Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Nam Jin Yoon

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:53)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Ashanti empire (45D: Modern-day home of the Ashanti empire => GHANA) —

The Asante Empire (Asante Twi: Asanteman) was an Akan empire and kingdom from 1701 to 1957, in what is now modern-day Ghana. [...] The Ashanti Empire fought several wars with neighboring kingdoms and lesser organized tribes such as the Fante. The Ashanti defeated the British Empire's invasions in the first two of the four Anglo-Ashanti Wars, killing and keeping British army general Sir Charles MacCarthy's skull as a gold-rimmed drinking cup in 1824. Due to British improvements in weapons technology, burning and looting of the capital Kumasi and final defeat at the fifth Anglo-Ashanti War, the Ashanti empire became part of the Gold Coast colony in January 1, 1902. // Today, the Ashanti Kingdom survives as a constitutionally protected, sub-national traditional state in union with the Republic of Ghana. The current king of the Ashanti Kingdom is Otumfuo Osei Tutu II Asantehene. The Ashanti Kingdom is the home to Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana's only natural lake. The state's current economic revenue is derived mainly from trading in gold bars, cocoa, kola nuts and agriculture. (wikipedia)

• • •

As with Wednesday's puzzle, I destroyed it and I very much enjoyed destroying it. Did not start out so great, though. Forgot KAFKA wrote "A Hunger Artist," ugh. Also read "Network" instead of "Noted work" at beginning of 1A: Noted work in which many different positions are discussed (KAMA SUTRA). Seems like if my memory and reading capabilities had been functioning satisfactorily, I could've really flown through this thing. Instead, I relied on three of my favorite things, yoga (ASANAS) and coffee (FLATWHITE) and poetry (Rita DOVE) to (eventually) bail me out ... oh, and KATE McKinnon, I knew her too. Thought for sure I'd get the "Othello" clue straight off, but the generic ATTENDANT never occurred to me (not before I got the ATTEN- part, anyway) (4D: Emilia vis-à-vis Desdemona, in "Othello"). Wrote a paper my senior year on Emilia—fat lot of good it did me! Anyway, after the flailing in the NW, I escaped via the lovely LAWYER UP (!), and wow did things speed up after that. Terminal "U" made NEHRU a cinch, and then whoooosh, there went the NE. I feel like I know the term GROUPCHAT from my daughter, but now that I think about it, it's not especially youth-y—but it is fresh, and one of my favorite answers of the day.

[Erik SATIE, Gymnopédies 3]

Took PREGGO right into the SE, where CHOU and GHANA were gimmes and so there went that corner. Then went up and swung back through the center quite easily thanks to some more of my favorite things (mushrooms, GINS). Finally came at the SW corner from both sides (the north, the east), and despite some floundering around the DAFT / DAB / ALE, I made pretty short work of it all. Ended on the "B" in DAB. Clue on ALE didn't make sense to me—I raise a glass *for* ALE?? (40A: Something to raise a glass for). But I guess if you have already had a pint and you want to signal to the bartender that you want another, sure, at that point, you might raise your glass to indicate that you wanted another ALE. Or maybe you're just raising it to your face so that you can drink it, I dunno. What matters is I came in under 5, and that the puzzle featured many an EYE-OPENER and (more importantly) was never awful.

[Black Box, "Open Your Eyes"]

FLAT WHITEs are "similar" to lattes, it's true, but somehow also infinitely superior. They were not a thing here until fairly recently. We drank them constantly in NZ, which has a bizarrely advanced coffee culture. I don't think I've ever heard a NE-YO song, even though his name is now as familiar to me as ENYA's (I exaggerate, but not a lot) (50D: "So Sick" hitmaker of 2006). I don't think I've ever been less attuned to popular music than I was in the 00s, i.e. the first decade of my job and the first decade of my daughter's life. Big blank spot in my knowledge. Then things start to come back online a little around 2011. But "SHOOP" ... "SHOOP" I was around for.

[Salt-N-Pepa, "Shoop"]

Nice Nirvana reference in the ANGST clue (10A: Teen spirit, perhaps). No good mistakes today, though I did write in ALERO (LOL) instead of MIATA at 3D: Chicago Auto Show debut of 1989. Gonna go listen to some SATIE now because "Gymnopédies" is soooothing and I need to wind down before bed. Hope you all enjoyed this puzzle as much as I did. No weak spots. Bouncy and fresh. Totally crushable. Everything a Friday should be. And I'm pretty sure it's a debut! Nice. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Challenging (I was too tired to start a Saturday, should've just done it in the morning)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: NAT Sherman cigars (51A) —

Nat Sherman is the brand name for a line of handmade cigars and "luxury cigarettes." The company, which began as a retail tobacconist, continues to operate a flagship retail shop now located on 42nd Street, off Fifth Avenue, in New York City. Corporate offices are now located at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey. [...] Sherman advertised during New York Giants radio broadcasts. Every major play during the game, Giants commentator Bob Papa exclaimed "Get that man a Nat Sherman cigar!". / Slang terminology for a PCP-laced tobacco cigarette is a "sherm" or "sherman", named for the brand.

• • •

Sometimes trying to write this blog in the 10pm to 7am window just ... doesn't quite work out. I get too tired too early, fall asleep on the couch, wake up in a kind of no man's land, and have to decide, "OK, solve and blog now, or set the alarm for 4am and solve and blog then?" I was fully prepared to go with the latter, but after I'd brushed my teeth I thought, "well, I'm up, let's just do this." Tonight, that was Not the right call. I haven't been this off a puzzle's wavelength in a long time, and I just found almost every part of this solve grueling and unpleasant. It was especially unpleasant because except for the center, the grid looks like a Monday or Tuesday grid—lots of black squares, lots of short stuff. And let me tell you, there is something particularly awful about having to wade through so much short stuff that is clued at nth-degree difficulty. I'll take my difficulty almost any other way, but, like, brutal clues on crap like MSG and GLO and (ugh) SIDE A, you can shove all of that. The SW was pretty tractable, but the rest, oof. I kept stopping, which is not something I normally do during a solve. The center stack actually looks OK, but who in the world is going to be excited by techno-corporate garbage like ADCLICKRATE and SALES and AOL ("pioneer"?) and ETRADE even OPEN A NEW TAB. Did a sales algorithm with a LA QUINTA loyalty card write this puzzle? And speaking of OPEN A NEW TAB ... and GET A SHOCK, and MADE A NEST ... again, oof. Big "ATE A SANDWICH" energy. Indefinite article abuse. This was just SOUR NOTE after SOUR NOTE, but the main issues were: too much short stuff (so, lots of fussy difficulty for zero payoff) and too much stultifying fill. Again, those three longer Across answers in the middle are nice. But man I did not enjoy myself one bit with this one.

Also unpleasant—how reliant I was on crosswordese just to get a toehold in this thing. First things I wrote in were stuff like NCR and OREM and ODE and DOER. Had THAT (at 8D) and no idea about the rest (THAT IS SICK). Had GET (at 9D) and no idea about the rest (GET A SHOCK). So moving between parts of the grid ... I just got repeatedly stymied by what ultimately seemed like pretty arbitrary phrases (you'd probably say "THAT'S SICK," honestly, and again, the whole "A" in the middle of so many phrases (like GET A SHOCK) just kept making me shake my head.

Here are some Selected Problems:

Problems (selected):

SIDEA (2D: Finer cut, usually) — "Finer cut" is ugh. No. It's the radio-friendly cut, perhaps, but that doesn't make it finer. Just horrible misdirection.
RITA (14A: Romance novelist's award) — probably seen this before, but ... blank. At one point wanted EDNA
ARABS (1D: About 5% of the world's population) — if you say so. Totally random. No life in the clue at all. Horrid.
BEHESTS (20A: Commands)— archaic / formal / almost never seen outside of a prepositional "at" phrase ... no idea. Had INSISTS.
ARKS (6D: Asylums)— first, it's asyla, and second, I barely know what this means. Ah, I see the third def. is "place or thing furnishing protection; refuge"; this feels about as in-the-language as plural BEHESTS
ARCHER (15A: One taking a bow) — I had ANCHOR. . . because ... "bow" is nautical, maybe? I don't know. Again, I'm very tired.
CAN'T GO (5A: Terse invitation to an invitation) — weirdly equivocated over that "G," thinking it might be a "D" (I mean, if CAN DO is a thing...)
MSG / GLO / AOL — just a rough ugly corner, that NE. Because of the quot. marks, I had "No MAS"; no idea what these alleged "1980s toys" are .... GLO Worms, you say? I had SNO Worms at one point
DUO (19A: Smallest possible band) — well this is a lie. I direct your attention to the phrase "one-man band."
NAT (51D: ___ Sherman cigars) — no idea none zero. Cigars ... LOL yep if you wanted a topic farthest from me, that's the one. Just no hope here.
LINEN (40D: Scrim material)— by this point, I disliked the puzzle so much that my brain kind of shut off. It was all I could do to put together Any kind of "material" from the letters I got from crosses. Sure, LINEN totally makes me think of "scrims" and vice versa, awesome. Whatever.
ROLLS UP TO (32D: Arrives at in a vehicle) — I had PULLS UP TO, though as errors go that one was not bad; easily fixable
LANA (25A: One of the film-directing Wachowskis) — I wanted MIRA, why? Is the other one MIRA??? Dammit, it's Lilly. Where the hell did MIRA come from?
CEE (33D: Artichoke heart?) — this was the worst. Saw right through it ... but in the wrong way. I wrote in ICH. You see. You see how that works, right? That's *at least* as "good" as (ugh) CEE.

Good riddance.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Francis Heaney

Relative difficulty: Easy (7:55)

THEME:"Alternative Cinema"— Movies are clued as "Alternative titles" for other movies; they're "alternatives" because their titles make them sound like their titles are about the same thing as the originals (even if, in every case, they are very much not):

Theme answers:

"TWELVE ANGRY MEN" (23A: Alternative title for "The Dirty Dozen")
"THE AFRICAN QUEEN" (33A: Alternative title for "Cleopatra")
"DOCTOR STRANGE" (51A: Alternative title for "Frankenstein")
"BYE BYE / BIRDIE" (68A: With 70-Across, alternative title for "To Kill a Mockingbird")
"WATERSHIP DOWN" (92A: Alternative title for "Titanic")
"THE LADY VANISHES" (106A: Alternative title for "Gone Girl")
"AMERICAN BEAUTY" (121A: Alternative title for "The Name of the Rose")

Word of the Day: SANRIO (94A: Hello Kitty company) —

Sanrio Co., Ltd. (株式会社サンリオ, Kabushikigaisha Sanrio) is a Japanese company that designs, licenses and produces products focusing on the kawaii (cute) segment of Japanese popular culture. Their products include stationery, school supplies, gifts and accessories that are sold worldwide and at specialty brand retail stores in Japan. Sanrio's best-known character is Hello Kitty, a little anthropomorphic cat girl, one of the most successful marketing brands in the world. (wikipedia)

• • •

The funniest thing about [Hello Kitty company] is remembering how Will once told a veteran constructor that HELLO KITTY was not well enough known to be in the NYTXW ... (!) ... and now it's so obviously well known that we're apparently supposed to know the parent company!? Wow. Tables, turned. I will say that the SANRIO / LAILA crossing was one of the only weak spots in this puzzle, in that lots and lots of people won't know SANRIO, and it's totally plausible that even if you know LAILA Ali you will misspell her name LAYLA. So ... SANRYO? Did anyone make that error? You can say "well SANRYO just looks wrong" but I would then direct your attention to the company name SANYO, which is just one letter shy of SANRYO. I just think that is a potential Natick for people (non-universally-known proper nouns crossing at a hard-to-guess vowel). Might mess some people up, which would be a shame, because I found this puzzle clever and delightful. How often do I say that about Sunday puzzles? (It's a rhetorical question! We all know the answer is "almost never"). The theme ... works. And it's clever. And genuinely funny. (Outright LOL at "BYE BYE / BIRDIE"). I will say that (to me) "DOCTOR STRANGE" is a comics character and "WATERSHIP DOWN" is a novel, but there's no disputing the fact that both were movies, so fair enough. There were very few ugly moments. Just a clean, entertaining breeze.

If you didn't know SANRIO, well, I had a little taste of that bafflement at UNEEDA (!?!?!??!!), which had me feeling worried that I had an error. I mean, how would I know. UNEEDA cracker from this century (or at least last century) if you want me to have a shot at getting it. Just finished watching "The Office" in its entirety, so I've been staring at EDHELMS a lot of late. TWYLA SHARON MATSUI SMEE LOUIS was quite the proper name mash-up there in the lower center, but MATSUI's the only one I can see giving people real grief. ISSICK made me wince, the way ISDUMB or ISANYADJECTIVE might, and every letter of FINNEY was a mystery to me (34D: Charles ___, religious leader known as "The Father of Modern Revivalism"), but whatever issues I had were quickly overcome, and the bulk of the puzzle was very easy to move through. I could do without MOR and DIC (...!), but otherwise I can't fault the fill very much at all. Lots of great longer fill in the (non-theme) Downs too, which is always nice.

Congrats to Brian Cimmet and Patrick Blindauer, the organizers of the Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament, which took place online yesterday with something north of 1800 (!!) contestants. I didn't participate but I did get to catch the finals of both the Local (novice) and Express (advanced) divisions, which were both oddly *thrilling*. Congratulations especially to David Plotkin, who won the whole shebang.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I used to watch a show called "Alphas." It was partially set in Binghamton. I watched it with my daughter, roughly a decade ago. I liked the show enough to buy a t-shirt. It looks like this:

Fast forward nine years, my daughter is now in college, and all my wife and I have to fill the void is an ornery but adorable kitten named Alfie.

On Friday, I got a package in the mail from my daughter. It contained this:

The one discolored toe bean in the exponent really put it over the top for me. That is a true-to-life detail. I'm either never going to wear this shirt (too precious) or I'm going to put it on and never take it off. Can't decide.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alan Massengill and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (2:42)

THEME: BEACHFRONT (54A: Property along the ocean ... or a hint to the starts of 18-, 23-, 36- and 47-Across) — first words ("fronts") of themers are beach-related things:

Theme answers:

WAVES HELLO (18A: Greets from across the way, say)
SURF THE NET (23A: Casually browse online)
SHELLS OUT CASH (36A: Spends moolah)
PALMS CARDS (47A: Demonstrates some sleight of hand)

Word of the Day: SEGO lily (64A: ___ lily)—

Calochortus nuttallii — known as sego lily — is a bulbous perennial which is endemic to the Western United States.
It is the state flower of Utah. (wikipedia)

• • •

BEACHFRONT is a nice idea for a revealer, but WAVES and SURF are the same thing—why would you waste a themer on a redundancy like that? Why not something with "sand" or, uh, PIERS PLOWMAN or something? SURF THE NET has a definite old-timer vibe to it (see also BEETLEs, Beatles, and The LOVIN' Spoonful), but it's fine, and the other themers were also fine, as stand-alone answers. I have a quibble with the revealer clue, though: I have only ever (or, rather, I have overwhelmingly) heard BEACHFRONT used adjectivally. I mean, I looked it up, and I see that there is a noun version, but for some reason my ears really really want the word BEACHFRONT to modify "property." So I think the revealer clue would've been clearer / more on-the-nose if it had read [*Like* property along the ocean...]. Just [Property ...] feels off. I don't know how to prove that most people use BEACHFRONT (when they use it) adjectivally, but I feel certain this is true. Anyway, I'm not mad at the revealer clue, just registering how awkward it sounds to me when clued as a noun.

[Robyn, "Beach2k20"]

The bulk of the trouble I had with this puzzle came from trying to get the last two themers, actually. SHELLS OUT CASH is a little green-painty* as answers go, so the SHELLS OUT part took a bunch of crosses to become clear. And PALMS CARDS is a fine phrase, I guess, but the PALMS part still took many crosses to sort out. I also struggled with WALL ST. (1D: Financial ctr. in Manhattan). The abbr. ("ctr.") part threw me off. Got the WA- but thought there was some specific building in question. Didn't much care for that bank of 6-letter Downs at all. The fill in general is a little dull / creaky. ISDUE is not quite as off-putting as yesterday's ISSICK, but it's close. ONE-ARM (3D: Feature of a Las Vegas "bandit") and PET TRICKS (33D: "Stupid" segments on old David Letterman shows). I would love if they were inside their complete phrases. Standing alone, I think they're pretty bad, especially PET TRICKS, which is a partial *and* quite dated by now. Lotsa stale stuff like SEGO OSSA IDEST etc., but by 20th-century standards, it's pretty clean. Overall: nice theme idea, slightly clunkily executed, with tolerable overall fill. Shrug. Next.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*green paint = phrase one might say, but that doesn't feel strong enough to be a stand-alone answer

P.S. ONE-ARM bandits = slang for slot-machines, in case you somehow didn't know

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Constructor: Olivia Mitra Framke

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:51) (undersized grid, 14x15)

THEME: AMENDMENT XIX (53A: Measure fully ratified on 8/18/1920) — a puzzle celebrating the 100th anniversary of WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE in the U.S. (34A: Subject of 53-Across):

Additional theme answers:

ALICE PAUL (17A: Rights advocate who campaigned for 53-Across)
CONSTITUTION (19A: What 53-Across changed)
TENNESSEE (56A: 36th state to ratify 53-Across, resulting in its passage)

Word of the Day: ORANGINA (10D: Citrus drink often sold in a pear-shaped bottle) —

Orangina (French pronunciation: [ɔʁɑ̃ʒina]) is a lightly carbonated beverage made from carbonated water, 12% citrus juice (10% from concentrated orange, 2% from a combination of concentrated lemon, concentrated mandarin, and concentrated grapefruit juices), as well as 2% orange pulp. Orangina is sweetened with sugar or high fructose corn syrup (glucose fructose) and natural flavors are added.
Orangina was developed by Augustin Trigo Mirallès from Spain in 1933 and was sold to French businessman Léon Beton at a trade fair in Marseille in 1935. Today it is a popular beverage in Europe (especially France and Switzerland), Japan, North Africa, and to a lesser extent in North America.
Since November 2009, Orangina has been owned by Suntory in most of the world. In the United States, the brand has been owned by Keurig Dr Pepper (formerly the Dr Pepper Snapple Group) since 2006. In Canada, the brand is owned by Canada Dry Motts Inc. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey, cool, an anniversary puzzle that actually appears exactly on the anniversary. And it's a milestone that's truly worthy of the tribute. No trickiness or gimmicks here, just straightforward trivia arranged in a symmetrical pattern, but it all works fine. Of course you'd normally refer to the "measure" in question today as the "nineteenth amendment," not AMENDMENT XIX, but the phrase as it appears in the grid is accurate, so I can't really ding it for its non-colloquial quality. Puzzle is undersized (narrow by one column) in order to accommodate the 14-letter central answer. I guess the constructor could've opted for the oversized 16x15 puzzle and stuck with the same answers just fine, but if you can do it in a 14 wide just as well, why not? You get a couple nice longer Downs in the bargain (ORANGINA, MUSTANGS). Actually, FOR KEEPS isn't bad either, and TOXINS and BOX SET both work nicely in the SE. I suppose those X's might've caused trouble, but with KOSOVO that actually ends up being the most interesting corner.

There's some less-than-lovely crosswordesey stuff (AMOI, OLES, OLAN) and a couple of weakish partials (ADEE, AKISS), and MNOP is ... yeah, not great; but this is a puzzle where all the fill really has to do is hang in there. Stay cleanish, let the attention go to the theme. Mission largely accomplished. Not much else to say.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (just over 5) (early a.m. solve)

THEME: LIFE / CYCLE (1D: With 41-Across, generational sequence)— the outer edge of the grid is populated by a "cycle" of 4-letter answers are clued as interlocking phrases, i.e. LIFE BOAT / BOAT SHOW / SHOW DOWN, etc. until the "cycle" ends up back at "LIFE" again (TIME/LIFE):

Theme answers:

LIFE BOAT (1A: With 5-Across, means of survival)
BOAT SHOW (5A: With 9-Across, place to yacht-shop)
SHOW DOWN (9A: With 16-Down, decisive confrontation)
DOWN PLAY (16D: With 39-Down, minimize)
PLAY DEAD (39D: With 62-Down, lie motionless)
DEAD HEAD (62D: With 71-Across, traveling music fan of old)
HEAD HOME (71A: With 70-Across, call it a night, say)
HOME GAME (70A: With 69-Across, advantage in sports)
GAME FACE (69A: With 50-Down, athlete's intense expression)
FACE TIME (50D: With 27-Down, Apple app)
TIME LIFE (27D: With 1-Down, company named for two magazines)

Word of the Day: Judd APATOW (22A: Judd who directed "Knocked Up") —

Judd Mann Apatow (/ˈæpətaʊ/; born December 6, 1967) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and comedian. He is the founder of Apatow Productions, through which he produced and directed the films The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), Funny People (2009), This Is 40 (2012), Trainwreck (2015), and The King of Staten Island (2020).
Additionally through Apatow Pictures, he produced and developed the television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000), Undeclared (2001–2002), Funny or Die Presents (2010–2011), Girls (2012–2017), Love (2016–2018), and Crashing (2017–2019).
Apatow also produced the films The Cable Guy (1996), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy(2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Superbad (2007), Pineapple Express(2008), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Get Him to the Greek (2010), Bridesmaids (2011), Begin Again (2013), Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013), and The Big Sick (2017).
Throughout his career, Apatow received nominations for eleven Primetime Emmy Awards (two wins), five Writers Guild of America Awards (one win), two Producers Guild of America Awards, one Golden Globe Award, and one Grammy Award. (wikipedia)

• • •

All short stuff, all cross-referenced—you can guess how much I enjoyed this (A: not much). "With this-clue, With that-clue," over and over and over, backward and forward up and down. Annoying, fussy, disorienting, joyless. Not hard at all, but because of the look-here, look-there horrid heavy cross-referencing, it was time-consuming. With no payoff. When I got into those little corners, because two of the answers now were going to be cross-references, and one of those was going to force my attention *outside* the corner, things just got confusing. Not hard, again. Just, "wait, where am I looking again?" I have absolutely positively seen this kind of ring around the rosy theme before: the interlocking phrase thing, the perimeter thing, both very much done before. And again, the main issue is not the been-done quality of the theme, but the failure to satisfy at least one of two theme requirements: is there a really good payoff? Is it a joy to solve? If you get 'no' to both, then why are you making this? This feels like a child's placemat game that got turned into a puzzle, and no one thought to ask "why?" The CYCLE bit in the middle is interesting, especially the way it's linked back to the first word in the CYCLE, but it's not interesting enough. The theme is unsatisfying, and one of the results of the theme set-up is that the grid is choked with 3-to-5-letter fill (ABRA NEHI STENO etc.), which is also unsatisfying.

It's a shame the theme was a drag, because at least a couple of these long Downs deserve better. AMBIENT NOISE in particular is really very nice, as is EMAIL BLAST, though I didn't like the latter as much because the clue threw me and so I couldn't pick up the BLAST part until almost the last cross. I know EMAIL BLAST as a mass email ... I didn't know the "bcc" part was a definitive feature. When I see "bcc" I think of secretively looping someone in for one reason or another; I guess I don't think of it for, like, mass advertising purposes. Anyway, the "bcc" had me thinking regular work-type emails, so BLAST (which is about the *size* of the audience, not the audience's recipient status) just didn't enter my brain til very late. Still, it's a vibrant phrase. Thumbs up, for sure. I had trouble moving through the grid because of having EMAIL but no idea about BLAST, and then having BOSTON and having no idea about ACCENT. Again, a clue word threw me: "tested." Your accent would be "tested" if you had to say that phrase, not if you actually had to park the car in Harvard yard, and yes, I know, that is why the "?" is on the clue, but that's pretty tenuous.

Mistakes? A few. Ironically screwed up the blogging clue by writing in ESSAY instead of ENTRY off the "Y" (66A: Blog post). That SW corner was the toughest for me, because I forgot if the actress was FAY or FEY or oh it's FOY? Oh, I probably knew that, or should, since I've watched every episode of "The Crown." Anyway, I would've sorted it out faster but the stupid under-clued ORANG (51D: Rainforest dweller, for short), crossing one of those dumb cross-referenced themers, was getting in my way. Any other trouble? Oh, yes, a major, costly mistake right up top with 17A: Puma competitor (FILA). Sadly, the one letter I had in place when I looked at that clue was the "I" and so I wrote in NIKE. Bah. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Grant Thackray

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging or Easy depending on if you looked at the revealer early or late (I looked late)

THEME: "A WRINKLE IN TIME" (59A: Classic young adult novel ... or hint to the path taken by four letters to the answers in the starred clues) — in order to make sense of the themers, you have to find the missing "IM," which is sitting directly above the "TE," so it's like the answer has sort of buckled, causing a "wrinkle" in the letter string "TIME":

Theme answers:

SENT(IM)ENTAL VALUE (16A: *An old wedding dress might have this)
"WHAT (I M)EANT WAS ..." (29A: *"Er ... um ...")
MORT(IM)ER MOUSE (45A: *Mickey's rival for Minnie's affection)

Word of the Day:"The L WORD: Generation Q," sequel starting in 2019 (26D) —

The L Word: Generation Q is an American drama television series produced by Showtimethat premiered on December 8, 2019. It is a sequel series to The L Word, which aired on Showtime from 2004 to 2009. A first-look screening took place on December 9, 2019, hosted by House of Pride, to coincide with the US release. In January 2020, Showtime renewed the series for a second season. // Generation Q is set over ten years after The L Word, in the new setting of Silver Lake, Los Angeles. Several actors from the original series returned to reprise their roles alongside a new ensemble of diverse characters. The show centers on a group of diverse LGBTQ+characters experiencing love, heartbreak, sex, setbacks, personal growth and success in Los Angeles.(wikipedia)

• • •

RThe concept is slightly clever but the actual experience of solving this puzzle was not great, largely because, once again, my grid is full of gibberish. It's a little better than other gibberish puzzles I've done in the past, in that at least I can actually *see* the missing "IM" at the end, once the revealer tells me what's going on, but still, the themers were all messed up in ways that made everything just a slog. Also, who the hell is MORT(IM)ER MOUSE? I cannot picture him at all. What a bizarre, obscure themer. But getting the letters in "MORTER" was actually much easier than getting the other two themers. I guess I resent the idea that if I'd done my puzzle backward, i.e. read the ending (the revealer) first, this puzzle would've been, what, 3 to 4 times easier. I'm making that up, but A WRINKLE IN TIME was practically a gimme, even with its generic [Classic young adult novel] clue, and then I could've focused on the letter string "TIME," and deciphering the themers would've been a snap. But instead I hacked to the end and while the revealer definitely gave me the "aha" moment you typically look for, the experience of working my way down there was so singularly unpleasant that it didn't matter. Payoff needed to be Much bigger to make up for the slog. And it wasn't just the theme experience that was annoying: the fill is really rough in lots of places, and that NE corner was really hard in a way that made it a huge, huge outlier.

Without knowing the themer gimmick, I didn't have SENT(IM)ENTAL VALUE, so in the NE I had PDA and DOILIES ... and I figured DOILIES would open things right up, buuuut ... nope. Had LIE for AIL (11D: Languish). Had LEK for LEU (Romanian currency, truly the lowest form of crosswordese), and I wasn't sure if 13D: -speak was -ESE or -ISH. So many Hindu gods that I wasn't at all confident there (9D: Hindu god of destruction = SIVA) (having the "V" would've helped) yet, and HOLESAWS???? (8D: Ring-shaped cutters attached to drills). LOL, forget it. Never seen the term in my life. I eventually had the SAWS part but, yeah, "ring-shaped" wasn't helping me at all. Clue on PHSCALE was vague (7A: Bases make up a part of it), so until I couldn't figure out the VALUE part of SENT(IM)ENTAL VALUE, that corner was a horror show. By contrast, its symmetrical equivalent went down in about 10 seconds. Harumph. And the fill in this thing, yuck. Romanian currency is just one of the terrible ICINGS on this dry cake. ESE ASEAT LAMES WAL LOC ESME REA OEDS IES TSETSE and whatever a CIERA is (!?!?) (2D: Popular Oldsmobile model of the 1980s-'90s) (I had ALERO, and then MIATA, which isn't even an Olds, but I was desperate). And while I'm up in that NW corner, what is with the *two* cross-referenced answers with all *four* parts all jumbled up together in this tiny little space (INNER crossing ERE which is followed by NOWwhich is followed byEAR). That clusterf*** was so choppy and awful, I was sure it was part of the theme until I saw the "*" on the first themer clue (and even after ... I wasn't sure). Please value user experience more, he shouted at the uncaring sky. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (7-something) (all of the challenge was in that lower-middle section, under the so-called "dome")

THEME: sadly, yes— sigh ... I guess the black squares are supposed to represent a single ONION DOME, even though SAINT / BASIL'S CATHEDRAL in RED SQUARE has many such domes, and even though that black-square arrangement is a pretty poor approximation of an onion dome, frankly

Word of the Day: ERDOS (15A: Paul ___, pioneer in graph theory) —

Paul Erdős (Hungarian: Erdős Pál [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a renowned Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. He was known both for his social practice of mathematics (he engaged more than 500 collaborators) and for his eccentric lifestyle (Time magazine called him The Oddball's Oddball). He devoted his waking hours to mathematics, even into his later years—indeed, his death came only hours after he solved a geometry problem at a conference in Warsaw. [...] Other idiosyncratic elements of Erdős's vocabulary include:

Children were referred to as "epsilons" (because in mathematics, particularly calculus, an arbitrarily small positive quantity is commonly denoted by the Greek letter (ε)).
Women were "bosses" who "captured" men as "slaves" by marrying them. Divorced men were "liberated". (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm never going to like themes on Friday or Saturday. Well, maybe not never, but you're gonna have to do way, way better than this random trivia test w/ terrible "picture." The theme stuff itself wasn't that hard to pick up, but because it was so cut off from the rest of the grid, the stuff under the "dome" was brutal for me—like a stand-alone puzzle that was way harder than any of the rest of it (probably because the other sections have easy-to-get theme material running through them, whereas there's zero theme material in the "dome" area). But back to the theme: don't care. You deprived me of the joy I get from the zippiest puzzle day of the week with this half-assed architectural nonsense. "Consecrated in 1561," Who Cares? It's not even a proper anniversary puzzle. We have ONION DOMEs all over town, as there are a lot of Eastern Orthodox churches around Binghamton. The black squares in this puzzle don't really capture the contours of the ONION DOME very well. I feel like some alien, or one of the Teletubbies, is looking at me when I look at this puzzle. Self-indulgent nonsense. Pass.

The fill was OK, though I didn't know a bunch of the names. CABOT is a name I only kinda sorta recognize as an explorer (1D: Notable voyager of 1497). Looks like he made it to Newfoundland. Good for him. Also, that ERDOS guy, that's a name I know exclusively because of crosswords, and even then I barely know it. Math guys think other math guys are more famous than they are. I had never heard of EULER before crosswords either, but at least he seems truly worth knowing. ERDOS is math-name crosswordese. ELENA, also crosswordese, and I totally forgot she was a Disney princess. Gross to see DHS here (Department of Homeland Security)—you rarely see it in xwords, which is great, since it's terrible and should be dissolved; and double-gross to see NOT PC, which, again, if you still have crap like NOT PC or UNPC in your wordlists, what are you doing? If you're "insensitive," you're "insensitive," not NOT PC. NOT PC is the language you use when you don't actually believe you were "insensitive" at all. Only total *********s use that kind of language. Shove it. NOT PC is disavowing language. It's "I'm sorry you were offended" language. It's trollspeak. It sucks.

I had DEM before GOV (57A: Cuomo, for one) and AGE before GPA (41D: N.C.A.A. eligibility consideration), both of which made the under-the-"dome" part additionally hard. No way I could see KITCHEN from just the -CHEN with 49A: Island locale as the clue. Clue needs a "perhaps." Lots of (most) KITCHENs do not have islands, ugh. Why can't you just make a fun, bouncy Friday themeless. Other people seem capable. It's mysterious. This showy crap is for the birds when the "show" is not impressive (as it usually is not). If you're gonna get cute, make sure you stick the landing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Hey, Tommy Benfey. Yes, you, Princeton. Erin asked me to wish you happy birthday yesterday but I totally bricked it because I have quarantine brain. Anyway, happy birthday, thanks for reading, and, I dunno, maybe do something special for Erin. She seems nice.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Medium (7-ish)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HENRI Bergson (2D: French philosopher Bergson) —

Henri-Louis Bergson (French: [bɛʁksɔn]; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopher who was influential in the tradition of continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the Second World War. Bergson is known for his arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.
He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented". In 1930 France awarded him its highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur.
Bergson's great popularity created a controversy in France where his views were seen as opposing the secular and scientific attitude adopted by the Republic's officials. (wikipedia)

• • •

Full of things I don't care about (chess) or actively dislike (OK, maybe that's too strong a thing to say about "How I Met Your Mother," but I never understood the appeal of the show and every time it comes up in crosswords I assume the constructor is trying to kiss Will's ass since Will was featured on an episode of the show once ... I'm sure the show is fine, it just wasn't for me, kind of like this puzzle). SHAMU is off-putting because animal abuse is off-putting, and seeing the horrible DHS mentioned in the puzzle for the *second day in a row* was a downer. The grid seems largely solid, overall, but aside from containing a few of my favorite things (MAUS, LAURA Linney, Anne MEARA), it didn't give much joy today. Sputtered a bit up top in the NW and more so in the NE, but the part that really slowed me down was PAWN PROMOTION, a phrase I don't recognize at all. I'm familiar with the concept of your pawn getting turned into a queen if it makes it all the way to your opponent's back line or whatever you call it, but the PROMOTION part was a bear for me. Needed almost every cross. Math / science / chess guys assume you know the intricacies of all their ****; I don't really mind that these topics are in puzzles, since they're part of the world, but I really feel like there's more of that stuff ... to the exclusion of other stuff ... because a certain kind of man still dominates the constructor ranks. Very similar white math/sciencey guys. I know and love a few of them, but it's ... a lot. I just feel the compulsion to roll my eyes every time there's (yet another) dude byline and I have to deal with some minor mathematician or some chess terminology or whatever. And then BARNEY (I knew) ... random last name. Not too fun. Red meat for chess fans who watch CBS, but PAS my thing. Bottom half of the puzzle, esp. the SE, was Tuesday-easy.

Surprised it took me as long as it did to finish considering how many gimmes there were. SHH "HEY YA" TSETSE LAURA Linney GRETA Gerwig MAUS BASSALE SLUR ARF REM, all no-brainers. But in addition to those long central answers that I didn't fully know, I got hung up around HENRI (whom I also didn't know), and then particularly in the NE, where I stupidly wrote in HODA instead of RIPA (16A: Gifford's talk show successor). Hoda Kotb is Gifford's co-host successor ... successor to Regis in Kathie Lee's life ... Anyway, four letters, female talk show personality associated with Kathie Lee Gifford, you can kinda see how I made the mistake. Kinda. I also thought 9D: Do some fast data processing? (CRAM) was CHEW ... because after you "fast" ... you then eat ... during which, presumably, you CHEW? And the food is the "data" you are "processing"? With your teeth? Question mark?

Lots of mistakes today. Aside from CHEW and HODA, I had HIS- before HER- (does anyone really still say "HERstory" ... feels very early '90s) (5D: Lead-in to story). I had SUNRA before SHAMU (I want to live in the world where SUNRA is the correct answer here) (4A: Performer for whom a San Diego stadium was named). I had HEIDI before HENRI and AGREE before AMITY (33D: Accord). And for 37A: Herb of the parsley family (ANISE), I had the -SE and wrote in PULSE ... yup, I sure did. That's a thing, isn't it? PULSE? [looks it up] Well, it's "the edible seeds of certain pod-bearing plants, like chickpeas and lentils," so it's *a* thing, and an edible thing at that, but it ain't related to parsley. Why would I go there and not just straight to the fairly common ANISE? I don't know. Anyway, I think that's it. Hope this puzzle resonated for at least some of you. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Barbara Lin

Relative difficulty: Easy (7:57)

THEME:"Musical Interlude"— wacky answers are created by adding the notes of the scale (DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, TI) to familiar phrases:

Theme answers:

AMAZING DOG RACE (23A: Iditarod, for one?) ("Amazing Grace")
FORESTER PARENT (31A: One driving kids around in a Subaru?) (foster parent)
ORGAN DOMINATION (47A: Letting out all the stops to drown out the other instruments?) (organ donation)
SCARFACE RESOURCES (62A: Cocaine and guns, in a Pacino movie?) (scarce resources)
PARASOL MILITARY (81A: Troops who are worried about sun protection?) (paramilitary)
GLARE AT GRANDMA (93A: Give mom's mom the stink eye?) (great grandma)
THE PITIED PIPER (109A: "Twelve Days of Christmas" musician who invites sympathy?) (the Pied Piper)

Word of the Day: UAR (77D: Former Mideast grp.) —

The United Arab Republic (UAR; Arabic: الجمهورية العربية المتحدة‎ al-Jumhūrīyah al-'Arabīyah al-Muttaḥidah) was a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 to 1971. It was initially a political union between Egypt (including the occupied Gaza Strip) and Syria from 1958 until Syria seceded from the union after the 1961 Syrian coup d'état -- leaving a rump state. Egypt continued to be known officially as the United Arab Republic until 1971.
The republic was led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The UAR was a member of the United Arab States, a loose confederation with the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, which was dissolved in 1961. (wikipedia)

• • •

A very normal 20th-century effort. The wacky add-some-letters stuff and the musical scale stuff, absolutely basic theme material for years and years. Doesn't mean it's inherently bad, just that you better put it to good (novel, fun) use, or else it's going to feel like an exercise in nostalgia. The Way Puzzles Were. And this one just didn't feel snappy or contemporary enough, or wacky enough, for that matter. It was a perfectly serviceable but ultimately tepid effort. And it's a good thing that it went by so fast (i.e. was so easy) because it is not a grid you want to look at too closely. There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of substandard fill here. Or, rather, it's pretty standard, and pretty tired, and pretty wince-inducing. Very short list I've scrawled out quickly here on my printed-out puzzle: MATIC EROO ENTO NUTRI (so ... just prefixes and suffixes) ATPAR ATNINE ACERB ARMEE RICAN MRE UAR (those last two *right next to each other*) ENORM and something called EDATE??? What the hell? Meanwhile over in the Plus column, all I have is SPOTIFY NIGIRI GNOCCHI and KALE SALAD (which sounds like a fun night in during quarantine). WIRETAP and MAHALIA are OK too. But overall, the theme just doesn't produce the fireworks it needs to in order to be successful, and the fill is too often gratingly non-wordy and overfamiliar. I'd give GLARE AT GRANDMA a thumbs-up, and maaaaybe SCARFACE RESOURCES too. Everything else just kinda lies there.

I had a clunky start to this one, in that I thought there was going to be some reference to the TV show "The Amazing Race" (the existence of this show makes the ultimate answer, AMAZING DOG RACE, very very anticlimactic ... like, you're just adding the word "dog" to a pre-existing TV show title). Then I realized that the base phrase was "Amazing Grace," w/ a "G," which has me wondering now if "The Amazing Race" was *always* a pun on "Amazing Grace" ... somehow? I guess it's pretty typical to start (comparatively) slow, since the start is always when you have the least amount of info to go on, by definition. Picking up speed is probably a pretty normal phenomenon. Still, looking bad, I sputtered up there compared to how blazingly fast I was afterward. Once I cleared the alleged Beatles song ("YES IT IS"!?!?!) (in my head it goes, "Speaking words of wisdom / YES IT IS!") (33A: B-side to the Beatles'"Ticket to Ride"), it was off to the races. This was one of those solves where I could feel, about halfway through, that I was going to be close to record pace. Sometimes you can just feel it. But then I typo'd EDGING (90D: Trim) as EEGING and that completely screwed up the tail end of the GRANDMA themer (-GRANEMA), which meant that the whole SE corner all of a sudden got much much harder. It felt big and empty compared to the areas I'd just been slicing through. So I had to plunk the "LA" in there in the circled squares (so knowing the theme actually helped!) and muscle my way through to the end. Not sure how I never actually saw the ROSIE clue, since that would've been a gimme (dang it!) (96D: Perez of "Do the Right Thing"), but anyway, I still got to the end in under 8, which is very fast for me. I think my record on a Sunday NYTXW is in the 7:40s. The high of nearly breaking my record kept me from having too many bad feelings about this puzzle, but as the high wore off and I reviewed the grid ... things soured quickly. But as I say, it's a very solid late-'90s kind of effort. B+ if it were actually the late-'90s. But for today, a C at best.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: David Alfred Bywaters

Relative difficulty: slow for me at 3:21 (so "Medium-Challenging," I guess)

THEME: "your former lover" [shudder] — EX- words clued as if they have something to do with your "ex":

Theme answers:

EXTENSION (17A: Stress between you and your former lover?)
EXCLAIM (26A: Thing your former lover said about you?)
EXCOMMUNICATION (41A: Former lover's text, e.g.?)
EXPOSES (51A: Former lovers' stances in photos?)
EXPENDING (66A: Current lover who seems suspiciously preoccupied?)

Word of the Day: ESTHER (21A: One of a pair of Old Testament books with female names) —

The Book of Esther (hebrew: מְגִלַּת אֶסְתֵּר, Megillat Esther), also known in Hebrew as "the Scroll" (Megillah), is a book in the third section (Ketuvim, "Writings") of the Jewish Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) and in the Christian Old Testament. It is one of the five Scrolls (Megillot) in the Hebrew Bible. It relates the story of a Hebrew woman in Persia, born as Hadassah but known as Esther, who becomes queen of Persia and thwarts a genocide of her people. The story forms the core of the Jewish festival of Purim, during which it is read aloud twice: once in the evening and again the following morning. The books of Esther and Song of Songs are the only books in the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God. (wikipedia)

• • •

The vibe on this one is very '70s, hey baby, have you met my lovvvvvuh hot tub etc. Something about the phrase "lover" has always rubbed me the wrong way—like, we get it, you're f***ing, dial it back. The whole thing felt some kind of weird thematic mash-up of Rupert Holmes'"Escape" and Ambrosia's "How Much I Feel":

You get a bunch of free EX-s (once you grasp the theme), but then the whole weirdness of the "?" clues makes it harder than a usual Monday, so I don't know, maybe difficulty-wise that comes out as a wash. For me, the "?" stuff, and the reparsing it entailed, made it more Tuesday than Monday for me. I don't think I fully grasped any of the themers as I was solving them. I was just dimly aware that they were phrases where an EX was doing something, but the answers themselves were just EX words, so I just got crosses and sort of waited for an EX word to appear that looked like it had something vaguely to do with the content of the theme clue. Found the whole thing repetitive and a little boring. I also got weirdly held up in the north, where 5A: Oaf, ugh, that could be like two thousand things, and the first one thousand I guessed were wrong (LOUT was my main guess). Also had Hop TO IT, not ON IT—"Hop TO IT" feels way way way more idiomatically correct to my ears, especially as a command. Super-annoying to have the clue on the crappy fill be the thing that throws you off. ON IT could be clued so much more clearly and cleanly. And cluing OTOH as merely "transition" slowed me down too (7D: Texter's transition); no hint there that it's an abbr. One more slow-down at COSMOS, where the clue ... just did nothing for me (54A: Absolutely everything). I'm focusing on slow-downs because nothing else about the puzzle (after the "lovvvvvvuh" stuff) seemed remarkable.

[Only Prince may say "lover"]

IN TWO *and* IN TOW? That's ... bold. I teach Shakespeare not infrequently and still canNot keep all the Italian men's names straight to save my life. ANTONIO, sure, sounds right (25D: Villain in Shakespeare's "The Tempest"). Again, just got some crosses and waited for something familiar to arise. Don't think of TEA (like, black tea, normal tea, tea) as a "throat soother"—that's more "herbal tea." Did not expect something as generic as MESS for 42D: Target of a cleanup. "Target your mess with a cleanup, children!" Meh. REUNE will always be an awful word. Wish there were more fun things in this grid to talk about. Alas. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Dave Bardolph

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Shakespearean cookout — famous phrases from Shakespeare, clued as if they referred to a "cookout":

Theme answers:

THE POUND OF FLESH (17A: 16-ounce sirloin that Shylock brought to the cookout?)
LEND ME YOUR EARS (27A: Mark Antony's request to the farmer when he realized he didn't have enough corn for the cookout?)
AY, THERE'S THE RUB (48A: Cry from Hamlet when he spotted his favorite spice mix at the cookout?)
WHAT'S DONE IS DONE (64A: Lady Macbeth's declaration upon checking the steaks at the cookout?)

Word of the Day: Las Vegas RAIDERs (51D: Las Vegas player) —

The Las Vegas Raiders are a professional American football team based in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The Raiders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. In 2020, the Raiders will play their home games at Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada.
Founded on January 30, 1960, and originally based in Oakland, California, they played their first regular season game on September 11, 1960, as a charter member of the American Football League (AFL). They moved to the NFL with the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. The team departed Oakland to play in Los Angeles from the 1982 season through the 1994 season before returning to Oakland at the start of the 1995 season. On March 27, 2017, NFL team owners voted nearly unanimously to approve the Raiders' application to relocate to Las Vegas. Nearly three years later, on January 22, 2020, the Raiders officially moved to Las Vegas. (wikipedia)

• • •

These are the kinds of corny (!) puns that I expect from the NYTXW on a Tuesday. Dadpuzz, for sure. I appreciate the timely late-summer vibe of the "cookout" premise. The only real objection I have comes from my ears, who do not like the THE in THE POUND OF FLESH. Unlike the other themers, that one exists as a pretty common metaphor in English, and in the context it's "A" pound of flesh, not THE. I'm sure the quotation is accurate, though I don't remember it precisely, hang on ... OK, wait *hang on*!!! Portia literally says, at one point, citing the contract, "The words expressly are 'a pound of flesh'" ... Like ... the play itself is literally telling you exactly how the quote should go. Yes, the phrase "pound of flesh" gets repeated a lot in the play, but I feel like Portia's words are basically the play rendering its ruling on what the proper wording of this phrase should be. I find for the "A," against the "THE," the theme is rendered invalid. Man, you have no idea how happy I am that my ears recoiled *justly*, and not just idiosyncratically or unfairly, as maybe perhaps sometimes occasionally happens. Vindication for my ears! Huzzah! But yeah, The THE is bad, and now that it's been disproved by the text, ruinous.

Puzzle felt easy overall, but my time was actually slightly *above* average. I really do solve more slowly in the early morning, for whatever reason. I feel alert and clear-headed enough, but things ... like, all the things ... just aren't up to full speed yet. My entire body just wants to cchhiillll in the early morning—it's such a glorious, slow time of day—so I think I'm unapt to break any speed records when I do an early-morning solve, and I have to adjust my difficulty rating accordingly. Looking the puzzle over, I actually made a bunch of mistakes, or just blanked out initially at a bunch of answers. I truly could not process RANT (6D: Chew someone out, maybe), since you REAM someone out, not RANT them out, but I get that RANT here doesn't require the object, it's an intransitive verb, yadda yadda. Oh, and I also don't play Yahtzee at all so PAIR was weird to me—sounds like cards, not dice (15A: Unexciting Yahtzee roll), which I guess is sorta the point of Yahtzee, but whatever. PAIR is not a word I know from that game.

Then I got really stuck at RAIDER, as my brain had apparently not processed, or cared in any way, that the Oakland Raiders moved (again). I know that Las Vegas has hockey now (!?), but that's as far as I got, or am apparently willing to go, on my Las Vegas sports knowledge. My brain really only has enough room for UNLV (4), to be honest. Life was better when that city had no major pro sports teams. Slightly stunned that Serbia has the DINAR as its unit of currency, but yes, it's one of two European countries using that domination (the other being North Macedonia, which I sincerely did not know was a country). Here are the rest:

Not sure how to spell the LEA in LEA& Perrins, so that hurt with RAIDER as well. I sincerely assumed a "Las Vegas player" was a ROLLER for a little bit there. Had STAR before SEAL (59D: Member of an elite team) and, without the Neil Diamond context, or any musical context at all, had no idea what 70A: Adjective for Caroline could possibly want (SWEET). Still came in well under 4. That's all for today. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. this blog got a nice mention in the NYT yesterday (8/24), in a very unexpected place: Wesley Morris's reflections on the 2004 (!) movie season. Specifically, in a discussion of M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village."

Showing up in an article about crosswords: expected. Showing up in an article about movies?: priceless.

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Constructor: Carl Larson

Relative difficulty: Challenging (just for me, because I misread a clue and then just stared at a single blank square for what felt like eternity; puzzle is actually probably more Medium)

THEME: WORK PORTFOLIO (34A: Collection that demonstrates job skills ... as suggested by 17-, 24-, 48- and 55-Across)— familiar phrases are all clued as if they are "investments" for various occupations... the latter part of each phrase being something one can invest in:

Theme answers:

COMEDY GOLD (17A: Investment for a humorist?)
BEEF STOCK (24A: Investment for a butcher?)
IONIC BOND (48A: Investment for a physicist?)
MENU OPTION (55A: Investment for a restaurateur?)

Word of the Day: Ken OLIN (16A: "Thirtysomething" actor Ken) —

Kenneth Edward Olin (born July 30, 1954) is an American actor, television director and producer. He is known for his role as Michael Steadman in the ABC drama series Thirtysomething (1987-1991), for which he received Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama nomination in 1990. Olin later began working as television director and producer; his producer credits include Alias (2001-2006), Brothers & Sisters (2006–2011), and This Is Us (2016-present). Olin is married to actress Patricia Wettig. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow ... investments. Portfolios. Were y'all out of golf- and chess-themed puzzles to torment me with? The very topic is so dull, and the execution here is so weird and tenuous—reliant entirely on clue phrasing for the revealer to make any sense, which it barely does. The choice of professions in the theme clues is so weird. A humorist, a butcher, a physicist (?), and a restaurateur (??). Why physicist? Aren't IONIC BONDs from chemistry? Why not a chemist? And stocks and bonds I get, great, that works, but after that, it gets real arbitrary-feeling. OPTION made some sense to me, but GOLD!?! The other three are generic terms, but GOLD is quite specific. I was looking for a type of thing, but what I got was just ... thing. That answer was totally horrible for me, both because it's just bad (inconsistent) theme-wise, and because I misread the AIG clue as [Big inits. in France] (as opp. to [Big inits. in finance]). Maybe I scanned the clue once and didn't reread it, I don't know? But I clearly expected that I'd eventually infer the themer ... but no. I had COMEDY -OLD and zero idea what letter went there. At the very end. Even when I had the theme in place. What investment thingie is -OLD? What common phrase is COMEDY -OLD? I mean, it's my fault for misreading the AIG clue, but a. AIG is bad fill b. GOLD is a horrid outlier among the "investment" words, c. the whole concept of the theme feels wobbly, and most importantly d. I just don't care about this topic at all. At all at all.

Don't put NRA in your puzzle. At all at all. Because now it's just so obvious that you're trying awkwardly to steer around the white supremacist terrorist organization and so we get really dated weird clues like New Deal alphabet soup orgs. (56D: New Deal program with the slogan "We Do Our Part," in brief). A half-experienced constructor could pull NRA and replace it with something as good or better within minutes. The fill on this one is weak all over. The longer stuff works OK, but things get awfully rough / old-fashioned in the short fill: STLO ANE TELS ATT DIRK RANDR ROO etc. Really hate the [Blowout] clue for ROMP because while accurate, it forces you into that "ugh which one is it?" position when you get the RO- (I guessed ROUT, of course). I still can't really make much sense of the COCKTAILS clue. I love COCKTAILS. I would've thought it impossible to make me dislike a COCKTAILS clue. And yet the clue here ... it's so weird and dated and awkward that it just ruins all the joy of the answer. What even is a "dinner invitation"? What kind of formal dinner is this? ["Dinner" preceder ...] is such convoluted nonsense. Is "Dinner" a quote, is it ironic, is the "preceder" part of a phrase? But, no, a "COCKTAILS Dinner" is not a thing, so I guess somehow the "invitation" says "COCKTAILS, Dinner" on it? COCKTAILS followed by "Dinner" quote unquote? Truly I am not familiar with whatever genre of thing this invitation is. I don't understand the clue-writing / editing on this thing at all. The clue on SPEND too, what the heck? (4D: Lighten one's wallet, so to speak) Why would you actually introduce a "one's" into your clue when you don't need to. Awkward. No idea what that clue was going for. I wrote in STEAL. Goodbye to you, puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Medium (6ish)

THEME: CHATTERBOX (58A: Windbag, as seen three times in this puzzle?) — words meaning "chatter" appear inside a "box" in this puzzle three times

Theme answers:

TALKING ABOUT (17A: Discussing) / BUGABOO (6D: Cause of dread)
"WHADDYA KNOW?!" (33A: "Imagine that!") / KAYAK (26D: White-water rental)
"NINJA WARRIOR" (40A: Obstacle-based competition show, informally) / JAWAS (41D: Scavengers on Luke Skywalker's home planet)

Word of the Day: THEA von Harbou (52D: Fritz Lang collaborator ___ von Harbou) —

Thea Gabriele von Harbou (27 December 1888 – 1 July 1954) was a German screenwriter, novelist, film director, and actress. She is especially known as the screenwriter of the science fiction film classic Metropolis and the story on which it was based. Harbou collaborated as a screenwriter with film director Fritz Lang, her husband, during the period of transition from silent to sound films. (wikipedia)

• • •

First of all, a CHATTERBOX is not a "Windbag." The latter has way more negative connotations, the former ... I've only really heard applied to children. Bad cluing. This has been a hallmark of NYTXW puzzles of late, just tin-eared baloney. That said, the theme is fine, conceptually. Words that mean "chatter," cram in a "box," ta da! It's just ... first, there are only three, which feels thin / weak. Second, TALKING OUT really looks like an OK answer for 17A: Discussing, so there's no "whoa, what?" or real "aha" moment there. Just me looking at BUGOO thinking, "well, that's weird." And then "NINJA WARRIOR"? Some reality show's *informal* name? I will grant you that "JAW" is a tough, tough letter string to stretch across the two words of a two-word phrase, but still, not excited about that answer very much (what is the actual name of the show? ... ah "American NINJA WARRIOR." That's ... quite a truncation. But anyway, WHADDYAKNOW is the only one I really like. Fresh clever snappy nice. So the concept is fine, but only one of the themers seemed really well executed.

