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
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
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
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