Made for moments sloganeer / WED 7-19-17 / Line from Student Prince appropriate to this puzzle / Early 2000s apple product / anti-doping target, informally / Descriptive of los Andes / Hold aside for year as college athlete

Constructor: Michael S. Maurer and Pawel Fludzinski

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: DRINK DRINK DRINK (32A: Line from "The Student Prince" appropriate for this puzzle) — this puzzle contains various toasts from around the world

Theme answers:

• TO YOUR HEALTH!
• DOWN THE HATCH!
• SALUD!
• L'CHAIM!
• TIRAMISU!
• AMALFI!
• KANPAI!
• NEHRU!
• PROST!
• ROID!

Word of the Day: "The Student Prince" (See 32A) —

The Student Prince is an operetta in four acts with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly. It is based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Old Heidelberg. The piece has elements of melodrama but lacks the swashbuckling style common to Romberg's other works. The plot is mostly faithful to its source. // It opened on December 2, 1924, at Jolson's 59th Street Theatre on Broadway. The show was the most successful of Romberg's works, running for 608 performances, the longest-running Broadway show of the 1920s. It was staged by J. C. Huffman. Even the classic Show Boat, the most enduring musical of the 1920s, did not play as long – it ran for 572 performances. "Drinking Song", with its rousing chorus of "Drink! Drink! Drink!" was especially popular with theatergoers in 1924, as the United States was in the midst of Prohibition. The operetta contains the challenging tenor aria "The Serenade" ("Overhead the moon is beaming"). (wikipedia)

• • •

This is terrible. Truly not good, on every level. So bad it makes me almost never want to drink again. We can start with the boring, basic, nothing theme. Let me get this straight—the theme is ... toasts. That's it. Just toasts. And there are just four of them (?). Four ... toasts from around the world. Oh, and then a "formal" and an "informal" ... toast (in English). These latter toasts are at least mildly colorful, but still ... toasts. And the revealer ... wow. Like most of this puzzle, it is out of the past (and not in the good, film noir way). I have no idea what "The Student Prince" is. None. Never seen the movie, wasn't alive during Prohibition to see the operetta. No idea. Didn't matter, as the answer was obvious, but how ridiculous to have a revealer that old and marginal, and on a Wednesday.


Speaking of old and marginal, let's move on to the other reason this puzzle is bad—the fill. I thought we'd finally gotten rid of much of this junk: KCAR? ROK? IDI? ARNE? *&$^ing ALER!? Gah, this is a mess. A mid-20th-century mess. A NEHRU jacket-era mess. Then there's the truly-bad-in-any-era EMAC (40A: Early 2000s Apple product) and SERIE (59A: Something to watch on la télé). Then there's merely bad ALTOS IMIT HOSP. Then there's the complete lack of anything interesting (besides maybe REDSHIRT) (35D: Hold aside for a year, as a college athlete). I mean, C'MON, man. Round these undead answers up and send them back to the tombs whence they came. In the end, the puzzle's only virtue was its short life span—I drove a stake through its heart in less-than-Tuesday time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Colonial-era headgear / TUE 7-18-17 / Cleverness thought of too late to use / Peter who wrote Serpico / Dressing up as fictional characters with others / Cartoon character who explores with Boots

Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: ON THE UP AND UP (42A: Straight-shooting) — two other themers start with devices that can take you up (or down, actually, but whatever). So since there are two ... UP ... and UP:

Theme answers:

• STAIRCASE WIT (17A: Cleverness thought of too late to use)
• ESCALATOR CLAUSE (30A: Flexible contract provision) 

Word of the Day: SCRY (27D: Foretell the future by using a crystal ball) —

verb

verb: scry; 3rd person present: scries; past tense: scried; past participle: scried; gerund or present participle: scrying

1. foretell the future using a crystal ball or other reflective object or surface.

[this clue really should say [*Pretend* to foretell the future etc.], come on ...] [also, what the hell is "other reflective object or surface"!?]

• • •

These are not the most familiar of themers. I knew one. My wife knew one. They were not the same ones, and the one I knew, I knew only in French—never heard STAIRCASE WIT, but I inferred it from "l'esprit de l'escalier." ESCALATOR CLAUSE baffled me. I had CLAUSE and ESC- and had to resort to crosses because ESCAPE wouldn't fill the space. I like the weird grid shape, and I actually kind of like the super-light theme (3 answers? 39 squares?), and the fact that they didn't even bother trying to give the revealer a dopey revealer clue. Simple. People can figure it out without your getting all corny with it. And yet I don't think I Like liked this puzzle. Any puzzle with REUNE(S) starts with two strikes against it, and ugh, SCRY and ATTA and AER and TNN ... so much MAASwordese, blargh. A puzzle with only three themers should have Much better fill than this. "Annie Hall," yes, ANTEHALL, no (31D: Entrance room where guests wait). So despite its quirky charms, I'm gonna say nay. Wait. Wait, no, I changed my mind—I thought it was a near-miss, but then I noticed that you can kinda sorta make a case that the grid has a kind of staircase/escalator shape (taken from SW corner to NE corner), and even if that is what we in the business call "reading too much into things," I don't care. I need Tuesday not to fail every week. So consider this the most marginal of positive reviews.


Aside from ESCALATOR, I didn't have much trouble here. Biggest issue by far (compounded by its adjacency to ESCALATOR) was with 26A: Place to find a pen and teller (BANK). I had the -NK and my eye got only as far as "pen" and I wrote in ... OINK. Now this "makes sense" insofar as a pig oinks and a pig lives in a pen. In all other ways, it makes no sense, particularly considering that OINK is not a "place," ugh. Otherwise, smooth sailing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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