Furniture style of Louis XV / SUN 2-2-14 / Girl's name meaning "happiness" / Super Bowl successes, for short

Constructor: Dick Shlakman and Jeff Chen
Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Play on Words" -- phrases that originated from Shakespeare's "Macbeth"

Word of the Day: THE SCOTTISH PLAY [Superstitious thespian's name for a work of Shakespeare ... from which 21-, 23-, 37-, 58- and 60-Down all come]

The Scottish Play and the The Bard's Play are euphemisms for William Shakespeare's Macbeth. The first is a reference to the play's Scottish setting, the second a reference to Shakespeare's popular nickname. According to a theatrical superstition, called the Scottish curse, speaking the name Macbeth inside a theatre will cause disaster. A variation of the superstition forbids direct quotation of the play (except during rehearsals) while inside a theater.
Because of this superstition, the lead character is most often referred to as the Scottish King or Scottish Lord. Sometimes Mackers is used to avoid saying the name, mostly in North America.

• • •

If I learn nothing else today, that's a pretty interesting superstition. We have a world-class Shakespeare theater here in Staunton so there are lots of Bardbots running around; I'll be sure to impress them with this next chance I get.

Theme answers:

• 21-Down [Compassion, figuratively] = MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS
• 23-Down [Start of many jokes] = KNOCK KNOCK. WHO'S THERE?
• 37-Down [Tautological statement of finality] = WHAT'S DONE IS DONE
• 58-Down [A single stroke] = ONE FELL SWOOP
• 60-Down [What the lucky person leads] = A CHARMED LIFE

And then the revealer clue mentioned with the Word of the Day.  Knock-knock jokes came from Shakespeare? That's two cool things I've learned from this puzzle. Nice. (No, they didn't. It's just some dialogue.)

There's a minor visual element as well, revealed at 100-Down, where BLOOD is clued as [Drippings appropriately positioned under the circled letters]. Those seven letters form the shape of a dagger or sword, fitting since (spoiler alert) the Thane of Glamis whacks almost as many people as Joe Pesci in "GoodFellas" and "Casino" combined.

Despite learning some cool new Shakespeare facts, I can't say the theme itself or the visual aspect of it grabbed me much. You can pick a bunch of in-the-language phrases from most of the big guy's plays -- I remember seeing "Romeo and Juliet" for the first time at the the above-linked theater, and every three minutes I'd hear a familiar line. The dagger, too is sort of just there without any clever Gorskian rationale. I know, the BLOOD. Not that there's anything wrong with the whole idea, but Saturday's puzzle will retain its title as NYX puz of the week.

Fill had some nice touches, including actress IONE SKYE who I believe chose her stage name from those two Scottish islands? Wrong, but sort of close.  Her famous Scottish dad took her middle name from the island but I was thinking Iona as the other one, not Ione. Also good: DURAN DURAN, POLO SHIRT, TOODLE-OO (I had ?????EOO and was sure I had something wrong), HEAVE-HO and ROCOCO.

Polo Skort

Favorite clue: [One for the money?] for UNUM. I guess it's time to return to my "musty vibe" theme one more time, though, as I couldn't find a single clue in here that couldn't have been written ten years ago. In a big Sunday puzzle that seems heavy on the old and weak on the new.

Thanks to Rex for handing me the keys for a week, and to readers and commenters for keeping it lively. Visit all my websites if you feel like it, they're open 24/7/365.


Signed, Matt Gaffney, Regent of CrossWorld for 24 more hours...unless I have Rex taken out, in which case I could rule forever. A trio of witches on a heath told me this would be a swell idea. I'll think about it...nah, too much work!

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Strawberry, for one / SAT 2-1-14 / "The Wizard of Oz" farmhand / He wrote of a "vorpal blade"

Constructor: Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Not that tough for a Saturday

THEME: None

Word of the Day: EMIL NOLDE [Member of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke]

Emil Nolde (7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German Danish painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and is considered to be one of the great oil painting and watercolour painters of the 20th century. He is known for his vigorous brushwork and expressive choice of colors. Golden yellows and deep reds appear frequently in his work, giving a luminous quality to otherwise somber tones. His watercolors include vivid, brooding storm-scapes and brilliant florals.
Nolde's intense preoccupation with the subject of flowers reflect his continuing interest in the art of Vincent van Gogh. [Wikipedia]

• • •

Another good freestyle, more Scrabbly than yesterday's. I took a stab at ON-SITE for 6-Down [Like some inspections] as my first answer but that turned out to be RANDOM. Slow start continued when I couldn't come up with BARBARA BUSH for [Her 1994 memoir has the chapter "Desert Storm"] even with six of the letters including the initial B. AQABA didn't fool me, though -- I sensed the Q up there and there it was.

More high-value entries all over: YOUR MAJESTY, OLIVE GARDEN and UNDEREXPOSE are a nice trifecta along the bottom, with JAX tying it all together.  FLEX TIMER, L.A. LAKER, almost symmetrical ERIK SATIE and ERICA KANE. That last one is the Susan Lucci character, and Ellen Ripstein was the "Susan Lucci of crosswords" for many years because she made it to the ACPT finals something like a dozen times without winning and Lucci was nominated for a daytime Emmy some similar number of times without success. But Ellen won the event in 2001 and Lucci eventually won too.

• Needed every crossing for EMIL NOLDE but an interesting and prominent artist is the kind of thing you're glad to learn from a crossword.
• The German word for "bridge" is "Brücke" and it makes two appearances in clues today: once under the EMIL NOLDE clue, and once in the clue for KOLN [Severinsbrücke's city]. But we call that city Cologne in English so the clue should've had an indicator for that. UPDATE: Wrong. As NDE points out in comments, the German word for bridge is the indicator. Entschuldigung.
• Let's give this themeless the Worst-5-Entries test we tried yesterday: F-STAR, MANA, OBES, RRR and AVI. Not bad at all.
• I like cluing MADONNA classically ["___ With the Long Neck" (Parmigianino painting)] instead of referencing the pop icon.
• I wasn't done with good fill: WE DID IT, ALARM BELL, BETAMAX, always good to mention Lewis CARROLL, and LEADS IN.
• Echoes of earlier in the week: Fibonacci made Monday's puzzle, and today he's used to reference his hometown of PISA. We also see MADCAP as an entry for the second time this week.

"I alone keep this tower standing!"

So now this is what I will call the best puzzle of the week, overtaking yesterday. Can Sunday beat them all? I happen to know who wrote it and he's very good. One of his puzzles was recently nominated for Crossword of the Month at my blog. So we'll all find out tomorrow. Pisa out.

Signed, Matt Gaffney, Regent for two more days of CrossWorld

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