Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (10:06)

THEME:"NUMBER THEORY"— on four different lines in the puzzle are numbers in foreign languages and also familiar phrases that contain that same number (only as an English word, not a foreign number). The point is that some foreign numbers look identical to English words. Elsewhere in the grid are the four different languages in question, and then there's a revealer:LOST IN / TRANSLATION (90A: With 92-Across, alternative title for this puzzle)

Theme answers:

QUINCE JELLY (24A: Relative of marmalade) / QUINCE (which is FIFTEEN (see 26A) in SPANISH (20A))
DOBBY THE HOUSE ELF (46A: Whom Harry Potter frees from serving Draco Malfoy's family) / ELF (which is ELEVEN (see 45A) in GERMAN (34A))
SEIZE / POWER (59A: With 60-Across, take control after a coup) / SEIZE (which is SIXTEEN (see 61A) in FRENCH (84A))
DUE TO THE FACT THAT (71A: Because) / DUE (which is TWO (see 75A) in ITALIAN (104A)

Word of the Day: "DR. I.Q." (1D: Title host of radio's first major quiz show) —

Dr. I.Q. (aka Dr. I.Q., the Mental Banker and Doctor I.Q.) is a radio and television quiz program. Remembered as radio's first major quiz show, it popularized the catch phrase "I have a lady in the balcony, Doctor."

• • •

I'm actually startled at how poor this is. Aside from the stray interesting answer (say, DOBBY THE HOUSE ELF), this one was a bemusing slog from start to finish. Never cared once about the theme. Never really *got* what the theme thought it was doing, why the theme thought it was interesting. I just filled in a bunch of languages pretty easily (without ever having to check the cross-references) and then wrote in repeated words a bunch of times. Because that's what this is—a weirdly elaborate thematic excuse for having words appear twice. All that space wasted on useless stuff like ITALIAN SPANISH FRENCH etc. who cares? We know what language they're in. The revealer was pathetic, in that LOST IN / TRANSLATION is not catchy or kicky or even very accurate. Yes, there are foreign words for numbers that are also (with different pronunciations) English words: whoopty bleepin' doo! And for that I have to endure stuff like MAESTRI (no one says this) and GENYER (fewer than no one says this—seriously, negative people). Gen Xer, definitely a thing, GENYER, ack, no. Reverse-stacking DETOO / ARTOO, awkward. AMUN (with a "U"?) RA, awkward, EXEQUY, what the hexequy is that?! ABAFT? ODIC? SOMNI-? OOOO? ITTY? ACITY? How does this one pass muster? How? EFFS all around.

DOBBY THE HOUSE ELF is a memorable character, but I always felt bad for his brother, DOOBIE the House Elf. Remember when Harry fired DOOBIE just for being late to work a few times and failing that one drug test? Uncool, Harry, you narc. Moving on to other parts of the puzzle ... AKRONOH is a crutch. It's like if ERIEPA and USOFA had a horrid cursed baby. If you do this with Akron, you can do it with any city in the country, and that slope feels slippery and horrible. USE THIS? I guess someone might say that, sure, but it doesn't feel very tight. I do like WAS A BI PEA, but only because I think it's important to represent the full spectrum of legume sexuality in puzzles. Not all peas are either straight or gay, you know.

Nothing more to say about this one. On The Clipboard this week, I don't have too much to rave about. My favorite themed puzzle of the week was probably Patrick Blindauer's "T Time" (for the American Values Club Crossword (AVCX)), which featured five different crossings that formed the shape of "T"s and crossed at the letter "T." Clean grid, lots of fresh fill, neatly done. Favorite themeless of the week was Natan Last's New Yorker puzzle, which was glutted with great long answers: BECHDEL TEST, SPEED READERS, PROM KINGS, SWEATS IT OUT, OF MICE AND MEN, etc. Those New Yorker puzzles are reliably good, but this one was exceptional.

Until tomorrow,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I just saw "Parasite" so my mind is still reeling and also my standards for good art are kinda through the roof right now. I feel real bad for the next movie I see.

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Constructor: Sally Hoelscher

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (2:52)

THEME: recent First Ladies, clued via their memoirs for some reason

Theme answers:

LAURA BUSH (17A: Author of the memoir "Spoken from the Heart" (2010))
ROSALYNN CARTER (23A: Author of the memoir "First Lady from Plains" (1984))
MICHELLE OBAMA (36A: Author of the memoir "Becoming" (2018))
HILLARY CLINTON (47A: Author of the memoir "Living History" (2003))
BETTY FORD (59A: Author of the memoir "The Times of My Life" (1978))

Word of the Day: NUBBLY (5D: Rough and textured, as fabric) —

adj. nub·bli·er, nub·bli·est
Rough or irregular; textured: the nubbly surface of raw silk.
(thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

The word is NUBBY. I spent more time, far and away more time, trying to grasp this answer than I did on anything else (it's an easy puzzle). That damn extra "L," yikes. If you think this is just a straightforward matter, LOL, here is the literal first page of hits when I google [define nubbly]:

Notice that NUBBY (no "L") is the third dang hit, and KNUBBLY (what the!?) is fourth. If this tells you nothing else, it's that none of these are words and they should never be used ever, amen. The fact that NUBBLY is standing alongside GLUEY (?) doesn't help matters. If you want to keep a low profile, don't associate with known felons (I see you, GLUEY). But let's talk about the theme: it is pretty weak. A bunch of First Ladies' names can be arranged symmetrically and so ... here we are. The memoir title thing gives it ... an angle, I guess ... but this was just fill-in-the-First-Lady. Pretty boring. And the fill was definitely subpar throughout, especially in the south. Those corners are pretty inexcusable. A little editing elbow grease woulda gotten the muck right out, but that's not really how this editing team rolls. AGA / AMESS is in fact a mess, and the SE, woof, with MDSE x/w ISS over DEE, it's already weak even before the absolutely baffling and unforgivable OVUM / OVOID crossing. Those words are related. They have the same root. What are you even doing here?! Absolutely not. I wouldn't even put them in the same grid together, let alone *cross* them. Then there's the glut of other GLUEY stuff throughout the grid like EKE ERMAS USAIR RAH ESSEN SITU ATA AME etc. There is indeed A LOT OF it. This one needed the theme to be snappier and the grid to be a lot more polished overall. And that is that.

Had I'M SORRY before OH, SORRY (30A: "I apologize!") but beyond that (and the whole NUBBLY fiasco), no significant errors or hold-ups.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:16 first thing in the a.m.—before 5 a.m., to be precise-ish—is very fast for a Tuesday)

THEME: PARALLEL PARKS (36A: Does a driving test task — or an apt description of the five circled diagonals in this puzzle) — U.S. National Parks run parallel to one another in the circled diagonals:

THE PARKS:

DENALI (Alaska)
GLACIER (Montana)
REDWOOD (California)
ACADIA (Maine)
ARCHES (Utah)

Word of the Day: Glacier National Park —

Glacier National Park is an American national park located in northwestern Montana, on the Canada–United States border, adjacent to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The park encompasses over 1 million acres (4,000 km²) and includes parts of two mountain ranges (sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains), over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants, and hundreds of species of animals. This vast pristine ecosystem is the centerpiece of what has been referred to as the "Crown of the Continent Ecosystem," a region of protected land encompassing 16,000 square miles (41,000 km²). (wikipedia)

• • •

I have surprisingly few feelings about this one. I think the theme idea is very clever. Slightly odd to see a theme based around U.S. National Parks that does *not* feature either YELLOWSTONE or YOSEMITE (what I think of as the two most iconic U.S. National Parks), but these five parks are all very well known; Glacier was the only one whose location I had to look up, though it's probably more famous than ACADIA, which I know about only because it's in the northeast (like me) and I once looked into going there (still never been to Maine, weirdly). So what we have are five parks, which form a slightly arbitrary but still very solid set, and you cannot argue with their parallelness. So the revealer actually involves wordplay, and doesn't just sit there pointing at the themers like the world's most bored and useless tour guide. If you'd simply described the theme to me, I'd say "sounds nifty" (maybe not in those exact words). But the experience of solving this one was rather flat. The main problem was that the puzzle was soooooo easy that I actually never noticed the letters in the circled squares. Didn't have to. I hesitated significantly only once, when trying to navigate the GARDENED / TERRARIA crossing early on (wanted TERRARIA to be a different word I couldn't call to mind, which I realized, after I was finally done, was MENAGERIE). After getting out of the NW corner, I made one error (AIR for ACT at 22D: Something a false person puts on) but otherwise filled in the grid pretty much as fast as I could read the clues. Is my speed / theme-neglect the puzzle's fault? Well, yeah, kinda. Make people have to notice the theme elements! This is especially important in a puzzle that Doesn't Have Any Theme Answers (beyond the revealer). Solving this was like solving a very weak themeless (weak because the fill is constrained by a theme, which does exist, but is simply invisible to me). I actually wouldn't have minded this as a Wednesday or even Thursday puzzle with (much) tougher cluing.

As for that fill, it's passable. There are definitely unattractive moments (GARS OMAHAN UNS SSA) but I know how hard it is to fill a puzzle with fixed diagonal words / phrases shooting through it. Seems like it should be easier than filling a grid with normal fixed Across/Down themers, but it is *not*. It's harder. The way to look at it is, you might have technically the same number of theme *squares* but the number of *answers* you've now conscripted into your theme scheme goes through the roof. Hardly any answers dont have at least one fixed theme letter in them. This makes building the grid very tough. Normally in a corner you can tear it all out and start again if you don't like it, but once you decide on these themers and this grid shape, you're locked in to those diagonals and they are touching evvvvvverything. It's messy and annoying and frustrating. This is not to defend junky fill at all. Only to explain that filling this grid is probably harder than it looks, and the amount of junk in this grid didn't seem any higher than the amount in any other NYTXW grid. Again, the experience of filling it all in was not exactly scintillating, but I'm actually surprised the grid didn't buckle in a much more visible and alarming way. In short, I've done worse. The theme is conceptually strong. I like CERBERUS (notably untouched by theme letters!) (64A: Dog guarding the gates of the underworld). There's more good than bad here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (my typing was alarmingly poor—I think I typo'd ever entry somehow) (4:11)

THEME: SWIPE LEFT / SWIPE RIGHT (60A: Reject romantically ... or a hint to the starts of the answers to 18- and 35-Across, phonetically / 65A: Show interest romantically ... or a hint to the ends of the answers to 20- and 44-Across, phonetically) — language from the Tinder dating app, where you SWIPE RIGHT on people you're interested in and SWIPE LEFT on those you're not. Here, in the puzzle, "swipe" must be interpreted as a word meaning "take illegally"—you will find words that mean "take illegally" (or sound like they do when you say them aloud) on the "LEFT" or "RIGHT" side of their respective answers

Theme answers:

LYFT DRIVER (18A: One competing with Uber) (actually lots of LYFT DRIVERs are also Uber drivers, I think) (here, "lift" means "swipe" ... and LYFT is at *front* of its answer, so it's a SWIPE LEFT)
BLUE STEEL (20A: Iron alloy that includes a bit of tungsten and chromium) (here, "steal" means "swipe" ... and STEEL is at the *back* of its answer, so it's a SWIPE RIGHT)
KNICK KNACKS (35A: Tchotchkes) ("nick" means "swipe"... SWIPE LEFT)
KEYSTONE KOP (44A: Incompetent figure of old slapstick) ("cop" means "swipe"... SWIPE RIGHT)

Word of the Day: HUSSAR (4D: Hungarian horseman) —

A hussar (/həˈzɑːr/ hə-ZAR, /hʊˈzɑːr/) (Polish: huzar, Hungarian: huszár, Serbian Latin: husar, Serbian Cyrillic: хусар) was a member of a class of light cavalry, originating in Central Europeduring the 15th and 16th centuries. The title and distinctive dress of these horsemen were subsequently widely adopted by light cavalry regiments in European armies in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
A number of armored or ceremonial mounted units in modern armies retain the designation of hussars.

• • •

Well that was a chore to explain. And also a slight chore to figure out in the first place. Didn't take me long, but I did have to think about it, and when I figured it out, well, GROAN, for sure (43A: Response to a computer crash). I'm having trouble getting past the repetition of SWIPE, for starters. I get that in order for the theme to work at all (probably), you've got to repeat the word, but it's just such an ugly solution, somehow. Might've been nice to indicate that the revealers were app-related phrases, as I probably struggled more with the front end of -PERIGHT than I did anywhere else in the grid besides HUSSAR (which I confused with HESSIAN, and which I haven't seen in a puzzle since god knows when). The ostentatious app-iness of this whole puzzle (see also TIKTOK) gives it a very strong "Hello, fellow youths!" feel, as in "Hello, fellow youths! Did you see that KEYSTONE KOPs one-reeler at the Rialto last night!? ROFL, amirite!? Hey, who are your favorite EARPS? Mine's Virgil, duh! Do you like 'KOJAK?''Who loves ya, baby?' Ha ha Yeah, he's cool. Oh, hang on, BRB, gotta go TOT up the SODAS for our field trip to Six Flags. I mistotted last time and we DRANK 'em all before we even left the parking lot: epic FAIL! Hey, you guys wanna make an OPERA TIKTOK?! I mean RAP! RAP is what I listen to for sure. Anyway, think about it ..." Etc. This theme is just ... a lot. Extra. Trying real hard. I see the wordplay and the theme density and all of it, and I am sort of nodding at it appreciatively, but it wasn't really for me. Two of the answers get their homonyms from fanciful made-up words (Lyft, Kop). The fill, especially around where the revealers meet (i.e. the south), is really rough. ITSYITISIIIISPY!?!? Yeesh. Oh, wow, I just realized that this puzzle is 16 wide. It really can't follow any of the rules, can it? What a rebel... I can't believe this puzzle doesn't have a hit show on Nickelodeon already.

Five things:

39D: Kiss amorously (SNOG)— I get that they use this word a lot in Harry Potter, but it still needs some indicator that it's foreign slang, imho.
50D: Harry Potter's Quidditch position (SEEKER) — this puzzle has definitely read all the Harry Potter books, multiple times. Or, he's seen all the movies. Probably the latter.
28A: Volunteer for another tour (REUP)— this was the final answer on the first Sunday puzzle I ever successfully completed (in 1991), so even though it is semi-garbage fill, I can't bring myself to hate it the way it needs to be hated.
61A: Legislature V.I.P. (WHIP) — probably the hardest single answer for me, weirdly. It's down in that thicket where the revealers overlap and before I knew what the revealers were doing, it was rough, and even after I had the "W" from SWIPE and and the "P" from I SPY I still couldn't see what was going on. W--P ... my brain wanted only WIMP.

47A: ___ pony (POLO)— yes, very "relatable."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (not sure of exact solving time as I had to wrestle with rebus squares in my software)

THEME: PIECES OF EIGHT (53A: Pirate plunder ... or a hint to interpreting an appropriate number of squares in this puzzle) — eight "8" squares, I guess ... so it's "eight" phonetically (i.e. "ATE") in the Acrosses and two "O"s in the Downs ... I guess the numeral "8" represents two "O"s one on top of the other ... [sigh]

Theme answers:

UPLATE / GOOF UP
THE FOURTH ESTATE / "SCHOOL DAZE"
HATERS GONNA HATE / TOO SOON / SNOOPS
TAILGATE PARTY / TOO SOON
XRATED / WHIRLPOOLS
ON A DATE / FOOLS
CRATER / WHOOPI

Word of the Day: Chicago's EDEN'S Expressway (67A: Chicago's ___ Expressway) —

The William G. Edens Expressway (also known as the Edens Parkway and the Edens Superhighway) is the main major expressway north from the city of Chicago to Northbrook, Illinois. Only the short portion from the spur ramp to the expressway's end in Highland Park does not carry I-94. It was the first expressway in Chicago and was opened on December 20, 1951. It has three lanes in each direction. The original name of the expressway was the Edens Parkway, named after William G. Edens, a banker and early advocate for paved roads. He was a sponsor of Illinois' first highway bond issue in 1918. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was annoying to solve. Why do constructors keep trying to do Soooooo much? I don't mean mere ambition, I mean whistles and bells that just make things a mess. It's "8" in the grid but ATE in the Across and "OO" in the Downs *and* there are 8 theme squares and there's a "pirate" (?) phrase for a revealer?! People will ooh and aah at the "impressive feat of construction," but the solving experience was unpleasant. It was especially unpleasant if, like so many people, you didn't solve it on paper. For me, it was just a dumb "why is ATE crossing OO and really is that the only thing that's happening? and it's just going to *keep* happening!?!?"HATERS GONNA HATE is a fun phrase, and I enjoyed remembering that "SCHOOL DAZE" existed, but the rest of it, no thanks.

Found the ATE/OO thing very early with UPLATE / GOOF UP (two "up" phrases crossing, really? OMG no, SAT UP is right there too, with "UP" crossing the "UP" in GOOF UP— that's all truly horrid). And then it was just a slog, with PIECES OF EIGHT only kinda sorta bringing it all together. I guess the "PIECES" are the 8 squares? I had some trouble seeing PIECES OF EIGHT because I had MOOR instead of COVE at one point (54D: Spot to lay anchor). I had a *lot* of wrong answers. PARKS for POLLS (24A: They close at 9 p.m. in New York); MLS before XFL (59D: Sports org. with the New York Guardians and Seattle Dragons); Nation of ISLES instead of Nation of ISLAM (don't ask, man, I have no idea what my brain was doing there) (30D: Nation of ___). The worst error by far was SLOGS (and then PLODS) for PLOWS (49A: Goes (through) laboriously). What a gangly awkward clue on such a basic word. Because of my wrong answer(s), I couldn't see YIPE (43D: Cry of surprise) (it's YIPES, btw). I also just couldn't get to CLICK (47D: Hit it off), and I really really wasn't expecting a theme square down there, so CRATER and WHOOPI were rough. The rest of the grid wasn't much trouble. It also wasn't much fun.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Erik Agard and Anne Flinchbaugh

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium (I solved on paper without a timer)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SANTOS (35D: Brazilian soccer team that Pelé played for) —

Santos Futebol Clube (Brazilian Portuguese: [ˈsɐ̃tus futʃiˈbɔw ˈklubi]), commonly known simply as Santos, is a Brazilian sports club based in Vila Belmiro, a bairro in the city of Santos. It plays in the Paulistão, the State of São Paulo's premier state league, as well as the Brasileirão, the top tier of the Brazilian football league system.
The club was founded in 1912 by the initiative of three sports enthusiasts from Santos by Raimundo Marques, Mário Ferraz de Campos, and Argemiro de Souza Júnior as a response to the lack of representation the city had in football. Since then, Santos became one of Brazil's most successful clubs, becoming a symbol of Jogo Bonito (English: the Beautiful Game) in football culture, hence the motto "Técnica e Disciplina" (Technique and discipline). The most recognized Santista anthem is the "Leão do Mar" written by Mangeri Neto. This was largely thanks to the Peixe's golden generation of the 1960s which contained players such as Gilmar, Mauro Ramos, Mengálvio, Coutinho, Pepe and Pelé, named the "Athlete of the Century" by the International Olympic Committee, and widely regarded as the best and most accomplished footballer in the game's history. Os Santásticos, considered by some the best club team of all times, won a total of 24 titles during that decade including five consecutive Brasileirões, a feat that remains unequaled today. Os Santásticos won four competitions in 1962, thus completing a quadruple, comprising the Paulistão, the Brasileirão, the Copa Libertadores and the European/South American Cup. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well OK then, hi, hello there. This is the Friday crossword content I am looking for (and congrats to Anne Flinchbaugh on what appears to be her NYTXW debut). After my initial annoyance at being thrown a "?" clue at 1A: Caseload? (BOTTLES)— not welcoming! — rather than wrestle with it, I just jumped over to the NE corner, got SIDEBET immediately, and settled in for what turned out to be a great, if brief, ride. I just kept filling in the grid and nodding. Yes. Oh sure, I like that. Good one. Oh, CHEAT CODE, huh, wow. It kept on like that. So smooth. So smooth that the rough bits (for me) really stood out. The rough bits are (unsurprisingly) all proper nouns that were "rough" because I didn't know them. Too bad so sad. The only truly rough bit, where "rough" can be understood as "unlovely," was OVULAR, which ... how many damn ways do we need to say egg-shaped in this ridiculous language? Were OVATE and OVOID not enough!? I guess my complaint here is more with the English language than with the puzzle, which, as I say, was mostly gold. The truly impressive thing to me was that it felt poppin' fresh while not really having *that* many long answers. Only six answers go longer than eight letters, and only three go longer than nine. And yet man do they make good use of the 8+ stuff: BADMOUTH, EVIL GRINS, RUNNER'S HIGH, CHEAT CODE, LUNAR CRATER. If you can maximized the wow value of your longer answers, keep your shorter stuff clean, and write occasionally interesting clues, well, that's all there is to it! Easy! (Editor's voice: not easy)

Favorite moments today were actually cluing moments, which I could probably just call "clues," but we're a high-class outfit here at "Rex Parker" and we like to deal in professional-seeming argot when we can. I loved the clue on DRS (what are the odds of That?) (25A: Mount Sinai people: Abbr.). Mostly I'm glad I saw the clue only *after* I'd filled it in from crosses, because wow that would've thrown me. My brain would definitely have gone "Bible" and not "hospital," and then I'd've been in Stuck City until the crosses helped me out (I bypassed Stuck City today, accidentally, by just doing the crosses). The other hurray moment for me with the cluing came at 43A: A mare might be found in one—before I read that clue, I had L--AR in place, so my brain was already thinking LUNAR, but when I saw the clue, I had a great (because brief) moment of "'mare,' what the ...?" and then snap, yes, got it. From the Latin for "sea," mares (actually ... looks like the plural is "maria") are "large, dark, basaltic plains on the moon" that early astronomers mistook for seas (wikipedia). They cover about a sixth of the moon's surface. Anyway, love both the DRS and the LUNAR CRATER clues, though I have to admit it was nice in both cases to be able to admire them without having had to go through that icky period where you're baffled by them. This puzzle was 95%+ good feelings, which is honestly about 30% more than I actually require. Please study the non-flashy parts of the grid to see what "smooth fill" means. Not JOSHING. Do it. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I did not know who EGO Nwodim is because I don't watch "SNL" any more, but she's been on the show since 2018 (11D: Nwodim of "S.N.L."). I like the way Erik (here and in his the puzzles he edits for USA Today) helps me navigate the pop culture names I don't know by making sure crosses are superfair.

P.P.S. I could not process what the "in more ways than one" part of the PREGAME clue was getting at (16A: Time for warm-up shots, in more ways than one). I think the idea is that players take practice shots in PREGAME, and cameras take shots *of* the warm-up in their PREGAME shows? So, basketball shots and camera shots are the "more ways than one" ... if that's wrong, please don't tell me, because I'm honestly content with my explanation.

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Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:28)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HILDA Doolittle (36A: Imagist poet Doolittle) —

Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist, associated with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets, including Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. She published under the pen name H.D. (wikipedia)

• • •

So mad right now because I have absolutely heard of "H.D." but had no idea those initials stood for HILDA Doolittle. Really truly deceptive, to the point of being borderline inaccurate, to say that the poet was anything but "H.D." She published under the name "H.D." Gah! Can't decide if this is a knowing-too-much or knowing-too-little problem. Anyway, it stinks. Still, I can't complain about difficulty very much, since HILDA / CPA provided literally the only difficulty in this whole solve. I somehow knew / "knew"MCCAIN (1A: Senator who wrote "Faith of My Fathers"); it was the first thing that came to mind and I tested it and bingo bango! Five of the six crosses immediately checked out, and CZARINAS followed shortly thereafter. Hard to overestimate how important getting 1-Across is on any day, but today it felt *particularly* fortuitous. With "-ZIC-" in place, QUIZZICAL LOOKS was a gimme. Wrote in QUOTATION MARKS without ever even looking at the clue—that is the kind of solve I was having. I typo'd PAGE GOY for Prince Valiant's haircut, which was the only real mistake I made. I guess the puzzle thinks it's being cute with all the "Q"s... honestly, I don't qare. The grid seems fine, overall, but the puzzle itself was way way way too easy. HOP UP, that was weird. I wanted PEP UP, which would also have been weird. I've heard of someone's being "hopped up on goofballs," but HOP UP as a phrase meaning simply "energize," that's definitely out-of-the-language for me. But nothing else was.

I had CPU for CPA because ... just because. I didn't know why the clue was winking at me (29D: No. brain?). Like, was it flirting with me? Did it have something in its eye? I just didn't get it. The CPU is the computer's "brain," so I just went with that, but then it seemed very unlikely that an imagist poet would be named HINDU Doolittle (which is where that first name was headed), so I tore out that "U" and then the rightness of CPA finally asserted itself to me. I just read about ARSÈNE Lupin and Sherlock Holmes in Alan Moore / Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which I'm in the middle of), so that clue felt like it was made special for me (59A: "___ Lupin Versus Herlock Sholmes" (1910 story collection)). It's not that I knew all the answers, it's that the answers I got caused other answers to topple by giving me enough letters in the right places to make educated guesses. Felt like watching dominoes fall rather than pushing a boulder up a hill. Exhilarating, in a way, but also sad, because I feel like I barely saw this. Do NOMADsTRAIPSE? Really? Not a very I would've associated with them. BAH. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sophia and David Maymudes

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium (9:15)

THEME:"RESOLVED"— you "solve" the puzzle by adding "RE-" to the beginnings of words in familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, which are clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style)

Theme answers:

REPRESS YOUR LUCK (27A: "Stop rolling sevens!"?) (are sevens "lucky"? Is this a craps thing?)
RELATE TO THE PARTY (45A: Build rapport like a presidential candidate?)
RESENT PACKING (70A: Hate getting ready to move?)
RESTOCKS AND BONDS (97A: Makes friends while working retail?)
RETURN THE TABLES (115A: Event planner's post-banquet task?)
RECOVER GIRL (16D: Young woman to call when your data gets deleted?)
RECESS POOLS (69D: Places to swim during school?)

Word of the Day: MONGO (106D: Home planet of Ming the Merciless) —

a monetary subunit of the tugrik (merriam-webster.com) .... or ....

Mongo is a fictional planet where the comic strip (and later movie serials) of Flash Gordon takes place. Mongo was created by the comics artist Alex Raymond in 1934, with the assistance of Raymond's ghostwriter Don Moore. Mongo is depicted as being ruled by a usurper named Ming the Merciless, who is shown as ruling Mongo in a harsh and oppressive manner.
The planet is depicted as being inhabited by different cultures, and having a varying ecosystem.The technology of these cultures varies from groups at a Stone Age level, to highly technologically advanced peoples. At the beginning of the comic strip, almost all of these cultures are shown as being under the domination of the tyrant Ming. In all the versions of the Flash Gordon story, Flash Gordon is shown as unifying the peoples of Mongo against Ming, and eventually removes him from power. Later stories often depict Mongo under the rule of its rightful leader, Prince Barin. (wikipedia)

• • •

The one positive thing I can say about this puzzle is that 1-Across (DESPAIR) is apt. Nice touch. Tells you exactly what you will feel about 1/3 of the way through the puzzle when you realize that this is it, it's not getting any better, you're just gonna be putting RE- onto the front of words ad nauseam. And the fill, that also isn't going to improve. It's just gonna tread water, struggling to keep its head above Adequate, for the remainder of the solve (which, thank merciful god, was not that long). ORME, ONYOU, TIRO, UIE, NNE TIRO INLA ANI ORIEL ISE IHAVEENCARTAATPAR! My investment in this puzzle, my care, my serious attention, they all checked out completely at -ONYM (15D: Ending with pseud- or syn-). ALOAF!? ORNITH.!!!!! hahahaha wow, wow. And the single ARREAR returns to haunt the grid once again ... stunning. What is happening today? HOY VEY!

I was forewarned that this would be a very easy puzzle, so of course I didn't come anywhere close to my record time (I have never ever done well on a puzzle I've been told by others is easy, which is why I stay the hell off of social media before I've solved and why you should never ever (please!) send me comments or questions about the puzzle until after I have posted my write-up. I know sometimes you are eager to get your feelings out, but ... courtesy! Still, though, this was pretty much as advertised, i.e. easy. UGLI, but easy. Here are the places I stumbled:

Stumbles:

1D: Pullers of Artiemis's chariot (DEER)— really should've gotten this one straight off, but did the sometimes reasonable but today dumb thing of putting "S" at the end of the answer and waiting to see what would happen. My brain had that chariot being pulled by HENS at one point.
53A: Dance craze of the early 2010s (DOUGIE)— sigh, bygone fads. Great! I vaguely remember the phrase "teach me how to DOUGIE!" and that is all I remember.
47D: Brexit exiter (THE U.K.) — ugh, THEUK. Especially ugly when the clue doesn't even bother to signal the abbr. part. Also, the cluing is awkward as heck, as it sounds like the answer should be "one who exits Brexit," not "the party whose exit is signified by the portmanteau 'Brexit'." Awk, I say!
84D: Study of birds: Abbr. (ORNITH.) — I just could not have foreseen a six-letter (!) abbr. I mean, of course ornithology is the study of birds, but ORNITH.!? It's just ... who expects ORNITH.!? (an entry not seen in sixteen years, and hopefully not seen for at least another sixteen)
99D: Rehearsals (DRY RUNS) — I kept wanting it to be TRYOUTS. Over and over. The fact that this answer ran through the very wince-y NNE SOL UIE NINO section didn't help matters

RECAP AND GOWN! REBOUND FOR GLORY! REFORM-FITTING! These aren't hard to come up with, and the funniness ceiling on the whole concept is pretty low. Sorry the news isn't better.

On the Clipboard this week ...

It's been a very Berry week, for sure. First of all, Patrick Berry's New Yorker puzzle this week was humblingly smooth and gorgeous. The kind of thing where even as you're solving, you're just shaking your head, marveling at the fact that any one human can be this good at anything. I wish more constructors would study his work and aspire to his level of craft. I mean, you're gonna fall short, but falling short of Patrick Berry can still leave you in a pretty wonderful place. See his puzzle here.
The other Berry thing that happened this week was his release of "Sweet 16," a puzzle suite (!) consisting of 16 smallish variety puzzles, each one leading to its own meta-answer, and then the whole set leading to some final meta-answer. I just started in on these and they're delightful. Well worth your $10. Buy "Sweet 16"here, for yourself, for a loved one, for America.
My favorite puzzle of the week was probably Amy Goldstein and Joanne Sullivan's WSJ crossword from Tuesday 2/18—and it's a theme type that I normally really don't care for. The puzzle was called "Behind the Scenes," and the theme answers were all two-word (or compound) phrases, where both words (or word parts) could also follow the word "PLAY" in familiar words/phrases. MONEYMAKER, DATEBOOK, etc. No great shakes, really. But the grid! It was so smooth and had such vibrant fill, stuff like HOTCOMB and PHOTOBOMB and FRONT TEETH and POOH CORNER (!!). I just *enjoyed* solving it. This puzzle was proof that you don't have to have a startlingly original theme concept to make a truly *enjoyable* puzzle. It's also proof that the WSJ should publish way way way more women. They're sitting at 6% for 2020 so far. That is embarrassing. The very existence of this puzzle proves that there are women constructors who can make puzzles not just as good, but better than the WSJ average. So why the incessant mediocre old white guy parade!? It's gotta stop, or at least ... abate. Please.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor:Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging

THEME:RAISING THE FLAG (15D: Activity depicted in a famous 2/23/1945 photograph ... and in three of this puzzle's answers) — Theme answers, which are all downs, feature the letters "FLAG" rising vertically from bottom to top.

Theme answers:

DINING AL FRESCO (4D: Having a meal under the stars, e.g.)
KING ALFRED (6D: Ninth-century English monarch known as "the Great")
LEGAL FORCE (28D: What a law hasn't been repealed still has)

Word of the Day: SUET (35D: Tallow source)

/ˈso͞oət/
noun
the hard white fat on the kidneys and loins of cattle, sheep, and other animals, used to make foods including puddings, pastry, and mincemeat.

• • •

Hi everyone! Jordan Siff here. I'm a brand strategist by day, but longtime fan of Rex's blog, so here I am to give you my take on today's puzzle. I live in NYC, so if you're reading this on the subway - perhaps refreshing Safari as you glide into a station that has cell service - you are my people!

So, I told myself that I didn't want to come across too jaded or critical in my debut post, but my job is to be honest here - this one missed the mark for me. I found it to be pretty tough for a Monday, more Tuesday-ish in difficulty, which may be due to the theme forcing some fairly obscure and long down answers. I see what RAISING THE FLAG was going for, but it didn't pan out too well as a theme because there wasn't anything unique about how it interacted with each answer. It was more or less "here are three answers that all have GALF somewhere in them." I might not be the biggest history buff, but I've never heard of KING ALFRED, and a somewhat random king from ninth century England feels a bit esoteric for Monday fare. LEGAL FORCE wasn't too exciting either. DININGAL FRESCO was a nice touch, but that's 1 out of 3. Perhaps the revealer helped some people solve the other themers once they knew that "GALF" would show up, but my experience was just finishing the puzzle and then scratching my head over the theme after the fact.

Outside the theme, this puzzle does have a few redeeming qualities. The clue for BARISTAS was clever - and I'll definitely need a nice, strong cup when I get back to my "daily grind" today. The cross between IOTA and ATOM, both clued as "Tiny bit," was cute. I liked the clue for CARVE, but for some reason had BASTE in there first? There wasn't too much hardcore crosswordese (looking at you, APSES), but some less common short fill that may have been a bit much for a Monday (e.g. SHOD AMAIN LOCI ROIL SUET).

Bullets:

HINGE (21A: What a door swings on)— Call me a millennial, but referencing the dating app could have been a more modern or fun cluing on this one.
MONGREL (25A: Opposite of a purebred) — This word definitely has a "playground insult" vibe, to me. I can't imagine someone matter-of-factly referring to their dog as a "mongrel."
AGORA (38A: Ancient Greek meeting place) — For some reason, this is singed into my head as a vocab word from my 6th grade Ancient History class. Shoutout Mrs. Kolodney!
AS IF (38D: "Yeah, I'm real sure!") — I'm trying to imagine someone sarcastically saying "Yeah, I'm real sure!" like that's a phrase that would be uttered out of a human mouth. AS IF!
GAMY (66A: Like venison that's been sitting awhile) — I thought that venison was gamy in and of itself. If it's been sitting for awhile, that just sounds...rancid!?

Signed, Jordan Siff, New to CrossWorld

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Hello, everyone! It's Clare — back for the last Tuesday in February. I swear this month has flown by, and I have no idea where the time went. Here in D.C., it's already starting to feel like spring because the weather has been so warm lately. Though, when I tell my family this, they like to remind me that it's already in the 70s out in California. Anyway, I hope you all have had a great month of February and enjoy the extra day in this leap year! Now on to the puzzle...

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME: STATE MOTTO(69A and 70A: What the first word of each long Across answer is vis-a-vis the bracketed place in its clue)

Theme answers:

FRIENDSHIP GAMES (21A: International competition for countries that boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics [Texas])
HOPE DIAMOND (31A: 45 1/2-carat gem at the National Museum of Natural History [New Hampshire])
FORWARD PASS (43A: QB's downfield throw [Wisconsin])
INDUSTRY LEADERS (57A: Companies that have big market shares [Utah])

Word of the Day:GILAS (23D: Large lizard of the southwest)—

The Gila monster (HEE-lə) is a species of venomous lizard native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. A heavy, typically slow-moving lizard, up to 2 feet long, the Gila monster is the only venomous lizard native to the United States and one of only two known species of venomous lizards in North America. Although the Gila monster is venomous, its sluggish nature means it represents little threat to humans. However, it has acquired a fearsome reputation, and is sometimes killed despite being protected by state law in Arizona. In 2019, the state of Utah made the Gila monster its official state reptile, despite the very small range of the Gila monster in the state. (Wiki)

• • •

Clue: What I said when I got to the end of the puzzle and realized the theme [California] --> Answer: "Eureka!"

Dumb joke aside, I mostly didn't find much PEP (33A: Liveliness) in the puzzle. I also felt like the theme was an afterthought to my solve — I was mainly confused by the brackets as I did the crossword and only at the very end did I understand why there were there. While I was solving, I kept trying to think how FORWARD PASS might relate to Wisconsin or wondering what relation the HOPE DIAMOND could have to New Hampshire. I guess, on the plus side of all this, I learned some state mottos? ('Cause that's definitely going to help me in the future...)

As I'm trying to write about the puzzle, I'm realizing that not much of the puzzle is sticking with me, as I didn't find really any of the clues to be particularly clever or fun. A lot of the answers seemed like they could be clued in fresher ways, like HYDRA (maybe something with Marvel); LEVY (Schitt's Creek, anyone); ERROR (something maybe baseball-related — like, say, the Astros' past few seasons); etc... I just get tired of seeing the same answer clued in almost the same way every time. Like in this puzzle, NARC at 61A is in essentially the exact same place as it was for Monday's puzzle (at 58A). This time it was clued as "drug cop." Yesterday, the clue was "antidrug agent, informally." If I never saw another AIDED; ORB; NARC; or APNEA in a puzzle, I would be a happy camper.

I did mostly enjoy the downs, particularly LAVA LAMP, TRIPOLI, AW SHUCKS, and GILAS. Though, from my deep dive into researching these Gila Monsters, I'm now a bit terrified of them.

Misc.:

I know LAVA LAMPS were mainly popular in the '60s-'70s, but they definitely had a resurgence sometime in the late '90s/early 2000s. Growing up, I was definitely obsessed with having one.
22D definitely had the potential to be a stumper, but, luckily, I'd read the book, "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" as part of a sixth grade project that involved making it into a picture book for little kids. The book was fine, but it's stuck with me because of how much I managed to procrastinate on the assignment. I remember my mom had to stay up very late finishing this assignment with me. I'd love to say it taught me a lesson, but I definitely still put the 'pro' in 'procrastination."
All I can think of when I see HEATS (63A: Preliminary races) is how many stupid heats there were in track for the 100m and 200m in high school. Seriously, it seemed like everyone competed in these two events, and they took absolutely forever to get through. It made trying to figure out when to warm up for the mile or 2-mile near impossible.
If someone wants to watch a movie about a "Glasgow Gal" (11A), I recommend watching "Wild Rose." She's a LASS but also loves to sing country music and wants to make it to Nashville. I saw it and loved it. And everyone needs to at least hear her sing this song that should've been nominated for (and probably won) an Oscar:

Signed, Clare Carroll, "ad astra per aspera" [Kansas]

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Constructor: Francis Heaney

Relative difficulty: Medium (untimed, on paper)

THEME: BILLIE EILISH — tribute puzzle honoring this singer/songwriter, who won a bunch of GRAMMYs at the most recent Grammy Awards (1A: Award notably won in each of the "big four" categories by this puzzle's honoree). The idea here is she won a GRAMMY in each of the "big four" categories, and her name divides into four equal parts (as seen at the ends of this puzzle's theme answers). I think that's it. There's also her biggest hit ("BAD GUY"), which gets the revealer clue (67A: Hit song by the 1-Across winner whose name is spelled out by the final three letters of 21-, 25-, 47- and 52-Across)

Theme answers:

PLAYMOBIL (21A: Toy brand with plastic figures)
"HIPS DON'T LIE" (25A: 2006 #1 Shakira hit)
TROMPE L'OEIL (47A: Art technique that's French for "fools the eye")
"AS YOU WISH" (52A: Butler's "Gladly")

Word of the Day: KELLI O'Hara (30D: Actress O'Hara with a Tony for "The King and I") —

Kelli Christine O'Hara (born April 16, 1976) is an American actress and singer. She has appeared on Broadway and Off-Broadway in many musicals since making her Broadway debut as a replacement in Jekyll & Hyde in 2000. She has also acted on television, film and opera, appearing with The Metropolitan Opera. In 2018 she made her West End debut.
O'Hara has received seven Tony Award nominations, first for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for the 2005 production of The Light in the Piazza. Her subsequent nominations include The Pajama Game (2006), South Pacific (2008), Nice Work If You Can Get It (2012), The Bridges of Madison County (2014), and Kiss Me, Kate (2019), winning Best Actress in a Musical in 2015 for her performance as Anna Leonowens in The King and I.^[2]
She has also played roles in television series, such as Masters of Sex and 13 Reasons Why, receiving a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her starring role in the 2017 web drama series The Accidental Wolf. She has appeared in films, such as Sex and the City 2, and operas, such as The Merry Widow and Così fan tutte. (wikipedia)

• • •

Francis Heaney has made some of my favorite puzzles. He did this candy cane-themed meta-puzzle a handful of years back (around Christmastime, 2013) that remains one of my favorite crosswords of all time—one of the few crosswords that I still think about years later ("Seasonal Staff"—see it here). I encounter his work primarily in the American Values Crossword Club puzzle, and I've been groomed to expect a very clever hook—something that makes the whole puzzle snap into place, some ingenious bit of wordplay, some didn't-see-it-coming gimmick. I make these prefatory remarks to try to explain why today's puzzle was such a disappointment. I never got that feeling of "wow." Worse, I was sure the problem was mine, so I kept scanning and rescanning the finished grid, wondering what the hook was, only to discover, in the end, that it's just ... that her name divides into "four" equal parts (to match (?) the "big four"GRAMMYs that she won earlier this year). Like ... that's it. Since the revealer clue basically holds your hand through the BIL / LIE / EIL / ISH revealer, so there's not really anything to discover (on your own), I figured that, since it's Francis here, there had to be more. Something special. Some extra level. And there just wasn't. It all seemed very flimsy as tribute puzzles go ... though as soon as I write that sentence, I realize that "tribute puzzles" are actually routinely disappointing. At least this one isn't just a bunch of trivia about a dead celebrity crammed hastily into a grid so that the "tribute" can come out in semi-timely fashion. This one at least tries to do something with the whole "big four" thing. It's just ... I didn't even know "big four" was a thing. At all. I couldn't name the "big four" categories. Album song record artist? Is that it? Oh, close. It's Album song record and then Best New Artist. Seems weird to make this "feat" contingent on the artist's being "New.""New" is just a matter of timing, not quality. So you can only win "big four" once in your life? Shrug. ANYway ... I know who Billie Eilish is, I know the hit song, this all should've been very much up my alley. But ... well, it was an alley, but mainly it was dark and I was kind of lost and then it turns out there wasn't anywhere to go because I was really just standing in my backyard the whole time. Or something like that.

Hardest part of the puzzle for me By Far was PLAYMOBIL, which ... what is that? I really (Really) wanted PLAYSKOOL ... that's a thing, right? I feel like I had a lot of PLAYSKOOL toys as a kid, like a barn that made a "moo" sound when the doors opened, does that sound right? Familiar? I don't think they had PLAYMOBIL toys when I was a kid. Wikipedia says the company was founded in '74, which is very much me-as-a-kid time. But I was PLAYSKOOL. So that whole -MOBIL part had me tilting my head. But the crosses checked out.

[the audience!!!! i love this]

The only other real head-scratcher for me was KELLI O'Hara, whose career is so accomplished (see Word of the Day, above) that I'm embarrassed I've never even heard of her. Oh, and I definitely did not know that GINA was Dennis the Menace's "gal pal" (though I do love the use of that phrase in this instance—guys have "gal pal"s too!) (63A: Gal pal of Dennis the Menace). The only girl I can picture in the Dennis-the-Menaceverse is (it turns out) Margaret, a bespectacled redhead who is more nemesis than gal pal. As for the rest of this puzzle, well, it just played like a somewhat disappointing themeless. The west was the wobbliest, fill-wise (ESAI ISEEM SMS), but overall it was solid enough. I just didn't get the aha moment I really truly expected. This puzzle is likely the victim of my having set the bar so incredibly high. Let me phrase that—of *Francis's* having set the bar so incredibly high, with his previous work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. partials are never gonna be *great* fill, but I did enjoy ADOG about as much as I'm ever gonna enjoy a partial (3D: On the internet, nobody knows you're ___" (classic New Yorker cartoon caption)). And "classic" is actually not much of an overstatement. This cartoon's got its own wikipedia page, from which I learned that, "As of 2013, the panel was the most reproduced cartoon from The New Yorker, and Steiner had earned between $200,000 and $250,000 US from its reprinting" (wikipedia)

July 5, 1993 (!!!)

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Constructor: ANDREW (24A) Kingsley and John Lieb

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (?) (untimed, on paper)

OR some combination of the two...

THEME: SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT (6D: Quantum mechanics thought experiment in which contradictory states exist simultaneously) — two-square answers contain three-letter words where the middle letter can be the second letter in the first square or the first letter in the second square. Theme is obliquely explained by two theme answers, both of which are split into two crossing answers (one in the NE, the other in the SW): CROSS / THE BORDER (14D: With 16-Across, travel internationally) and "I NEED / SOME SPACE" (42D: With 55-Across, breakup line)

Two-square answers:

18A: Mantra chants => OMS (with Downs of WHOM BOOS or WHO BOOMS)
39A: Zenight => TOP (with Downs of NEATO DROP or NEAT DROOP)
33A: Opposite of masc. => FEM (with Downs of FEAST MAIL or FAST EMAIL)
53A: A pair => TWO (with Downs of TWEEN OWS or TEEN WOWS)

Word of the Day: BASS Ale (1A: British brew since 1777) —

The Bass Brewery /ˈbæs/ was founded in 1777 by William Bass in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England. The main brand was Bass Pale Ale, once the highest-selling beer in the UK. By 1877, Bass had become the largest brewery in the world, with an annual output of one million barrels. Its pale ale was exported throughout the British Empire, and the company's distinctive red triangle became the UK's first registered trade mark. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is one of those times where I recognize that the puzzle is good even though I didn't particularly enjoy solving it. I kinda slumped and groaned when I got to SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT because it seems a tired kind of thing for the puzzle to be obsessed with. "Schrödinger"-type puzzles are stock form—these are puzzles where one of two letters can occupy a square—maybe it's one letter in the Down and another in the Across, or maybe it's like the CLINTON / BOBDOLE puzzle of election day 1996, where both answers worked. Anyway, it's a thing. So this felt very "aren't we clever?" / wink-y / insidery / meta from (close to) the start, which I just found grating. I'm fine with the two-letter answers; in fact, the whole concept is indeed very clever, and the addition of this whole other level to the theme—sort of punny references to what's going on with the two-square answers (CROSS / THE BORDER and "I NEED / SOME SPACE")—makes the theme incredibly dense. This extra level is structurally / architecturally impressive, but it didn't do much for my solving experience, since I actually was left wondering what those phrases were doing, and wondering if they weren't doing ... more. More than just commenting cleverly on the two-square action. Realizing they were just there as window dressing made them less fun. This is the second day in a row where I kept waiting for the AHA moment to drop, and it just never did. Kinda cute to "end" with the TWO-square answer TWO, though (53A: A pair).

I think I'm also just bored with the idea of more dudes doing more "architecturally impressive" mathy/sciencey tricky Thursday puzzles when the NYTXW's non-male constructor percentage still languishes at an embarrassing 17% YTD. The all-dude culture up in editing continues to ... well, just continues, I guess. But I was sincerely impressed that the grid didn't collapse under the weight of the theme density here (by which I'm surprised the fill doesn't well and truly suck). This is the kind of theme where just getting the grid out clean is a feat. Non-theme fill isn't earth-shattering or fancy, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to hold. And it does.

I didn't have much trouble with this one. The basic theme concept made itself known early. I had WHOM and BOOS alongside each other, and then when I (quickly) got SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT, I went back and looked and noticed that WHOM/BOOS could also be WHO/BOOMS ... and that was that. It was very very easy to identify where this trick was going to happen again because, well, there are only four two-letter answers. The only real trick was figuring out the descriptive themers in the NE and SW, and that wasn't too hard. One real slow down came when trying to get into the center of the grid from the north and not being able to get the BLOOD part of NEW BLOOD (nice answer, btw), I wanted NEW HIRES (20D: Recent recruits, so to speak).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Aimee Lucido

Relative difficulty: Easy / Easy-Medium (untimed on paper)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AKON (46D: One-named singer with the 2006 hit "Smack That") —

Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiam (/ˈeɪkɒn/; born April 16, 1973) is a Senegalese-American singer, songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, philanthropist and actor. He rose to prominence in 2004 following the release of "Locked Up", the first single from his debut album, Trouble. [...] His second album, Konvicted received three nominations for the Grammy Awards in two categories, Best Contemporary R&B Album for Konvicted album and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Smack That" and "I Wanna Love You". // He is the first solo artist to hold both the number one and two spots simultaneously on the BillboardHot 100 charts twice.^[1] Akon has had four songs certified as 3× platinum, three songs certified as 2× platinum, more than ten songs certified as 1× platinum and more than ten songs certified as gold in digital sales. Akon has sung songs in other languages including Tamil, Hindi, and Spanish. He was listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the #1 selling artist for master ringtones in the world. [...] Forbes ranked Akon 80th (Power Rank) in Forbes Celebrity 100 in 2010 and 5th in 40 Most Powerful Celebrities in Africa list, in 2011. Billboard ranked Akon No. 6 on the list of Top Digital Songs Artists of the decade.

• • •

So nice to wake up and see Aimee Lucido's name in the byline. She is part of the elite New Yorker crossword team (along with legends like Patrick Berry, Liz Gorski, Erik Agard...) and her puzzles are typically effervescent delights. This one was no exception. Clue after clue, answer after answer had me smiling and (if you can imagine) genuinely enjoying myself! Her puzzles tend to skew contemporary, with lots of fresh turns of phrase and concepts but not (necessarily) a lot of proper nouns. I like proper nouns just fine, but they can be really hostile to people who don't know them and create hard generational lines between solvers. You gotta handle them carefully. Today, AKON's the only real potential proper name stumbling block I see. Mostly I see really in-the-language words and phrases like BINGE WATCH (such a good clue—1A: See the seasons pass quickly?) and ESCAPE ROOM and DEATH TRAPS and COPARENTS and MAKE IT RAIN (again, so good) (52A: Give out cash freely). I guess there is "SHARKNADO"—that's definitely a proper name. But "SHARKNADO" is the "Godfather" of the 2010s, so I just assume everyone knows it. "I'm gonna MAKO him an offer he can't refuse!" Classic.

I love that this puzzle came on the heels of yesterday's puzzle. That puzzle was a technical marvel, in its way, but those puzzles always feel like puzzbros (virtually always guys) showing off for other puzzbros, whereas this ... this just feels like a good time. I know, it's apples and oranges, as Thursdays call for trickiness and Fridays call for a certain open breezy challenge, but still, I have to note that the dearth of women constructors is especially striking when women constructors finally *do* appear and are so clearly above average. The WSJ hardly publishes any women, but when they finally did publish a team of women (Joanne Sullivan and Amy Goldstein) last week ... well, I liked that puzzle more than almost any WSJ puzzle I'd done that year. Erik Agard has the USA Today at something like 70% women constructors right now (!?) and that puzzle is objectively better than it's ever been. The New Yorker crossword team is almost half women, and those puzzles are consistently first-rate. The problem isn't "women aren't interested," the problem is The Culture. And when the most prominent members of The Culture do not care about representation, you have ... our current situation. Anyway, Aimee is great and the NYTXW is lucky she deigned to send them anything.

I made a lot lot lot of mistakes for such an easy puzzle. Let's start with TEAM for BEDS (1D: Twins, e.g.). Shout-out to all my Minnesota readers (there are a weird lot of you)! I am on a social media fast for Lent and what has replaced it is a metric ton of preseason baseball media (news, Grapefruit and Cactus League games, podcasts aplenty, etc.). With friends as well as a daughter in Minneapolis, and baseball on the brain, I could not see "Twins" as anything but a TEAM. I actually had BE_S and still no idea for a few seconds. Brain: ".... is it TEAM?" What else?

Mistakes:

46D: One-named singer with the 2006 hit "Smack That" (AKON) — what happens when you are aware of various names but have no idea what songs they go with? NEYO happens!

8D: Its scientific name is Bufo bufo (TOAD) — had the -OA-, went with COAL
41A: Like many Egyptian pyramids (LOOTED)— this is a very good but very tough clue. Had LOO-ED and still no idea. Thought maybe the passages inside were ... LOOPED? Or maybe there are ankhs ... those have loops, right? Kinda? ...

20A: Something Winnie-the-Pooh lacks (PANTS) — I didn't make a mistake here, I just wanted to point out this answer, which amused me. It's funny 'cause it's true.
45A: About .4% of the weight of the human body (NACL)— OK I object to this clue, as there is nothing in it that indicates to me the answer will be a chemical formula! Boooo! Anyway, I forgive this clue, as it led me to my best wrong answer. I had the "N" and eventually decided that .4% of the weight of the human body must be attributable to the NECK.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (untimed on paper)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Paul LYNDE (43D: Paul of the old "Hollywood Squares") —

Paul Edward Lynde (/lɪnd/; June 13, 1926 – January 10, 1982) was an American comedian, voice artist, game show panelist and actor. A character actor with a distinctively campy and snarky persona that often poked fun at his barely-closeted homosexuality, Lynde was well known for his roles as Uncle Arthur on Bewitched, the befuddled father Harry MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie, and as a regular "center square" panelist on the game show The Hollywood Squares from 1968 to 1981. He also voiced animated characters for four Hanna-Barbera productions.
Lynde regularly topped audience polls of most-liked TV stars, and was routinely admired and recognized by his peers during his lifetime. Mel Brooks once described Lynde as being capable of getting laughs by reading "a phone book, tornado alert, or seed catalogue."^[4] Lynde once said that while he would rather be recognized as a serious actor, "We live in a world that needs laughter, and I've decided if I can make people laugh, I'm making an important contribution." (wikipedia)

• • •

JANELLE MONAE is the only thing about this puzzle I really liked (7D: Grammy-nominated singer who made her on-screen film debut in "Moonlight"). Oh, I guess I liked SOCIETY PAGES too (20D: Bygone parts of newspapers with local gossip). Otherwise it's a lot of random trivia like KEY ARENA and CROTON RIVER (is every damn river in America fair game now?) and a lot of cluing that is irksome instead of what I have to believe was the intention, which is merely "difficult." It had this weird old-fashioned vibe, like ... who uses WORST as a verb like this? (29A: Trounce) (I had the "W" and wanted "WHOMP!"). In my experience, only the NYTXW. TAMERS are from some bygone idea of the circus (also circuses with captive animals that need to be "tamed" are gross and horrifying). BOYARDEE looks dumb all naked and alone without the CHEF to proceed it. BATE? (30A: Reduce in intensity) Where do you say that? Besides "bated breath," I guess. Still, it's *a*bate. Be honest, you never use BATE. Is "barber" a verb now? "Please barber my hair, Larry!" Odd (26D: Barber => STYLE). Everything about the cluing, and many things about the fill, just felt off. Getting a tough clue should result in a definitive "Ah, OK, right, yes." Not, "Uh ... I guess." I had a series of "Uh ... I guess"es with BATE and BABES and BEEF HOT DOG. "BABES" is fine but seems oddly ... poetic? ... you'd say there are "babies" in a nursery (30D: Nursery contents). Anyway, the clues were not enjoyable or convincing today. They were all, "You could look at this word ... *this* way!" and I just kept shaking my head "NAH."

I listen to music and follow contemporary music reasonably closely and I was not aware FUNKRAP was a thing. I need to look up examples, hang on ... huh ... weird ... when I google [funk rap] the very first hit I get is for G-FUNK, which I *have* heard of. Sigh. If I search your alleged term, the first hit should not be Some Other Term. Now I'm searching for it in quotation marks and *still* getting G-FUNK as the first hit. I am not hunting this term further because the fact that I *could* find it if I tried real hard isn't a very good defense of the answer. If I go to last.fm's list of "top funk rap artists," the first is Digital Underground, but if I look up Digital Underground on wikipedia, the "genres" offered for that group are "alternative hip-hop,""west-coast hip hop," and "funk"." Last.fm lists KMD second among "top funk rap artists"—weird; I own a KMD album and did not know they were "FUNK-RAP." You can't even find the word "funk" anywhere on KMD's wikipedia page. The term "FUNK-RAP" seems really ill-defined and loose—inferrable, for sure (in that everyone knows "funk" and "rap"), but not a very tight / specific genre.

I know that the letters of the Greek alphabet are all fair game, and I'm used to seeing them in my grid, but that doesn't mean I've ever stopped resenting being asked to know the Greek letter *order.* What I'm saying is that if you have to use Greek letters, go ahead, but cross-referencing them to try to be cute is only ever going to be annoying. Can we just turn Saturdays into Fridays? Or find a way to achieve difficulty that doesn't sap the joy from the whole solving experience? Either or.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I found another thing I liked—the clue on ELISION (10D: Something Cap'n Crunch has). That's some wholesome misdirection.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium to Medium (10:15)

THEME:"Letter Dictation" — Phrases that have words that sound like letters in them are clued as if they related to the letter ... so the (all-caps) clue is a literal representation of the answer, if the answer is taken as an auditory pun referring to a letter of the alphabet. Thus:

Theme answers:

SPLIT PEA SOUP (20A: GAZACHO) ("gazpacho" is a "soup" from which the "P" has "SPLIT")
GIVE THE STINK EYE (29A: SMEILL) ("smell" is a "stink" to which an "I" has been given)
LONG TIME NO SEE (47A: ENTURIES) ("centuries" is a "LONG TIME" in which there is no "C")
OH BY THE WAY (62A: TECHNIQUEO) ("technique" is a "WAY" that the letter "O" is sitting "by")
YEAH WHY NOT (66A: DEFINITEL) ("definitely" is a word meaning "yeah" only here the "Y" is "NOT" (present))
BE IN THE MOMENT (82A: INSTBANT) ("instant" is a "moment" and "B" is "IN" it)
GREEN TEA EXTRACT (96A: ENVIRONMENAL) ("environmental" means "green" but here the "T" has been "EXTRACT(ed)")
ARE YOU WITH ME? (110A: RUMYSELF) ("R" and "U" w/ "myself," i.e. "ME")

Word of the Day: Leopold AUER (72A: Violinist Leopold) —

Leopold von Auer (Hungarian: Auer Lipót; June 7, 1845 – July 15, 1930) was a Hungarian violinist, academic, conductor and composer, best known as an outstanding violin teacher. [...] Auer is remembered as one of the most important pedagogues of the violin, and was one of the most sought-after teachers for gifted students. "Auer's position in the history of violin playing is based on his teaching." Many notable virtuoso violinists were among his students, including Mischa Elman, Konstanty Gorski, Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, Toscha Seidel, Efrem Zimbalist, Georges Boulanger, Benno Rabinof, Kathleen Parlow, Julia Klumpke, Thelma Given, Sylvia Lent, Kemp Stillings, and Oscar Shumsky. Among these were "some of the greatest violinists" of the twentieth century. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm going to start by doing something I never do; I'm going to quote another crossword blog. This is from Jeff Chen at xwordinfo: "NO LIKEY… that feels like something okay for me to say [...] Not sure if Sam gets the same pass." I am on a social media fast for Lent, so I cannot do what I normally do when an answer makes me wince, which is go on Twitter and confirm that someone, anyone, heard what I heard. I think I audibly shouted at "NO LIKEY" when I got it. I think what I shouted was "Nooooooo." It is a phrase that reeks of Chinglish, i.e. a kind of mocking fake-Asian speak. The phrase "Me NO LIKEY" would drive that point home a little harder, perhaps, but dropping the "Me" does not in anyway erase the connotations of racial mockery. I get that not everyone will have these associations. But as you can see from Jeff's (very mild) response, NO LIKEY is gonna read as racial caricature to a *bunch* of solvers, and someone, somewhere along the line—for sure, the editor, if no one else—should've said "no" to this, should've recognized that this is potentially problematic language, should've foreseen that it would go down badly-to-very-badly with some subset of solvers. I would be agasp and agog and all the a-words if *none* of test-solvers raised this as a potential issue. Mostly I'm genuinely aghast that the editor is so bad at his job. That his ear is so tin. That he just doesn't care. And that the NYT as an institution just doesn't care. This isn't a one-time thing. He's barely one year off from the whole BEANER incident, for god's sake. He can't keep stumbling into racism and then claiming he didn't know any better. To claim that NO LIKEY is just an [Informal "Ugh!"] ... I dunno, man. I just don't know.

The theme? It's clever. It works. It's fine. Much of the rest of the puzzle, however, feels off (yet again). "HOPE TO GOD!" is not a stand-alone phrase, and therefore absolutely does Not swap out for 2D: "With any luck!" ... [Wish desperately], that would work for HOPE TO GOD. Further, the phrase is "all or nothing."ALL OR NONE is just awkward (3D: Uncompromising). OREOOS is somehow more irksome than just plain OREO. Way way more irksome. Constructors are using it all the time now, trying to seem clever when all they are is desperate for more vowels. As I've said before, GENYERS is not now and will never be a thing. They're "millennials" and that is all that they are. You might be able to get away with just GEN Y, as that had currency for maybe a hot second, but GENYERS is gruesome. No one knows who Leopold AUER is. Just keepin' it real. I mean, I do, because I had to do this whole AUER investigation way back when (circa 2007) when there was massive AUER confusion around which AUER was the violinist and which was the (somewhat better known) actor? Mischa, I think?? Yes, that's it.

BOATEL remains a deeply dumb word (95D: Waterside lodging with a portmanteau name). What the hell is a BLEEP CENSOR?? (64D: Curse remover). I get that curses are bleeped on network TV (say) and that that is a form of censorship, but is BLEEP CENSOR someone's job?? Is it a machine? Bizarre. SMOKE RINGs are not at all hard to blow (40D: Something that's not easy to blow). I blew them all the time when I smoked. For a while, I was convinced that it was the primary reason I smoked. Diverting. Meditative. Then I went to the doctor at age 21 for some unrelated thing and he asked if I smoked and I was like "... yes" and he just looked at me like "you ****ing idiot" and I was like "I know, I know" and I quit the next month. I don't miss it, but I do miss the rings a little. I had DAS before AGS (109D: Chief legal officers: Abbr.) and NBC before BBC (60A: Original airer of "The Office"), which was the closest thing to a pitfall in this whole puzzle. That's because I was certain about NBC, which was the original airer of the *US* version of "The Office." So I didn't change that "N" which meant I couldn't see BEAST and since I couldn't remember YANN I had a real snafu on my hands in the heartland of the grid. Two themers were implicated. But I figured Grendel had to be a BEAST (60D) and finally extricated myself from there. Really liked D-WADE (86D: Nickname of the Miami Heat's all-time leader in points, games, assists and steals) and KILL FEE (51A: Payment to a freelancer for unpublished work) as answers. Nice stuff. But nothing but nothing had any hope of getting the awful taste of NO LIKEY out of my mouth.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Hard

THEME: NOTHING — Theme answers start with a synonym for "nothing."

Theme answers:

ZIPPO LIGHTER (20A: Butane-filled item for smokers)
SQUAT JUMPS (27A: Exercises that work the glutes, quads and abs)
ZERO MOSTEL (47A: Star of Broadway's "Fiddler on the Roof")
NOTHING DOING (53A: "Forget about it!" ...or a clue to the starts of 20-, 27- and 43-Across)

Word of the Day: IBSEN ("A Doll's House" playwright Henrik) —

Henrik Johan Ibsen (/ˈɪbsən/;^[1] Norwegian: [ˈhɛ̀nrɪk ˈɪ̀psn̩]; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time.^[2] His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare,^[3]^[4] and A Doll's House was the world's most performed play in 2006.^[5]
(Wikipedia)

• • •

Hi, it's Annabel! If I seem extra tired that's because I moved into my first apartment today! It's so exciting. I'm living with a few housemates, but other than that, hey, it's all mine! This GRAD is GROWing.

This is the first puzzle in the New York Times' week of women constructors. Every puzzle this week will be constructed by a woman, to mark Women's History Month. I think that's pretty cool! I hope next year they take it up a notch, like Universal Crossword, which is using only woman-constructed puzzles this much in what they're calling "Women's March." I like that, and honestly I think the NYT has a lot further to go in terms of female inclusion than a single week--but I am definitely grateful for that week!

The Universal Crossword's #WomensMarch starts today! Each of the 36 puzzles this month has been constructed by a different woman or pair of women. Below is a visual of the constructors' names that our creative services team at @AndrewsMcMeel put together. Happy solving! pic.twitter.com/IcZaspzM0a
— David Steinberg (@dsteinberg49) March 1, 2020

Back to the puzzle. Whoof, a tough Monday. ERMA Bombeck and ZERO MOSTEL had me stuck for a while because they didn't have super helpful crosses, and for some reason the bottom corner also had me clueless (or should I say HINTless); I had GRAN for NANA and SYMPATHETIC instead of SYMPATHIZER. But the difficulty is good for people who like a little bit of a challenge to start the week off. I just happen to like easing into the week. Fill was pretty interesting, not too many typical Monday words (lookin' at you, though, EON). I liked the Krazy Kat reference. Oh, and I've never heard anyone say they "don't give A RAP."

I thought for sure the "Forget about it!" in the theme clue was going to be some kind of New York "fuhgeddaboutit" thing. The combination of "nothing" synonyms was a little weird--it's typically ZERO, ZIP, NADA, right, not ZERO, ZIP, SQUAT? A perfectly serviceable Monday theme nevertheless. It would have been nice if such a tough puzzle had a theme that was a little more interesting, but that's okay.

Bullets:

TAS (22D: Profs' aides) — There's actually another way to clue this. TAS is short for Tool-Assisted Speedrun, which means programming a computer to beat a video game by hitting inputs way faster than a human ever could. It's a really cool rabbit hole to go down. Check it out:

ERMA (35A: "At wit's end" humorist Bombeck — "Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart." - Erma Bombeck
ELSA (65A: Singer of "Let It Go" in Disney's "Frozen") — Andrea Carla Michaels, why would you bring this back?!?! Now I'm gonna have "Into The Unknown" stuck in my head for a week.

Signed, Annabel Thompson

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

[Follow Annabel Thompson on Twitter]

Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:11 despite my typoing like every answer ... took me about six passes to get COTY into the grid properly, somehow, ugh ...)

THEME: various "stars"— various kinds of famous-people stars are clued as if they were other kinds of stars:

Theme answers:

ANNIE OAKLEY (17A: Shooting star?)
AL ROKER (37A: Morning star?)
SIMONE BILES (59A: Gold star?)
PAUL BUNYAN (10D: Giant star?)
SANTA CLAUS (29D: Pole star?)

Word of the Day: YAW (40A: Veer off course, as a ship) —

1aof a ship : to deviate erratically from a course (as when struck by a heavy sea)especially : to move from side to side

bof an airplane, spacecraft, or projectile : to turn by angular motion about the vertical axis (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Lynn Lempel is a legendary early-week constructor and I'm happy to see her name again today. This isn't among my favorites of hers, mostly because the theme concept feels looser and less precisely executed than it usually is in her work. My main problem is with [Gold star?], which is the only "star" in the set that isn't an actual in-the-sky star. Rather, it is a sticker you get on exemplary homework in elementary school, or a Soviet-era insignia indicating "Hero" status. If "gold star" has an astronomical meaning, it must be pretty obscure. Doesn't come up on google searches. Whereas, shooting star? Sky. Morning star? Sky (refers to Sirius when it appears in the morning sky, but also Venus or (less often) Mercury when it does the same, thank you wikipedia). Giant star? Sky. And pole star? Sky (another word for the North Star, or Polaris, though also a metaphor meaning "guiding principle"). I'm thrilled to see SIMONE BILES whenever she wants to make a grid appearance, but [Gold star?] makes this set of themers clunk, and the set wasn't exactly tight to begin with. There's nothing holding the set together besides the star stuff, and three of these "stars" aren't even real people. They're fictional. I mean, have you ever actually seen an AL ROKER in person. I doubt it.

Almost all my trouble today (and there wasn't much of it) came in the center of the grid, where I could not think of a Disney dog in five letters starting with "G" and I could *not* think of a word for [Little devils] that wasn't IMPS. So let's take those one at a time. First ... GOOFY's a dog!? But ... Pluto's a dog! Isn't Pluto GOOFY's dog? How does a dog have a dog? Wait ... OK now I'm just reenacting this scene from "Stand By Me":

I threw BOAR athwart the Disney dog answer, hoping for clarity, but things just got worse, as GO___ seemed even less like a dog name, somehow, and now I had the "B" from BRATS but still no idea how to get to there from [Little devils], a clue that seems far too cutesy to describe actual BRATS, unless "Little devils" is some kind of tailgating slang for BRATS (as in bratwurst, as in sausages). Probably not, but I do like it and I am going to start calling sausages that.

Yesterday's puzzle was accompanied by a note:

To mark the beginning of Women's History Month, every puzzle this week (Monday to Sunday) has been made by a leading woman crossword constructor.

This sounds noble enough, but only the NYTXW would think to honor a "month" with a week's worth of puzzles. I mean, if that's not ... telling, I don't know what is. It's tokenism at its finest. It's also embarrassing, considering that another crossword—the syndicated Universal Crossword, edited by David Steinberg—is actually doing the whole month. All women constructors, all month long. He's calling it the Universal Crossword Women's March (solve or print puzzles out from here, or get them here in .puz format). Here's the line-up, which includes today's constructor, Lynn Lempel, and other familiar names, as well as a slew of debut constructors:

But sure, NYTXW, one week, great. You know what they call a week's worth of puzzles by men at the NYTXW? They call it ... a week. Just kidding, most weeks this year have featured at least one woman. To find a seven-day stretch of just men you have to go all the way back to ... Jan. 16-22, 2020. Olden times. Times of yore. And there's actually a more recent twelve-day stretch where only half a puzzle was constructed by a woman. But congrats on the progress, NYTXW. Baby steps, I guess.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Tracy Gray

Relative difficulty: Challenging (over 5?)

THEME: ONE UP (69A: Outdo ... or a hint to entering four answers in this puzzle) — themers look like nonsense in the grid because the letters "NE" aren't there. Turns out this is because the letter string "ONE" in each themer is actually turned "UP" ... so the "NE" extends upward from the "O" and then, back at themer level, the answer continues as usual...

Theme answers:

ZO(NE)DEFENSE (the "NE" are part of ENOLA) (18A: Strategy used in basketball and football)
HOW O(N E)ARTH (the "NE" are part of ENOUGH) (33A: Exclamation of surprise)
TATUM O'(NE)AL (the "NE" are part of ENOCH) (45A: "Paper Moon" Oscar winner)
CLAUDE MO(NE)T (the "NE" are part of ENOKI) (60A: "Water Lilies" painter)

Word of the Day: HAMA (47A: Major city of west-central Syria) —

Hama (Arabic: حماة‎ Ḥamāh, [ħaˈmaː]; Syriac: ܚܡܬ‎ Ḥmṭ, "fortress"; Biblical Hebrew: חֲמָתḤamāth) is a city on the banks of the Orontes River in west-central Syria. It is located 213 km (132 mi) north of Damascus and 46 kilometres (29 mi) north of Homs. It is the provincial capital of the Hama Governorate. With a population of 854,000 (2009 census), Hama is the fourth-largest city in Syria after Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one was unpleasant from beginning to end, for a host of reasons. The worst thing about it, though, was not the puzzle's fault—because the worst thing about it was that it's a Thursday puzzle posing as a Wednesday. This level of trickiness, where solvers get answers that look like garbage until they realize "oh, there's this bizarre trick," that's Thursday territory. No way am I looking for something this rule-breaking on a Wednesday. I lost so much time not understanding why the themers were gibberish—time I *never* would've lost on a Thursday, when I would have been *expecting* some kind of gibberish-explaining trickery. Don't slot Thursday puzzles on Wednesday; it's annoying, and kind of a violation of a tacit agreement between solver and puzzle, i.e. you can come at me with trickery all you want on Thursdays and Sundays. But on Wednesdays ... well, there better be good, clear reason for the trickery. Expecting me to make sense of gibberish is really too much to ask. And that's where this puzzle loses me entirely, actually: the gibberish. Even if this puzzle *had* run on a Thursday, I just can't get happy about having had to stare at HOWOARTH for literally any amount of time. It's so awful. It's such a not-good puzzle feeling. Finally (and I mean almost literally "finally") getting ONE UP did not make me think "oh, that was worth it." Not even close. Your tricks should delight. Even if they frustrate at various points along the way, there should be a playfulness that makes one happy to be along for the ride. Having a puzzle where you go from "that's nonsense" to "why in the world are they just removing NE from these answers?" to "that's it?!" ... I don't understand what's fun about any of that. HOWOARTH. That is my takeaway from this experience. HOWOARTH. I like the puzzle about as much as I like the fact that HOWOARTH is somehow a correctly entered answer in this grid. You gotta stick that revealer landing way, way, way better if you want to pull off grid gibberish, is what I'm saying.

Dislike the highly sequestered NW / SE corners, and especially the SE, where the revealer is, and where the other Acrosses were not exactly easy, and where I had OAT instead of NUT at 65D: Trail mix bit. When the corners are so cut off ... there's no air. Nowhere to go. It's claustrophobic and aesthetically unpleasing. Also aesthetically unpleasing: MISACTS (?), a word said by no one. Also FB STATUS, what? That is a stretch. Really dislike it. But then I really dislike "FB" in general, and all answers associated with it, so that answer never really had a chance with me. I've never heard of MIELE (20A: German appliance brand), a "brand" which appeared in the NYTXW once in 2013 but then you gotta go back literally 50 years before you find its next previous appearance. When I saw this clue, I wanted ... what's that brand? ... KRUPS, maybe? I don't know, but it sure wasn't MIELE. Also never heard of HAMA (47A: Major city of west-central Syria). Maybe because it's been 34 years (!) since the city of HAMA was last in a NYTXW grid. I had HOMS written in there and was *very* happy with it. HOMS is (or was, as of 2004) nearly twice as populous. And look how dang close the two cities are to each other:

How is your "HAMILTON" clue this boring? (41D: Winner of 11 Tonys in 2016). Such a dynamic and entertaining musical, and *this* is the clue you give it? I like SWOLE (23D: Extremely muscular, in slang) and WEDGIE (43A: Prank involving yanking underwear) alright, but honestly nothing else even came close to making me smile today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: ??? Challenging? Easy? Depends on when you get the gimmick

THEME: NO MAS (56D: "Enough!," in Mexico ... or a hint to 11 answers in this puzzle) — words that should have "MA" in them just ... don't. That's it, that's the puzzle.

Theme answers:

(MA)DEFACES (1A: Mugged for the camera, maybe)
WEB(MA)STER (8A: Site administrator)
(MA)STIFFS (40A: Large guard dogs)
(MA)LADIES (41A: Aches and pains)
(MA)LINGERS (70A: Feigns sickness to avoid work)
(MA)IN ROADS (71A: Much-traveled thoroughfares)
(MA)DONNA (1D: Much-painted religious figure)
TA(MA)LE (12D: Food cooked in a cornhusk)
(MA)LICE (36D: Evil intent)
RE(MA)IN (32D: Stay behind)
LAW(MA)N (58D: Wyatt Earp, for one)

Word of the Day: WEBSTER (8A: Site administrator) —

noun Archaic.
a weaver.

[It's actually supposed to be WEB(MA)STER (!?) without the "MA"— if you're going to take the "MA" out of words, maybe take them out of words people actually use, so you know they're missing!?]

• • •

Ms. Burnikel is one of my favorite constructors. She's prolific and her puzzles have gotten better and better over the years, to the point where I now consider her one of the top, let's say, five constructors working today. I'm trying to give you some idea of why this puzzle ended up being so incredibly disappointing. These days I almost *never* dislike one of her puzzles. But this one. Wow. OK. So ... The problem with this puzzle is that it sets you up for something potentially interesting, and then lets you down. And by "lets you down," I mean really, really lets you down, in that the clever thing you think might be going on ends up *not* going on, and the thing that *is* going on is not only far, far less interesting, but also dreadfully hard to piece together (in part because you believe you *know* what is going on, and believe it is possibly clever: wrong and wrong).

