Joerg

@MJ Another physicist (though not a professor) and with you on the GAMMA. There are perfectly fine meaning for this that are not that obscure. Although here the crossings are doable, as for a few other ones that fall into your weird & arcane category. But ARIE and YOLANDA crossing TARA ROAD and BEHAR – that is quite a Natick indeed. Both me and my sometimes co-solver knew neither of the four answers for certain – and guessing all four crossing letters correctly opens up a lot of combinatorial options...

@Ned S There is difficult and there is Naticky. Having proper names of people ("Hadid YOL_ND_", "Joy B_H_R"), places ("_RI_ Crown Theater") and undefined somethings in the title of some book ("T_R_ROAD") cross – with each of these people, places and book titles being obscure enough that successfully guessing them or looking them up doesn't make you feel like having learned something of sustained value – pushes this from challenging difficulty to an annoying display of vocabulary. I agree with @Casey (and some other commenters) that the editors let something pass that was neither fun nor satisfying – and that is very different than the feeling I get from making it through difficulty with a learning opportunity.

@Bill when you also don't know the name of some TV Joy, then _RI_ even if we assume two vowels becomes up to 36 possibilities. And while the two 'A's in YOL_ND_ Hadid are guessable they open up additional combinatorics when you search for the mistake in your guesses. It wasn't unthinkable that the solution could involve TORO ROAD (bringing bulls into it) ORIC (Crown Theater) Hadid YOLONDI Joy B'CHIR So while I can get through an isolated Natick, especially with the instant verification of online solving, this SW corner took it to another level – at least for some solvers.