Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Evan Kalish

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:47—personal best Tuesday time)

THEME: GOLF BALL (60A: Sports item that can be found at the starts of 17-, 21-, 32-, 42- and 54-Across) — places a GOLF BALL might be on the way from the TEE to the CUP:

Theme answers:

TEE SHIRT (17A: Souvenir from a concert tour)
ROUGH RIDER (21A: Cavalryman under Teddy Roosevelt during the Spanish-American War)
BUNKER HILL (32A: Revolutionary War battle in Boston)
GREEN SALAD (42A: Leafy course)
CUP OF COCOA (54A: Hot order with marshmallows)

Word of the Day: AVICII (59A: Late Swedish electronic musician with the 2013 hit "Wake Me Up") —

Tim Bergling (Swedish: [tɪm ²bærjlɪŋ]; 8 September 1989 – 20 April 2018), known professionally as Avicii(/əˈviːtʃi/, Swedish: [aˈvɪtːɕɪ]), was a Swedish electronic musician, DJ, and songwriter who specialized in audio programming, remixing and record producing.
At the age of 16, Bergling began posting his remixes on electronic music forums, which led to his first record deal. He rose to prominence in 2011 with his single "Levels". His debut studio album, True (2013), blended electronic music with elements of multiple genres and received generally positive reviews. It peaked in the top ten in more than fifteen countries and topped international dance charts; the lead single, "Wake Me Up", topped most music markets in Europe and reached number four in the United States.
In 2015, Bergling released his second studio album, Stories, and in 2017 he released an EP, Avīci (01). His catalog also included the singles "I Could Be the One" with Nicky Romero, "You Make Me", "X You", "Hey Brother", "Addicted to You", "The Days", "The Nights", "Waiting for Love", "Without You" and "Lonely Together". Bergling was nominated for a Grammy Award for his work on "Sunshine" with David Guetta in 2012 and "Levels" in 2013. Several music publications credit Bergling as among the DJs who ushered electronic music into Top 40 radio in the early 2010s.
Bergling retired from touring in 2016 due to health problems, having suffered stress and poor mental health for several years. On 20 April 2018, Bergling died by suicide in Muscat, Oman. He was buried on 8 June in his hometown of Stockholm. His posthumous third album titled Tim was released in 2019. (wikipedia)

• • •

Don't know if I'm still on some kind of speed-solving high from this past weekend of tournament competition, but man did I smoke this one. Set a personal Tuesday best despite multiple wrong answers and assorted sputterings. I think the themers themselves were all so transparent that it was easy get a toehold in every section, and so I covered ground really quickly, in general. I like the theme pretty well. I don't know about the cluing on the revealer—I guess the GOLF BALL"can be found" in those places, some (rare, short-lived times, in the course of play), but the ball cannot actually be "found" there now, so the cluing is weird. I think the revealer ought rather to have highlighted the fact that the first words of the themers trace a theoretical Par 4 hole performance as one might really play it, from the TEE to the ROUGH to a BUNKER to the GREEN and then in the CUP in 4. Missed the fairway *and* put it in the sand, but still got down in 4. CUP OF COCOA is a slightly contrived answer (I mean, BOWL OF JELL-O is a thing, but ... is it?), but I'll allow it. It's a functioning theme, just fine for a Tuesday.

As for the fill, it was OK, though it's kinda wobbly or at least questionable in a number of places. I really want to question AVICII, who was a huge force in the musical world, it's true, and whose name was all over even non-music media a few years ago, after his untimely death, but I would stake my vast blogging empire on a bet that a significant majority of NYT solvers will have little to no idea who he is. It's weird to introduce him to the NYT solving world on a Tuesday (as I suspected, AVICII is a debut appearance). His name is a hilarious outlier, compared to everything else in the grid. It's the only answer I can imagine even a casual solver's not knowing. Well ... there's also MT ADAMS (what the hell?), but at least there, the clue pretty much hands you the answer (50A: Washington peak named after the second U.S. president). I don't know that AVICII is good fill. I am always happy to see the puzzle branch out in terms of its regular fields of interest, and AVICII's popularity is certainly sufficiently substantial (if not with the typical NYTXW-solving crowd), but ... it feels like it was crammed down in that corner just 'cause. Just to get a debut answer in there. You mean I gotta endure UVEA and EFILE and SNOCAT because you desperately wanted to be the first to drop AVICII? On a Tuesday? Feels weird. Like it's not here for good reasons. And I'm saying this as someone who (sorta kinda) knew the name (stored it away after all the obits rolled out). I mean, if you need him, by all means use him, but if you don't ...

I got slowed down a few times, nowhere worse than at the very end, by a cruddy little federal agcy. (61D: U.S. consumer watchdog, for short) (FTC). That's the Federal Trade Commission, right? Ugh, I would avoid fed agcys. when possible—it's just an alphabet soup, and no one's ever happy to see those answers. But if you needed one, why not go with the FDA (an agcy. whose name is way way way more familiar to me) and then just change MOONS to MOODS? You'd get I DID at 63A, which I like better than INIT, even if I SEE is very nearby (so you'd get two "I ___" phrases in close proximity). Actually, all the fill down there could be totally reworked, and maybe should be. None of it is exactly shining. Anyway, sorting that little answer cost me many seconds. I also wrote in ON THE QT before ON THE DL (7D: Hush-hush), ST. PATTY before ST. PADDY (23A: March parade honoree, colloquially), and needed all the crosses for the ugly legalese HERETO (35D: Regarding this point). But again, theme works fine, and I can't really complain about "difficulty" if I set a personal record, so as Tuesdays go, I'm not mad.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. [24D: Song that can't be sung alone] (DUET) ... "Can't" *Can't*? Everyone who has ever sung "Islands in the Stream" in the shower begs to differ.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:10) (felt much harder)

THEME: E-stuff— Theme clues are that I guess are actual things starting with an E-prefix (E-waste, really??), and then answers are just an example of the post-E part of the clue in which all the vowels are "E"s:

Theme answers:

"THE SECRET" (18A: E-book?) (because "The Secret" is a book title in which all the vowels are "E"s...)
DELETED SCENE (20A: E-waste?)
TERM SHEET (27A: E-filing?)
REFERENCE LETTER (37A: E-mail?)
ENTER HERE (45A: E-sign?)
SEVENTEEN (58A: E-mag?)

Word of the Day: TERM SHEET (27A) —

A term sheet is a bullet-point document outlining the material terms and conditions of a business agreement. After a term sheet has been "executed", it guides legal counsel in the preparation of a proposed "final agreement". It then guides, but is not necessarily binding, as the signatories negotiate, usually with legal counsel, the final terms of their agreement. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow, this was terrible. I haven't felt so completely put off by every facet of a puzzle like this in a good long while. I mean, everywhere I turned, the fill was atrocious; there was no escape. And the theme, which, in retrospect, might've been at least reasonably well executed, ended up being way too dense, resulting in two bad themers that probably could've been done away with *entirely*, which would've resulted (probably?) in much, much, much cleaner fill. So we get too much of a bad thing, which ends up wrecking everything else. This should've been sent back for serious revisions if the theme ... tickled ... the editor so much. What is E-waste? Whatever it is, it is not remotely as much of an in-the-language thing as all the other E-terms. Chuck that clue and answer in the sea. And TERM SHEET, ugh. There's a term only a lawyer could love. Wife and I had never heard of it. I guess it gets ... filed? And "THE SECRET" ... is your E-book? I barely remember that book. What ... was it? Feels Y2K / magical thinking-ish. Am I in the ballpark? Hang on ... Well, a bit later than Y2K, but otherwise, yeah, garbage:

The Secret is a best-selling 2006 self-help book by Rhonda Byrne, based on the earlier film of the same name. It is based on the belief of the law of attraction, which claims that thoughts can change a person's life directly. The book has sold 30 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 50 languages. // Critics have claimed that books such as this promote political complacency and a failure to engage with reality, and that "it isn’t new, and it isn’t a secret". Scientific claims made in the book have been rejected by a range of critics, pointing out that the book has no scientific foundation. (wikipedia)

Speaking of garbage: the fill. From the ridiculous gunk of ESTD EOS SCH to the alphabet soup of FTC ATF to the never-welcome OOX (a noxious answer whose noxiousness is compounded by its faux-cutesy "aint-I-a-stinker?" cluing, ugh) (35A: It's for naught in noughts-and-crosses) (n.b.: "noughts-and-crosses" is British for "tic tac toe"), to, well, everything. Is it INURES or ENURES, who cares, no one, but you still gotta guess! Sorry, you guessed wrong (41A: Accustoms). Plural DNAS. AS NEAR?? EERO ENRY and the ERN ERA! Then there was SHE-CAT, which ... stop. It's just a cat. OPEN FIRE is super-grim in this ERA of mass shootings.

Lastly, I was racking my brain for an answer that made sense for [City south of Yosemite] ... only to find it was the City I Grew Up In. No one, but no one, would describe FRESNO that way. It is certainly geographically true (lots of cities are south of Yosemite), but it is hours away, in (and I can't stress this enough) an entirely different eco-system, i.e. a valley that is a desert that ... look you're gonna have to trust me here, if I wanted to orient you to FRESNO, I might use Bakersfield or Sacramento or maybe the Sierra Nevadas generally, but Yosemite?? LOL, no. My god I just saw OOX again, so I am nauseated and have to stop. To sum up: theme might've worked OK at four answers; at six, it's a disaster—theme stretched too thin, and grid absolutely rekt. Ugh, SCH. Why? Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: DIVE BAR (40A: Seedy hangout ... or a hint to finishing four Across answers in this puzzle)— four Across answers end by taking a "dive" downward; the part that dives is also a kind of "bar":

Theme answers:

SNAIL/SPACE (1A: Extremely slow speed)
GE/MINI (11A: Sign of spring)
TRAN/SPORTS (49A: Conveys)
ES/CROW (62A: Something to hold money in)

Word of the Day:"OMEGA MAN" (18A: 1971 title role for Charlton Heston, with "the") —

The Omega Man (stylized as The Ωmega Man) is a 1971 American science fiction film directed by Boris Sagal and starring Charlton Heston as a survivor of a global pandemic. It was written by John William Corrington and Joyce Corrington, based on the 1954 novel I Am Legend by the American writer Richard Matheson. The film's producer, Walter Seltzer, went on to work with Heston again in the dystopian science-fiction film Soylent Green in 1973.^[2]
The Omega Man is the second adaptation of Matheson's novel. The first was The Last Man on Earth (1964) which starred Vincent Price. A third adaptation, I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, was released in 2007. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a really lovely puzzle. The theme is impeccably executed. I've seen "words that shift up / down / diagonally" themes before but this one has a novel rationale for the veering, and a themer that is both lively in its own right and perfect as a revealer. Here's how you know the theme has been very well crafted. It's the little things—the fact that the Across parts of the themers look just like ordinary crossword fill, so it's not just that "bars""dive," but that the Across answer at first appears to be a real answer that just isn't quite right ("How is a GEM a sign of spring!!!?"). Further, the bars are all different from one another. That is, they all take the meaning of the word "bar" differently—there's one you drink at, but then there's the small fridge in your hotel room, a key on your keyboard, and a lever for ... prying or jimmying or whatever. The grid isn't overly dense with theme stuff, so the fill can breathe and therefore Be Interesting. There's a few things I would wish away if I could (ELIELI, TES, ATOB), but most of it is, at worst, solid. I don't think of LITERATI as "scholarly," perhaps because I work with scholars and LITERATI seems far too broad and fancy a term to describe most of them (15A: Scholarly sorts). LITERATI sounds urbane and sophisticated, whereas "scholarly" evokes "professorial" to me. Also, LITERATI sounds superficial, somehow—like it's more about the fame (?) of the person than the actual erudition. I am clearly overthinking this. The point is that LITERATI evokes Tom Wolfe to me, whereas "scholarly" evokes someone you've never heard of writing things you'll never read. Fame v. obscurity.

Loved the double dose of Women's World Cup (champions Team USA and coach Jill ELLIS). Also loved 29D: One crying "Uncle!" for NIECE. Totally got me. OMIGOD is weird, in that it is clued as an [Oft-abbreviated outburst] when it, too is an abbreviation (isn't it?). "Oh my God" --> OMIGOD --> OMG. I feel really bad for whoever inspired the clue for FLIRT (26D: Use goo-goo- eyes and make small talk, say). The latter strategy has too much in common with "passing time at some dumb job thing you don't want to be at" or "talking to your mom's friends," whereas the former strategy sounds sad, desperate, and possibly predatory. *Use* goo-goo eyes? Not *make*? "Use" makes it sound like a weird strategy. "Use the goo-goo eyes, Luke..." Anyway, I don't know if I know how to FLIRT, but I feel like this clue is not giving you good flirting advice.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. anyone else SLOP when they should've GLOPped??? (7D: Hardly Michelin-star fare). I had SUCK for 7A: Have a sudden inspiration? (GASP), and I was really, really happy with that answer. Oh well.

P.P.S. TES today is short for "tight ends" (71A: Versatile offensive football positions, for short)

P.P.P.S. This exchange made me laugh

[SEGA!]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Evan Mahnken

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:10) (one-handed) (eating late-night pb sandwich)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: WILHELM SCREAM (35A: Classic sound effect in an action film when someone is badly injured) —

The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect that has been used in at least 416 films and TV series (as of July 2015) beginning in 1951 for the film Distant Drums. The scream is often used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion.
Voiced by actor and singer Sheb Wooley, the sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow. This was its first use from the Warner Bros. stock sound library, although The Charge at Feather River is believed to have been the third film to use the effect.^[4]
The effect gained new popularity (its use often becoming an in-joke) after it was used in the Star Wars series, the Indiana Jones series, animated Disney and Pixar films, and many other blockbuster films as well as in many television programs, cartoons, and video games.

• • •

THREE POINTERS

WILHELM SCREAM is, admittedly, a flashy answer, so it's in the right place (dead center), but there's not much else that's exciting here. The other longer Acrosses are OK, but nothing else really snaps, crackles, or pops, and there's a lot of regrettable short fill and forgettable mid-range stuff. The puzzle lost me at BABAS / RETIP / SAPOR :( and never quite got me back. I honestly can't stand SAPOR, which is one of those words that exists in crosswords and nowhere else. If you see it ... it bodes ill. Defensible, sure, and you could use it in a pinch to hold some very challenging-to-fill part of a grid together, but just sitting there is a non-challenging area of a Friday themeless? Bah. GAO also yuck. KPS?? I've heard of being ON KP, but plural KPS is bizarre. That little area could be easily refilled in a much cleaner and less weird way. The "K" is not that valuable. KPS = not worth it. ISNO and ACTV aren't helping. ONE ON and AWS, same. Other stuff is passable, but Fridays should bounce and hum and sing and this one just screamed once and then died.

I'm very tired after my first day of teaching in the new semester. I'm painfully out of practice. Didn't eat, didn't hydrate, didn't *quite* get one of my syllabuses finished, couldn't solve my tech problem in one of my classrooms. Took a long walk after work to a bar downtown and then had a drink and took the same long walk home, so this sentence is probably going to be my last. Luckily there's just not that much to write about. OK, this sentence will be my last. Bye! (damn it!). This one is the last!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. the clue on WENCESLAS (11D: Carol king) is very good and deserves polite applause, at least.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (8:48)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: OPSOMANIA (46A: Intense craving for a particular food) —

[it's not in Webster's 3rd Intl, so here is a wikipedia entry on opson (Gr.)]: Opson (Greek: ὄψον) is an important category in Ancient Greek foodways. First and foremost opson refers to a major division of ancient Greek food: the 'relish' that complements the sitos (σίτος) the staple part of the meal, i.e. wheat or barley.
Opson is therefore equivalent to Banchan in Korean cuisine and Okazu in Japanese cuisine. Because it was considered the more pleasurable part of any meal, opson was the subject of some anxiety among ancient Greek moralists, who coined the term opsophagia to describe the vice of those who took too much opson with their sitos.
Although any kind of complement to the staple, even salt, could be categorized as opson, the term was also commonly used to refer to the most esteemed kind of relish: fish. Hence a diminutive of opson, opsarion (ὀψάριον), provides the modern Greek word for fish: psari (ψάρι), and the term opsophagos, literally 'opson-eater', is almost always used by classical authors to refer to men who are fanatical about seafood, e.g. Philoxenus of Leucas.
Finally, opson can be used to mean a 'prepared dish' (plural opsa). Plato, probably mistakenly, derived the word from the verb ἕψω - 'to boil'.
The central focus of Greek personal morality on self-control made opsophagia a matter of concern for moralists and satirists in the classical period. The complicated semantics of the word opson and its derivatives made the word a matter of concern for Atticists during the Second Sophistic. (wikipedia)

• • •

There were some definite highlights here, most notably the clue on TECH SAVVY (65A: E-sharp?), which, as my friend Rebecca Falcon said to me just now, beats every damn e-joke in the e-puzzle this past Wednesday. And it's oddly impressive to get two longish V-ending entries (!!!) to stand side-by-side like that at the bottom of the grid. Clue on CROP CIRCLE, also solid in its misdirectionality (35A: Unbelievable discovery in one's field). Much of this, though, felt weird, off, or hard for bad/dumb reasons. Weird: well, that's a polite word for the ridiculous inclusion of NRA in yet another puzzle (42A: Org. with magazines on magazines). Hahaha what cute wordplay I almost forgot all the mass shootings by white supremacist terrorist who easily got their hands on weapons of war because of the NRA. Tee hee. It's fun! Change C'MON to CLOT, and we're done. Nobody's gonna like TRA, but nobody's gonna like ATS or OID, and they're in here, so ... I guess I should be happy that they managed to lay off the right-wing cluing at 12D: Take precedence over (TRUMP). Tone deaf and amoral is the kind of cluing I've come to expect from the current regime. So that sucked.

Also sucking: HALFA (!?!?!) [space] LOAF (52D: With 38-Down, amount to make do with). First of all, what? Second of all, ugh, bad enough to split a phrase, but to have to resort to cross-reference for a phrase this weak and lumpy?! Terrible. The TO in ACTODC is making my eye twitch. WET NOODLE is not a thing people say, and certainly not a thing people say to describe a [Wimp]. It's too close to WET BLANKET. I think I know the phrase only from an idiom ... something's being "better than 50 lashes with a WET NOODLE"—did I make that up? Dream it? Hang on ... HA, no, I'm *right*—though the number of lashes seems to vary widely. Here's a NYT headline that uses 50, so I feel vindicated. But [Wimp]? That ain't it. (side note: don't ask urban dictionary what WET NOODLE means ... just don't).

Then there's OPSOMANIA, which, oof. Yes, I do love to learn new words, blah blah blah, but this is someone's wordlist run amok. It's difficulty for difficulty's sake. Nothing very edifying about it. Also, the "W" in SLOW-MO???? (7D: Highlight reel effect). That was jarring to me. I've only ever seen SLO-MO. The "MO" is already abbreviated, and surely that's the harder part to figure out. You gotta go SLO. That "W" feels entirely unnecessary. Looking around the internet, I see that some folks are using the "W" version, so maybe it's more common than I imagined, but yuck and no. The NYTXW itself says: SLOMO 39, SLOWMO ... 1. Just one. Today's entry. Yes, six-letter entries are as a rule going to be much less prevalent than five-letter entries, but still, 39-0 before today ... should tell you something. Good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Matt Ginsberg

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging

THEME: NOW YOU SEE ME / NOW YOU DON'T— Across answers have an extra "C" added to normal phrases to create wacky phrases. Down answers have a "C" subtracted from normal phrases to create wacky phrases. So wacky!

Theme answers:

NOW YOU SEE ME (113A: Illusionist's phrase illustrated by seven Across answers in this puzzle?)
NOW YOU DON'T (73D: Illusionist's phrase illustrated by three Down answers in this puzzle?)

Across themers (+C):

ANY COLD TIME (23A: When you can ice skate outside?)
DEAD CHEAT (25A: Poker player in the Old West after being caught with a card up his sleeve?)
WINCE MAKER (50A: Bad pun?)
PAGE CRANK (58A: Manual part of a printing press?)
SPARE CRIB (77A: Need for parents who weren't expecting twins?)
CROW HOUSES (85A: Rookeries?)
CREST AREA (111A: Toothpaste aisle?)

Down themers (-C):

MODERN DANE (5D: Queen Margrethe II, e.g.?)
FREE RADIAL (15D: Arrangement in which you buy three times but get a whole set?)
MAGI MOMENT (70D: Visit to baby Jesus?)

Word of the Day:KLEIN (55A: ____ bottle (topological curiosity)) —

In topology, a branch of mathematics, the Klein bottle /ˈklaɪn/ is an example of a non-orientable surface; it is a two-dimensional manifold against which a system for determining a normal vector cannot be consistently defined. Informally, it is a one-sided surface which, if traveled upon, could be followed back to the point of origin while flipping the traveler upside down. Other related non-orientable objects include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary (for comparison, a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary).

• • •

Hi all, Rachel Fabi in for Rex today, which under most circumstances would be a good thing for a constructor; I tend to say nice things about puzzles, while Rex is (in)famously cranky about many of them. Today's puzzle, however, is unfortunately going to be a challenge for me to glow about, as I have objections to the fill, the theme, and (some of) the cluing.

As a general rule, if the answer at 1A is a variant of a very common piece of crosswordese, you have already lost me. By the time I realized the puzzle was looking for AMIR instead of EMIR, I had already wasted an annoying amount of time trying to decipher that corner and moved on *twice*, and only managed to crack it by virtue of having written about OONA Chaplin on a previous review for Rex. The fill throughout the rest of the puzzle is not significantly better (see IDYL [also a variant!], RANEE [variant!!!!], ANAS [what?]).

I did not see this movie, now or otherwise

Despite the fill, my primary gripe is actually with the theme. NOW YOU SEE ME, when a magician (sorry, "illusionist") says it, does not mean "Now there is a C!". This theme would have made far more sense if the thing that was added to or subtracted from the "normal" phrases was the word ME, rather than the letter C. "Now you see ME. Now you don't." Almost as strange was the imbalance between the +C phrases (7) and the -C phrases (3). Why not have 5 of each, if you're determined to pack that many themers into this puzzle? The grid was pretty tortured by the theme density, and the fact that more Cs were appearing than disappearing feels inelegant. The iffy fill just wasn't worth the payoff.

a Klein bottle, apparently

I didn't really connect with a lot of the clues, but I generally don't blame constructors for that--sometimes you're just on a different wavelength. I will say that it seemed like the clues skewed harder when they didn't need to-- there are plenty of ways to clue KLEIN, for instance, and I suspect that the "topological curiosity" (pictured here) is beyond not just my wheelhouse, but that of 95% of solvers. In general, I am thrilled to learn new ways to clue common words, but when it's crossing UTILE and the aforementioned variant RANEE, I think it's better to stick with tried-and-true clues, especially on a Sunday. I won't bore you with the laundry list of clues I had similar objections to, but let's just say there were several. Ok, one more: 28A: Lamb offering? for ESSAY. Just, what? I have googled, and apparently there is a 19th century essayist by the name of Charles Lamb, but this is not an answer that needed that kind of clue. Contrast this with OAKIE, which was clued as an actor who is unfamiliar to me, but which is also not cluable in many other ways. In cases like that, a tricky/trivia-name type of clue is reasonable. But for LAMB and KLEIN and several other clues, it seems like they went hard when the Sundayness of this puzzle called for easy-medium.

I do have a few positive things to say! I lol'd at the clue on TIDAL (46A: Like the motion of the ocean) because it reminded me of a lyric from the Bloodhound Gang song "Bad Touch." I also enjoyed the inclusion of CHARO, whose "cuchi-cuchi" tagline I learned through RuPaul's Drag Race. And even though I don't think the theme was executed well, I did enjoy some of the puns that came out of it (specifically MAGI MOMENT, MODERN DANE, and SPARE CRIB).

Overall, I did not click with this puzzle, but there were enough bright spots that I can say that I also didn't hate it!

Signed, Rachel Fabi, Queen-for-a-Day of CrossWorld
[Follow Rachel on Twitter]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:49 on oversized 16x15 grid)

THEME: B- B-— themers start with repeated syllables starting w/ "B":

Theme answers:

BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP (18A: Start of a nursery rhyme on a farm)
BOO-BOO BEAR (29A: Bow-tie-wearing cub in Jellystone Park)
BYE BYE, BIRDIE (54A: 1963 musical that was Dick Van Dyke's film debut)

Word of the Day: TESSA Thompson (71A: Actress Thompson of "Sorry to Bother You")—

Tessa Lynn Thompson (born October 3, 1983) is an American actress, singer, and songwriter. Her breakthrough role was in Tina Mabry's independent filmMississippi Damned (2009). She gained further recognition for her starring roles as Nyla Adrose in the drama film For Colored Girls (2010), civil rights activist Diane Nash in the historical drama film Selma (2014), Bianca Taylor in the sports drama film Creed (2015) and its sequel Creed II (2018), Valkyrie in the superhero films Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), Josie Radek in the science-fiction horror film Annihilation (2018), and Detroit in the science-fiction comedy film Sorry to Bother You (2018).
On television, Thompson has starred as Jackie Cook in the mystery drama Veronica Mars (2005–2006), Sara Freeman in the period crime drama Copper(2012–2013), and Charlotte Hale in the HBO science-fiction thriller Westworld(2016–present). (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle was fun. The theme is just riffing on sounds, and doesn't really care about set completion, or vowel progression, which is fine. On Monday, give me a loose, silly theme with three lively themers and (consequently) a grid not burdened by junk, and I am a very happy solver. I will admit that my happiness today was probably augmented by the fact that I solved this in under 2:50, which would be a fast time for me even on a normal 15x15 grid. On a 16x15, that time, for me, is smoking. Predictably, the moments where I teetered the most came with the contemporary proper nouns: had the -TUM, so Jayson TATUM was a reasonable guess (and rang a bell, despite my not being a big NBA fan) (67A: N.B.A. phenom Jayson), and TESSA also rang a bell, sorta kinda, but in both cases my speed slowed way down as I carefully checked crosses, or built the answers from crosses. It would probably be a good idea to store this TESSA away in your brain—that is a very favorable letter combination, and there just aren't that many famous TESSAs, so even marginally famous ones are likely to recur. I think there's an actress, TESSA Hadley (I can picture her, but can't remember what she's been in ... hang on ... LOL, whoops, she does exist, but on my bookshelf, not on TV—I've got "Late in the Day" on my bookshelf just waiting for me to read it. Now I want to know who this actress is that I thought was TESSA Hadley ... Oh *&$%#, it's Glenne Headley. Nevermind.).

[Glenne Headley, Demi Moore, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel (!?) ... wow, 1991 was weird]

I spelled NICKI right on the first pass! (38A: Singer Minaj). Part of me always thinks it's gonna be NIKKI (like NIKKI Sixx or, I just found out, NIKKI Haley). I screwed up the term of endearment, though, and wrote in BABY when the crossword just wanted BABE (6D: Term of endearment). I like that YOGI(S) is in here to support BOO-BOO BEAR. And look, he's even DROOLing (over a pick-a-nick basket, no doubt), and there's RANGEr Smith right there in the same section, hot on his trail. Man, I miss being 6 years old sometimes.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hello, again! I hope everyone is having a great end to their summer. It's currently already feeling more like fall weather here in DC, though, so at least that's something! I just started my 2L year of law school and am really hoping that everyone is exaggerating when they tell me that I'll basically be worked to the bone this year. Stay tuned!

Constructor: Daniel Raymon

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME: The first name of a female celebrity followed by an adjective that's an anagram of the name.

Theme answers:

MELISSA'S AIMLESS (17A: Actress McCarthy is wandering)
STELLA'S ALL SET (33A: Designer McCartney is prepared)
LAUREN'S UNREAL (42A: Supermodel Hutton is incredible)
DARLENE'S LEARNED (60A: Singer Love is erudite)

Word of the Day: LAUREN Hutton (42A: Supermodel Hutton is incredible)

Mary Laurence "Lauren" Hutton is an American model and actress. Raised in the southern United States, Hutton relocated to New York City in her early adulthood to begin a modeling career. Though she was initially dismissed by agents for a signature gap in her teeth, Hutton signed a modeling contract with Revlon in 1973, which at the time was the biggest contract in the history of the modeling industry. (Wiki)

• • •

Overall, I thought the puzzle was alright. I was quite perplexed by the theme until about 20 minutes after I solved it and realized that the second part of each theme answer was an anagram of the first part of the answer. It's a clever enough bit of constructing, and I like the parallelism in each theme answer. Still, the adjectives in the theme answers seem pretty random to be. It's not clear to me why MELISSA McCarthy would be aimless, why DARLENE Love is learned, and so on. Also, this wasn't a big deal, but it was a bit off to have the second part of three of the four theme answers be a one-word adjective and then have 42A end with a two-word adjective: ALL SET.

There were some clever clues/answers in the puzzle and not too much crossword-y fill. I struggled some in the northeast corner, mostly because I really wanted "assign" to work for 13D: Put into different classes instead of ASSORT. And, although it seems like it's a relatively common expression to have a case AT BAR (26A), I'm in law school, and I've never heard anyone — student, professor, or judge — talk about being before a sitting judge in that way.

I do have a bone to pick with 48A: Tennis point just before a win, maybe. I watch a lot of tennis (side note: Federer is the best player of all time; don't @ me), and it took me ages to get to FORTY. I suppose it's technically correct that one person is at FORTY before they win a game, set, or match, but I still don't think the clue/answer really make logical sense. It was a leap to get there, and it could've been clued in a myriad of other ways. I'm not entirely sure what to make of having STEMS (35D: Things florists cut) and SEPALS (51A: Flower parts) both in the crossword — and crossing each other. It's possibly a clever bit of constructing to have related answers cross; or it's redundant; or it's challenging because I don't know much about flowers, and now I'm supposed to answer two clues about them. I also took a bit of time to get 68A: Likely to zone out because I've always thought SPACY was spelled "spacey." I Googled it, and it seems like "spacey" is the preferred spelling.

All that being said, I did like 2D: Most common commercial name in New York Times crosswords — OREO. It was maybe a bit too on-the-nose, but I thought it was fun. I also liked the clue for LAPEL (65A: Pin point?) quite a bit and enjoyed 52D: POLLY"want a cracker." Likewise, 54A: Contents of hangars as PLANES was nice.