The puzzle sets you up for something to do with "MA"s right away. I actually thought it was a "MAD" rebus at first, when that NW corner turned out to be the front end (this is important) of *two* answers that started with the letter string "MAD." That one square affects answers going in both directions at exactly the same point, ok, good, moving on ... annnnnd ... there is no other "MAD" square. OK, maybe there are other rebus squares? No. No. But that's fine, it's fine, we'll figure it out. Hey, look (MA)STIFFS. Aha! So "MA" is missing from the front ends of the themers and is, like, hanging off the grid for some reason. I've seen stuff like this before. "MA" is located just outside the grid, over and over. There will surely be some kind of pattern, and some kind of humorous revealer. [at this point I have literally written "MA" outside the grid several times—above DONNA, to the left of FACES, to the left of STIFFS...] Then the NE corner happens and, well, you know it's (TA)MALE but why is "TA" hanging off the grid now? And what's a WEBSMER? Ugh. OK. Abandon that. Evennnnnntually realize that (MA)LADIES is missing its"MA" ... so not a rebus, not a hanging-off-the-grid thing, OK, what's the organizing principle, because *surely* there must be one. Oooh, (MA)LADIES is on the same row as (MA)STIFFS! Organizational principle rediscovered! Certain rows ... and columns, maybe ... are missing "MA"at their front ends (!!!). But no. No. There is no order. And, worst of all, the "MA"s, despite being missing from the *fronts* of the first four themers you encounter, are also sometimes missing from the middles of answers. Just four times. Four elevenths of the time. Why? No reason. They just are. "My, that is ... much worse." Yes, it is. What made this puzzle truly miserable to solve was that it kept seeming like it was going to have some really brilliant central conceit, some kind of hidden order that would reveal itself and make it all worthwhile. And man was that not true. Just missing "MA"s and that. Is. It. Woof. The affected answers do end up being symmetrical, so that's ... something? Some kind of order? ... but by the time I noticed that, all good will toward this puzzle was out the window.

Even when I was done, I didn't understand WEBSTER. What the hell kind of fake-ass slang is that? Only after looking up WEBSTER did I realize "oh ... it's WEB(MA)STER." Which ... is a word I have not heard since the '90s, I think. Because the actual "MA"-including answer (WEBMASTER) is not common, because the "web" part is familiar and the suffix -STER can mean, like, "one who does stuff" (mobster is in the mob, a jokester tells jokes, a prankster pranks, etc.), because all of this, WEBSTER just looked like stupid internet slang of yore. To have it turn out to be WEB(MA)STER, which is ... also stupid internet slang of yore ... well, you couldn't have fashioned a more annoying "aha" moment if you'd tried. That whole corner was just grimness that never resolved, even after I was done with the puzzle. Even now, it feels unresolved. A stain that won't quite come out.

I also deeply resent when the revealer is so transparent that if I'd just looked for it at the beginning of the solve, the whole thing would've become transparent. "NO MAS!" is obvious. A gimme. So, no "MA"s. So ... OK. The end. You just roam around looking for dropped "MA"s. Whether you go the hard route the way I did (not seeing the revealer til the end) or you start off with the revealer and go the easy route, either way, I can't see how any of this is any fun. It's much worse to do it my way of course, both because it takes longer, and because, for a while there, you really do think there might be a clever puzzle in front of you.

Bullets:

2D: Villainous conglomerate on "Mr. Robot" (E CORP) — I *watched* this show for several seasons and didn't remember this one. I have no idea what non-watchers are going to make of it, *especially* in a puzzle with this theme. "Is there an "MA" missing? Who Knows!?!? MAE CORP?! That sounds pretty villainous..."
31A: One-up, say (DRAW) — this was such an awful clue, and crossing RE(MA)IN made it doubly miserable to solve. I had DRAW and still had no idea how it fit the clue. If a score is "one up" (that is, one apiece, one all), then there's no hyphen, is there? The hyphen suggests it's a verb. But if you "one-up" someone, you don't DRAW them? I have to believe that the clue somehow refers to DRAW in the sense of a tie, an even score, but ... why do you do this with your clues? Why? The editorial voice is so awkward.
57A: Grocery chain with more than 1,900 U.S. stores (ALDI) — we have these, but ... do you have these? I never saw one til I moved to Binghamton. Maybe they're spread out evenly nationwide, now, but I feel like the clue *knows* that they're kinda regional, and so is shouting "there's actually 1,900 of them!" at you, defensively.
51A: 2009 biopic starring Hilary Swank ("AMELIA") — I assume it was about AMELIA Earhart. I have no memory of this movie's existing.
49A: "I agree with both of you!" ("ME THREE!") — ah... that's the stuff. An oasis! A shady bower! A beautiful island in an ocean of gunk! I like this answer very much, is what I'm saying.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. ah, another cutesy clue for the white supremacist terrorist organization that is the NRA (19A: Org. that sticks to its guns). Truly the cherry on top of this ... thursdae.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Caitlin Reid

Relative difficulty:Easyish

THEME: none

Word of the Day:Marianne Craig MOORE (25D: Poet Marianne who won a 1952 Pulitzer) —

Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit.

• • •

Hi all, Rachel Fabi in for Rex today. I'm doing double-duty today blogging the NYT here for Rex and the New Yorker over on another crossword blog whose name rhymes with Fiery of a Tossword Greened. Friday is my favorite crossword day of the week because we get (at least) two themelesses! What I love about themeless puzzles is that they really give the constructor's voice a chance to shine through the marquee entries they choose to highlight and the flexibility they have in their choice of fill, which is *definitely* the case with this puzzle.

In today's puzzle from Caitlin Reid, we have: one sparkly, colloquial, very much in-the-language long central entry (I DON'T HAVE ALL DAY), two super-solid stacks of 9s in the NE and SW, and six-ish crunchy long downs (including highlights MOCKTAIL, THE CASBAH, and TEA TOWELS). That last one was a struggle for me to parse, but it was very satisfying to finally crack with my last two letters (the W and the L).

"The Spanish Playing Cards" by Joan Miró

In terms of fill, Caitlin delivered a truckload of trivia, including Eliot NESS and his autobiography "The Untouchables," Pulitzer prize-winning poet Marianne MOORE (see above), Mariah Carey's "The Emancipation of MIMI," Alfred BINET (Alfred who pioneered in I.Q. testing). AHAB (Literary character played by Gregory Peck, Patrick Stewart and Orson Welles), MIROS ("The Spanish Playing Cards" and "Nude With Mirror"), and Eugene O'Neill's "Desire under the ELMS." Whew! I almost had to double-check that this was the NYT and not the New Yorker, because that density of arts-and-culture fill would not be out of place over there. Not that I mind! This is a key feature of themeless puzzles that makes them fun; you can up the difficulty with trivia and wordplay in ways that might distract from a theme in a regular weekday (M-Th) puzzle.

Speaking of using wordplay to ratchet up the difficulty, we've got some fabulous doozies in here. "Turner on a record" for TINA (no question mark!), "Set out on the highway?" for TIRES, "Big cast?" for HEAVE, "Old knockout?" for ETHER, and my personal favorite, "Threat bearing small arms?" for T-REX. These are all so good! And the last one melds wordplay with the mental sight gag of a dino with tiny arms in a way that, again, really highlights the constructor's voice and sense of humor (see also: "Heavens to Betsy!" being the clue for OHMYGOSH for no reason other than that it's a funny expression. And the clue "Like a hospital gown, maybe" for DRAFTY).

There were a few things in this puzzle I didn't recognize, which is pretty par for the course on a Friday. K STATE, for instance. There are multiple "K" states! "Which state is K STATE?", you might reasonably wonder. Wonder no more, for I have googled, and the answer is Kansas State. I also didn't know this meaning of BREVE ("Two whole notes, essentially"), and I have never heard of HAIR TONIC, although that one is probably on me. Finally, I had no idea what Kvass was, and assumed it was a cocktail that had RYE whiskey as an ingredient. In fact, Kvass, is a fermented beverage made from LITERAL RYE BREAD. What a world!

Overall, in case it's not clear by this point, I very much enjoyed this puzzle. It was clever and fun and a little sassy, and I totally dig it. It's also yet another kickass puzzle coming out in the broader context of the Women's March of constructors (and the NYT's Women's First-Week-of-March). Keep 'em coming!

(...and, relatedly, I wrote this Saturday's Universal puzzle as part of Women's March, if you're looking for something silly, light, and/or themed).

Signed, Rachel Fabi, Queen-for-a-Day of CrossWorld

[Follow Rachel on Twitter]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Longtime Eagles QB Donovan / SUN 2-16-20 / Whom Harry Potter frees from serving Draco Malfoy's family / Area the Chinese call Xizang / Fictional creature made from slime / Millennial informally / Facetious response to verbal jab / Beginner in modern lingo

Former competitor of Southwest / MON 2-17-20 / Argentine partner dances / Prestigious Atlanta university

Village of the Prancing Pony inn in Lord of the Rings / TUE 2-18-20 / 1930s boxing champ Max / Storms are brewin in her eyes in a 1986 #1 hit

Hungarian horseman / WED 2-19-20 / Reject romantically show interest romantically / Popular game that needs no equipment / Popular video-sharing service / Iron alloy that includes bit of tungsten chromium

Pirate plunder / THU 2-20-20 / Sweet and healing medicine of troubles per Horace / Oscar-nominated actor with nearly synonymous first and last names / Where the Ko'olau range is located

Palace in Hindi / FRI 2-21-20 / Celebrity with namesake cereal in '80s / Mare might be found in one / Helpful word in solving cryptograms

Imagist poet Doolittle / SAT 2-22-20 / Unstable subatomic particle / Creature with eyespots on its wings

Dance craze of early 2010s / SUN 2-23-20 / Color akin to cyan / Pullers of Artemis's chariot / Locke who was called father of Harlem renaissance / Home planet of ming merciless / Southeast Asian ethnic group /

Twisted person / MON 2-24-20 / Do the honors with the turkey / Jules who wrote "Journey to the Center of the Earth" / Flurry

Liveliness / TUES 2-25-20 / Place for tugboats / Japanese cartoon style / Rave's partner

Toy brand with plastic figures / WED 2-26-20 / Actress O'Hara with Tony for King and I / Anise-flavored aperitif / Gal pal of Dennis the Menace / Old airline with globe in its logo / Peaceful pastoral scene

British brew since 1777 / THU 2-27-20 / Ivy seen along Schulylkill River / Fearsome part of Jabberwock

2013 disaster film with cult following / FRI 2-28-20 / Celle-la across Pyrenees / Prohibition-era guns / Something Winnie the Pooh lacks

Bass-heavy hybrid music genre / SAT 2-29-20 / Bygone parts of newspapers with local gossip / Self-titled 1961 album / Market built around short term engagements / Former home of Seattle SuperSonics / Titular comic strip character from AD 800s

Exercises that work the glutes, quads and abs / MON 3-2-2020 / Actress Loughlin of "Full House" / Clue for the clueless / N.B.A. player once married to a Kardashian

French-founded fragrance firm / TUE 3-3-20 / Grossly distorted imitation / City railways not at street level / Fraternal order with animal emblem

German appliance brand / WED 3-4-20 / Dweller along Bering Sea / Major city of west central Syria / Hartz collar tag

Villainous conglomerate on Mr Robot / THU 3-5-20 / Grocery chain with more than 1900 US stores / Onetime London-based record label / Hay-bundling machine

noun Archaic.

Kvass ingredient / FRI 3-6-20 / "The Spanish Playing Cards" and "Nude With Mirror" / Opposite of mainstream / Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the ___"