Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Max Lauring

BOO! It's Annabel Monday again!

Constructor: BENJAMIN LAURING AND MAX LAURING

Relative difficulty: EASY

THEME: PART ANIMAL — Theme answers consisted of an animal and a body part.

Theme answers:

RAT TAIL (15A: *Out-of-vogue hairstyle akin to a mullet)
HARE BRAIN (17D: *Foolish sort)
BEES KNEES (22D: *Really something, with "the")
PIGEON TOES (27A: *Condition with feet turned inward)
PIGGY BACK (32A: *How a tot rides on someone's shoulders)
SNAKE EYES (37A: *Two ones, in dice)
PART ANIMAL (48A: Like a centaur or faun...or a hint to each of this puzzle's starred clues)
DOG EARS (60A: *Signs of a much-used book)

Word of the Day: OLIO (55D: Miscellany) —

1:olla podrida

The Spanish restaurant offered an olio containing a variety of ingredients.

2a :a miscellaneous mixture :hodgepodge

… an incredible bourgeois olio of fancy stonework, stained glass, and light-opera staircases …

—R. H. Rovere

b :a miscellaneous collection (as of literary or musical selections)

This olio of broadsides, speeches, letters, poems, and other documents …

—S. R. Slaton

(Merriam-Webster)

• • •

I do still look cool right?

I hope everyone had a great and spoOoOoOoOoOoOoOky Halloween! I know it was like a week ago, but it's a really big deal at my college so it feels like it's still here. I went as Danny Zuko from Grease, except I forgot to make the T-Birds sign for the back of my leather jacket so I kinda just looked like a random person in a leather jacket with greasy hair. Oh well, I still looked cool. (Before my mom has a heart attack, that's a lollipop stick in the picture, not a cigarette - it's part of the costume!)

Anyway, enough talking about stuff that happened an entire week ago! This puzzle was pretty good. The fill was actually some of the best I've seen in a while - ERG, ELOI, PLAT and some fun stuff with suffixes. And the constructors were pretty light on pop culture references for once! Having to make a million guesses about which obscure soap opera star a given clue refers to is always one of my least favorite parts of the puzzle, honestly, so getting a break from that is refreshing. I didn't really get stuck anywhere, except for having PIGEON FOOT for PIGEON TOES for an embarrassing amount of time.

I literally just got that the theme is PART ANIMAL because it contains both a body part and an animal. I had HALF ANIMAL there for a long time and I didn't quite get the double meaning. I guess that's pretty clever? Also, there sure were a ton of theme clues this time! Anyway, fauns are cool. I haven't read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe for about a million years but Mr. Tumnus is definitely the best part of that book. I like his umbrella.

Bullets:

DOG EARS (60A: Signs of a much-used book) — Not to be a nerd or anything but, nooooooo! Don't do this to books! It's better than leaving them face down but it's not good to leave creases in the pages forever! I usually just use a random discarded clothing tag or something as a bookmark because I'm too lazy to find my bajillion actual bookmarks. ...Actually, I guess I get dog-earing a book if you know it's something you're going to read a lot of times and you want to save your favorite parts. I dunno. Different strokes for different folks?
ENGAGE (64A: Have the attention of) — Speaking of being a nerd, I personally would have clued this very differently...

YANKEES (40D: Team with the most World Series Victories (27)) — Argh! I'm in Boston! We don't talk about that here!!!! Even the "(27)" in the clue seems like it just rubs it in. Rude!
REEBOK (54A: Nike competitor) — "Are those Reebok or Nike?"