Large decorative letter at start of chapter / SUN 9-22-19 / Hairstyling icon Vidal / Athlete's knee injury, familiarly / 2010s dance move involving dipping head to elbow / Feature of many Cape Cod house / Former leader of Sinaloa drug cartel / Method for identifying mystery callers / Lopes of R&B's TLC

Constructor: Tracy Gray

Relative difficulty: Medium (probably easy, but I've had a couple ... (drinks, I mean drinks))

THEME: "On the Up and Up" — themers all contain a word followed by "up"; instead of "up"'s being in the grid, the word that precedes "up" actually goes up, i.e. vertically (in circled squares)

Theme answers:

• (KEEP) [UP] APPEARANCES (25A: Maintain the impression of well-being)
• KISS AND (MAKE) [UP] (39A: Reconciled, as a couple)
• (SIT) [UP] BENCH (41A: Ab-targeting exercise equipment)
• REVERSE PHONE (LOOK) [UP] (67A: Method for identifying mystery callers)
• (PIN) [UP] GIRLS (91A: Some cheesecake photos)
• HIGH-SPEED (DIAL) [UP] (95A: Accelerated alternative to broadband)
• (STEP)-[UP] TRANSFORMER (108A: Voltage-increasing eelctrical device)

Word of the Day: DORMER (97D: Feature of many a Cape Cod house) —

A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window is a form of roof window.

Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable space in a loft and to create window openings in a roof plane.^[2] The term "dormer" is commonly used to refer to a "dormer window" although a dormer does not necessarily contain a window. A dormer is often one of the primary elements of a loft conversion. As a prominent element of many buildings, different types of dormer have evolved to complement different styles of architecture. When the structure appears on the spires of churches and cathedrals, it is usually referred to as a lucarne.

• • •

Really thought I was killing this one, but I've been drinking (lightly, but still), and so ... my sense of time, and my own prowess, were both a bit off. My time was average. Also, this puzzle was average. I've seen gimmicks like this many times before. This one was no better and no worse than all of those. The title was both unnecessarily helpful (I got theme easily, without even noticing the title) and misleading (there's just ... the one "up" per themer, so having "up and up" in your title is very dumb). I've heard of a reverse phone book, or something like it, but the exact phrase REVERSE PHONE LOOK-UP feels awkward to me. Not as awkward, however, as STEP-UP TRANSFORMER. Actually, that one's not so much awkward as "???????" LOL at the idea that I am familiar with all the types of "transformers" there are in the world. I've never even seen the movie "Transformers," how in the world am I supposed to know what a STEP-UP TRANSFORMER is. Absurd, that one. I have used a SIT-UP BENCH at the gym, and yet I still don't like it as an answer. The others all feel very much in the language. Just fine. Not exciting, but adequate. Fitting. Apt. This puzzle feels like an inoffensive placeholder. Nothing much to recommend it, but nothing much to make you throw your computer across the room either.


Question-mark clues once again are making me want to heave them bodily from the room. 31D: A quarter to four? (ONE). ONE is a quarter *of* four. A quarter *to* four (as in, the relationship of 1/4 to 4) is ONE SIXTEENTH. I like KERI as the actress on the amazing show "The Americans," far far less as .... some kind of lotion (although I can hear the ads: "KERI is so very ..."):


POW does not "come with a sock" unless you are illustrating comic books. I had TOE here. EWASTE remains the worst, no matter how valid it is. LISA Lopes clue is missing the *crucial* "Left Eye" part (38A: Lopes of R&B's TLC). She's LISA "Left Eye" Lopes, dang it. Leaving that out feels blasphemous. TORNMCL is some "look at my wordlist" fill. Of course you can tear your MCL, just as you can tear a bunch of things, but iconically (i.e. crossworthily) you tear your ACL. I thought a zebu had a distinctive HORN (95D: Distinctive part of a zebu) (HUMP). I thought an [Act of self-aggrandizement] was EGOTISM. I took Latin for a couple years and still thought SANCTI was too Latin-y (for a crossword) (unless it appears in the phrase "... et spiritus SANCTI" and even then, I dunno. The clue on YASMINE was precisely zero help (16D: Woman's name that's one letter off from a fragrant flower). I doubt that many people have heard of the yasbine flower. Unfair!* OK, I'm done with this. See you tomorrow.

Oh, and happy birthday to my brilliant and beautiful daughter, who is nineteen today and does not read my blog, god bless her

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*I'm kidding, there's no such flower as the yasbine. The flower in question is obviously the gasmine**

**Still kidding, please don't send me explanatory emails

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Rowers workout machines infomrally / SAT 9-21-19 / Suckerfish / Noted film festival site since 2002 / Performer in first U.S. public radio broadcast, 1910 / Like some nonbinary people

Constructor: Joon Pahk and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Challenging (interrupted solve, but somewhere in the 9s, I think)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AGENDER (37D: Like some nonbinary people) —

: of, relating to, or being a person who has an internal sense of being neither male nor female nor some combination of male and female : of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity is genderless or neutral (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Very tough for me. The fact that my dog wouldn't setting down and kept clacking around the hardwood floor outside my office was Not Helping (I need quiet to solve, especially tough puzzles), so I had to get up and shut the door, and then had to loudly call out "Lie Down," at which point my wife responded "it's me" 'cause I guess she had just gotten up to go downstairs. ANYway, frustrating. I lost some time in there. I wish I'd enjoyed this more. The grid is very nice in places, but the cluing had a kind of forced hardness that I found sort of off-putting. By "forced" I mean that the toughness felt like it was coming by an attempt to get cute that went a little awry. At some point, after I looked at what felt like the fourth "?" clue in a row, I got a little exasperated. I'm still trying to make [Baby buggy?] work right for LARVAL. It's not the greatest fill to begin with. I get that baby bugs are larva and so if "buggy" is an adjective meaning "of or related to bugs," then ... LARVAL. But it doesn't quite hit the mark. I think it's 'cause LARVAL is not a word you can use in an everyday sentence, so it's hard to swap out, or reimagine, or something. Just awkward. I wish the fill had been more IMPRESSIVE. It's solid and clean overall, for sure, but mainly this puzzle exists to be Hard. And you can make any grid Hard with the right cluing. The only really fresh thing was AGENDER (37D: Like some nonbinary people), which, bizarrely, I don't remember ever seeing before (whereas I've seen "non-binary," "NB," and even the written-out term "enbies" (which I love) a heckuva lot). But AGENDER wasn't hard to infer, and it's a very real term that just somehow missed me. Original. Like it.


Much of my struggle came from NE, where LARVAL and the CREW part of CAMERA CREW (32A: Group that's on the take?) just wouldn't come. Also had real trouble in the SE because of (again) the "?" clue on 43A: Spot starter? (TEA KETTLE). I had TEA and guessed KETTLE but did Not like it (it "starts" TEA? Because ... you pour water from it? My "kettle" heats water. You pour tea from a tea pot. And in either case, "starter" is dubious. I actually pulled KETTLE at one point because I couldn't get Downs to work. This turned out to be because I had SURE IS! instead of SURE DO! (48A: "You got that right!") (impossible to differentiate between IS, DO, AM, ugh), and RARER instead of RIPER (54A: Tenderer, maybe). This meant the only Down I had down there was EUREKA (44D: Exuberant cry). I had TRANIS for 45D: Some Caribbean islanders (TRINIS), so I *definitely* knew something was messed up. Aren't STEP-INS women's underwear? I'm pretty sure they're women's underwear. I always thought laceless shoes were SLIP-ONS. That one was weird. Luckily, the Acrosses and the short Downs in that corner were way easier. The answer that really broke me, though, was MAJORING IN (36A: Reading, to Brits). Parsing that answer, my word. And just understanding the clue ... I assumed the trick was that "Reading" was the city or the railroad (thanks, Monopoly!). Eventually I was like "MAJOR what?" and then got it. It's a great clue / answer. Just ground me into powder. Anyway, enjoyed the struggle, mostly

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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