Brewmaster's science / SAT 9-3-11 / German fantasy writer Michael / Photographer who once collaborated with Capote / Term for some morning deejays

Constructor: Peter Wentz



Relative difficulty: Challenging



THEME: none





Word of the Day: ERIC DANE (39D: "Grey's Anatomy" actor) —

Eric Dane (born November 9, 1972) is an American actor. After appearing in television roles throughout the 1990s and 2000s, he became known for playing Dr. Mark "McSteamy" Sloan on the series Grey's Anatomy, and has recently branched into film, co-starring in Marley & Me, Valentine's Day, and Burlesque. [...] Dane made headlines when he participated in a nude tape with his wife and Kari Ann Peniche. [???] // Eric Dane checked himself into rehab in June 2011 and will soon be finished with his 30 day therapy, "He reports back to work next week," said his rep. "Business as usual." Dane entered a California treatment center to rectify his problem with dependency on prescription drugs after suffering a sports injury. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very hard and also very annoying. Nothing worse than having majority of the difficulty in a puzzle come from the names of 3rd-rate celebrities. I had some very vague familiarity with J.C. CHASEZ (1D: Former 'N Sync vocalist and judge on "America's Best Dance Crew"), but ERIC DANE is brand new to me. "Grey's Anatomy" is ... nothing I would ever watch. Zero appeal. None. But I think Sandra Oh is or was in it. Also what's her name ... Katherine Heigl. Those people are actual well-known actors; hence, I know their names. I have no idea what an ERIC DANE is. But at least his crosses were fair, which is more than I can say for those of J.C. I'm sure I've seen the word ZYMURGY sometime in my life (35A: Brewmaster's science), but it's not exactly everyday (also, ZYZZYVA and SYZYGY are running interference). That "Z" will surely rough up at least a handful of people. Also, SKOPJE!?!? (27A: Birth city of Mother Teresa) Like ZYMURGY, I'm sure I've seen it, but I couldn't even tell you what country it's in. Poland? Nope. The Republic of Macedonia. The point isn't that any one of these shouldn't be in a puzzle—the point is that J.C. CHASEZ is kind of not that famous and his name is nuts and Crosses Of Nutso Proper Names (Esp. Those of Not Universally Famous People) Require Gettable Crosses. Also, if you've got Mr. CHASEZ in your puzzle, your minor celebrity quotient has been reached (sorry, ERIC DANE).







Most of the puzzle didn't trouble me that much. Well, let me rephrase that. I made headway everywhere, but only the NE went down without any trouble at all. Guessed VOLTA (23A: Inventor of the battery in 1800) and was able to spread N and E from there pretty effectively. Eventually worked down and dropped in KINFOLK and LANES (50D: They're added in some infrastructure upgrades) more on gut feeling than certainty. Was sure one or both were wrong because they gave me FAP- as start of answer for 55A: Ninnies. This is because I had the infinitely reasonable SOP for 47D: Sponge. Not the stupid slang-no-one-uses SOT (actually, I mean that no one uses "sponge" to mean SOT ... and also no one uses SOT unless one does a lot of crosswords and is being facetious). I don't mind misleading clues, but that one rankled because "sponge" is such a reach for SOT. Probably rankled more because it was another glitch in the damned ERIC DANE corner. Somehow managed to get MORITA (46D: Actor Pat), which instantly clued MR. MIYAGI (which took effort to spell). And then I just crawled toward the end, piecing together the west (CHASEZ and its environs) block by block. Once I went with my gut on some of those little answers in the SW (the ugly ENDE (57D: German fantasy writer Michael), the ugly ADENO), then I finished that corner. Noticed FAPHEADS wasn't a word. Changed it. Last letter into the grid was either the "E" or the "Z" in CHASEZ. It's a shame the celeb names sucked the joy right out of this puzzle, because it had its moments. Loved ZOO CREW, VITAMIN D, TIZZY, and "SEZ WHO?" in particular.



Bullets:

• 6A: Broken thing in "Gimme a break" (KIT KAT BAR) — If that ad jingle weren't seared in my brain, this clue would make no sense. No reference to ads, or jingles. Looks like "Gimme a break" is a song or movie or something.
  
  
• 3D: Bibliolater (BOOKWORM) — at least I knew what "biblio" meant ...
  
  
• 26A: Extinct wingless bird (MOA) — Yay, N.Z. I know a little something about extinct birds from N.Z.
  
  
• 21A: Nobel-winning economist James (MEADE) — nope, never heard of him. Also, HARUM? Never heard of him either, which is not surprising, as I've never (or almost never) heard of David Noyes Westcott (52A: "David ___," Edward Noyes Westcott novel). I assume that if I have heard of him, it was bec. of a crossword that thought NOYES would be a good entry. And then there's Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev. Thumbs down to overreliance on names.
  
  
• 12D: Cleanser with the logo of a chick emerging from an egg (BON AMI) — gimme. Part of the reason the NE was so easy (comparatively).
  
  
• 13D: Photographer who once collaborated with Capote (AVEDON) — with -ON in place, easy to get.

• 34D: "The Tinker's Wedding" playwright (SYNGE) — yet another name I know *only* from crosswords.
  
  
• 28D: Ninth successor of St. Peter (PIUS I) — of course I don't have my popes memorized, but what's weird is—this is the name I wanted from the get go. I didn't write it in, of course, because how would I know the 10th pope? Also, I didn't write it in because I was convinced for a time that Mother Teresa was born in SKOKIE.
  
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Noted Finnish chair designer / THU 11-18-10 / Dressing tool / Hypothetical fundamental particle / 1990 autobiography subtitled Baseball Wall Me

Constructor: Peter Wentz

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: QUADRUPLE PANGRAM (43A: What this puzzle is, orthographically)— grid contains four of every letter of the alphabet


Word of the Day: KAMA (CLUE) —

Kāmadeva (Sanskrit: कामदेव) is the Hindu deity of human love or desire. Other names for him include; Ragavrinta (stalk of passion), Ananga (incorporeal), Kandarpa ("inflamer even of a god"), Manmatha (churner of hearts), Manasija (he who is born of mind, a contraction of the Sanskrit phrase Sah Manasah jāta), Madana (intoxicating), Ratikānta (lord of Rati), Pushpavān, Pushpadhanva (one with bow of flowers) or just Kāma ("longing"). Kamadeva is son of Hindu goddess Sri and, additionally, is the incarnation of Pradyumna, Krishna’s son. [...] Kāmadeva is represented as a young, handsome winged man who wields a bow and arrows. His bow is made of sugarcane with a string of honeybees, and his arrows are decorated with five kinds of fragrant flowers. The five flowers are Ashoka tree flowers, white and blue lotus flowers, Mallika tree(Jasmine) and Mango tree flowers. A terracotta murti of Kamadeva of great antiquity is housed in the Mathura Museum, UP, India. (wikipedia)

• • •

Probably a little easier to pull this kind of thing off when you make the grid 16 wide, but the grid couldn't very well have been normal size, given the 16-wide QUADRUPLE PANGRAM across the middle, so nothing to complain about there. Actually, given how out-of-control Scrabbly the grid is, I'm astonished at how clean it is. I don't mind the four cheater squares (black squares that do not add to the total word count—they make a grid easier to fill), because they seem justified in this taxing theme environment. For every little thing I'm not in love with (JQA, IN HOT, AKIM), there is something inventive and cool ("WHOA WHOA!," "HEY, KID!" (51D: Geezer's cry to a young 'un), A.V. CLUB (52D: Tech-savvy school grp.) that makes me forget the small stuff. Pangrams do not normally impress me at all, but the high bar on this one really impressed me.

I could tell right away that something weird was up when I had four Xs in side a 4x4 section of the NW. I was thinking that there'd be some kind of connect the Xs or treasure map theme ... but then I never saw another X. But I saw some Zs. And Js. And Qs. Still, had QUADRUPLE well before I had PANGRAM. I was moving along at a fast enough pace that I didn't care to stop and figure out what the hell was going on. Plow forward until you can't—that's my motto (it'll look great on a coat-of-arms, I think). After I got the central answer, the puzzle actually did get easier, because I went into those (damned isolated) corners expecting and hunting for odd letters and letter combinations. Big help in the south with KOOKY (69A: Like the Addams Family), especially since I had no idea about AKIM (64D: Actor Tamiroff), though I know I've seen him before. North section took the most work—literally (well, figuratively, probably) scratched and clawed for ever single letter—could not see the connection between IVANA and the Taj Mahal until after the puzzle was done, actually (I'm assuming the IVANA is Trump and the Taj Mahal is a casino or hotel or something) (16A: Onetime name at Taj Mahal) (funny that AGRA is also in the grid, since it's the site of the Other Taj Mahal=>34D: Locale of a much-visited mausoleum).

Clues felt amped up a bit today. 36A: Stone work is a devilish clue for "J.F.K." (intersecting presidential mongrams!), and 54D: Awards show with a Best Play category, with "the" had me thinking TONYS and EMMYS before finally hitting ESPYS ("oh ... *that* kind of 'play'"). I did not know that a TUP was a [Male sheep, in Britain]. I had a male turkey there for a bit. Then I remembered the word for what male sheep do to female sheep (see "Othello"), and that fit nicely. In the end, I clearly found this puzzle easier than most others. I had an only slightly slower-than-average time, but the times at the NYT site are abysmal. I crushed people who normally crush me. No idea why this should be. Perhaps it was the easy start—1A: Fighter in the "Iliad" was clearly AJAX, and the first thing I did was confirm the "X"—yep, XERXES fits (4D: Persepolis king). Slid right down into the heart of the grid from there and, with the exceptions of north and south, never struggled inordinately. Lots of names in this one, but I either knew them or fought through them, and they all seemed fairly crossed, so: thumbs up.

Bullets:

• 20A: Annoyance, in British slang (AGGRO) — one of a mountain of words I know only because of xwords. It and words like it (e.g. ADZ (48A: Dressing tool) and INEZ) really helped me move through the puzzle with reasonable facility.
  
• 49A: 1990 autobiography subtitled "Baseball, the Wall and Me" ("YAZ") — former Red Sox left fielder Carl Yastrzemski. He was in the first set of baseball cards I ever collected (1978). "The Wall" is the Green Monster in Fenway Park.
  
• 53A: Basketball's Isiah Thomas, to fans (ZEKE) — Yeah, I guess I've heard that. It's not as strong a nickname as YAZ, though. Not by a longshot. Mostly people called Isiah "Isiah," whereas people called Carl Yastrzemski "YAZ" routinely.
  
• 76A: Longest-lived First Lady (BESS) — there's something odd, bordering on disrespectful, about omitting her last name completely. Or does [First Lady] automatically denote first name?
  
• 13D: It's about 90 yards of a football field (ACRE) — I couldn't make sense of this until just now, mainly because "90 yards" is a unit of length, not area. But I see where area is implied.
  
• Noted Finnish chair designer (AALTO) — Like AGGRO, I learned this somewhere along the way (although, truthfully, I wanted EAMES at first, since he's first in my chair designer arsenal).
  
• 3D: Hypothetical fundamental particle (AXION) — I feel like he was also a dude punished in Hades ... whoops, that's IXION ("bound to a solar wheel for all eternity" because he TUPped (a fake cloud version of) Hera)

[32D: "___ little silhouetto ..." ("Bohemian Rhapsody" lyric)]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. an animated look at each letter of the alphabet in the grid, by Brian Canes: