THEME: "Upsides" — cute, clever title. Why? Because the Across answers at the east and west edges of the grid are CLIMBING / THE WALLS (38A: With 91-Across, super-antsy … or like 24 Across answers in this puzzle?)
Theme CLIMBERS:
STRAW BALE / STRAINED / STRONG DRINKS / ST LEO II
NOTE TO SELF / NOT EVEN A LITTLE / NO TAX / NORTH
DECAF TEA / DECALS / DECISION TREE / DENUDES
YOUTUBED / DAUBED / SHARE ONE'S BED / BRAISED
LESSER EVIL / TASMANIAN DEVIL / ANVIL / AVAIL
PANTY RAID / UNAFRAID / DIGESTIVE AID / LEGAL ID
Word of the Day: ST LEO II (26A: Pope during the rule of Emperor Constantine IV) —
Pope Leo II (611 – 28 June 683) reigned from 17 August 682 to his death in 683. / He was a Sicilian by birth (the son of a man named Paulus). He may have ended up being among the many Sicilian clergy in Rome, at that time, due to the Islamic Caliphate attacks on Sicily in the mid-7th century. Though elected pope a few days after the death of Pope St. Agatho (10 January 681), he was not consecrated till after the lapse of a year and seven months (17 August 682). Leo was known as an eloquent preacher who was interested in music, and noted for his charity to the poor. (wikipedia)
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This is neatly executed, but purely architectural themes leave me cold. This is, I realize, a matter of taste, and, as I say, I think this one is quite solid. Does what it says it does. Fill is well above average compared to much of what we've seen of late. So I can see how some might find this enjoyable, even though I got bored directly after figuring out the theme. It's just that once you get the theme, then you know what's going to happen. Everywhere. There are no theme answers except the revealer, so no wordplay, no cleverness, no The Reason I Do Crosswords. No fun. But for those of you who admire a good construction stunt, this one seems like it might float your boat, ring your bell, or the like. The analogy I just used (on Twitter) is flavored coffee. I don't drink the stuff. Don't like it. But I know some do, and I assume they enjoy it. So I think of this puzzle as good flavored coffee—if you like that kind of thing, this is a good version of that thing.
[Underrated album]
The there was some fill that seemed a little forced, but I assume it was tough to get all those adjacent answers to climb the damn wall. YOUTUBED is just wrong. I am on YouTube every day, and I assure you I have never YOUTUBED. At a bare minimum, it's a transitive verb. You can't just YOUTUBE. Hey, you wanna come over and YOUTUBE? Hot Tub, sure. YOUTUBE, no. TV DAD is iffy, and the Cosby angle (13A: Cliff Huxtable and Ward Cleaver) makes it slightly icky. SHARE ONE'S BED is ridiculous. EAT ONE'S LUNCH! (that's me saying something equally ridiculous, something similarly Not a stand-alone phrase). But overall, I think the fill is quite strong—very light on the Klunkers. I don't think I would've gone with [Ghetto blaster?] for GAT, no matter how clever I thought the wordplay. The ethnic / racial implications are gross. "You know how those poor ethnics are with their loud music (and now, guns)." Ugh. Also, when I google [gat ghetto] I mostly get hits that suggest google thought I meant [gay ghetto]. So the GAT-ghetto connection: not strong. GAT is slang for revolver or pistol. No class / race implications. Crime implications, sure. But why drag the "ghetto" into this? I think I'm balking at what looks like the NYT's indulgence in white racial fantasies. Look, many dictionaries will tell you the phrase "ghetto blaster" ("a large radio and tape recorder that can be carried around, and is often played very loudly in public places") is sometimes considered offensive, so I don't know why you touch it as your base phrase. It's not like the NYT crossword is the most racially inclusive thing in the world. Maybe have less of a tin (and white, and privileged) ear next time.
Got theme in the NW, when I realized that STRAINED and STRAW both started STRA- (at this point I hadn't even noticed WARTS). Then I looked at theme title, went with my original guess WARTS, and saw exactly what was going on. Shortly there after, I got the whole revealer without much help:
But after that, the "walls" became just too easy to get. If you could get the "wall" Down, you could nail all the related Acrosses very, very easily. See here:
After this, I went up into the NE and then just circled back down to SW corner. Pretty uneventful.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
PS "TMNT" (45A: 2007 film featuring Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello and Michelangelo) stands for "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." I *know* some of y'all were like "?????"
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Word of the Day: Daniel OREN (54D: Opera conductor Daniel) —
Daniel Oren (born 1955) is an Israeliconductor. […] Oren has conductedoperaproductions all over Europe and the United States. Since 2007, he is the artistic director of theVerdiOpera House inSalerno, Italy. Oren conducts at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Metropolitan in New York, the Arena in Verona, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Bastille in Paris and the opera houses ofRome,Trieste,Genoa,Florence,Parma,Turin,Venice,Buenos Aires,San Francisco,Tokyo,Huston,Washingtonand many others. He also leads many symphonic concerts with orchestras such as the Santa Cecilia in Rome and the orchestras of Florence,Koln,Stuttgart,Frankfurtand theBerlin Philharmonic.
Ah, the good old triple/triple stack. You know what? Fifteens are all solid. The rest of the grid ... much, much less so. This is, of course, the danger with the long stacks—easy to be happy when you're reading Across, but man, don't look Down. I got ten pieces of fill in my grid that I have circled to indicate their deep sub-optimality: nine of them are Downs. This isn't terrible surprising, since outside of the 15s there really aren't that many Acrosses (compared to Downs). Still, if you can't manage your Downs, you have no business going to press. Everyone knows the Downs won't be Great (how can they be in a stunt puzzle like this), but you should be limited to only one or two groaners, tops. Tops. And certainly no more than one "genus." Genuses (or "genera," if you're gonna be a jerk about it) are the lowest form of crossword answer. They say "I give up, I was desperate." So if you have to put even one "genus" in your puzzle, you better have a good reason and you should do so only with great contrition. Two genuses is a war crime. And *these* genuses!? Hoo boy. POA?! (4D: Bluegrass genus). That "O" was the very last letter I put in up top, and I just stared at that answer. POA. Someone said "Sure, that should be in a puzzle." That fact blows my mind. Apparently veteran solvers know POA from the olden days when short obscurities reigned. But I caught only the tail end of the Maleska era, and POA never made it into my word bank. See also (the improbably worse) ITEA (23A: Virginia willow's genus). That is head-shakingly weak. ITEA! I, TEA? [Leoni memoir?] [Oolong memoir?].
What is a USM? Is that Univ. of Southern … Mississippi? People know that? Also, people know the OREN guy? Looks like he's been in the grid before, though lately O-REN Ishii from "Kill Bill" seems to be the preferred clue for all your OREN cluing needs (you should try to set your OREN Cluing Needs at "zero"). EFS is hilarious because no no no no. Fs. People get Fs. Those are the grades they get. EFS, LOL. But to repeat—the 15s are good. The 15s are good. That is *an* accomplishment. Please disregard the rest of the grid.
For the record, this is how I broke this thing: I recognized 1A: 1968 hit with the line "I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag" as a Stones song, but couldn't remember which. "SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL" wouldn't fit. So I went at the Downs. Not much luck, really, but enough luck (KORAN FLACK!) that key letters in the Stones song turned up, and thus, I was off…
Then this is where I stopped to take a picture of the Rare Spotted POA:
Middle section was like its own, free-standing puzzle, so I went at the Down crosses again, and again a small handful cracked it open:
And then here's the place where I stopped to take a picture of the answer that probably really wanted to be IKEA but wasn't:
In both the top third and middle third of this grid, the genus clue was the last letter I put in. "O" in POA, "I" in ITEA. Lower third was easier, as I knew ERIE DARA DUNST SHAK TBA MUFTI YOGI.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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