Mezzo-soprano Marilyn / FRI 2-24-12 / President's daughter on West Wing / French loanword literally means rung on ladder / Psychedelic 1968 song featuring lengthy drum solo / Once-autonomous people southern Russia / 1980s Tyne Daly role / Hymn sung to Apollo / Homeric character who commits matricide

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: whatnot (51A: What a whatnot has = BRIC A BRAC) —

n.

1. A minor or unspecified object or article.
2. A set of light, open shelves for ornaments.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/whatnot#ixzz1nGXoLi3i

• • •

This seems an OK puzzle, but I didn't enjoy it much. With the exception of (finally) figuring out "INAGADDADAVIDA" (48A: Psychedelic 1968 song featuring a lengthy drum solo), most of the effort didn't seem quite worth it. STOCKS AND SHARES is a meaningless phrase to me (30A: Paper assets). I mean, I know those words, but I wouldn't put them together into a grid-spanning central phrase. I just learned that there are things called "STOCKS AND SHARES ISAs" (Individual Savings Accounts). OK. Started out lightning fast in the NW, then got to WATER- and couldn't build on it at all. Two really bad wrong guesses (SALUTE for SNAP TO (8D: Acknowledge a commander's entrance, maybe), EAR LOBE for EARLOCK (?) (14D: One hanging at a temple) kept me at bay a long time in the north. Don't know who ALAN BATES is (15A: 1968 Best Actor nominee for "The Fixer"). This fact strangely does not EMBARRASS me. Stuff like HERBAGE and ELLIE meant nothing to me (35D: Nonwoody plant parts). [Blank] SLIDE could've been at least two other four-letter words besides ROCK. I certainly didn't know what a "whatnot" was (in this clue's sense of the word), and though the only -AC-ending word I could think of was BRIC A BRAC, it kept seeming wrong for various reasons (51A: What a whatnot has).



The thing that irritated me most about the puzzle—in fact the only thing that I found genuinely irritating at all—is the clue for ORESTES (38A: Homeric character who commits matricide). If we are calling ORESTES a "Homeric character," then virtually every known character from classical mythology is "Homeric." ORESTES is not a "character" in either of the Homeric epics—not in the sense that English-speaking human beings generally understand the word "character." He is mentioned in both. Briefly. Despite the fact that you could lawyer up a defense of the clue on a "letter of the law" basis, this clue is fundamentally dishonest. Aeschylus wrote substantially about ORESTES. Homer simply waved at him in passing.

Bullets:

• 13A: Mezzo-soprano Marilyn (HORNE) — no idea, but didn't matter 'cause that corner was easy. Also had no idea "DONAHUE" was ever on MSNBC (25A: It was MSNBC's highest-rated program when canceled in 2003).
• 21A: French loanword that literally means "rung on a ladder" (ECHELON) — this was a gimme—a gimme I could've used in a much harder part of the grid. A gimme that was wasted in this already-easy corner.  

• 37A: It has a denomination of $1,000 (T-NOTE) — uh ... OK. I was thinking G-NOTE, for obvious reasons.
• 41A: Weapons used to finish off the Greek army at Thermopylae (ARROWS) — I'd forgotten this. And rounding off the classical trifecta of clues, we have PAEAN (5D: Hymn sung to Apollo).
• 2D: Poet who gave us "carpe diem" (HORACE) — ah, the opening of this puzzle, when everything seemed so right. I went THAI / IN NEED / ARETHA / HORACE in about 10 seconds. 
• 7D: Kaplan who co-hosted six seasons of "High Stakes Poker" (GABE) — at four letters, I figured it had to be him, but my incorrect SALUTE kept clashing with him, so I wouldn't put him in. TV poker, ugh ... more stuff I just don't care about. Puzzle is just outside my general sphere of interests.
• 33D: Once-autonomous people of southern Russia (COSSACKS) — lots about them in Anna Karenina. At least I think that's how I know about them.Whoa, Tolstoy also wrote a novel titled, simply, "The COSSACKS." I did not know that.
• 12D: Letter on Kal-El's costume (ESS) — It's technically "Clark's" costume, but ... whatever. This was a gimme. Just covered the "ESS" specifically in a recent class discussion of Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns."
• 47D: 1980s Tyne Daly role (LACEY) — 'Cause CAGNEY wouldn't fit.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Youth with Skull painter / FRI 2-17-12 / Lady Baltimore novelist 1906 / Graceful fairy / Postapocalyptic best seller of 1978 / Aquila's brightest star

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: OWEN WISTER (49A: "Lady Baltimore" novelist, 1906) —

Owen Wister (July 14, 1860 – July 21, 1938) was an American writer and "father" of western fiction. [...] He began his literary work in 1891. Wister had spent several summers out in the American West, making his first trip to Wyoming in 1885. Like his friend Teddy Roosevelt, Wister was fascinated with the culture, lore and terrain of the region. On an 1893 visit to Yellowstone, Wister met the western artist Frederic Remington; who remained a lifelong friend. When he started writing, he naturally inclined towards fiction set on the western frontier. Wister's most famous work remains the 1902 novel The Virginian, the loosely constructed story of a cowboy who is a natural aristocrat, set against a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War and taking the side of the large land owners. This is widely regarded as being the first cowboy novel and was reprinted fourteen times in eight months. The book is dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt. (wikipedia)

• • •

My only complaint about this puzzle was that I blew through it like it was barely there. Also, not a lot in the way of really interesting fill—with the exception of "THERE, THERE" over "EASY DOES IT" (53A: "It'll be O.K." lead-in + 55A: "Whoa, not so fast!"), which makes for a somewhat interesting half of an imagined dialogue, and BABE MAGNET, which is great 1-Across material (1A: Stud, say). The fill is pretty smooth, just not very spicy. It's also very ANTLERS™ — ultracommon letters abound, and there's just the lone "X" to represent your minority letters. I enjoyed the trivia in the clues, which kept some very familiar answers hidden from me for a little bit, but there was a bit of a nagging blandness. But you can't fault clean fill + interesting fill too much.

I started a bit haltingly by putting in GAPE for 1D: Appear thrilled (BEAM). But I figured ALFA had to be right at 2D: Two before Charlie, and then, without even looking at 37-Down (37D: South-of-the-border bad guy), I knew 19A: More, to a 37-Down would have to be MAS. I don't think I ever saw "Godfather Part III," so that clue was a mystery to me, and stayed that way even after I got -LIW-... that is a letter combination so odd that my first instinct was "Error." But I kept it in and eventually uncovered ELI WALLACH (15A: He played Don Altobello in "The Godfather Part III"). Moved from there down to the SW, where CHADS, HALS (32A: "Youth With a Skull" painter), and ODS came very easily, and FALSE START then gave me all the traction I needed (27D: Reason for a track delay). I think I then went up to the NE and then down to finish in the SE, with only RAO (31A: 1990s Indian P.M.) and an initial "S" for "F"error at 44A: Grain, e.g. (FEED) holding me up at all. Not a record time, but still pretty fast. Mid 6s.


Bullets:

• 18A: Hillbilly's plug (CHAW) — that has to be one of the most disturbing clues I've come across in a while. 
• 20A: Eric of "Funny People," 2009 (BANA) — no idea what movie that is, but a four-letter Eric in the past decade or so is surely BANA. He's the Crossword Hollywood It Boy. I picked him up the same way I picked up DADO and BETEL—reflexively.
• 6D: Aquila's brightest star (ALTAIR) — I'm no good at astronomical junk, but I had enough crosses to get ALTAIR, which I'd seen in other puzzles. 
• 10D: Postapocalyptic best seller of 1978 ("THE STAND") — if you discuss postapocalyptic literature with anyone for very long, this title inevitably comes up. A massively popular example of the genre.
• 22D: League division (EAST) — this wasn't hard, but it felt a little ... cryptically unspecific. Seems like it needs a qualifier, if only an appended "at times." Or maybe "Common league division." Phrasing makes it sound like the word will, absolutely, mean "league division."
• 28D: "Faded Love" singer, 1963 (CLINE) — I'm gonna assume this is Patsy, even though I don't recall ever having heard this tune ... 

• 30D: Film with the tagline "Borat was SO 2006" ("BRUNO") — I haven't seen either, but know both titles well. "BRUNO" doesn't seem to have had the cultural impact that its predecessor did.
• 46D: Graceful fairy (PERI) — falls in the BANA / DADO / BETEL category of Instinctive Fill. Short Stuff You Just Know.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Footloose hero McCormack / FRI 2-10-12 / Spartan toiler / Onetime pickling liquid / Tony's Taras Bulba co-star 1962 / Longtime Dodgers coach Manny / Only Englishman named Dr. of Church / Maker of fabrics with intricate designs

Constructor: Barry C. Silk and Brad Wilber

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

 THEME: none

Word of the Day: JACQUARD LOOM (54A: Maker of fabrics with intricate designs) —

The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns such as brocade, damask and matelasse. The loom is controlled by punched cards with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design. Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and the many cards that compose the design of the textile are strung together in order. It is based on earlier inventions by the Frenchmen Basile Bouchon (1725), Jean Baptiste Falcon (1728) and Jacques Vaucanson (1740) (wikipedia)

• • •

Never heard of either of the long Acrosses, so ... yeah. Not much joy there. Fighting for every letter of an answer that ultimately means nothing to you—not the most pleasant experience. POLITICAL DNA (18A: Party makeup?) I've probably heard somewhere, once or twice, but it seems pretty weak, as in-the-language colloquial phrases go. My first page of google hits for the phrase gives me a Facebook page with that title and two different stories about Nancy Pelosi's daughter. Shrug. Rest of the grid was pretty nice, with lots of late-week trickiness in the clues. But looms just don't excite me, and there's not much else to get very excited about. It's a very serviceable, solid puzzle, for the most part. A good 10-minute workout for me today. That's about 2-3 minutes over my average, and all of that time was spent a. figuring out those two mystery Acrosses, and b. remembering how to spell DE RIGUEUR (6D: Proper). Man, that "UEU" combo just eluded me. I kept forgetting the first "U" and thinking "Why Won't It Fit?" 


I just put HELOT in a puzzle I constructed. I wasn't proud, but I did it anyway. It's a solid, if somewhat arcane, word. It'll do. Beats ALEGAR, that's for sure (I remember learning that word years ago, from crosswords, of course; never seen it since, til now) (16A: Onetime pickling liquid). Had a back-and-forth about "Throw Momma From the Train" with some friends recently (I have a "Screening 1987" Facebook group that is watching one 1987 movie a week, all year long— "Throw Momma" is on the schedule). Momma's saying "OWEN" was one of the things I remembered best about that movie. I apparently have no idea what it means to be named a "Dr. of the Church." Which Church? Catholic? I have "Dr. Donne" in my head (a metaphorical rather than literal title, probably), so I was thinking Anglican Church, which of course made the whole "Only Englishman" thing completely bizarred. "But ... it's the Anglican Church ... so ... what?" (29A: Only Englishman named a Dr. of the Church = ST. BEDE). The phrase "'Footloose' hero" made me laugh, so even though that's a crazy clue for REN, I approve (12D: "Footloose" hero McCormack).


