die die) SES DEI ATOI DIK. But otherwise it's reasonably smooth and interesting. Despite my aversion to excess commercialism in puzzles, I really liked ADD TO CART (19A: Online shopping button), and the DATA PLANS / OLIVE TREE stacking provides a nice modern/ancient contrasting juxtaposition. SYNTHETIC and GIGAHERTZ make attractive grid lynchpins. This is a marginally appealing Friday puzzle, on the whole. Plus, I learned something semi-valuable, i.e. how to spell KIM-JONG UN. I had a "U" where the "O" goes. I know a woman whose last name is JUNG, so I'll blame her. Or else I'll blame Erica JONG, who I assumed couldn't possibly share a name part with the North Korean dictator. Why I assumed that, I have no idea.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Brendan Emmett Quigley's latest puzzle ("The Other Way Around") is a good example of what a midweek (i.e. Wed.) themed puzzle should look like. Go do it.

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Boito's Mefistofele eg / FRI 4-10-15 / Roman general who defeated Hannibal / City between Citrus Springs Silver Springs / Yogi's utterances / Locks Great Lakes connectors / Red Scare target / Rossini's final opera / Old Italian nobles / Movie genre parodied in 2011's Rango

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "SABOTEUR" (16A: 1942 Hitchcock thriller) —

Saboteur is a 1942 Universal spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker. The film stars Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings and Norman Lloyd.

This film should not be confused with an earlier Hitchcock film with a similar title, Sabotage(also known as The Woman Alone) from 1936. [too late] (wikipedia)

• • •

Grid seems competent enough, but there were too many long giveaways in this one, which made the whole solving experience a not-terribly-interesting walk in the park. One of those parks that maybe has a trail around a large pond. A few trees. Some old barbecues and park benches. And that's about it. Fine, if your needs are limited, but not somewhere you'd go to truly enjoy yourself. EDIE FALCO = massive gimme. IRENE CARA = same. You could've stopped the 36-Across clue at [Ricky Martin hit…] and I'd've gotten "LIVIN' LA VIDA LOCA." That's too much territory to just give away so easily. And it's not like the grid has any scintillating parts to recommend it. It handles its longish answers pretty smoothly, that's true, but no one's writing home about CONTESSAS and PERMALLOY (whatever that is).


I had this thing pegged as easy and overly straightforward from the beginning, when I guessed BASSO / OATER, and then filled in all the first Downs in the NW, in order, off of just their last letters—like so:

I like blowing through a Friday as much as the next person—makes you feel powerful!—but I like to at least have a few moments where I ooh and aah at the scenery, no matter how fast it's going by. Today, there was no real scenery (though the staggerstack of long Downs in the middle is quite nice). The only bumps in the road were entirely self-made. Presented with SABOT- I immediately wrote in "SABOTAGE" for the Hitchcock film. Not sure if this was an intentional trap, but it's a good one, as Hitchcock directed both "SABOTAGE" (1936) and (today's correct answer) "SABOTEUR" (1942). But I hung on to the wrong answer only briefly, as it was Clearly wrong. Took me longer than it ought to have to get MUHAMMAD ALI (14D: Who said "My only fault is that I don't realize how great I really am"). I even had the MUHA- and could think only of MUHA … TMA GHANDI? Hmmm, doesn't seem like something he'd say. MUHA… RAJAH? Not even sure that's a thing. Made things worse for myself by going with ELLES instead of MLLES at 26A: Misses in Marseille: Abbr. If I'd just stuck around long enough to read the end of that damned clue … but no matter. All this was worked out easily enough, and nothing else in the puzzle offered much resistance. Well, PERMALLOY, a little, but just a little. 

Bullets:

• 21A: ___ Brickowski ("The Lego Movie" protagonist) (EMMET) — A reader tweeted at me that choosing this clue over sad hobo clown Kelly was very 21st century. I noted that their names are actually spelled differently (two Ts for Emmett Kelly). Not that many famous one-T Kellys. Just this guy, I think:

"Emmet Fox (July 30, 1886 – August 13, 1951) was a New Thought spiritual leader of the early 20th century, famous for his large Divine Science church services held in New York City during the Great Depression." 

• 37D: 2019 Pan American Games site (LIMA) — I had them in LAOS. You develop certain reflexive tendencies when you solve a ton of puzzles over many decades. I knew LAOS felt a little too … large … to be a "site," but my fingers didn't care. In it went.
• 10D: Magnetizable nickel-iron combo (PERMALLOY) — Turns out you can pronounce it both ways, in case you're wondering, though perm-ALLoy seems to be preferred. I can't even believe "PERma-loy" is allowed. My guess is that people just couldn't stop themselves saying it (by analogy with permafrost, perma soft, perma shave, etc.), and it stuck as an acceptable variant. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS if you do the puzzle online right when it comes out, feel free to tell me what you think needs discussing (via Twitter @rexparker) (#heyrex)

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