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

Locale of St. Catherine's Monastery / SUN 1-29-12 / River to Korea Bay / Sheiks garments / Simpsons character with platform shoes / George nicknamed Mr Basketball / Mythical figure blinded by Oenopion / Leucippus Deocritus philosophically / Gold rush town of 1899

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Networking Event" — familiar phrases wherein the first word is also a TV network; "?"-clues imagine that the phrases are network-related

Word of the Day: HONE (101A: You might rub a knife across it) —

n.

1. A fine-grained whetstone for giving a keen edge to a cutting tool.
2. A tool with a rotating abrasive tip for enlarging holes to precise dimensions.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/hone#ixzz1knqNc9m9

• • •

Found the cluing on this oddly hard. Clues were *just* out of my familiarity zone. I've never used [Savvies] or GROKS, for instance. I've been entranced, but never HEXED. I know HONE as a verb, but not a noun. I know ALBS, but not ABAS (64D: Sheiks' garments). I have no idea what trio a LAMPPOST could possibly be part of (79D: One of a secretive trio). I didn't not know ION was a TV network *or* that ION EXCHANGE was a thing. I did not know that beads of any kind came from CORALS. I spelled PAYTON thusly. Etc. I actually had an error up top because the clue for SINAI was utterly meaningless to me, devoid of anything SINAI-ish at all, and so when I ended up with SENAI (because of BEER instead of BIER at 5D: Drink served with Brezeln), I didn't even question it (18A: Locale of St. Catherine's Monastery, said to be the world's oldest working monastery). If the clue is fantastically esoteric, it must be because it's trying to justify the importance of some strange geographic location I've never heard of, I reasoned. Quality-wise, everything in this puzzle seems just fine. 

Theme answers:

• 22A: Fancy footwear at a TV station? (SPIKE HEELS)
• 24A: Advertising department at a TV station? (E-MARKETING)
• 36A: Slide show at a TV station? (ENCORE PRESENTATION)
• 56A: Q&A at a TV station? (ION EXCHANGE)
• 72A: Expert at a TV station? (HISTORY BUFF) — this one doesn't repurpose HISTORY very well (or at all)
  
• 86A: Enrollment at a TV station? (LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP)
• 104A: Recruiters at a TV station? (FOX HUNTERS) — nothing about this said "FOX" to me. These days, with shows like "House Hunters," seemed like any three-letter word could've come before "HUNTERS"
  
• 106A: Fish holder at a TV station? (OXYGEN TANK)   

Bullets:

• 5A: Cowboys' home, familiarly (BIG D) — I remember the first time I saw this in a puzzle, mainly because it Naticked me (thought I was dealing with one word, and the cross was ... something, clearly)
• 27A: ___ Levy, four-time Super Bowl coach for Buffalo (MARV) — I hear the fifth time's the charm...
• 35A: Classic toy company whose name is its founder's middle name (LIONEL) — Toy trains. Does anyone under 40 still "play" with those? Reverend Lovejoy of "The Simpsons" is a model train enthusiast. No idea if the same can be said for DISCO STU (8D: "The Simpsons" character with platform shoes)

• 50A: River to Korea Bay (YALU) — a river I know mainly from constructing. It's a lifeline I generally refuse to use (unless there's no alternative, obviously—so far that hasn't been an issue).
• 82A: George nicknamed Mr. Basketball (MIKAN) — I wanted MIKUS. I think that's the last name of some of my parents' friends. Somebody and Connie? Where is this info coming from?
• 103A: Country singer David Allan ___, writer of "Take This Job and Shove It" (COE) — parents were big POE fans, I'm guessing.
• 109A: It's picked in the Pacific (UKE) — I took "in the Pacific" literally. 
• 10D: Gold rush town of 1899 (NOME) — Gold, four letters, this is it.
• 14D: Mythical figure blinded by Oenopion (ORION) — their names are disturbingly similar. I did not know ORION was "blinded." My daughter would likely laugh at my ignorance (so don't tell her, for god's sake; she's stroppy enough as it is). 

• 49D: Leucippus and Democritus, philosophically (ATOMISTS) — "The atomists theorized that the natural world consists of two fundamental parts: indivisible atoms and empty void." (wikipedia). ADAMISTS, on the other hand, are nudists. There's an interesting Venn diagram waiting to happen.
• 88D: Half of a title role for John Barrymore or Spencer Tracy (MR. HYDE) — took a lot of doing. You never know what "half" is going to mean in a clue like this. MATA could be half a title role, for instance. I mean, not here, obviously, but, well, you get my point. Or you don't.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS Only a few weeks left to enter Patrick Blindauer's latest interconnected crossword contest, and this time it has a musical theme. Pay $9.95 via PayPal on Patrick's website and you'll get access to a PDF of crosswords; each puzzle has a final answer and those answers combine to form a meta-answer which can be sent in (before Feb. 16) for the chance to win a prize (swag includes gift cards and puzzle books). Sign up now so you have time to solve and enter!

1953 John Wayne film / WED 11-23-11 / 1982 hit by the Clash / Original member of star alliance / Bogota bears / Trapdoor concealer

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: GARDEN VARIETY (55A: Ordinary ... or what the beginning of the answer to each starred clue is?) — first words of theme answers are all types of GARDEN

  
Word of the Day: "HONDO" (43A: 1953 John Wayne film) —

Hondo is a movie that was made in 1953 by 3-D Warnercolor western film starring John Wayne, directed by John Farrow. The screenplay is based on the 1952 short story "The Gift of Cochise" by Louis L'Amour. The book "Hondo" was a novelization of the film also written by L'Amour, and published by Bantam Books in 1953.

• • •

Got sucked into live-tweeting the GOP debate and now my eyes and brain hurt. Still, managed to take this puzzle down in the 4-minute range, which is pretty dang fast (for me) for a Wednesday. Once again, I finished this puzzle with absolutely no idea what the theme was. Wrote in GARDEN VARIETY off of [Ordinary] and didn't really bother to look at the rest of the clue (at that point, it was pretty late in the game). With the exception of the ugly RELOG, the grid seems pretty solid. Had only minor hang-ups throughout, like, "how do you spell 'KAHN'?" (34D: France's Dominique Strauss-___) and "what's that word ... sounds like 'ARGOT'...?" (19A: Grain disease = ERGOT) and "what the hell are these sidewalk vendors selling!?" Also some small mistakes, like SON for SIS and RED for ODD and TEAL for ANIL.




Theme answers:

• 20A: *1982 hit by the Clash ("ROCK THE CASBAH")
• 28A: *1994 World Cup final site (ROSE BOWL)
• 37A: *Fortuneteller's bit (TEA LEAF)
• 45A: *Popular drinking game (BEER PONG)

["My baby don't care for ... HIGH-TONED places"]

The DET Lions are my team and yet I somehow blanked when I saw 13D: Ford Field team, on scoreboards. So many arenas have corporate sponsors that this one didn't stand out to me as DETroit, despite the car name. I know the [1953 John Wayne film] ("HONDO") because I collect vintage paperbacks and I've seen the Louis L'Amour version of this book many times. I did not know that NERO was once a 64A: Colossal statue outside ancient Rome's Colosseum, but at four letters, there weren't that many options (I got EMPEROR entirely from crosses without ever solving NERO). Was sure 66A: Big name in locks (YALE) would have something to do with hair, and 58D: An original member of the Star Alliance (SAS) something to do with sci-fi. Wrong and wrong.

Oxford Dictionaries just announced their "Word (or Phrase) of the Year" for 2011: "squeezed middle," a term I could infer the meaning of, but which I had never heard. It's certainly not as in-the-language (or nearly as fun to say, or snappy) as the other terms on the short list: Arab Spring, occupy, hacktivism, phonehacking, and sodcasting.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Florida city on Gulf / MON 10-10-11 / Midwest city whose name is poker variety / Stogie holder / Footwear may be worn with PJs

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: 10CC — ten two-word phrases, where both words in each phrase start with "C"

Word of the Day: "RIGOLETTO" (3D: Verdi opera) —

Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851. It is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not much to say here, except 10 is a hell of a lot of theme answers.


Theme answers:

• 17A: Stogie holder (CIGAR CASE)
• 21A: Florida city on the Gulf (CAPE CORAL) — not familiar...
• 27A: What a TV host often reads from (CUE CARD)
• 33A: Place to hang a jacket (COAT CLOSET)
• 43A: Sign of alien life, some say (CROP CIRCLE)
• 49A: Army do (CREW CUT)
• 59A: Fessed up (CAME CLEAN) — jumped the gun here and wrote in COME CLEAN, inferring answer from crosses and figuring surely a theme answer would be in present tense...
  
• 66A: The French Open is the only Grand Slam tournament played on this (CLAY COURT) — ugh, this clue. Just write [French Open surface]. Done and done.
  
• 8D: Bit of razzing (CAT CALL)
• 44D: Auto maintenance (CAR CARE)     

Weird to have long Downs that are not theme answers when shorter Downs are. Other than that, I honestly don't know what else to tell you. ARF under SPCA is a cute juxtaposition. I have never heard anyone refer to their footwear as MOCS (1D: Footwear that may be worn with PJs), especially when pajama-clad. The clue appears to mean "slippers." Also, [Scratch] for MAR doesn't quite work for me as an equivalence. This is like cluing HUNT as [Shoot at]. Maybe, but not necessarily. If I scratch your back, or a lottery ticket, I've marred neither (not if I'm doing it right, anyway). If I scratch your car, and it's barely visible, MAR seems too strong. I thought CHIC was COOL (27D: Trendy). I didn't know OMAHA had anything to do with poker (54D: Midwest city whose name is a poker variety), nor did I know TAFT's father co-founded Skull and Bones (38D: President whose father co-founded Yale's Skull and Bones). The COLTS (8A: Football team with a blue horseshoe on its helmet) are still without Peyton Manning and continue to suck in unfathomable ways, as do I in my football pool.


Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme sci-fi film / MON 8-8-11 / Grassy plain of Southwest / Condiment that's OK for observant Jews / Terse four-star review

Constructor: Ian Livengood (pronounced "LIVin' Good," and not, as I've been pronouncing it, "BEETLEJUICE")

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: HIGH / SEAS (1A: With 69-Across, where to find the ends of 17-, 22-, 32-, 43-, 54- and 61-Across) — theme answers are phrases where last word is also a name for someone who works on a boat: SWAB, HAND, MATE, JACK, TAR, and SALT


Word of the Day: JACK —

n.

1. often Jack Informal. A man; a fellow.
2. 1. One who does odd or heavy jobs; a laborer.
   2. One who works in a specified manual trade. Often used in combination: a lumberjack; a steeplejack.
   3. Jack A sailor; a tar.
3. (Abbr. J) Games. A playing card showing the figure of a servant or soldier and ranking below a queen. Also called knave.
4. Games.
   1. jacks (used with a sing. or pl. verb) A game played with a set of small six-pointed metal pieces and a small ball, the object being to pick up the pieces in various combinations.
   2. One of the metal pieces so used.
5. Sports. A pin used in some games of bowling.
6. 1. A usually portable device for raising heavy objects by means of force applied with a lever, screw, or hydraulic press.
   2. A wooden wedge for cleaving rock.
7. A device used for turning a spit.
8. Nautical.
   1. A support or brace, especially the iron crosstree on a topgallant masthead.
   2. A small flag flown at the bow of a ship, usually to indicate nationality.
9. The male of certain animals, especially the ass.
10. Any of several food and game fishes of the family Carangidae, found in tropical and temperate seas.
11. A jackrabbit.
12. A socket that accepts a plug at one end and attaches to electric circuitry at the other.
13. Slang. Money.
14. Applejack.
15. Slang. A small or worthless amount: You don't know jack about that. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/jack#ixzz1UOKVGATj

• • •

Saw Ian Livengood yesterday at Lollapuzzoola 4, where he informed me that he had today's puzzle, and that I'd been pronouncing his name wrong for a good long time. Actually, he didn't inform me about the pronuncation—not directly. I just asked him. I'd heard someone say his name with the first "i" short and I thought it sounded weird. Turns out, that pronuncation was right. Pronunciation doesn't really matter for blog purposes, but (and this may surprise you) I do communicate in non-blog form, from time to time. At first I thought Ian was at the tourney as a volunteer, but he was competing like me. In my case, I use the word "competing" loosely, as I continued and then rounded out what turned out to be about the most disastrous solving week of my life—two NYT themes I didn't completely understand, a Sunday puzzle I couldn't finish, and tournament puzzles that were uniformly (and occasionally painfully) hard for me. Tanked one of those when I had EMTS where a completely different word belonged (no spoilers, as there are apparently a Lot of you playing at home (yay!), but I had two letters wrong in that word, at least one of which I should've figured out from the crosses. But no). Started feeling like maybe my brain was going. Then I did today's puzzle in 2:36. So I don't know what's going on. Today's only stumbles were right off the bat at 1A (software problem—clue to long to read without screen adjustment), and then getting to JAW from --W (wife had same problem; weird) (42A: Part of the head that moves when you talk), and lastly, writing in PLANO (Texas?) instead of LLANO (12D: Grassy plain of the Southwest).

