Melancholy Musketeer / THU 10-10-24 / Like many Keats works / Swahili honorific / Indian honorific / Lou Grant's wife on "The Mary Tyler Moore" show / "Educated insolence," per Aristotle / Sufficient, informally

Constructor: Grant Boroughs

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "W" OR "D" CHOICE (58A: Author's concern that, when parsed as four parts, provides a hint to this puzzle's theme) — six circled squares can contain either a "W" or a "D" and still work (i.e. still make plausible answers, in both directions)

Theme answers:

• COW / COD (1D: Major food source animal)
• WASHBOARDS / DASHBOARDS (15A: Instrument panels)
• PAW / PAD (9A: Dog leg terminus)
• WITHER / DITHER (11D: Fail to act decisively in the face of a challenge)
• WRY HUMOR / DRY HUMOR (28A: Trademark of deadpan stand-ups)
• WINED / DINED (28D: Lavishly regaled, in a way)
• WELLS / DELLS (33A: Areas that are lower than their surrounding terrain)
• FLEW / FLED (21D: Raced, as away from danger)
• SOW / SOD (52A: Do some garden work)
• PLOW / PLOD (39D: Move forward resolutely)
• WAY AHEAD / DAY AHEAD (44A: What lies before you, with "the")
• WISHES / DISHES (44D: Things listed on a wedding registry)

Word of the Day: WASHBOARDS (15A) 

n.

1.

a. A board having a corrugated surface on which clothes can be rubbed in the process of laundering.

b. Music A similar board used as a percussion instrument.

2. A board fastened to a wall at the floor; a baseboard.

3. Nautical A thin plank fastened to the side of a boat or to the sill of a port to keep out the sea and the spray.

adj.

Having rows of ridges or indentations similar to those of a washboard:washboard abs; a washboard dirt road.

• • •

This one really tries to impress you with volume. Volume volume volume! That is certainly ... a lot of D/W squares. Six squares, twelve clues that have to work both ways (that is, for "D" and "W" versions of the answers). That's ambitious, and it creates a *very* thematically dense grid—twelve themers plus the revealer, with hardly any answers not crossing some bit of fixed thematic material (as a constructor, you "fix" your themers in place before you fill the rest of the grid). So, architecturally, this one is ... really going for it. But the problems of "really going for it" are all on display here, and very predictable. Two big issues: forced cluing and strained fill. As for the cluing, you have to really (really) play on the margins of word meanings at times to make those clues work for both words. DAY AHEAD works great for its clue (44A: What lies before you, with "the"). WAY AHEAD really, really doesn't. WAY FORWARD, maybe? If you were cluing WAY AHEAD normally, you would never, ever use the clue that's used today. In fact, you'd probably go with a different sense of WAY AHEAD entirely ([Leading by a lot], [Up big], something like that). Time and again, one of the two D/W answers works great, the other ... uh, not so much. See especially WELLS for its clue (33A: Areas that are lower than their surrounding terrain), and especially WASHBOARDS for its clue (15A: Instrument panels). I was done with the puzzle and looking up WASHBOARDS before I realized that "instrument" must indicate the musical instrument type of "washboard," the kind played in jug bands, say, which is really just ... an actual washboard, right? The kind used for scrubbing clothes before washing machines came along? I guess WASHBOARDS are "panels" ... of a sort. Still, [Instrument panels] is some ... let's be generous and say "inventive" cluing. Certainly works for DASHBOARDS. But for WASHBOARDS ... I dunno, man. Pushing it.

And then there's the fill. No surprise that it creaks—it's under a lot of thematic pressure. But it really creaks, and that's after the constructor has added not one but two pairs of cheater squares (black squares that don't increase word count, added to make filling a grid easier)—just before ACES and just before PA(W/D), and then their symmetrical equivalents. I had a "oh it's gonna be one of these days, is it?" moment very (very) early on:

You will never (ever) see the word ODIC anywhere but crosswords. I studied Keats and other ODISTs (another crossword favorite), and I never saw the word ODIC in the wild, to my knowledge. ODIC makes ODIST look like everyday language. ODIC. That's what I'd call someone who looked and acted like ODIE from "Garfield." Someone dim-witted and annoyingly happy, with their tongue hanging out all the time. To encounter ODIC at literally step two, that was deflating, and ominous. See also ENUF, and not one but two crossword honorifics (SAHIB, BWANA). Plus, dear lord, HAH and HAH!? HAH HAH!?!? No one says "HAH HAH!" Laugh syllables are already the lowest form of crossword fill, but here you've gone and combined them in some new and unholy way, why!?!? For 19A: Syllables of laughter, I wrote in "HA HA HA," as did all nice normal decent and good people. The fact that those mutant HAHs also crossed DAH (!?) ... it's all a little much. I mean, I know I said laugh syllables are the lowest form of crossword fill, but I forgot about Morse Code. ENUF said (oof, ENUF ... you're killing me, puzzle). 

The revealer itself ends up feeling forced, too, when you read it as four parts. "You have a 'W' or 'D' choice!" It doesn't really trip off the tongue. But on a clunky, hyperliteral level, it works. The whole thing works, but it clunks, and it wasn't particularly fun to solve. Once you get the gimmick, the puzzle actually gets easier, as you can fill all those circled squares, and with "W" and "D" options, you can get all those crosses really quickly. Only trouble for me today came with the whole HAH HAH-not-HA HA HA fiasco. That corner also had PELHAM, which I did not know and would never have heard of were it not for one of the greatest movies of all time, The Taking of PELHAM 1-2-3 (the original, 1974 version, with Matthau). It's about the hijacking of a subway car. Do yourself a favor and watch it. Right now, today. It's perfect. I wish I were watching it right now. But PELHAM wasn't clued via the movie, it was clued how it was clued (9D: ___ Bay, neighborhood of the Bronx), so I was at a loss. I also had LONGEST instead of LARGEST for a bit at 40A: Like the femur, among all bones in the body. The femur is, in fact, that LONGEST bone in the body, so if you faltered there too, you have nothing to be ashamed of. 


Bullets:

• 36A: Toss out (SCRAP) — I wrote in SCRAP but then figured no, it has to be SCRUB, because no way they'd use SCRAP when "SCRAPpy-Doo" is in the clue for UNCLE, which crosses this answer (at the "C") (29D: Scooby-Doo, to Scrappy-Doo). But SCRUB was a bad fit for the clue and the crosses didn't work, so it was back to SCRAP. Bah.

• 30A: Lou Grant's wife on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (EDIE) — we did a complete "MTM" rewatch last year, so this answer made me smile. EDIE is very likable, but ... she's not on many episodes, really. I feel like over seven seasons I saw her maybe half a dozen times? (Looks like it was just five!). But Lou does talk about her a lot. They get divorced! She gets remarried! (spoiler alert). Anyway, this seems like it would be very hard for most people, especially the youngs. You just work crosses and wait for something namelike to appear, I guess. We all have to do that sometimes.

• 60D: Private sleeping accommodations? (COT) — sleeping accommodations for a "Private" in the Army
• 51D: What makes a sticker stickier? (AN "I") — you add the letter "I" to "sticker" and bam, "stickier"
• 20D: Melancholy Musketeer (ATHOS) — I've known ATHOS forever, for crossword reasons, but it occurs to me now that I have never read The Three Musketeers or, as far as I can remember, seen any film version of their story. So this "Melancholy" bit is news to me. I had no idea. But again, I didn't need to—"Musketeer," five letters, ATHOS, moving on ... (the other Musketeers are ARAMIS and ... POTHOS? ... [looks it up] ... dammit, PORTHOS! So close. Ah well, doesn't matter, you're never gonna see PORTHOS in crosswords anyway (well, you might, but it's been 16 years, so don't hold your breath).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Like thin clouds / TUES 4-25-23 / Half of a 1960s folk quartet / Aardvark's prey / Eat like Pac-Man

Hello! It’s Clare, back for the last Tuesday in April. Hope everyone has had a lovely (and warm) April. The weather here in DC has been pretty great, and it’s meant getting to ride my bike in shorts and a tank top rather than with three layers and a rain jacket and ear warmers and gloves. Except I’m now getting a tan line from my backpack from when I bike. Oops! I’ve also been enjoying watching my Warriors, who tied the series with the Kings on Sunday, and Liverpool is kinda sorta maybe making a push for a top-four finish, which would qualify them for the Champions League. With Liverpool out of the running to win the English Premier League, I’ll be rooting for my sister’s team, Arsenal, to crush Man City when they play on Wednesday in one of the biggest games of the season! Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Grant Boroughs

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Two words, cued literally, that can be pronounced as one word ending in -ies, at which point the pronunciation switches from ‘-ize’ to ‘ease.’

Theme answers:

• QUARTER LIES // QUARTERLIES (17A: "It's worth only 20 cents," "It has Abe Lincoln on it" and others?) 
• PAN TRIES // PANTRIES (26A: Flute-playing Greek god makes an effort?) 
• CAD DIES // CADDIES (40A: Terse summary of Alec d'Urberville's fate? (spoiler alert!)) 
• PREP PIES // PREPPIES (53A: Peel the apples, roll out the dough, turn the oven on, etc.?) 
• SPECIAL TIES // SPECIALTIES (65A: Neckwear reserved for fancy occasions?)

