Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle (2024)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TRIPLE SEC(9D: Ingredient in a Long Island iced tea) —

Triple secis anorange-flavouredliqueurthat originated in France. It usually contains 20–40%alcohol by volume.

Triple sec is rarely consumedneat, but is used in preparing manymixed drinkssuch asmargaritas,cosmopolitans,sidecars,Long Island iced teas, andmai tais. //

The origin of the name "triple sec" is disputed. The term is French and composed oftriple, with the same meaning as in English, andsec, the French word for "dry". Some sources claim it comes from a tripledistillationprocess used to create the liqueur,but others say that a triple distillation is not used.Cointreau, a brand of triple sec, is reported to have invented the term based on the three types of orange peels used in the liqueur, although other reports have Cointreau claim the triple to mean "three times the flavour of Curaçaos." (wikipedia)

• • •

I'll start with the only thing I really didn't love, and sadly it was the very last answer I filled in: OBAMANIA (33D: Craze of late-2000s politics). Now I was there, I remember the mania, but this word ... I mean, say it to yourself. How ... how do you say it? You can't say OH-buh-mania because that's not where the stress in his name goes, but you can't pronounce his name the way you're supposed to or you end up with a word that rhymes with "gonorrhea." I guess you have to hard-hit each and every one of the first *three* syllables for it to come out like anything anyone would understand coming out of your mouth, whereas OBAMAMANIA fairly trips off the tongue. It's got that "MAMAMAMAMA" string that makes it fun to say. Also, when I google ["OBAMANIA"] the first, and I mean very first, hit I get is to the Collins Dictionary, and it's an entry for the extra "MA" version: OBAMAMANIA. Now I can see very well that OBAMANIA is an accepted variant—I'm just saying I *hate* it. My ears hate it. My sense of lexical beauty and cadence and mellifluousness hates it. The one thing I love about it is that it's juxtaposed with SATANISM. Have fun with that one, you racist/birther/conspiracy theory-addled f*ckwits. I wish I could buy a record where the ALBUM ART featured an orgy of OBAMANIA and SATANISM. That would rock.

But before I hit that (to my ears) clunker of a final answer, I was having as good a time as I've had with a themeless (and a Friday in particular) in a long while. I actually had to work a bit to make answers appear, and my work routinely felt like it was properly rewarded. Love to struggle and then get the answer and go "oh, cool" (rather than "oh, bad," which is, obviously, worse). My first smile came with WINE GRAPE—back to the bar! (see yesterday's alcohol-heavy puzzle). It's a nice phrase, well disguised by what appears to be a geography clue (4D: Muscat, for one) (Muscat is the capital of that popular crossword destination, OMAN). But after WINE GRAPE I was left with BARG- as the answer to 23A: Quarters, e.g. and man I was stumped. "Quarters" are coins, "Quarters" are a living space, "Quarters" are segments of a football game (or anything, really) ... but the only thing I could get out of BARG- was BARGAIN or, I dunno, BARGLES (is that a word? I think I'm thinking (aptly) of "garbles"). My brain was doing that common thing of assuming the answer was one word. Bah. When I finally got it, I thought "neat trick. Clever." Though I don't think I know how to play the game. I just remember John Cusack's "dime for every quarter" con at the beginning of The Grifters, and I don't think that's a BAR GAME, strictly speaking:

"I DID INDEED!" is indeed smug, good clue (18A: Smug affirmative). The best clue, with probably my favorite answer of the day, was the one for the symmetrical counterpart to "I DID INDEED!"—50A: Backpedaling qualifier ("... IN A GOOD WAY"). There's something about the phrase "Backpedaling qualifier" that (unlike OBAMANIA) sounds great in my head, and just imagining the context where one might need to utter such a backpedaling qualifier made me laugh. "Your mom kinda looks like Sid Caesar ... IN A GOOD WAY!"

The other answer besides BAR GAME that really challenged my parsing abilities was BIAS CUT (37A: Feature of many haute couture dresses). Again, I thought I was dealing with a single word, and after FIASCOS didn't pan out, I was out of answers to fit the letter patterns. Turns out the solution was, once again, two words and not one. I went from thinking "who the hell has ever heard of this fashion term ... MIASCUS or DIASCUM or whatever it is!!?" to "D'oh! BIAS! It's BIAS CUT ... OK, yeah, that's a thing I've at least heard of. You win again, puzzle." (and thanks, ROBIN HOOD, for the assist there—great clue on that answer too: 29D: Legendary figure whose first name sounds like something he's known for doing).

I had many single-letter problems today. CRAY before CRAW(1A: Lead-in to fish) and (as always) REMI before RAMI and SNARE before SNARL and OLEN before OLIN(52A: Massachusetts college specializing in engineering) (my daughter toured that school back when she thought engineering was the way to go, but today I convinced myself that OLINwas a name that belonged solely to actors Lena and Ken and OLEN must be the college). The OL-N family of answers is crowded and confusing:

O-LAN used to be a staple of crossword grids, but time and constructing software have not been kind: 47 appearances in the modern area, but only four in the last decade. OLON and OLUN, meanwhile, remain mythical.

[SATANISM!]

Bullets:

• 12D: Litmus test of a chef's basic culinary skills (OMELETTE)— I had -MEL- and wanted SMELL TEST (nevermind that it didn't fit, and that "test" was already in the clue)
• 26D: Green party figure, for short? (ST. PAT) — it's a good clue. Somehow bugs me that "figure" gets used in this clue and the clue immediately following it (29D: Legendary figure etc.). Also bugs me (slightly) that "triple" is in the ITO clue (27A: First woman to land a triple axel in major competition) when it's clearly, ostentatiously in the grid (TRIPLE SEC).
• 47D: "Is the pope Catholic?!" ("UH, YES!")— I have mixed feelings about the "UH / OH" genre of answer, especially now that the number of such answers seems to be getting out of control. You've got two of them crossing here today, with "UH, YES!" cutting through "OH HELL NO!" and I can hear both of today's phrases perfectly fine in my head but especially when you throw "UM" in the mix it can be very hard to know which two-letter sound the speaker is opening with. "UH, YES!" is kinda pushing the boundaries of feasibility.
• 22A: "I love mankind ... it's ___ I can't stand": Linus from "Peanuts" ("PEOPLE")— normally not a big fan of fill-in-the-blank quotation clues. Normally.❤️

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

THEME: "I'VE CHANGED" (53A: "The old me is gone" ... or what happened between the first and second parts of 19-, 28-, 37- and 48-Across?)— wacky two-word phrases where the first word ends in -IVE and in the second word the "IVE" ... "changes" ... to "ES" ... (why "ES?" I do not know):

Theme answers:

• MASSIVE MASSES (19A: Services at a megachurch?)
• CURSIVE CURSES (28A: List in a fancy witchcraft guide?)
• PASSIVE PASSES (37A: What a tentative quarterback throws?)
• MISSIVE MISSES (48A: Long letters sent to the wrong person?)

Word of the Day:EMIL Nolde(30D: Expressionist painter Nolde) —

Emil Nolde(bornHans Emil Hansen; 7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German-Danish painter andprintmaker. He was one of the firstExpressionists, a member ofDie Brücke, and was one of the firstoil paintingandwatercolorpainters of the early 20th century to explore color. He is known for his brushwork and expressive choice of colors. Golden yellows and deep reds appear frequently in his work, giving a luminous quality to otherwise somber tones. His watercolors include vivid, brooding storm-scapes and brilliant florals.

Nolde's intense preoccupation with the subject of flowers reflected his interest in the art ofVincent van Gogh.

Even though his art was included in theEntartete Kunstexhibitionof 1937, Nolde was a racist, anti-semite and a staunch supporter of Nazi Germany.

• • •

[Missives. Massive.]

This is one of the weakest Thursday themes I've (!) ever seen, which makes me think I must be missing something ... but I can't figure out what it is. I get that "IVE" changes from the first to the second part of the theme answers, but why does it change to "-ES"? That's what I don't get. Surely the transformation must be meaningful, I reasoned. So I sought for reason and continue to seek for reason, and find none. If the "IVE" had changed into something ... well, something, anything, anything that would lend coherence to the theme, then maybe enduring a bunch of tepidly wacky singsongy themers would've seemed worth it, but without that coherence, what I've got in front of me is a half-baked mess. Totally unworthy of a Thursday, or any day. So I look forward to hearing what I'm missing, because if there's even slightly more complexity to this theme than what I can see at the moment, that would elevate the apparent quality of this theme considerably. The weakness of the theme answers isn't helping matters. It's hard to get excited about any of these answers—they are very easy to get, but there's nothing to them. They're preposterous, but not in a particularly funny way. Megachurches aren't typically Catholic, but the term "MASS" is, so that was ... weird. Also, passes can't be passive. You have to actively ... throw the ball, however weakly or ineffectually. I do like the word MISSIVE, so that last themer is probably my favorite, just on surface-level word interest alone, but on the whole, this is all very beige (with apologies to beige, which I'm sure is a very fine color in the right context).

The fill has more lows than highs (lots of ATESTS EXO ITPRO ESO-type filler), but there were at least a few answers that livened things up a bit. I like the puzzle's immersion in the art world. Nice to see Henri Rousseau here (last I saw him was in NYC somewhere, maybe MoMA? Yes, MoMA). I've (!) always liked the paintings of EMIL Nolde, so finding out (just now) that he was a Nazi sympathizer who tried to ingratiate himself to Hitler was pretty grim business. Of course (of course!) being a Nazi sycophant didn't pay off, and more of his work was included in the "Degenerate Art" exhibition of 1937 than that of any other artist. Unsurprisingly, he carefully hid his onetime support for Hitler from the art world in the postwar era, fashioning himself as a victim of Nazi persecution (not untrue, just ... not the whole story). Given his association with Nazism, I probably wouldn't cross his name with SHTETL in the future. Just a suggestion. (42A: Historical setting sought in "Everything Is Illuminated")

In addition to the art, you've got the architecture of Frank GEHRY, whose buildings are works of art themselves, and are frequently homes to some of the world's great artworks—see the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, for instance:

[43A: "The most important architect of our age," according to Vanity Fair]

From the world of food and drink, we have tasty POSOLE(15D: Traditional Mexican stew) and my beloved AMARO, a crucial ingredient in many co*cktails, including the Black Manhattan (33A: Liqueur whose name translates as "bitter" in Italian). I generally prefer AMARO Montenegro, but I must have half a dozen AMARI (5!) in my liquor cabinet right now, including this one, which I bought on crossword appeal alone (ETNA!), though it turns out to be pretty damned good:

[AMARO dell'ETNA]

Both DEFIB(1A: Apparatus used in CPR training, informally) and GETGO(58A: Very beginning) add a little spice to the short stuff today. On the other hand we've got the intolerable SESH unfortunately elevated to marquee status by its inclusion in the somehow-even-more-intolerable GOSSIP SESH. You've also got the improbable comparative SERENER(41D: Like a Zen garden vis-à-vis a zoo) and the always-ugly-no-matter-how-you-clue-it SNOT (6A: Word that looks like an alternative to "tisn't"?). I like that the puzzle used the proper PROPHESIED(25D: Foretold) and not the awful PROPHESIZED (or the true abomination, PROPHECIZED). Not sure how I feel about PURPLE RICE (16A: Colorful grain). I want to like PURPLE RICE. I've had purple potatoes, not sure I've had ... no, I have had PURPLE RICE. I'm sure. Didn't leave much of an impression. I think I'm officially neutral on this one. ALAS, I'm not neutral on most of the fill, which skews a little crosswordesey and overcommon.

Read more...

THEME:DUCKS IN A ROW— State of order that this puzzle fails to achieve? There are four types of ducks in this puzzle, whose names appear on two different lines-- i.e., they're not "in a row," because they're in two different rows.

Theme answers:

• FLAT EARTHER for [One who might object to the phrase "around the globe"]
• "TEA" combines with "L" on the line below to form TEAL
• SMALL ARMS for [Easy-to-carry weapons]
• "MALLAR" combines with "D" on the line above to form MALLARD
• SPIDERWEB for [Collection of fine threads]
• "E" on the line below combines with "IDER" to form EIDER
• LAND LUBBERS for [Unlikely sailors]
• "R" on the line above combines with "UBBER" to form RUBBER

Word of the Day: WESSEX(Bygone kingdom of ancient Britain) —

The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until England was unified in 927.

• • •

Hey folks, and happy Malaika MWednesday to all who celebrate! I found this puzzle to be very breezy, the slower time is because I solved it alongside my boyfriend who has been solving puzzles for only a couple of weeks now. I think it's very fun watch where he gets stuck and which clues are easy for him. Anyway, please let the record show that this is somehow the second Duck Puzzle that I have reviewed while subbing for Rex!!

I think this theme is very well-done and fitting-- sometimes it's hard to make the geometry of a theme answer line up with the wording of the revealer (a 15x15 crossword is soo constrained), but in this case the ducks quite literally are not in a row. My biggest complaint is that only two of terms are Known Ducks to me-- when I got TEAL early on, it didn't really help me figure out what was going on. (I was able to clock that EIDER is a bird because I'm familiar with "eiderdown" but didn't realize it was a duck til I got the central answer.) I also liked that RUBBER was saved for last because it's a little different than the others.

There was quite a lot of medium-length fill in here, and while most of it was fun (GRANDMA, PUFFIN, T-SHIRTS, ARMOIRESwith the cute clue), I must call out DAIRYMAN because I simply refuse to believe that's a thing. When I go to the butcher, he is not my beefman!! When I get my produce, he is not my fruitman!! Am I totally off base here? Is this something that people know?? Maybe I'll ask my aunt who lives in Wisconsin.

I cannot believe puffins just look like this.... birds are crazy

Other tricky spots for me were HGT (a made up abbreviation, in my opinion), LYRA (I wanted "lyre," or at least a reference to His Dark Materials), and AER (I had no idea what AER Lingus is, although don't worry I did Google it after solving and... will probably immediately forget). It's impressive that in a grid so packed with theme material, there were only four entries that I wasn't a fan of! This is probably because David used a couple more black squares than average (themed puzzles tend to have around 38; this had 42), which is exactly what they're there for, in my opinion-- to make the rest of the entries smoother.

Bullets:

• [Mine is ⬛️⬛️⬛️-⬛️⬛️-⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️: Abbr.] for SSN— This was a great new clue for a frequently-seen entry
• [____-violence (really tearing into an Indian appetizer?)] forNAAN— Oh man I did not like this... so weird! Is it a pun? Is it trying to be a joke? Honestly I just think this is confusing and out of place.
• [Judo rank] for DAN — This was one of my final entries. I'm very unfamiliar with judo, and was looking for the entry to be something I was unfamiliar with, rather than a term I know by a different meaning.
  

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Hi, everyone! It’s Clare, here for the first Tuesday of June (switching it up because the world conspired against me with two major filings due on the same day last week). It’s been actually quite nice weather here in DC recently (think picnics and eating outside at restaurants), so I’m trying to enjoy the not-extremely humid outdoors while I can. I’ve also been staying busy with watching the French Open (Go, Coco!) and getting more into the WNBA (Go, Mystics? – even though we’re currently eight games into the season and winless). I’m also extremely excited for the Olympic Trials that are coming up soon (mainly for track, but swimming and gymnastics and all the others will be cool, too). And I’m extremely sad I watched my final Liverpool game with Jurgen Klopp as our head coach. As Liverpool fans would say to him: “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

Anywho, on to the puzzle...

Constructor: Daniel Bodily

Relative difficulty: Pretty easy

THEME:CAN’T TOUCH THIS (66A: With 67- and 68-Across, MC Hammer lyric that applies to each of the answers to the starred clues) — Each theme answer is something that one can’t (or at the very least shouldn’t) touch

Read more...

THEME: ON THE BOARD (56A: Helping to manage a nonprofit, say ... or where to find the answers to the starred clues?)— things that can be found on a board:

Theme answers:

• CHESS PIECE (17A: *King or queen, but not prince) (chess board)
• WOOD GRAIN (10D: *Texture in a cross section of timber) (wood board)
• CHARCUTERIE (35A: *Artfully arranged meats) (also wood, but for eating off of: a serving board)
• THUMBTACK (32D: *Cousin of a pushpin) (bulletin board)

Word of the Day: SAMIRA Wiley(18D: Actress Wiley of "Orange is the New Black") —

Samira Denise Wiley(born April 15, 1987) is an American actress. She is best known for her starring role asPoussey Washingtonin theNetflixcomedy-drama seriesOrange Is the New Black(2013–2019) and as Moira in theHuludystopian drama seriesThe Handmaid's Tale(2017–present), for which she won thePrimetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series.

Wiley also had starring roles in such films asThe Sitter(2011),Nerve(2016),Detroit(2017), andSocial Animals(2018). She also narrated the Netflix documentaryNight on Earth(2020). (wikipedia)

• • •

I thought this was a fantastic Monday theme. It's not the snappiest revealer, maybe—since I was solving Downs-only, I had no idea how it was clued and assumed it had to do with sports, where, when a team (finally) scores, the announcer might say they're ON THE BOARD (as in the scoreboard, duh). And now that I write that out, I realize that there are probably lots of boards not represented by this puzzle. Scoreboards and tote boards and emery boards and diving boards—the theme has Sunday potential in terms of its scope, though (like Many theme ideas) it might get wearisome stretched to a 21x21 grid. At any rate, what we get is a vibrant set of theme answers, representing four very different board types, with CHARCUTERIE holding its rightful pride of place—that was probably the answer that was most fun to parse from a Downs-only perspective. I had no idea what the theme was and (as with every Across answer) had to just rely on letter patterns supplied by the Downs in order to make sense of the answer. The puzzle hadn't really grabbed my attention to that point, but "TRIP OUT, CHARCUTERIE FOREMEN!" has a way of making you take notice. I appreciated that the puzzle gave me a couple of fine longer non-theme answers (HARD TIME, COLD BREW) and even threw in some surprisingly sassy short stuff in the bargain, like DUCK IN or GO OFF, which is a normal enough phrase but in the grid looks like a typo for "goof." And as for DUCK IN, phew, also hard to pick up Downs-only. I had STOP IN and then when that didn't work ... zippo. It's fun when answers, even short answers, feel *worth* discovering, and not just the same old. This puzzle had far more personality than most Monday puzzles—more than most puzzles generally, to be honest.

The thing that made it harder than normal, at least from a Downs-only perspective was ... well, first, the fact that so many of the 7+-letter answers were Downs (when you can't work crosses, the longer an answer is, the harder it is to get if you don't know it right off the bat). But the bigger problem for me was the grid seemed kinda name-y. Pop culture name-y. These tend to have a heavy risk/reward component—if you know 'em, wheeee, if you don't, especially if the names aren't terribly common in the general population, yikes. My big yikes was SAMIRA Wiley. Now I kinda sorta knew the name, but the vowels, The Vowels! Sigh. I survived by the skin of my teeth, but *only* because ATE RAW was already in the grid, which allowed me to infer that (probably!) ATE was not the answer at 29A (-TE). My ear wanted something that sounded like SaMEERa as the name, but I was absolutely prepared to doubt my brain and go with SAMARA (which is not a thing, unless you are John O'Hara and you have an appointment there, in which case you'd have to add an "R").

Staring down SAM-RA / -TE, I was in guessing territory. After crossing "A" off the ... board ... I was left with "I" and "E" as plausible answers. Both ÉTÉ (French summer) and ITE ("meteor" suffix) are viable 3s, so I had to go with a hunch—which looked more namelike: SAMIRA or SAMERA. I chose the former. I had my reasons, but it was just dumb luck.

BATEMAN was right up my alley, but as I wrote it in I had this feeling that BATEMAN was gonna be somebody else's SAMIRA (i.e. a pop cultural blindspot, though with perhaps more familiar / inferable letter combinations) (25D: Patrick ___, villainous protagonist of "American Psycho"). Jason BATEMAN seems like the more Mondayish BATEMAN to me. But back to things I *didn't* know: ICE Spice! (9D: Rapper ___ Spice). I would like to confess my mistake and come clean about my membership in the LIL Spice fan club! I see we have other members here with us today (I see you). Welcome.

ATE RAW felt a little wobbly as a verb phrase (3D: Consumed uncooked). EAT RAW would be great, in the sense that it's a common fad diet slogan, but ATE RAW, while completely defensible, doesn't quite have the zip. UTERUS was hard as hell to parse because when POUCH wouldn't fit, I was out of ideas and not getting a ton of help from (inferred) crosses (44D: One of two for a female kangaroo, surprisingly). Once I gotGOOFF (boom!) and committed to NEGATE and ROMEO in the crosses, I saw the second UTERUS, but that was a weird way to come at that answer. Cool, but not Monday-easy. I never ever want ANAL in my grid (despite having put it in a grid once—once!) so I had PRIM in there at first (50D: Fastidious to a fault). The SW corner bugged me—it's a throwaway little corner, just an innocuous stack of fours, so I shouldn't notice it at all, but AAH / ASEC had me like "aaaah, no." There's something ugly about having *two* strongly subpar answers in such a tight space. My printed-out grid has alternative after alternative scribbled in the margin (if you construct, you know that your brain can fall down an infinite rabbit hole trying to make a tiny section of grid come out "right"). Here are the versions I currently have written at the bottom of my print-out:

AGRA

SPEC

HAWK

MIRA

SPEC

GAWK

TARA

ALEC

GAWK

HERA

AVEC

HAWK

SARA

AVEC

GAWK

Clearly none of the above answers bothers me as much as AAH (-not-AHH) and the partial ASEC. Your irritation level may, and probably does, vary.

[I know the puzzle wants me to seeHAWKas a bonus theme answer but I absolutely do not and would be willing to sacrifice him in a heartbeat to make this corner better (61A: Skater Tony who is also 56-Across?).]

See you later.

Read more...

THEME: "Typecasting" — familiar phrases are clued via names of famous people that are "typed" in some funny / punny way:

Theme answers:

• QUOTATION MARKS (22A: "RUFFALO" and "TWAIN"?)
• CUT-OFF JEANS (33A: HARLO and SMAR?)
• JUMPING JACKS (46A:LORD and KEMP?)
• STARBUCKS (63A: *O'NEIL* and *ROGERS*?)
• LONGJOHNS (66A: CEEEEENA and LENNNNNON?)
• SPLICED GENES (85A: WILDERODDENBERRY?)
• DASHED HOPES (100A: S-O-L-O and L-A-N-G-E?)
• TWO-DOLLAR BILLS (112A: RU$$ELL and BLA$$?)

["Starring JackLORD"]

Word of the Day: PAPAS fritas(72A: ___ fritas (Cuban French fries)) —

Papas Fritas(typically stylized aspApAs fritAs) were an Americanindie rockband that formed in 1992 and released three studio albums before breaking up in 2000. The band's name is Spanish for "fried potatoes" (specifically "French fries" in American English) but is also a pun on the phrase "Pop has freed us," which they used as both the name of their music publishing company and their2003 career retrospective. (In 2006 a German band also named Papas Fritas released a single called "Stehpisser," which is erroneously listed as part of the American band's discography in several online music stores.) (wikipedia) //In Spain, fried potatoes are calledpatatas fritasorpapas fritas. Another common form, involving larger irregular cuts, ispatatas bravas. The potatoes are cut into big chunks, partially boiled and then fried. They are usually seasoned with a spicy tomato sauce.Fries are a common side dish in Latin American cuisine or part of larger preparations such as thesalchipapasin Peru orchorrillanain Chile. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Prized possession]

If you're going to call it "Typecasting," then all the clues should involve actors. You're "casting," after all. I'm fine with the fact that the puns all involve the ways that the names are "typed" (out)—the "type" part works—but the "casting" part, come on, they should all be actors, especially since you've gone ahead and made many of them actors already. NICCCCCCHOLSON, not LENNNNNON. I guess finding two double-S (i.e. double-$) Bills who were both actors would've been a very tall order (impossible, actually). Still, it was annoying to have roughly half the names be actors (which seemed to fit the title) and then have the other names just be generally famous but non-acting people. Other than that, I guess the theme was fine. Cute, even. I know that the overall solving experience was grim, though. Too much crummy fill, too much weak cluing, not enough exciting or interesting answers. I was groaning and eye-rolling a lot today, with Peak Groan coming with TV TAPE, what on god's green earth is that supposed to be?! TV TAPE???! TV TAPE. I'm just going to keep saying it, hoping that through iteration, it will magically turn into something, something real, something someone has actually said before. Just gruesome. Embarrassing. How do you talk yourself into TV TAPE!? (21A: VCR medium). You gotta exercise discretion. You cannot let your wordlist push you around. There's so much of this going around—constructors who think that just because it's in their database, it's good. No experienced constructor is ever going to try to palm TV TAPE off on you. Criminal. Editorial malpractice. But since it's been used before, it's been used since—four times this century now. Precedent is not enough of a reason to include something. Certainly not something this unpleasant. (Every prior TVTAPE clue was [VCR insert]—I can't tell if this clue is better worse or same—probably same, in that I don't care, I just want the answer to go away)

I've heard of a HACKSAW, but not a BACKSAW (70A: Cutting tool with a reinforced spine), ugh. DCPOWER, another ugh (89D: What's generated by solar panels). Come on. Use real phrases, I'm begging you. I would accept DEAD HEAT as an answer (happily), but IN A DEAD HEAT is something like ON A SANDWICH, i.e. a phrase you might say, but that does not have enough standalone energy to stand alone. Never going to accept that MUCKER is a thing. One can muck stalls, but you would never (ever) call someone a MUCKER. Are READ-A-THONs real? Sounds made up. The tin-eared, no-respect-for-actual-usage quality of some of these answers is killing me. Such an annoying distraction. Why is MICA "glam rock?" (48D: Glam rock?). Is it ... shiny? Wikipedia says it's used in cosmetics and food (?) to add "shimmer" or "frost," OK. Did not know that. Also did not know ATE, which seems like absurd slang to me. Do people not have to ask you to repeat yourself? Why would you use ATE to mean "did a great job on" when ATE IT already means "did a terrible job on." I've seen James Harden and others (basketball players, that is) do this thing where they mime eating after they do something great—is that the context for this ATE? That clue was Trying way, way too hard to be ... what, youthful? I dunno. Rough. Oh, damn, just realized Harden's not eating—he's cooking! MY BAD.

Never heard of CECIL the Looney Tunes turtle, which is weird, since I grew up on Looney Tunes cartoons. Maybe I have seen him but he's just so minor, so D-list as "LT" characters go, that I can't remember him. Come on, Joel—you could've clued him as [Pomona College sagehen mascot]. Real missed opportunity. Your alma mater is very disappointed.

AU LAIT before BLACK (1A: One way to order coffee), OH I SEE before AH I SEE (110A: "Got it now"), TREYS before TRIPS (31D: Strong poker holding, informally), TAM before TAJ (57D: Cap worn by dervishes). Absolute prayer on the PAPAS / SALADIN crossing. Luckily I knew SALADIN enough (from being a medievalist) (55D: First sultan of both Syria and Egypt) to be able to best-guess the spelling, because PAPAS I was never gonna get (confidently) from that clue (72A: ___ fritas (Cuban French fries)). BEERAMID sounds like a quirky, original answer (36A: Drinker's structure made from stacked cans), but once it's been used (and it has, several times in the past few years now), its novelty wears off. Novelty terms like that are good once and then you really gotta leave them alone for ... well, a long time. See you in 2034, maybe, BEERAMID. Don't normally care about two-letter preposition dupes, but there sure are a lot of "IN"s today (WEAR IN, IN IT, I'M IN). Also "IT"s (Give IT A go, IT IS SO, IN IT (again)). Really didn't care for much about this puzzle outside the basic theme concept, which I think is solid, playful, entertaining. I just wish the fill had been stronger and the cluing much more ... much less ... well, different, anyhow. Apter. On the money-er.

Peter Gordon's "A-to-Z Crosswords 2024 (Petite Pangram Puzzles)" is gearing up for a new season.

Every day (including weekends) for 13 weeks you’ll get a 9×11easy-to-medium crossword whose answer contains all 26 letters. They will be written by Peter Gordon and Frank Longo. The puzzles will be delivered to your email inbox in two forms: Across Lite, which can besolved on your computer, smartphone, or tablet; and pdf, which can be printed and solved on paper. All this for less than17¢ a puzzle.

These are great fun, a welcome addition to my daily solving regimen (delivered right to my Inbox). At 9x11, it's not as much of a time commitment as a full 15x15 puzzle, but it's much more engaging than a typical Mini puzzle. I always learn a lot of words and names from Peter's puzzles, and since these puzzles always contain every letter of the alphabet, the fill is never dull. The Kickstarter ends today (Sunday, 6/2) at 10pm EDT, so sign up now. Right now. Totally worth it.

That's all. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

THEME: none

Word of the Day: "THE DAILY"(7D: Popular news podcast since 2017) —

The Dailyis a daily newspodcastproduced by the American newspaperThe New York Times, hosted byMichael BarbaroandSabrina Tavernise. Its weekday episodes are based on theTimesreporting of the day, with interviews of journalists fromThe New York Times. Episodes typically last 20 to 30 minutes. (wikipedia)

• • •

Promoting your company's own podcast in your crossword? Suddenly I feel a whole lot less bad about not knowing what the hell "THE DAILY" is. As if the subtle dumbing down and the gamification of the crossword weren't bad enough, now they're gonna use it as a self-promotion vehicle? Is this ... SYNERGY? Ugh. Today's puzzle on the whole wasn't bad—despite those sequestered NW and SE corners, it had much better flow than yesterday's, for me—but there weren't enough marquee long answers today, and what there was didn't reach the peaks it oughta reach in a late-week themeless. FREEZER BURN was the peak. SPACE CADETS was kind of a shrug, and none of the rest of it really got above middling. The whole thing just felt a little flat and tame. And once again, way too easy for a Saturday. "THE DAILY" (or, rather, the "DAILY" part of "THE DAILY") was my only sticking point, the only thing in the whole grid I didn't know and had any trouble getting besides MEZE, which I thought I didn't know, but when I got the "Z," all of a sudden I remembered (39A: Small appetizer in Turkish cuisine). I solved in perfect clockwise fashion, from NW all the way around to W, ending, tastily enough, with STRUDELS (27A: Pastries popularized during the Hapsburg Empire). I was a bit slow on the uptake with a couple answers—BACK PAY, for instance. I was 92% certain that the clue was doing some kind of thinly veiled wedding clue there, as the puzzle often uses "union" in that vague, potentially misdirective way. But no, the "union contract" is exactly the kind of thing you imagine when you hear "union contract," i.e. a labor union, and BACK PAY is just a straightforward answer. But that was sincerely the struggliest moment I had outside "THE DAILY." Saturdays really oughta pack more punch than that.

I kept expecting some bizarre or unfamiliar answer to leap out at me (or not leap out at me, I guess), but the hits just kept coming. I opened with PUPAE / AUTOS after I couldn't put together 1A: Five-star, as a hotel (POSHEST) (not a fan of that clue for that answer at all—there might be several five-star hotels in the area, but only one can be POSHEST—the superlative adjective there felt unwarranted). PUPAE was wrong, of course, but that didn't matter, as I went AUTOS to SERTA to PERVADE and by that point had enough momentum to blow through the rest of the NW and turn PUPAE to PUPAS, no problem. "THE DAILY" stopped me coming out of that corner, but then SPACE CADETS came along with the assist and from there I managed to swing up into the NE and continue my clockwise journey. From that point, it was a light jog around the crossword track, with no real difficulty and only a few unsightly moments awaiting me. ABRA is now and always has been terrible, full letter grade deduction for relying on it in any circ*mstance, esp. as clued (i.e. a CADABRA-less incantation). Hmm, I'm now in wiktionary looking at other possible meanings of ABRA and while they aren't crossworthy, they are fascinating:

Read more...