Popsicle in Fifty Shades of Grey / SUN 10-28-12 / Psychologist Jean / Prime minister of 1945 / 1978-79 CBS detective drama / Softly exhale cheap sentiment / Hoarders airer

Constructor: Michael Sharp and Caleb Madison

Relative difficulty: ???

THEME: "WHAT THE ..." — familiar phrases have the sound "-THE" added to end of a word in that phrase, creating wacky phrases, clued "?"-style

Theme answers:

• 23A: "Come on, woman, shape that wood!"? ("LATHE, LADY, LATHE")
• 38A: Cheerful superhero? (CAPTAIN BLITHE)
• 52A: Take a patient approach to revenge? (WAIT AND SEETHE)
• 71A: Ones who stop giving to their church? (TITHE BREAKERS)
• 89A: Softly exhale cheap sentiment? (BREATHE CHEESE)
• 101A: Mad scientist's sadistic exclamation upon attacking the Empire State? ("WRITHE, NEW YORK!")
• 119A: What the Grim Reaper's backup carries? (SCYTHE OF RELIEF)
• 15D: "If you don't like my anger, do something about it!"? ("SO SOOTHE ME!")
• 76D: Hate coke? (LOATHE BLOW)

Word of the Day: "KAZ" (96A: 1978-79 CBS detective drama) —

Kaz is an American crime drama series that aired on CBS from September 10, 1978 to April 22, 1979. // Ron Leibman starred as Martin "Kaz" Kazinsky, a Polish American former convict who became a criminal defense attorney after he was released from prison. Leibman won anEmmy Award as Outstanding Lead Actor in a drama. Nevertheless, the show failed to capture an audience and was cancelled due to low ratings. In all, 22 episodes aired. (wikipedia)

• • •

Origins (from memory, so I might get a detail wrong here or there): Caleb wrote me with "LATHE LADY LATHE" and asked if I wanted to help build a theme around that answer. We brainstormed a *lot* of words to which you could successfully add "-THE," and then a lot of potential phrases using those words ("LATHE LADY LATHE" is still my favorite, esp. as clued—if you're gonna do wacky, Do Wacky, i.e. Absurd—this is also why I like my second-favorite theme answer, "WRITHE, NEW YORK!"). Once we settled on a symmetrical group of answers, Caleb put together the grid. Fast. One second we were talking about it as a hypothetical, next thing I know, he sends me a fillable grid, with all the theme answers in place, and (impressively) with theme answers even intersecting in the NE and SW. Then we filled it. This is a weird thing to do with two people. I think at first he took the east and I took the west. Then we took passes making things mesh. Back and forth a few times. Done. But ... this is not the grid we initially submitted (dum dum DUM!).


Well, most of it is, but the entire SW corner has been rewritten since we first submitted it. This is because Will liked the theme, wanted to run the puzzle, but balked at including one of our longer answers: Chinese artist and dissident AI WEIWEI. Will wrote:

I like the theme, but ... would you be willing to change the lower-left corner? I'm not crazy about the entry AI WEIWEI. He's not so well-known yet, and his name is crazily spelled and not inferable. IS DONE in the same corner isn't so wonderful either. Maybe the whole area can be improved.

He was certainly right about IS DONE, but I was a bit surprised about the AI WEIWEI rejection. I thought he was pretty famous, or at least NYT-reader famous. Just this week, a video of AI WEIWEI has been making the rounds (via sites like The New Yorker, New York Magazine, etc.). Maybe you've seen it.

Plus, I thought we'd made sure all the crosses were fair, so even people who hadn't heard of him could still solve the puzzle. But Will knows his audience better than we do, so we happily obliged. Since that was "my" corner, I tore it up and started plugging in AI WEI WEI substitutes. Now, both Caleb and I like to make the most of longer answers—to find new, weird, fresh, strange, or otherwise grabby words, names, or phrases to work into the grid. So I started throwing in as many good 8s as I had lying around. I got some of them to work, but there was always something not-quite-right about the resulting fill. Then, perhaps because I was constructing the puzzle at the height of "Fifty Shades" mania, I hit upon SAFE WORD and refused to let go. Hence TROW, which I kinda hate (90D: Suppose, to Shakespeare). But the rest of the adjacent fill works just fine, and I can't tell you how happy I am that SAFE WORD got in, and got in just as I'd clued it (106A: "Popsicle," in "Fifty Shades of Grey," for one).


DAAÉ is one of my least favorite crossword names (55D: Christine ___, "The Phantom of the Opera" girl); it's a name that looks like it was invented by a crossword constructor just to get herself out of a jam. Blecch. But I was intent on marrying Caleb's great SE corner with the fill he had going on up top, and so that middle-right portion of the grid was wicked hard to pull off. I had to invent CABLEMEN (which, thankfully, it turns out, is a real thing; 65A: Some electrical workers), and choke down NHLER and that ugly little LST / ATA crossing, but I was generally happy with the result. There's a Random Roman Numeral in there, so, you know, yuck, but as clues for DLIX go, I like mine (131A: 1,000 years before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I).


Bullets:

• 19A: Setting for the 2012 film "Argo" (IRAN) — Sometimes Will modernizes the clue. Like here. I certainly didn't know what "Argo" was when C and I were making this puzzle. Other current clues Will added include 95A: San Antonio mayor Julián, keynote speaker at the 2012 Democratic convention (CASTRO) (interesting, considering Will took *out* my Republican convention clue for CLINT (16D)... ), and 32D: Replacement refs, maybe? (SCABS).
• 42A: Oklahoma birthplace of Oral Roberts (ADA) — I'm reasonably certain Oral Roberts did not figure in our original cluing. I just started watching "The United States of Tara" earlier tonight, and in an earlier episode the actor who plays Buster Bluth in "Arrested Development" plays an English teacher named Oral. Or Orel, I guess. It wasn't spelled out.
• 116A: Canon fodder? (FILM) — nice clue. Not mine. Maybe Caleb's, maybe Will's, can't remember. My wife didn't like the clue until I explained "Canon" referred to the camera. She was thinking of "canon" as a set of great works.
• 53D: Carnival Cruise Lines stop (ARUBA) — seems pretty vague. I think our original clue had something about the capital, Oranjestad, which now that I think of it would look beautiful in a grid.

Hope you enjoyed the puzzle. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex "Michael Sharp" Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Mewing passerines / THU 7-21-11 / 1985 NL MVP Willie / Bridge at Narni artist / Courtier who invites Hamlet to fence with Laertes

Constructor: Michael Sharp

Relative difficulty: I have no idea

THEME: SLICED / CHEESE (36A: With 38-Across, deli purchase ... or a description of the answer to 17-, 26-, 47- or 55-Across) — theme answers are cheeses, which the "?"-style clues "slice" into wacky phrases


Word of the Day: SIR Barton (3D: ___ Barton, first Triple Crown winner, 1919) —

Sir Barton, (1916–1937), was a chestnut thoroughbred colt who in 1919 became the first winner of the American Triple Crown. // He was sired by leading stud Star Shoot out of the Hanover mare Lady Sterling. His grandsire was the 1893 English Triple Crown champion, Isinglass. // Sir Barton was bred in Kentucky by John E. Madden and Vivian A. Gooch at Hamburg Place Farm near Lexington. Madden raced him in his two-year-old season. He was entered in six races, winning none. Madden sold the horse in 1918 for $10,000 to Canadian businessman J. K. L. Ross. // Ross placed Sir Barton in the hands of trainer H. Guy Bedwelland jockey Johnny Loftus. At three, he made his season debut as a maiden in the Kentucky Derby. He was supposed to be the rabbit for his highly regarded stablemate, a horse named Billy Kelly. (A rabbit is a speed horse set up to wear out the rest of the field, thereby allowing another horse to win.) However, it was Sir Barton who led the field of 12 horses from start to finish, winning the race by five lengths. Just four days later, the horse was in Baltimore and won the Preakness Stakes, beating Eternal. Again he led all the way. He then won the Withers Stakes in New York and shortly thereafter completed the first Triple Crown in U.S. history by easily winning the Belmont Stakes, setting an American record for the mile and three-eighths race, the distance for the Belmont at the time. Amazingly, Sir Barton's four wins were accomplished in a space of just 32 days. He was voted the 1919 Horse of the Year, American racing's highest honor. (wikipedia)

• • •

So here's how this goes: I notice (I forget how) that GORGONZOLA (17A: French writer with snaky hair and a petrifying gaze?) breaks into two words, creating a phrase that is also a funny mental image. So then I brainstorm cheeses to see if I can break them in similar fashion, and I don't really get anywhere; at this point I'm not trying very hard ("trying very hard" = getting on the damned internet and finding massive lists of cheeses, seeing if any of them break into phrases, and then deciding if any of those are well known enough as cheeses to be theme answers in a non-Cheese Monthly puzzle). I have lots of such scribblings and lists and half-hearted theme stirrings lying around in various parts of my office. Weeks or months go by and I'm cleaning my office and I find my original notes. And I try a little harder with the cheese brainstorming, somehow ending up with four cheeses that can be organized in a grid with rotational symmetry. The problem / challenge—some of the "sliced" phrases are nuts. Preposterous. I mean, wacky answers always are, but a couple of these are loony. I then decided that the majority were good-loony. But four cheeses didn't really seem quite ... there yet. So I pondered a "reveal." And then, magically / luckily, SLICED CHEESE presented itself. Perfect description of what's going on, *plus* the answer breaks into two parts of equal length—considered a first Across / last Across split, but then noticed I could put it right in the middle. And there you go.

You could make the argument that this puzzle is basically one solid theme answer + three answers that were forcibly and brutally conscripted into theme service. But I figure if you're going to go wacky, go big or go home. And if MA'S CAR PONE isn't going big, wacky-wise, I don't know what is (55A: Mom's special road-trip corn bread?). That phrase is so improbable, so surreal, that I can't help but love it, the way you might love a cross-eyed, three-legged dog that can yodel. Fact: I considered cluing this answer [Mom's fish, after taking a rave drug], which I love even more, but I didn't think that meaning of "E" was in-the-language for most NYT solvers, so I backed off. That's right, MA'S CAR PONE is me backing off. If I could send one of these theme answers home, it would be LIMB URGER, if only because "URGER" is barely a word (47A: One trying to shake a leg?). My original clue for PRO VOL. ONE was [In favor of the first bk.?] — I don't like that "Abbr." at the end of 26A: In favor of the first book?: Abbr.; seems unnecessarily confusing. Which part is abbreviated? Who knows?

Seems like at least half the clues were changed this time, possibly because I clue like a maniac. My clues tend to be reaches—usually not ridiculous, but often pushing the limits of traditional crossword puzzle solver knowledge, usually in the direction of stuff I love. Will wisely lost my "Simpsons" clue for JASPER (1A: Traditional March birthstone) and my yoga clue for CORPSE (46D: Zombie, essentially). Many of the other changes were a matter of de-pop-culturefication, or simple concision. It's a bit weird to get your puzzle back and have it be unrecognizable in parts. I had no idea JASPER was a stone. I'm serious. I knew my clue on JASPER would get changed, but I figured it would be changed to JASPER Johns. So 1A was a mystery to me. I actually thought Will might have changed the answer itself. Then I hit the 1919 Triple Crown winner, which I also did Not know, and thought, "Huh ... I'm going to be unable to complete my own puzzle. That'll be a first." Clues on OSAKA (34D: City of 2 1/2+ million at the mouth of the Yodo River) and DANKE (13D: Comment preceding "Gern geschehen") and COROT were also new to me, though, to be fair, my own original clue on COROT would probably be mystifying to me. I know he's French, and pre-Impressionist, and that's about it (32A: "The Bridge at Narni" artist).

As for the fill in general, I'm pretty pleased with it. Least pleased with the ALG. / AB OVO / OSRIC section (I'd kill OSRIC if I could—ironic, since he's one of the few characters who *don't* die at the end of "Hamlet" ... wait, he doesn't die, does he? I'm reading that Branagh makes him die, but I don't remember that being part of the play...) (42D: Courtier who invites Hamlet to fence with Laertes). Love STEEL TOE (10D: Common work boot feature) and FOOTRUB (7D: Service that requires no shoes) and BEEFSUP (and the fact that BEEF crosses BURGER) (41D: Fortifies). Also love TOPLESS (!) (44A: Like some bars and beaches) and, for reasons I really don't fully comprehend, the clue on FIBER (52A: ___ One). In my original submission, I cross-referenced 31A: "Beat it!" ("GET OUT!") and 20A: Dissolve a relationship (END IT). Will dissolved that relationship. I now realize I could have triple-cross-referenced these answers with EXES (28A: Joint custody parties), but it's probably a good thing that that idea occurred to me very late. Happy to bring Willie MCGEE back into the light, however briefly, and to have him sitting right next to BIRDS (he played for the Cardinals) (49D: 1985 N.L. M.V.P. Willie). If this puzzle has no other distinction, it will go down in history as the first appearance in the NYT crossword of one Mr. Justin BIEBER (65A: "Baby" singer Justin). The floodgates are open. The Age of BIEBER is well and truly upon us. God be with us.



Finally, I discovered that Will has a sly sense of humor. Check out his clue on BARB (53D: Sharp put-down). My first thought upon reading it: "touché."

Bullets:

• 21A: Antelope of southern Africa (RHEBOK) — had clued this as [Oribi cousin] but Will (in a very useful email he sent me, explaining some of his clue changes) said: "For any solver who doesn't know what an oribi or rhebok is, the clue would be meaningless. So I was more explanatory"
• 62A: It's developed during training season (ROSTER) — I forget what my original clue was here, but this clue (a good one) took me a while to figure out (it'd been a long time since I'd seen this puzzle; it was accepted sometime in the fall of '10, I think).
  
• 4D: Obsolescent communication devices (PAGERS) — I think I had them as "simple"; I'm glad Will went one step further and relegated them to "bygone" status.

• 46D: Zombie, essentially (CORPSE) — coincidentally, wife and I just started watching AMC's "The Walking Dead" (I read the comic and decided I'd give the TV show a go). It's about zombies. Best part of the viewing experience so far is when zombies are trying to bust into a department store where survivors are holed up. One zombie picks up a big rock and starts trying to break the glass, and wife and I exclaim, at Exactly The Same Time (and word for word), "They know how to use tools!?" (All earlier evidence suggested they were pretty simple (and slow) creatures)
  
• 37D: Mewing passerines (CATBIRDS) — I love this clue, in part because it kind of looks like nonsense.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Many a Justin Bieber fan / WED 12-22-10 / Kirk's foe in a "Star Trek" sequel / General played by Fonda (in 1976), Peck (1977) and Olivier (1981)

Constructor: Michael Sharp (a k a Rex Parker)

Relative difficulty: Medium-Difficult

Theme: Going All In — Six answers are phrases which usually include "All In" at the beginning with "All In" omitted. Theme revealer at 63-Across.


Word of the Day: VALOR (3D: Bravery) —

valor (uncountable)

1. Value; worth.
2. Strength of mind in regard to danger; that quality which enables a person to encounter danger with firmness; personal bravery; courage; prowess; intrepidity.

(wiktionary.org)

• • •

What’s up, CrossWorld. Caleb Madison and Natan Last here, Sock 'Em Boppers a-ready, throwing down in Round 3 of our CrossFeud. We're guest-blogging today for Rex Parker, who, Renaissance Man that he is, has put on his constructing hat today.… And try as we might, we just can't find out who this Bennet CERF (33-A, Bennett of "What's My Line?") or Toots SHOR (54-D, Restauranteur Toots) is, with the Google Machine, or the Lady Gaga. Once we saw Justin Bieber and Biggie SMALLS in the puzzle, however, we knew we’d get … at least two answers.

