Unseen wife on "Cheers" / SAT 9-6-25 / Ancient home to many pre-Socratic philosophers / Free kick, e.g., in soccer lingo / Sea creature also known as a redfin ocean pan / Bread whose dough is rolled on a chakla / 19th century naturalist buried in Westminster Abbey / Down Under colleges

Constructor: Kunal Nabar

Relative difficulty: Easy (a little harder, maybe, if some of the many proper nouns were mysteries)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SET PIECE (16D: Free kick, e.g., in soccer lingo) —

  

The term set piece or set play is used in association football and rugby football to refer to a situation when the ball is returned to open play, for example following a stoppage, particularly in a forward area of the pitch. In association football, the term usually refers to free kicks and corners, but sometimes penalties, throw-ins and kick-offs. Many goals result from such positions, whether scored directly or indirectly. Thus defending set pieces is an important skill for defenders, and attacking players spend much time practicing them; set pieces are one area where tactics and routines can be worked out in training in advance of matches. Some players specialize in set pieces. (wikipedia)

• • •

The big challenge of the day for me was trying to remember what Octavia Butler's middle initial was. Unlike Ursula K. LeGuin, another titan of science fiction, Octavia Butler's middle initial isn't as commonly used when referring to her. The "K" in Ursula K. LeGuin is iconic, whereas the "E." in OCTAVIA E. BUTLER is ... less so. Still, she is in fact billed as OCTAVIA E. BUTLER on her books (and her wikipedia page), so there's nothing wrong with including the middle initial here. I just whiffed it. I know Butler's name well and have read at least a couple of books by her and just could not retrieve her middle initial. When OCTAVIA BUTLER wouldn't fit, I briefly doubted whether she was the author in question or not, despite the fact that I had the "OC-" locked down, and what other author's name starts that way? OK, Ocean Vuong, but what other author? It's not like the "E" was hard to get—I could see the cross was likely -ERN (56D: Directional suffix)—but when I could hardly get any crosses off of OCTAVIA_BUTLER, that made me doubt myself all over again. ARTS and BEG and TIT seemed solid, as far as crosses went, but I came up empty everywhere else and had to go back to the NE and come down the east and middle of the grid in order to get the bottom of this puzzle to fall. Once I did, the bottom actually fell pretty easily. But yeah, trying to round that corner from the west into the south by way of "OC-" was the one moment where the wheels came off for a bit. I wouldn't classify it as a true struggle. More like a momentary delay, the significance of which was amplified by the fact that I hadn't had any delays at all with the first half of the solve (north and west sections). The upshot of all this is "E!" OCTAVIA E. BUTLER. "E" as in "Everybody knows that, dummy" (actually, it stands for "Estelle"). 

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER is the standout marquee answer today, imho. OPEN MARRIAGES, also interesting! I don't think all OPEN MARRIAGES involve "swinging," but "swinging" is mentioned as a "variant form" of open marriage on the "Open marriage" wikipedia page. I really don't want to get too far into the sex weeds on this one. I'll leave the sex weeds to you all. The clue seems accurate enough, and, as misdirections go, pretty clever. For the second day in a row, though, I wish the marquee stuff were ... more marqueeish. Actually, the more I look at the bottom stack, the better it looks. SILENT RETREAT has a lot of boring letters, but as an answer, it's cool and original. And TALKING HEADS is excellent; it just has a boring clue. Why would you go with "TV panelists" (zzz) when you could go with...

The proper nouns come thick and heavy early on, with VERA EMEKA KINTE and STEF all teaming up to cover enough cultural ground to thwart the \ forward progress of as many solvers as possible, at least a little. My familiarity with that group went from VERA (a gimme) to STEF (total unknown), with KINTE and EMEKA in between. KINTE was known to me, though I was not 100% confident of the spelling (KENTE?). And EMEKA Okafor is a name I've heard just by watching ESPN a lot 10 to 20 years ago, but even more than with KINTE (much more than KINTE, in fact), the spelling eluded me. Luckily, none of these names really held me up, as I went SHARK OPAH VERA, then changed JAMS (wrong) to MOBS (right) (1D: Packs), and those long Acrosses up top went down pretty easily. Wanted BARE NECESSITIES, but it wouldn't fit. But the ESSENTIALS went right in as my second guess, and the wine-dark SEA confirmed it, and so whoosh whoosh, down and left I went. Blocked at OCT- (as I've said) so back up top, down via SLEEPWEAR, and all the way home without much fuss. So many short answers and so many access points for every section made this one easy to bring down.

[DISCS]

Bullets:

• 45A: Jazz fest? (NBA GAME) — the "?" made it a gimme. "So ... it's not musical jazz ... what other 'jazz' is there?" A: Utah Jazz. Clue, solved.
• 2D: Sea creature also known as a redfin ocean pan (OPAH) — first of all, SEA is in the grid, so probably shouldn't be in this clue. Second, crossword fish to rescue! Sometimes crosswordese really helps you out, and that that telltale "H" in OPAH (which came from yet another sea creature, the SHARK) gave me a huge initial boost. OPAH is in prime position—with all its letters near the beginnings of all the long answers up top—so getting that answer was way more valuable than getting, say, TGIF (also a four-letter cross of all those upper answers, but in a far less useful position). OPAH WINFREY, is that something? Where's that theme? Where's the celebrity fish theme!? (actually, it's probably been done, or at least attempted ... somewhere)
• 24D: Subject of trade that gave rise to St. Louis and Detroit (FUR) — "Subject" really threw me for some reason. If the clue had just started [Trade...] I probably would've gotten it easier. Or not. At some point I was thinking of a sports trade (which makes no real sense) and then I was thinking about ... I dunno, the Louisiana Purchase, which wasn't really a "trade" at all, but more of a ... purchase (also, while the Louisiana Purchase included what is now St. Louis, it did not include Detroit). Anyway, the FUR trade, yes, that was a very big deal, economically, in early America.

• 39D: Bread whose dough is rolled on a chakla (CHAPATI) — me: "I don't know any Indian breads with a name that long!" Me, a little bit later: "Oh, CHAPATI! Hey, sorry I forgot about you, pal." I thought I was tapped out at NAAN and ROTI, but no, CHAPATI (also PARATHA and PAPADAM, if I'd been thinking clearly) (and those are just the ones *I* know—obviously there are lots (lots) more)
• 50A: "People are wrong when they say ___ is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it": Noël Coward ("OPERA") — I had the terminal "A," and since Noël Coward is a dramatist, I figured ... DRAMA. But no. But then, unexpectedly, elsewhere in the grid: yes! (32D: Much "Real Housewives" doings). Love when that happens. Such an eerie feeling.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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English translation of the Irish "aigéan" / SUN 1-19-25 / Pokémon with a catlike appearance / Boondi ___ (yogurt dish with dried chickpea flour) / Turkish travel stops / Hugo-winning sci-fi author Bacigalupi / Arjuna's skill, in the "Mahabharata" / "Strega ___" (classic children's folk tale) / New York x paper / Nashville neighborhood known for its many recording studios / Winter haven for some small mammals / Nature's fishhook, you might say / One of the "holy trinity" ingredients in Indian cuisine

Constructor: Emily Sharp and Kunal Nabar

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Word Problems" — answers are familiar phrases, but clues are written as mathematical problems:

Theme answers:

• DIVISION OF LABOR (22A: Hard / work) (phrase meaning "labor" is "divided")
• PRODUCT OF THE TIMES (31A: New York x paper) (phrase meaning "The Times" is expressed as a "product" (i.e. ___ x ___))
• ROOT CAUSE (51A: √generate) ("root" of a word meaning "cause")
• DIFFERENCE OF OPINION (66A: It's what - you think) (phrase meaning "opinion" expressed as a subtraction problem (by which you calculate "difference"))
• SQUARED UP (82A: (Pixar movie)²) (the "Pixar movie" Up is "squared")
• INTEGRATED CIRCUIT (99A:  ∫ workout routine) (phrase meaning "circuit" is expressed as an integral)
• ADDED COMPLEXITY (112A: Rocket science + brain surgery) ("complex" things are "added" together)

Word of the Day: "Strega NONA" (40A: "Strega ___" (classic children's folk tale)) —

