Relative difficulty: Medium (somewhere in the 2:50s)
THEME: "SAY WHAT?" (71A: "Huh?" ... or a possible response to 1-, 19-, 25-, 48- and 57-Across — themers are ... what? Types of talk that are either incoherent or wrong or pointless or some combination, I guess:
Theme answers:
BLATHER (1A: Prattle)
MUMBO JUMBO (19A: Nonsense)
JIBBER JABBER (25A: Worthless talk)
GOBBLEDYGOOK (48A: Unintelligible jargon)
BALDERDASH (57A: Twaddle)
Word of the Day: EVA MARIE Saint (6D: Actress Saint of "North by Northwest") —
This is roughly the Monday equivalent of yesterday's puzzle: a loose list of vaguely related things, all of them redolent of times of yore, and then a grid that's creaky and, like the themers, has a cultural center of gravity somewhere in the middle of the last century. Look, I *love* EVA MARIE Saint, and she's welcome any time, but come on. SCOOB (!?) is what passes for a "current" cultural reference in this thing. "ZORBA the Greek" ... Paul ANKA ... LOVE-INS ... RED (!) CHINA ... "PAL JOEY" ... even the HIP stuff reeks of one-hit wonder datedness (BAHA Men, PSY). G.B. SHAW is a real yikes (only one step up from GBS, which thankfully you don't really see anymore — it seems to have been well and truly exiled along with RLS, EAP, and other literary monograms once thought worthy of grid space). Even the video game is old ("MYST"). Even the "Internet" slang is old (THE WEB!). BAD! SAG! Again, this isn't about bygone things per se, which are obviously an important part of anyone's knowledge base. It's just over and over and over, relentlessly, the presumed knowledge in this thing (and so many NYTXWs) belongs to those who are 65+; there's an arrogance, really, to the idea that you don't even have to acknowledge that other things have happened lately. It's deeply exclusionary of younger solvers. And again, I'm talking about degree here. Balance. There is no balance here. No generational balance. It's just dust. Everywhere. And the theme accentuates this, as most of these terms (which, by the way, have very little in common except kooky-sounding names) are now quaint and used only ironically, if at all. I mean, really, BALDERDASH? Actually, I might use BLATHER or MUMBO JUMBO. But the others, man, I don't know...
The theme could've been made a little more coherent if all the themers had had the same clue? Maybe? Like ... you probably could've gotten away with [Nonsense] for all of them. Probably. But what you have here is a not-terribly-coherent list, and it's weirdly extra long (just as yesterday's puzzle had an unusually high number of themers). More does not = better. It's just ... more of a just-OK, mostly boring thing, and all that "more" does is put pressure on the non-thematic elements of the fill, which is why it's not that great (OOO, ALAMB, BAAS, AER, LRON, etc.). That's all I have to say today. Hope springs eternal. Or, you know, hope stirs a little. Probably alive. Enjoy your day.
Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium (the latter for me, but I solved very ploddingly, with sleep in my eyes, so...) (AH ... wait, it's oversized? OK, then def Easy) (5:10)
THEME: TOR! AH ... (68A: Sacred text ... or your reaction upon figuring out this puzzle's theme?) — "TOR" is added to familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily:
Theme answers:
CAPTOR IN HAND (21A: Kidnapper who gets arrested?)
BEAT THE RAPTOR (29A: Win a one-on-one game against a Toronto hoops player?)
"KEEP IT, REALTOR!" (45A: "I don't want this house after all"?)
CANTOR OF CORN (55A: Synagogue singer with hokey humor?)
Word of the Day: SANDRA Oh (10D: Oh, what an actress!) —
Hello! It's the first full week after New Year's Day and that means it's time for my annual pitch for financial contributions to the blog, during which I ask regular readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. As you know, I write this blog every. Single. Day. OK, two days a month I pay young people to write it, but every other day, all me. OK sometimes I take vacations and generous friends of mine sit in, but otherwise, I'm a non-stop blogging machine. Seriously, it's a lot of work. It's at least as much work as my day job, and unlike my day job, the hours *kinda* suck—I typically solve and write between 10pm and midnight, or in the early hours of the morning, so that the blog can be up and ready for you to read with your breakfast or on the train or in a forest or wherever it is you enjoy the internet. I have no major expenses, just my time. As I've said before, I have no interest in "monetizing" the blog in any way beyond simply asking for money once a year. I hate ads in real life, so why would I subject you all to them. I actually considered redesigning the site earlier this year, making it slicker or fancier somehow. I even got the process partly underway, but then when I let slip that I was considering it, feedback was brisk and clear: don't change. Turns out people don't really want whistles and bells. Just the plain, internet-retro style of a blogger blog. So that's what you're getting. No amount of technical tinkering is gonna change the blog, which is essentially just my voice. My ridiculous opinionated voice yelling at you, cheerfully and angrily, about how much I love / hate crosswords. I hope that this site has made you laugh or taught you things or given you a feeling of shared joy, or anger, or failure, or even given you someone to yell at. I'm fine with that. I also hope I've introduced some of you to the Wider World of Crosswords, beyond the NYT. I am passionate about puzzles and I (mostly) adore the people who solve them—so many of my friends, and the thousands of you I've never met. I can't stop, and I won't stop, and I hope you find that effort worth supporting.
Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):
Second, a mailing address:
Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905
All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions (I. Love. Snail mail!) will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. This year's cards are illustrations from "Alice in Wonderland"—all kinds of illustrations from throughout the book's publication history. Who will get the coveted, crosswordesey "EATME!" card!? Someone, I'm sure. You, I hope. 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 NO CARD. As ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support.
Now on to the puzzle!
• • •
Let me start with the sorry-to-be-annoying bad news, which is that the revealer is just wrong. It's a very nice thought, a nice try, an interesting way to try to repurpose TORAH, but when you discover something or have a revelation, you either say OHO or AHA, orrrrrrrrr (and this is the crucial part) the "AH" comes first. It does. It just does. Always.
I supposed you can contrive a scenario where the solver says the the three-letter string out loud first and then settles back in her chair and goes "Ah," but that's, well, contrived. It's always "Ah, [thing you discovered / remembered / are surprised by." So the revealer, while amusing in its aspirational wackiness, just doesn't land. I'd sooner by "TOR! AHA!" than "TOR, AH." That said, the themers are amusing enough, and the grid is pretty clean, so solving this was definitely not an unpleasant experience. I just think revealers should work. Perfectly. Actually, the more you ham it up, the more plausible "TOR! AH!" starts to seem. You have to really exclaim them and draw them out. Like, the revelation is so startling that the letter string comes before the Actual Exclamation. Defensible, maybe. Still, not right to my ear.
All of the difficulty was in parsing the themers, which first involved figuring out what the theme was. I had to drop down to BEAT THE RAPTOR before getting it (had BEAT in place, read the clue, knew a Toronto hoops player was a RAPTOR, and just shoved RAPTOR on the tail end of the answer, and then reasoned the middle of the answer from there). Parsing nonsense phrases can add considerable time to your solve, even after you know what the deal is with the theme. Because ... well, nonsense is not something your solving brain toggles to easily, and the longer the nonsense, the harder it is to parse it, understand its syntax, etc. For me the hardest answer by far was "KEEP IT, REALTOR," largely because there's nothing in the clue to suggest that the phrase is meant to be said With The Interlocutor's Name In It, i.e., there is no indicator of "realtor" in the clue. None. I could easily be saying "I don't want this house after all" to my wife or self anyone, really. So even knowing that TOR had to go in there, even having TOR wedged at the end of the answer, without the "L" (from the toughly clued LARYNX—47D: Need to speak) or the "R" (from the "I did not know that" BARONESS—40D: Margaret Thatcher, e.g., in her later years), the only word my brain could see was REACTOR. The fact that there is an implied comma in the answer made things nuts. But most of the rest of this grid was pretty straightforward 4- and 5-letter stuff, so no problem. Best thing about this puzzle for me was the cheeky (and timely) clue on SANDRA Oh (10D: Oh, what an actress!) (she co-hosted the Golden Globes just a few days ago).
Relative difficulty: Average, with a Thursday gimmick
THEME: The World, orbiting The Sun — The World, indicated in the circled squares in the four quadrants of the grid, orbits The Sun, indicated in a rebus square in the center. The Sun also has lovely rays extending out into the grid.
RIP
Word of the Day: FALUN Gong (23A: ___ Gong [Chinese spiritual practice]) —
Falun Gong/ˈfɑːluːnˈɡʊŋ/ or Falun Dafa/ˈfɑːluːnˈdɑːfɑː/ (Standard Mandarin Chinese: [fàlwə̂n tâfà]; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a Chinese spiritual practice that combines meditation and qigong exercises with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance (Chinese: 真、善、忍).
The practice emphasizes morality and the cultivation of virtue, and
identifies as a qigong practice of the Buddhist school, though its
teachings also incorporate elements drawn from Taoist
traditions. Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation,
practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to eliminate attachments, and
ultimately to achieve spiritual enlightenment. [...] On 20 July 1999, the Communist Party leadership initiated a nationwide crackdown and multifaceted propaganda campaign intended to eradicate the practice. It blocked
Internet access to websites that mention Falun Gong, and in October
1999 it declared Falun Gong a "heretical organization" that threatened
social stability. Falun Gong practitioners in China are reportedly
subject to a wide range of human rights abuses: hundreds of thousands are estimated to have been imprisoned extrajudicially, and practitioners in detention are subject to forced labor, psychiatric abuse, torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands of Chinese authorities.As of 2009, human rights groups estimated that at least 2,000 Falun
Gong practitioners had died as a result of abuse in custody.Some observers put the number much higher, and report that tens of thousands may have been killed to supply China's organ transplant industry.
In the years since the persecution began, Falun Gong practitioners have
become active in advocating for greater human rights in China. (Wikipedia)
• • •
Laura here -- I'm back again, and I get to blog a woman constructor! (Or co-constructor, at least.) Did you know that so far in 2017, only 13% of New York Times puzzles have been constructed by women? That's on track to be the lowest percentage ever. Why so few? Editors, constructors, bloggers, and journalists have offered explanations: crossword constructing is more techy now (eye-roll), more women used to construct as a hobby and now they have real jobs and don't have time (larger and more dramatic eye-roll), or perhaps there's systemic and/or unconscious bias in the culture (eyebrow raise). Are you a woman or female-identified solver reading this blog and interested in constructing puzzles? I can't claim to be an expert, but I'm learning, and I'd love to learn with you. Send me a tweet or ask Rex to forward an email -- maybe we can work together on breaking what I've decided to call the Newsprint Ceiling.
Oh yeah, the puzzle: I liked it very much. I knew something was up, likely rebus-wise, when I couldn't fit SUNSET into 35A (Cowboys may ride off into it). Got the northeast right away with BATHTOY (14A: Rubber ducky, e.g.) crossing STUART (9D: Little of children's literature), noted that the circled letters spelled out THE WORLD and also that they made a little circle. Went to the southeast next, noted that we had another THE WORLD but that it was oriented differently, then orbited the sun clockwise and finished up in the northwest with ETRURIA (15A: Ancient region of central Italy) and ADRIENNE (2D: Actress Barbeau of the cult classic "Swamp Thing"). Did you notice that the letters of THE WORLDs aren't just randomly placed?
In each quadrant, THE WORLD is oriented differently; in the NE, it begins at noon and goes counterclockwise; SE, at 3pm; SW, at 6pm; and NW, at 9pm. Cool and lovely -- but I am a greedy solver and wanted more. I saw AARON (6D: Composer Copland) in the NE and thought, "Appalachian Spring"? Maybe each quadrant alludes to a season? Or did ETRURIA indicate something about which hemisphere faces the sun at whatever point? But nah. The fill was fill, however decent.
I live near the Appalachian Trail, where it is finally Spring
Bullets:
55A: Part of the escape route in "Casablanca" (ORAN) — I have seen Casablanca eleventy-godzillion times. Thought I had the script by heart. And I needed all the crosses to get this -- since it turns out that I have every bit of dialogue memorized except the escape route narration by the movie announcer guy in the opening credits. "I was misinformed."
40D: Jack of "Barney Miller" (SOO) — Barney Miller was a 1970s sitcom about NYPD detectives. Jack Soo, born Goro Suzuki, was interned imprisoned at the Topaz War Relocation Center Concentration Camp during WWII and acted for years on Broadway and in films and television, usually playing stock Asian characters. Detective Nick Yemana on Barney Miller was his last (and best) role until his death from cancer in 1979.
Jack Soo, 1917-1979 (on far right)
44D: Detective whose first name is Kentaro (MR MOTO) — Mr Moto was a recurring character in stories and novels by John Marquand from the 1930s through the 1950s. In eight movies produced in the 1940s, he was played by Hungarian-American actor Peter Lorre (whom you might also remember from Casablanca).
64A: Cartoonist's aide (INKER) — This was clued back in January as "Comics artist," which is far more accurate. Let's not demote our INKERs! Inking isn't something your assistant does to help; it is an integral part of the collaborative art of comics production. There's even an Eisner Awards category for inking.
Thanks to Rex for giving me another guest-posting opportunity this week, and I hope to see you all again soon.
THEME: GREEK / PLAYS (8A: With 58-Across, "Antigone" and others, ... or, when reinterpreted, a hint to 17-, 31- and 50-Across) — famous Greeks have their names "played" (?) with, i.e. clued as if they were actually wacky phrases:
Theme answers:
HIPPO CRATES (17A: Packing boxes for heavyweights?)
ARI, STOP HANES! (31A: Order to Onassis to block a brand of underwear?)
DEMOS THE NES (50A: Shows a Sega Genesis rival at an expo?)
Word of the Day: DEMOSTHENES —
Demosthenes (/dɪˈmɒs.θəniːz/; Greek: ΔημοσθένηςDēmosthénēs[dɛːmostʰénɛːs]; 384–322 BC) was a prominent Greekstatesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by studying the speeches of previous great orators. He delivered his first judicial speeches at the age of 20, in which he argued effectively to gain from his guardians what was left of his inheritance. For a time, Demosthenes made his living as a professional speech-writer (logographer) and a lawyer, writing speeches for use in private legal suits. (wikipedia)
• • •
I wanted to like this, but it's hard to choke down a puzzle that starts with "TOP COPS" (what in the world...?) (1A: Early 1990s CBS series about the exploits of real-life police officers) crossing TOSHES (come on, now...) and then has grand thematic aspirations but can never quite find its footing. So ... the revealer clue refers to "Antigone" ... which is by Sophocles ... who is, in fact, a *playwright* ... but who is not in the grid. Well, that's OK, I guess we'll get *other* playwrights? And ... we do ... once. We get ARISTOPHANES. But then we also get non-playwrights somehow (HIPPOCRATES, DEMOSTHENES). Meanwhile, the puzzle seems to have wanted another thematic layer, as SAPPHO and PINDAR are both Greek writers whose names can ... if you get really, outrageous ... be clued as wacky phrases. Can you "sap" the Vietnamese soup "pho"? Can you "pin" the entire Daughters of the American Revolution? Maybe. But here, today ... no. Their names just sit there. No wackiness. What happened? There is No Way SAPPHO (16A: Whom Plato called "the tenth Muse") and PINDAR (52A: Noted writer of victory odes) are there coincidentally. And yet, no "?" clues? Bizarre.
Grid feels not very efficiently made. Theme isn't dense, and yet we end up with these ridiculously large (and therefore hard to fill cleanly) corners in the NW and SE. Why not put a corner cheater in there or ... something. Take the pressure off so we don't have to endure "TOP COPS" and TOSHES and ERLE and OCTO and the green paint of ONE ACRE. Or, on the other side of the grid, MTETNA PESETA HARI ORELSE ESSES. Seems like this one should've been sent back with a "nice idea—rebuild grid" note. Also, there is a story behind the de-theming of SAPPHO and PINDAR, I'm sure.
Didn't have that much trouble except in that first big corner. Didn't know LUIS or GRAEME or "TOP COPS," but I did know Hanson's "MMM BOP" (a song now older than every member of the band was when they first recorded it), which helped make the big corner in the SE much easier to handle.
Word of the Day: SHOJI (48D: Japanese sliding door) —
n., pl., shoji, or -jis.
A translucent screen consisting of a wooden frame covered in rice paper, used as a sliding door or partition in a Japanese house.
[Japanese shōji : shō, barrier, screen (from Middle Chinese tsiang) + ji, seed, n. suff. (from Middle Chinese tsz).]
Hey, we're allowing 16s now, for no thematic reason? OK, cool. Not the biggest stack fan in the world, but this 16 stack does not result in the disastrous fill that usually accompanies 15 stacks, for whatever reason, so I'll take it. Clean and interesting fill all around, with the short / weaker stuff spread out and inconspicuous. Nice that two of the 16s relate to one another, too. The one weird thing about this puzzle was how cut off the NE and SW corners are—just a one-square opening connecting them to the rest of the grid. OK, that's not *that* weird, but what that segmentation does is turn those corners into independent mini-puzzles. and the SE corner mini-puzzle was on a whole different plane of Difficulty from the rest of the grid. I ran TARZAN THE APEMAN down into that corner easily (4D: Much-filmed swinger), and early, but after that ... yikes. Got ROY (62D: "The Natural" hero Hobbes) and guessed TEJANO (65A: Certain Mexican-American) but having *zero* idea about SHOJI (never heard of it) (48D: Japanese sliding door), SENG (ditto) (54D: Hong Kong's Hang ___ Index) and "Tarantula hawk" (ditto ditto) (46A: Tarantula hawk, e.g. => WASP), I was in a bit of a jam there for a bit. Not sure how I got out of it. I think ISOMER was a gut-level guess that I tested out (61A: Chemistry test topic). And STINGY just came to me, eventually (67A: Tight). Even so, I crawled through that corner, whereas I sprinted through the rest of the puzzle. Finished under 7. Not bad, especially considering the extra-wide grid.
I had a few errant answers today. Thought Hanson was from OMAHA (five letters, ends in A, more common in crosswords than TULSA ... well, I thought it was a good guess) (12D: Hometown of the band Hanson); thought [Culture centers?] were TEES. See, that's me, outsmarting a clue that isn't being smart. Or, that is being smart. Smarter than I. Don't even remember seeing the clue at 35D: Party label for Brit. P.M. William Gladstone (LIB), which is just as well, since I wouldn't have known it anyway. I was happy to get SMETANA from just a few crosses, even though SMETANA is my least favoritely named composer (25D: "The Moldau" composer). His name sounds like a synonym for "phlegm." Do people outside New York remember AL D'AMATO? I'm inside New York, so it was practically a gimme for me (37D: Chuck Schumer's predecessor in the Senate).
First thought on seeing the clue at 58D: Pull felt on earth: "Why would you want to pull felt, and where else would you do it besides earth?"
Drank a lot at dinner (it's the last day of classes, so I felt entitled), so now I'm gonna go drink a lot of water and watch "The Daily Show." See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Read more...
[American Spanish, from Spanish Caribe, Carib; see Carib.]
(thefreedictionary.com)
• • •
Interesting and mildly enjoyable. You don't often see 14-letter answers in 15x15 grids (for good reason—they can't be centered and that one black square they bring with them can be really tricky to build around), so when I finished the puzzle and noticed the top and bottom lines (1A, 65A), I thought "well, that's one way to handle 14s—break 'em." Most of the rest of the puzzle is at least OK, though to be honest CARIBES kind of put a damper on the whole experience. It's a long, totally uninferrable obscurity, a word that's of zero use to anyone, a word that no one but an ichthyologist and hard-core crossword solver (with a good memory) is going to know, a word of the type that gives crosswords a bad name. That single word slowed me down more than anything else. I couldn't believe it was real. It doesn't even look like it has anything to do with fish. I mean, I don't like EGER much as an answer either, but it's a real place in the world (9D: Hungarian city that has hosted two World Puzzle Championships). A reasonable bit of geography trivia. Nothing close to the same can be said for CARIBES.
ENDLESS STRUGGLE is vague and lifeless as a phrase (38A: Battle of good versus evil, e.g.), but most of the other longish stuff in the grid has pop. I even liked EPOXY RESIN despite its not meaning a hell of a lot to me (7D: It forms a strong bond). I have a vintage paperback version of the boxing story "KID GALAHAD" (27D: 1962 film starring Elvis Presley as a boxer) so that was a familiar face, as was TOBIAS Wolff (10D: "This Boy's Life" author Wolff). But there weren't that many gimmes for me today, and I made a ton of mistakes. Never heard of SOJU (though I like it as an answer) (52D: Korean liquor similar to sake). The SE corner was especially tough for me. Always dicey when you cross-reference answers in the same quadrant (SNOWFALLS and INCH). Then throw in lots of potentially misleading cluing, and you've got trouble. I couldn't decide between THE WEB (46D: What's used for site-seeing?) or THE NET. I had both POKE and PUSH before I figured out PSST (54D: Nudge alternative). I had PINE for PLOD (57D: Lumber) and SLAM for SLUG (58D: Hard punch). So, outside of the general vicinity of CARIBES, the SE was the real causer of slowness today. Aside from EMU forELK (25A: Leather variety), no other significant missteps; just methodical, steady progress.
Bullets:
52A: 1990s girl group member with a tongue piercing (SCARY SPICE) — first three words of the clue were a dead give away for the last five letters of the answer, and a cross or two took care of the first five letters. You might also see SCARY SPICE in the puzzle as MEL B.
8D: Topic de Freud (RÊVE) — Took me a while. I wonder if anyone else considered "IDÉE" a first.
45D: Tom of "Tomorrow" (SNYDER) — Tom Tomorrow writes a comic called "This Modern World." This is all I could think of until the "Y" made me remember that Tom SNYDER once existed.
THEME: TO-DO LIST (66A: Agenda ... or, together, what the seven starred clues and their answers constitute?) — all the starred clues have answers that are synonymous with "TO-DO" (i.e. "disturbance")
Word of the Day: "AH, SIN" (9D: Bret Harte/Mark Twain play) —
Ah Sin (1877), a play by Bret Harte, Mark Twain. [ Fifth Avenue Theatre, 35 perf.] Broderick (Edmund K. Collier), a “knave through circumstances over which he ought to have control,” attacks Uncle Billy Plunkett (P. A. Anderson), “the Champion Liar of Calaveras,” leaving him for dead and attributing the attack to mill owner York (Henry Crisp). Just as a lynch mob is about to hang York, the wily Chinaman Ah Sin (Charles T. Parsloe) solves the crime by connecting an incriminating coat to Broderick. The Augustin Daly production, developed from a character in Harte's poem, was a failure, but it is remembered because of the speech Mark Twain, dressed in white, gave at the end that many critics claimed was better than anything in the play. Sensing a poor reception, Mark Twain began by wryly telling the audience that the play was “intended rather for instruction than amusement” and suggesting, as an example, that “for the instruction of the young we have introduced a game of poker.”
[It's pledge week here at the Rex Parker site (thru Sat.) —read my pitch for donations in the opening paragraphs of Sunday's write-up, here ... and thanks for your faithful readership (and the many kind messages I've received so far)]
• • •
Maybe it's just the 10 hours (!) sleep talking, but I *loved* this puzzle. Thorny without being filled with annoying, obscure words; delightful in the broad subject range of its answers; and smart in its theme and the execution thereof. Very clever repurposing of "TO-DO." And So Many Theme Answers—all symmetrical, all *intersecting* other theme answers, and yet nowhere does the grid feel strained or awkward. The only thing that bugged me had nothing to do with the quality of the puzzle—why does HULLA have two "L"s but "BALOO" doesn't? My brain rejects this lack of "L" symmetry. I don't know who Derek Bowman is, but Sarah Keller is an old pro—though usually you see her stuff on Monday or Tuesday. Whatever they've got going is working and they should do it again sometime.
Theme answers:
1A: *Rumpus (BROUHAHA) — more spelling issues here. I mean, "OU?" It's not HOUPLA or HULLABALOU or HOUHAH, after all...
7D: *Hubbub (HURLY-BURLY)
16A: *Excitement (HOOHAH)
10D: *Turmoil (COMMOTION) — stands out like a sore thumb for being the one theme answer one might actually use unironically / unsillily.
32D: *Tumult (KERFUFFLE)
63A: *Foofaraw (HOOPLA)
30D: *Ruckus (HULLABALOO)
With so little connection between the east and west halves of the grid, this really was like two different puzzles, though both ended up being about the same in terms of difficulty. I've been constructing puzzles over the past week (for eventual publication as well as for private clients) and I think being in constructing mode helps your solving brain, if only slightly. I used OAXACA in a clue yesterday (3D: Southern Mexican state), and I had to write a KSU clue a few days ago (P.S. almost all KSU clues are the same as this one—32A: The Wildcats of the N.C.A.A.). When you construct, you not only encounter all the words that eventually end up in your grid, but all the words that could've been in your grid, the ones you select, discard, put back in, spin around, write your friends about to see if they're good / terrible, etc. Anyway, I didn't need much special help or luck today, as the short answers were generally easy enough to give me significant purchase on the longer stuff. ANA and UNS in the NW, LMN and YMA near the middle, TAM and EBAY (51A: Web site that includes the heading "Dolls & Bears") in the SE. Do boxers have "matches" (25D: Match enders, briefly = TKOS)? I guess they do. But that's a word I associate more with soccer (aka football). Boxers have "bouts."
Bullets:
17A: Like the maximum-height New York City apartment building that's not required to have a fire evacuation plan (SIX-STORY) — I think I spent half my solving time reading this clue. Shouldn't every NYC building have, at least, a "plan" for getting people out of the building if it's burning?
28A: Inits. on many uniforms since 2002 (TSA) — good clue; had me stumped all the way.
34: Figure on Scotland's coat of arms (UNICORN) — I was looking for THISTLE, but luckily already had some important crosses, most notably the "U"
64A: They may be painted in a bathroom (TOENAILS) — I always imagine women doing this on the couch while watching soaps and eating bon-bons. Not accurate?
37D: Hungarian hero ___ Nagy (IMRE) — Crosswordese 102. Not much else available in the -MR- department.
39D: 1994 Ray Liotta action film ("NO ESCAPE") — never heard of it, and yet I got it easily, off of "NOES-." I've been watching 1987 movies lately. I recommend seeing "Black Widow" (starring Debra Winger and Theresa Russell) and avoiding "The Bedroom Window" (starring a completely miscast Steve Guttenberg ... but also a frequently naked Isabelle Huppert, so ... you could choose to take the bad with the good, I guess). The fact that both movies have the initials "BW" is a complete coincidence, as far as I know.
45D: 1920s-'40s baseballer with a retired "4" (MEL OTT) — lack of any indication of how great he was left me searching for a much less legendary player. The fact of a retired no. doesn't tell me much about real greatness. No "Hall-of-Fame," no position, no team ... totally gettable, but not the gimme it might have been.
46D: Holy Roman emperor who succeeded his father in 973 (OTTO II) — [Holy Roman emperor who [some random bit of trivia that will clarify things for you not at all]]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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THEME: Name word ladder — from KARAN to SEGAL in four moves
Word of the Day: ARSIS (28A: Accented part of a poetic foot) —
n., pl., -ses (-sēz').
The short or unaccented part of a metrical foot, especially in quantitative verse.
The accented or long part of a metrical foot, especially in accentual verse.
Music. The upbeat or unaccented part of a measure.
[Middle English, raising of the voice, from Late Latin, raising of the voice, accented part of a metrical foot, from Greek, raising of the foot (marking the upbeat), the unaccented part of a metrical foot, from aeirein, to lift.] [oh, no, Definition 1 isn't confusing and contradictory-sounding at All...]
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Kept waiting for the trick to come into view. It never did. I was done and wondered what had happened. Then I saw the name ladder. Ho hum. Grid is OK, except the NW, what with the odd-looking REEDIT and MENTEES and the from-outer-space ARSIS (never heard of it, and I teach poetry on a regular basis—if it's obscure to a poetry-teaching English Ph.D., it's ObScure). I cannot imagine having any occasion to talk about something called the ARSIS—maybe the musical meaning is more common to musicians than the poetic one is to literary scholars. Little heavy on the odd names (TESSA, ROS, a pretty marginal O'CONNER) (38A: 2010 Olympic ice dancing gold medalist ___ Virtue + 59A: Children's author Asquith + 2D: Patricia who wrote "Woe Is I"), the RE-words (REEDIT, RENAMING, the vomity REASSESS), odd plurals (MENTEES, SETTERS), prefixes (ENTO-, SACRO-), and ITs (IT'S WAR, TAKE IT, KEEP AT IT). I do love MAIGRET. And KATEY SAGAL. And SERRANO peppers. Other than that, the best thing I can say about the puzzle is that it was wicked easy—about a minute faster than yesterday's. Only part that really held me up was the part where Ben Franklin apparently writes about CHESS (43D: Benjamin Franklin's "The Morals of ___"). I had no idea, just as I have no idea why anyone would want to go from KARAN to SEGAL. What's the point?
[IT'S WAR!]
Theme answers:
16A: Big name in women's fashion (DONNA KARAN)
20A: Supreme Court justice who was formerly a U.S. solicitor general (ELENA KAGAN)
31A: Host of an Emmy-winning PBS series (CARL SAGAN)
47A: Star of TV's "8 Simple Rules" (KATEY SAGAL) — more iconic parts for her include Peg Bundy on "Married... With Children" and the voice of Leela on "Futurama."
52A: Author who co-wrote the screenplay for the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" (ERICH SEGAL)
Bullets:
15A: Glazier's frame (SASH) — forgot what "glazier" meant—someone who cuts and sets glass.
54A: Part of the New Haven landscape (ELMS) — ugh. Why should anyone know or care what kind of trees are common at Yale? Eli-tist clue. I had ELIS!
57A: New York city where Ogden Nash was born (RYE) — yet more northeastern provincialism.
4D: "___ Man Answers" (1962 Bobby Darin / Sandra Dee film) ("IF A") — never heard of it, but the answer here was pretty easily inferrable.
11D: He said "I just put my feet in the air and move them around" (ASTAIRE) — another name for this very name-heavy puzzle. I barely saw the clue. Had the whole middle section, saw that the clue was asking for a person, looked at what I had ... and wrote in ASTAIRE.
15D: Line of cliffs (SCARP) — this eluded me for a bit, as all I could think of was ARETE.
39D: Oscar-winning actor who played Napoleon, Mussolini and W.C. Fields (STEIGER) — as in Rod, whom I used to get confused with ROD Serling (before moving to Rod Serling's birthplace). Guys just aren't named ROD anymore. I think ROD Carew was officially the last one.
THEME: A PATTERN — circled squares form inverted "pyramid" with seven rows. First row contains word PATTERN, and subsequent rows lose one letter at a time, spelling new words each time, until the final row, which contains the single circled square "A." Further, the word in each row provides the clue for an answer in the grid; thus seven different clues read [First row], [Second row], etc.
Word of the Day: EPHOR (2A: Ancient Spartan magistrate) — n., pl.-ors or -o·ri (-ə-rī').
One of a body of five elected magistrates exercising a supervisory power over the kings of Sparta.
[Latin ephorus, from Greek ephoros, from ephorān, to oversee : ep-, epi-, epi- + horān, to see.]
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Fussy puzzles always leave me lukewarm. This is a fine piece of construction, but I didn't enjoy solving it. A pretty good gauge of my enjoyment level is how succinctly the theme can be explained. Now, it's a faulty gauge, because "Breeds of Dog," for example, is succinct, but apt to suck as a theme. But in general, elegance means simplicity. Brilliant simplicity = ideal. Today's puzzle combines two theme types (both of them on Brendan Emmett Quigley's list of "10 Bull@#$! Themes," a must-read), and makes something ambitious and novel out of them. Thus, not bull@#$!. You've got your "assorted circled letters spell out a word" theme (Bull@#$! Theme #4) combined with your "theme clues are words made from a single original word, which sheds one letter at a time as we move from theme clue to theme clue" (Bull@#$! Theme #6b). Puzzle manages to pull off both theme types while also maintaining geometrical precision with the circles. Impressive. Just not a joy to solve. There is nothing, thematically, holding the puzzle together. Clues, answers ... have nothing in common, meaning-wise. The puzzle is all about shape, all about letter placement. Letters as objects, not components of words whose meanings are important. That kills things a bit for me. Then there's the fact that the theme clues are [First row], [Second row], etc. This seems wrong. [First row OF CIRCLES] is what you mean. There are 15 rows in the puzzle. So I admire the creativity and ambition here, but the puzzle wasn't my cup. It happens. No big deal.
The Rows:
PATTERN — 52A: First row (design)
PATTER — 51D: Second row (spiel)
PATER — 43D: Third or sixth row (dad)
PATE — 64A: Fourth row (head)
PAT — 4D: Fifth row (dab)
PA — 43D: Third or sixth row (dad)
A — 61D: Seventh row (one)
Once again, NW was a total bear for me. Moccasins have BEADs (1A: Moccasin adornment)? I thought they were just simple slip-on shoes, relatively unadorned. There must be a native American type that is more pimped out. Thought I was dealing with a rebus for a moment at the Peck clue, trying to get ATTICUS to fit in 17A: Literary lead role for Gregory Peck in 1956 (Ahab). And EPHOR is a word I'm sure I've seen before, but I couldn't remember it (2D: Ancient Spartan magistrate). Still looks alien to me. (Btw, sort of, why have I never seen EEPHUS in the puzzle? It's a valid answer, a baseball answer, and those two "E"s have to be good for something.).
Early attempts at understanding the circled squares were not great. Noticed the "P"s descending down the left of the triangle, and then the "A"s on the next "row," etc. and tried predicting where letters would be that way — with much failure. Once I'd convinced myself there was no rebus, and that the "row" clues would just come to me eventually, I got far enough in to the grid to figure out what I was dealing with, and it all came together fairly nicely. This is a good example of the difficulty coming not from the clues/answers, per se, but from the gimmick. Get the gimmick, get the puzzle.
Bullets:
13A: With 14-Across, Nancy Lopez and Annika Sorenstam have each won this several times (LPGA / TITLE) — clue confused me. LPGA TITLE is not a single thing. It's any tournament on the tour. The "this" in the clue made me think the answer would be an event, not an event type. I had LADY in the first part and TOURS in the second at different points in my attempts to solve this.
29A: New York's _____ Institute (art school) (Pratt) — I know this place from watching too much "Project Runway" over the years. PRATT and PRATTLE in same grid is mildly unfortunate.
33A: C7H5N3O6 (TNT) — whatever you say. Got it all from crosses.
46A: Stereo component (preamp) — ??? ... Preamplifier: n. An electronic circuit or device that detects and strengthens weak signals, as from a radio receiver, for subsequent, more powerful amplification stages.
7D: Japanese butler in "Auntie Mame" (Ito) — never seen this clue for ITO before. Judge ITO's heyday is long gone, I guess.
8D: Mickey Mouse's puppy pal (Pluto) — uh ... yeah, I guess he *is* a "puppy." Weird. Puppies aren't usually as big as their owners.
9D: Shipping magnate Onassis (Ari) — shouldn't something cue the short form of his name? I mean, I can see that ARISTOTLE doesn't fit, but still, aren't there rules about this sort of thing?
33D: Gene Roddenberry-inspired sci-fi series ("Andromeda") — couldn't tell you a single thing about it.
34D: Metallic shade, in Sheffield (steel grey) — "Sheffield" because a. it alliterates with "shade," and b. because "GREY" with an "E" is British, though I can never remember the US/UK distinction there.
53D: Classic Broadway musical with the song "Alice Blue Gown" ("Irene") — so classic I forgot to hear about it.
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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