Textile city NNE of Paris / MON 2-16-26 / Dull-witted sort / One giving support during childbirth / One of the Leeward Island in the Caribbean / Longtime comic strip set in a medieval kingdom / Possible cybercrime, informally / New wave band with the hit "Whip It" / Chicago's ___ Planetarium / Mike who voiced Shrek in "Shrek" / Computer operating system developed by Bell Labs

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (***solved Downs-only***)

THEME: Four kinds of ID — the letters "ID" appear in four different theme answers, with a different meaning each time:

Theme answers:

• THE WIZARD OF ID (19A: Longtime comic strip set in a medieval kingdom)
• BOISE, ID (36A: Capital of the Gem State, in a mailing address)
• I.D. THEFT (38A: Possible cybercrime, informally)
• "I'D GO EITHER WAY" (54A: "Makes no difference to me")

Word of the Day: ANTIGUA (42D: One of the Leeward Island in the Caribbean) —

Antigua is an island in the Lesser Antilles. It is one of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean region and the most populous island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua and Barbuda became an independent state within the Commonwealth of Nations on 1 November 1981.

The island's perimeter is roughly 87 km (54 mi) and its area 281 km² (108 sq mi). Its population was 83,191 (at the 2011 Census). The economy is mainly reliant on tourism, with the agricultural sector serving the domestic market.

More than 22,000 people live in the main city, St. John's. The city is situated in the north-west and has a deep harbour which is able to accommodate large cruise ships. Most of the population lives in the island's Central Plain. Other leading population settlements are All Saints (3,412) and Liberta (2,239), according to the 2001 census. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow I did not understand the rationale at all once I'd finished. Four IDs ... what am I missing? With no revealer to help me, I finally settled on the idea that these are just four different kinds of "ID"—a single word, a state abbrev., an abbrev. for "identity," and the contraction "I'D." It's that last one that clanks the hardest for me, as "I'D GO EITHER WAY" feels real off. I can definitely hear someone saying "I COULD GO EITHER WAY," but "I'D" (as in "I would"?), that doesn't ring as true to me. ["I could go either way on that"] was the clue for YOUR CALL a couple years back, and ["Makes no difference to me"] feels like an identical sentiment. I'm coming down with a cold, though, so my idiomatic sensors might not be working right. Let's see, what else is going on here? Maybe we're also supposed to admire the symmetry of the "ID"s? I don't know. But anyway, that's it, I think: four types of "ID." I know it's probably too much to ask, but it seems like the puzzle would be much nicer, or more elegant, if there were no other "ID"s in the grid at all. No RAID, no AVOID, no IDEA, no OVID. Other than that, I don't have much to say about this. Seems thin. And like it needs a hook—something to tie it all together. All in all, it was a little MEH for me.

The Downs-only solve was pretty brutal. I had mistake after mistake, and then got to the end and stared down two longer Downs that I couldn't get at all. Started out with WHIPS instead of CLOTS (1D: Thickens, as cream) and then tried both ALOT and ATON before I ever got near SLEW (4D: Whole bunch). No one has called another person a DODO BIRD since god knows when. Feels like something children used to say, in times of yore (i.e. my childhood). That answer required many crosses. I thought I had inferred the first themer, but (not knowing what the theme was), I wrote in THE WIZARD OF OZ. That made AVOID and especially MAD DASHES hard to see for a bit. If you ABHOR something, you might give it 0 stars, but the act of giving 0 stars is not itself abhorring (31D: Give 0 stars in a review, say). First you ABHOR, and *then* you give the bad rating, as a result of that abhorrence. Did not love the cluing there. The rest of the puzzle was pretty doable, until the end, when first IN-CROWDS (a very odd plural) (37D: Glitterati) and finally ANTIGUA left me almost completely stumped. I kept singing the Beach Boys' "Kokomo" in my head, hoping I'd alight on the correct island, but only got as far as Key Largo and Montego—no ANTIGUA to be found. There are a lot of Leeward Islands; I certainly couldn't remember them all. I was really relying on inferred crosses to help me out, but they were in short supply. The only letter I had for certain was the "I"! NEAR could've been NE'ER, SCAN could've been SCAB, SCAM, SCAR, and on and on—all the missing letters had multiple possibilities. My main problem was only thinking of SPY and SPF for SP-. When I finally ran the alphabet, I (immediately) hit SPA, and that terminal "A" was the thing that finally got me going toward ANTIGUA. Spent as much time trying to put that one together as I did on most of the rest of the puzzle. 

Bullets:

• 13A: Textile city NNE of Paris (LILLE) — seems kind of tough for a Monday. I know it well, and know its association with textiles, but had to read Alain de LILLE in grad school, so I have an advantage there.

[this is at least the second time I've featured this exact image on the blog when LILLE has been in the puzzle, so specific is my association of that place name with this exact book, a sodomy-obsessed 12th-century treatise on human sexual behavior that must've sat on my bookshelf for years and years in the '90s]

• 20D: D.C.'s National ___ (ZOO) — no idea. None. Zero. Wanted MALL but it wouldn't fit. I guess D.C. has ... a ZOO. Cool. I did not know that. I'm not a big ZOO fan. Animal fan, yes. ZOOs, not really.
• 32D: One giving support during childbirth (DOULA) — this was a gimme, but it also seems like a word of relatively recent fame. DOULA was not a thing I'd ever heard of until this century. But now it feels like a common term, definitely Monday-level vocabulary (and definitely built for crosswords—five letters, 60% vowels, terminal "A" ... it's got a lot going for it, from a constructor's POV). There's even a death DOULA (someone who assists the terminally ill in the dying process) on the current season of The Pitt. DOULA did not debut in the NYTXW until 2012 (courtesy of constructor Paula Gamache). It then promptly disappeared again for almost nine years. This is its sixth appearance in the 2020s. Perhaps not surprisingly, five of the seven NYTXW puzzles to feature DOULA have been constructed or co-constructed by women. That gender discrepancy is striking considering that even today (with representation considerably improved from the low of about a decade ago), women's names appear on the byline less than 1/3 of the time (108 puzzles in 2025) (15 out of 47 puzzles so far in 2026).
• 27D: Top-tier (BEST) — wanted A-ONE. I blame ... decades of crossword puzzles. Crossword history is littered with A-ONEs. Just SLEWs of A-ONEs, everywhere you look. 659 total NYTXW appearances, 208 in the Modern Era. That's against 255/88 for BEST. So my instincts were wrong, but sound. I played the higher percentage guess. These things don't always work out.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. if you contributed to my January blog fundraiser by check (i.e. through the mail), please know that anything I received through last week has been processed. If you sent a check and it hasn't cleared, please let me know. Thank you.

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Anoint in western pacific / THU 9-15-16 / Isabel of mathetmatics fame / Squire message / Manila alternative in guessing game / Clan from ocean / Gaiter locales for short / Wand representer in myth / Croat who won academy award in 1999

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Challenging (hilariously so)

THEME: ANAGRAM THE / FIRST WORD / IN EACH CLUE —just what it says

Word of the Day: Deseret (63A: Steered, today => UTAH) —

The State of Deseret (ⁱ/ˌdɛzəˈrɛt/) was a provisional state of the United States, proposed in 1849 by settlers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Salt Lake City. The provisional state existed for slightly over two years and was never recognized by the United States government. The name derives from the word for "honeybee" in the Book of Mormon. (wikipedia)

• • •

More than 2x my normal Thursday time. Not really a problem in and of itself, but what I spent that time doing: ugh. Seriously, 2x ugh. Slow start, not surprisingly, but not that long into my poking around and getting nowhere, I picked up the anagram gimmick. Seeing that there were three parts to the "revealer," though, I figured there were three elements to the gimmick. There were not. There was just the one. And I had already discovered it. And the rest of the long, tedious solve was just ... anagramming. Over. And over. To what end? Just to ... the end. Considered opening an anagram tab an just plugging in first words so I wouldn't have to bother with the stupidity of it all, but decided just to gut it out. SATS are *things* that high schoolers obsess over? I resent having to anagram a word in order to get something as stupid and vague as "things." "O, CANADA" is a "strain"? Gah. And the grid is just ... instructions plus a forgettable themeless. That's what the puzzle boils down to. Solver pleasure given zero consideration here. One "aha" moment followed by a long slog to the finish line.


The fill doesn't even matter. There's nothing to say. Anagrams. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Focus of onomastics / SUN 8-14-16 / One-eyed female on Futurama / Enough to Roman / Durkheim so-called Father of Sociology / Product possibly named after real physician / Like settings of typical Grant Wood paintings / Frost-covered biochemical solid / Thick-skinned grazer / Southwestern cliff dwellers

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Moral Thinking" — "-al" sound added to familiar phrases; wackiness follows:

Theme answers:

• THE OLD GRAY MERYL (23A: Actress Streep playing a centenarian?)
• BARTLETT PERIL (31A: Risky business for a compiler of quotations?)
• KODIAK BARREL (52A: Alaskan beer container?)
• MARKET SHERYL (72A: Promote singer Crow's music?)
• BILL OF FERRELL (92A: Debt for comedian Will?)
• HANDLE WITH CAROL (104A: "I can't help you, but the Brady Bunch mom will be happy to assist"?)
• ICY STEROL (35D: Frost-covered biochemical solid?)
• THIN ERROL (48D: Like actor Flynn post-dieting?)

 
Word of the Day: WIDOW (63A: Typographical no-no) — 

2.Printing
a last word or short last line of a paragraph falling at the top of a page or column and considered undesirable. (google)

• • •

Add-a-sound. This type of thing has to be perfectly executed for me to enjoy it, and this one just wasn't. There was an arbitrariness and pointlessness to this that made it seem ... listless. Like a placeholder. You know those photos that come *with* the frames? The ones that *look* like family photos and certainly could play them on TV, but that don't move you in any way because they're clearly not just not *your* family—they're not anybody's family? So that's about the level at which this puzzle hit me, emotionally. It's like a plausible facsimile of a puzzle. A puzzle you'd see in an acid reflux medication ad. Is that a crossword? Sure looks like one? Huh, OK, what were we talking about? Oh, right, Prilosec. Add-a-WHATEVER themes must be tight! I mean, for pete's sake, they should at least be tight enough to result in a meaningful title. "Moral Thinking"??? So ... "More '-al' Thinking?" Is that it? But ... "More Thinking" is not anything. What a mess. "Gimme Moral"! "Moral Bounce to the Ounce!" "... Baby One Moral Time!" Something!


Was weirdly slow to start, and then picked up speed quite a bit toward the middle and end. Tried to get cute and fill in 5A: Means of going down a 36-Down without looking at 36-Down, which caused problems (shocker) at both 5-Across and 36-Down. I put in RAMP at 5A, and then later, when I got it changed to RAFT, I put in RIVER at 36-Down. I'd say 1/3 of the puzzle's total resistance came from my total mishandling of this cross-reference situation. Slowest section was WNW, where SNIPER wouldn't come (33A: Good shot?), and where AMY'S really wanted to be EDY'S (44A: ___ Kitchen (frozen food brand)), and apparently I don't know what "onomastics" means, ugh (34D: Focus of onomastics (NAMES)). Had a few issues in the NE too, where SEDATE preceded SERENE (29A: Unruffled), DOLTS preceded DODOS (13A: Meatheads), and SOLELY was toughly clued at 17D: 100%. Really enjoyed both GAG ORDER (77D: It stops talking) and COLD CALL (80D: Telemarketer's action), particularly the former, as the clue *and* answer are first-rate. Overall grid quality is decent, actually, but the theme's just a dud for me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Mellow R&B track / FRI 3-25-16 / Acid alcohol compound / French border region / 500-pound bird hunted to extinction / Lost tapes rapper / Echos French daily / W competitor

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: RENÉ Préval (52A: ___ Préval, twice-elected president of Haiti) —

René Garcia Préval (French pronunciation: ​[ʁəne pʁeval]; born January 17, 1943) is a Haitian politician and agronomist who was twice President of the Republic of Haiti. He served from February 7, 1996, to February 7, 2001, and from May 14, 2006, to May 14, 2011. He was also Prime Minister from February 1991 to October 11, 1991. Préval was the first elected head of state in Haitian history to peacefully receive power from a predecessor in office, the first elected head of state in Haitian history since independence to serve a full term in office, the first to be elected to non-successive full terms in office, and the first former Prime Minister to be elected President. His presidencies were marked by domestic tumult and attempts at economic stabilization, with his latter presidency being marred through the destruction wrought by the 2010 Haiti earthquake. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wrote two exams and gave two exams and hiked in the woods for an hour and ate pizza and drank a Manhattan and had a chocolate-chocolate chip / walnut cookie my daughter made and Passed Out on the couch at like 9pm last night. Woke up (in bed, somehow) at 7am. Now it's 7:36 and I'm staring at this puzzle trying to recreate why it played so hard for me, given that so much of it—almost all of it—is fresh, up-to-date, familiar stuff. Stuff. You know, things, JUNK. Not PACK (1D: Stuff). Not PACK, Ian! Seriously, though, that was a nice misdirect, and 22% of the reason that I couldn't make the NW corner work for so long there at the end. But that corner was only the last in a series of roadblocks for me. In between the roadblocks was some lovely, vibrant scenery. I do like this puzzle. I think I was just having car problems, to continue this poor metaphor. So ... OK. I started in the NW and got absolutely nowhere. A French daily I've never heard of ... probably ends "-ES"; Probably LES but not sure, could be DES (?). Wanted JUNK / KNEEL (half right!). Tore that out. Wanted, amazingly, ARAL at 3D: Water source for 11 countries (NILE). ARAL is the one that is *disappearing*, Rex. Come on! So I just abandoned ship up there, to toggle to another metaphor. And then I found a much friendly, warm, laid-back reception in the NE, in the loving embrace of SLOW JAM (7A: Mellow R&B track), the first thing I put in the grid with any certainty.