Strega Nona is a children's picture book written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola. If considered as a folktale, the story is Aarne-Thompson type 565, the Magic Mill. It concerns Strega Nona (resembling what would be "Grandma Witch" in Italian, although this would actually be "Nonna Strega", with the two words reversed and the first one spelled with a double n) and her helper, Big Anthony. With only a single "n" (i.e., Nona), the title actually means "Ninth Witch" in Italian. The book, which is likely dePaola's best-known work, was published in 1975 and won a Caldecott Honor in 1976. It was one of the "Top 100 Picture Books" of all time in a 2012 poll by School Library Journal. Strega Nona has been challenged or banned in some children's libraries in the United States because it depicts magic and witchcraft in a positive light. // Strega Nona is a wise woman and witch doctor who lives in Calabria, in southern Italy. Because she is getting old, Strega Nona employs a young man named Big Anthony to do household chores. One night, Big Anthony observes Strega Nona singing to her magic pasta pot to produce large amounts of pasta. However, he fails to notice that she blows three kisses to the pot to stop the pasta production. // Big Anthony shares his discovery with the townsfolk the next day, but he is laughed at. Two days later, while Strega Nona is visiting her friend Strega Amelia, Big Anthony sings to the pasta pot and successfully conjures up large amounts of pasta, which he serves to the townsfolk. However, since Big Anthony cannot stop the pot from cooking, the pasta gradually covers Strega Nona's house and nearly floods the entire town. Disaster is averted when Strega Nona returns and immediately blows the three kisses to stop the pot's cooking; she punishes Big Anthony by making him eat all of the pasta. (wikipedia) 

• • •

Pretty much the definition of "Not For Me." I took Calculus II in the fall of 1987 and never thought about math again after that (except for the math required to get through Physics I, which was not much—that was my only A+ in college! How!?). It's not that I didn't understand the concept here. I just didn't love it. It didn't strike a chord. It's not my thing. Moreover, some of the "problems" seem to be perfectly expressed, while others seem ... like train wrecks? Or messy, anyway. Like, the clue on SQUARED UP seems perfect: Up is a "Pixar movie," and the clue has "Pixar movie" squared ... or a SQUARED ... UP. Nice. But what the hell is going on with the PRODUCT OF THE TIMES clue? I know that the "Times" is a New York paper ... is the idea that you turn the "New York paper" into an equation by just putting a "times" symbol in the middle of it? And which part is mathy? "Product?" "Times?" All "___ times ___" equations yield "products." The exact way the clue works here is unclear to me. The execution just feels super-awkward. Same thing with the clue on DIFFERENCE OF OPINION. It's like ... you take the words that mean "opinion" and just randomly drop a "-" symbol in there (the way you randomly plunked a "x" symbol in the earlier clue), and that's ... it? If both the numerator and denominator meant "labor," I'd understand the DIVISION OF LABOR clue better. I think. Why do the division and subtraction and multiplication clues have the "/" "-" and "x" symbols just dropped in the middle of phrases, but the addition clue actually has real, discrete terms, i.e. different, standalone "complex" things on either side of the "+" symbol. That makes sense to me. Two "complex" things are being "added" together. The others don't make sense because the units in the equation don't stand alone. I apologize—I can't quite express why the placement of these mathematical symbols frequently feels odd and arbitrary, but it does. The root and integration clues seem to work a lot better than the simple arithmetic ones. I dunno. I'm admittedly not a math whiz, but some of these just clanked, to my ear. The others were fine, but as I say, the concept here is someone else's idea of a good time—hopefully yours, but definitely not mine.

As for overall difficulty, this one was pretty average, perhaps a bit on the easy side. The themers didn't really present any problems, and there was so much short fill in this one that moving through it was a problem only when I encountered a name I didn't know, which is pretty typical (and only happened a handful of times today.  It's a very choppy grid, complete with four cheater squares* to make answers even shorter. This made the puzzle skew toward crosswordese at times (it's even got -ESE in it!) (38A: Language suffix). OGEE and AGEE! Together! You don't see that too often. Still, the puzzle does get in some decent longer stuff. I like NO VACANCY, ESOTERICA, and esp. "IN A PAST LIFE..." (as clued) (67D: "When I was much younger..."). Normally, I would also say that I loved KILIMANJARO, but today, I'm just happy I survived KILIMANJARO. See, like ... some of you? many of you? at least a few, I'm guessing ... I was not 100% sure of all the vowels in KILIMANJARO. Actually, there's just one vowel I wasn't sure of—and it just happened to have a cross that was Absolutely no help. The puzzle tells me that "Strega NONA" is a "classic" children's folk tale, but hoo boy that is News To Me. I mean ... nope, nothing, nada, never heard of it. Nonsense words to me, both "Strega" and "NONA." Sounds Italian? (Yes: See Word of the Day, above). Anyway, total Natick for me. I guessed correctly, but ... I left this square until the very, very end:

It was really between "O" and "A," with the "O" seeming possible because "MON" is so close to "MONT," which is part of so many mountain names ("Mont" is Fr. for "mountain," "Monte" is Italian for "mountain"). But "A" just looked better. Felt better. So that's what I guessed. Actually, I reasoned that if the answer were really NONO, the clue would've gone a completely different (and more familiar) route. Same thing for NONE. That square was oddly harrowing. Nothing else about this puzzle was at all scary. There were names (there are always names) that were beyond me. The Pachinko author (116D: "Pachinko" author ___ Jin Lee = MIN). The Hugo-winning guy (though I'm sure he's been in the grid before) (6D: Hugo-winning sci-fi author Bacigalupi). I know I've thought to myself that AYO Edebiri's name would be useful for crosswords (12D: Actress Edebiri of "The Bear"), but did that help me remember it today? It did not. Needed crosses. Gah. Arjuna was unfamiliar to me (43A: Arjuna's skill, in the "Mahabharata"), as was that "Strega NONA" business, and the idea that anyone anywhere ever called COYOTES "brush wolves" (?) (55A: Brush wolves, by another name). But all these minor challenges were easily overcome because surrounding fill was, generally, a cinch.

Bullets:

• 59A: Post-spring cleaning event (TAG SALE) — where I come from (and where I currently live), we call these "garage sales" or "yard sales." 
• 65A: Nashville neighborhood known for its many recording studios (MUSIC ROW) — I like this one. Seems original. (And it turns out, yes, this is a debut answer)
• 33D: English translation of the Irish "aigéan" (OCEAN) — I like that the Irish term evokes the Aegean (which got its name from Theseus's father, Aegeus). I don't know what the linguistic relationship of Irish to Greek is. The resemblance may just be coincidence.
• 107A: Burrowing rodent (MOLE RAT) — wanted this to be MUSKRAT at one point. Muskrats are indeed rodents, and they *occasionally* burrow (to make nests) (look at me, I'm a muskrat expert!), but they don't burrow full-time, or, like, build a whole identity around it, the way MOLE RATs do, apparently.

• 117A: Social workspaces for some remote workers (CAFES) — overthought this one and went looking for some modern term, some neologism used in the business world that I was perhaps not entirely familiar with. But I also wanted CAVES at one point (because you might work the remote (control) in your man CAVE?). But no, it's just CAFES, a place where lots of people work on their laptops ... or at least have them open, I have no idea what they're doing.
• 121A: Winter haven for some small mammals (SHED) — another one where I was expecting a technical term instead got something perfectly ordinary. 
• 21A: Practical (UTILE) — that UTILE / USE TO crossing made me screw up my face a little. Same root. Too close. From merriam webster dot com:

For over a hundred years before "useful" entered our language, "utile" served us well on its own. We borrowed "utile" from Middle French in the 15th century. The French derived it from Latin utilis, meaning "useful," which in turn comes from uti, meaning "to use." "Uti" (the past participle of which is "usus") is also the source of our "use" and "useful." We've been using "use" since at least the 13th century, but we didn't acquire "useful" until the late 16th century, when William Shakespeare inserted it into King John. Needless to say, we've come to prefer "useful" over "utile" since then, though "utile" functions as a very usable synonym. Other handy terms derived from "uti" include "utilize," "usury," "abuse" and "utensil."

• 55D: Pokémon with a catlike appearance (MEW) — had the "M," saw "cat," wrote MEW, and crossed my fingers. It worked!

Hey, the online Boswords tournament is starting up again soon. Here's organizer John Lieb to explain:

Registration is open for the Boswords 2025 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament which will be held on Sunday, February 2 from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and to watch a short video describing the event, go to www.boswords.org.

That's all. See you next time.

*"cheater squares" are black squares that do not add to the overall word count, inserted simply to make the grid easier to fill. Today, these are the black squares after ANT and before SAC, and after SHED and before SKIN. Despite the negative connotations of the name, cheater squares are not inherently bad. Used judiciously, they can be very helpful to a constructor in smoothing out the fill quality of a given section. 

P.S. Last week during my yearly fundraising drive I decided to add Zelle as a payment method on the last day, which worked fine ... until it didn't. Several contributions were mysteriously rejected. It is not a big deal, but if you contributed that way, it's possible it didn't go through (this applies to only like a dozen of you). The problem was on my end ("MY BAD!"). I apologize. The bank and I have spoken. I should have the kinks ironed out for next year. For now, it's still just PayPal, Venmo, and snail mail. Thanks! 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Genre for Gabriel García Márquez and Haruki Murakami / FRI 6-23-23 / Game played on yaks in Mongolia and Pakistan / Target of a biometric scanner / by that kiss I vow an endless bliss Keats / Quick impression as of a person / Frankincense and myrrh but not gold

Constructor: Kunal Nabar

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: None 

Word of the Day: ASMARA (39D: Capital of Eritrea) —

Asmara (/æsˈmɑːrə/ əs-MAHR-ə), or Asmera, is the capital and most populous city of Eritrea, in the country's Central Region. It sits at an elevation of 2,325 metres (7,628 ft), making it the sixth highest capital in the world by altitude and the second highest capital in Africa. The city is located at the tip of an escarpment that is both the northwestern edge of the Eritrean Highlands and the Great Rift Valley in neighbouring Ethiopia. In 2017, the city was declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its well-preserved modernist architecture. The site of Asmera was first settled in 800 BC with a population ranging from 100 to 1,000. The city was then founded in the 12th century AD after four separate villages unified to live together peacefully after long periods of conflict. Under Italian rule the city of Asmara was made capital of Eritrea in the last years of the 19th century. [...] In 1952, the United Nations resolved to federate the former colony under Ethiopian rule. During the Federation, Asmara was no longer the capital city. The capital was now Addis Ababa, over 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) to the south. The national language of the city was therefore replaced from the Tigrinya language to the Ethiopian Amharic language. In 1961, Emperor Haile Selassie I ended the "federal" arrangement and declared the territory to be the 14th province of the Ethiopian Empire. Ethiopia's biggest ally was the United States. The city was home to the US Army's Kagnew Station installation from 1943 until 1977. The Eritrean War of Independence began in 1961 and ended in 1991, resulting in the independence of Eritrea. Asmara was left relatively undamaged throughout the war, as were the majority of highland regions. After independence, Asmara again became the capital of Eritrea. (wikipedia)

• • •

I had some idea that this puzzle was going to be easy because yesterday I had seen this astonishingly condescending tweet from @NYTGames:

A tip for newer solvers: Skip tomorrow’s crossword and play Friday’s this week. Our editors say it’s a good one — and not as challenging as your typical Friday solve. 🧐

— New York Times Games (@NYTGames) June 21, 2023

I would never have seen the tweet, but friends of mine were rightly mocking it, which is basically what Twitter is now (i.e. stuff you'd rather not see but your friends keep pointing at it going "Can you believe this ****!?"). Anyway, telling your subscribers not to try, LOL, that is one hell of a marketing strategy. I guess the "Ted Lasso" backlash really has begun. "Do Not Believe ... that you can do the Thursday puzzle!" And Thursday's puzzle was actually the *perfect* opportunity to ease newer solvers into the whole concept of the rebus puzzle, since as you know, the puzzle was pretty damn easy, as rebuses go. Surely there is a way to help newer solvers tackle tougher puzzles besides telling them simply to pass and wait for the next easy puzzle to come down the pike. And surely there's a way to sell today's (quite nice!) puzzle to solvers without saying "Hey, you'll like it, we dumbed it down for you!" I hear that there's some scheme afoot in the NYT Games newsletter to offer themeless puzzles up with clues that have been completely rewritten by in-house staff (gutting the original constructor's cluing voice completely, without their consent). Editors change clues all the time, of course, but that's ... editing. Not wholesale rewriting. Maybe I have misunderstood, and the plan is less heavy-handed and constructor-unfriendly. But I'm not liking this marketing trend that says "new solvers are impatient dummies who need to be coddled so that we get more engagement on the app." And today's puzzle deserves much better framing than "not as challenging as your typical Friday solve." What's remarkable about it isn't that it's easy, but that it's good, and fun. No reason you can't hype its quality and relative accessibility while also leaving the poor Thursday puzzle completely out of the conversation.

This puzzle is built in such a way that the whoosh-whoosh comes early and dramatically ... and then the puzzle settles down to a more regular Friday pace. This is because all of your very long answers originate in the NW corner, which (if you're me, a reasonably normal human solver) is where you start. I don't start with the long stuff. I got right to the short stuff in order to hack at the long stuff, so that when I finally look at the long stuff, I have some reasonable hope of getting it. I tried 1A: Like some knowledge and commitments, but that makes this clue basically a "word that can go with"-type clue, and as I told you yesterday, my brain cannot handle those. Today was no different. But the Downs were much friendlier. POLO RNA IOTAS bam bam bam. Wanted OPEN-something and ROCK-something for the next two Downs, but wouldn't commit. Saw that 12A: Playbills? seemed to open with MONO- but couldn't do anything with that. Eventually committed to OPEN MIC and ROCK ON and then decided to check the "M" in 1A's (apparent) MONO- by looking at the Down cross. And that ... that was the moment the roller coaster car crested ... and dropped!

That's a 14-letter answer I could've gotten with no letters in place. You say "Gabriel Gar-" and I'm already shouting "MAGICAL REALISM" back at you (12D: Genre for Gabriel García Márquez and Haruki Murakami). What a beautiful answer to have as your initial grid-buster, the answer that goes shooting across the grid, opening up ... A Whole New World (I know, Aladdin is not technically MAGICAL REALISM, just go with it). MAGICAL REALISM / MONOPOLY MONEY followed by PEOPLE PLEASER / PALATE CLEANSER was like getting the big fireworks finale at the beginning of the fireworks show. So many beautiful explosions! And then that's it for the long stuff. The grid has mirror symmetry on the diagonal, which means we don't have to work our way to the other side of the grid to get our symmetrical long answers—both pairs of long answers instead come flying out of that one point in the NW. As for the rest of the grid—to its credit, it's not a letdown. I mean, nothing's gonna beat that initial burst of highly alliterative goodness, but the middle and SE corners are still pretty dynamic, and loaded with solid and interesting answers. The colorful KOI PONDS and the UNCTUOUS TIME LOOP. There's even a weird little [Apt cry...] pair stacked one atop the other in the dead center of the grid. One big joy up front and then a host of little joys thereafter. This ticks all my Friday boxes. And I think it's a debut (?!). So next time, NYT Games, try hyping the quality (and the constructor!) and not just the easiness. Also, show more respect for tough puzzles—and for the newer solvers who aspire to solve them.

Other things:

• 29A: Quick impression, as of a person (READ) — all the difficulty for me today came in small packages. This answer, for instance. I was thinking of something "doing" impressions, not "getting" them. 
• 25D: Like many gift packages and old messages (TAPED) — this one too, oof, just couldn't get it. "Gift packages" had me thinking something like "gift baskets," and "old messages"—that could've been a million things. I considered TYPED (!?). 
• 47A: Drones, e.g. (MALES) — again, tough by reasons of vagueness (today's drones are bees)
• 44D: Oil and film, for two (MEDIA) — I like this clue a lot. Again, toughness through vagueness.
• 13D: Spanish American cowboy (LLANERO) — I knew LLANO (South American grasslands) but not the dudes who ride them! Was able to infer the -ERO ending relatively easily by analogy with ... I dunno, "ranchero" "caballero" etc.
• 23D: City formerly known as Christiania (OSLO) — in a bizarre coincidence, just last night I read aloud to my wife a short blurb about Nobel Prize-winning author Knut Hamsun (who was Norwegian), and in that blurb was this exact bit of trivia. Kind of a depressing read (Hamsun wrote about despair, and also ended up a Nazi sympathizer), but at least I got a crossword answer out of it!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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