Early smartphone model of the 2000s / SUN 11-16-25 / Formerly with law enforcement, informally / Castle fortifications / Uncle Sam's land, informally / Frequent question bout the spelling of "Caribbean?" / Conflict that ended with the Treaty of Nanking / Movable parts of record players / Wally ___, astronaut who commanded Apollo 7 / Selina ___, the veep on "Veep"

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Misquoting Shakespeare" — wacky clues lead to imaginary phrases that sound like misquotes of famous phrases from Shakespeare:

Theme answers:

• "GOOD KNIGHT, SWEET PRINCE" (22A: King's assessment of his son the Crusader?)
• "TO THINE OWN ELF BE TRUE" (40A: Santa's view on loyalty for those who help him?)
• "FARE IS FOUL / AND / FOWL IS FAIR" (51A: With 61-Down and 78-Across, "Food at this restaurant stinks, but the duck seems fine"?)
• "TWO B'S OR NOT TWO B'S" (64A: Frequent question about the spelling of "Caribbean?")
• "A NOSE BY ANY OTHER NAME..." (87A: Schnozz, honker or beak?)
• "BEWARE THE TIDES OF MARCH" (112A: Warning to a beachgoer on St. Patrick's Day?)

Word of the Day: Wally SCHIRRA (88D: Wally ___, astronaut who commanded Apollo 7) —

Walter Marty Schirra Jr. (/ʃɜːˈrɑː/ shur-AH; March 12, 1923 – May 3, 2007) was an American naval aviator, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. In 1959, he became one of the original seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury, which was the United States' first effort to put humans into space. On October 3, 1962, he flew the six-orbit, nine-hour, Mercury-Atlas 8 mission, in a spacecraft he nicknamed Sigma 7, becoming the fifth American and ninth human to travel into space. In December 1965, as part of the two-man Gemini program, he achieved the first space rendezvous, station-keeping his Gemini 6A spacecraft within 1 foot (30 cm) of the sister Gemini 7 spacecraft. In October 1968, he commanded Apollo 7, an 11-day low Earth orbit shakedown test of the three-man Apollo Command/Service Module and the first crewed launch for the Apollo program. [...] Schirra was the first astronaut to go into space three times, and the only astronaut to have flown into space in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. In total, he logged 295 hours and 15 minutes in space. After Apollo 7, he retired as a captain from the U.S. Navy as well as from NASA, subsequently becoming a consultant to CBS News in the network's coverage of following Apollo flights. Schirra joined Walter Cronkite as co-anchor for all seven of NASA's Moon landing missions. (wikipedia)

• • •

Gonna be brief because I have nothing good to say about this. A startlingly weak pun theme with fill that made me cringe over and over. This felt like what might've passed for an OK puzzle 30+ years ago, but today ... I can't believe this was accepted. The title of the puzzle isn't even trying, that's how weak this theme is. "Misquoting Shakespeare." Yes. You are doing that. But why? What is the point? These puns are completely arbitrary and not funny in the least. The central one ("FARE IS FOUL / AND / FOWL IS FAIR") is the best of the lot, by far, largely because it's an epic two-parter (three- if you count the "AND") where the quotation sounds exactly like the original, correct Shak. quote. That is, it involves perfect homophones, one in either half of the symmetrical quote, and the quote itself actually borders on amusing.  "TWO Bs OR NOT TWO Bs" is also OK—the clue addresses a very real spelling issue, so ... fine. But the others, oof, they do nothing. They have no wit, charm, sense of humor, genuine playfulness. "Uh, what sounds like 'night,' I know, KNIGHT?" Who cares? The resulting phrase is practically nonsense, and certainly isn't funny. And the remaining three are somehow worse than that. At least "KNIGHT" actually sounds like "night." Why "ELF"??? I mean, if you're going to try a pun there, why not go with "shelf," which is at least closer to "self"? "TO THINE OWN ELF BE TRUE" makes about as much sense as "TO THINE OWN CELL (phone?) BE TRUE" or "TO THINE OWN SELF BE BLUE." And then "A NOSE BY ANY OTHER NAME?" Why NOSE???? Why not HOSE or POSE? Why not BEWARE THE RIDES OF MARCH? Or SIDES OF MARCH? Or EYES OF MARCH, for that matter? These themers today involve only arbitrary minor sound / spelling changes, and (the real crime) they yield almost nothing in the way of humor. I can forgive groaners, but I can't forgive how meek and tepid these groaners are. Try harder! "EAT TWO, BRUTE!" "LORD, WHAT FOOLS THESE TURTLES BE!" "MY KINGDOM FOR A HEARSE!" "LET SLIP THE CLOGS OF WAR!" "NEITHER A BURROWER NOR A LENDER BE!" These are also bad, but they are no worse than what we end up getting. With no guiding principle beyond "kinda sorta sounds like Shakespeare" ... ugh.

["Beware the Eyes of Mars!"]

And the fill—a problem from the start. OK, you're throwing ENOLA and STN at me right off the bat in that little corner in the NW, I've seen worse. What's that? You wanna give me the odd prepositional phrase ON EARTH too? Sigh, OK, you're pushing it, but so far, this is just ordinary crud. But then you try to smack me with a cold fish labeled À LUI and that's it, I'm completely out of the puzzle now. I wrote À MOI in there, which is bad enough, but it's a common kind of bad: a short foreignism that's not the kind of thing you're apt to know if you don't speak the language, but that you see from time to time (less now than in the bad old days of crosswordese, but still, you see it). But À LUI? Check out this À LUI heat chart:

[xwordinfo]

You can see, even Maleska (NYTXW editor 1977-93), whose name is virtually synonymous with the pre-Shortz crosswordese-heavy grid, was like "we should probably take it easy with this À LUI stuff.” And then in the Shortz Era, it practically disappears. 'Cause it's bad. Hasn't been used in nine years. Standards for fill are generally much higher now than they were decades ago, but lately (this week, and esp today) things have regressed. Please understand that if À LUI were an aberration, if most of this grid were cleanly filled, I would definitely point it out (and boo at it), but I wouldn't be dwelling on it. You're allowed some less-than-pretty stuff when you're making any grid, particularly a themed Sunday. But this grid just kept throwing subpar fill at me. I've had enough French to know it, but it's ugly as a piece of short fill, and, along with its crosswordese counterparts up there, really indicative of the direction this grid is going. To wit: OR I comes at you next, and then THE I (!?), and things get EELIER (!?!) in the NE, where we get still more French (FRÈRE) and some EMILE I've never heard of. And then there's a whole ESC / ECONO / OPI / ANE patch. And things go on like that from there. The names in this one also seemed pulled from Crossword Roster of Yore. ODETTE (30A: "Swan Lake" role) and HALAS (91D: "Papa Bear" of the N.F.L.) and SCHIRRA, the last of those being exceedingly tough for anyone who has no real memory of all those early space missions and who was involved when / where. SCHIRRA was the one name that nearly broke me, as I had ABASE instead of ABASH at 96A: Leave red-faced, which gave me SCIERRA, which looked bad, but not much worse than SCHIRRA looks, honestly. And it's not just not enough good stuff or contemporary stuff or fun stuff to balance the puzzle out.

The grid isn't all bad. I'm fond of PARAPETS and WORSE OFF. IN A TRICE is arcane, but not in a way I hate. It's good-quaint. FLASH CARD, GARROTE, TYPIFIED, WESTERNS—the puzzle gets off a few good ones. But mainly it felt like this puzzle was pummeling me with half-baked puns and a whole arsenal of tired, tired fill. I said I was gonna keep it brief, so ... this is "brief" for me. I'll stop. On to the Bullets.

Bullets:

• 21A: Conflict that ended with the Treaty of Nanking (OPIUM WAR) — which one? It's either the OPIUM WARS, plural, or you're gonna have to be more specific. This clue is referring to the First OPIUM WAR, which is the title of its wikipedia page because, again, there were more than one. Specifically, there were two, the first one fought between the British Empire and China, 1839-42, the second between UK/France and China, 1856-60. If you talk about these wars, you talk in the collective (OPIUM WARS), or you specify which OPIUM WAR you're talking about. Because you have to. Because there are two. FIRST OPIUM WAR would be great fill, imho. OPIUM WAR is blargh unless your clue is [One of two 19th-century conflicts between the UK and China].
• 20A: Early smartphone model of the 2000s (TREO) — bygone smartphones? You gotta be courageous enough to delete stuff like this from your wordlist. TREO is a crutch. With every passing day, it's worse fill. There is no rehabilitation until something else comes along with that name, something that is not a long-bygone phone model. When I search [TREO] on DuckDuckGo (which I generally prefer to Google), the smartphone appears nowhere on the first page of hits. Even on Google, I'm getting a TREO Foundation and TREO scented candles before I'm getting (finally) pictures of early smartphones. [Palm TREO] is what you wanna search. Lots of models, starting in 2002, but done by 2008. Seventeen years gone. No one should have to remember phone model names that are that old. TREO has such a grid-friendly combination of letters, I get why a constructor might want to use it, but ... have courage. Throw it in the ocean.
• 76A: No Mr. Nice Guy (MEANY) — really thought this was spelled "MEANIE" ... because it is. MEANY is a Var. (as in "Variant")
• 121A: Movable parts of record players (TONE ARMS) — I move one of these parts on a regular basis, but still never remember this technical term. I think I just call it the "arm," if I call it anything

That's enough of that. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Border county of New York of Pennsylvania / FRI 8-20-21 / Superhero misidentification / Apt surname for a librarian / Surname of father and son NBA coaches Paul and Stephen

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (more like a Saturday, for sure)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: NUTLETS (42D: Snacks for squirrels) —

1a: a small nut

b: a small fruit similar to a nut

2: the stone of a drupelet [

a small drupe; specifically  : one of the individual parts of an aggregate fruit (such as the raspberry)] (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Just couldn't get into this one. The fill felt flat and the fill felt forced and now I'm alliterating just to amuse myself. I guess HOT TOPICS is OK, and STALE JOKE would've been OK with a more accurate / specific clue—"routine" and "stale" just aren't the same; the latter is far more value-coded, but I guess the "routine" wordplay was too tempting to lay off of. The cluing was what made this a humdrum-to-unpleasant experience for me. It seemed like it was trying too hard to be clever, or else it was too humdrum. But mainly it was the fill that put me off. I don't really see what the marquee answers are supposed to be, and in a Friday (best of all days) there should be a bunch of them. "ARE WE ALONE?" might've worked with a saucier clue, or one that gave it a more everyday context, but the alleged "question" of "humanity" just doesn't resonate at all for me. I want the question to end "... in the universe?" TOADIEDUP feels awkward. NUTLETS, LOL, what? Squirrels eat nuts. Paradigmatically. I never saw a squirrel eat NUTLETS in its or my life. I'm gonna ask the squirrels in my yard how the NUTLETS are today and I assure you they are going to laugh at me. 

I watch a lot (lot lot) of movies, and read a lot about movies, and while I'll give you WAR EPIC (even though I don't love it), I absolutely won't grant you ART CINE. The clue is in English, so the answer should be in English. An ART FILM is a thing. CINE is a thing. ART CINE ... I mean, really? You're going to say that? Write that? That is a pretentious hybrid phrase I've never seen or heard. SOOTS as a verb, also nonsense. No way you should cross E-READER and READE, especially if you are going to clue READE in relation to reading (54A: Apt surname for a librarian). Also, if you want me to have a good time, maybe don't give me a STAPH infection and blood clots (crossing!).

[When google thinks you've made a mistake ...]

I guess with the last two puzzles being remarkably, anomalously easy, the puzzle universe was bound to correct itself, and it sure did today, as I just kept staring at some of these clues wondering what they thought they were doing. TAMES was hard, largely because of a tenuous / vague clue (19A: Controls). TEAM was hard because of a somewhat better but (again) completely context-free clue (3D: A's, but not B's or C's) (the TEAM in question is the Oakland A's baseball squadron). I had to work that section from the back ends of the longer Across answers (PBJ, I LOVE, SEE THINGS). VETO POWER got me into and through the NE pretty easily, but getting into the western part did not come easily to me. I was stuck (-ish) here:

No idea what "Gaspard de la NUIT" is (23D: Ravel's "Gaspard de la ___"), and despite the "Z," which normally gives an answer away quickly, my brain just refused to see SUN TZU (author of "The Art of War") (25A: Who said "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle"). I was looking for one last name. BLITZ ... FRITZI ... something maybe Italian and WWII-related? Further, parsing CLOSEINON was too much for my morning brain today (29A: Near). So ... obscure proper noun, other proper noun, and hard-to-parse phrase had me stuck. I had to go into the SW and work upward, which meant the west was the last thing to fall (as you can see by the cursor in my finished grid, above—SCAR was the last answer I got). I also struggled a bit earlier, when doing the SE, because in addition to the preposterousness of ART CINE and NUTLETS, I had to deal with a wrong but very plausible guess in one of the short answers down there. Specifically, at 47D: Syndicate, in a way (REAIR), I had RERUN, which is the word that one would actually use, but yes, REAIR, defensible; if your goal is defensible, congrats. It's not that there weren't passable moments in this one ("NICE CATCH!," say), but mostly this one just clunked along and offered up no real high points. Lots of trivia, lots of forced wordplay in the clue, not a lot of joy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Classic comics teen with good manners / SUN 12-20-20 / Mild light-colored cigar / William founder of Investor's Business Daily / Halogen-containing salt / Suffix suggested by wiggling of one's hand

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9-something)

THEME: AIM LOW ... just kidding, it's actually "Toy Story" — popular toys of yore, such as one might have received on CHRISTMAS (65A: Day to play with new toys)

Theme answers:

• BARBIE DOLL (22A: She debuted on March 9, 1959, in a black-and-white striped swimsuit)
• TAMAGOTCHI (24A: Virtual pet simulation game that won an Ig Nobel prize for its Japanese creators)
• ETCH A SKETCH (39A: Toy that was originally called "L'Écran Magique" ("The Magic Screen"))
• TWISTER (57A: Game that got a big boost when Johnny Carson demonstrated it with Eva Gabor on "The Tonight Show")
• PLAY DOH (78A: Toy that was derived from a wallpaper cleaner)
• CHATTY CATHY (95A: Toy with 18 spoken phrases, including "I love you" and "May I have a cookie?")
• RUBIK'S CUBE (111A: Puzzle toy solved in a record 3.47 seconds in 2018)
• SILLY PUTTY (114A: Toy that astronauts brought to space to secure tools in zero gravity)
• MR. POTATO HEAD (38D: First toy to be advertised on TV)
• CANDYLAND (46D: Its box once read "A sweet little game for sweet little folks")
• COZY COUPE (!?!?!?!?!) (48D: Toy that sold more cars in American in 1991 than the Honda Accord or Ford Taurus)
• TICKLE-ME ELMO (33D: By the end of 1996, one million of this toy was sold in a shopping frenzy) 

Word of the Day: COZY COUPE (48D) —

The Cozy Coupe is a red and yellow toy car manufactured and distributed by Little Tikes, an American manufacturer of children's toys based in Hudson, Ohio. [...] First sold in 1979 as one of the first molded-plastic toy cars sold in the United States, it was called the "world's best-selling car for much of this decade" by The New York Times in 1998, outselling the Honda Accord and Ford Taurus. By 1991, the Cozy Coupe was selling 500,000 units per year, making it the top-selling model in the United States, outselling the 399,000 Accords and 299,000 Taurus vehicles sold that year. By 1997, its sales of 313,000 units in the US and another 100,000 sold in the United Kingdom in 1997, would have made it the fifth-best-selling car in the US among real vehicles. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

What a depressingly unambitious puzzle. I am once again stunned with what veteran constructors can get away with. Must be nice. There's nothing here. It's a bunch of old toys. The. End. "Toy Story" is a wildly inaccurate name, as there are only the faintest hints of "stories" about these toys, in the clues. And then the revealer is just ... CHRISTMAS? And then on top of all of that, the fill is weak all over the place. This puzzle could've run 20 years ago, with almost no changes, and it would've been sub-remarkable then, too. This is a shrug. It's an insult. Again, I say: this is just a list of popular toys. The revealer is a total thud. The fill is bad. How much do you have to hate Christmas to make let alone publish this? I don't know. This is either the worst kind of cronyism or astonishing editorial malpractice or both. Either way, yikes. The frame of reference is very old, and not just because the toys are old (though that is a lot of it). The creaking quaintness of the fill isn't helping. APEDOM? IRENIC? "ETTA KETT"? Then there's awkward stuff like AT STORES (we say "in stores") and AT A RISK (the "A" was giving me fits, ugh). Also, who cares who founded Investor's Business Daily, what even is that? There are really good O'NEILs in the world! Pick one of them! From stem to stern, this puzzle is just a heap of bad decisions. I love CHRISTMAS! I love toys! I'm sure it's fun to reminisce about toys, but, you know, run a little feature in the Arts section if that's what you want to do. If you want to turn the concept of "Toys through the years..." into a crossword, you need a hook, an actual *puzzle* concept, something ... well, something more than this. 

What else to say? Not much. The biggest "??????" of the day by a long shot was COZY COUPE, which I first heard of ... today. Never ever heard of it. Ever. I get that the wikipedia page told you that COZY COUPE outsold Accords and Tauri in the U.S. but I have to insist that as far as Iconic Toys go, this one isn't anywhere near the others on the list. Also, the phrasing on the clue is bizarre: "Toy that sold more cars ..."???? The toy ... *is* the car. The COZY COUPE is not a car salesman. It's a car. [Toy automobile that outsold etc.], that might work. Anyway, not iconic, bad clue, clue language lifted from wikipedia (so, lazy clue). COZY COUPE is the biggest theme loser of the day. I didn't know what IODATE was, but that's pretty typical for me (98A: A halogen-containing salt). Had "I HOPE" for "I'M DUE" (101A: "My luck has to change at some point"). Balked / winced at the -AED ending of SAMBAED, but I guess you gotta spell it that way (107A: Performed a Latin ballroom dance). I'm gonna stop. Gonna go answer the question "Where are the CATS AT?" (96D: Took care of a tabby, say). Gonna ask Santa for much, much better puzzles this week. Take care. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Peter Gordon's Fireball Newsflash Crosswords will be starting a new season in 2021—twenty crosswords over the course of the year with content taken directly from current events. It's a great way to keep abreast of new, potentially crosswordy names before they go mainstream, and Peter's puzzles are always really professional and polished. Get a subscription for yourself or *give one* as a gift to a crossword-lover you know this holiday season. Go here for more details.

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Scheming sergeant of old TV / SUN 6-14-20 / Pointed arch / Rodriguez who starred in Jane the Virgin / Indescribable religious ideal / Dandy on Downing Street / Ollie's foil in old films / Things proposed by Greek philosopher Democritus / Some toy dolls of 1980s / Gates of Hell sculptor

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:36)

THEME: "Making Arrangements" — Clues are imagined quotations in which one phrase is an anagram of another phrase (said phrases are left blank in the clues and appear in the grid):

Theme answers:

• 23A: Sign at a chemical plant: "This facility is ___—___" (with 114-Across) (CONTAMINATED / NO ADMITTANCE)
• 31A: Question to an English teacher: "Why did Poe write his poem"___"? Answer: "___?" (with 98-Across) ("A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM" / "WHAT AM I, A MIND READER?")
• 45A: We can tell the boss's assistant is a ___ because he always ___ (with 87-Across) (SYCOPHANT / ACTS PHONY)
• 50A: My weight increases when traveling because ___ during ___ (with 84-Across) (VACATION TIME / I AM NOT ACTIVE)
• 64A: Someone who is ___ years old now will be ___ in six years (with 68-Across) (FORTY-FIVE / OVER FIFTY)

Word of the Day: ANNE Moody (30A: Moody who wrote "Coming of Age in Mississippi") —

Anne Moody (September 15, 1940 – February 5, 2015) was an American author who wrote about her experiences growing up poor and black in rural Mississippi, and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement through the NAACP, CORE and SNCC. Moody fought racism and segregation from when she was a little girl in Centreville, Mississippi, and continued throughout her adult life around the American South. [...] In 1969, Coming of Age in Mississippi received the Brotherhood Award from the National Council of Christians and Jews, and the Best Book of the Year Award from the National Library Association. In 1972, Moody worked as an artist-in-residence in Berlin. She went on to work at Cornell and in 1975, released a collection of short stories, titled Mr. Death: Four Stories. One of the stories, New Hope for the Seventies, won the silver award from Mademoiselle magazine. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is substandard work and the only explanation for it is cronyism, or, if you'd rather, the particular inertia of accepting puzzles from the same people (men) year after year after year after year because well they've been published year after year after year after year ... by you ... so there's a precedent ... that you set, but ... you can't argue that the name on the byline is an experienced constructor, largely because you've continued to publish him ... year after year after year. Every time I see his name, I think "oh no" and immediately thereafter I think "no, come on ... maybe this will be the time that the puzzle is at least pretty solid and not groaningly weak and bygone and sad!" And every time, like Charlie Brown trying to kick the damn football, I end up in a disappointed heap on the ground. Let's be clear: there is virtually no concept here. Take any phrase that you can make an anagram out of. *Literally*, any. Any. Doesn't matter. Do the phrases have to have anything to do with each other? No no no, we can just make it *seem* like they do when we write our convoluted and preposterous theme answer clues. Symmetry takes care of itself, since by definition both parts of an anagrammed pair are of equal length. So ... you just need five (!!?!) and bing bam boom, Sunday puzzle, and since you are a veteran (because the editor has published you year after year after year), you get paid literally the most you can be paid for an NYT crossword. Lather, rinse, *********ing repeat. I'm not mad at the constructor. It's the editor that's the problem. The NYTXW needs new leadership, new vision, new energy. 'Cause what we're seeing here, and far too often, is just sad. A puzzle running on former glory, i.e. on fumes. Inevitably good puzzles appear, because good constructors still submit and their puzzles get through. But the NYTXW should be good, or at least *aiming* for good, every time out. This one isn't even trying. "Making Arrangements"? That's your title? May as well have been "It's Random Anagrams, Folks, Take It Or Leave It, I Get Paid Either Way!"


Do I have anything more to say about this puzzle? I really don't think I do. SNEE and ESALEN and LEDTV ... I have those things to say. I liked the Negro Leagues clue on MONARCH (16D: Jackie Robinson, in his only year in the Negro Leagues).

Satchel Paige

ICEFISH is OK (43D: Sit out on a frozen lake, say). But those are more than offset by stuff like NOSERAG (ew!) and ONCD and OGIVE etc. Sgt. BILKO might've enjoyed this one, but not me. Hard pass. Better puzzles (and editors) are out there. I Promise You. XO.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Bob of old children's TV / SAT 2-15-20 / Chanel fragrance with French name / Epoch when modern mammals arose / Benchmark test for British students / Third largest city of Ottoman Empire

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:39 at a leisurely, non-speed pace)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TORTOLA (18A: Largest of the British Virgin Islands) —

Tortola /tɔːrˈtoʊlə/ is the largest and most populated of the British Virgin Islands, a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands.^[2] It has a surface area of 55.7 square kilometres (21.5 square miles) with a total population of 23,908, with 9,400 residents in Road Town. Mount Sage is its highest point at 530 metres (1,740 feet) above sea level.

Although the British Virgin Islands (BVI) are under the British flag, it uses the US dollar as its official currency due to its proximity to and frequent trade with the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The island is home to many offshore companies that do business worldwide. Financial services are a major part of the country's economy.

On 6 September 2017, the British Virgin Islands were extensively damaged by Hurricane Irma. The most severe destruction was on Tortola. News reports over the next day or two described the situation as "devastation". (wikipedia)

• • •

Bob KEESHAN

This puzzle felt like maybe the constructor was reliving the '60s and maybe I really didn't need to know all the details. Like maybe he went AWOL during Vietnam and then met a girl at a diner and they agreed to hook up later at a party ("IT'S A DATE") and then it's all kind of a blur of FREE LOVE and PHONE SEX and lots and lots of HASHEESH and TEA, i.e. smoking cigarettes and watching Captain K-angaroo (Bob KEESHAN!) and honestly don't ask me how SUCK DRY and VEINY SALAMI are involved because I don't want to think about it. This thing felt so conspicuously and deliberately hotted up that when I got to 20D: What are depicted in some blue prints? and had THE SMU- filled in, I knew "blue prints" was a misdirection, but I was certain, *certain*, that that misdirection involved SMUT! If it's "blue" it's gotta be ... THE SMUTTS!? THE SMUTTY!? THE SMUT FX!?" By the way, I do not recommend googling [THE SMURFS smut], as you are (probably?) not going to like what you find. Anyway, despite the high TMI levels in this puzzle, it was probably about as much as I've ever liked a Randolph Ross puzzle, even if it was almost painfully rooted in times of yore. Still, there were too many awkward crosswordy answers and alt-spellings for the puzzle to be truly enjoyable. I felt like I tore through it simply because I'd been doing puzzles for thirty years, i.e. things like SELENE and EOCENE and TAPIR and ACTA and ADE and ESTERS and what not were reflex fills for me. I do enjoy destroying a Saturday puzzle, and the sex and drugs definitely woke me up, but it's still a mixed bag overall, I think.

["... smokin' cigarettes and watching Captain (kang) KAAAANGaroo, now don't tell me ..."]

Watched a character on "Ozark" OD on OPIOIDS last night, so that answer was weirdly fresh (48A: 21st-century health menace). I saw someone online mention that MEASLES fit in that same space, which is depressing (the fact that you might consider MEASLES for this clue, not the fact that it fit). Does Randolph Ross know a guy name "LEV" and is it his birthday because he's getting a lot of leverage out of that letter string today, especially in the SW where it's a LEVfest. Enjoy the FREE LEV, everyone. LEVIES! LEVERETS! ALEVELS! And then later, just when you thought you were LEV'd out: ELEVENTH! Happy birthday, Lev, wherever you are.


I will confess that I had no idea what TORTOLA was and I would've guessed food if you'd just showed me the word. Needed every cross but it didn't matter because that NE corner was so easy. I got in there off of just the -EX in PHONE SEX and took it all down in no time. PELAGE gave me a little more trouble because I really thought that was another word for the sea. The adjective "pelagic" comes to mind. What am I thinking of ... (consults dictionary) ... well, I'm right about "pelagic": "of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea: OCEANIC" (m-w). And PELAGE does indeed mean what the puzzle says it means ("the hairy covering of a mammal"). Weird that those words are etymologically unrelated: PELAGE from Latin via Middle French poil (hair) and "pelagic" ultimately from Greek pelagos (sea). That's all for today, students. See you tomorrow.

[CHRISSIE!]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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16501-16511 / SUN 11-17-19 / 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme sci-fi thriller / Do old printing house job / Norman Lear series star / Noted deco designer / Blake who wrote Memories of You

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Medium (10:07)

THEME: "Report Card" — I don't even know what is happening ... looks like familiar phrases are clued via imagined report card grades:

Theme answers:

• MOTHER SUPERIOR (23A: Parenting: A+)
• BREAKING BAD (35A: Taming wild horses: D-)
• PARKING FINE (49A: Valet skills: B+)
• SCARBOROUGH FAIR (62A: Hosting a morning news show: C+)
• BUCK PASSING (81A: Stuffing tip jars: D)
• WORKING POOR (91A: Employee efficiency: D+)
• BATTING AVERAGE (109A: Baseball skill: C)
• TASTE GREAT (69D: Fashion sense: A)
• SOUNDS GOOD (16D: Stereo quality: B)

Word of the Day: GREER Garson (74D: ___ Garson, Oscar winner for "Mrs. Miniver") —

Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson, CBE (29 September 1904 – 6 April 1996), was a British-American actress popular during the Second World War, being listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top-ten box office draws from 1942 to 1946.

A major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the 1940s, Garson received seven Oscarnominations, including a record-tying five consecutive nominations for acting and all in the Best Actress category (1941–1945), winning the award for Mrs. Miniver (1942). (wikipedia)

• • •

It's not so much that the concept is bad, it's that the cluing is so incredibly convoluted. There's no consistency. I have no idea what the pre-parenthetical part ... is. Is it the imagined "course" that you are getting a grade in? In that case is the idea that you get a SUPERIOR rating in MOTHER...ing?? Or you MOTHER (verb?) SUPERIOR (ly)? Or a MOTHER has been rated SUPERIOR. But a PARKING has not been rated FINE. Someone's skill *at* parking, presumably, is rated FINE. And don't even get me started on the confusing idiocy that is the clue on BUCK PASSING. How does "BUCK," all on its own, convey "Stuffing tip jars???" If the BUCK gets a PASSING grade ... what part of any of that is directly related to "Stuffing tip jars?" Ugh, yes, you might but a (single) BUCK in a tip jar, but nothing about BUCK directly relates to tip jars, and *anyway* you can hardly be said to be "stuffing" a tip jar with a single solitary buck, dear lord, make this awfulness stop. It's such a mess, cluing-wise. And the fill is last-century bad. And this is a veteran who will get paid the top amount (you know they. have a two-tiered pay system where veterans, who are mostly white dudes, get paid more than others, ostensibly because those veterans "require less editing," LOL, no, a lie, URBS, ONEAS, GES, [......... we're sorry, we're experiencing technical difficulties, as our blogger's head has partially exploded at the unfathomable incompetence taking place in plain sight of everyone I mean is it like the White House in there where everyone is afraid to tell the boss he's slipping or whaaaaaat!? Anyway ............ please stand by]

OK cool, I'm back. ARIE is awful RELEE is awwwwwwwwwwful on every single level, GTE LIEINIT ETSEQ crossing ESQ ONUP ONEAS omg don't get me started on NOTUS, which had me flummoxed—getting that was the exact opposite of an aha moment. An f.u. moment. Take the UBERS through the URBS, TRUDI! You know what? FIRETRAP! (58D: Dangerous structure) Ironically, the only thing about the puzzle that I liked is a literally badly built thing. What a world.


Five things:

• 48D: Luxury car pioneer Henry (ROYCE) — had the "RO-," wrote in ROLLS :/
• 76D: Solomonlike (JUST) — ugh. He's wise. That's his thing. "Wise as Solomon." It's a saying. Here it is, under "Idioms" at thefreedictionary.com. Four letters. Wise. This answer JUST blows.
• 100A: Growing room (ACRE) — still not getting this. Is an ACRE a "room" (as in "space") for growing ... crops? At all. This puzzle's idea of cleverness or wordplay or whatever, oof, you can have it
• 31D: Actress Samantha (EGGAR) — she has no iconic roles. Very much a real actress, but also very much crosswordese. Also, I get her confused with ... what was the name of the "Charles in Charge" / "Baywatch" actress? ... ahhhh, Nicole EGGERT. You all are *welcome* for this public service. 
• 103A: 16501-16511 (ERIE, PA) — my nominee for absolute worst clue/answer combo of the year. Like, the Jordan/Pippin, Shaq/Kobe of awful clue/answers. Completely inscrutable numbers that literally no one outside of NW Pennsylvania will recognize (the clue = zip codes, in case that wasn't clear), and then the answer: classic stale city/state abbr. pairing. You never ever see, say, ENIDOK or RENONV or WACOTX, but omg ERIEPA ... The worst. Worst. Worst of the worst. Museum-quality junk.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. 27A: Number of people in an office? (DENTIST) ... "Number" = "One who numbs"; such fun

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Outdated postal abbr / THU 10-17-19 / Grimalkin / Rowdy concertgoer maybe / Big name in small planes / Cybermemo / 1980s Pontiac sports car

WARNING / ALERT / IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you are solving in the newspaper, then your puzzle is different from everyone else's. Please go back in time and enjoy the write-up I did for your puzzle LAST MONTH, thank you. (Everyone who downloads the puzzle or solves in the app, keep reading)