Misc.:

I am all about Harry Potter being in a crossword (69A)! For those who haven't read (and reread... and reread) the series, O.W.L. stands for Ordinary Wizarding Level, and N.E.W.T. stands for Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test.
I would've paid big bucks to have REX at 63D: "Toy Story" dinosaur instead be clued as "__ Parker, a crossword puzzle blogger."
6A: Hit 2003-07 teen drama on Fox — THE OC. Finally a TV show that's more in my wheelhouse, and I've never even watched it!
I was recently back in Lake Tahoe in California, and I got to hike up a mountain on my bucket list, and I certainly saw some VISTAS from up there!
9D: Home to Xenia and Zanesville, the most populous U.S. cities starting with "X" and "Z" has got to be the weirdest way I've ever seen OHIO clued. But, hey, points for originality! And, I learned something from the solve!

All done! In other words: CLARESCLEAR :)

Signed, Clare Carroll, a slightly nervous 2L

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Daniel Grinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:39)

THEME: TENNIS (62A: What 8-, 20-, 36- and 52-Across sound like they could be about) — movies with tennis terminology in their titles:

Theme answers:

"THE NET" (8A: 1995 cyberthriller about espionage)
"YOU GOT SERVED" (20A: 2004 film about a group of street dancers)
"FAULT IN OUR STARS" (36A: 2014 romance about two teens with cancer, with "The")
"LOVE, ACTUALLY" (52A: 2003 Christmas-themed rom-com)

Word of the Day: SATORI (55A: Religious enlightenment) —

Satori (悟り) (Chinese: 悟; pinyin: wù; Korean: 오 o; Vietnamese: ngộ) is a Japanese Buddhist term for awakening, "comprehension; understanding". It is derived from the Japanese verb satoru.
In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to the experience of kenshō, "seeing into one's true nature". Ken means "seeing," shō means "nature" or "essence".
Satori and kenshō are commonly translated as enlightenment, a word that is also used to translate bodhi, prajna and buddhahood. (wikipedia)

• • •

GAËL Monfils ... a name to watch out for

I was liking the puzzle OK as I was solving it, mostly because I was flying, and none of the fill made me wince much (except maybe CASTRATI ... which seems to be forming some kind of subtheme with SPAYS ...). Well, actually (!), the word SACS always makes me wince a little (a variation on the common "moist"-aversion), and AL JOLSON makes me think only of blackface, and SYN isn't great as fill, so it wasn't all smiles, but I was cruising and things were mostly fine. I couldn't figure out why there were these fairly marginal movie titles that kept coming up. I also couldn't figure out what the 8- and 9- letter Across answers (theme-length answers) had to do with the theme. Well, it turns out they had nothing to do with the theme. The revealer, when I finally got there (and I got there at the very very end) landed with a massive clunk. Turns out I'd been solving an oddly contrived variation on a very basic and kind of sad theme type—set of answers contains words that have something in common. A variation on a first-words or last-words-type theme (here, both last and first words are involved). I imagine some version of a TENNIS theme has been done many times before. This one tried to get clever and make them *movies* about TENNIS, but they don't actually sound like they're about TENNIS. I have "no they don't" written next to the revealer clue. And the grid is very choppy a *and* gunked up with these answers that look like they should be themers, that are longer than the first themer, but somehow aren't themers. It's visually confusing / displeasing. Long non-theme Downs in a puzzle with Across themers, fine; long non-theme Acrosses in the same type of puzzle tend to create an unpleasant visual interference, IMHO. Fill seemed mostly fine. Did not hate this one, but was ultimately disappointed. I appreciate the attempt to make the theme *something* besides just "tennis words," and I appreciate the attempt to publish it in a timely fashion (the U.S. Open just started). But upon review, this shot just missed.

CASTRATI itself doesn't bother me (5D: Singers of high notes in olden times), but somehow having that Italian plural but then an English plural of RISOTTOSin the symmetrical position really does bother me (37D: Italian dishes that are simmered). Actually, I don't know that RISOTTI is an actual Italian plural. I just know that I was sure as hell anticipating it. Maybe that word in the plural is just weird, period. I mostly killed this puzzle, but had some trouble down below. Had SCAD for SLEW (64A: Boatload), and BYLAW took me forever (51D: Standing rule). That revealer corner in the SW was by far the hardest, though. Forgot that CORGI herded cattle (47D: Cattle-herding canine). Couldn't figure out SALOON from first couple letters (43D: Where one might take or dodge shots). And then I misread the clue for STOOGE as [Underlying] instead of 59A: Underling. Lastly, I needed every cross to get the revealer, ha ha. True story. That's all. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:53)

THEME: blank OR blank — themers are familiar phrases following the pattern "___ OR ___"; clues all take the form of [Word that can complete (some all-caps word that is missing consecutive letters)]:

Theme answers:

GIVE OR TAKE (17A: Word that can complete CARE___R)
IN OR OUT (27A: Word that can complete SH___ED)
FRIEND OR FOE (38A: Word that can complete DE___)
DO OR DIE (49A: Word that can complete ___TING)
BOOM OR BUST (61A: Word that can complete ___ER)

Word of the Day: ENOCH (50D: Biblical figure who "walked with God") —

Enoch (/ˈiːnək/ (listen), EE-nuhk) is of the Antediluvian period in the Hebrew Bible. Enoch was son of Jared and fathered Methuselah. This Enoch is not to be confused with Cain's son Enoch(Genesis 4:17).
The text of the Book of Genesis says Enoch lived 365 years before he was taken by God. The text reads that Enoch "walked with God: and he was no more; for God took him" (Gen 5:21–24), which some Christians interpret as Enoch's entering Heaven alive.
Enoch is the subject of many Jewish and Christian traditions. He was considered the author of the Book of Enoch and also called Enoch the scribe of judgment. The New Testament has three references to Enoch from the lineage of Seth (Luke 3:37, Hebrews 11:5, Jude 1:14–15). (wikipedia)

• • •

Felt like I flew through this, and my time was certainly on the fast side for me, but weirdly my Thursday times have been remarkably consistent over the past four months: all timed solves between 4:24 and 6:02. Only reason I find this weird is that I think of Thursday having a very wide-ranging level of difficulty, in that it's the gimmicky puzzle of the week and those gimmicks can sometimes be very hard to discover. Usually, once you discover them, the puzzle gets real easy, but the discovering can take an awful lot of time. Only Monday and Tuesday solving times have a narrower range—not surprising, as those are uniformly easy. OK, back to this specific puzzle. The theme answers are pretty dull, but the cluing provides an interesting twist. Narrows the field of acceptable answers considerably. Still, not sure those clues can be considered flashy or even interesting. Once you tumble to the concept here (that the "Word" is actually a pair of options), then for the rest of the themers, you don't really need the clues—just use pattern recognition from crosses to figure out common ___ OR ___ answers. I certainly never did the word math (until after I was done). Theme seems like something a constructor's gonna like more than a solver.

The fill is mostly reasonable, but it's got some subpar moments. I know the [Fittings under the sink] as traps, not U-BENDS, which is totally new to me. MAITRE is kind of a long foreign word. Had POSH for PISH because why wouldn't I? (10A: "Nonsense!") SW corner is chock full o' crosswordese. GAWP at it, why don't you? Rest of the grid has its fair share, but that corner, yikes. Starts with PRO RATA and just ... keeps going. The ENOCH / ACTIN / SOTO / SSNS area isn't terribly lovely either. My favorite answers of the day were ADZUKI (delicious), FOG OF WAR (38D: Cause for combatants' confusion), and POP OFF. I thought the [Raiders' org.] might be AFC or NFL, but having EATS in place already meant that the "F" in both those options would've resulted in a word starting TF- for 47D: Service easy to break? (TEASET), so I scrapped those and tried DEA. Bingo. Besides the PISH, U-BENDS, and ENOCH areas, I didn't have much trouble at all. Do people know SPERRY? Top-Siders were a huge fashion trend when I was in middle school. Had to have the real thing or you'd get teased. My god middle school in the '80s was a classist hellhole of viciousness. I've never been more miserable. Luckily I had MTV. A boy's best friend is his MTV. Anyway, good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. my wife notes (correctly, I think) that DEFRIEND (!?!) (see 38A) is not a thing people actually say. I gotta believe "unfriend" beats DEFRIEND by an enormous margin, ordinary usage-wise. As far as I can recall, I've heard "unfriend" nearly exclusively (as a term meaning "to drop someone as a Friend, particularly on the social media platform called Facebook"). Anyway, this is all to say that if you found the clue on FRIEND OR FOE confusing, you're certainly not alone.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trent H. Evans

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:13)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AEAEA (50A: Island of myth in Homer's "Odyssey") —

Aeaea or Eëa (/iːˈiːə/ ee-EE-ə or /əˈiːə/ ə-EE-ə; Ancient Greek: Αἰαία, Aiaíā [aɪ.aí.aː]) was a mythologicalisland said to be the home of the goddess-sorceress Circe. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus tells Alcinousthat he stayed here for one year on his way home to Ithaca. He says that he could not resist the need to be on this island, not so much for Circe but so that he does not resist the pull. The modern Greek scholar Ioannis Kakridis insists that any attempt at realistic identification is vain, arguing that Homer vaguely located Aeaea somewhere in the eastern part of his world, perhaps near Colchis, since Circe was the sister of Aeëtes, king of Colchis, and because their paternal aunt the goddess Eos had her palace there. (wikipedia)

• • •

OK, so OFFICE WIFE (1A: Certain "work spouse") isn't *necessarily* a sexist concept (if it's playful, open, mutual, and "wife" here doesn't mean "person who does stuff for me so my life can be easier"). And the clue on "DO I LOOK FAT?" (64A: Question always best answered "no") isn't *specifically* gendered here but ... the two together give the grid a pretty bro-y, locker-roomy, "chicks, man"-type vibe that made me roll my eyes. This is very bad news for a puzzle in which those are actually two of the more interesting / original answers. And since it already has to make up for junk like ILIAL and AEAEA and EATETH, the puzzle really can't afford to be fumbling away its longer answers. There's really nothing very special or entertaining about the other marquee answers. Hard to get excited about EIGHTPM or USGRADEA. Those are acceptable answers, for sure, but they should be propping up greatness. Instead, they're posing as greatness. And not well. Again, you dig yourself a hole when, on a Friday themeless, you trot out EDDA EKE ELS STR SNO LEN GEN EOS CBER etc. Hard to come back from that.

The nerdiest thing about my reaction to this puzzle is repeated giggling when thinking about CECE living on AEAEA (you know, as opposed to "Circe" living there). I imagine she lures Odysseus there with her gospel singing, and then turns his men into, let's say, EWOKs until Odysseus agrees to sleep with her. (I was talking about The Odyssey in class earlier today, so you'll pardon my gospel / Star Wars retelling ... or you won't. SUE me, I guess) Only struggle today involved getting some of those Downs in the NW. Even though I got OFFICE WIFE first thing, ambiguous clues held me back on 2D: 101, 102 and others (FEVERS), 3D: Draw back (FLINCH), 6D: Things in orbit (EYES), and 9D: Set at a cocktail party (FLUTES). I also wrote in AEON for AGES at 18A: Years and years, so that created a minor snag as well. Bottom half of the grid didn't provide much resistance at all.

Gotta get some sleep now. Not at all adjusted to this whole "blogging late / getting up early for work" thing yet. Love writing, love teaching, but ... I dunno, getting stuck for an extended period on AEAEA also sounds pretty good to me right now. I *would* miss my (non-office) wife. And my dog. Maybe I'll just plan to rent a cabin near the Finger Lakes once the fall foliage finally comes around. Less exciting than AEAEA, probably, but it's close to home, and, you know, non-fictional.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Brian Thomas

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:31, should've been even faster)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Georges PEREC (25A: French author Georges) —

Georges Perec (born George Peretz) (French: [peʁɛk, pɛʁɛk]; 7 March 1936 – 3 March 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was murdered in the Holocaust, and many of his works deal with absence, loss, and identity, often through word play. (wikipedia)

Oulipo (French pronunciation: [ulipo], short for French: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature") is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Other notable members have included novelists Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, poets Oskar Pastior, Jean Lescure and poet/mathematician Jacques Roubaud.
The group defines the term littérature potentielle as (rough translation): "the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy".
Constraints are used as a means of triggering ideas and inspiration, most notably Perec's "story-making machine", which he used in the construction of Life A User's Manual. As well as established techniques, such as lipograms (Perec's novel A Void) and palindromes, the group devises new methods, often based on mathematical problems, such as the knight's tour of the chess-board and permutations. (wikipedia)

• • •

I would not be surprised if many of you set a personal best Saturday time today. I didn't, but I probably should have. Too leisurely out of the gate, and too clumsy on the keyboard. And then, at the very end, I face-planted by totally misreading 53A: Viscous (ROPY) as [Vicious]. Ugh. Anyway, 4:31 is still very fast for a Saturday, for me. Looking back over the puzzle, it's basically a Tuesday with a few marginal proper nouns and dated phrases thrown in to act as very ineffective speed bumps. I knew PEREC, but you are very much forgiven if you didn't. I wouldn't know him if it weren't for crosswords, and I know I'm not alone in that. My proper noun downfall was TANIKA (?) Ray, co-host of "Extra," whatever that is. Is that some kind of entertainment news TV show—a form that it's hard to believe still exists. I'm not even going to check because I don't care. Anyway, all the crosses were favorable, so TANIKA didn't crush me, but she definitely held me up. The other major hold-up came from MISSILE ENVY (29A: 1980s feminst coinage regarding nuclear proliferation), which ... really? Really? Sigh. If you say so. "Feminist coinage?" What's "feminist" about it? Who is the feminist involved here? I get that it's a play on "penis envy," but ... it really doesn't sound like a term that is in common parlance, or ever was. So I needed a Ton of crosses to get it, but again, the crosses were not at all hard, so fine. I'm startled that this was a Saturday and not a Friday. Hard to fathom. It really was very, very easy (by Saturday standards).

["The Windy Apple!"]

A word about TONTO (15A: Classic TV character whose name is Spanish for "fool"). A few words, actually. First, The Lone Ranger was a radio show and a book series before it was a TV show, and TONTO was in the pre-TV stuff, yet the puzzle keeps narrowly cluing him via the TV show. Second, while "tonto" does mean "fool" in Spanish (which meant the name was changed to "Toro" or "Ponto" in Spanish-dubbed versions of the TV show), the creator had reason to believe it meant something else: "Show creator Trendle grew up in Michigan, and knew members of the local Potawatomi tribe, who told him it meant "wild one" in their language" (wikipedia). The clue kind of implies, or softly suggests, that the "fool" meaning was by design. Maybe this clue is the puzzle's way of pointing out that the character of TONTO was very much the product of white ignorance. Native Americans have long criticized the character as a form of racial caricature. Johnny Depp's portrayal of TONTO in the 2013 "Lone Ranger" caused a fairly high-profile backlash, with accusations of appropriation and racial insensitivity being leveled at the movie and its star (ironic, given that the movie was intended to offer a more authentic TONTO, rejecting earlier portrayals of the character as a mere monosyllabic sidekick). This is all to say that the character of TONTO is inextricably linked to a long history of white writers, producers, actors, etc. representing Native Americans in simplistic ways with little or any input from Native Americans themselves. I know some people who don't ever want to see TONTO in the grid again. I'm not sure I agree, but I do understand. If I felt I absolutely had to use TONTO to make a stellar grid come out right, I'd probably stick to very straightforward, factual cluing. Don't get cute.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: Challenging (at least as I solved it, i.e. NOT on paper) (11:33)

THEME:"That's a Tall Order" — four orders (to a dog) are "tall" in this one, i.e. they are composed of letters that are two boxes tall (you can't tell this from my grid because UGH my grid (from AcrossLite) can't deal with this particular feature—doesn't look like the app can handle it either???)

Theme answers:

PLINY THE ELDER over COLOR WHEEELS (for HEEL)
KEEPS IT REAL over POSITED (for SIT)
BASTAYA (???!?!?!?!) over JAMES TAYLOR (for STAY)
SEX COMEDIES over JALISCO, MEXICO (for COME)

Word of the Day: ¡ BASTA YA ! (73A: Spanish phrase meaning "Enough is enough!") —

¡Ya basta! is a phrase in Spanish roughly approximate to "Enough is enough!" or "Enough already!" in English. It has been adopted by several Latin American insurgent groups as an expression of affront towards issues that sparked the original dissent. Its adoption by the EZLN in Mexicoas the movement's motto is exemplary of its popularity and ability to rally diverse ideologies under a common goal. Grammatically, there's little difference between ¡Basta ya! and ¡Ya basta!, and both are correct. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this seems like a cool theme but the software I use couldn't replicate it and since I never read the "Note" (they often give away too much info for my tastes, and also they take *time* to read tick tick tick), I just thought that the bottom themer in each instance was supposed to leap up and join the top themer for the length of the circled squares, leaving squares blank for reasons I couldn't fathom. So when I finished, the themers all looked something like this:

I went on to the NYTXW website, and there too, the whole "tall" thing (with single cells for answers on two different levels) was not replicated. It's a cute joke, but it sucks when your own tech can't deliver the product in a way where the joke has a chance to land.

[FETCH!]

Beyond the theme, there seemed to be a lot of (to me) pretty obscure stuff—both stuff I knew (the Acura INTEGRA—why in the world is "Acura" not in that clue!?!? (99A: Bygone car model that's an anagram of GRANITE); ACTAEON; ENJAMBMENT (45D: Flow of one line of a verse to the next without a pause) and stuff I did Not know (AMY RYAN—never heard of her, don't remember "Gone Baby Gone," whiffs all around (4D: Oscar nominee for "Gone Baby Gone," 2007); COMOROS—LOL literally no idea this was a place (34A: Archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean); GLUTENIN—if you say so ... (97A: Protein in Wheaties); and especially POSTBAC, which I'm told is a reasonably common program for picking up prereqs for a grad program you didn't get in undergrad, but I've somehow never heard the term before. Worse, the clue is a bleeping mess) (16D: Program starting with the fifth year of college, informally). Because of the technical issues with the theme, and all the longer mystery stuff, this played way harder than most Sundays have been playing for me lately. Oh, I think I like CATCAFE (111A: Establishment such as Crumbs and Whiskers or KitTea (both real!)). And I know I love dogs (and obedience!) so I should've had more fun solving this. I just didn't. I was irritated most of the time. ¡BASTA YA! (which, btw, is too long of a foreign phrase, imo) (and yet another answer I'd never heard of)

["Me and Rex took the car, / ha, ha, stay home... stay"]

Not sure why, but the clue on HAE Min Lee is bugging me slightly (33A: ___ Min Lee, victim in the podcast "Serial"). "Victim" just seems a harsh way to sum up a life. I know that that is how anyone knows her, but still ... something about that clue feels vulturish, or at least callous. Further, "victim in the podcast 'Serial'" almost makes her sound fictional. I'm *not offended*—it's just not sitting well, that clue. The long themers are all solid to Very interesting. I particularly like JALISCO, MEXICO even though (uggggh) I wrote in TABASCO, MEXICO at first (Tabasco *is* a Mexican state, just not a [State bordering the Pacific]). The most irksome part of the grid was dead center and featured a bunch of three-letter answers that made no sense to me. WOO is a [Modern cousin of "Yay!"]?? Like, online? Like, how modern? Like ... that sound is ambiguous to me, esp. as written. I can definitely *hear* it, but seeing it is ... weird. Just didn't compute. WOW clue also didn't compute (57D: Stun). I get it now. But honestly even with -OW I was like "......... POW?" And then MOW, yeeesh (56A: Charge (through)). Those two verbs imply different outcomes to me, with MOW specifically meaning knocking down. If you charge through, maybe something/one gets knocked down, maybe not. So MOW to WOW to WOO were all tough, instead of what 3-letter answers tend to be, i.e. easy. GI'ING? Sigh. I'm sure it's in a dictionary somewhere, but (again) (for like the 6th time today) I've never heard of this. I like learning new things, generally. But this one too often felt like a steroided wordlist run amok. I did enjoy BARK, though (59A: Dog sound). Nice little added (theme) touch.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Hard

THEME: PENTATHLON — Theme answers ended in the events of a pentathlon.

Theme answers:

GORDON JUMP (17A: Arthur Carlson portrayer on "WKRP in Cincinnati")
PHOTOSHOOT (23A: Job for a model)
CHICKEN RUN (52A: 2000 stop-motion comedy hit)
ADULT SWIM (9D: Late-night Cartoon Network programming block)
SNOW FENCE (32D: Winter barrier)

Word of the Day: HI-HAT (53D: Component of a drum kit) —

A hi-hat (hihat, high-hat, etc.) is a combination of two cymbals and a foot pedal, all mounted on a metal stand. It is a part of the standard drum kit used by drummers in many styles of music including rock, pop, and blues.^[1] Hi-hats consist of a matching pair of small to medium-sized cymbals mounted on a stand, with the two cymbals facing each other. The bottom cymbal is fixed and the top is mounted on a rod which moves the top cymbal towards the bottom one when the pedal is depressed (a hi-hat that is in this position is said to be "closed" or "closed hi-hats").

(Wikipedia)

• • •

Hello, it's an Annabel Monday! And I guess the summer's over, huh? Just like that. I mean, not that it means that much anymore now that I'm just sort of living my life rather than being on summer vacation. Also my summer job got extended through September, which is amazing because honestly I really really love working in this library. It's gonna be sad to leave it, but hopefully I'll move on to another library before I get my M.L.S.

This has been one of my favorite Mondays in awhile! The relative difficulty rating comes from the numerous cultural refs/name drops, the fact that HAJ is usually transliterated as HAJJ and so I didn't trust that answer, and the amount of wrong answers I had. RANGE for RANCH was the most egregious--I mean, come on, it literally says "home!" Like "Home on the Range!" Anyway.

There was some fun wordplay, and some great words; EWER, which means a pitcher or jug, was my second pick for word of the day, which is impressive since I feel like I'm often scrambling for a good word rather than choosing between two! (ANCHO was a good one as well.) I feel like the decision to call SKIT a "comedic sketch" synonym could draw the IRE of some comedians, but I personally don't know enough about the differences, if there are any. Also, like the mental image of a ONE-WAY CRIME MAP. Like, a scavenger hunt that leads you from crime to crime but ends you in jail? That seems like kind of a Batman villain thing. The point is, I loved this puzzle.

I'm going to avoid exposing my lack of knowledge about all sports other than rugby and sailing by JUMPing right over the PENTATHLON theme and onto CHICKEN RUN. The VHS tape of that movie lived on the TV stand so I could replay it over and over again, proving that I've had amazing taste since childhood. Or maybe it's just that rewatching a movie that somehow pulls off "British chickens wearing women's accessories, aware of the grisly fate that awaits them, team up with an American rooster conman who pretends to teach them to fly but ends up building a working plane"-- and pulls it off perfectly and hilariously--shaped me into the lover of B-movies and anything else with a buckwild plotline that I am today.

Also, those guys made Wallace and Gromit!

Bullets:

TAE BO (68A: Fitness program popularized in the 1990s) — Did you know Tae Bo was invented in 1976?!? Did they even have exercise tapes back then? I would have thought it was way later!
LIT (22A: Extremely fun, as a party) — I was looking up the etymology for the modern slang context of this word and found out that it's actually been circulating in and out of slang since the 1910s, if not earlier, as in, from this 1918 book, "We walked into the vamp's house. We all got lit and had a hell of a time." It's so cool how language changes! (Also if you're still interested in that etymology, a cursory Google suggests that the more recent use of the word stems from its use in rap music, which in turn probably stems from African-American Vernacular English. But I'm no linguist--I just thought the 1918 thing was cool!)
KOI (58A: Colorful pond fish) — The word "koi" only conjures up one mental image for me now. "I have also fallen into the fountain at the Steamtown Mall."

Signed, Annabel Thompson, still searching for jobs!

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

[Follow Annabel Thompson on Twitter]

Constructor: Evan Kalish

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (3:55)

THEME: LATE BLOOMER (61A: One who catches up eventually ... or a hint to the ends of 17-, 30- and 46-Across) — themers end with letters that spell the name of a flower:

Theme answers:

PURPLE PROSE (17A: Excessively ornate writing)
BANANA DAIQUIRIS (30A: Some sweet cocktails)
COURTED DISASTER (46A: Did something hugely risky)

Word of the Day: ALI Wong (23D: Funny Wong) —

Alexandra Wong (born April 19, 1982) is an American actress, stand-up comedian, and writer. She is noted for her Netflix stand-up specials Baby Cobra and Hard Knock Wife, as well as her television appearances in American Housewife, Are You There, Chelsea?, Inside Amy Schumer, and Black Box. She also wrote for the first three seasons of the sitcom Fresh Off the Boat. In 2019, she had her first leading film role in Always Be My Maybe, which she produced and wrote with her co-star Randall Park. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's nothing really wrong with this puzzle. It just feels a little ... wilted? Discovering the theme (after I was finished) delivered more of a "oh ... huh, yeah, I guess those are flowers" reaction than an "aha" or "woo-hoo" or "wow" or whatever target response you're likely going for when you make a themed puzzle. The themers themselves are fine enough answers, but nothing tricky is going on, and there are only three themers, so I feel like the fill should've been better (instead of just bigger—see the NW and SE corners). It was largely uninspiring, overall. What put me in a bad mood, though, was the cluing on a couple of longer answers. First, BANANA DAIQUIRIS—[Some sweet cocktails]!? That's it? That's what you've got for me? So many ways to go with this exotic drink and you just go [Some sweet cocktails]? Some? How many? Four? Twelve? The percentage of "sweet cocktails" that are specifically BANANA DAIQUIRIS must be in the hundredths of a percentile. Yeesh, liven it up a little. Give me something. Some color, some flavor, some *specifics*. And then there's the clue on BUCKAROO (11D: Cowboy), which also needed more specifics, specifically the phrase [Cutesy term for ...]. The difference, tonally, between mere "Cowboy" and BUCKAROO cannot be measured. It is infinite. I cannot believe that [Cowboy] was the cluing PLAN A (or B or C). Getting that answer (finally!) was a major eye-rolling moment.

For a grid with a lot of longer fill, it somehow managed also to have a lot of shorter fill, much of it overly common (ENOKI, ERR, ELI, IPA, etc.). Not bad, mind you. Just ... there. ENAMOR UNO IDO APSE ERE NOS ORG EGRESS EMO ADELE. That sort of stuff. Almost all of my slowness came in that NE corner, where BUCKAROO and GOT NASTY just took a long time to emerge, and PLAN A took some time to see (29A: Preferred option for proceeding), and BANANA DAIQUIRIS didn't come together for reasons I cover above.

Five things:

28D: Unusual sexual preference (KINK) — this is a good clue. I might go with "niche" or ... some other adjective, over "unusual," but "unusual" is probably reasonable; good to see the NYTXW embrace this meaning, I think
41A: Word that can precede water or war (HOLY) — I am the worst at these kinds of clues. Just awful. Me today: "H... let's see ... HIGH! High water and high ... war? ... no ... OK that's it, I'm out of four-letter H-words"
25D: The ___ (gang for a ladies' night out) (GALS)— I kept misreading this clue as [The ___ gang] and since the clue used "ladies" I went ahead and wrote in GIRL—the GIRL gang, why not?
19A: Summer setting in K.C. (CDT)— I am somehow both good (unerring) and slow at these. My brain is like a computer, only it's one of those Coleco jobs from the '80s—it's *gonna* get you the right answer, but it feels like you can actually *see* the processing happening. In my mind, I can feel a little pixelated cursor moving around a map, alighting on the city, scanning the broader map for the time zones, double-checking the clue for what season we're in, and then ding! the screen goes green and Mario does a little dance or something.
11A: Great (BIG)— Ugh. This clue is only [Great] because the previous Across clue is [Great]. This type of sequential duplication cluing is not and has never been Great. It's supposed to be cute or clever, but mainly what it ends up doing is giving you at least one clue that's off or a stretch. Boo, I say.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Patrick Blindauer

Relative difficulty: ha ha, apparently Easy, but my time was Medium-Challenging (4:44)

THEME: ice cream cones — three answers depict different cone orders: a SINGLE , DOUBLE, and TRIPLE SCOOP, consisting of some combination (I guess) of VANILLA, CHOCOLATE, and/or PISTACHIO

Theme answers:

OV (14D: Yum! This won't last long, though!)
OOV (31D: I bet these flavors taste great together!)
OOOV (56D: Wow! Look at the size of this thing!)

Word of the Day: MOA (30A: Extinct relative of an ostrich) —

Moa were nine species (in six genera) of now-extinct flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. The two largest species, Dinornis robustus and Dinornis novaezelandiae, reached about 3.6 m (12 ft) in height with neck outstretched, and weighed about 230 kg (510 lb). It is estimated that, when Polynesians settled New Zealand circa 1280, the moa population was about 58,000.
MOA, Haast's Eagle, and me
Moa belong to the order Dinornithiformes, traditionally placed in the ratite group. However, their closest relatives have been found by genetic studies to be the flighted South American tinamous, once considered to be a sister group to ratites. The nine species of moa were the only wingless birds lacking even the vestigial wings that all other ratites have. They were the dominant herbivores in New Zealand's forest, shrubland, and subalpine ecosystems for thousands of years, and until the arrival of the Māori, were hunted only by Haast's eagle. Moa extinction occurred around 1300–1440 ±20 years, primarily due to overhunting by Māori. (wikipedia)

• • •

The constructor, depicted here at the
2014 ACPT with an imaginary MOA

Well, I see that lots of people are setting personal best times on this one, but I'm guessing they were fully awake. I solved this at 5am, first thing out of bed, and the whole gimmick just didn't compute, especially the cone pictures, which had clues, so ... I thought they should actually form words, especially since the Os kept seeming like they wanted to be the starts of OH or OOH or OOOH. So my brain never fully grasped that those answers were supposed to look like cones. Also some stuff was just not for me. If you put "dog" in a clue for a three-letter answer that begins with "C" then I'm putting in CUR, that's just how that works. Ugh. Very much resent [Dirty *dog*] for CAD. I don't know the ranks of people in "Sound of Music" :( and despite knowing very well what a RABBLE is I couldn't see it to save my life, even with the "R" in place, so the NE corner alone had me flailing around badly.

