Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: camp swampy dog

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "NINE to FIVE" word ladder - starred clues are all part of a word ladder that starts with NINE and moves down the grid (changing one letter at a time) to end at FIVE. Theme tied together with central, grid-spanning answer, STANDARD WORK DAY (38A: Hint to the word ladder in the answers to the starred clues)

Word of the Day: SESSILE - adj.

Botany. Stalkless and attached directly at the base: sessile leaves.
Zoology. Permanently attached or fixed; not free-moving: a sessile barnacle.

[Latin sessilis, low, of sitting, from sessus, past participle of sedēre, to sit.] (answers.com)

I usually like Barry Silk puzzles, but not this one. As you know, I'm always immediately put off by a 1A that requires that I look elsewhere in the grid, especially when I go look there and there is no way to know what I'm looking at. Word ladders in general are ho-hum as concepts to me. You have to do something fantastic to make it worth while. And this one? Meh. I got your word ladder right here: NINE FINE FIVE. The end. The only semi-interesting thing about this word ladder is the stacked parts - TINE over TONE, FORE over FIRE - which require a whole bunch of (occasionally inventive) double letters in the Downs. The biggest problem for me with this puzzle concept is STANDARD WORK DAY. First of all, NINE to FIVE isn't very STANDARD anymore. Second, STANDARD WORK DAY is a dead, dull phrase. I had nearly all of the letters and still had no idea what I was looking at. "Hey, is it "STANDARD WORD DAY" today?" Thought it might be some kind of self-referential CROSSWORD thing for a while. I had to endure SESSILE (29A: Permanently attached, in zoology) and HEXOSE (51D: Simple sugar) for ... what? A very basic word ladder and this phrase? No thanks.

Hey, you know what else fits in the slot occupied by STANDARD WORK DAY?

DOLLY PARTON SONG

Love her:

["I set out to get you with a fine-toothed comb..."???]

Theme answers:

1A: *Start of a 38-Across (nine)
15A: *Small part of a spork (tine)
18A: *Musical quality (tone)
22A: *Made tracks (tore)
35A: *Teed off (sore)
44A: *Put into piles (sort)
56A: *Locale in a western (fort)
64A: *It may precede a stroke (fore) - cute
67A: *Ax (fire)
71A: *End of a 38-Across (five)

Here's some more stuff that irked me a little. SCENE V = arbitrary. Could have been I or V or X, and there's nothing even to suggest which one. (50D: Part of an act, perhaps). While it's true that some men's hair is PARTED, there is nothing particularly manly about the part (33D: Like some men's hair). There are parts in some women's hair too. ART HOUSE + ARTY = one too many ARTs for my taste (40D: Theater for niche audiences + 28D: Pseudo-cultured). On the other hand, I really liked the unexpected noun cluing of EMPTY (16A: Recyclable item), and the somehow-made-it-work cluing on NO MAN'S (3D: Kind of land). My biggest "???" moment came at 12D: "The Way of Perfection" writer (St. Teresa). I studied the Middle Ages in grad school and I didn't know this. The title sounds Chinese to me (the way = tao), but then again the title also sounded like a contemporary self-help book.

Bullets:

17A: Prayer wheel user (lama) - I wrote in SUFI. I was ... on the right continent at least.
27A: Good name for an investment adviser? (Ira) - recycled clue. Old joke. Next.
32A: Early MP3-sharing Web site (Napster) - a big, infamous name about a decade ago when people were worried that file-sharing would kill the music industry. The uproar all seems kind of quaint now.
45A: Canal site (isthmus) - my first thought when "canal" is used in xword clues is always EAR.
47A: Showing irritation (peevish) - ironically, one of the few things I liked today.
53A: Toxic pollutant (PCB) - I always want this to be PFC. Maybe because I'm mashing PCB up in my head with CFCs = Chlorofluorocarbons?
65A: Rat Pack nickname (Dino) - that came easily
63A: Crossword maker or editor, at times (cluer) - true enough
36D: Wynn and Harris (Eds) - better than cluing it as an abbrev. for "editors," I think.
10D: Survivalist's stockpile (ammo) - I had CANS
9D: Orkin victim (pest) - I like how the clue makes "Orkin" sound like a serial killer.