Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle (2024)

THEME: FIRST LADY (58A: Title for Jackie or Jill, and a hint to the answers to the starred clues)— "first" words of theme answers can all follow the word "LADY":

Theme answers:

• GAGAABOUT (17A: *Crazy for)
• LIBERTYVALANCE (23A: *Title role for Lee Marvin in a 1962 western)
• LUCKOUT (36A: *Get seriously fortunate)
• MARMALADESKIES (48A: *Meteorological description in a Beatles song)

Word of the Day: Frank O'HARA(16A: Poet Frank who led the 1950s-'60s "New York School") —

Francis Russell"Frank"O'Hara(March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at theMuseum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in theNew York School, an informal group of artists, writers, and musicians who drew inspiration from jazz,surrealism,abstract expressionism,action painting, and contemporaryavant-gardeart movements.

O'Hara's poetry is personal in tone and content, and has been described as sounding "like entries in a diary".Poet and criticMark Dotyhas said O'Hara's poetry is "urbane, ironic, sometimes genuinely celebratory and often wildly funny" containing "material and associations alien to academic verse" such as "the camp icons of movie stars of the twenties and thirties, the daily landscape of social activity in Manhattan, jazz music, telephone calls from friends".O'Hara's writing sought to capture in his poetry the immediacy of life, feeling that poetry should be "between two persons instead of two pages."

The Collected Poems of Frank O'Haraedited by Donald Allen (Knopf, 1971), the first of several posthumous collections, shared the 1972National Book Award for Poetry. (wikipedia)

• • •

You know that feeling when you're humming along, just loving a puzzle, and then someone goes and dumps a bucket of TUCKET all over it? No? Well, neither had I, before today. What a tragedy. Gorgeous to gruesome in no time flat. When you're out of luck(et), and feel like "f*ck it!," bring in the TUCKET. The TUCKET (as it will now be known, with the definite article out front) has not been seen or heard from in over three decades. It was believed extinct. Or perhaps mythical—who even remembers 1992? But today, it returns from its decades-long hibernation / mystical journey and slimes its grim way right across my MARMALADE SKIES. "With tangerine trees, and [record scratch] TUCKET Surprise!" I cannot say enough about the monstrosity that is TUCKET. I want to put it in a bucket and chuck it. If this seems like an outsized reaction, well, first of all, hi, have we met? And second of all, I refer you to the opening words of this paragraph—I thought this puzzle was (otherwise) fantastic. The quality gap between TUCKET and the rest of this puzzle is a gulf, a chasm, it cannot be measured, you cannot see the other side of the canyon from TUCKET. I mean, I didn't *know* BANTU (as clued) (22D: ___ knots (hairstyle)), but at least I recognize the word (it's an African people / language group), and anyway, hairstyles are not in my purview—if you tell me something is a hairdo, I believe you, because my own personal hair style is NIL. But TUCKET ... TUCKET isn't just something I didn't know. It's something that should not, and possibly does not, exist. Is it real? Am I typing or still in a crossword nightmare. It *is* the 40th anniversary of Nightmare on ELM ST, maybe I'm in the middle of one of those situations, still asleep and being chased by Griddy Krueger, aka The TUCKET. Whether I'm awake or asleep, TUCKET remains very bad (please congratulate me on getting through this paragraph without using "suck it").

But before TUCKET, wow, what a beauty. I smiled when I threw down MCGRIDDLE and then *beamed* when MCGRIDDLE led to LIBERTY VALANCE! OK, yes, I did spell it LIBERTY VALENCE at first, as if it were a chemical or psychological phenomenon, but no matter. What a great movie: Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Lee Marvin and Lee Van Cleef and Woody Strode in the same damn western?! That's a lot of western! Before The Man Who Shot LIBERTY VALANCE, you couldn't get that much iconic western manliness on the screen at one time—science had not yet figured it out. But then John Ford was like "TUCKET! I want Wayne *and* Stewart! I'm putting them both in my movie, and a handful of other tough guys to boot, who cares if I literally set the atmosphere on fire!?" And then time passed and here we are, enjoying LIBERTY VALANCE with an APEROL chaser! (18D; Red alcohol in a spritz). Recommendation for APEROL lovers out there: ditch the spritz and try a Naked & Famous. I learned about this (apparently already famous) drink from my new favorite podcast, "co*cktail College." It's a sour with equal parts (3/4 oz.) APEROL, lime juice, yellow chartreuse and mezcal, shaken, up (in a coupe). Simple and delicious.

So this puzzle hits me with a sweet breakfast treat and then an iconic western and a colorful co*cktail ingredient and *then* hits me with my favorite modern poet!? (Frank "Don't Confuse Me With John" O'HARA!). I was all in. This is why The TUCKET was so tragic, but let's not revisit that. Back to the theme—it's very simple, very straightforward, nothing terribly tricky about it. I had the "Lady" bit figured out after the first two themers, but did not know what the revealer was going to be, exactly. In retrospect, FIRST LADY seems obvious. This is such a good example of how your theme does not have to be overly complicated. If the concept is tight enough, and especially if the answers are colorful enough, then you can do wonders by focusing on good old-fashioned craftsmanship. Speaking of old-fashioned, the other drink I just learned about that I still need to try is the Oaxacan Old Fashioned. No APEROL in there, but it still has the MEZCAL (only three crossword appearances? didn't debut til 2019!?) as well as crossword favorite AGAVE (nectar). Anyway, on the next hot weekend, I'm giving it a shot.

The puzzle played harder than usual because, well, TUCKET, but also BANTU took me a bit, and then I couldn't get either POMPEII(41D: Unfortunate neighbor of Mount Vesuvius) or RATTLE(46D: Maraca, e.g.) from their initial letters and ended up having to come back for that SW corner. First I just blanked on the city near Vesuvius, and then I couldn't spell it. Two "I"s!! I was like "well POMPEI won't fit and neither will ... POMPEIAN (!?!?)" so I dunno, man." As for RATTLE ... I mean, true, but so basic I never would've thought of it. Also I confess I get "maraca" and "marimba" confused, still (the latter is also Latin American, and also a percussion instrument, but you play it with mallets (something like a xylophone)). The puzzle wasn't *hard*, just harder than the usual Tuesday, for me. Also, much (much) prettier than the usual Tuesday. That is, until ... but enough about that. Let's not revisit that. Let's listen to some Gary Puckett instead.

See you next time.

Read more...

THEME: SET (71A: Guinness world record holder for "English word with the most meanings") — SET appears in the grid a bajillion (i.e. 12) times, clued differently each time

The (remaining 11) SETs:

• 1A: Theater backdrop
• 5D: Part of a tennis match
• 8D: Sink, as the sun
• 24A: Put (down)
• 31A: Prepare, as the dinner table
• 40A: Written in stone
• 35D: Having everything one needs
• 47A: Unit for a comedian or musician
• 57A: Like hard plaster
• 62D: Complete collection
• 64D: Adjust, as a watch

Word of the Day: Patricia Lockwood(11D:Philip Larkin or Patricia Lockwood = POET) —

See Also

Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword PuzzleRex Parker Does the NYT Crossword PuzzleRex Parker Does the NYT Crossword PuzzleRex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Patricia Lockwood(born April 27, 1982) is anAmerican poet,novelist, and essayist. Her 2021debut novel,No One Is Talking About This,won theDylan Thomas Prize. Her 2017 memoirPriestdaddywon theThurber Prize for American Humor. Her poetry collections includeMotherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, a 2014New York TimesNotable Book. Since 2019, she has been a contributing editor forLondon Review of Books.

She is notable for working across and between a variety of genres. "Your work can flow into the shape that people make for you," she toldSlatein an interview in 2020. "Or you can try to break that shape."In 2022, she received theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters' Morton Dauwen Zabel Award for her contributions to the field ofexperimental writing.

Lockwood is the only writer with bothfictionandnonfictionworks selected as 10 Best Books of the year byThe New York Times. At four years, she also holds the record for the shortest span between repeat appearances on the list.

Kirkus Reviewshas called her "our guide to moving beyond thinking of the internet as a thing apart from real lives and real art,” andGarden & Gun: “goddessof theavant-garde.”(wikipedia)

• • •

This is a pretty fun puzzle ... if you ignore the theme entirely. I guess that it's mildly interesting that SET has so many definitions, but what's *not* (even) mildly interesting is filling in SET over and over and over and nine more overs again. There's the initial shock of "oh, we're doing this?" and then the final "oh, that's why we're doing this?" and in between, yeah, just a lot of SETs. This probably seemed like a good idea, conceptually, but it's like no one thought about what it would be like to solve it. SET is a pretty boring answer to begin with, so ... let's do it a dozen times? It is kind of gutsy and avant-garde to flout convention this way, I'll give it that. And the puzzle really commits to the bit, with Every Single 3-letter answer in the Entire Grid coming in as a SET. Huge upside is that we aren't subjected to all the even more boring, or perhaps actively ugly, 3-letter fill that might’ve gone in those slots otherwise. 3-letter fill is never gonna make a puzzle interesting, why not turn it *all* to SET? So the puzzle gets high points for its artistic ambition and rule-breaking spirit. But I can't say entering SET after SET after ten more SETs was anything other than monotonous.

On the plus side, once I realized that All the 3-letter answers were gonna be SET, I had a lot of free access to Across answers (the clues for which I never look at on Mondays). Those six free SETs gave me desperately needed traction in a puzzle that had most of its longer answers running Down (most themed puzzles have the bulk of their longer answers running Across, and it's much easier to use short Downs to guess a long Across than it is to do the reverse (use long Downs to get at short Acrosses)). May not seem like a lot, but I really needed those free SETs to have any hope of bringing down those long Downs, particularly in the SW. That free SET at 31A was probably the single-most valuable freebie, giving me the initial letters of EXISTENCE and TIPPYTOES, neither of which I could get a grip on without the assistance. My problems in the SW were compounded by the fact that (despite being a medievalist) I couldn't guess FEUDAL from the clue (44D: Like England between the ninth and 15th centuries). When MEDIEVAL didn't fit, I blanked. And I wasn't sure if areas where cigarettes weren't permitted were SMOKEFREE or SMOKELESS (in retrospect, it should've been obvious—SMOKELESS is a word I've only really heard as a modifier of "tobacco" ("smokeless tobacco" being another term for "chewing tobacco")). I also had -PE UP and decided the answer had to be PIPE UP (it was TYPE UP (52A: Put into a Word document, say)). NeededTIPPYTOES to get me out of that predicament.

The rest of the puzzle was pretty tractable, though "OK, GOOD" definitely caused me to spin my wheels (7D: "All right, that's fine"). Gonna add "OK" to the category of answer I've been talking about for days now (well, yesterday and Friday, for sure): the rapidly proliferating (or so it seems) "UH / OH / UM / (and now) OK" phrases—colloquial phrases that open with one of those two-letter units, which can be very hard to differentiate from each other. What's the difference between an "UH, OK" and an "UM, OK," or between either of those and an "OH, OK"? Somehow "that's fine" didn't evoke "GOOD" for me—"that's fine" means more "that'll do" than "GOOD")—and the "OK" part was not at all obvious either. The cluing needs to be spot on with these kinds of answers, and I'm not sure it was today. The adjacent YEN FOR wasn't a walk in the park, either. It's not a phrase I hear, ever. I think it's largely bygone. I've definitely heard of "having a YEN (n.) FOR something," but the verb phrase "YEN FOR" (in the sense of "pine for" or "jones for" or "ache for" or "long for" "YEarN FOR"), that I don't hear so much. I know it's real, it just didn't come quickly to mind.

Read more...

THEME: "Quiet Time" — each theme answer contains one circled "silent" letter; those letters end up spelling "AUCTION," which gives you an "AUCTION" made up of "silent" letters, or ... a SILENT AUCTION (117A: Popular charity event ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters):

Theme answers:

• CINNAMON BREAD (22A: Sweet loaf with a swirl)
• "TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR" (31A: Triple-platinum song from Taylor Swift's debut album)
• SCIENCE PROJECT (49A: Potato battery or model volcano, e.g.)
• SIDE HUSTLE (58A: Extra source of income, slangily)
• FRUIT SALAD (76A: Side dish at a summer cookout)
• "THIS IS JEOPARDY" (84A: Classic game show intro)
• DAMNWITH FAINT PRAISE (103A: Pay a backhanded compliment, perhaps)

Word of the Day: PAI GOW(72D: Chinese gambling game with dominoes) —

Pai gow(/paɪˈɡaʊ/pyGOW;Chinese:牌九;Jyutping:paai⁴gau²[pʰaːi˩.kɐu˧˥]) is a Chinesegamblinggame, played with a set of 32Chinese dominoes. It is played in major casinos inChina(includingMacau); theUnited States(includingBoston, Massachusetts;Las Vegas, Nevada;Reno, Nevada;Connecticut;Atlantic City, New Jersey;Pennsylvania;Mississippi; andcardroomsinCalifornia);Canada(includingEdmonton, AlbertaandCalgary, Alberta);Australia; andNew Zealand.

The namepai gowis sometimes used to refer to acard gamecalledpai gow poker(or "double-hand poker"), which is loosely based on pai gow. The act of playing pai gow is also colloquially known as "eating dog meat".

Pai Gow is the first documented form of dominoes, originating in China before or during theSong Dynasty.It is also the ancestor of modern, westerndominoes. The name literally means "make nine"after the normal maximum hand, and the original game was modeled after both aChinese creation myth, and military organization in China at that time (ranks one through nine).

• • •

The theme seems oddly thin. There's no reason you couldn't do this theme with a bunch of different phrases. SILENT NIGHT. SILENT TREATMENT. SILENT SPRING .SILENT MOVIE. Actually, you couldn't do SILENT MOVIE, as "V" (apparently!) is the only letter in the English language that won't ever shut up. So SILENT FILM, then. There's nothing specifically auction-y about this grid, no real auction content, just the silent letters in the eight theme answers. But ... this brings me to the other thing that makes the theme seem thin, which is that silent letters aren't special. They're everywhere. And the only restriction on your themers is that they contain ... a single specific silent letter? So ... *annnnnnny* answer with a silent "A" in it would work as the first answer, for instance. I mean, BREAD answers alone would give you a mountain of possibilities, and BREAD is hardly the only example of a silent "A" in the English language. Because you just need the one silent letter, you really just need one word—the rest of the (long) themer just takes up space. Doesn't have to be about auctions, or silence ... just sits there. And while several of the themers are bright and interesting answers, CINNAMON BREAD, SCIENCE PROJECT, and FRUIT SALAD just kinda lie there. I dunno. This theme just didn't seem to have narrow enough parameters to be at all interesting. Worse is the fact that several of the themers contain More Than One Silent Letter. The circles the one it wants you to see, but what about the "I"s in FAINT and "PRAISE"—if the "I" in FRUIT is silent (which the puzzle is telling me it is), then the "I"s in "FAINT and "PRAISE" are also silent. The "A" in TEARDROPS seems silent. There's also the "E" is SIDE, or even at the end of SCIENCE. If you are going to make the silent letter the hallmark of your theme, there really (really) should be just one silent letter per theme answer. It would be too much to ask that absolutely no other letters in your Sunday-sized grid be silent, but with the themers, you'd think you could manage that one tiny restriction (since your theme has so few restrictions to begin with).

Some of the themers do have enough personality to make you forget (briefly) how thin the theme is. I don't know what "TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR" is, nor did I know singles went "platinum" at all, let alone thrice (I thought that was just for albums, and anyway who is buying singles—in those numbers— in the 21st century?). Still, at least the answer is original and vibrant, and provided some genuine suspense for me "Where ... where will the teardrops end up ...? On Her What!?!?! PILLOW!? TEAPOT!? PET CAT!?" I also liked "THIS ... IS ... JEOPARDY!" and DAMN WITH FAINT PRAISE, fine answers that would be a credit to any grid. I absolutely hate the term, the phrase, the concept, the very existence of SIDE HUSTLE, which is some capitalist propaganda designed to make the fact that you have to work two or more jobs just to survive sound cool, man! It's the Protestant Work Ethic distilled and weaponized for the 21st century consumer. Booooooo. But it is a term people use, so it's valid, I just hate it so much. The puzzle's main problem is that once you get beyond the handful of good themers, the vibrancy level really drops off. There aren't many longer answers at all, and while the grid does make decent use of many of the 7+ answers it does have (BURRATA, JUST ONCE, BUDDY COP), mostly what you get is a boatload of forgettable 3-4-5s. And again, the puzzle is playing way too easy. This has been a real trend of late, with the late-week puzzles, and the trend shows no signs of reversing. Today, I needed every cross for PAIGOW, and I had trouble remembering the seemingly arbitrary string of letters in HSBC, but other than that, there was no challenge, no bite. The clues didn't seem to be trying particularly hard to fool or even entertain you. Overall, everything works fine in this puzzle, but it all feels a bit flat. "Quiet Time," for sure. Too quiet.

And here just two days later we've got "UM, BYE" going "... 'pushing the boundaries of feasibility," eh? ... um, hold my beer." I do not really buy "UM, BYE." I buy "UH, YES" about ten times as much as "UM, BYE." "UM, BYE" opens the floodgates on some increasingly absurd combinations, things one might very well say but that don't exactly make great standalone answers. "UH, SURE." "UM, WHY?" "OH, THAT." LOL I just looked it up and "OH THAT" has already appeared three times! Anyway, there's nothing terribly alarming about the UH / OH / UM creep, I just want to point it out. Just asking us to collectively keep our eye on the situation and think about whether limits exist and what they are. "OH SHUT UP." I will not, sir, or ma'am, how dare you.

Not a fan of NOAIR (111A: Flat's problem), for a host of reasons (surely there's some air even in the worst flat, this isn't really a thing you'd say about a flat, there's another NO answer just a couple inches away (NO DISC), etc.). Also not a fan of the arbitrary definite article in THE SUNS (I had THE HEAT in there at first) (48D: Fitting N.B.A. team to go on a hot streak?). 'EM ALL may be the worst five-letter answer I've ever seen in a grid, and I've seen TO POT (several times!). My guess is that this was in the constructor's database because of previous instances where EMALL had appeared in crosswords, clued as E-MALL (yes, as in "electronic mall"). Let me just look it up ... Oof, no. I mean, yes, EMALL has been clued that way, but it's also been clued this way, with the elided "TH"—did you know there was a "hit song" from 1941 called "Bless 'EM ALL"? Probably not. Seems much more likely that you would've heard of Metallica's triple-platinum debut album (take that, Taylor Swift!) Kill 'EM ALL. Both 'EM ALL titles have been used in NYTXW clues. In light of this unfortunate information, I have to revise my assessment slightly: 'EM ALL is still godawful, but in all of 'EM ALL history, I have to admit that Pokémon's "Gotta Catch 'EM ALL" is King 'EM ALL. Well, as Satan famously said, "Better to reign in crossword hell than serve in crossword heaven!" (I added the "crossword" part, sorry Milton). Ironic congratulations to King 'EM ALL!

P.S. "Touch 'EM ALL" is reasonably common baseball slang, a post-homerun declaration / exclamation favored by some announcers. So look out for "Touch 'EM ALL"—coming to an E-MALL near you soon, I'm sure.

Read more...

THEME: none—there's a dumb little ABC/XYZ thing (see below), but I don't think that constitutes a "theme"

Word of the Day: UTHER Pendragon(29D: King Arthur's father) —

[Anthony Head as King UTHER Pendragon in the BBC TV series Merlin]

Uther Pendragon(Brittonic) (/ˈjuːθərpɛnˈdræɡən,ˈuːθər/;Welsh:Ythyr Ben Dragwn, Uthyr Pendragon, Uthyr Bendragon), also known asKing Uther, was alegendary King of the Britonsand father ofKing Arthur.

A few minor references to Uther appear inOld Welshpoems, but his biography was first written down in the 12th century byGeoffrey of Monmouthin hisHistoria Regum Britanniae(History of the Kings of Britain), and Geoffrey's account of the character was used in most later versions. He is a fairly ambiguous individual throughout the literature, but is described as a strong king and a defender of his people.

According toArthurian legend,MerlinmagicallydisguisesUther to look like his enemyGorlois, enabling Uther to sleep with Gorlois' wife LadyIgraine. Thus Arthur, "the once and future king", is an illegitimate child (though later legend, as found inMalory, emphasises that the conception occurred after Gorlois's death and that he was legitimated by Uther's subsequent marriage to Igraine). This act of conception occurs the very night that Uther's troops dispatch Gorlois. The theme ofillegitimate conceptionis repeated in Arthur's siring ofMordredby his own half-sisterMorgausein the 13th century French prose cycles, which was invented by them; it is Mordred who mortally woundsKing Arthurin theBattle of Camlann. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, they can't all be ME DAYS. After yesterday's gorgeous thriller, I expected maybe a bit of a come-down, but nothing this precipitous. This is admittedly a personal-taste thing (For The Most Part), but this grid was just crammed with unappealing things, and often *gratuitously* unappealing clues, starting from literally square one. I didn't know there even was an AGE OF MAMMALS (presumably still ongoing?), but leaving the validity of the term aside, the clue ... why would you steer directly into the slaughter of animals solely for the attractiveness of their fur, when the actual answer has nothing to do with the fur industry? Farming animals for their fur … you want to not only bring that up, but make a cutesy joke about it? I mean, that is *a* choice, certainly your prerogative, but that cluing decision put me off the puzzle right away. But things would quickly get somehow worse. After getting traction at the back ends of the longer answers up top. I whipped back across the grid and right into a pile of answers that seemed designed to disappeal to me, personally. It's like the grid was actively hostile. "Hey, I hear you hate this, have some." Let's start with GOSS, which takes us full circle from the abomination that is SESH through the epically cloying GOSSIP SESH (which was in a puzzle earlier this week) to end finally in the puddle of muck that is the alleged abbrev. GOSS. Who says this, and are they related to the people who (somehow, still) say TRUE DAT(28A: "You said it!," informally)? Oof. Then we get more animal torture with BEAR TRAPS, which, yes, I see, is clued as "financial lingo," but for me "financial lingo" is really only one step up from animal torture in terms of appeal, so no joy there (13D: Misleading market downturns, in financial lingo). And then, for a little added flourish of ugh, there was NFT, the absurd fad that every bitcoin blockchain bro in the world is currently trying to memory-hole because it was just a pile of fraud and embarrassment and idiocy. You can tell how generally unappealing NFT is to constructors by how *in*frequently it has been in puzzles—this is just the second appearance, and the last one was in late 2022. Some answers are just inherent cringe, and NFT is one of them. GEO / OFT > GEN / NFT Every Single Day of the Week. See also GPA / AFT.

Read more...

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...