Further, I can never remember who this MCKAY person is (even though I've said this before) (53D: Adam who directed "Vice" and "The Big Short"), and wow that is the weirdest CIA clue I've ever seen (43D: Org. with a World Factbook). Rest of the puzzle was indeed pretty easy, but the above issues caused me to come out very much on the slow end of things. Oh, the other thing I resent about this puzzle: PISTACHIO???? Yuck, what? That flavor seems very much not iconic (anymore?). Also, I had the CHI- at the end of it and figured it *had* to be some kind of CHIP. PISTACHIO is not a flavor I think of, ever, when I think of ice cream. So, again, 5am me just couldn't process this theme effectively. I love that the grid is wonky and asymmetrical, though I can't say I love the theme answer placement (random) or the cluing (either [See this, see that] or those cone clues. Cone answers look cool, but I don't like the cluing on them at all. Oh, and the clues on the flavors? I mean, look at them. [Ice cream flavor]. That's it. Three times. That's boring. Like a TRIPLE SCOOP cone in mid-summer, this was tasty but messy.

Other things that happen when you try to speed thru a puzzle at 5am: eyes got only as far as "Vladimir" in the clue 5D: Leader born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (LENIN), and I had the -IN, so I wrote in PUTIN. I read [Had a competition] at 47A: Had a conniption, so LOST IT took a few stabs. We've already gone over the whole CUR issue (in both these places, as with my first pass at PISTACHIO, the letters I had in place before looking at the clue really really misled me). Rest of the grid was pretty VANILLA. I knew the "COLUMBO" clue right off the bat (10D: Detective show whose premiere episode was directed by Steven Spielberg), so that really should've opened up that recalcitrant NE corner, but all it did was give me the "C" that made me think 10A: Dirty dog was CUR. Pah, bah, and pish. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium (felt predominantly easy, but I didn't know several things, which slowed me down) (5:44)

THEME: More than a ___, but less than a ___ — all theme clues follow this pattern, and the answer is a word that is one letter longer (in the front) than word that means [first blank], and one letter shorter than a word that means [second blank]:

Theme answers:

1A: More than a bird, but less than a facial expression (COWL)
5A: More than a symptom, but less than a jerk (WITCH)
10A: More than a card, but less than a track bet (LACE)
20A: More than a snake, but less than a bodily organ (LADDER)
36A: More than a British islander, but less than a team symbol (ASCOT)
39A: More than a court filing, but less than a status change (EMOTION)
42A: More than a bagel, but less than a walk (TROLL)
59A: More than a color, but less than a trade occupation (LUMBER)
67A: More than a boat, but less than an idea (PARK)
68A: More than a weather forecast, but less than a muscle injury (TRAIN)
69A: More than an insect, but less than U.S. president (RANT)

Word of the Day: HAILE Gebrselassie (15A: ___ Gebrselassie, two-time Olympic running gold medalist) —

Haile Gebrselassie (Amharic: ኃይሌ ገብረ ሥላሴ, haylē gebre silassē; born 18 April 1973) is a retired Ethiopian long-distance track and road running athlete. He won two Olympic gold medals over 10,000 metres and four World Championship titles in the event. He won the Berlin Marathonfour times consecutively and also had three straight wins at the Dubai Marathon. Further to this, he won four world titles indoors and was the 2001 World Half Marathon Champion.
Haile had major competition wins at distances between 1500 metres and the marathon, moving from outdoor, indoor and cross country running to road running in the latter part of his career. He broke 61 Ethiopian national records ranging from 800 metres to the marathon, set 27 world records, and is widely regarded as the greatest distance runner in history.
In September 2008, at the age of 35, he won the Berlin Marathon with a world record time of 2:03:59, breaking his own world record by 27 seconds. The record stood for three years. Since he was over the age of 35, that mark still stands as the Masters Age group world record in addition his 10000 m Masters record has not been challenged since 2008. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a themeless pretending that it's not. Looks like tons (tons) of words can do this: lose a first letter, still be a word, gain a new first letter, still be a word. And, like many a weak-themed puzzle, this puzzle tries to impress by burying you in an avalanche of themers. Sadly, the themers aren't really interesting words, so the grid ends up being pretty blah overall. Now, I did enjoy the fact that I torched the themers—fire through dry grass; that always feels good. I don't think I hesitated on any except the first one (where, of course, I had no idea what was going on). With every other themer, I had at least one cross before looking at the clue, and only once or twice did I not know instantly what it was. Success makes the solve feel pleasant, for sure! But I still can't say I think a lot of this theme, or this grid. Not bad, by any means, but not nearly as impressive as it (really) wants you to believe it is. Also, when your marquee answers are this dull and/or niche (LINAGES? SANDSPUR?), maybe try harder.

Tough getting started, as the NW corner has two themers, and I didn't yet understand the theme. Plus I forgot the mountain nymph and wrote in NAIAD even though I knew that was a river nymph. First answer into the grid was EDSEL :( (always makes me feel slightly guilty when I get my traction from rank crosswordese) (24A: Classic auto with a so-called "floating speedometer"). Eventually righted the ship on OREAD, got ELI RIME LARDERS AREA, and then the fact that there were two themers up there really helped, because it somehow drove the theme concept home hard, and after that—no trouble with the theme. Really should've taken a hard look at the Olympic running gold medalist's last name, because the -selassie part really was trying to give me HAILE. But as it was, I just thought it was some obscure name I couldn't possibly know, and I used all the crosses to get it (if you don't know who HAILE Selassie is ... now you do).

I'm badly misreading at least one clue a day these days (I'm blaming these new gradation lenses, which are ugh). Today, I somehow read 27D as [Big night in casinos]; I had M-- and thought "... MONday? Is MONday a big night at casinos?" (I've never been in one except to go to a pretty terrible magic show that my family insisted we go to on one of our family vacations—this one, to Tahoe). Anyway, it was [Big inits. in casinos] and MGM. Wrote in SDST instead of SDSU at first (knew the school, clearly forgot the abbr.). Had PEAK before CONK (12D: Crown). Had almost no trouble in the bottom half of the grid. Just tore through the SE in particular. SANDSPUR was the only thing keeping that half from playing like a Monday for me. My last letter was the "R" (which crossed 52D: Flowering plant that's also a woman's name (ERICA)).

Gotta run.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Challenging (7:20) (so ugly)

THEME: sadly, yes

Word of the Day: ANNA Nordqvist (16A: Nordqvist of the L.P.G.A.) —

Anna Maria Nordqvist (born 10 June 1987) is a Swedish professional golfer who plays on the U.S.-based LPGA Tour and the Ladies European Tour. She has won two major championships: the 2009 LPGA Championship and the 2017 Evian Championship. (wikipedia)

• • •

Life is too short for themed Fridays. This is especially true when the themes are this thin and stupid. A bunch of snacks? You replaced my Friday themeless, my beloved breezy Friday themeless, with a bunch of *&#$!ing snacks. I hope someone paid you for product placement, because otherwise this makes absolutely no sense. First, it's just not a theme. No, it's not. You could never, ever sell this as a theme. "Hey, I have this theme idea.""What is it?""Snack items!""OK, good, go on ...""No, that's it. Just some snack items. Symmetrically placed snack items. But get this ... [giggles at self] ... for 3 Musketeers I'm going to put a "3" in the box! A number! Not a letter! Oh, that'll bring the house down.""... .... [wide-mouthed stare] ... ...""It's good, right?" The whole thing is made worse by being clued at a Saturday level, and not just that, but ... like a 1997 Saturday level. Too much "watch me trip you up with my 'clever' clue for LEADDOGS (?)," not enough, you know, good fill and fun clues. Arcane and tedious, simultaneously. IZAAK crossing SUZY is a really terrible cross. A Truly Terrible Cross. But this thing was sinking from 1-Across, to be honest (1A: Blue dye => that crosswordese you used to know but forgot because mercifully constructors don't use it anymore, ugh). HISS doesn't even begin to get at it.

Seriously, that clue for LEAD DOGS (20A: Heads to Nome, say) is flagrantly bad. It's ungrammatical. Either the "to" in the clue makes absolutely no sense, or LEAD DOGS is a verb phrase that I was totally unaware of until this moment. That clue is garbage. It's a fireable offense. But that's just one bad moment. The whole NW is a clusterf*$% of terrible. First three Downs, barf. I was lucky enough to live thru the age of LYNDE, but that's gonna play super obscure to lots of people younger than me. ACTS is obnoxious, since the answer should clearly be LAWS (5D: Bills no more). The DEE clue, also trash (32A: Back on board?) (get it? 'cause DEE is the last letter, or "back" (!?!?!), of the word 'board'? Eh? EH?). USGA is an ugly initialism, and also repeats letters from L.P.G.A., which is in the ANNA clue (16A). You clued EDITOR as [Important movie credit]!?!?!? Jeez louise, try Harder. Be Specific. Give your clues Interest. I don't know what a PLUMB RULE is. I had PLUMB LINE (which fit, because of course it did). Ironically, this puzzle showcases tasty treats, while being decidedly not one. I'd rather eat HERRING butter cups. Saturday can't get here fast enough.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:48) (second fastest Saturday on record, fastest since January)

THEME: none (thank goodness)

Word of the Day: ETS (41A: A.P. exam inits.) —

Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a Princeton address.
ETS develops various standardized tests primarily in the United States for K–12 and higher education, and it also administers international tests including the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General and Subject Tests, HiSET and The Praxis test Series—in more than 180 countries, and at over 9,000 locations worldwide. Many of the assessments it develops are associated with entry to US tertiary (undergraduate) and quaternary education (graduate) institutions, but it also develops K–12 statewide assessments used for accountability testing in many states, including California, Texas, Tennessee, and Virginia. In total, ETS annually administers 20 million exams in the U.S. and in 180 other countries. (wikipedia)

• • •

Whoa. Solved straight out of bed, with absolutely no expectations of speed, and ended up with my second-fastest Saturday of the year (multiple minutes faster than yesterday's misplaced, misbegotten atrocity). If you correctly guess 1-Across right out of the box, then you're usually in good shape, and if that 1-Across is JVSQUADS—loaded as it is with high-value Scrabble tiles—then it turns out you're in Very good shape (1A: H.S. teams mainly with freshmen and sophomore players). I had JVSQUADS / AZIMUTH inside of 15 seconds. A J, V, Q, and Z before the party has really even begun. Those letters were all huge legs up (legups?) for the crosses, and the NW corner was done before I could blink thrice. I dropped QUE, UNDID, AZIMUTH, and SLUR immediately off of JVSQUADS, then ran the other long Acrosses back, no problem, then dropped all the long Downs, no problem (well, I wanted SPILL OUT before SPILLAGE (3D: Overflow), but that wasn't *much* of a problem). Helps to know a PRIE-DIEU is a thing (16A: Fixture in a church sanctuary). I've seen parts of that word in xwords for so long that I had no problem when the whole thing showed up today. Then it was IMPROV CLASS, GAVE UP, ANIMAE (misspelled but basically right), EMILE, TERENCE, ITASCA ... just slicing through that corner like it wasn't there (helped very much by knowing who TERENCE is, and by being a New Yorker w/ Minnesota friends and family—and thus knowing my ITASCA from my Ithaca). The PANCREAS clue was probably supposed to be tricky, but I didn't even see it until most of PANCREAS was filled in. The biggest stumbling block in the entire upper half, for me, was the last letter in PAW (31A: Shake on it!). I hate that type of clue generally (an unquotationmarked familiar phrase where the "it" is the thing you are going for) and here, "on" is a million times wrong. You're looking for "with." [Shake on it!] would be a fine clue for DANCE FLOOR or FAULTLINE but not PAW. No no. Woof. Bad dog.

