Metal next to tungsten on the periodic table / WED 12-21-22 / Country with second-most Portuguese speakers / Large-scale corporate union / Manhattan on an envelope / Ideal for audiophiles in brief

Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?" (63A: "Why are you making such a fuss?" ... or a hint to 17-, 36- and 43-Across) — theme answers are all different kinds of "big deals":

Theme answers:

• FIFTY PERCENT OFF (17A: Sign in a clearance section)
• MEGAMERGER (36A: Large-scale corporate union)
• ROYAL FLUSH (Dream hand for a poker player)

Word of the Day: AGNI (30D: Hindu fire god) —

Agni (Sanskrit: अग्नि, romanized: Agni, Sanskrit pronunciation: [ˈɐgnɪ]) is a Sanskrit word meaning fire and connotes the Vedic fire deity of Hinduism. He is also the guardian deity of the southeast direction and is typically found in southeast corners of Hindu temples. In the classical cosmology of the Indian religions, Agni as fire is one of the five inert impermanent elements (pañcabhūtá) along with space (ākāśa), water (ap), air (vāyu) and earth (pṛthvī), the five combining to form the empirically perceived material existence (Prakṛti).

In Vedic literature, Agni is a major and oft-invoked god along with Indra and Soma. Agni is considered the mouth of the gods and goddesses and the medium that conveys offerings to them in a homa (votive ritual). (wikipedia)

• • •

Hmm. OK, so ... hmm. The theme works in a very general sense. The first two themers, however, feel arbitrary: very and somewhat, respectively. It's not inaccurate to say that either one is a "big deal," though, so my main problem with those first two is really with the second, which is that it is dull. And "mega" is just standing in for "big," so ... a big merger is a big deal, yes, that is true. FIFTY PERCENT OFF has a snap to it, where MEGAMERGER is just a depressing sludge of a word. But OK, technically both answers are apt. But ROYAL FLUSH kinda goes off the rail. Do you call a good hand a "big deal"? Of course you “deal” a hand in poker. I get that "big" is (now) being used metaphorically, and that a ROYAL FLUSH is "big" in that it is the best hand you can hold, but the thing is "big deal" is a perfect description of themers 1 and 2, but an iffy one of 3. The revealer is the best part of the puzzle, as an answer in its own right. It would be welcome in any puzzle at any time. And as a revealer, it has some sass, it's clever. Thank god they didn't just hand us BIG DEAL, that would've been dull. Still, even with the good revealer, the theme as a whole feels workmanlike. Functional, but not exciting. 

I don't really understand some of the fill choices today. Specifically, above all, RHENIUM? That seems like one of your more obscure elements. If I've heard of it, I've barely heard of it. I think it's reasonable to expect solvers to know *a lot* of the elements of the periodic table. But some deep cuts ... feel desperate. And aren't so fun to encounter. At least the last time this answer appeared, the clue told us it was named after a German river. Today: "next to tungsten"??? What the hell? How is that supposed to help? It's Wednesday. The rest of your fill is widely accessible and familiar, and then you just drop RHENIUM in? With *that* clue? As I say, I don't understand these choices. RHENIUM was jarring. AGNI was also jarring, as I still see it as ye olden fill meaning "lambs" (Lat.). 

Just as I wonder how deep into the periodic table is fair game, so I wonder about the Hindu pantheon, though AGNI is pretty major (per the "Word of the Day" description, above), so you (I) can't really complain. But HUFFISH? Hoo boy, I can complain there. What ... is that? Is it like the normal word "HUFFY?" I asked my wife if she'd heard of "HUFFY": "Kind of ... I've heard of 'in a huff'..." "OK, well have you heard of HUFFISH?" "[long pause] ... no." Again, not a choice I understand. And because FWORDS was also bad (what, are we just doing any letter of the alphabet+WORDS now!?!?!) I quickly rewrote the whole damn grid (well, the east side, anyway). Just to satisfy myself. I managed to pick up both HASHISH and ARSE, which pleases me, if no one else.

[dang, looks like I duplicated ERA ... ah well, just make it EPA, it's fine...]
[oh no, NEEDY dupes NO NEED ... this is why you have proofreaders!!! I could
fix it, but I'm not getting paid to fix it, so I'm not gonna.]
[OK, I'm gonna ...]

[Why has no one used PGUP before!?! It's a perfectly cromulent abbr.!!]
[If I had more time, I'd open up the constructing software and go after RHENIUM!]

I had O--T at 49A: Expel and was mad when the answer was OMIT because that is not accurate cluing. Thankfully, the answer was not, in fact, OMIT, but OUST, a much more accurate answer. The only good thing about FWORDS (plural!?!?) is that it crosses SALTY, and if any language qualifies as SALTY, it's the F-word. The real F-word. Not "fie" or "fiddlesticks." I liked FOIST ON, for reasons even I don't quite understand. There's just something ... I dunno, oddly energetic about it. Maybe I just like the clue (44D: Shove down the throat of). I like that the puzzle went for BAFTA / BODE over the more obvious but dated choice, NAFTA / NODE. Remember NAFTA? Remember Ross Perot? I mostly try not to. Gotta wrap things up, as wife will be back soon with dosa and samosa and probably some other -osa I forgot. See you tomorrow (assuming I can get the wifi hotspot on my phone to work in the nowheresville no-wifi place we're headed to tomorrow).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Cereal once advertised by Woody Woodpecker / SUN 1-23-22 / Old-timey reproach / Duh in modern slang / Streaming service acquired by Fox in 2020 / Nonbinary people informally / 2000s Fox teen drama / Thomas British general at Bunker Hill / Himalayan humanoid

Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Turns of Phrase" — familiar phrases following an [X] OF [Y] pattern have their [X] and [Y] reversed (or "turned," I guess), creating wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):

Theme answers:

• DRAWERS OF CHESTS (21A: Artists sketching pectorals?)
• HONOR OF MAIDS (33A: Vow to remain mum about hotel guests' secrets?)
• FOOT OF FLEET (52A: Small distance covered by a naval armada?)
• MAN OF RIGHTS (73A: Boxer lacking a left hook?)
• PLENTY OF HORN  (89A: What brass band music has?)
• ABSENCE OF LEAVES (107A: Tree feature in winter?)
• COMMAND OF CHAIN (14D: What a dog walker and a strong-willed pooch might vie for?)
• BROTHERS OF BAND (45D: The Bee Gees' Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb?)

Word of the Day: SCLC (13A: Civil rights grp. once led by M.L.K.) —

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civil rights movement. // On January 10, 1957, following the Montgomery bus boycott victory against the white democracy and consultations with Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, and others, Martin Luther King Jr. invited about 60 black ministers and leaders to Ebenezer Church in Atlanta. Prior to this, Rustin, in New York City, conceived the idea of initiating such an effort and first sought C. K. Steele to make the call and take the lead role. Steele declined, but told Rustin he would be glad to work right beside him if he sought King in Montgomery for the role. Their goal was to form an organization to coordinate and support nonviolent direct action as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South. In addition to King, Rustin, Baker, and Steele, Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, Joseph Lowery of Mobile, and Ralph Abernathy of Montgomery, all played key roles in this meeting. The group continued this initial meeting on January 11, calling it (in keeping with the recent bus segregation issue) a Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration when they held a press conference that day. The press conference allowed them to introduce their efforts:

• communicating what they had included in telegrams sent that day to applicable members of the Executive branch of the U.S. government (President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, and Attorney General Brownell)
• sharing an outline of their overall position regarding the restrictions against the "elementary democratic rights [of America's] Negro minority"
• and providing a short list of concerns they wished to raise with "white Southerners of goodwill".

On February 15, a follow-up meeting was held in New Orleans. Out of these two meetings came a new organization with King as its president. Shortening the name used for their January meetings, the group briefly called their organization Negro Leaders Conference on Nonviolent Integration, then Southern Negro Leaders Conference. At its third meeting, in August 1957, the group settled on Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as its name, expanding its focus beyond buses to ending all forms of segregation.

