Source of distress for a bull / SUN 12-1-24 / "The Corsican Brothers" author, 1844 / Dirt-y words? / X exchanges, for short / Co-star of 1952's "Moulin Rouge," familiarly / Actress Barton of "The O.C." / Emmy winner born Alphonso D'Abruzzo / Big name in travel mugs / Either of two wise-cracking film critics in "Mystery Science Theater 3000"

Constructor: John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

[there's a little ZAMBONI icon blocking the second "I" in INDIC (121A: Like Sanskrit)]

THEME: ZAMBONI (93D: Machine waiting to enter the middle of this grid, as suggested by the answers to the starred clues) — the middle of the grid is an "ICE" rink, represented by five isolated ICE answers, one atop the other (the Downs inside the "ice rink" must be read phonetically to be understood). The ICE rink awaits the ZAMBONI (which, if you solve in the app or on the website, appears in a little animation at the end to "resurface" the ICE). The starred clues throughout the grid have ordinary answers that can be read as ZAMBONI-related puns:

The ICEs:

• ICE (54A: Decorate at a bakery)
• ICE (61A: Clinch)
• ICE (68A: Off, in mob slang)
• ICE (73A: Rapper ___ Spice)
• ICE (77A: Diamonds, informally)

The central Downs:

• IIIII (i.e. "ayes") (54D: Positive votes)
• CCCCC (i.e. "seize") (55D: "___ the day!")
• EEEEE (i.e. "ease") (56D: Comfort)

The ZAMBONI puns (i.e. the starred clues):

• SURFACE SCRATCH (23A: *Blemish on a vehicle)
• SLOW-ROLLING (35A: *Like a weakly hit ground ball)
• ADDED / LAYER (32A: *With 101-Across, extra level of intricacy)
• FROZEN ASSET (97A: *Holding that's hard to convert to cash)
• "SMOOTH OPERATOR" (115A: *1984 Sade hit)
• CLEAN SHEETS (16D: *Expectation at the start of a hotel stay)
• GLOSSES OVER (66D: *Quickly moves past in conversation)

Word of the Day: ZAMBONI (93D) —

An ice resurfacer is a vehicle or hand-pushed device for cleaning and smoothing the surface of a sheet of ice, usually in an ice rink. The first ice resurfacer was developed by American inventor and engineer Frank Zamboni in 1949 in Paramount, California. As such, an ice resurfacer is often referred to as a "Zamboni" as a genericized trademark. (wikipedia)

• • •

As I've said before, I'm not usually big on puzzles that are primarily architectural feats, or on puzzles that rely heavily on post-solve shenanigans (i.e. animation) for their entertainment value. That said, I like this puzzle better than most "architectural feat" puzzles because the theme involves not just physical manipulation of the grid, but wordplay to boot, and lots of it. The "ICE rink" here is particularly ingenious. You've got this strikingly isolated 3x5 section in the middle of the grid, which appears to violate one of the cardinal rules of crosswords ("Thou shalt have all over connectivity"). But the "rink" does end up being connected, conceptually, by the theme—namely the ZAMBONI, which is indeed "waiting to enter the middle of this grid." It's then connected physically to the rest of the grid, but only if you experience the post-solve animation, where a little ZAMBONI comes scooting onto the ICE and smooths everything out (i.e. systematically erases all those "ICE"s, turning them a bright ice-blue).

Print solvers obviously miss out on the post-solve ZAMBONI appearance. My software ended up in a kind of No Man's Land when rendering the animation, giving me instead a static picture of what I ultimately inferred was supposed to be a ZAMBONI, and then a teeny line connecting the "rink" to the rest of the grid, which (in the animation) is the entry/exit point of for the ZAMBONI.  

Those "rink" answers, particularly the Acrosses, are very easy to get, so it's likely you didn't need any particular assistance from the theme to work them out. From a pure solving standpoint, best thing about the "center ice" (which, I just realized, describes this puzzle perfectly *and* is the actual term for the central part of a hockey rink) is the clever way the Downs are worked out, the all-one-letter phonetic solutions to "AYES," "SEIZE," and "EASE." This gives the puzzle an ADDED / LAYER (!) of wordplay, on top of the general punniness of the answers to the starred clues. Overall, the puzzle reminded me a lot of the recent HOT AIR BALLOON puzzle, with its pictorial element and its punny themers. The balloon puzzle's pictorial element was more striking, but it was also more obvious—I like how this "rink" kind of snuck up on me—and the added wordplay involved in the "ICE rink" composition gave it a little extra zing.

[88A: Either of two wise-cracking film critics in "Mystery Science Theater 3000"]

As for the fill, my main comment is "Rizzo had a first name!? And it was BETTY!?!?!?" Admittedly, it's been many many years since I watched Grease, but I have watched it a lot, and somehow forgot the BETTY tidbit. Now that I'm typing it out, I seem to remember that ... maybe (?) there was a scene where people (the T-Birds?) teased her about her first name (for sounding too "good girl," maybe). Anyway, she is decidedly mononymous throughout the film, so I had a big blank where BETTY was supposed to go, and somehow that blankness radiated westward and made everything over there harder. That section below ADDED and above ÉTÉ was by far the hardest part for me to work out. No idea about ALDA (32D: Emmy winner born Alphonso D'Abruzzo), DOUP (33D: Arrange, as hair), or DUMAS (45A: "The Corsican Brothers" author, 1844). The BETTY-adjacent TISSUES had that "?" clue that kept it out of my reach for a bit (47D: Cold comfort?). I had MILEPOST before SIGNPOST (64A: Info provider at a crossroads), I totally forgot the Elgort guy (ANSEL) (83A: Actor Elgort of "West Side Story"), and with GOSSIP, again, the "?" clue got me (89A: Dirt-y words?), as did the fact that the answer itself wasn't a plural (the clue could've just been ["Dirt"], but they had to go and get fancy). But outside of that section, things were very easy. I misspelled Bert LAHR's name (as LEHR) and wouldn't have noticed if BASEL hadn't looked so wrong (105A: ___ metabolism => BASAL; whereas BASEL is a city in Switzerland; BASIL, of course, remains a culinary herb, which I'm unlikely to forget, as it is the only member of the BAS-L family with which I have regular contact). In that same area, I struggled (slightly) to figure out the "setting" for "Cinderella," after ROYAL PALACE and ROYAL CASTLE wouldn't fit. Once I got ROYAL BALL, it seemed obvious, but once you start looking for a physical place, it's hard to stop.

[SIGNPOST suddenly triggered a memory of this textbook/workbook that I had in elementary school (in the late '70s); haven't thought about it at all since elementary school ... until now. Crazy]

Some notes:

• 5A: Source of distress for a bull (DIP) — briefly worried that there was going to be some animal suffering in the puzzle, but "bull" here is just someone betting on a "bull" (i.e. rising) market. To that person, a (market) DIP would be potentially distressful.
• 1A: Smack (BUSS) — both words for “kiss”
• 13A: Actress Barton of "The O.C." (MISCHA) — kinda going back for this one. I watched the show for a bit, so I know her name, but secondary actors on bygone TV can be dicey name territory. Luckily, today, the crosses all seem fair. That's assuming you knew SCREE, or at least knew enough to infer that "S" (15D: Rocky debris).
• 28A: Things compared between Wordle solvers (STREAKS) — ew, what? People do this? I am a religious Wordle solver but I've never given one thought to my "streak," and even if I did, the idea that I'd "compare" mine with someone else's, no. Weird. Crossword streaks are far more noteworthy and substantial as puzzling accomplishments go—and I wouldn't compare them either. No one cares about your streak (but you).
• 73A: Rapper ___ Spice (ICE) — if you've never heard of her, I'm not that surprised. She is a very recent phenomenon (rising to fame sometime in the past few years) ("she began her musical career in 2021," per wikipedia). But I'm no expert. I only know about her because they discussed her on "All Songs Considered" once, and also some local frat (I think?) has a poster of her hanging in their window downtown that I walk past all the time. It looks something like this:

• 91A: Co-star of 1952's "Moulin Rouge," familiarly (ZSA-ZSA) — I had no idea ZSA-ZSA Gabor was in ... anything. She always seemed to be famous primarily for being famous. Unlike her sister, EVA, who was on Green Acres. Anyway, my reaction to this clue was "they had a 'Moulin Rouge' in 1952?" News to me. I know ZSA-ZSA primarily from a single episode of The Love Boat. Here's a clip (in German, for added fun):

• 94A: X exchanges, for short (DMS) — X is the site formerly known as Twitter. The app has recently suffered a mass exodus of users, whereas competing app BlueSky has seen its numbers soar. I deactivated my Twitter (X) account on my birthday this year, and am now living quite happily on BlueSky. Oh, and DMS are simply "direct messages."
• 24D: What a par 5 has never been, on the P.G.A. Tour (ACED) — to "ace" a hole is to get a hole-in-one.
• 31D: Operate at a heavy loss (BLEED MONEY) — vivid. Best non-theme answer in the grid. Maybe the best answer, period. Well, except maybe "SMOOTH OPERATOR," which is hard to beat.

• 111D: Guesses of interest in the cellphone lot (ETAS) — I have to confess that I have no idea what a "cellphone lot" is. Apparently it's just a free or low-cost parking lot for people to wait in when they're picking up passengers from the airport (although maybe they have them at other public transport sites, I don't know).

It's the first day of December, which means (in my mind, at any rate) it's officially Holiday Season! This means two things for this blog. First, starting next week and for a couple Sundays after that, I'll have a Holiday Gift Guide, featuring crossword and other puzzle-related gifts you can get for the puzzle-lover in your life (or for yourself, why not?). So if you have something puzzle-related to sell, or you have a puzzle-related gift suggestion, please pass that along to me. Second, also starting next Sunday and then for as long as I've got material, I'll be posting Holiday Pet Pics—send me pictures of your non-human loved ones in festive settings (dressed in a Santa hat, playing with a dreidel chew toy, whatever) (crossword content optional), and I'll post a few at the end of my write-up every day throughout the Holiday Season. For both gift suggestions and Holiday Pet Pics, you can reach me at rexparker at icloud dot com. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Monodon monoceros more familiarly / SAT 7-23-22 / First person to fly solo around the world 1933 / Gesture signifying perfection / Animal whose name literally means nose

Constructor: John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: WILEY POST (31A: First person to fly solo around the world (1933)) —

Wiley Hardeman Post (November 22, 1898 – August 15, 1935) was a famed American aviator during the interwar period and the first pilot to fly solo around the world. Also known for his work in high-altitude flying, Post helped develop one of the first pressure suits and discovered the jet stream. On August 15, 1935, Post and American humorist Will Rogers were killed when Post's aircraft crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow in the Territory of Alaska.

Post's Lockheed Vega aircraft, the Winnie Mae, was on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center from 2003 to 2011. It is now featured in the "Time and Navigation" gallery on the second floor of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. (wikipedia)

• • •

Your sense of difficulty will likely depend heavily on your familiarity with the (considerable amount of) names in today's puzzle, but for me, this was a cinch. Far easier than yesterday's. Much easier (and more pleasurable) for me to work around a name I don't know (or in the case of WILEY POST, only vaguely know) than to have to wonder what a lot of trying-too-hard clues are doing with their awkward wording and trickery. I do think this one is mayyyyybe a little heavy on the names, though that may simply be because names are in such marquee positions (e.g. 1-Across, 2/5 of that center stack). In fact, it's really the stack of COTILLARD and WILEY POST, not far from EDWARD I and PANETTA, that creates the illusion of overall name-iness. I don't think the puzzle actually has any more names than your average puzzle. But today's are long names, in crucial positions, so they might've factored heavily in whether you sailed through the puzzle (like me) or didn't. I once wrote an article on "Braveheart," so EDWARD I was a gimme at 1A: "Braveheart" villain, and as so often happens, a 1-Across gimme heralded an easy puzzle. 

I did that NW corner about as fast as I've done any themeless corner ever. ILE RHINO NARWHAL and the whole thing just fell. Was not confident that the momentum would continue, given how utterly cut off that section is from the rest of the grid, but I just guessed the SCIENCE part of DATA SCIENCE, and then, as with EDWARD I, I just *knew* COTILLARD, and SOLFEGE, and I was off and (really) running. WILEY POST was by far the biggest stumbling block for me, but even there, once I got some crosses, despite not really knowing who he was, his name drifted into consciousness, and I never felt anywhere close to legitimately stuck.

Despite the fact that DATA SCIENCE crossing LOGIC GATE tried very hard to put me to sleep, I thought most of this was [CHEF'S KISS]! Front-page article about New York POT FARMs in my paper yesterday, so [Joint venture?] was totally transparent to me. I only know the phrase CABS IT from doing the NYTXW. Seems a very NYC thing. A very last-century NYC thing. But one of the perks of doing this damn puzzle over decades is you pick up a lot of regionalisms and slang and place names and what not, which you then end up encountering again solely in crosswords, which creates a kind of crossword-produced, imaginary, composite NYC, made up of all the NYCs that ever were since about the '20s. I wonder what would happen if I tried to draw an NYC map if I only knew about NYC from crosswords. Let's see, there's the BQE and MOMA and ... NEDICK'S on every corner, maybe? Anyway ... CABS IT! And if someone asks you to look after their cab while they're out of town, well then you CAB SIT. Sounds made up, yes, but so does NEDICK'S, so ... CAB SIT. "I was cabsitting outside the Nedick's at 88th and Lex when this pug* named Roscoe ..." — and all of a sudden you've got yourself a Damon Runyon story!

This puzzle could've used a little more oomph in the cluing, if only because it feels at times like a trivia test. There are a few "?" clues (a few is the appropriate number, btw), and they're solid, but most of what you get today in the clue department is exceedingly straightforward. I like that the "monodon monoceros" (NARWHAL) is crossing the RHINO(ceros). Horny-faced creatures of the world, unite! The weirdest moment of the solve for me was a malapop—this is a term for when you want an answer that ends up being wrong ... but then that wrong answer ends up being *right* elsewhere in the grid! I think Andrea Carla Michaels coined that term a long time ago. Sounds like a niche term, but it happens an Awful lot. Today, I considered "AW DANG!" at 4D: "Oh, darn!" ("AW RATS!"), and that "G" made me think DREG for 26A: Bottom of the barrel (LEES). Fast forward to—11D: Remnant (DREG). DREG is such a weird word to see in the singular that this particular malapop feels deeply strange. But there it is! Overall, I enjoyed this suitably Saturday-level solving experience, even if the trivia (right in my wheelhouse) failed to really put me through the WRINGER (3D: Metaphor for a difficult ordeal) (which I sometimes quite enjoy on a Saturday). See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*"pug" is old-timey slang for "pugilist" or "boxer," but if you want it to be a dog, I think the story still works.

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Toponym in the dairy aisle / SAT 6-26-21 / Tropical island whose name comes from Spanish for snows / When Ma is gettin kittenish with Pap in Carousel / Ungrammatical title of 1984 Cyndi Lauper hit / Labor-intensive tattoo type /Test that uses radioactive tracers / Literary team playing in front of "ten thousand eyes" / Times when NPR listeners are engrossed enough to linger in their idling cars

Constructor: John Lieb and Brad Wilber

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: CLU Gulager (5D: Actor Gulager of TV's "The Tall Man") —

William Martin "Clu" Gulager (born November 16, 1928) is an American television and film actor and director. He first became known for his work in television, appearing in the co-starring role of William H. Bonney (Billy the Kid) in the 1960–1962 NBC television series The Tall Man and as Emmett Ryker in another NBC Western series, The Virginian. He later had a second career as a horror film actor, including a lead part in Dan O' Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead (1985). He also was in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985). In 2005 he started acting in his son's horror films -- the Feasts movies and Piranha DD -- in his 80s. 

Gulager's first major film role was in Don Siegel's The Killers (1964) with Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan in his only movie role as a villain, followed by a supporting part in the racing film Winning(1969) opposite Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward; in Peter Bogdanovich's drama The Last Picture Show (1971); and opposite John Wayne in McQ (1974). In the 1980s, Gulager appeared in several horror films, such as The Initiation (1984) and the zombie comedy The Return of the Living Dead (1985). In 2005, he appeared in the horror film Feast, as well as its sequels. He also appeared in the independent film Tangerine (2015) and in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). (wikipedia)

• • •

Get a CLU!

This is a wonderful example of how a puzzle can be old-fashioned but In A Good Way. By "old-fashioned" I mean it's not flashing ultra-contemporary colloquial phrases and pop culture names, but its fill still feels thoughtful, polished, fresh, and very much in the (general) language. It feels like the best-constructed stuff used to feel a decade+ ago, but unlike a lot of older puzzles, it is conspicuously lacking in the kind of short repeaters that pros know by heart and novices just stare blankly at (i.e. a certain kind of crosswordese). In short, this didn't feel like it was *for* younger solvers, but it also didn't feel particularly exclusionary of them. And that's all anybody (i.e. me) wants—make the best puzzles you can make, and make them to *your* tastes, but give *everyone* a way to enjoy them. Balance out your cluing so that people outside your particular demographic feel invited in, not ignored. That way, we get a huge variety of puzzle styles and sensibilities, and everyone's mostly happy most days. This is the future liberals (i.e. me) want!* Old and young, content streamers and eremitic cave-dwellers, cats and dogs, all solving contentedly together! It would be weird, yes, but like popping bubble wrap (apparently), it would also be ODDLY SATISFYING.

["Well I spent some time in THE MUDVILLE NINE ..."]

The 15s on this are both solid and stylish. Three of the five are general phrases anyone might say, the other two are narrower in their focus and do suggest a lean toward a certain demographic (i.e. NPR listeners old enough to have "Casey at the Bat" be a seminal part of their elementary school experience), but you wouldn't call either DRIVEWAY MOMENTS or THE MUDVILLE NINE particularly obscure or dusty. In fact, the only answer in this puzzle that made me think "whoa, there's a throwback" was CLU Gulager, a name you used to see a lot but don't see much any more, as his career faded more solidly into the past and constructors began using software that helped them be less reliant on the proper-noun repeaters of yore. But just as I think older (say, my age and older) solvers should come around to learning new pop culture names (within reason! I still have "YouTuber" resistance!), I think it's important for younger solvers to look on old stuff they don't know not always as stuffiness or staleness, but as stuff they just didn't know yet. Also, CLU Gulager is great! Try some! Watch 1964's "The Killers," where Gulager and Lee Marvin just ooze bad-guy cool ... also co-starring Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, and Ronald Reagan in his final film role ... as the movie's *real* bad guy. It's fun.). Anyway, though the puzzle feels like its cultural center of gravity is well back in the 20th century, it comes forward a number of times, picking up the magnificent DANA Owens (aka Queen Latifah) and Cyndi Lauper and TARA Westover and trap music (ATL) and a lot of other things that remain current. I enjoyed this a bunch.

I never got very hung up during this puzzle, but I never really got up a racer's pace either. Faster toward the bottom, but that's pretty typical (the more you've got in the grid, the easier the rest of the grid gets, in general). I thought I might race through the grid after I blew the top section open very early:

But THE MUDVILLE NINE took some work, for sure, and difficultish cluing made the short crosses not always easy. I struggled to get stuff like SUM TOTAL (great answer) and to remember stuff like NEVIS and to parse stuff like THE ONE. I also did not understand the clue on TOES (3D: Answer that would be more apt at 10 Down?) since 10-Down was [Romantic's dream] and yeah, *some* people are romantically into TOES, it's true, but I still felt like I was missing something there. Then I noticed there was no "-" in "10 Down," which made me look at that phrase a new way ... and *then* the aha dropped. You have "10" TOES "Down" ... well, down there, where your feet are. Assuming you have both your feet. A fake cross-reference! Turns out I like those better than I like real cross-references! 

Some more things:

• 26D: Topographical map feature (RIDGE) — had RI-G-, wrote in RINGS :(
• 23A: When "Ma is gettin' kittenish with Pap," in "Carousel" (JUNE) — I don't think I've seen "Carousel," and the clue gave me strong Ma & Pa Kettle / L'il Abner vibes, so I thought the answer would be more yokelish slang, and I had -UNE, and, well, I am not ashamed to tell you that I sincerely considered SUNE (a backwoods variant of "soon"?!?)
• 40A: Give away (RAT ON) — had --T ON, wrote in LET ON :(
• 32A: English football powerhouse, to fans (MAN U.) — short for "Manchester United." I've seen it in puzzles before and every time I look back over a grid that it's in, for a brief moment I think "What the heck is MANU!? I don't remember that clue?" It is bizarre in that it looks like some awful obscure crosswordese but it's actually a right-over-the-plate (to borrow a metaphor from a different sport), perfectly common colloquial term for one of the most famous football clubs in the world. MANU > NANU (NANU)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. omg does the DRIVEWAY MOMENTS clue actually have an NPR pun in it!? 58A: Times when NPR listeners are enGrossed enough to linger in their idling cars ... as in Terry Gross? Host of "Fresh Air"? Well, if it wasn't intentional, I still heard it, so the violation stands! 

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Sam Shepard play about warring brothers / FRI 7-10-20 / Subject of a 23-foot bronze statue in San Diego's Balboa Park / Brooklyn Nine Nine actor who played in NFL / Mission name in Martian / Ubernerd of 90s TV / 1197 film with tagline one wrong flight can ruin your whole day

Constructor: John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:18)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: "TRUE WEST" (27A: Sam Shepard play about warring brothers) —

True West,  drama in two acts by Sam Shepard, produced in 1980 and published in 1981. The play concerns the struggle for power between two brothers—Lee, a drifter and petty thief, and Austin, a successful screenwriter—while they collaborate on a screenplay in their mother’s southern California home. Lee, who claims that he can write a “truer” western than Austin because he has actually lived the western life, convinces Austin’s producer that he is the right man for the project, and the role reversals begin: soon Austin is behaving like a thief, and Lee is the coddled Hollywood writer. This savage and blackly humorous version of the Cain and Abel story also satirizes the modern West’s exploitation of the romanticized cowboys-and-Indians West of American mythology. (Britannica.com)

• • •

I've never heard of "TRUE WEST" and I don't watch "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," so that meant two giant answers that were just mysteries to me. Actually, I take that back. I have heard of TERRY CREWS, and that ultimately helped, but I honestly wasn't really sure about the first name, and with -RRY in place I was very ready to entertain HARRY, or, in an emergency, LARRY (28D: "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" actor who played in the N.F.L.). Need ELCID to come along and rescue me by providing the "E" which made TERRY the only option (33A: Subject of a 23-foot bronze statue in San Diego's Balboa Park). Speaking of that "T"—"TRUE WEST"! Yes, my long unknown proper name problem areas *cross*. Fun. But other proper names helped me out, so I can't complain too much. It's just that having the primary difficulty in a puzzle be the piecing together of names that don't really mean anything to you... it's not the Greatest feeling. Of course there are things I don't know in virtually every puzzle I solve, so that's not the problem. I think the problem is how disproportionate the difficulty was—it felt like All the actual work I had to do was concentrated in these answers. The rest was fine, but I blew through it. So I'm left with only really remembering the "TRUE WEST" / TERRY CREWS experience, and not the other parts of the grid. The grid overall looks ... fine. "THE CHRONIC" and MILHOUSE were right up my alley, and MOVEMBER over SLOW CLAP is pretty nifty. I remember LITE BRITE, so I enjoyed that answer as well. There's very little gunk in here today, though I do kinda consider Paula DEEN gunk (notorious racist).