The puzzle got noticeably weaker toward the bottom, with things changing quite rapidly around the equator. SAPID is, ironically, yuck (37A: Palatable). ETS is tolerable as a plural for aliens but horrid as a plug for a company that not everyone knows (not even close) (41A: A.P. exam inits.). It's *especially* bad crossing SNELLS, a very technical term (42D: Tackle box accessories). I've done enough puzzles to know both those answers, but the clue on ETS is just gonna wreck a bunch of people, needlessly. So so so so much better to come up with an entertaining clue for the aliens than to just dump a dull trivia clue about boring monolithic monopolistic ETS. Truly a terrible editorial decision, one that affects both the aesthetics and the solvability of the puzzle in potentially large and bad ways.

The bottom was mostly as easy as the top. Shout out to The PRICKLY PEAR, a southwestern restaurant in Ann Arbor (which may be long gone by now, for all I know, but it was there when I was in grad school, so, today, lucky me!) (57A: Cactus with an edible fruit). Again, as in the NW corner, the high-value Scrabble tiles came easily in the SE. Got ATLANTAN off the -TL- and then PIX-STIX off just the "T" (38D: Candy sold in straws)—couldn't remember if it was PIXI or PIXY, but YSL took care of that (56A: Monogram on L'Homme products). SW was the last to fall, and it always feels dicey backing into a themeless SW at the very end of a solve—you're so close, but you've gotta come in from the back ends of the Acrosses, and you've got nothing in there yet to help ... things can fall apart. But today, they didn't. All fell quickly. Last letter was the second "A" in MARSHA Norman (47D: ___ Norman, 1983 Pulitzer-winning playwright). In the end, I liked the highs of this one—there were probably a few too many lows, but overall I enjoyed the experience more than I didn't (huge asterisk by this assessment, since, as I've said many times, solvers tend to be too lenient on puzzles they crush and too harsh on puzzles that crushed them).

Peace.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. hey, looks like The Prickly Pear is still there. Cool.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:31)

THEME:"Well, Well, Well, if it isn't ..." — familiar phrases that have been parsed to seem like they are people's nicknames:

Theme answers:

BURY-THE-HAT CHET (23A: ... the guy who vows to take his Stetson to the grave)
HEART BRO KEN (33A: ... the fraternity guy who wants to be a cardiologist)
SHORT-SIGH TED (51A: ... the guy who barely shows he's exasperated)
POP-IN JAY (56A: ... the guy who always shows up unannounced)
WHAT-A-DIS GRACE (70A: ... the gal who delivered the greatest put-down ever)
DRONE DON (86A: ... the guy who takes aerial photos for the military)
GROUND NUT MEG (91A: ... the gal who loses it when pass plays are called)
ROLLERS KATE (108A: ... the gal who spends all day at the hairdresser)
FORT LAUDER DALE (121A: ... the guy who can't stop bragging about Bragg)

Word of the Day: J. Carrol NAISH (49A: J. Carrol ___ (two-time 1940s Oscar nominee)) —

J. Carrol Naish (born Joseph Patrick Carrol Naish; January 21, 1896 – January 24, 1973) was an American actor. He appeared in over 200 credits during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Naish received two Oscar nominations for his supporting roles in the films Sahara (1943) and A Medal for Benny (1945), the latter of which also earned him a Golden Globe. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. (wikipedia)

• • •

Full disclosure: I drank at Joe DiPietro's bar last month. And we had a long talk (over the considerable noise). And I liked him a lot. Still, I was fully prepared to find Sunday kind of old-fashioned and tedious, yet again. But I gotta say ... this one worked for me. As I have said many (many) times, if you are going to go wacky or corny or punny or whatever, Go Big. Don't send in tepid little safe answers, a har here, a tehee there. No, bring in GROUND NUT MEG and BURY-THE-HAT CHET, for chrissake, and let them take over the dance floor, wreck the place, and then burn it to the ground. These nicknames are ornate in their dumbness, which makes them great. Well if it isn't HEART BRO KEN! I want Ken to be real. I want to hang out with WHAT-A-DIS GRACE. I have no idea who this NAISH guy is, and RATED A sounds dumb, and U THANT is old-school crosswordese, but do I care? I do not. I'm going out for a drink with SHORT-SIGH TED because he's fun to be around and even though he's got problems (like all of us), he's not all long-winded and dramatic about them. Not like that DON guy, yeesh. Seriously, how can you not love the idea of a guy who just goes around praising forts all the time. Apache, Knox, Collins ... we get it, DALE.

I love that "Bones" was a show that someone apparently watched. I have seen exactly zero episodes, and can't imagine watching one, but somehow just knowing it existed and had fans is comforting. This is all to say that I did Not know TAMARA, but I pieced her together (the way the stars of "Bones" were always "piecing" bodies together ... or so I imagine) (130A: Actress Taylor of "Bones"). Longer Downs on this one are also, like the themers themselves, entertaining. Never heard DRUNKATHON, but I believe it exists, and anyway it's inferrable (2D: Prolonged period of excessive imbibing). "COME TO PAPA" is an expression that kinda creeps me out, but I also kinda like that it's next to THE RIDDLER, who is clued as ... a papa (79D: Father of Enigma in DC Comics). Honestly, this puzzle had me at DOCK ELLIS (83D: Pitcher who famously claimed he was on LSD while throwing a no-hitter (1970)). There's a doc(k) about him on Netflix and if you don't know the story of his acid-trip no-hitter, you should definitely watch it. Or just watch this.

Not too thrilled to see NRA in here again, though at least this time they didn't try to cute-it-up with some dumbass "magazine" pun or whatever. I can just pretend that the [Big D.C. lobby] is the National Restaurant Association, so that's what I'm gonna do. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Late Swedish elecgtronic musician with 2013 hit Wake Me Up / TUE 8-20-19 / Cavalryman under Teddy Roosevelt during Spanish-American War / Rapper with 2018 #1 album Invasion of Privacy / Small squirt as of perfume

Start shooting / WED 8-21-19 / Tuscan home of St Catherine / Phrase used by many easy-listening radio stations / Protest singer Phil

1971 title role for Charlton Heston / THU 8-22-19 / Outdoor section of zoo / Versatile offensive football positions, for short / Often abbreviated outburst

Classic sound effect in action film when someone is badly injured / FRI 8-23-19 / Title locale in Hercule Poirot mystery / Military drudges for short / fighter for Moors in Zaragoza in 1080s

Intense craving for particular food / SAT 8-24-19 / Rhyming toy / Spot to buy tix in NYC / Royal Navy stronghold during WW II / 2001 best seller with tiger on its cover / Symbols seen in comic strip cursing / Crossbow-wielding creature of sci-fi

Jack who co-starred with Charlie Chaplin in "The Great Dictator" / SUN 8-25-19 / Mumbai royal / Donizetti's "Pour mon âme," e.g. / French greeting

One-named queen of Tejano music / MON 8-26-19 / Pork dish of southern cuisine / Bow-tie wearing cub in Jellystone park / NBA phenom Jayson

The O.W.L. AND N.E.W.T at Hogwarts / TUES 8-27-19 / Magnetic quality / History-making events / "I'm shocked!"

Ship names for ancient Roman province in Iberia / WED 8-28-19 / Singers of high notes in olden times / 1995 cyberthriller about espionage / Entertainer who popularized phrase you ain't hear nothing yet / 2004 film about group of street dancers / 2003 Christmas-themed rom-com / Hell week hellion say

Bean popular in East Asia / THU 8-29-19 / Biblical figure who walked with God / Teacher in une école / Cause for combatants confusion / Protein found in muscles

Island of myth in Homer's Odyssey / FRI 8-30-19 / Alternative to Mountain Dew / Related to hip / Longest continuous sponsor of Olympics since 1928

French tennis player fashion icon / SAT 8-31-19 / Classic TV character whose name is Spanish for fool / 1980s feminst coinage regarding nuclear proliferation

Company that makes Bug B Gon / MON 9-2-19 / Corn syrup brand / Dried chili in Mexican food / Country between Togo and Nigeria

Long-stemmed mushroom / Universal recipient's category / Cheese whose name comes from Italian for sheep / Statue that might offend a bluenose / Sculling implement / Popular Belgian beers for short / One man army of silver screen / DIre appraisal of situation

Org with World Factbook / WED 9-4-19 / Extinct relative of ostrich / Detective show whose premiere episode was directed by Steven Spielberg / Genre introduced to Grammys in 1989 / Go Set Watchman setting

Big employer in Delaware / THU 9-5-19 / Grass with prickly burs / Some bygone service stations / Measures of newspaper ad space / Annoyance for oyster eater / 1946 role for Fonda 1994 role for Costner

2002 George Clooney film set in space / FRI 9-6-19 / Espana (old colonial domain) / Sci-fi character who claims fluency in more than six million forms of communication / California county containing Muir Woods

Image on oscilloscope / SAT 9-7-19 / Angle measured by astrolabe / 1980s arcade character with propeller beanie / Norman 1983 Pulitzer-winning playwright / Cactus with edible fruit / Fixture in church sanctuary / Monogram on L'Homme products / Ancient Roman writer of comedies