Bullets:

• 32A: Tony's "Taras Bulba" co-star, 1962 (YUL) — "Taras Bulba" may as well be a JACQUARD LOOM for all I know about it (saw it used in a puzzle once as a clue for "TARAS," I think). No idea who "Tony" is here (it's Curtis). 
• 59A: Running quarterly, for short? (COIN-OP) — yeah, that's a good "?" clue.
• 10D: Longtime Dodgers coach Manny (MOTA) — 32 consecutive years as a Dodgers coach. Keep in mind, that's not the same as *the* coach, i.e. the manager. Still, impressive.
• 13D: Ending for AriZona flavors (-ADE) — they make sugary drinks and "teas" and what not. -ADE was an educated guess.
• 51D: Like the Navajo language (TONAL) — I thought 63A: Reacted to a punch was WEAVED, so I had this answer ending in "V." Not a lot of options. YAKOV? PART V?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Fort's steep slope / FRI 2-3-12 / Curling rink line seven yards from tee / Oedipe opera composer 1936 / 2008 demolition target / Where ayuh is affirmative

Constructor: Joel Kaplow

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ELATER (45A: Click beetle) —

The family Elateridae is commonly called click beetles (or "typical click beetles" to distinguish them from the related Cerophytidae and Eucnemidae), elaters, snapping beetles, spring beetles or "skipjacks". They are a cosmopolitan beetle family characterized by the unusual click mechanism they possess. There are a few closely related families in which a few members have the same mechanism, but all elaterids can click. A spine on the prosternum can be snapped into a corresponding notch on the mesosternum, producing a violent "click" which can bounce the beetle into the air. Clicking is mainly used to avoid predation, although it is also useful when the beetle is on its back and needs to right itself. There are about 9300 known species worldwide, and 965 valid species in North America. (wikipedia)

• • •

Six interlacing 15s, none of them very grabby. SINGING TELEGRAM (17A: Special delivery of a sort) is somewhat interesting, but the rest are just blah, as is most of the fill. It's actually somewhat glutted with crosswordese (for a Friday—SMEE and SNEE make for some ugly bookends). Overall, it was a piece of cake except for a. HOG SCORE (or is it HOG'S CORE??? Nope, it's HOG SCORE), an answer that wants to be quaint and adorable but is just annoying for being both highly technical and completely forgettable (10D: Curling rink line seven yards from tee), and b. the whole ELATER area. Actually, it was EINS (28D: Fifth of fünf) that screwed me up. I had EINE. I'm not Germanically versed enough to know the difference, apparently, so my [Oxford attachment?] was an E-HIRE for, like, ever. Other minor slips included ALAN for ALEC, RTE for AVE (9D: GPS screen abbr.), and ON A BREAK for IN A SLUMP (38D: Experiencing down time). I did learn that Eolith or neolith is a tool. I thought they were eras, but now that I think of it, I'm probably thinking EOCENE.

I'd almost like ESCARP (43A: Fort's steep slope) / ELATER better if it were one word: The ESCARPELATER!



Bullets:

• 1A: Title matchmaker of early 19th-century literature (EMMA) — Only needed the first two words of that clue. Cinch.
• 15A: Britain's Douglas-Home (ALEC) — I have no idea who this person is. In fact, at first, I wasn't sure it was a person. Maybe, I don't know, a home ... of some kind. Oh look, he was Prime Minister, very briefly, six years before I was born. How interesting.
• 25A: "Oedipe" opera composer, 1936 (ENESCO) — a composer that appears in grids from time to time, often under a different spelling (ENESCU!)
• 36A: N.F.L. QB Kyle (ORTON) — former Bronco, who led the KC Chiefs to victory over the Tebow-led Broncos in a late-season game that made me very happy.

• 2D: Where "ayuh" is an affirmative (MAINE) — I can't even imagine how this works.
• 61A: "Live at Red Rocks" pianist (TESH) — a poor man's ENESCO.
• 6D: Pasternak mistress Ivinskaya (OLGA) — ??? [Some Russian woman's name] would've worked just as well. Got it off the "O."
• 24D: 2008 demolition target (SHEA) — I forgot about that. Somehow I imagine it still sitting there, unused, sad. Like Tiger Stadium. (Whoops, apparently that was also a 2008 demolition target—I haven't been to Detroit since '06)
• 33D: Dutch Golden Age painter (HALS) — I like his name. It means "neck" in Middle English.
• 39D: Home of Sistan and Baluchestan (IRAN) — I'm enjoying imagining that these are fat twins, like Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Mosel tributary / FRI 1-27-12 / Scrooge star 1951 / Henry James biographer / Wailuku's county / French expert in body language

Constructor: Joe Krozel

Relative difficulty: EEEEEasy

THEME: BOX (36A: Enclosure ... and an alphabetical listing of letters not appearing elsewhere in this puzzle's answer) — BOX appears free-floating, in the middle of the grid, inside a BOX made of black squares

