Thrice-remade movie / THU 4-18-24 / Saber-toothed tiger in the "Ice Age" movies / Bloomers worn around one's head? / Acre on the ocean floor / Ascent stage for a bird / First name in objectivism / Perfume name with an accent

Constructor: David Kwong

Relative difficulty: Medium

[sorry about all the blue eyes in the grid—I shut my puzzle before taking a screenshot so I refilled the grid with "Reveal All" rather than type it all in again]

THEME: A STAR IS BORN (A STAR IS "B" OR "N") (63A: Thrice-remade movie ... or, when parsed as six words, a hint to the theme clues in this puzzle) — theme clues all start with stars (asterisks), which you have to imagine as either "B"s or "N"s in order to make sense of the clues:

Theme answers:

• ELECTION DAY (17A: *Allot time) (Ballot)
• MOTHER OF PEARL (23A: *Acre on the ocean floor) (Nacre)
• RIVIERA (40A: *Ice is found on it) (Nice)
• THE CRETAN BULL (53A: *Ovid of Greek mythology) (Bovid)
• MCCARTNEY (10D: *Assist in a foursome) (Bassist)
• HATCHLING (32D: *Ascent stage for a bird) (Nascent)

Word of the Day: THE CRETAN BULL (53A) —

In Greek mythology, the Cretan Bull (Ancient Greek: Κρὴς ταῦρος, romanized: Krḕs taûros) was the bull Pasiphaë fell in love with, giving birth to the Minotaur. // Minos was king in Crete. In order to confirm his right to rule, rather than any of his brothers, he prayed Poseidon send him a snow-white bull as a sign. Poseidon sent Minos the bull, with the understanding that bull would be sacrificed to the god. Deciding that Poseidon's bull was too fine of a specimen to kill, Minos sent the bull to his herds and substituted another, inferior bull for sacrifice. Enraged, Poseidon had Aphrodite curse Pasiphaë, the wife of Minos, causing her to fall in love with the bull. She subsequently gave birth to the half-man, half-bull, Minotaur. Poseidon passed on his rage to the bull, causing him to lay waste to the land. (wikipedia)

• • •

Puzzle felt easy but that doesn't mean I wasn't several steps behind the theme at all times. Theme answers were discernible and (mostly) familiar things, and almost all non-theme fill in the puzzle was short and (therefore?) easy to get hold of, so I moved through the grid without much problem despite having no real idea why the starred answers were what they were (their clues appearing to make no sense). I was well into this puzzle (about half done) before I finally figured out the star trick, and then only because I was forced to—could not think of any answer ending in -RTNEY (was not thinking of names), and there was no way to get into that NE section without following that themer up there, so I had to jump into the void in the far NE and try to get that section with no help from crosses. Luckily I knew 12D: Anna May WONG, Hollywood's first Chinese American film celebrity, so I was able to hack my way through that section without much trouble, then had a "D'oh" moment when I pieced together MCCARTNEY. Only because that section forced me to pay attention to the themers did I stop to think about how "*Assist" could get you to MCCARTNEY and, well, it didn't take long. The * was a B! OK! Stars are letters! What do they spell!? Nope, they're all "B"s! Ballot! Bassist! Why are they "B"s!? Whoops, nope, Nacre, that's an "N" ... so they spell nothing and they're not all "B"s, what the ...? Best not think about it. And I didn't. When I finally got to the revealer (hard because the "N" in BORN was in SNIT and yikes, no idea (61D: Cross fit?)), I thought "Oh, the stars are "B" "O" "R" and "N" I guess" (clearly I hadn't been paying close attention). It was only after I'd finished and literally counted the words in "A STAR IS B, O, R, N" ("7!? But the clue says 6!") that I realized "OR" was one word, and that the stars were simply either a "B" OR an "N."

I think the theme's ingenious. I am less fond of the grid, which, first of all, is sooooo heavily segmented, with  the huge NE and SW sections accessible only by the tiniest of passageways (through the themers), and the very far NE and SW sections really truly sequestered away, and the puzzle in general being so chopped up that you're virtually overrun with 3-letter words—only a couple of non-theme answers (up top and below) are  longer than 5. Lots of hacking through less-than-lovely short stuff, with severely impeded flow due to the grid's segmenting. But the segmentation and preponderance of short gunk don't prevent the theme from shining through. I think it's all worth it, is what I'm saying—the theme is dense enough and weird enough to make the puzzle's infelicities tolerable. 

Hardest parts for me were the "?" clues, specifically that SNIT clue, and then the AIM clue (34D: Sightsee?), which I guess just has to do with putting the sights of your ... gun? ... on something? If your gun has a "sight" then you "see" through it in order to AIM it. As for the SNIT clue (61D: Cross fit?), my brain went all over hell and gone trying to make sense of that one. The craziest thing I thought was that the clue wanted me to tell them what Jesus was wearing on the cross ("fit" being slang for "outfit"). I was like "dang, that's kind of morbid ... wait, what *was* he wearing? Some cloth? Rags? RAGS? Nope, doesn't work." Other difficulty in this puzzle came from those far far NE and SW sections, which I couldn't get into easily, the first time because I didn't understand the theme (see above), the second time (SW), because I only know the word HATCHLING if you show it to me. That is, if you'd asked me to give you a word meaning "nascent stage for a bird," I'm not sure how long it wouldn't taken me (without help) to come up with HATCHLING. I had -CHLING and still couldn't come up with it (!?). Just a total brain meltdown. Lastly, difficultywise, there was THE CRETAN BULL. I've known the story of Pasiphaë and the birth of the Minotaur for decades, but I had no, none, zero, absolutely no idea that the damn bull had a name. I got THE CRETAN BULL and thought "wait wait ... do you mean THE MINOTAUR? It's called THE MINOTAUR! What the hell kind of moniker is THE CRETAN BULL?!" Turns out it's just the Minotaur's dad. Wow. Deep cut, mythologically speaking. Also, "Bovid," great word. I use it occasionally as a late guess in Quordle when I want to burn those back-of-the-line consonants

Bullet points:

• 19A: The False Good Samaritan, e.g. (CON) — no idea. I search it and get crossword sites. I guess this is a type of CON, i.e. scam.
• 29A: It'll all shake out (SALT) — Will it? All of it? Citation needed.
• 3D: Saber-toothed tiger in the "Ice Age" movies (DIEGO) — no idea. This is a very Hollywoody puzzle! Thrice-remade movies and movie tigers and Hollywood Walk of Fame markers and Anna May WONG. Also, RIAN Johnson (I happen to know the constructor and RIAN are friends, so that one actually made me smile)
• 5D: Bloomers worn around one's head? (LEI) — this is great, truly great, and I don't think it even needs a "?"
• 6D: Visitor from a faraway place (UFO) — not necessarily, no. The fact that it can't be ID'd doesn't mean it's from outer space. Could be some kind of kite or dirigible or maybe a pterodactyl escaped from Jurassic Park, you don't know!
• 35D: Name that's an anagram of BREAD (DEBRA) — ah, we're still doing this, I see. Truly the "I give up" of name-cluing. Somewhere, someone named DREAB is sad. "Finally, recognition! ... oh."

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Cave dweller of Greek myth / WED 4-17-24 / Food products wholesaler / Old Testament queendom / Pro wrestler Luger / Eschew the pews, say

Constructor: Joseph Gangi

Relative difficulty: Medium? Medium-Challenging? Probably depends on your familiarity with the story...

THEME: ONE EYE (73A: Feature of 20-Across ... and, when sounded out, a feature of today's puzzle (clues and all!)) — the "theme" is POLYPHEMUS, a (not "the"!) cyclops in the ODYSSEY, whose "eye" Odysseus puts out. There is an awkward and gruesome representation of eye-gouging in the NW, where MAIM goes right through the puzzle's (and POLYPHEMUS's) only "I" ("eye"), which is the first word in the imagined (humorous?) exclamation, "I CAN'T SEE!" Oh, and there are no other "I"s in the grid (or in the clues, For Some Reason)

Theme answers:

• POLYPHEMUS (20A: Cave dweller of Greek myth)
• MAIM (7D: Hurt badly)
• "I CAN'T SEE" (18A: Cry after a poke) (!?)
• ODYSSEY (41A: Journey such as the one where 20-Across appears)
• THE CYCLOPS (60A: 20-Across, by another name)
• WANDERED (?) (65A: Took the long way home, say)

Word of the Day: THE CYCLOPS (60A) —

The Cyclops is a 1957 American science fiction horror film written, produced and directed by Bert I. Gordon, starring James Craig, Lon Chaney Jr. and Gloria Talbott.

The theme of a monster created as a result of radioactivity was a common one in the 1950s // Test pilot Bruce Barton is missing and his girlfriend, Susan Winter, organizes a search party, which is sent out in the jungles of Mexico.

The team of scientist Russ Bradford, mining expert Martin "Marty" Melville, and pilot Lee Brand fly into unknown territory.

While searching the area, however, they uncover giant mutated Earth animals such as a mouse, an eagle, a mygale, a green iguana, a tegu and a boa.

More importantly, they encounter a mutated 25-ft tall, one-eyed human monster who became disfigured due to an exposure to radioactivity from massive radium deposits in the area. This is responsible for the unusual size of all the other giant inhabitants of the region. He kills Melville, but appears to recognize the girl.

When the cyclops tries to prevent the rest of the group from flying to safety, he is wounded and presumably dies.

• • •

Well, I really hope you're up on your Odyssey. I am—reread it earlier this year—and I still found this one harder than usual, perhaps because it was thought necessary to keep all "I"s out of the clues as well as the grid. When you tie your hand behind your back like that (or poke your own eye out, to use another metaphor), it's hard to do your job (in this case, write clues) effectively. I was wondering why the cluing felt off and kinda stodgy and sluggish. And then I got to the revealer and realized the "trick" they were playing, but the question is: what does that trick get you (except subpar cluing)? Like, why do it? Nobody has noticed as they're solving, I guarantee you, and no one is going to feel as if their solving experience was enhanced by having had "I"s removed from the clues. The grid, OK, whatever, that seems fitting, but the clues? You only lose, you do not gain, by taking your little maiming gambit into the clues. It's a terrible decision that (negatively) affects the basic solving experience. A feature that makes the puzzle worse and that no one will notice (until they're told). It's Baffling. But that's just the beginning of this puzzle's execution problems. POLYPHEMUS is *a* Cyclops. The ODYSSEY is rather explicit about this. He is one of many. He is *the* main Cyclops in the story, *the* only one that has a name (that I can recall), but he is in no sense THE CYCLOPS ("In Homer's Odyssey, [the Cyclopes] are an uncivilized group of shepherds, the brethren of Polyphemus encountered by Odysseus" (wikipedia)). So THE CYCLOPS, ugh, that answer was a clank and a half. 

Also, are you doing an ODYSSEY puzzle or aren't you? The theme clues kept veering in and out of the ODYSSEY, explicitly invoking it here, pretending not to notice it there. "I CAN'T SEE" is absurdly clued. "A poke"?! "A poke"? "I CAN'T SEE!" is literally no one's cry after "A poke." I don't know if I'm more mad about "a" (be specific!) or "poke" (you "poke" someone to annoy them, or get their attention; a "poke" does not MAIM you). The whole thing is absurd without explicit reference to the ODYSSEY. Also, the puzzle seems to want to make a gruesome act of MAIMing comical? Whimsical? And then WANDERED is just down there on its own, no idea what it's doing, just wandering, with only the vaguest relation to the theme. "Should I just stand here? Like this? Guys! Is this the right spot? Why am I here again?" "We need you to provide symmetry for "I CAN'T SEE." "But I don't have anything to do with eyes or seeing? My thing's more ... wandering. Plus there's no symmetrical counterpart for MAIM. So can I just ... wander ...?" "No, do as you're told and stay put!" "Well fine but it's against my nature, I'm just saying." WANDERED, everybody!

Before I even got to the theme I sort of doubled over and heaved a sigh at how unpleasant it seemed like the fill was going to be. FLORAS? Oof. Over LEVELA and AGATES, crossing ALEPH, which is crossing PHAT? Lots more oof. The kind of oof that makes me stop and take a screenshot. Again, all before I got to the theme. 

All the "I"s in the world, all the eyes of Argus, couldn't have saved some of this fill. It levels off, i.e. comes back to something like an acceptable norm, elsewhere in the grid, but overall, it's still underwhelming. Hardest parts for me were the proper nouns (don't really know SASHA, and definitely don't know non-Luthor LEX—had to run the alphabet for that "X" after [Takes a toll on] ended up not being TIRES). The one answer that just about broke me was STABLY. Even now, it doesn't quite look like a word. I keep mentally pronouncing it "STAB-LY," i.e. "in the manner of a stab." Maybe it's an oblique reference to the maiming up top? No, it's just the adverbial form of "stable." ABLY has never perpLEXed me, but STABLY, yikes, it just jams my synapses.

Notes:

• 7A: Mental ___ (MATH) — I have no idea what this is. Is there a physical MATH that I missed in school? A calisthenic arithmetic, maybe?
• 70A: Wrap for a monarch? (COCOON) — this was one clue that came off very nicely. Lovely misdirection.
• 3D: Watermelon-shaped (OVAL) — isn't OVATE more appropriate? I think of OVAL as more of a two-dimensional "shape." Wikipedia says an OVAL is a "closed curve in a plane," and, again, I didn't take all the math classes in school (mental or otherwise), as we've established, but "in a plane," suggests 2-D to me. Watermelons, on the other hand, notoriously 3-D. 
• 27D: Eschew the pews (ELOPE) — Told ya. They cannot lay off ELOPE. Can. Not. ELOPE and ARSON just trigger some irresistible punning / rhyming / whimsical wordplay urge (as I discussed at length this past Friday)
• 49D: Quest for some athletes (GOLD) — I had GOAL. On many levels, my answer works. Just not the level that counts (LEVEL A?)
• 56D: Food products wholesaler (SYSCO) — never quite sure of the spelling. There's also the CISCO Kid rattling around in my brain somewhere, not to mention "The Thong Song" guy (pretty sure he's a SISQO—yep, ooh, and with an accent over the "O," Ó la la!). 
• 9D: Flotsam and jetsam (TRASH) — I had DROSS, which is less nautical than flotsam and jetsam, but at least as nautical as TRASH, and a hell of a lot more poetic.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...