City known as the Navel of Italy / WED 7-3-13 / Preserves on a farm / Facetious "I see" / Former chess champion Mikhail / ___ Palmas / Hydrocarbon suffix / Sitcom cook who said "Stow it!" / Does anybody read these titles?

Constructor: Pamela Klawitter

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: CORNER STORE — The circled squares in the corners spell out types of stores.

Word of the Day: CAROL ANN (36D: British poet laureate Duffy) —

Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL (born 23 December 1955) is a British poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009.^[1] She is the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly LGBTperson to hold the position.^[2]

Her collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Rapture (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence, in an accessible language that has made them popular in schools. (from Wikipedia)

• • •

Neville back again; you might remember me from last Wednesday's puzzle. Where's Rex now? I'm not quite sure, but the last I heard, he was looking into some body disposal. This is a nice puzzle idea, but it really fell flat for me. First is the theme. Usually, I'd ramble on before getting to the theme, but we need to tackle this.

Theme answers:

• RETAIL
• DIME
• CHAIN
• GENERAL

That's it. I mean, CORNER STORE is right across the center as a revealer, but that's it. This is the only thematic content in the puzzle. And these are certainly all things, but aren't the last three all examples of retail stores? Was there not a fourth type that fit in a corner? You could use CORGI to hide part of GROCERY, but then what with the CERY? Oh, how about DISCOUNT? Split it at DISC and COUNT.

So with so little theme, and with what is there banished to the corners of the puzzle, we expect great fill, right? Wrong. Despite being a 78-worder, there's some questionable content in here. Partials galore! A DIM, A BAT, AS I, IT OR, IS NOT. And sorry if I [take A DIM view of] this puzzle, but 5 partials is far too many for my taste. And those aren't the only "the heck is this?" entries for me. First: ENSILES. To ensile is to store in a silo; never used this word and I never expect to use it. Do farmers use this word? I'd be surprised if they regularly do. It's a terrible construction. The next whopper? -ATOR. Yes, it's a legitimate suffix, but holy crap what a choice of an entry. And it's crossing AH SO. When's the last time you heard that one? ENNA may be the Navel of Sicily, but does that mean I'm supposed to have heard of it? Population is under 30K... a quick scan of its Wikipedia page gave me nothing more exciting than this navel business, but that's not enough "crossworthiness" for me. Then -ANE, T.S.E. and ULT. don't make me feel any better.

On a different note, I'm surprised that Y-SHAPE is in this puzzle, as I recall a conversation about a move away from [letter]-[word] entries (see also K TILE in Scrabble or B MINOR in music). Some might argue that the Y is ambiguous here, but I think it's fine. [What a slingshot or wishbone has] pretty narrowly defines this one. Ms. Klawitter does have some fun entries in the rest of the fill, but they just can't justify all of that dreck we've already talked about. Before we get to bullets, how about a quick poll. Hands up if you thought [March V.I.P.'s?] meant the month of March instead of going for a march as SERGEANTS do. (My hand is raised so high right now.)

Bullets:

• 33D: Group with two apostrophes in its name (B'NAI B'RITH) — This clue meant nothing to me at first, but after the first to letters were in, it was perfectly clear, and I loved it. B'nai B'rith is a Jewish service organization, though I know it better from crosswords. I blame my Catholic upbringing.
• 26A: Sharpie feature (FELT TIP) — Did you write on yourself with a Sharpie, but need to get rid of it for a not date or a job interview? Just add Tabasco! (And next time, think ahead before writing on yourself with a permanent ink marker. Come on!)
• 62A: Figurative use of a word (TROPE) — Some people fall down rabbit holes on Wikipedia where they keep clicking links from one article to the next. Others keep watching related videos on YouTube. Me? I can spend ages at TV Tropes (which isn't limited to television at all). Why not start here, and I'll see you in a few hours.
• 11D: Landline sound (DIAL TONE)  — Here's a nice entry. Are you ready for this blast from the past? Hold on to your hats, folks. We're heading back to 1996.

Signed, Neville, Prince of CrossWorld

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Bride in Gondoliers / SUN 7-31-11 / Sally teacakes / Noted diamond family / Huntee in game / 2003 Affleck/Lopez flick / Switzerland/France separator

Constructor: Pamela Klawitter

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Separate Checks" — theme answers are common phrases that, when taken literally, describe words that are "separated" (i.e. in two parts, separated by a black square) in different parts of the grid. "Separated" words are in circled squares for easy identification.


Word of the Day: "IL RE Pastore" (42D: "___ Pastore" (Mozart opera)) —

Il re pastore (The Shepherd King) is an opera, K. 208, written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Metastasio, edited by Gianbattista Varesco. It is an opera seria. The opera was first performed on April 23 1775 in Salzburg, at the Palace of the Archbishop Count Hieronymus von Colloredo. (wikipedia)

• • •

I found this more difficult than your average Sunday puzzle, due largely to the fact that you had to pick up some of those circles before you could begin to have any hope of filling in the theme answers. Also, perhaps because the theme was so ambitious, many of the answers were nuts, e.g. IL RE (it's the king, alright—King of the Uglies), PIS (which I still don't get) (oh, it's P.I.s, OK; 47D: Some tails, for short), ANA'S (!?) (18A: "___ Story: A Journey of Hope" (Jenna Bush best seller)), LUNNS (99D: Sally ___ (teacakes)), etc. That ENDE / LUNNS crossing was potentially *lethal*. Never heard of either ... except I had, in fact, seen ENDE in puzzles before (doesn't mean I remembered him) (113A: "The Neverending Story" writer), which allowed me to educatedly guess the "N"; otherwise, puzzle death. Multiple ALDAS, multiple RNAS (?), someplace called LEMAN (46D: Lake ___, Switzerland/France separator) (I want to go to there, just so I can point at it and shout, "You LEMAN!"). Lots and lots of slightly creaky stuff. I admire the theme's complexity, though I'm (once again) 90% certain I've seen this theme, or one like it, in the not-too-distant past. I've definitely seen words split by black squares before. Still, for apparent level-of-difficulty alone, this one gets a mild thumbs-up, though I do have to say that BEAR PIT pretty much ruins the whole happy vibe of the puzzle (59A: Place for some animal baiting). You can put all the sex and dirty words and body parts you want in my Sunday puzzle, but animal torture just does not pass my personal breakfast test.



Theme answers:

• DIVIDED HIGHWAY
  
• FALLEN APART
  
• TORN ASUNDER (this one confused me at first—wondered how ASUNDER was going to fit in just those four squares ...)
  
• BANANA SPLIT
  
• FRACTURED SKULL
  
• CRACKED WINDOW
  
• BROKEN PROMISE
  

My last letter was the "V" in TIVO (102D: Program coordinator?) / AVES (114A: Upper class?), which required me to run the alphabet, and even then I still didn't get AVES. My only guess, now, is that AVES is a "class" of animal that is "high" because its members, generally, fly. To cross that "?" clue with the TIVO "?" clue seems over-the-top. I mean, I already had to suffer through the terrible ENDE / LUNNS crossing. Gimme a break with the AVES.

Bullets:

• 24A: Bride in "The Gondoliers" (TESSA) — ??? Probably seen it before, but still, ??? Crossing NISI (7D: Not yet final, at law) was a bit scarifying. Seriously, that's three dicey crosses in this thing, at least.
  
• 25A: "What the Butler Saw" playwright, 1969 (ORTON) — wanted ODETS. Saw this in Ashland, OR circa 1982. I remember it being some kind of sex farce where people were on stage in their underwear. But I was 12, so my memory could've been quite skewed by a single scene, for all I know.

• 26A: Noted diamond family (ALOU) — they are mostly "noted," these days, in crosswords.
  
• 32A: Title character in a 2009 Sandra Bullock crossword film (STEVE) — hey, it's terrible movie day in Puzzle World. "All About STEVE" in a twin bill with "GIGLI" — suddenly BEAR PIT doesn't seem quite so bad ...
  
• 52A: Panamanians and Peruvians (LATINS) — took me forever. I would never refer to them as LATINS (I'd say "LATIN AMERICANS," if anything), but it's valid.
  
• 76A: Huntee in a game (HIDER) — "Huntee" is a pretty dumb-looking word, but I got this instantly, so can't grouse too much.
  
• 94A: French CD holder (ETUI) — wait, I have a picture here somewhere, hang on ... yeah, here we go:

• 98A: Techie's hangout (PC LAB) — I have antipathy toward PCLAB as an answer. It's not entirely rational. No one calls the computer labs this, possibly because there are Macs there. A techie would, presumably, hang out anywhere there was a computer, or energy drinks and Cheetos.
  
• 40D: Definitely not Felix Unger types (SLOVENS) — wow, you can be a sloven? I knew you could be slovenly, and I knew you could be a SLOVAK, or SLOVENE, but a SLOVEN—that, I did not know.
  
• 57D: Pulitzer-winning Sheehan (SUSAN) — no idea. Wanted GAYLE, but that's "Sheehy," and her name's spelled "GAIL" anyway.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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