Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Wood in Tolkien films

Constructor: Mike Buckley

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: quote from ALBERT / EINSTEIN — "CREATIVITY / IS THE RESIDUE OF / WASTED TIME" (18A: Beginning of a quote by 3-/31-Down on which Stephen Colbert commented "I hope teenagers aren't watching this right now")

Word of the Day: DHOTI (30D: Indian attire) —

The dhoti also known as pancha, panche or veshti is a traditional men's garment worn in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. It is a rectangular piece of unstitched cloth, usually around 4.5 metres (15 ft) long, wrapped around the waist and the legs and knotted at the waist, resembling a long skirt. (wikipedia)

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Under five minutes on a Thursday is pretty dang good for me. The thing that confuses me most about this quotation is the clue. It needs context. Without it, I don't know what the joke is—is it that teenagers are already lazy and don't need encouragement? Most of the teenagers I know are fantastically over-scheduled, so the "teenagers waste time" thing doesn't ring very true. But I like the quotation. It's a nice sentiment. You don't see quotation puzzles that much any more. I tend to like them funny, when I like them at all, but as pithy, motivational quote puzzles go, this is fine. Solving-wise, I just had some minor hiccups here and there—nothing that held me up much at all. If I've heard of a DHOTI before, I forgot about it today. That one answer made the SW slightly hard to get into, just as RHODO (WTF-O?) partly blocked my entry to the NE. I do not think of "Rock, Paper, SCISSORS" as a "kids' game" (13D: One of three choices in a kids' game)—adults play it. Hell, some adults play it competitively. Yeah, there are tournaments and everything. So that answer took some effort. I also forgot BARI existed, so I had to hammer it together from crosses (59A: Italian port). Nothing much else here to remark on. Oh, I saw OSSIE Davis in "The Cardinal" (1963) the other day. I bet not many of you can say that.

NERO was a gimme (daughter is a newly minted Trekkie who just watched the 2009 "Star Trek" movie for the first time last week) (37A: 2009 "Star Trek" villain). There wasn't much in my wheelhouse, but I was oddly proud of my ability to pull the olde-timey stuff out of my bag of tricks quickly today. Got SAHL instantly, with no crosses (51D: Comic who said "A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now"), and got INK SPOTS off just the IN- (33D: 1940s quartet with the #1 hit "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall," with "the"). You know, I've never actually seen "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"—weird. Anyway, if the crosses hadn't prevented it, I'd probably thrown down TIM CURRY at 11D: Player of Eddie in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (MEAT LOAF). He and Susan Sarandon are the actors from that movie that come to mind most readily. Bummed at my slowness picking up SEÑORITA (34D: Eligible one in El Salvador). Something about the election of a pope from Latin America today put my brain in the wrong frame of mind on that clue.

Puzzle could've used a little toughening up (Actress Sorvino? Actor Davis? Really?), but it was interesting and inoffensive.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld