Five Norwegian kings / SUN 7-16-17 / Nighty-night wear / Bird bills / Actress Kazan / Word before Cong or Minh / Resident of Tatooine / Irish for "We Ourselves" / Hong Kong's Hang Index / Scott of "Joanie Loves Chachi"

Constructor: Andrea Carla Michaels and Pete Muller

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: DRINKS ALL AROUND (29D: "It's on me!" ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — Drinks are "all around" in circled letters in almost-symmetrical places "all around" the grid. Starting at 12 o'clock and proceeding clockwise, we have six drinks on our menu:

• BEER (what I'm drinking right now)
• PINK LADY
• COSMOPOLITAN (at 5 o'clock, which it is, somewhere)
  
• WINE
• TIA MARIA (I read this backwards at first, and was all, "What's a MAI TAI RA?")
• DIRTY MARTINI

Our revealer crosses COCKTAIL LOUNGES (61A: Places to get looped).


Word of the Day: NED ROREM (82A: "Miss Julie" opera composer, 1965) —

Ned Rorem (born October 23, 1923) is an American composer and diarist. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976. He received his early education in Chicago at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, the American Conservatory of Music and then Northwestern University. Later, Rorem moved on to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and finally the Juilliard School in New York City. Rorem was raised as a Quaker and makes reference to this in interviews in relation to his piece based on Quaker texts, A Quaker Reader. In 1966 he published The Paris Diary of Ned Rorem, which, with his later diaries, has brought him some notoriety, as he is honest about his and others' sexuality, describing his relationships with Leonard Bernstein, Noël Coward, Samuel Barber, and Virgil Thomson, and outing several others (Aldrich and Wotherspoon, eds., 2001). Rorem has written extensively about music as well. These essays are collected in anthologies such as Setting the Tone, Music from the Inside Out, and Music and People. His prose is much admired, not least for its barbed observations about such prominent musicians as Pierre Boulez. Rorem has composed in a chromatic tonal idiom throughout his career, and he is not hesitant to attack the orthodoxies of the avant-garde. (Wikipedia)

• • •

If the spirit moves you
Let me groove you

Laura here, toasting Rex with a BEER as he takes a break. We've seen more than a few alcohol-themed puzzles over the years -- heck, there's a whole book of them -- but here's a new twist (Charles Dickens walks into a bar. "I'll have a dry martini." Bartender: "Olive or twist?"). Nice double-revealer crossing in the center; fun finding the embedded drinks all around the grid. I would've liked slightly more consistency in the themers -- we have the generic categories BEER and WINE but then cocktails like DRY MARTINI, PINK LADY, and COSMOPOLITAN, and a liqueur: TIA MARIA. The challenge, I can imagine, was to find symmetrical alcohol varieties that would then fit all-roundly all around the grid. While I toast the constructors' ambition, their grid suffered in terms of fill that would accommodate the theme. ERNA (111A: Met soprano Berger), ERLE (20A: First name in courtroom fiction), ELSA (110A: Captain von Trapp's betrothed [which reminds me of this McSweeney's classic]), ORLE (53D: Shield border), and ERTE (101A: Artist who designed costumes for "Ben-Hur") are all handy combos of letters that have vowels on the ends and consonants in the middle. Cheers: new take on old theme; jeers: tired fill to get the new take to take.

As one of the 44D: Boomers' offspring (GENX), I appreciate a grid that contains both Joanie Loves Chachi (34D: BAIO [Scott of [the aforementioned] [who was a total asshole regarding costar Erin Moran's death earlier this year]) and FONZ[ie] (57D: 1970s TV cool dude, with "the").

"Sit on it!"

With Andrea's collaboration today, and -- since I last guest-posted -- puzzles by Susan Gelfand, Lynn Lempel, Zhouqin Burnikel, Ruth Margolin, and collaborations from Elayne Boosler and my college classmate Lisa Loeb, we are now up to 14% women constructors so far this year: 28 out of 169. 2017 is still tracking to be the worst year on record for women constructors at the New York Times. I encourage all aspiring constructors to take a look at Andy Kravis's new project, Grid Wars -- he has some excellent tips.

Bullets:

• SENG (12D: Hong Kong's Hang ___ Index) — An alternative to NYSE as a stock index in the fill.
• DRAKE (30A: Male duck) — Could've clued as "'Hotline Bling' artist who got his start on 'Degrassi: The Next Generation'." 
• NOME (43D: Gold rush city of 1899) — I had gotten this through crosses, and then going back and looking at the grid, at first I thought it was something like: Response to "Me!": "NO, ME!"
• DRAPE (106A: Hang) — How about, instead: "Clothing material source for 110A's rival"?

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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Video game character rescued by Link / SAT 7-15-17 / Incredible in modern slang / Watt per ampere squared / Traditional rite of passage among Masai / Capital whose name means city inside rivers

Constructor: Zachary Spitz

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Jack OAKIE (29D: Oscar nominee for "The Great Dictator") —

Jack Oakie (November 12, 1903 – January 23, 1978) was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television. He is best remembered for portraying Napaloni in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. (wikipedia)

• • •

Gonna pass on this one because of the stupid *&$^ing frat-boy (SIGMA CHI?) juxtaposition of BALLS and DICK at the top of the grid. Did he have a bet with his friends as to how much sexual material and innuendo he could cram in here. ARSE and SEX and KNELT and BLEW (!) and, I don't know, MELON? Ugh. SO BAD. Actually, more SAD than bad. The actual grid, overall, is pretty well made. But it's just a tiresomely Dude puzzle anyway, even without the cheap tittering. I mean, the only women in the puzzle look like this:

Oh, and this:

And then Michelle WIE, who is here because her name is convenient (24D: 2014 U.S. Women's Open champion). Even EVA manages to not be a woman, Somehow (5D: Spacewalk, for short). Oh, whoops. Almost forgot about TRACI Lords. OK ... so, she's a legit actress with a long resumé, but given this puzzle's ... let's say, prurience ... I'm guessing it's most interested in her early career (full disclosure: I own her album "1000 Fires"; it's pretty good).

I have seen AMAZEBALLS in a puzzle before, so this felt old, even though it is (apparently) new to the NYT (not saying much) (1A: Incredible, in modern slang). The only answer I really like here is TWEETSTORM (62A: Digital barrage). Marginal foodstuff names (DATE SUGAR? ROCK MELON?) are not my idea of a good time. ATTU and CKS are really really not my idea of a good time. PLUTOMANIA is super made-up, and also sounds like some kind of Disney fetish (57A: Excessive desire for wealth), which is SAD, as that corner is nice otherwise. OK, I'm done with this one. I miss Patrick Berry's Friday puzzle. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS one of my Twitter followers just floated the theory that the puzzle was actually giant subtweet of the president*.  SAD and TAX EVASION etc. I think if you look *exclusively* at the SE corner, you can make that case. Otherwise, I dunno...

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