White-crested ducks / SUN 6-22-14 / Summer weather stat / 2014 for Doublemint gum / Town on south shore of Long Island / Southern university whose newspaper is Hullabaloo

Constructor: Elizabeth C. Gorski

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Dime Store" — rebus puzzle where the "¢" sign (represented by an "I" in the Down and a "C" in the Across) must be written into ten different squares in the grid, always as the first letter in the letter string "CENT" in the Across answer—ten "CENT"s = a dime, hence the puzzle's title:

Theme answers:

• ¢ENTENNIAL (23A: 2014, for Doublemint gum)
• VI¢ENTE FOX (25A: Mexican president of the early 2000s)
• ¢ENTRIST (40A: Middle-of-the-road)
• IRIDES¢ENT (44A: Like mother-of-pearl)
• RE¢ENT PAST (66A: Several days ago, say)
• ¢ENTIPEDES (70A: Bugs that technically are misnamed)
• PER¢ENTAGE (93A: Agent's cut)
• TEN ¢ENTS (96A: Total value of the symbols created by the special crossings in this puzzle)
• DE¢ENT MEAL (113A: Something square to eat?)
• "I'M INNO¢ENT!" (116A: Defendant's cry)

Word of the Day: THI (29D: Summer weather stat.) —

Temperature-Humidity Index, or THI, a number used to indicate the discomfort caused by the combined effects of heat and moisture in the air. The formula used to calculate the index is designed to yield a value ranging from 70 to 80. In general, almost all persons are comfortable when the index is 70, and almost no one is when it is 80. In 1985, the National Weather Service officially adopted the Heat Index to replace the THI, but in some areas the THI is still given with summer weather data. (HowStuffWorks.com)

• • •

Did you read this interview with Liz Gorski last week (on the Ravishly.com website)? I forget if I linked to it here or just posted about it on Twitter and Facebook. Anyway, it's charming and interesting and well worth the read.

The "Challenging" part of my "Medium-Challenging" rating is entirely for the time it takes you to pick up exactly what is going on with the Across/Down, "I + C = ¢" thing. Once you get a feel for it, the puzzle plays pretty normal, maybe even a little on the easy side (since you know all those CENTS are coming down the pike). I'm a bit surprised to see this theme appear so soon after a very similar Sunday theme—Daniel Finan's DOLLAR$ AND ¢ENTS puzzle from last year, which I Loved, and which had not only the I/C rebus, but the I/S rebus (for the "$") as well. That puzzle appeared in the NYT less than a year ago (7/14/13), and while Liz's version is clearly not identical, and does have both the "Dime Store"/TEN¢ENTS angle and the "¢ENT" letter string angle (neither of which featured in last year's puzzle), still, it's a bit strange to repeat a basic core concept in so short a period of time.


Anyway, this puzzle looks pretty good on its own, less good when compared to Finan's masterpiece from last year. Once you pick up the concept, as I say, things get easy, and there's not a lot of oomph left in the grid. Nothing that's going to surprise or amuse you. Just more ¢ signs. There were bits here and there that I found entertaining, like the double-rebus answer PA¢NP¢LL (12D: Percocet, for one), or the phrase NO RELATION (28A: Tyler Perry, to Katy Perry, e.g.), which is common, but which I can't remember ever seeing before (nice clue on that one, too). But otherwise the puzzle felt pretty average, fill-wise. Good chunk of common crossword stuff, lots of RLSTNE words. An unfortunate pair of anatomical partials in EYE ON and EAR TO. A word I didn't know was a word (SMOOTHEN? Next you'll be telling me ENSMOOTHEN is a word… what's wrong with How is SMOOTHEN different from SMOOTH?). Most baffling answer was THI—I was happy to see that this is a standard of measurement that hasn't been used by the National Weather Service for almost 30 years; made me feel better about my ignorance. That is perhaps an initialism we should put out of its misery right bleeping here and now.


It's late and I smell like campfire and I want to go to bed, so I'm going to rattle off my

Puzzles of the Week 

for the last three weeks in pretty quick succession here.

First week of June: Patrick Blindauer's "Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark" (patrickblindauer.com)—a puzzle you can get here for free (under "Play"). It's a toughie, so A. pay attention to the title, which is very important, and B. remember that the "Solution" is also available at his site (again, under "Play").

Second week of June: Merl Reagle's "The Homer That Never Happened" (Merl Reagle's Sunday Crosswords), an astonishing Sunday-sized puzzle about a familiar MYTH. Can't describe it much without giving it away. You'll want to do this one. Merl described it to me as more of a "killer find" than a "killer feat," but … well, you'll see. I see what he means, but he's being modest.

Third week of June: Caleb Madison's "Put the Gun Down" (American Values Club), a smart and entertaining oversized (18x19) offering. Tricky, funny, and very contemporary. Despite two short music answers that absolutely gave me fits (Because I Am Oldish), I found this one irresistible. Get it here for a buck (or just subscribe to AVC already)— or read about it here, at Crossword Fiend.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Onetime Toronado informally / SAT 6-21-14 / Cigar with clipped ends / Xenophobe's bane / Game in which top trumps are called matadors / Strategic port raided by Sir Francis Drake in 1587 / Sierra Nevada evergreen / Kramer vs. Kramer novelist Corman / Onetime capital of Mughal empire / Onetime resident of White House with cleft palate / Handy talent

Constructor: Brad Wilber and Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: W. C. Handy (22A: Handy talent? => BLUES) —

William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a blues composer and musician. He was widely known as the "Father of the Blues".

Handy remains among the most influential of American songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American form of music known as the blues, he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. While Handy was not the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to one of the dominant national forces in American music.

Handy was an educated musician who used folk material in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from several performers. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ooh, a supergroup. Can a supergroup have just two members? I say yes. These are two of my favorite constructors, so when I say it was slightly weaker than I expected, keep in mind that I expect Amazing when I see either of these constructors' names. What I got was solid and entertaining—a nice Saturday challenge—but tepid in places (namely the whole big SW quadrant), with this one odd answer that's irritating me like an eyelash in my eye that I can't get out. That answer is RIS (32A: ___ d'agneau), an answer so … bad? I wanna say "bad" … that I feel like virtually all other alternatives in that "R"'s place would've been better, even ones that result in partials, abbreviations, unlikely plural names, etc. So I've never heard of this lamb dish (clearly). I've also had 7+ years of French and have no idea what "RIS" means unless it means "smile." Is the lamb smiling? Something tells me no. Here's the wikipedia definition:

Sweetbreads or ris are culinary names for the thymus (also called throat, gullet, or neck sweetbread) or thepancreas (also called heart, stomach, or belly sweetbread), especially of the calf (ris de veau) and lamb (ris d'agneau), and less commonly of beef and pork.

Still not sure exactly what "RIS" means, but I think it's a. French and b. not widely known outside specific culinary contexts. I'm torn here, in that the dishes are real things, so "RIS" is clearly a thing (though autocorrect has now turned it into "rid" half a dozen times so far during this write-up). But I'm deeply opposed to not-commonly-known foreign words. Maybe if the clue on OLDS were clearer, I would've simply forgotten about RIS. But it wasn't so I'm talking about this stupid little three-letter word instead of everything else the puzzle has to offer. And I guess this is my point—the last thing you want is to have something off, something rankling, in the connective tissue of your grid. It is apt to leave solvers with a bad taste, and take attention away from the worthier parts of the grid. NONI (also not a great answer) doesn't bother me nearly as much as the crosses are all clear, i.e. that one word, NONI, is not going to keep me from getting any of the crosses. But I had OLD_ and I looked at the clue, 19D: Onetime Toronado, e.g., informally, and I had no idea at first what was even meant. "Onetime" means that OLDS is no longer a brand name? If that's so, then the phrasing seems off. It didn't used to be a Toronado and then become something else or enter some new state of being. I wasn't even sure the thing in question was a car. Was worried this was a historical or a sports clue and the answer was going to be OLD [some letter]. But I took a flier on the car and it worked out. And still I am talking about this little section. . . Gah!


Really liked the NE—in fact, the whole eastern side of the grid is pretty nice. I'm much cooler on the west. NADERITE gets my vote for Most Original Answer of the Day (36D: Voter with a Green button, once). Crosswordese muscle memory helped me get DIONE (44A: Moon of Saturn) and ISERE (45D: River bordering the Olympic host sites Grenoble and Albertville). I wanted SOVIET ERA before STALIN ERA (29D: Setting for "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"). I got Dennis confused with what's his name, the prince … Prince Herbert, the guy who doesn't want to marry, doesn't want to inherit his father's land, but just wants to … sing!


So I had HEIR and even SIRE before SERF (33D: Dennis in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," e.g.). Dennis, you'll recall, is the "Constitutional Peasant"— a Marxist avant le lettre …

["Oh 'king', eh? Very nice."]

["King of the who?"]

["I thought we were an autonomous collective"]

["I'm your king." "Well I didn't vote for you."]

["You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!"]

["Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!"]

TAD LINCOLN sounds like a heartthrob, but I'm guessing he wasn't (18A: Onetime White House resident with a cleft palate). Oh, he died at 18. That's sad.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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