Word of the Day: TALIA Shire (37A: Sylvester's "Rocky" co-star) —

Talia Shire (born April 25, 1946) is an American actress most known for her roles as Connie Corleone in The Godfather films and Adrian Pennino in the Rocky series. // Shire was born Talia Rose Coppola in Lake Success, New York, the daughter of Italia (née Pennino) and arranger/composer Carmine Coppola. Talia is the sister of director and producer Francis Ford Coppola and academic August Coppola, the aunt of actor Nicolas Cage and director Sofia Coppola, and the niece of composer and conductor Anton Coppola. She was married to composer David Shire, with whom she had a son, Matthew Orlando Shire. She has two other sons, actors/musicians Robert Schwartzman and Jason Schwartzman, from her second marriage to the late producer Jack Schwartzman.(wikipedia)

• • •

Yesterday we had a Wed. trying to be a Thur., today a Thur. trying to be a Fri. (while being as easy as a Wed.—full circle!). Freakishly easy, and interesting only at the architectural level. I want to fail it as a crossword, given that nothing "crosses" BOX, but you need (or can use) info outside the BOX to solve BOX, so ... good enough, I guess. Maybe "think outside the box" was the impetus of the phrase, since you (sort of) have to (literally) do that to solve the puzzle. At any rate, aside from the arrangement of the black squares, it's a dull and easy puzzle that suffers from the problems every pangram suffers from—most notably, a general all-over junkiness of fill that seems patently unnecessary. I mean, look at that eastern section. Ghastly. Inexplicable ... until you realize: W's gotta go somewhere (I don't know *what* the SW's excuse is. You already got your Q up top... In fact Z, Q, J, and K are all dispatched in exactly two Acrosses up top). Anyway, the fact that TALIA is the Word of the Day tells you nothing interesting is happening inside the grid. You got a box. A little picture. There you go.





[Yes, that *is* Tilda Swinton] 
Started with EMMAS and never stopped (1A: Actress Stone and others). What was the logic behind making the cluing so easy? The only place I hesitated at all was the far SE, and then only because there were a pair of self-referential clues down there and I didn't know that ALDA was the host of PBS's "Scientific American Frontiers." AMPS also froze me out (even with -MPS in place) (55D: Concert pieces). But I finished this thing in under 5. Except for that one ridiculously fluky Friday where I finished under 4, this was almost certainly my fastest Friday ever. EDEL (63A: Henry James biographer) and SIM (5D: "Scrooge" star, 1951) are mildly obscure to ordinary folk, but to longtime solvers they're as ordinary as houseflies. MARCEAU is an interesting name and close to the most interesting thing in the grid (23A: French expert in body language?). Actually, I think JUST MY LUCK is my favorite answer (21A: "Figures I'd have this problem!"). Bouncy, colloquial, fresh—everything the rest of the grid is not.


Bullets:

• 56A: Baseball All-Star Kinsler and others (IANS) — an attempt to toughen up the puzzle a bit, I gather. I watch a lot of baseball, so this was a gimme. Also, two plural names in the same (easy) grid? (see also EMMAS) Not great form.
• 57A: "1984" shelfmate ("ANIMAL FARM") — interesting clue, but far, far too easy. Now if the answer had been "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" (my shelf holds allegories...), that would've been a surprise.
• 34D: Mosel tributary (SAAR) — one of your lesser-used 4-letter European xword rivers.
• 51D: The Charleses' pet (ASTA) — to the NYT's credit, this dog is not nearly as common as he once was. But when you stick him in a corner like that SW corner, well, it's like he's at a group meeting for his 12-step "recovering crosswordese" program. O man, I didn't even see AGRA until just now. Quaint euphemism! It's old-timers' day at the crossword.
• 2D: Wailuku's county (MAUI) — you don't say ... hey, has "YOU DON'T SAY" ever been an answer? 'Cause I think it'd be a good one. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Bourbon enemy / FRI 1-20-12 / 1997 film with song Tupelo Honey / Head nurse on Scrubs / North American home 30,000 islands / What dickey simulates / Inventor given gold medal by Titanic survivors

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BITT (5A: Mooring post on a ship)

n.

A vertical post, usually one of a pair, set on the deck of a ship and used to secure ropes or cables. 

tr.v. bitt·ed, bitt·ing, bitts

To wind (a cable) around a bitt. (freedictionary.com)

• • •

[It's pledge week here at the Rex Parker site (thru Sat.) —read my pitch for donations in the opening paragraphs of Sunday's write-up, here ... and thanks for your faithful readership (and the many kind messages I've received so far)]

• • •

Deceptively simple. So clean and clear that it starts to border on ho-hum. Nothing here is gonna jump out and bite you, or make you jump up and cheer. It's all just ... creamy. No particularly grabby or contemporary answers, but all of it solid, which is remarkably hard to pull off when you have this much white space to fill. I found the puzzle extremely easy until I hit the NE, which stopped me cold. Couldn't come up with the latter parts of BUYS OUT (24A: Secures every share from) or RAN SHORT (28A: Had some inventory problems), and while I got LITHE OK, I put in both ABAFT and STERN before finally alighting on ABEAM (16A: Nautical direction). Thought maybe [Prompter] was a relative adjective, or else something akin to a cue card, so CATALYST was tough to come up with. I had no idea LAKE HURON had that many islands (12D: North American home of 30,000 islands). Astonishing. While I think the whole concept of RENT-TO-OWN is a terrible idea, I think that answer looks mighty nice in the grid (11D: Like some store furniture). Only other issue was putting in NATCH for NO DUH (1D: "Well, of course"). Otherwise, very smooth sailing.



