Hoopster observing Ramadan / Ankle-exposing pants / Baked with breadcrumbs cheese / Narrow arm of sea / Dangerous backyard projectile / Pluto flyby org

Constructor: Jim Holland and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Adding On" — you add "-ING" on to the ends of one of the words in a familiar phrase, yielding wackiness:

Theme answers:

• FASTING FORWARD (29A: Hoopster observing Ramadan?)
• LUCKY STREAKING (46A: Gangster Luciano performing a risqué prank?)
• BUM STEERING (68A: Hobo at the wheel?)
• STOCKING MARKET (88A: Where to buy certain Christmas decorations?)
• LIGHT SWITCHING (105A: Mild form of corporal punishment?)
• SQUARE ROOTING (15D: Cheering done in a plaza?)
• GOLDING DIGGER (57D: Big fan of the "Lord of the Flies" author?)

Word of the Day: CYGNET (55A: Young swan) —

noun

noun: cygnet; plural noun: cygnets

1. a young swan. (google)

• • •

Oh well. I was hoping for a much nicer puzzle on this, my blog's 10-year anniversary. But you get what you get, and I get an add-ING puzzle, somehow. Perhaps because I was terrible to animals in a past life, I don't know. And I thought add-a-*letter* puzzles were stale. This add-ING thing, yeesh. I mean, it yields an interesting answer or two (see FASTING FORWARD and the amusingly kinky LIGHT SWITCHING), but the rest is tepid cornball.  SQUARE ROOTING is just [Cheering done in a plaza?]? That is boring af. At least make the SQUARE a nerd or something. Something! With ultra-basic, throwback-basic themes like this, you gotta bring the wacky. Tepid wacky is unbearable wacky. [Hobo at the wheel?] for BUM STEERING? Try [Driving with your ass?]. See? 100% better. Possibly 200%. Even the title is half-hearted and bland. "Adding ... On." Which is really just add-ing. You add "ing." Title may as well be "Adding." But it's "Adding On." Because that's a phrase. Of sorts. Why not something ridiculous, like, I don't know. "Tacking Liberties"? 'Cause you're taking liberties with the original answers as well as tacking "ing" onto words in those answers. Or make your theme answers wackier. CHARLIE BROWNING! HYDE PARKING! LOWING ON THE TOTEM POLE! Come on! Some. Thing. Something!


I emphasize passion and commitment because even (especially?) when I have not enjoyed a puzzle, I have tried, day in, day out, for 10 *&$^&ing years, to bring not just cogent analysis, but genuine, heartfelt, occasionally absurdly emotional engagement with the damned crossword (fittingly, Sia's "Cheap Thrills" is blaring as I type this). I'm currently watching my sportswriter friend Adesina Koiki live-tweet the BYU/WVU football game like his life depended on it—like it was the most important, most amazing thing happening on planet earth right now. He's ALLCAPS into it. And I know that I'm not ALLCAPS into the puzzle every day. But lord knows I try to bring something of my passion for puzzles, something of my personal, idiosyncratic insight, something of my gosh-darn soul to every write-up, in however small a way. I am so grateful for your readership and for the crossword community and for the many genuinely brilliant, warm, and funny people I've met and become friends with as a result of this blog. I know sometimes it seems like the puzzle is trying to suck my soul out of me through my, uh, let's say, eye sockets. But I still care about crosswords. I care about good crosswords. And more than that, I enjoy the company of people who share this care with me. Thank you a gazillion or a bajillion, your choice. 10 years!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. a little history for you. Here's the very first comment I ever got on my blog:

And the second:

Moral: Don't be a grandpamike. Or do. Maybe you'll inspire someone to adopt the same "*$&% you" spirit grandpamike inspired in me.

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Nickname for New York's Aqueduct Racetrack / TUE 1-5-16 / Reductive film trope for blonde / Little red animal in children's tale / Ancient dynastic ruler briefly

Constructor: Jim Holland

Relative difficulty: Played way slower than normal for me ... not sure why

THEME: T- —familiar phrases have T- added to the front, creating low-grade wackiness:

Theme answers:

• T-MOBILE HOME (16A: Major telecom's corporate headquarters?)
• T-SQUARE ROOTS (26A: Early history of a drafting tool?)
• T-BALL BEARING (42A: Demeanor during a kid's outdoor game?)
• T-TOP BILLING (56A: Sending of invoices for removable car roofs?)

Word of the Day: EIGER (61A: Treacherous peak in the Alps) —

The Eiger is a 3,970-metre (13,020 ft) mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland, just north of the main watershed and border with Valais. It is the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that extends across the Mönch to the Jungfrau at 4,158 m (13,642 ft), constituting one of the most emblematic sights of the Swiss Alps. While the northern side of the mountain rises more than 3,000 m (10,000 ft) above the two valleys of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, the southern side faces the large glaciers of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, the most glaciated region in the Alps. The most notable feature of the Eiger is its 1,800-metre-high (5,900 ft) north face of rock and ice, named Eigerwand or Nordwand, which is the biggest north face in the Alps. This huge face towers the resort of Kleine Scheidegg at its base, on the homonymous pass connecting the two valleys. (wikipedia)