Big revelation of the day, for me, was that JACK has anything to do with the HIGH / SEAS. I don't know JACK about synonyms for TAR, apparently, which will not surprise anyone who remembers one of my earlier tournament wipeouts (where I had OAR for TAR and ended up inventing a crazy Philippine mountain called MOAPO!). Otherwise, this is a familiar theme type ("Answers All End With ...") livened up (or "livened up," I suppose, if you want to pun on the constructor's name) by a nicely varied and interesting set of theme answers and an impressive theme density. Fill is solid, for the most part. Best of all—the whole grid is held together by "TIME COP" (26D: 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme sci-fi film). Van Damme travels 17 years through time to flex his muscles once again! He's relevant again! I'd razz IAN about putting his own name in the grid, but it's a pretty common crossword answer (46A: 007 creator Fleming). I had it in a grid once, and I didn't even know IAN when I made that puzzle. Trying to pre-review your own puzzle, though ... that's a little embarrassing (24A: Terse four-star review => "LOVED IT!").


["In the year 2004 ..."]
Theme answers:

• 17A: Q-tip, e.g. (COTTON SWAB)

• 22A: It points to the minutes (BIG HAND)
  
• 32A: Presidential candidate's #2 (RUNNING MATE)
  
• 43A: Excellent, slangily (CRACKERJACK)
  
• 54A: Sticky stuff on a baseball bat (PINE TAR)
  
• 61A: Condiment that's O.K. for observant Jews (KOSHER SALT)
  

I asked IAN (just now, via Facebook) if PIT CREW (50A: Tire-changing group at a Nascar race) was originally tied to the theme in some way, or if it was just an Easter Egg (you know, those special hidden features on DVDs that aren't marked...). Let's see what he says [... checking Facebook ...]: "50A = easter egg, I suppose. Not a theme answer." And there you go. Inside information, totally free of charge.

Here are a few photos from the Puzzle Weekend that Was:

[Puzzle lunch with constructors at Ridgeway Diner, Friday afteroon]

[Outside Reservoir bar after drinks with friend and regular NYT solver Brian Grosz, Friday afternoon]

[Bartender Jeff Bond and Erik Jamba solve a Patrick Berry "Rows Garden" puzzle from the Wall Street Journal at Barracuda, Friday night]

[Showing off my dance moves to befuddled tournament organizer Brian Cimmet. Please note the genuine Burger King Krusty the Clown watch. It's vintage (i.e. circa 2004)]

[With wife at Gobo restaurant, Saturday night]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Cereal with propeller-headed mascot / THU 7-14-11 / St Pete ball field / Art is fruit that grows in man / Histoire de first in popular series

Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley and Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Ps AND Qs (51A: Good behavior ... or a hint to two lines of letters in this puzzle) — diagonal line of black squares cuts across center of grid. On one side is a line of Ps, and on the other, a line of Qs


Word of the Day: QUISP (35D: Cereal with a propeller-headed mascot) —

Quisp is a sugar-sweetened breakfast cereal from the Quaker Oats Company. It was introduced in 1965 and continued as a mass-market grocery item until the late 1970s. Sometime afterward, the company sold the item sporadically, and upon the rise of the Internet began selling it primarily online.

Quisp was initially marketed with a sister brand, Quake. Its joint-product television commercials were produced by Jay Ward, a major producer of animated television series. (wikipedia)

[QUAKE *and* QUISP!]

• • •

An elegant puzzle that I could not find the handle on for the Longest time. In retrospect, I don't really understand what went wrong. I think there were two major problems. First, I simply didn't see or come across the theme revealer for the Loooooonnnngest time. It's in a weird place. I kept thinking I'd stumble on it, but that didn't happen. Once it did, I got it instantly (I could see the Q-line developing at that point) and from then on out, the puzzle felt reasonably easy. The other major problem I had was dropping in ADMAN instead of ADREP at 43A: Madison Ave. figure. This may seem an innocuous little mistake, but it really kept me stuck. Since most of the rest of my puzzle was Very sparsely filled in, I suspected there was some major trick, like a rebus, awaiting me somewhere. So when ADMAN got me DMOP- as the opening of 38D: Enlarged letter at the start of a chapter (DROPCAP), rather than figure something was wrong, as a normal person would, I just charged ahead, thinking some gimmick would pop out later and make it all OK. I mean, the AD clearly worked, so I never questioned the MAN. Otherwise, I was simply, unaccountably out of step with the puzzle at first. GUFF for 'TUDE (5D: Cheekiness, slangily). TURN IN for RETIRE (15D: Call it a day). ERAT for QUOD (26D: Q.E.D. part). REPLY for QUERY (30A: "Who?," e.g.). ONT for QUE (39D: Canadian prov.). TOKEN for SCRIP (20D: Money substitute). BBS for QTS (22A: Oil amts.). Just one of those days.

BIP (7D: Marcel Marceau character) and QUISP were just outside my ken. I live reasonably close to Utica, but a million different Native American-sounding names felt like possibilities for the county name. ITASCA? ITHACA? (No; 16A: County of Utica, N.Y. = ONEIDA). None of the fill or clues were terribly grabby or memorable (except maybe SADISTS—58A: Crossword editors, say). But I liked the elegant simplicity of the gimmick. Fill was mostly solid. Pretty nice work. And a bonus (second) theme answer in MANNERS to boot. Well done.


Bullets:

• 1A: Crew and others (SPORTS) — Me: "Uh ... JS? NECKS?"
  
• 49A: He said "Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant" (ARP) — artist in 3 letters? ARP is a good bet.
  
• 60A: One not with the Church of England (PAPIST) — again, this term is a pejorative and should be clued as such.
  
• 9D: Town on the south shore of Long Island (ISLIP) — I know almost nothing about Long Island, but I knew this.
• 36D: "Histoire de ___," first in a series of popular children's books (BABAR) — "Histoire" and BABAR rhyme, which is how I finally came to terms with this one.
  
• 52D: Ones often calling the shots? (SOTS) — great clue. My first answer: DOCS. It made sense to me at the time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Eponymous associate Stalin / THU 6-23-11 / Early French settler North America / City home to US Brig Niagara / Stone-cold truths / Seine feeder

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: CLEAN UP (70A: Response to 40-Across ... or what can be done to 12 answers in this puzzle without affecting their clues?) — an OIL rebus. When you CLEAN UP the OIL SPILLS (40A: Environmental woes)—i.e. remove the OIL from the answer—the clue still makes sense.


Word of the Day: Vyacheslav MOLOTOV (63A: Eponymous associate of Stalin) —

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (Russian: Вячесла́в Миха́йлович Мо́лотов; 9 March, [O.S. 25 February] 1890 – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium (Politburo) of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev. He served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941, and as Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1957. Molotov served for several years as First Deputy Premier of Joseph Stalin's cabinet. He retired in 1961 after several years of obscurity. [...] On 30 November 1939, after a futile year-and-a-half campaign to persuade the Finnish government to cede territory to the Soviet Union and give up some sovereignty by conceding specific military and political favors, the Soviet Union launched an offensive against Finland, starting what came to be known as the Winter War. The Finnish Army faced large numbers of Red Army tanks. Being short on anti-tank guns, they borrowed the design of an improvised incendiary device used in the just-concluded Spanish Civil War. // During the Winter War, the Soviet air force made extensive use of incendiaries and cluster bombs against Finnish troops and fortifications. When Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov claimed in radio broadcasts that they were not bombing, but rather delivering food to the starving Finns, the Finns started to call the air bombs Molotov bread baskets. Soon they responded by attacking advancing tanks with "Molotov cocktails" which were "a drink to go with the food". At first, the term was used to describe only the burning mixture itself, but in practical use the term was soon applied to the combination of both the bottle and its contents. This Finnish use of the hand- or sling-thrown explosive against Soviet tanks was repeated in the subsequent Continuation War between the two countries. (wikipedia)

[How I learned the term "Molotov cocktail"]

• • •

There are some nice touches here that take this puzzle beyond your run-of-the-mill rebus: a central answer that is both a rebus-containing answer and a clue to the theme, plus a final, exclamation-point Across answer that adds an interesting now-you-see-it, now-you-don't dimension to the puzzle. That said, I don't think the puzzle works very well, mainly because the gimmick—that the theme clues work with or without OIL—is not very shocking. The OIL TANKER without the OIL is a TANKER, but what else is it carrying besides OIL? It's still an OIL TANKER. Same thing with FISH OIL. You can take the OIL out, but the part of the FISH that contains the "fatty acid" is nonetheless still the OIL. The OLIVE and SESAME crossing adds an interesting culinary dimension, and in those cases the disappearing OIL actually *does* make a difference, but overall, the disappearing act just didn't make much of an impact on me. Also, the fill is icky in a lot of places, most notably in the area of the last square I filled in: the "L" in LEK (42A: Albanian money) / SILAS (33D: Albino in "The Da Vinci Code"). Whoa. No, no, scratch that. The absolute worst area is the west. RESEE (28D: Take in again) next to UNHAT (29D: Take a 31-Down off, in a way) is up there with the ugliest juxtapositions in puzzle history, esp. considering they both run through USH (a much-hated abbrev.) (39A: Do some theater work, informally) and Briticized MEAGRE (43A: Scanty, in Salisbury). UGH indeed. Throw in (deep breath) NOT ON, ABAT, IS ONE, OONA, ESA, OISE, ULAN, plural OLES, and, well, yeah. I've seen prettier grids.

I think instead of saying UGH all the time, I going to switch to LEK. "LEK!" I think it works.

Theme answers:

• OIL TANKER (1A: Persian gulf sight) / OIL CAN (1D: Garage container)
  
• OIL TYCOON / OIL PAINT (8D: Canvas coat) (best thing about this intersection is that Getty gave his name to a famous museum in L.A., which has more than its fair share of OIL PAINTings)
  
• OIL RUB (27A: Day spa offering) / OIL PUMP (27D: Crankcase part)
  
• FISH OIL (32A: Fatty acid source) / OIL SKIN (35D: Outer-layer protection)
  
• OIL SPILLS / OIL RIG (40D: Gulf of Mexico sight) — essentially same clue as 1-Across. :(
  
• SESAME OIL (69A: Asian cooking staple) / OLIVE OIL (48D: Greek salad ingredient)
  

Bullets:

• 17A: Early French settler in North America (ACADIAN) — Until this very second, I was reading the phrase as "North Africa"; the French had a more recent presence there, which is what I'm using as my excuse.
  
• 20A: City that's home to the U.S. Brig Niagara (ERIE) — Did anyone else try ENID (despite the fact that it's nowhere near a sizable body of water and nowhere near Niagara)?
  
• 46A: Country where Bambara is the main spoken language (MALI) — Cool trivia. I would've guessed FRENCH (see Bullet #1, above)
  
• 7D: ___ Furterer, line of French hair products (RENÉ) — Wow, really? I just went with "common French man's name" here and trusted it to be right.
  
• 5D: Leveling in a ring (KO'ING) — That's not a word, that's a sound effect (see also LEK).
  
• 11D: Add a bit of support during a conversation (CHIME IN) — really like this. Common colloquial phrase, but I don't recall seeing it much, if ever, in the grid.
  
• 21D: Stone-cold truths (REALITIES) — I'm not sure why they're "stone-cold," unless they belong to Steve Austin or ... Keith Stone (whose face is All Over billboards where I live—we thought he was a real person we just didn't know, maybe a country music star or something. Then we saw the TV ads).

• 26D: Astounding Stories subjects (UFOS) — an old scifi pulp magazine, which eventually morphed into Analog Science Fact & Fiction and then (1992) Analog Science Fiction and Fact (wikipedia).
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Rugby scuffle / MON 5-16-11 / Greece/Turkey separator / Kitschy gift with green fur / Skin-transferring operations / Former California NFLer St Louis

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: HORSE PLAY (63A: Roughhousing ... or a hint to the ends of 17-, 21-, 26-, 33-, 40, 43-, 47- and 56-Across) — HORSE can follow the endings of every theme answer to make familiar phrases


Word of the Day: MARAT Safin (16A: Tennis's ___ Safin) —

Marat Mikhailovich Safin; (Russian: Марат Михайлович Сафин) (born January 27, 1980) is a former Russian tennis player. Safin won two majors and reached the world number 1 ranking during his career. He was also famous for his emotional outbursts and sometimes fiery temper on court. Safin also holds the record for most broken racquets in a year with 87. Safin is the older brother of former World No. 1 WTA player Dinara Safina (Dinara Mikhailovna Safina) (Russian: Динара Михайловна Сафина), born April 27, 1986 in Moscow. They are the first brother-sister tandem in tennis history to both achieve No. 1 rankings. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is pretty close to an ideal Monday puzzle—it's super-easy, with lively theme answers, and the fill is astonishingly smooth, especially consider the theme is Nine Answers Deep. Nine theme answers of 7+ length. That's sick. Now, the theme concept is no great shakes. Typical "words-that-can-follow" theme, at its core. But it hardly matters when the grid looks this great. On a Monday, you can't ask for much more than this. Interesting grid feature: both RATE and TADA cross four theme answers and are made up entirely of letters from those crossing theme answers. I can't recall ever seeing answers that did either of those things.

Of course my feelings about this puzzle may be slightly affected by the fact that it was my fastest solving time of any (15x15) puzzle I've ever done ever in the history of me. Ever.

Theme answers:

• 17A: Greece/Turkey separator (AEGEAN SEA)
  
• 21A: Lumberjack's tool (CHAIN SAW)
  
• 26A: Advocating "Bring the troops home now!," say (ANTI-WAR)
  
• 33A: In the evening (AFTER DARK)
  
• 40A: Daily nine-to-five struggle (RAT RACE)
  
• 43A: Really dimwitted (BRAIN DEAD)
  
• 47A: Like the best straight in poker (ACE HIGH)
  
• 56A: Lift weights (PUMP IRON) — could've been tied to GYM (25A: Place for barbells and treadmills)
  

I slowed down only once during this solve—trying to get from the AZTEC RAIN GOD down into the middle part of the grid. Couldn't see AFTER DARK on my first approach, so jumped *immediately* to the far west and rode ANTI-WAR down to BRAIN DEAD and then right back to the place that had given me trouble. After that, it seemed like all my first thoughts were the correct ones.

Bullets:

• 1A: Rugby scuffle (SCRUM) — saw this first and then instead of writing it down I went to Downs and just kept it in my head, dropping the S-word, C-word, R-word, U-word, and M-word, in order.
  
• 58A: Skin-transferring operations (GRAFTS) — I realize that this is a basic, literal, medical clue, but it has a creepy, horror-movie vibe to me.

• 12D: Former California N.F.L.'er now located in St. Louis (L.A. RAM) — old L.A. team is getting a lot of xword action lately. I will be located in St. Louis this September for a certain superstar crossword constructor's wedding.
  
• 45D: Kitschy gift with green "fur" (CHIA PET) — only answers I can think of that *might* have slowed folks down are this and MARAT.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Social gathering with coffee / MON 4-11-11 / Lion King villain / Siberian plain / Dissect grammatically / Command post on ship / Ancient Peruvian

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Fictional villains — 7 of them


Word of the Day: STEPPE (21A: Siberian plain) —

In physical geography, a steppe (from Russian степь, "steppe," further derivation unknown) is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes. The prairie (especially the shortgrass and mixed prairie) is an example of a steppe, though it is not usually called such. It may be semi-desert, or covered with grass or shrubs or both, depending on the season and latitude. The term is also used to denote the climate encountered in regions too dry to support a forest, but not dry enough to be a desert. Soil type is typically chernozem. // Steppes are usually characterized by a semi-arid and continental climate. Extremes can be recorded in the summer of up to 40 °C (104 °F) and in winter, –40 °C (–40 °F). Besides this huge difference between summer and winter, the differences between day and night are also very great. In the highlands of Mongolia, 30 °C (86 °F) can be reached during the day with sub-zero °C (sub 32 °F) readings at night. (wikipedia)

• • •

So ... villains. I like villains. These are famous villains, symmetrically arranged. Not much else to say, really. A very smooth, very easy Monday puzzle. The oddest thing in the grid is OMSK (54D: Siberian city), and that's really not all that odd (esp. for regular solvers). Weirdest thing about the grid (which I discovered only now, as I was figuring out the word count) is that it's only 14 squares across. No wonder my time was so good—13 fewer squares to fill in (give or take). KHAN and SCAR are weird throw-ins, in that neither really stands out as a theme answers, i.e. you could (and do) find those names / words in any puzzle. But theme density's always a good thing if it doesn't make for terrible non-theme fill, and those answers certainly didn't. Most interesting answer, for me, was THEME SONGS, though I really wish they'd gone with a somewhat less insipid example for the clue (3D: "I'll Be There for You" for "Friends," and others).



Theme answers:

• 8A: "Star Trek" villain (KHAN) — technically, shouldn't this be ["Star Trek II" villain]?

• 15A: "Batman" villain (THE JOKER)
  
• 19A: "Superman" villain (LEX LUTHOR)
  
• 36A: "The Silence of the Lambs" villain (HANNIBAL LECTER)
  
• 51A: Harry Potter villain (VOLDEMORT)
• 58A: Sherlock Holmes villain (MORIARTY)
  
• 63A: "The Lion King" villain (SCAR)
  

Bullets:

• 33A: Action to a newborn baby's bottom (SLAP) — is this really common, or just something they do in movies for dramatic effect?
  
• 8D: Social gathering with coffee (KLATCH) — this word has nothing, inherently, to do with coffee. Clue should have been [Coffee ___].
  
• 16D: Janis with the 1971 #1 hit "Me and Bobby McGee" (JOPLIN) — there's this one contestant on "Idol" that judges keep comparing to Janis, which you'd have to be tone deaf to believe. Woman's voice is fine, even remarkable at times, but there's just None of the soul, personality, life that Janis's voice had.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Rock bassist Weymouth / THU 3-24-11 / Muckraker Tarbell / Camp historic Mormon expedition / Ruth chaser 1961 / TMZ twosome

Constructor: Ian Livengood

Relative difficulty: Medium


THEME: JETS — single circle opens each of 4 long theme answers; these four circles spell out JETS, which, in turn, is the clue for every long theme answer (all of which are clued [See circles])

• JACUZZI FEATURES
• ENGINES ON A PLANE
• TEAM FROM NEW YORK
• SHARKS' RIVAL GANG

Word of the Day: TINA Weymouth (55D: Rock bassist Weymouth) —

Martina Michèle "Tina" Weymouth (born November 22, 1950, Coronado, California) is an American musician, best known as a founding member and bassist of the New Wave group Talking Heads and its side project Tom Tom Club (co-founded with husband and Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz). (wikipedia)

• • •

Circles, clueless answers, and answers that are really clues (here, with the "answer" in every case being JETS) are all things I tend Not to like in my puzzles. The last category especially bugs me, as the resulting fill is usually somewhat forced and not totally natural-sounding. That said, this puzzle was executed about as well as a puzzle of this type can be. Circles actually add an interesting twist (and an interesting limitation on the theme answers). All theme answers are exactly 15 letters long, and, with the slight exception of ENGINES ON A PLANE, feel like very believable crossword clues for JETS. DANO was a mystery to me (36A: Paul of "There Will Be Blood"), but everything else felt very familiar, with only the clues providing difficulty (this is a good thing). So, despite moments of exasperation, I liked it fine.



Had no idea how to get to YEAGER from the clue: 48D: Flier of the X-1—no idea what an "-1" is. Also no idea (until I had just one letter left) what [Keen] could possibly be if not SHARP (my first answer). SWELL? So it's dated slang, like NEATO. Argh. That little region roughed me up a bit. Clue on TRAPS was good but vicious (19D: Green surroundings?). I had no idea. TRACT? TRAIL? Weirdly, I wanted SAHIB (35A: Title of respect) from the get-go, but wouldn't put it in because TRA-S didn't seem plausible as a potential answer for 19D. Thought clues on LUTE (16A: Subject of a lesson for Katharina in "The Taming of the Shrew"), SHAW (65A: The 1999 comedy "She's All That" is based on his work), and ZION'S (18D: ___ Camp, historic Mormon expedition led by Joseph Smith) were all pretty hard. On the other hand, I had good luck with ATELIERS and PIE PLATE (39D: Makeshift frisbee), putting both of them in right away (once I got a cross or two to confirm them). West gave me perhaps most trouble of all. END AT just sounded wrong as answer for [Finish on], and ALOHA shirt (41A: ___ shirt (colorful short-sleeved attire))??? In America, we call them "Hawaiian shirts" (I feel as if I've written that exact sentence before). And DANO, as I say, is no one to me.



I almost made a stupid mistake at 66A: Unveiled, writing in BORE as if it were the past tense of "bare," when of course it's the past tense of "bear." Luckily, I love Talking Heads and knew TINA Weymouth, who gave me the "A" that showed me that [Unveiled] was an adjective, not a verb=>BARE.

Bullets:

• 23A: Muckraker Tarbell (IDA) — pretty much the top of the IDA list.
  
• 43A: Ruth chaser in 1961 (MARIS) — one of the few very easy clues in the puzzle.
  
• 32D: Kindle download (E-BOOK) — got slightly confused here, as I thought that EBOOK was a specific format that Kindle did not, in fact, handle. . . but E-BOOK is just a general term for electronic book, and in that sense, this clue is fine. I mostly use my Kindle to read the NYT (I pay for the privilege, so all this new paywall stuff is just noise to me right now). Read a bit more of "Count of Monte Cristo" on my Kindle today, in fact. It was a snow day (lousy Smarch!) and family was home, so not a lot of work happened. Mainly, this happened:

And a little bit of this:




Could've been worse.

See you tomorrow.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. though she won't see this today, probably, all my love and best wishes to my good friend (and fellow crossword junkie) who underwent major surgery yesterday. Just got notified that all went well. Can't wait to have you back, sweetheart.