Bandmate of Johnny Rotten / WED 3-23-11 / Ancient land in modern Jordan / Onetime exam in British schools / Home to Da Vinci's L'Ultima Cena

Constructor: Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium


THEME: JULIUS CAESAR (54A: Speaker of the Latin quote hidden in the answers to the starred clues ... and the English language-quote hidden in the answers to the double-starred clues) — "VENI VIDI VICI" and "THE DIE IS CAST," respectively

Word of the Day: AKIO Morita (57D: Sony co-founder Morita) —

Akio Morita KBE (盛田 昭夫 Morita Akio, January 26, 1921, Tokoname, Aichi – October 3, 1999, Tokyo) was a Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony Corporation along with Masaru Ibuka. (wikipedia)

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Solved on paper, in preparation for my run at next year's B Finals (ACPT 2012) (all puzzles are done on paper at the ACPT). I tend to solve on-screen because it's so much more convenient, but the mechanics of on-paper solving are completely different, and something I need to get much more used to. I learned to solve crosswords on paper, but that was long before I got very good, and well before I'd even heard of software that allowed for on-screen solving. At any rate, I'm moving back to paper for my NYT-solving now, for the most part, which means having to get used to a whole new set of difficulty norms (on-paper times are inevitably slower). This is all to say that I don't really know how difficult this was. I had moments of sputtering, but overall it felt very doable—perhaps even a bit moreso than an average Wednesday. Hardest part was figuring out the second part of the theme, i.e. seeing THE DIE IS CAST "hidden" in the answers to those four double-starred clues (I'd have been more impressed with a hidden ALEA IACTA EST). I'm ambivalent about the theme—the double-star, double-language aspect is interesting, but those words aren't exactly hard to "hide," and the quotes are unrelated, and only one of the "hidden" words actually touches more than one word in its answer. So ... I'm on the fence. Neither up nor down for me. I came, I saw, I shrugged.

Theme answers:

• EVENINGDRESS VIVIDIMAGE SIDVICIOUS (Soiree attire / Indelible picture in the mind / Bandmate of Johnny Rotten)
  
• THEIR ADIEU VISIT CASTE ("His/her" alternative / Parting word / Sojourn / Social grouping)
  

Pencil-solving allows me to see quite vividly where I struggled. I rarely take the time to erase, choosing instead to scrawl new letters on top of old, leaving a strange palimpsest for the judges/computers to interpret (no problems so far). Today, the place de resistance was the NE, where failure to come up with the RX-8 carmaker (HONDA? ACURA? No, MAZDA) and failure to guess quickly what followed EVENING (DRESS, it turns out), meant that that corner gave me minor fits. I think I got TEES (12D: Concert souvenirs), and then DRESS, and then tried HONDA, and when that didn't work, MAZDA, and it went down from there. Tournament experience has taught me that in speed-solving, you are in your own world where time runs differently—what feels like epic struggle might only be 10-15 seconds. I thought I was really getting beaten up by Puzzle 5 as I was solving it at the tourney ... but I ended up with the 11th best score on that puzzle (out of 650 or so solvers). Of course on the easiest puzzle (Puzzle 1), I got so caught up in speed that I left a square blank—a horribly costly error (I'd have been close to the Top 20 overall if I'd simply filled that stupid little square in—it's not like the cross was tough; I just missed it).

Two other hiccups today: LIMO for SEMI (7D: Hard-to-park vehicle) and E'ER for O'ER (63D: Poetic contraction). Otherwise, pretty smooth sailing.

Bullets:

• 34A: Onetime exam in British schools (O LEVEL) — did not know the O LEVELs were "onetime." I've seen A LEVEL and O LEVEL several times in recent puzzles, after (or so it seems) never having seen them before. Weird.
  
• 50A: Ancient land in modern Jordan (EDOM) — one of many four-letter Mediterraneanish geographical clues I can't keep straight. See also ELEA, which I also confuse with ALEA, which, given today's theme, is interestingly coincidental.
  
• 11D: y= 3x + 5 representation, e.g. (LINE) — true enough, though I couldn't see it. Technically, y = x is a LINE, right?
  
• 23D: Home to da Vinci's "L'Ultima Cena" (MILANO) — I was just wondering what it was about this clue that indicated the Italian spelling, when I realized that the "L'Ultima Cena" is Italian for "The Last Supper." Aha.
  
• 33D: Danish city where Hans Christian Andersen was born (ODENSE) — vaguely rings a bell. Got most if not all of it from crosses.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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