I need people to understand that this is not a theme. Having eleven 11-letter answers, none of which bear any relation to each other, is called being a "themeless" puzzle. I can't begin to say what a fraud this puzzle is. It is not a thing, not a feat, not hard, to fill a puzzle like this. It is 70 words. It's just a themeless grid, with two answers that are pretending real hard that they are a theme, but no. I see you, and no. So you gunk up yet another lovely themeless day with a fake-ass "theme," a., and then b. it's not even about VETERANS DAY. How does this celebrate, honor, or even vaguely refer to veterans. Please don't point to ARES, because that is bull. IKE? Come on. He's in like half of all puzzles in some form. GUADALCANAL? OK, that is a war thing, but still, there is nothing here cohesive enough to qualify as a theme, and what *is* here does nothing to actually honor veterans. You wanna do a VETERANS DAY theme, do a real VETERANS DAY theme. You wanna do an ELEVEN theme, well, unless it's based on "Stranger Things," I'm not interested.
While some of the longer fill is pretty sweet, the amount of garbage is kind of startling. SEPTAL? RIN? And the pièce de réstistance, AWS!? (41A: Comments like "Yer joshin'!") What the af? I'll give the 11s this: they are solid. NETIZEN will never not be crud, but QUEEN BEY and ROBERT STACK liven up any party. I didn't have any trouble with this at all. I guess I forgot the NOSTRUM part of MARE NOSTRUM, and that ate up some time. Oh, and I couldn't come up with the DRAFT part of DRAFT ANIMAL. Had MOVIE in there before FLICK. But these were all minor bumps. I should probably rate this one Easy, but I feel like I need to beat 6 minutes for a Saturday to qualify as truly Easy, and I was mid-6s, I think, so ... just easyish. AWS!? Sorry, I'm still smh over that one. Oh well, that's all for today.
Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging (felt easy enough, but my time was on the high side)
THEME:TASTE (54D: It's often unaccounted for ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — circled letters spell out each of the five basic tastes detectable by the human tongue
Theme answers:
STATUE OF LIBERTY (SALTY)
DESKTOP COMPUTER (SOUR)
CABINET MINISTER (BITTER)
SLIPPERY WHEN WET (SWEET)
PURE MATHETMATICS (UMAMI)*
*apparently when the puzzle came out online last night, the circled squares in the last themer spelled out not UMAMI but UMMAI
Word of the Day:ITT(12D: Onetime telecommunications conglomerate, for short) —
ITT Corporation (ITT) is an American worldwide manufacturing company based in White Plains, New York, producing specialty components for the aerospace, transportation, energy and industrial markets. // The company was founded in 1920 as International Telephone & Telegraph. During the 1960s and 1970s, under the leadership of CEO Harold Geneen, the company rose to prominence as the archetypal conglomerate, deriving its growth from hundreds of acquisitions in diversified industries. ITT divested its telecommunications assets in 1986, and in 1995 spun off its non-manufacturing divisions, later to be purchased by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide. // In 1996, the current company was founded as a spinoff of ITT as ITT Industries, Inc. and changed its name to ITT Corporation in 2006. // In 2011, ITT spun off its defense businesses into a company named Exelis, and its water technology business into a company named Xylem Inc. (wikipedia)
• • •
Puzzle has one thing going for it, and that is five solid 15s as themers. Beyond that, though, there's not much here to enjoy. Nonconsecutive squares spelling things out is the opposite of delightful, 100% of the time (plus or minus a percent). There's nothing particularly clever or amazing about answers that have words "hidden" in them in this way. The themers have nothing to do with the theme itself, so it plays like a very easy themeless. Further, the revealer just lies there. There is no twist, no word play, no nothing that makes this theme snap into place. The tastes *are*, in fact, accounted for, as they are clearly marked by the circled squares. If you're going to go the "no accounting for..." angle, then that should have something to do with how the theme expresses itself. That doesn't happen here.
["I got kicked off Noah's Ark. / I turn my cheek to unkind remarks. / There was TWO (61D: Noah count?) of everything, / But one of meeeeeeeeee..."]
The grid is super choppy and segmented, which means it's overwhelmed by short (3- to 5-letter) stuff, which means a lot of stale fill. That said, stale does not mean particularly terrible. It's crossword-normal; it's just unalleviated by longer, more interesting fill. The one unusual answer it does have ("I'M MEAN!") is completely preposterous (19D: Bully's boast). In what universe does a bully boast "I'M MEAN!"? Seriously. I can't imagine *any* plausible context in which a bully might boast that, and here we're asked to believe it's somehow iconic—a common thing associated with the verbal repertoire of bullies. Ridiculous. It's very, very clear that the constructors had real problems managing their themers there. They designed the grid in such a way that "I'M MEAN!" has to cut through *three* themers—that means this was one of the *first* answers they put in the grid (you gotta lock down those multiple theme crosses before you proceed, because very often there simply aren't very many answers that work). Not sure why they greenlighted "I'M MEAN!" I'd've moved my themers around like crazy to find different letter pattern options before I went with a phrase that for all intents and purposes doesn't actually exist.
[Washington Post Sunday crossword writer/editor, on "I'M MEAN!"]
SPECIAL MESSAGE for Solvers in Syndication(for the week of January 15-January 22, 2017)
Hello, solvers. A new year has begun, and that means it's time for my week-long, once-a-year pitch for financial contributions to the blog. The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's 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 you to read / enjoy / grimace at for at least another calendar year, with a new post up by 9:00am (usually by 12:01am) every day, as usual. Despite my regular grumbling about puzzle quality, constructor pay, and other things that should be better in the world of crosswords, I still love solving, I still love writing about puzzles, and I love love love the people I meet and interact with because of this blog. Well, most of them. Some I mute on Twitter, but mostly: there is love. The blog turned 10 in September, and despite the day-in, day-out nature of the job, I can't foresee stopping any time soon. The community of friends and fellow enthusiasts are all just too dear to me. You can expect me to be here every day, praising / yelling at the puzzle—independent and ad-free. 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 "Cookery Postcards from Penguin"—beautifully designed covers of vintage cookbooks, with provocative titles like "Cookery For Men Only " (!) or "Good Meals from Tinned Foods" (!?). 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 I say in every thank-you card (and email), I'm so grateful for your readership and support.
Now on to the puzzle!
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YEOH is right. Actually, I'm pronouncing that "yeow" in my head, which is undoubtedly wrong. Still, my point stands, which is this one was rough—not in a tough way, but in an ouchy way. The top and bottom parts, despite being (apparently) far less demanding to fill well, are somehow filled 4x worse than the quadstack area (which itself isn't nearly as interesting as most recent stacks from Mr. Ashwood-Smith). I have no idea what's happening up top and below. Boatloads of subpar-to-bad-fill, inexplicable Scrabble-f*cking with "X"s, crosswordese galore incl. ADAIR, ORR, ODEON, NISAN, and the inexplicable revival of TOSSPOTS. And yet the only real groany stuff in the middle section is ORARE and HEA. Baffling. Since the quadstack itself isn't scintillating today, its basic solidity does not do nearly enough to undo the top/bottom garbagefest. Shout-out to HAD A HAND IN and COPACETIC, which are pleasant diversions. And shout-out to ELVIN BISHOP(25D: "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" hitmaker of 1976), whose name I couldn't remember, but whose song I sure do:
The NYT has to stop this gratuitous use of the near-future President's family, and the ALT-right in general, in its puzzles. OBAMA (and MALIA) appeared a lot because his letter pattern is so grid-friendly. 60% vowels, terminal A—both useful features. And you can clue OBAMA only one way. Nowhere else to go. ERIC, however, has a near-infinity of other clues ... and yet you go to this smug fascist halfwit ... twice in one week!? I'm in no way saying the puzzle has a rightward tilt (that's absurd, just as absurd as the opposite claim). I'm saying the incoming administration is repugnant on every level and casual references to them (and their Nazi, sorry, ALT-right supporters) in crossword puzzles normalizes them. It's the most normalizing thing ever, actually. The banal neutrality of a crossword clue. Fuck all that. All of it. Also, I happen to know that in this case, the ERIC clue was an editorial decision, and one that did Not sit well with at least one of the constructors. I'd be furious too if someone rubbed that shit on my puzzle. Even if you're trying to draw some vague connection to Mussolini's right-hand man there at 45D: ___ Balbo, right-hand man to Mussolini (ITALO) ... no.
There's a cuteness to this idea, particularly the MONSTER under the bed. Actually, that's my favorite part. The rest of it, however, has a ton of problems. First, theme answers both are and are not about beds; this kind of inconsistency is irksome. If you're going to bury your bed words in non-bed answers (and that's the ideal) then do it all the way. PAD, SHEET, COVER, BLANKETS ...are all used in non-bed contexts, but the PILLOW in PILLOW TALK is not a non-bed pillow. I can give a little more leeway to the answers that are proximate to the [bed] image, but the bed-part answers, no. Clunk. Further, the clue on DUST BUNNY does not ring true. No "parent" "may think" there's a DUST BUNNY under the bed. That is not a thing that a parent does. You might find one there, sure, but you don't *imagine* the bunny. You clean under the bed. The bunny itself is not something you think on, not nearly the way a kid thinks on the potential MONSTER. Attempt at parallel cluing there rings totally false. PAD doesn't seem that beddy to me, though I guess a *mattress* PAD is indeed often found there. AND SO TO BED is nobody's diary entry but Pepys', so that clue also rings false. Mostly, there is just too much bed stuff going on. Stuff above the bed does not relate to the below-the-bed-stuff, so thematically this feels like not clearly conceptualized enough. The cool central gag is dwarfed by a bunch of incidental, only vaguely bed/sleep-related stuff. Deadens impact of the "joke." Also, what is up with that title ("Sack Time")? What is ... that? A pun? That is not a phrase. No one says "sack time." If you google it in quotation marks, you will get a crossword blog among your first hits, so ... ?
Not thrilled with non-theme Across answers as long as or even dwarfing themers. Distracting. On top of that, TATE MUSEUM is not exactly a thing. It's the TATE GALLERY or the TATE MODERN. There are many Tate museums, but TATE MUSEUM is ... imprecise. Let's keep going, this time, to full-on inaccuracy: 1D: Big feature of Popeye, informally (BICEP). You'd think my complaint would be about BICEP (not a word), and yeah, it's icky, but the real problem is with the clue, in that it's factually incorrect. And people noticed. Right away:
I can't wait for the retraction on that one. Classic. Moving on, the fill had nice moments (e.g. PASTICHE, ADD TO THE MIX, WISEACRE), but too many ugh-ish moments. NW sets the tone with BICEP ASONE EIRE RTS ENURE (lots of mediocre stuff in small space), and then it goes on from there. VIVACE ANODE LST; CIO ICEE OKRAS plural!; ULE ALETA!! (a cross that broke at least one person I know). It's a grid w/ lots of short answers, and we get pummeled with them. Finally, there's the very terrible cross, the close-to-textbook Natick, of SCARNE / SANDIA (93A: "___ on Cards," classic 1949 book / 85D: New Mexico's ___ National Laboratories). Yeesh. SANDIA???? I have vaguely heard of SCARNE, but SANDIA? No. Crossing proper nouns like this, at a fairly unguessable letter... how do you see this and not go "Nope, back to the drawing board"? I guessed correctly; others won't. Here's my solution: change SANDIA (!?!) to SANDRA and clue R-NE in relation to a U.S. Senator of note.
I'll take R-NE over IN E any day. IN E is a suffix posing as a short phrase. Not a fan. Stop falling back on the dull tried-and-true stuff. Be inventive! And above all, for pete's sake, police your Naticks.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. I hereby retract my objection to the title. It's not great, but it's definitely a thing—esp. in the military. Check this bit of military, uh, history out.
Constructor:Martin Ashwood-Smith and George Barany
Relative difficulty:Medium
THEME:none
Word of the Day:DANAIDES(36D: Eternal water-pourers in Hades) —
In Greek mythology, the Daughters of Danaus (/dəˈneɪɪdiːz/; Greek: Δαναΐδες), also Danaids, Danaides or Danaïdes, were the fifty daughters of Danaus. They were to marry the fifty sons of Danaus's twin brother Aegyptus, a mythical king of Egypt. In the most common version of the myth, all but one of them killed their husbands on their wedding night, and are condemned to spend eternity carrying water in a sieve or perforated device. In the classical tradition, they come to represent the futility of a repetitive task that can never be completed (see also Sisyphus). (wikipedia)
• • •
The 15s / 16s hold up pretty well; the rest ... doesn't. The top and the bottom are full of gunk that made this puzzle icky to move through. Improbably, the quadstack felt like the smoothest part of the grid. Sure, it has a few predictably less-than-ideal crosses (I see you, ECASH), but there's not nearly as much bad short stuff in the middle as there is everywhere else. This makes almost no sense, as one would expect the reverse to be true. Quadstacks put strain on a grid, so that should be where the strain should show. Instead, ADM REA ELENI (!?) DENTE chunk is up top, in the place where the puzzle should be cleanest. And the bottom is even rougher, with PAREE MERLE AAS AREOLA NO FEES AERO being a cavalcade of blah, and ERY APEAR EAPOE (all up against the very tough DANAIDES) is a flat-out disaster. It's as if two different people made this puzzle. Oh ... look at that. I wonder if that had anything to do with this. I won't speculate. Martin's not usually so careless with the tops and bottoms of his centered quadstacks, is all I'm saying. The three 16-letter Downs do add perhaps somewhat more strain to the grid than one might otherwise see in a quadstack. Still...
JAPAN was wickedly clued (1D: Follower of a diet system), especially crossing JAGS, which for some reason I don't think of as [Sharp projections]. They're cats, for short, or they're crying spells, or maybe some kind of generically handsome TV military lawyers, I'm not sure. What "Gear" does OIL protect? Oh, the actual gear of a car? One of many gears? OK. I had many different answers where AHASH (blargh) is supposed to go. Started with A MESS, then went to A MASH, which worked swimmingly ... for a while. I've read a lot of classical literature, but the DANAIDES somehow got by me. Virtually no part of that answer (except the terminal "S") was inferrable to me—this made the (ugly) southern section by far the hardest. Oh, except for the [___ College] / [Cannery row?] crossing. I wrote in COE College, which is a place, and it worked, except ... CARS? Are there rows of CARS at a cannery? Turns out, there are not. JOE College, 20x ugh, who says that anymore? That's some '50s-era stuff. And again down there with the EGRET and ESTE and ORES—really weak fill where it shouldn't be. I did enjoy the longer stuff. I just don't get the quality discrepancy.
Seems like I've seen this exact grid, or something very close to it, for many central quad-stack puzzles. I guess the heavy segmentation, which results in a puzzle that plays like three separate puzzles, is kind of inevitable when you have a giant stack in the center. It all felt very familiar. A bit deja vu. I was less surprised or bothered by anything relating to the quad-stack than I was surprised and (mildly) bothered by the less-than-great short stuff up top and down below. I think TAWS OREN PACA TBAR TROP and PICAS are, as a group, worse than the short stuff holding the center together. They're certainly no better, and (the main point) they're far less explicable, since they come (down below) in much easier-to-fill areas of the grid. I enjoyed (and got thrown by) E-CIGARETTE (I had the back end and kept getting frustrated that CIGARETTE wasn't long enough…), but nothing else up top or down below was very remarkable. The quad-stack, on the other hand, has two wonderful entries ("I CALL 'EM AS I SEE 'EM" and "BREAKER ONE-NINER!"), and while ALOP and AMERE and "ERI TU" are no one's idea of a good time, they're certainly reasonable in a quad-stack situation. The strangest thing about my reaction to this grid is that I've grown oddly fond of the seemingly requisite ONE'S answer (today, IN ONE'S SPARE TIME). Some part of me feels like I should ding it, since it's kind of a cliché, but I find myself just nodding at it in acknowledgment, like "Hey, what's up?" or perhaps, even more enthusiastically, "There he is—up top!" [high five]. Perhaps this is because, as ONE'S answers go, IN ONE'S SPARE TIME is pretty dang solid.
