Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Technological debuts of 1998

Constructor: Kelsey Blakley

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Odd One Out" — Note reads: "Every letter in the answer to each asterisked clue appears an even number of times in that answer ... except one. Altogether, these eight unpaired letters can be arranged to spell the answer to 68- and 70-Across." What the unpaired letters spell: NUTS OVER (68A: With 70-Across, some people are _____ crosswords)

Word of the Day: CRINOID (25D: Sea lily, e.g.) — n.

Any of various echinoderms of the class Crinoidea, including the sea lilies and feather stars, that are characterized by a cup-shaped body, feathery radiating arms, and either a stalk or clawlike structure with which they are able to attach to a surface.

adj.

Of or belonging to the Crinoidea.

[From New Latin Crinoīdea, class name : Greek krinon, lily + Greek -oeidēs, -oid.] (answers.com)

A puzzle with very little payoff for how complicated it must have been to construct. I generally don't read "Notes" attached to puzzles, and today was no exception. Turns out, reading the "Note" would have helped me little, if at all. I simply thought the the central answer NUTS OVER was contrived and pandering and awfully forced. So I find out, in the end, after reading the "Note," that there was an architectural reason for the phrase. Doesn't make me like it any better. This is one of those puzzles that you can appreciate for its construction intricacies after it's done, but while you're solving ... you've got nothing. Nothing good, anyway. What you do have: ENTICER, AMUSER, AIRER, and DESIRERS. You also have a Near-Natick crossing in (the horrible, apparently variantly spelled) EDRED (60A: King of England, 946-55) and ADRIANO (56D: Italian Renaissance composer Banchieri). I studied medieval England in grad school and still struggled to come up with EDRED. His most notable achievement appears to be that he was the grandfather of Alfred the Great, the most important king of the Anglo-Saxon period. Also, the spelling EADRED appears to be preferred. EADRED gets fewer Google hits, but I think that's because EDRED appears to be a name some people (Scandinavians?) still have.

Theme answers:

46D: *Real work (strenuous effort) [unpaired "N"]
102A: *Deficits (insufficiencies) [unpaired "U"]
23A: *Religious affiliation of John Adams and William Howard Taft (Unitarian Church) [unpaired "T"] — "CHURCH" felt weird to me here, so much so that I left it off until I confirmed it through crosses.
86A: *Hides out (goes underground) [unpaired "S"]
116A: *Ragged (tattered and torn) [unpaired "O"]
3D: *Not firm work? (private practice) [unpaired "V"] - great clue
33A: *You raise your arms for these (anti-perspirants) [unpaired "E"] — cute clue
46A: *Physician's promise (Hippocratic oath) [unpaired "R"]

Had a rare double "Didn't I just ...?" moment today when first BAUM (5A: Creator of Princess Ozma) and then TERENCE (54D: Ancient playwright who originated the phrase "While there's life, there's hope") showed up in the grid again, just one day after their last appearances. The "Ozma" clue has been used before, and this time the "OZ" part tipped me to the answer. I had to struggle to get a number of answers — not just the aforementioned EDRED and ADRIANO, but ALONSO (24D: Explorer _____ Alvarez de Pineda, first European to see the Mississippi), "LILI" (30D: "_____ Marlene" (W.W. II love song)), "ORR'S" (18A: "The Pearl of _____ Island" (Stowe novel)), and LEX (39A: Big Apple subway line, with "the"), which I guess is inferrable via LEXington Ave. I'm going with the LEX Luthor clue every time, but that's just me. Also had no idea about CRINOID (25D: Sea lily, e.g.). Otherwise, I thought the puzzle very doable.

Bullets:

13A: State below Lower Saxony (Hesse) - hardly a gimme, but the Downs were all so familiar that by the time I got a look at the clue, I knew exactly what the answer was.
20A: Technological debuts of 1998 (iMacs) - a standard clue for this common answer
32A: Manilla pact grp., 1954 (SEATO) - doing a lot of crosswords means getting familiar with, and thus pretty good at guessing, common acronyms.
35D: 1967 #1 hit whose lyrics begin "What you want / Baby, I got it" ("R-E-S-P-E-C-T")

65A: Montana Indians (Crees) - not a huge fan of the unnecessarily s-pluralized tribe names, and today we get two. See also PONCAS (34D: Plains Indians). For reasons I don't understand, APACHES is an s-plural that seems just fine to me. It may be alone in that respect.
113A: _____ White, one of the girls in "Dreamgirls" (Effie) - also Sam's secretary in "The Maltese Falcon." A great character that the movie gets All Wrong.
123A: Impressionist Degas (Edgar) - a clear gimme, but one I needed to get that SW corner to move. I had ---DEFICIENCIES in the theme answer for a bit, and nothing in that little corner was budging at all 'til I saw good ol' EDGAR.
11A: Refuser of a 1964 Nobel Prize (Sartre) - A "refuser" to go with all the other Odd Jobs in the puzzle.
14D: Swab's target (ear wax) - great, if gross, answer
15D: Nubian Desert locale (Sudan) - flat-out guess, with no crosses. Woo hoo!
75D: Supermodel Hutton (Lauren) - you could've used a "bygone" here. She makes me think of "Models, Inc." even though she was apparently not in it. If you have 90s phobia the way I do, you might want to avert your eyes: