Literally "Three teeth" / SUN 9-24-23 / Reaction to the 1950s culture of commercial consumerism / Insurance company with a purple heart logo / First plant on earth it's thought / Marine character whose name has four consecutive vowels / Product once marketed with dancing silhouettes / Dutch explorer Tasman for whom an island is named / SNL characters who coined the term parental units

Constructor: Joel Fagliano & Christina Iverson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Rebrandings" — wacky puns on company names, clued as if they are "rebrandings":

Theme answers:

• 
  LITTLE SEIZERS (23A: We've rebranded! Now we sell tiny tongs!) (Little Caesars)
• WALL GREENS (We've rebranded! Now we sell ivy!)
• BUD WISER (35A: We've rebranded! Now we run an advice column on friendship!) (Budweiser)
• HOLE FOODS (49A: We've rebranded! Now we sell doughnuts and bagels!) (Whole Foods)
• BEST BYE (52A: We've rebranded! Now we help write breakup letters!) [probably shouldn't use "write" here since another of your themers is WRITE-AID (see below)] (Best Buy)
• AMERICAN HEIR LINES (68A: We've rebranded! Now we do genealogy for the U.S.'s rich and famous!) (American Airlines)
• PROCTOR / AND GAMBLE (84A: We've rebranded! Now, with 86-Across, we operate a test-taking facility/casino!) (Procter & Gamble)
• TALK O' BELLE (98A: We've rebranded! Now we produce a "Beauty and the Beast"-themed podcast!) (Taco Bell)
• WRITE-AID (101A: We've rebranded! Now we sell only pens and pencils!) (Rite-Aid)
• EMBASSY SWEETS (115A: We've rebranded! Now we sell candy to diplomats!) (Embassy Suites)

Word of the Day: MOE Berg (116D: ___ Berg, baseball player turned spy) —

Morris Berg (March 2, 1902 – May 29, 1972) was an American catcher and coach in Major League Baseball, who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Although he played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, Berg was never more than an average player and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball." Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball".

A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke several languages and regularly read ten newspapers a day. His reputation as an intellectual was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information Please, in which he answered questions about the etymology of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.

As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups which the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the German nuclear weapons program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the OSS's successor, the Central Intelligence Agency. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm a bit puzzled out tonight, what with solving and blogging the Saturday puzzle early this morning, then going to Ithaca for the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition, where I spoke briefly and also solved a lot of puzzles and also served as a judge, which meant checking over lots of contestant grids. And now after a little break for dinner I'm back solving and blogging again. So when I say this seemed a little lackluster, it could be that I'm just a little burned out. I did have a little aha moment when I finally got my first themer—which was technically WALL GREENS, but I wasn't *entirely* sure that was misspelled, so I didn't really Get the theme until LITTLE SEIZERS. So yeah, uh, cute, but really it's just wacky puns. I've seen Sunday puzzles do this a million times. Today the theme is: companies. And you've got the whole "rebranding" angle, which adds a certain surface-level sparkle and cohesion, but basically it's just wacky puns, the bread and butter of Sunday puzzles since time immemorial. I wish more of them were genuinely clever. LITTLE SEIZERS was pretty good, but with some of them, I can barely see the rebrand, so the wackiness feels muted. I've mentioned WALL GREENS, which barely changes the spelling of the original company. Then there's the stretches, like BUD WISER (?). How do you get from "advice column" to BUD WISER? Has "BUD" been made into a verb here, meaning "to be someone's pal (i.e. bud)"? Like, "Read our advice column! We'll help you BUD ... WISER"? It's a grammatical wreck, that one. 

Then there's PROCTOR AND GAMBLE, which, right now ... honestly I don't know which part is misspelled (or "rebranded"). Is it PROCTER normally? Yep, that's it. Really hard to get excited about wordplay that tepid. I'm not even sure that counts as play. The most inspired answer may be TALK O' BELLE, but that one made me mad because it was the Only one to play the "rebranding" game in both parts of the company name. All the others just change one element (SEIZERS, WISER, WALL, HOLE, etc.) but both "Taco" and "Bell" get new looks in TALK O' BELLE. I don't know if I'm mad because it's odd man out or mad because the other answers are nowhere near as good. Probably the latter. Anyway, not really my thing, but as I say, It's been a long and very puzzly day.

