Filmmaker Allen / SUN 6-26-11 / Locale for cattail / Game whose name derived Swahili / It landed Pacific Ocean 3/23/01 / Bygone hand weapon

Constructor: David Levinson Wilk

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "T Mobile" — Familiar phrases in which "T" switches places with letter next to it, creating wacky phrases, clued "?"-style


Word of the Day: GANEF (18D: Thief, in Yiddish) —

n US slang

an unscrupulous opportunist who stoops to sharp practice

[from Yiddish, from Hebrew gannābh thief, from gānnabh he stole]

• • •

I generally like David Levinson Wilk puzzles, and I like much of this. Well, some of it. The theme is Extraordinarily loose, though. I don't like themes with infinite possible answers—the bar is just too low. The only consistency is that a T moves. One space. In every theme answer that movement takes place in the last two letters of a word ... except in PRE-MARTIAL SEX. So no consistency there. T and *any* letter adjacent to it? Whether on its left or its right? Not the kind of theme I'd expect from the Nation's Premier Crossword. Too simplistic. The theme answers are cute in parts, but brief amusement couldn't overcome the overall bummer created by the looseness of the theme. That said, the grid is mostly decent, and it actually took me an above-average amount of time to finish, for reasons I don't quite understand—a nice Sunday challenge. There's a handful of entries I could do without (KLMN, EVENI, GANEF, ETRES), but most of the fill is bouncy, and many of the clues felt fresh and interesting. K.D. LANG will be playing here on July 4 (Q: why would she want to be in Binghamton (of all places) on the Fourth of July!? A: She's Canadian, what does she care?) (1A: 1988 Grammy winner for "Crying"). Nobody loves a FASCIST (pace Sylvia Plath), but I love FASCIST as a crossword entry (68D: Like Mussolini). And Bowie is Bowie is Bowie, and is always welcome:

[79A: 1983 #1 hit with the lyric "Put on your red shoes"]

Theme answers:

• 23A: Dance seen in a Lincoln Center performance of "Don Giovanni"? (NEW YORK MINUET) — "Dance" in clue, DANCE in "LET'S DANCE" ... but I doubt anyone noticed
  
• 33A: "None of the leading sales people came in today"? ("ALL BEST ARE OFF")
  
• 40A: Celebration after a 1964 heavyweight championship? (FETE OF CLAY) — maybe my favorite answer
  
• 55A: Stirrup? (COWBOY BOOST)
  
• 71A: Decide to sleep in the nude? (CAST PAJAMAS)
  
• 81A: What whitewashers apply? (IVORY COATS)
• 88A: Response to the query "Does Ms. Garbo fist-bump?" ("NO, GRETA SHAKES") — wow, that is one forced clue. I guess it beats a clue about Ms. Garbo's not having the dt's.
  
• 102A: Love before war? (PRE-MARTIAL SEX)
  

Most troublesome of the trouble spots, for me, was the area around the KATIE / IRWIN intersection (59A: Scarlett O'Hara's real first name + 42D: Filmmaker Allen). Had no clue about either name—never a great feeling to run into an unknown proper noun collision like that. Couldn't figure out ASCRIBE (had ACCLAIM at one point) (29D: Credit) and would never have gotten to TAE BO from the clue (35D: Judo-like exercises) without significant crosses. The plural "exercises" feels wrong. TAE BO is an exercise routine. Singular. I guess if you take each movement as a discrete exercise, then voila, but I don't like it. I had TOTES in there but took it out (forget why) (49D: Lugs). Had TRIB in there but then took it out and tried TROP ("The TROP" is the name of the Tampa Bay Rays ballpark) (49A: Tampa paper, briefly, with "the"). Throw in the fact that I REMEMBER is kind of an arbitrary phrase (42A: "You don't need to remind me") and OIL PALM is not high on my Familiar Tree list (14D: Tree whose two-word name, when switched around, identifies its product), and you (or rather I) have a pretty thorny section on your (my) hands.

Bullets:

• 20A: Cry from a balcony ("O ROMEO...") — Nice clue. Sounds general, ends up being (very) specific.

• 32A: Locale for a cattail (FEN) — Considering I have no first-hand experience with FENs or cattails, I got this remarkably quickly.
  
• 68A: Shriners' headwear: Var. (FEZES) — points off for "Var." Bonus points for a "Z."
  
• 95A: "Rock 'n' Roll is King" band, 1983 (ELO) — it's a 1983 music kind of day, I guess. First "LET'S DANCE," now this:

• 1D: Former German chancellor Adenauer (KONRAD) — started with "C," and then adjusted to accommodate K.D.
  
• 11D: Country star ___ Lynne (SHELBY) — she did a very fine album of Dusty Springfield covers called "Just a Little Lovin'":

• 16D: Plane over Yemen, maybe (DRONE) — Great clue. Very contemporary.
  
• 17D: College town just off Interstate 95 (ORONO) — the crosswordiest of college towns. Just as MIR is the crosswordiest of space stations (103D: It landed in the Pacific Ocean on 3/23/01).
  
• 45D: Bygone hand weapon (BROAD AX) — several years of D&D experience as a kid and I still couldn't come up with this (easily), even with AX in place.
  
• 59D: Director of the major film debuts of James Dean and Warren Beatty (KAZAN) — really want to read Schickel's bio of KAZAN. Of course I really want to read a LOT of things. It's overwhelming. I probably shouldn't let it stress me out. My wife and daughter just *read*. Me, I always want to be reading the *right* thing, in the *right* order, at the *right* time. I think I'd enjoy reading more if I just did it instead of thinking about it so much.
  
• 72D: Game whose name is derived from Swahili (JENGA!) — I have literally never played this game. It was created in the '80s, but became really popular (as I remember it) in the '90s, when I was not playing games of any kind at all. Not my favorite decade.
  
• 85D: Alex of "Webster" (KARRAS) — also [Alex of the Detroit Lions].
  
• 88D: Southwest Africa's ___ Desert (NAMIB) — just dawned on me that this is probably related somehow to NAMIBIA. Never heard of the desert before.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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