Harry Potter librarian Pince / SUN 4-21-13 / Affiliate of AFL CIO / Dinosaur pioneering cartoon short / 1989 John Cusack romantic comedy / Site of Cyclops smithy / Lover of Cesario in Twelfth Night / Puerto Rican city that shares name with explorer

Constructor: Jonah Kagan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Front Flips" — familiar phrases have their "front" word "flipped," creating wacky phrases, clued "?"-style

Word of the Day: UMW (14D: Affiliate of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.) —

The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners and coal technicians. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care.
The UMW was founded in Columbus, Ohio, on January 22, 1890, with the merger of two old labor groups, the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union. Adopting the model of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the union was initially established as a three-pronged labor tool: to develop mine safety; to improve mine workers' independence from the mine owners and the company store; and to provide miners with collective bargaining power. After passage of the National Recovery Act in 1933, organizers spread throughout the United States to organize all coal miners into labor unions. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a pretty old theme concept. Seen it many times. Did one myself once, though in my case the theme answers were all actually thematically related as well as word-flipped. Anyway, maybe it's a two-parter and next week's is "Back Flips" because ... why not? If you can do front flips, you can do back flips, flippety flip flip. Flip. Like a dead fish. The fill is OK. I always like when a constructor makes good use of his long non-thematic answers, and this puzzle has a bunch that are quite good: FIRST KISS, PROMISE RING, and "SAY ANYTHING" (an iconic movie from back when movies still had the capacity to be iconic). I need to coin a term for the answer / clue that is so distracting / annoying / irritating / jarring that it takes your head out of the game. Makes you stop and wonder WTF?, possibly aloud. They yank your attention, so ... "Yankers" maybe. Two yankers today. First: UMW. It yanked me for two reasons. One, I've never seen it, that I can recall. When I google [umw], the first hit I get is University of Mary Washington, which sounds made up, and yet, as I say, beats United Mine Workers in a google search. Second, UMW is a perverse answer given the clue. UAW seemed faaaaar more likely, for many reasons, not least because I've actually seen it in grids before. I'm not even sure what "affiliate" means, union-wise. So ... UMW is legit fill, but yankety yank. Yankier still was DISTRO. Are we just making up "words" now. I am inferring that it has something to do with DISTRObution, but ... yikes. Never heard it, never seen it, no-wise. Total yanker. Everything else seems perfectly adequate.

Theme answers:

• 24A: Tammany Hall corruption, e.g.? (EVIL FROM NEW YORK)
• 34A: Try to see what you're getting for Christmas? (PEEK UNDER WRAPS)
• 45A: Academy for criminals? (PERP SCHOOL)
• 51A: Journey from the nest to the kitchen, say? (RAT'S TREK)
• 64A: Hidden drug habit, maybe? (POT SECRET)
• 76A: Drink greedily? (GULP IT IN)
• 81A: Playground apparatus of the Apocalypse? (DOOM SWINGS) 
• 91A: Be a lenient judge? (DIAL DOWN THE LAW)
• 105A: Maligned merchandise? (REVILED THE GOODS) 

Bullets:

• 6A: Coolidge's vice president (DAWES) — I can never remember this. There's a newish biography of Coolidge by the very crossworthy Amity SHLAES.
• 53A: "Arrested Development" character Fünke (TOBIAS) — First, when I got sick I didn't shave, and still haven't, and so look disturbingly like David Cross, who plays TOBIAS Fünke (though he plays him beardless ...). Second, new "Arrested Development" is coming soon to Netflix and I am very excited about this. May 26, 2013. Gonna binge-watch the whole season.
• 54A: "Harry Potter" librarian Pince (IRMA) — really wanted this to be NEZ.
• 70A: Psychologist Jean known for his theory of cognitive development (PIAGET) — Pretty sure I know him only because I put him in my own Sunday puzzle last fall. His name sounds fancy, like a car or a time piece.
• 17D: "___ the Dinosaur" (pioneering cartoon short) ("GERTIE") — Winsor McKay! My hero. One of them, anyway.
• 35D: Site of Cyclops' smithy (ETNA) — bobbled this one, thinking of the name of a classical smithy (i.e. Vulcan???), before realizing "oh, right, *site* ... four letters, starts with "E" ... there we go."
• 45D: Puerto Rico city that shares its name with an explorer (PONCE) — I know this as pejorative British slang. But this clue is probably better for polite company.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Cephalopod known for its shell / WED 5-11-11 / Popular online lectures about ideas worth spreading / Old-time crooner Julius / Alvy's love interest

Constructor: Jonah Kagan

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: FIBONACCI SERIES (33A: Mathematical sequence related to a pattern found in a 17-, 29-, 42- or 58-Across, informally) — those things have spirals, I guess, though not spirals that look like a Fibonaaci spiral, exactly.


Puzzle note: "When this puzzle is done, the 11 circled letters can be connected by a curved line to spell a two-word phrase appropriate to this puzzle's theme."

Word of the Day: GOLDEN RATIO (the circles spell this phrase) —

In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one. The golden ratio is an irrational mathematical constant, approximately 1.6180339887. (wikipedia)

GOLDEN SPIRAL = In geometry, a golden spiral is a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor b is related to φ, the golden ratio. Specifically, a golden spiral gets wider (or further from its origin) by a factor of φ for every quarter turn it makes.

• • •

Just didn't care about this one at all. I know that there are people who will marvel at it, but once I got to FIBONACCI SERIES, all I could think was a. ugh, how do you spell FIBONACCI?; b. it's a FIBONACCI ... something ... number? oh, SERIES, OK; and c. ugh, this is that "Da Vinci Code" thing ("The Da Vinci Code" being something else I care nothing about). I didn't even notice the note on the puzzle, or what the circles were supposed to be doing—they were random letter pairs, as far as I could tell. Wasn't til after I was finished that I noticed (before ever seeing the note) that the circles made a spiral spelling out GOLDEN RATIO. Not all spirals are golden (right?), so the connection between the theme answers and the mathematical concept is pretty loose, as far as I can tell. But I imagine math nerds (roughly half of crossword-dom) loved this, and why shouldn't they? It's imaginative. It did nothing for me, but that's just a matter of taste. I don't like sour cream. Some people do. More power to them. ("Sour cream" is my new shorthand for "puzzle that I don't like purely for matters of personal taste").

Theme answers:

• 17A: Food with a heart (ARTICHOKE)
  
• 29A: Cephalopod known for its shell (NAUTILUS) — this took me the longest of all the theme answers, by far. I was thinking "cuttlefish" or "squid" ...
  
• 42A: Cochlea locale (INNER EAR)
  
• 58A: Van Gogh subject (SUNFLOWER)
  

By far the toughest part of the puzzle for me was the LATIN / LDR intersection. I had HUMAN at 23D: Homo sapiens, e.g. and then scrapped that when I finally put CDR in at 23A: Pres., e.g. (ugh, two "e.g." clues intersecting). Very rare that I stare at one blank square for any length of time on a Wednesday, but it took many seconds for me to figure out that "L." Also went with DOHS over DUHS (24D: Stupidity symbols). Clue fits DOHS much better. DUH tends to indicate something's obviousness / someone else's stupidity, but DOH is a symbol of one's own stupidity. Actually, I don't like "symbol" for EITHER one.



Bullets:

• 21A: Alvy's love interest in a Woody Allen film (ANNIE) — that film was, of course, "Dances with Wolves"
  
• 20A: Popular online lectures about ideas worth spreading (TED TALKS) — Wow. I know what these are, but I had No Idea they were well known enough to be a NYT answer. I Like ... but I am curious to see how widely known these talks are. Here's a good one that I use in my Comics course:

• 26A: Midsize Kia (OPTIMA) — Went ALTIMA at first. D'oh.
  
• 36D: "A Clockwork Orange" narrator (ALEX) — was certain it was ALEC. Had to hunt down that little error.
  
• 61A: Singer Bareilles with the 2007 top 10 hit "Love Song" (SARA) — all the SARAs in the world, and *that*'s the one you go with? Can't place the song. Let's find it ... hmm. I think I heard someone sing this on "Idol" once.
  

• 6D: They thought C-3PO was a god in "Return of the Jedi" (EWOKS) — Those little critters are about the most important thing to know about the "Star Wars" universe, crossword-wise, after LEIA and maybe ARTOO. DARTH VADER, HAN SOLO, and OOLA the alien dancing girl are also handy to know.
  
• 26D: Speaker of stupid syllables (OAF) — very clunky attempt to make sequential clue magic. The syllables aren't stupid; the words they make are.
  
• 37D: Glass behind a radio microphone (IRA) — "Glass" and "radio" in same clue = IRA. No longer tricky.
  
• 47D: Old-time crooner Julius (LA ROSA) — a Word of the Day, back in the day, so I remembered him ... kind of. It took me half the crosses for his name to finally pop into my head.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

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Sea grass grazer / FRI 9-17-10 / Colorful stage performers since 1987 / Literally different lizards / Five-time NBA All-Star Chris

Constructor: Jonah Kagan

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none


Word of the Day: BLOOD MOON (6D: Autumnal event so called because it helps hunters kill their prey) —

The hunter's moon—also known as blood moon or sanguine moon—is the first full moon after the harvest moon, which is the full moon nearest the autumnal equinox. // The Hunter's Moon is so named because plenty of moonlight is ideal for hunters shooting migrating birds in Northern Europe. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not much to say about this one. Seems fine. Nothing offensive, nothing too memorable. It's pretty funny that he's got BELLA (7D: "Twilight" protagonist) up there next to a full moon (i.e. the BLOOD MOON), since the "Twilight" series involves werewolves. It's less funny that NUVA (17A: ___Ring (birth control brand)) is somehow being accepted as a standalone answer, when it's not a word, real or commercial or whatever. The brand is NuvaRing, one word. I don't know if I've ever seen one part of a camel-capped word allowed to fly solo like this. Feels really wrong. The short Acrosses in that NE section are pretty weak in general — all in the name of JIU JITSU, I guess (it is a pretty sweet word; 10D: Practice with locks and pins?). I like DAWG (41A: "Wassup, ___?") over BARK (46A: Where you might see some initials — carved into trees, I guess). Some of the question mark clues were cute, or tough to see through, but there's just not a lot here to make you sit up and take notice.

I had trouble getting started in the NW—a lot of trouble. First pass rendered virtually nothing — LOSS (21A: Perfect-record breaker) and ROC-A (9D: Jay-Z's ___-Fella Records), I think. After flailing a bit, I somehow guessed NO PROBLEMO off of just that final "O" (13A: "Easy peasy!"), and it all opened up from there. BELLA/EMILY (8D: "Bones" actress Deschanel) /ROC-A/WEBBER (4A: Five-time N.B.A. All-Star Chris) seems a pretty massive cluster of contemporary names / pop culture clues. NO PROBLEMO for me, but for others, maybe more of a PROBLEMO. Had some trouble in the SW, trying OUTDATED before OUT OF USE (33D: Defunct) and trying and failing many times to come up with a company that started "CLIN..." (it's CLINIQUE—32D: Company that gets a lot of its money from foundations?). Once I got past DUGONG (26D: Sea grass grazer) and into the SE, things got easy again and I was home free. At first I thought DUGONG was DUGOUT ... as in, a DUGOUT canoe ... that "grazes" sea grass ... as it glides along ... in the sea? I guess. Had HEAD for HOPE (43A: One might lose it in a crisis), but otherwise, cake down there.

Bullets:

• 1A: Japan's Prince Hirobmi ___ (ITO) — bah. I'm sure I've seen this ITO before, but couldn't remember him. I'll take the judge or the skater.
  
• 29A: Literally, "different lizards" (ALLOSAURUSES) — not hard, but somehow annoying. Did not like the plural. Don't quite understand my own strong distaste here, but there it is.
  
• 32A: Descartes found this truth to be self-evident (COGITO ERGO SUM) — love this clue, which spins the word "self-evident" in an unexpected direction.
  
• 34A: Colorful stage performers since 1987 (BLUE MAN GROUP) — don't think I've seen them in the puzzle before. Cool (I mean, as an answer — as a group they just creep me out).
  
• 35A: There are 50 in a keg of Newcastle (LITRES) — pretty easy to infer this answer. British liquid measurement—not many places to go from there.
  
• 36A: Home of Polar Bear Prov. Park (ONT.) — my first guess, but I balked because of my DUGOUT-for-DUGONG issues.
• 52A: Put off retirement? (STAY UP LATE) — phrase that reminds me of only one thing:

• 11D: Troubadour's creation (LOVE POEM) — had the POEM part and thought "TONE POEM? That's pretty modern for a troubadour..."

• 41D: Il Poeta (DANTE) — Nice fat Dante gimme, two days in a row! Nice literary complement to its neighboring "Hamlet"-related answer, ARRAS (42D: Decoration for Gertrude's room in "Hamlet")
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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Receptacle for Voldemort's soul in Harry Potter / WED 4-14-10 / Book that spans 2369 years / Carmaker name means arise out of Asia / Big busting tools

Constructor: Jonah Kagan

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: EARTH Day? ... because that's when you turn your HEART to the EARTH? ... even though EARTH Day is Apr. 22? ... — circled squares in first theme answer spell out HEART, and in each subsequent answer the last letter in the string is moved to the front of the sequence, ending with circles spelling out EARTH. Circled letter strings are all symmetrical.


Word of the Day: ELIAS Canetti (14A: English novelist Canetti who wrote "Crowds and Power") —

Elias Canetti (Bulgarian: Елиас Канети; 25 July 1905–14 August 1994) was a Bulgarian-born novelist and non-fiction writer of Sephardi Jewish ancestry who wrote in German. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981. // In 1981, Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power". He is known chiefly for his novel Auto-da-Fé (Die Blendung), and for Crowds and Power, a study of crowd behaviour as it manifests itself in human activities ranging from mob violence to religious congregations.(wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually, this theme is kinda boring — moving common letters around inside circles blah blah blah — and I don't really understand what the hook is — you go HEART to EARTH, but why? And why are HEART and EARTH appearing as the actual words HEART and EARTH and not buried inside different words? Who knows? The good thing is, the theme answers are mostly cool, and the grid itself is solid and even lovely in parts. Well, the SW corner is kinda blah, but the SE is gorgeous, and the others are just fine. Good to see HORCRUX (an NYT first) (12D: Receptacle for Voldemort's soul in Harry Potter) come out to play. That'll be a cinch for some (me) and a *&#ch for others. I don't like the "in Harry Potter" part of the clue. "Harry Potter" is not a title, it's a character. "In the Harry Potter series" would have been more appropriate. Had a huge WTF moment with ELIAS, and really, really dislike PRED (58A: Sentence segment: Abbr.), but other than that, the puzzle was very doable, and mostly enjoyable.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Dear (NEAR TO ONE'S HEART) — I think this was an answer in a very recent LAT puzzle. Some puzzle I just did, anyway. Weird.
  
• 23A: What children should be, so the saying goes (SEEN BUT NOT HEARD) — I had "SEEN AND NOT HEARD" at first.
  
• 35A: Home of the Ivy League (NORTHEAST)
  
• 52A: It's a relief in Athens (PARTHENON FRIEZE) — this is by far the weirdest answer. Feels very forced. But then again, it's got FRIEZE in it, which adds needed 'zazz to the grid.
  
• 59A: Likely to change everything (EARTH-SHATTERING)
  

Let me see ... any other notable screwups or revelations? No, not really. Loved the very current (or relatively current) clue on SEXY (34A: What Justin Timberlake's "bringin' back," in a song). Love the highly improbable-seeming clue on KIA (49A: Carmaker whose name means "arise out of Asia") — really, you got all that out of those three letters? Amazing. I would love to see Jessica LANGE (64A: Oscar-winning "Tootsie" actress) and Wanda SYKES (67A: Comedian Wanda) in something together, the way they're in the SE corner together. Maybe a buddy comedy. Black and white! Straight and gay! Maybe one is neat and the other messy. And they fight crime.




Bullets:

• 22A: Rock band with a lightning bolt in its name (AC/DC) — AC/DC needs some new clues. These old ones are getting worn thin.
  
• 1D: Book that spans 2,369 years (GENESIS) — Dang, that's a lot of years. Just for GENESIS??? I guess more time passed between Eden and Abraham than I imagined.
  
• 44D: Place to see a flying camel (ICE RINK) — a nice antidote to yesterday's tired ICEAXE. Ice skating apparently has a "flying camel" and a "toe loop," but I wouldn't recommend combining them. If you google [flying camel], the first definition you get is from the Urban Dictionary and has *nothing* to do with skating.
  
• 46D: Big busting tools (SLEDGES) — this one took me a fair number of crosses to get. I thought maybe the clue was going after some kind of tool that narcs use.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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TUESDAY, Dec. 1 2009 — 1980s soap opera set at a winery / Repetitively named Philippine province / Six-time baseball All-Star Sandy

Constructors: Jonah Kagan and Victor Fleming

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BREAKFAST (56A: Part of a morning routine ... or a literal hint to 18-, 22-, 35- and 49-Across) — theme answers begin with FA- and end with -ST. Buncha letters in between thus, technically, literally, BREAK FAST in two.

Word of the Day: "FALCON CREST" (22A: 1980s soap opera set at a winery) — Falcon Crest is an American primetime television soap opera which aired on the CBS network for nine seasons, from December 4, 1981 to May 17, 1990. A total of 227 episodes were produced. // The series centers around the feuding factions of the wealthy Gioberti/Channing family in the Californian wine industry. Jane Wyman stars as Angela Channing, the tyrannical matriarch of the Falcon Crest Winery, alongside of Robert Foxworth as Chase Gioberti, Angela's nephew who returns to Falcon Crest following the death of his father, and Lorenzo Lamas as Lance Cumson, Angela's playboy grandson. The series was set in the fictitious Tuscany Valley (modeled after the Napa Valley) just north of San Francisco.

-----

Quick write-up this morning, as I have to work today. Nice long break coupled with birthday and Thanksgiving makes it feel like "work" was another lifetime ago. And today shows "December" on the Calendar. All in all, kind of a slap-in-the-face morning. This puzzle was fine. I thought I'd seen the theme before, but I can't verify that. Pretty loose as themes go, but it's got the BREAKFAST revealer (only two instances of BREAKFAST in the cruciverb.com database??), and the theme answers are mostly entertaining. FALL HARVEST is a dud, but the others are cool. Maybe would have been nice not to have two TV shows (spread the FA-ST love around to other media), but "FATHER KNOWS BEST" fits so nicely across the grid, and "FALCON CREST" is campy fun, so why not?

Theme answers:

• 18A: Magical powder (FAiry duST)
• 22A: 1980s soap opera set at a winery ("FAlcon CreST)
• 35A: 1950s-'60s sitcom that ran on all three networks ("FAther Knows BeST")
• 49A: Occasion for pumpkin picking (FAll harveST)

All of my difficulty (or nearly all of it) came right off the bat, in the NW, where I made the sucker's move of putting in KOUFAX for ALOMAR (2D: Six-time baseball All-Star Sandy). If I'd just put in CAIRO at 1A: City near the Great Sphinx I probably wouldn't have fallen into that trap, but CAIRO didn't occur to me — or, rather, seemed too obvious, so I bypassed it, and then KOUFAX went in, and that section got bogged down. ILOILO (3D: Repetitively named Philippine province) is a horrible bit of fill that I've seen a handful of times now. No problems today, but thank god I'd seen it before, or I don't know how long it would have taken me to rectify the NW. I didn't know ILOILO was pronounced as repetitions of the same sound (i.e. ILO ILO). My brain always pronounced it "IL OILO." Other sticking points included ESCORT (46D: Front car in a motorcade) — sounds vaguely familiar, but did not spring to mind at all as I was solving — and RBI (57D: A sac fly earns one) — I had RUN.

Bullets:

• 21A: Peeved (in a pet) — crosswords are the only place that people are IN A PET any more. Not a favorite bit of fill, but better this complete form than the (oft seen) partial, APET.
• 8D: Net mag (e-zine) — another dud I'd rather never see again, or certainly not in the same grid with IN A PET and ILOILO. I will say, though, that E-ZINE beats E-MAG, if only because of the "Z."

• 38D: Duped (had) — interesting clue. The "D" here was my last letter in the grid. I am (for some reason) vaguely curious about last letters. I wonder what a scatter plot (is that the right term?) of the placement of my last letters would look like. I feel like I had a strong pull to the west — generally direction tends to be clockwise-ish starting in the NW and coming around and ending in the far W. I may start keeping track of this last-letter stat, just for fun.

OK, see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. if you haven't already, why not sample the array of extra puzzles I've published over the past week. Two are available from links in upper sidebar, and a third (released yesterday) is available right here: "Aces!"

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