• • •

I guess this is the conclusion to yesterday's absurd PF puzzle. That is, it puts the "T" in PFFT.  I barely noticed the theme, which is probably good, because I don't think it's much worth noticing. It's slight, and it's thin. Where is the T-BONE CHINA or the T-CELL BLOCK or the T-REX RYAN or T-ZONE DEFENSE or T-PAIN AU CHOCOLAT (15!) etc.? If you're gonna go with a weak concept like this, you should go for greater theme density, and certainly go for much cleverer, much funnier clues. These didn't land At All. The most literal wackiness I've ever seen. Cluing is really, really, really important to puzzle enjoyment, and it can be the difference between a theme that works and theme that doesn't. It was like no one was really trying with these theme clues. This might've worked with a denser theme and with more Wednesday-difficulty theme cluing, something less painfully straightforward than what we get here.


Outside of ALLEGORY and LAST LEG and GOOD TO GO, there wasn't a lot of zip to this one. Cluing also seemed off in places. The [Room often next to a bedroom] is a bathroom. BATH is a shortening, "bedroom" is not, so, foul. BATH is informal real estate talk. BATH as a "room" slowed me down for sure, as did the "informally" in the lame LAME clue (2D: Not cool, informally). "Cool" is *already* informal. LAME parallels it perfectly. Why on earth do you add "informally" there? And who chooses BIG A (!?!?!) (52D: Nickname for New York's Aqueduct Racetrack) over RIGA. World capital beats "nickname" for some racetrack any day. Any. Day. AIRTO is an early contender for worst partial of the year. BIMBO isn't really redeemed by the semi-self-aware clue (43D: Reductive film trope for a blonde). MISNAME is what the person who chose "Y'all Qaeda" to describe those buffoonish Oregon terrorists did. "Y'all" is southern, not western. Obviously the superior name is "Vanilla ISIS." The angry white people with guns and a poor understanding of the Constitution are Vanilla ISIS. So much apter. The most humiliating thing I did while solving this puzzle was enter HUGH at 38D: Grant for moviemaking? And this after watching "His Girl Friday" (one of my favorite movies) Just Last Night. Ugh. I'm sorry, CARY.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Good dinosaur in Pixar's Good Dinosaur / MON 11-16-15 / Diplomatic contretemps during John Adams's administration / Carrier to Amsterdam / Captain Hook's henchman

Constructor: Jim Holland

Relative difficulty: Somewhat tougher than usual Monday (30 seconds tougher)

THEME: THREE IN A ROW (59A: Tic-tac-toe win ... or hint to the starts of the answers to the starred clues) —three theme answers begin with three consecutive letters of the alphabet

Theme answers:

• ABC ANCHOR (10D: *David Muir ... or Peter Jennings, once)
• KLM AIRLINES (19A: *Carrier to Amsterdam)
• XYZ AFFAIR (33D: *Diplomatic contretemps during John Adams's administration)

Word of the Day: MAUD Adams (14A: Bond girl Adams) —

Maud Solveig Christina Wikström (born 12 February 1945), known professionally as Maud Adams, is a Swedish actress, known for her roles as two different Bond girls: in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), and as the eponymous character in Octopussy (1983) as well as making a brief uncredited appearance in A View to a Kill (1985). (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't think this works too well, thematically. It might, if there were better theme answers available. For instance, XYZ AFFAIR is aces. First-rate. But the others are less so. KLM AIRLINES is legit enough, though it's a bit dull, the AIRLINES part being pretty redundant, in common parlance. I've only ever heard it as just KLM. Answer here is acceptable, but not interesting. And then there's ABC ANCHOR, which feels slightly awkward and forced. It doesn't google well. When I put "news" into the middel of the phrase and then re-google search, the number of hits balloons to something like 5x the number of hits for ["ABC ANCHOR"] alone. It's a contrived answer—defensible, but not sharp. Light years away from XYZ AFFAIR. And with only three theme answers in the whole thing, you really want them all to land. Perfectly. The fill on this one is not fantastic, even with the 4 cheater squares added, presumably, to make filling the grid easier (black squares above MAR / below ION, and above AYE / below ONT). There's no excuse for having RELEE in an early-week puzzle that's this easy to fill, to say nothing of the longish abomination that is ASATEAM. But it's clean-ish. The real issue for me was the wobbly theme execution.


Bullets:

• 1D: Uses for all it's worth (MILKS) — this was the first of many missteps and rewrites. I think I wrote in MAXES. 
• 17A: The good dinosaur in Pixar's "The Good Dinosaur" (ARLO) — I have never heard of this movie, so, needless to say, I've never heard of the answer. This and MAUD (where I drew another blank) added to my relative slowness today. Can you add to slowness? Sure. Why not?
• 51A: Full-length movie (FEATURE) — is "The Good Dinosaur" a FEATURE??? Oh, would you look at that: It. Hasn't. Even. Come. Out. Yet. (due out Nov. 25) I'm trying to understand how I'm supposed to know a character in a movie that hasn't been released yet. And on a Monday? Weird. Anyway, FEATURE helped me change MELEE to RELEE. I had written in that "M" when I noticed I had -ELEE and figured "What else could it be...?" Blargh.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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