Vampire's bane / TUE 10-27-15 / Spider's hatching pouch / Hurrays for matadors

Constructor: Kurt Mueller

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Vampire's banes... — bunch of stuff that kills vampires

Theme answers:

• THE HOLY BIBLE
• DIRECT SUNLIGHT
• GARLIC NECKLACE
• SILVER BULLET
• STAKE (through the) HEART 

Word of the Day: Sônia BRAGA (33D: Sonia of "Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands") —

Sônia Maria Campos Braga (born 8 June 1950) is a Brazilian actress. Nominated for three Golden Globes and an Emmy Award, Braga is best known in the English-speaking world for her performances in Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Moon Over Parador. Her television credits include Sex and the City, Alias, American Family and The Cosby Show. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle has one nice element—the STAKE through the HEART. It's also an anomalous element. The other themers are a rather contrived assortment, with adjectives and other words added to make the answers symmetrical. For instance, what other bible would it be besides "The holy" one? And I think crucifixes are much more common banes, actually. GARLIC is the bane, and the necklace is just one form in which people can wear it to protect *themselves*. It's more repellent than bane. And SILVER BULLET? No one associates that w/ vampires. That's werewolves all the way. I'm sure some list somewhere says "sure, those kill vampires too," but if you say "SILVER BULLET" the only thing people are going to think is "werewolves." Or Coors Light. Or Bob Seger. Or maybe Vampire Bob Seger. But not plain-old vampires.


So there's one clever bit, dead center (stake thru heart is also the primo A1 way to kill a vampire), and then there's ... the rest. And again, too much gucky fill. TO ALL ALII, A LIE, A DAB! U AR an EGGSAC AGER. I might've had some love for KGBSPY, but I just saw it. Where did I see it? I forget? Was it NYT? I do too many puzzles. Anyway, that's a decent answer. How do you not go with "Kiss of the Spider Woman" for the Sônia BRAGA clue in a monster-themed puzzle? Seems like a missed opportunity to creep things up. This grid is super-choppy. Lots of black squares, lots of short fill. This leads to very little interest outside the themers, though DIEHARD, BLOSSOM, and CHEERIO have a certain bounce. Lately we've been getting dusty fill and loose or low-bar themes. The cluing here is also super-straightforward. Boring. Hoping mid-/late-week puzzles pick it up some.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Small salmon Var / WED 5-7-14 / Will Realistic Joneses playwright / When doubled Billy Idol #1 hit / Pan producer / Tell 1962 hit by Exciters / Daily bread of eyes per Emerson / Letter between sierra uniform / French CD holder

Constructor: Kurt Mueller

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "IT'S SHOWTIME!" (63A: Possible title for this puzzle) — theme answers are all "intro words" from famous shows:

Theme answers:

• "HERE'S JOHNNY!" (17A: Ed McMahon intro words)
• "A ONE AND A TWO…" (24A: Lawrence Welk intro words)
• "LIVE FROM NEW YORK …" (39A: Chevy Chase intro words)
• "AND AWAY WE GO!" (51A: Jackie Gleason intro words)

Word of the Day: Will ENO (33A: Will ___, "The Realistic Joneses" playwright) —

Will Eno is an American playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. His play, Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2005. […] 
In his Broadway debut, The Realistic Joneses began previews at the Lyceum Theatre on March 13, 2014 and officially opened on April 6, 2014, after a run at the Yale Repertory Theater in 2012. The play is directed by Sam Gold with a cast that stars Michael C. Hall, Toni Collette, Marisa Tomei and Tracy Letts. The New York Times reviewer of the Broadway production wrote: "But don’t come to the play expecting tidy resolutions, clearly drawn narrative arcs or familiarly typed characters. 'The Realistic Joneses' progresses in a series of short scenes that have the shape and rhythms of sketches on 'Saturday Night Live' rather than those of a traditional play. (Most are followed by quick blackouts.) And while the Joneses — all four of them — have all the aspects of normal folks, as their names would suggest, they also possess an uncanny otherness expressed through their stylized, disordered way of communicating... But for all Mr. Eno’s quirks, his words cut to the heart of how we muddle through the worst life can bring." (wikipedia)

