From the LO FAT TAE BO of the NORTE to the KOI of the IONIAN ISLA in the south. Someone who works with class. 69D: Last seen in 1985 and another addition to the seafaring word bank we go to now and then, a BRIGANTINE has two masts, yes, but apparently only one is square-rigged. Babe who never lied. I thought MISS ME was pretty cute, after I got it. 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).
54 Matthews St. Binghamton NY 13905. Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (normal Tuesday time, but it's 16 wide, so... must've been easier than normal, by a bit). By the way, BRIGANTINE is probably the etymological root of the term BRIG for a ship's prison. 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. And here: I'll stick a PayPal button in here for the mobile users. Babe who never lied - crossword clue. This also was true of BRIGANTINE and CASEY KASEM, two unusual long entries that made the chunky bottom left corner fillable. ANKLE INJURY (66A: Serious setback for a kicker). Or my favorite, at 100A, the "Unemployed rancher, " or DERANGED CATTLEMAN, which made me think so much of this old song, for some reason. Of course the parameter of matching word lengths for symmetry also went into the choices.
INTERIOR DESIGNER, and it can't have been easy to embed that many *well-known* designers names inside two-word phrases. If you're feeling at all distempered right now, the rest of the entries include: Someone who works with nails. RADIO RANGE (52A: Aerial navigation beacon). 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. Crossword clue babe who never lied. You gotta do better than this. The word RESELL has No Such Connotation. Somehow, it is January again, which means it's time for my week-long, once-a-year pitch for financial contributions to the blog.
103D: One of those occasional bits of chivalry regalia that pops up in the puzzle, an ARMET is a helmet that completely enclosed one's head while being light enough to actually wear, which was state of the art once. 16D: I was absolutely taken in by this clue — read right over Feburary, which is next month MISSPELLED. Anyway, if you are so moved, there is a Paypal button in the sidebar, and a mailing address here: ℅ Michael Sharp. Try 83A, the "Unemployed loan officer" — aptly, a DISTRUSTED BANKER.
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. There are seven theme entries today, running across at 22, 29, 46, 63, 83, 100 and 111. 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. This resulted in lots of longer-fill entries involving some less common words and phrases. That's one shy of his Sunday golden jubilee, and it puts him in fine company.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld. I'm sure there are many more. Whatever happens, this blog will remain an outpost of the Old Internet: no ads, no corporate sponsorship, no whistles and bells. Minor: somehow INTERIOR DESIGNER does not seem repurposed enough; that is, we're still talking about designers, and what with Vera WANG getting into home furnishings (maybe she's been there a long time already; I wouldn't know), somehow the distance between the revealer phrase and the concept of a fashion designer isn't stark enough to make the reveal really snap. 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. "Scalp" specifically implies massive mark-up. However, there are several problems. Today's puzzle is Randolph Ross's 49th Sunday contribution (he's made 110 puzzles, according to, in total). Tour Rookie of the Year).
Once we reached into the 70s and 80s with BEEPERS, entertaining UTAHANS and MCDLTS, I was on a bit firmer ground. I winced my way through this one, from beginning to end. DISILLUSIONED MAGICIAN. I hear Florida's nice.
SPECIAL MESSAGE for the week of January 10-January 17, 2016. 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. 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. SNOW ANGELS (28A: Things kids make in the winter). Alex Rodriguez aka A-ROD (69A: Youngest player ever to hit 500 home runs, familiarly).