Tahitian-style wraparound skirt / WED 1-12-11 / Provisional Mormon state / Milton Berle's longtime sponsor / Lake Michigan explorer Jean

Constructor: Jim Hilger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: HALF — a rebus puzzle with six "HALF" squares placed symmetrically around the grid (four in the corners, two near the center)


Word of the Day: PAREO (48A: Tahitian-style wraparound skirt) —

The pāreu or pareo (see below) is the Cook Islands and Tahitian word for a wraparound skirt. Originally it was used only to refer to women's skirts, as men wore a loincloth, called a maro. Nowadays the term is applied to any piece of cloth worn wrapped around the body, worn by males or females. It is related to the Malay sarong, Sāmoan lavalava, Tongan tupenu and other such garments of the Pacific Islands such as the islands of Hawaiʻi, Marquesas, Aotearoa, and Fiji. (wikipedia)

• • •

[It's pledge week here at the Rex Parker site (thru Sat.) —read my pitch for donations in the opening paragraphs of Sunday's write-up, here ... and thanks for your faithful readership (and the many kind messages I've received so far)]

An enjoyable and (mostly) easy rebus puzzle. A bit tough getting off the ground, but once I backed that first HALF into the corner in the NW, it squawked pretty quickly. Once the next HALF showed up, I knew what I was looking for and it was off to the races (esp. in the bottom half where I just put the "HALF"s in the corners and got the crosses instantly). Not a terribly ambitious rebus, but fine for a Wednesday (when most people aren't expecting to see one). The strangest thing about this puzzle is the grid—there's a boatload of black squares (42 by my count), including two giant blocks of nine squares each on either side of 1/2 AND 1/2. The chosen theme answers, and their placement, pretty much necessitate this blackness (1/2 AND 1/2 has to be centered, but because of the placement of the theme answers around the edges, nothing can go on either side of 1/2 AND 1/2). Whatever the reason, the result has some unfortunate consequences, namely a highly segmented grid with a *huge* amount of short (and hence uninteresting) fill. 28 three-letter words (I think). Is that high? That seems high? Add in the four-letter words (12, I think), and over half the answers are tiny. There's also some YAKky fill in the longer stuff, like NICOLET (?) (11D: Lake Michigan explorer Jean ___) and DESERET (?) (45D: Provisional Mormon state) and PAREO (!?). TO ANY is a bad partial, but you gotta give a puzzle like this some leeway, especially in the middle where the "HALF" answers aren't safely hugging the wall, but right in the middle of everything. In the end, I liked it. Uneven, quality-wise, but ultimately enjoyable.

HALF-BAKED is my favorite flavor of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. ONE HALF is, by far, the weakest theme answer. Would have loved to have seen HALF TIME, HALF WIT, HALFLING (D&D nerds know what I'm talking about), TWO AND A HALF MEN, or comics legend HAL FOSTER (creator of "Prince Valiant").



The HALFs:

• HALF BAKED / HALF TRUTH
  
• ONE HALF / HALF NELSON
  
• HALF AND HALF / SAWED IN HALF / HALF HEARTED
  
• BETTER HALF (37D: Wife, colloquially) / HALF DAY
  
• FIRST HALF / OTHER HALF (49D: Jacob Riis subjects, with "the")
  

I somehow don't think of BEAT OUT as conveying the "barely" part of 2D: Barely defeat. I had EDGE OUT (first thing in the grid). That NW corner was the hardest, not just because it came first (before I had the theme), but because of BEAT OUT and then TEXACO (Berle was waaaaay before my time—no idea about his corporate sponsors, 14A: Milton Berle's longtime sponsor), and then DONEN (musical theater names and I do not get along) (6D: "Singin' in the Rain" director Stanley). Knowing UKR. straight off helped. A lot. Potentially tricky words like TOLUENE and HULKS and TYRE (34A: Port on the eastern Mediterranean) all fell 1-2-3. Rest of the grid was a snap except the end, in the SE, where PAREO was a huge mystery, and P-ENUPS made no sense to me at all. I was parsing it wrong, breaking it between the "N" and "U." Something-UPS? After rechecking all the crosses, I had a "D'oh!" moment when PRE-NUPS came leaping forth (44D: Marriage contracts, briefly). Done and done.

Bullets:

• 23A: "Misty" composer Garner (ERROLL) — more old musical stuff I don't know!? At least tap into some of my other ignorances. Spread the misery around!
  
• 66A: "Time After Time" singer Cyndi (LAUPER) — love her! "She's So Unusual" is great, and apt. Apt!

[Cyndi covers Prince!]

• 53D: Moe parodied him in some W.W. II-era Three Stooges shorts (ADOLF) — ... and yet you will never see HITLER in an NYT puzzle. I guess he's less evil when you call him by his first name.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. THE Song of 2010 ... translated. Awesomely. Adorably. (Sorry— the profanity is in the title itself, so I can't really hide it ... :)

Petrified weeper of myth / THU 10-14-10 / Fictional villain given name Julius / 1959 hit with lyric did he ever return

Constructor: Jim Hilger

Relative difficulty: Challenging

From Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

THEME: STAY and READ BETWEEN THE LINES (20A: With 40-Across, coloring advice ... and literally so and 58A: With 40-Across, infer something ... and literally so) — STAY and READ "literally" appear sandwiched between two LINES: MASON/DIXON (17A: Border names) and WHITESTAR (24A: Owner of the Titanic), on the one hand, and FREETHROW (52A: Unblockable shot) and PRODUCTION (61A: Factory output), on the other.



Word of the Day: MOSHE Arens (12D: ___ Arens, former Israeli defense minister) —

Moshe Arens (Hebrew: משה ארנס‎, born 27 December 1925) is an Israeli aeronautical engineer, researcher and former diplomat and politician. A member of the Knesset between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Arens has also served as the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and was professor at the Technion in Haifa. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was flat-out confusing to me. Took me longer than a Thursday's taken me in a good long while. In fact, it took me longer than Any puzzle on Any day of the week has taken me for several weeks (11-ish minutes). Admittedly, I wasn't solving under the best conditions: on laptop, on couch, half-listening to TV. But still, yikes. First, I got the theme early and couldn't believe that that was it — READ and STAY ... so what? Who cares? (it wasn't until Well after I had finished that I got the "literally so" part of the clues). But I couldn't make much headway At All in the entire W, NW, and N. Just ... jack. The two LINEs were invisible to me, MASON/DIXON because of the weird way it was clued, and WHITESTAR because I've never heard of it. Had WHITESPAR and then noticed that SPAR was in the grid and changed PENN to the (correct) TENN. (26D: Clingmans Dome is its highest point: Abbr.). Even before closing in on the tough NW, the NE had given me fits with two proper names I didn't know and odd cluing on the stuff I did. I admire the concept of this puzzle, but did not enjoy solving it. Cluing seemed off and vague, and answers just weren't that interesting. Not so fond of Scrabbliness when I have to suffer a HEXA TAK to get it.



Where to begin with the issues. Let's see: MOSHE and BEHAN (13D: Irish writer Brendan), not in my arsenal (though ultimately I just guessed MOSHE from the -HE and from knowing that MOSHE is a Hebrew name). WHITESTAR? Never heard of it. Had INTERCEPT for INTERDICT (37D: Head off). OEO? Not ringing bell (64D: Antipoverty agcy.). DR. NO? No. Had the "O" and could think only of IAGO (34A: Fictional villain whose given name is Julius). DWELT? I had DWELL — figured clue was asking me to recall the idiomatic phrase "to DWELL in the past," and that that was what the "?" was about in the clue [Live in the past?]. But I guess you DWELL "on" the past ... at any rate, I only turned the answer into the "past" tense when DEVOLE refused to be a real word (it's DEVOTE, 34D: Commit). SLEEVE was very hard to see (43A: It might be rolled up on a farm). HOTELs are for lots of people, not just tourists, so that didn't come easily (25D: Tourist locale). Had no Idea what the song lyric in 33A: 1959 hit with the lyric "Did he ever return? No, he never returned" was about. With that lyric, I figured (what else?) "M.I.A." But no, it's that stupid song I never heard of except in xwords, "MTA." Don't think of DISSIPATE as "going away" — thinning out, lessening, scattering, sure (3D: Go away). MASON/DIXON is clued as a plural, so went looking for terminal "S" ... wanted APR for 2D: Abbr. in many car ads (EPA). SCOTT'S is a paper towel to me, so no hope there (4D: Big name in lawn care) (paper towel is actually just SCOTT, it turns out). Raggedy ANDYS? After KENS, I was at a loss (5D: Some male dolls). All in all, a real slog for me in that whole quadrant.



Bullets:

• 5A: Some Spiders, informally (ALFAS) — as in Romeos. Took a little thought.
  
• 15A: Petrified weeper of myth (NIOBE) — terminal letter always gets me. I want to end it in "I," like NAOMI.
  
• 28A: Old ___ Bucket (Big Ten conference football prize) (OAKEN) — time at University of Michigan came in handy here—not that it helped terribly much.
  
• 30A: Worrying comment from a surgeon (OOPS) — Had "OH NO"
  
• 56A: "___ Es el Amor" (classic Spanish-language hit) (ESO) — No Idea, but what else was the answer going to be besides this ultra common bit of crossword fill?

• 6D: 2018 Super Bowl number (LII) — if you want to make me hate a Random Roman Numeral (RRN) more than I would normally, just clue it via a hypothetical future Super Bowl. And 52 is a good number: cards in a deck, weeks in a year, etc.
  
• 24D: Sonogram targets (WOMBS) — took me shockingly long to get this, even with the "B" in place. Could think only of ABS, likely because "targets" just sounds too violent. "We're going to target your abs," sure, in workout parlance. "We're going to target your WOMBS!" Uh, I'd run ladies.
  
• 35D: Thatching material (REED) — I don't thatch much these days, so ???
  
• 47D: Pressing concern for an astronaut? (G FORCE) — When I see "pressing" and "?" in the vicinity of one another, I'm thinking only of ironing.

Lastly, here are two (utterly unrelated) videos I have come across in the past two days—both excellent, in very different ways. I was going to wait until I had good puzzle-reasons for posting them, but ... pfft. My blog, I'll do what I want. Enjoy. If you want to cry then laugh, watch them in order. If you want the reverse experience, then reverse the experience.

[The crying one]

[The laughing one]

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Sandy :)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Swing bandleader Garber / THU 5-20-10 / Escape route city Casablanca / Dancer in Jabba Hutt's court / Baseball All-Star 1954-73

Constructor: Jim Hilger

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Ampersandwiches™ — 4 15-letter phrases with letter+AND+letter expressions on either end, with preposition+THE in the middle



Word of the Day: EMIL von Reznicek (26D: Viennese-born composer ___ von Reznicek) —

Emil Nikolaus [Freiherr] von Reznicek (4 May 1860 in Vienna, died 2 August 1945 in Berlin) was an Austrian late Romantic composer of Czech ancestry. [...] Today, Reznicek is remembered mainly for the overture to his opera Donna Diana, composed in 1894. The overture is a popular stand-alone piece at symphony concerts and also served as the theme for the American radio (1947-1955) series Challenge of the Yukon, which later migrated to the TV series (1955-1958) Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. It was also used in the 1950s on the BBC's Children's Hour by Stephen King-Hall for his talks on current affairs. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is an interesting twist on a familiar phenomenon—the Ampersandwich™. One of my commenters coined the term a while back as a way of describing those crossword answers that fit the form letter+AND+letter, e.g. RANDB, BANDB, RANDR, etc. The arrangement of the Ampersandwiches here is completely arbitrary, and the prepositions in the middle are random, as far as I can tell. Further, the achievement of the interlocking pattern of theme answers is not terribly impressive when you realize they all intersect in the middle of AND. Still, a cute idea. Grid structure, however, leaves you with only short fill in the rest of the grid — nothing longer than six letters (?!). So no interest there, and perhaps too much groany crosswordese (ONEL, ETON, ENDO, EGRETS, EARED, ATRI (gag), etc.), with the double-dose of movie characters (in rotationally symmetrical positions!) being perhaps the most grating part of this parade. OOLA is familiar crosswordese (forgot the consonant, but picked it up eventually), as is ELSA, only here, ELSA has a nutjob clue (57A: Dr. Schneider of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"). That character is too minor to be crossworthy. Way too minor. OOLA probably is too, but there are no other OOLAs (except the beginning of "OO LA LA"), so I can forgive that one (21A: Dancer in Jabba the Hutt's court, in "Return of the Jedi").



Theme answers:

• 17A: Grocery leisure? (R AND R IN THE A AND P)
  
• 3D: Interview near an inn? (Q AND A BY THE B AND B)
  
• 63A: Railroad's work to produce new products? (R AND D ON THE B AND O)
  
• 11D: Soul music over a financial institution's sound system? (R AND B AT THE S AND L)
  

My greatest struggles came in the tiny north and south sections. Noooo idea who [Swing bandleader Garber] was (JAN), and UNTO could have been INTO as far as I was concerned (7D: Billy Graham's "___ the Hills"), so ... trouble. Plus, I went with SOHO over NOHO (8D: It's west of New York's East Village). Thought maybe the [Chinese vessel] was a SCOW at one point, though that didn't sound terribly Chinese. Maybe a WOK. WOKS? Bah. Once I got KNELT (9D: Showed reverence, in a way), which gave me the "L" in OOLA, I then changed SOHO to NOHO and things fell into place. [Like many limericks: Abbr.] is a weird, weird clue for ANON. If I had to list stereotypical features of limericks, the fact that most are anonymous would not be on the list. In the south (by far the hardest for me), ELSA killed me. I had ABOVE for 53D: Overhead (ALOFT). Actually considered HAIL instead of the much more plausible SNOW for 58D: Winter fall. The only way I untangled it all was, finally, getting HEX off the "H" (65D: Bad spelling?). Then TWIX, then SNOW, ALOFT, ELSA. Done.

Bullets:

• 33A: Baseball All-Star, 1954-73 (MAYS) — should've given similar clue to AARON (19D: Sorkin who created "The West Wing")
  
• 35A: Word often cried after "Go" ("TEAM!") — I went with "FISH!"
  
• 46A: Elisabeth of "Hamlet 2" (SHUE) — I'd have gone with "The Karate Kid"; I don't even know what "Hamlet 2" is.

[hmmm, this trailer is eerily familiar ... have I claimed never to have heard of this movie before?]

• 51A: Bone below the femur (FIBULA) — I invented a bone called the TIBULA and then wondered how the hell TIRED could be right for 51D: Let go...
  
• 2D: Escape route city in "Casblanca" (ORAN) — "OMAN, ADEN, IRAN ... something like that. Come ON!" P.S. ORAN crossing ORANG???? (14A: Arboreal critter)
  
• 31D: Young salmon (SMOLT) — had STOAT (weasel) and SHOAT (piglet) in there before SMOLT ever saw the light of day.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

P.S. forgot to mention that longtime reader/commenter Dave Eckert (aka "imsdave") has his debut puzzle appearing in the LAT today! So congratulations to him. Also, the actress who played ELSA Schneider is named "Doody." That is all.