Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: John Wrenholt

Relative difficulty: Challenging (nearly 2x avg)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SCOW (52D: Garbage disposal unit)—

: a large flat-bottomed boat with broad square ends used chiefly for transporting bulk material (such as ore, sand, or refuse) (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Having trouble concentrating on the details of the puzzle tonight since a morally rotten and sadistic police culture is currently gleefully bludgeoning unarmed people all over the country but I'll see what I can do. This was very much a Saturday puzzle, which is irritating. It was hard even for a Saturday (for me). I got completely and utterly stuck. Twice. This hardly ever happens, and certainly not on a Friday. The grid looks OK, I guess, but the cluing was irritatingly tough and/or off. Seriously, the whole NW was empty despite my having both lead-in answers (INKBOTTLE and SEAHORSE). I eventually guessed SIC (4D: Editorial insertion), but even then ... I don't associate SAUNAs with skiing, I don't know about skateboard parts (?), AGAIN is absurd (and I *have* a personal trainer...) (14A: Exhortation from a personal trainer). I thought maybe it was DIG IN (??). Yuck to struggle in such a confined space. And I had very similar though slightly less severe issues in the SW, where NSFW is attributed to a ... trailer? (62A: Trailer advisory) ... and the PUSH PIN clue is beyond hard (38D: Colorful spot on a map) and what the actual hell is a POODLE CUT (55A: Hairdo famously sported by Lucille Ball) ("famously"?). The expression HIS NIBS makes my skin crawl (50A: Mr. High-and-Mighty). I can't imagine using it, I hate hearing it, and I don't think I even know what it means, really. SCOW clue, superhard. The recycling code (??) for STEEL. I just couldn't follow any of this. Whatever sense of fun or entertainment the clue writers had, I did not share. I liked TRAIL BOSS and very little else about this thing (11D: Cattle drive leader).

THREE DOG on its own is idiotic (45A: Like a very cold night, idiomatically). Also, literally no one calls a "cold night" that. No! It's a band. THREE DOG ... just sitting there ... on its own. That's nonsense. BEAR is a [Direction word] sure I guess in the sense that if you give someone directions you might tell them to "BEAR right" but ugh over and over with this Trying Too Hard to be hard instead of fun. That "seasonal rut" clue on STAG, same issue. AIRALERT meant nothing to me. DEMOLITIONIST fit in BALLOON ARTIST's spot (37A: One whose work is always blowing up?). FOGY looks so dumb in print, my god. I thought it was an -IE word but FOGIE ... also looks kinda dumb. Had FRONT LAWN before FRONT YARD, so that (really) hurt (18A: Spot for a campaign sign). LHASA crossing DHAKA? A miniature crosswordese geography conference, cool (not cool). The grid design is part of the problem. When you try to make a grid with lots of short stuff difficult, ugh, disaster. It's a 70-worder but it feels much higher because of the choppiness of the grid and the attendant flood of 3-4-5-letter answers. I guarantee you I finish the Saturday puzzle faster than this (it's a Doug Peterson puzzle, I hear, so I know it will be good...)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Challenging (slowest in months)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: N'DJAMENA (1A: Capital of Chad) —

N’Djamena (/əndʒɑːˈmeɪnɑː/; French: N'Djaména, pronounced [n(ə)dʒa.me.na]; Arabic: انجمينا‎ Injamīnā) is the capital and largest city of Chad. A port on the Chari River, near the confluence with the Logone River, it directly faces the Camerooniantown of Kousséri, to which the city is connected by a bridge. It is also a special statute region, divided into 10 districts or arrondissements. It is a regional market for livestock, salt, dates, and grains. Meat, fish and cotton processing are the chief industries, and the city continues to serve as the center of economic activity in Chad.

• • •

Well I was wrong. Thought I would finish today's faster than yesterday's, but this too was just brutal for me. Slowest Saturday (which means slowest puzzle, period) in recent memory. It was also just not a very exciting grid, as Doug Peterson puzzles go (bar is high). It's quite solid, but there's not much shine, and there's ... well, I just can't get very excited about AMBUSH PREDATORS as a marquee answer (8D: Leopards and anacondas, e.g.). I did not know that was a thing. For me it was just [random adjective] PREDATORS, and it took me forever to see AMBUSH, and then when I got it, no "aha," just a "... really? that's a thing?" I had a similar adj. + noun issue with SKIN DIVERS (13D: Key explorers). Got DIVERS then thought, "well, that could be anything," and it could. I wanted REEF, I think. I don't know why MARIA CALLAS is "Tony" (43A: Tony soprano?) (except that she sings notes, like any soprano, and notes are ... tones? I get that you want a TV character pun there in your clue, but ...).

The biggest issue / downer for me, though, was 1A: Capital of Chad (N'DJAMENA). At 1-Across, that is such a f***-you kind of answer. People who have been on "Jeopardy" and trivia nerds who memorize world capitals will know it, and everyone else won't (I was a "won't"), which is it breaks hard into two very very very different camps: Absolute Gimme or Absolutely No Idea. And what's more, if you have no idea, it's not a city you have any chance of spelling in any kind of inferential way. All random letters if you don't know the answer. So the whole NW becomes torture. Throw in my having no idea re: another name (DEUS) (20A: ___ Ex (video game franchise)) and another name (SARA) (35D: Shepard who wrote "Pretty Little Liars") and having even names I did know buried in clues that were either vague (FRED SANFORD) (23A: '70s sitcom title role) or inscrutable to me (TOM THUMB) (17A: Folklore character whose stockings are tied with eyelashes), and wow was this thing a struggle. And not a fun one. Too reliant on proper names to be truly enjoyable. The top half was twice as hard as the bottom half. The last letter I put in was the "1" square, a thing that virtually never happens. Had -OTE and still had to think for a bit about what letter could complete it (1D: Mark down). Looking it over now, there's just So Many Names. Great when you know 'em ("LOVIN'You"!) not so great when you don't, esp. when you're cluing everything as hard as possible.

Clue on EXUDED just didn't make sense to me (6D: Couldn't contain). You can contain things you exude. Why not? The ability of one to contain or not contain something seems to me to have nothing to do with exuding. Awful. I had EMO before ALT (4D: Music genre prefix). REDS and GEMS before (ugh, that's all) HUES (28A: Ruby and sapphire). APES before AXES (38A: Forest swingers). Knew Elizabeth CADY Stanton but thought she was a CATY, I really really did. Man, who is the CATY that I know? Do I even know a CATY??? I must not. SALAD was also ridiculously hard (26A: Bar assembly). But in general, this was two puzzles: the bottom (pretty normal Saturday) and the top (torture). Really really don't like VIC right now (29A: Perp's mark, in cop slang); you can really bury all "cop slang" for a long, long time, and I would not mind. Thanks.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andy Kravis

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (13-ish)

THEME:"Surplus Store"— "Sur" sound is added (+) to beginning of familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):

Theme answers:

SURGERY VERDICT (23A: "The operation was a success," e.g.?) (jury verdict)
SURPRISE FIGHTERS (36A: People who start arguments out of nowhere?) (prize fighters)
SURLY MAJORS (54A: Officers who woke up on the wrong side of the cot?) (Lee Majors)
SURFER BALLS (69A: Soirées where everyone is dressed in their finest board shorts?) (furballs)
SURPASSED PERFECT (86A: Got 101% on an exam, say?) (past perfect)
SURFEIT OF ANGER (105A: Why someone might practice deep breathing every five minutes?) (fit of anger)

Word of the Day: Kitty O'NEIL (93A: Stuntwoman Kitty known as "the fastest woman in the world") —

Kitty Linn O'Neil (March 24, 1946 – November 2, 2018) was an American stuntwoman and racer, known as "the fastest woman in the world." An illness in early childhood left her deaf, and more illnesses in early adulthood cut short a career in diving. O'Neil's career as a stuntwoman and race driver led to her depiction in a television movie and as an action figure. Her women's absolute land speed record still stands. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was a slog and the past few days have been slogs and I just don't understand what is happening. Yes, the National Mood is awful and it's affecting my mood for sure, so we can ascribe some of the downer feelings to that, but honestly there is a dismal quality to the voice of the puzzle (that is, the editorial voice—the editor is the one who shapes the final look of the puzzle, esp. the clues). The whole vibe of the puzzle this past few days has been somebody's idea of a good time but not mine. There's no daring, no joy, no bounce. Difficulty without joy is so miserable. I guess there are people who just like difficulty for its own sake, but if I don't get that pop of "oh cool" from breaking through on a difficult puzzle, then the whole experience feels very much not worth it. This puzzle lost me from the jump—literally from 1-Across: Sadistic feline character in a Scott Adams strip (CATBERT). It was a gimme (well, I could infer the answer from the clue) but please hear me when I say F*** that guy, he was never funny and now he's a right-wing Trumpist dipshit of the highest order. And at 1-Across! This is the Tom Cotton editorial of 1-Acrosses. Like ... how did this happen? Why? Who needed this? (also BERT is in the puzzle, and even if it's not technically a dupe it *feels* like a dupe, i.e. a duplicated word)

Then the theme. It's surs. Yes, sir, it is. That is surely the theme. I kinda liked SURLY MAJORS. The rest, pfffft. It's so repetitive, which just adds to the overall grinding feeling. I kept knowing what was coming, but then having serious trouble figuring out what the theme clues could be going for, then eventually getting them and going "OH, OKAY" (btw I had "OK OK OK" there at first) (104A: "Well, all right then"). BILLOWY is kind of a cool word. SQUIRT GUN is fun and has a clever little "?" clue (73D: Water heater?) ("heater" is slang for "gun" in case that was somehow not clear). BIG DANCE is nicely colloquial and original (4D: March Madness tourney, with "the"). So there were moments of entertainment, but there weren't enough of them.

Mistakes:

22A: The Red Baron, for one (AIRMAN) — me: AIRACE ... :(
32D: Off the beaten path (AFIELD) — me: ASTRAY ... :(
30D: Go on a rampage (RUN RIOT) — me: RUN AMOK ... :(
72A: "Holy guacamole!" ("WOWIE!") — me: "ZOWIE!" ... :(
58D: Gets going, so to speak (ROLLS)— me: ................. [shrug]
71D: They often end on a low note (BASSOS)— ooooof this one. BASSI is the plural, which I know as it was In The Puzzle On Friday. Sigh. So I wrote in BASSES, which also a plural of the low singing voice, and then I didn't check the cross, and ended up with Kitty ENEIL, whom I'd never heard of and whose clue is written real weird (why would a "stuntwoman" be known for being "fast"??? I mean, I know now, but the clue is weird as is). So that was (un)fun.
107A: ___ Mae (SALLIE) — me: FANNIE ... :(
82D: Frequent result of wearing a bike helmet (HAT HAIR) — me: HAT HEAD (following the example of "bedhead"). So, yeah ... :(

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kyle Dolan

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:39) (I felt way slower than that, so I have no idea what happened)

THEME: BAIT to BOOT vowel-sound progression— last words of themers move through all the long vowel sounds:

Theme answers:

CLICKBAIT (17A: Enticing weblinks that suck people in)
TIGER BEAT (25A: Teen magazine founded in 1965)
FROSTBITE (37A: Hazard of being outside in the cold for a long time)
PARTY BOAT (52A: Place for a blast offshore)
ANKLE BOOT (62A: Footwear that extends a little above the foot)

Word of the Day: HECTARE (1D: Unit of land that anagrams, coincidentally, to THE ACRE) —

The hectare (/ˈhɛktɛər, -tɑːr/; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm²), or 10,000 m², and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is about 0.405 hectare and one hectare contains about 2.47 acres. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very tired tonight, so this will have to be quick. Vowel progression puzzles can be fun. I published one a while back. The answers have to be entertaining in their own right, as well as follow the pattern. Otherwise, you're just marching through a progression ... why? This set of themers is strong. I don't think the fill in general is that strong, but the themers are pretty crisp. None of them feel limp or dull and a couple of them (CLICKBAIT, PARTY BOAT) really crackle. And that's really all it takes on a Monday: a coherent set of themers that have a little bounce, and then a grid that isn't a total wipeout. This one has weak spots (ESA RETAGS LEN REN ELO CAF KAA ANO etc.) but only KAA really bummed me out (it's a crosswordesey proper name I have trouble remembering) (63D: "The Jungle Book" python). Because it's Monday, I didn't really have time to get bummed out by anything. Corners felt big, and I did not feel like I was making good time, but 2:39 is definitely good time for me on a Monday. I altered (slightly) the way I moved through the grid at the beginning, getting BEAR immediately followed by ALIKE at the top of the grid and then working straight through the Down crosses instead of solving the whole BEAR section and then solving in a continuous flow over to ALIKE's section. There's something about plowing through the Downs in order that really moves things along, and up top is where you can do that the easiest / fastest.

SW corner probably had the most snags for me, as SOFALEG was tough to come up with (47A: Furniture part that might leave a mark on a floor), as were PARTY BOAT and AFROPOP, to a lesser extent (41D: Genre for the Nigerian singer Wizkid). I am always really bad at guessing what kind of music genre the puzzle wants from me. EUROPOP TEENPOP EMOROCK ALTFOLK etc. Once I got the first and last letters of AFROPOP (I went MALES MOANERS ASPEN...), the answer was clear, but I've never actually heard of Wizkid until right now. Outside of that corner, nothing but KAA was remotely troubling. This was a light snack of a puzzle. Reasonably tasty.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Freddie Cheng

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (3:58) (I just couldn't get my head around a few of the themers)

THEME: GO FISH (31D: Popular kids' game ... or a hint to 18-, 32-, 37- and 58-Across) — themers describe fishing? I guess?

Theme answers:

PICK-UP STICK (18A: Item in a game of jackstraws) (what are 'jackstraws'!!!?)
OPEN A CAN OF WORMS (32A: Attempt to fix something and inadvertently make the situation worse)
TAKE A SOFT LINE (37A: Go easy on the criticism)
GET HOOKED UP (58A: Join (with))

Word of the Day: ARCADIA (13A: Land of rustic innocence) —

Arcadia (Greek: Αρκαδία) refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an idyllic vision of unspoiled wilderness. Arcadia is a poetic shaped space associated with bountiful natural splendor and harmony. The 'Garden' is often inhabited by shepherds. The concept also figures in Renaissance mythology. Although commonly thought of as being in line with Utopian ideals, Arcadia differs from that tradition in that it is more often specifically regarded as unattainable. Furthermore, it is seen as a lost, Edenic form of life, contrasting to the progressive nature of Utopian desires.
The inhabitants were often regarded as having continued to live after the manner of the Golden Age, without the pride and avarice that corrupted other regions. It is also sometimes referred to in English poetry as Arcady. The inhabitants of this region bear an obvious connection to the figure of the noble savage, both being regarded as living close to nature, uncorrupted by civilization, and virtuous. (wikipedia)

• • •

What year is it? That is the question I kept asking as I solved, and after I solved, and right now. Whose idea of "fishing" is this? A stick and a can of worms and a soft (???!) line ... who is fishing, Opie? And is "GO FISH" really a "popular" kids' game in the year of our lord 2020? Who plays pick up sticks? What is 'jackstraws'?! And while we're at it, when did anyone ever call the school cafeteria the CAF!? (1D: School lunchroom, informally) Wow, wow, what? No. No. So I didn't get it. I don't believe in what the puzzle wants me to believe in. Further, I don't really see how TAKE A SOFT LINE works. I don't even know the idiom at all. I had to work for almost every letter in that one. And even now, looking at it, I don't see what softness has to do with fishing lines. I get that all these themers are verb phrases, so it's like we're getting instructions ... on how ... to fish? ... but what is "soft line"? The fact that I have to ask means that there's a problem. Also, a single, lone PICK-UP STICK!? I doubt it. And GET HOOKED ... UP? OOF. That UP was rough for me, as I had ON at first. And GO FISH is all weirdly placed, seriously, the whole thing is a thematic mess, and the attempts at playful fill (NERD PROM, FROGKICK) can't save it. Also, NERD PROM is gross on at least two levels. A, the White House Correspondents' dinner devalues journalism; don't be seduced by glamor and access; don't be chummy with politicians; take their lunch money and make them cry! And B, those aren't nerds. No, they're not. I know nerds. Please trust me on this. Also, nerds actually go to actual prom now, so ... the moniker is dumb, stem to stern.

I like MILK BAR best today (10D: Place to get a dairy treat). Oh, and SUBPOENA, just because of its funny spelling (i.e. Latin spelling ... I just like that it looks so different than it sounds). Almost all of my struggle with this one came with TAKE A SOFT LINE, a total puzzle ruiner, as I discussed above. I also had trouble with FROGKICK, as I was thinking of what the arms do, not the legs (41D: Breaststroke move). ODIC is a dumb word. Having JOVI over BON feels assbackwards, although part of me wishes they'd found a way to include ARENA in the cross-referencing action. Go all the way and just make that little southwestern section a total cross-referencing clusterf***. Why not? Penny, pound, etc. DURAG has still somehow never appeared in the NYTXW, despite being the more common (and preferred) spelling (26A: Close-fitting headwear). Here, check out this article. The title of the article is, "The Durag, Explained." The subtitle is, "It's spelled durag. The end." And it was published in the ... (checks notes) ... New York Times? Huh. Weird.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:58 on an oversized 16x15 grid)

THEME: AVENGERS, ASSEMBLE! (62A: Classic comics rallying cry ... or a hint to 18-, 30- and 49-Across)— names of three different Avengers embedded in the themers:

Theme answers:

ASSISTANT MANAGER (18A: Second-in-charge, as at a restaurant)
EVENT HORIZON (30A: Boundary marking the limits of a black hole)
THROW A SPIRAL (49A: Toss the pigskin perfectly)

Word of the Day: The Avengers (62A) —

The Avengers are a fictional team of superheroes appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The team made its debut in The Avengers #1 (cover-dated Sept. 1963), created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby. The Avengers is Lee and Kirby's renovation of a previous superhero team, All-Winners Squad, who appeared in comic books series published by Marvel Comics' predecessor Timely Comics.
Labeled "Earth's Mightiest Heroes", the Avengers originally consisted of Ant-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and the Wasp. Ant-Man had become Giant-Man by issue #2. The original Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him. A rotating roster became a hallmark of the series, although one theme remained consistent: the Avengers fight "the foes no single superhero can withstand." The team, famous for its battle cry of "Avengers Assemble!", has featured humans, mutants, Inhumans, deitys, androids, aliens, legendary beings, and even former villains. (wikipedia)

• • •

This concept is cool, and the revealer is a nice touch (it's also the reason the puzzle is 16-wide). But the thing about the Avengers is that it's a rotating group of characters, so having three feels bizarre. It's a random sampling of three, meaningless as a set (i.e. there's no incarnation of Avengers that is just these three). There is the original set of five Avengers, and it would've been super-cool to see the original band get back together, but a. that would require a bigger, possibly a Sunday-sized puzzle, and b. good luck embedding either HULK or IRON-MAN inside a longer phrase. SHUL KID? HAIR ON MANDIBLE? I don't think the Ideal of this theme is attainable. So we have this, which feels light. Like a meeting with so many absentees that you don't really have a quorum so everyone goes home and you send out one of them Doodle polls to see if you can find a time slot where *everyone* can meet. Like that. Like the idea, like the revealer, saddened by the weak turnout. Also saddened by THROW A SPIRAL, which is definitely a member in good standing of the EAT A SANDWICH Society (dedicated to spreading "[blank] A [blank]" chaos throughout griddom). The fill was just fine, maybe a little above average, with RAGEQUIT (11D: Angrily abandon a video game) ("... or crossword puzzle," it might have added) and BEATBOXERS (9D: Vocal percussionists) being the real highlights.

[I know this isn't the Avengers in question, just roll with it]

First themer I got was EVENT HORIZON and immediately thought, "Oh, sh*t, I made this puzzle before!" Actually, the puzzle I made had Norse gods in it (THOR, ODIN, LOKI ... I forget the last one ... TYR? HEL?). That puzzle was rejected by Patrick Berry back when he was editing the Chronicle of Higher Education puzzle (that rejection was so thoughtful and taught me a lot about the difference between elegant and merely good). It was rejected largely on the grounds that he'd run something similar recently, but I didn't do anything with it. Then the same theme turned up in the NY Sun, in a puzzle made by Joon Pahk. I think I called it "Divine Intervention." Or maybe that's what Joon / Peter Gordon called their version. The whole reason I made my version of that theme was because I had heard that Shortz had never (at that time) heard of HELLO KITTY, that he had in fact told a veteran constructor (female) that that answer was not well known enough to be in the grid. This was in the late '00s (... ... ... ?). So I was like "Must ... Make ... HELLO KITTY ... Puzzle!" And I noticed that HELLO KITTY had LOKI embedded in it, and bam, a theme idea was born. (A NYT version of this theme eventually appeared; you can read about it here) Side note: LOKI is the antagonist in the very first Avengers story arc. Where was I? Oh, right, the THOR answer ... but then I got the ANTMAN answer and it turned out not to be a Norse gods puzzle at all. Which is probably for the best.

Trouble spots:

3D: Cover, as a car (INSURE)— definitely did not grasp the idiomatic meaning of "cover" here
15A: Dubliner's land (EIRE)— guessed wrong (ERIN), ugh
41A: Comedian Martin (DEMETRI) — I know his name, but man do I not know how to spell it. I wanted more "I"s for sure
32D: Rise from bed or drop to one's stomach (HIT THE DECK) — I absolutely do not know the meaning of this phrase as it relates to the first part of this clue. Rise from bed!? Yeesh. Also, I was somehow thinking "drop to one's stomach" had something to do with a sinking feeling *in* one's stomach ... or eating something heavy, maybe (??)
38D: Affect in a distant, menacing way (LOOM OVER) — also the answer to the question, "Hey, who moved my loo?"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Medium (???) (I refused to read the "Notes," so I had to find and decode the 2-letter squares without any visual aid) (any difficulty this one had involved those squares and their crosses) (although it probably helped to be old and/or a longggggtime solver 'cause hoo boy is this one rooted in the past)

THEME:"MY WAY" (41A: Hit for 20-/22-Across (1969 or 1977)) — 20-/22-Across = both FRANK / SINATRA *and* ELVIS / PRESLEY (giants of POPULAR / MUSIC); you gotta write both their names in (resulting in two letters per square) to get the correct result in the Downs

Gotta imagine FRANK SINATRA over ELVIS PRESLEY for Downs to work:

GEM*RIGS**TASED

ADO*OPRAH*AWAKE

FEH*COATI*TATER

FRANK*SINATRA**

ELVIS*PRESLEY**

SEEMTO*ESTE*SAK

Word of the Day: Gertrude EDERLE (2D: First woman to receive her own New York City ticker-tape parade (1926)) —

Gertrude Caroline Ederle (/ˈɛdərli, ˈeɪd-/ ED-ər-lee, AYD-; October 23, 1906 – November 30, 2003) was an American competition swimmer, Olympic champion, and former world record-holder in five events. On August 6, 1926, she became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Among other nicknames, the press sometimes called her "Queen of the Waves." (wikipedia)

• • •

There's probably potential in this whole "they have the same number of letters in their first and last names" thing, but this execution was a Huge miss. The doubled-up letter thing ... OK, fine. It wasn't particularly tough, it was slightly annoying to fill in on computer, but it works OK. The problem is ... there's really nothing to do with this fact. The rest of the grid is so limp. "MY WAY" is just five letter and then ... really, POPULAR / MUSIC, *that's* what you're gonna use to anchor the entire bottom half of the grid, thematically. POPULAR / MUSIC was astoundingly, painfully anti-climactic. All this action up top, and then pffffffffft down below. Also, oof, the cluing. It's just a bunch of numbers and dashes and cross-reference commands. With this, Giant in that, See this, Hit for them, With this, see that. There's zero content in those clues. No color, no zazz, no nothing. I just can't get over how bad POPULAR / MUSIC is as your big finale. What's more, the fill on this one is particularly unpalatable. It's worst at the ANTRA SAK connection (woof and woof) but HOR FEH EKE DER RNC OOH BARI x/w OREM ESTE ASTA EDERLE —none of this is doing you any favors.

So, let's see, sports stars of the '20s and movie dogs of the '30s and singers of the '50s and TV stars of the '60s ... wow, this one really was aggressively nostalgic. The entire 21st century can f*** right off, I guess. I mean, when your idea of a current event is Nick NOLTE's being named Sexiest Man Alive by People Magazine, that tells you a lot about the narrow segment of the population for whom this puzzle is exclusively intended. Diversify your content or don't bother to make puzzles, thank you.

My favorite answer today is ROCK STAR (4D: Moon or Mercury). The clue involves great misdirection, and with ROC- in place, I figured something ROCKET-y must be happening. I mean, two heavenly bodies in the clue, gotta be a rocket involved somehow, right? Right?! Wrong. Keith Moon (The Who). Freddie Mercury (Queen). Nice. The rest of this puzzle, less nice. Again, the main problem is how badly a potentially interesting theme idea was fumbled in the execution.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. you can find an American in Moscow in IDAHO because there's a Moscow, IDAHO (home of the University of Idaho)

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Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:21)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Geoduck (52D: Geoduck, e.g. = CLAM) —

The Pacific geoduck (/ˈɡuːiˌdʌk/; Panopea generosa) is a species of very large, edible saltwater clam in the family Hiatellidae. The common name is derived from a Lushootseed(Nisqually) word gʷídəq.
The geoduck is native to the coastal waters of western Canada and the northwest United States. The shell of the clam ranges from 15 cm (6 inches) to over 20 cm (8 inches) in length, but the extremely long siphons make the clam itself much longer than this: the "neck" or siphons alone can be 1 m (3.3 feet) in length. The geoduck is the largest burrowing clam in the world. It is also one of the longest-living animals of any type, with a typical lifespan of 140 years; the oldest has been recorded at 168 years old. (wikipedia)

• • •

Had to work slightly harder than I usually do for a Robyn Weintraub Friday, but only slightly. I always get so happy when I see her byline on Friday and I was not disappointed. Smooth, doable themeless with lots of fresh colloquial phrases and just a great sense of fun—that's what I've grown to expect from Robyn. Love the crossing questions "ANYONE HOME?" and "WHAT'S SO FUNNY?" (imagining coming home, shouting "ANYONE HOME?" and hearing only laughter ... "WHAT'S SO FUNNY!?"). "I AM SO THERE," also a winner. She does not waste her long answers. The "worst" ones are still solid, vivid things (MICROSCOPE, CROISSANTS). And the shorter stuff is all highly tolerable. The cluing felt toughish in places, which I'll discuss below, but my real hangup today came when I very confidently wrote in LOVELORN at 28A: Pining and then some (LOVE SICK). Because the clue on RIDESHARE had a toughish "?" clue (34A: Not go it alone?) and because I had a very wrong five-letter T-word for my [Island north of Australia], that eastern section got completely bogged down. I ultimately had to come at it from beneath—"I AM SO THERE" and CROISSANTS really saved my bacon (by the way, if you ever serve bacon and CROISSANTS, I AM SO THERE!). Oh, to be clear, the [Island north of Australia] was TIMOR, and I had TONGA, which, it turns out, is actually 169 islands, so ... missed it by That much!

Didn't enjoy HAHA as a [Reaction button option for a Facebook post]. It is true, if you hover your cursor over the Like button and *then* over the animated laughing-face emoji, it tells you that you are about to select the HAHA option. But it's an emoji, and letters are not involved, and so HAHA is making me sad (which is also, technically, a [Reaction button option for a Facebook post]. I also didn't like the clue on AGONY at all (59A: Sitting next to a constantly crying baby on a cross-country flight, maybe). Crying babies are crying babies, they happen, they're normal, and they aren't a tenth as annoying as the behavior of many grown-ass adults on planes. There's no worse look than ostentatiously grieving the fact that there's a baby on your flight. Grow up, you stupid baby (not the baby, you; you're the baby ... you see what I mean). The AGONY clue is a cruddy clue that makes me think about how selfish and impatient people are. So boo.

I wanted LISP at 33D: Shpeak thish way (SLUR), but I clearly didn't think that one through / sound that one out. Struggled with the misdirection on 1A: Fed (G-MAN). Struggled with the misdirection on 11D: In a row (AT IT) ("row" here is an argument). I wrote in FREE MEAL at first at 20A: Uncommon amenity on an airplane (FREE WIFI). I think that's it for trouble spots. See you tomorrow, when I expect the trouble spots to be somewhat more plentiful.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. there is a new daily blog dedicated to the USA Today Crossword Puzzle (which, in case you haven't heard, is under the editorial leadership of Erik Agard, and is, consequently, very good). Sally's Take on the USA Today Crossword is written by Sally Hoelscher and you can find it here.

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Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Medium (8-ish)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: XIANGQI (39D: So-called "Chinese chess") —

Xiangqi (Chinese: 象棋; pinyin: xiàngqí; English: /ˈʃɑːŋtʃi/), also called Chinese chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is one of the most popular board games in China, and is in the same family as Western (or international) chess, chaturanga, shogi, Indian chess and janggi. Besides China and areas with significant ethnic Chinese communities, xiangqi is also a popular pastime in Vietnam, where it is known as cờ tướng.
The game represents a battle between two armies, with the object of capturing the enemy's general (king). Distinctive features of xiangqi include the cannon (pao), which must jump to capture; a rule prohibiting the generals from facing each other directly; areas on the board called the river and palace, which restrict the movement of some pieces (but enhance that of others); and placement of the pieces on the intersections of the board lines, rather than within the squares. (wikipedia)

• • •

Did CAVEMEN make this? Like, nerdy CAVEMEN who are way too into games and puns and Scrabbly letters and who seem completely unaware of the existence of women? This was a dude puzzle for dudes filled with dude things and absolutely no references to women unless you wanna go ahead and count a fictional female rabbit as a woman. UNREAL. Oh, sorry, I overlooked also-fictional MEG. She's just three letters and all tucked away down there. Anyway ... I see that you are really into Scrabbly letters and groanworthy wordplay and some e-sports thing ... I'm just gonna go ... stand over here now, thanks, bye. The whole vibe on this just wasn't for me. Not badly constructed, just kind of blah and without any real sparkle or breadth of cultural reference (beyond the Chinese chess thing). I didn't have too much trouble with it except in the west in general, and the southwest in particular. Really resented EXFBI, which feels very much not a thing (38A: Like some private eyes). I read a lot (Lot) of private eye novels; I have taught courses in crime fiction at the undergraduate and graduate level. I am sure that some actual, and maybe some fictional, private eyes used to be in the FBI, but I reject that as a *definitive* thing, and I kinda reject the very "word"EXFBI. Getting that off the -BI was probably the hardest thing about the puzzle, especially since that "I" came on the horrid crosswordese Saw sequel SAWII, which I thought ... maybe was SAWIV (I *saw* none of them). Not knowing a single letter of XIANGQI was probably the thing that slowed me most in that corner, but the thing that annoyed me most was damn sure EXFBI. That, and my stupid failure to spell ELYSIAN correctly on the first try (ELESIAN!? What was I thinking?) (38D: Heavenly).

Weird experience up top to start, where I had LION over ACRE over WEGO and absolutely no idea what the first three letters of *any* of those answers was. Wrote in HELLION (!) at one point for 1A: Hyperbolic figure (ZILLION). Somehow thought there could be a TWO-ACRE lot; wasn't sure from the "?" clue if an adj. or noun was called for (15A: Quite a lot?). Wanted only "HERE WE GO!" for 17A: "And so it begins!" ("OFF WE GO!"). Didn't get any of that stuff until late, when I finally figured out TOM SWIFTY (the very name made me ugh) and worked my way up (32A: Classic bit of groanworthy wordplay). Had "BE REAL" before "UNREAL" (28A: "No way!"). In other parts of the grid, I had no idea what a XEROPHYTE was (8D: Plant suited to an arid environment), so was heavily reliant on crosses. Wanted ODDBALL before ODDDUCK (13D: Weird type).ROADEOS is a superdumb thing I don't believe is real any more than I believe ROLEOS are real and so that answer can get bent (14D: Motor contests with a portmanteau name). Couldn't be less interested in "e-sports competition"s if I tried, and EVO is evo-cative of precisely nothing, so that was unpleasant. And I just could not wrap my brain around the phrasing of the clue at 33D: Accelerate in the process (FAST TRACK). It was the "in" ... I couldn't make it work. I think the clue actually probably works better as just [Accelerate]. The prepositional phrase just makes it clunky and awkward.

OK, on to Sunday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:36)

THEME:"Making Arrangements" — Clues are imagined quotations in which one phrase is an anagram of another phrase (said phrases are left blank in the clues and appear in the grid):

Theme answers:

23A: Sign at a chemical plant: "This facility is ___—___" (with 114-Across) (CONTAMINATED / NO ADMITTANCE)
31A: Question to an English teacher: "Why did Poe write his poem"___"? Answer: "___?" (with 98-Across) ("A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM" / "WHAT AM I, A MIND READER?")
45A: We can tell the boss's assistant is a ___ because he always ___ (with 87-Across) (SYCOPHANT / ACTS PHONY)
50A: My weight increases when traveling because ___ during ___ (with 84-Across) (VACATION TIME / I AM NOT ACTIVE)
64A: Someone who is ___ years old now will be ___ in six years (with 68-Across) (FORTY-FIVE / OVER FIFTY)

Word of the Day: ANNE Moody (30A: Moody who wrote "Coming of Age in Mississippi") —

Anne Moody (September 15, 1940 – February 5, 2015) was an American author who wrote about her experiences growing up poor and black in rural Mississippi, and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement through the NAACP, CORE and SNCC. Moody fought racism and segregation from when she was a little girl in Centreville, Mississippi, and continued throughout her adult life around the American South. [...] In 1969, Coming of Age in Mississippi received the Brotherhood Award from the National Council of Christians and Jews, and the Best Book of the Year Award from the National Library Association. In 1972, Moody worked as an artist-in-residence in Berlin. She went on to work at Cornell and in 1975, released a collection of short stories, titled Mr. Death: Four Stories. One of the stories, New Hope for the Seventies, won the silver award from Mademoiselle magazine. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is substandard work and the only explanation for it is cronyism, or, if you'd rather, the particular inertia of accepting puzzles from the same people (men) year after year after year after year because well they've been published year after year after year after year ... by you ... so there's a precedent ... that you set, but ... you can't argue that the name on the byline is an experienced constructor, largely because you've continued to publish him ... year after year after year. Every time I see his name, I think "oh no" and immediately thereafter I think "no, come on ... maybe this will be the time that the puzzle is at least pretty solid and not groaningly weak and bygone and sad!" And every time, like Charlie Brown trying to kick the damn football, I end up in a disappointed heap on the ground. Let's be clear: there is virtually no concept here. Take any phrase that you can make an anagram out of. *Literally*, any. Any. Doesn't matter. Do the phrases have to have anything to do with each other? No no no, we can just make it *seem* like they do when we write our convoluted and preposterous theme answer clues. Symmetry takes care of itself, since by definition both parts of an anagrammed pair are of equal length. So ... you just need five (!!?!) and bing bam boom, Sunday puzzle, and since you are a veteran (because the editor has published you year after year after year), you get paid literally the most you can be paid for an NYT crossword. Lather, rinse, *********ing repeat. I'm not mad at the constructor. It's the editor that's the problem. The NYTXW needs new leadership, new vision, new energy. 'Cause what we're seeing here, and far too often, is just sad. A puzzle running on former glory, i.e. on fumes. Inevitably good puzzles appear, because good constructors still submit and their puzzles get through. But the NYTXW should be good, or at least *aiming* for good, every time out. This one isn't even trying. "Making Arrangements"? That's your title? May as well have been "It's Random Anagrams, Folks, Take It Or Leave It, I Get Paid Either Way!"

Do I have anything more to say about this puzzle? I really don't think I do. SNEE and ESALEN and LEDTV ... I have those things to say. I liked the Negro Leagues clue on MONARCH (16D: Jackie Robinson, in his only year in the Negro Leagues).

Satchel Paige

ICEFISH is OK (43D: Sit out on a frozen lake, say). But those are more than offset by stuff like NOSERAG (ew!) and ONCD and OGIVE etc. Sgt. BILKO might've enjoyed this one, but not me. Hard pass. Better puzzles (and editors) are out there. I Promise You. XO.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Olivia Mitra Franke

Relative difficulty: ??? Easy but also I got stalled forever ("forever") because of a wrong Apple product guess and also LASERED, LOL no that is not a thing...

THEME: AU PAIRS (40A: Some household helpers ... or an oral hint to 17-, 24-, 51- and 63-Across) — each theme answer features two "O" pairs:

Theme answers:

SCOOBY-DOO (17A: Mystery-solving Great Dane of cartoons)
GOOGLE DOODLE (24A: Logo art that changes almost daily)
BAMBOO SHOOTS (51A: Stir-fry ingredients, often)
FOOL PROOF (63A: Can't-miss)

Word of the Day: HOOHA (54D: Commotion, in slang) —

informal
: a state or condition of excitement, agitation, or disturbance : COMMOTION, UPROAR (wikipedia)

• • •

I only had one glass of wine but somehow I could not type smoothly at all tonight, so my time was more bloated than it should've been. I think the puzzle was easy, although LASERED feels laughable to me and because of the whole 'hit'-is-both-present-and-past-tense thing, I had no idea what was going on there (46D: Hit with a beam of light). I guess the verb "to laser" is a thing in hair removal (?) but that's not in the clue and I only know the verb LASED and so when I finally got it all I could picture was someone in a scif show going "I LASERED him good!" and it just made no sense. Laser hair removal, I know about. LASERED as a verb, not so much. I also guessed IPAD instead of IMAC, which cost me, and which, honestly ... is just the worst (37D: Popular Apple product). I mean, Apple products are such ugh. You know them, but it's like "which one?" and the clue's all "I'm not telling?" and you're like "stupid four letters, guess I gotta check crosses, this is *tedious*!" etc. Anyway, IPAD and LASERED caused a LOAD of problems and did not ENHANCE my enjoyment of the puzzle. Luckily, the theme was nifty—a near perfect Monday-type concept, with simple, snappy fill. Nice revealer. Nice. Fill overall was a *little* on the weak side, but mostly just dull and stale (AGORA ORR AAS etc). But, again, didn't matter. Theme zinged. Puzzle was appropriately easy. Thumbs up.

HOOHA always makes me laugh, first because it is slang for "vagina" and second because it's the title of the first story in the first MAD magazine ever published (1952), a story I teach every year (it's fantastic and genuinely funny—although there, it's spelled with a terminal "H," as it often is in the "disturbance" meaning of the word as well):

W: Harvey Kurtzman, A: Jack Davis

I had the Jeep Grand Cherokee as an ATV at first (??)—got the "V" first and ... I dunno, some kind of instinct kicked in (ATV = ~2x as common as SUV in the NYTXW). Had SNEER for SCOWL (7D: Angry expression). Everything else went pretty smoothly. [Place to buy a drink] seems too vague for CASH BAR. Gotta be a be a more colorful and specific way to do that one. GRANOLAS in the plural is a little weird, but I guess if you're looking at various brand all lined up on a supermarket shelf, OK. It's all OK. It will do just fine. Again, with a theme this tight, on a Monday ,all you gotta do is not completely blow the fill, and I would say Mission: Accomplished on that front.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:31)

THEME: GRAY AREAS (61A: Ill-defined situations ... as seen four times in this puzzle?)— I'm guessing the grid in the app / paper has "gray areas" where the circled squares appear in my grid; these squares spell out units of measurement, which, if preceded by the word "square," become units of area. So the square inch, square foot, square yard, and square mile are all gray (literally) areas (figuratively)

Word of the Day: NI'IHAU (11D: Hawaii's "Forbidden Isle") —

Niʻihau (Hawaiian: [ˈniʔiˈhɐw]) anglicized as Niihau (/ˈniː.haʊ, ˈniː.iːˌhaʊ/ NEE-how, NEE-ee-how) is the westernmost main and seventh largest inhabited island in Hawaii. It is 17.5 miles (28.2 km) southwest of Kauaʻi across the Kaulakahi Channel. Its area is 69.5 square miles (180 km²). Several intermittent playa lakes provide wetland habitats for the Hawaiian coot, the Hawaiian stilt, and the Hawaiian duck. The island is designated as critical habitat for Brighamia insignis, an endemic and endangered species of Hawaiian lobelioid. The United States Census Bureau defines Niʻihau and the neighboring island and State Seabird Sanctuary of Lehua as Census Tract 410 of Kauai County, Hawaii. Its 2000 census population was 160; Its 2010 census population was 170.
Elizabeth Sinclair purchased Niʻihau in 1864 for $10,000 from the Kingdom of Hawaii. The island's private ownership passed on to her descendants, the Robinsons. During World War II, the island was the site of the Niʻihau Incident, in which, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese navy fighter pilot crashed on the island, then terrorized its residents for a week.
The island, known as "the Forbidden Isle", is off-limits to all but the Robinson family and their relatives, U.S. Navy personnel, government officials, and invited guests. From 1987 onwards, a limited number of supervised activity tours and hunting safaris have opened to tourists. The island is currently managed by brothers Bruce and Keith Robinson. The people of Niʻihau are noted for their gemlike lei pūpū (shell lei) craftsmanship. They speak Hawaiian as a primary language. (wikipedia)

• • •

Kind of a non-event, this one. There's just very little theme material, and you certainly don't have to have any sense of the theme to finish (I certainly didn't). Then when you're done, what do you have? Sixteen total squares of theme material?? And ... they're just basic units of measurement. And you have to infer the missing "square" part to get the "area""joke" ... but there's just a big "But Why?" question hanging over the whole thing. No payoff. The solve wasn't too bad, if you take it as an easy themeless. But it wasn't exciting or interesting enough to be a themeless, and it also wasn't exciting or interesting enough as a themed puzzle, so it's just ... here. The NYTXW is gonna have to step up its game at least a little, as other publications are definitely coming after them, quality-wise. The USA Today is definitely more thoughtfully and carefully edited at this point (though its puzzles rarely get above Tuesday-level difficulty), and the New Yorker just made a big push into their burgeoning puzzle business, adding a Wednesday puzzle to go with their Monday and Friday offerings, and hiring three new regular constructors—all women. All. Women. This is great news for puzzledom and a pretty obvious slap in the face to the all-male-edited NYTXW, which has been so indifferent to the issue of gender equity and has had such a dismal recent record of publishing women. The NYTXW is a huge business, and won't feel any real heat from competition any time soon, but it's at least worth noting, for historical purposes if nothing else, that the non-NYT puzzle ecosystem has never been stronger than it is at this current moment. Right now. The NYTXW just isn't leading the way anymore. The NYTXW is stagnating. Same men making the same puzzles they've been making: competent, occasionally very good, but too often bad. At this point, it is definitely looking backward, not forward—completely contrary to Shortz's early editorship, which was revolutionary and important.

TESLA ORKIN YSL RONCO ALTOID LEGO TGEL—I don't know if that's more or less than the normal amount of brand names in a puzzle, but it feels like a lot, and they're awfully concentrated up top, particularly in that NW corner. I can tell you precisely where solvers are going to have trouble today: two answers that may as well be in neon, they're so different from the others in terms of general familiarity. NI'IHAU is the first and ABSEIL (45D: Descend by rope, as in mountaineering) is the second. If people have trouble, this is where they will have it. Oh, and the plural of CONCHS is super-weird-looking, so maybe folks had trouble there. Or maybe you never heard of T/GEL (37D: Neutrogena dandruff shampoo) (I think the shampoo I use is called T/SAL, also Neutrogena; I'm not in favor of either one as crossword material). FURL remains dumb without the UN- in front of it.

I had DULL before DRAB (26D: Lacking pizazz), but I think that's the only out-and-out error I had. I struggled with the two neon answers, but nothing else gave me much trouble. I liked the clue on ROCKS (66A: Wears stylishly, in slang). [Message with a hashtag] is the kind of clue for TWEET that only someone who had never seen Twitter could write. Tweets might contain hashtags. Or they might not. They might also contain links or pictures? Or nothing but text. Further, other social media posts feature hashtags. The clue just feels lazy. I wouldn't say this puzzle GOTANF (ugh), but it didn't GETANA, either.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:21)

THEME: FIELD OF DREAMS (53A: 1989 Best Picture nominee ... with a hint to 20-, 24-/27- and 32-/37-Across)— theme answers are kinds of fields (?) that are also things upon which you sleep, perchance to dream:

Theme answers:

BLANKET OF SNOW (20A: Winter whiteness)
SHEET / OF ICE (24A: With 27-Across, slippery hazard)
BED / OF ROSES (32A: With 37-Across, metaphor for comfort)

Word of the Day: TOSCANINI (23A: Longtime music director of La Scala and the New York Philharmonic) —

Arturo Toscanini (/ɑːrˈtʊəroʊ ˌtɒskəˈniːni/, Italian: [arˈtuːro toskaˈniːni]; March 25, 1867 – January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and of the 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his eidetic memory.^[1] He was at various times the music director of La Scala in Milan and the New York Philharmonic. Later in his career he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–54), and this led to his becoming a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is another one of those themes (like yesterday's) where the cleverness just misses slightly, in a way that has solvers wondering if they actually Got it, or if there's something they're missing. Yesterday, it was the "square" part needed to make any sense of the whole "area" angle ... a logical gap that had to be filled by the reader, but which in some cases never got filled (without explanation) and even when filled was much more likely to elicit a "... huh ..." than a "wow." You can get as clever as you like, but your gimmick better Land, eventually, or else it's a flop. Today ... instead of supplying "square" we have to infer what the hell "fields" has to do with anything. This isn't hard, but it is unsatisfying. There's just too much going on for this to really work. You have the whole bed metaphor thing, which seems like a fine theme, but then there's the revealer, which adds this "field" element, which just makes things odd. The "field" metaphor seems fine for BLANKET OF SNOW, but seems very tenuous when applied to a mere SHEET OF ICE; yes, technically any expanse can be a "field," but ... bleh. There's a cogent core idea here, with the BLANKET SHEET BED set, but the revealer tries too hard and slips and face-plants, imho. I would add this assessment to the fill. Or at least to the NE and SW corners, where the constructor clearly thought he was doing something *good* by putting those "Z"s in there, but woof, no. That is textbook Scrabble-f***ing. The "Z" is not worth INEZ / OZS and the surrounding fill (DOMO, GTOS). Any half-decent constructor can construct that corner cleanly and even interestingly in under five minutes. But some constructors still labor under the delusion that "Z"s (or "Q"s or other rarer letters) will make their puzzles inherently snazzy. The SW corner is even more egregious, as ZONAL is such an awful, painful adjective (57A: Like certain transportation pricing). "Oooh, a clue about transportation pricing! Cool!" said no one. Just make the "Z" a "T" and write Good Clues. Come on.

The rest of the fill is really bad in places, especially the north, which is a minefield of garbage. Like, it's garbage that also explodes. OLEIC REATA OMANI! It's like some kind of unholy incantation used to summon OOXTEPLERNON, the God of Bad Short Fill. DSO APER CPO all ensure that we never get too far without groaning, and then the south is rough too, with the plural DDAYS (always awful) and the semi-archaic "I FEAR ..." really making things not very fun.

Mistakes:

6D: Ancient Mexican (OLMEC)— I had AZTEC
7D: Rodeo rope (REATA) — I (confidently) had RIATA. So confident am I in that spelling that I've actually had to correct myself twice already while writing this blog post. I guess REATA is the Spanish, and that spelling survives. There's kinship with "lariat" that makes me want the "RI" spelling. For the record, RIATA is roughly twice as common in Shortz-era puzzles as REATA.
16A: Don Juan's mother (INEZ)— wasn't sure if this was gonna be the INES spelling. Lesson of the day is—if it's Don Juan's mom or a hurricane, it's a "Z"
53D: Only digit in the ZIP code for Newton Falls, Ohio (FOUR) — I had FIVE. How in the hell should I know? What a miserable clue.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Challenging (7:21)

THEME: CAR / VAN / SEMI / TRUCK / BUS (39A: [Ugh, we've been stuck here for an hour...]) — a TRAFFIC JAM (61A: Situation depicted at 39-Across) and three arbitrary, vaguely related other themers:

Theme answers:

BOTTLENECK (17A: Possible cause of a 61-Across)
INTERSTATE (11D: Bad place for a 61-Across) (there are *good* places for them?)
LATE TO WORK (28D: What a 61-Across might make you)

Word of the Day:"KUBO and the Two Strings" (2016 animated film) (1D) —

Kubo and the Two Strings is a 2016 American stop-motion animated action fantasy film directed by Travis Knight (in his directorial debut). It is produced by Laika. It stars the voices of Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, George Takei, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Brenda Vaccaro, Rooney Mara, and Matthew McConaughey. The film revolves around Kubo, a young boy who wields a magical shamisen (a Japanese stringed instrument) and whose left eye was stolen during infancy. Accompanied by an anthropomorphic snow monkey and beetle, he must subdue his mother's corrupted Sisters and his power-hungry grandfather Raiden the Moon King, who is responsible for stealing his left eye. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a mess, and a rehash of a concept I've seen elsewhere. The center answer feels vaguely unfair, in the sense that it's not a word, or a phrase. It's just a series of vehicle types ... when you're trying to pick vehicle types out of thin air, with no way of knowing what they might be *except* via the *one* Down answer, yeeeesh. Kinda violates the law of US crosswords that all squares must be checked. I see how knowing there's a vehicle type in there acts as a kind of check, but oof. Unpleasant. The idea that that center answer "depicts" a TRAFFIC JAM seems preposterous, in that ... it only does so because the TRAFFIC JAM clue says it does so. Absent that clue, 61-Across looks like ... maybe a parking lot, or a line of cars at a light, or a drive-thru window, I dunno. There Are Only Five Of Them. Nothing particularly "jam"-y about it. I get that you are "jamming" (??) the answers into little squares, but if that's your big punchline ... I think it's gonna miss a lot of people. Further, the three other themers are all arbitrary and not terribly "jam"-y either. I think of BOTTLENECK as more of a synonym of TRAFFIC JAM than a "cause"; INTERSTATE is just a random road ... no reason a TRAFFIC JAM there is any "bad"-er than a TRAFFIC JAM anywhere else; and LATE TO WORK ... sigh, it's adjectival where the others aren't, and again, totally arbitrary, but it gives you symmetry with INTERSTATE I guess so put it in there, sure, why not? The whole thing was made more grueling and tedious by the cluing, which was way harder than normal. The NW corner alone was an astonishing chore. First pass yielded absolutely nothing. Thank god I got the BOTTLE part of BOTTLENECK, because I desperately needed all those letters. Thought the answer might be RUBBERNECK at first ... it seemed vaguely plausible. Anyway, ugh to most all of this.

So many problems, even outside the TRAFFIC JAM. Misspelled ERIK ("C"). Misspelled RAMSAY. ("E"). No idea about this MALL (54D: The world's largest one is in Chengdu, China (covering 18 million square feet)). You couldn't invent a worse SHANE clue for me if you tried. Just ???? (65A: One of the McMahons of WWE). Wow KANS is bad. The attempt to untie ALEXA and AMS via "alarms" was painful (27D: One setting an alarm, maybe + 29D: Alarm clock settings, for short). Impossible for me to get from clue to MUTT (I had OLIO) (4D: A little of this, a little of that). Had HOOPS before HORSE (68A: Basketball game). Thought the anchor was on a *SWIM*TEAM (50A: Group working with an anchor) (NEWSTEAM). I'm looking this grid over and seeing no answers I truly liked. Zero. I like that RE(BUS) actually contains a rebus square, that's kinda cute. But DETS no EEKS no ... so much generic fill, and nothing exciting or even semi-splashy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Greg Johnson

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (more Medium, maybe) (6:49)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: MONTROSE (20A: 1970s rock band that launched the career of Sammy Hagar) —

Montrose was a California-based hard rock band formed in 1973 and named after guitarist and founder Ronnie Montrose. The band's original lineup featured Montrose and vocalist Sammy Hagar, who would later go on to greater fame as a solo artist and as a member of Van Halen. Rounding out the original foursome were bassist Bill Church and drummer Denny Carmassi. The group disbanded in early 1977. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's just nothing interesting going on here. I don't understand themelesses like this, where there are literally no marquee answers. There's some fine, solid stuff here and there, but there is Zero to make you go wow or hey or cool. The grid shape has a lot to do with it. Nothing over 8 in this grid; but still, you'd think there'd be a number of sizzling, interesting, colloquial, original, some other adjective 8s lying around for you to start with, as your seed entries. What ever *were* the seed entries here? Hard to imagine being excited about putting any of these answers in the puzzle. And it's not even like the grid is that clean overall. One potential solace of a boring grid is that it's fill is never yuck, but ANE and ERINS and LBO and ÉGAL / TÊTES in same corner and CIRC MACAO SNO ... that stuff starts to rankle when there's no great stuff to justify it. The NYTXW absolutely must run killer themelesses every single time, because right now, the New Yorker is just eating their lunch. They've got an elite stable of constructors turning out three timely, fresh, current, well-crafted themeless puzzles per week. Their constructing team is diverse and talented and (most importantly) ambitious. Hungry. It'll be a long time before the New Yorker competes with the NYTXW in terms of total audience, to say nothing of revenue, but they are clearly coming. Quality-wise, they've already blown past the NYTXW (where average themeless quality is concerned, anyway). What's worse (for the NYTXW) is that they've got some of what *had* been the NYTXW's best talent (Robyn Weintraub comes to mind). If the New Yorker added a couple of themed puzzles and went to a daily puzzle format, they'd immediately be the best daily in the country. These are just facts.

But back to this puzzle. MONTROSE? Oof. To me, that is a smallish northern Pennsylvania town about 20 miles from me. I knew Sammy Hagar was eventually in VAN HALEN (which fits!) and I knew he eventually had a solo hit with "I Can't Drive 55" (maybe there were others...?), but MONTROSE ... that's a new one. They appear to have had no real hits. Cool cool. Annnyway, everything around that answer was hard (not surprisingly). Had real trouble with ORDERING because of the deceptive clue (21D: Counter action — you order at a counter) and with FLOOR WAX for the same reason (12D: Coat placed on the ground). Forgot ASTANA existed but was able to work around it pretty easily (3D: Kazakh capital renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019). Wanted SPCA before PETA (41A: Rights org. whose logo includes a rabbit), but not much else proved that challenging. The STAGE part of STAGE SET weirdly took some effort (52A: Theater background). Oh, and REBOXED was briefly elusive (36A: Made more secure for shipping, say). I don't see the necessary connection between reboxing and security. I also think REBOXED is not the greatest fill. But then *nothing* was the greatest fill today. When EVEN KEEL and PUMP IRON are your stand-outs ... you need to try harder.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Stella Zawistowski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (6:49)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Danity KANE (34D: Danity ___, girl group with a self-titled 2006 #1 album) —

Danity Kane is an American girl group composed of members Aubrey O'Day, Dawn Richard, and Shannon Bex. The group originally had five members, but Wanita "D. Woods" Woodgett left the group in 2008, and Aundrea Fimbres left in 2014. Formed on the third iteration of MTV's Making the Band reality television series in 2005, they signed to Bad Boy Records by Diddy.
Danity Kane's self-titled debut studio album was released in 2006 and achieved success in the United States, shipping a million copies domestically, while spawning two singles with top 10 single "Show Stopper" and the ballad "Ride for You." Their second studio album, Welcome to the Dollhouse, was released in 2008, following the release of their second top 10 single "Damaged". The band became the first female group in Billboard history to debut their first two albums at the top of the charts. (wikipedia)

• • •

I was braced for a hard one, as that is what Stella's name means to me, but then the hardness didn't really come. I was slower than I should've been, probably, because I tend to slow down and move methodically through puzzles that are terrors. I could've turned on the gas here and didn't, is what I'm saying. And I still came in under 7 on a Saturday, which is to say I came in with a roughly normal *Friday* time. And I liked it. I like Friday puzzles. I like spending 6-8 minutes on a puzzle filled with interesting longer answers and some thoughtfully tough clues. And so I liked this. The only part that made me even a little mad was the KANE / KAYE krossing—two proper names of not tremendous fame, crossing at a vowel ... that's dicey. But in the end (the very end, actually), the "A" was the only reasonable guess. Everything else about this grid seems very much in order. Oh, ADANO is icky crosswordese (8D: Sicilian town that lost a bell to Fascists, in literature), but that's such a minor thing, really, in the face of so much good. Love the central Across ("SKETCHES OF SPAIN"), though I initially forgot about its existence (despite *owning it*) (33A: 1960 Miles Davis album inspired in part by flamenco music). Having the -TCHES part in place, I really really wanted to make "BITCHES BREW" happen, but ... way too many squares. Also love ALL-NIGHTER and HAPPY PLACE, and METEORIC and "MANEATER"—make it fun, it's all I ask. Oh, and make it smooth. This was both.

["Lean and hungry type," in a Hall & Oates hit]

I knew "Golden Girls" was set in Florida but couldn't decide TAMPA or MIAMI so I let the crosses tell me (1A: Setting for "The Golden Girls"). I know "SHANE" very well as a movie (Alan Ladd! And my girlfriend Jean Arthur!), but I was not aware it was a novel, so that was embarrassingish (18A: 1949 novel set in the Wyoming Territory). I literally cried "SHANE" earlier today, in the voice of my cat, as my wife left the house and my cat put his paws up on the screen door and looked longingly after her. Had EL NIÑO before LA NIÑA, but of course I did (19A: Pacific Ocean phenomenon). I forgot Uno had a SKIP card and do not think of my PECs as near my abs, so yeah, that whole western section was rough for me. Luckily, it was also small. PTRAP sounds like a kind of music, and I needed many crosses to get it (40A: Plumbing fitting with a bend). Is ADD-A-LINE hyphenated? (58A: Cellphone account offering). I would think an additional or extra line would be the "offering." Somehow having a verb phrase as an "offering" felt weird, unless the answer is not a noun but a phrase of offering, i.e. "Say, would you like to ADD A LINE." Yeah, OK. Still feels weird, but OK. Was baffled by the clue on DECORS (59A: Looks inside?) until I got every last letter from crosses. Then I wasn't baffled, but by then not being baffled didn't really do me any good. My baker makes a great TRES Leches cake, which I am definitely buying (again) tomorrow (53D: ___ leches). Sweet dreams for me. Good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Byron (old like me) and Harrison (EIGHT YEARS OLD) Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium (10:15)

THEME:"Animal Crossings"— "What do you get when you cross ___ with ___?" riddles, where the ___s literally cross right next to the answers to each riddle:

Theme answers:

ELEPHANTS / FISH = SWIMMING TRUNKS
CHICKENS / SQUID = EXTRA DRUMSTICKS
EELS / RHINOCEROS = ELECTRIC CHARGES
FIREFLIES / CHEETAH = LIGHTNING SPEED

Word of the Day: HASSAN Rouhani (13A: Iranian president Rouhani) —

Hassan Rouhani (Persian: حسن روحانی‎, Standard Persian pronunciation: [hæˈsæn-e ɾowhɒːˈniː](listen); born Hassan Fereydoun (Persian: حسن فریدون‎) on 12 November 1948) is an Iranian politician serving as the current and seventh President of Iran since 3 August 2013. He was also a lawyer, academic, former diplomat and Islamic cleric. He has been a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts since 1999, member of the Expediency Councilsince 1991, and a member of the Supreme National Security Council since 1989. Rouhani was deputy speaker of the fourth and fifth terms of the Parliament of Iran (Majlis) and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 1989 to 2005. In the latter capacity, he was the country's top negotiator with the EU three, UK, France, and Germany, on nuclear technology in Iran, and has also served as a Shi'ite ijtihadi cleric, and economic trade negotiator. He has expressed official support for upholding the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. In 2013, he appointed former industries minister Eshaq Jahangiri as his first vice-president.

• • •

You know what can make me like corny dad-joke riddles? Puzzles co-constructed by 8yo boys and their dads, that's what. Everyone should co-construct with a kid. They should do a whole week of that. Co-constructor has to be in elementary school, go! OMG this puzzle even has a title of that app or game that I keep seeing people mention but that I've been studiously ignoring because why are grown people playing children's games but here it is on a puzzle constructed by an actual child, so I am All In, sign me up, etc.! Only SMILES, sorry folks, I know you kinda like the grouch but Not Today. OK, if I were being really truly Scroogey, I would say EXTRA DRUMSTICKS isn't as much of a coherent stand-alone concept as the others, and LIGHTNING SPEED is not an entity, which makes it weird as a result of even fantastical cross-breeding, and crossing plural animals with singular animal is ... interesting. But pffffffffft, don't care. I think these are cute. The grid actually played hardish for me in places, though my time was totally normal (it's a post-Negroni time, too, so ... you should probably shave a minute off my time if you want to know what my time would be like under normal, not slightly buzzed conditions). I liked that there was a WAVETANK to go with all these EELS and FISH and what not, though tbh WAVETANK took me a long time to get. Also difficult for me: CAT'S EAR (don't ... know what that is), and AREOLE (did not know that sense of the word and also spelled it AREOLA at first). Oh, and HONEYBEE! Napoleonic symbol? News to me! Funniest word in the grid to me is ADZING, a present participle so improbable it makes me giggle.

I don't think I understand RECAST as the answer to 23A: Put in another light. Oh crud I just got it. I could not shake the idea that someone was changing a lightbulb ... or RECASTing a play and the star of the play was somehow metaphorically a "light." But "in another light" is metaphorical. Gotcha. Never heard of a RACER, so that "C," yipes (3D: Nonvenomous, fast-moving snake). NOMEN was hard because Latin (I thought "NOMEN" was just "name" but I guess it's the second of three usual names in ancient Roman, huh). Wrote in EAST END before WEST END, that was dumb (69A: London theater district). I hope that Harry was happy that he got to put PEE in the grid, though tbh it was probably Byron who was tittering at that one (118D: 16th letter). OUTOFIT is a really fantastic entry that I had trouble parsing. It's weirdly rare—twice this year now, but only five times in the Shortz era total. It took me til the last letter (which, ironically, was the first letter) to figure out. Seriously thought AUTOFIT might be a thing (64A: Dazed and confused), but it made zero sense for the clue.

Have as happy a Father's Day, or just day, as you can. XO

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (2:53)

THEME: ESCAPEE (39A: Fugitive who, phonetically, is "hiding" in certain letters in 17-, 21-, 52- and 61-Across) — letter string "SKP" can be found inside all four themers:

Theme answers:

DESK PHONES (17A: Lines at the office?)
RISK-PRONE (21A: Willing to accept danger)
ASK PRICES (52A: Lowest acceptable offers, in stock market lingo)
JAMES K. POLK (61A: President between John Tyler and Zachary Taylor)

Word of the Day: Hula HOOP (5A: Hula ___) —

A hula hoop is a toy hoop that is twirled around the waist, limbs or neck. The modern hula hoop was invented in 1958 by Arthur K. "Spud" Melin and Richard Knerr, but children and adults around the world have played with hoops throughout history. Hula hoops for children generally measure approximately 70 centimetres (28 in) in diameter, while those for adults measure around 1 metre (40 in). Traditional materials for hoops include willow, rattan (a flexible and strong vine), grapevines and stiff grasses. Today, they are usually made of plastic tubing. (wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually, this is wonderful. If I didn't literally "aha" when I figured out the theme (after I was done), I came close. I make this face when I don't get the theme immediately upon finishing, and I was just starting to make it, thinking it maybe had something to do with a letter "E" that had "escaped" from the themers (don't do that, please), and then I noticed the "hiding" letter string SKP and then I was like "o, wow, well, yes, that works perfectly ... [says ESCAPEE out loud] ... yup, checks out!" There is a small part of me that thinks getting the "K" from the single initial "K" in JAMES K. POLK (where it's already sounded out as a letter) is a minor flaw, and a bigger part of me that doesn't give a f*** about "stock market lingo" and thinks ASK PRICES sounds super dumb. But whatever, SKP is probably hard do perfectly and this one works and I finished in under 3 and had a genuine aha so Not Mad. Well, tiny bit mad at the revealer clue—the ESCAPEE is hiding in the answers, not hiding "in certain letters in" the answers. The ESCAPEE literally *is* the letters, and those letters are "hiding" inside the larger phrase. The clue phrasing is awkward and to my ear incorrect.

My cat does not get SLOBBERY when he gets a CAT TREAT, but some cats do and I like that those answers are symmetrical. TSKED is awful but I'm pretty sure I've used it in actual conversation ... semi-ironically, but still. BARPIN is about as boring a word for a piece of jewelry as I can imagine. I was like "OK, some kind of PIN ... EAR PIN? ... wait, BAR PIN? Really? Yuck. Snore." There is an "ear pin" in this puzzle, it turns out, but it goes by the name of "stud" and it goes in the PIERCED EAR at 18D: Place to insert a stud. Anything else to say about this? Not really. Nice work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Greatest Father's Day moment was learning that my daughter is dropping sub-5 times on Monday puzzles now. I had no idea. She keeps her training to herself. Here I am being characteristically encouraging :)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:20-something, though I had not one but two typos I had to track down)

THEME: STRAIGHT EDGES (14D: Rulers, e.g. ... or what the letters in 3-, 7-, 27- and 34-Down all have) — if you write them in sans-serif caps, the left edges of all the letters in the themers are all straight (i.e. letters in themers are drawn entirely from the set: BDEFHKLNPR. According to "Notes" on the puzzle:

In the print version of this puzzle, each square in 3-, 7-, 27- and 34-Down contains a short vertical line in the left half of the square.

Theme answers:

KEEBLER ELF (3D: Mascot on cookie boxes)
FEEL FREE (34D: "Be my guest!")
DR PEPPER (7D: Forrest Gump's favorite soft drink)
"REBEL REBEL" (27D: David Bowie hit with the lyric "You've torn your dress, your face is a mess")

Word of the Day: RAREFY (13D: Make thinner, as air) —

1: to make rare, thin, porous, or less dense : to expand without the addition of matter

2: to make more spiritual, refined, or abstruse (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

This is one of those ideas you have when you're just brainstorming and you jot it down in your notebook and you realized it can't possibly produce a joyful result so you scrap it. Or, you don't, I guess. Not sure how you get away with a theme like this. Must be nice. Yeesh. Look, the theme does Not work electronically, which is how So Many people solve now, so it's a giant F.U. to them, and honestly, even if I was solving this on paper, I'd resent the NYTXW putting in little "vertical lines" for me to use like a little trellis on which to build the rest of the letters that go in those squares. I wonder how many people started solving and just wrote in the letters to the side of the damned "vertical lines" only to realize later on, "oh, I was supposed to ... make letters ... that incorporated those lines ... huh.""REBEL REBEL" is a great song and I'm never going to object to seeing Bowie in the grid, but the fact that you have a to repeat a word to get this theme to be In Any Way interesting tells you something.

The fill seems ok. ET TU, TUTEE is making me laugh, in a "so bad it's good" way, though ... that SW really isn't good. I had PLEAT before DRAPE (7A: Arrange in folds). I wrote in RARIFY and BORE instead of RAREFY and BORN, so that was bad work on my part. RAREFY just looks so awfully wrong. Also, the clue ... [Make thinner, as air]? ... that is so weird. "We need to RAREFY this air, stat!" I only ever (and I mean Only Ever) hear the word used adjectivally, in the purely metaphorical phrase "rarefied air." I think of that air as being the effect of high elevation, like "la-di-dah, look at you up there ... breathing your rarefied air like some kind of duchess ..." Actually, I would never use the phrase. The point is, it's hard to imagine someone "rarefying" anything, least of all air. I'm not sure I ever saw "Crash," and when I think of the expansive oeuvre of Mr. Brendan FRASER, that movie doesn't come to mind; luckily, there aren't that many actors named Brendan, so FRASER came quickly enough. ERR ERSE ERNST ELSE OER ONO EBB SELA ETTU ATIT TUTEE this could've been cleaner. Much cleaner. Big come-down after yesterday's nifty number.

iconic FRASER

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (4:58)

THEME: COLD OPEN (59A: Start of each "S.N.L." episode ... or a hint to the initials of the words in 17-, 24-, 35- and 47-Across) — "OPEN"ings (i.e. the initials) of the words in the themers are I.C., which, when said aloud, make "icy," which is a word meaning "COLD":

Theme answers:

IOWA CITY (17A: It served as its state's capital before Des Moines)
IRISH COFFEE (24A: Joe and Jack, say?)
INFORMED CONSENT (35A: Medical ethics topic)
IRON CURTAIN (47A: "Barrier" dismantled in 1991) (the "quotation marks" are weird here)

Word of the Day: SLOVAK (55A: Bratislava resident) —

The Slovaks (or Slovakians; Slovak: Slováci, singular: Slovák, feminine: Slovenka, plural: Slovenky) are a West Slavic ethnic group and nation native to Slovakia who share a common ancestry, culture, history and speak the Slovak language.
In Slovakia, c. 4.4 million are ethnic Slovaks of 5.4 million total population. There are Slovak minorities in many neighboring countries including Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine and sizeable populations of immigrants and their descendants in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States among others, which are collectively referred to as the Slovak diaspora. (wikipedia)

• • •

Monday concept with Thursday cluing. The result: weird and mostly unpleasant. COLD OPEN is a great idea for a revealer, but more for a Monday puzzle where all the first words of themers are cold or can follow the word "cold" (CUT, COMFORT, etc.), something like that. But "I.C."??? That's corny, and using the initials (plural) as OPEN (singular) feels awkward. The fill is all over the place, too, as the grid appears to be trying desperately to be ZANIER than your average grid (what with the "Z"s all over) but somehow it did not have a sizzling feel. Came out clunky, though that was also a result of the cluing, which was oddly (and not very cleanly) ratcheted up (I guess 'cause the theme was so straightforward). ET TU, TNUT!? NYE, NYSE! AMO, LIS! These are just random entries that I didn't care for, that seemed to pile up. The puzzle started out seeming very easy (in the NW), but then when I hit the ISOGON (?) GRAYLY (??) part, things slowed way down. Ditto the R.H. MACY part, wow, initials? (21D: Department store founder). Yeeeesh. FALSIE is a word I've heard, but Not for eyelashes (?) (26D: Fake eyelash, slangily). Anyway, INFORMED CONSENT (a fine answer) took a lot of work, and the whole middle just bogged me down in unpleasant ways. Oh, and one other thing about the themers: since when does Tennessee whiskey go in IRISH COFFEE (24A: Joe and Jack, say?). That clue was brutal, in more ways than one.

So proud to know VIZSLA, but not proud enough to spell it correctly. Even now it feels like the "S" and "Z" should switch places. That little letter transposition hurt more than it should have. I had a very very hard time parsing "NO TAKERS?" (38D: Anyone? ... ANYONE?"). It started with NOT so I wanted NOT phrases, oof. Forgot Lindsey VONN's name, which is definitely my bad (56D: Winter Olympics star Lindsey). I know the word NARY but somehow [Old-timey "not"] didn't do it for me. ["My turn"] is a terrrrrrrible clue for "I'LL GO," since "I'LL GO" is a phrase of volunteering, one you'd use when it's not clear who should be going, whereas "My turn" is a phrase of certainty. If you say "My turn" it is definitely your turn, whereas if you say"I'LL GO" it is not at all clear that it is your turn, but since no one else is stepping up, well alrighty then. If you can't hear the difference between these two phrases, I can't help you, and since I can't help you ... I'LL GO.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. huge thumbs down to not one not two but three [___ tourist destination]s (two of which are "Italian"). Write a clue, why don't you?

P.P.S. base on early Twitter chatter, I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict that the VIZSLA / ZAC crossing is gonna mess a bunch of people up today (it's a very bad cross)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

State of invincibility enabled by cheat code / FRI 6-5-20 / Quaint stationery shop item / Like a very cold night idiomatically / What recycling code 40 is used for / Old Eur domain

Folklore character whose stockings are tied with eyelashes / Ex video game franchise / Lane on eastern boundary of Covent Garden / Language introduced in 1995 / SAT 6-6-20 / Perp's mark in cop slang / Scene of W.W. I fighting

Stuntwoman kitty known as fastest woman in world / SUN 6-7-20 / Sadistic feline character in Scott Adams strip / Montana in the 1980s / Put bluffer in tight spot / German city where Charlemagne was buried / Appetizer often served with mint chutney

Genre for Nigerian singer Wizkid / MON 6-8-20 / Its mascot is pitcher with smiling face / Teen magazine founded in 1965

Land of rustic innocence / TUE 6-9-20 / Rink great Bobby / Comic book debut of 1963 / Annual White House Correspondents' dinner jocularly

Classic comics rallying cry / WED 6-10-20 / Angrily abandon video game / Boundary marking limits of black hole / The ___ Erwin Show 1950s sitcom

Bone cavities / THU 6-11-20 / Bag in commercialese / Where to find American in Moscow / 1960s TV character who often said Surprise surprise surprise / Old TV knob abbr.

Mitch's husband on Modern Family / FRI 6-12-20 / Onetime nickname in magazine publishing / Remote station locale

Bygone Buick / SAT 6-13-20 / Classic bit of groanworthy wordplay / Hyperbolic figure / Supposed sightings off coast of Norway / Annual e-sports competition since 1996 / Motor contests with portmanteau name / Opera with noted triumphal march

Scheming sergeant of old TV / SUN 6-14-20 / Pointed arch / Rodriguez who starred in Jane the Virgin / Indescribable religious ideal / Dandy on Downing Street / Ollie's foil in old films / Things proposed by Greek philosopher Democritus / Some toy dolls of 1980s / Gates of Hell sculptor

Mystery-solving Great Dane of cartoons / MON 6-15-20 / City where Gangnam Style video was filmed / Ancient Greek gathering spot / Hit with beam of light

1992 rap song that popularized term bootylicious / TUE 6--16-20 / Waze technology for short / Hawaii's Forbidden Isle / Descend by rope as in mountaineering / Evil alter ego in Robert Louis Stevenson story / Bulky herbivorous dinosaur

Don Juan's mother / WED 6-17-20 / 1960s band with car-related name / Company that's RAD on New York Stock Exchange / Longtime director of La Scala New York Philharmonic

Lee known for his cameos / THU 6-18-20 / Cosmic force / Rocky Mountain city once home to Anaconda Copper Mining Company / One of McMahons of WWE / Offering at pier restaurant

1970s rock band that launched the career of Sammy Hagar / FRI 6-19-20 / Kazakh capital renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019 / Rocky's best friend in Rocky films / Craps throw called Little Joe / Measure equal to about 57º / Ad campaign featuring mustaches

Coastal environment simulator at aquarium / SUN 6-21-20 / Nonvenomous fast-moving snake / Onesie protector / Cabinet inits since 1980 / Geographical locale whose name means waterless place

Hate U Give heroine / MON 6-22-20 / Percussive piece of jewelry for Indian dancer / Lowest acceptable offers in stock market lingo / Typical physique for middle-aged guy

Sticker on green products / TUE 6-23-20 / Group on top of loose football / Bellicose Greek god / Forrest Gump's favorite soft drink / Means of climbing over rural fences

Fake eyelash slangily / WED 6-24-20 / Jed's adviser on West Wing / Hungarian sporting dog / Closest dwarf planet / Geometric figure with equal angles / Barrier dismantled in 1991