***

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: untimed, on paper, but I'm gonna say "Easy-Medium"

THEME: joined at the hip — clues are ALLCAPS words or names that have something in common and have been run together, overlapping at last letter of first word and first letter of last word. Each word; these clues visually represent familiar two-word phrases where the first word means (roughly) "joined" and the second word is whatever kind of thing the clue words are. So:

Theme answers:

• SPLICED GENES (20A: WILDERAYBURN) (Gene WILDER + Gene RAYBURN (an old talk show host))
• ATTACHED HOUSES (22: HACIENDADOBE) (can a hacienda not be made out of adobe? These "houses" don't seem distinct enough from one another)
• COMBINED FORCES (43A: MILITIARMY) (militia + army)
• UNITED STATES (48A: UTAHAWAII) (state of Utah, state of Hawaii)

Word of the Day: MARLENA (27A: "Days of Our Lives" role for more than four decades) —

Marlena Evans is a fictional character on the NBC daytime drama, Days of Our Lives, a long-running serial about working life in the fictional town of Salem. She has been played by actress Deidre Hall since 1976, but the character was absent from the show from 1987 to March 1991 and again from January 2009 to September 2011. Marlena was created by scriptwriter Pat Falken Smith and executive producer Betty Corday, and has become one of Days of our Lives' most well-known characters. Hall made her debut on the soap on June 21, 1976, currently making her the second longest running actress on the serial, surpassed only by Suzanne Rogers (Maggie). (wikipedia)

• • •

ALAN HALE

An interesting theme completely wrecked by atrocious fill. The theme concept here isn't bad—kind of obvious, but clever in its way. But I feel like I could've guessed most of them without any help, or with little help, from the crosses (the only one I had issues with was COMBINED FORCES, as I wanted a lot of other different first words like JOINED or UNITED or ALLIED or something ... COMBINED actually took a bit). The themers were not tricky. Once you get the gist of the theme, there it is, you see it, cute, great. Now you've got to fill in the rest of the grid, and oof. Ouch. Yipes. I have "ugh" "no" and "ouch" written alllll over my puzzle print-out. Let's start with the name parade in the NE—so much real estate on old TV actor a physicist a soap role (?????) and GAL GADOT (whose name I can never spell (I'm always Waiting for Gal GODOT), but that's on me). And that little corner in the NE, why ... just why? Why the terrible ONTV (16A: Where "Star Trek" and "Mission: Impossible!" originated) and more terrible KTS (12D: Gold standards: Abbr.)? You can do annnnnnything up there, and you do that? Astonishingly poor judgment. And then, let's take a look around, shall we? It won't be pleasant, but here we go: AFUSS. Sigh. Lord. Come on. A terrible partial? Crossing an old ("old" is a theme today) Pontiac model (29D: 1980s Pontiac sports car)? Next to the woeful UNARM (it will always be "disarm" and only "disarm"). And then ENOTE? ENOTE!? Stop, [Cybermemo]!?!? Ugh. Only someone who thinks "COSMIC!" is an actual exclamation could like this fill, my goodness (42D: "Far out, man!"). And then D'ESTE!? Not ESTE, which is common/irksome enough, but D'ESTE!? And RFD, which I know only from old (there's that word again) TV, i.e. "Mayberry R.F.D."? It's all so rough. So Rough. Oh well, I liked LEADFOOT (37A: Highway speedster) and QUARTETS, and there *is* a nice shout-out to yesterday's puzzle (34D: Like the worst dad joke = CORNIEST).


Five things:

• 3D: Ticket category (ADULT) — I got PAYS then PLACID then ran the Downs coming off of PLACID and got them all right ... except this one. I wrote in AISLE.
• 34A: Grimalkin (CRONE) — Grim what now? If I've seen this word before, I forgot it ("this word" = "grimalkin" — I *have* heard of CRONE!). Cool word. Storing it away.
• 54A: Locker room shower? (ESPN) — old cluing trick, where "shower" means "entity that shows something" (as opposed to "descending moisture") (P.S. congrats to the Washington Nationals on their first trip to the World Series—I assume their locker room was showered with champagne after Game 4 of the NLCS)
• 7A: Deg. for an animator (BFA) — kinda hate "degree" clues because who knows? I always have to leave the first square blank on this one, as it could easily be MFA (the deg. I'm actually more familiar with). 
• 58A: K'ung Fu ___ (Confucius) (TSE) — really enjoying* the "anagrams of EST" mini theme going on there at the bottom of the grid: quartETS over SET over TSE (crossing D'ESTE!). Really... something (*not actually enjoying)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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