Most of the rest of the grid was either dull or irksome. I gotta believe that CACHINNATE is the least well-known word in the grid by a country mile (11D: Laugh uproariously). I've never seen it in my life. I was sure I had something wrong. Kept expecting it to be something about, I don't know, cackling? Yeesh. I'm not apt to use it again, so it's just a very long obscurity. ATHENS, OHIO was a surprise to me as the only U.S. Athens I ever think of is in Georgia (12D: U.S. city named for a European capital). I have never heard of this so-called "Generation ALPHA," ever (46A: Generation ___ (cohort born in the early 2010s)). Never. Generation names are always dicey, and that one ... wow, who's peddling that. They're not even 10, stop. Because of that stupid clue, I had an error, in that I put in SET AT instead of LET AT at 47D: Unleash upon and figured maybe ASPHA ... I dunno, was part of the theme, somehow? The ASPHALT Generation, I dunno. I mean, I sniffed the problem out eventually, but ALPHA, again, dubious clue *posing* as "fresh." PENNE PASTA is an awful redundancy (29D: Food that's cut diagonally). I was happy to learn a couple of new things. Well, I can't say I'm *happy* to learn that hasenpfeffer is made of HARE, but it's at least a curious fact that I might remember. And I am *definitely* happy to learn about THEA von Harbou, screenwriter of "Metropolis" (!) and not just Fritz Lang's collaborator, but his wife as well. Always happy to learn more about the often unheralded work of women in early cinema. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kate Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (low 7s)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ISO (32A: Camera film speed inits.) —

Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system. A closely related ISO system is used to describe the relationship between exposure and output image lightness in digital cameras. [...] The ASA and DIN film speed standards have been combined into the ISO standards since 1974. // The current International Standard for measuring the speed of colour negative film is ISO 5800:2001(first published in 1979, revised in November 1987) from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Related standards ISO 6:1993 (first published in 1974) and ISO 2240:2003 (first published in July 1982, revised in September 1994 and corrected in October 2003) define scales for speeds of black-and-white negative film and colour reversal film, respectively. // The determination of ISO speeds with digital still-cameras is described in ISO 12232:2019 (first published in August 1998, revised in April 2006, corrected in October 2006 and again revised in February 2019). // The ISO system defines both an arithmetic and a logarithmic scale. The arithmetic ISO scale corresponds to the arithmetic ASA system, where a doubling of film sensitivity is represented by a doubling of the numerical film speed value. In the logarithmic ISO scale, which corresponds to the DIN scale, adding 3° to the numerical value constitutes a doubling of sensitivity. For example, a film rated ISO 200/24° is twice as sensitive as one rated ISO 100/21°. // Commonly, the logarithmic speed is omitted; for example, "ISO 100" denotes "ISO 100/21°", while logarithmic ISO speeds are written as "ISO 21°" as per the standard. (wikipedia)

• • •

If I just look at this grid as a finished object, it seems fine. It's pretty solid, and it's got little moments of currency and up-to-date-ness. It's got no real marquee answers beyond the central PYRAMID SCHEME, so nothing really pops or sizzles, but it's alright. And yet solving it was not that fun. I never know how much the editor's cluing voice is just mucking things up, but it just felt like there was a layer of muck and dust and quaintness over a lot of the cluing. Cluing turned SKINNY into an olde-timey word (13D: Inside dope). Cluing on GOLD TEETH just felt ... hmm ... labored (46A: Pearly whites that aren't white). It's basically saying "teeth that aren't white," which tells me nothing. Why would anyone have GOLD TEETH? Once you've answered that question, maybe incorporate *that* into your clue, instead of leaving us with this overly literal dead weight (also, "pearly whites," another olde-timey expression). Cluing on PARROT was super-technical and bizarre (44D: Oscine : songbird :: psittacine : ___). I'm so tired of hair being clued as MOP. Again, for some reason, it just feels 50 years old (weren't the Beatles known as "mop-tops" or something like that?). But then some of the issues I had were with the fill itself. Like ... BIP?! (21D: Marcel Marceau character) Yeeeeesh. No one has thought of Marcel Marceau in 40+ years, and though I know I've seen BIP in xwords before, I drew a total blank there. Younger solvers will have no clue, none, and no way to have a clue, as mime lore has not been maintained as far as I can tell. And SHOE PRINT ... while I'm sure that that is a thing, even if the print were left "in the dust" by a shoe, most humans would still call it a "footprint," so ... just weird (28A: One might be left in the dust). Grid really does seem solid enough, overall, but this lacked the Zing I love in a good Friday, and then also it was hard in unrewarding ways, so ... so-so, I guess.

Found the NW extremely hard, as TOOT was first HONK then BEEP (again, "TOOT" for a horn honk feels olden). Is the "station update" in 4D: Subject of a station update, for short (ETA) a ... train station? bus station? "Station update" just feels so weird, like it's about TV or something. I actually wanted APSE early but didn't put it in because the "E" felt wrong in the cross. POLISHUP was hard to parse (2D: Make final improvements to). SOBSTORY was very vaguely clued (3D: A play to one's emotions) (Something about the "A" at the front of the clue felt strange). And then the SW got me too, with SPOIL being really hard to get from 43A: Turn, and that clue on PARROT, ugh, and ONEACT, also toughish (I wanted some 6-letter word for "existential" ... or else the actual 6-letter word FRENCH). Having SALESMAN for SALES REP (ugh) really really killed me (36D: Professional pitcher). Had TAN for SUN, which was a very right wrong answer (23A: Go for the bronze?). I hate this clue for SUN. You might SUN yourself with zero intention of getting "Bronze," but TAN—straight line from TAN to bronze. Sigh. I've seen MEETCUTE a few times now so it didn't enchant the way it might have in, say, 2015. Really surprised TENET didn't get the Christopher Nolan movie title treatment (60A: Article of faith). My greatest moment of glory was spelling TA-NEHISI perfectly on the first try—I put his full name in a themeless for Buzzfeed, lo these many (five?) years ago. PYRAMID SCHEME is a nice answer. Seems like the kind of answer you'd build a theme around. You can have that idea for free, constructors of the world. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:49)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: YU-GI-OH! (8D: Trading card franchise that's an alternative to Pokémon) —

Yu-Gi-Oh! (Japanese: 遊☆戯☆王, Hepburn: Yū-Gi-Ō!, lit. "King of Games") is a Japanese manga series about gaming written and illustrated by Kazuki Takahashi. It was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine between September 1996 and March 2004. The plot follows the story of a boy named Yugi Mutou, who solves the ancient Millennium Puzzle. Yugi awakens a gambling alter-ego within his body that solves his conflicts using various games.
Two anime adaptations were produced; one by Toei Animation, which aired from April to October 1998, and another produced by NAS and animated by Studio Gallop titled Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, which aired between April 2000 and September 2004. The manga series has spawned a media franchise that includes multiple spin-off manga and anime series, a trading card game, and numerous video games. Most of the incarnations of the franchise involve the fictional trading card game known as Duel Monsters, where each player uses cards to "duel" each other in a mock battle of fantasy "monsters". This forms the basis for the real life Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. Yu-Gi-Oh has become one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sat down to solve this puzzle just as the news was breaking that actor Chadwick Boseman ("Black Panther") had died, very young (mid-40s), after a four-year battle with colon cancer. He was a tremendous actor (see "Da 5 Bloods" if you haven't already), and I'm just gutted. Like, the world is a lot to take generally these days, so the loss of someone so talented, someone who played iconic, transformative Black figures (James Brown, Jackie Robinson) as well as the Black superhero, on top of all this mess ... it's truly awful. "Black Panther" was the only movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I really loved, and he had a lot to do with that. He was an important, powerful, inspiring figure in popular culture these past few years, and his death is both surprising and deeply saddening. So please forgive the rather brief write-up today—I'm feeling a little too deflated to do my usual song and dance.

I enjoyed this puzzle, actually. It's true that some of that enjoyment came from the bizarre mind-meld I had with the puzzle. Most of my initial guesses ended up being right, which, on Saturdays, is rarely the case. So much so that I don't trust most of my initial guesses on Saturday. I am tentative about writing things in. I verify with crosses. But from AMIE to CAV to CHINOOK to CHUM, first guesses were right. I sincerely didn't know CHINOOK were anything but a kind of salmon, but I had the -OK and I know those salmon are from the "Pacific Northwest," so I went with it. Seems a bit ... denigrating? ... that when you google [Chinook] the first hits you get are for a helicopter and a dog breed. Seems like maybe the actual people should be near the top. Anyway, being on this puzzle's wavelength, and then just getting a few choice gimmes handed to me (YU-GI-OH, DIDION, CHOPRA, CINDY), really helped me move through this one quickly. The long answers in this one are generally bright and fun, which is all I ask from my themelesses. I finished this faster and liked it better than yesterday's puzzle. HEADFAKE over USVSTHEM was probably my favorite moment, and it's hard not to be cheered by "MAHNA MAHNA!" (12D: Muppets song with nonsense lyrics)

I did the thing where I drilled down the Downs in the NW as fast as I could, with the first answer I could think of. Did the first six and got three right ... and that was enough. One of my wrong answers was actually right, I just wrote it in the wrong was (CSU instead of CAL), and then I left one blank (5D: Expression of doubt = OR NOT) and I wrote in ALOT instead of HEAP, but even with the static from the wrong answers, I could see AFTERYOU, which made me know exactly which answers were wrong, and I sped away from there. Not a fan of the extra (first) "H" in AHCHOO. Hate the *concept* of the SIDEHUSTLE, but I think it's actually pretty good as fill. Last letter in was the "V" in INVADE, which was (strangely) the hardest answer in the puzzle for me. I think of a "blitz" as an invasion, sure, but I don't think I'd ever substitute "blitz" for the *verb* INVADE. But that's a quibble. Overall, I liked this fine. I'm done. Take care.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Olivia Mitra Framke

