Material in some china / SAT 7-9-22 / Louis predecessor of the franc / Hub for Nollywood movies / Indoor rowing machine in brief / Max couture label / Zeljko 2008 Emmy winner for Damages

Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging to Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Zeljko IVANEK (40D: Zeljko ___, 2008 Emmy winner for "Damages") —

Željko Ivanek (/ˈʒɛlkoʊ ɪˈvɑːnɪk/; Slovene: [ˈʒɛːlkɔ iˈʋaːnək]; born August 15, 1957) is an American actor of Slovenian-Croatian origin, known for his role as Ray Fiske on Damages, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award. Ivanek is also known for his role of Ed Danvers on Homicide: Life on the Street and Homicide: The Movie, Governor James Devlin on Oz, Andre Drazen on 24, Blake Sterling on the short-lived series The Event, and Emile "The Hunter" Danko in Heroes. From 2014 until 2019, he starred as Russell Jackson in the drama Madam Secretary. He also had a recurring role as FBISpecial Agent Jim Racine in the series Banshee. 

For his active stage career, he has been awarded a Drama Desk Award and has been nominated for three Tony Awards. (wikipedia) 

• • •

Wow, they don't make 'em like this any more. Or they do, I guess, just rarely. This was a proper Saturday, a harder, better version of yesterday's 4-corner type of challenge. Lots of white space, lots of vague or tricky cluing, lots of technical terms and trivia, lots of opportunity to fall on your face. Repeatedly. But because every corner had *two* ways in, not just one, it had much better flow than these types of highly segmented grids often have, and what's really impressive is how clean this relatively low word-count grid ended up being. And not just clean, but often fresh. Yes, the "freshness" frequently comes via names of recentish fame, but it's also there in the cluing (on LAGOS, for instance (15A: Hub for Nollywood movies)). "Freshness" doesn't only have to mean "recentness," it can mean thoughtfulness and originality and cleverness as well. Because if the puzzle were entirely and aggressively up-to-the-minute it would feel narrow and faddish, whereas this one tempered its recent pop culture trivia with wide-ranging subject matter. You can feel some predilections, such as the way the grid leans into movies and television, and especially music (CLARINET, RUBATOS, ARIETTAS). This gives the puzzle personality. It was definitely a rough solve for me in places, but ultimately I felt like the puzzle prioritized solver enjoyment just as much as Saturday gruelingness. As Saturday puzzles go, it is something close to model.

Looking at the blank grid, one might imagine that the most troublesome spots were going to be the giant lakes of white space in the NE and SW, but those were actually the easier parts of the puzzle for me. Harder for me were the other, narrower corners, and harder still was the connective tissue. I foundered on both sides of that center diagonal line of black squares, where the 3- and 4-letter answers form little staircases of a sort, from the lower to upper half of the puzzle. This made zooming from one corner to the next, for me, impossible. And yet I didn't feel trapped. That is ... it was like being lost in a hallway rather than cornered in a room. I never ended up anywhere where I felt there was no escape. I just got stuck, but I knew help was eventually going to come from some other part of the puzzle to rescue me. So coming out of the NW, for instance, I got "TOOTSIE" easy (30A: 1982 film with the tagline "Behind every great man, there is a woman!"), but had only vague memories of "Catcher in the Rye" (last read age 13), so ALLIE was a bust (weirdly, I remember Holden's sister was PHOEBE, but ALLIE, gone ... probably, in part, because he's dead before the novel starts) (22D: Holden's brother in "The Catcher in the Rye"). Then I thought all those presidents used to be ELIS (not ELKS) (as you can see, above, ELKS was my very last answer) (28A: Group that counts Harding, Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy as former members). LAOS was a guess, but not an informed one (25A: Home of the Plain of Jars, a UNESCO World Heritage site). I wanted INTERACTED but I also knew it could be INTERFACED or INTER-godknowswhat, and I've never seen a CLAM CAKE in my life (clam bake, crab cake) (6D: Specialty of Rhode Island cuisine), so I had to slide down to the SW in order to maintain momentum, and there, despite having no clue as to any part of IVANEK, I blew through the corner (LOL I have watched several shows featuring IVANEK, including "Damages," so I know his face well, but he's just "that guy in that thing" as far as my brain is concerned). 

Coming out of the SW, I was excited to see the "Atlanta" clue (one of my very favorite shows, one of the greatest TV shows of this century), and was super-excited to see the name I have been waiting to see in crosswords. "It's ZAZIE ...! ZAZIE ...!" And here my brain froze (45A: Actress with an Emmy nomination for FX's "Atlanta"). I blame ZADIE SMITH. I even tried SMITH here. Which weirdly got me SINEW (wrong), which even more weirdly got me INTRO and EVADE (both right!). But I'm getting ahead of myself. Blanked on the BEETZ, but luckily Cameron DIAZ gave me the "Z" that made me remember the odd bit of municipal slang HIZZONER (35D: Informal title in city government), and I got going again ... only to get bogged down once more trying to get out of that corner and up to the NE (my last corner). BONEASH!!? Woof, that one broke me (32A: Material in some china). Made me question ARIETTAS ("is it ORIETTAS? ... or are you thinking of OPERETTAS and ORATORIOS? ... damn it!") (33D: Mozart's "Voi, che sapete" and others) And then again *all* of the short-answer clues that made up the connective tissue leading out of the SE were killing me. Kinda wanted BADE but wasn't sure. DONEE clue was too vague. No idea re: GONG (another music clue!) (37A: Subject of a smash hit?), wanted both ECU and SOU before D'OR (29A: Louis ___ (predecessor of the franc)), had FOUL before LONG. Eventually had to dip into the (empty) NE corner itself and (luckily) get EATING and REAGAN, which helped me get LUNGS (ugh) (26A: Pair of pants?) (because they are a pair ... that pants?), and I managed to work my way back through the short stuff from there. Torched the NE corner and ended up finishing up back at my first real trouble spot, which I'm calling ELKS Junction. The end. A magical, mystical journey, full of peril and wonder. But I survived the ordeal of BONEASH Pit, maneuvered past the gruesome ship WRECKS (14D: Settings for some scuba dives), powered-up with a magic CLAM CAKE (!), and completed my quest at last. Good times.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[UPDATE: since people seem to have questions ... 39D: Pool side = SOLIDS because the "pool" in question is the cue sport that you play on a felt-covered table with six pockets (one "side" is SOLIDS, the other stripes)]

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Rarest naturally occurring element in earth's crust / SAT 12-7-19 / Nigerian novelist Tutola / Reduplicative girl's name / 2000s rock singer with hit albums Hell-On Middle Cyclone / Yoga pose similar to Upward-Facing Dog / Opera heroine who slays witch / Japanese city on Tokyo Bay / Old-fashioned attire for motorist

Constructor: Kevin G. Der and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Challenging (11:56)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AMOS Tutuola (10D: Nigerian novelist Tutuola) —

Amos Tutuola (20 June 1920 – 8 June 1997) was a Nigerian writer who wrote books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales. [...] Tutuola's most famous novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town, was written in 1946, first published in 1952 in London by Faber and Faber, then translated and published in Paris as L'Ivrogne dans la brousse by Raymond Queneau in 1953. Poet Dylan Thomas brought it to wide attention, calling it "brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching". Although the book was praised in England and the United States, it faced severe criticism in Tutuola's native Nigeria. Part of this criticism was due to his use of "broken English" and primitive style, which supposedly promoted the Western stereotype of "African backwardness". This line of criticism has, however, lost steam. (wikipedia)

• • •

Saw the constructor names and thought "O dang, this is gonna be hard." Then I got a little bit of the way in and ... the NW pretty much just fell. I mean, not Super easy, but very doable. So I thought, "Hey, maybe this isn't gonna be so bad." And I made my way down the west coast, and then ... nothing. Stuck. Tried to move into the NE—nope. Lucked into a good first guess at 34D: "Go ahead, ask" (FIRE AWAY) and got the far SE done, but even then, even with chunks filled in here and there, all over the grid, I was flailing for much of this. I just sort of ... oozed my way to the end. I'd say HEADBANDS, on the one hand, and CLOMP, on the other, were the twin epicenters of my trouble. Had HEADBA--S but couldn't see how clue could work with "S" at end (which, honestly, should've been and probably was ultimately the thing that made me realize [Do loops?] was a noun and not a verb phrase. As for CLOMP, my goodness (28D: Really hit one's stride?) ... I had ELOPE in there at one point, with ERIE (wrong) OGLE (right) and LOW FAT (right) "confirming" it. I didn't understand how that clue could point to ELOPE, but I figured, it's Saturday, I'm sure it's just one of those tricky clues that I'll grasp later. Hoo-whee, wrong. Pretty clear now, in retrospect, that finally figuring out the symmetrical answers HEADBANDS and WRAP PARTY (which ELOPE was blocking) was what turned me from dead-stuck to slowly moving. After WRAP PARTY, the SW wasn't too hard. NE proved much tougher, though it somehow took me a long time to even look at 4A: The "dark" in a Dark and Stormy, perhaps (JAMAICAN RUM), which really would've helped me, as I could've at least guessed the RUM part. Anyway, finally got the Puzzle Solved! signal at the "M" in AMOS (who, along with sounds-like-a-"Star Wars"-villain ASTATINE and not-"SHERRI"-or-"DIANNE"-but "RONNIE," I'd never heard of). (10D: Nigerian novelist Tutuola + 35D: Rarest naturally occurring element in the earth's crust + 12D: Name that's the title of a 1964 4 Seasons hit)


Here's just a list of all the ways things went bad:

The Things:

• 1A: Shaken thumb, in American Sign Language (TEN) — no idea
• 18A: How a security guard might say goodbye? (GOTTA BOUNCE) — this is actually terrible corny wordplay, not a proper "?" clue. 42A: Setting for a plastered cast? (WRAP PARTY)—*That* is a proper "?" clue.
• 24A: Mascot of the W.N.B.A.'s Mystics (PANDA) — wanted the name of some ... wizard or magician or famous ... mystic? But it's just ... PANDA? Does she even have a name?
• 25A: Most actors don't hold real ones, informally (CIGS) — a. hard!, b. really?? I've seen so many actors smoke on screen I just don't know where the "most" is coming from here.
• 28A: Language from which "Saskatchewan" comes (CREE) — As I mentioned above, I had ERIE here
• 33A: Light on packaging (LOW-FAT) — The lack of quotation marks around "Light" feels like a crime
• 39A: League leader, informally (COMMISH) — ohhhhh, the person in charge of the league. Not the team in first place. Sigh. Gotcha.
• 40A: E.U. alliance (G-SIX) — me: ".... UNIX? Like ... les états ... unix?"
• 48A: Opposite of calm (PANIC) — any other MANICs out there? ... anyone? ...
• 54A: Patchwork? (BETA RELEASE) — I don't even get this one. I thought betas were pre-releases? So what's being ... patched? Exactly? Also, ask me how excited I am by STEM-related jargon ...
• 44D: Japanese city on Tokyo Bay (CHIBA) — I know a martial arts actor named CHIBA, but Japanese city ... no, can't say it rings a bell. I was like "is there really a city named CHINA ... in Japan?")

• 4D: The tunes "The Blarney Pilgrim" and "The Lark in the Morning," e.g. (JIGS) — I mean ... if you say so ...
• 9D: Yoga pose similar to Upward-Facing Dog (COBRA) — baffled by this (at first), which is highly amusing for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that I was in both updog and COBRA as recently as Tuesday night. Sigh. 
• 36D: Energy regulators in the body (THYROIDS) — my dumb ass seriously wrote in ADYNOIDS at one point, wow

All that, on top of the previously mentioned trouble with HEADBANDS, CLOMP, AMOS, "RONNIE," ASTATINE, etc. I'm probably most mad at the fact that I got NEKO CASE almost entirely from crosses without ever having looked at the clue—that would've been a gimme for me!! Would've felt great to just throw it down with no help from crosses, bam. But that's one of the weird things about solving—no telling where your eyes are gonna go first. I've got a bad habit of really really holding off on even looking at the longer clues until I've dealt with their shorter crosses. Mostly this works, but sometimes, esp. if I get frustrated with the shorter stuff, I *forget* to just at least *check* the clues on the longer answers. I assume I'll *need* the shorter crosses to make sense of the long stuff. But not always. Anyway, a worthy, hard puzzle that made me feel bad about myself! Which is my problem, not (mostly) the puzzle's.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Global currency market with portmanteau name / SAT 10-13-18 / Nissan crossover named for Italian city / 2016 film whose climax is on planet Scarif / Cartoonist's indicator of nodding / Title for Princess Anne beginning in 1982 / Ancestor of Methuselah

Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (I think I was around 6 minutes (?), but I don't know, 'cause I had an error only *I* could've made (see below), so I didn't notice the clock when I put in the last letter)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ZOE KAZAN (29A: Lead actress in 2017's "The Big Sick") —

Zoe Swicord Kazan (born September 9, 1983) is an American actress and playwright. Kazan made her acting debut in Swordswallowers and Thin Men (2003) and later appeared in films such as The Savages (2007), Revolutionary Road (2008) and It's Complicated (2009). She starred in happythankyoumoreplease (2010), Meek's Cutoff (2010) and Ruby Sparks (2012), writing the screenplay for the last. In 2014, she starred in the film What If and the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, for which she received an Emmy nomination. In 2017, she portrayed Emily Gardner, based on Emily V. Gordon, in the film The Big Sick. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very nice work here from Kevin, and I did so well. So so well. Until the end, when I finished but had an error. No Happy Pencil! I knew it had to be in the answer I'd never heard of—49D: Global currency market with a portmanteau name (FOREX). LOL, I can't even guess the basis of the portmanteau, that's how little the actual answer means to me. The problem—and I acknowledge that this is a problem that only I, and possibly other teachers of poetry, had—was that I didn't even hesitate at 60A: Volleyball team, e.g. I wrote in SESTET. The End. That is to say, I ended with FORES for the "portmanteau" ("Formidable Resolution"? "Forbidden Reservations"?). So the "S" should've been an "X." I was worried for a sec that the "F" was wrong, because FATE seems like a really bad answer to 49A: Theme in some time travel fiction. FATE is the main theme in the Aeneid, a mostly non-time travel epic poem. Not sure how FATE is involved more heavily in time travel fiction than in Any Other Genre, so yeah, thought maybe "F" was wrong, but what then? HATE? I mean, it's probably true. Travel through time to kill the person you HATE? Or GATE? "Stargate" is a thing, right? MATE? First mate on a starship, or maybe ... you have to time travel to find a MATE. But the answer was FATE. And the answer was SEXTET. And now this is all that I'm going to remember about this puzzle, which is sad, because I remember enjoying it.


