Fashion designer behind fragrance Rock Me / SAT 7-20-13 / Famed kicker born with clubfoot / 1993 hit with lyric Keep plain that song all night / 1957 Dell Vikings hit / Audi model retired in 2005 / Orfeo composer Luigi / He hit more home runs than Barry Bonds / Successor to Gibson on ABC World News

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ANNA SUI (61A: Fashion designer behind the fragrance Rock Me!) —

Anna Sui (born August 4, 1964) is an American fashion designer. Sui is one of the most celebrated names in fashion history, known for her timeless designs and ability to transcend eras with historical and culturally inspired collections. She was named one of the "Top 5 Fashion Icons of the Decade"  and earned the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), joining the ranks of Yves St Laurent, Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, and Diane von Furstenberg. Her worldwide luxury fashion brand includes clothing, shoes, cosmetics, eye-wear, and accessories, as well as her renowned line of signature fragrances. Anna Sui products are sold through her free-standing stores and distributors around the world in over 50 countries.  In 2006, Fortune estimated the collective value of Sui's fashion empire at over $400 million. (wikipedia)

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I should like this a lot more than I do. The grid is certainly interesting, and mostly clean. It's just that I found the cluing really, really irksome. Again and again. If a puzzle is challenging (as this was), I like it best when the struggle seems worth it; I don't like struggling, getting an answer, then finding that I'm making a face and thinking, "yeah ... I guess." Good tough cluing is stuff like [Big spinning effort] for PR BLITZ. Had me mystified til the very end, but when I got it, I could not deny the aptness and cleverness of the clue. Now, that answer did run through what is probably the crappiest part of the grid (ONER + NEB) (57D: Standout + 62D: Tortoise's beak), so I don't like that ugly crosses were part of the problem, but still, that clue is undeniably wonderful. But too many of the clues were just deliberately obtuse in this way that I thought was more faux-impish (or dickish) than truly clever. "Setting" in [Setting of "Love Me Do": Abbr.] (G MAJ.) represents an absurd use of that word. [Ends up short, maybe] is slightly torturous for ERRS (and we have to endure it why? so that, what, we get to experience the vastly over-rated "identical successive Across clues" trick? Pass.). ADRENAL is no longer an adjective, apparently (63A: Hydrocortisone producer). Not sure how that works. An EGO is "feedable"? Only by ridiculous contortions. 42D: Gets hot led to an obvious (in retrospect) and thus probably deliberate and thus definitely annoying trap—if you have the first letters, SEE-, the obvious move is SEES RED. But no, it's SEETHES. MIA HAMM is a "kicker" only because other sports have "kickers," not because anyone would ever call her that ever (plus, she's intersecting another soccer clue and you *don't* exploit that?) (59A: Famed kicker born with a clubfoot).

As I say, the grid is good—I just thought the cluing obtuse and kinda lousy. Not enough P.R. BLITZ-type payoff. I do love "HEY MR. DJ" (1A: 1993 hit with the lyric "Keep playin' that song all night") and RIGHT HAND MAN and "COME GO WITH ME" (46A: 1957 Dell-Vikings hit). I even love SADAHARU OH (9D: He hit 106 more home runs than Barry Bonds), despite my frustration at not knowing how to spell it (took a while to convince myself that that first name did indeed end in "U"). I fell into two terrible holes (in addition to the SEETHES one). The first was LYCÉE for ÉCOLE (2D: Place for une faculté). If I were ignoranter of French, I'd've been fine. But no. The worst mistake I made though, was a twofer—Had [SO TO speak] and so went right to MISTS UP for 37A: Shows some emotion (TEARS UP). When you confirm one mistake with another mistake, bad times follow. Hard to go anywhere S or W of that region with MISTS UP in place, primarily because GRECO-ROMAN was occluded (28D: Some-holds-barred sport).


