Swiss who pioneered in graph theory / WED 3-2-11 / Only patron on "Cheers" to appear in all 275 episodes / Bxe5 or 0-0-0 in chess

Constructor: David Poole

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Movie "taglines" — plays on words make for alleged movie taglines ... [honestly, I don't get it]


Word of the Day: AARON Rodgers (21A: Super Bowl XLV M.V.P. Rodgers) —

Aaron Charles Rodgers (born December 2, 1983) is an American football quarterback for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). Rodgers was selected in the first round (24th overall) of the 2005 NFL Draft by the Packers. Rodgers played college football while attending the University of California, Berkeley, where he set several California Golden Bears records, including lowest interception rate at 1.43%. // Professionally, Rodgers is the NFL's all-time career leader in passer rating during both the regular season (98.4), and in the post-season (112.6) – among passers with at least 1,500 and 150 pass attempts respectively. He also owns the league's lowest career pass interception percentage for quarterbacks during the regular season (1.99%) (wikipedia)

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I'm waiting on an email from a friend, hoping she'll be able to explain this theme to me. So ... theme answers are alleged movie taglines, which are actually puns made out of ... let's see, a movie title, a Shakespeare play, an actual tagline, and a play/movie title. How is this coherent? On an individual basis, any one of the theme answers might be deemed cute (ICY DEAD PEOPLE is particularly nice), but I'm just missing how this one holds together conceptually. Also, the non-theme fill is dry as a bone. Monday-easy, with just about zero answers of interest. Just didn't work for me, Dawg (sorry, just finished watching "American Idol," the first night of which was pretty damn terrible—with a couple of notable exceptions).

Theme answers:

• 17A: "Taxi Driver" tagline? (A FARE TO REMEMBER)
  
• 25A: "Back to the Future" tagline? (A COMEDY OF ERAS) [wince]
  
• 42A: "Titanic" tagline? (ICY DEAD PEOPLE) — morbid, but great
  
• 56A: "Return of the Jedi" tagline? (LUKE BACK IN ANGER)
  

I learned a couple of interesting bits of trivia today: that NORM was in every episode of "Cheers" (1A: Only patron on "Cheers" to appear in all 275 episodes) and that the HUMMER was discontinued (10D: G.M. brand discontinued in 2010). Beyond that, honestly, I don't have anything to say. Oh, I didn't see the clue til just now, but I'd never heard of the Aramco oil company (in clue for SAUDI). Maybe I'll remember that. Probably not. Oh, last thing: the clue on EULER is the most incoherent-sounding clue I've ever seen. [Swiss who pioneered in graph theory]??? First of all, though correct, "Swiss" for a Swiss person always sounds horribly wrong to me. Second, can you pioneer "in" something? Or is it "in graph" theory? I tripped on EULER once years ago, and I've had him in my back pocket ever since. Today was no different—brain saw "Swiss" and "[something math]" and I had the "EU-" so ... bam.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]