Between that and "Glengarry Glen Ross," that whole corner was Mine (11D: "Glengarry Glen Ross" co-star, 1992). But one problem coming out of there—the biggest problem I had in the whole damn puzzle—was 7D: Pink property. I kept hacking away and getting letters, but it continued to make no sense. I sensed early it could be a Monopoly property, but, funny story, I have none, and I mean zero, recollection of there being a STATES AVENUE. I mean ... none. So I eventually had AVENUE (from crosses) and STATE (from crosses) and thought "Hmm, STATE blank AVENUE, what letter goes there? "S"? STATE S AVENUE ... what is that?" If I had to name all the Monopoly properties I could, I would never name STATES AVENUE, clearly. MARVIN GARDENS, BOARDWALK, ST JAMES PLACE, VERMONT AVENUE, PACIFIC AVENUE, see, I know a lot of them. Soooo. I got slowed right down. Also couldn't remember how to spell the DHABI part of ABU DHABI (seriously, even now I typed "DAHBI"), and that was the part I *needed* to get into that perilous little SE corner (38D: Where Etihad Airways is headquartered). But ESTER / SPA / ARISEN bailed me out.

Did you know HANGOVER CURE has exactly the same number of letters as HAIR OF THE DOG? (19D: Supposed morning remedy) And they both start with "H"! Fun! [faceplant].

HATERADE and HASHTAG already feel like dated slang your parents know and use wrong, but I still like them, perhaps because I'm actually the parent in this scenario. I tore up that SW corner (GARETH is a close personal friend of mine), and went right up to the NW corner, where I nearly died. That clue on 1A: Far and away one's favorite writer? is both ingenious and unfair. The "favorite" part really adds unnecessary and irrelevant information that even the "?" doesn't fully redeem. The "Far and away" part is perfect. Same with "writer." But "favorite"? Thought for sure it would be an actual writer's name. A writer who might be someone's actual favorite. A specific writer, anyway. Vague clue on EVEN (2D: Flush) and (as with PENPAL) general category of answer (rather than specific answer) for 5D: Snorkeling mecca (ATOLL) added to my woes. I think AVIATE eventually saved me (14A: Fly). Don't remember.

There's some great, great clues in here, including

• 17A: Slice from a book? (PAPER CUT)
• 12D: Chill in bed? (AGUE)
• 26D: Statements for the record (LINER NOTES)

Overall, this was a fine puzzle that I was in no shape to handle effectively this morning.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Finnish-based telecom / MON 1-25-16 / Barrier outside popular nightclub / shish kebab holders

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: CHEW TOY (39A: Puppy amuser ... or the end of the answer to each starred clue) — answer ends are all things dogs put in their mouths for amusement; whether said things actually qualify as "chew toy"s ... I don't know.

Theme answers:

• MASKED BALL (17A: *Party with disguises)
• FISH STICK (3D: *Food item often dipped in ketchup or tartar sauce)
• FUNNY BONE (35D: *Inaptly named part of the elbow)
• VELVET ROPE (59A: *Barrier outside a popular nightclub)

Word of the Day: ANDRE Braugher (5D: Actor Braugher of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine") —

Andre Braugher (/ˈbraʊər/; born July 1, 1962) is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Detective Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Street from 1993 to 1998 and again in the 2000 made-for-TV film, Owen Thoreau Jr. on the TNT show Men of a Certain Age, and his Emmy-nominated performance as Captain Ray Holt on the Golden Globe-winning comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm 98% certain Ian Livengood has a dog. A dog that was once a puppy. So I don't know how he figures that a "ball" or a "stick" is a CHEW TOY. "Rope," yes. "Bone," sort of. But the other things are just toys. Things dogs fetch. Things they put in their mouths because it is really their only means of effectively "playing" with any object (what with their tragic lack of opposable thumbs and all...). If your dog is chewing on a stick, there's a good chance he/she will aspirate bark. Not fun, for you or the dog. And if your dog is "chewing" on the ball, two things will happen: that ball will not last long, and it will also get so impossibly slobbery that you will refuse to take it from your dog's mouth, much to your dog's impatience and chagrin (I speak from recent, i.e. this morning, experience). So, to sum up, you can make the argument that all the end-words here are dog toys, but "CHEW TOYs," no. No you can't.  Here's a picture of one of my dogs getting petted by a toddler (earlier today)—luckily my dog is super-good-natured and did not use said toddler for a CHEW TOY:

I have mostly given up on the NFL, but I did watch the end of the Pats/Broncos game, just before solving this puzzle, and am now considering whether sports spectatorship, particularly if it involves tense, down-to-the-wire matchups, might not be an effective pre-solving ritual—I shredded this puzzle in just over 2:30. And that despite completely blanking on ANDRE Braugher's name and (worse) the location of Shanghai (!?). I don't feel that great about the crossing of "HERE" in HERESY with "HERE" in ... well, HERE. I feel even less great about crossing THE and THE in that same center section (although I do love "THE NERVE!" as an answer). Mostly this puzzle is clean, harmless fun. But I'm standing by my CHEW TOY purism. Now please enjoy this picture of river ice that looks like my *other* dog in profile:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Longtime Syrian strongman / MON 11-30-15 / Stereotypical parrot's name / Body of water between France Switzerland / Tibetan watchdogs

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: MID-As TOUCH (64A: Moneymaking skill ... or, when read as three words, what happens in 17-, 21-, 35-, 45- and 54-Across) —five 10-letter themers, each made of two 5-letter words where first word ends in "A" and second word begins with "A" ... thus, the "A"s "touch" "mid-"answer:

Theme answers:

• OPERA ARIAS (17A: Songs for divas)
• FIONA APPLE (21A: 1997 Grammy-winning artist whose last name is a fruit)
• LHASA APSOS (35A: Tibetan watchdogs)
• PAULA ABDUL (45A: Former "American Idol" judge)
• SANTA ANITA (54A: Noted California horse-racing venue)

Word of the Day: BOLLS (26A: Pods of cotton) —

(google)

• • •

This is pretty damned elegant, especially for a puzzle of the phenomenally easy variety. The revealer came as a real "wow," which is a rarity on Any day of the week. I could see that it was MIDAS TOUCH but didn't stop to read the clue that closely and could only think, as I was speeding off to finish the rest of the grid, "Uh ... where's the gold in these answers? How does 'AA' represent gold?" But it doesn't. Instead "A"s touch in the "mid"dle of the answers. The exact middle—a nice "touch." I'm not sure I like OPERA ARIAS that much as an answer, since it seems almost redundant—where the hell else am I going to hear ARIAS? And you have to cheat a little bit with the pluralizing to get LHASA APSOS to come off. But let's just call that "creativity," not "cheating." Why can't I learn how to spell LHASA. It always comes out LLASA on first try. Like ... I confuse LLAMA and LHASA. And yet I would never ever spell the animal LHAMA. Maybe writing about this will help settle this issue in my brain. And yet, somehow, I feel I have written these exact words before, to no avail.


I was down near my record time on this one. Where were the hiccups. Well, LHASA, obviously, though that was easily fixed. Honestly, the only other issues I had involved my clumsy fingers, which will apparently never obey me well enough to allow me to break the 2:20 mark. I was right at 2:30 today. I got lucky at a couple turns. I had LAKE and threw down GENEVA more as a hope than a certainty. That worked out. Also, I was able to make the turn into the center of the grid via the *back* end of PAULA ABDUL without any trouble (she's a gimme for me ... I had a ... let's call it a "phase" ... in college; an ABDUL phase ...). Fill here is pretty clean, with some pretty exciting longer answers (yes, I am someone who finds CLIPBOARDS exciting, for real) (11D: Ones providing backing for writers?). Nice Monday work, for sure.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Old townhouse feature / FRI 11-6-15 / Myers 24 character / Stable character of old TV / Weighted weapon used by Inca army / Leader of battle of Alesia / Word derived from another that has related meaning like wisdom from wise

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy (PARONYM nearly raised it to Easy-Medium, but not quite)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PARONYM (49A: Word derived from another that has a related meaning, like "wisdom" from "wise") —

(google)

• • •

Well this was just lovely. I kept pausing to admire it because I could tell early that it was going to be too easy, and thus over too quickly. There's a real Patrick Berry-like smoothness to the grid, though this one has a ton of life and bounce and currency (unlike some of Patrick Berry's recent offerings, which have felt a little staid). The highlights here are the colloquialisms—scads of them, long ones, traipsing all over the grid [side note: I just looked up "traipsing" to make sure I was using it right, and it's a Weird word. The first definitions of "traipse" relate to walking "wearily" or "casually," and "traipse" has synonyms like "trudge," "trek," "tramp," "tromp" ... BUT "traipsing" also appears to shade toward "gallivanting" or "gadding," words with far lighter, springier, bouncier implications, ... suggesting aimless pursuit of entertainment more than slogging. Anyway, I imagine the colloquialisms in this puzzle skipping hither and yon ... not trudging. Just to be clear]. I got "THAT SAID ..." instantly, and then ran a bunch of the Downs from there. Loved finding "SAME HERE!" right underneath, and then, under that, the jarring commercial juxtaposition of PRILOSEC SPEEDOS. Swooped into the middle of the puzzle and made my first (and only) big mistake—though it was one that was very easily fixable:

I don't mind falling into traps I can easily crawl out of. Traps where I get out of them going "Ha ... you got me ... good one," as opposed to those in which I just lay at the bottom, groaning. MR. ED (34D: Stable character of old TV) got me out of this particular trap, allowing me to change "I'M UP FOR ANYTHING" to "I'M UP FOR WHATEVER," and then the creamy center of the puzzle practically filled itself in. Another great colloquialism ("NO BIG DEAL") took me up to the NE, which went down pretty easily (though those sequestered corners—dead ends! no way out!—always feel dicey to me). Then I rode "The LEGO MOVIE" down into the SE, where I finally had to do a little Work. I had issues after getting to here:

Couldn't see DARKLY (and wasn't sure whether I could trust the "-LY" ending there, since we already had one in HARSHLY). Couldn't remember my 1977 AL baseball players (which is slightly embarrassing, considering that's an iconic year for me—the first year I collected baseball cards as a kid). Couldn't think only of EXIT VISA at 54A: Something an alien may have ... and couldn't figure out how a [Time for a party] could be (apparently) plural. Then, literally as soon as I took the above screenshot, I got NEW YEAR'S, CAREW, etc. until we reached the heart of the problem in the SW: PARONYM, which I didn't know at all.


I then eyeballed the SW corner and thought, "Narrow entrance, no exit .... deep breath." You never know what you're going to find in these little rooms. But this one proved more bunny than bear. I sent FOREIGNER down there, and then its neighbors IOTA and SARIS. I somehow went with EXCITE over INCITE, but that was the only hiccup. Puzzle finished when CAESAR called a TRUCE.


Bullets:

• 16A: Mark on a golf course (O'MEARA) — very nice clue. Had the "O" and thought "One ... something ...?"
• 41A: 2015 Super Bowl winners, familiarly (PATS) — I read the clue as [2015 Super Bowl winners, finally], and thought, "Jeez ... partisan much?"
• 13D: Old townhouse feature (ORIEL) — bay windows that project from the walls of buildings but do not reach the ground. I get these confused with another kind of window ... something about an "eye" ...  that is also crosswordese ... it's slipping my mind right now. Aha: OXEYE, also known as "oeil-de-boeuf."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Onetime Coors alcopop / WED 8-26-15 / Sculptor who pioneered Dadaism / Canadian airline with directional name / Israeli novelist Perfect Peace / Hoops legend with statue in Philadelphia / Religion founded in 19th-century Persia / Image in Timberland logo / Black hues in Shakespeare /

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: HUMP DAY (53A: Middle of the week ... or an appropriate title for this puzzle) — circled squares make form of a "hump" in the grid (four times) and spell out CAMEL

Word of the Day: John OSBORNE (58A: Playwright John who wrote "Look Back in Anger") —

John James Osborne (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor, known for his excoriating prose and intense critical stance towards established social and political norms. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre. // In a productive life of more than 40 years, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and TV. His personal life was extravagant and iconoclastic. He was notorious for the ornate violence of his language, not only on behalf of the political causes he supported but also against his own family, including his wives and children. Osborne was one of the first writers to address Britain's purpose in the post-imperial age. He was the first to question the point of the monarchy on a prominent public stage. During his peak (1956–1966), he helped make contempt an acceptable and now even cliched onstage emotion, argued for the cleansing wisdom of bad behaviour and bad taste, and combined unsparing truthfulness with devastating wit. (wikipedia)

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By far my favorite part of this solve was getting to 26D: They're blown for good luck and then looking at my grid and realizing I had this:

I haven't literally LOL'd mid-solve in a long time. That was fun. But the puzzle itself, let's see... I'm not sure I fully understand it. That is, I feel like I must be missing something. I know Wednesday (today) is commonly known as HUMP DAY, and I know camels have humps, and I see the word "camel" in the form of a hump four times in the grid. So there's some layers here. But the revealer feels a bit anemic, in that the "day" part isn't really relevant to all the camel business. And there are four humps ... just because. Arbitrary number. That's how many would fit, I guess. And there is no other thematic material, so ... it's kind of like a themeless, only with not terribly interesting longer answers. This is an interesting but kind of conceptually ragged puzzle. Fill is also slightly less great than I've come to expect from Ian. But those "camels" cannot have been easy to build a grid around. Not cleanly. And really it's just a few answers that feel off (EBONS, most notably).


Fill is oddest / worst / weirdest in and around the revealer. POL POT, ugh, man, I'd do Anything I could to avoid that guy. HITLER is banned from crossword grid, but *this* guy's OK? I guess POL POT's only responsible for the deaths of 1-3 million people, so maybe he is "better than HITLER," but still, yikes. Not loving OSBORNE (?) or WESTJET (??) either. Middling / obscurish proper nouns taking up a lot of real estate, while also creating the conditions for crud fill like OUSE and ANE. Also I stared at LIMBS as the answer for 47D: Post-storm detritus and thought "damn, that's pretty gruesome." Then I realized the limbs were from TREEs. At least I hope they are.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Popular sheepskin boots / WED 6-24-15 / Region known for its black tea / Monch Eiger for two / BC animal that goes ZOT / Classic Langston Hughes poem

Constructor: Ian Livengood and J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: FIVE STARS (56A: What 17-, 23-, 33- and 47-Across each have) — five-star things, each answer having a somewhat different sense of what "five-star" means:

Theme answers:

• THE PIERRE (17A: Luxury hotel overlooking Central Park)
• OMAR BRADLEY (23A: First chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1949)
• SOUTHERN CROSS (33A: Constellation visible in Melbourne and Sydney)
• CHINESE FLAG (47A: Flier over Tiananmen Square)

Word of the Day: THE PIERRE —

The Pierre is a luxury hotel located at 2 East 61st Street at the intersection of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, facing Central Park. The hotel, which was designed by Schultze & Weaver, opened in 1930, and was later acquired by Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces of India. Standing 525.01 feet (160.02 m) tall, it is located within the Upper East Side Historic District as designated in 1981 by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. (wikipedia)

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I've quite liked puzzle co-constructed by J.A.S.A. in the past (J.A.S.A. stands for Jewish Association Serving the Aging), but this one seemed a bit weak. The core concept just isn't that interesting or entertaining. And it doesn't cohere that great either. I've heard of a five-star general and a five-star hotel, but not a five-star constellation or a five-star flag. SOUTHERN CROSS and CHINESE FLAG are associated with stars, sure, but the number "five," not so much. Also, if, like me, you get your sense of the SOUTHERN CROSS from the flag of New Zealand, then you were under the (apparently mistaken) impression that the constellation actually had four stars. So that was weird. Also, do people who don't live in NYC know THE PIERRE? I'd never heard of it. I get that the class (like the puzzle) is NY-based, so there's nothing *wrong* with a parochial answer like that, but I don't think that answer's going to resonate much in the sticks (i.e. outside the five boroughs). Ian and his class have certainly polished the puzzle well—I hope you can see the difference between puzzles made by experienced, conscientious constructors (Joel on Monday, Ian today) and run-of-the-mill, under-edited puzzles that the NYT runs. No wincing! All answers real and (mostly) interesting! OK, ARMLET is weird, but I'm pretty sure it's real. Anyway, this wasn't terribly exciting. Acceptable, for sure, but too basic, conceptually, and too wobbly in the execution for my tastes.


Biggest troubles were in and around THE PIERRE, just because I'd never heard of it. Wanted SCHEMATA for SCENARIO (3D: Plot outline). Wanted TO-DO for STIR (29A: Hubbub). Wanted STALLS for STABLE (11D: 35-Down [i.e. HORSE] quarters). Oh, I also had trouble around RODGERS, because I also don't really know who Richard RODGERS is. Is he RODGERS and Hammerstein RODGERS? Ah, yes, look at that—so he is. Not knowing him made FRIED and LOVED and SKI TRAIL all weirdly tougher than they should've been. I somehow thought the AMA  was the ["Protecting and promoting your health" org.]—that's a mistake I can understand and live with. I still think the expression is TRUE DAT but there's plenty of evidence that, at least on paper, I'm wrong. Or, rather, TRUE THAT is more popular. Crossword mainstay Michael CERA recently released an album entitled "TRUE THAT," so put that in your crossword trivia pipe and smoke it.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Instagram alternative / FRI 5-8-15 / 1960 Pirates World Series hero familiarly / Participant in Battle of Saratoga 1777 / Gentlemen this is vodka sloganeer / Masago at sushi bar / Melter on winter sidewalks / Space in paper available for journalism instead of ads / Japanese import set in kitchen

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HALITE (16A: Melter on winter sidewalks) —

noun

1. sodium chloride as a mineral, typically occurring as colorless cubic crystals; rock salt. (google)

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This one was pretty sweet. Smooth and practically groaner-free. Nice mix of contemporary names and common words/phrases. I think I'm becoming one of Those People who doesn't like to see a ton of brand names in the grid. I don't mind them, I just … have limits. And when you lead with SNAPCHAT over KETEL ONE, part of me's like "easy there, Pitchy McAdman." But the commercial density of the rest of the puzzle was less intense. The puzzle also flirted with my indeterminate but very real Proper Noun Limit, generally, but managed to stay a safe distance from Insufferable Territory. Proper nouns can be boring you-know-it-or-you-don't exercises in trivia … or they can be 12D: Fox hunt leader of old (SIMON COWELL), which is some kind of genius clue. Playful yet literal, and spot-on (the "Fox" is the TV network and the "hunt" is "American Idol"). My only complaint was that it was too easy. SNAPCHAT was a gimme (1A: Instagram alternative), and that set me up to knock out the NW and then flow easily into the west and center of the grid. Thusly:

The openness of the grid—that is, the multiple access points that every section has—made consistent progress easy. I didn't get significantly held up at all. I wrote in SHOO for SCAT (36D: "Beat it!"), and that took some time off the clock, but that's a pretty minor hiccup.


