Rocker Hitchcock / THU 6-30-11 / Snack cake since 1961 / Whitman's dooryard bloomer / Intermediate at law / 1966 gold album Herb Alpert

Constructor: David Poole

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: ACRONYM (50D: Basis of the answer to each starred clue, commonly) — answers are silly sentences that are also homophones of common acronyms (initialisms, actually, but why split hairs?)


Word of the Day: MESNE (10D: Intermediate, at law) —

a.

[Cf. Mean intermediate.]
(Law) Middle; intervening; as, a mesne lord, that is, a lord who holds land of a superior, but grants a part of it to another person, in which case he is a tenant to the superior, but lord or superior to the second grantee, and hence is called the mesne lord. // Mesne process, intermediate process; process intervening between the beginning and end of a suit, sometimes understood to be the whole process preceding the execution. Blackstone. Burrill. -- Mesne profits, profits of premises during the time the owner has been wrongfully kept out of the possession of his estate. Burrill. (Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/mesne#ixzz1QioqZXBn)

• • •

This puzzle is ingenious, even if the fill is a little rough around the edges in parts. ROBYN Hitchcock (57D: Rocker Hitchcock) crossing ALAN BALL!? (64A: "Six Feet Under" creator) Yikes. I knew both, but only because a. I was in college when ROBYN Hitchcock was a well known "college rock" (it was a thing) artist, and b. I do puzzles and have stumbled on ALAN BALL before. Lots of names, and with every theme answer relying on your knowing famous names, this seems like an easy puzzle to get stuck in (name-y puzzles tend to be landmines). But the theme is great, even if, as I say, ACRONYMs, technically, can be said as a word, e.g. NOW (the National Organization for Women) or OSHA (the Organization of Senior Hat Artists). These are all initialisms, but I think dictionaries have tired of people screwing up and decided that any initialism can be called an ACRONYM now, so ... here we are.


Theme answers:

• 16A: *"Got it! You want me to play Dorothy's aunt!" ("I SEE! BE EM!")
  
• 25A: *"Get in line, Ms. Gorme!" ("QUEUE, EYDIE!")
  
• 40A: *"Ms. Myers, shall I pour?" ("DEE DEE ... TEA?") — this was the first theme answers I stumbled across and I somehow couldn't get the name DOROTHEA out of my head (I had the last two letters). Even later, when I'd filled in ACRONYM, I couldn't figure out what the deal was. Only when I got "QUEUE, EYDIE!" and went "huh?" did it dawn on me what was going on. After that, things were a little easier.
  
• 56A: *"Supermodel Macpherson, I presume?" ("YOU ARE ELLE?")
  
• 71A: *"Sly insect!" ("CAGEY BEE!")
  

Got Nothing in the NW and so ended up starting at BALD (33A: Unlocked?) and sliding right down into the SE corner, where I ended up piecing together ACRONYM pretty early, well before I had any theme answer in place. Man, there are Really a lot of names in this puzzle. But I've said that. I also said the fill was a little rough around the edges, but truthfully the only outright ugly thing in the grid is MESNE (which I have seen only once before: when it was running through a stack of four 15s back in March) (10D: Intermediate, at law). Otherwise the puzzle is hampered only by an excessive reliance on odd names. Weird to have FDA and SRO (60A: 1966 gold album by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass) and GMT and PSA in this puzzle, if only because I really want to turn them into theme answers. *"Gosh, it's all gone!" => "GEE, EMPTY!" *"Urinate, my fellow Mexican!" => "PEE, ESE!" I think I've got the hang of it.

Bullets:

• 15A: Horse-drawn vehicle (LANDAU) — like ALAN BALL, I know LANDAU Only from crosswords.
  
• 34A: Cub #21 of 1990s-2000s (SOSA) — "of the Steroid Era" is more like it.
  
• 35A: "The Rules of the Game" filmmaker, 1939 (RENOIR) — Jean. Know the name, but have not (to my knowledge) seen any of his films.
  
• 53A: Peeler's target, informally (SPUD) — a befuddling clue. "Target" makes potato-peeling sound awfully violent / personal.
  
• 55A: Whitman's dooryard bloomer (LILAC) — just finished "To Kill a Mockingbird" today. I'd never read it before. Hey, guess what else I've never read. Go on.
  
• 73A: Surfer's handle (USER NAME) — that use of "surf" shouldn't fool anyone at this point.
  
• 2D: Newman of early "S.N.L." (LARAINE) — know her name by sound. Written out, it looks Nuts.
  
• 6D: Snack cake since 1961 (SUZY Q) — ooh, rough. I haven't seen one of these ... well, since I don't when. Not sure I could pick one out of a snack cake line-up.

• 58D: Horror movie locale, for short (ELM ST.) — again, pretty hard. I was thinking "locale" in the general sense (i.e. cabin in the woods).
  
• 67D: Old NASA vehicle (LEM) — A common enough ACRONYM. I was reminded of it the other day when someone, somewhere mentioned a one-hit wonder band that I'd completely forgotten about. OK, so their name's LEN, not LEM. Just go with it:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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