Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel and Dennis Ryall
Relative difficulty: Easy (my fastest time in years)
THEME: STOP (
69A: "Freeze!" … or, when broken into three parts, how the answer for each of the six starred clues goes) — they start with "S" and end with "P"
Theme answers:
- SLAP (1A: *Obstetrician's action on a newborn's behind)
- STANLEY CUP (18A: *Goal an N.H.L.'er shoots for?)
- SKINNY DIP (20A: *Go swimming in one's birthday suit)
- SKI TRIP (40A: *Visit to Vail, maybe)
- STEEL TRAP (56A: *Sharp mind, figuratively)
- SUMMER CAMP (61A: *Setting for "Meatballs" or "Friday the 13th")
Word of the Day: Jack OAKIE (
65A: Actor Jack of "The Great Dictator") —
Jack Oakie (November 12, 1903 – January 23, 1978) was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television. […] Oakie is probably most notable for his portrayal of Benzino Napaloni, the boisterous dictator of Bacteria, in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), for which he received an Oscar nomination for the Best Supporting Actor Award. This role was a broad parody of the fascist dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini. (wikipedia)
• • •
A MESSAGE TO MY BELOVED READERS IN SYNDICATION (JAN. 19, 2015)
Hi all. It's time for my week-long, just-once-a-year-I-swear pitch for financial contributions to the blog. If you enjoy (or some other verb) this blog on a regular or fairly regular basis, please consider what the blog is worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. In making this pitch, I'm pledging that the blog will continue to be here for your enjoyment (or some other noun) for at least another calendar year, with a new post up by 9:00am (usually by 12:01am) every day, as usual. I'm in my ninth (!) year of writing about the puzzle every single day, and while there are occasions when the daily grind gets a little wearisome, for the most part I've been surprised by how resilient my passion for solving and talking about crosswords has been. It's energizing to be part of such an enthusiastic and diverse community of solvers, and I'm excited about the coming year (I have reason to be hopeful …
mysterious reasons …). Anyway, I appreciate your generosity more than I can say. This year, said generosity allowed me to hire a regular guest blogger, Annabel Thompson, who now brings a fresh, youthful voice to my blog on the first Monday of every month. So thanks for that. As I said last year, I know that some people are opposed to paying for what they can get for free, and still others really don't have money to spare. Both kinds of people are welcome to continue reading my blog, with my compliments. It will always be free. I have no interest in cordoning it off, nor do I have any interest in taking advertising. I value my independence too much. Anyway, if you are so moved, there is a Paypal button in the sidebar, and a mailing address here:
Rex Parker
℅ Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton NY 13905
And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users.
I assume that worked.
For people who send me actual, honest-to-god (i.e. "snail") mail (I love snail mail!), this year my thank-you cards are "Postcards from Penguin"—each card a different vintage Penguin paperback book cover. Who will be the lucky person who gets … let's see … "Kiss, Kiss" by Roald
DAHL? Or "The Case of the Careless Kitten" by
ERLE Stanley Gardner? Or the Selected Verse of Heinrich
HEINE? It could be you. Or give via PayPal and get a thank-you email. That's cool too. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say so. No problem. Anyway, whatever you choose to do, I remain most grateful for your readership. Now on to the puzzle …
• • •
Wow, this was easy. Even for a Monday, easy. Cluing was very straightforward and the theme is essentially a non-theme. Starting with "S" and ending in "P" … so, five unrelated things. Oh, sorry, six. I forgot about SLAP. Couple of things about this theme: it's an old concept, this breaking STOP into three parts. When I've seen it done before, it has involved a letter change (i.e. turning "S" to "P," to wacky effect). I don't think I've seen this interpretation of the
S TO P concept before. I don't know what to say about it. There it is. I do think the theme density, particularly up top, gets you into some fill problems. I mean, stacking those two themers gives you an overlapping succession of letters that are not that fill-friendly. Ends -TD. Ends -AI. Has -NP- in the 3 & 4 spots of a five-letter answer. Probably lucky to get out of that mess with
ERL as the only atrocious bit of fill. On a Monday, I think ERL,
ALAE and
OAKIE are all pretty much unacceptable. Like
ERL,
OAKIE is in a danger zone (right next to overlapping themers again). And I have a theory about
ALAE, which is that it's also a victim of theme pressure—my hypothesis is that
STP was supposed to be a themer. That this grid was designed to have STP there, in the crossing center position. Then perhaps the editor was like "that's a really weak themer, let's pretend it's not one" but then didn't have constructors rework the grid. How else to explain the fact that it's an answer that goes from S to P, in a totally acceptable theme position, that is yet unstarred? This means
ALAE is sitting smack between two very theme-dense areas, which would explain its existence. Otherwise, how in the world do you end up with ***ing
ALAE in your Monday puzzle?
The clue on
SLAP is disturbing on several levels. It's the syntactic level that bugs me most, though. "Action on a behind" is such odd, inelegant, creepy phrasing. Otherwise, cluing seems fine. Just dull.
SALARY CAP, STUTTER STEP, STOCK TIP … you could go on and on. But please don't. Let's just leave this be and move on.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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