Title town of Longfellow poem / SUN 5-20-12 / Lanchester on screen / Hall-of-Fame pitcher Joss / Singer of 1958 #1 hit It's Only Make Believe / When repeated old New Orleans tune / First H in Hannukah / Simba's mate

Constructor: Alan Arbesfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Wisecracks" — familiar phrases where terminal "Y" in one word removed. Destination: Wacky Town.

Word of the Day: AIN (64D: River to the Rhône) —

The Ain is a river in eastern France. In the Franco-Provençal language it is known as the En. //The river rises at an altitude of some 700 metres, near the village of La Favière, in the Jurassiclimestone of the southern end of the Jura mountains and flows into the Rhône about 40 kilometres above Lyon, some 190 kilometres down the Ain. (wikipedia)

• • •

Simple concept that at times rendered moderately amusing answers. Fill is dilapidated, but you can see that. I wrote down in the margins fully two dozen answers I would try *hard* to keep out of any puzzle I was constructing. Now, keep in mind, in making a Sunday, you're going to get some fill you're not thrilled with. It happens. Sundays are big, and you can't really begrudge the constructor a LTYR or ILA here and there. But this one is hyper-reliant on musty Maleska-Era stuff: answers that are second nature for the seasoned solver, but not at all lovely. ORLE (46A: Shield border) and ATRI (45D: Title town of a Longfellow poem) and AIN (64D: River to the Rhône) are probably the best examples from today's puzzle. Someone in-the-know wrote me the other day to say that my proposed fix for FOCH (in that puzzle a while back) wouldn't fly with Will because it would've resulted in SLA, an answer he is trying to phase out. I'm all for phasing out SLA, actually, but I have a hard time squaring the (alleged) anti-SLA sentiment with this grid.  I don't know why the quality of the fill seems to matter so little lately. I also don't know why a stud wearing scarlet should be a drag queen. A stud dressed like Scarlett, sure. But the color alone hardly makes a man a cross-dresser.


Theme answers:

• 23A: Chocolat, say? (TREAT OF VERSAILLES) — good
• 39A: Macho drag queen? (A STUD IN SCARLET) — good
• 50A: Like literary classics? (GOOD AND READ) — zzzzz
• 54A: Call to the bar? (BEER BELL) — pretty good
• 68A: Like a centaur? (PART ANIMAL) — good
• 70A: "Don't let that youngster get off without paying!"? ("BILL THE KID!") — pretty good
• 86A: Unbiased account? (FAIR TALE) — OK
• 89A: Announcement made by a transplant surgeon, perhaps? (LIVER STABLE) — uh ... I don't know much about surgery, but would you say "[organ] stable"? A patient can be stable, but an organ? It *seems* plausible, but I don't know if it is.
• 97A: Stigmatize a "great" king? (BRAND ALEXANDER) — fine
• 119A: Two reasons to avoid a dog kennel? (THE SOUND AND THE FUR) — clue makes this good

We get "WOMAN" on the one day we *don't* get ONO—what are the odds? (actually, probably pretty good) (11A: John Lennon song that ends "I love you, yeah, yeah, now and forever"). The "when repeated" words were both complete mysteries to me. I must have just looked up that "IKO IKO" song recently (33A: When repeated, an old New Orleans tune) because once I got the "K" I knew it, but SANS — wow, I have no memory of that Shakespearean line At All (35A: Word repeated four times in the last line of Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage"). I got ADDIE with just a cross or two (60A: Hall-of-Fame pitcher Joss) but (funnily) wrote in RUTH instead of RYAN at first for 84A: Baseball's strikeout king. I wrote the "F" in TREAT OF VERSAILLE really weirdly, so at the end I was left wondering why CAKES was the answer to 6D: Saint-Germain-des-Près sights (CAFES). [Take a peke?] is a great clue for DOGNAP. NAAN is spelled the correct (i.e. preferred by me) double-A way today (52D: Tandoor-baked bread). Belle STARR (62D: Outlaw Belle who is said to have harbored Jesse James) sounds like a comics character (i.e. like Brenda STARR); her name came to me easily, unlike TWITTY—I didn't know he went that far back (100D: Singer of the 1958 #1 hit "It's Only Make Believe"). HETH is not a letter I know (101D: The first "H" in Hanukkah). I know ETH (Old English). And ETA (also an "H"). I know the ice planet HOTH. But HETH not so much. I do, however, know NALA, and a bunch of other "Lion King" names, despite never having seen the movie (113D: Simba's mate). I still think of "The Lion King" as a *recent* Disney movie, but it's 18 years old now. I've got t-shirts older than that.



Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Read more...