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:45)

THEME:"All Aflutter"— a puzzle about the BUTTERFLY EFFECT (81A: Subject of this puzzle, as suggested visually by its central black squares), which is apparently a concept in CHAOS THEORY (24A: Mathematical field that includes the 81-Across); the grid includes a "definition" of the concept (ONE SMALL THING / CAN MAKE ALL THE / DIFFERENCE / IN THE WORLD) (3D: Start of a definition of the 81-Across) and then for some reason you have to add the letter "N" (?) to a "shaded square" (not depicted, but visible in the paper and on the app), which turns TOR and ADO into TORNADO (62A: A.L. East team ... or, using the shaded square, what a little movement by this puzzle's subject might cause), which I guess illustrates the idea of a "small change" making... "all the difference in the world???" I don't know. Black squares near the middle of the grid also kinda depict a butterfly

Word of the Day: MANA (????) (35A: Magical resource in Magic: The Gathering) —

Magic or mana is an attribute assigned to characters within a role-playing or video game that indicates their power to use special magical abilities or "spells". Magic is usually measured in magic points or mana points, shortened as MP. Different abilities will use up different amounts of MP.^[1] When the MP of a character reaches zero, the character will not be able to use special abilities until some of their MP is recovered.
Much like health, magic might be displayed as a numeric value, such as "50/100". Here, the first number indicates the current amount of MP a character has whereas the second number indicates the character's maximum MP. In video games, magic can also be displayed visually, such as with a gauge that empties itself as a character uses their abilities. [...]
"Mana" is a word that comes from Polynesian languages meaning something along the lines of "supernatural power". The concept of mana was introduced in Europe by missionary Robert Henry Codrington in 1891 and was popularized by Mircea Eliade in the 1950s. It was first introduced as a magical fuel used to cast spells in the 1969 short story, "Not Long Before the End", by Larry Niven, which is part of and later popularized by his The Magic Goes Away setting. It has since become a common staple in both role-playing and video games.

• • •

That "definition" is such an awful cliché. And it's not even a "definition," it's a dumb saying. If you were truly dealing CHAOS THEORY, my guess is you'd provide a proper definition, but instead we get this mushy pop mumbo jumbo, "ONE SMALL THING / CAN MAKE ALL THE / DIFFERENCE / IN THE WORLD"; like, if someone said that to me, I'd slowly or possibly quickly just find somewhere else to be. Also the whole butterfly flapping its wings and causing a TOR(N)ADO ... somewhere, anywhere, is another bit of nonsense. Again, I believe that there is a thing in CHAOS THEORY called the BUTTERFLY EFFECT, but the pop understanding of it flaunted here is just garbage. Weirdly, I think I first understood the BUTTERFLY effect as an effect through *time*, not *weather*, i.e. I thought it was the idea that if you went back in time and killed a single butterfly (why you would do that, I don't know, you cruel bastard) then the "effects" across large amounts of time could be world-alteringly significant. But sure, no, butterfly flaps cause tor(n)ados, that works too. Seriously, the wording on the "definition" is the Main Thing making me not like this puzzle at all. I kept thinking it was going to be something specific or at least snappy, but ... no. Also, why ... what is the rationale for entering the letter "N," specifically, in that "shaded square" (between TOR and ADO)? "Using the shaded square"?? Does "using" mean "putting an 'N' in there for some reason." I hate stuff like this because I feel like "ugh do I have to read every clue again to see if *somewhere* the 'N' rationale is explained!?" But I don't think it is. Just ... arbitrary. Put an 'N' in there. TOR(N)ADO. Whoopee.

Theme is so elaborate (by which I mean space-consuming) that there's not much room for interesting longer fill, though I did enjoy COCOAPUFFS. Baffled by BELLAS and MANA. I feel like I used to see ONAGER(S) a lot but since I haven't in a while, I totally blanked on the name (28D: Wild Asian equines). Had the "O" and wanted only OKAPIS, obviously wrong. Had a lot of trouble with the short Acrosses in the west, where SCHISM had a vague clue (60A: Split), "I'M IN" felt like it really wanted to be "C'MON!" (66A: "Let's do this!"), "CAN DO!" was really really not how I was hearing "You got it!" (72A), and ANNOY seemed just as good as ANGER for 77A: Tick off. I don't seem to have any significant trouble otherwise. I like this puzzle's thematic ambition, but like lots of puzzles that try to do grid artwork *and* have thematic content *and* have some weird (here, extra-square) trick, it felt shaky. Showy, but not precise or elegant. But again, the thing that really turned me off the whole enterprise was the whole "definition"—a forced, trite, made-up, for-symmetry's-sake expression that isn't even a specific quotation. I so badly wanted it to be an actual thing that in the beginning I was mad that ONE SMALL wasn't followed by STEP FOR MAN etc.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Anne Marie Crinnion

Relative difficulty: Challenging (FOR A MONDAY) (3:31)

THEME: CHANGE LANES (64A: What you might do to pass on an interstate ... or a phonetic hint to the starts of 18-, 28- and 50-Across) — first words of themers are homophones for types of "lanes," but with different "changed" spelling:

Theme answers:

RODE SHOTGUN (18A: Traveled in the front passenger seat) ('road')
ALY RAISMAN (28A: Captain of the 2012 and 2016 U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics teams) ('alley')
WHEY POWDER (50A: Main ingredient in a protein shake, maybe) ('way')

Word of the Day: MASADA (8D: Ancient fortification overlooking the Dead Sea) —

Masada (Hebrew: מצדה‎ metsada, "fortress") is an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel situated on top of an isolated rock plateau, akin to a mesa. It is located on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea 20 km (12 mi) east of Arad.
Herod the Great built two palaces for himself on the mountain and fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BCE.
According to Josephus, the siege of Masada by Roman troops from 73 to 74 CE, at the end of the First Jewish–Roman War, ended in the mass suicide of the 960 Sicarii rebels who were hiding there.
Masada is one of Israel's most popular tourist attractions. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a cute theme. Is "lane" a perfect synonym for all these words ("road,""alley," and "way")? I don't know, but it's close enough, and the themers themselves are lively and interesting. Good revealer, strong themers. The theme works. My only issue is a pronunciation one—I definitely say WHEY way (way) breathier than I do "way.""Weigh" is a precise homophone for "way," but WHEY just has far more exhale for me in the WH-. But it's fine. Close enough. I did think, though, that this should've been a Tuesday. ALY RAISMAN is totally crossworthy, but even having heard her name many times before, It was very tough for me to remember her last name, and how to spell it. And then that same last name ran right into what was, for me, the hardest part of the grid. If I've heard of MASADA before, man did I forget it. I needed every cross, and sadly one of those crosses was a chemical formula (NAOH), which I'm sure was a breeze for some of you, but for me, unless we're talking about NACL, I'm gonna struggle in the chemical formula, especially on a Monday. Found the clue on CD-ROM really hard. Just ... nothing about it said CD-ROM to me (4A: Something computers cannot write to or erase). I'm sure it's accurate, just not very evocative of its shape or purpose or relative bygoneness. And then there was one more time suck, in the SW, where I had the -GE and confidently wrote in SURGE for 68A: Sudden forward thrust (LUNGE). Even now, SURGE feels like a better answer for that clue. Somehow also couldn't get BAND, possibly because BAND was an actual *class* when I was in middle school, not an "extra-curricular" (58D: Extracurricular activity for a musician).

I took a bad route in this puzzle, which is to say I took a very haphazard and thoughtless initial route, building off answers that I had, but in a careening way that took me all over the place without really solidly finishing off any particular part. So the latter half of my solve was basically me going back and playing fill-in / clean-up in a lot of sections I had blown through where I had left blanks. It's weird how much your solving route can affect your time. Even solving quickly, moving pell mell about the grid will cost you. Not getting CD-ROM up top really threw me, and I couldn't lock into a good rhythm after that. Here are some other issues / problems / thoughts:

Five things:

69A: "___ could've told you that!" ("EVEN I")— ugh, always bad when your bad fill is also your hard-to-get fill. I wanted "WELL, I"). Actually I just wanted "I" but you can see how that was not going to work.
43A: End of a lasso (NOOSE)— yeah, no, I really don't care how you clue it, I'd really rather not see this word in my crossword ever. Too evocative of lynching. Pass.
27D: "Hilarious!," in a text (LMAO) — sigh, this one hasn't died yet? Still in use? OK. I had the "L" and only wanted LOLS! or something like that
4D: One tending a house during the owner's absence (CARETAKER) — uh, that's a "housesitter." A CARETAKER takes care of a person.
71A: Choice words? (AND/OR)— again, no. "OR" is a choice word, but "AND" is decidedly not. If anything, these are words of ambiguity or flexibility, but "choice" is misleading.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hi, everyone! It's Clare — here a week later than normal because of chaos last Monday. Law school classes started that day (all being done virtually), and Zoom had an outage, and my school's main web page crashed multiple times... It was super fun! All in all, I haven't really minded online learning so far; I'm just trying (and, yes, sometimes failing) to not get distracted.

On to the puzzle for today!

Constructor:David Steinberg

Relative difficulty:Easy

THEME: PERSONAL PRONOUNS(52A: Gender identifiers often separated by slashes)— The theme answers are all personal pronouns...

Theme answers:

SHE / HER(as part of 22A: ARTHUR ASHE and 26A: HERD)
THEY / THEM (as part of 33A:BUT HEY and 35A: THE MET)
HE / HIM(as part of 46A:ACHE and 47A:HIMALAYANS)

Word of the Day: BROUHAHA (15A: Hubbub) —

Brouhaha is a French word sometimes used in English to describe an uproar or hubbub, a state of social agitation when a minor incident gets out of control… Typically, a brouhaha is marked by controversy and fuss that can seem, afterwards, to have been pointless or irrational. (Wiki)

• • •

Overall, I thought this puzzle was a pretty good one! I really liked the idea of the theme, and it felt fresh to me, too. The theme was executed very well — the way each set of PERSONAL PRONOUNS was offset by a square in the puzzle instead of a slash was a nice touch.

There was a fair amount of junky little stuff in the puzzle, though — possibly as a result of the formatting of the theme. See: ELSA, GPS, KIM, ETA, etc... I know three-letter words are to be expected out of puzzles, but some of these clue/answer combinations felt especially weak to me in an otherwise good puzzle. I especially hate those three-letter words like AHH (22D: Utterance from a hot bath) and OHO (10D: "Looky here!") because it's such a crapshoot: You never really know what combination of letters it's going to be. Having both SIRS (31A: Round Table figures) and SIRI (44A: One always getting asked questions) felt repetitive. Likewise, THE WHO (4D: Roger Daltrey's band) and THE MET (35A: N.Y.C. opera house). And, finally, I really disliked FB POSTS (7D: Social media things that can be liked, informally); that is just not a thing.

With all that being said, I really did like a lot of the words in the puzzle! A puzzle that fits in words like BROUHAHA, MIMOSAS, HIMALAYANS, CHAI LATTE, INTERVIEW, and MYOPIC is a win in my book. I also appreciated the love for Mia HAMM (26D), ROBB Stark (23D), and ARETHA Franklin (8D). And, I thought ARTHUR ASHE (22A) was especially timely, as the U.S. Open is just starting. (My dad has requested that I interject that he interviewed ARTHUR ASHE twice). SALAD (13D) as an introductory course was also fun — I didn't even fall for the intended misdirection by trying to put in something like "torts," my favorite introductory law school course.

Bullets:

This was the first time I immediately typed out ORCS (10A: Enemies of hobbits) rather than wondering if it was actually spelled "orks." Maybe I've finally turned a corner on this.
Does anyone even know what HBO Max (30A) really is or what it does? No? Me, neither.
My knowledge from 5th grade on the capitals comes in handy again for TOPEKA (54A). I really only memorized the capitals then to beat a classmate on the test...
This puzzle finally taught me who TARA Reid (35D) is. I'd pictured her in my head as a different actress for so long, but I finally Googled her, and I've got it all cleared up now.
THE MET (35A) threw me at first because I had the first five letters and kept trying to pronounce the answer as "theme"-something: "themer,""themed," etc.
In case you need a serotonin boost, here is a clip of BTS performing at a recent awards show (where this amazing k-pop group swept the four categories they were nominated for). Also, in case you missed the news, BTS just got their first number 1 ever on the Billboard Hot 100 for their song "Dynamite"! No, this has nothing to do with the puzzle. But, I'm making it my mission to get everyone to love BTS as much as I do. You'll enjoy the happiness boost — trust me.

Signed, Clare Carroll, a virtual 3L

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Constructor: Margaret Seikel

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:47)

THEME: CATCH PHRASE (60A: Popular expression ... or what the opposite to the answer of each starred clue is?) — theme phrases end with a word that means not "catch" but its opposite: "throw":

Theme answers:

SUMMER FLING (16A: *Something reminisced about in the movie "Grease")
GROUND CHUCK (10D: *Some hamburger meat)
BRENNER PASS (24D: *Alpine crossing over the Austrian/Italian border)
ELEVATOR PITCH (14D: *Sales spiel in 60 seconds or less, say)

Word of the Day: BRENNER PASS (24D) —

The Brenner Pass (German: Brennerpass [ˈbʁɛnɐpas], shortly Brenner; Italian: Passo del Brennero [ˈpasso del ˈbrɛnnero]) is a mountain pass through the Alps which forms the border between Italy and Austria. It is one of the principal passes of the Eastern Alpine range and has the lowest altitude among Alpine passes of the area.
Dairy cattle graze in alpine pastures throughout the summer in valleys beneath the pass and on the mountains above it. At lower altitudes, farmers log pine trees, plant crops and harvest hay for winter fodder. Many of the high pastures are at an altitude of over 1,500 metres (4,900 feet); a small number stand high in the mountains at around 2,000 metres (6,600 feet).
The central section of the Brenner Pass covers a four-lane motorway and railway tracks connecting Bozen/Bolzano in the south and Innsbruck to the north. The village of Brenner consists of an outlet shopping centre (supermarkets and stores), fruit stores, restaurants, cafés, hotels and a gas station. It has a population of 400 to 600 (as of 2011).

• • •

Really enjoyed solving this one (mostly), then got to the revealer and just sort of cocked my head like a dog when he is both interested and baffled. In trying to figure out what the revealer meant, I kept looking at the the entire *phrase* of each theme answer—you know, because the revealer says to. Then I just simplified matters and looked at the last words in the phrases, and bingo. Well, not quite "bingo!" which implies "aha, got it!" More like "bingo?" Because I wasn't entirely sure I understood. Because the concept is ludicrous. It's as if you wanted to use CATCHPHRASE as a revealer, got nowhere because there aren't enough synonyms for "catch," thought to yourself, "lots of synonyms for 'throw,' too bad there's no such word as THROWPHRASE," and then thought to yourself, "wait, a, minute! I got it!" So this puzzle basically exists because the word THROWPHRASE doesn't exist but the word CATCHPHRASE does. The theme is CATCHPHRASE but you've only got throwphrases, but that's OK, you just (to borrow a film production term) fix it in post! That is, write an "opposite" clue to justify the whole enterprise. I think this revealer is so dumb it's actually good. Like ... yeah, just go for it. I'll take loopy over corny Any day. And the themers themselves are so good, just on a stand-alone basis. I have one big objection to the themers, though, and that is — the song is "SUMMER NIGHTS!" I would've accepted SUMMER LOVIN' (had me a blast, happened so fast). I had SUMMER -ING and when I couldn't get "LOV" to fit in the remaining squares, I sincerely thought I had a rebus puzzle on my hands. What I'm saying is, please be precise with your "Grease" clues; the world is fragile enough as it is and these things matter. Thank you.

I predict one serious potential trouble spot for solvers, and that's at the BRENNER PASS / AMEN RA crossing. I think "E" is the best guess there, but AMEN RA—famous for being spelled a bunch of ways, most notably AMUN RA (the only spelling actually mentioned in the "Amun" wikipedia entry) (32A: Egyptian sun god). And I dunno, but BRUNNER PASS sounds *awfully* plausible to me. So yeah, I think that's close to being a Natick* for some folks, especially you can be absolutely text-book *correct* in the Across and get a Down that looks right enough. My trouble spot was 'ZAS (68A: Some pepperoni orders, informally), which, ugh, for several reasons, most notably a. it's just a dumb abbr. and I don't know anyone who actually unironically uses it, and b. it's Scrabble-f***king** of the rankest sort. "Shove a Z in the corner!""But...?""Shove it!!!" Also, this puzzle has weird crosswordesey patches, like ORBS over ZEROG over AMENRA, or that AGA SIR EES run in the SE (SIR is actually fine, the others less so). But wow the longer phrases really land today, both in the theme and non-theme answers. ALICE PAUL! (33D: Suffragist and longtime leader in the National Woman's Party) PENNILESS! (8D: Flat broke) Why do I like PENNILESS? It's both sad and full of common letters, and yet ... something about it is so vibrant and vivid. Give me melodrama! I'll take it. You can always shove ELON. I really wish the PRIDE clue had indicated "for short," because it's PRIDE MONTH that's celebrated (19A: Annual June celebration). Yes, people say PRIDE, but it's a shortening, so the clue should make that clear. OK, that's all. Nice work overall. Is this a debut? Anyway, I hope this constructor makes more puzzles.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Natick = two not-universally-known answers (typically proper names) crossing at an unguessable letter (typically a vowel)

**Scrabble-f***ing = when you misguidedly try to make your grid more "interesting" by shoving high-value Scrabble-tile letters into the corner(s) of your grid

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Modern-day home of Ashanti empire / FRI 8-14-20 / Having one on the way slangily / Mushroom eaten in ramen / French term of endearment that literally means cabbage

Film comedy bomb of 1994 / SAT 8-15-20 / Word whispered by quiet old lady in Goodnight Moon / Worms 1980s toys / Internet marketing metric

First name of Peace Nobelist that ends ironically / SUN 8-16-20 / Phillipa who played Eliza in original cast of Hamilton / Charles religious leader known as Father of Modern Revivalism / Slugger Hideki / What a dental scalar removes / Actress Tyler who will be apt age in 2031

Property along the ocean / MON 8-17-20 / Greek peak in Thessaly / Spoonful 1960s pop group / Needs for playing Quidditch

Pre-Q quartet / TUE 8-18-20 / Alanis Morissette song about unfortunate situations / Heroine in Pearl Buck's Good Earth / Balkan land whose capital is Pristina / Grump cat or doge e.g. / Measure fully ratified on 8/18/20

Title detective of 1970s TV / WED 8-19-20 / 1815 novel of romantic misunderstandings / Destroyer of town of Nicolosi in 1669 / Sun Valley locale / Fictional maker of earthquake pills tornado seeds

QB protectors informally / THU 8-20-20 / Mickey's rival for Minnie's affection / Longhorn rival / Hypothetical solar system beyond Neptune / White-barked trees / Pink alcoholic drink familiarly / Relatives of violas /

Notable voyager of 1497 / FRI 8-21-20 / landmark consecrated in 1561 / Imported European wheels / Suffering from desynchronosis

Food mascot in green suit jacket / SAT 8-22-20 / Performer for whom San Diego stadium was named / Beer with triangular logo / Giuseppe leader in Italy's unification / Hangout for Dorian Gray

Ball of vinegared rice topped with raw fish / SUN 8-23-20 / Basketball player in old slang / Party symbol since 1870 / Lyre player of myth / Non-US MLB team on sports tickers

Stress between you and your former lover / MON 8-24-20 / Undercoat of oil painting / Money to tide you over

Adjective for Caroline / TUE 8-25-20 / Unexciting Yahtzee roll / Las Vegas player

Old-fashioned weapon for hand to hand combat / WED 8-26-20 / Strategic objective soon after D-Day invasion / Dinner preceder on dinner invitation

One-named Italian male model / THU 8-27-20 / Obstacle-based competition show informally / Term for naval builder that looks like aquatic insect / Generation cohort born in early 2010s / Drink once advertised as twice as much for nickel / Fritz Lang collaborator von Harbou

Marcel Marceau character / FRI 8-28-20 / Plot point in rom-com / Dish that might be garnished with nori negi / Gaelic name for Scotland / Secret admirer of Lily Potter in Harry Potter universe / First #1 hit for Spice Girls

Trading card franchise that's an alternative to Pokémon / SAT 8-29-20 / Muppet song with nonsense lyrics / Outburst from Sneezy / Haydee to Count of Monte Cristo

Wild Asian equines / SUN 8-30-20 / Soleus muscle locale / Pitch Perfect a cappella group / Pop singer known for wearing face-covering wigs / Magical resource in Magic the Gathering

Captain of 2012 2016 US women's women's Olympic gymnastic teams / MON 8-31-20 / Belgian river to North Sea

Life, in Rome / TUES 9-01-20 / Brunch cocktails / Soccer great Mia / Round Table figures

Alpine crossing over Austrian Italian border / WED 9-2-20 / Suffragist and longtime leader in the National Woman's Party / German grandparent affectionately / Middle-distance golf club / Some pepperoni orders informally / Difficult skating jump with backward takeoff