Dancers known for their street-style wardrobe / FRI 12-6-13 / Harper Lee's given name / Cold war defense system / Home of Sunset Paradise / Wine cassis drinks / Mikado weapon

Constructor: Elizabeth C. Gorski

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HARAJUKU GIRLS (51A: Dancers known for their Japanese street-style wardrobe) —

The Harajuku Girls are four Japanese and Japanese American backup dancersfeatured in stage shows and music videos for Gwen Stefani during her solopop/R&B/dance-record phase. The women also act as an entourage at Stefani's public appearances. // The Harajuku Girls are Maya Chino ("Love"), Jennifer Kita ("Angel"), Rino Nakasone-Razalan ("Music") and Mayuko Kitayama ("Baby"). The name of the group is a reference to Harajuku, a neighborhood of Tokyo. The stage names of the women are derived from Stefani's Love. Angel. Music. Baby., which was the name of her first album as well as her clothing brand. (wikipedia)

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A lovely puzzle from Ms. Gorski. I am kind of blown away by HARAJUKU GIRLS, though. I thought perhaps it was some major phenomenon of which I was simply unaware. But as phenomena go, it seems pretty damn minor: they're just Gwen Stefani's back-up dancers? That is a rather slim claim to fame. I wonder what percentage of the solving audience knew who these dancers were before today. I can't imagine that many (note: many of my friends apparently have at least kind of sort of heard of these GIRLS). You gotta love how it looks in the grid, but I'm scratching my head a bit here re: puzzle-worthiness. Every constructor I know has had Far More Famous entries rejected because the editor hadn't heard of them and assumed solvers wouldn't have either. Can't imagine more than 5% of "average" solvers (whoever they are) actually knowing this answer. Why it's not bothering me more, I don't know. Possibly because it's pretty and its crosses seemed fair to me (assuming you knew KIRS, which … I have no perspective on. It's a common enough crossword answer, but I've never seen it outside crosswords) (53D: Wine-and-cassis drinks). My female blogging friend tells me that women, esp. those who follow fashion, are much more likely to know HARAJUKU GIRLS than men. I cannot dispute that. It's entirely possible that I am on a lonely island called "People Who Didn't Know This Answer" and you are all at home right now watching Gwen Stefani videos.


I also didn't know DEW LINE (47A: Cold war defense system). I am told that I "always" hate answers that I don't know, so … I guess I hate this one. Only I don't. It's a thing I've never heard of that I'm happy enough to learn primarily because it was crossed so fairly. Funny How That Works. DEW stands for "Distant Early Warning" and was a system of radar stations in the arctic designed to detect any Soviet incursions during the Cold War. Or so wikipedia tells me. Despite the fact that DEW LINE sat atop HARAJUKU GIRLS and I knew neither, the puzzle, as I say, was quite tractable. There are definite short-fill issues here and there (SE corner in particular, with its NELLE / SNEE / AGENA mash-up). But the long answers are pretty much aces, and there's even some good stuff in the shorter answers, like CANCUN and "GLORY BE!" and GOOF ON.


Why would SIRI be "Karen" in Australia!? That is my favorite fun fact of the day. Is SIRI some horrible slang term down there? Is it clinically unbearable to  hear anyone actually say "SIRI" w/ an Australian accent? And "Karen?!" Is no one actually named "Karen" Down Under? Does it not get confusing? "Where are we?" "Ask Karen." "Who the *&%& is Karen?" "She's in your phone, MATE(S)." Fosters wallabies Uluru. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. definitive proof that editing has gotten terribly lax—can we all agree that AIS (58D: Grafton's "___ for Alibi") is the worst entry in the grid? Yes? Good. Can we also agree that it is entirely unnecessary, and that anyone looking at that entry could fix it, in at least two ways, right now, just by changing the first or last letter of that entry? Yes? Good. I mean, you see this, right? I'm not just "being grumpy" and "snarky," right? Yes. Right.

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Stock pantomime character / SAT 3-30-13 / Orangish gem / Inti worshipers / Privateer who captained Blessed William / Wall St manipulators / Symbol of elasticity in economics / Mikado weapon / 1968 #2 hit with lyric my love for you is way out of line

Constructor: Gareth Bain

Relative difficulty: Easy (maybe Easy-Medium)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: MOW (60D: Part of a barn) —

n.

1. The place in a barn where hay, grain, or other feed is stored.

2. A stack of hay or other feed stored in a barn.

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Mostly very easy, with a couple sticky places. The stickiest was the SE, where EYEWASH is [Nonsense] and MOW is [Part of a barn]. Rural + olde-timey = place I do not live. I ran the alphabet to get the "W," and knew it was right only because I had a vague memory of seeing EYEWASH used in this capacity before in crosswords (as with SARD [Orangish gem], I have never seen it anywhere outside puzzles). I'd've gone with EYELASH and actress Gretchen MOL, but that's just because I hate the figurative and literal meanings of EYEWASH so much. Just ... off-putting somehow. But the rest of this grid is pretty nice. I do Not understand building a puzzle around THE AGING PROCESS (37A: Gerontologist's study). The THE makes it weird, and the phrase itself just has no pop. You've got one 15 here: make it count! But I do love the mid-range stuff, like PROM KING (5D: Alpha senior?) and "OH, PLEASE" and the delightfully creepy "YOUNG GIRL" (21D: 1968 #2 hit with the lyric "My love for you is way out of line"). I even like "I HATE MEN," despite never having heard of it—it was easy enough to infer from knowing the plot of "Taming of the Shrew" (38D: "Kiss Me, Kate" song). In a 70-worder, I'd rather not see stuff like STLO and IRT and MIRY and SARD and SNEE and any number of other short dull/common stuff, especially with nothing *terribly* interesting in the corners to offset it. So I liked it, but with a lower-case "L."

[barbed wire ... wait for it ...]
Wrote SCRIPTS in immediately and was surprised it worked out (1A: In-box material for some agents)—a rare obvious Saturday 1A. I don't know where PIERROT lives in my brain, but he's in there somewhere—I'm guessing crosswords put him there. I felt lucky to be able to piece that together pretty quickly. Felt right, then crosses confirmed it. I got MIRY off the "I"—that's how used I am to seeing that absurd word. Once I got "YOUNG GIRL," I was able to fan out in all directions. NE and E were astonishingly easy—probably Tuesday/Wednesday easy. Had some trouble in the SW until "I HATE MEN" broke it open. Then there was the SE, where I finished with that damn MOW / EYEWASH cross. Had a few odd missteps. Wanted to write in OGDEN (?) at 32A: Writer of the lines "Pigeons on the grass alas. / Pigeons on the grass alas" (STEIN). Is that Gertrude STEIN? It must be ... yep. It is.


Not much else to say. Didn't know a few things, like 45D: Annie once played by Ethel Merman (OAKLEY) or 53D: Privateer who captained the Blessed William (KIDD), but crosses took care of them pretty quickly. I don't really know what "Inti" is, but INCAS came readily (28D: Inti worshipers). I thought [XX] was a pretty damned clever clue for FEMALE.

I'm going to go bask in the warm afterglow of Michigan's OT win over Kansas now. It's been a long time since UM was good at basketball—you gotta go back to my first years in grad school—I got there the same year as the Fab Five. Good times. OK, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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