ALBS was a throwback, for sure—in the sense that it's classic crosswordese and you don't see it so much these days (for example: ALBS made five appearances in 1995, but then made none for over six years during a stretch from 2012 to 2018)  (25A: Garb for the masses?). I'm never gonna remember SEGNO, which shows up like once a year just to mess with me (45D: Musical "repeat" mark). We have the always-horrid ASDOI / ASAMI dilemma at 37A: "Same here" (ASAMI). A few more stray short crosswordese answers, but really very minimal. Aside from the aforementioned long proper names, there were a few other answers that stalled me a bit. SHINY, for instance, weirdly threw me (1D: Well-polished). Built it entirely from crosses. Also AUNTIE—the reunion I had in mind was scholastic, not familial (21A: Reunion attendee, informally). I never saw "The Martian," so ARES was all crosses (21D: Mission name in "The Martian"). And I thought the [Startling sound] at 47A was POW, and very nearly left that corner with POW in place. Luckily, my eye caught sight of WERPS and knew something had to be wrong (49D: Suspects, informally = PERPS). Overall, far more good than bad (or even mediocre) here. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I got SEGNO (45D) eventually, but this criticism seems ... valid

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British brew since 1777 / THU 2-27-20 / Ivy seen along Schulylkill River / Fearsome part of Jabberwock

Constructor: ANDREW (24A) Kingsley and John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (?) (untimed, on paper)

 OR

OR some combination of the two...

THEME: SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT (6D: Quantum mechanics thought experiment in which contradictory states exist simultaneously) — two-square answers contain three-letter words where the middle letter can be the second letter in the first square or the first letter in the second square. Theme is obliquely explained by two theme answers, both of which are split into two crossing answers (one in the NE, the other in the SW): CROSS / THE BORDER (14D: With 16-Across, travel internationally) and "I NEED / SOME SPACE" (42D: With 55-Across, breakup line)

Two-square answers:

• 18A: Mantra chants => OMS (with Downs of WHOM BOOS or WHO BOOMS)
• 39A: Zenight => TOP (with Downs of NEATO DROP or NEAT DROOP)
• 33A: Opposite of masc. => FEM (with Downs of FEAST MAIL or FAST EMAIL)
• 53A: A pair => TWO (with Downs of TWEEN OWS or TEEN WOWS)

Word of the Day: BASS Ale (1A: British brew since 1777) —

The Bass Brewery /ˈbæs/ was founded in 1777 by William Bass in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England. The main brand was Bass Pale Ale, once the highest-selling beer in the UK. By 1877, Bass had become the largest brewery in the world, with an annual output of one million barrels. Its pale ale was exported throughout the British Empire, and the company's distinctive red triangle became the UK's first registered trade mark. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is one of those times where I recognize that the puzzle is good even though I didn't particularly enjoy solving it. I kinda slumped and groaned when I got to SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT because it seems a tired kind of thing for the puzzle to be obsessed with. "Schrödinger"-type puzzles are stock form—these are puzzles where one of two letters can occupy a square—maybe it's one letter in the Down and another in the Across, or maybe it's like the CLINTON / BOBDOLE puzzle of election day 1996, where both answers worked. Anyway, it's a thing. So this felt very "aren't we clever?" / wink-y / insidery / meta from (close to) the start, which I just found grating. I'm fine with the two-letter answers; in fact, the whole concept is indeed very clever, and the addition of this whole other level to the theme—sort of punny references to what's going on with the two-square answers (CROSS / THE BORDER and "I NEED / SOME SPACE")—makes the theme incredibly dense. This extra level is structurally / architecturally impressive, but it didn't do much for my solving experience, since I actually was left wondering what those phrases were doing, and wondering if they weren't doing ... more. More than just commenting cleverly on the two-square action. Realizing they were just there as window dressing made them less fun. This is the second day in a row where I kept waiting for the AHA moment to drop, and it just never did. Kinda cute to "end" with the TWO-square answer TWO, though (53A: A pair).


I think I'm also just bored with the idea of more dudes doing more "architecturally impressive" mathy/sciencey tricky Thursday puzzles when the NYTXW's non-male constructor percentage still languishes at an embarrassing 17% YTD. The all-dude culture up in editing continues to ... well, just continues, I guess. But I was sincerely impressed that the grid didn't collapse under the weight of the theme density here (by which I'm surprised the fill doesn't well and truly suck). This is the kind of theme where just getting the grid out clean is a feat. Non-theme fill isn't earth-shattering or fancy, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to hold. And it does.


