Antique medical device used for electrotherapy / MON 3-19-18 / Taiwanese computer brand / DC Comics superhero with sidekick Speedy / Bureaucratic rigmarole / Cowpoke's sweetie

Constructor: Michael Wiesenberg and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Medium Monday

THEME: RAINBOW (48A: What the starts of the answers to the seven starred clues constitute) — all the colors...

Theme answers:

• ORANGE PEEL (17A: *Garnish for a cocktail)
• INDIGO GIRLS (26A: *"Closer to Fine" folk-rock group)
• YELLOW LIGHT (44A: *Caution to slow down)
• GREEN ARROW (60A: *DC Comics superhero with the sidekick Speedy)
• BLUE BIRDS (10D: *Symbols of happiness)
• RED TAPE (23A: *Bureaucratic rigmarole)
• VIOLET RAY (35D: *Antique medical device used for electrotherapy)

Word of the Day: FWIW (56A: Letters suggesting "I'll just go ahead and throw this out") —

acronym for "for what it's worth". Used mainly in computer-based conversation (instant messaging, email, text messaging, etc.) (online slang dictionary)

• • •

Well yes those are the colors of a RAINBOW ... OK. Pretty literal, pretty basic, pretty bland. Doesn't seem NYT-worthy, conceptually. No wordplay or cleverness here at all. The colors are actually the colors. The peels are orange, the birds are blue. The girls aren't actually indigo, though. That must be metaphorical. Or maybe related to denim. VIOLET RAY is almost painfully literal, in that its first word is the color and the second word relates to light. YELLOW LIGHT not doing much better. At least a YELLOW LIGHT is a thing people know. [Antique medical device used for electrotherapy]?? That is a long, grim, bygone way to go to get VIOLET RAY. The fill here is acceptable but no better. Teeters at times, but mostly stays upright. Pretty BLAND overall. Not sure why this gets made, published. Hoping for slightly more adventurous and ambitious stuff tomorrow.


INDIGO GIRLS is a smug little insidery wink (NYT loves those)—the INDIGO GIRLS were featured in the documentary "Wordplay" (2005) as one of a handful of celebrity solvers (including pitcher Mike Mussina, president Bill Clinton, and comedian Jon Stewart). They were charming, and I have always enjoyed their music. Saw them live twice when I was in college—once in Edinburgh, opening for 10,000 Maniacs; then again, headlining at the Pantages in L.A. I went to Pomona College with Emily Saliers' sister, Carrie. Annnnnnnyway, nice to see the duo's name today.


I had a lot of little trouble in this grid. Mostly it was a breeze, but I had weird blanking moments. When BAR didn't work at 25A: Place for drinks, my brain just refused to see PUB, even with the -UB in there. Was just looking at an old collection of "Li'l Abner" in the bookstore yesterday, thinking "Who the hell reads this?" And here we are with PAPPY. Abnerspeak (or "Dogpatch") is an old crossword standby. Like, really old. Never bothered to learn much about it. It mostly drifted into the mists of yore. Just not today. Balked at VIOLET RAY because wth is that? Had LOAN for LEND, as I always always do (55D: Supply temporarily). Couldn't make sense of plural GRIEFS for a while (45D: Intense sorrows). Could think only of the grieving sound of GROANS. Really really couldn't make sense of FWIW, which was clued as if it was referring to trash (56A: Letters suggesting "I'll just go ahead and throw this out"). When Green Lantern didn't fit, and Green Hornet didn't fit, I drew a blank at that last themer. Still an easy puzzle. A normal, easy, Monday puzzle. Goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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PM who won 1957 Nobel Peace Prize / FRI 3-18-16 / Picasso masterpiece with French title / It flows for nearly 2000 miles in Asia / Hotel Impossible airer / Sir William so-called Father of Modern Medicine / Corsairs Rangers of 1950s

Constructor: Michael Wiesenberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LESTER PEARSON (34A: P.M. who won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize) —

Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson OM CC OBE PC PC (Can) (23 April 1897 – 27 December 1972) was a Canadian scholar, statesman, soldier and diplomat, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for organizing the United Nations Emergency Force to resolve the Suez Canal Crisis. He was the 14th Prime Minister of Canada from 22 April 1963 to 20 April 1968, as the head of two back-to-back Liberal minority governments following elections in 1963 and 1965. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a solid puzzle underneath it all, but it's like a fairly well-made car that has started to RUST. There are definitely some weak and flaky parts along the edges. I think the NW put a very bad taste in my mouth that the rest of the puzzle just couldn't fully get rid of. AMIR is not and will never be redeemed by being in the title of a "comedy web series" (6D: "Jake and ___" (comedy web series)). It is and always will be a terrible variant of EMIR. No fair dressing it up as talented young people. If AMIR were a one-off, crosswordese-wise, I wouldn't find it that remarkable, but that corner alone has ESTEE and NTEST (hello, old friend) and MOIRE (1D: Op art pattern), a word I admittedly irrationally hate with the fire of several suns, mostly because I've never seen it anywhere but crosswords and can't really define it and know in my heart of hearts that no one but no one "likes" it and that it only exists in a puzzle because the constructor desperately needs that sweet sweet friendly letter pattern. [Exhale] Then there's "I HATE war" (!?). F.D.R. at his most eloquent, I'm sure.


Things improve after that, considerably. The NE holds together nicely, with a TANGLE of varied and interesting answers and only ELOI to CREPE me out with its crosswordesey ghastliness. Then central stack seems fine, and I might've really enjoyed it if I'd had Any Clue who LESTER PEARSON was. Not often that the marquee, central answer is a complete unknown to me, but today is one of those days. This unfamiliarity would play a crucial role at the very end of the puzzle, which is the only time I really had to struggle with this one. I ended up here:

 

The killer clue here was 32D: Says one can make it, say. I envisioned someone standing on the sidelines of a race, or on the other side of a tightrope, encouraging a competitor / tightrope walker. "Come on ... you can make it!" It's the referent of "one" that's the trouble here. Anyway, I put RAVES in here without knowing why. Perhaps the sideline encourager has lost her damn mind. This gave me P-EES at 36A: Friends, in slang, which was confusing. "BFFS ... B F F-ies ......... PHEES? Please let that be wrong." It was. Also looked at -I- AHEAD (34D: Be in store) and could imagine only GIT AHEAD ([Succeed in Dogpatch?]). Total wreck. Eventually I decided LIE AHEAD had to be right, then PEEPS, then (aha) RSVPS, and there we were. Done.

After the NW, the only objections I had were ... the extended -ER family (you know, the DYERS and the CARERS and whatever the hell a so-called OSLER is) (the ANSWERS and ALDERs and STEWOVERs, on the other hand, are all fine people). The puzzle creaks, but it holds up.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. belated thumbs-up for the clever clue on VERBOSE (29D: Denoting the style in which one might consider this clue to be written).

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Time for Debussy's faune / FRI 1-16-15 / Hemoglobin carrier / Picturesque subterranean spaces / Journalist who wrote 1943 book here is your war / Alcopop alternative / Like tarantella dancers

Constructor: Michael Wiesenberg

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ERYTHROCYTE (55A: Hemoglobin carrier) —

Red blood cells (RBCs), also called erythrocytes, are the most common type of blood cell and the vertebrate organism's principal means of delivering oxygen (O₂) to the body tissues--via blood flow through the circulatory system. RBCs take up oxygen in the lungs or gills and release it into tissues while squeezing through the body's capillaries. (wikipedia)

• • •

FRIDAY'S PUZZLE

Hey, this is pretty good. I like this grid shape; my one NYT themeless puzzle had a very similar shape. It gives you four showcase areas, four stacks/groupings where you can take cool, longer fill out for a spin. What I like most about this grid is the breadth of subject matter. Science! French music! Hybrid punctuation!  I gagged a bit on EGOISTICAL. Try saying it in a way that doesn't make you sound like an affected, tea-drinking whist-player. I don't know why you're drinking tea, but you are, and I don't really know what "whist" is, but it sounds like you're saying it when you say EGOISTICAL. EgoWHISTical. Normals say "egotistical," of course. Gotta let that one off on a (dictionary) technicality, but don't gotta be happy about it. But nothing else clunked for me. Clues were gritty without being inedible. A fine time was had by all (of me). Here's what that time looked like. Let's start with the opening:

As you can see, I was following the time-worn tactic of drilling down the short stuff first and then seeing what your brain can do, pattern-recognition-wise, with the longer Acrosses. I had *just* enough after my first pass at the Downs to pick up SWEET POTATO (even though I had half of 1D wrong). A bit later, when I couldn't make headway, I took out AM and tried DO SO, and when that didn't work, I think I got SEE YOU LATER and IS SO simultaneously. That corner fell from there. When I hit a wall trying to move into the SW, I headed to the east, which proved most tractable. STIR IN, FATTEST, SOLOISTS, all easy pick-ups, and so the NE went down without much trouble. Soon I had a grid that looked like this:

Again, drilled down through the long Acrosses and waited for pattern recognition to do its thang. Thank god (!) for OBSERVANTLY because those other two Acrosses in the SE were not going to cough up their secrets very easily. But with OBSERVANTLY in place, the little Downs in the far SE fell easily, and after virtually all their crosses were in place, first NATURE TRAIL and then ERYTHROCYTE came into view. Big stroke of luck that JUICE BAR was so easily inferable from just the -BAR. "J" helped me take care of the whole middle, and then there was just the SW. Here's what happened there:

Hurray for the '80s. Do people still drink WINE COOLERs? (26D: Alcopop alternative) They sure did when I was in high school. I mean, I didn't—I was a total square who was too terrified to break any law (until college, when I started knocking over banks). But Bartles & James were practically folk heroes in the '80s. Anyway, again, I just needed that little bit of help from the crosses and boom went WINE COOLER. All you need is one of those long answers in any given quadrant to get serious traction. A minute or so later, I was done.

Bullets:

• 8D: Restrain, as one's breath (BATE) — OK, upon reflection, there are some clunkers in here.  Breath might be (figuratively, floridly) "bated," but nobody BATEs their damned breath. Nobody SOEVER. DEUT ITI ATA LEB NRC also aren't great, but that's a pretty small handful. And the longs are generally good, so I'm not too disturbed. 
• 30D: ___ Beach, Calif. (PISMO) — my dad took me and my sister to PISMO Beach in the summer of '78. In an RV. This trip was weirdly memorable. It was the trip on which I was introduced to baseball cards (Topps had this solitaire game you could play with the cards—basically a game recreation type thing—and I sat at the RV table and played and played and played … I can still see Jim Rice's big smiling mug …). My sister tripped over a parking curb while holding an ice cream cone and went right over onto the pavement … but maintained total control of the cone (she was 6). And this song was very, very popular: (Also, within a month my parents would be divorced. But … this song!)

• 4D: Brew ingredient from a 2-Down (EYE) / 2D: See 4-Down (NEWT) — This was wicked confusing ("Brew" being highly ambiguous), but when it came together, the phrasing all checked out. I like my cross-references spot-on and close together (check and check).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Look what I got in the mail today! Fan art! Very sweet… (it's a magnet!)

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Pioneer in Nevada gaming industry / FRI 9-12-14 / Tamid ever burning synagogue lamp / Inits of Thoreau's mentor / Musician with 2012 album lux / artistic friend of zola / Rival of Captain Morgan /

Constructor: Michael Wiesenberg

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: NER Tamid (39D: ___ Tamid (ever-burning synagogue lamp)) —

In Judaism, the sanctuary lamp is known by its Hebrew name, ner tamid (Hebrew: נֵר תָּמִיד), which is usually translated as "eternal flame" or "eternal light". Hanging or standing in front of theark in every Jewish synagogue, it is meant to represent the menorah of the Temple in Jerusalemas well as the continuously burning fire on the altar of burnt offerings in front of the Temple. It also symbolizes God's eternal presence and is therefore never extinguished. It is also intended to draw parallels between God and fire, or light, which is emphasized throughout the book of Exodus in the Torah. Additionally, it is often used to symbolize the light released from the shards of the receptacles that God used to create light and goodness.^{[citation needed]}

These lights are never allowed to dim or go out, and in the case of electric problems, alternative emergency energy sources are used to prevent it from diminishing.

Though once fueled by oil, most today are electric lights, including some that are solar-powered. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is definitely solid enough to pass muster on a Friday, but I did find it a bit of a BORE. There were some nice colorful bits here and there, like I'M OUTTA HERE and DEAR READER… and HOW ON EARTH!? But there was also a lot of blah, including longer phrase (BE NICE TO, DRIVE TO WORK) that seem more like random excerpts of human speech than strong, self-standing phrases. The threes in this one are Particularly rough. NER is about as low as it gets, partial-wise, and RWE, EHS, SITU, AOKI … not a ton better. FURL is a funny word I believe to be real (by inference from its UN-prefixed cousin) but have never heard. Oh, look, "Secure neatly" is the first definition you see when you google "FURL"—and umbrella is mentioned there as well. We all appear to be furling all the time and yet Never calling it that. What's wrong with us?


It's ARENA ROCK. It's not STADIUM ROCK (1A: Queen's music). Just 'cause google tells you something's a thing doesn't mean it's *really* a thing. If you know in your heart of hearts that the *real* phrase is actually different, don't settle for the knock-off.  OVERSTRESS and ENSNARED and INTERSPERSE just look like reasons to hurl a lot of common letters at me all at once. I liked ROMA TOMATO less for the answer itself than for the hole it made me fall into, namely thinking the answer *started* TOMATO. I had -OMAT- at the front end of that answer, and instinctively wrote in TOMATO-, figuring the rest of the answer would work itself out somehow. Didn't know what DIT was supposed to stand for at 12A: Film developer?: Abbr., but I let it ride for a while. ROMATOMATO now looks awesomely ridiculous to me, and I am amusing myself by saying ROMATO-MATO over and over. Domo arigato, ROMA TOMATO!


Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Victor Herbert's naughty girl / SAT 4-6-13 / Biblical boater in Brest / Rajiv's mother / 1960s Greystoke portayer / Colombian cowboys / Minnesota county west of St. Louis / Sidewalk scam / Nordic flier / Mocha residents / Their anthem is Lofsongur

Constructor: Michael Wiesenberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Anthony WAYNE (42D: American Revolution's "Mad Anthony") —

Anthony Wayne (January 1, 1745 – December 15, 1796) was a United States Army general and statesman. Wayne adopted a military career at the outset of the American Revolutionary War, where his military exploits and fiery personality quickly earned him promotion to brigadier general and the sobriquet Mad Anthony. (wikipedia)

• • •

I liked this one pretty well, despite some less than lovely short fill here and there, and despite being (often) well out of my wheelhouse. The stacks in the NW and SE look great. The peoples of three nations are in this grid—is that a record? How would you even begin to check that? Why am I asking you, you don't know. Still, it almost feels like a theme—YEMENIS! NEPALIS! ICELANDERS! (25D: Their anthem is "Lofsöngur") That's a lot of squares dedicated to inhabitants of particular countries. My main trouble today was a. proper nouns (a very predictable sort of trouble) and b. wrong answers that seemed right (also, predictable). Absolutely no clue who this MARIETTA person is (28A: Victor Herbert's "naughty" girl). Also no clue who Victor Herbert is (this is what I mean by "out of my wheelhouse"). Also no clue on CARLA Thomas or "Mad Anthony" WAYNE. Proper nouns also helped me, though. No idea who NAPOLEON II is or why he's important, but I could see that NAPOLEON was involved and then I just guessed a Roman numeral. No idea about moon craters, but TYCHO Brahe was an astronomer, so I inferred that one easily enough from crosses (7D: Large lunar crater). Didn't know DORSEY signed SINATRA, but I have heard of DORSEY, so not hard (with a cross or two). And then there was the biggest proper noun bonanza of the day: OKSANA BAIUL, whom I got in her entirety off the "K."


Then there were the wrong answers (always entertaining). First DELLA for CARLA (a stupid guess based on nothing but the -LA). Then ALL KINDS for ALL SORTS (fixed when I figured 39D: Nordic flier had to be SAS and certainly didn't start with a "K"—KLM's a nice three-letter "flier," but not "Nordic"). Off of -OLE-OS I wrote in BOLEROS at 36D: Finely tempered swords (TOLEDOS). Wasn't until I got the MIRROR part of DAILY MIRROR that I realized my error. Had all kinds of problems in the WEIMAR region. Tried STYNE for WAYNE, considered SETS for WEDS, considered STEM for SAIL, and best / most momentum-sapping of all, I had ZAGGED for WAGGED (40A: Went back and forth). Yes, ZAGGED is a bad answer, as that involves going only forth, not back and forth, but since I wrote it in off just the "G" in HOGS and then *all* the crosses (except that first one) worked out, I didn't question it. I was eventually saved by one of my great sources of childhood entertainment—MAD LIBS (37D: Game requiring many plug-ins? — great clue).




NOE is "Noah" in French, in case that was at all unclear (9D: Biblical boater, in Brest).

David Steinberg, in addition to being a crossword constructor, also runs "The Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project," which is committed to building "a digitized, fully analyzable database of New York Times crossword puzzles published from February 15, 1942, to November 20, 1993 (before Will Shortz took over as editor)." For the project's website, he asked me and constructor Matt Gaffney to review a pre-Shortzian puzzle. We decided to do it as a fairly free-wheeling dialogue, and it turned out pretty good, I think (long, but good). David posted it yesterday, and you can read it here. But first, I recommend you try to solve the puzzle we discuss—everything will make more sense that way. It's a Sunday puzzle from October 22, 1989, written by Phyllis Fehringer, entitled "One Upmanship." Solve it here.

Happy birthday to my sister Amy, who doesn't solve crosswords and is far too busy to read my jolly blog.

See you tomorrow,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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