Obsolete repro machine / WED 5-17-17 / Dory propeller / Hello Dolly singer informally / Ruling family of old Florence

Constructor: Paul Hunsberger

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: word loop —two-word phrases where second word is also the first word of a two-word phrase that ends with the first word of the subsequent theme answer. (Yes, it was about as pleasant to solve as it was to read that description); only the broken phrases (that start in one themer and end in the next) are clued, and they're clued, well, essentially, like this:

Theme answers:

• BACK / COURT (Area that an N.B.A. team has eight ... / ... seconds to clear)
• CASE / CLOSED (Successful detective's ... / ... declaration)
• CIRCUIT / BOARD (Critical computer ... / ... component)
• GAME / OVER (Dreaded words in a video ... / ... arcade)
• SEEING / DOUBLE (Knocked ... / ... for a loop, say)

Word of the Day: CFL (23D: Grid org. with a 110-yard field) —

The Canadian Football League (CFL; French: Ligue canadienne de football, LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. Its nine teams, which are located in nine separate cities, are divided into two divisions: the East Division, with four teams, and the West Division with five teams. As of 2016, the league features a 20-week regular season, which traditionally runs from late June to early November; each team plays 18 games with at least two bye weeks. Following the regular season, six teams compete in the league's three-week divisional playoffs, which culminate in the late-November Grey Cup championship, one of the country's largest annual sports and television event. (wikipedia)

• • •

God, things are just getting gruesome. Aside from fill that includes dumb non-words like ECO-TAX and MIXALOT w/o the "Sir" and a SLEW of crosswordese (from OSLO to OTERI to SSN to ESSENE and back again) this theme ... sigh. It's a simple word loop: AB, BC, CD, etc. ad infinitum (well, not infinitum, but theoretically so ...). The only "interesting" part is the cluing, where instead of cluing the answers in the grid, you clue the "between" answers ... which sounds OK, but in practice is a bleeping mess, because ... well, you can see the theme clues yourself —all ellipses and slashes and you're all "wait, where does this start and end again?" etc. Oh, and there are somehow multiple SADIES there, even though no one can name more than one SADIE (Hawkins doesn't count).

[SATCHMO]

This took me almost as long as yesterday's, because the gimmick was mostly lost on me. I just plowed ahead and got themers mostly from crosses (somewhat from inferences based on the cluing words). I did this weird / horrible thing in the middle where I had CIRCUIT and ended up writing in CLAIMS CIRCUIT (something in my brain went from "circuit court" to "(small?) claims court"). I don't really know what EHOW (ugh) is. I had ETSY. Hardest part was the whole area around the BOARD of BOARD GAME. Had SET and KIT before DRUMPAD. WATERY never ever occurred to me for 58A: Like light beers. Had IN INK before IN PEN (never be impressed by someone who brags about solving this way; it's nonsense). There is so little Joy in the NYT crosswords of late. Just tired / old / bad concepts, with olde fille, and all of it only semi-competently executed. Most frequently published constructors used to be legends. Now ... once in a while there's a legend, and there are a few loyalists who are good at their craft. But mediocre-to-bad constructors are seeing more and more of their work in print because Good submissions are Obviously down. I know you all can see this. I know I'm more vocally annoyed than your average solver, but It's A Problem. Oh my god I just noticed plural ECRUS OK I have to go.


P.S. in much nicer news, my wife was elected to the Binghamton City School Board yesterday. I am very proud of her. When total voter numbers are this small, all that door-knocking ... it matters. I'm now going to go  throw trash out the window of my car in the neighborhoods where my wife *didn't* get the most votes (elections have consequences), so look out ... Sunrise Terrace (wherever that is)!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Pitch-selecting gesture / TUE 5-12-15 / House smaller than villa / eyes potion ingredient at Hogwarts / City NW of Munchen / Dancer in club down in old Soho

Constructor: Paul Hunsberger

Relative difficulty: Medium (Normal Tuesday)

THEME: ELASTIC BAND (56A: Office item suggested visually by this puzzle) — circled letters B, A, N, D get farther apart in each subsequent theme answer, until the final theme answer, where the circles (though not the letters B, A, N, D) SNAP back into place…

Theme answers:

• URBAN DESIGN (18A: Layout of city streets, parks, etc.)
• HAREBRAINED IDEA (23A: It's so crazy it just might work)
• BROADMINDED (37A: Tolerant)
• WHIPPERSNAPPERS (48A: Presumptuous sorts)

Word of the Day: ASHLEY (65A: ___ Wilkes, obsession of Scarlett O'Hara) —

George Ashley Wilkes is a fictional character in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and the later film of the same name. The character also appears in the 1991 book Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind written by Alexandra Ripley, and in Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig. […] In a sense, he is the character best personifying the tragedy of the Southern upper class after the Civil War. Coming from a privileged background, Ashley is an honorable and educated man. He is in clear contrast to Rhett Butler, who is decisive and full of life but is vulgar and distasteful as well. Rhett is both ruthless and practical, and is willing to do whatever he must to survive. In contrast, Ashley is often impractical (even Melanie admits this on her deathbed), and would resist doing many things Rhett would do because they aren't "proper" or "gentlemanly". Ashley fights in the Civil War, but he does it out of love for his homeland and not a hatred of the Yankees, who he actually hopes will just leave the South in peace. As a soldier he shows enough leadership to be promoted to the rank of Major, and survives being imprisoned at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois (a notorious prisoner-of-war camp) for several months. He eventually returns home, still able-bodied. Ashley could have lived a peaceful and respectable life had the War never taken place. The War that changed the South forever has turned his world upside down, with everything he had believed in 'gone with the wind', a phrase composed by the poet Ernest Dowson. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm not entirely certain what this puzzle is supposed to represent. That is, I don't know what act is being performed on the ELASTIC BAND (which most of humanity—by a 13-to-1 margin, acc. to Herr Google—calls RUBBER BAND, but we'll worry about that later*). Is it around something, like, I don't know … what do you put rubber bands around in an office anymore? … and then you idly pull it back and snap it, so that it resumes its original position/shape? Are you snapping it so that it flies across the room? Are you pulling it so far that band eventually SNAPs apart? Since the BAND has become the word SNAP at the end, and since circled-letter positionality is never clear/consistent in the grid, I don't know. It's true that, visually, the word BAND is elasticized over the course of three theme answers—I don't know how hard it is to do that, but I can't imagine it's that hard. Spacing increases in the word BAND are consistent (i.e. the letters B, A, N, D are symmetrical in relation to one another throughout), but the BANDs (+ SNAP) are wonky in relation to each other. This seems like a cute idea that got a wobbly, makeshift, "Good enough!" execution, i.e this seems like a quintessential Tuesday. Poor Tuesday.


Puzzle felt very easy, but my time was totally normal. Why? I think the main issue was ASL / ASHLEY, the latter because I'm not that familiar with all the characters of "Gone With the Wind," and the former because I haven't seen a person signing in the corner of my TV screen since, I want to say, the '70s (59D: What might be seen in the corner of a TV screen: Abbr.). Maybe close-captioning obviated the need for this? I don't know. All I know is I got ASL entirely from crosses and didn't know what it was, so far was my mind from sign language. The other slow-down was REEARN … for obvious reasons (I hope). Fill today is below average, but not terrible. Mostly just stale. ANGIO is a weak standalone. My dad was a radiologist, and I heard the word "angiogram" a lot growing up. The ANGIO referred to here is (I'm guessing) and angioplasty, but I was not aware that, like AMNIO, it could stand alone. ITA crossing CASITA is bad, no matter how you clue ITA. Not much else to say.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"How the $@&! is "elastic band" an office item?! Does he mean "rubber band"? Because elastic bands are in underwear, not desks." — unsolicited, valid indignation from one of my Twitter followers last night

[Follow Rex Parker on Facebook and Twitter]

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Doggone quaintly / TUE 12-9-14 / Black Swan role / Gotcha facetiously / William Sydney Porter's pen name / Doggedly pursuing / Mad Libs label / Fork-tailed bird / Gently used transaction / Pre-ayatollah leader

Constructor: Paul Hunsberger

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (***for a Tuesday***)

THEME: SHOE (67A: Item depicted by this puzzle's circled letters) stepping on gum — this is what the circled squares depict when you connect them all with a pen or maybe just your mind...

Word of the Day: D LEAGUE (7D: N.B.A. farm system, informally) —

The NBA Development League, or NBA D-League, is the National Basketball Association's official minor league basketball organization. Known until the summer of 2005 as the National Basketball Development League (NBDL), the NBA D-League started with eight teams in the fall of 2001. In March 2005, NBA commissioner David Stern announced a plan to expand the NBA D-League to fifteen teams and develop it into a true minor league farm system, with each NBA D-League team affiliated with one or more NBA teams. At the conclusion of the 2013–14 NBA season, 33% of NBA players had spent time in the NBA D-League, up from 23% in 2011. Beginning in the 2014–15 season, the league will consist of 18 teams; 17 will be either single-affiliated or owned by an NBA team, with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants being the lone exception. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, once I was done, I could indeed draw a reasonable facsimile of a shoe by connecting all the relevant letters. And there's some GUM, cute. Sadly, though, before I got to the art portion of our puzzle, I had to endure the actual-putting-letters-in-boxes portion of our puzzle, and *that* was decidedly less fun. The fill here is nothing short of abysmal, especially for a 78-word Tuesday, especially for the puzzle that bills itself as the best in the world or whatever they're saying now. I'm trying to find some way to express my feelings about -EERS, and  … I think my favorite ("favorite") thing about it is that it's crossing EERO. If you're going to put bad (i.e. terrible) fill in your grid, why not be comical about it. Cross it with something that is also not desirable, and that kind of rhymes! At least that makes the badness semi-interesting. ODO and OVO and AH, SO!? If "GUM" is the thing the toe of the shoe is stepping on, I can only assume that the AH, SO under the heel is a kind of metaphor for that other material you wouldn't want to step in.


The puzzle doesn't even bother to try to hide the easternmost SOLE and the HEEL. Honestly, this puzzle is at least two drafts away from being presentable. Hide those words and make the fill even semi-presentable, and you've got a cute little Tuesday. But as is, no. It's bad. AIRCON? I keep laughing every time I look at that answer, for three reasons. 1. No one ever says that (though in last two minutes I've had one person tell me it's British, and another tell me he (not British) grew up saying it but was recently mocked by a 20-something for saying it), 2. It's hilarious that it's clued as [House cooler, for short], as us normals have an even *shorter* way of saying it (or writing it, anyway) … and 3. because I like to imagine AIRCON is some kind of sequel to "CON AIR." Gah. You know, the problem is almost never "bad idea." It's almost always, lately, "decent idea that hasn't been sufficiently well developed or polished or crafted." The "Good enough!" mentality reigns. So many OYS.

I liked D LEAGUE (7D: N.B.A. farm system). That's about it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Mexican hero Juraez / WED 9-18-13 / Second-highest pinochle card / Adage regarding skittishness / Plant with fluffy flower spikes / That inverted bowl per Edward FitzGerald / Green vehicle briefly

Constructor: Paul Hunsberger

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: TENT rebus — Five "TENT" squares can be found throughout the grid

Word of the Day: E-CAR (42D: Green vehicle, briefly) —

n

(Engineering / Automotive Engineering) a car powered by electricity

[electric car] (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

Love the crossing 15s. Rest of it is just average. Buncha tents. If there were a revealer (or if the puzzles had titles, as they really should—as all the old (and great) New York Sun puzzles did), maybe something with involving "camp," this would've had a little more vroom, a little more coherence. But as an "arbitrary letter string" rebus, this one is fine. Even though I picked up the gimmick early, I still found the puzzle much harder than usual. Knowing the TENTs were out there didn't make them that much easier to find—the two towards the east were particularly tough for me to see, since once is in a German phrase / plant I don't know (11D: Plant with fluffy flower spikes = KITTENTAILS) crossing, and the other ... I don't know, I just had a hard time finding it. That SE corner was the hardest for me by far, though I really should've grokked TENTACLE much earlier. Had "MISTER!" for "LISTEN" (!?!!) (68A: "Hey"), wasn't entirely sure about BENITO (50D: Mexican hero Juárez), had no idea about ABCD, and E-CAR? Forget about it. Never seen it in a puzzle (it's not in the cruciverb database, so I guess it's never been in a mainstream puzzle). E CAR looks like an abbr. for East Carolina, which is a university, I think. Yes. It is.

[7A: 1970s-'80s sketch comedy show]

My only real objection today is to 70A: The "cetera" of "et cetera" (SO ON). I know Latin, a bit, and that is, how you say, not ... accurate. "Cetera" is a neuter plural noun, meaning "the rest" or "the remaining." I know that the abbr. "etc." can be translated as "an SO ON," but ... no. If you want to break it down into its constituent parts, then you need to be precise about what they mean. I was so baffled by that clue that when I'd finished, and had SOON, I thought "... how in the World!?" My outrage was slightly mitigated when I realized I hadn't parsed it correctly. Two words. SO [space] ON. Still not right, but at least it's ballparky, I guess.

I'll leave you with this whimsical image of slavery. I think it depicts when the first sudoku came over on the ships from Africa. Not sure. But isn't it adorable? Also, classy.

I look forward to the sequels, "Waterboarded By Sudoku" and "Genocide-oku."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Apiarist's facial display / THU 2-21-13 / Grand ungodly godlike man of fiction / Biblical hunter / Last Pope Paulo numerically / Bewitched wife familiarly / wonder Tone Loc Crowded House / Offenbach's belle nuit o nuit d'amour

Constructor: Paul Hunsberger

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: ROUGH / AROUND THE / EDGES (32D: With 21- and 25-Down, lacking refinement ... like this puzzle's grid) — letter string "ROUGH" appears once on each side of the grid (in DROUGHT, BOROUGHS, TROUGHS, and THOROUGH)

Word of the Day: RED ALE (2D: Traditional Irish brew) —

Irish Red Ale, also known simply as Irish Ale or Red Ale, is a style of sweet, malty ale brewed by many Irish breweries. The red color comes from the use of small amounts of dark or roasted grains. Despite the name, this beer style may also be brewed as a lager. (homebrewtalk.com)

• • •

Marred for me by the completely fake answer TWO-HIT (7D: ___ wonder (Tone Loc or Crowded House, e.g.). I see that the term has some google traction, but most often as part of a larger discussion of the *real* term, "one-hit wonder." I am a Crowded House fan, so I saw the clue and went "ugh, they're calling them 'one-hit wonders' again," because I'm used to people doing that: remembering "Don't Dream It's Over" and forgetting "Something So Strong." I simply thought the clue was being very loose with the term "hit," as people who use the term "one-hit wonder" often are. No one uses the term "two-hit wonder," so it never Ever occurred to me that it could be a thing, let alone a thing that might appear in a puzzle. The fact that it's essentially a partial is just the cruddy icing on the stale cake. Also, while I love the answer BEE BEARD for the image alone, but "facial display?" (8D: Apiarist's facial display) What apiarist puts bees on his face for display? This sounds like some kind of circus trick, not something a professional apiarist would do. Weird. The puzzle as a whole represents a decent attempt to build a puzzle (here, a kind of visual pun) out of a common expression. There's not that much ickiness, but what little there is really hurts. TWO-HIT, SESTO (27A: Last Pope Paulo, numerically), and ECH (!?!) are real gut kicks. RAMA isn't helping. But most of the rest is solid.


I started Very slowly—absolutely tanking the NW before moving on to the NE, where I got some traction. Why DROUGHT didn't occur to me right off the bat at 1A: Dust Bowl phenomenon, I have no idea. Ugh. And of course once I wrote in ONE-HIT, all hope was lost up there (until the very end). Got going with  BED to EDY to BEE-something to EDUARDO (a name I know only bec. I once blew it in a crossword—then I saw "The Social Network"; now I remember) (15A: Facebook co-founder Saverin). That corner fell, but I couldn't get out (the BEARD part of BEE BEARD not being intuitive to me). Started over with MASSE in the SE (another good / common crossword word) (50A: Spin-heavy shot), and worked that corner all the way around to the center, finally hammering out ROUGH, which immediately gave me the reveal, ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES. Before I got ROUGH, I thought it was going to be something ACROSS THE something. After I got the reveal, the rest was pretty easy. SE fell fast (easy once you know ROUGH is on the edge somewhere) and then I finished in the formerly intractable NW. If not for the ROUGH I knew had to go in there, I could still very well be stuck. ULULATE helped too (4D: Howl). Rough corner—SESTO and RED ALE took some real effort.


Bullets:

• 20A: "Grand, ungodly, godlike man" of fiction (AHAB) — went from "how the hell am I supposed to ...?" to "Oh, of course" pretty quickly.
• 54A: Spin-o-___ (360-degree hockey maneuver) (RAMA) — never ever heard this. Good thing I never saw the clue.
• 10D: Offenbach's "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour," e.g. (DUET) — nooooo idea. Would've guessed ARIA if crosses hadn't prevented it.
• 37D: One is named for the explorer James Ross (POLAR SEA) — Close to a gimme for me. ROSSSEA is a not-uncommon crossword answer. Three consecutive Ss makes it, let's say, useful in certain tight spots.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Scavenging Southern food fish / SUN 9-25-11 / Often-parched gully / Leonine movie star of old / Black Watch soldier's garb

Constructor: Paul Hunsberger

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Entwisted" — familiar phrases have their N "twisted" to make a Z, creating wacky phrases, which are then clued "?"-style

Word of the Day: MUDCAT (33D: Scavenging Southern food fish) —

n

(Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Animals) any of several large North American catfish living in muddy rivers, esp in the Mississippi valley (Collins English Dictionary) (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

Coincidentally, as I pasted in that definition of MUDCAT (a southern fish), "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" came on ...


This theme did next to nothing for me, though the grid offered up some amazing surprises along the way—I'm a particularly big fan of "IT'S ALL GOOD!" "WHAT THE HEY!" and GROUPIES. A rapper might have GROUPIES and a POSSE. KID ZAPPER would be a good rap name. Now Kenny Rogers's "Lady" is on


OK, I'm turning Spotify off now. I've see the N->Z puzzle done, and done much better, before. I found SEE JUSTICE DOZE to be, by far, the worst theme answer in the puzzle: both because the base phrase feels less solid than the others, and (more importantly) because of the vowel-sound change in the "Z" word. No other theme answer has that. I get that you're just tipping Ns on their sides, and nobody said sound was relevant, but nonetheless, as the only sound-changer, this one sticks out badly. Not surprisingly, the toughest part of the puzzle for me was everywhere around, and especially above, SEE JUSTICE DOZE. My last letter was at the MUDCAT (?) and MCM crossing. A HAM is a ham radio operator? That's what they call themselves? OK. I don't especially love the crossing of REEL and EELS, but I would watch an animated movie review show called "REEL EELS" where two cartoon EELS review the latest offerings from Hollywood and then give their take on some vintage film that has fallen off most people's radars—like, say, "Fatso" (1980), which just arrived for me today via Interlibrary Loan. I would pay to see those EELS review "Fatso."

Theme answers: 

• 21A: Result of being badly beaned? (GREAT DAZE)
•  23A: Scraping kitchen gadget with nothing in it? (EMPTY ZESTER) — since when does a zester Ever have anything "in it?" Awkward.
  
• 45A: Pale yellow-shelled sea creature? (MAIZE LOBSTER)
• 60A: View the effects of a big lunch in court? (SEE JUSTICE DOZE)
• 67A: Fluorescent candy? (HIGHLIGHTER PEZ)
• 92A: "Cheers" spinoff mania? ("FRASIER" CRAZE)
• 113A: Hapless Roman ruler? (EMPEROR ZERO)
• 115A: Taser for children? (KID ZAPPER)  

How is OLAV an alternative to Ole or Edvard? Like ... an alternative name you might give your child if he were Swedish? Very weird clue. Again, foam is the defining characteristic of a cappuccino, not so much of a LATTE. I've never heard of FREE-RUN chickens. In America, we call them "FREE-RANGE." NITE Owl is the name of one of the heroes in "Watchmen"—I don't remember the cafe from "L.A. Confidential," though it hardly matters as the answer was easy to infer.

Bullets:

• 5A: Often-parched gully (WADI) — one of the sillier-sounding geographical words, but I still like it.
• 9A: Goal of phishing (SCAM) — I wrote in SPAM, but that's more the phishing itself than the goal.
• 19A: 1997 best seller subtitled "Her True Story" ("DIANA") — first guess: LEONA.
• 41A: Leonine movie star of old (LAHR) — Cowardly Lion portrayer of crossword fame.
• 64A: Land of King George Tupou V (TONGA) — Did you know that Tonga was named the sixth most corrupt country in the world by Forbes magazine in 2008. Wikipedia!
• 10D: Polyphemus, to Odysseus (CAPTOR) — all I could think of was CYCLOPS, but I guess he was CYCLOPS to everybody, not just Odysseus.
• 70D: Unemployed persons with full-time jobs (HOME MAKERS) — interesting clue.
  Kind of ingratiating clue. I half-expect it to be followed up with "... am I right, ladies?!?"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. today is the 5th birthday of this blog. [noise maker sound]!

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Cube-hopping character in 1980s arcade game / TUE 3-8-11 / Soaks as flax / Our planet to Berliner / Old TWA hiree / Kid-lit elephant

Constructor: Paul Hunsberger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: WEST (69A: The half of the keyboard on which all of this puzzle's answers can be typed)


Word of the Day: Q-BERT (8D: Cube-hopping character in a 1980s arcade game) —

Q*bert (pronounced /ˈkjuːbərt/) is an arcade video game developed and published by Gottlieb in 1982. It is a platform game that features two-dimensional (2D) graphics. The object is to change the color of every cube in a pyramid by making the on-screen character jump on top of the cube while avoiding obstacles and enemies. Players use a joystick to control the character. // The game was conceived by Warren Davis and Jeff Lee. Lee designed the titular character based on childhood influences and gave Q*bert a large nose that shoots projectiles. His original idea involved traversing a pyramid to shoot enemies, but Davis removed the shooting game mechanic to simplify gameplay. Q*bert was developed under the project name Cubes, but was briefly named Snots And Boogers and @!#?@!? during development. // Q*bert was well received in arcades and by critics, who praised the graphics, gameplay and main character. The success resulted in sequels and use of the character's likeness in merchandising, such as appearances on lunch boxes, toys, and an animated television show. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was pretty dreadful. It's a stunt puzzle that offers no joy for the solver. None. What joy is there in this kind of fill? Am I supposed to clap at the end that you've restricted yourself to half the alphabet (when that half includes RSTEA)? The resulting fill is of limited interest, at best, and repulsive at worst. Junky abbrevs. like SERV and BRAZ and STRS, ugh. At least four "A"-containing partials ... or rather, two *crossing* pairs of such partials (ARAW w/ ARAT, SETSA w/ ATASTE), something called a TREATER, RETS (!) (64D: Soaks, as flax), the crosswordesey ERBE and ERDE (43A: Our planet, to a Berliner). To say I'm AVERSE to this kind of joyless concoction is an understatement. The long answers are decent enough (esp. STEWARDESS—10D: Old TWA hiree—and STARGAZERS—30D: Astronomers ... or daydreamers), but ... no. This fish should've been thrown back.

• Wife: "Is 69A WEST?"
• Me: "Yes."
• Wife: "But what if your keyboard's not oriented that way?"
• Me: "The direction is relative to you."
• Wife, indignantly: "Directions aren't related to you, they're related to the globe. LEFT or RIGHT I'd buy, but not WEST."
  
• Me (to myself): "Weird. That didn't bother me ..."

Theme answers:

• All of them
  

At least the puzzle made the effort to contain all available letters ... so I guess it's *kind* of a pangram? TADA?! (16A: "And ... there you have it!").

See you tomorrow,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. my friend made this grid this morning in about an hour. I told him it didn't have the magic word, "WEST," so ... fail! Still...

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Yangtze river boat / TUE 2-16-10 / Sitcom diner waitress / Hipster's Understood / Idle repairman's employer in ads

Constructor: Paul Hunsberger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: PROCESSED MEAT (59A: Spam or sausage ... or a hint to the starts of 20-, 35- and 42-Across) — three theme answers begin with anagrams of MEAT


Word of the Day: SAMPAN (50D: Yangtze River boat) —

A sampan (Chinese: 舢舨; pinyin: shānbǎn) is a relatively flat bottomed Chinese wooden boat from 3.5 to 4.5 m (approximately twelve to fifteen feet) long. Some sampans include a small shelter on board, and may be used as a permanent habitation on inland waters. Sampans are generally used for fishing or transportation, in coastal areas or rivers. It is unusual for a sampan to sail far from land as they do not have the means to survive rough weather. (wikipedia)

• • •

Recovering from a bad bout of stomach flu / food poisoning, so this will be brief. Didn't like the puzzle at all. The fact that PROCESSED MEAT was the last thing I wanted to think about yesterday is only a tiny part of the problem. Theme answers are dull and non-theme fill is overwhelmingly weak. Four partials, plus a bunch of boring "this'll do"-type short fill that suggests a computer filled this one out moreso than a human being. Just careless. Compare the fill in today's puzzle with yesterday's, and you'll see what I mean. It's a crosswordese smorgasbord today. One single section (in the west) contains: EOS, ALPE, EAT AT, OLEOS, AORTAS, EMT, and TSK. You're not even *trying* to be interesting! Ugh. I don't have the energy to go on. Thumbs down.

Theme answers:

• 20A: Larva-to-adult transition (METAmorphosis)
  
• 35A: Be monogamous, among animals (MATE for life)
  
• 42A: Leader on the field (TEAM captain)
  

Bullets:

• 17A: Hipster's "Understood" ("I dig") — Today's hipsters would never say this. [Beatnik's "Understood"] might be better (I'm saying this as if I care — better never to see this answer again than to see it merely reclued)

• 23A: Idle repairman's employer, in ads (Maytag) — About the best answer in the grid, which is just sad. Oh, I also like SPARK PLUG (34D: Ignition system device)
  
• 30A: Sports show-off (hot dog) — read this as [Sports show-down], so took longer on it than I should have. Speaking of HOT DOG, really enjoying watching Olympic snowboard cross. 4 people, one track, mayhem. Far more exciting than watching, say, luge.
  
• 62D: Sitcom diner waitress (Flo) — Love her, but am most impressed that her crosswordese status is so well established that you don't even have to put "Mel's" or "Alice" or "70s-80s TV" in the clue. Or "gum-chewing" or "Kiss my grits!" And answer is still obvious.
• 9D: Clip out, as a coupon (scissor) — ??? You know what you do to coupons? You clip them out. Or cut them out. "I'll be right there, I just have to finish scissoring this coupon!" No.
• 5D: Italian city after which a deli offering is named (Bologna) — aargh, more processed meat. Uncle!

Off to have water and plain oatmeal for breakfast. Enjoy your day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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