We wouldn't get the lovely Sand Witch dad joke. The violence and white supremacism depicted in Popeye would be a whole paragraph. Rex would have said, '4 sandwiches, that's Deli-ghtful was a fun take on the theme.

As noted elsewhere, xword-ese is stuff like ORR, OTT, ENO that appear WAY more often in puzzles than real life. This would be the only part of the puzzle Rex likes. I feel a little slow on the uptake this morning, not immediately sensing a guest (welcome back again) blogger. Should modern words be omitted because people above a certain age might not have heard of them? I thought we wanted fresh, modern fill? It ain't serious, but I'm just really confused by this criticism. And beyond that if you're really stumped, every single one of its crosses is super gettable. It's also part of the theme, so if you're really stuck, start thinking of deli sandwiches that might work. SUBREDDIT, on the other hand, has never been used before that I can find and is part of a site with millions of users from various age groups the 'reddit' part at the very least is one of the most well-known modern-day forums. Not necessarily everyday words that show up far too often and/or completely obscure things for the average English speaker that have useful letters like APSE and ERSE? Like isn't crosswordese supposed to be common, generally shorter fill, that is only used because they have common letters and fit in a lot of configurations? OTERI comes to mind. I guess I'm not entirely sure what crosswordese is, but I think SUBREDDIT is.

OYL (23A: Olive _ ) - Who doesn't love Popeye? Couldn't find very many great cartoon clips, so here's Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl.

Seriously, no idea why people like this gross sandwich. Took another because surely I had to be missing something, and realized that what I was missing was that it was actually more like an old tire slathered in sugary tomato. Took one bite and it was like enjoying a fresh wad of wet newspaper with some barbecue sauce. I've had one of these recently just to see what the hype was all about. MCRIB (1A: Periodically sold fast-food item) - I'll admit it.Make it with cheddar and throw some green apple on that bad boy and you've got yourself a gourmet meal. My favorite sandwich is a classic grilled cheese. What do you call a sorceress at the beach? A sand witch! As usual, I find very little to say about this Monday theme.

Oh, and did anyone else have CZAR for TSAR? Took me ages to find and correct that. Weird discrepancy with the foreign language clues why is CASA 'house in Mexico' but OEUF is 'Egg: Fr.'? I'm not a fan of the whole 'in _' style for foreign language clues anyway, but adding 'Fr.' is just kinda lazy.there must be another way. SUBREDDIT is total crosswordese, I only got it because I'm what the kids call 'too online.' Good joke on BAR NONE. So we definitely don't need to sweat like the dude in the post's picture - it ain't TZAR.I liked this one overall, seemed like just about the right challenge level for a Monday with some interesting fill, but I had a few nitpicks. In every Shorts-era clue, it is marked as a variant with Var. TZAR has only been used 6 times under Shortz, and not at all since 2007. Eight of them are for the the other meaning of the word, and include: Of the 266 clues for TSAR during the Shortz era, I don't see any that refer to anything other than a Russian ruler.Ĭontrast that with the last 13 clues for CZAR.

More recent cluing always uses true monarchy references for TSAR, but leans toward cluing for the Americanized meaning of a powerful person for CZAR.Īnd of course tons more.

Spelling alphabet czar tsar reddit