I didn't have much trouble with this one. The basic theme concept made itself known early. I had WHOM and BOOS alongside each other, and then when I (quickly) got SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT, I went back and looked and noticed that WHOM/BOOS could also be WHO/BOOMS ... and that was that. It was very very easy to identify where this trick was going to happen again because, well, there are only four two-letter answers. The only real trick was figuring out the descriptive themers in the NE and SW, and that wasn't too hard. One real slow down came when trying to get into the center of the grid from the north and not being able to get the BLOOD part of NEW BLOOD (nice answer, btw), I wanted NEW HIRES (20D: Recent recruits, so to speak).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Predecessors of Transformers / SAT 2-16-19 / Fifth-century scourge / Ovary's place botanically / Rebellious Downton Abbey daughter / Another moniker for Empire City of South

Constructor: Andrew Kingsley and John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:16)

THEME: kiss types and New Age musicians ... or, none

Word of the Day: "GOBOTS" (20A: Predecessors of Transformers) —

GoBots is a line of transforming robot toys produced by Tonka from 1983 to 1987, similar to Transformers. Although initially a separate and competing franchise, Tonka's Gobots became the intellectual property of Hasbro after their buyout of Tonka in 1991. Subsequently, the universe depicted in the animated series Challenge of the GoBots and follow-up film GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords was established as an alternate universewithin the Transformers franchise. While Hasbro now owns the fictional side of the property (character names, bios, storyline), the actual toys and their likenesses were only licensed from Bandai in the 1980s, were not covered by the Tonka acquisition, and are not available for Hasbro use. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well that was easy. Really easy. Even answers I didn't really know, like "GOBOTS," somehow came to me as if out of a forgotten dream, or perhaps from a GENIE, I don't know. Weirdly, the answers I struggled with most in this grid were both food items. First, CARPACCIO, which I know, but couldn't quite come up with at first. CARAVAGGIO? No, he's a painter. I blame Thursday's "I PAGLIACCI." And then, WORSE than CARPACCIO even, was (somehow!) PICKLE (39A: It may be made into spears). I had P- then PI- the PIC- then PIC--E and still couldn't see even a real word there, let alone a thing that could be spears. But then I got PANSEXUAL (connected to the DOMINATRIX by a PICKLE, interesting), and had a self-hatred-filled "aha" moment. But I'm being overdramatic. I probably spent time obsessing about PICKLE out of pure spite; I was deeply resentful that every other answer was just bowing to my will, and PICKLE was all "No!" and so instead of bypassing it and just killing it with crosses, I got all "Do as I say!" and thus lost precious time. Most of the rest of the time, I was quite enjoying myself. Very much in my wheelhouse, and very clean, this thing was. From HOTLANTA to the "Simpsons" reference to the MINOTAUR, I was all over this.


I have one major bone to pick, though: since when is BRIAN ENO a [New Age composer]. Here's the list of genres that wikipedia has listed for him:

Now here's the list of genres that wikipedia has for YANNI (34A: New Age keyboardist):

You hear that, NYT: disavowed! Even YANNI's like, "no, what, don't call me that!" Anyway, I have never in my ENO life heard ENO referred to as ENO-thing like "New Age." It's a terrible clue, ENO (En Ny Opinion). Didn't know investment banks had anything to do with IPOs (40A: Job for an investment bank, for short), but I don't know anything about finance, so there's that. Didn't know Walter LANG but figured Fritz LANG was a director, so why not Walter? Very proud of myself for seeing right through 35A: Third character to appear in "Macbeth" (CEE) (as in, the letter CEE is the "third character" in the word "Macbeth"). I kinda think CEE crossing C-NOTE is bad. Like, a stand-alone "C" in your puzzle should mean the written-out letter "CEE" should not also appear in your puzzle, and the C(EE)s definitely shouldn't cross.


Puzzle's with X's are easy to solve. Well, easier than puzzles without X's, all other things being equal. I just know that POLEAXE definitely got me PIXIE CUT and OXO definitely got me PANSEXUAL and FLEXTIME definitely got me DOMINATRIX, all much more quickly than I would have otherwise. X's are fun but they give a lot away. You gotta keep your eye on them.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. 2019 NYT crossword constructor count update:

M: 41
W: 6

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Queen Gertrude's alas in Hamlet / TUE 8-21-18 / South Asian mixed rice dish / MASH transport informally / Comedy rock duo featuring actor Jack Black / Self-important minor official

Constructor: John Lieb and Andrea Yañes

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging to Challenging (3:48) (my third-slowest Tuesday of the past four months)

THEME: DARWIN (69A: Evolution theorist ... or what the circled letters are evolving toward?) — circled squares pick up a new letter and spell out a new word with each subsequent theme answer, going from D to DARIN ... and then DARWIN there at the end:

Theme answers:

• TENACIOUS D (21A: Comedy rock duo featuring actor Jack Black)
• DA ALI G SHOW (26A: Sacha Baron Cohen program of the early 2000s)
• STEELY DAN (36A: "Reelin' in the Years" band)
• DARN TOOTIN' (47A: "Abso-lutely!")
• BOBBY DARIN (55A: 1950s-'60s teen idol who sang "Dream Lover" and "Splish Splash")

Word of the Day: TENACIOUS D —

Tenacious D is an American comedy rock duo, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1994. It was founded by actors Jack Black and Kyle Gass, who were part of The Actors' Gang theater company at the time. The duo's name is derived from "tenacious defence" - a phrase used by NBA basketball sportscaster Marv Albert. [...] Critics have described their fusion of vulgar absurdist comedy with rock music as "mock rock". Their songs discuss the duo's purported musical and sexual prowess, as well as their friendship and cannabis usage in a style that music critics have compared with the storyteller-style lyrics of rock opera. (wikipedia)

• • •

Was dismayed by how arbitrary all the letter-adding seemed, until I got to DARWIN. That answer gave the theme the hook it really needed. It's a super-duper pop culture-dependent puzzle—a really dicey trait for a Tuesday puzzle. Tons of people won't even know who TENACIOUS D are, I guar-an-tee you. DA ALI G SHOW will be more familiar because ALIG is in puzzles occasionally. STEELY DAN and BOBBY DARIN are legit famous, no problem there. The fill, sadly, is quite bad in many places, with several short answers you should never use except in a terrible emergency (and esp. not on a Tuesday): NMI, TAUR, ERL (!), ORY (!!), and OME (!?!?!). Queen Gertrude's "alas"!?!?!?!?!? I teach Shakespeare every year and I had no idea what this clue was even trying to get at. As if Gertrude is somehow famous for saying "O [comma] ME." Ha ha, no. That is soooo bad. I didn't even understand there was an implied comma in that answer until after I was done. OME is bad fill never use it ever, ok? ok. And ETA is not good and neither is ETD, so you're gonna wanna just blow by them, not create a whole cluster**** of crossreferencing jokiness around them at the center of your grid. Next time, I mean.


The NE and SW corners were so wide open, which, again, made the puzzle harder than a normal Tuesday. But the most challenging was the SE, I think, where the GOD part of TIN GOD was a mystery to me, and GO GRAY (a good answer) was tough, as was ONE ONE (as clued), and then there's BIRYANI (44D: South Asian mixed rice dish), which I have never seen on a menu despite having been to many Indian restaurants in my life. Rough. I think it's been in the puzzle before, but again, it's Tuesday, so yikes. I really liked GAP YEAR (3D: Hiatus between high school and college) and IRON MAN (2D: Avenger in a red-and-gold costume) next to each other up there in the NW. Besides the SE corner, my main struggle involved parsing DA ALI G SHOW, first because of O comma ME, and second. because I spelled it Kunta K*E*NTE. Oy, proper nouns crossing at vowels. So dangerous.


Had a wonderful time this past weekend at Lollapuzzoola 11 in NYC (run by Brian Cimmet and Patrick Blindauer). Huge success. New venue on the Upper West Side and they packed the joint—maxed out at 400 contestants. Lots of first-time tourney-goers were there, many of them (apparently) competing in the Pairs division. My wife and I came in fourth this year (out of 63 teams!) which is not bad. A couple teams who didn't compete last year were very strong, and my friend Neville Fogarty and his mother did amazingly well, coming in 2nd in Pairs. The overall winner of the tournament was Stella Zawistowski, who managed to finish a very tough finals puzzle ahead of Glen Ryan and Sam Ezersky. I met a ton of new people and got to see many old friends. Again, this tournament and Indie 500 (in D.C. in the late spring) are the only ones I reliably attend—because they are in cool cities and they are run by cool people and the puzzles are of a very high quality and the vibe of the tournaments is relaxed and fun. You should make a point of trying out Lollapuzzoola 12 next year, but you'll want to keep an eye out for it and register early. Its popularity increases every year.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. here's an embarrassingly self-congratulatory article in which the NYT basically calls a bunch of you (commenters on this blog) trash, without even having the courage to name this blog directly.

"Commenters often respond with attacks on puzzle makers." Just chew on that sentence for a while. Worth noting that the NYT didn't even have its own (self-praising) blog until after Diary of a Crossword Fiend and then my own blog proved very popular, allowing for people other than His Highness to dictate public perception of the crossword. So now the NYT has not one but *two* house blogs (xwordinfo is *not* independent) to create the illusion that there are two kinds of blogs: "mean" blogs (not theirs) and "nice" blogs (theirs). I would've let this stupid puff piece blow right by, but they decided to totally mischaracterize my blog without even deigning to name it. I guess this hokey, feel-good nonsense is how they distract solvers from the embarrassingly low constructor pay, the sexist / racist fill that the editor has included and defended over the years, et cetera et cetera. Pettiness appears to be a winning financial strategy for them, though, so I guess I can't blame them.

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