Longtime media columnist David / SUN 8-2-20 / Bird also known as little auk / Longtime Yankees first baseman Mark / Hedge fund titan nicknamed Palindrome / Gish novelist of Resisters Typical American / Mixed Marriage playwright st john greer / Mythical creature on old Bhtanese stamps

Constructor: David Levinson Wilk

Relative difficulty: Average

THEME: "Puzzlin'" — familiar phrases with -ING words in them are reclued as if the "G" were the first letter in the next word in the phrase and the -ING word were changed to a slangy "-IN'" ending:

Theme answers:

• STANDIN' GROOM ONLY (23A: Nobody but the guy gettin' married on his feet?)
• EVERLASTIN' GLOVE (38A: Winter item you'll be wearin' for years?)
• FALLIN' GRAIN (58A: Danger when walkin' in a silo?)
• PARKIN' GRAMP (69A: Drivin' around the lot with pop-pop?)
• QUALIFYIN' ROUND (87A: Sayin' "Look, here's the thing about dry land ..."?)
• FEAR OF MISSIN' GOUT (102A: What was causin' the doctor to check for joint pain?)

Word of the Day: ANN MEYERS (56D: Basketball Hall-of-Famer who was the first woman to sign an N.B.A. contract) —

Ann Meyers Drysdale (born Ann Elizabeth Meyers; March 26, 1955) is an American former basketball player and sportscaster. She was a standout player in high school, college, the Olympic Games, international tournaments, and the professional levels.

Meyers was the first player to be part of the U.S. national team while still in high school. She was the first woman to be signed to a four-year athletic scholarship for college, at UCLA.^[1] She was also the second woman to sign a contract with a National Basketball Association team, the Indiana Pacers (1979). Her USA World Champion team member Lusia "Lucy" Harris-Stewart was the first woman to sign with an NBA team in 1977, the New Orleans Jazz. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't even know what to say. I don't understand who this puzzle is for. It feels like it's for 1996 or maybe 1985. The theme ... the "jokes" all seems so forced and corny. I mean, the clue on QUALIFYIN' GROUND, for instance, doesn't even make any real sense. "Dry land"? That is your GROUND? And you are imagining someone ... adding some kind of information about "dry land" ... as a form of qualification? It's just so head-shakingly sad, all of this. I'm all for simple and cute, but if this is simple (and I guess it is), the results were repeatedly groany, and not in a "good one!" kind of way. Also the puzzle is really hurt by its low word count. It wants to look impressive by having these big banks of long answers, but they are really costly. NERD ALERT and maybe PHONE SEX are the only answers that seem really nice. Meanwhile, in the "costly" department, we have primo junk like IIN (!?!?) and GOI and ENTO and ASET and AFOE (!?!?!?) and these names, my god, so many names that are clearly only here because they have so many favorable (i.e. RLSTNE) letters in them: ERVINE CABELLO ANNMEYERS NEY MEADE (really, *two* crosswordese military leaders?). GRAMP is not a thing (it's GRAMPS or GRAMPA). OUCHIES is 6000% not a thing. ENNUIS absolutely cannot be pluralized in any reasonable context, my goodness, come on (78D: Ho-hum feelings). Deep mothball smell coming off of this one. I don't know why making a delightful, joyful, or even just light and airy Sunday puzzle is so, so hard. NESPRESSO!? Nespress-no. AALARGE (?), USEALOT (!?!?!). It was a groan-out-loud solve, for sure. ENDE (ugh) of story.


I finished with an error that I absolutely could not find. This is because I had LIE IN instead of LIE ON (40D: Treat as a bed), because I lie in bed, not on bed, and also because ERIS is a goddess so I didn't really think twice about that answer. Now, if I'd read the clue closely ... it would've been a good idea to think twice about it, since the clue was actually asking for a *god* (52A: God who becomes a goddess when an "r" is removed) (EROS). I never bother with those "remove this letter and carry the eight to get another thing!"-type clues. It's a crossword, not a child's rebus puzzle in Highlights magazine. Just clue the answer. Sigh. Anyway, that's all clearly my fault, but since LIE IN is a very plausible answer, and ERIS is in the god/goddess family, you can see (I hope) how finding that particular mistake was well-nigh impossible. Do people call cop cars / squad cars / police cars "RADIO CARS" anymore??? (46A: Receiver of an all-points bulletin). Again, I wonder about what year this puzzle was made in / intended for. The name-y-ness of the puzzle was a little extreme. Count them. There are a lot, and especially a lot up top. TEIXEIRA JEN ERVINE CABELLO SNERT MEADE SHARPTON NEY are all very densely packed in that N/NE section. See also CARR JAYNE CAAN ANNMEYERS NESPRESSO, wow. Names always feel good when you know them and terrible when you don't. Name-dense puzzles are thus dangerous. Not sure EVITE and EBOOK belong in the same grid if you can avoid it. You can leave me the SQUISHY ZEBRAFISH and honestly take most of the rest of this and dispose of it. I just don't understand how this concept qualifies as acceptable fare for the "best puzzle in the country."


So Lollapuzzoola, one of the two crossword tournaments I think are worth going to, would normally be happening in NYC this month, but ... well, you know. Look around at the hellscape that your putrid national leadership hath wrought. Good news, though—the tournament is still happening, entirely on-line, in just under 2 weeks (Saturday, Aug. 15)! Here's organizer Brian Cimmet to tell you all about it:

It’s almost time for the greatest crossword tournament ever held on a Saturday in August – Lollapuzzoola 13 is taking place virtually on Saturday, August 15! There will be five tournament puzzles, extra (optional) games peppered throughout the event, and two skill divisions in which to vie for championship bragging rights. Visit http://bemoresmarter.com/lollapuzzoola for more information and to sign up today!

I expect they're going to break "attendance" records since everyone has equal access to the tourney, wherever they live, and people are understandably desperate for human community of a fun-loving nature. Anyway, you should do this. The in-person version of the tourney is always delightful, and I can't imagine the on-line version would be anything less.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Landlocked land along the Silk Road / SAT 8-1-20 / Worshiper of goddess Mama Quilla mother moon / Natural feature near Queensland / Former name of subsaharan Africa's largest country / Like the last complete symphony of Gustav Mahler

Constructor: Adam Aaronson and Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: hard-to-spell proper nouns — not really a "theme," but ... a design element, for sure (see 1A, 68A)

Word of the Day: KYRGYZSTAN (68A: Landlocked land along the Silk Road) —

Kyrgyzstan (/ˈkɪərɡiːˌstɑːnˌ -ˌstæn/ Kyrgyz: Кыргызстан Qırğızstan [qɯrʁɯsˈstɑn]), officially the Kyrgyz Republic (Кыргыз Республикасы; Russian: Кыргызская Республика, tr.Kyrgyzskaya Respublika) and also known as Kirghizia (Киргизия [kʲɪrˈɡʲizʲɪjə]), is a country in Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country with mountainous terrain. It is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west and southwest, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east. Its capital and largest city is Bishkek.

Kyrgyzstan's recorded history spans over 2,000 years, encompassing a variety of cultures and empires. Although geographically isolated by its highly mountainous terrain, which has helped preserve its ancient culture, Kyrgyzstan has been at the crossroads of several great civilizations as part of the Silk Road and other commercial and cultural routes. Though long inhabited by a succession of independent tribes and clans, Kyrgyzstan has periodically fallen under foreign domination and attained sovereignty as a nation-state only after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle was not all-over hard but it was cluster-hard, for sure. There's a knot of answers right around and including FEED, and virtually all of my problems were there and radiating out from there. Everything circled in green in this shot, basically:

That little gimmick with the "K" proper nouns in the first and last Across answers, yes, that slowed me down, but not because I didn't know the answers, only because I wasn't sure how to spell them (which was surely the point ... though I don't know why that is "fun," truly; I mean, I see what you're doing, but ... yeah, that sort of "cute" just isn't my thing). Everything pictured in the green knot above, however, did legit slow me down. I am very mad at myself about "I RESIGN," which I honestly should've seen much more quickly (27A: Words from a quitter). I had the -ESI- but all I could think of was "I DESIST," and I was like "wow, that's terrible." Yes. Terrible and wrong. I was also mad that I just couldn't come up with the ROLL of EEL ROLL (47A: Sushi with unagi). I know very well that unagi is eel and I got the EEL part no problem, but ... I just kept picturing the eel sitting on sushi rice and thinking "what ... do you call that? EEL RICE?" When I think "sushi" I think raw fish (or, if eel, cooked fish) on rice. The whole ROLL possibility ... I just blanked on. Found the cue on FEED hard and the clues on DUEL (35D: Go one on one) and AGES (25D: So long) vague and thought 'SCUSE ME was a single word ending in "-EME" (39A: "Comin' through!"), and then there was NECROMANCY, which had a very hard "?" clue (29D: Dead reckoning?), but one I could normally battle through pretty easily if the adjacent answers were normally cooperative. Alas, they were not. The rest of the puzzle—a snap (again, except the spelling bee at the first and last Acrosses).


It's a nice grid overall, for sure. The two *long* Acrosses are the real stand-outs, but won't get the attention they deserve because of the look-at-me-ness of the K-words. Big PLAY WITHIN A PLAY fan ("The Murder of Gonzago" is in "Hamlet"). Nothing else really Sizzle-sizzles, but the big chunks are all smooth and none of the short crosses are horrid, and "I'M HONORED" at least feels original / creative, so, yeah, looks good, more of this would be fine, thank you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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