Accented part of poetic foot / THU 2-10-11 / Glazier's frame / Line of cliffs / Star of TV's 8 Simple Rules / Part of New Haven landscape

Constructor: Derek Bowman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Name word ladder — from KARAN to SEGAL in four moves


Word of the Day: ARSIS (28A: Accented part of a poetic foot) —

n., pl., -ses (-sēz').

1. 1. The short or unaccented part of a metrical foot, especially in quantitative verse.
   2. The accented or long part of a metrical foot, especially in accentual verse.
2. Music. The upbeat or unaccented part of a measure.

[Middle English, raising of the voice, from Late Latin, raising of the voice, accented part of a metrical foot, from Greek, raising of the foot (marking the upbeat), the unaccented part of a metrical foot, from aeirein, to lift.] [oh, no, Definition 1 isn't confusing and contradictory-sounding at All...]

• • •

Kept waiting for the trick to come into view. It never did. I was done and wondered what had happened. Then I saw the name ladder. Ho hum. Grid is OK, except the NW, what with the odd-looking REEDIT and MENTEES and the from-outer-space ARSIS (never heard of it, and I teach poetry on a regular basis—if it's obscure to a poetry-teaching English Ph.D., it's ObScure). I cannot imagine having any occasion to talk about something called the ARSIS—maybe the musical meaning is more common to musicians than the poetic one is to literary scholars. Little heavy on the odd names (TESSA, ROS, a pretty marginal O'CONNER) (38A: 2010 Olympic ice dancing gold medalist ___ Virtue + 59A: Children's author Asquith + 2D: Patricia who wrote "Woe Is I"), the RE-words (REEDIT, RENAMING, the vomity REASSESS), odd plurals (MENTEES, SETTERS), prefixes (ENTO-, SACRO-), and ITs (IT'S WAR, TAKE IT, KEEP AT IT). I do love MAIGRET. And KATEY SAGAL. And SERRANO peppers. Other than that, the best thing I can say about the puzzle is that it was wicked easy—about a minute faster than yesterday's. Only part that really held me up was the part where Ben Franklin apparently writes about CHESS (43D: Benjamin Franklin's "The Morals of ___"). I had no idea, just as I have no idea why anyone would want to go from KARAN to SEGAL. What's the point?


[IT'S WAR!]

Theme answers:

• 16A: Big name in women's fashion (DONNA KARAN)
  
• 20A: Supreme Court justice who was formerly a U.S. solicitor general (ELENA KAGAN)
  
• 31A: Host of an Emmy-winning PBS series (CARL SAGAN)
  
• 47A: Star of TV's "8 Simple Rules" (KATEY SAGAL) — more iconic parts for her include Peg Bundy on "Married... With Children" and the voice of Leela on "Futurama."
  
• 52A: Author who co-wrote the screenplay for the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" (ERICH SEGAL)
  

Bullets:

• 15A: Glazier's frame (SASH) — forgot what "glazier" meant—someone who cuts and sets glass.
  
• 54A: Part of the New Haven landscape (ELMS) — ugh. Why should anyone know or care what kind of trees are common at Yale? Eli-tist clue. I had ELIS!
  
• 57A: New York city where Ogden Nash was born (RYE) — yet more northeastern provincialism.
  
• 4D: "___ Man Answers" (1962 Bobby Darin / Sandra Dee film) ("IF A") — never heard of it, but the answer here was pretty easily inferrable.

• 11D: He said "I just put my feet in the air and move them around" (ASTAIRE) — another name for this very name-heavy puzzle. I barely saw the clue. Had the whole middle section, saw that the clue was asking for a person, looked at what I had ... and wrote in ASTAIRE.
  
• 15D: Line of cliffs (SCARP) — this eluded me for a bit, as all I could think of was ARETE.
• 39D: Oscar-winning actor who played Napoleon, Mussolini and W.C. Fields (STEIGER) — as in Rod, whom I used to get confused with ROD Serling (before moving to Rod Serling's birthplace). Guys just aren't named ROD anymore. I think ROD Carew was officially the last one.
  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]