I often find cross-referenced clues annoying, but today I found one very helpful. As I moved from one answer to its counterpart across the grid (the way one might move, say, from the Conservatory to the Lounge in Clue), I thought "Oh, this is what cross-referenced clues are supposed to do. Neat." Fortuitously, I got the --K at 48A: Official 18-Across of Utah and immediately saw it had to be ELK, which meant 18A: See 48-Across was probably ANIMAL. So I abandoned the ELK corner for the ANIMAL corner and worked my way methodically down and around, back to the ELK region, with the "E" in NESTED my final letter. Here's the key moment of cross-grid / cross-reference transition:

Really liked COACH K as fill. Not sure if it's completely original, but it's fresh and unusual and very much in-the-language, sports-talk-wise. I remembered what HESSIANs were, which was my big memory coup of the day. HESSIAN is a word I learned from crosswords. Not sure how they eluded me in US History class, but so many other things did, I can't be that surprised. I forgot who the hero of the 1960 World Series was, so thank god that "Z" cross was easy—as soon as I got it, I remembered Bill Mazeroski. Not sure I knew people called him MAZ (the way people called Carl Yastrzemski "YAZ"), but I do like that "Z" there. Much better than the "E" that would've taken its place otherwise (probably) (you can put a couple other letters there, but they're not great).

A nice, novice-friendly Friday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Hatrack piece / MON 3-16-15 / Sunday liquor prohibition / Every West Point graduate until 1980 / Big-mouthed pitchers / Venomous Nile dwellers / 1995 crime caper based on Elmore Leonard novel

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (**for a Monday**) (completion time: 3:01)

THEME: SMALL TALK (66A: Chitchat … or an apt title for this puzzle?) — two-word phrases where one of the words is slang for a small person:

Theme answers:

• SQUIRT GUN (17A: Toy in a water fight)
• FRIED SHRIMP (25A: Crispy seafood dish)
• GET SHORTY (39A: 1995 crime caper based on an Elmore Leonard novel)
• PEE WEE REESE (56A: Hall-of-Fame Dodger nicknamed "The Little Colonel")

Word of the Day: TRISHA Yearwood (52D: Yearwood of country music) —

Patricia Lynn "Trisha" Yearwood (born September 19, 1964) is an American singer, author, and actress. She is known for her ballads about vulnerable young women from a female perspective that have been described by some music critics as "strong" and "confident". Yearwood is a member of the Grand Ole Opry and was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2000.

Yearwood rose to fame in 1991 with her debut single "She's in Love with the Boy", which became her first No. 1 single and was featured on her self-titled debut album. Yearwood has continued to find success and widespread critical acclaim, releasing a further 10 studio albums, which have spawned eight more No. 1 singles and 20 top-10 hits combined, including "Walkaway Joe", "The Song Remembers When", "Thinkin' About You", "I'll Still Love You More", and "I Would've Loved You Anyway". In 1997, Yearwood recorded the song "How Do I Live" for the soundtrack of the movie Con Air. It became her signature song, achieving high positions and sales worldwide, and won her a Grammy Award. She has also recorded successful duets with her husband, country singer Garth Brooks, including "In Another's Eyes", which won the couple a Grammy Award.

Yearwood has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide, and has won three Grammy Awards, three Country Music Association Awards, two Academy of Country Music Awards, an American Music Award, and a Pollstar Industry Award for touring. Aside from her success in music, Yearwood has also ventured into writing, releasing three successful cookbooks, which earned her the status of two-time New York Times best-selling author. Since April 2012, Yearwood has hosted a culinary series on Food Network titled Trisha's Southern Kitchen, for which she has won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Culinary Program. (wikipedia)

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This was pretty nice. Much more interesting than your average Monday grid, but still Monday-easy. My time was up above average, due largely to the multiple passes it took me to get into the large, open corners, as well as some general blanking and initial wrongness. I couldn't even process what [Hatrack piece] meant. "Piece" had me thinking GUN or GAT, but that makes no sense (I don't think) with "Hatrack." Anyway, "piece" just meant "piece." A piece of a hatrack. I didn't now hatracks (my autocorrect wants "hayracks") came in pieces. This all to say that PEG, it did not come (back) to me. For a while. And I had -MAN and wrote in NAVY- even as I knew that was wrong (12D: Every West Point graduate until 1980). It was just the first thing that came into my head and my brain was like "go for it, man." Stupid brain. NEIL v. NEAL took me a second, -TALK too me many seconds longer, and WAVER … that thing wouldn't budge til I hacked it apart with crosses. I wanted WEAVE and then I just blanked. Still, done pretty quickly.


So, theme works fine. Grid design is weird, but in a good way. Substantial corners, which made the grid feel lower word-count than it was. The center is super-choppy, which drives the word count way up. Ends up at the 78 max. It's an interesting design choice, driving more of the black squares toward the middle in order to open up the corners. I like the results. There's some old school crosswordese in here (ORA, TOSSPOT), but nothing outrageous. Enjoyable.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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