We've decided to bury the hatchet, for Rex's sake. Fight indefinitely postponed. Bookies, calculate your odds. Michael Vick, place your bets. Screaming ladies, hold onto your underthings. For the course of this blog post, Caleb and Natan have merged into... Catan. Catan: like Brangelina, but cuter, and with fewer Cambodian children. It also saves us from having to use the personal pronoun "we" all the time.

On to the puzzle. As we solved this, in the same room, yelling obscenities at each other when we couldn’t get something ("*$^@!# TOOTS SHOR?!" "WAIT A SEC IS THIS A &$#!@*ING REBUS?!?"), we also commented on the solidness of the theme. It’s very clever, of course, and not only are the six phrases Rex has chosen all lively, but the omitted answer is also a tight phrase:

Theme answers:

• 1A: Cry at the start of a vote [ALL IN] FAVOR
• 20A: "Soon enough, my friend" [ALL IN] GOOD TIME
• 36A: As a package [ALL IN] ONE
• 52A: Completely imagined [ALL IN] YOUR HEAD
• 11D: Top-rated TV series of 1971-76 [ALL IN] THE FAMILY
• 32D: To be expected [ALL IN] A DAY'S WORK

Don’t get too excited, Michael/Rex, but these are all pretty colloquial and altogether awesome answers. We especially liked the clue for [ALL IN] GOOD TIME (“Soon enough, my friend”); the two phrases are perfect substitutes for one another, and equally colloquial. Now onto the fill, which was stellar in some places, awkward in others, but which overall contained a good mix of the highbrow and the low, the savory and the un.

Interestingly, as I (Catan) write this, I'm in a house on Duane Street, a block away from Reade street, home to the original Duane READE store (14-A: Duane ___ (New York City pharmacy chain)). Coincidentally, I'm also playing PACMAN (6-D: Iconic chomper) (great clue, that), listening to OTIS (10-A: Soulful Redding), acting FERAL (48-D: Untamed), and swaying to and FRO (48-A: One way to sway). What can I say. We're just two TWEENs chilling out to some Bieber (51-A: Many a Justin Bieber fan).


The extra dose of Star Trek clues were all gimmes for Caleb, but Natan, who's more of a Star Wars kid, had trouble with 'em. Both of us were happy to see Eero Saarinen, with all his crazy vowels, not as an answer but as a clue (28-A: Eero Saarinen, for one). Similarly, cool to see PRO RATA (42-D: How some wages are calculated) in full as well.


An interesting facet of this puzzle, and the submission process in general, is the stuff that Will lets FLY (28-D: Pass muster), and the stuff that gets nixed. We have it on good information that 34-Across was, in a past life, I AM, which made (27-D: Block) DE MER (clued as "Mal ___, sea sickness") instead of DETER. Hard to say which is the lesser of the evils, but DE MER has, at least, appeared in crosswords before, though never in the Times; I AT (34-A: "Am ___ risk?"), for its meager part, has appeared nonce. Constructors ourselves (down, Screaming Ladies, down!), we woulda gone with IAJ (clued as "Am ___ Burnett?: Existential crisis from a Yankees pitcher") and DE JER (Mal ___ [sickness gotten from watching too much "Seinfeld").


So appropriate.

Bullets:

• Go from site to site? (SURF) — Nice misdirective clue.
• Biggie _____ (rapper a k a Notorious B.I.G.) (SMALLS) — An example of something that could have gotten a lame plural clue (T-shirt sizes) but instead becomes lively and current. And awesome.

Teenagers that we are, our minds did not immediately go to the land of verbs when we saw Madden in the clue for 12-Down; needless to say, the actual answer was much less exciting: INFURIATE.

Also, our constructor seems to be a bit of projecting at 37-Across (Old Man: Ger.). Oh, Michael Sharpenschnitzel, you’ll always be young at heart.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter] or [Caleb Madison]

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Some Strauss compositions / 8-17-10 / 1959 top 10 hit for Ricky Nelson / Confit d'___ (potted goose) / Small cave, poetically

Constructor: Michael Sharp


Hello Rexites, my old friends
I've come to talk with you again
Because a puzzle softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the crossword that was planted in my brain
Still remains

It's the debut of Michael!!!

Wow, special day here. Andrea Carla Michaels blogging some guy named Michael Sharp's NY Times debut! Who wants to be me?! First, may I say “Congratulations”!!!!!! Nice, solid, four-entry, fun-filled theme … with a fifth “reveal” smack in the middle: S.O.S.!

I always know I like a puzzle when I have constructor-envy and find myself saying “I wish I had thought of that!” S.O.S. Seems so simple, yet lends itself to all sorts of fun expressions. When I saw(ed) SAWED-OFF SHOTGUN (17A: Weapon for Clyde Barrow) I thought, this is gonna be a fun theme … Is it kinds of guns? Weird past tenses like “Sawed”? A play on “Sod Off”?

What? What? I mean, coming up with colorful S.O.S. phrases is not as easy as it looks.… Let's see. OK, obviously, Save Our Souls, Son of Sam, … um, Sense of Smell, Sultan of Swat, … then there's Sink or Swim, … Six of Spades. OK. I'm done.

And yet, Michael Sharp has four terrific ones (well, at least three. I'm still on the fence about SLIP-ON SHOES (27A: Loafers, e.g.) … tho perfectly legitimate).

The other nice part of the theme phrases is that the O of S.O.S. could all easily have been “Of,” yet Mr. Sharp has four different Os. There are the coolly balanced OFF/ON plus OLD and only one OF. So attention was paid! What I love is how musical this puzzle is. First of all, SOUNDS OF SILENCE (53A: 1966 album that concludes with "I Am a Rock").



I had to actually get up off the couch to look at Simon and Garfunkel's album cover to verify it was indeed called “SOUNDS OF SILENCE” (n.b. to Caleb and Natan: before there were MP3s and before there were CDs, there were vinyl records with artsy covers) because I would have sworn it was called “The Sound (no s) of Silence.” Could I have been wrong for 35 years? Well, it wouldn't be the first time. But the deal is, it turns out that the song is called “The Sound of Silence” but the album is indeed named “Sounds of Silence.” Confusing.

Then there is, IT'S LATE (22A: 1959 top 10 hit for Ricky Nelson).



And what puzzle would be complete without the Beatles?


OK, technically, LET 'EM IN (33D: 1976 hit that begins "Someone's knockin' at the door") is Paul McCartney with Wings (n.b. to Caleb and Natan: before Paul was Sir Paul, and before Wings, there was this other band …).

Not to mention, SAME OLD SONG.



Actually SAME OLD SONG is not The Four Tops hit, which is actually called “It's the SAME OLD SONG,” thus the less pop culture-y clue 42A: Tired routine, colloquially. This is good bec it makes the theme tighter and more consistent, in that it's not that two out of four are songs, they are each significantly different. One's an object, one's descriptive of footwear, one's a colloquial phrase, and one's an album. Nice. The musicality of this puzzle is apparent in that it literally starts right off with 1A: Some Strauss compositions. But here's where it's weird. GALOPS with that one L is as weird to me as the double N in BANDANNA was last Wednesday. (Maybe the LLAMAS stole the other L?! But that one L right off the bat is a bit freaky … not as freaky as the word “Camelids” but freaky nonetheless) (60A: South American camelids).

So I had trouble getting out the gate, as the colorful 1D: Dogfaces did not immediately lead me to GI'S. (You'd have to be of a different era to immediately equate “Dogfaces = GI'S,” or perhaps more male than female). I mean, I got GI'S, but if I had one criticism of the puzzle, it would be that there was a touch of stodginess in some of the interesting fill: CUSS, STOUTLY, REALTY, GROT and APEAK.

Perhaps, CUSS (51D: Ornery sort) may in fact be a shout-out to Rex, and perhaps STOUTLY is as well.… I mean, isn't Rex Stout someone? A detective or something? …. Aha, just googled and he is the American Crime writer who created Nero Wolfe. How fitting is that?! So as a shout-out to Rex Stout, STOUTLY is way cool. If it's not, then it's just a bit … STOUTLY.

In other original fill, WRAITH (21A: Specter) would have been my Word of the Day, if I did that sort of thing. You gotta love 9D: SCHWINN (9D: Bicycle maker since 1895) … (tho if you change (25D: They might follow bad calls) BOOS to "boas," and (34A: Politico Paul) RON into "rag" … you'd get … SCHWING!!!!!).

And holla to HOGCALLS! Soooooooooooooooey! Damn, that's good! (38D: Noises from a county fair contest) Plus OO LA LA is also super fun, or shall I say 41A: How fa-a-ancy, but I admit I wanted an H in there.

For those less musically inclined and into darker subthemes, I also envisioned a little scenario where a melancholy street urchin IN RAGS is running thru Ho Chi MINH City or SADR City trying to avoid IEDs (22D: Like a street urchin, typically / 13D: Ho Chi ___ City / 37D: Iraq's ___ City / 45A: Weapon for Iraqi insurgents: Abbr.)

And of course I can't see the word FREI without thinking “ARBEIT MACH FREI”; so kudos for defining it as 18D: Independent, in Ingolstadt. Boy, that sure sidesteps a whole discussion. Sort of like a skipping rope rhyme. “I, my name is Inga, and I'm an Independent, and I'm from … Ingolstadt!” (Trip. Splat!)

Now, I'll let the constructor himself explain how the puzzle came about (and, perhaps, a pre-emptive defense of NMI, IED, RFD'S, and REMAP).

Look up (look up)
Is that the moon we see?
Can't be (can't be)
Looks like the sun to me
It's late (it's late)

It IS late, so I'll end with a little mash note:

Dear Michael/Rex,

Congratulations again! Fresh and fun, definitely not the SAME OLD SONG
(with a different meaning since you've been gone) … Thank you for trusting me to blog the blogger … but I'll let you take it from here.

With 50D: XOXO!,

Andrea

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

[Note from RP: Thanks, Andrea. Figured this one would be a Wednesday, but Will thought otherwise. Definitely some rough stuff all around the HOGCALLS area, mainly bec. I refused to give it up. Am surprised to hear "SAME OLD SONG" is unfamiliar to anyone. I made double/triple sure it was in common usage, in headlines of NYT articles, etc. Peter Gordon just sent me a message with no content except a link to his 1994 "SOS"-themed puzzle, which I had no idea existed (that's what I get for relying exclusively on the cruciverb database for my info about recent puzzle history, I guess). And his was a Sunday! Thankfully, he didn't have SAWED-OFF SHOTGUN, so at least I can still cling to that as an original contribution to puzzleworld. Oh, also, I worked really hard to make sure that none of the "O" words in the "S.O.S." phrases were repeated. You can do "OF" phrases all day long...

OK, I don't want to say too much more. There's an interview with me over at "Wordplay," where Jim Horne does a wicked parody of my reviewing style. Check it out here.

Thanks for the good (and bad) feedback everyone.~RP

P.S. Thanks to those of you who have (already!) sent me pictures of yourselves solving or pictures of your completed grid. Really entertaining. Keep 'em coming!

P.P.S. Watch 2010 ACPT Champion Dan Feyer solve this puzzle in real time—keep an ear out for his uncensored audio commentary: made me Laugh Out Loud]

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"20 Years of Detention" — A Perfectly Cromulent Puzzle

It was 20 years ago today ... that a certain TV show had its full-length, prime-time debut. Patrick Blindauer and I offer the following puzzle as a tribute. Enjoy.

As usual, click on "Print" on the image below, or go here (to the crosswordfiend.com forum) to get a .puz / AcrossLite version of the puzzle. Thanks to Patrick Blindauer for doing this with me. It was a blast. If you get stumped, you can find the solution here.

Brief write-up of the puzzle after the kitten, below ...

20 Years of Detention



I first thought about writing a puzzle to commemorate the 20th anniversary of "The Simpsons" some time last year. But as with most things I think of, I did nothing about it. Time passed. Then I was having dinner in Queens with Patrick Blindauer and and a few other folks after Ryan and Brian's Crossword Tournament in August, and I mentioned the idea to Patrick. I mentioned some possible theme ideas, but none seemed terribly feasible. Too obvious, or too elaborate. To my surprise, shortly thereafter, Patrick emailed me with a giant list of Bart's chalkboard scrawlings, each one beginning "I will not..." and each one paired with another of equal length. At first I thought ... I don't know. I wasn't sure. But then the more I thought on it, the more I liked it. It would be like a giant quote puzzle, so crosses would have to be super fair, but the theme phrases themselves (unlike most quote puzzles) are actually funny (TEASE FATTY makes me laugh every time I look at it).


We had enough material to do a Sunday-sized puzzle, but I wanted it to come out on the anniversary itself (today, Dec. 17), so we pared it down to six (still a Hell of a lot to cram into a 15x15 grid, esp. with the Xs and Ks and Vs and what not, plus BART). I built a grid. Got it rolling, then realized that fill would be a little ugly in and around the XEROX region. So Patrick tweaked the grid slightly and that opened things right up. We could have gone with a few other things besides OSAMU at 25A, but there was NO way I was giving it up. He's about as big a figure as there is in (non-Western) comics, and is a household name in Japan, and he's not in the cruciverb.com database, so I was prepared to fight for him. In that section, INI is really painful, but I was happy enough to get out of that XEROX section with OSAMU, ARTICHOKES, and PECKISH in place (all of which I love). MOE (like ABE) was an accident. But once I saw I had both of those guys, I intentionally put LISA in the NW.

Without a doubt, the western seaboard of the puzzle, from OSAMU to the far SW, took the most time to construct. And reconstruct. And reconstruct. I wanted PECKISH, which limited what we could do coming down off the "K" into the SW. In the end, we had the option of KAREEM or KARENS, neither of which is exciting (tho' the former beats the latter), and both of which were going to leave us with more partial / abbrev. action than we wanted in the surrounding fill. Then on a lark I proposed KAREN O to Patrick. She's the lead singer of the YEAH YEAH YEAHs (see 34D to see why we could *not* cue her that way). She was in the (hipster music) news as we were writing the puzzle, since "Where The Wild Things Are" was about to be released into theaters. I knew she was really famous in the rock music world, but for a mainstream audience ... I wasn't sure. Ran it by Patrick, thinking for sure he'd say "no way," but he liked it. Thought it was fresh and valid. So we went with her, and the SW is way, way better for having her.

Once Patrick got the grid issues sorted out (the really hard work), I filled most of the grid. At the end, Patrick got in and suggested modifications up top and in the SW (specifically, he picked up that IDEE, which used to be in the SW, and IDEAL, up top, are etymologically related and should therefore not appear in same grid together — that's an eagle eye). I clued Acrosses and he clued Downs, and then went through like a good editor and polished / modified *all* the clues. His technical skillz and editorial skillz are pretty mad. Some last minute back-and-forth on exactly how to clue the theme answers, and there we were. Done.

We submitted it to Will, but he rejected it, believing the theme had only niche appeal. Also, he seemed not to get the humor in many of the theme answers (e.g. "Am I supposed to know who FATTY is?"). If he felt that way, I'm sure he won't be alone. He knows what he's doing. So we're releasing it directly to you, for you to adore, vilify, or shrug at, as you see fit. Thank you.

~RP

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