• • •

Theme answers were all very easy to get, while the rest of the puzzle was often clued tough and vague. The result was a puzzle of pretty normal Wednesday difficulty. There is some nostalgic joy, perhaps, in recalling these shows, but I found this puzzle a little too straightforward for me, theme-wise, and often choppy and awkward, fill-wise. "LIVE FROM NEW YORK" is a massive outlier, in that all the other examples of "intro words" are the very last words of the intro. But "LIVE FROM NEW YORK…" needs the very crucial, show-identifying words "… IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT!" to be truly parallel with all the others. I feel like Lawrence Welk is an outlier here too, but for reasons that have more to do with taste than anything else. All the other shows involve comedy somehow, and while I realize there are bits on the Lawrence Welk show that pass themselves off as comedy … no. All the other shows are comedically iconic. The Lawrence Welk show, well, isn't. But it is a show, and it was (probably?) on in primetime at some point (as opposed to now, when it is on weekend afternoons on my PBS station), so it's at least defensible, if not clearly fair.

[There's laughter in here, but it's the laughter of the damned…]

Had major, major trouble getting both 1D: Remaining (OTHER) and 2D: Where the action is (ARENA). Neither clue computed. At all. Had -THE- and -REN- and still no idea. Also thought Charles on a piano was looking for a last name, not a (famous) first one (RAY). So my start was very rough. But the initial "AON-" on the Lawrence Welk opener made that one a piece of cake, and once I broke into the middle via the obvious SNL opener, the puzzle got much tamer. I'm startled by the absolute terribleness of COHOE (7D: Small salmon: Var.). You should tear out the whole section before you let an out-and-out loser (never-seen "Var.") like that into your grid. Real, massive, intolerable blemish. Yeah, you've got a bit of a challenge there with the built-in --H-E, but if you can't get something real like TAHOE or OCHRE to work there, then Build The Grid Better so you don't have this problem. Gah. Choppy grid leads to predictable mediocrity in the short stuff: and EELER crossing an ETUI, an EMAG not far from ENO, etc. (what the hell was up with that ENO clue? (33A: Will ___, "The Realistic Joneses" playwright)—ENO is ENO, and making it tough to get, with an absurd "know it or you don't and you probably don't" clue, only makes it More annoying). LOOSE LIPS is a winner, but otherwise, but overall this one comes in slightly less than enjoyable, despite the inherent entertainment value of the themers.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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The Mikado baritone / SUN 2-12-12 / Rathskeller vessel / Superboy's sweetie / Supply at French smoke shop / Actresses Dana Judith / Macedonian city with Greek and Roman ruins / Classic fragrance sold in France as Mon Peche

Constructor: Kurt Mueller

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Additional Reading" — a "BOOK" rebus puzzle, with "BOOK" inserted (inside a single square) into familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, clued "?"-style

Word of the Day: DONNISH (93A: Professorial) —

adj.
Of, relating to, or held to be characteristic of a university don; bookish or pedantic.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/donnish#ixzz1m8HqjyIk

• • •

Don't have strong feelings about this one. Theme / rebus was easy to pick up. Theme answers were occasionally cute, occasionally ho-hum. The crosses were kind of a casualty of the rebus word—not many good, different ways to fit "BOOK" into an answer. (Side note: never heard the phrase BOOK IN before; also, I think I would've gone with Newark mayor Cory BOOKER instead of BOOKER T., if only to avoid the partial) Puzzle seemed slightly heavyish on the crosswordese (EDESSA, LEK, ELEA, etc.), and there wasn't much interesting non-theme fill, but mostly it was solid and solvable. Mysteries today included IVEYS (22D: Actresses Dana and Judith — though Judith IVEY sounds vaguely familiar) and (especially) DONNISH. I was forced to run the alphabet to figure out the cross at DON-ISH and ME-O (didn't know MENO—wanted MEZZO). Had DORKISH for [Professorial] at one point. DONNISH / MENO was very rough. ["Ask ___ questions ..."]—now there's a MENO clue.



Theme answers:

• 21A: Send over some Bibles? (DELIVER THE GOOD BOOKS)
• 33A: Dolt's football game plans? (PLAYBOOK FOR A FOOL)
• 54A: The truth about a popular Internet community? (FACEBOOK REALITY)
• 80A: Egotistical author's request to a reader? (BOOKMARK MY WORDS)
• 100A: Annual publications for burros? (DONKEY'S YEARBOOKS)
• 117A: Dust cover made of 100% aluminum, perhaps? (FULL-METAL BOOK JACKET)
• 13A: Aid for record-keeping at Mrs. Smith's? (APPLE PIE ORDER BOOK)
• 47D: Get together with your bet taker? (MEET ONE'S BOOKMAKER) — my favorite theme answer   

Bullets:

• 1A: Handsome, as Henri (BEL) — Not BEAU? 7 years of French and I couldn't turn up BEL. Sad.
• 72A: Singer/actress with a simultaneous #1 album and #1 film, familiarly (J-LO) — she had a #1 film??? Wow. "The Wedding Planner?" Really, America? She's actually a pretty good actress (see "Out of Sight"). But singing-wise, let's just say, she's no Whitney.

• 77A: Rathskeller vessel (STEIN) — I think we have a bar downtown called the Rathskeller, or "The Rat" for short. I associate it with vomiting undergrads.
• 116A: "The Mikado" baritone (KOKO) — the sign-language gorilla?
• 2D: "There's a Chef in My Soup!" writer (EMERIL) — possibly the stupidest title I've ever seen.
• 32D: 1987 Broadway sensation, colloquially (LES MIZ) — My first answer: LESTAT (the vampire?)
• 37D: Superboy's sweetie (LANA) — confusingish, since LANA is Clark's "sweetie" too (if "Smallville" is to be believed).
• 75D: Classic fragrance sold in France as Mon Péché (MY SIN) — "Classic?" I just translated "mon péché." 
• 76D: Macedonian city with Greek and Roman ruins (EDESSA) — just one of those geographical terms you learn in the course of doing puzzles. 
• 97D: Supply at a French smoke shop (TABAC) — You can get great CHIRAC TABAC at SEA-TAC.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Glassware ovens / SAT 11-5-11 / 19th dynasty's founder / Sister of Nephthys / 2004-06 Haitian PM / Ulysses star 1967

Constructor: Kurt Mueller

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: LEHRS (46D: Glassware ovens) —

(engineering) A long oven in which glass is cooled and annealed after being formed. Also spelled lear; leer.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/lehr-engineering#ixzz1cnMSyvod

• • •

Wow, that was unpleasant. I was nowhere near this puzzle's wavelength, and almost nothing made me go "wow" or "cool" or clever. Just not for me. At all. I have to say that the construction seems really shoddy right around the SW corner. If you are going to stack one 15 on top of another, maybe don't choose words that give you --HR- in one of the crosses. LEHRS is very obscure, and then there's a crud fill domino effect with ATHOL (ugh, terrible fill—a little town that only northeasterners are going to have heard of) (45A: Massachusetts town near the New Hampshire border) and then some Haitian P.M. who was in power for a whole two years (36D: 2004-06 Haitian P.M. = LATORTUE). Does his name mean "torture," because ... that seems apt (I think it means "turtle," actually). Oh, and LECT (41A: Symposium offering: Abbr.)—also not so good, also located in that cluster*$@# of a corner. RAMSESI is ugly (37A: 19th dynasty's founder). You would never say that a ROADSIDE "holds" a "shoulder" (37D: Shoulder holder). MIR went around an ORB? Really? Really? You're calling Earth an ORB now, Shakespeare? (15D: It was last inhabited in 2000). And LMN and ALI are such awesome fill that you want to call attention to them with this KO nonsense? I'm guessing there are lots of people who don't see WARLORDs as particularly "minor" (18A: Minor despot). Wahoo is an ELM? Do the bobolinks live there? A torpedo is a sandwich? AN E? (52D: The 4th of November?) I'm supposed to accept that indefinite article? ANE is a suffix and that's all it is. That's All It Is. Dear lord. I've heard of NEO-conservative, but not a NEO-liberal (56D: Liberal leader?). A county in Maryland? (9A: Queen ___ (Maryland county) = ANNE'S) See, the ridiculous clues are on the crappy fill. This is always a bad combo.

I liked GOLD CARD and ALFRED HITCHCOCK and, to a lesser extent, GRILLED / CORN (Street fair fare). Otherwise, this was tough and unpleasant, my least favorite puzzle combo.

Bullets:

• 1A: First name in eroticism (ANAIS) —also, half of a perfume name.

• 14A: Relative of a bobolink (BALTIMORE ORIOLE) — I guess if you can't make your clues clever, you just look up some ridiculous name in a bird book.
• 21A: Title role for Omar Sharif or Benicio Del Toro (CHE) — one of a handful of little gimmes strewn about the puzzle. I think Sharif has been used to clue "CHE!" (1969) in late-week puzzles before.
• 44A: Popular tech news site (CNET) — seems puzzleworthy to me, but I realize that I very rarely see it. Maybe it's seen as too off-the-radar for most NYT solvers to be commonplace. 
• 59A: Gives a "Yoo-hoo!" on Facebook (POKES) — another gimme. I never understood the POKE function. If I want to get someone's attention, I just write on that person's wall or use Direct Message. I think the "POKE" function was invented and became popular only because it sounds funny / sexual. Seems useless.
• 26D: Tony's boss on "Who's the Boss?" (ANGELA) — one of the very few times today where I thought "Now you're speaking my language!" 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Classic 1921 play set partly in factory / THU 10-27-11 / 1957-91 King of Norway / Helps for autobiographers / Citiy near Ben Gurion airport / Glace after thawing

Constructor: Kurt Mueller

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: GHOST in the Machine — a GHOST rebus, with four "GHOST" squares and a central Across answer that reads "HAUNTED" (38A: Having spirit?)

Word of the Day: RADDLE (32D: Make by interlacing) —

v. t. (răd"d'l)
To interweave or twist together.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/raddle#ixzz1bweQl7AJ

• • •

Despite some rough fill around the edges, I quite enjoyed this one. Thus ends a four-puzzle slide the likes of which I hadn't seen in the NYT in a while. I was getting a little worried. This one has a nice central idea, with entertaining, lively theme answers. Those giant corners mean that some of the shorter crossing material is a bit ugly (e.g. HAEC, OOO, EERY, AUT (!?!?!), and virtually every Across answer in the NE). But the long answers are splendid, and uncovering the GHOSTs was actually fun. Rebus actually made things easier than normal today—there are only so many GHOST phrases, so once you have one GHOST answer in place, the cross comes almost instantly. Took me a little while to pick up the theme—I actually traversed the entire grid from NW to SE before uncovering my first GHOST at "[GHOST]BUSTERS"—but once I had it, I tore through the puzzle from there on out. Would've been under 5 if I could have remembered how to spell LHASA (61A: Tibetan terrier=>LHASA APSO). I always want to go with LLASA, which is some kind of conflation of LLAMA and LLANO, I think. Wrong continent on both counts. Anyway, fixed my mistake and still came in with a very speedy time, just over 5.





Theme answers:

• PALE AS A [GHOST] / [GHOST] TOWN (8D: Result of a boom and bust, maybe)
• GIVE UP THE [GHOST] / MARLEY'S [GHOST] (47A: Fictional character who says "I wear the chain I forged in life")
• [GHOST] WRITERS (27A: Helps for autobiographers) / [GHOST] OF A CHANCE
• HOLY [GHOST] / "[GHOST]BUSTERS" (69A: 1984 film whose soundtrack had a #1 hit with the same title)

There were two words I can't remember ever seeing before today: RADDLE and LIPARI (3D: Italy's ___ Islands). Other than that, everything else was fairly familiar. Kind of magical how nicely WOODY ALLEN (the filmmaker) fits alongside ROGER EBERT (the film critic) (28D: Who wrote "It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens" + 29D: "Life Itself: A Memoir" autobiographer, 2011). I love BEANIE BABY for its fantastic datedness (11D: Toy collectible of the late '90s). Grown people lost their damned minds collecting and selling and trying to make fortunes on the BEANIE BABY craze. "The craze lasted through 1999 and slowly declined after the Ty company's announcement that they would no longer be making Beanie Babies and made a bear called "The End"" (wikipedia). "The End" came in two models—noose-around-neck or gun-to-head.






No GHOSTs in "R.U.R." (Classic 1921 play set partly in a factory). Just robots.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Orphan girl in Byron's Don Juan / SUN 7-24-11 / Northernmost borough of London / Vast in verse / Noted 1991 Harvard law grad

Constructor: Kurt Mueller

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Nine of Diamonds" — nine baseball phrases, which are clued as wacky non-baseball phrases (baseball is played on a diamond—hence the puzzle title)


Word of the Day: IDEOGRAM (84D: Emoticon, e.g.) —

An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek ἰδέα idea "idea" + γράφω grafo "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarity with prior convention; others convey their meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, and thus may also be referred to as pictograms. (wikipedia)

• • •

Once again it's hot and once again I'm tired (more so), so this time the write-up really will be short. This puzzle should break hard, difficulty-wise, depending on whether you're a baseball fan or not. Once I caught onto the theme, I needed only a cross or two to get most of the remaining theme answers. Not much challenge. In fact, I finished this in 7:35, which is about a minute and a half faster than my previous NYT Sunday record. That ENFIELD (77A: Northernmost borough of London)/ NGO (78D: Vietnam's ___ Dinh Diem) section gave me a little fright (don't know either), but the fill and cluing elsewhere were a cinch. I barely noticed most of the theme answers, so my attention went more to the fill. There wasn't a lot to love—IDEOGRAM and RUBS IT IN (51D: Adds insult to injury, say) are OK, but otherwise, not much stands out. STOOP TO (82D: Reach at a lower level) is awkward as a stand-alone phrase; SPEWERS would be unfortunate in the singular—it's worse in the plural (24D: Some volcanoes); and CCC is just ... I don't know what (62D: Junk bond rating). But aside from an ENORM (77D: Vast, in verse) here and a NOSER there (91A: Brown-___) , everything seemed fine. Forgettable, adequate, fine. The theme concept is kind of cute—I just wish there'd been more resistance in this thing.

Theme answers:

• 23A: Cuts in a cardboard container? (BOX SCORES)
  
• 31A: Yelled initially? (CALLED OUT AT FIRST)
  
• 44A: So-so formal dance? (FAIR BALL)
  
• 46A: Went far too slowly during the 10K? (WALKED IN A RUN)
  
• 63A: Piece of black-market playground equipment (SWING FOR THE FENCES)
  
• 83A: Wool or cotton purchase request? (BATTING ORDER)
• 85A: Disgusting advice? (FOUL TIPS)
  
• 98A: Whiskey bottle dregs? (BOTTOM OF THE FIFTH)
  
• 113A: Nobleman after a banquet? (FULL COUNT)
  

Bullets:

• 37A: 26 of the 44 U.S. presidents: Abbr. (ATTYS.) — interesting stat, but that doesn't quite make up for the ugliness of ATTYS.
  
• 58A: Arizona is the only state to have one (ZEE) — fantastic clue.
  
• 107A: Coporate shake-up, for short (REORG) — one of my least favorite crosswordisms, but I used it once, so I can't complain too much.
  
• 114A: Rita Hayworth's femme fatale title role of 1946 ("GILDA") — an early and important movie in the film noir canon.
  
• 118A: Toothpaste brand once advertised as having the secret ingredient GL-70 (GLEEM) — guessed it off the "M" but had no idea about the advertising claim.

[It's "*fewer* cavities," jackass! Less Gleem, more grammar!]

• 13D: Orphan girl in Byron's Don Juan (LEILA) — yuck. Make it Ali or don't make it at all.
  
• 99D: Noted 1991 Harvard Law grad (OBAMA) — see ATTYS., above
  
• 2D: Perform Hawaiian music, say (CROON) — I was utterly unaware that Hawaiian music had anything to do with crooning.
  
• 98D: Confederate general who won at Chickamauga (BRAGG) — must be the guy the Fort is named after. The only BRAGG I know (very well) is Billy:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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