Modern H.R. initiative / SUN 10-20-24 / Futuristic microscopic machine / Hasten, old-style / Marquee at the Tri-Plex mistaken as a promo for ... "Godzilla"? / ___ Sidle, longtime role on "C.S.I." / Italian sauce whose name sounds like a French stew / Bandmate of Keith for 60+ years / Band whose name is sometimes rendered with a backward B

Constructor: Jerry Miccolis

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Triple Features" — each answer is an imagined "Marquee at the Tri-Plex" featuring three movie titles, which, together, seem to describing a fourth, different movie:

Theme answers:

• BIG GIANT MONSTER (23A: Marquee at the Tri-Plex mistaken as a promo for ... "Godzilla"?)
• WITNESS ALIEN ARRIVAL (37A:  ... "E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial"?)
• HANCOCK SIGNS THE PAPER (54A:  ... "Independence Day"?)
• TANGLED FROZEN TRAFFIC (75A: ... "Rush Hour"?)
• WIRED SLEEPERS MISERY (91A: ... "Insomnia"?)
• MANHATTAN HOOK-UP (110A: ... "Sex and the City"?)

Word of the Day: HANCOCK (see 54A) —

Hancock is a 2008 American superhero comedy film starring Will Smith as an amnesiac, alcoholic, reckless superhero trying to remember his past. The film is directed by Peter Berg based on a screenplay by Vince Gilligan and Vy Vincent Ngo. The film also stars Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman.

The story was originally written by Vy Vincent Ngo in 1996. It languished in development hell for years with various directors attached, including Tony Scott, Michael Mann (who would later co-produce the film), Jonathan Mostow and Gabriele Muccino, before being filmed in 2007 in Los Angeles with a production budget of $150 million.

In the United States, the film was rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America after changes were made at their request in order to avoid an R rating, which it had received twice before. Columbia Pictures released the film in theaters in the United States on July 2, 2008. While Hancock received mixed reviews from critics, who found it promising, but let down by the mid movie change in tone, it grossed $629.4 million worldwide, becoming the fourth highest-grossing film of 2008. (wikipedia)

• • •

Still fighting off a head cold, so this write-up might not be as elaborate, or coherent, as you have come to expect (or at least hope for). I really gotta polish this off and get some sleep. So ... movies! I like movies. It took me a bit to figure what was going on here because after I got BIG GIANT MONSTER, I thought all the answers were going to be "three movie titles that are all synonyms of one another." "BIG GIANT" is pretty bad here. Unmotivated redundancy. The other answers work, more or less. It's a cute idea—three movie titles that suggest another movie title. But that's twenty-four (24!) movie titles you're being asked to know, or be at least vaguely aware of: six theme clues with a movie in each clue and then three movies in each answer. 6 times 4 = 24. Were you familiar with all of them? I was ... almost. Couldn't place WIRED. Had to look it up. It's the biopic about Belushi (1989), based on the Bob Woodward book of the same name. It is by far the least successful movie of the twenty-four. According to wikipedia, it made just over $1 million on a $13 million budget. I only kind of remember SLEEPERS ... is that the one from the '90s about a group of criminals, or maybe hackers? [looks it up] Well, it is from the '90s (1996), and it does involve criminals, but the core story involves a group of men who, as boys, served time in a juvenile detention facility and experienced terrible abuse. So the movie is about the aftermath of that. I don't know where I got "hackers" from. I think I was thinking about not SLEEPERS but SNEAKERS (1992), which is about a group of security specialists (though not computer security, I don't think). Annnnyway, WIRED and SLEEPERS seem like outliers, fame-wise. I would've said the same about HANCOCK, but it turns out that movie grossed over $600 million, so ... clearly somebody saw it! Oh, THE PAPER, that wasn't that big of a hit, was it? As I recall, it was about this thing that used to exist called a "newspaper." Ask your parents.