Puzzle is redeemed in its weaker parts by some pretty nice cluing. IBEFOREE does not amuse me, but that clue, 1A: Start of a weird infraction?, is clever (note: "weird" violates the IBEFOREE rule…). Lots of "?" clues today (I count nine)—pushed but did not exceed my tolerance limit for that mode of cluing. Hardest "?" clue for me was 18A: Mideast pops? (ABBA), as I had no idea ABBA meant "father" in Hebrew, and Really had no idea who William BEEBE was. In the end, I went with the "B" at that crossing because a. no other letters made sense, and b. ABBA Eban is a thing. A crossword thing. Person, actually. Not 'thing.' And he was Israeli, which explained the "Mideast" part of the clue. BEEBE looked hella wrong, but "B" was the best option I had there, and it was the right one.
Happy 11th anniversary to my remarkable wife. (And thus the crazy week of daughter's birthday / blog's birthday / wedding anniversary comes to an end…)
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. [Country standard] is a great trick clue for NATIONAL AVERAGE. I was thinking "Country" = music. Then I was thinking "standard" = flag ...
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THEME: LIKE WATER AND OIL (36A: Incompatible)— rebus puzzle with three OIL squares up top, three WATER squares below, and the upper and lower halves of the grid separated not by full black squares but just the slim black lines between the squares.
[The grid in AcrossLite (pictured) is nuts, as the circles sometimes represent rebus squares (not marked at all in the low-fi version), and sometimes represent where a new Down answer begins. In the PDF / newspaper, you have to discover rebus squares for yourself and the dividing lines between top and bottom halves of the grid are represented merely by extra-dark black lines between boxes]
Word of the Day: ALEC Douglas-Home (62A: 1960s British P.M. ___ Douglas-Home) —
Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel (/ˈhjuːm/hyoom), KT, PC (2 July 1903 – 9 October 1995) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister from October 1963 to October 1964. He is notable for being the last Prime Minister to hold office while being a member of the House of Lords, prior to renouncing his peerage and taking up a seat in the House of Commons for the remainder of his premiership. His reputation, however, rests more on his two spells as the UK's foreign minister than on his brief premiership. (wikipedia)
• • •
An interesting idea with a somewhat awkward execution. Full disclosure—I just solved one of the greatest puzzles of the year earlier in the day, so my standards for this kind of tricky-grid stuff may be unreasonably high at the moment. Still, there's an oddness to the way this concept is represented. First, the OIL and WATER *do* mix, so the visual is all thrown off. We'd need a solid line across the grid to get it right, but instead we've got this alternating jagged thingie which is visually wrong. Whole point of the puzzle is that OIL and WATER don't mix. But here they do, in the weird central Across answer. Then there's the rebus squares. There are three (why?) and they are oddly symmetricalish (why???). The mirror symmetry with the rebuses was a let down. Once I'd noticed it up top, I tried it down below, and sure enough, the WATER square was in the perfect mirror symmetry position. What is the point of this? To make puzzle easier? It's already easy enough. The number and position of the rebus squares seem odd and arbitrary. The black squares are oddly placed, and (necessarily) not the same below as they are up top. None of these features are fatal flaws, they're just … compromises and accommodations that took me out of the puzzle, dampening the effect the puzzle seemed to be going for. It's like a decent balance beam routine with a decidedly unstuck landing. Interesting, nice in parts, but not great. Puzzle gets points for unusualness, but its high concept is somewhat rough in reality.
There were an odd lot of terminal-I answers in the long Downs, and those things are just too easy to uncover. Got ARTICLE I and CLEMENT I with virtually no problem. Ditto LIBRETTI. I like how TOILET WATER gets in on the upper- and lower-half rebus (31D: Lightly scented perfume). I have never encountered a HOT WATER BAG (52A: Soother of an aching joint). It's a bottle, where I'm from, even if it is vaguely bag-shaped. ET VOILA was a very clever way of picking up a rebus square. Both KEY ARENA(37D: Seattle Center Coliseum, since 1995) and LAST PASS feel quite original, which is nice. I had a lot of the puzzle done before I hit TINF- and realized that rebus squares were involved. I thought the 34A: Chicken for dinner (BROILER) was a FRIER — it fit so nicely — so that held me up for a bit there in the center. But nothing else about this puzzle was that tough. Probably took a little longer to solve than normal, but that's pretty typical on a puzzle where you have to pick up some tricky concept. Once you lock on to the concept, the puzzle's pretty easy.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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THEME: BLIND [c]ARBON [c]OPY (73A: With 74- & 75-Across, "invisible" part of a distribution list ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme) — theme answers are 3-part grid-spanners where each of the two black squares represents the letter "C" (because the "C" and the "C" are "BLIND"...)
