Ruler after diet / MON 4-23-12 / Ruler in vegetable garden / Cone-shaped shelter / Folded Mexican dish / Ruler with custard desserts

Constructor: Michael David

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Rulers — words ending in "KING" are reimagined (in the clues) as phrases related to KINGs

• 4D: Ruler after a diet? (THIN KING)
• 20A: Ruler on a golf course? (PAR KING)
• 10D: Ruler on a beach? (TAN KING)
• 20D: Ruler in a Utah city? (PROVO KING)
• 40D: Ruler with custard desserts? (FLANKING)
• 42D: Ruler in a W.C.? (LOO KING)
• 53A: Ruler in a vegetable garden? (PEA KING)

Word of the Day: CLOY (57D: Fill to excess) —

v., cloyed, cloy·ing, cloys.

v.tr.
To cause distaste or disgust by supplying with too much of something originally pleasant, especially something rich or sweet; surfeit.

v.intr.
To be too filling, rich, or sweet.

[Short for obsolete accloy, to clog, from Middle English acloien, from Old French encloer, to drive a nail into, from Medieval Latin inclāvāre : Latin in-, in; see in-² + Latin clāvāre, to nail (from clāvus, nail).]

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/cloy#ixzz1sourhDlt

• • •

LOO KING, but no PEE KING?

Despite the abundance of KINGs (i.e. tons of squares that are easily filled in once you catch on to the theme), this one played harder-than-normal for a Monday, for several reasons. First, there's 1A: Late, as a library book (PAST DUE). Tens of thousands of people will either think or (as I did) write in OVERDUE, as that is the more commonly used phrase. The phrase in the grid is totally valid, just not the one that is likely to leap to mind first (if, like my wife, you are smart and check the crosses before writing anything in, then this answer won't affect you much, if at all). Then there's the fact that it's not obvious where the theme answers are in this grid, so when you first encounter a "?" clue, it's not going to be clear that it's theme material. Could just be any old "?" clue. This was true for me at 4D: Ruler after a diet? (THIN KING). I was sure that the pun was on "diet" and that (because of "ruler") I was supposed to think of "diet" in the sense of "legislative assembly" (e.g. Diet of Worms) (wife, strangely, had same thought). Then there was the fact that the SUMMON (32D: Order to come) / FUME (40A: Be furious) nexus was just tough. Those clues were hard (I thought "to come" meant "in the future" and assumed [Be furious] was RAGE). Both wife and I got hung up there. Then there's the meaning of CLOY that I was not familiar with (57D: Fill to excess). I knew "be sickeningly sweet," but not "overfill." At four letters, of course I wanted SATE there (also wanted EEK at 56A: Comic strip cry, since I was going off the K—if clue had said ["Cathy" cry], I wouldn't have made that error). Then there's PULE (53D: Whine). It's a word. Just not that common a word. I've seen it only in crosswords. Wife claims never to have seen it.

So this played more Tuesday than Monday. Quality-wise, it has pluses and minuses. The theme is actually cute and kind of funny, and though having So Many (a cloying number of) KINGs in the grid feels excessive, the amusement offered by the clues as well as the relative difficulty of the rest of the grid mostly made up for what could have been an annoying repetitive feature. The fill undoubtedly could've been stronger in more expert hands. There's a Lot of crosswordese (and whatever TING is). But overall, I think this is a decent effort. Maybe I'm biased because my (real) first name is Michael and my middle name is David and so it looks like 2/3 of me constructed this puzzle. But I doubt it.



Thanks to (crossword constructor) Alex Boisvert for recently tweeting about the ROYGBIV mnemonic (66A: Rainbow mnemonic). I'm sure I would've gotten it easily anyway, but Alex's tweet ensured that the answer was right at the top of my brain.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld