British PM between Churchill Macmillan / WED 11-30-16 / Preceder of barbara clara / Iraq war danger for short

Constructor: Molly Young

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: imaginary new products from Apple, all beginning with "i" (a la iPad, iPod, etc.), all of which are puns on words/phrases starting with "eye": 

Theme answers:

• iLIFT (14A: New push-up bra from Apple?)
• iBALL (8D: New sports equipment from Apple?)
• iSTRAIN (12D: New colander from Apple?) 
• iSHADOW (40D: New tracking device from Apple?)
• iDROP (52D: New parachute from Apple?)
• iLASH (66A: New whip from Apple?) 

Word of the Day: Robert EDEN (36A: British P.M. between Churchill and Macmillan) —

Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative politician who served three periods as Foreign Secretary and then a relatively brief term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1955 to 1957. [...] His worldwide reputation as an opponent of appeasement, a "Man of Peace", and a skilled diplomat was overshadowed in 1956 when the United States refused to support the Anglo-French military response to the Suez Crisis, which critics across party lines regarded as an historic setback for British foreign policy, signalling the end of British predominance in the Middle East. Most historians argue that he made a series of blunders, especially not realising the depth of U.S. opposition to military action. Two months after ordering an end to the Suez operation he resigned as Prime Minister on grounds of ill health, and because he was widely suspected of having misled the House of Commons over the degree of "collusion" with France and Israel. (wikipedia)

• • •

Found this one pretty GRIM, for a boatload of reasons. As soon as I worked out iLIFT in the NW, all hope drained out of me. A bunch of *&$^ing "i-" words? Nonsense words? All over my grid? Lord, why? At that point, I didn't see the "eye" pun, but once I did, I didn't care. It didn't add anything pleasurable to the experience of putting fake i-products in the grid. Further, the theme material here is Obscenely thin. 34 squares by my count. That is Nothing. Your thinnest themes usually have ~40. And there are a ton of potential themers on the table. iPATCH and iTEST and iLINER iLIDS iCHART iLEVEL iCANDY iTEETH etc. etc. Then there's the matter of non-theme i-answers in the grid—a serious elegance f*&%-up. If your (superthin) theme involves i-starters, then no other answers should be i-starters. It's not hard to do. In fact, this grid almost does it, but for the inexplicable IBID / IED crossing, and then INA. Why is no one thinking of these little details? Again, there's hardly any theme here. No pressure on grid. Make it nice. And the fill, ugh. It's probably not too far below NYT average, but I mentally checked out at BOTA (30A: Leather bag for wine). With so little theme pressure, grid should've been soooooooo much better than it was. There is a germ of an idea here, but it's very awkwardly and poorly expressed here.


Appears the puzzle was considered overeasy at some point and so some of the clues were toughened up. That EDEN clue, yeesh. Prime Minister for like 2 years in the '50s? Sure, I know that ... :( ... That one's position near BOTA made that section a little rough-going. I had FORESEEN before FORETOLD (42A: Predicted), conflated WMD and IED and ended up at first with IMD, totally blanked on the meaning of [Perfidy] (!?!?) (DECEIT), and then misread 1D: Casual greetings (HIS) as a singular and wrote in HEY. There were what felt like a bunch of non-theme "?" clues too, esp. up front. Still, low 4s is a pretty normal Wed. time for me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Holly tree / WED 6-17-15 / Modern prefix with aggression / Bygone component in luminous paint / 1921 play that introduced word robot / Hot Japanese bowlful

Constructor: Molly Young and David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: famous people who refused honors

Theme answers:

• GEORGE C. SCOTT (3D: Actor who refused a 26-Down in 1971)
• DAVID BOWIE (5D: Rock star who refused a 37-Down in 2003)
• JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (15D: Playwright who refused an 8-/57-Down in 1964)

Word of the Day: ILEX (7D: Holly tree) —

noun

1. 1. 

   another term for holm oak.
2. 2. 

   a tree or shrub of a genus that includes holly and its relatives. (google)

• • •

[GEORGE C. SCOTT]

Kind of interesting concept, and I always love remembering DAVID BOWIE, but the nature of the theme made this play *way* too easy / obvious, and the fill was really substandard. Dull, tired, yesteryear. Here is my solving experience in a little grid-photo essay. Let's just say that things did not get off to an auspicious start. I can often tell how painful / glorious a solve is going to be by the first handful of answers I get. Could such an early indicator be wrong? Of course. But it rarely ever is. One bad corner usually heralds many bad corners. Here's my first first few answers in the grid:

"R.U.R." used to be much more common. It's one of those answers that modern constructing techniques (and modern standards) have been able to drive to near (and deserved) extinction. But clearly it's not dead. It's a real play and I wouldn't care much about it if, again, it weren't the canary in the coal mine. After the initial ugliness, though, things just got weirdly, disturbingly easy. Finished up that NW corner, and then immediately plunked down not only GEORGE C. SCOTT, but ACADEMY AWARD, in its entirety, clear on the other side of the grid. What the hell else kind of honor is GEORGE C. SCOTT going to refuse. His silver medal in EPEE at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal? (great clue on EPEE, though—50D: Poker game?). So now I'm a few seconds into this thing and already…

Soon I get DAVID BOWIE and while I don't immediately get KNIGHTHOOD, I'm honestly not thinking that hard about it, as the grid is easy to fill and I'm sure I'll pick up the other half of that themer on crosses eventually (which I do). The delay in getting the second half of the BOWIE answer gives me time to really "enjoy" the grid. When my travels take me to the dreaded abbr. isl. of ICEL. I am compelled to stop, sigh, and take a picture.

As you can see here, JEAN-PAUL SARTRE isn't exactly hiding, and since the second part of his answer (the NOBEL / PRIZE, that is) will give me entree to not only the NE but the SW, the whole puzzle starts to seem like a dull exercise of fill-in-the-blank, paint by numbers, connect-the-dots, or choose your own 1st-grader diversionary activity metaphor. First part of themers just Handed you the second part, for the most part, leading to a dangerous spike in ho-hummitude. Even MEL / OTT was getting on the give-away-answers-in-other-parts-of-the-grid act.

So now the only thing left was to discover unfortunate stuff like the intersection of SOUR ON and RAT ON.

The whole thing ended IN A TIE, which was about as exciting as that answer sounds. The end. Lesson: a good concept is one thing, but without clever, interesting, or even serviceable execution, it's not worth much.

Congrats to the Golden State Warriors on their NBA Championship. Even though I was born in S.F., I was rooting for Cleveland to make a go of it, because they were Such underdogs, and, you know … Cleveland. It's Cleveland. It needs a sports hug. I look forward to rooting for the Cubs in the fall (though Chicago doesn't need a sports hug at all—congrats also to the Blackhawks on their 3rd Stanley Cup of this decade).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Facebook and Twitter]

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