Word of the Day: LALLY column (2D: ___ column (construction piece)) —
A lally column is round thin walled structural steelcolumn oriented vertically to provide support to beams or timbers stretching over long spans. A lally column is filled with concrete to prevent buckling. The advantage of a lally column over conventional structural steel is the ability to cut it to length on a construction site with simple hand tools such as a plumber’s pipe cutter. Lally columns are generally not as strong or durable as conventional structural steel columns. The term “lally column” is sometimes incorrectly used in reference to other types of prefabricated steel columns.
The lally column is named after a U. S. inventor, John Lally, who owned a construction company that started production of these columns in the late 19th century. He resided in Waltham, Massachusetts and Boston during the period 1898 through 1907. He was issued four U. S. Patents on composite columns: #61472, #869869, #901453,and #905888. Pat. #869869 was assigned to the U. S. Column Company of Cambridge, MA. (wikipedia)
• • •
Mixed feelings. I am quite impressed by the sheer number of theme answers, considering how particular the placement of the "C"s within each answer has to be. I'm also impressed that (for consistency's sake) there are no "C"s at all in the grid. But conceptually I don't quite get it. I know what "bcc" is, and "blind carbon copy," but I've never heard of "blind cc," which is the phrase that would describe what's happening in this grid. I googled that phrase, and it's a thing, of sorts, but, I don't know. Maybe it's something to do with "C" being the symbol for Carbon? The concept feels slightly rickety. Still, I mostly liked the challenge—there's some truly terrible fill here and there (SOHIO, -EAL, ONER, LALLY, ASE, SAR, EFOR, AREAR, etc.), but at least it's all gettable. Maybe if this puzzle had been titled "The Black Sea" or something different, I would feel more warmly about it. Again, I do admire the number and symmetricality of the theme answers.
Theme answers:
1A: sports news of 1919 (BLAcK SOX ScANDAL)
17A: Toys "R" Us department (ELEcTRONIcGAMES)
34A: Frederic March's last film ("THE IcEMAN cOMETH")
45A: like some student activities (EXTRAcURRIcULAR)
64A: role that garnered 12 consecutive unsuccessful Emmy nominations, 1985-96 (JESSIcA FLETcHER) — of "Murder, She Wrote," played by Angela Lansbury; I could think only of ERIcA KANE.
Not sure why "invisible" is in quotation marks. Clue works fine (i.e. is literally correct) without the quotation marks. Had real trouble with the little areas in NE and SW (where, in each case, two theme answers were in play). Also had trouble in the NW, as BEEPS (1D: Urban cacophony) are computer or timer sounds to me, LALLY meant nothing to me, and AREAR ... well, actually, I got that, but ugh. Also didn't know KETONE (4D: Organic compound with a double-bonded oxygen). Wrote in LEIA for XENA (7D: Princess known as the Defender of the Elijans) (not a trap I've fallen into before, to my recollection, which is shocking, given how many times both princesses appear in crosswords). No idea who this composer guy is, but "silver" in Italian was no problem (9D: Composer Dominick whose name means silver in Italian). I think Dario ARGENTO is more famous than this composer ARGENTO (Dario outgoogles Dominick by 30x when names are put inside quotation marks). I (and many of my friends) went through a ravenous "Tales of the City" phase in college. Those books are entertaining—smart, funny, and very, very readable. This is to say that MAUPIN was a gimme. Cluing in this puzzle wasn't terribly impressive, but 24A: Drawer in a doctor's office? (SYRINGE) was pretty damned good, I must say.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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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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