This also was true of BRIGANTINE and CASEY KASEM, two unusual long entries that made the chunky bottom left corner fillable. 16D: I was absolutely taken in by this clue — read right over Feburary, which is next month MISSPELLED. For example, at 22A, we have an "Unemployed salon worker" — think beauty shop, here, and you'll get an out-of-work or DISTRESSED HAIRDRESSER, a coiffeur who's been dis-tressed.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld. Moving from interior design to fashion design... just doesn't have pop. THEME: INTERIOR DESIGNER (41A: Elle Decor reader... or any of the names hidden in 18-, 28-, 52- and 66-Across) —there are *fashion* DESIGNERs in the INTERIOR of every theme answer: Theme answers: - FARM ANIMALS (18A: Most of the leading characters in "Babe"). Some very brief entries were gotchas, like EPA (I thought Carter set up this agency) and BAA, of all things, simply because I'd only thought of cotes as housing doves. And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users. ANKLE INJURY (66A: Serious setback for a kicker). BUT... the biggest problem here is the fill, which is painful in many, many places. Green paint (n. )— in crosswords, a two-word phrase that one can imagine using in conversation, but that is too arbitrary to stand on its own as a crossword answer (e. g. SOFT SWEATER, NICE CURTAINS, CHILI STAIN, etc. And can we please, please, in the name of all that is holy, retire TAE BO. They each define a person with a particular career, who has been removed from that particular career; their specific state of unemployment can be expressed as a pun. Of course the parameter of matching word lengths for symmetry also went into the choices. It will always be free. There's also the obscurity / strangeness RADIO RANGE (which I would've thought meant how far a radio signal reaches) and the utter green paint* of ANKLE INJURY. Babe who never lied crossword club.com. SNOW ANGELS (28A: Things kids make in the winter).
This is my 49th Sunday Times puzzle and for the first time I can say I had a glut of possible theme entries. I thought MISS ME was pretty cute, after I got it. I might accept HEAD or NECK or BRAIN INJURY as a stand-alone "body part INJURY" phrase, but all other body parts feel arbitrary. I'm sure there are many more. Trying to get back to the puzzle page? However, there are several problems. I chose the seven in this puzzle because they each had adjectives that had to do with being fired or quitting. Tour Rookie of the Year). 90A: A shop rule like 'No returns' is still a common CAVEAT. Today was a day when my mental repository of names came up short, so I struggled with BEAMON, CULP, THIEU and a couple of others; I did appreciate solving BABE and then getting THE BAMBINO, and I'll take any reference to LASSIE that I can get, the cleverer the better. I hear Florida's nice. Babe who never lied. The word RESELL has No Such Connotation.
There are seven theme entries today, running across at 22, 29, 46, 63, 83, 100 and 111. Just the singular, personal voice of someone talking passionately about a topic he loves. As I have said in years past, I know that some people are opposed to paying for what they can get for free, and still others really don't have money to spare. SUNDAY PUZZLE — They say that comedy is just tragedy plus time (who they are can be pretty much up to you, since the Venn diagram of humorists and people credited with that expression is about a perfect circle). The idea is very simple: if you read the blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), please consider what it's worth to you on an annual basis and give accordingly. Subscribers can take a peek at the answer key. It's certainly a compliment of the highest order and should be used as such more often — or would that cheapen it? It's an easy Tuesday puzzle; we shouldn't be seeing even one of those answers, let alone all of them. By the way, BRIGANTINE is probably the etymological root of the term BRIG for a ship's prison. RADIO RANGE (52A: Aerial navigation beacon). I figured it was O. K. because I have had more than a few batteries die on me. Lastly, [Scalp] does not equal RESELL. If you're feeling at all distempered right now, the rest of the entries include: Someone who works with nails. Alex Rodriguez aka A-ROD (69A: Youngest player ever to hit 500 home runs, familiarly).
Anyway, if you are so moved, there is a Paypal button in the sidebar, and a mailing address here: ℅ Michael Sharp. I was inspired by a slightly related joke category: "Old___ never die, they just …" e. g., "Old cashiers never die, they just check out. You gotta do better than this. Someone who works with class. This is to say that the revealer doesn't have the snappy wow factor that comes when we are forced to really reconceive what a phrase means, to think of it in a completely different way. SPECIAL MESSAGE for the week of January 10-January 17, 2016. DISILLUSIONED MAGICIAN. Try 83A, the "Unemployed loan officer" — aptly, a DISTRUSTED BANKER. This resulted in lots of longer-fill entries involving some less common words and phrases. I winced my way through this one, from beginning to end. From the LO FAT TAE BO of the NORTE to the KOI of the IONIAN ISLA in the south. EYE INJURYs are real, but would you really buy EYE INJURY in your puzzle?
And those aren't even the nadir. INTERIOR DESIGNER, and it can't have been easy to embed that many *well-known* designers names inside two-word phrases. 24D: Perhaps this entry defines itself, as it's a debut today, RARE GEM. Both kinds of people are welcome to continue reading my blog, with my compliments. STU Ungar (43D: Poker great Ungar). Here are some of the other possibilities that didn't make the cut: DEPARTED ACTOR, DEPRESSED DRY CLEANER, DEBUNKED CAMP COUNSELOR, DETESTED EXAMINER, DEBRIEFED LAWYER, DECOMPOSED SONG WRITER, DEFROCKED DRESSMAKER, DEPOSED MODEL, DISCHARGED SHOPPER, DISCOUNTED CENSUS TAKER, DISSOLVED PUZZLER, DISBARRED BALLERINA, DISCONCERTED MUSICIAN, DISINTERESTED BANKER. I value my independence too much. 72A: I was briefly flummoxed by the clue here and looked for a question like "Where were you, " that would have been in response, or something like "Am I late? " Whatever happens, this blog will remain an outpost of the Old Internet: no ads, no corporate sponsorship, no whistles and bells.
The timing of this puzzle, vis-à-vis the government shutdown, is an unfortunate coincidence; our lineup is scheduled and set so far in advance that this kind of juxtaposition can happen, and I hope that nobody is dismayed. Just put it in a crosswordese retirement community with ERLE Stanley Gardner and Perle MESTA and other fine people who shouldn't be allowed near crosswords any more. Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]. Or my favorite, at 100A, the "Unemployed rancher, " or DERANGED CATTLEMAN, which made me think so much of this old song, for some reason.
I have no interest in cordoning it off, nor do I have any interest in taking advertising. I have no way of knowing what's coming from the NYT, but the broader world of crosswords looks very bright, and that is sustaining. 54 Matthews St. Binghamton NY 13905. Hint: you would not). Over and over again, the fill made me shake my head and grimace. Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (normal Tuesday time, but it's 16 wide, so... must've been easier than normal, by a bit).