Small-time tyrants / SUN 5-30-10 / Opponent of Pericles / Cumberland Gap explorer / Supermax resident / Latte topper

Constructor: Eric Berlin

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: FULL CIRCLE — Theme clues apply both to the theme answer in question and the subsequent theme answer, creating a kind of cluing chain, with the last theme clue applying back to the first theme answer.


Word of the Day: TOCCATA (64D: Improvisatory piece of classical music) —

Toccata (from Italian toccare, "to touch") is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers. Less frequently, the name is applied to works for multiple instruments (the opening of Claudio Monteverdi's opera Orfeo being a notable example). (wikipedia)

• • •

I really liked the theme, though the interlinkedness helped me not at all. I just liked (loved) that, with so many clues that start [With X-Across...], I never ever ran into the typical cross-referenced clue at X-Across: [See The Clue That Sent You Here]. Instead, each theme clue just passed the buck down the line, which never required me to look back at other clues to remember what the hell was going on. Because of this, the theme answers were Super easy to get. The puzzle seems to have known this would be the case, and made the rest of the grid more difficult than usual in order to make up for it. Nothing particularly brutal, but a lot of stuff designed to slow you down. I got ANAPESTS fine (51A: Some poetic feet), but everything between there and, let's say, MURALIST, was a fight. Never heard of TIN GODS (53D: Small-time tyrants), and the "small" part of that clue had me really wanting TINY in the answer. I over thought MT ETNA (63A: Sicilian tourist attraction) and tried MT ENNA (ENNA being a city in Sicily that occasionally shows up in the grid). Cluing on OLEG is wholly new to me (71A: ___ Kalugin, former K.G.B. general with the 1994 book "Spymaster"). TOCCATA is a word I've heard of ... it must be on some recording of someone I have somewhere ... but I wasn't sure of it for a while. And then CLEON — I had CREON in my head (76A: Opponent of Pericles). That's somebody, right? CREON? Yes, he is the non-small-time tyrant in Antigone. Throw in NITRATE (83D: Fertilizer ingredient), which I was none too sure about, and that whole section ended up being a battle. There were other hang-ups along the way too, but none where my ignorance was so concentrated.

Theme answers:

• 22A: With 24-Across, two things that are stuffed (ROAST TURKEY)
  
• 24A: With 36-Across, two things on a farm (SCARECROW)
  
• 36A: With 38-Across, two things associated with needles (HAYSTACK)
  
• 38A: With 55-Across, two things that spin (RECORD PLAYER)
  
• 55A: With 82-Across, two things at an amusement park (FERRIS WHEEL)
  
• 82A: With 95-Across, two things that are sticky (COTTON CANDY)
  
• 95A: With 99-Across, two things with brushes (RUBBER CEMENT)
  
• 99A: With 115-Across, two things with ladders (MURALIST)
  
• 115A: With 117-Across, two things that are red (FIRE TRUCK)
  
• 117A: With 24-Across, two things associated with Thanksgiving (CRANBERRIES)
  

My wife pointed out to me that all the theme answers are two-word phrases except two: MURALIST and CRANBERRIES. Clearly, this didn't bother me at all. Wife also shared my understandable distaste for ISTS (58A: Believers), my strange affection for OLDISH (26A: Getting up there in years), and my surprise that the word GLADLY (2D: With a smile) had never appeared in a (post-mid-'90s) crossword puzzle. Not in the NYT, and not in any puzzle in the cruciverb.com database. Weeeeeird. It's not exactly obscure.

Bullets:

• 1A: City SE of Delhi (AGRA) — In India, four letters — gimme.
  
• 10A: Cumberland Gap explorer (BOONE) — I have no idea where the Cumberland Gap is, HA ha. I still got this easily (it's a passageway through the Appalachians, btw).
  
• 18A: Supermax resident (FELON) — I taught for a while in a (mere) maximum security prison in Elmira. The supermax is a couple of miles away from that, in Southport, NY.
  
• 44A: Balloonist's baskets (GONDOLAS) — I'd forgotten that's what those are called.
  
• 59A: "Hair" song with the lyric "Hello, carbon monoxide" ("AIR") — something unsettling about "Hair" cluing "AIR" — too close. And yet I really like the clue (despite never having seen "Hair").
  
• 90A: Second track on "Beatles '65" ("I'M A LOSER") — I think I've seen this title in crosswords (in whole or in part) more than I've actually heard the song.

• 106A: 1922 Physics Nobelist (BOHR) — wife very happy with the crossword muscle she's developing: gimme!
  
• 113A: Adjective for a bikini, in a 1960 song (TEENIE) — I think it's a compound adjective, "TEENIE-weenie."
  
• 120A: Drug company behind Valium (ROCHE) — not on my radar. Needed crosses.
  
• 121A: "Pearls Before Swine," e.g. (COMIC) — by which the puzzle means COMIC strip. Really not on my radar. Needed crosses.
  
• 1D: Region in ancient Asia Minor (AEOLIA) — know this term only from Coleridge and the AEOLIAN harp, which is some kind of contraption you put in your window (memory ... foggy ...) so it can be "played" by the wind. Yes, that's right. This is a toughish ancient Greek answer, as is IONIAN, potentially (100D: Sea between Italy and Greece).
  
• 18D: Latte topper (FROTH) — wanted FOAM. FROTH sounds sooo much less appetizing.
  
• 69D: "Southland" airer (TNT) — never heard of "Southland." Maybe because I don't watch any TNT.
  
• 77D: Scientist with multiple Emmys (NYE) — Bill NYE the Science Guy. Never really watched him, but still a gimme.
  
• 85D: Biochemical sugar (RIBOSE) — only very vaguely familiar. Looks like a word meaning "funny" — a hybrid of RIBALD and JOCOSE.
  

Will bring the "Tweets of the Week" feature back next week. Til then, enjoy your long weekend (if you've got one).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]