Bullets:

• 9A: Head nurse on "Scrubs" (CARLA) — not a show I ever watched, and yet I can picture the character clearly. Weird. "Scrubs" featured actor Donald FAISON. He has a name that could be useful in crosswords, but so far, no one's used it.
• 19A: Highly rated 1997 film with the song "Tupelo Honey" ("ULEE'S GOLD") — ULEE is super-common in crosswords, of course, but, strangely, this marks the crossword debut of the full title "ULEE'S GOLD."
• 37A: Inventor given a gold medal by Titanic survivors (MARCONI) — Something to do with radio, no doubt. He didn't invent the lifeboat, did he?
• 52A: Colorful Amazon swimmer (NEON TETRA) — worked by inference here, and managed to get the whole thing off just the "N"
• 41A: U.K. Triple Crown racecourse site (EPSOM) — standard xword fare. Very much worth knowing.  
• 26D: Bourbon enemy (BONAPARTE) — me: "But ... how could anyone hate bourbon? It's sooooo good."
• 3D: Mammy's son (ABNER) — something to do with the comic strip, no doubt. I was utterly stumped.
• 13D: Tiramisu ingredient, often (AMARETTO) — wanted some kind of cheese, possibly ricotta. The actual cheese in tiramisu is mascarpone.
• 38D: Leroux who created the Phantom (GASTON) — knew this without knowing how/why.
• 30D: The Village ___ (musical group with the 1963 hit "Washington Square") (STOMPERS) — well, I guess that's as good a STOMPERS clue as you're going to see. Maybe [Tantrum throwers, at times]. Or these.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Onetime Taliban stronghold / FRI 1-13-12 / Eaters of halal food / Natural Affection playwright / Nine Stories title girl / Rachel McAdams's Sherlock Holmes role

Constructor: Todd Gross and Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TORA BORA (33A: Onetime Taliban stronghold) —

Tora Bora [...] , is a cave complex situated in the White Mountains (Safed Koh) (Safed Koh is the Dari form for Spin Ghar) of eastern Afghanistan, in the Pachir Wa Agam District of Nangarhar province, approximately 50 km (31 mi) west of the Khyber Pass and 10 km (6.2 mi) north of the border of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan. Tora Bora was known to be an important area for the Taliban and insurgency against the Soviet Union in the 80's. Tora Bora and the surrounding White Mountain range had natural caverns formed by streams eating into the limestone. (wikipedia)

• • •

36 black squares? In a themeless? Not sure I've seen that before. 33 last week, for instance, and that was in a 72-worder (the maximum). There's only 66 words in this thing.

This puzzle was over almost before it began. Started off with a dead-obvious 1A: Eaters of halal food (MUSLIMS) and from there the top section was done in about a minute. The middle section, however, proved somewhat more challenging. STRIPLINGS was by far the hardest word for me to come up with (3D: Youth). In fact, the very last letter I put in this damned thing was the "L" in STRIPLINGS / PALISH (?) (21A: Unhealthily light). I half-resent the clue on PALISH. I'm flat-out PALE and don't think I'm unhealthy. TAN is unhealthy. But I'll leave my ghostly gripings aside for now. More problems in the middle: I couldn't find TORA BORA on a map, sadly, so I certainly had no idea it had anything to do with the Taliban, and I (like half of humanity, I'm guessing) I fell for the AVATAR fake-out (38A: Hit film directed by James Cameron (ALIENS)), despite having FAULT (and thus the "L") in place to begin with (28D: Geologist's big break?). Then the bottom was super-easy again. Got MANIFOLD off the "D" (48A: Car exhaust part), and then dropped a bunch of the short stuff down off of that. Doubt the bottom took me any longer than the top. So, wicked easy in parts, but only Easy-Medium overall. As for the puzzle as a whole: I like the fill, but don't enjoy the grid shape. Well, I like looking at it, and it made the puzzle easy to solve, but it feels slightly ... cheap; I need a better word that sounds less derogatory. None of the fill is very exciting. Doug Peterson usually has a handful of winners in his grids. Not sure what happened here.




Bullets:

• 11D: Partridge family setting (NEST) — I really should've noticed that lowercase "f" ...
• 30D: Rachel McAdams's "Sherlock Holmes" role (IRENE ADLER) — never saw it, but woman + Sherlock Holmes = only one (very crosswordy) thing. Another super-easy clue.
• 22D: "Natural Affection" playwright (INGE) — could've been "Any Title" playwright and I'd have handled it the same way—wait for at least one cross and then dip into my trusty arsenal of 4-letter playwrights.
• 14D: "Nine Stories" title girl (ESME) — yet another common crossword name. Do crosswords long enough, and you know ESME (also a name from the "Twilight" universe, FYI).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Volga tributary / FRI 1-6-12 / 2010 Ke$ha chart-topper with creatively spelled five-word title / 2005 horror sequel / 1990s series originally set in year 2193

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

 Word of the Day: OKA (61D: Volga tributary) —

Oka (Russian: Ока́, IPA: [ɐˈka]) is a river in central Russia, the largest right tributary of the Volga. It flows through the regions of Oryol, Tula, Kaluga, Moscow, Ryazan, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod and is navigable over a large part of its total length, as far upstream as to the town of Kaluga. Its length exceeds 1,500 kilometres (930 mi). The Russian capital Moscow sits on one of the Oka's tributaries—the Moskva River. (wikipedia)

• • •

There is much that I love about this puzzle: it has a contemporary feel but is well balanced with answers from many different realms of knowledge and many different eras; it's full of unexpected, interesting answers; it has lots of Xs; etc. But there are two things that were disappointing. First, the difficulty level was wildly uneven—it was supremely easy for long stretches, and then there'd be some obscurity like "TIME TRAX" (?) or some oddity like WIGWAG (?) and things would grind to a strange, temporary halt. Puzzle seemed to over-rely on pop culture titles to provide difficulty ("FOXY LADY," "TIME TRAX," "WE R WHO WE R"). Never a great puzzle feature. The bigger problem, however, was that there are two completely terrible crosses in this puzzle—one I got, one I didn't. 

In both cases, the crosses are both proper nouns of dubious fame, that cross at a not-completely-inferrable letter. This is the definition of a "Natick" (for a definition of the "Natick Principle," go here and scroll down to the glossary). And this puzzle has two. Firstly: yes, MARIO KART is a major video game franchise, but most adults (not all—MOST) are going to be familiar with MARIO but have No Clue about the strange, un-video-game-sounding KART (and its spelling). And only hard-core crossworders know what the hell the OKA is. The only reason I got this one was that I knew OCA was a South American tuber, so the spelling was probably something else. Now that I look at this corner, I know it's going to be a total disaster for many, esp. many older solvers. Ke$ha song with a title from outer space crossing "SAW II" and L.A. GEAR. That's a whole lot of commercial names in one little place. And WIGWAG is down there too, so, yikes (I had WIGWAG as WAFFLE and then WIGGLE...). 

The other Natick (the one that got me) was SONO / ULANOVA. Again, two proper nouns of dubious fame, but this time, both from the Same General Sphere of Knowledge (the sphere of classical music, broadly defined). That's a huge no-no. It's fine to have all manner of answers in your puzzle, including all manner of oddities and obscurities, but you do not cross unfamous proper nouns at an uninferrable letter and you Especially do not do so when both answers are from the same cultural world. It doesn't give the solver a chance. Every solver is ignorant of something, and the beauty of Crosswords is that he/she can save herself from having that ignorance completely derailing the solving experience. This is all to say that I had SOLO / ULALOVA. Obviously ULANOVA sounds more correct now that I see it, but it's not like "L" is an absurd guess, and SOLO seems sooooo much more plausible than SONO (20A: "Dove ___" (Mozart aria)). I mean, it's a *&^%ing aria, and SOLO is a *&^%ing Italian word. Dear lord, if you're going to have a terrible answer like SONO, and your cross is from *&^%ing ballet, at least clue it as a prefix or something. Ugh. This is what happens when you don't take care to avoid this kind of crap—it's what people remember. Actually, a whole lot of people are going to have errors and Never Know. If I'd done it on paper, I would've been blissfully unaware that SOLO / ULALOVA was wrong.

Please note: I gave you two examples of Naticks today. One got me. One didn't. The point isn't what I, personally, do and don't know. I knew the Ke$ha song and the video game and the tributary, but I can still see that it's going to (unfairly) screw other people up. Objectively, the crosses I have discussed are bad. Cluing on SONO- could've saved the one cross. I might have indicated that MARIO KART had a misspelled word—it would've gone nicely with the "WE R WHO WE R" clue, which did the same.

Bullets:

• 17A: 1958 Buddy Holly hit ("MAYBE BABY") — nice answer, and one that was a joy to uncover, mainly because it had me combing through and humming the Buddy Holly catalog.

• 18A: "Guaranteed relief every time" sloganeer (EX-LAX) — not my favorite way to get two Xs, but daring nonetheless.
• 29A: Letters signifying quality brandy (VSOP) — I know this only from crosswords. See also OKA and ARIE
• 51A: Rappers' covers (DO-RAGS) — Some rappers' covers, sure. Many non-rappers' covers too.
• 42A: The so-called Island of the Gods (BALI) — weird: whenever the Judeo-Christian God or anything biblical is in the puzzle, you never see any of this "so-called" nonsense. You could just put the phrase "Island of the Gods" in quotation marks. "So-called" sounds snarky.
• 3D: Chickens for dinner (FRYERS) — I wanted POLLOS ... because ... of arroz con pollo? I don't know.
• 9D: Eponym of a frozen food (EDY) — don't normally think of ice cream as a "frozen food" (I think more of frozen vegetables or Stouffer's dinners and the like). But, of course, ice cream is indeed a frozen food. And this eponym was very easy to come up with.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

1957 Cy Young Award winner / FRI 12-30-11 / Site of 1815 escape / Russain chemist with law of thermodynamics / Show for which Jim Dale won Tony 1980

Constructor: Mike Nothnagel

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Germain Henri HESS (5D: Russian chemist with a law of thermodynamics) —

Germain Henri Hess (Russian: Герман Иванович Гесс German Ivanovich Gess, August 7, 1802–November 30, 1850) was a Swiss-born Russian chemist and doctor who formulated Hess's Law, an early principle of thermochemistry. (wikipedia)

