Feature of a deerstalker / TUE 5-3-22 / Event first televised in 1953 with the / Metaphor for lies in a Walter Scott poem / Prize satirical scientific award sine 1991

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Challenging (way harder than typical Tuesday)

THEME: CHINESE / DYNASTY (39A: With 43-Across, historical period found in each set of circled letters) — theme answers start with circled squares, all of which contain dynasty names:

Theme answers:

• MINGLE IN THE CROWD (18A: Mix at a mixer, say)
• TANGLED WEB (30A: Metaphor for lies, in a Walter Scott poem)
• CHINESE / DYNASTY
• SUIT TO A TEE (50A: Fit perfectly)
• HANGING BY A THREAD (65A: Surviving, but just barely)

Word of the Day: CHOU / EN-LAI (36D: With 52-Down, 39-Across leader from 1949 to 1976) —

Zhou Enlai (Chinese: 周恩来; pinyin: Zhōu Ēnlái; Wade–Giles: Chou¹ Ên¹-lai²; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China serving from 1 October 1949 until his death on 8 January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and helped the Communist Party rise to power, later helping consolidate its control, form its foreign policy, and develop the Chinese economy. (wikipedia)

• • •

Short write-up today, both because I'm short for time this morning and because I'm just in a terrible mood, what with Roe v. Wade about to be overturned and all ("all" being "all of the other rights-revoking culture war carnage that is surely going to follow"). Also, I really didn't enjoy this puzzle and don't particularly want to dwell on it. The theme is fine, conceptually. It's a super-basic first-words (or in this case, first-letters) theme, with a very plain revealer. Really nothing terrible, but nothing exciting either. Chinese dynasties normally function as crosswordese, but now they're being used as an integral part of a crossword theme. Cool. There are lots of dynasties—how many, exactly, is apparently a tricky question—but at least a dozen major ones. I think I've seen these dynasties before. I don't know. But the point is, whether you're excited by or indifferent to CHINESE DYNASTYs, the theme itself was fairly basic. What wasn't basic, what was grievously off-putting, was, well, a couple of things. First, the difficulty level, which seemed way past Tuesday. Even little corners were playing very sluggish. My first pass at the NW yielded only DIMES and SEDAN. Never ever got any kind of flow going. Some of the "difficulty" can be explained by the fact that the grid is oversized (16 wide), but it really did feel more Wed. or Thu. at the cluing level. Which would not itself be So bad, but so much of the grid is filled with gunk. ATTABOY ETTA ETA EVO ENLAI ATON DOHS and on and on. So it was a slog the mostly turned up unpleasant stuff. But I think the thing that really did this puzzle in for me was the theme answers, specifically MINGLED IN THE CROWD. I ... what ... what kind of a standalone phrase is that? I wrote in MINGLE- and then thought "well, that's what you do at a party, you MINGLE ... 'let's MINGLE,' you say." The IN THE CROWD part feels so so horrible and tacked on and makeshift. Where the hell else are you going to MINGLE? The desert? TANGLED WEB doesn't stand alone either, though at least I know where that phrase comes from. SUIT TO A TEE only reminded me of the crosswordese "TOATEE" (sometimes stylized "TOAT"), so that was no good. HANGING BY A THREAD, I liked. But yeah, MINGLED IN THE CROWD just ran fingernails down the chalkboard of my heart.

I think the puzzle was in a kind of no-man's-land, forced into a Tuesday slot because it's really a Tuesday-type theme, but oversized and with hard-to-grasp longer answers. Maybe the circles are an attempt to make it more Tuesday (they certainly aren't necessary—you could've run this puzzle later in the week and left the circles out of it). OK, I've already gone on too long. This just wasn't for me at all.

Notes:

• 71A: Humble response to "How do you do it?" ("I MANAGE") — as I've said before, very recently in fact, this kind of "Humble response" is not "humble" at all. It's performative humility, and therefore the opposite of humility. You see this kind of posture on social media All The Time, and it's rotten. Usually we get "I TRY" as our "humble" response; today, it's the longer, harder-to-pick-up, and therefore worse "I MANAGE." I want fake humility out of the grid like I want ALITO out of the grid. I know I'm still gonna see both of them, a lot, but my feelings aren't gonna budge.
• 15D: Aboveboard (LICIT) — one of the absolute worst kealoas* there is. I had the "L" and went LEGAL and LEGIT before being forced into LICIT.
• 59D: "I'm glad that's over!" ("WHEW!") — another kealoa*! Had to leave that first letter blank and check the cross, because it could easily have been "PHEW!"

• 1A: Lines at the cinema? (DIALOG) — I have never spelled it any way but "dialogue," so this one missed me completely. 
• 32D: Needed further explanation (WASN'T CLEAR) — oof, WASN'T CLEAR is right. I sometimes lie awake nights thinking about how choked some wordlists must be with every single variant of various verb phrases ... WAS CLEAR WAS NOT CLEAR WASN'T CLEAR IS CLEAR IS NOT CLEAR ISN'T CLEAR ARE CLEAR ARE NOT CLEAR AREN'T CLEAR ad infinitum. Parsing this one, with its apostrophe and all, was not (wasn't) easy. Wanted WAS NO- something. I guess I don't mind the phrase itself, but it was one more thorny part in an already thorny and not terribly rewarding Tuesday.
• 53A: The first "O" of O.O.O. (OUT) — I hope to god that there are other solvers out there who struggled to get this and then just stared at it wondering "how?" Apparently "O.O.O." stands for "OUT of order." I've never seen this anywhere, except maybe crosswords. I've seen many "Out of Order" signs in my day (on video games, toilets, vending machines), but none of those sign writers were confident enough to believe that merely writing "O.O.O." was going to do the trick. This is the kind of sloggy short stuff that really killed all the flow and good vibes today.

Alas, this write-up wasn't any shorter than usual. Best laid plans etc. Please please please go pick up your "These Puzzles Fund Abortion" puzzle pack if you haven't already. It's a tiny thing you can do in the face of the whirlwind of political stupidity, cruelty, misogyny, and backwardness. Plus you get some excellent puzzles in the bargain. Take care, see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = short, common answer that you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.

UPDATE: I see (and love) you people :) Keep it up!

[THESE PUZZLES FUND ABORTION]

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Mag whose first cover featured Michael Jordan and two young fans / SAT 8-28-21 / UK's tallest building named for its look / Symbol for stock volatility in finance / Sarcastic remark to a slowpoke / Western city on the Humboldt River / Title hero of a 2021 Pixar film

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: None 

Word of the Day: Natural numbers (29D: Some are natural: Abbr. => NOS.) —

In mathematics, the natural numbers are those used for counting (as in "there are six coins on the table") and ordering (as in "this is the third largest city in the country").

• • •

Just not my day. Really didn't like the cluing on this one at all and so even though there are several fine entries, the solving experience was rough and unpleasant. Maybe if I had any idea what "Bridge of Spies" was, or who was in it, the experience would've been slightly more tolerable, but probably only slightly. The main problem for me was the middle. Almost all of it. I just had no way in. Never heard of THE SHARD (5D: U.K.'s tallest building, named for its look). Thought ELKO (23D: Western city on the Humboldt River) was RENO, and then ENID. And on and on. I had EDITS and eventually AFTER PARTY and that is all I had in the middle. Bottom finished, top finished, middle ... empty. Wanted an actual animal, not ASLAN, so even with -LAN in place I just kept trying to think of animals. Oh, I guessed THRASHER, so that was in there too, but it wasn't much help. Couldn't bring myself to write in SOUP for 38D: Stock holder because it seemed so stupid. "Holder?" Sigh, whatever. But the real backbreaker in the middle, the thing that, once corrected, helped me finally get traction and work my way to the end, was "GIVE IT A SEC," which was the cool answer I was sure was correct for 12D: "Be patient" ("GIVE IT TIME"). That A SEC just killed me. When I finally decided to take it out, I wrote in TIN at 36A: Spam might be kept in it, and that started everything going in the right direction. TIN gave me LINES and ANGRY and then -THING gave me HOT and then SOLO HOMER and on to the end. But honestly this was just grueling, with almost no ameliorating sparkle or cleverness. And the cluing, I just don't understand...

DARK HUMOR" is not a phrase I've ever associated with "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." I have watched that movie a million times and never thought it "dark." Yes, a guy has various limbs chopped off and they spurt blood, but honestly there's no "darkness" to that scene at all. The movie is zany. It's comedy. It's parody. Dark shmark. It's downright light-hearted. Didn't know S.I. FOR KIDS existed. I'm sure that's supposed to be a marquee answer, but if a magazine falls in the woods and I'm not there to hear it ... I can't appreciate it too much. Also, S.I. FOR KIDS. it turns out, simply isn't the title of the "mag" in question. Here's wikipedia's first line: "Sports Illustrated Kids (SI Kids, trademarked Sports Illustrated KIDS, sometimes Sports Illustrated for Kids) is a monthly spin-off of the weekly American sports magazine Sports Illustrated. ." "Sometimes"????? So we get a "mag" that's "sometimes" this title, and we get it in made-up abbr. form. Pfft. Cluing COURTESY via a random quote was cruel—that's a long answer to give over to a mere fill-in-the-blank clue. No joy there. Haven't been paying much attention to new movies because theaters haven't been open that long so "LUCA" got by me, I'm afraid. Had U.S. POST before U.S. MAIL (I blame this on my actual home mailbox, which says "POST" on it). I haven't heard the term FLAME WAR for what feels like decades, so I had real trouble remembering the kind of "war" I was dealing with. I think "LET'S DO THIS THING!" is valid and good and belongs in the center (37A: "Ready for action!"). And I like AFTER PARTY. Nothing much else here interests me. And there's a lot of AONE TREY YESES OGRE ADT DADAS ANION SOLTI ADHOC NOS LIETO HEE HAW ROM PSHAW STILE ERST going on here. That is, a lot of gunky short crosswordesey and somewhat erstwhile fill. The SE corner was easy, but that's the only part I moved through smoothly... actually, the NE was pretty pliable too. But overall, a slog; a slog that started with me writing in HYPO / OTHER instead of TREY / YESES (1D: Long shot, informally / Column on a survey), and never got much more pleasant. YESES, yeesh. Super glad this is over.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Number cruncher in Wall Street lingo / SUN 11-1-20 / Bolshoi debut of 1877 / Little auk by another name / Boat sometimes built around whalebone frame / Original site of Elgin Marbles / Coarse-grained igneous rock / Org that publishes journal Emotion / Amenity in GM vehicles

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Medium (11-ish)

THEME: "West-Southwest" — W's are (mostly) turned into SW's creating wackiness clued wackily forever and ever ad infinitum dear lord make it stop:

Theme answers:

• SWAY UP HIGH (23A: What an unsteady tightrope walker may do?)
• SUMMER SWEAR (29A: "It's just too $%#@ hot!," e.g.?)
• SWARM RECEPTION (40A: What a beekeeper receives at work?)
• FOR SWANT OF A BETTER SWORD  (67A: Why the knight went shopping?)
• SPARKLING SWINE (94A: Hogs, after being scrubbed clean?)
• SWEPT FOR JOY (111A: What the ecstatic janitor did?)
• SWISH LISTS (117A: "Michael Jordan's Top 10 Free Throws" and others?)

Word of the Day: POWER-DIVE (80D: Sky fall?) —

: a dive of an airplane accelerated by the power of the engine (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

I just don't understand who these puzzles are for? Who is cheering for this? Who is excited by this? This absolutely tepid letter-change / wacky-clue banality, where is this fan base? I guess if you have a captive audience that doesn't really know that things can be different, can be way, way less stale than this, then you can just churn out mediocre Sunday fare like this, week after week after week. "Oh, Rex hates everything." I hate this. And you should too. "Hate" is maybe too strong. I'm just exhausted by this oversized unimaginative never-ending parade of Sunday madness. The title alone tells you that no one is trying very hard. It's just ... a literal description of the letter change? You change west (W) to southwest (SW). But the phrase "West-Southwest" doesn't mean much except a random direction. Who cares? Who!? And so a loooongtime constructor gets max pay for what is essentially filler. People were making puzzles exactly like this, exactly this exciting, actually, probably more exciting, in the 80s and 90s. And actually you can still do a simple theme like this today if the results are stellar, or if your revealer or title is really clever, or really ... if you've got any angle that makes it exceptional. But this is just drudgery. And not even consistent drudgery. You've got a "W" in that center themer that you *don't* change to SW ("WANT")—the only themed "W"word  that doesn't change. It's a jarring, ugly inconsistency. You've also got "SW" answers in non-theme positions (e.g. SWAN LAKE), which just makes the whole theme execution seem ragged and inelegant. I have no more time for this thing. I have trick-or-treaters that need tending to. If this were a novice constructor, I still wouldn't like the puzzle very much, but I'd feel less indignant than I do now, when I see a veteran churning this kind of stuff out (and the editor continuing to accept it). This is worse than you deserve. I'm not lying about this.

There's lots of green ink right in the center of my printed-out puzzle because POP ___ coulda been soooo many things (34D: Beyoncé, for one) (STAR!? IDOL?!), and then END OFF, what on god's green earth is that? I can't imagine ever saying that ever in any context (43D: Conclude (with)). And both of those cross SEADOVE, what the f (62A: Little auk, by another name). So that was unpleasant. Forgot how to spell (crosswordese) UMIAK (17D: Boat sometimes built around a whalebone frame). I think I had UBIAK (?). Also had trouble up there in the NE with CRAWL (I had CREEP) (15D: Go at a glacial pace), and GENRE, which had a very ambiguous clue (18D: Soul, e.g.). No idea about Spike's sister JOIE (112D: Screenwriter Lee, sister of Spike). Really struggled with the cutesy SHORT U (92A: Upfront?) (get it? ... because the "front" of "up" is a SHORT U sound? Hey, here's another SHORT U sound for you: UGH (9D: "Yuck!"). Not much else to say about this one. Praying for a kinder, more ambitious, and more exciting November, puzzlewise. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. how about WAN LAKE? Already light-years better than any answer in this puzzle. Do the theme in reverse! Do something!

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Clique's aspirations in modern lingo / SAT 12-21-19 / TV host fluent in eight languages / Either half of country duo with 14 #1 country hits / Bygone ad figure in tuxedo sunglasses / Bit of Communist Chinese attire

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Easy-Challenging (I dunno, I solved it after waking from a nap, so it was probably Easyish but I couldn't make sense of the upper west coast to save my life)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HOTSY-TOTSY (28A: A-O.K.) —

slang 

: comfortably stable or secure : PERFECT, OKhad a quarrel, but everything is hotsy-totsy now (coined about 1926 by Billie De Beck †1942 American cartoonist) (merriam-webster)

*** 

William Morgan DeBeck (April 15, 1890 – November 11, 1942), better known as Billy DeBeck, was an American cartoonist. He is most famous as the creator of the comic strip Barney Google, later retitled Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. The strip was especially popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and featured a number of well-known characters, including the title character, Bunky, Snuffy Smith, and Spark Plug the race horse. Spark Plug was a merchandising phenomenon, and has been called the Snoopy of the 1920s.
DeBeck drew with a scratchy line in a "big-foot" style, in which characters had giant feet and bulbous noses. His strips often reflected his love of sports. In 1946, the National Cartoonists Society inaugurated the Billy DeBeck Memorial Awards (or the Barney Awards), which became the Reuben Award in 1954. [...] DeBeck is credited with introducing or popularizing a number of neologisms and catchphrases via Barney Google, including "heebie-jeebies", "horsefeathers", "hotsy totsy", "balls of fire", "time's a-wastin'", "touched in the head", and "bodacious". (wikipedia)

• • •

This 40-black-squares look, I don't know. Seems like a lot of real estate to cede to black squares on a Saturday. Last week's Saturday puzzle had just 30, and *that* one was 16-wide. The puzzle felt ... spindly. The huge black cross formations made me wonder if there wasn't going to be some kind of theme, some kind of visual ... pun or something. But no, there's just a ridiculous number of black squares. And for what? So that ... what can happen, exactly? It's a minor point, in the end, I guess, but I found this one aesthetically off-putting from the get-go. The grid was OK but the cluing seemed awkward and tin-eared in many places, and a couple of those marquee answers felt dated (in two very different ways). Let's start with HOTSY-TOTSY, which ... what? How does this clue not at least have an "in times of yore," or "in OLDEN-speak" tag on it. I've never heard a soul use this term—looks like it had its heyday in the '20s (nineteen-20s ... dang, I'm gonna have to start specifying!) (see "Word of the Day," above). It also looks like it means [Sexy, to your grandpa]. Maybe I'm extrapolating slightly from "hot to trot," I don't know. For a term that hasn't been popular in any way in my lifetime, I think you gotta do something better than just [A-O.K.]. Or, how's this, don't use it in the first place. It looks colorful (i.e. it has that wacky rhyming slangy thing going for it), but with no real currency, it's just going to be befuddling and annoying.
Differently dated, to my ear, is SQUADGOALS, which was a hot hashtag back in ... I wanna say 2015? (42A: Clique's aspirations, in modern lingo). Actually, as I write that, I get the feeling that I have written it before. And I have (earlier this year). I love current stuff in puzzles, but you gotta be fast. Memes and hashtags Do Not Age Well. I got SQUADGOALS easy, but that answer makes this puzzle look like an old person (i.e. me) desperately trying to seem young. Like when you try to use that term that the kids are using in front of your kid and your kid just rolls her eyes. Like when middle-aged white people started saying "bling." Like that. Here's an interesting article about how white people co-opted the term from black culture. I guess the main thing I want to stress here is you gotta use hot things while they're hot and then move on. Both jazz-era slang and social media hashtags have shelf lives that need to be respected. Hashtag shelf life is much, much shorter. I think SQUADGOALS still has currency (I got it easily enough, people are still using it on Twitter), but the fact that it's ringing bygone to my ears means that the "in modern lingo" bit is precarious. Is "bling" modern lingo? Is "phat?" What do you call slang that's defined by its cultural novelty but that then gets old? Tell me, daddy-O! How do you know when your term has slid from "modern lingo" into "erstwhile lingo"?
The worst part of the solve for me came at the end, in the NW, and here the tin-eared / awkward cluing really comes into play. I had JUN- and still no idea about JUNK E-MAIL because I the terms that humans use are "junk mail" or "spam" (1D: Target of some filters). JUNK E-MAIL is certainly a recognizable term, in that if you said it, people would know what you're talking about, but people actually *say* "junk mail" or "spam." The bigger problem here, though, was all the answers that JUNK EMAIL ran through, none of which I could figure out, two of which were cross-referenced in an unimaginably awkward way. So the idea, I guess, is that refugees from Vietnam came to ... the U.S.? ... via GUAM. But the wording on the 'NAM clue, my god (24A: Origin of many refugees once in 26-Across, for short). The "once in" was the confusing part. Does that mean "Who had once been in"? "Once they got to"? Also, 'NAM is not a thing people who did not serve there *ever* call Vietnam. Using it as a casual abbr. for a place name always feels wrong. 'NAM isn't just "for short." If you were planning a trip to southeast Asia, you wouldn't talk about going to 'NAM. It's Vietnam. But the bigger issue here is the clue phrasing, and the weird status of GUAM in all this. It's just such a clunky way to try to get a cross-reference going. And then to do that clunky cross-reference with abutting words!? Turned that whole area into a nightmare. Throw in the fact that ELIA was very hard  (34A: Man's name meaning "Jehovah is God") (it is a man's name, obviously, but I can name only one ... unless you count essayist Lamb's pseudonym, which I don't), and POKE was hard (17A: ___ fun), and I just got destroyed up there. Total freefall. Oh, and I wanted SANTIAGO for a bit too at 13D: Two-time host city of the FIFA World Cup (SAO PAULO). I had just the SA- and -O to go on for a bit—weird that those three letters sent me to a wrong answer that is so weirdly adjacent to the right answer (another soccer-loving South American city).

So there was HOTSY-TOTSY and there was that NW corner with its NAM/GUAM mess. The rest was a blur. That was my experience.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Onetime Fandango competitor / SAT 10-8-16 / Bid on hand unsuited for suit play maybe / Cusk deepest living fish / Italian city where Pliny Elder Younger were born / Austrian philosopher Rudolf / Old brand in shaving aisle / Pricing model for many apps

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Einstein-ROSEN bridge (25A: Einstein-___ bridge (wormhole)) —

A wormhole or Einstein–Rosen Bridge is a hypothetical topological feature that would fundamentally be a shortcut connecting two separate points in spacetime. A wormhole may connect extremely long distances such as a billion light years or more, short distances such as a few feet, different universes, and different points in time. A wormhole is much like a tunnel with two ends, each at separate points in spacetime. // For a simplified notion of a wormhole, space can be visualized as a two-dimensional (2D) surface. In this case, a wormhole would appear as a hole in that surface, lead into a 3D tube (the inside surface of a cylinder), then re-emerge at another location on the 2D surface with a hole similar to the entrance. An actual wormhole would be analogous to this, but with the spatial dimensions raised by one. For example, instead of circular holes on a 2D plane, the entry and exit points could be visualized as spheres in 3D space. [...] The Einstein–Rosen bridge was discovered by Ludwig Flamm in 1916, a few months after Schwarzschild published his solution, and was rediscovered (although it is hard to imagine that Einstein had not seen Flamm's paper when it came out) by Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen, who published their result in 1935. However, in 1962, John A. Wheeler and Robert W. Fuller published a paper showing that this type of wormhole is unstable if it connects two parts of the same universe, and that it will pinch off too quickly for light (or any particle moving slower than light) that falls in from one exterior region to make it to the other exterior region. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hard to concentrate what with all the drama in the world of presidential politics, but I managed to pry myself away from my stunned, gleeful, and highly animated Twitter long enough to solve this puzzle, and now write about it. Lots of delightful answers today, and shorter overfamiliar stuff was not overpowering—largely innocuous. I didn't get 1-Across straight away, but I did stick an "S" at the end of it and then got SHACK instantly (6D: Take to living together, with "up"). SHACK to MOOLAH to SMIT to Evers to Chance, hooray. And thus the NW began to open up:

I do not know what SKUNK cabbage is. I figured 21A: Kind of cabbage was gonna give me some kind of money slang, like "kale" or "long green" or MOOLAH. But it's actual cabbage, though not the type you eat. The type that stinks, apparently. After I worked out the NW and sent I'M WAY AHEAD OF YOU (lovely) across the grid, the pace picked up considerably (THANK GOD!). Not sure what happened, but somehow I ended up filling in the whole NE and E and then throwing down ROTISSERIE (27D: Game's turning point?), figuring, at first, that it was a sports clue (see "ROTISSERIE League Baseball").

I've barely heard of FREEMIUM and certainly don't know what it means in relation to an app. Many apps are free ... is this some tech-speak way of saying "free"? Oh, wait, here's a definition: "Freemium is a pricing strategy by which a product or service (typically a digital offering or application such as software, media, games or web services) is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for proprietary features, functionality, or virtual goods" (wikipedia). So offer the shitty version of something free, is that it? Or incentivize (sorry) in-app purchases or some other corporate blather that makes my head hurt, is that it? Probably. Anyway, as you can see, it didn't take me much longer to get all of LIMOUSINE DRIVER (58A: One with a long stretch to go?). That is not, how you say, a good "?" clue. See "long stretch," think, *immediately*, "limousine." Not very tricksy. I had SOR as SAR because I invented a mythical "Sisters of the American Revolution" (59D: Young women's grp.). My familiarity with the Toni Morrison corpus, however, bailed me out, and shortly I was finished. Under 8 even with my stopping three times to take screen shots. A very modern, lively, clean grid. Hurray. OK, off to watch Sexual Assailant Cheeto try his best to egest a human-sounding apology noise from his face hole. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Topkapi Palace resident / FRI 5-6-16 / Architect sculptor with eponymous New York museum / Home to naturally pink Lake Retba / Mamie Eisenhower hairstyle / Like atoms with full outer shells / Speedball component

