Huck Finn's father / SUN 9-30-12 / Sholem Aleichem protagonist / One-named Brazilian soccer star / One-sixth of drachma / Weavers willows / Capital of Swiss canton of Valais / ABC in Variety-speak / Wild equine

Constructor: Elayne Cantor and Victor Fleming

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Car Talk" — car-related answers, wacky non-car-related clues

Word of the Day: PELEG (12D: Genesis man who lived 239 years) —

Peleg (Hebrew: פֶּלֶג / פָּלֶג, Modern Péleg / Páleg Tiberian Péleḡ / Pāleḡ ; "division") is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as one of the two sons of Eber, an ancestor of the Israelites, according to the "Table of Nations" in Genesis 10-11 and 1 Chronicles 1. Peleg's son was Reu, born when Peleg was thirty, and he had other sons and daughters. According to the Hebrew Bible, Peleg lived to the age of 239 years. (wikipedia)

• • •

We're into a run of not-so-great puzzles. Honestly, the last few have felt dated, stale, and seriously lacking in overall polish. Here, we just have car stuff. All the interest is in the clue, but those miss as often as not, and are often forced and awkward. Then there's the fill, which, collectively, is some of the worst I've seen on a Sunday puzzle in some time. A punishing barrage of crosswordese—or worse, often: plural crosswordese: OSIERS, ENOTES, RAYONS, NAES, LEOS, TSETSES, GRRS, OLLAS, TEHEES (!?!?!)—just painful. There's lots more non-plural junk as well, and almost nothing sparkly or thoughtful on the plus side to balance it out. I've written down "YO, DUDE," NIGHTIES, and BACK PAY as non-theme answers that I particularly like. That's it. I'm begging constructors—try harder! DEMAREST is a massive waste of an 8! You only have so many longer answers—make them count. And the short stuff doesn't have to be scintillating, but keep the truly stale and outright gag-worthy stuff to a small handful. It Can Be Done. In this day and age, what with all the tools available to constructors, and with more scrutiny than ever given to puzzles, there's just no excuse for filling puzzles in ways that are barely serviceable.  I'm looking at that KIP, PAP, ANEMO-, ADESTE, ASI, CTS corner and thinking "Why!?" Yes, BACK PAY and "YO, DUDE" (both in that corner) are good, but did they really necessitate all that dead weight? Sundays especially, being long, should have many, Many highlights. "Barely serviceable" becomes "actively abusive" in a puzzle that's 21x21.


I have a long list of the stale fill that plagues this puzzle, but I'll spare you. You can see it. You saw it. It has been SEEN by you (50D: Comprehended).

Theme answers:

• 23A: What Katie Holmes lost in divorce court? (CRUISE CONTROL) — "lost?" I thought she wanted out. Also, "control?" That's what you have in a marriage? What kind of vaudvillean gag is this? "Take my spouse ..."
• 28A: Commute on a crowded bus, e.g.? (REAR BUMPER) — not even sure how this works. Is the guy bumping people's REAR ends? Is he at the back of the bus? Mystifying.
• 55A: Epiphany? (HEAD LIGHT)
• 69A: What "Send" triggers? (AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION)
• 80A: Legal proceeding over a meth bust? (CRANK CASE) — drug slang. Good. More of that.
• 110A: Smell of sour milk? (TURN SIGNAL)
• 118A: Bling-bling? (HOOD ORNAMENTS) — "Bling" (and esp. "bling-bling") is, and has been, dead. From the wikipedia entry, subheading "Mass Usage" (emph. mine):

While the specific term bling was first popularized in the hip hop community, it has spread beyond hip hop culture and into mass culture. This is similar to the meteoric rise of hip hop music itself, which has led to its most popular artists becoming mainstream pop music icons. "Bling" was added to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in 2002 and to the Merriam Webster dictionary in 2006. Companies such as Sprint and Cadillac have used the word bling in their advertisements. During a 2008 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade in Jacksonville, Florida, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney admired a baby decked in dress attire with gold jewelry and said, "Oh, you've got some bling-bling here."^[3]

In 2004, MTV released a satirical cartoon showing the term being used first by a rapper and then by several progressively less "streetwise" characters, concluding with a middle-aged white woman describing her earrings to her elderly mother.^[4] It ended with the statement, "RIPbling-bling 1997-2003." In 2005, the rapper B.G. remarked that he "just wished that he'd trademarked it"^[5] so that he could have profited. Like many cases of once-exclusive vernacular that becomes mainstream, the views of the originators towards the term have changed significantly over the years. On VH1's Why You Love Hip-Hop, rapper Fat Joe stated, "rappers don't call jewelry 'bling' anymore, we just call 'em "diamonds"."

For a relatively straightforward puzzle, I found parts of it pretty hard. Specifically, the NE and SW corners, which were serious problems. At one point I wasn't sure I was going to get the NE at all. Couldn't remember how to spell DEMAREST (40A: 1946 Best Supporting Actor nominee William). No clue on EIRE (33A: "Sing of old ___ and the ancient ways": Yeats). No clue on CARB (14D: Dual-___). Never ever heard whatever meaning of ACE that clue is going for (13A: Dandy). I had FOP and then A-OK. ACE as adjective? OK, I guess so, though "dandy" doesn't feel like a very tight synonym. POTPIE, also tough (16D: Round entree). SW corner was a little easier, if only because TURN SIGNAL was understandable and gettable (where REAR BUMPER, in the NE, really really wasn't). But still—I had either BIG-TIME or BIG-DEAL or something like that before BIGGEST (90D: Number-one). No clue on SION (111D: Capital of the Swiss canton of Valais). NECK before NAPE (104A: Spot for a farm laborer's sunburn). No clue on PENN'S (100D: ___ Landing (part of Philadelphia)). ENTIRE before INTACT (97D: Whole). And SUD-for-SUR (84D: Spanish direction) meant that IN SPIRIT took a good long time to see (97A: With one's heart, if nothing else). Rest of the puzzle seemed relatively normal, difficulty-wise.


Bullets:

• 51A: Digit in military lingo (NINER) — not the "digit" I was imagining. I was picturing a toe or finger.
• 85A: Programming behind computer pop-ups (ADWARE) — aka The Worst Thing About The Internet (after trolls).
• 109A: Potentially slanderous remark (LIE) — I had DIS.
• 123A: Wild equine of ASIA (ONAGER) — crossworld's biggest ass. Anagram of "orange." Always makes me think of Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin," for some reason.
• 126A: ABC, e.g., in Variety-speak (NET) — neglected the "e.g." which had me thinking of ABC specifically. I knew CBS was "the Eye," but ABC ... eluded me.
• 2D: One-named Brazilian soccer star (ADRIANO) — I don't know this guy. RONALDINHO I know.

• 55D: ___ bar (HEATH) — Ugh. Lowercase "bar" made me doubt it til the bitter end, but I guess the bar is just called HEATH, so "bar" would be lowercase. Still, ugh on this clue.
• 70D: One-sixth of a drachma (OBOL) — if I had to nominate, say, five crossword answers for Most Quintessential Crosswordese, this would almost surely make the slate. The clue reads like a parody of itself. Sounds like every pop culture representation of crosswords ever. Movies and TV shows always imagine crosswords as reservoirs of exotic and/or obscure words. In "Someone to Watch Over Me" (1987), for instance, Mimi Rogers (speaking of ex-Mrs. Cruises) impresses her bodyguard when he asks for help with his crossword and she comes up with the answer: URDU. And I thought: Of course. Of course it's URDU. Had to be something four letters long and foreign, right? But at least URDU has the virtue of being spoken by millions and millions of people, whereas no one currently living has ever spent an OBOL. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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SUNDAY, Jul. 8, 2007 - Elayne Cantor and Nancy Salomon

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "R-Rated Film Remakes" - Puns (oh boy, huzzah) on famous movie titles, aka Porn Remakes

At least one of these allegedly fake titles is real, i.e. a name of an actual porn flick. Not only that, the same title has been used in sitcoms at least twice as a parody title. That title: "BROADCAST NUDES" (88A: Remake about a TV station/F.C.C. controversy?). It was a 1988 porn film. It was a passing reference on "The Simpsons," and it was the title of an episode of "The Larry Sanders Show." Just FYI.

I say the difficulty level here is "Medium" only because it took me longer than it should have to get the theme, primarily because I tripped all over what should have been an easy answer, 32A: Remake about impiety during a storm? ("Sinnin' in the Rain"). I had the -NIN- part of SINNIN' but put in RAINING ... then figured out the answer but couldn't get it to fit (didn't realize I had to drop the "G" I had hangin' on the end there). The first answer I got after that, very easily (too easily?), was "THE NAUGHTY PROFESSOR" (68A: Remake about a lecherous instructor?).

Other theme answers:

• 23A: Remake about a red, white, and blue libido? ("Lust in America") - what's most striking about this clue, strangely, is its use of the serial comma, which the puzzle normally eschews between penultimate and ultimate item in a list...
• 51A: Remake about a strip club? ("Risque Business")
• 106A: Remake about a holy person's slip? ("Saint Misbehavin'")
• 119A: Remake about a ribald watchman? ("The Bawdy Guard") - Had GUARD and filled the whole thing in without ever looking at the clue.

Assorted observations:

13A: Cape Cod course (chowder) - thought the answer was a golf course. CHOWDER always makes me laugh because of a "Simpsons" episode in which the mayor's nephew threatens a French chef for not pronouncing "Chow-DAIR" correctly (the mayor and his whole family speak with heavy, Kennedy-esque accents).

21A: Daddy Warbucks's henchman (The Asp) - wow that's cool. I had No Idea.

22A: Lowly digs (rat hole) - is this literal? As in, rat's holes are low (to the ground)? Or metaphorical, like a slightly nicer way of saying "sh#thole?"

40A: No dessert for dieters (torte) - ??? This clue is awful. What dessert is for dieters? Most are not. And what if the "torte" were somehow defatted or tofued up, such that a dieter might eat it? I can imagine dieting and eating a TORTE - maybe just a sliver. Seriously, make your clues Specific! TORTE-specific!

41A: Game co. that originated Dungeons & Dragons (TSR) - now you all know that I played this game for a few years as a kid, so of course I'm going to blog about it, but ... as of this moment, I have no idea what TSR is or stands for. I had to rely on crosses for this one. Stands for "Tactical Studies Rules," apparently.

74A: Rodrigo _____ de Vivar (El Cid) (Diaz) - I'm sure I've had this before, but still didn't know it. It was inferrable with just a couple crosses, thankfully.

103A: Following closely? (aping) - liked it, not sure why.

125A: Difficult (ornery) - such a great word, though [Difficult] seems far too tepid a clue.

8D: Actor Brian of "Juarez," 1939 (Aherne) - Now that I see this name, I know that I have blogged about not knowing him before. Just not in this movie incarnation.

16D: Fans' sounds (whirrs) - clever. Wanted HURRAS or RAH RAH.

17D: Japanese "thank you very much" (Mr. Roboto ... I mean Domo Arigato)

18D: 1983 Nicholas Gage book ("Eleni") - again, smacks of something that I've blogged before. Still, didn't know it.

60D: Olympic track great Johnson, familiarly (Rafe) - wanted MIKE, at first, then this guy's name came to me out of the blue.

30D: Essen's basin (Ruhr) - edumacated guess

35D: Lucky ones? (Irish) - took me pathetically long time because I wanted it to end in "S."

83D: Wrist bones (carpi) - great word. Never seen it in the grid. Looks like a typo of CAPRI.

86D: Where Hercules slew a lion (Nemea) - I went through a Hercules phase a while back (doesn't everyone?) and so his labors are well known to me.

121D: Slingshot's shape (wye) - oh I don't like that at all. If that's how you spell the letter "Y," then no one should ever do it. Isn't WYE a river? Try that next time.

122D: Children's author/illustrator Asquith (Ros) - Long, long way to go for this answer. Why not [Frasier's colleague] or [Icelandic rock band Sigur _____]?

I'm done.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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