This is a good grid, but I didn't enjoy solving the puzzle. This rarely happens. My dissatisfaction is not due to toughness, but to the way toughness was achieved. But I realize that this is largely a subjective matter.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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1968 novel set in Korea / FRI 7-19-13 / British P.M. when W.W. I began / How Congress might adjourn / Player of Sal in Godfather / What name Rhoda means / Republican who won Bentsen's vacated Senate seat / Joe who was retired in 1997 / Magna Carta's drafters

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SINE DIE (37D: How Congress might adjourn) —

Adjournment sine die (from the Latin "without day") means "without assigning a day for a further meeting or hearing". To adjourn an assembly sine die is to adjourn it for an indefinite period. A legislative body adjourns sine die when it adjourns without appointing a day on which to appear or assemble again. (wikipedia)

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I had exactly three issues with the fill today. First, ASQUITH (1D: British P.M. when W.W. I began). Never heard of him. That's on me. Second, SINE DIE. Never heard of it. Had some Latin in grad school, so pieced it together. I think I like knowing what it means, but as fill goes, it is the weakest thing in the whole grid—here only because those letters are convenient, not because the phrase is wonderful. Third, EMBOWERED (49A: Surrounded with foliage). Actually, the more I look at it, the more it looks like a word. Not an everyday word, but a word. So that's three issues. That I have only three issues, and that they are barely issues, when the puzzle has a mere 66 words features so much open space and two amazing quad 9-stacks with clean-as-hell crosses ... I could go on, but won't. Or maybe I will. This thing is gorgeous. That NE corner alone is a work of art. I am serious about that. So much open space, and not a single flaw. Not a hitch or bend or compromise. It's disgusting. That it lacks Scrabbly letters is to its credit. Do you know how often stacks of longish answers have at least a few Down crosses that are junky or made-up or just plain ugly? Always. Always. Almost always. It's why *stacks* don't appeal to me much. Many of them are like club sandwiches, but instead of toothpicks holding the sandwich pieces together, you get rusty nails. So sorry. But not here. Down after Down, it's just real word after real word. This is hard to do. And by "hard" I mean "nearly impossible." But it doesn't look hard. Looks like a pleasant walk in the park. This is why constructors revere PB1—his genius is so deep, it doesn't need to be showy. He always seems to be chasing flawlessness above all other puzzle values. I admire that so much more than the puzzle with a mere six black squares and nine Js or whatever.

Had some trouble getting started. Had QANDA and TEA right, but a bunch of other stuff that wasn't. Tried TRAIT at 1A: Winning smile, e.g. (ASSET), and ALOE at 27A: Folk medicine plant (HERB) and TRITE at 15A: Too-familiar (STALE). So I had to get out of there. I think I finally got off the ground with EATS then CRATE then ALT then TARHEELS. After that, I buzzed around that grid at a pretty nice clip, moving fairly consistently in a clockwise direction. Took less than 30 seconds, I'm sure, to fill in the SE. EMBOWERED held me up a bit longer in the SW, but not that much longer. I ended up wrapping things up where I'd tried to begin—in the NW.


I have never heard of the Samnite Wars, but I had AP- and the clue had "Road" in it, so no problem (16A: Road built during the Samnite Wars => APPIAN WAY). I really like seeing Kay Bailey HUTCHISON in the grid for some reason. We don't have much in common, politics-wise, but she seems decent and you don't see female politicians in the grid that much, so I'm happy to see her. I didn't realize Joe CAMEL had been retired so long ago (26A: Joe who was retired in 1997). His mug is so familiar, I just think of him as eternal. Just finished "Mo' Meta Blues" by Ahmir "Questlove" Jenkins—a fantastic music memoir. His band The Roots has an album called "Things Fall Apart," named after the Chinua ACHEBE novel (34A: "Things Fall Apart" novelist). Loved "Rhoda" and had no idea it meant ROSE. Don't think I've seen a Clark Gable/LANA TURNER movie, but I like their cute little moniker (47A: She and Clark Gable were known as "the team that generates steam). I forgot that "MASH" was a novel (10D: 1968 novel set in Korea). I think of it as a movie that became a TV show. And it is. But it was a novel first.


Off to try to read myself to sleep in this oppressive heat. Good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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