Felt very very easy to start with, because SHONDA was a gimme (1A: Rhimes who created "Grey's Anatomy"), and then NONOS DUDS and ATSEA went right in. Every first guess seemed to be right for me today. KNESSET KESTRELS CORELLI, all just dropping in no problem. ZOE KAZAN is a regular crossword solver, so she'll probably be pretty chuffed today. The SE was the hardest part of this thing by a wide, wide margin, starting with my having no idea what followed the NOT in NOT BAD (33A: Fair). Me: "NOT ... TAN?" And then PIMAS!? Forgot they existed. ISOPOD? Needed many crosses. APERÇU? LOL, uh, I mean, I know the word (solely from crosswords), but yeep. And of course this is where FORE(X) and SE(X)TET were all hanging out, so it was a sandstorm of confusion. So much tentative fill down here that I even second-guessed MURANO, which I *knew* was right (56A: Nissan crossover named for an Italian city), but ... I also kept wanting to call it the "Mitsubishi MURANO," so ... oy. Rough. But again, the first 75% was a rollicking good time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Realm of Queen Lucy the Valiant / SAT 3-31-18 / Myrmica rubra / Food flavorer that's not supposed to be eaten / Start of some futuristic toy names / Hang time to snowboarder / Johnny nicknamed godfater of rhythm blues / Lady first female member British parliament

Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: TOTAL GRIDLOCK (52A: Nightmarish Manhattan traffic situation ... or a possible title for this puzzle) — Across and Down lines (i.e. rows and columns in the grid) alternate directions, e.g. first row runs east-to-west (i.e. backwards), second row runs west-to-east (i.e. the normal direction), third row runs back east-to-west again, etc. (and same for the Downs columns)

Theme answers:

• ONE-WAY STREETS (19A: Most crosstown thoroughfares in Manhattan ... with a hint to this puzzle's theme)
• SNOITCERID / LLA NI GNIOG (35A: With 41-Across, proceeding willy-nilly)

Word of the Day: Johnny OTIS (1D: Johnny nicknamed "The Godfater of Rhythm and Blues") —

Johnny Otis (born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes; December 28, 1921 – January 17, 2012) was an American singer, musician, composer, arranger, bandleader, talent scout, disc jockey, record producer, television show host, artist, author, journalist, minister, and impresario. He was a seminal influence on American R&B and rock and roll. He discovered numerous artists early in their careers who went on to become highly successful in their own right, including Little Esther Phillips, Etta James, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Ace, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Hank Ballard, and The Robins (who eventually changed their name to The Coasters), among many others. Otis has become widely synonymous with being known as the original "King of Rock and Roll" and the "Godfather of Rhythm and Blues". (wikipedia)

• • •

A themed Saturday. Oy. I mean, this puzzle's hard, but what made it most hard, for me, was that it was themed, and I never look for (and also hate) themes on Saturdays. This should've been a Thursday puzzle. It's much harder, sure, but type-wise, it's a Thursday. Actually, on a Thursday, I'd've finished it much faster, because I'd've thought "what's the theme?" and would've then looked at those longer Acrosses. In tough themelesses, I generally ignore the longer answers until I've worked a lot of the smaller crosses. Smaller answers are easier to get (generally), and once I've picked a bunch of them up, then I look to the crosses to confirm. My problem was I just never looked at 19A (i.e. the first theme clue). If I had, bam, there's the tip that it's themed / tricky, so I at least know I'm striking out because Something is Up and not just because the cluing is hard. Solving in software hurts here too—if you can't see all the clues at once laid out in front of you, your eye can't pick up the ellipses in those theme clues, which is the tip that something themey is going on. So just the fact of running this on a Saturday and not a Thursday added to its difficulty, which feels mildly cheap, frankly. Also, I have seen the "street" thing before; it's been a NYT theme before, though never TOTAL GRIDLOCK the way this one is. The one I remember had answers doing this back and forth thing, but just for Acrosses, I believe. This construction is indeed impressive, but it's a stunt puzzle, par excellence. And the theme is one that, once you pick it up, has no pleasures or revelations left for you. It's just a slog, as your brain struggles to keep up with which way which row / column is going. Lastly, GOING IN ALL / DIRECTIONS simply does not fit the theme. Grids do not go in all directions; they go in two directions. This is ... I mean, this is what defines a grid. The two-direction thing pretty much defines gridness. What the hell?


So since I was not looking at the theme clues, it took me way longer than it should have to grok the theme. I knew RED ANTS was correct (1A: Insects of the species Myrmica rubra) (let it never be said I'm *totally* science-ignorant...), right from the start, but I also knew (or thought I did) that the actor was EWAN McGregor, and both things couldn't be true (or so it seemed). So I flailed there a bunch and moved on. Also wanted 14D: Provisos to be IFS, but it seemed to *start* with "S" so that didn't work. Finally, I wrote in SPAS at 22A: Employers of masseurs and then checked the cross at 23D: Holden's younger sister in "The Catcher in the Rye"—well I absolutely positively knew that was PHOEBE. My sister and I used to make fun of this kid in one of her classes who had to read out loud from the book and kept calling her "Fobe," so that particularly literary name has Stuck Like Glue. I still mentally say "Fobe" every time I see PHOEBE written out. Anyway, SPAS couldn't work with PHOEBE ... unless ... I turned SPAS around. At *that* moment, minutes into my solve, I thought, "Wait, this isn't *$&%&ing themed, is it?" And bam. There's DEMITASSES (12D: Small coffee cups) and THO (33A: Short while?) and I'm off—creepingly off. After that, there's just the awkward work of entering half the answers backwards. Beyond the gimmick, the puzzle is totally ordinary. I mean, do you even remember any of the clues or answers? The only ones I remember are the crossing "?" clues at 37D: Turkey club? (NATO) and 43A: Back on the job? (TEBA, i.e. ABET), where I had to run the alphabet. Totally baffling, and probably the only time today when, after getting the right answer, I thought "OK, yeah, that's good. Fair play." Turkey club? Man. Both those clues are brutal and perfect (Turkey is a country in the "club" that is NATO, in case that wasn't clear) (and if you "back" or support someone in a crime, like a bank "job," then you ABET that person).


OK, it looks like Johnny Cueto is currently pitching a perfect game through six, so I have to go. I am very impressed by this puzzle, architecturally, but I can't pretend to like themed Saturdays, and I can't pretend I haven't seen a (admittedly less ambitious) version of the back-and-forth street thing before, and I especially can't pretend GOING IN ALL / DIRECTIONS makes any sense whatsoever for this particular theme.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Welp, looks like someone got a hit off Cueto as I was writing that last paragraph. Oh well. Still gonna go watch baseball. Because baseball is on. It's baseball season. Baseball. Bye.

P.P.S. And while I was typing the first P.S. the UConn women ... lost??? Whoa. Now I really gotta go see what's up.

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Cavalleria Rusticana baritone / SAT 11-25-17 / Devil Hatfield Kevin Costner / Musician with 1963 gold-selling album Honey in the Horn / Portraitist with Baltimore museum named after him / Beverage brand whose logo depicts three claw marks / Siempre much covered 1965 song about Che Guevara

Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PAMPAS CAT (27D: Striped or spotted animal named for its habitat) —

The Pampas cat (Leopardus colocolo) is a small wild cat native to South America that is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List as habitat conversion and destruction may cause the population to decline in the future. It is also known as the colocolo or Pantanal cat over parts of its range. It is named after the Pampas, but occurs in grassland, shrubland, and dry forest at elevations up to 5,000 m (16,000 ft). [...] The Pampas cat is a small, but heavy-set cat. (wikipedia)

• • •

Low word count. Hard for the sake of hard. Not my favorite puzzle type. This Is Why I Need Fridays to Be Fridays—Bouncy, lively themelesses! Tough, but doable. Pleasurable. I would be happy if Saturdays were like this too, but Fridays are my most-liked day because they tend (more than other days) to be in that sweet spot, that Goldilocks Zone: tough but not unpleasantly tough. And free from the restraints of themes that often don't pay off. Today, 60 words, and clues (as well as fill) that were designed to be not clever but brutal. Dealing in vagueness and obscurity. The worst of this came in the NW, where ANSE and ALFIO made me want to quit right there. Never heard of either. I had FEEL -A-E staring at me for 3D: Have peace of mind and I just shook my head and prayed that something would come to me. Didn't take long for SAFE to drop in there, but ugh, ANSE, ALFIO, that's just horrible. Going this low in the word count just isn't worth it most of the time. The stacks in the NW and SE are pretty good—the Acrosses, at least. Well, they're solid, anyway. The NW > the SE, which holds up, but doesn't shine. SPILL BLOOD over TEAR INTO adds some vivid, brutal energy to the puzzle, which is nice. But mainly this felt like a slog. Trivia about LAREDO, ridiculous clues for common stuff like OTTER (?!) ("known to chase its tail?"—my parents live near Monterey, I've seen lots and lots of OTTER activity ... never that). I felt like I only finished in reasonable time because I just happened to know dumb **** like what the MONSTER logo looks like (37D: Beverage brand whose logo depicts three claw marks). Things started out very promising ...

