Noted portrait photographer Anne / MON 5-17-21 / Daytona 500 acronym / Supposed means of communication with the dead / Critical marks on treasure maps / Things milking machines attach to

Constructor: Wren Schultz

Relative difficulty: Medium (i.e. normal Monday) (2:57)

THEME: YES (67A: What the circled letters all mean) — just like the clue says:

Theme answers:

• JAZZERCISE (16A: Alternative to Zumba)
• DAIRY QUEEN (29A: Where to order a Blizzard)
• OUIJA BOARD (44A: Supposed means of communication with the dead)
• SIOUX FALLS (60A: Biggest city in South Dakota)

Word of the Day: LCD (53A: Like many HDTVs, in brief) —

A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly, instead using a backlight or reflector to produce images in color or monochrome. LCDs are available to display arbitrary images (as in a general-purpose computer display) or fixed images with low information content, which can be displayed or hidden. For instance: preset words, digits, and seven-segment displays, as in a digital clock, are all good examples of devices with these displays. They use the same basic technology, except that arbitrary images are made from a matrix of small pixels, while other displays have larger elements. LCDs can either be normally on (positive) or off (negative), depending on the polarizer arrangement. For example, a character positive LCD with a backlight will have black lettering on a background that is the color of the backlight, and a character negative LCD will have a black background with the letters being of the same color as the backlight. Optical filters are added to white on blue LCDs to give them their characteristic appearance.

LCDs are used in a wide range of applications, including LCD televisions, computer monitors, instrument panels, aircraft cockpit displays, and indoor and outdoor signage. Small LCD screens are common in LCD projectors and portable consumer devices such as digital cameras, watches, digital clocks, calculators, and mobile telephones, including smartphones. LCD screens are also used on consumer electronics products such as DVD players, video game devices and clocks. LCD screens have replaced heavy, bulky cathode ray tube (CRT) displays in nearly all applications. LCD screens are available in a wider range of screen sizes than CRT and plasma displays, with LCD screens available in sizes ranging from tiny digital watches to very large television receivers. (wikipedia)

• • •

Surprised this was accepted, for a host of reasons. I like the theme answers fine on their own, they look nice in the grid, but the theme is startlingly thin and purposeless. Why these languages? Why are they all European languages? HAI- (for instance) could start infinite potential answers. So can all of these yeses (except OUI). It's just not tough or impressive or even interesting to have a long answer that starts SI-. A gajillion answers do that. Same with JA-, same with DA-. Further, why are all the yeses up front? What's the logic? They may as well appear in the middle of the grid as anywhere, since there's no governing principle, no revealer to make their initial positioning make any kind of sense. Which leads us to the biggest question: why is this revealer such a dud? Why is there a revealer at all? Anyone can look at the circled squares and see they all mean "yes" in other languages. YES is such an incredibly redundant let-down of a revealer. Now if puzzles had titles, maybe you could've called this one, I don't know, "Up-Front Agreement" or something, I don't know. Maybe taken the circles out and put the language in parentheses at the end of each theme clue? Something like that? Anyway, something. Just putting YES at the end, that is not it. That is not anything. 

The grid seems fine on the whole. A little heavy on the 3-4-5s, but it could've been much worse. Only HOC and TAI and AT SIX and maybe the plural (?) EGADS are at all irksome. Hard to make a grid smoothish when it's loaded with short stuff, but this one does the job OK. And with lotsa J's and Z's and Q's and X's to boot. Not a fan of Scrabbly for Scrabbly's sake, but here, the grid doesn't suffer at all (perhaps because most of the Scrabbly stuff is in the themers themselves—not part of some ill-advised attempt to lade high-value tiles into the grid unnecessarily). I had TRIES before TURNS (21A: Opportunities to play in games), and struggled to get LCD, because honestly I still don't know exactly what that means, despite seeing it all the time in crosswords (I made it Word of the Day today in hopes that the meaning would stick). Can't see anything besides maybe Anne GEDDES giving anyone any trouble. I don't think of her as a "portrait photographer," but more of a "babies in weird costumes and / or weird positions" photographer. But she's famous enough, that's for sure. That's all. Have a lovely Monday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Rock band known for its energy domes / TUE 4-17-18 / Archipelago west of Portugal / Bruece Lee role based on old radio character / Loosening of government controls for short / Giant four-legged combat walker in Star Wars films

Constructor: Wren Schultz

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:01)

THEME: VOWEL (65A: Every other letter in this puzzle's grid(!)) — that's the theme; pretty self-explanatory

Theme answers:

• All of them

Word of the Day: KIWI (57D: New Zealand bird) —

noun

1. 1. 

   a flightless New Zealand bird with hairlike feathers, having a long down-curved bill with sensitive nostrils at the tip.
2. 2. 

   informal

   a New Zealander, especially a soldier or member of a national sports team.

[Actual solving outfit]

• • •

I have no idea how hard or easy this is to do, and I don't really care. You'd never notice the gimmick unless someone told you about it, and it has no relevance to the solving process. I guess if you somehow got really stuck and knew the "every other letter" = vowel gimmick, you could maybe narrow down your letter choices, but in a puzzle this easy, that seems highly unlikely. It's basically a profoundly easy and pretty dull themeless, with a very weak one-word revealer that points out an invisible stunt. If a stunt falls in the woods and there's no one ... etc. I genuinely don't understand this. Or, rather, I don't understand going forward with this when you have no zippy wordplay, no revealer, no phrase that you're reimagining. The punchline is just ... VOWEL. It would be great if the NYT thought for a dang second about what it would be like to solve this thing. You're humming along, it's easy, there's absolutely no discernible pattern or theme but you don't care 'cause you're crushing it, and then you hit dum dum DUM ... VOWEL. And you look at the grid and you see that indeed every other letter is a VOWEL but also it looks like any other blah crossword except w/o the pesky theme, I guess. But at least you got to see ODER and BOLA and ONED and NAGAT, though, so at least you've got that going for you.


I nearly broke 3 minutes on a Tuesday, which hasn't happened for me in a long while. I was half a minute faster today than yesterday. I had almost zero areas of trouble, and very few times when I looked at a clue and didn't know immediately what the answer was. ODER required crosses, but other than that, every answer seemed to just fall before me, without my having to do much of anything. At the very end (NE corner) I lost a few seconds because I hesitated at ___ DEPOSIT (10D: Lode). Figured it was ORE, but wanted confirmation. Then didn't get DEVO at first pass (11D: Rock band known for its "energy domes") and then of course fell in the old COLA / SODA trap at 9A: Pizza party drink (SODA). And so, 3:01. Really, really want those two seconds back. Curse you SODA! I shall never drink thee again ... I mean, I don't drink thee now, but ... moreso!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Dickinson with modeling agency / WED 6-1-16 / Elephant boy boy / One-named singer from Iceland / Coffehouse combo often / Em polly in literature / NCAA's Aggies informally

Constructor: Wren Schultz

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: diacritical marks — four of them in the grid, both as answers, and as the marks themselves, which can be found (if you solve on paper and care to write them in) at the intersection of four sets of words throughout the grid:

Theme answers:

• CEDILLA (7D: Mark in the intersection of 58-Across and 43-Down) (GARÇON and CURAÇAO)
• TILDE (22D: Mark in the intersection of 56-Across and 38-Down) (SI, SEÑOR and AÑO)
• CIRCUMFLEX (45A: Mark in the intersection of 19-Across and 11-Down) (ÎLE and MAÎTRE D')
• UMLAUT (Mark in the intersection of 17-Across and 1-Down) (ÖYSTER and BJÖRK)

Word of the Day: ASGARD (37A: Odin's realm) —

In Norse religion, Asgard (Old Norse: ''Ásgarðr''; "Enclosure of the Æsir") is one of the Nine Worlds and home to the Æsir tribe of gods. It is surrounded by an incomplete wall attributed to a Hrimthurs riding the stallion Svaðilfari, according to Gylfaginning. Odin and his wife, Frigg, are the rulers of Asgard. // One of Asgard's well known locations is Valhöll (Valhalla), in which Odin rules. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is at least interesting. It takes a common crossword observation / complaint (esp. where the TILDE is concerned)—that crossing a letter with a diacritical mark over it with one that lacks such a mark is like crossing two different letters—and makes it the subject of the puzzle, with four crosses that actually get the diacritical mark thing right. OK. Interesting concept. There is some weirdness here–hilarious, to my mind—in that the examples for UMLAUT are neither of them actual words or place names. They are names belonging to musical acts. BJÖRK's, at least, is a given name. BLUE ÖYSTER CULT, however ... yikes. That's not just an umlaut—that's a "metal umlaut"! It's used "gratuitously or decoratively" in band names (mostly metal bands, hence the name). The most famous instance, to my mind, is the double metal umlaut in Mötley Crüe. I thought BJÖRK's umlaut was also decorative, but it's her actual given first name, apparently (Also, according to one very reliable source, "Thë ümläüt wäs ïnvëntëd by Ïcëländïc sïngër Björk ïn 197Ö."). Anyway, the UMLAUT portion of this puzzle is bewildering and funny. Which, I think, is actually a plus. Here's an interesting article on the difference between the UMLAUT and the dieresis (same symbol, different function). There really aren't many (any) English words with true UMLAUTs. Apparently, with German loan words in English, most of the time the diacritical marks are "suppressed." I'm just reading wikipedia here, so don't quote me.


The grid is choked with crosswordese, which is its main problem. As if AÑO and ÎLE weren't enough, there are old friends like RLS and AESOPS and ENE SLO SABU STR ILO REN. This incarnation of REN (49A: "Footloose" hero ___ McCormack) actually slowed me up more than almost anything in the puzzle besides another even worse piece of fill: CMIX (I miscalculated my random Roman centuries and started off with M...). As for the names of the diacritical marks not lining up symmetrically in the grid ... I just don't care. Concept is worth the "violation" of grid etiquette. Junky fill is a far bigger problem, and even that didn't ruin the solving experience completely.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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