Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: John Ruff

Constructor: John Ruff

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH(?)" (58A: "Hmm, why use the spellings of 17-, 27- and 46-Across?) — theme answers have British spellings (words spelled with "O-U-R" instead of the American "OR"):

Theme answers:

FLAVOUR OF THE DAY (17A: Listing at an ice cream shop in Ipswich)
COLOURING BOOKS (27A: Kids' items at a day care in Derby)
NEIGHBOURHOODS (46A: Areas on a map of Manchester)

Word of the Day: CIS (24D: Stool pigeons, in police shorthand) —

[I know]
An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a "snitch", "rat", "canary", "stool pigeon", "stoolie", "tout" or "grass", among other terms) is a person who provides privileged information, or (usually damaging) information intended to be intimate, concealed, or secret, about a person or organization to an agency, often a government or law enforcement agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informants are officially known as confidential human sources (CHS), or criminal informants (CI). It can also refer pejoratively to someone who supplies information without the consent of the involved parties. The term is commonly used in politics, industry, entertainment, and academia. // In the United States, a confidential informant or "CI" is "any individual who provides useful and credible information to a law enforcement agency regarding felonious criminal activities and from whom the agency expects or intends to obtain additional useful and credible information regarding such activities in the future".(wikipedia)

• • •

Oh, this again? Actually, no, not again. Yesterday's "OH DEAR!" theme worked really well—surprising, playful, funny. Today's puzzle just didn't have enough oomph. The revealer has to be absolutely On The Money in this one because the theme answers are so preposterously dull. A bunch of words spelled Britishly isn't anyone's idea of a good time, I don't imagine. So OK, revealer, whaddya got for me? Oh ... oh, are you kidding? First of all, I see your "O-U-R" pun, and that's cute, but what exactly is this phrase? "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH." Is someone saying that as a statement? Asking it as a question? The clue for it is phrased so badly that I honestly don't know (58A: "Hmm, why use the spellings of 17-, 27- and 46-Across?). Normally, when a clue is a quotation, the answer has to be an equivalent of that quotation, not a response to it, so ... that would mean "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH?" is interrogative ("OH, YOU ARE BRITISH?"). But that makes no sense at all. "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH!" only makes sense as a statement of mild surprise. "OH, I see: YOU ARE BRITISH!" If you know the person is British, then it makes no sense that you are asking why. Also, who would phrase a question that way?? "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH?"??? That sounds like someone whose first language is not English (if this were a question, you would of course phrase it "OH, ARE YOU BRITISH???").

But then if we say "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH" is in fact a statement, not a question, then why is it clued as a question? The idea here seems to want to be that these are things (the clue and then the answer) that you might say, sequentially, to yourself, as a solver (?). "Hmmm, why would you do this British spelling thing? ... oh, I see, you are doing it because you are British!" But the clue makes an absolute muddle of the linguistic situation—answer and clue have to have equivalency (such that one can be swapped out for the other), and yet imagining "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH?" as a question, as we've established, is ridiculous. So the mild cutesiness of the "OUR" pun is completely undone by the disastrously muddled phrasing of the revealer clue.

The rest of the puzzle was mostly a heap of dull short stuff, though there are a couple of 7s and a couple of 8s and a couple of 9s crammed in there as well, all of them solid. Still, I felt like I was drowning in 3s and 4s. I think the relative dullness of those theme answers really costs the puzzle today. Usually, the theme is where most of the interest lies, but today, those three themers are just a kind of bland set-up for the Big Reveal (which, as I say, was, for me, a bust). Felt like a lot of URDUs and EYREs and ERSTs and ESAUs and OGLEs and OGEEs and OMANIs and IPOS. The roughest bit for me came right near the center, with CIS / ESTE / OGEE. I know OGEE well, but I couldn't accept it because of ESTE, which I only ever remember encountering as Spanish for "East"—when it comes to indicating "this," I feel like it's always ESTO or ESTA (33A: Spanish for "this"). In fact ... 201 appearances of ESTE in the Shortz Era and this is literally the first time it's been clued as Spanish for "this" (!?). It's always the direction, or else a Renaissance family name, or part of some place name—never Spanish "this." Bizarre. And so I balked at OGEE because it gave me ESTE. As for CIS, I didn't balk at that—I simply had no idea. I read a lot of crime fiction—teach it, even—and I guess I don't read enough contemporary police procedurals because that abbr. meant nothing to me. I could infer its meaning once all the letters were in place, but CIS on its own ... that's the counterpart of TRANS in gender terminology. That's the only way I'm used to CIS being clued. So the fill got ugly and bumpy through there. I also had a weird lot of trouble with JAM IN (32: Pack tightly). No good reason, just couldn't parse it—had to get it to -AMIN before I saw it.

Bullets:

1A: Appropriate answer for 1-Across (START) — since this was the first clue I looked at, I cannot argue with its logic
23A: Some limb-moving muscles (ABDUCTORS) — I always thought of these as hip muscles, and thus leg-moving muscles exclusively, but I see now that there are ABDUCTORS all over; they move limbs away from the midline of the body, and are involved in spreading your fingers and toes as well. Nice to get an anatomical clue here instead of a kidnapping clue.
5D: Instrument with a Renaissance-era ancestor called a sackbut (TROMBONE) — "76 Sackbuts Led the Big Parade" just doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Or maybe it does and I'm just used to TROMBONE. Trading butt for bone ... seems like a lateral move in terms of mellifluousness. Still, "sackbut" does sound slightly more like a medical condition, so maybe we are better off.

42D: Lowe on TV (ROB) — balked at this one too. "TV? When was he on TV?" Mentally, I have him locked in as a big-screen heartthrob of the '80s. This isn't a sex tape clue, is it? Oh, crap, he was on West Wing and Parks and Rec. Of course. Never mind.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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