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Isamu NOGUCHI (36A: Architect/sculptor with an eponymous New York museum) —

Isamu Noguchi (野口 勇 Noguchi Isamu^?, November 17, 1904 – December 30, 1988) was an American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured and sold. // In 1947, Noguchi began a collaboration with the Herman Miller company, when he joined with George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames to produce a catalog containing what is often considered to be the most influential body of modern furniture ever produced, including the iconic Noguchi table which remains in production today. His work lives on around the world and at the Noguchi Museum in New York City. (wikipedia)

• • •

This really looks like a face to me. Like a simian robot muppet face. I think it is benevolent, but that's what the cylons would want me to think so ... not sure. One unique thing about this face—its cheeks are made of proper nouns that I've never seen before (not in the grid, anyway). "West Wing" is one of those shows that people like to gush about, and that I know I'm just never ever going to watch. But I've heard people talk about it enough (you know who you are ...) that somehow Allison Janney's character C.J. CREGG crept into my brain and lodged there (33A: Allison Janney's role on "The West Wing"). Well, the "C.J." part definitely did. The CREGG part is only vaguely familiar, but except for the "C" it was easy to come up with. The other cheek is NOGUCHI, whose name I briefly forgot but whom I was once interested in because his designs are so cool. Very mid-century space age. He makes shapes that look a lot like the shapes I often see on the covers of the vintage scifi paperbacks in my collection. The artist Richard Powers in particular seems to have been highly influenced by NOGUCHI (or vice versa)?

 [NOGUCHI]

[Powers]

 [Powers]

[NOGUCHI]

This played very easy overall; I came in the low 6's, going at a very leisurely pace, and taking the time to take a screen grab at the point I hit one of my most-disliked abbrs.: ATH.

ATH is on my personal No-Fly List (6D: Sports person: Abbr.). I might actually let it fly, but the circumstances would have to be extraordinary. Also on that list: ATTU (51D: Battle of ___ (1943 U.S./Japanese conflict). REPEN wasn't on it, because I never fathomed such a word, but it's on the list now (15D: Transcribe). Otherwise, this grid is very solid. Those center parts were probably the hardest to get into, if only because of the aforementioned proper nouns ("cheeks"). Also, I don't consider BANGS a "hairstyle." More *part* or a hairstyle—the front part. Your overall hairstyle might be doing any number of things and also have BANGS.

[also from my collection]

Had HASSLES for 16A: Snags (LASSOES), which more than half worked out. Wanted SEABEDS instead of SEALABS (20A: Locales for deep investigaions?) and took way more time than I should've needed getting the last four letters of MAKE THE BEST ----. I could think of only OUT OF (too long) and OF (too short). But of course the actual answer (MAKE THE BEST OF IT) works perfectly for the clue (53A: Turn lemons into lemonade, so to speak).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Florida community with portmanteau name / SAT 2-27-16 / Crumbly mideastern dessert / Bomberman console / Czar known for his mental instability / Dinner serving in prodigal son parable / Dwarf planet discovered in 2005

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: HALVA (30D: Crumbly Mideastern dessert) —

Halva (halawa, alva, haleweh, halava, helava, helva, halwa, halua, aluva, chalva) is any of various dense, sweet, tahini based confections of arabic origin, served across the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Malta and the Jewish diaspora. // In global, popular usage it means "desserts" or "sweet", and describes two types of desserts:

Flour-based

This type of halva is slightly gelatinous and made from grain flour, typically semolina. The primary ingredients are clarified butter, flour, and sugar.

Nut-butter-based

This type of halva is crumbly and usually made from tahini (sesame paste) or other nut butters, such as sunflower seed butter. The primary ingredients are nut butter and sugar.

Halva may also be based on various other ingredients, including sunflower seeds, nut varieties, beans, lentils, and vegetables such as carrots, pumpkins, yams and squashes.
Halva can be kept at room temperature with little risk of spoilage. However, during hot summer months, it is better kept refrigerated, as it can turn runny after several days. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty straightforward Saturday fare. Did it right upon waking, at a leisurely pace, and finished about three minutes faster than yesterday, but not so fast it made my head spin. It was easy in the main, with a number of little KNOTty parts that required me to exert effort. Those ended up being the interesting parts, as the marquee answers, while nice and smooth, just didn't grab me that much, and there was definitely an ouchy bit here and there in the shorter fill. Seemed pretty clear from the jump that 1A: Anchor line meant "anchor" in the sense of television news anchor. The clue pretty much screamed "I'm trying to trick you, heh heh heh heh [sneer] [wring hands] [twirl mustache]." Classic misdirection language: clue looks nautical, but both its words have different potential spheres of meaning, and thus it's probably not nautical at all—this is how I think on Saturdays. But what do anchors say? "Dateline ..."? "And that's the way it is ..."? "Our top stories now..."? No idea. As usual, I used short stuff to get me going. Today: SEL (4D: Frites seasoning), but only after completely misreading the clue and writing in ÉTÉ. My brain registered something like "season when you fry in France." After I fixed that, I took an odd series of big steps down into the middle-right of the grid.

UTTER was an obvious guess, confirmed by R-ATA (who knows what spelling you're gonna get?), and then the next few answers after that were obvious. HALVA was such a weird throwback for me. I have a very location- and time-specific memory of HALVA: the San Francisco of my childhood. I remember when we'd visit, there were delis and other shops that would have HALVA bars out where "normal" shops (i.e. shops back home) might have the candy bars (home was Fresno, just to give you some idea of context here) . So I thought, "Sure, I'll try this." And found it both unusual (to my unsophisticated palate) and delicious. But I don't ever remember having HALVA anywhere else (in my entire life) except then and there. And yet, the name, somehow, I remember. Weird, considering it's a pretty damn common dessert and HALVA is surely available in most cities across the country now. For all I know they actually had HALVA bars in Fresno and I just never noticed. Anyway, that is my weird and largely uneventful HALVA story.


Had so much trouble parsing 35D: A host that even with -LEWS filled in I didn't get it. I was taking "A" as some kind of symbol or name or something, not as an indefinite article, and "host" can be understood a ton of different ways, of course. So there was some struggling there, but not much. The only other trouble spot was at the crossing of POWHATAN and SOWED, where I had to run the alphabet (and run it almost all the way—stupid "W"!) to get SOWED, which just did not occur to me at all for 45A: Set in motion. In fact, just looking at SO-ED, I couldn't think of *any* letter that could go there. PAWHATAN I just don't know. Maybe I've seen it before. Probably. But it's a jumble of letters to me, largely. There were other things I didn't know or couldn't remember (THAYER, IVAN IV, TAMIAMI), but crosses made them non-issues.


LEO and LEOPARD in same grid ... thumbs down. Liked freshness of HATERS (2D: No fans) and AIR BnB (48D: Website for budget travelers), but most other fill doesn't shine or surprise or delight that much. This is just a solid, workmanlike Saturday. A fine morning diversion.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Four of 12 imams of Shia / WED 6-7-15 / Red Lobster freebie / Amused singer of Raise Your Glass / Coke Zero alternative / Nickname for high-achieving couple

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty:Very very easy

THEME: Mononymous singers — familiar phrases that contain words that are also the names of one-named singers; answers are clued wackily, as if they had something to do w/ said singers...

Theme answers:

• TICKLED PINK (17A: Amused the singer of "Raise Your Glass"?) (I do not know that song)
  
• PRINCE CHARMING (25A: Enchantment of the singer of "Raspberry Beret"?)
• PRO BONO (35A: Favoring the singer of "Sunday Bloody Sunday"?)
• STING OPERATION (42A: Medical procedure for the singer of "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free"?)
• TRAINED SEAL (57A: Coached the singer of "Kiss From a Rose"?) 

Word of the Day: Kevin DURANT (5A: Kevin who was the 2014 N.B.A. M.V.P.) —

Kevin Wayne Durant (born September 29, 1988) is an American professional basketball player who currently plays with the Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He has played the small forward position for the Thunder, formerly the Seattle SuperSonics. Durant has won an NBA Most Valuable Player Award, four NBA scoring titles, the NBA Rookie of the Year Award, and an Olympic gold medal. He has also been selected to five All-NBA teams and six All-Star teams. (wikipedia)

• • •

Solved this faster than both the Tuesday and the Monday puzzles, so ... not sure what happened there, but I think this one's clued Much too easily. I was getting theme answers just by looking at the answers w/ a handful of crosses in place. Never saw clue for DYNAMIC DUO because I had the tail end and just wrote in the rest—what else was ...-ICD-O gonna be? I like Chagall's work so MARC = gimme. I watched a lot of "Friends" so MATT = gimme. I do a lot of crosswords so TEK = gimme. Etc. This thing didn't push back At All. Took me a little while to see exactly what the theme was, but that's just because I didn't have much time to think about it—I was too busy filling in answers as fast as I could type them. I wrote in DARN for DAMN (23D: "Aw, hell!").  I think that is literally the only "mistake" I made all puzzle. I'm kind of on the fence about the theme. It's just one-named singers whose names are in familiar phrases. That doesn't strike me as that interesting or ambitious. But it's probably just playful enough to pass muster. But (but!) the fill was a little south of good. My mood never quite recovered after I got DIETRC :( and LRON :( :( one after the other. ABMS OOP ORSO ALGA ULAN. It's just a bit clanky. First rate Scrabble-f*cking in the SW. So it's a mild negative from me today, I think. But very, very mild.


Gotta get back to baseball now. When I came up here, it was the 6th inning and Houston was up 2-0 on the Yankees. Let's see what it is now ... whoa, looks like Houston increased its lead to 3-0. Still, that could disappear in a hurry. Gotta get back to watching it live. I've got picture from ESPN and audio from Astros radio. Best of both worlds (if I mute the commercials). Later...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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True Blood vampire Northman / FRI 2-27-15 / Prefix meaning heavens / Frequent demonstrator of doppler effect / Knot toads parliament / So-called Japanese chess / Classic 1984 film in which most dialogue was ad-libbed / Evolutionary biologist who wrote Panda's Thumb

Constructor: Julian Lim

Relative difficulty: Medium (Medium-Challenging for me because Tiredness/Stupidity)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SHOGI (22D: So-called Japanese chess) —

Shogi (将棋 shōgi^?) (/ˈʃoʊɡiː/, Japanese: [ɕo̞ːɡi] or [ɕo̞ːŋi]), also known as Japanese chess or the Generals' Game, is a two-player strategy board game in the same family as Western (international) chess, chaturanga, makruk, shatranj and xiangqi, and is the most popular of a family of chess variants native to Japan. Shōgi means general's (shō 将) board game (gi 棋).

The earliest predecessor of the game, chaturanga, originated in India in the 6th century, and sometime in the 10th to 12th centuries xiangqi (Chinese chess) was brought to Japan where it spawned a number of variants. Shogi in its present form was played as early as the 16th century, while a direct ancestor without the "drop rule" was recorded from 1210 in a historical document Nichūreki, which is an edited copy of Shōchūreki and Kaichūreki from the late Heian period (c. 1120).

• • •

My normal strategy of throwing down all the short Downs as fast as I can, first answers that come to mind, and then looking back and seeing if I can pick out the long Acrosses with the help of pattern recognition … did not work today, despite the fact that many of my first guesses for the Downs were correct. RISE and ASIA. PEP. RONA and IF AT—all good. But any hope of seeing correct Acrosses was somehow stymied by MAKE (for COST) and ALEC (for ERIC) and a botched Mass. motto word (always sucks to trip on the worst bit of fill in the puzzle) (ENSE). Also, I couldn't remember parliament of OWLS, despite the fact that that was the name of a Batman arc only a few years back (actually, "Court of OWLS"), and despite the fact that my boy Chaucer wrote "The Parliament of FOWLS." Actually, I think it's because of the Chaucer title that I didn't get OWLS, despite the rhyming. Result was sadness and then doubt—I started pulling different little words, some of which were correct. I also forgot that "Spinal Tap" was actually called "THIS IS SPINAL TAP" (14A: Classic 1984 film in which most of the dialogue was ad-libbed), so despite thinking of that movie first, I didn't write it in because, of course, in my head, it "didn't fit." So that whole up-top experience made the puzzle tougher than average for me. But maybe not for more alert people. Here's where I (finally) got started:

Courtesy of the gimme GARP (32A: Robin Williams title role). From here, the bottom was done in under a minute. Seriously. It was the mirror image, the opposite, the world upside down, compared to the north. Probably helped that STEPHEN JAY GOULD (52A: Evolutionary biologist who wrote "The Panda's Thumb") spoke at my college when I was a senior, so I got him off the -LD. Yes, that definitely helped. But after SHALL WE went in (48A: "Ready to go?"), Every Single Short Down off of that was obvious, so the bottom was Monday for me. Ended up getting SPARE THE ROD without ever reading the clue.

From here, the west was easy, but I briefly ran into the problem I feared—not being able to get up into that top part. The problem: MELISMA (20A: Musical phrase in which a single syllable is sung over several notes). Vaguely familiar, now that I look at it, but not in my knowledge base. So I got as far as PSYCHIC and then worried a little. I had wanted TRAMP earlier for 14D: Galumph, so I tried that. Same with ROSEATE. But still … it all felt a bit dicey. But once I got PHONES, finally, this happened.

From there it was ERIC and OWLS and quickly all was done.


This was a good puzzle, I think. I would say that this is *in spite* of its design, which looks cool, but which loads up the puzzle with short answers. And while those have their share of predictable ugliness today [shakes fist at ENSE!], overall, they're pretty clean. The central chunks are chunkily varied, and the long Acrosses up top and down south are nice (nicer up top, so I was happy to end there).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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