English war poet Gurney / SUN 6-23-13 / 1942 Cary Grant comedy / Musical duo Brooks & ___ / Comic strip about the Patterson family / Procter & Gamble soap / Pulitzer-winning composer Ned / Krakauer's "___ the Wild" / Tech-media Web site founded in 1994 / Playwright O'Casey / Where Arab Bank is headquartered / Home of Hannibal / Unalaska native

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Two-By-Fours — Rebus puzzle consisting of phrases where the same two-letter pair appears in four squares in each phrase.

Word of the Day: CAMAY (32D: Procter & Gamble soap) —

Camay is the name of a scented hand and body soap, made by Procter & Gamble. It was first introduced in 1926 and marketed as a "white, pure soap for women," as many soaps of the time were colored to mask impurities. Camay's slogan for many years was "Camay: the soap for beautiful women." It was later replaced with "For your most beautiful complexion at every age."

For many years, Camay was a major sponsor of the soap operas As The World Turns and Search for Tomorrow. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Hello, CrossWorld. Evan Birnholz here filling in for Rex while he's away during the Mass Crossword Blogger Exodus of 2013. Seriously, it's weird how many of the best known puzzle bloggers are all vacationing at the same time. Must be something in the water. I mean, puzzle....er, I mean, water. Whatever the reason, I'm glad I got to fill in today, because I got a real good one on my plate.

In a word, this puzzle is astonishing. Consider first how Patrick Berry had to choose eight in-the-language theme answers that A) have the same two-letter string repeated exactly four times and B) fit symmetrically with each other when those strings are jammed into one square. Then, consider just how much real estate went into crossing those rebus squares with common words and phrases (32 rebus squares altogether, which is huge for a Sunday, and 30 non-theme answers cross them). That means that with the eight theme answers, 38 of 140 entries in the puzzle (27% of all the answers) are directly involved in making the theme fit together. Now, take all of those constraints and look at the grid again. To be able to do all of that with an absolute minimum of poor fill is really impressive. The worst offenders might be the geographical partial MOINES (27A: Des ___, Iowa), the I-can't-believe-that's-spelled-correctly NOES (78A: "Regrets" and others), and the long abbreviation PARENS (90A: Holders of addl. thoughts), but that's really it. Just about everything else is rock-solid. I didn't know CAMAY, but I got all of the crosses with no problem. Quite an enjoyable solve all-around.

Theme answers:

• 4D: 1942 Cary Grant comedy (ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON) — Not one I've ever seen, but I'm a huge fan of another Cary Grant comedy, "Arsenic and Old Lace" from 1944.
• 15D: Elocution phrase (HOW NOW, BROWN COW)
• 22A: Comic strip about the Patterson family (FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE)
• 45A: #1 on the American Film Institute's "Greatest Movie Musicals" list (SINGIN' IN THE RAIN) — My first thought before I caught onto the rebus: MOULIN ROUGE. What a terrible choice for #1 if that had been the right answer.
• 47D: Initiates a conflict (CASTS THE FIRST STONE) — Great answer. This is the only theme entry where one of the letter pairs spans two words (at the end of CASTS and the beginning of THE), whereas the rest are contained within one word.
• 61D: Classic name in crossword puzzles (MARGARET FARRAR) — I suspect this one will be the toughest for casual solvers. Farrar was the first editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, serving in that capacity from 1942 to 1969. In fact, she came up with many of the common crossword conventions that you see today -- the grid must be symmetrical when you rotate it 180 degrees, no two-letter words, etc. Crossword enthusiasts may very well have heard of Farrar, but since she's not exactly a household name outside of the puzzle world, it would not shock me if her name is a complete mystery for many others. Thankfully the crosses are all gettable.
  
• 73A: German-born Emmy winner of 1960s TV (WERNER KLEMPERER) — Notable for playing Colonel Klink in "Hogan's Heroes." His appearance as Homer's conscience in "The Simpsons" is a great moment in one of my all-time favorite episodes.
• 94A: Various things (THIS, THAT, AND THE OTHER)

Hmmm, a 1940s movie, a 1950s movie, a character from a 1960s TV show, a crossword editor from the 1940s-1960s, a comic strip that began in the 1970s.....did you get a distinct old-timey flavor to this puzzle? I certainly did. It's not really a problem -- just, I dunno, kinda funny. One of the very few modern clue/entry combos shows up right at the top with 1D: Cool, in hip-hop slang (DEF), almost like the puzzle is teasing us young'uns from the get-go with the hip, "cool" talk before diving into the trivia from yesteryear.