The one other outlier was GIANT, in that it's the only pre-1979 movie in the puzzle. Well, that and GODZILLA, but GODZILLA, as a creature, is iconic, whereas GIANT ... if you didn't know the plot of that movie, you could easily think it was about a giant. It's not. It's a 1956 western/drama, famous in large part for being James Dean's last film. MONSTER is that movie about the female serial killer, right? [looks it up] Yes. I think I've actually seen only about a quarter of these movies, but that didn't matter. Even if the theme answers were the hardest part of the puzzle (hard because wacky and strange), the puzzle overall was still remarkably easy. Maybe the idea was that, with so many movie titles, the crosses needed to be very easy. And they were. I've never heard the term "Tri-Plex" before. Looks like there's one in Great Barrington, MA (wherever that is). But I can infer that it's a place that has three screens, shows three movies—hence today's hypothetical marquees. Oh, last movie observation—I had no idea Sex & The City was a movie. It is, first and foremost and most famously, a TV show. So that was weird. But it looks like, yes, there was a reasonably successful 2008 movie adaptation, so OK, it's a movie. 

The rest of the grid was largely forgettable and occasionally awkward. AZURE BLUE? (76D: Sky shade). Is AZURE BLUE here to keep BIG GIANT company? AZURE BLUE ... what else is AZURE gonna be? Is there an AZURE ORANGE I'm unaware of? Bizarre. That next to MEMOIRE (?!) crossing the awkward EMAILER crossing the ungainly and overly wordy SOLD AS IS ... that was definitely my least favorite part of the grid. I don't like BAES in the plural. I don't like OBE ever, but especially in the plural (29A: Honors for David Beckham and Leona Lewis: Abbr. = OBES). NYETS, truly terrible in the plural (104A: Overseas refusals). I do not like the idea of cluing ORCA as a "menace" (38D: Marine menace). The ORCA's just living its life, man, too bad your yacht got in its way. Or maybe the idea is that ORCAs menace ... seals? Penguins? Apex predators have to eat! "Menace," bah. Just 'cause you can alliterate ([Marine menace]) doesn't mean you should. 

The hardest part of the puzzle today was ... nowhere, really. I had some very minor trouble picking up the SPLIT (in SPLIT VOTE (16D: Cause of a hung jury)). Beyond that, I didn't have any significant hesitation until the very (and I mean very) last square of the puzzle. I sincerely stared at SPA-/ADA- for a while. Well, a few seconds, at any rate. I have never heard of the novelist ADAM Johnson, but ADAM seemed like the only viable answer (he won the Pulitzer in 2013 for his novel The Orphan Master's Son). As for SPAM ... er ... that's not a good clue (107D: Overcommunicate, say). First, I don't think of boner pill ads as a form of "communication." Second, the spammer is "communicating" just the right amount for the spammer, I presume. Yes, spam involves mass mailing / texting / whatever, but the "over" in "Overcommunicate" implies there is some good or right amount of advertising that I want to be subjected to, and I assure you there is not. 

Bullets:

• 5A: Italian sauce whose name sounds like a French stew (RAGÚ) — the French stew is "ragout"
• 71A: Suitor of Christine in "The Phantom of the Opera" (RAOUL) — no idea. Just waited for a name to appear. Phantom was a tremendously popular Broadway production and like most tremendously popular Broadway productions not named Hamilton, I never saw it.
• 85A: Modern H.R. initiative (DEI) — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It's a concept that drives racists crazy. They have appropriated it as a racial slur; it's how a certain class of losers insults Black success now. See also their obsession with being "anti-woke." Dear god these people are boring. Bitter and boring. Can't decide which is worse.
• 38D: Actor-turned-policeman Estrada (ERIK) — wait, he didn't actually become a cop IRL, did he? ... OMG he did! And here I thought he was just a fictional cop on CHiPs. 

Estrada became a reserve police officer for the Muncie, Indiana Police Department, depicted on Armed & Famous. From there, Estrada moved to Virginia, where he was an I.C.A.C. (Internet Crimes Against Children) investigator for eight years in Bedford County, Virginia. As of July 1, 2016, he was a reserve police officer in St. Anthony, Idaho. In the course of his duties, Estrada has been filmed patrolling on a police motorcycle.

• 101A: ___ Sidle, longtime role on "C.S.I." (SARA) — no idea. Less than no idea. I couldn't name any "roles" on any of the C.S.I.s or N.C.I.S.s or JAGs or whatever. Network dramas of the 21st century ... nothing. I got nothing.
• 14A: It can bust one's bracket (UPSET) — "bracket" is part of a multi-round single elimination tournament. If you have filled your "brackets" with predicted winners, as many do for the NCAA basketball tournament, then an UPSET can "bust" your bracket (unless you predicted it, then you're good!)
• 28A: Something seen framed in a Zoom background, perhaps (AWARD) — ew, who does this? I've got a framed signature of Muhammad Ali here that my dad got when he was an Army doctor in the early '70s. I've got a framed movie poster for a schlocky Mickey Rooney / Mamie Van Doren film. Seems a little self-important to make an AWARD part of your Zoom background. 

• 31A: Bandmate of Keith for 60+ years (MICK) — Keith Richards, MICK Jagger, The Rolling Stones...
• 81D: Shooting marble (TAW) — ugh, marble types. This is gonna throw some people, especially considering it abuts TALI (kinda difficult anatomy clue) (75D: Ankle bones) and crosses WIRED, which, as we've established, was not a big hit.
• 39D: Jazz singer Cleo (LAINE) — I know Cleo LAINE only from crosswords. LAINE crossing RAIMI might prove tricky for some, though RAIMI is a very successful director who has appeared in the NYTXW a lot, so this cross is probably "fair." Not great, though.
• 63A: Liturgical vestment (STOLE) — lol I had no idea. Sounds pretty fancy. My "liturgical vestment" vocabulary begins and ends with ALB (a common answer in crosswords of yore)

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Video game lover of Princess Peach / TUE 11-14-17 / Carved figurine popular around Christmas / Yale affectionately / UN agcy headquartered in Geneva

Constructor: Jerry Miccolis and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Challenging (a minute off my average, which on a Tuesday is a ton)

THEME: TRIPLE / DOUBLE (37A: With 39-Across, impressive basketball feat ... or a feature shared by the answers to the six starred clues) — themers all have three sets of successive double letters:

Theme answers:

• SWEET TOOTH (17A: *Sugar craving)
• WOOD DEER (21A: *Carved figurine popular around Christmas)
• GOOD DEED (23A: *What never goes unpunished, it's said)
• HEEL LOOP (53A: *Wheelchair foot strap)
• FEED DOOR (56A: *Pet cage feature)
• BOOKKEEPER (60A: *Figurehead?) (again with the dumb "?" in a non-"?" theme) 

Word of the Day: SPOT AD (33D: Expense item for a political campaign) —

informal

a brief advertisement broadcast in a programme break (Collins)

• • •

I've never heard of half the themers, so yeah, this didn't go well. I can kind of sort of imagine what a FEED DOOR is (I imagine it's for ... gerbils or something?) and I can kind of sort of imagine what a HEEL LOOP is (does it keep the leg elevated?) but a WOOD DEER, no, that I cannot imagine, unless it is some kind of Rudolph figurine, in which case, a. it's a "wooden" deer, and b. those are not and have never been "popular." You've got three solid themers—much better to find an equally solid fourth, and then make a clean grid. No need to crowd the damn thing so much, especially when you're crowding it with weakness. Those mystery themers kept me far more stuck than I normally ever get on a Tuesday. Oh, I should probably mention, for you non-basketball fans, that a TRIPLE / DOUBLE is when a player hits double-digits in three of the five main statistical categories: points, assists, rebounds, blocks, and steals (usually points, assists, rebounds).


I was over my *Wednesday* average. I mean, WOOD DEER, come on. And SPOT AD was another disaster for me. That crossing FEED DOOR, with a very vague INCIDENT clue (38D: Episode) and a clue for CRETIN that I did not know was the meaning of CRETIN (47D: Dimwit) all combined to make that SW corner hellish. Even that ACCT clue had me going "???" (46A: Website subscriber's creation: Abbr.) Considering how dense the theme is, the fill is actually fairly decent. I have of course seen ELI plenty, but OLD ELI—that's one I wasn't ready for. Since the SPOT AD clue mentioned political campaigns and I had "S" in place, I kept wanting something like SMEARS. Clue on HIDEF, also hard (70A: Far from fuzzy, for short) (I had HAIRY at first). Honestly, things basically went south right away, at 1-Across, where I wrote in OFAGE instead of GROWN (1A: No longer a minor).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. a fun game is coming up with other TRIPLE / DOUBLEs, e.g. QUEEN NOOR. You try!

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Ghostbuster Spengler / SUN 4-2-17 / King who spoke at Kennedy's inaugural ball / Writer who coined term banana republic 1904 / French region now part of Grand Est / Pride parade letters / Fifth-century pope dubbed Great / Stop in sailor's lingo

Constructor: Jerry Miccolis

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Initial Description" — theme answers are APRONYMS:

Theme answers:

• SWAN = SWIMMER WITH ARCHED NECK
• MARS = MOSTLY ARID RED SPHERE
• ATLAS = AID TO LOCATE A STREET
• TRIO = THREE ROLLED INTO ONE
• OKAY = OTHERWISE KNOWN AS YES
• WASP = WINGED AND STINGING PEST 

Word of the Day: ABOLLA (20A: Togalike Roman cloak) —

An abolla was a cloak-like garment worn by Ancient Greeks and Romans. Nonius Marcellus quotes a passage of Varro to show that it was a garment worn by soldiers (vestis militaris), and thus opposed to the toga. // The abolla was, however, not confined to military occasions, but was also worn in the city. It was especially used by the Stoic philosophers at Rome as the pallium philosophicum, just as the Greek philosophers were accustomed to distinguish themselves by a particular dress. Hence the expression of Juvenal facinus majoris abollae merely signifies, "a crime committed by a very deep philosopher." // The word abolla is actually a Latinization of the Greek ambolla (ἀμβόλλα) or anabole (ἀναβολή), for a loose woolen cloak. (wikipedia)

• • •

There are lists of these out there. On website. Whole databases of them. I can't take a theme seriously that involved no originality on the part of the constructor. FREE AIR, RELEASE TENSION! See! Not original! I just typed FART into the database and bam! Here, watch: LESBIAN ... "Lady Enjoys Sexual Behaviour Involving Another Non-male"; LEWINSKY ... "Licking Elite Willy Is Nearly Sex! Kenneth Yells." These are no doubt entertaining, but constructors should be coming up with their *own* gimmicks, not lifting others'. Most of the apronyms in this puzzle are either straight out of the database I'm using, or are slightly modifications of the database versions. It's not that hard to make these things yourself. You could even narrow your "clues" to, say movie stars (STELLAR THESPIAN REALLY EARNS EVERY PLAUDIT!), or baseball players (BEEFY OUTFIELDER NEVER DID STEROIDS) or presidents (TWITTER RANTS UNDERSCORE MORONIC PRESIDENCY), or whatever. Now, keeping them under 21 letters in length would be a challenge, but ... I think it's probably doable. And then you might have something. Something tight, contemporary, genuinely wacky, and (above all) *original*.

[TRIO]

There were only two trouble spots in this thing—the word ABOLLA (!?!?!) (20A: Togalike Roman cloak), which I think I'd rather have than EBOLA, but only barely, and then the whole SW corner. The latter problem is Entirely Foreseeable when you look at the Downs. After the dumb partial AS WAS (?), there's name name name name. CHANG has the same number of letters as STICH (102D: 1991 Wimbledon champ Michael). ORWELL has the same number of letters as O. HENRY (97D: Writer who coined the term "banana republic" (1904)) (I knew the date was wrong for Orwell, but still...). I blanked on the Ghostbuster name (106D: Ghostbuster Spengler) (wanted OTTO ... I think because OTTO Dix <=> EGON Schiele; at least that's the artsy, high-culture excuse I'm gonna use). And I never knew the Préval guy was a RENÉ (107D: ___ Préval, two-time president of Haiti).  So that was very rough. Nothing else about the grid was rough.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. here's an apronym theme that is much tighter and much more original (NYT, May 21, 2000)

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Thrice in Rxs / SUN 7-17-16 / Heraldic border / Cathedral music maker / Bandleader who popularized conga line / Longtime all my children role / Hall of fame slugger Johnny / Stephen King novel with pyrokinetic character

Constructor: Jerry Miccolis

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Double Features" — imagined double features, which are really imagined single features in which two movie titles have been fused together [addendum—please read the P.P.S., below]:

Theme answers:

• FROZEN WATERWORLD (22A: Double feature about the Arctic Ocean?)
• ALIEN CONTACT (38A: ... about the search for extraterrestrial life?)
• TITANIC SKYFALL (49A: ... about baseball-sized hail?)
• BIG CONSPIRACY THEORY (67A: ... about Lee Harvey Oswald not being the lone gunman?)
• SAW THE DEPARTED (87A: ... about attending a funeral?)
• ROCKY SLEEPER (96A: ... about an insomniac?)
• NOTORIOUS KINGPIN (116A: ... about Pablo Escobar?)

Word of the Day: BORIS Johnson (67D: ___ Johnson, former mayor of London) —

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born 19 June 1964) is a British politician, popular historian, author, and journalist. He has been Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs since 13 July 2016 and has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Uxbridge and South Ruislip since 2015. He had previously served as MP for Henley from 2001 until 2008 and as Mayor of London from 2008 until 2016. A member of the Conservative Party, Johnson identifies as a One-Nation Conservative and has been associated with both economically liberal and socially liberal policies. [...] Johnson is a controversial figure in British politics and journalism. Supporters have praised him as an entertaining, humorous, and popular figure with appeal beyond traditional Conservative voters. Conversely, he has been criticised by figures on both the left and right, accused of elitism and cronyism, laziness and dishonesty, and using xenophobic, racist, and homophobic language. Johnson is the subject of several biographies and a number of fictionalised portrayals. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ugh. This shoulda been called "Wordplay Trainwreck." Two major, deal-breaking flaws with this theme. PART A (ugh, I say): it is infinitely replicable. Just plunk two movie names next to each other. You could probably do a Sunday-sized puzzle from post -2010 movies alone. Getting symmetrical theme answers is really your only challenge. "The Martian Room"! "Brooklyn Bridge of Spies"! I haven't even left 2015 yet. There is nothing here. Not only that, I guarantee you that this theme has been done, and been done better, and been done more cleverly. Even the title is just a [shrug]. A bored "how's this?" And then Part B, the execution. These answers ... it's like the creators weren't really sure what "funny" was. Like they looked up "humor" on the internet at the last minute. How else to explain the singularly weak BIG CONSPIRACY THEORY? You Can Plunk "Big" In Front Of Anything, why why why would you do that??? Nothing Clever Is Happening Here! And ALIEN CONTACT!?!?! You know that CONTACT was actually about ... alien ... contact ... so ... literally nothing clever is happening here. It is negative clever. Also, SAW THE DEPARTED would just never work ever on any level. I can imagine the other pairings as coherent phrases, but not that one. Titles so rarely begin with the perfect tense and no clear subject. Everything about this puzzle, including how it got approved for publication, is utterly baffling. Also, the fill isn't great.

[NOTORIOUS ... BIG]

MITRAL x/w CARRÉ = rough (7D: Kind of heart valve + 26A: French for "square"). Very rough. I'm actively relearning French as we speak and couldn't come up with CARRÉ, probably because there are no accents aigus in crosswords. PART A (not I!?) and GNMA (blargh) were also dire and made ALIEN hard to see (because, again, who would've expected so banal a pairing as ALIEN and CONTACT!). MEIS! ASYE! TER! I have to stop now. This appears to be a debut, and it's one a discriminating editor should've sent back, with notes on how to make it NYT-worthy. Only Merl Reagle could pull off something like this—could give it the ridiculous, clever, ingenious humor it *needs* to come off. He would've added some twist that made it all seem worthwhile. I miss him.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. this tweet

P.P.S. IMPORTANT

Please read the following comment from reader Martin Abresch, who found out from reading another blog (one in the "NYT Family," ironically...) that:

the submitted version was much *MUCH* better. The theme answers were not designed to be wacky movie combinations. The design was for a two-movie answer to describe a one-movie clue.

FROZEN WATERWORLD = Ice Age?
ALIEN CONTACT = ET The Extraterrestrial?
TITANIC SKYFALL = Armageddon?
BIG CONSPIRACY THEORY = JFK?
SAW THE DEPARTED = The Sixth Sense?
ROCKY SLEEPER = Insomnia?
NOTORIOUS KINGPIN = The Godfather?

I mean, this goes beyond issues of one clue being better or worse than the other. The answers were designed to provide accurate descriptions of movies. They were not written to be wacky. In the published puzzle, SAW_THE_DEPARTED (Double feature about attending a funeral?) is dull as a doorknob and barely makes sense. In the original version, SAW_THE_DEPARTED ("The Sixth Sense?") is clever and precise.

Personally, feel sorry for the constructor, Jerry Miccolis. The theme was solid, and several of the theme clue-answer pairs made me smile. The editors utterly ruined it. I do not understand why they changed the clues at all. Epic fail.

This is jaw-dropping, honestly. One of the worst editing fails I've ever heard of. The original clues are the raison d'etre of the whole puzzle. They actually make sense of the title, for *&%^'s sake. Maybe it's time the NYT started seriously considering a changing of the guard. Yeesh. Sorry Will ruined your puzzle, Jerry. Better luck next time.

P.P.P.S. See Will's disavowal in the comments...

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