• • •

So I've been solving cryptic crosswords on Twitch ... (I'm trying to imagine time-traveling to the '80s and saying this sentence to teenage me ... yeah, it's pretty funny) ... so I've been solving cryptic crosswords on Twitch (a live-streaming service used primarily by gamers, I think), every Friday night at 7pm, with my friends Rachel Fabi and Neville Fogarty, and just this Friday we solved a cryptic by Will Nediger, and it was a delight. This puzzle here, today, is far far too basic in its concept and too tepid in its humor to be a real delight. You just switch the words on either side of "OF"? Ok, it's true, sometimes very simple themes can work beautifully, but here, the bag is very very mixed. DRAWERS OF CHESTS is kind of funny, but FOOT OF FLEET is virtually nonsensical. BROTHERS OF BAND is syntactically super-awkward. And what is with the completely arbitrary pluralizing of some of the answers. I get why you'd pluralized LEAVES in ABSENCE OF LEAVES—you can't get the foliage pun with ABSENCE OF LEAVE. But why is CHESTS plural but CHAIN not? MAIDS plural but BAND not? I'm sure some of this has to do with just getting the answers to be the appropriate length, so that you can arrange them symmetrically in the grid, but it all seems haphazard. Still, the real problem is the lukewarmness of the whole concept. It hits there, misses there, and generally isn't consistently funny enough, considering how simple the theme is; considering how many ___ OF ___ phrases there are in the world (or in the language, anyway), these should've been funnier. 

I also don't quite understand some of the fill decisions. In particular, I don't get why you'd got with TUBI, a proper noun that is also a company that is also a thing many solvers won't be familiar with, when the perfectly good TUBE and TUBA would've slid right in there. TUBI has only one potential way to clue it, whereas TUBA has many and TUBE, well, the possibilities are endless there. Is the idea to be novel? With your short fill? Needlessly? In manifestly exclusionary ways? I get that you want to seem "current," and I have no problem with TUBI if you need TUBI, but you absolutely do not need TUBI here and I don't get why it's a better choice than the more ordinary words with more interesting cluing possibilities. I also don't quite get SCLC, an initialism I've never seen before and one that has not been seen in the grid for *twenty-seven years*. I wanted SNCC (pronounced "snick" ) here, because, well, I've heard of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), and it's also a civil rights org. of the mid-20th century. And it's been in the puzzle a dozen or so times in the Shortz era. But even SNCC I don't think is *great* if you can go with *words* instead of *initialisms*. I couldn't even infer what SCLC stood for. I figured it was Southern something Legal something, but only one of those was right. I'm happy to learn about the org., and again, I think that if you absolutely need SCLC to hold a corner together, then go for it, but this is a tiny and very flexible corner, and you absolutely do not need SCLC. For example:

Now, I'd get rid of SCAD in the singular too, if I could. It's just ... not a thing you'd say. One SCAD? No. I'd also clue J'AIME as the name JAIME, but that's another issue entirely. I guess there was probably some idea of making the grid more diverse or inclusive, which is normally a great instinct. But regular words > initialisms almost every time, esp. when the initialism is not universally familiar. And zero appearances in 27 years suggests it's not the most widely known initialism. These are small issues, in many ways—the crosses were ultimately fair, so who cares, I guess? I'm just expressing a preference for solid non-proper-noun words, in general. You can write more interesting clues for these, and they're gonna be more widely accessible as well. If you feel differently, well, clearly at least some people agree with you!

I think I said "Really?" out loud at the "I" plural EUCALYPTI. I'll take it from ABACI, I suppose, but it seems absurd in the longer answer. I think they're just called "eucalyptus trees," or even "eucalypts," though there is one instance of EUCALYPTI (italicized, i.e. in Latin) on the "Eucalyptus" wikipedia page. Loved the clue on BALD EAGLE (38D: Benjamin Franklin famously considered it " a rank coward" with "bad moral character") because it is hilariously unexpected (far funnier than any of the themers). Also liked seeing ENBIES, although ... hmm ... not sure how I feel about the clue including the word "nonbinary" when ENBIES is derived from the initials of "nonbinary" (i.e. N, B). I guess I'm OK with it, but generally you wouldn't clue initial-based answers using the words those initials stand for. [National Organization for Women, for short] is not an acceptable clue for N.O.W., for instance (albeit an extreme instance). But I'm just happy to see ENBIES at all, so clue shmue, today it's fine. I forgot CORN POPS existed. Do CORN POPS exist? (they didn't cover this in my Cereal Ontology class). I had the CORN and then ... no idea. Wanted CHEX, sorta, but that seemed too niche a cereal for a star like Woody Woodpecker to get involved with. Looks like they do indeed exist. Another Kellogg's product (to go with SPECIAL K earlier in the week). I like the FEE (from ADFEE) and FIE and FOE are in this puzzle, and that GOGO crosses GOOGOO. Sometimes weird little seemingly coincidental details like this can add a little dash of charm to the grid. I also just like the word BORDELLO (82D: Red-light district establishment). It just sounds cool. Fun to say. Olde-timey. So much more melodious than "whorehouse" or "brothel." Aside from SCLC, the only thing that was at all unfamiliar to me was this Thomas GAGE guy, whose name I've probably seen before (71A: Thomas ___, British general at Bunker Hill). I just can't keep all the generals of all the wars of all the wars straight. I just ... can't. But if the crosses are fair, it's fine: I'll deal. See you tomorrow (or next week, if you're one of those Sunday-only people :)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. hey it's time for another installment of the Boswords Crossword Tournament—the next one takes place next Sunday, Feb. 6. Here's the deets from tournament co-director John Lieb:

Registration is now open for the Boswords 2022 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament which will be held on Sunday, February 6 from 2:00 to 5:30 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org.

See the website for more details—John made a little video that explains everything very effectively. If you've never done a tournament before, they can be quite fun, and if you solve the NYTXW regularly, then the answer is yes, you are "good enough" :) You can compete as pairs in this one, so if you're at all reluctant to go it alone, grab one of your nerdy friends (or parents, or children). This should be a fine, fun way to spend a winter's afternoon.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Small flat-bottomed boat / WED 3-10-21 / Title matchmaker in 1815 novel / Start of a saying about getting in the way / Polysemous words have multiple of these

Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: SPOILER ALERT (54A: Warning you might give before revealing the endings of 20-, 29- and 45-Across) — theme answers are the front ends of familiar adages, the back ends of which all begin with SPOIL(S):

Theme answers:

• TOO MANY COOKS (spoil the broth) (20A: Start of a saying about getting in the way)
• ONE BAD APPLE (spoils the whole bunch) (29A: Start of a saying about negative influence)
• SPARE THE ROD (spoil the child) (45A: Start of a saying about parental discipline)

Word of the Day: Bob SEGER (32A: Rocker Bob) —

Robert Clark Seger (/ˈsiːɡər/; born May 6, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and musician. As a locally successful Detroit-area artist, he performed and recorded as Bob Seger and the Last Heardand Bob Seger System throughout the 1960s, breaking through with his first album, Ramblin' Gamblin' Man (which contained his first national hit of the same name) in 1968. By the early 1970s, he had dropped the 'System' from his recordings and continued to strive for broader success with various other bands. In 1973, he put together the Silver Bullet Band, with a group of Detroit-area musicians, with whom he became most successful on the national level with the album Live Bullet (1976), recorded live with the Silver Bullet Band in 1975 at Cobo Hall in Detroit, Michigan. In 1976, he achieved a national breakout with the studio album Night Moves. On his studio albums, he also worked extensively with the Alabama-based Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which appeared on several of Seger's best-selling singles and albums.

A roots rocker with a classic raspy, powerful voice, Seger wrote and recorded songs that dealt with love, women, and blue-collar themes, and is an example of a heartland rock artist. He has recorded many hits, including "Night Moves", "Turn the Page", "Still the Same", "We've Got Tonite", "Against the Wind", "You'll Accomp'ny Me", "Hollywood Nights", "Shame on the Moon", "Like a Rock", and "Shakedown", the last of which was written for the 1987 film Beverly Hills Cop II and topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He also co-wrote the Eagles' number-one hit "Heartache Tonight", and his recording of "Old Time Rock and Roll" was named one of the Songs of the Century in 2001.

