Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:51)

THEME: none, although the MIDDLE answer is in the MIDDLE and the BOTTOM part of the BOTTOM answer is at the BOTTOM, so that's something

Word of the Day: NOB (42A: One of the jacks in cribbage) —

[no idea, and I've looked it up ... blah blah rules of cribbage blah blah something about nobs, nibs, knobs ... cribbage slang is garbage fill, what the hell even *is* cribbage? There's a reason you never, ever see cribbage slang in a grid ... Sigh, OK, fine, here's a definition ...]

In cribbage, nobs is the name given to the Jack of the turn-up suit. That is, if the turn-up card is a four of Diamonds, then the player holding the Jack of Diamonds scores an extra point in her hand, known as "one for nobs" (sometimes "knobs") or "one for his nob" (or sometimes "his nibs"). This is a very old term, which probably dates back to the origins of cribbage. What is a nob? The word is British English slang for an important person, so perhaps this is why. (Cribbage Corner)

• • •

Hey, this is pretty nice. Clean and interesting, and very ... inclusive, by which I mean there was not a ton of generation-dependent pop culture. In fact, it seems very light on the proper nouns overall, which is cool. I love names, but they are frequently divisive, opening up the puzzle for those who know them and locking out those who don't. If there's one thing I've learned in the many years I've been solving—and I'm not sure there is, but here goes—it's that constructors should be very, very careful with any proper noun that isn't obviously common knowledge. Nothing will tick solvers off faster than having their puzzle blown up by some name (especially an unusual or not terribly inferrable name) they haven't encountered before. Here, MUNRO is on top of ASTIN (!), but beyond that, there's not much in the way of contemporary name-age. Just a lot of common, but colorful, words and phrases. Colorful enough that LINO and ESE and ÉTÉ just kind of floated by me unnoticed. IAMSO, OTOE, all tolerable when the marquee stuff is working. Oh, speaking of names: just saw someone on Twitter say they screwed up the [River of forgetfulness, in myth] because they (understandably) misspelled EMERY (with an "O"). Hope that didn't happen to you. If it did, just cross the river LETHO and fuhgeddaboutit.

Got into this one via the tried-and-true solve-the-short-Downs method. CAIN LINO ELEV (whoops) got me CLEOPATRA (1A: Ruler who died in 30 B.C.), and the rest of the NW was easy from there. Got stymied coming out of there, though, as SWEET TALK wasn't easy to see (22A: Cajolery), nor was "WAS IT?" (23D: "You sure about that?"). Started over in the NE with CRIB and TONY, and then worked back to join up with the NW and move on down the grid. There were two answers I wanted but balked at because something felt off: ICE CAP (25A: One of two polar opposites), because somehow I think of that being only a North Pole thing. I know there's ice at the South Pole, but ... I dunno, I think of Antarctica as a continent ('cause it is), so somehow its having something that the North Pole also had just felt ... weird; and then there was RACE TO THE BOTTOM, which is what I wanted (8D: Competition that hurts everyone), but BOTTOM ... I couldn't get to work because of the three-letter 50A: Hawaiian souvenir, which BOTTOM would've caused to start with a "T" ... and surely the answer was LEI. Even later, when I gave in to BOTTOM (!), I couldn't understand the T. Thought maybe answer was ... TEE? (shirt)? Ugh to the cutesiness of thinking a TAN is a "souvenir." Anyway, nothing else in this grid gave me much trouble. Felt like I struggled, but a sub-6 time on Friday is pretty normal, even somewhat better than normal.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Ryan McCarty

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (6:03)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: APHERESIS (29D: Loss of a sound at the start of a word, as "opossum" to "possum") —

noun
noun: apheresis
1.
LINGUISTICS
the loss of a sound or sounds at the beginning of a word, e.g., in the derivation of adder from nadder.
2.
MEDICINE
the removal of blood plasma from the body by the withdrawal of blood, its separation into plasma and cells, and the reintroduction of the cells, used especially to remove antibodies in treating autoimmune diseases. (google)

• • •

Liked this one a lot, which is surprising given that I had some *serious* 1-Across dread with ABLARE (which I got both instantly and reluctantly) (1A: Loud, as a radio). Knew it had to be ABLARE and then tested the crosses one by one. ENDS worked, ATOM MAN ... was wrong (4D: Fighter of Ferocious Flea in 1960s cartoons), but ATOM ANT ended up being right: and then there was the "L"! (3D: Close friend of Hamilton, in "Hamilton"). Me: "L L L L L ... what is it? ... oh, yeah, LAFAYETTE!"

This one felt very much up my alley, and also very smooth and lively and entertaining. I count 1, 2, 3, 4 sticking points of any significance. First the whole ATOM MAN issue (see above). Second, JAMES WATT (18A: Pioneer in steam engines). I had the JAMES and wanted the WATT but balked because I thought a. WATT was the lighbulb guy (this is true, same guy) and b. WATT was the Secretary of the Interior under Reagan, maybe?? OMG, yes, also true. I looked it up and dang, I remembered that one correctly. So there are at least two puzzleworthy JAMES WATTs. Good To Know. Anyway, I left the WATT part blank and kept moving down the west coast instead.

Then I wrote in TALK, TALK! at 17A: "I wanna hear everything"which I shoulda known was wrong. I mean, if you're gonna put TALK TALK in a puzzle...

Then there was APHERESIS, which required me to get Every Single Cross (P.S. AS A SET is by far the worst thing in this grid, delete it from your wordlists everyone, please, now, thx). Finally, there was the SW, where it was just dumb luck that I knew IDIOLECT. Even knowing that, it was only the "D" that got me into that corner—gave me PADRE, which saved me. Because "AS I AM"? MESS BOY? Oh, no. Was not about to get either of those without gobs of help.

[2018 ACPT champion Erik Agard in his ELENA Delle Donna jersey] (13D: Multi-time W.N.B.A. All-Star ___ Delle Donne)

Loved LITTLE KNOWN FACT and WACKY TOBACKY and *especially* THAT'S SO NOT OK. Perfect contemporary colloquialism. Perfect for a Saturday (really hard to parse, but got a great aha moment when I finally cracked it). I did not think DANK MEMES was a real thing outside of people mocking Jill Stein on social media two years ago (48A: Internet in-jokes that have gone viral, in modern lingo). DANK is a word normally reserved (I think) for pot, er, I mean WACKY TOBACKY. No one says DANK MEMES anymore, I don't think. But don't trust me on memes. I am definitely not a reliable source of meme lore. Lots of proper nouns in this one, but I knew most of them, so besides "AS I AM," nothing really held me up. CHEAP SEAT looks a little silly in the singular, but I'll allow it. A very fun outing overall. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I chatted with my friend Ben Smith about the latest "Solve the Internet" crossword puzzle (published weekly by Motherboard). Solve it here. Read my chat with Ben here.

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Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Easy (9:34)

THEME: Person / Place / Thing — theme answers are three interlocking two-word phrases, first a person then blah blah you know the drill

Theme answers:

AL GREEN BAY WINDOW (23A: Singer / City / Home feature)
PARIS HILTON HEAD SHOP (36A: Socialite / Resort / Store)
OLIVER NORTH POLE DANCE (52A: Political commentator / Geographical area / Fitness routine)
SEAN PENN STATION BREAK (75A: Acgtor / Transportaion hub / Part of a broadcast)
RICH LITTLE ROCK MUSIC (91A: Comedian / State capital / Record store section)
MAE WEST BANK HEIST (109A: Actress / Mideast area / Crime)

Word of the Day: HENLEY (92D: Regatta site since 1839) —

Henley Royal Regatta (or Henley Regatta, its original name pre-dating Royal patronage) is a rowing event held annually on the River Thames by the town of Henley-on-Thames, England. It was established on 26 March 1839. It differs from the three other regattas rowed over approximately the same course, Henley Women's Regatta, Henley Masters Regatta and Henley Town and Visitors' Regatta, each of which is an entirely separate event.
The regatta lasts for five days (Wednesday to Sunday) ending on the first weekend in July. Races are head-to-head knock out competitions, raced over a course of 1 mile, 550 yards (2,112 m).^[1] The regatta regularly attracts international crews to race. The most prestigious event at the regatta is the Grand Challenge Cup for Men's Eights, which has been awarded since the regatta was first staged. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is an objectively bad puzzle. More accurately, it's an objectively 30-year-old concept that plays like a parody of a tired theme type. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard multiple constructors over the years use this exact theme type (the before-and-after theme type) as a paradigmatic example of Tired Themes. You can tell that the puzzle is just shrugging at you by the title and the theme clues—there's not even an attempt to be clever or interesting or funny or anything. The very fact that this was accepted ... it feels almost contemptuous of the solver. "We're giving you NOTHING. See you next week." Meanwhile, RICH LITTLE ROCK MUSIC! Wow, sure, yeah, more of that. BETTY WHITE HOUSE MUSIC. KAREN BLACK SEA SHANTY. Are we having fun yet? This is the kind of puzzle that helps maintain the image of puzzles as just a cute diversion. A bastion of quaintness. D-grade word play and a lot of crosswordese and trivia. How do you have a grid this big and Not One non-theme answer longer than seven letters? How. Maybe I'll check EHOW just kidding who even uses that site??! (15A: Popular self-help website)

The weirdest thing about solving today was that I felt like I was strugggggggggling ... and then posted my fastest time in months. That tells you something about how unpleasant I found this. Even 9 and half minutes felt like a trek. I kept having to work around fussy ambiguous stuff, like, is it THUMP or WHUMP (10A: Heavy hit), and what kind of [Carnival performer] is being asked for ... Oh, GEEK, really? How ... pleasant. The "?" clues also held me up a bunch, or seemed to. Most of those failed to land, for me. [Make a good point?] is SCORE? Isn't that just ... [Make a point?]. I get that there's misdirection there, but the "good" does nothing *but* misdirect, and does so by making the connection to the actual answer (SCORE) pretty strained. Then there's 3D: Take a few pointers? Loving dogs as I do, and dogsitting as I am this weekend, I wrote in DOGSIT, and thought, "well, that's nice. Good clue!" But then the answer was DOGNAP. How ... pleasant. And Oliver North is just a "political commentator" now? What a world.

I need not to be talking about this puzzle any more, this puzzle, which embodies everything tired and sad and moribund about NYT Sundays over the past several years. Again, I don't see how this was ever accepted. I sincerely don't. There's not enough here. There's not a great title, and there aren't even *good* clues. The rest of the grid holds almost zero interest, primarily because there are no longer answers. But it's easy. People like easy, right? OK, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: John Lampkin

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Monday) (3:31)

THEME: DIDDLY SQUAT (62A: What the exercise regimen in 17-, 25-, 37- and 51-Across is worth) — weightlifting puns (except for "twist"—I don't know what that is)

Theme answers:

CHEESE CURLS (17A: Arm exercise at a dairy farm?)
FORKLIFTS (25A: Shoulder exercise at a cutlery store?)
PEPPERMINT TWIST (37A: Wrist exercise at a chandy factory?)
WINE PRESS (51A: Chest exercise at a vintner?)

Word of the Day: TRURO (7D: Cape Cod resort town) —

Truro (/ˈtrʊəroʊ/; Cornish: Truru) is a city and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is Cornwall's county town, only city, and centre for administration, leisure and retail. Truro's population was recorded as 18,766 in the 2011 census. People from Truro are known as Truronians. As the most southern city in mainland Great Britain, Truro grew as a centre of trade from its port and then as a stannary town for the tin mining industry. Its cathedral was completed in 1910. Places of interest include the Royal Cornwall Museum, the Hall for Cornwall and Cornwall's Courts of Justice. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one was just slightly off, all over. I'm in the gym 5 days a week, so I might be too close to the subject, but there are some slight problems with this answer set, from my pov. The connection between the body part in the clue and the "exercise" type in the answer feels tenuous. You can do curls with your arms, sure, OK, but LIFTS you also do with your arms, not specifically your shoulders. Shoulder PRESS is actually a pretty common "exercise," but chest is the body part that gets associated with PRESS, which is normally called a *bench* press, and while CURLS, LIFTS, PRESS, and SQUAT are all very familiar gym terms, TWIST ... ??? Wrist twist? I've never done one of these. I don't think I've heard of them. Even if they exist, they aren't nearly as common an "exercise" as the other gym-related answers. And what even is a PEPPERMINT TWIST (besides a dance)? I had PEPPERMINT SWIRL in there at first (before I knew the theme, obviously). And is the joke that you are literally curling cheese, lifting forks, twisting peppermints, and pressing wine (bottles?), and *that's* why the "exercise regimen" is worth DIDDLY SQUAT? On Mondays, I expect the theme concept to be tight and the execution to be bam bam bam bam. No "what?" or "... huh" about it.

Having themers with "?" clues automatically sets a Monday puzzle on a path to be harder than usual. And then there were soooooo many clues that were vague enough to trick me into initial mistakes—a lot of them. I haven't seen SWEATS in my gym in so long that that answers didn't even occur to me until I had over half the crosses. I thought Bo-Peep's sheep were a TRIO. Couldn't see POINTA for a bit. Figured [Totalitarian control] was IRON FIST. Then thought one of four in a grand slam was a RUN. Then stupidly wrote in SEEM for 71A: Consider to be. Thought the ICE was thin on Everest. And then I couldn't get either SEDGE or SALES off their initial esses. SALES was brutal for me, as I thought 53D: Business successes was referring to the, uh, success of the business, not a thing that is considered a success within the general sphere of business. Ugh. Unlike lots of solvers today (I guarantee you) I got TRURO instantly, but I still insist it has no business in any early-week puzzle and should only be trotted out in cases of extreme need. The very clue—[Cape Cod resort town]—should tip you off that is only regionally known, and the town population (18K???) should tip you off that it simply isn't Monday material. You can see how the themers get the constructor in a bind there, as he's gotta run --C-F and --U-O right next to each other, and the first one's pretty much gotta be DECAF, so ... yeah. You made it hard on yourself. But TRURO isn't acceptable (on a Monday). Only reason I know it is because a decade ago I yelled about its being ridiculously obscure. I guess I didn't yell loud enough.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:08)

THEME: FULL HOUSE (57A: Hit 1980s-'90s sitcom ... or what the circled letters in 16-, 26- and 43-Across represent?) — five-letter strings that feature three-of-a-kind followed by a pair (in poker terminology, a FULL HOUSE)

Theme answers:

GRASS SEED (16A: Groundskeeper's supply)
WELL LOOKY THERE (26A: "Do my eyes deceive me?!")
THREE-EGG OMELET (43A: Hearty breakfast order)

Word of the Day: SERAPHIC (9D: Blissfully serene) —

adjective
characteristic of or resembling a seraph or seraphim.

"a seraphic smile"

synonyms: blissful, beatific, sublime, rapturous, ecstatic, joyful, rapt; (google)

• • •

Entirely adequate! Concept is interesting. If the three-of-a-kind and the pair had been in different parts of the answer, I would've side-eyed this puzzle until my eyes fell out, but keeping them all together gives the impression of an actual poker hand, so, cool. Still not a fan of these theme answers where the circled squares don't touch all the words in the answers (i.e. THERE in 26A and OMELET in 43A are just hanging out there, not in on the poker action at all), but I know the editor doesn't care about such things, and getting this theme to work out entirely in two-word phrases would probably have been pretty rough, so fine, whatever. My biggest harrumph involved WELL, LOOKY THERE! because it's LOOKY HERE. One does not LOOKY THERE. One LOOKYs (lookies?) HERE. Google only partially backs me up here (80k HERE to 27 THERE—I want that gap to be much, much bigger). If you are saying LOOKY, my sense is that you and your interlocutor are both in relatively proximity to the thing you are lookying at, and even if that thing were relatively far off, like a tall building, I still say you go for HERE. I can barely make my mouth say LOOKY THERE, so wrong does it feel.

Today's solve was 23 seconds faster than yesterday's. I've been keeping track of my times for about three months now, and roughly a quarter of the time, I'm faster on Tuesday than on Monday. I'm also faster on Friday than I am on Thursday more than half the time. It's actually kiiiind of interesting to see all the columns of data. I have lots of annotations too, like * for an AM solve and ∆ for an alcohol-affected solve (there are only a couple of these, don't worry). Bizarrely, however, today, despite flying through the grid, one of my only hiccups was OOLONG. And I had O-L--- in place before I even saw the clue (23D: Tea choice). That should've been automatic, but my brain just went "OIL ... something?" Weird tricks my brain will play on me when I'm trying to engage in pattern recognition at high speeds. Otherwise, I had some trouble with SERAPHIC (a word I know of but never use, or see), and then futzed around a bit at the very end, in the south, trying to get EFFS (51D: Lots of fluff?) and FRIA (61A: Arizona's Agua ___ National Monument) into place. The word "fluff" is mostly EFFS, in case you are wondering what the hell that clue is about. And [Longtime members of the bar?] are SOTS because alcoholism is hilarious in crosswordville. Lovable, kooky drunks who exist for our amusement. It's fun. The short fill on this one was kinda weak, and the choppy grid a little irksome (ultra narrow passageways all over the place), but I found it tolerable, and it's Tuesday—the one non-Sunday day where tolerable is really a win.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:52)

THEME: SNOOZE BUTTON (49A: What a late sleeper may use ... resulting in 19-, 31- and 40-Across?) — familiar phrases that, when taken with a different meaning, suggest what happens when you hit the SNOOZE BUTTON:

Theme answers:

RADIO SILENCE (19A: Incommunicado period)
BUZZKILL (31A: Debbie Downer)
SOUND OFF (40A: Express one's opinion in no uncertain terms)

Word of the Day: HOBART (44D: Capital of Tasmania) —

Hobart (/ˈhoʊbɑːrt/ ( listen)) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. With a population of approximately 225,000 (over 40% of Tasmania's population), it is the least populated Australian state capital city. Founded in 1804 as a British penal colony,Hobart, formerly known as Hobart Town or Hobarton, is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney, New South Wales. Prior to British settlement, the Hobart area had been occupied for possibly as long as 35,000 years, by the semi-nomadic Mouheneener tribe, a sub-group of the Nuennone, or South-East tribe. The descendants of these Aboriginal Tasmanians often refer to themselves as 'Palawa'. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was a pretty decent themeless puzzle. Or that's how it played, anyway. I worked my way down to SNOOZE BUTTON, saw that it was a revealer, but didn't really bother to try to figure out the gag. The rest of the puzzle was straightforward enough that I didn't need to think about how the revealer worked. It's just a themeless puzzle, and then later on you realize, oh yeah, I guess those three answers do kind of do what the latter part of the revealer clue says. Interesting. The puzzle is very, very light on theme material, which may be another reason it feels like a themeless—the grid has room for more interesting fill than you normally find in MTW theme puzzles. GHOSTED, HOT YOGA, and WORD LENGTH (as clued) were my favorites, but it's all pretty solid. That TATAS EKED DESI block is about the only real weak spot. Everything else holds up. I don't mind a thinnish theme if a. the theme works, and b. the rest of the grid is particularly strong. And so the thinness of the theme didn't matter to me. Better to have a thin theme that works than to choke a grid with theme material and cause the rest of the grid to suffer. Clean fill, interesting fill, very acceptable theme. I'll take it.

Had trouble with NEW TAKE at first, because I know HOT TAKE so much better. Also, because the clue, [Fresh spin on a familiar idea], really should've stopped after [Fresh spin]. That's the equivalency. The rest is just added on. Maybe NEW TAKE can stand alone, whereas "Fresh spin" probably needs the prepositional phrase that follows. It's just that I don't think NEW TAKE does stand alone very well. In fact, when I google ["new take"], the first thing that comes up is the phrase "new take on something" from WordReference Forums. That's the idiom. I know I am overthinking this; what else have I got to do?! It's just ... well, look:

Those are the videos right under the first google hit. New take on new take on new take on. Ergo, NEW TAKE doesn't really stand alone, ergo "on a familiar idea" is unnecessary because NEW TAKE is really parallel only to "Fresh spin." QED, LMNOP, UFO, TTYL. I continue to not like BUSHSR as an answer. he's BUSHI. I know that BUSH SR. is in fairly common usage, but I don't have to like it, and I don't. BUSHI—that is the answer I want to see. And what the heck kind of merry-go-round has a UNICORN on it? And isn't the merry-go-round itself the "ride." Weird to call an individual animal a "ride." I know, you ride it, blah blah blah. I have no idea why anyone would go to merry-go-rounds for their UNICORN clue. It's preposterous. I forgot OPAL was a hurricane. I remember IVAN ... maybe IRENE? But OPAL was, contrary to the clue's assertion, not "Memorable"to me. (It was undoubtedly memorable to others.) Nothing else in the grid presented much of a problem. Pretty easy and uncomplicated overall. Enjoyable, despite the handful of answers / clues that I've spent the last paragraph griping about.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Challenging (11:47 ... third slowest time for Any puzzle in the last three months—and the two slower times were Sundays)

THEME: HANDS DOWN (34D: Easily ... and a hint to four answers in this puzzle) — Four theme answers turn Down at one point before continuing Across again *on the original line*; the part of the answer that turns Down, taken on its own, is a word that can precede "HAND" in a familiar word or phrase:

Theme answers:

DEFOREST (1A: Clear of trees)
EVA LONGORIA (22A: "Desperate Housewives" co-star)
ENVIRONS (38A: Surrounding area)
TREASURE MAP (51A: It often features an "X")

Word of the Day: CHIRON (29D: "Wisest and justest of all the centaurs," in Greek myth) —

In Greek mythology, Chiron (/ˈkaɪrən/ KY-rən; also Cheiron or Kheiron; Greek: Χείρων"hand")^[1] was held to be the superlative centaur amongst his brethren, as he was called as the "wisest and justest of all the centaurs" [come on, man, wiki-cluing is lazy] [...] A great healer, astrologer, and respected oracle, Chiron was said to be the first among centaurs and highly revered as a teacher and tutor. Among his pupils were many culture heroes: Asclepius, Aristaeus, Ajax, Aeneas, Actaeon, Caeneus, Theseus, Achilles, Jason, Peleus, Telamon, Perseus, sometimes Heracles, Oileus, Phoenix, and in one Byzantine tradition, even Dionysus. (wikipedia)

• • •

I napped on couch for better part of an hour immediately before solving: NOT a recommended solving strategy. That was brutal for me. I picked a bad day to start at 1-Across, I guess. I just poked at the grid a bit until I realized I'd better go hunting for some kind of revealer. So I delved into the SE corner, and eventually got all of it. That corner wasn't terribly hard—but that's because it's HANDS FREE (there's a revealer someone should try to build a puzzle around!). As for the rest of the grid, oof. Three of the four hands screwed me up something awful. First one I got was EVA LONGORIA, and never having watched a single episode of "Desperate Housewives," I figured the answer was just some EVA I couldn't remember. MENDES didn't fit, so I was stuck. Didn't help that that corner also had 16A: Joined (WED), which I had as MET, and 6A: Smack-dab (SPANG) (!?!?!), which I had as SPANK. I think I was thinking of "brand spankin' new" ... all I know is SPANG is garbage (albeit garbage I think I've seen in a puzzle before at least once). So, hurray, I got my first "hand" (FORE!), surely I'm on my way! ... Nope.

Could not remember the damned centaur's name (CHIRON) and had no idea the "hand" would be in his name, so the whole middle was a disaster. Instead of ENVIRONS I had, let's see: AURAS, then EDGES, then EAVES (!?). So rough. The NW wasn't much better. FORENSICS is "the art or study of argumentation or formal debate" to me, not whatever happens on "CSI" (forensic science?). TABLES as research paper addenda was baffling. EL CHEAPOS??? Who says this and where (in the world) did the EL part come from? Also, do I want to know? I had trouble with even the non-theme stuff in the NW: EPIC, ROCK, ESS (wanted "EGO-") (40A: Self-starter?). Just a disaster. Finally limped into the SW and ... crushed it. By that point, I guess, I had things pretty well sussed. But it was still a humiliating overall experience.

I wonder if anyone is going to get Naticked by the CENA / CHIRON crossing today. If you don't know at least one of them, that "C" is not exactly inferrable. I've heard of both, but I can easily imagine a reasonably accomplished solver who has heard of neither.

One of the roughest / strangest things about this theme is that one of the "hands" doesn't go *all* the way "down"—IRON, LONG, and SURE all go down til they hit bottom (a black square or the puzzle's edge). But FORE just hangs there, bouncing back up before it comes anywhere near bottom. Would've made more sense to find a 1-Across answer that contained a "hand" that could've been dropped down in the position now held by SHUL (4D: Synagogue).

I know the phrase "burn rubber" a lot better than LAY RUBBER (57A: Accelerate a vehicle suddenly); I like "burn" roughly 100000x more than LAY, but I'm not the king of Valid Idiomland, sadly. One odd thing about this theme is there are tons and tons of "hands" that didn't make the cut. FARM, SLOW, BACK, FREE... This theme might've made more sense in a Sunday-sized puzzle (though man that would be one tough Sunday). I've seen this exact theme type before (where part of an answer just drops Down), but the revealer gives it a new twist. Overall this is a worthy, challenging effort, light on junk and heavy on butt-kicking.

Please do yourself a favor and go get the new suite of Vowelless Crossword Puzzles from Peter Broda. Perfect for stocking your clipboard in advance of your impending summer vacation to That Place with Your Family. If you've never done Vowelless Crosswords before, they are great fun, and make for very good pattern-recognition practice. They will divert you and consume large swaths of time, what more could you ask for? Seven puzzles, pay what you want! Get it get it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. watched my wife finish her puzzle this morning, which reminded me of something:

If you've never seen AQI (and I had never seen it until it jumped out of a crossword at me several years ago), then you're in trouble (61A: Atmospheric pollution meas.). You have to talk yourself out of ANI, either by figuring out that "Q" might stand for "quantity" (no) or "quality" (yes) and "N" can't stand for anything reasonable, *or* by reasoning that you've seen ANI for years, in all kinds of cluing incarnations, and if it were some kind of pollution abbr. you probably would've seen it by now.

P.P.S. shout-out to everyone who wanted their salmon to be COHO (I learned NOVA ... from crosswords ... though I've since seen it in the wild) (19D: Salmon variety).

P.P.P.S. last thing, re: EL CHEAPOS. First, forgot to note the utter ridiculousness of having "EL" (singular definite article) precede plural CHEAPOS. Second, here's an article by Jane H. Hill that highlights the ubiquity *and* questions the innocence of mock Spanish in the U.S. It suggests there's something at least vaguely racist about the mock honorific "el cheapo," and o-suffixing in general, esp. to suggest inferiority (thanks to Ben Zimmer for the reference):

Mock Spanish itself is a system of four major strategies for the ``incorporation'' of Spanish-language materials into English. These strategies yield expressions that belong to a pragmatic zone bounded on one end by the merely jocular, and on the other by the obscene insult. They include (1): ``Semantic derogation'': the borrowing of neutral or positive Spanish loan words which function in Mock Spanish in a jocular and/or pejorative sense; (2) ``Euphemism'': the borrowing of negative, including scatological and obscene, Spanish words, as euphemisms for English words, or for use in their own right as jocular and/or pejorative expressions, (3) ``Affixing'': the borrowing of Spanish morphological elements, especially el ``the'' and the suffix -o, in order to make an English word especially jocular and/or pejorative, and (4) ``Hyperanglicization'': absurd mis-pronunciations, that endow commonplace Spanish words or expressions with a jocular and/or pejorative sense and can create vulgar puns. (Jane H. Hill, "Mock Spanish: A Site For The Indexical Reproduction Of Racism In American English," 1995)

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Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:20)

[mirror symmetry!]

THEME: ZZ TOP (52A: Rock band whose name is suggested by the first row of this puzzle) — "ZZ" is in every answer at the "TOP" of this grid ... not really a full-fledged theme, but it's something!

Word of the Day: OBEAH (15A: West Indian sorcery) —

Obeah (sometimes spelled Obi, Obeah, Obeya, or Obia) is a system of spiritual and healing practices developed among enslaved West Africans in the West Indies. Obeah is difficult to define, as it is not a single, unified set of practices; the word "Obeah" was historically not often used to describe one's own practices. Some scholars, such as Diana Paton, have contended that what constitutes Obeah in Jamaica has been constructed by white society, particularly law enforcement. Accordingly, different Afro-Caribbean communities use their own terminology to describe the practice, such as science, among the Jamaican Windward Maroons. Obeah is similar to other Afro-American religions such as Palo, Haitian Vodou, Santería, and Hoodoo in that it includes communication with ancestors and spirits and healing rituals. Nevertheless, it differs from religions like Vodou and Santeria in that there is no explicit canon of gods or deities that is worshipped, and the practice is generally an individual action rather than part of a collective ceremony or offering.
Variants of Obeah are practiced in the Bahamas and in the Caribbean nations of Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Virgin Islands, as well as by the Igbo people of Nigeria. In some cases, aspects of these folk religions have survived through syncretism with Christian symbolism and practice introduced by European colonials and slave owners.

• • •

Talk about yo-yoing. Yesterday, had my worst M-Sat time since I started recording my times (three months ago); today, had my fastest Friday time in that same time span (which was also faster than all my recorded Thursday times). And this was an A.M. solve—those are usually 50% slower than nighttime solves. World upside-down! Today, I knew better than to roll out of bed and go straight to the computer, so I went downstairs, went through the whole ritual of making coffee (pour-overs require attention), talked to the dogs, etc. Then I solved. And just that period of waking up made a huge difference. I tore through this so fast I surprised myself. I kept waiting for the debilitating speed bump to hit, but it never did. There were a few harrowing curves, but I managed to handle them without veering too much off course or slowing down too much. It helped (a lot), that I had finally gotten around to watching "Thor: RAGNAROK" just last month (though of course I misspelled it the first time: RAGNORAK, rhymes with ANORAK?). If not for that movie, that answer would be brutal, totally out of line, but the movie was a huge hit, so ... fair ball! I also thought 36A: Fore-and-aft-rigged vessel was a KETEL (a la KETEL One? The vodka named after ... a boat?). But HOTS straightened that out and then came SCHROEDER and zoom I was off. Speaking of zoom: so many ZEEs! I don't really care about the Scrabble-tile value of the letters in any grid—I just care that the fill is good. And trying to force Js and Qs and what not into your grid in a way that compromises the overall quality of the fil is of course a disaster: hence the term "Scrabble-f***ing." Today's Zs were very very showy, but they were not at all forced. Nowhere did I think "Nice job, genius, you got your Z but ruined this whole corner, I hope you're happy!" All Zs and Xs and even that one J are positioned beautifully. No reaching. Everything smooth. Hurrah.

Besides misspelling RAGNAROK, I had one other write/rewrite situation that impeded my progress a bit: up in the NE, where DORMER sits on ISO. I assume a DORMER is a window that you add to a loft so that you can see ... out? Is there another meaning of DORMER. Anyway, [Loft addition] was hard, and I'd never heard of ISO in this context (31A: Film speed letters), *and* I wrote in ZERO IN ON instead of ZEROES IN (problem with speed-solving: you can miss little things like whether the clue is in the 2nd person (!). So I made a little mess there and had to clean it up. Not a huge deal. But a deal of sorts. A comparative deal. (Side note, "film speed" in 31-Across clue refers to photographic film; I was thinking motion picture speed, like, I dunno, how fast the film goes through the real (!?). Whoops)

Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A closely related ISO system is used to describe the relationship between exposure and output image lightness in digital cameras. (wikipedia)

[BING!]

Bullets:

15A: West Indian sorcery (OBEAH) — while the grid is pretty clean, it definitely helped to Know Your Crosswordese. I've never seen OBEAH anywhere outside of crosswords (except maybe in a comic book or two...), but every few months it comes in handy, solving-wise. See also ORE as clued (21D: Fractions of a krona).
13D: Old-fashioned image projector (ZOETROPE) — I know this only because it's the name (I believe) of Francis Ford Coppola's production company. Let me just check BING ... (said literally no one ever what the hell, 39-Down!?) ... yup! It's American Zoetrope now (also now entirely owned by his children, Roman and Sofia), but it was indeed just ZOETROPE Studios for a time.
28D: "Beowulf," essentially (ELEGY) — once again, an answer squarely inside my wheelhouse causes me above-average trouble. I teach "Beowulf" from time to time, and while, yes, I would talk about its elegiac quality, I'm not sure I'd say it's "essentially" an elegy. There are lots and lots and lots of parts of it that are more heroic epic; it's mainly the last bit with the dragon / suicide mission / sad kinsmen sitting around wondering what's next / funeral pyre part that gets all ubi sunt-ish. (BING it, or "google" it, if you insist)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium (8:16) (possibly easier: one possibly idiosyncratic mistake made a Huge difference today) (possibly harder, if your knowledge of rap or weed is not strong, or at least existent)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: CRUNK (34D: Style of Southern hip-hop) —

Crunk is a subgenre of hip hop music that emerged in the early 1990s and gained mainstream success during the mid 2000s. Crunk is often up-tempo and one of Southern hip hop's more dance and club oriented subgenres. An archetypal crunk track frequently uses a main groove consisting of layered keyboard synths, a drum machine rhythm, heavy basslines, and shouting vocals, often in a call and response manner. The term "crunk" is also used as a blanket term to denote any style of Southern hip hop, a side effect of the genre's breakthrough to the mainstream. The word derives from its African-American slang past-participle form, "crunk", of the verb "to crank" (as in the phrase "crank up"). (wikipedia)

• • •

What a lovely puzzle. Or, for me, five puzzles, because all five sections (the corners + the fat middle) played differently from one another. Easy, medium, hard (both inherently hard and hard-because-of-error)—this thing ran the gamut. In the end, my time was just average, but it felt like I was one kind-of-dumb mistake away from lighting it up, burning it down. After fighting my way out of the NW (ARRIS!? APSIS?! Yikes; NTESTS, ugh), I thought I'd come storming down into the middle, but after I gave up on STIP-something and wrote in STROBE LIGHT at 14D: Party flasher, things came to a halt right quick. Wrote in GNARL at 31A: Get all twisted up (RAVEL) and that pretty much killed things in the middle for a while. Then I lucked out: I knew CRUNK. CRUNK feels like a crucial answer, and a serious generational dividing line. If you know enough about rap to know subgenres, well, here's not just the answer, but a very very important "K," the lead letter in 48A: Term of respect in old westerns ... so, effectively, here is the entire SE corner, on a platter. No CRUNK, no korner. I would've been baffled by the [Term of respect...] if not for that "K," but with (only) the "K," I got KEMO SABE and the SW corner went down in sub-Monday time. Not kidding. I remember nothing. It filled itself in. Didn't even see half the clues. Total fire hazard, that corner. Whoosh. So at that point, my experience was Medium (NW), gruesome (middle), and Kids' Menu Easy (SE). Onward!

Even with the top and bottom of MORAL CENTER, still couldn't see it at first (21D: Source of guiding principles). So, two corners down, (amoral) center still elusive. Went into the NE corner very confident. Had that sweet DOT sitting there, giving me first letters of all those Acrosses. And boom there goes DISBAR, boom there goes ON TIME, bo ... bi ... er ... hmm, what "parent company" could start with a "T"? Better check the Downs ... hmmm, OK 11D: Like valentines, starts "AM-" ... how 'bout AMOROUS!? Oh yeah, now we're cooking (narrator's voice: he was not cooking). I just got destroyed up there, and all because of two answers. 8D: Like the best streams? (IN HD). This is a horrible clue, mostly because, as a "?" clue, it offers actually no "?"-type wordplay. No familiar phrase, no pun. Streaming is a real thing, streams are real things (video-wise, I mean), so there's no real "?"-worthiness. And the phrasing on the clue evokes ... nothing. So I'm looking for a word that goes with the word "stream," four letters, starts "IN-." Nothing. Same parsing problem on the "parent company." Not expecting two words. Possibly because everyone knows the store as GAP. It's officially THE GAP, but first sentence of damn wikipedia entry (which is titled "Gap Inc." btw) says, "The Gap, Inc., commonly known as Gap Inc. or Gap, (stylized as GAP) is an American worldwide clothing and accessories retailer" (emph mine). So, staring down a six-letter answer that starts with "T" that is a "parent company," I went with ... can you guess? ... that's right, TARGET! Oy. I never made it out of there. Had to finish center and work my way back up (via back ends of STEEL CAGE and AMATORY).

How did I manage to tip the center with no further help from the corners? Honestly, it was just CAVER (28D: Speleologist). Once I committed to that answer, GNARL went out, RAVEL went in. Then, knowing 31D: Give up probably started RE- (it did: RENOUNCE), I had the E, E, and -IC in GENETIC and I saw it! Match, meet newspaper. Once again, whoosh. There went the center. It was that easy. But only after it was that difficult. Finished up in the SW, thanks to getting GERMANE instantly, off the "G" (33D: Material), and also thanks to having recently looked up KUSH for some reason. That is, I knew it was pot, but needed specifics. I forget why. I don't even smoke. I just wanted to know. Anyway, bone up on your pot and rap terminology if you want to have a future in solving. Not joking. OK, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. there was hardly any junk in this grid, and what little there was was Saved By Rhyme (SBR). When your fill is slime, try a rhyme! Need AMUCK? Bring in a duck! Stuck with ARRIS? You'll always have Paris! Etc.

P.P.S. some puzzle suggestions for you Saturday solvers. Peter Broda has a suite of Vowelless Crossword Puzzles available right now (ed. Andy Kravis). Vowelless crosswords are a really entertaining, and tough, variation on your favorite pastime. Seven puzzles, pay what you want. Get them here. Also, be sure to check out this past week's American Values Crossword second puzzle, a "labyrinth-style puzzle" by Francis Heaney, entitled "The Maze Ruiner." If you're not already a subscriber, just pay the $1 and get it a la carte. I promise you, you'll be wowed. It might take you half and hour, or an hour, or a day, or longer, but It Is Worth It. Really impressive work. Very clipboard-worthy. Get it here.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Ezersky and Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (12:28)

THEME:"Complimentary"— familiar phrases clued as if they were compliments (by reimagning the meaning of the first word in the answer)

Theme answers:

OUTSTANDING BILLS (24A: Compliment to a lawmaker?)
RADICAL MOVEMENT (36A: Compliment to a composer?)
SWEET TALK (62A: Compliment to a lecturer?)
STELLAR CLASSIFICATION (64A: Compliment to a taxonomist?)
KILLER BEE (67A: Compliment to a champion speller?)
SOLID FOUNDATION (87A: Compliment to a charity organizer?)
SMASHING PUMPKINS (103A: Compliment to a vegetable gardener?)

Word of the Day: PASTICCIO (47D: Musical medley) —

noun
another term for pastiche. (google) (grrrrrrrr)

In music, a pasticcio or pastiche is an opera or other musical work composed of works by different composers who may or may not have been working together, or an adaptation or localization of an existing work that is loose, unauthorized, or inauthentic. (wikipedia)

• • •

Really didn't care for this one, which is startling, given that I love almost every puzzle Byron Walden touches. This one, though, had a theme that I found corny and dull, and then fill that was just ... it was like someone got enamored of his deep wordlist and decided to let it explode all over his grid, with very little in the way of restraint or balance. Marginally famous pop culture names all over the place (well, concentrated in the NW, but all over the place). A Garth Brooks THE and then a gratuitous river THE (THE SEINE? Booooo). ASHCAKE *and* ASHE *followed immediately by* ASHEN? TESSES? IMRE? Holy crap, TARBES????!!?! This is the first time in my life I'm even hearing of this place's existence. If it were a crossworthy place, It Would Have Been In The Grid Before (oh, sorry, it *has* appeared in the grid before ... once ... just after the end of WWII (seriously)). I can accept PASTICCIO as something I should know, even though I didn't, but I'm never going to accept "THE DANCE," don't @ me about Garth Brooks' fame and sales etc. (12A: Song sung by Garth Brooks on Jay Leno's last "Tonight Show"). Oh really, wikipedia, it's his "signature song," is it? Look, I didn't spend the entire decade of my 20s assiduously avoiding that guy's music (and Jay Leno) for you to go shoving my face in it in my cranky middle age! OK, so "THE DANCE" is not objectively bad, just bad in my particular ears and nose and throat. If not for THE THE in THE SEINE, I probably would've let Garth go tbh. What the hell kind of non-word is NON-EGOS? See, you should exercise discretion, not just put in Whatever Fits. NON-EGOS is never going to be good fill (80D: Worlds external to the mind). Sometimes it's good not to GO ALL IN with your wordlist. Real words, please. DAREN'T!? Is that how they speak in TARBES (wherever that is)?

And then so many multi-word phrase, it got irksome after a while. TOOK AIM AT, TAP IN TO, ACT AS IF, GO ALL IN, SON OF A, DO ON ... I dunno, it was as if the puzzle knew its theme was pretty standard-issue NYT and so tried to zazz it up, but the zazz knob kind of broke and things ended up a bit of a mess. This is a very different problem from having your grid overrun with crosswordese, but it's a problem nonetheless. I did like the neat stack of three themers in the middle. Very Merl Reagle-esque. And some of the fill was interesting. I am never going to care about "Doctor Who," but I still didn't mind TIME LORDS (41D: Beings on TV's "Doctor Who"). And ONE-PAGER is some very in-the-language slang (IMPO) (in my professiorial opinion). I barely remember JARTS and don't even know what the portmanteau is there (77A: Banned game projectiles). I assume it's a portmanteau of something and darts. JORTS woulda been great. Jeans + shorts. Makes sense. JARTS? Oh ... looked it up. It's "javelin darts." LOL, did you know that? With a name like that, I'm shocked, Shocked that they had to ban them. I weirdly liked the clue on NIGER (95A: Major exporter of uranium). I mean, how would I know that ... except I'm old enough to remember the faulty intelligence that led to the Iraq War, so ... yeah. OK, it's hot and I want a FRAPPE, so bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I'll repeat my announcement from yesterday, since it's relevant to Sunday-solvers as well:

Some puzzle suggestions for you Saturday solvers. Peter Broda has a suite of Vowelless Crossword Puzzles available right now (ed. Andy Kravis). Vowelless crosswords are a really entertaining, and tough, variation on your favorite pastime. Seven puzzles, pay what you want. Get them here. Also, be sure to check out this past week's American Values Crossword second puzzle, a "labyrinth-style puzzle" by Francis Heaney, entitled "The Maze Ruiner." If you're not already a subscriber, just pay the $1 and get it a la carte. I promise you, you'll be wowed. It might take you half and hour, or an hour, or a day, or longer, but It Is Worth It. Really impressive work. Very clipboard-worthy. Get it here.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Monday) (3:36)

THEME:"COCO" (60D: Hit 2017 computer-animated film ... or a hint to 20-, 27-, 49- and 58-Across) — Theme answers are all two-word phrases where both words start "CO-":

Theme answers:

COUNTRY CODE (20A: Start of an overseas telephone number)
COUNTERFEIT COIN (27A: Faux money)
COMPLETE CONTROL (49A: What a micromanager would like to have)
COME CORRECT (58A: Approach respectfully, in modern parlance)

Word of the Day: CORONET (47D: Princess' headwear) —

noun
1.
a small or relatively simple crown, especially as worn by lesser royalty and peers or peeresses.
2.
the band of tissue on the lowest part of a horse's pastern, containing the horn-producing cells from which the hoof grows. (google)

• • •

Didn't care much for this one. Cool to see "COCO" clued this way for the first time, but the themers (with the notable exception of COME CORRECT) were kind of blah, and the revealer in a weird position, and ideally there would've been no other "CO-" words in the grid at all besides the ones in the themers (but we've got COO, COARSE, and CORONET). The theme type is pretty old-fashioned. I mean, it's fine, I just expected much better. Bizarre to me that you'd go back to the "SWAG Surfin'" well so soon (5A: "___ Surfin'" (2008 rap song))—and again on a Monday. Most of the fill was pretty dull, though there the grid has its moments. SELF-CARE is nice, and pretty current/modern (at least I hear the term much, much more now than I did, say, 5+ years ago) (38D: Tending nto one's own well-being). Enjoyed MUMBAI and RAITA. As I suggested above, COME CORRECT is very original, though I don't know about "modern parlance"—I know it almost exclusively from '80s-'90s hip-hop (and a quick google shows it still has musical currency). Whatever, cool concept. Would've enjoyed ROOFTOP BAR maybe on a different day of the week, or with a non-"?" clue. Here, nothing said "BAR" to me, or even "TOP," so I had to hack it with crosses. Lots of crosswordese (EERIE, ETON, ETAL, et al.). Never like POOP in my grid, no matter what the clue. By no means a bad puzzle, but not for me.

The clue on TALE was completely baffling to me. Now, I can see it—the whole idea that fishermen (always men?) tell lies about the one that got away or whatever. "Fish story" is even a general term for a far-fetched story. But the way it's clue, I really thought the dude was bringing something home ... and mere TALE didn't really cut it for me. I had -ALE and still nothing. Also really wanted the term PILE ON, which very much fits the clue (9D: Add even more criticism) ... just not the number of boxes in the answer. I also just couldn't remember CORONET. I had the COR- and could think only of CORONAS, CORONAE ... maybe COROLLA? ... I dunno. I feel like CORONET was a brand of dishware when I was growing up. Or disposable dishware, or something, is that right? Whoops, nope, that's Chinet. Sigh. Anyway, CORONET, it's just a crown, sans any fancy jewels I guess. Hmm. OK, I'M OUT.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Amanda Chung and Karl Ni

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:18)

THEME: FLYING / COLORS (37A: With 40-Across, what a straight-A student passes with ... or a hint to 17-, 27-, 46- and 62-Across)— things that can fly and also start with a color:

Theme answers:

RED BARON (17A: W.W. I enemy ace)
GOLDEN SNITCH (27A: Quidditch ball that ends the game when it's caught) [phrasing?]
GREEN LANTERN (46A: Comics hero with a magic ring)
BLUEBIRD (62A: Symbol of happiness)

Word of the Day: WEBBYS (67A: Annual internet awards) —

A Webby Award is an award for excellence on the Internet presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousands industry experts and technology innovators. Categories include websites; advertising and media; online film and video; mobile sites and apps; and social. (wikipedia)

• • •

Quick write-up this morning—miserable heat made me fall asleep early last night, and now miserable heat + grogginess is making want to get to (more) coffee and cool, cool yogurt/berry shake as soon as possible. Themewise, this one works well. I had to think for a few seconds, after I'd finished, what the "flying" had to do with any of it, because only themers 1 and 2 seem inherently about flying to me, but yes, they all fly, and they all start with colors, ta da. The one outlier in the group is GOLDEN SNITCH, mainly because the GOLDEN part, while accurate, is not a crucial part of its name. It's the Snitch. You catch the Snitch. In accounts of Quidditch, players chase the Snitch, not the GOLDEN SNITCH. "Way up above them, Harry was gliding over the game, squinting about for some sign of the Snitch" (from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's (or Philosopher's) Stone) See. It's like that throughout. The blue red and green colors are essential to the identity of their respective answers today; golden, not so much. Could've gone with YELLOWJACKET in that same space, but I guess the allure of HP was too strong. The clue on GOLDEN SNITCH is also kind of messed up (27A: Quidditch ball that ends the game when it's caught). The "ball" does not "end the game"—catching it does. The ball doesn't "end the game when it's caught." I'm just imagining the ball going, "OK, everyone, I'm caught, that's it, game over." Grammar! Still, though, I think the theme holds up reasonably well.

Fill-wise, there are problems, but it's Tuesday, so what's a Tuesday without fill trouble. Was put off the grid right away with the horrible ASDOI / ASAMI dilemma at 3D: "Likewise.""Here, guess which terrible answer it is. You have no way of knowing and have to get it from crosses. Fun, right!?" (see also the ALII / ALIA dilemma at 66A: Et ___ (and others), ugh). Also, DETOO, gah. It's bad enough I have to see D2 spelled out, seeing it as a name *part* and not the full name is unpleasant. I'd sooner accept ARTOO, because at least that's what people occasionally call it (him?). But then there is some nice stuff here. Love PREFAB and CYBORG. Mostly the grid is bland, as opposed to downright obnoxious. As Tuesdays go, this is decent work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Challenging (5:56)

THEME: F(OS)SIL (29D: What each circled square in this puzzle represents)— taken together, the circled squares spell TYRANNOSAURUS REX; bonus themer in the middle of the grid = DIG SITE (39A: Archaeologists' workplace)

Word of the Day: PALLS (53D: Becomes tiresome) —

verb
become less appealing or interesting through familiarity. (google)

• • •

A complete Tyrannosaurus Rex ... broken into precisely eight pieces ... of exactly the same size ... that is some find. For me, there was both an aha and a letdown at the end. Not "wow," but "really? That?"SHEESH. Perhaps also HOO BOY, though I honestly don't know what sound the puzzle is making with 9D: "Whew!" Is that like "Phew, that was a narrow escape"? Or "woohoo, that was fun"? HOO BOY is highly malleable, as far as I can tell. Wikitionary just has it as used to express strong emotion. I use it to express the magnitude of an issue or problem. I think. I honestly haven't thought too hard about my HOO BOY usage, tbh. Anyway, back to the puzzle. There is a cleverness and an ambition here. Admirable. But something about the execution, and specifically about the moment I discovered the gimmick (immediately post-solve), was dissatisfying. Like someone had pulled a prank on me, but it wasn't a very good one, so, like, I wanna be a good sport about it, but I'm super-judgy about technique, so ... it's a weird space to be in. The feeling upon completion was not on the positive side, is all I can say.

Are GYM BU(NN)IES women? Do women call themselves that? Really? I mean, really to either question, actually. That answer reeks of OGLE-ness. Why can't women just be GYM RATS like guys? Did we need the Playboy-inflected "BUNNIES"? I go to the gym virtually every day and have never heard this term, so I'm baffled and slightly off-put. [cranks up the google machine] I'm poking around the internet now and seeing a. that the term relates primarily to gay men, and b. that there is a whole section of the internet that clearly doesn't know a. and uses the term in the sexist garbage way I imagined. The world is big and weird. If the clue wants to be gay, it should be gay. Just ... be it. Don't be all coy with this [Workout-obsessed sorts, colloquially] stuff. Be Specific. Otherwise, a lot of old squares like me are going to assume you're into some sexist dickery again.

Figuring out that the circled squares were rebus squares wasn't that hard. Figuring out that they were just two letters apiece, also not terribly hard. Seeing what they had to do with each other, even after the F(OS)SIL revealer, was not easy (but then, I was not stopping my solve to look at all the squares and see). The worst problem for me, though, was that I thought the [Big name is French perfumes] at 1A was COCO (as in Chanel). So (TY)LER PERRY, whose name I know well enough to have been the first person to put his full name in a NYT crossword puzzle thank you very much, was not even on my radar at first. I kept thinking of Medea, not Madea, and wondering how I'd know any such actress (3D: Madea's portrayer in a long-running film series). Not knowing the term GYM BU(NN)IES, also tough on my solving time. Had no idea PALLS was a verb; the clue meant nothing to me (53D: Becomes tiresome). Never heard it used that way.

The "S" at the end of both SROS and ENOKIS is awful. Neither of those wants to be plural, and you've pluraled them together, simultaneously. Had OVATE at first for 26A: Egg-shaped (OVOID), possibly because OVATE means "having an OVOID shape" (this is another ASDOI / ASAMI /// ALII / ALIA situation where I just hate both options and hate having to guess. Do you all know SKRILL(EX)? I laughed as I wrote that in, thinking of how many people solvers would be wondering "What is a SKRILL EX?" I knew the name and still managed to misspell it (SKRILLIX. Silly rabbit ...). Oh, and I had BEAUTY SPOT, which I thought was the name for it (35D: Mole). Maybe not. Or maybe, it's another ASAMI / ASDOI situation, in which case throw it in the river. SHEESH, HOOBOY, etc. In the end, I think this one tried a tad too hard to be SHOWY.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Mike Knobler

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:30)

THEME: SECRET CODE (17A: What the answers to the six starred clues follow, as hinted at by 66-Across) (66-Across = NEXT PLEASE) — for starred clues, you have to move each of the letters in the correct answers one step up in the alphabet to get the letters that need to go into the grid—these new stepped-up letters spell real words, although those words have nothing to do with anything:

Theme answers:

DUD -> EVE
ETSY -> FUTZ
SNEER -> TOFFS
TANKS -> UBOLT
OHMS -> PINT
HAL -> IBM (this has been the subject of some "2001: A Space Odyssey" speculation...)

Word of the Day: Y.A. TITTLE (5D: First N.F.L. player on the cover of Sports Illustrated) —

Yelberton Abraham Tittle Jr. (October 24, 1926 – October 8, 2017), better known as Y. A. Tittle, was a professional American football quarterback. He played in the National Football League (NFL) for the San Francisco 49ers, New York Giants, and Baltimore Colts, after spending two seasons with the Colts in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC).^[b] Known for his competitiveness, leadership, and striking profile, Tittle was the centerpiece of several prolific offenses throughout his seventeen-year professional career from 1948 to 1964. (wikipedia)

• • •

I am laughing so hard at the non-sports types among you (and that's a lot of you, including my wife, currently solving in the next room) trying to make any kind of sense of YATITTLE. "Who would name their kid YA!? Or is it YAT?!" Someone should try to put YELBERTON (his actual given name) in a grid and see what happens. Me, I was thrilled to get that clue, because though I didn't know it straight off, I got it with only a few crosses, and it felt like I got a secret EZ PASS or something. Sadly, I'd struggle a bunch later, and my time wouldn't be any better than normal. For me, this was like solving a themeless with six mystery answers. Six answers I had to get almost entirely from crosses—for a couple, like UBOAT, I could see from the letter pattern what words they were going to make, so I didn't need *every* cross. But most, I needed. So it was slow going in parts. But ... hey, wait, what are TOFFS? My brains was cool with it, but now my brain is realizing it was thinking of DOFFS. Are TOFFS like ... fops? Huh, British informal derogatory. Interesting choice. "Rich or upper-class person." Well OK then.

As for the code, I couldn't make ETSY into anything so I just jumped to 66-Across, which I hate doing, but I needed a hint. Got NEXT easy enough, but thought maybe it was NEXT IN LINE! (which fits). Later, I looked at NEXT PLEASE trying to see what code was embedded therein—maybe some hint at a letter equivalency or letter swap or something ... but no. It's just NEXT. That's the clue word. PLEASE is superfluous. Why is there a superfluous word in your revealer? In the end, this is just six short words that can be changed to other words via ROT-1. That's the official name of your (not really) SECRET CODE. It's just a code. And you crack it with NEXT. Maybe if I had a BLOODY MARY, one SIDE EFFECT would be enjoying this whole premise. Alas, I'm not drinking this month.

High word-count grid with lots of short stuff, though there's six longer (8+) non-theme answers here, all of them at least solid. I guess I don't have much to say about the overall fill. Seemed fine, if a bit stale in parts (ALOU OMOO ERIES CTA PDAS etc.). I made some dumb mistakes along the way, mostly by misreading clues. Wrote in TREE at 1A: Christmastime purchases because I didn't see the plural (FIRS). Considered SPELL at 72A: Participated in a bee because I missed the verb tense (SEWED). Nothing was terribly hard. Just a matter of navigating around six totally (from my perspective) unclued words. Did you know that by today's SECRET CODE, ANNA would become BOOB. Oh, what fun. ANTS would become BOUT. STAR would become TUBS. ADDER -> BEEFS. Sigh. Good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. That clue on YACHT is pretty clever (5A: Vessel that's 1% full?) (i.e. full of "the 1%," i.e. the very rich)

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Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:58)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HAN characters (35A: ___ characters (Chinese script)) —

Chinese characters (simplified Chinese: 汉字; traditional Chinese: 漢字; pinyin: hànzì; literally: "Han characters") are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. They have been adapted to write a number of other Asian languages. They remain a key component of the Japanese writing system, where they are known as Kanji. They were formerly used in the writing of Korean (where they are known as Hanja), Vietnamese (in a system known as Chữ Nôm) and Zhuang (in a system known as Sawndip). Collectively, they are known as CJK characters. Vietnamese is sometimes also included, making the abbreviation CJKV. (wikipedia) (emph mine)

• • •

This is a very solid and smooth offering, for sure. Polished within an inch of its life. Near zero on the GarbageMeter. There's nothing terribly grabby in the way of fill, but when All Of It works, I am not about to complain. PINK SALT, that's pretty original, although I mainly think of it as "salt rich people will pay a lot for based on erroneous beliefs about its health benefits" salt. I also think we have some in the cupboard somewhere. Or did. We definitely use a salt mill, so that's pretty ridiculous. Where was I? Oh, this puzzle is good. NOSE-TO-TAIL is probably the most original thing here, and also the thing that gave me the most trouble. I did not realize this was a cuisine trend ... where you eat All Of The [Insert Animal Here]. I guess it's ecological or something, like farm-to-table. I am trying to eat (far) less animal. NOSE TO TAIL sounds like a kind of formation you would not want to be in. That answer was hardest for me, and helped make the SE corner the toughest corner. Not too tough. Just tougher than the rest.

Started out hot with BARBIE—my sister probably had a Dreamhouse, or wanted one; she definitely had the Corvette—but weirdly couldn't think of what the final four letters could be. Sincerely thought: "What was Barbie's last name?"DOLL. Her last name was DOLL. But just BARBIE was enough to get me going on the Downs. Went straight from there over into the NE via ERITREA. Tried to go into the SW, but somehow FIXTURES and UP NEXT just weren't going to reveal themselves from just their back ends, and so I worked the NE instead. Very fast there, with just a START SLOW hiccup before STARTS SMALL (11D: Not bite off more than one can chew). Biggest problem was figuring out what word I could make out of -ORKMA-- (31A: One might be by the water cooler). "... PORKMAIL?" Seriously, the -ORK was just so weird-looking.

Jumped over to RUBS, which quickly got me BORAT and RAISINS. Only problem in that quadrant was the HEFTS error I always make with the stupid sword handles (HAFTS). Getting into the SE was the only real problem this grid presented. I had HALF- and no idea what followed at 35D: Divided barrier. Eventually just guessed the DOOR part. Short Downs just weren't that quick in coming down there. Blanked on NRC (53D: Government org. concerned with radioactive waste). Also really struggled with both GAIN (49D: Appreciation) and LINE (50D: A cameo might have one). Had -AIN and -INE and still no idea, right at the end. Had to close them out by getting OGLE from O---E (48A: Check out, in a way). Today I was grateful to have "RUR" (24D: Play from which the word "robot" comes) and SABRA (36A: Israeli-born Jew) and ENOL (52A: Hydroxyl-bearing compound) in my big bag of crossword vocabulary (SABRA is the rarest of those, but common enough that it's worth remembering). A stupid lazy fly is buzzing in my office so I'm going to quit before I go insane like Walter in that one "Breaking Bad" episode. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Jason Flinn

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (8:17)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: NEROLI (Common perfume oil) —

Neroli oil is an essential oil produced from the blossom of the bitter orange tree (Citrus aurantium subsp. amara or Bigaradia). Its scent is sweet, honeyed and somewhat metallic with green and spicy facets. Orange blossom is also extracted from the same blossom and both extracts are extensively used in perfumery.

• • •

Substitute blogger alert! While for the bulk of Rex's coming vacation you'll be in the capable (much more so than my own) hands of Laura Braunstein, today OFL let me take the wheel. I'm Matt and while it's easy to find me talking crosswords on Twitter, today is my first time on the blog. On to the puzzle.

Grid-spanning quadruple stacks. Bleh. With grids like this, you're opening up two cans of worms: is the long stuff snappy enough to help with compromises in the necessary short downs, and how much glue are you going to find, especially in the crummy middle? I think the constructor did about as well as you can do with quadruple stacks. The long stuff felt fresh while still feeling in the language instead of forced: THERE'S NO I IN TEAM, ORDERED A LA CARTE, TELLS IT LIKE IT IS, PEER ASSESSMENTS are all full of constructor-friendly letters while feeling accessible to solvers, and STRING ORCHESTRAS (1A: Performers taking bows onstage?) threw me much longer than I'd like to admit, even with the ? raising my hackles.

But the rest became a test of your crosswordese knowledge, and on the whole, uninspiring. I definitely (for now) am A Young Person, and a mixed bag on the short stuff cost me significant time. KTEL, XKE, ELAM, LUI, EDO, ELO, LSD, came quick. And short fill-wise, we've got to accept some stuff in this grid design. But I hit real roadblocks in other places, especially the Maleska-esque NEROLI (only one other appearance in the Shortz-era), a bird I've never encountered in SORA (only one NYT appearance in the 15 years I've been doing the puzzle), and ONDES (7D: French waves). If you're of a different generation, I can see trouble with Comedy Central star-cum-Oscar-winning director Jordan PEELE (46D: Noted Obama portrayer), and that's not to say anything of FALSER, which is just crummy. ENCAGE and REDEPOSIT a little less so, but a trade-off I'm willing to make given how un-awkward the long stuff was. In the end, for a Saturday that time-wise I found a bit tougher than normal, I'm remembering the "blah" much more than the misdirection in the top half, which is a shame.

Bullets:

37D: DARLINGS (angels) and 38D: STINKERS (No-goodniks) — A fun little juxtaposition. Maybe I'd've rolled my eyes if the clues were "angels" and "devils," but as it is it feels like an easter egg in a themeless.
1D: STOGY (Low-end smoke) — Just reminded me of the all-ways bad EL CHEAPOS of a bit ago, but you can do a lot staler at 1D.

Until next time, assuming I'm welcomed back.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Patrick Merrell

Relative difficulty: 16:19 (Note: This week, I'm going to share my times, instead of rating the puzzles, and you can infer from there)

THEME:"Movie 'M*A*S*H''Up'"— Two one-word movie titles are stuck together to make a wacky plot description of a third movie.

Word of the Day: GESTALT (27A: The forest, as opposed to the trees) —

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism (/ɡəˈʃtɑːlt, -ˈʃtɔːlt, -ˈstɑːlt, -ˈstɔːlt/; from German: Gestalt[ɡəˈʃtalt]"shape, form") is a philosophy of mind of the Berlin School of experimental psychology. Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world. The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a global whole with self-organizing tendencies. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Rex is away on a well-deserved vacation; I (Laura) will be here through next Saturday. Think of me as Rex's MALEFICENT PERSONA or GHOST AVATAR or CLUELESS SHARKNADO.

Theme answers:

23A: "Anchorman" = ? (1976) + (1980): NETWORK FAME
28A: "Rear Window" = ? (2004) + ? (2014): SAW NEIGHBORS
44A: "Silence of the Lambs" = ? (1946) + ? (1960): NOTORIOUS PSYCHO
68A: "Transformers" = ? (2000) + ? (1992): TRAFFIC TOYS
77A: "Jurassic Park" = ? (1997) + ? (1975): TITANIC JAWS
98A: "Twister" = ? (2004) + ? (2013): SIDEWAYS GRAVITY
115A: "Dumb and Dumber" = ? (2007) + ? (1979): SUPERBAD HAIR
125A: "The Poseidon Adventure" = ? (1956) + ? (1984): GIANT SPLASH

I enjoyed this very much, and even though I solved it on my phone during the set break at a concert (Guster with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra; they were awesome!), it flowed pretty quickly, because a) movie names/trivia are my thing; b) I very much like (and like to make) theme-types where you take a category and stick the names of things in that category together to make new, funny things. My primary beef with this set is that the theme entries could apply to many other movies; it's almost arbitrary which movies the constructor or editor(s) decided to clue for each M*A*S*H (1970) Up (2009). Like ... okay, SAW NEIGHBORS is a pretty succinct plot summary for Rear Window, I'll grant you that, but how many movies have a NOTORIOUS PSYCHO in them? Many movies. At the very least, all the Fridays the 13th. (Also, plenty of Hitchcock in this grid, not that I'm complaining). And GIANT SPLASH could summarize pretty much any movie in which something unpleasant happens to a cruise ship. Does a tornado (subject of the 1996 film Twister) really have SIDEWAYS GRAVITY? Because that would be cool (in the sense of interesting; not that I'd want to experience it personally).

2008 + 2015 + 1944 + 1996 = July 22-28, 2018

Fill-wise, not much gave me trouble, though the NE was the last to fall; somehow I wanted [34A: Best in mental competition]: OUTWIT to be an adjective (i.e. ___EST rather than a verb). Funny story about [106A: Frederick Forsyth's "The ___ File"]: ODESSA. I tried to put IPCRESS here -- though The Ipcress File is a spy novel by Len Deighton published ten years earlier; many spy novels are entitled The Something File, or The Whatever Conundrum, or The [insert European city here] Connection. The spy novel is a genre I have tried repeatedly and failed to get into; some years ago I was reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John LeCarre, 1974). I complained to a friend that even though I could absorb fantasy sagas that ran to thousands of pages and took up entire endcap displays at Borders, and remember who all the different dynasties were, and which alien lifeform was feuding with which magic school fraternity, I tried to read one spy novel and got utterly confused trying to remember who all the characters were and whether they were the mole. "So you're saying," responded my friend, "That you'd've liked that book better had it been titled Hobbit Wookiee Direwolf Borg?" Yes. Yes, I would.

Bullets:

[1A: Festival of Colors celebrant]: HINDU— The Festival of Colors, or Holi, happens every spring (in 2018 it was on March 1 & 2) and celebrates not only the return of spring, but the repair of broken relationships.
[17D: Silents star whose name is an anagram of 112-Down]: Pola NEGRI began appearing in films in Berlin in the 1920s; she moved to Hollywood and specialized in femme fatale roles. She returned to Germany in the 1930s and starred in a few sound films, and was rumored to be a favorite of a certain dictator. She came back to Hollywood as the Nazis rose to power and had a few cameos, but mostly retired from film after the 1940s.
[45D: Without a contract]: ON SPEC— Most crossword puzzles are submitted to editors ON SPEC. There are probably fewer than ten constructors who work full-time, on contract, only making puzzles (and not, say, also as editors of other folks' puzzles).

Thanks folks! I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your server.

Signed, Laura, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Todd Gross

Relative difficulty: 4:03

THEME:"OF THE"— Four expressions that have the prepositional construction "[noun] of the [time period]" in increasing order of time-period length.

Word of the Day: NAT (63D: Turner who led a slave rebellion) —

In August of 1831, seven enslaved men turned the South and the nation upside down when they engaged in a violent and historic bid to gain their freedom. Beginning before dawn on a Monday morning, a band of slaves led by Nat Turner made their way across Southampton County in southeastern Virginia. As they traveled from farm to farm, they killed every white person they encountered and picked up recruits from among the slave population. Within twenty-four hours, fifty-five white men, women, and children lay dead. By Monday afternoon, whites launched a successful attack against the rebels, capturing or killing most of them that same day. Nat Turner remained at large, and rumors spread that the rebellion had been part of a much more widespread conspiracy of slaves in Virginia and North Carolina. Over the next four months, dozens of slaves were put on trial, and more than twenty were executed, including Turner, who was captured after hiding in the area under a pile of wood for more than two months. (The Nat Turner Project)

• • •

Theme answers:

[17A: Unplanned]: SPUR OF THE MOMENT
[28A: Parliamentary agenda]: ORDERS OF THE DAY
[48A: Literary club feature]: BOOK OF THE MONTH
62A: Annual Time issue]: PERSON OF THE YEAR

This is a nice Monday theme which does no more and no less than it needs to. I'm not super-sold on ORDERS OF THE DAY as plural, but Wikipedia confirms its use as a phrase used in the business meetings of a deliberative assembly. Apparently the Book of the Month Club is still going strong! You can get five hardcover books delivered to your door in a "fun to open box." I don't know about you, but what I find discouraging about reading is that the books are generally in a container that is such a drag to open. PERSON OF THE YEAR used to be Man (or far less often Woman) of the Year until 1999, when Time went gender-neutral. Inanimate objects have twice been Thing of the Year: The Computer in 1982 and the Endangered Earth in 1988. You were Person of the Year in 2006. Guess who was Man of the Year in 1938?

Fill-wise, we're good for a Monday with entry-level, standard stuff like ANTE ISIS MEME MAUI AFTA -- all on the NOSE, LIKE SO.

Bullets:

[26D: TV broadcast band]: VHF— That's quite a throwback, to when there was VHF and UHF, and the channels were on a little dial that you had to turn manually, and you taped a wire hanger to the rabbit ears on top of your little tube TV. And sometimes you could get that other channel that showed Monty Python if you stood near the antenna just so. Do we even say broadcast anymore?
[40D: N.R.A. members]: GUN USERS— I'm not convinced, from rhetoric of late, that the NRA is an organization for GUN USERS anymore, or if they just exist to intimidate people who disagree with them.
[6D: Possibly, but unlikely]: IN THEORY— I think of IN THEORY as more, yeah, it's good on paper, but will it play in Peoria? That doesn't mean it's unlikely to happen though -- just that it might not go over as planned.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Laura, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Jonathan Kaye

Relative difficulty: 6:12

THEME: DNA— If you solve in the app (iOS or web), there's an animated [58A: Shape of 7-Down]: DOUBLE HELIX at [7D: When the ends of each of its letters are connected to those above and below, a simplified schematic of a famous structure]: {see screenshot above, which doesn't do it justice, and I can't figure out how to embed a gif in a Blogger post}

Word of the Day: DORA (58D: Picasso muse ___ Maar) —

Maar, whose real name was Theodora Markovic, was born in Tours, France, on Nov. 22, 1907, and spent her childhood in Argentina, where her father, a foreign-born architect, was working. Arriving in Paris around 1925, the beautiful dark-haired young woman was drawn into the world of photography, first as a model for Man Ray and others and then as a photographer.
In the 1930's, with Andre Breton and Georges Bataille urging her into the Surrealist movement and encouraging her to paint, she joined the Union of Intellectuals Against Fascism and was active in other anti-Fascist groups. After meeting Picasso, she helped him set up his studio at 7 Rue des Grands-Augustins, where in 1937 he painted ''Guernica,'' a process she recorded in photographs. [New York Times obituary, 26 July 1997]

• • •

As I'm writing this, the animated DOUBLE HELIX at 7D is twisting gently in the grid on my iPad. This is a fantastic use of technology to enhance the solving experience, and I'm curious if this was something that the constructor had in mind when he constructed the puzzle, or if that feature was developed later. [Update: A twitter exchange just confirmed that he did not, and the feature was added to the web- and app-based solving interfaces by the tech team.] We've seen other gimmick-y puzzles from this constructor before (I remember liking a "hook" puzzle that used the letter J a couple years ago), all on Thursdays -- so it's interesting to find this one on a Tuesday; it had a Thursday "feel" (though I didn't solve in a Thursday time).

Theme answers:

[20A: What 7-Down is]: BIOCHEMICAL
[58A: Shape of 7-Down]: DOUBLE HELIX
[11D: Creatures with 23 pairs of 25-Down]: HUMAN BEINGS
[25D: Genetic bundles]: CHROMOSOMES
[66D: Subject of this puzzle]: DNA

One would expect the fill to suffer in order to get that 15-letter center entry of Hs and Xs -- but I don't think the entries that intersect 7-Down are out of the ordinary for a Tuesday. Maybe [62A: McCarthy aide Roy]: COHN is not so well known if you haven't seen Angels in America eleventy-billion times. Elsewhere, Word of the Day [58D: Picasso muse ___ Maar]: DORA is some varsity-level art history trivia. (I keep looking back at that rotating DOUBLE HELIX. That is just so cool.) I'm not crazy about [5D: Lucy Ricardo, to Ricky]: TV WIFE; do we think of TV HUSBANDs? Maybe I've seen TVDAD or TVMOM. Also, there is an abundance (and by abundance I mean more than one) of acronyms for government and other agencies: CDC, OSHA, NLRB, AFLCIO. Ugh, DITS. I diss DITS. And you've got your common fill beginning with E: your EPEES and your EONS and your ELAL and your EOS and your EXPO and, hey, [54D: Jazzman Blake]: EUBIE! We don't see him as much in grids, so why don't we have him sing us out:

Signed, Laura, Sorceress of CrossWorld
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Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: 6:28 (Wednesday average: 7:59; Wednesday best: 2:17)

THEME: Flipped the Bird— The names of three species of birds are "flipped" and embedded in three long theme entries.

Word of the Day: ICE-T (57D: One of the first musicians to have an "explicit content" sticker on an album) —

Tracy Lauren Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American musician, rapper, songwriter, actor, record executive, record producer, and author. He began his career as an underground rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays; the second hip-hop album to carry an explicit content sticker after Slick Rick’s La Di Da Di. The following year, he founded the record label Rhyme $yndicate Records (named after his collective of fellow hip-hop artists called the "Rhyme $yndicate") and released another album, Power.
He co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count, which he introduced on his 1991 rap album O.G.: Original Gangster, on the track titled "Body Count." The band released their self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer," which glamorized killing police officers. Ice-T asked to be released from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, and his next solo album, Home Invasion, was released later in February 1993 through Priority Records. Body Count's next album was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late-1990s. Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD Detective/Sergeant Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. (Wikipedia)

• • •

There was a comment earlier this week that just giving my time doesn't provide readers with enough information regarding how difficult the puzzle was, so above I've also given my average and best times, as recorded on the iPad app (after solving a total of 1,444 puzzles in this iteration of the app). I hope that gives a little more context. Note, however, that my Wednesday best was for solving my own puzzle, so take that as you may. Looking back over the week so far, this Sunday was 16:19 (Sunday average: 23:02; Sunday best 6:47 [again, best time was for my own puzzle!]), Monday was 4:03 (Monday average: 4:59; Monday best: 3:16), and Tuesday was 6:12 (Tuesday average: 6:29; Tuesday best 3:50). This week, so far, is running just under average difficulty -- for me. I'm required by the Crossword Blogger's Code of Ethics to state that your mileage may vary.

Theme answers:

[20A: Grand preparations?]: PIANO REHEARSAL (HERON)
[27A: Things that go bump in the night]: POLTERGEISTS (EGRET)
[47A: Iconic logo since 1962]: GOLDEN ARCHES (CRANE)
[56A: Gestured rudely ... or what this puzzle's circles have done?]: FLIPPED THE BIRD

We've got a solid Wednesday, which in my playbook is kinda like a Monday, but a little tougher and/or more off-beat themewise. (If you gotta have a gimmick, save it for Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday.) I generally like themes that take a common idiom (i.e. flipped the bird) and interpret it literally as the basis of wordplay. In a puzzle venue that allows for titles (Wall Street Journal, Chronicle of Higher Ed, Puzzle Society, etc), a puzzle like this might have additional entries and a title -- say "Flipping the Bird" -- instead of a revealer entry. (Having both a title and revealer is kinda like wearing both a belt and suspenders; overkill in most situations but occasionally appropriate.) Flipping the bird, as a hand gesture, has both its own Wikipedia entry -- The Finger -- and its own emoji, which Emojipedia glosses as "reversed hand with middle finger extended."

The fill in the NE corner was last to fall in this grid; somehow I couldn't see COCKY (had BOSSY) over APHID, though my raised bed garden is crawling with the buggers. Interestingly not too many proper names today (other than Word of the Day ICE-T and [54D: TV host Van Susteren]: GRETA); those are usually where I can get a decent foothold; nor did the fill-in-the-blanks help me get much speed. I didn't find the longer down entries to be too exciting, but overall the experience was [33D: Scoring 100]: ERROR FREE.

Bullets:

[30D: "Oklahoma!" aunt]: ELLER— Unusual to get this character from Oklahoma Exclamation Point! (note: not an error; this is how I say the title of all musicals that have an Exclamation Point!) in a grid; far more common is ADO Annie, who cain't say no.
[5D: Disney villain voiced by Jeremy Irons]: SCAR— In The Lion King, Scar/Claudius [spoiler alert] murders his brother Mufasa/Hamlet Sr. (James Earl Jones). His nephew Simba/Hamlet (Matthew Broderick) dallies a bit with his pals Rosencrantz/Timon (Nathan Lane) and Guildenstern/Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella), before driving his girlfriend Nala/Ophelia (Moira Kelly) to suicide, avenging his father's death, and dying in a duel. At least that's how I remember it.
[58D: Rosencrantz or Guildenstern]: DANE— Or meerkat/warthog, what have you.

Signed, Laura, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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One of jacks in cribbage / FRI 7-6-18 / Ruler who died in 30BC / It time 1977 hit babys / Ironic reaction to dry humor

Loss of sound at start of word / SAT 7-7-18 / Fighter of Ferocious Flea in 1960s cartoons / Chemical compounds in so-called hospital smell / Bakr longtime adviser to Muhammad / Zayn formerly of One Direction

Regatta site since 1839 / SUN 7-8-18 / Godfather mobster who was shot in eye / 1960s it girl Sedgwick / Longtime Inside NBA analyst / Perelman classic Russian science writer

Cape Cod resort town / MON 7-9-18 / Danglers on luggage / Computer crash investigator informally

Concert pianist Rubinstein / TUE 7-10-18 / Old print tint / Sight at golf course grocery

Pianist comic Victor of old TV / WED 7-11-18 / Memorable 1995 hurricane / Suddenly stopped communicating with in modern lingo

Wisest and justest of all centaurs in Greek myth / THU 7-12-18 / Pro wrestling star John / Some addenda in research papers / 1973 Jim Croce hit / Lux composer of 2012

Fore-and-aft-rigged vessel / FRI 7-13-18 / / Apocalytpic event predicted in Norse mythology / West Indian sorcery / Fractions of krona / Martial art whose name means literally sword way

Style of Southern hip-hop / SAT 7-14-18 / Banana Republic's parent company / Symbol of change in math / City license once needed to work in establishment serving alcohol / Ancient city rediscovered in 1870 / Home to ancient Zapotec civilization / Strain of potent marijuana

Surfin 2008 rap song / MON 7-16-18 / Approach respectfully in modern parlance / Place to see town while painting town red / Hit 2017 computer-animated film

Comics hero with magic ring / TUE 7-17-18 / Annual internet awards / Part of mosque from which call to prayer is made / Smartphone predecessor for short / Cartoon boy who makes many prank calls / Product label looked for by lactose intolerant

Grammy-winning dubstep pioneer / WED 7-18-18 / Wolf riders in Lord of Rings / Workout-obsessed sorts colloquially / Operating system whose logo features penguin / Newnowned ancient orator / Madea's portrayer in long-running film series

Chunnel train / THU 7-19-18 / Vessel that's 1% full / 1847 novel partly set on whaler / Many ancient tombstone / Surname of three baseball brothers / First NFL player on cover of Sports Illustrated

Title character of 2006 mockumentary / FRI 7-20-18 / Dreamhouse resident / Food portmanteau / Hydroxyl-bearing compound / Catwoman portrayer Meriwether / Colorful seasoning that originated near Himalayas / Five-letter capitol written as two words in its native language

Common perfume oil / SAT 7-21-18 / Pioneering infomercial company / Sports org. since 1916 / Noted Obama portrayer / Marsh Bird / French waves / Performers taking bows onstage?

Festival of Colors celebrant / SUN 7-22-18 / Former QB Tony / Big Ten anthropomorphic nut / Rockettes motions / Bikini blast / Marshal Dillon / City Missouri Council Bluffs / Golden calf Exodus / Frederick Forsyth File / Villagers victimized Grinch

Host with a microphone / MON 7-23-18 / Egyptian goddess repetitive name / Three blind creatures / West Coast NFL / California Nevada border lake / Singer 19 21 25 / Rice Burroughs / I Still Believe Vince Gill

Sanity Clause / TUE 7-24-18 / Caesar's assassins / Thick Japanese noodle / Friday 13th New Beginning / Cuisine tom yum soup / McCarthy aide Roy / Need You Tonight

Garden pest / WED 7-25-18 / Letter before Omega / Vietnamese festival / Triple Crown of Surfing / Ancient Anatolian region / Disney villain Jeremy Irons