Pro-Church of England position / FRI 7-1-11 / Winthrop's affliction Music Man / Title girl 1990s-2000s MTV cartoon / Cousins of blackbirds

Constructor: Chris A. McGlothlin

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM (38A: Pro-Church of England position)— word is broken up and rebused across the middle of the grid

Word of the Day: ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM (38A: Pro-Church of England position) —

Antidisestablishmentarianism [...] is a political position that originated in 19th-century Britain in opposition to proposals for the disestablishment of the Church of England, that is, to remove the Anglican Church's status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales. // The establishment was maintained in England, but in Ireland the Church of Ireland (Anglican) was disestablished in 1871. In Wales, four Church of England dioceses were disestablished in 1920, subsequently becoming the Church in Wales. // The question of disestablishment of the Church of England is still current, often tied with the position of the English monarch as "Supreme Governor" of the Church (see Act of Settlement 1701). Those who wish to continue the establishment of the Church of England are referred to as Antidisestablishmentarians. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very hard for me. The times I'm seeing right now at the NYT site indicate that it was blisteringly hard for most folks. First off, you're not always looking for a rebus or trick or theme of any kind on a Friday. So there's that. Then there's the fact that it's just hard. I count at least nine answers that I flat-out didn't know (though a handful of those I'd vaguely heard of and could guess at with some crosses). I'm torn between admiring the puzzle (it's tough and memorable and there are some very cool entries and clues) and a general feeling of "I don't get it." Why that word? Why is it broken up? Is splitting or breaking somehow related to the word's meaning (seems a stretch)? Or is it just that this is a famous long word, so why not put it at the center and dice it and stuff it into little squares?

I had a sense early on that there was a rebus involved (at ARK(AN)SAS, actually / 28D: Home of the 42nd U.S. president), but I already had so much of the puzzle done, with no rebus squares in sight, that I figured Clinton must have some other "home" that ends in the same last two letters as his home state. Eventually, the general impenetrability of the center made it clear that something fishy was afoot (is that a mixed metaphor?), and the undeniability of JUST FOR MEN (I mean, once you get to JUST FOR [one blank square], your options are pretty limited) finally tipped me to the letter-cramming gimmick (8D: Popular hair care product).

Fill is pretty solid, except for that ALER / PLAN C (6D: Alternative fallback position) / HAHAHA patch in the NW. My main objection is to the ENTO- / TOE cross (9D: Prefix with -derm / 21A: It may be pinched). Never ever heard of ENTOderm (!?!?!) (is that when your skin is ... on the inside?), and I have never pinched my TOE (stubbed, sure, but not pinched), whereas I pinched my TIE just this morning before heading out to freshman orientation. It's how I get the knot to cinch up right. ENTO- is a terrible bit of fill anyway—don't call attention to it by getting cute with your crosses.

[Warning: some profanity]

Stuff I didn't know:

• 17A: Florida's ___ Park Race Track (HIALEAH) — Who can forget the THRILLA in HIALEAH!? Classic. (15A: Start of a big 1975 sports event?)
• 2D: An apostle (PHILIP) — of all the PHILIPs... come on. Boo. Boring.
• 23A: Winthrop's affliction in "The Music Man" (LISP) — whose what?
• 38D: Structural piece bent 90˚ along its long dimension (ANGLE IRON) — pfft. Next.
• 50A: London borough with Wembley Stadium (BRENT) — again ... of all the BRENTs. Boring / obscure.
• 65A: Chanel fragrance "pour homme" (EGOISTE) — sounds vaguely familiar, but I needed a lot of help from crosses.
• 39D: Sheet music notations (TABLATURES) — I was trying to make this something like E NATURAL for a while...
• 13D: Story from Joyce's "Dubliners" ("EVELINE") — never read Joyce. Not a word. Weird, right?

Not the most contemporary of puzzles, but that's OK. At least it has "DARIA," a great and highly underrated cartoon that was technically a spin-off of "Beavis & Butt-head" but is almost nothing like "Beavis & Butt-head" (27A: Title girl in a 1990s-2000s MTV cartoon). Smart, cynical girl trying to survive a modern Riverdale High School (her school's name = Lawndale). Recommended. Is the constructor an older man who really likes his hair, 'cause "A Little DAB'LL Do Ya" and JUST FOR MEN ... that's an odd coincidence.

Bullets:

• 31A: Like many blog comments, informally (ANON.) — when I realized there might be a rebus in play, I briefly considered that the answer here might be A[NG]RY.
• 36A: Cousins of blackbirds (GRACKLES) — black with a weird bluish sheen. We get them on our lawn quite a bit.
• 40A: Creamlike paint shade (EGGSHELL) — big big help. Got this answer off just the final "L"
• 1A: It often contains "lies" (EPITAPH) — absolutely fantastic clue. Just what a 1-Across clue should be. I also enjoyed 60A: Mama grizzly, south of the border (OSA). Are there grizzlies in Mexico?
• 66A: Astronaut's favorite dessert? (MOON PIE) — piece of cake, just like the entire SE corner. Weird contrast to rest of the puzzle.
• 26D: Class with Browning and Golding, say (ENGLISH LIT) — those of you horrified at my non-Joyce-reading will be happy to know that a. this clue was transparent, b. I've read both the authors mentioned, and c. I know enough about ENGLISH LIT to know that there is no one class that would feature both these writers (unless the topic of that class is "random books I pulled off my shelf"). Further, the first man who came to mind when I saw "Golding" was not the "Lord of the Flies" guy, but the Renaissance translator of Ovid. Arthur Golding. You heard me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Harry Shearer's program on public radio / SUN 1-23-11 / One of Sean Combs's aliases / Last-second bidder on eBay / Oscar snubber of 1972

Constructor: Chris A. McGlothlin

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "LETTER OPENERS" — 26 different starred clues each start with a different letter of the alphabet, from "A-ONE" to "Z AXIS"


Word of the Day: R-VALUE (6A: *Insulation measure) —

The R-value is a measure of thermal resistance used in the building and construction industry. Under uniform conditions it is the ratio of the temperature difference across an insulator and the heat flux (heat transfer per unit area, ) through it or .The R-value being discussed is the unit thermal resistance. This is used for a unit value of any particular material. It is expressed as the thickness of the material divided by the thermal conductivity. For the thermal resistance of an entire section of material, instead of the unit resistance, divide the unit thermal resistance by the area of the material. For example, if you have the unit thermal resistance of a wall, divide by the cross-sectional area of the depth of the wall to compute the thermal resistance. The unit thermal conductance of a material is denoted as C and is the reciprocal of the unit thermal resistance. This can also be called the unit surface conductance and denoted by h. The bigger the number, the better the building insulation's effectiveness. R-value is the reciprocal of U-value.

• • •

First thing I noticed was the unusual and very cool-looking grid. The next thing I noticed was the almost complete lack of long answers. Hmmm. Theme was very, very, very easy to gather. It's ambitious (26 theme answers)—but there were a few problems. First, the lack of long answers makes for a somewhat dull grid. There's no humor, no tricks, no ... just not much of anything except the relentless revelation of letter-answers, which are very varied in quality / interestingness. Y CHROMOSOME is fantastic, as is its clue (116A: *Women just don't get it). But R VALUE? S TYPE? They're valid entries, but figuring them out is not entertaining. You know they're coming, eventually, but there's no aha moment, no surprise. Once you gather the theme (quickly), then it's mainly just a matter of plodding through grid. So theme-wise, I wasn't very intrigued. Strangely, though, I thought the non-theme fill was quite great in many places. NO DRAMA! IN DRAG! "LE SHOW!" (77D: Harry Shearer's program on public radio) Very daring. BENAZIR and SEQUOIA, also nice. My favorite answer, for reasons I don't quite understand, was LUMP SUM. Don't recall ever seeing it in a puzzle before. Fresh, and perfectly clued—the one moment in the puzzle (besides Y CHROMOSOME) that really did give me the aha I was craving. Sure, there's a PROSY here and a TERNE there and a HE'D somewhere else, but otherwise the fill was mostly nice. So theme gets not-so-high marks from me, but grid shape and fill definitely get a thumbs-up.


Theme answers:

• A-ONE
• B-MOVIE
• CSPAN
• DDAY
• ESTREETBAND (26A: *The Boss's backers)
  
• FSTOP
• GMAN
• HBOMB
• IPOD
• J-LO (88A: *4x platinum album of 2001)
  
• K-TEL
• L BAR
• M DASH
• NSYNC (42D: *Group with the 2000 #1 hit "It's Gonna Be Me")
  
• O-RING
• P DIDDY
• Q-TIP
• R VALUE (?)
• S-TYPE
• T-TOP
• U-HAUL
• V SIX
• W TWO (...)
• X-RAY
• Y CHROMOSOME
• Z AXIS
  

Did this one on paper in my dining room with my wife and our friend Donna. They were busy doing other stuff, so I'd just call out clues and we proceeded that way. Most clues were easy to get on the first pass. I didn't even have to say how many letters or what crosses there were much of the time. I see a total of four write-overs in the grid. First, Donna said COMIXES and I wrote it in without thinking about whether it was a word or not—real answer was ADMIXES (46D: Mingles (with)). Then I didn't read the clue thoroughly and wrote in IDEA instead of IDÉE at 103A: Light bulb over one's tête? Next, I wrote in SHARD for SHRED (106D: Bit). Lastly, and most scarily, I had MENA at 101A: Actress Sofer instead of RENA at first. I think I got her confused with MENA Suvari (another actress whose first name lands her in the grid from time to time). Luckily, I had heard of ARCO and so could change the "M" to "R." But that cross felt a teensy bit dangerous.

Bullets:

• 24A: Oscar snubber of 1972 (BRANDO) — my partners didn't know it, but this was a gimme for me. Didn't he send a Native American woman in his place ...? I was three, so I don't remember. Ah, here it is: Sacheen Littlefeather. Youtube won't let me embed it, but you can see her (non-) acceptance speech here.
  
• 65A: ___ Mode, female character in "The Incredibles" (EDNA) — did not know this. Seems like a clue meant to toughen the puzzle up, at least a tiny bit (still, easily inferrable from a couple crosses).
  
• 89A: Maurice of Nixon's cabinet (STANS) — I know I've seen him in puzzles before, but I'm not sure how I'm ever going to remember that completely improbable last name.
  
• 122A: Last-second bidder on eBay (SNIPER) — I have been a SNIPER, though I didn't know there was a name for it until I did this puzzle.
  
• 40D: Repeated cry in Buster Poindexter's "Hot Hot Hot" (OLE!) — Me: "... HOT?" Then I remembered the opening OLE OLE OLE OLE part.
  
• 58D: 1909 Physics Nobelist for work in wireless telegraphy (MARCONI) — tip of my tongue. Said three different wrong answers out loud before I hit the right one. Sadly, I had to go to Starship to get the right answer...

["MARCONI plays the mamba ...?"]

• 111D: Lead/tin alloy (TERNE) — one of those words I've never seen anywhere but crosswords, and even then, only once (before today)
  
• 87D: ___ Trench (earth's deepest depression) (MARIANAS) — I thought the actual trench was MARIANA. MARIANAS TRENCH appears to be a punk/EMO band from Vancouver...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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