... but then frequently ground to a halt. I have no idea what a PAMPAS CAT is, and I'm guessing you haven't either. Also, I still don't think I understand how the clue for TABLET PC works (38A: Consumers want to get their hands on it). Far and away the roughest answer for me, even after I had TABLET--. I thought it was TABLE TOP, for a bit, to be honest. I get that a TABLET PC has a touch screen, so you use your hands on it ... but you use your hands on all computers. I'm using my hands on this ordinary laptop right now (OK, I'm actually using a wireless keyboard, but I could *easily* be using the laptop's own keyboard). I spaced on John MCCLANE's last name, despite having rewatched "Die Hard" just a few months ago. Wanted that second letter to be "C," but TABLE T-C made no sense. TABLE TIC!? Again, if PAMPAS CAT had been an actual animal anyone knew anything about, my problems here might've been avoided. Anyway, the lesson is, don't get cute with your clues unless the solver's gonna get a solid "aha" out of it.


My great coup was getting LAREDO off just the "D" and BATALI off just the "L" (despite knowing nothing about jalapeño contests or "Iron Chef"). The only PEALE I know is Norman Vincent, so this [Portraitist...] guy was rough. I put in LALO off the initial "L," but kept doubting it, thinking I'd confused the [Contemporary of Sain-Saëns] with a modern film composer (turns out I was thinking of LALO Schifrin ... so the confusion was merited). Lots of proper nouns today, which meant the puzzle was heavy on trivia, light on cleverness / wordplay. I resent 40D: Opportunity for people to act badly? as B-MOVIE refers to lower-budget films, not bad acting, and bad acting in high-budget films abounds. Some of my best friends are B-MOVIEs, is what I'm saying. [Producer of loose leaf notes?] was about as close as any clue got to cleverness. Why do lines form quickly for SLAM POETS? Is "quickness" an essential part of slam poetry? Can a slam poet not recite at a normal, non-quick pace? Clearly these clues just aren't working for me. Maybe they made more intuitive sense to the rest of you all. I hope so.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. In case you missed it earlier this week, I made you this:

Off-Season Baseball Crossword 01 

"FAN DUEL" 

PDF = tinyurl.com/yalbbv8b

.PUZ = tinyurl.com/ycq6wctz

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Swedish lake that's largest in European Union / SUN 12-25-16 / Coin portraying Queen Victoria once / Stows as banner / Onetime alternative to Facebook Messenger / Soy-based frozen dessert brand / Roman emblem of power adopted by Mussolini

Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Married Couples" — themers are all two parts, where first and last parts are yoked (married) by a pair of letters (circled squares that represent the last two letters of the first part of the answer and the first two letters of the last part of the answer). Clues are all familiar phrases represented in the grid literally-ish:

Theme answers:

• DRAMATIC PIE(CE)NTER (22A: Play by heart?) (get it, 'cause a play is a "dramatic piece," and here it is "by" (i.e. next to ... ?) "center" (another word for "heart"))
• SYMBOL FOR AMPE(RE)GULAR (37A: A plus average?)
• ALI(AS)SSITANCE (60A: Handle with care?) 
• SERENI(TY)PHOON (75A: Calm before the storm?)
• CLUT(CH)INESE BOARD GAME (96A: Grab and go?)
• ABI(DE)CEPTIVE PITCH (116A: Stay ahead of the curve?)  

Word of the Day: FASCES (29A: Roman emblem of power adopted by Mussolini) —

Fasces (/ˈfæsiːz/, (Italian: Fasci, Latin pronunciation: [ˈfa.skeːs], a plurale tantum, from the Latin word fascis, meaning "bundle") is a bound bundle of wooden rods, sometimes including an axe with its blade emerging. The fasces had its origin in the Etruscan civilization, and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a magistrate's power and jurisdiction. The image has survived in the modern world as a representation of magisterial or collective power. The fasces frequently occurs as a charge in heraldry, it is present on an older design of the Mercury dime and behind the podium in the United States House of Representatives, it is used as the symbol of a number of Italian syndicalist groups, including the Unione Sindacale Italiana, and it was the origin of the name of the National Fascist Party in Italy (from which the term fascism is derived). (wikipedia)

• • •

This was not pleasant at all. It's all backwards and strange, and the title doesn't really make any sense. I finished the entire puzzle without having any clear idea what the theme was trying to do. I mean, I got the whole letter-overlap thing, and I could somewhat see how the clues were signifying the answers in the grid, but I kept waiting for some big revelation, something that made sense of the whole fussy endeavor. But it never came. Unless I'm missing something, it just never came. There is no "aha" moment, just a series of "... oh, ok"s. Conceptually, this is a constructor's idea of a good time, not a solver's. If the solver had been taken into consideration, then the snappiness would be in the grid, not in the clues. You give away the fun in the clues, and then force the solver to endure the junky nonsense that appears in the grid. It's gibberish, these answers. You can see why I kept waiting for something Bigger—the only way the pain of putting those answers makes any sense is if there's some larger payoff. What do the two parts of each answer have to do with each other? What do the circled letters have to do with each other? Do they spell something? No. You give away the punchline in the clues and then make the solver cobble together the tortured set-up. No thanks.


And why "Married Couples"? Just the overlap? The clues don't express marriage at all. [Play by heart?] expresses adjacency, but not "marriage." And [Stay ahead of the curve?]... god knows how that relates to "marriage." The whole marriage concept seems to refer solely to the fact that a "couple" of letters unite (!?) two answer parts. The solve was just a bummer on almost every level. There were some nice non-theme moments, like ESPNRADIO and TOFUTTI, but there was also AREAR *and* AROAR, FAISAL *and* FASCES, and then whatever VANERN is (34D: Swedish lake that's the largest in the European Union) (if it's so all-fire "large," why have I never seen it in puzzles—weird). I'm stopping now so I can go get my Christmas spirit back (been gorging on TCM Christmas movies all day—got "Meet Me in St. Louis" waiting on DVR. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and have a wonderful day, whoever you are.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Physicist Nathan who postulated wormholes / SUN 5-29-16 / 1880s-90s veep P Morton / Enlightened buddhist / Drive street where Harry Potter grew up / Dweller along Mandeb Strait / TV inits since 1975 / Never in Nikolaus

Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (closer to Medium)

THEME: "Best Picture Adaptations" — Best Picture titles that have had one letter changed, resulting All The Wacky:

Theme answers:

• BEER HUNTER (21A: Best Picture adaptation about ... a search for the perfect brew, with "The"?)
• SILENCE OF THE IAMBS (24A: ... inaudible metrical poetry, with "The"?)
• THE VAST EMPEROR (37A: ... a fat Eastern monarch?)
• DUNCES WITH WOLVES (50A: ... fools accompanying a pack of wild animals?)
• GONG WITH THE WIND (67A: ... a reed and percussion duet?)
• FRENCH CONFECTION (84A: ... an éclair or crème brûlée, with "The"?)
• A BEAUTIFUL MINK (99A: ... gorgeous fur?)
• GERMS OF ENDEARMENT (my favorite) (113A: ... cooties from hugs and kisses?)
• MY HAIR LADY (also good) (122A: ... a salon woman I go to?)

Word of the Day: OEO (65D: War on Poverty agcy.) —

The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the War on Poverty programs created as part of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society legislative agenda. (wikipedia)

• • •

Kevin Der is a great constructor, which is why I keep looking at this grid and wondering what I missed. I wrote out all the letter changes to see if there was some kind of sequence or hidden message in either the original or the new/wacky letters, but I just got gibberish. I don't fully understand why the letters that were changed ... were changed. Why not THE LUST EMPEROR? Or SILENCE OF THE LAMPS (or LIMBS) (or JAMBS)? A BEAUTIFUL RIND? TERNS OF ENDEARMENT?  If the only criterion is a single letter change, it seems like you should've been able to get better humor mileage out of these "adaptations." That said, I thought the answers were pretty cute, and I enjoyed remembering movie titles and figuring out which word would be changed how, so there was definitely some entertainment value here. And again, I would not be shocked to learn that there was some Deep Der Stuff going on in this puzzle that I just can't see.


If you knew your crosswordese, then you had a leg up today. AIT crossing ARHAT! (29A: River islet / 12D: Enlightened Buddhist). Two words I only ever seen in crosswords (OK maybe I've seen AIT in the wild, but not much). You were also ahead of the game if you knew a Slew of short proper nouns. You were also ahead of me, as I knew virtually none of those shorties. The fact that they were densely clustered around RAVE REVIEW, an answer I didn't understand until the very last letter I put in the grid, made the NW by far the toughest section to solve. Let's meet the mystery players:

• LIV! (23A: Disney Channel's "___ and Maddie") — you can just stop at "Disney Channel"
• LEVI! (27D: 1880s-'90s veep ___ P. Morton) — uh ... no.
• PEGG! (57D: Simon of the "Mission: Impossible" films) — OK now that I realize we're talking about the modern films and not the original series (my bad!) I can actually picture this guy. But while solving, I figured he was just some olde-timey actor I'd never heard of.

All that, and the fact that [****] was a baffling clue for RAVE REVIEW (which I assumed would be some kind of plural...), conspired to hold me back up there. But I just left it for last and luckily, once I circled back around, the dominoes fell, however slowly. As far as the cast of mystery players, I also didn't know who ROSEN (44D: Physicist Nathan who postulated wormholes) or EVIE (92A: Daughter in E.M. Forster's "Howard's End") was.


Other trouble spots involved my comical inability to anagram "snake" (I don't think of snakes as SNEAKy, as I nearly step on them all the time in the woods), my layman's understanding of [What stars do] (GLIMMER, I wrongly assumed), and my utter non-understanding of what "sponsorship packages" even means (TIERED? If you say so!). Still, because the film titles were so familiar and the changes to said titles so minuscule, I made pretty good time. Not lightning fast, but better than average.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Hey, Rich and J.T.—I know you send each other emails with the subject line "FRP," and I know what the "F" stands for. So ... thanks for acknowledging my fearlessness. XO 

P.P.S. Lollapuzzoola, one of my two favorite crossword tournaments, is accepting crossword submissions for its tourney this August. Here's a message from tourney organizer Brian Cimmet: ""Lollapuzzoola, the greatest crossword tournament ever held on a Saturday in August, is accepting submissions! Our 9th annual tournament is happening on Saturday, August 13 in New York City — and it could feature YOU! Do you have a puzzle that is brilliant, clever, inventive, mildly wacky, curiously strong, and can measure up to the unrehearsed nonsense of Lollapuzzoola? Send it our way! We'll take a look at themes, concepts, completed grids, etc. (but don't feel pressured to finish cluing or filling). Submissions will be accepted until June 1, 2016. Please send your work to brian@bemoresmarter.com" http://www.bemoresmarter.com/

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Roman emperor who overthrew Galba / THU 10-15-15 / Financial guru Suze / Orpheus Spartacus by birth / Follower of roger to radioer / Yuri's love in Dr Zhivago / Companion of Quasimodo

Constructor: Kevin G. Der

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: spirals — theme answers are things that spiral, and also there is a chain of double-letter squares (the circled squares pictured above) that spirals clockwise from the NW into the center of the grid...

Theme answers:

• SNAIL SHELL (18A: Home that's never left?)
• YULE LOG (24A: Christmas edible?)
• WHIRLPOOL (41A: Big name in appliances)
• MILKY WAY (55A: Our place in the universe)
• GUGGENHEIM (63A: Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, with "the")

Word of the Day: OTHO (2D: Roman emperor who overthrew Galba) —

Otho (/ˈoʊθoʊ/; Latin: Marcus Salvius Otho Caesar Augustus;^[2][3] 28 April 32^[4] – 16 April 69), was Roman Emperor for three months, from 15 January to 16 April 69. He was the second emperor of the Year of the Four Emperors. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was weird. Basically had two solving experiences, the first was a boring, easy puzzle that seemed themeless except for all this 2-letter square stuff. The second actually didn't involve solving. It involved looking at the grid and wondering what the 2-letter square pattern was all about. Then I noticed GUGGENHEIM and SNAIL SHELL, and I got it. *Then* I notice WHIRLPOOL. Then YULE LOG and MILKY WAY. That's a lot of theme material. So a two-tiered theme like this—very impressive. Solving it—very very easy, kind of plodding. The spiral effect doesn't quite come off because the circled (or shaded) squares a. don't really spiral, since they turn on right angles, and b. conflict visually with the black square pattern. So the grid just doesn't scream "spiral" at you. It barely whispers it. I've seen the shaded-square version at the NYT site. There, you've got white squares and gray squares and black squares and you have to really Want to see the spiral. Anyway, I'm impressed by the architecture, even if it wasn't a delight to solve.


Speaking of architecture, all I could think of after grasping the theme was Liz Gorski's masterful Guggenheim museum puzzle from 2009 (commemorating the museum's 50th birthday).

Here, the grid really evokes the museum's unique shape. Other constructors have used spiraling to interesting effect. Matt Jones had a puzzle called "I'm Getting Dizzy" with some great themers:

And Merl had an asymmetrial hurricane puzzle, I'm told, but I can't find it at the moment. Anyway, this particular version of spiraliness is a "New Idea," I guess. But both rebus squares and spirals have been done. This week should be named "Commissioned Thursday Puzzles" week; also "Why Aren't We This Innovative More Often?" week. Seriously, even having "New Ideas" week is a pretty serious indictment of your other 51 weeks. You're the "best puzzle in the world" (self-styled). You should have "New Ideas" all the time.


Not much to say about the solving experience besides the fact that it was easy, even though my time was much longer than usual because of all the extra keying I had to do to get the two letters into each square. How long did it take for me to pick up the double-letter gimmick? I'd say under 10 seconds. Here's where I got it:

It helped that the circled squares were, well, circled, and that HOED (1A: Did some gardening) was a gimme and that I then wanted HINT straight off (1D: Help for the flummoxed). From there it was just a matter of "What if 'IN' goes in that first circle." After that, it was a simple matter of writing answers in as soon as I read their clues, except in that tiny northern patch where PLINTH (6D: Bust supporter) crosses THRACIAN (22A: Orpheus and Spartacus by birth) and there's a "?" clue for SNAIL SHELL. Throw in all the circled squares involved up there, and I had a little bit of a struggle on my hands. But not much of one.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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