Word of the Day: Oxlip (7D: Yellow primrose) —

Primula elatior, the oxlip is a species of flowering plant in the family Primulaceae, native to nutrient-poor and calcium-rich damp woods and meadows throughout Europe, with northern borders in Denmark and southern parts of Sweden, eastwards to the Altai Mountains and on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, and westwards in the British Isles. (Wiki)

• • •

This is a theme that made a lot more sense in hindsight and that I somehow enjoyed more after finishing it. I can’t even tell you how long it took me to figure out how to describe the theme for this write-up. But looking back, having the two words made into one was executed well. And while it’s not exactly the most inventive of themes, it made for a solid Tuesday puzzle. 

While solving, though, I was confused by the theme and didn’t put two and two together (or in this case, one and one). It didn’t help that I think the worst clue for the theme answers was the first one, at 17A, with QUARTER LIES, which kind of put me off from the start of the puzzle. The idea of a quarter being worth 20 cents or Abe Lincoln being the face on it didn't make me think of lies; those notions are so wacky I wasn't quite sure what they were supposed to be. If we’d started with SPECIAL TIES (65A), I think I would’ve enjoyed the solve a lot more. It also didn’t help that I’ve never seen “preppy” used as a noun, so I couldn’t wrap my head around PREPPIES (53A). I tried “prep work” at first, even though that didn’t make a ton of sense. 

This was a quite clean puzzle, without a ton of crosswordese, which I appreciated. I also liked a lot of the words the constructor chose to incorporate into the puzzle. My favorite for whatever reason was CHOMP (32D: Eat like Pac-Man). That’s such a random and fun word to say, and you can totally picture Pac-Man moving around the game just chomping up those little pellets and the ghosts. Some of my other favorite words were SOAPY (28D), WISPY (47A), HEIST (57D), and PATSY (73A). I liked the clue and answer for 42D: Word with song or dive — so, SWAN song or SWAN dive. ONE HOP (56A: Like some grounders in baseball) was also fun. And there was some nice symmetry in the puzzle with NOKIA (6A) being on top of EXECS (15A) and TAMPA (1A) directly above OCEAN (14A). 

The long downs were nice, with MOUSE TRAP (12D), REPORTERS (33D), and ENTREATED (34D). I didn’t really like CAMPINESS (11D), mostly because I think the adjective is used way more than the noun. Something can be “campy,” for sure. Talking about CAMPINESS? Not so much. 

Now for some dislikes… I find most repeated clues in puzzles to be annoying. They can work if the clue is clever and the answers are next to or near each other. But in this puzzle, the clue was a rather odd “mined find,” and one answer was in the middle of the puzzle while the other was in the SW. That just felt weird. I didn’t like IS ON TO (31A: Sees through). While it may be crosswordese, I’ve never used (or seen) the plural of serum as SERA (38A: Some skin-care products) in the real world — and I use five-plus serums (or, I guess, SERA) on my face nightly. 

There were some places for some potential confusion, especially because there seemed to be a few more proper nouns in this puzzle than usual. OXLIP (7D: Yellow primrose) is a quite uncommon type of flower (even my gardening aficionado mother had never heard of it). I hope everyone knows KEIRA Knightly (8D), especially from her turn in the amazing 2005 version of “Pride and Prejudice,” although the spelling with the “e” before the “i” might’ve tripped some up. I’ve seen Parker POSEY (59D) in a couple things, but I didn’t recognize her name right off the bat.

Misc.:

• In my humble opinion, a window seat is much better than an AISLE (70A: Preferred seat assignment, to many) on a plane! It’s especially helpful on a long flight when you want to lean up against the window to sleep. 
• I’ve done many a LAP (67D) around a track. I used to do a lot of 5K races, which is 12.5 laps; a 10K is 25 laps. Once in high school, we did some fundraising thing where we did our long run for the week around the track. I ran something like 12 miles that day, which was a scary (and boring) 48 laps. 
• I’ve been to the Louvre and was lucky enough to see Nike of Samothrace (aka Winged Victory). I used to only ever wear NIKE (27D) shoes when running, but I recently switched over to HOKAs, which offer a lot of lovely support. 
• On Wednesday, my sister and I are going to see a BTS member in concert in NYC! It’s the opening day of his tour, and as you might imagine, we’re rather excited. His name is Suga (aka Agust D aka Yoongi), and what kind of fan would I be if I didn’t share his newest song, which is amazing:)

And that's it from me! Have a great May.

Signed, Clare Carroll, more a fan of hard cider than of beer in the heavens (or BREW SKIES // BREWSKIES)

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Beats me in textspeak / WED 9-22-21 / Member of the South Asian diaspora / Page NFL Hall of Famer turned justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court / Dweller east of the North Atlantic / Black hole for socks facetiously / Tiramisu topper / Ship built with help of Athena

Constructor: Grant Boroughs

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME: Crossword add-iCS —  -ICS is tacked to the end of familiar phrases to create wacky phrases, clued wackily ("?"-style!):

Theme answers:

• DOT COMICS (17A: Much of Roy Lichtenstein's work?)
• MATH CLASSICS (28A: Euclid's "Elements," Descartes's "La Géométrie," etc.?)
• CARPENTER ANTICS (38A: Wacky shenanigans of a woodworker?)
• FRYING PANICS (46A: Frights upon waking up from sunbathing naps?)
• POP TOPICS (64A: Things that dad likes to discuss?)

Word of the Day: Roy Lichtenstein (17A) —

Roy Fox Lichtenstein (/ˈlɪktənˌstaɪn/; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. His work defined the premise of pop art through parody. Inspired by the comic strip, Lichtenstein produced precise compositions that documented while they parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. His work was influenced by popular advertising and the comic book style. His artwork was considered to be "disruptive". He described pop art as "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting". His paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City.

Whaam! and Drowning Girl are generally regarded as Lichtenstein's most famous works.^]Drowning Girl, Whaam!, and Look Mickey are regarded as his most influential works. His most expensive piece is Masterpiece, which was sold for $165 million in January 2017. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well that's two days in a row now that we've had a Very old-fashioned theme concept and very old-fashioned and fairly tired fill. You add -ICS to words to get new words. OK. How does that work out for you? Nothing is particularly hilarious or even funny about the results, and the core concept doesn't even have a real hook. There's no reason for -ICS, no pun on "I SEE" or "ICY" or ... I dunno what you do to get "-ICS" to be special, but whatever it is, this puzzle isn't doing it. The Lichtenstein answer DOTCOMICS has some liveliness and cleverness, but the rest just thud into place, and once you know they all end in -ICS, an already-easy puzzle becomes that much easier. Just an exercise in filling in boxes. The only themer I had any trouble with was MATH CLASSICS, because I was fixated on the Frenchness of the Descartes title and wanted it to be FRENCH CLASSICS, which obv wouldn't fit. Actually, now that I look at the themers in the bottom half of the grid, I'm not sure I looked at their clues at all. There was no need. The short fill was so easy that those longer answers eventually just came into view. This puzzle didn't even have any vibrant or fresh longer fill to at least add some character and interest to the solving experience. AMERICAN ... EUROPEAN ... is there some inside joke there? A continental identity joke? Maybe an immigration theme of some sort? Wait, is this a hidden "Perfect Strangers" theme!? You've got an AMERICAN named Larry APPLETON who now lives in Chicago and gets an unexpected visit from his EUROPEAN cousin, Balki, and then, as with this puzzle, wackiness ensues. Oh this is much better than the surface theme. Much better.

This puzzle was so easy that before I ever got a theme answer I got bored and set myself a challenge to see if I could go corner to corner, NW to SE, in an unbroken string, having to use crosses all the way. And voila!

Now as you can see, I had an error there ("All the SAME" instead of "All the RAGE" at 41D), but whatever, I still got there. Mission accomplished. 

This puzzle had a few OK moments. I enjoyed IDK (don't see that enough ... beats, say, IMHO, imho) and GAMEPLAN. But there's just too much gunk, ATEST and ASIT and ALLOF, and that's just the partials. You've also got an RRN (random Roman numeral) at MIII, and that's right next door to a plural scolding sound, TSKS ... it's rough all over. Some of this is clearly a product of grid design, where the (fixed) themers are forcing some very tough choices in the short crosses (both MIII and TSKS, for instance, run through *two* themers, so there really aren't a ton of great options there). I had no trouble with anything but ALAN Page, who ... yeah, let's just say my knowledge of Minnesota Supreme Court justices is limited. Limited to zero. Zero knowledge. ALAN Page rings a very, very faint bell (it turns out he's a really remarkable guy and kind of a big deal in Minnesota). I guess the "Minnesota Supreme Court" bit was to alert me that he was a Minnesota Viking. Yeah, that didn't help much. But it's a four-letter common name, it did no harm. What did do harm, though, was crossing AVI- with AVIATOR. You can't do that. Same root. AVIATOR already had AVI- in it. Look:

aviator (n.)

"aircraft pilot," 1887, from French aviateur, from Latin avis "bird" (from PIE root *awi- "bird") + -ateur. Also used c. 1891 in a sense of "aircraft, flying-machine." Feminine form aviatrix is from 1927; earlier aviatrice (1910), aviatress (1911). (etymonline.com)

So now you're just crossing the prefix with itself. Awful. This puzzle should really get an editor. OK, bye now.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Happy birthday to my dear daughter, who can now drink (legally). Or go to casinos, I guess, though that seems unlikely.

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