Felt like I was getting assaulted by "?" much of the time, though I think that there are only eight such clues in total, so maybe I just had the misfortune of running into a bunch in quick succession. None of them was particularly bad, I just had that "oh cut it out already" feeling after I'd seen like what felt like one too many. I think they're all clear enough. Christmas (or Yule) ORNAMENTs might be "ball"-shaped. A person UNZIPS (or "drops"?) their "fly" (well, some people, sometimes, with some pants). You "roll" dice to win "dough" at a CRAPS TABLE. Bakers use whisks, so a BAKERY is a [Whisk-y business?] (pun on "risky business"). Etc. The only answers that gave me any trouble all seemed to be concentrated in NW. The POP ART clue was tough for me (1A: Reaction to the 1950s culture of commercial consumerism). If I'd know the "reaction" was aesthetic, that might've helped. I was looking for ... I dunno, some kind of movement, like, oh, the Luddite movement or something like that (but more modern). Maybe some kind of religious revival or consciousness-raising group or something. But no. It's Lichtenstein and Warhol. Tough. But not as tough as the clue on TEEN, my god (6D: Louis Braille, when he invented Braille). I guess the "when" part was supposed to clue me into a "stage of life" answer. but all I could think was nationality or ethnicity. "Uh, SERB? LETT? CELT?" I'd've been guessing all day without crosses. TEEN. That has to be the most esoteric way of getting at something as banal as TEEN that I've ever seen. Nothing else in the puzzle was nearly as hard as those two (crossing!) answers. Nothing non-thematic, anyway.

I had BULKY before BURLY (52D: Powerfully built) and PSG (Paris Saint-Germain!) before POR (Portugal) (59D: Cristiano Ronaldo's team: Abbr.). The latter mistake is what happens when you simultaneously know both too much and too little about soccer. Messi played for PSG, but Ronaldo never did, as far as I can tell. Oh well. Got confused by the clue on OTTAWA, / ONTARIO, mostly because I didn't understand "selected" (15D: With 22-Across, world capital selected by Queen Victoria). "Selected ... for what?" I wondered. But I guess she just .... chose that city to be the capital of the country? For some reason? Why? Did she just close her eyes and plunk her finger down on a map? I think that's what she did. I like the image, so that's the reality I'm going with. Over at Bluesky, the newish Twitter (now, stupidly, "X") alternative, posts are most commonly referred to as SKEETs, so look for that definition of SKEET to appear in crosswords ... some time. Probably. Maybe. For now, [Sport with clay disks] will have to do.

It's almost time for the Boswords Themeless League to start up again. Registration is open for the Fall League. It's a fun way to "compete" from the comfort of your home. If you love crosswords and want to add a new, entertaining dimension to your weekly solving repertoire, consider signing up. Here's the blurb from League co-ordinator John Lieb:

Registration for the Boswords 2023 Fall Themeless League is open! This 10-week event starts with a Preseason puzzle on Wednesday, September 27 and features weekly themeless puzzles -- clued at three levels of difficulty -- from an all-star roster of constructors and are edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to solve a practice puzzle, to view the constructor line-up, and to learn more, go to www.boswords.org. 

The constructor line-up looks good, and Brad is a wonderful, experienced editor, so these should be a treat. That's all from me today. And a mini shout-out to everyone at the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition who came up and talked to me and said nice things etc. I had a blast. I was particularly excited (literally bouncing on the balls of my feet at one point) when younger people (Cornell students! Several! Hi, Ben) would tell me they solved and read the blog on a regular basis. So cool (to me) to see people their age so enthusiastic, so ready to embrace their word nerdiness and hang out with their elders. I took pictures with people, signed autographs (!!!), it was great. Great. More than I deserve. This was the first tournament of any sort I'd been to in person since before the pandemic. The whole event had a laid-back and friendly vibe. I hadn't realized how much I missed being around fellow enthusiasts. Very wholesome. Very energizing. I mean, I'm tired right this moment, but energized overall, and very grateful to be doing what I'm doing every day. See you tomorrow, or next week, or whenever.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Experience of feeling unfamiliar with something that's actually quite familiar to you / SAT 4-1-23 / Pikachu's cry in Pokemon / Wilcox daughter in Howard's End / Cochon de suckling pig / Scientific name for the American Bison / Brew whose red-and-white logo was inspired by billiard balls / Japanese export beginning in 1982 / Noted employer in Clermont Ky / Symbol of forgetfulness in Ishiguro's The Buried Giant / Puppeteer Baird who performed for The Sound of Music

Constructor: Wyna Liu and Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: ABC (22A: Airer of "Batman" on 1960s TV) — all answers are made out A, B, C, and all the other letters of the alphabet ... except Q and Z for some reason

Word of the Day: ARM BANDS (37D: They go from 540 to 1700, informally) —

An armband is a piece of material worn around the arm. They may be worn for pure ornamentation, or to mark the wearer as belonging to group, or as insignia having a certain rank, status, office or role, or being in a particular state or condition. Sprung armbands, known as sleeve garters, have been used by men to keep overlong sleeves from dropping over the hands and thereby interfering with their use. Armbands may also refer to inflatable armbands used to assist flotation for swimmers or for use with sphygmomanometers, in which case they are generally referred to as cuffs. (wikipedia)

• • •

I woke up this morning thinking "Hurray, it's April 1, best day of the year! Who doesn't like being fooled? Not me, that's for sure." And then I open this puzzle and ... what a gift. Truly the best puzzle of the year, without question.

See you tomorrow!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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French department that borders Switzerland / THU 7-30-20 / Appropriate ratio for this puzzle

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Easy (?) (very easy for most of you, but not for me; I was so confused by the way the puzzle came across in my software and by having to navigate the grid in an unnatural way that my time came out very normal)

THEME: TWO / TO ONE (51- and 54-Across: Appropriate ratio for this puzzle?) — every across answer comes in two successive parts, so TWO parts TO every ONE answer, I guess

Word of the Day: FALL / LINE (17A & 18A: It's all downhill from here) —

merriam-webster.com

• • •

This is one of those "feats of construction" that you can shoot into the sun, please and thank you. I'm sure it was a challenge to make, but that absolutely does not translate into "pleasure to solve." It's not even that the gimmick is hard to grasp—it's not. It's ultimately very simple. It's straightforward. But imagine ... you know how annoying it is when you encounter one too many cross-reference clues, one too many [With 14-Across, blah blah blah]-type of clue, where you have to look in a different section of the grid for whatever the back end of some answer is? OK, yes, annoying, agreed; now imagine ALL the Acrosses are like that. All of them. ALL of them force you into another section of the grid in order to finish them off. And sometimes, a lot of the time, that means your first part is in the east and your second part is Back In The West. And why? The payoff? Ha ha, joke's on you, there is none. None. It just goes on like that. With no interesting fill, no good answers, hardly any longer answers at all, literally every single damned across entry is made up of 3- 4- or 5-letter bits. Nothing longer. Only (2) answers in the Downs longer than five (5!!!). Absolute drudgery. I guess the easiness is going to make people feel ... successful or good, I don't know. Most people will certainly finish faster than usual, perhaps faster than they've ever finished a Thursday puzzle. But this theme ... I can see how as a constructor you might have the idea and try it out, but once you saw that even if you *could* do it, it would be dreary at best, you'd think ... you wouldn't ... do it. It's not like anyone's going to get to TWO / TO ONE and go "Ohhhh!" or "Aha!" or anything. All in all it's just one more split-answer brick in the wall.


So a brief explanation of why my time was totally average while the rest of you were going very fast. First, I'm tired. Second, I move through puzzles section by section, as a rule. Work the crosses on answers I've already got. When I have to jump sections for every single Across, it's like being forced out of my normal puzzle rhythm at every turn. Just feels yuck. Also, my software was presenting the clues in a weird way. Like this:

I looked at "1a. & 5." and honestly didn't know what it meant. In normal newspaper layout, there's just "1. & 5." under the normal "Across" heading, so the meaning is something closer to transparent. With the "a." part attached to just the first number, I thought, I don't know, maybe math or some other weird thing was involved. It's Thursday, after all, so who knows? The worst part of the solve for me was actually realizing I have no idea what a FALL LINE is. Unless it's a fashion thing. Otherwise, no idea. None. Just none. Tree line, sure. Fall guy, yep. Fault line, definitely. But FALL LINE, wow, made it to 50 without experiencing this one. This is obviously a problem with me, not the puzzle, but it certainly didn't help my mood (which even by then was already pretty foul).


I had OMAN before IRAN (2D: Charter member of OPEC). I don't really know the term LAND / USERS. I laughed out loud at ASPEN / TREE, which is the HAIKU / POEM of this puzzle. I also laughed at MADE / ABID, which feels very "green paint"-y.* At least WAITA / SEC, as a whole, feels like a solid, stand-alone expression. MADE / ABID is just a mini ATEASANDWICH. I think the past tense here is just ... BID. And omg I struggled with the GOOD in GOOD / TONE. GOOD? Just ... GOOD? "Even," "measured," ok, but just GOOD felt vague and confusing. I've heard $100 bills called "C-NOTES" and "Benjamins," for sure, but BENS?? Sigh. That would have people wondering if you weren't talking about a Mercedes. Bizarre. LRON is always awful as fill and AIN is pAINful. With your whole grid made up of 3-to-5 letter bits, those bits could At Least be clean. But no, LRON AIN. That is some 1980s-normal fill right there. And even the two longer answers don't really do much. They're completely acceptable—hell, compared to the rest of the fill, they're two big breaths of fresh air. But your FOLK MUSIC TOILET BAG can't make up for THE slash AISLE (wow) or the rest of it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"green paint" = phrase that, sure, one might say, but that doesn't really hold up as a stand-alone crossword answer

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Measure of gold purity / TUES 4-28-20 / Number with all its letters in alphabetical order / Hodgepodge / Soundly defeats, colloquially

Hello! It's Clare today for the last Tuesday of April. At least, I think it's Tuesday? The shelter-in-place has been going on so long that all the days are starting to blur together. The only thing orienting me right now is that I have a final on May 1 — don't ask me what day of the week that is, though. I hope you all are staying healthy and safe! I've been back home in California for a bit, and I'm taking my law school finals online and trying to stay motivated. It's not easy! Especially because my love for BTS has only grown (for those who read my write-up last month, I was indeed talking about the K-pop group known for their amazing lyrics/music and dance routines). My YouTube recommendations are now just entirely their videos, which has kept me pretty distracted.

Yes, I might be going a little stir-crazy. So, on that note, let's get to the puzzle!

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Medium-Hard

THEME: Replacing the "TR" sound in the final word of each of the theme answers with "TW"

Theme answers:

• COMPANY RETWEET (19A: Endorsement from a brand's account?)
• OLD BAG OF TWIX (24A: Some Halloween candy discovered in February?)
• FAMILY TWEEZE (40A: When the whole clan gets their eyebrows done?)
• HIGH SPEED TWAIN (46A: CliffsNotes version of "Huckleberry Finn"?)

Word of the Day: SAM SPADE (35D: "The Maltese Falcon" detective) —

Sam Spade is a fictional character and the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon. Spade also appeared in four lesser-known short stories by Hammett. The Maltese Falcon, first published as a serial in the pulp magazine Black Mask, is the only full-length novel in which Spade appears. The character, however, is widely cited as a crystallizing figure in the development of hard-boiled private detective fiction—Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, for instance, was strongly influenced by Spade. (Wiki)

• • •

Maybe I've been staring at the walls (and textbooks) too long, but, for me, the puzzle today mostly fell flat. The theme didn't feel clever enough to take up so much space in the puzzle, and theme just sort of sat there — it was fine, but it didn't even get an ironic "hah" from me. I know there doesn't always need to be a revealer in a puzzle, but I do think this particular puzzle could have benefitted from something to tie the puzzle together — maybe a clue involving Elmer Fudd, as he is known for having a speech impediment that changes an r-sound to a w-sound (fact I learned from Google: This is known as rhotacism). The pun I found the funniest was HIGH SPEED TWAIN, but this also feels like the biggest reach — I'm not sure that this answer makes sense for the clue. Then, the rest of the puzzle didn't do much for me, either, with some very literal clues and answers and some truly odd words to see in a puzzle as fill. I mean, BLAMABLE? That's just an ugly word. And, TOENAILS? When the most interesting down in the puzzle is TOENAILS — and they always get an "ew" reaction from me — I think there's a problem.

In general, I felt like I wasn't on the same wavelength as the constructor for most of the puzzle and kept putting in wrong answers. I got off to a bad start in the puzzle pretty quickly with 1A: Honey bunch? It took me a while to figure out it was COMB rather than "bees" or "hive" or something like that. I also just generally disliked the clue for EMTS — 59A: Some volunteers at music festivals, for short. There are so many other ways to clue this that aren't bizarre, including making the puzzle more current and mentioning how awesome and integral and heroic EMTS are on the front line of the pandemic and how important their work is. And, why clue in relation to music festivals, which aren't even happening right now (I know because I'd been planning to see BTS in concert yesterday!).

I did like some of the good literature references we've got in the puzzle with WOOLF for "Mrs. Dalloway," DAISY from "The Great Gatsby," and SAM SPADE from "The Maltese Falcon." Those are some great book choices. Dashiell Hammett's Brigid O'Shaughnessy was the first femme-fatale character I read, and I'll never tire of reading anything F. Scott Fitzgerald writes. I mean, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," Like, come one!

Misc.:

• 21D: Complete fool as TWIT made me weirdly happy, because it reminded me of the book "The Twits" by Roald Dahl, which is one of his strangest books, but I loved it. According to Wikipedia, Dahl wrote this book because of his hatred of beards. The first line of the book is, "What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays!"
• The puzzle was a tad "current" today with DISS track (49D) and FACE SWAP (8D: Popular app feature that generates funny photos). Though the puzzle also had FWIW, and I can guarantee you that nobody under the age of 30 actually uses this. 
• I went on a rant last time about UCLA in honor of my sister, who went to Cal, and the constructor today had the audacity to make me type out this school again!
• Anyone else being trendy right now and making a LOAF (or loaves) of bread? With the run on banana bread, do stores even have any bananas left? My sister won't stop talking about how we need to make a sourdough starter.

Signed, Clare Carroll, a twitchy twenty-something

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Escapee from Miss Gulch's bicycle basket / SUN 4-12-20 / Player of Ben Watt on Parks Recreation / Weak unconvincing argument / Moore whom Sports Illustrated called greatest winner in history of women's basketball / Asian city with monument to John McCain / So-called enclosed rhyme scheme

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Medium (10:48)

THEME: "Barista Training Day" — familiar phrases are clued as if they completed imagined sentences about to people learning to make coffee:

Theme answers:

• SPILLED THE BEANS (24A: Things got off to a bad start when one trainee tripped and ...)
• SPLIT HALF AND HALF (40A: The carton leaked milk everywhere when the trainee accidentally ...)
• LACKED A FILTER (53A: The drip coffee tasted grainy because they ...)
• FAR FROM YOUR AVERAGE JOE (68A: In fact, every cup they served was ...)
• RAN OUT OF STEAM (85A: To make matters worse, the espresso machine ...)
• GROUNDS FOR FIRING (95A: They worried about their jobs -- these mistakes were ...)
• GOT INTO HOT WATER (115A: Sure enough, when the boss showed up, everyone ...)

Word of the Day: Berbers (90A: Home to man Berbers => MOROCCO) —

Berbers, or Amazighs, (Berber languages: ⵉⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵏ, ⵎⵣⵗⵏ, romanized: Imaziɣen; singular: Amaziɣ, ⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖ ⵎⵣⵗ) are an ethnic group of several nations mostly indigenous to North Africaand some northern parts of West Africa.

Berbers mostly live in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, northern Mali, northern Niger, and a small part of western Egypt. (wikipedia)

• • •

As you've probably come to understand by now, my expectations for Sundays are quite low. When the theme misses, or is just too weak to sustain over the course of a 21x21 grid, then the solving experience is the sloggiest of slogs, even when the puzzle isn't terribly difficult. Slightly weak theme on a Wednesday, you can endure, maybe even enjoy, but stretch that same theme out to Sunday size, and woof. Not fun. It's strangely rare that a NYT Sunday has a theme that is truly inventive and delightful *and* well executed. So I have learned not to expect much. But even with those low expectations, I was genuinely stunned at how weak this effort was. Or, rather, I was surprised to see so weak an effort from someone so experienced but also so (relatively) young. This concept is corny and old-fashioned—take a concept, find phrases unrelated to that concept but that contain words that *can* be related to that concept, and then make that wacky reimagining of the phrases the basis of your overarching pun-driven narrative. Seen it. A lot. If you like that sort of thing, great. Especially great if the puns really land, but some people like even just-OK puns of this sort. Fine. A pun-based puzzle like this really has to hit much more often than it misses, and hit Big; this one just putters along. Humor-wise, it's pretty average for this theme type, but too often the phrases themselves seemed awkward or forced or strange. LACKED A FILTER is ... ick. It's just not tight. It's a phrase someone might say, but it isn't stand-alone strong (whether you found them funny or not, SPILLED THE BEANS, RAN OUT OF STEAM, GOT INTO HOT WATER ... those all hold up; solid expressions, and thus tolerable answers). SPLIT HALF AND HALF ... I kept wanting that first word to be "spilt"; also I don't think of "half and half" as "milk," so the clue is weird there. Also, the phrase itself ... teeters. This is ... not a great set of first search results (when I google the phrase in quot. marks):

Wanted FAR FROM YOUR AVERAGE to end in BEAR, but the Yogi Bear phrase is "smarter than the average bear." Still, the phrase as is isn't exactly strong or particularly current. The worst, to my ear, though, was GROUNDS FOR FIRING. The phrase is "grounds for dismissal." Here are the "grounds for" phrases that google expects:

Actually, this is a terrible list. What is "grounds for sculpture"?! The more important google info is that "grounds for dismissal" absolutely trounces "grounds for firing" by about 10 to 1. I figured out FIRING without much trouble, but all these minor misses really left me with a, let's say, bitter taste in my mouth.


But the more surprising issue was how rough the fill was in many places. AYS AAHS *and* AMS!? More than one FIDO!?!? GRP AGER BAHA and on and on. Why do COG (45A: ___ sci, college major related to psych) and ABBA (51D: So-called "enclosed" rhyme scheme) have the dumb clues they have? A COG is a thing; clue it as a thing, not as this alleged major that no one says this way (would sound too much like "cock sigh" ... "cock's eye?"). And I teach bleepin' sonnets and yet have never referred to ABBA as an "enclosed rhyme scheme." I'm sure someone somewhere calls it that, but 9 times out of 10 if ABBA comes up in my life, this is what it means to me:


I did enjoy some stuff today. PHONE TAG is fun (58D: Series of missed calls). RAIN DATE and PRESS BOX aren't bad. I enjoy the work of ADAM SCOTT (might watch all of "The Good Place" again real soon, as I already miss it). But the grid averages out to somewhat below average, and without a tight / funny theme to anchor everything, we end up with another mere time-filler; an exercise in filling in boxes, dutifully completed because that's what we do. But this really does feel like weak ... sauce (I can't even bring myself to use the puzzle's own "weak TEA" metaphor).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Peter Sagal reviews a new book about crosswords in today's New York Times Book Review; it's very much worth reading, even if he does refer to me as "the curmudgeonly scold whom every constructor resents [...]"  

P.P.S. (reprinted from yesterday's write-up) please read this blog post by the great Liz Gorski, a wonderful crossword constructor whose name you might recognize from NYT crosswords past. She stopped submitting to the NYTXW a while back. The blog post explains why. Her words (which, trust me, are diplomatic) provide a complementary perspective to that of the recent Open Letter to the Executive Director of Puzzles at the NYT, calling for, among other things, increased diversity among the test-solving and editorial staff. But Liz is writing from a place of longtime personal experience, and she's demonstrably (and understandably) less sanguine about the likelihood that small editorial policy changes are likely to seriously address the problems with gender parity and overall inclusivity at the NYTXW. Anyway, it's worth a read. She's a legendary constructor, and I'm happy she's added her voice to this discussion.

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Puckered fabric / SUN 6-16-19 / Co-owner of Paddy's pub on It's always sunny in philadelphia / Onetime US soccer prodigy Freddy / Weapon with distinctive hum / Thomas Aquinas others philosophically / Classic play with Delphic oracle

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (10:59)

THEME: "Not In So Many Words" (Unthemed) — well, not theme, but they want you to know that the word count is low for some reason ...

Word of the Day: PLISSÉ (44D: Puckered fabric) —

adjective

1. 1. 

   (of fabric) treated to give a permanent puckered or crinkled effect.

   "a plissé prom dress"

noun

1. 1. 

   material treated so as to be permanently puckered or crinkled. (google)

• • •

My god this puzzle is annoying. And coy. Oh, it's themeless ("Unthemed") but oh, tee hee, 1-Across is FATHER'S DAY, which is today! ... but no, yeah, it is Actually themeless and there is nothing else FATHER'S DAY about this. This is called punting. We got nothing good in the hopper, we can't pull off a Sunday theme to save our lives lately, so let's try to make the word count as low as possible (near as I can tell, this ties the record for low word count for a Sunday at 124 ... the puzzle it ties was published New Year's Eve 1961, and it's A Doozy) (in that it has "words" like FOSSA, GISHU, ARRHA, TEMENI, KEZIA and FISCS). Look, 21x21 is just too big for a themeless. Not enough constraint. 15x15 works well for themelesses—you can make it superhard and it's still small enough not to take forever, and the constraint (in terms of size and word count, which must be 72 or lower) forces a certain amount of creativity and ingenuity. A 21x21 canvas is just too big for a themeless. I can't really be impressed that you could pull off *anything* in a 21x21 grid. What's stopping you? Who even thinks in terms of word count on a Sunday. Mostly this is just word sprawl. Very little of it is bad. Some of it is fun. But it's mainly just blah blah blah. And then ADIT and TISCH crossing PLISSÉ, bleecccccch. THE SLOTS and THE BIT. Do Something Interesting. Just slapping FATHER'S DAY at 1-Across isn't it.


I did not have a bad time solving this. I merely had A Time. Not enough for the Marquee Puzzle, though. Not nearly enough. Sundays are the hardest day of the week to pull off. Themed puzzles are hard in general, and to get one to work, and not become tiresome, across such a great amount of space, is truly special. Which is why y'all should go back and admire Agard's "Stoner Movies" instead of whinging that it was about drugs. Eric is (almost) single-handedly keeping the NYTXW from being a full-on embarrassment of bygoneness and white-guy mediocrity. Sincerely, they're lucky he lets them publish his stuff.


I don't care about this grid enough to comment much.

Didn't know:

• PALOMA (39A: Cocktail of tequila and grapefruit soda)—rough clue. I think Picasso is the only PALOMA I know
• PLISSÉ (44D: Puckered fabric)—oof. OK. New words are cool, but crossing ADIT and TISCH, maybe less than cool
• DENNIS—(83D: Co-owner of Paddy's Pub on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia")—may as well have been clued [Man's name] or [Name]. Uniconic.

Did know:

• ADIT—the most Maleskan of all the crosswordese. In the early '90s, I actually used to sign off my emails to my fellow NYT-solving friend with pieces of 4-letter crosswordese. ADIT was a favorite. "Favorite."

Knew and actually liked:

• TOTORO—a lovely movie
• ASSHAT

OK bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. FACEVEIL? As opposed to what, ASSVEIL? Come on. (80D: Muslim niqab, e.g.)

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Engraved stone marker / WED 5-1-19 / Article's start in journalism jargon / Compassionate Uncle Tom's Cabin girl

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:24)

THEME: Anagrammed STATE CAPITALS (36A: What the answers to the starred clues are each anagrams of):

Theme answers:

• IN SLANG (Lansing) (20A: *Not formally worded)
• UP LAST (St. Paul) (21A: *Like the pitcher in a batting order, often)
• MALES (Salem) (26A: *Peacocks, but not peahens)
• ROVED (Dover) (44A: *Wandered)
• ANTI-U.S. (Austin) (54A: *Like some foreign protests)
• HAIR GEL (Raleigh) (55A: *What keeps a part apart)
• DOMAINS (Madison) (24D: *Internet addresses)

Word of the Day: Samantha BEE (36D: Killer Bee?) —

Samantha Anne Bee (born October 25, 1969) is a Canadian-American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actress, and television host. Bee rose to fame as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where she became the longest-serving regular correspondent. In 2015, she departed the show after 12 years to start her own show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.

Bee became a US citizen in 2014, while retaining her Canadian citizenship. In 2017, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world on their annual Time 100 list. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'll try not to dwell on this one, since early Twitter feedback seems to indicate that everyone already knows what's wrong with it. There's just no point to this. Why are you anagramming STATE CAPITALS? Why not anagram cheeses or dog breeds or characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And what is the point of the anagram? Why anagram and not, I don't know, make them run diagonal or form circles or something. I keep expecting there to be another level here, something beyond a puzzle that straight-up tells you "these answers are anagrams of STATE CAPITALS" and that's it. Maybe the state codes of the states in question ... spell something out? ... no? ... uh ... is this a metapuzzle scavenger hunt, some epic quest that only like four people will understand and if you go to all these capitals in a certain order ... you win a THING? Am I currently in a VR GAME? There must be some explanation for why this puzzle is happening. But I'm at a loss. Also, why punish solvers by making them do homework at the end of the solve For No Reason. Of course I couldn't resist de-anagramming these capitals, but I did not feel good doing it. "MUST I!?" Turns out, yeah, I must, but only because I'm compulsive.

There are three UPs in this puzzle. Probably not high on your list of "things wrong with this puzzle," but it's really jarring to me, especially since two of them appear in crossing answers (UP LAST, HAUL UP). DUE UP is a pretty flagrant dupe (i.e. answer containing a duplicated word), with the baseballiness of the phrase really calling attention to UP LAST and its explicit baseball clue (21A: *Like the pitcher in a batting order, often). UP UP UP. Yuck. Also, ST. PAUL is an abbrev. ... which feels like cheating. You can't anagram the abbrev. version! Also, ANTI-U.S. is an abbrev. but nothing in the clue signals it. SAM I AM and SAMANTHA feels like a dupe, esp considering she's known commonly as "Sam Bee." Also, why is her clue [Killer Bee?]. It's great if you're a fan of hers, but "Killer" hardly gets at who she is or what she does except in a very metaphorical, highly elliptical way. Sometimes you actually do need to resist the wordplay.


FAN SITE (18D: MuggleNet or The Leaky Cauldron, for "Harry Potter" readers) and VR* GAME (45D: Something that requires a special headset to play, informally) are cool, but they're overshadowed by this nothing of a theme.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*VR = virtual reality

P.S. PRNDL stands for "Park Reverse Neutral Drive LOW," i.e. the gears on an automatic transmission

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Thumb drive port, for short / MON 4-1-2019 / Gymnast Korbut / Old Venetian rulers / Peter Fonda title role of 1997

Constructor: Joel Fagliano

Relative difficulty: Easy







THEME: APRIL FOOLS — Theme answers are just strings of letters.

Theme answers:

• TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT (20A: Tea set?)
• GGGGGGGGGGGGGGG (36A: G-string?)
• BBBBBBBBBBBBBBB (50A: Beeline?)

Word of the Day: EBBETS (45D: ___ Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers) —

Ebbets Field was a Major League Baseball stadium in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. It is known mainly as the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team of the National League, from 1913 to 1957, but was also home to three National Football League teams in the 1920s. Ebbets Field was demolished in 1960 and replaced by apartment buildings.

• • •

Hi everyone, it's me, Rex, and I thought this puzzle was poorly constructed. Always unfortunate when I don't have a lot to say about a puzzle, and that's the case here. The theme answers fell flat; the answers didn't even form an acronym. I would have loved to see more diversity in cluing as well; too many baseball clues, overused clue-word connections, etc. This one just did nothing for me.

Wait, it's the first Monday of the month! It's been me, Annabel, this whole time! April Fools! That being said, I think the puzzle's trick worked; I totally slapped myself in the forehead when I entered my fourth T. I actually do wish the answers had formed an acronym. In fact, it seems like it would have been easy to do without changing too many of the clues--G, B, and T were all there, and with the LGBTFLAG clue it seems like a natural progression to add LLLLLLL or something.  But other than that, having words that aren't actually words is a good April Fool's prank in my book!

Anyway, the rest of the puzzle. Not to linger on LGBTFLAG too long but I don't know anyone who doesn't just say "Rainbow flag" or "pride flag," making that terminology feel a little forced. I didn't have a ton of difficulty with this one, which IMO makes it a good Monday overall! My one other major gripe with the puzzle was that the cluing tended towards straightforward, which would normally be fine but doesn't feel right for an April Fools' Day puzzle. Play around with some words a little! I mean, getting BUSS right away did validate my English major, but give me something else to work with too!


Bullets:

• BLAH (50D: When tripled, "and so on and so forth") — I'm feeling the opposite of this right now! I just got back on campus after my last spring break ever (until graduate school but that's different), and I've been applying to a bajillion jobs. I'm like, super nervous, guys, but also super excited. So yeah, anything but blah.
• AEIOU (59A: "...and sometimes Y" preceder) — Oh man, talk about a blast from the past. 
• OUIS (40A: French assents) — I think the constructor was just being a ouise guy with this one. [Loud groans] 
• EARWORM (25A: Tune you just can't get out of your head) — It was too hard to pick just one, so I'll leave you with this comedy bit about an earworm instead. 

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired college student.

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