With a career spanning six decades, Seger has sold more than 75 million records worldwide, making him one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. Seger was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was a ride. I went from "WHY am I getting only the front ends of adages!?" to "WHY in the world would anyone want to 'spoil' and adage, or think that was something it was even possible to do!?" to "Ohhhhh ... *spoil* ... I see ... hmm ... yeah, that weirdly works." This is definitely the direction you want your feelings to go in over the course of a solve. Much better than "This seems nice" followed by a series of potholes and finally your car skidding off the road into a ditch. Understanding the theme really does require mentally finishing all of the adages, so hopefully you knew ... those? I never know with adages like these whether they have currency any more with younger people. "TOO MANY COOKS" was the title of a viral video a while back, though I don't think anyone in the video ever finished the adage. The Osmonds version of "ONE BAD APPLE" is the version of the adage that lives in my head, and that song actually reverses the adage ("ONE BAD APPLE don't spoil the whole bunch, girl..."), but the "spoil" part comes through all right. SPARE THE ROD seems most likely to be dated, i.e. least likely to be familiar to younger readers, though like all adages with which I'm familiar, they don't seem to belong to time, exactly, so who knows. Certainly a maxim exhorting the value of beating children is less likely to find a friendly audience today than in the past, for good reason. All the adages were familiar to me, though, so the "spoil" part of the joke was able to land properly. 


The fill is mostly clean, and the symmetrical drinking establishments (IRISH PUBS / SPORTS BAR) was a nice touch. The clue on GLOB seemed a little lazy. I could trip on virtually anything on the floor, and FLOOR MAT is not a tripping hazard that immediately comes to mind. I'm not even sure what they mean by FLOOR MAT. Mats come in "door" or "welcome" varieties. Oh, there's a bath mat, certainly. But FLOOR MAT, as a thing around your house (which is where I just assumed the tripping would occur), that didn't hit home for me ... even though, now, as I look around, I notice I have two decorative pieces in my home office, painted by my grandmother, which could only be described as FLOOR MATs, and I've almost certainly tripped over them at least once ... whatever, I put FLOOR RUG here, thinking a rug the most likely tripping culprit. ERRATA should be only for books—tedious to put the logically correct answer for the clue, ERRORS, and then have to erase it. Especially tedious when your thought on entering ERRORS was "man, I hope they don't want ERRATA here, that would suck." My least favorite of the clues, though, was the one on MENTAL (1D: Like solving crosswords), because again, in attempting to get cute and winky, you make things vague and unpleasant. Most things you do are MENTAL, even when they're physical, and crossword puzzles are physical as well (ask a speed solver about the importance of grid navigation technique). So the puzzle is all "tehee, I'm being meta" but all I am thinking is "you've swapped aptness for cutesiness, bad call." 

Still, the only real trouble I had with the puzzle came in the west, where ALLOW was hard for me to get to (the usage described by the clue here feels slightly old-fashioned, so it didn't spring to mind quickly). Actually WASH was probably the toughest element over there, since "Draw" can mean a lot of things, and I'd use "draw" more for a specific contest, but WASH for more of an overall situation ... I wouldn't say a match ended in a WASH, is what I'm saying. But the clue is apt enough, just tough. Then there's the cutesy "?" clue on WASP, which doesn't quite land for me, as the "center" part of the clue doesn't really refer to anything specific. But maybe the sting is "centered" (by definition?) in the WASP itself, I dunno. Anyway, I bumbled (!) through that corner. The rest of the grid, no problem.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. happily watching the "Too Many Cooks" video (above) and had a genuine record-scratch moment when I noticed what was on the coffee table in this shot:

So ... the crossword contains TOO MANY COOKS and
"TOO MANY COOKS" contains crosswords. Nice.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

One-named Italian male model / THU 8-27-20 / Obstacle-based competition show informally / Term for naval builder that looks like aquatic insect / Generation cohort born in early 2010s / Drink once advertised as twice as much for nickel / Fritz Lang collaborator von Harbou

Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Medium (6ish)

THEME: CHATTERBOX (58A: Windbag, as seen three times in this puzzle?) — words meaning "chatter" appear inside a "box" in this puzzle three times

Theme answers:

• TALKING ABOUT (17A: Discussing) / BUGABOO (6D: Cause of dread)
• "WHADDYA KNOW?!" (33A: "Imagine that!") / KAYAK (26D: White-water rental) 
• "NINJA WARRIOR" (40A: Obstacle-based competition show, informally) / JAWAS (41D: Scavengers on Luke Skywalker's home planet)

Word of the Day: THEA von Harbou (52D: Fritz Lang collaborator ___ von Harbou) —

Thea Gabriele von Harbou (27 December 1888 – 1 July 1954) was a German screenwriter, novelist, film director, and actress. She is especially known as the screenwriter of the science fiction film classic Metropolis and the story on which it was based. Harbou collaborated as a screenwriter with film director Fritz Lang, her husband, during the period of transition from silent to sound films. (wikipedia)

• • •

First of all, a CHATTERBOX is not a "Windbag." The latter has way more negative connotations, the former ... I've only really heard applied to children. Bad cluing. This has been a hallmark of NYTXW puzzles of late, just tin-eared baloney. That said, the theme is fine, conceptually. Words that mean "chatter," cram in a "box," ta da! It's just ... first, there are only three, which feels thin / weak. Second, TALKING OUT really looks like an OK answer for 17A: Discussing, so there's no "whoa, what?" or real "aha" moment there. Just me looking at BUGOO thinking, "well, that's weird." And then "NINJA WARRIOR"? Some reality show's *informal* name? I will grant you that "JAW" is a tough, tough letter string to stretch across the two words of a two-word phrase, but still, not excited about that answer very much (what is the actual name of the show? ... ah "American NINJA WARRIOR." That's ... quite a truncation. But anyway, WHADDYAKNOW is the only one I really like. Fresh clever snappy nice. So the concept is fine, but only one of the themers seemed really well executed. 

Most of the rest of the grid was either dull or irksome. I gotta believe that CACHINNATE is the least well-known word in the grid by a country mile (11D: Laugh uproariously). I've never seen it in my life. I was sure I had something wrong. Kept expecting it to be something about, I don't know, cackling? Yeesh. I'm not apt to use it again, so it's just a very long obscurity. ATHENS, OHIO was a surprise to me as the only U.S. Athens I ever think of is in Georgia (12D: U.S. city named for a European capital). I have never heard of this so-called "Generation ALPHA," ever (46A: Generation ___ (cohort born in the early 2010s)). Never. Generation names are always dicey, and that one ... wow, who's peddling that. They're not even 10, stop. Because of that stupid clue, I had an error, in that I put in SET AT instead of LET AT at 47D: Unleash upon and figured maybe ASPHA ... I dunno, was part of the theme, somehow? The ASPHALT Generation, I dunno. I mean, I sniffed the problem out eventually, but ALPHA, again, dubious clue *posing* as "fresh." PENNE PASTA is an awful redundancy (29D: Food that's cut diagonally). I was happy to learn a couple of new things. Well, I can't say I'm *happy* to learn that hasenpfeffer is made of HARE, but it's at least a curious fact that I might remember. And I am *definitely* happy to learn about THEA von Harbou, screenwriter of "Metropolis" (!) and not just Fritz Lang's collaborator, but his wife as well. Always happy to learn more about the often unheralded work of women in early cinema. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Small three-legged table / SUN 3-15-20 / Stuffed deep-fried rice balls in Italian cuisine / Cheat informally / Trattoria dumplings / Tilted arc sculptor Richard

Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger 

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (11:28)

THEME: spooneristic phrases — four-word (or four-part) phrases where last two parts sound like the first two parts, but with the initial sounds reversed:

Theme answers:

• ALL HAIL HALL ALE (23A: Cheer for beer on campus?)
• BOO BLURRED BLUEBIRD (38A: Hoot at an out-of-focus nature photograph?)
• SO NERVOUS NO SERVICE (54A: Antsy feeling when one is out of cellphone range?)
• STEVEDORE DIVA STORE (78A: Where a demanding dockworker gets supplies?)
• DUTCH TOWN TOUCHDOWN (94A: Landing in Rotterdam?)
• B CHORD KEYBOARD (114A: Piano that plays only a certain three notes?)

Word of the Day: TEAPOY (46A: Small three-legged table) —

1: a 3-legged ornamental stand

2[influenced by tea] : a stand or table containing a tea chest or caddy and used for supporting a tea set also : TEA CADDY (merriam-webster)

• • •

This was awful. Let's talk about why. I want to start with the title, which is atrocious on many levels. The first level is: it provides no help. None. Tells you nothing. The "wordplay" (a generous term for what's going on here) is not at all evident, so one is forced to take the words "Gets Low" literally, and perhaps go looking for something ... low? Lowered? Will something be lowered? Will we hear cows lowing? Is this a MOO rebus? Who can say? Worse (and this is the next level of bad), once you're done with the puzzle, or perhaps part way through the puzzle, you will realize that "Gets Low" is supposed to be a spoonerized "Let's Go," and you will be irate for many reasons, but above all you will be irate (if you have any sense) at the fact that the phrase is, in fact, "Ready, Set, Go," not (not) "Ready, Set ... Let's Go!" (!?!?!?!?!). The fact that you tried to get all cute in your title with a phrase that is not even a real phrase—terrible. A breach of contract. Please please hit your mark with the title. It's the bare minimum. You can have a boring title, but to have a stupidly confusing title based on wordplay that doesn't exist ... no. Not acceptable.


More: the spoonerized phrases are just ... random. There's no coherence here. Nothing holding it together. No oomph. Just nonsense phrases, which are made worse by not even being plausible nonsense. What is a "DIVA STORE"? Why oh why is there a "SO" in SO NERVOUS NO SERVICE. Is that ... am I supposed to imagine that is thinking / saying "I am SO NERVOUS that I will have NO SERVICE?!?" The "SO" is doing ... what here? Is it supposed to mean "Very"? The Entire Phrase Is Garbage. The fact that the themers are unfunny nonsense phrases also makes the puzzle hard, which ... let me tell you, bad is one thing, difficult-bad is so much worse. At least let me get through your badness quickly. I audibly yell-groaned in the middle of this one; that's how frustrating it was to solve it (this happened somewhere in the NE, where CHIEFDOM (!?!?!) was, and HOORAH (22A: "Yay!") was not HOORAY, and where [Name tag holders] were LANYARDS and not somethingsomethingCARDS, and where (my bad) I forgot the word ARANCINI (which is about the only thing interesting about today's puzzle), and where, finally, I had to endure a cutesy "?" clue for ... COMA!?!?! You really wanna give COMA the ELOPE treatment, i.e. the punny question-mark clue!? "Get it, [Time out?] ... it's funny! ... 'cause he's in a COMA!" Hilarious. Between the woofy theme and this clue and then the clue on ICU (5A: Place for an oxygen tent, for short), this puzzle was the Opposite of what I needed during this time of quarantine.


EUCHRE = [Cheat, informally]? "Informally"? Man, this was news to me. The "informally" is so so annoying because it kinda implies slang, which kinda implies it's a term people actually say, which EUCHRE (as a verb) ... is not. I am aware of the existence of the card game, but the verb ... no way. And holy moly TEAPOY!?!?! I put that "P" in and was like "er ... uh ... I ... I guess." And it was right! But I really wanted it to be TEABOY. I figure if a "highboy" can be a piece of furniture, so can a TEABOY. I struggled all over with this one, but not in a way that would be fun to recount. Biggest error was LONE next to DIAL instead of SOLE (8D: Exclusive) next to CALL (9D: Phone). That hurt. OVERLY for EVERSO also hurt a little (64D: Exceedingly). But very few things about this puzzle didn't hurt. I'm gonna stop now. What the world needs now is crosswords, fun crosswords. It's the only thing that there's just ... too little of. Peace and love to all of you in this terrible time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Crepes in Indian cuisine / WED 6-12-19 / 1933 James Whale sci-fi horror film / Mathematician John who discovered logarithms / Eponym of world's largest tennis stadium / Builder of Domus Aurea / Adan's mate in la biblia / 1938 Alfred Hitchcock mystery / Title meaning commander

Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:31)

THEME: LACK OF CHARACTER (53A: Amorality ... as suggested by 17-, 25- and 41-Across?) — movie titles that suggest that a "character" goes missing or is "lack"-ing:

Theme answers:

• "THE LADY VANISHES" (17A: 1938 Alfred Hitchcock mystery)
• "RUNAWAY BRIDE" (25A: 1999 Garry Marshall comedy)
• "INVISIBLE MAN" (41A: 1933 James Whale sci-fi horror film, with "The")

Word of the Day: DOSAS (13D: Crepes in Indian cuisine) —

A dosa is a cooked flat thin layered rice batter, originating from the Indian subcontinent, made from a fermented batter. It is somewhat similar to a crepe in appearance. Its main ingredients are rice and black gram ground together in a fine, smooth batter with a dash of salt. Dosas are a typical part of the Southern Indian and Sri Lankan Tamil diets, but the dish is now popular all over the Indian subcontinent. Traditionally, dosas are served hot along with sambar, a stuffing of potatoes, and chutney. They can be consumed with idli podi as well. (wikipedia)

• • •

The revealer is just a clunker. A huge let-down. A massive disappointment. Anticlimax epitomized. First off, I don't even think LACK OF CHARACTER means "amorality"—the latter strikes me as something much more severe than some kind of character deficiency. But mostly the phrase just fizzles. It's weak and old-fashioned and decidedly lacking in pizazz or elan or verve. I had LACK OF and (given [Amorality...]) immediately tried to write in CONSCIENCE. So I got LACK OF CONSCIENC ... There's a germ of a theme idea that seems interesting, but that revealer just made the whole thing go pfft. Not that it was really humming before then. I nearly slammed my computer shut at MALE NAME (4D: August, e.g., but not May or June). Blargh. I was very proud when I saw right through that clue and wrote in MAN'S NAME. Not sure I like either one, but MALE NAME just rubs me the wrong way somehow. Also, "June" is not a MALE NAME, eh?:

June Sheldon Jones III (born February 19, 1953) is an American football coach and former player. He is currently the head coach and general manager of the Houston franchise in the XFL. Jones was the head football coach at the University of Hawaii at Manoa from 1999 to 2007 and was the head football coach at Southern Methodist University (SMU) from 2008 to 2014, before resigning on September 8, 2014. Previously, he coached in the National Football League (NFL): a three-year tenure as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons from 1994 to 1996 and a ten-game stint as interim head coach of the San Diego Chargers in 1998; he also spent 1½ seasons as head coach of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Canadian Football League (CFL). (wikipedia)

And NAIVER?? (15A: Not so savvy about the ways of the world) LOL who says that?? Any sane human would say "more naive." I also didn't like how heavily segmented the grid was, with a bunch of 3x4 sections (i.e. a lot of short fill) and only one fairly narrow way to move from the top half of the grid to the bottom (i.e. right through the center). When I got to J--- at 35D: Don't you believe it! (JIVE) and wrote in JOKE, that pretty much killed all momentum and I had no choice but to head into Empty Territory and try to start over. Hate that. Had to go all the way down to the DTS (hate that, a lot) (59A: The shakes, for short) and build my way back up.


NAPIER (57A: Mathematician John who discovered logarithms) over EX-ALLY (60A: Former friend) is ultra-unfortunate. Obscure over awkward. Down there with DTS and the revealer, those answers really added to the unpleasantness of the last 1/4 of my solve. I'm just glad I knew "THE LADY VANISHES" and had some idea of DOSAS because if you didn't know the Hitchcock film or the Indian "crepes," you could easily have found yourself with "THE LADY VANISHED" / DODAS. Not keen on the fact that "THE LADY VANISHES" gets its definite article, but "The INVISIBLE MAN" has a definite article that has vanished, run away, gone invisible (actually, it's just been stored in the clue). Tiny detail, I know, but when the puzzle doesn't deliver much in the way of pleasure, those tiny details come to the fore. Today's errors included the aforementioned MAN'S NAME (for MALE NAME) and JOKE (for JIVE), as well as TEE (for CEO) (16A: Top of an outfit, for short?) and AVERS (for AVOWS) (18D: Asserts openly). I will never, ever be able to keep "aver" and "avow" straight. I should stop trying and just accept my fate.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...