• • •

High Point: UP THE WAZOO
Low Point: HAIL TO
Crucial gimmes: SMOOT, SPAHN

Really liked this one—played tough at first but then opened up beautifully. I like having to struggle for results that do not then make me resent the struggle. Beginning was rough, with nothing going in in the NW until I just took a flyer on SPAHN (25D: 1957 Cy Young Award winner) and the crosses Worked (hurrah!). I guessed HOSTAS (38A: Landscaping plants) off the (at that point imagined) "H." I repeat, *I* guessed HOSTAS. Me. My knowledge of flora is ... I would say "lacking," but that's hardly strong enough. Crosswords taught me that HOSTAS was a word at all, and now today, bam, I just throw it down and off I go. Didn't go off so fast on HESS, though. Still science deficient. Needed Every Single Cross (HESS is a gas / toy truck company to me). I tanked at least one other sciencey clue ... oh yeah, I went with PETROchemical over NEUROchemical. Seemed reasonable. Just watched some awesome animated versions of PLATO's "Allegory of the Cave," and yet still needed virtually every cross to get the answer to 32D: Academy head. Had PLAT- and thought "how is a PLATE an 'academy head'?" Because of the PETRO error I had 45A: Most chic as TOPIEST (which I believe is the correct answer to [Most like a 33-Downed person]). Was annoyed at myself for not coming up with the director of "Good Will Hunting," until I realized I had No Idea Gus VAN SANT directed that. The only names I associate with that movie are Matt Damon and that other guy ... played O'Bannion in "Dazed and Confused" ... come on, what's his name? Affleck! Ha. Brain only partially decayed. Just like two of my teeth, it turns out. Stupid dental X-rays and their diagnostic abilities! I've got an appointment with Dr. Novocaine next Thursday ...





Bullets:

• 17A: What you might reach for after hearing "Don't go anywhere!" (RADIO DIAL) — I don't really get this. Why are people so defiant of the admonition?
• 16A: Holder of legends (ATLAS) — first two answers that leapt to mind : ARK, ERIC.
• 33A: Show for which Jim Dale won the 1980 Tony for Best Actor in a Musical ("BARNUM") — this clue couldn't have been more meaningless to me if it tried. Jim Dale? Yeah, I'm gonna need a *little* more information than that.

• 41A: Shout with cupped hands, maybe (BOO) — Not computing. Are you shouting it across an open field?
• 48A: Drug sold under the brand name Retrovir (AZT) — Did not know this, but I had the "Z," so no sweat. I'm guessing "Retrovir" refers to retrovirus and not, as I originally thought, a Roman who wears bell bottoms.
• 51A: Site of an 1815 escape (ELBA) — I had ERIE. That's a big miss.
• 15D: How Simon Cowell often critiques (CRUELLY) — "The X-Factor" (or the first and only episode I watched, at any rate) was dull and terrible. And "American Idol" has gotten soft and keeps generating irrelevant winners. So I'm out of the reality singing competition game, I'm afraid. More time for watching and rewatching "Downton Abbey."
• 10D: ___-X (septic treatment brand) (RID) — kind of a cruel way to clue a perfectly ordinary word, but somehow I managed to pull this answer out of my X.
• 52D: Humorist who wrote "Progress might have been all rigiht once, but it has gone on too long" (NASH) — As in Ogden. I had SAHL. As in Mort. Humorist, four letters—SAUL is the knee-jerk reaction.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Visitor at beginning of Hobbit / FRI 12-23-11 / Albert's love in Bye Bye Birdie / Flower named for resemblance to turban / Blood shed on Mount Olympus / Murderer in PDQ Bach's spoof opera

Constructor: Patrick Berry

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

 Word of the Day: MANDARIN COLLARS (14A: Nehru jackets have them) —

A mandarin collar is a short unfolded stand-up collar style on a shirt or jacket. Mandarin collars start at the neckline and typically rise vertically two to five centimeters. The style originated from Western interpretation of dresses worn by Mandarins in Imperial China. // The length along a mandarin collar is straight, with either straight or rounded edges at top of the centre front. The edges of the collar either barely meet at the centre front or overlap slightly. Overlapping mandarin collars are often a continuation of a shirt's placket and have a button on the collar to secure the two sides of the shirt together. (wikipedia)

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[FOR MY READERS IN SYNDICATION: It's pledge week here at the Rex Parker site (thru Sat.) —read my pitch for donations in the opening paragraphs of Sunday's write-up, here ... and thanks for your faithful readership (and the many kind messages I've received so far)]

• • •

Fairly typical Berry puzzle—solid and smooth. Tiny passageways between puzzle segments made moving through the grid a bit difficult. Top section played pretty easy, but I couldn't get into the middle at all at first—no way PAGINATE was coming, and though I had POLLIWOG (9D: It grows older and then croaks), I also had ANDREO (!?), which I realized afterward was due to stupid ANDREA *Bocelli*. Botticelli's first name was SANDRO? I had no idea. That middle section was the last to fall. I had to reboot in the bottom section with AVER / VALETED (36D: Did Jeeves's job), but had a harder time down there than I did up top, in part because I had OLE instead of RAH at 50D: Stadium shout, in part because I misspelled the answer to 31D: Blood shed on Mount Olympus (ICHOR) at first (I merged it with the autumnal hue OCHRE to get ICHRE), and in part because I thought 46D: Cross (SORE) was ROOD. Once I finally *saw* the clue for MAURA (44D: Actress Tierney)—a gimme—I got MAPLES (44A: Trees sought by leaf peepers) and started to make good headway. Eventually swung back up into the middle via AMEND / SCHMO / SACRILEGE. The "G" in PAGINATE / GORES was the last thing to go in the grid.

Great morbid clue on RUSSIAN ROULETTE (47A: Game you can't lose twice). Horrible, unnecessarily morbid clue on RHESUS (32D: Popular test animal in medical research). Also a poor clue on SEXISTS (33D: They put half the world down)—a pretty simplistic representation of how sexism works. It's not some guy shouting "All women in the world are stupidheads." You can be sexist and not actively "put down" half the world. I get the idea, but the wording stinks. A few interesting trivia clues today, particularly 22A: Flower named for its resemblance to a turban (TULIP). Both P.D.Q. Bach and "Bye Bye Birdie" are generally outside my sphere of knowledge, so neither of those answers came easily (46A: Murderer in P.D.Q. Bach's spoof opera "A Little Nightmare Music" + 38D: Albert's love in "Bye Bye Birdie"). I did not know ANTs had castes, though I guessed the answer easily enough.





SACRILEGE strikes me as something much stronger than simply lifting a fiver (28A: Stealing from the collection plate, e.g.). OSIER (45A: Twig used in wickerwork) and ORLON (10D: Woollike acrylic fiber) are common crossword materials, and I got them both pretty easily (OSIER helped with the whole ICHRE / ICHOR thing). NCR went from being a stumper when I started this blog to a gimme today (49D: Manufacturer of bar code scanners). Thought [Seller of supplements] would have some trick to it, but no—it's just GNC, a store you can find in any mall, USA. Got a couple lucky breaks up top—I teach Virgil every year, so the obscurish MANTUA was not obscurish to me, and my wife and I just started reading "The Hobbit" aloud to one another in the evenings, so the GANDALF visitation is fresh in my mind (1D: Visitor at the beginning of "The Hobbit"). My nephew is going to be an extra in Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" (filming in NZ, out next December). Excitingish!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Volcano south of Quito / FRI 12-16-11 / Taiwan strait city / Loser at Salamis and Plataea / Early Appalachian crossers / Longa ancient city founded by son of Aeneas

Constructor: Doug Peterson and Barry C. Silk

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: COTOPAXI (31D: Volcano south of Quito) —

Cotopaxi is a stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains, located about 28 km (17 mi) south of Quito, Ecuador, South America. It is the second highest summit in the country, reaching a height of 5,897 m (19,347 ft) // Cotopaxi has an almost symmetrical cone that rises from a highland plain of about 3,800 metres (12,500 ft), with a width at its base of about 23 kilometres (14 mi). It has one of the few equatorial glaciers in the world, which starts at the height of 5,000 metres (16,400 ft). The mountain is clearly visible on the skyline from Quito. It is part of the chain of volcanoes around the Pacific plate known as the Pacific Ring of Fire. // The volcano is the subject of 1855 and 1862 paintings by Frederic Edwin Church. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not a very scintillating grid today. Maybe STELLAR PARALLAX is good (45A: Effect used to measure astronomical distances). Don't know. Never heard of it. Just figured it out from crosses. Other stuff I've seen before. Shorter stuff doesn't really pop. I would love to love COTOPAXI, but I've never seen it before (that I recall), and don't generally like proper nouns that are pretty obscure and look like a random set of consonants and vowels. Puzzle played very easy for me—a series of sprints, interrupted by slight pauses—until I tried to finish off the top of COTOPAXI. I'd gotten all the lower part of it from crosses, but my luck ran out up there, north of PATIO, as it did west of CORVETTE. I spent as much time on that blank patch of land (even removing the -ETTE part of CORVETTE at one point) as I did on the Entire Rest Of The Puzzle. In retrospect, this shouldn't have happened. I wanted PAULO for 26D: "The Alchemist" novelist Coelho from the get-go, but something kept me from writing it in. When I said it to myself, it sounded preposterous. "That can't actually be someone's name, can it? Why would you give your kid a sing-songy, rhyming name?" Also, Tony Coehlo, who I think was a California politician when I was a kid, was running interference. If COTOPAXI was the main bad guy on one side of the Great White Hole in my grid, PETIT was the other. I don't know if I really know what a PETIT four is (26A: Four front?). I am imagining a CANAPE ... crossed with a pinafore (whatever that is). I see it's a dessert thing. O well. JESTS was ridiculous, as I had JOKES and JAPES beforehand. Clues on COALS and CHUTES and CHAIN were all terribly ambiguous, so I just floundered stupidly for a while until I went back to square one and thought "What if I just plug PAULO in here after all...?" So I rate this puzzle Easy-Challenging. Thus, Medium.



I started with WON OUT (2D: Carried the day). Lucky guess? Maybe. Whatever, it worked. Shortly thereafter (once I turned SMIRCH to SCORCH), I threw the 15s across and took HOKKAIDO down. Took care of the NE corner and then got stuck (see above). Went back to W and SW, and polished that off with no problem (except SAN MATEO / AMOY, yipes — the former took a while to come into view, and good thing it did, as AMOY means nothing to me) (39A: Taiwan Strait city). Once AEROBIC EXERCISE went in, the SE was a cinch, and then it was just a matter of climbing COTOPAXI, which I did, cross by cross, until ... (again, see above).


Bullets:

• 21A: Striking things about rec rooms (CUES) — first significant pause. Even with CU-S in place, I had no idea what was up with this. I found the cluing a little overly clever / precious today. 
• 8D: Triptych trio (PANELS) — I somehow thought MAGI at first. Then crosses made it all clear.
• 22D: Orange half of a TV duo (ERNIE) — much easier to get than I thought it would be. Ruled out any possible tanning-bed casualties that might be on TV, then went for Muppets.
• 36D: Simpson who was Time's first Woman of the Year (WALLIS) — didn't know her a few months back. Still don't. American socialite who married the Duke of Windsor? No wonder I don't care.
• 43D: ___ Longa, ancient city founded by the son of Aeneas (ALBA) — I have some familiarity with this material, so this was a cinch. See also XERXES (38D: Loser at Salamis and Plataea).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld