Spider-Man's surrogate father / THU 12-31-15 / Onetime gig for Wiig / Sickly looking overlord / Terminus of Qingzang railway / Modern civil rights initialism / 1971 documentary about Ravi Shankar

Constructor: Ben Tausig

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: MONOPOLY (65A: Game patented December 31, 1935) — answers that require you to PASS GO (i.e. skip over the letter string "GO") when you read them, if you want the wacky clues to make sense (62A: Round a corner in MONOPOLY ... or what you must do to answer the clues for 20-, 34-, 43- and 56-Across) . With "GO," the phrases are simply common words / things; without "GO," they are wacky answers to wacky "?" clues:

Theme answers:

• GOOGLE DOCS (20A: Enjoy the swimsuit edition of The New England Journal of Medicine?)
• CARGO SHORTS (34A: Brief entries in an auto film festival?)
• WAGON MASTER (43A: Sickly-looking overlord?)
• EGOMANIACS (56A: People obsessed with being online?)

Word of the Day: SNIP (50D: Insignificant person) —

(google)

• • •

If you think this is weird ... it gets weirder. Let's start with what we have before us: a pretty good, very current / contemporary MONOPOLY-related puzzle with a play-on-words theme (involving the phrase PASS GO). The fact of the game's being patented on December 31, 1935 is the presumptive reason for running this puzzle today. God I love that the actual New Year's Eve-themed puzzle got bumped to non-New Year's Eve for *this*, which is about as obliquely, tenuously, flimsily related to New Year's Eve as a theme can be. You want generic end-of-year holiday crap, go back in time, man. Tonight, we MONOPOLY.


I think the theme holds up pretty well as a tricky Thursday. I don't really know what a WAGON MASTER is, but I assume he masters wagons, or at least drives them. It's strange: when I got GOOGLE DOCS, I just assumed GOOGLE was another word for "stare at" (like OGLE ... or maybe GOGGLE), and so I thought the answer was funny but had no idea the "GO" needed to be passed. So when I got to WAGON MASTER, I was baffled. "How are wagons ... sickly-looking?" Only after the revealer did it become clear (which, I guess, is where "revealer" gets its name—its role in "revealing" or "making clear" the tbeme). I loved all the current references—including the clues on GRETA (27A: Actress Gerwig of "Mistress America"), IFC (71A: Cable channel that airs "Portlandia"), PEELE (12D: Key's longtime partner in sketch comedy), and STEVEN (66A: Psychologist Pinker who wrote "How the Mind Works"). Lots and lots of "?" clues made this one playful and toughish. I did not know SNIP and really doubted it. But there it is, in the dictionary. I will never like RPS (... per second?) or USH, dictionaries be damned. My favorite clues were [Spanish nuts] for LOCO and [Swiftly built home?] for NEST. I also like that Ben got both his own name (UNCLE BEN) and (aurally) the editor's (CARGO SHORTS) into the grid. I am also in the grid, as I had a MIXED DRINK earlier in the evening (Manhattan w/ Knob Creek rye) and I'm currently wearing EYEGLASSES. So there.


So I started this write-up by saying "it gets weirder." To see just how weird, you're going to have to do three more puzzles today: Buzzfeed, American Values Crossword Club, and Brendan Emmett Quigley (AVXC is normally subscription, but *today's* puzzle is FREE). I am telling you this as if *I* know exactly what's going to happen, and I don't. I just know that the four puzzles are all ... related. In a certain way. For certain reasons. Each puzzle stands completely on its own merits, so there's no need to do the other puzzles. In fact, I'm pretty sure the NYT didn't even know it was going to be just one part of a linked set of puzzles that all come out today. That little bit of information—the whole guerrilla crosswording angle—makes me infinitely happy. Anyway ... yeah. Something to look forward to. Happy New Year's Eve, for real.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Physics Nobelist who pioneered in quantum physics / WED 12-30-15 / French comic series that has sold 350+ million copies worldwide / Old knockoff of IBM product / Last royal house of Italy

Constructor: Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: AULD LANG SYNE — the song you sing on NEW / YEAR'S / EVE (64A: With 65- and 66-Across, when to sing the song in the circled squares)

Theme answers:

• PAUL DIRAC (20A: Physics Nobelist who pioneered in quantum mechanics)
• ALAN GREENSPAN (37A: Federal Reserve chairman under four presidents)
• GREASY NEALE 

Word of the Day: GREASY NEALE (51A: Football Hall-of-Famer with a nickname befitting his elusiveness on the field) —

Alfred Earle "Greasy" Neale (November 5, 1891 – November 2, 1973) was an American football and baseball player and coach. // Neale was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Although writers eventually assumed that Neale got his nickname, "Greasy", from his elusiveness on the football field, it actually arose during his youth, from a name-calling joust with a friend. [...] Neale was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1967 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1969. Both inductions recognized his coaching career. (wikipedia)

• • •

New Year's Eve is still December 31, right? They didn't move it. I don't really understand doing a New Year's Eve puzzle *not* on New Year's Eve. I get that this puzzle *type* is more Wednesday than Thursday, but a holiday puzzle should fall on the holiday, day of the week be damned. That, or constructors should anticipate the day their holiday puzzle will fall on and plan accordingly. They have calendars now that can see well into the future and tell you such things. This is a very basic puzzle type, but the execution is interesting. Not sure I enjoyed it, but it is interesting: mirror symmetry, plus circles, plus the rarely-if-ever seen Entire Bottom Line revealer. Two of the three theme answer names seem pretty obscure for Wed. theme answers. Not that PAUL DIRAC and GREASY NEALE aren't puzzle-worthy; they're just niche famous, whereas ALAN GREENSPAN is all-the-way famous (which is to say, he's alive and remains prominent in the cultural memory—100 years from now, ALAN GREENSPAN will probably be the third-most-famous themer in this puzzle). I barely knew DIRAC, and while I knew NEALE, I misremembered who he was. I had him as a member of the '72 Dolphins. Their quarterback was Bob Griese, but I know who  Bob Griese is, so that's not whom I was imagining. Guy I was imagining was black (unlike Griese). Also a wide receiver (unlike Griese). No idea what I was thinking.I think I also half-thought that he was on the Meadowlark Lemon-era Harlem Globetrotters. . . Yes! There we go: Fred "Curly" Neal.


Perhaps because the grid is trying to be (and occasionally is) sparkly, there is some less-than-lovely fill. By "some" I mean "lots of." From the truly terrible APOX and NLER, to scads of merely subpar stuff like TAVI, TSE, ELS, IBEAM, RIA, SAGO, DTS, ACCTS, and a lot more ho-hum short stuff. I got held up in a few places. No idea that [Yanqui] was AMERICANO. To me, an AMERICANO is a coffee—espresso w/ hot water added. I had one earlier today. I think it's also a cocktail. I actually had AMERICANS there, thinking [Yanqui] was somehow plural (!?), but then I got the NEATO cross. I also had trouble picking up MINUS SIGN (5D: Something that makes a difference?) (not surprising, given that clue), and V-CHIPS (23A: TV monitors?) (another "?" clue). Do V-CHIPS still exist? I never hear them mentioned. They seem a very '90s thing somehow. Like ... people wanted them in the '90s to keep their kids from watching "South Park." That's what I remember about V-CHIPS: freaked-out '90s parents.


I liked YVES over EVE. I didn't like ENDS over ENDOR. I liked the adjacent pairing BEAT / POETS. BOB AND WEAVE and HEALTHY GLOW make nice pillars. I hope the grid isn't supposed to be a visual representation of anything, like a dropping ball or a noisemaker or something, because if so, I clean missed it.

Happy New Year's Eve Eve.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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