The only downside to the puzzle (if you can even call it that) is that, owing to the constraints of the theme, you won't find many entries that really pop beyond the theme answers. STORM DRAIN (8D: What a gutter may lead to) is very nice and crosses two different rebus strings to boot. MOUSSAKA (74D: Eggplant casserole) is a fun word too. I'm a big fan of the clues for JAB (3D: Hardly a slow poke), PIECES (77A: Breaking developments?) and MERGER (83A: Company of two?). No other filler answer made me say "wow," but again, to produce a theme-rich puzzle like this with as many constraints that it has and get a clean grid at the same time is no small feat. Patrick is one of the best constructors in the business for a reason and this puzzle is a good example of that.

This was one of those rebuses (rebi?) where it seems pretty difficult at the beginning but becomes much easier once you recognize the gimmick -- but just getting there is tough enough as it is. Before I knew the rebus element was in play, plenty of wrong answers looked appealing at first glance. 48A: John at a piano (ELTON) could be TESH (he of the "NBA on NBC" theme song). 68D: Green ___ (BERETS) could be BEANS. 72A: Gas in a vacuum tube (ARGON) could be NEON. 59A: Toot one's own horn (BOAST) could be BRAG. 103A: Horrorful (SCARY) could be ICKY (well, probably not, but it's only four squares long and I didn't think there was a special trick to the puzzle when I wrote it down....and by the way, is "horrorful" even a word?). Anyway, those latter two mistakes caused some real trouble for me because the B of BRAG and the C of ICKY were both correct, so I hesitated to erase them until it became obvious that they were crossing rebus squares. Once I figured out the trick, I really got rolling and actually finished in my normal range for a Sunday. Amazingly, I had my a-ha moment with the theme answer least likely to tip me off: MARGARET FARRAR, when I realized that 76A: Untrustworthy sort had to be LIAR. It helped that I made a lucky guess on BERETS just from the B and S alone -- I just thought there might be a rebus square in between, and I couldn't remember WERNER KLEMPERER's first name.

Bullets:

• 18A & 19A: Rescue mission, briefly / Get off the highway (EVAC / EXIT) — A bit fortuitous that these two ended up next to one another.
• 30D: One of the authors in the game Authors (ALCOTT) — Remember when I said this puzzle felt a little old-timey? Here's Exhibit A of that. Not the answer.....the clue. Authors is not a card game I've ever heard of, but it supposedly dates back to the mid-to-late 19th century.
• 44A: "What nonsense!" (POOH) — More old-timey goodness. Bosh! What poppycock and balderdash, you nefarious slubberdegullion! A.A. Milne's bear isn't exactly young himself, but people of all ages at least know about him. I'm yet to hear anyone say POOH in this clue's context, though.
• 45D: Old Nick (SATAN) — Okay, who else thought it was gonna be SANTA? The right answer isn't far off, letter-wise anyway.
• 47D: Tech media Web site founded in 1994 (CNET) — I don't understand why "Web" is capitalized. And is it kosher that the clue uses the word "founded" when FOUNDING (24D: Setting up) is already in the grid?
• 67D: Socialite's party (BALL) — I originally misread the clue as [Socialist's party].
• 69D: Like some stores of years gone by (TEN-CENT) — Embrace the old-timeyness!
• 74D: Eggplant casserole (MOUSSAKA) — I don't think I've ever eaten it, but I know that one of the earliest memories I have of this word is from this scene in the animated Disney film "Hercules."
• 87A & 5D: Palmed off / Besieger's bomb (FOISTED / PETARD) — If you change that F in 87D: Volume control on a soundboard (FADER) to an H, you'd get Saturday Night Live's Bill HADER. That would turn FOISTED into HOISTED, which would make for a nice pairing for the phrase "hoisted upon with one's own PETARD."
• 100A: Unalaska native (ALEUT) — I see what you did there, The New York Times. Putting that Un- in there at the beginning, trying to throw me off the scent by making me think it was some playful term for someone who is not from Alaska when, in fact, that person is from Alaska, because Unalaska is a real city there. Your tricks won't work with me, Times puzzle. I'll play your game, you rogue.....and I'll win.

Signed, EVAN Birnholz, Earl of CrossWorld

Update: Questinia makes a good point in the comment section that GURNEY (50A: Patient mover) appears in the clues as well, at 2D: English war poet Gurney (IVOR). I missed that entirely, but it's a fair criticism.

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Greek war goddess, Puccini piece, Adriatic resort, Actress Eleniak

Constructor: Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: easy-medium-to-impossible, or, how quick do you catch on to rebuses?

THEME: "Condensation" — Seven pairs of crossing entries share a square that uses a dual interpretation of "WATER." In one direction, the word WATER is condensed into the square. In the other direction, the chemical notation for water is used (HHO, or, as it more commonly gets expressed, H₂O).

Word of the Day: TARTINE (89D Open-faced sandwich topped with a fancy spread) — An open sandwich, also known as an open face/faced sandwich, Ulrich Sandwich, bread baser, or tartine, consists of a single slice of bread with one or more food items on top. (per wiki)

• • •

The ACPT is through the first day of preliminary puzzles. This is treedweller, filling in while our regular host vies for all the glory. After six puzzles, Rex Parker is in 41st place overall, 16th in the B division. He is separated from the B Finals by 325 points. That's kind of a lot, but this morning's round is traditionally a Sunday-sized puzzle with more points available, so maybe a comeback is still possible. You can do it, Rex!

I first got an inkling of the rebus at MOUTH HOLE, but no combination of letters seemed to belong together as a subset. I knew there was a HO here and HO there, but still couldn't make my guesses match the required number of letters/boxes. I finally caught the twist at BATTLE OF WATERLOO and filled things in pretty steadily after that. Final letter was the N of TARTINE/ENYO. I couldn't see a better guess, but got the "All squares filled" message instead of "Successful completion." I finally decided to admit defeat, asked for the solution, and saw that I'd only missed the rebus squares. Feel free to click on the link for the Wordplay blog's instructions on entering these answers properly, and if you found the magic combo of letters that gives Across Lite or the standalone ipad app satisfaction, please let us know in the comments.

Theme answers:

• 1D Refuse to hand over WITHHOLD
• 27A Subject of big 1970s headlines WATERGATE SCANDAL
• 16D Ski mask feature MOUTHHOLE
• 35A The second African-American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Oscar ETHEL WATERS
• 14D Last possible moment ELEVENTH HOUR
• 50A Seltzer CARBONATED WATER
• 51D Where people are always changing? BATHHOUSE
• 67A Best Picture inspired by a Pulitzer-winning series of newspaper articles ON THE WATERFRONT
• 68D What an optimist has HIGH HOPES
  Sinatra's classic song High hopes by tb139
  
• 85A Necklace decoration that's not from the sea FRESHWATER PEARL
• 80D "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" song HEIGH HO
•  102A Coastal structures countering erosion BREAKWATERS
• 84D Prominent features of the theme from "StarWars" FRENCH HORNS ---Not sure I like this. I don't really hear FRENCH HORNS as much as trumpets and synthesizers.
  
• 109A Historic event on June 18, 1815 BATTLE OF WATERLOO  

 Occasionally, someone new will find out I solve the NYT puzzle and ask why I like it. I get the biggest reactions when I talk about how I enjoy rebuses. To the uninitiated, it is appalling and unthinkable that sometimes you might need to enter more than one letter in a single square. But for me, and I think a lot of us, these are the days to look forward to. Having the double representation of water is a nice bonus. But, if tradition holds, the times people record on the applet will skew longer than usual. In fact, I just noticed the "puzzle info" in the ipad app calls it "nearly impossible." As a fan of the genre, I thought there were plenty of very gettable theme answers to alert us to the trick and allow the breakthrough for a fairly easy solve. This may just be the luckiest weekend of my life and all my first guesses turned out to be right. Anyway, my difficulty meter seems to be out of calibration recently. Go with what feels good to you.

I often find Sundays exhaust my interest before I get to the end, but this one came alive once I saw the rebus and I was a little surprised when I finished.

Bullets:

• 4D Software for touch-up artists PHOTOSHOP — I was trying to get off the whole product placement thing, but this is two Adobe products in two days. It did get us WATERGATE, a currently impossible-in-the-real-world HOLY SEE and somewhat related TRIPTYCHS. You call this one.
• 1A Direct descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims, e.g. WASP — As in, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Not necessarily the 80s' metal band, W.A.S.P.
• 49D N.Y.U. athlete VIOLET — My worldly wisdom does not extend this far. I was highly skeptical that a school's mascot would be the girl who turned into a giant blueberry in Willie Wonka's factory. Turns out, it's just the color. The mascot is a bobcat.
• 97A Unilever soap brand LUX — [sigh.] I give up.

As always, I have been honored to take the reins here for a while, but I gotta tell ya, it's exhausting. Every day another freaking puzzle! If you enjoy reading Rex's commentary day in and day out, consider clicking the Donate button to the right of your screen. Believe me, he earns it.

I leave you with what is still my favorite ACPT video:


Signed, treedweller, on behalf of
Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Member 1990s pop quintet / THU 5-19-11 / Brinded cat hath mewed Macbeth / Beverage Luau flavor / Queen in Shelley's poetry / White House pair in 60s

Constructor: Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: CRUSHED [ICE] (66A: Drink cooler ... or a hint to six squares in this puzzle's answer?) [that phrasing can't be right ...] — an ICE rebus, with six ICE squares


Word of the Day: BONAIRE (5D: Neighbor of Aruba) —

Bonaire ([...] Dutch: Bonaire, Papiamentu: Boneiru) is a special municipality (officially "public body") of the Netherlands, consisting of the Caribbean island of Bonaire and, nestled in its western crescent, the uninhabited islet of Klein Bonaire. Together with Aruba and Curaçao it forms a group referred to as the ABC islands of the Leeward Antilles, the southern island chain of the Lesser Antilles. The name Bonaire is thought to have originally come from the Caiquetio word 'Bonay'. The early Spanish and Dutch modified its spelling to Bojnaj and also Bonaire, which means "Good Air". (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty straightforward rebus. Lots of ICE. OK.

Two tricky parts for me. The entire PUBLICENEMY section, since there is nothing in the clue or in the cross-referenced clue to indicate what you're after (weird to do that with a long, rebus-containing answer). My struggle is at least somewhat ironical, as I was listening to PUBLICENEMY earlier this evening. Anyway, GROH (52D: Actor David of "Rhoda") and HANNAH (31D: Mrs. Van Buren) were proper nouns that were well and truly off my radar (though GROH rings a very faint crossword bell). Only other real hold-up came at the ELECTRICEYES / PRICE crossing. Neither clue was helping me at all. Finally just stuck a rebus square in there, which jogged my memory about the meaning of "C.P.I." (Consumer PRICE Index).



The ICE theme has been done before (ICE-containing words, incl. ATOMICENERGY and PUBLICENEMY, in an LAT puzzle a few years back), but not in rebus form (not that I could find, anyway). Seems a fine puzzle overall—unremarkable as rebuses go, but still entertaining, in its way.

Theme answers:

• 3D: They're not laid in a cage (ORGANICEGGS) / 27A: Member of a 1990s pop quintet (SPICEGIRL)
  
• 21A: Nuclear power (ATOMICENERGY) / 8D: Black-and-white (POLICECAR)
  
• 41A: Canine command (SIC'EM) / 34D: Touch-and-go (DICEY)
  
• 36D: See 35-Across [i.e. Any member of 36-Down=>RAPPER](PUBLICENEMY) / 58A: "___ the brinded cat hath mew'd": "Macbeth" (THRICE) // — for the record, there are members of PUBLIC ENEMY who are not RAPPERs, so the RAPPER clue is wrong. Terminator X, for instance, was a DJ (not the same thing — for the distinction, see, for instance, the D.J. Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince album, "He's the D.J., I'm the RAPPER"). FYI, "Terminator X quit the hip-hop scene in 2003 and has been running an ostrich stud farm in North Carolina" (wikipedia), though he appears to be releasing some kind of comeback album in '11.

• 59A: Photocells (ELECTRICEYES) / 50D: Part of C.P.I. (PRICE)
  
• 66A: CRUSHED ICE / 64D: Fine point (NICETY)
  

Bullets:

• 23A: Beverage that once offered a Luau flavor (NEHI) — my first and only guess for a flavored beverage in four letters.
  
• 48A: Dribble guard (BIB) — briefly thought this was a basketball clue.
  
• 51A: White House pair in the 1960s (BEAGLES) — took me way longer than it should have. Really wanted people, and even though B-names didn't fit any president from that decade, I still didn't tumble to Johnson's BEAGLES til quite late.
  
• 18D: Compressed video file format (MPEG) — Had MP-, nearly went MP3s (thinking some kind of number rebus...), but the "video file" part of the clue stopped me and I adjusted.
  
• 42A: Queen in Shelley's poetry (MAB) — took an entire Romantic Poetry class in college. Don't remember whatever poem this is at all. Know Queen MAB from Shakespeare.
  
• 55D: Messing on the screen (DEBRA) — of "Will & Grace" and nothing else that I know of.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

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Ships whose rudders don't touch water — THURSDAY, Jul. 16 2009— Destination of Saul / Container for folding scissors / Singer of Wagner aria Liebestod

Constructor: Elizabeth C. Gorski

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: IT ADDS UP (33D: Possible title for this puzzle) — anagrammatic equations: ELEVEN [PLUS] TWO (17A) and TWELVE [PLUS] ONE (57A) are ANAGRAMs (35A) that both total THIRTEEN (12D). The [PLUS] in both equations is entered as a rebus square (with whole word "PLUS" or "+" symbol going into a single square)

Word of the Day: TILSIT (2D: Swiss cheese) — Tilsit cheese or Tilsiter cheese is a light yellow semi-hard cheese, created in the mid-19th century by Prussian-Swiss settlers, the Westphal family, from the Emmental valley. The original buildings from the cheese plant still exist in Sovetsk, Russia, formerly Tilsit on the Neman River in East Prussia. (wikipedia)

Found this one very painful to solve. When I look at a clue like 17A: 35-Across of 57-Across that equals 12-Down, my eyes glaze over and I stop caring much about the puzzle. It's one (not so great) thing to be referred all over the grid in a puzzle theme, it's another to have the resulting clue be such an inelegant, clunky, almost unreadable disaster. Is it "13" day? Couldn't this have run on some day having to do with "13?" That would have given it at least some significance, some raison d'etre. I love Gorski puzzles, usually, and I love the spirit of this one, with her typical exciting use of multiple thematic elements, e.g. the equations, the anagrams, the rebus squares. But the process of filling it all in was a huge drag, and since the underlying basis for the puzzle is just an odd coincidence of math and language ... I felt the struggle unworth it. Hate having that "so what" feeling? at the end.

My time today was nearly twice my normal Thursday time. This is partly because I gave up mentally at the clue to 17A, and partly because I made Huge errors in the NW at first. Started easily enough with A DEEP (1D: "Take _____ breath") and PITT (22A: The Big East's Panthers, for short), but then wrote in "I'M LATE" for 3D: Cry just before a rabbit appears? Did she hear the cry before she saw the White Rabbit? I couldn't remember, but that was my justification for going the "Alice in Wonderland" route. Appropriate, since it caused me to fall down a hole that I had a hard time getting back out of. Compounded problems up there by going with EONS instead of AGES (5D: So, so long). Never having heard of TILSIT, I floundered muchly.



Non-theme fill was trouble throughout. Not one of the more smoothly filled grids I've seen from Ms. Gorski. Heavier on the crosswordese and abbrevs. than I would have expected (I tripped on CWTS, 54D: 100-lb. units, entering KWTS, which gave me the almost correct-looking DAMASKUS at 53A: Destination of Saul when he had his conversion, in the Bible). Many opportunities for me to screw up: OAST for OVEN (23D: Brickmaking need) and CASELOAD for CASEFILE (11D: Detective's work record) were among the more notable stumbles. I think my favorite thing about his puzzle is the answer "B + AVERAGE. Great use of the rebus square in a long, uncommon answer. Otherwise, fill is kind of blah and theme, while technically impressive, was not much pleasure to work out.

Bullets:

• 7A: Commercial prefix with vision (Uni-) — no idea what this is. Had this experience a few times today, most notably with ...
• 29A: French novelist Robert _____, upon whose work the 1973 thriller "The Day of the Dolphin" is based (Merle) — Thanks. That 1973 thriller I've never heard of really helps. MERLE Haggard would be rolling in his grave if he were dead. Norman and Oberon too.

• 14A: Ships whose rudders don't touch water (dirigibles) — OK, that's good fill. No idea they had "rudders."
• 19A: Bobsled challenges (esses) — embarrassingly long time spent figuring out what E-word this could possibly be.
• 39A: Container for folding scissors (etui) — speaking of E-words, this one is spearheading the crosswordese revival today. ASTI, APSE, and ELEA want their pensions! Clue on APSE, 61A: Half-dome construction, was a toughie. Had me thinking of Yosemite.
• 8D: Red-spotted _____ (newt) — wanted TIT. Considered trying TEAT.
• 9D: Singer of the Wagner aria "Liebestod" (Isolde) — a common enough crossword name, but I still needed many crosses to get it.
• 36D: Britain's Royal _____ Club, for plane enthusiasts (Aero) — lot of this hard clue dress-up going on with the common fill today, which is at least more interesting than run-of-the-mill clues, e.g. [Plane prefix].
• 46D: Puzzled (non [PLUS] ed) — got it quickly — the whole SE was oddly easy compared to the rest of the grid — but really thought there was another "S" in there. NONPLUSSED? No, that looks wrong too. No wonder I don't use this word.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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THURSDAY, Jul. 2 2009 — Pittsburgh-born poet who was subject Picasso portrait / Subject of 1999 best seller Dutch / Tangy teatime treats

Constructor: Elizabeth C. Gorski

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "{ROSE} IS A {ROSE} IS A {ROSE} IS A {ROSE}" (34A) — famous quotation by GERTRUDE STEIN (20A) that suggests a FLORAL DISPLAY (50A). Quotation expressed as a rebus, with "ROSE" written into a single square four times.

Word of the Day: ASIR (60A: Province of Saudi Arabia) — ʿAsīr (Arabic: عسير‎) is a province of Saudi Arabia located in the southwest of the country. It has an area of 81,000 km² and an estimated population of 1,563,000. It shares a short border with Yemen. Its capital is Abha. (wikipedia) [I don't think I've seen a place name written with an initial apostrophe before...]

A lovely little puzzle, though FLORAL DISPLAY seems kind of arbitrary as a theme answer. Plus, ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE suggests one flower, or one person stuttering while trying to ask a question about said flower. In fact, the bottom of the puzzle seems manifestly weaker in every way than the middle and top. The S and SW were toughest for me, with the MARCI / DSCS crossing being a near killer (59A: "_____ X" (2003 Lisa Kudrow film) / 53D: Mil. awards). I love Lisa Kudrow, but I somehow Completely missed "MARCI X," and as for DSC ... it feels like there are a million "mil. awards" out there, several beginning with "D" (DBE, e.g., lmnop, etc.). I figured MARCI was better than MARDI and DSC was probably Distinguished Service Cross. Am I right? [... looking it up ...] Yes! Woo hoo! U!S!A, U!S!A! In the SW ... SAK? (55D: Bag, in brand names) Really? OK. Last letter into the grid was the "S" in PSI / SENT. I am having trouble seeing the non-awkward way in which [Let fly] means SENT. Didn't know PSI (38D: Wave function symbol in physics), but the only alternative was PHI and ... HENT? No.

Theme answers:

• 20A: Pittsburgh-born poet who was the subject of a Picasso portrait (Gertrude Stein)
• 34A: Famous quote by 20-Across ("ROSE is a ROSE is a ROSE is a ROSE")
• 50A: Colorful decoration hinted at by 34-Across (floral display)

Other rebused answers:

• 34D: Snow White's sister (ROSE Red)
• 27D: Gloomy (mo ROSE)
• 37D: Was revolting (ROSE up)
• 24D: Writer Bierce (Amb ROSE)

Quotation is from Stein's poem "Sacred Emily." Context:

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
Loveliness extreme.
Extra gaiters,
Loveliness extreme.
Sweetest ice-cream.
Pages ages page ages page ages.

Bullets:

• 5A: Flower in Chinese embroidery (lotus) — don't know much about Chinese embroidery, but I know Buddha sits on a LOTUS sometimes, so it's a flower I associate with Asia generally.
• 10A: Year the Chinese poet Li Po was born (DCCI) — I think this clue is recycled. Weird. Is this now the standard clue for 701?
• 18A: Tangy teatime treats (lemon tarts) — my mom used to make these things called "Lucy Lemon Squares" that were amazing. Thin, with lemon filling on some kind of shortbready crust with powdered sugar on top. I always thought they were named after Lucy from "Peanuts," who was probably the only Lucy I knew at the time.
• 39A: Who wrote "Can one be a saint if God does not exist?" (Camus) — yeah, that sounds like him. It's quotation day!
• 55A: Carrie Bradshaw had one in "Sex in the City" (shoe fetish) — I'm sure I'm violating some New York code by saying I could never stand this show. This answer, however, is fabulous.
• 9D: Twisted this clue's is (syntax) — HA ha. Yoda.
• 21D: Subject of the 1999 best seller "Dutch" (Reagan) — super controversial, as it's essentially written as a novel and therefore messes with all kinds of assumptions about objectivity and truthfulness. I never got all the way through it, but I'm a notoriously lazy reader.
• 43D: Tails partner (top hat) — wrote in TUXEDO.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS lots of entries rolled in yesterday for the contest I'm holding at my other website, "Pop Sensation." Still a full day left to enter. Check it out.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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