Automaker Bugatti / FRI 6-20-14 / First stabber of Caesar / Business bigwig Blavatnik / Eponymous German physicist / Top ten hit for Eminem 3 Doors Down / Tenor Vickers / Romance novelist Leigh / 1930 tariff act co-sponsor / Scottish island that's home to Fingal's Cave / She played Detective Sasha Monroe on Third Watch / Hug Shel Silverstein poem / Composition of Accent seasoning

Constructor: Martin Ashwood-Smith

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ST. AFFA (whoops, nope, that's one word: STAFFA) (40D: Scottish island that's home to Fingal's Cave) —

Staffa (Scottish Gaelic: Stafa, pronounced [s̪t̪afa]) from the Old Norse for stave or pillar island, is an island of the Inner Hebrides in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. The Vikings gave it this name as its columnar basaltreminded them of their houses, which were built from vertically placed tree-logs.

Staffa lies about 10 kilometres (6 mi) west of the Isle of Mull. The area is 33 hectares (82 acres) and the highest point is 42 metres (138 ft) above sea level.

The island came to prominence in the late 18th century after a visit by Sir Joseph Banks. He and his fellow-travellers extolled the natural beauty of the basalt columns in general and of the island's main sea cavern, which Banks renamed 'Fingal's Cave'. Their visit was followed by those of many other prominent personalities throughout the next two centuries, including Queen Victoria and Felix Mendelssohn. The latter'sHebrides Overture brought further fame to the island, which was by then uninhabited. It is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland. (wikipedia)

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I know at this point my not liking a quad stack puzzle is not remarkable, but this one really is terribly put together. There's just no concern for pleasure or (in parts) even general do-ability. A ton of people are just going to get trounced by the absurd proper nouns in this puzzle, mainly the names LETTS and (esp.) ETTORE (!?!). Honestly, both the "R" and the "E" in TRE (20A: ___ cord (piano direction)), were, for me, an out-and-out guess. Cross your fingers, hope for the best. It's just an obscure proper noun / foreign word train wreck right there. Also, who is LORA Leigh? What is "Hug O'WAR"? What is "A DOSE of Rock 'n' Roll"? If the fill in any of these cases was actually interesting and not the kind of horrid compromises we always see in quad stack crosses, maybe. But … wow. Even making allowances for my own personal anti-stack predilection, I found this miserable. Honestly, when I saw that there were not one but two ONE'S phrases in the first stack, I just stopped trying / caring. When we invent *joke* 15s, that is the kind of crap we make up—random phrases with ONE'S in them. ONE'S is now such a huge, obvious, joke of a crutch, that unless you can make a stack without resorting to such a phrase, just give up. Give. Up. See also REAL ESTATE SALES, a flimsy answer that exists solely to provide a long string of very common letters (54A: Focus of GHTV's "House Hunters").


HES, THES, THEE, AT ME … the absurd Scrabble-f***king in the east and west … the laughably obscure STAFFA … it's beyond me. You can have it. Good + night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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1/100 of Danish krone / THU 6-19-14 / Best-selling 2004 young adult novel written entirely in form of instant messages / Oldest academic quiz competition in US / Neighbor of Teaneck NJ / Mercedes roadsters / Russell Anna Huxtable on Cosby Show /

Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Medium (took a little longer than normal, but it's a little bigger than normal, so …)

THEME: TWENTY QUESTIONS (17A: Classic 1940s-'50s quiz show) — Twenty of the clues are written out as questions. Black squares form a "?" in the middle of the grid.

Word of the Day: "TTYL" (5D: What best-selling 2004 young adult novel was written entirely in the form of instant messages?) —

ttyl is a young adult novel written by Lauren Myracle and is also the first book in the 'Internet Girls' series. In 2004, it gained attention for being the first novel written entirely in the style of instant messaging conversation. The novel was a New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and a Book Sensebestseller. "ttyl" is internet slang for "Talk to you later". (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle manages to be both a ridiculous and annoying themed puzzle and a fairly accomplished themeless puzzle. Thank god crossword clues aren't normally written in this trivia-question type way: hugely grating. Also, jarring to have conventional "?" clues (the ones with plays on words and what not) alongside these dumb trivia clues that end in "?" But as I say, the grid is impressive in its way, with lots of longer, interesting answers shooting both down and across the puzzle. All the long answers are arresting (and mercifully Real) words and phrases, except (ironically?) for the second theme answer: TOO TIRED TO THINK, which is not a thing. TOO DRUNK TO ****, that's a thing. This song, also a thing:


But TOO TIRED TO THINK? Despite its googling very well, I don't think so. Most of those google hits don't feature the phrase in self-standing form (usually it's "too tired to think about x y z…"). And anyway, what does tiredness have to do with anything? Or is this answer even a theme answer? Who Can Say? The answers to the "TWENTY QUESTIONS" (i.e. the 20 clues that are written in question form) are spread all over the grid willy-nilly, such that I have no idea what's holding this grid together beyond the black-square "?" picture in the middle. There's just no value in this theme. You could take any crossword grid and write 20 of its clues as questions—so what? So what we have here is an interesting themeless puzzle baked inside a pictorial grid, with some annoying, watery theme frosting spread over the top.


Today's mistakes included INBRED for INNATE (47D: Not acquired, say), NATO for OPEC (1A: What group founded in 1960 currently has 12 members?), TWO STAR for ONE STAR (49A: What rating does the Michelin Guide give to "a very good restaurant"?), and [blank stare] for LEONIA (44D: Neighbor of Teaneck, NJ).

Bullets:

• 6D: What is the oldest academic quiz competition in the U.S. (since 1948)? (HI-Q) — never heard of this, though it's oddly inferable. Clue seems to be (once again) largely lifted from wikipedia.
• 37A: School head, slangily (PREX) — Yuck. First I had to get used to PREXY (a term I've only ever seen in crosswords) and now you're telling me PREX is legit too? How is a PREX different from a PREZ? Who decided we needed a different abbr. when we already had a perfectly good one?
• 13D: What California congressman heads the House Oversight Committee? (ISSA) — Darrell. His brother Mel is also in the puzzle (42A: MEL ISSA).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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