Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:36)

THEME: BOUNCE BACK (64A: Recover ... or what 17-, 25-, 38- and 51-Across do) — themers start somewhere in the middle (in a circled square), proceed in the normal L-to-R direction, but once they hit the end, BOUNCE BACK (past the original circle, back to the "first" square"). So they're just partially palindromical answers:

Theme answers:

EKACNAPOTA (i.e. "potato pancake") (17A: Fried Hanukkah treat)
ELUSPACE (i.e. "space capsule") (25A: Apollo command module, for one)
NOTGNIHSAWALLAW (i.e. "Walla Walla, Washington") (38A: Home of Whitman College)
DAERBANA (i.e. "banana bread") (51A: Fruity loaf with a moist texture)

Word of the Day: BAM BAM Bigelow (47D: Former pro wrestling star ___ Bigelow) —

Scott Charles Bigelow (September 1, 1961 – January 19, 2007) was an American professional wrestler, better known by the ring name Bam Bam Bigelow. Recognizable by his close to 400-pound frame and the distinctive flame tattoo that spanned most of his bald head, Bigelow was hailed by former employer WWE in 2013 as "the most natural, agile and physically remarkable big man of the past quarter century", while former co-worker Bret Hart described him as "possibly the best working big man in the business."
Bigelow is best known for his appearances with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), World Championship Wrestling (WCW), and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) between 1987 and 2001. Over the course of his career, he held championships including the ECW World Heavyweight Championship, the ECW World Television Championship, the IWGP Tag Team Championship, and the WCW World Tag Team Championship. Bigelow headlined seven pay-per-views: the first Survivor Series in 1987, Beach Brawl in 1991, King of the Ring in 1993 and 1995, WrestleMania XI in 1995, and the 1997 and 1998 editions of ECW's premier annual event, November to Remember. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very busy with first-week-of-school stuff, so this'll be sort of brief, as I need Sleeeeeep. This seemed fine. The answers start in the middle, they bounce back ... there it is. I guess this is some kind of architectural feat, I don't know. I do know that the only one that really interested me was WALLA WALLA, WASHINGTON, both because it's really long (though ultimately a perfect grid-spanning 15 boxes) and thus has the most dramatic visual effect, and because I applied to Whitman College when I was a high school senior (I have lots of family in the Pacific NW), and so knew the answer instantly (and weirdly enjoyed remembering this little bit of my bio that even I had forgotten). Didn't so much like having to write answers in (partially) backward. But it was more awkward than annoying. Fill on this one seems about average, with the showy and original GAY RODEO (39D: Sporting even profiled in the 2014 documentary "Queens & Cowboys") out ahead of the rest of the pack.

I don't really get how [AA] = ACES. Maybe it's some kind of poker notation I'm unfamiliar with. Certainly never heard of BAM BAM Bigelow, but the crosses were easy, so he didn't hold me up that much. BAM BAM died at 46. Rough. I know and accept that ALITO will show up in my puzzle for the rest of my lifetime, but I'm never gonna like it. I'm also never gonna like TIE--- as an answer, as TIEPIN TIETAC and TIEBAR are all things, and all things that have appeared in the NYTXW, specifically (today, I tried TAC). I wrote in SORT (?) instead of SAVE (37D: Action under a File menu). But otherwise I just didn't make any mistakes on this one. Got the theme very easily once I realized the front end of the first themer *had* to be the gibberish that I was looking at ("EKACN-etc."). First thing I did was read backward. Saw "cake." Got it quickly after that. None of the other themers proved problematic in the slightest. I had more fun yesterday, but still, this was better than SO-SO (69A: Meh).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Brian Thomas

Relative difficulty: Challenging (slowest Friday in a long time, though ... again, I'm solving at 5am, just out of bed, so that could be it?)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: JEANNETTE RANKIN (34A: Congresswoman who said "I want to be remembered as the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote") —

Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was an American politician and women's rights advocate, and the first woman to hold federal office in the United States. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from Montana in 1916, and again in 1940.
Each of Rankin's Congressional terms coincided with initiation of U.S. military intervention in the two World Wars. A lifelong pacifist, she was one of 50 House members who opposed the declaration of war on Germany in 1917. In 1941, she was the only member of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
A suffragist during the Progressive Era, Rankin organized and lobbied for legislation enfranchising women in several states including Montana, New York, and North Dakota. While in Congress, she introduced legislation that eventually became the 19th Constitutional Amendment, granting unrestricted voting rights to women nationwide. She championed a multitude of diverse women's rights and civil rights causes throughout a career that spanned more than six decades. To date, Rankin remains the only woman ever elected to Congress from Montana. (wikipedia)

• • •

West half of my grid has hardly any green ink on it at all, whereas the east is predominantly green ink (green ink being what I use to mark up all the problem areas), and the SE alone took me probably half my time, which was very high for me (8-9 min. maybe? I often shut the puzzle without writing it down). So mostly what I remember about the puzzle was struggle. Sadly, didn't have very many moments where I thought "cool!" or "good one!" It seemed solid enough, but a little blah. The center answer is undoubtedly interesting and original, but I didn't have that "aha" joy because I just couldn't retrieve her name, so her last name in particular (which was at one entryway to the SE corner) just blocked me. Same with [Athlete in the N.B.A.'s Southwest Div.] (MAV). I know all the NBA teams, but the idea that I have them sorted in my head by division, ugh, no. I'm I figured MAV but didn't really know. Something team-specific would be nice. Anyway, staying in the SE:

didn't know if it was IN A ROUT or IN A ROMP (26D: Going away);
no idea, at all, forever, what word followed COOL (8D: Hipsters) (honestly, "cats" is the only really acceptable "COOL" follower);
just stared at super-vague 43A: Tears and esp. 45D: Lift (SPREES and STEAL, respectively);
needed every cross to get SNOB and still barely understand it (43D: Expensive beer chaser?) (that clue is torturous—I think it wants "chaser" to mean both"follower" (i.e. of the word "beer," in a familiar phrase) and a word for someone who "chases" i.e. "seeks" beer that is expensive??? I get that you think that's clever, but clues don't work that way—it's completely convoluted);
who the f*** is DAN + Shay? (47A: ___ + Shay, Grammy-winning country duo);
had STOP SHORT and then (much more certainly) STOPS COLD before much later realizing it was STOPS DEAD (a phrase you just wouldn't use unless followed by "in his tracks" or some other phrase, whereas STOPS COLD, mwah, les mots justes!)

The long Acrosses were also hard to see, though I would've seen them sooner without all the trouble around them. Oh, I left out the worst one—a math joke :( question-mark :( :( clue for ON AVERAGE (33D: In a mean way?), which I figured was a prepositional phrase, which I was parsing as ON A ___. And again, that answer ran *right* through allllll the SE mess I just described.

Cluing was too much like a riddle book. [She took a seat to stand]. [It is avoided while playing it]. Sigh. I don't enjoy riddles when I'm doing crosswords. Or ever. ROSA PARKS was easy enough, and I got TAG pretty easily from crosses, but it's the principle of the thing. When a clue's sense of "fun" is way off from mine, it really affects puzzle enjoyment. Is JOE BOXER still a brand? I got that one easily, but as I did, I thought about how I hadn't thought about that brand name in ages. I think it's the name of an '80s band, too ... oh, well, yes, almost:

Didn't really know XIAN (51A: Easternmost point of the Silk Road), so minor struggle there. Stupidly misread the clue on "DUNE" and thought it wanted an *author* name (28A: First winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, 1965)—just stopped reading the clue at "Nebula Award." To me REPOST signifies a single post, which has absolutely no relationship to a meme (which, if it's a meme, then almost by definition you've seen it a lot, and probably in many different forms, in which case REPOST *really* doesn't work). BRIT was hard (10A: Adele or Ed Sheeran); wanted IDOL or STAR, which obviously is intentional on the part of the clue, ugh. Really hard to imagine someone exclaiming "I'VE DONE IT!" unless it's the 19th century. "I did it!" you'd say. Does ANO (year) not have a tilde in Portuguese? I guess that's one way to get around the year/asshole problem in Spanish, but unfortunately all it does is direct my attention directly toward the year/asshole problem in Spanish, so much so that I am writing this sentence. DIET POP sounds absurd (25A: Drink that may contain aspartame). "Pop" is fine and "soda" is fine, but with DIET, my ears only want SODA. And BLART ... sigh, I knew that one, but wow, not even a reference to the movie title in the clue (10D: Movie mall cop). I can't believe that movie (there were probably sequels, weren't there?) is going to leave a crossword legacy. Just didn't find very much to enjoy today. Grid is not terrible, just very much (especially in the cluing) not for me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Medium (8:01)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ATHOL Fugard (42A: Playwright Fugard) —

Athol Fugard FRSL OIS (born 11 June 1932) is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director widely regarded as “South Africa’s greatest playwright.” He is best known for his political plays opposing the system of apartheid and for the 2005 Oscar-winning film of his novel Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood. Acclaimed as “the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world” by Time Magazine in 1985, Fugard continues to write and has published over thirty plays. Fugard was an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego. He is the recipient of many awards, honours, and honorary degrees, including the 2005 Order of Ikhamanga in Silver "for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre" from the government of South Africa. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was honoured in Cape Town with the opening of the Fugard Theatre in District Six in 2010, and received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sometimes puzzles have no dramatic flaws but still come across as listless, like they were spat out by a computer armed with a prodigious word list. There's just an Uncanny Valley quality—yes, these are all words and phrases, and they are mostly reasonably familiar, but somehow it still doesn't feel like a flesh & blood human being made this. I think I just want to see more obvious humanity in, well, everything, and I expect Fridays and Saturdays to fairly teem with it. BUREAUCRAT and ACCOUNT REP are just deathly to joy in general, and then many of the longer answers, while Just Fine, don't really sing. Don't have flair. Don't seem daring. Maybe you love Gilbert & Sullivan and so thought PIRATE KING was keen, ok. But by the end of this thing, the only things I looked back on with any fondness were MEDAL HUNT, OPEN LETTER, and RAINMAKER. The rest feels like a robot or a Martian or a robot-Martian made it. I mean, a well-trained, highly observant robot-Martian, one who had been studying the ways of humans and their language for years, but still. I also just really didn't like the structure of the grid—I always find highly-segmented puzzles annoying, as cut-off corners tend to play like entirely separate, often much harder stand-alone puzzles. With only one tiny route in, the NW and SE corners like that—the rest of the grid is more open, had a nice flow, wasn't a slog. But then there were these tight 3x10 (roughly) corners and they felt slightly suffocating. Maybe this entire puzzle rests on PIRATE KING. Certainly if I'd known it, the SE would've been much easier, and maybe if I were a Gilbert & Sullivan fan, I'd've felt that PIRATE KING and MUSICAL were sufficiently delightful distractions. But I doubt it.

Hey, if cancel culture is real, why is infamous racist Paula DEEN still showing up in my crossword? (4D: Celebrity chef Paula). Literally no one in solver-ville is clamoring for more DEEN content, so ... what the hell are you even doing, constructors / editors? To whom is ONE STAR an [Amazon deterrent]. Does it deter me ... from buying something. The seller ... from selling bad things or giving bad service? Mostly I find ONE-STAR reviews unhinged and narcissistic. Also, it's the review / rating that's the deterrent, not the star itself. Cluing ONE STAR as if it were a noun phrase is weird. "I gave the blender ONE STAR and that ONE STAR will surely deter future blender buyers." Again, as I said up top, something about the wording here lacks a distinctively *human* quality. It's called a "paring knife," not a PARER. But I don't have a load of complaints today, just a kind of disappointed, listless feeling. Mistakes? A few. I genuinely thought PIRATE KING might be PIRATEKIND (26D: Gilbert and Sullivan's "glorious thing to be"). HISS (?) before SASS(52A: See 48-Across) (48A: "Watch your ___!" (response to 52-Across) (TONE) (suuuuper-awkward cross-reference). MAKE A JOKE before TAKE A JOKE (43A: Laugh it off, say). MARES (??) before BERGS (51A: Calves come from them). INDIA before TAMIL (5A: Part of Kamala Harris's ancestry) (wasn't really sure what part of speech was called for there). HIS before THY (21A: "Glorify ___ Name" (church chorus)). Nothing too remarkable. Nothing too remarkable. That's how I feel about pretty much the whole shebang today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Kwong

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:16)

THEME:"Could You Repeat That Number?" — All double-numbered Acrosses (e.g. 11A, 22A, 33A, etc.) require you to mentally supply "Double" at the front of the clue:

Theme answers:

ROPES (11A: Dutch requirements) (Double dutch)
RBI (22A: Result, maybe, in brief) (Double result) (!?!? phrasing ?!?!)
"YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE" (33A: 07 film) ("Double" 07)
VEE (44A: U preceder) (double "U" i.e. "W")
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY (55A: Day competitor) (Doubleday)
ONO (66A: "Fantasy" Grammy winner) ("Double Fantasy")
TINKER TO EVERS TO CHANCE (77A: Play combo of old) (double play)
LIE (88A: Dealers do this) (double-dealers)
INTERCONTINENTAL (99A: Tree alternative) (Doubletree)

Word of the Day: KAREN O (80D: Lead singer of rock's Yeah Yeah Yeahs (who uses just the initial of her last name)) —

Karen Lee Orzolek (born November 22, 1978), known professionally as Karen O, is a South Korean-born American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. She is the lead vocalist for American rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. [...] O and Spike Jonze collaborated on a 2005 Adidas commercial, Hello Tomorrow, after Jonze had directed the video for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 2004 single "Y Control". O composed all songs on the soundtrack of Jonze's film Where the Wild Things Are (with the exception of a cover of the Daniel Johnston song "Worried Shoes") in collaboration with Carter Burwell. She is listed on the soundtrack as "Karen O and the Kids". The song "All Is Love", written by O and Nick Zinner and included in this soundtrack, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, a songwriter's award, at the 2010 Grammy Awards. // O also contributed "The Moon Song" to Jonze's 2013 film Her. O and Jonze were nominated in 2014 for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Moon Song". (wikipedia)

• • •

A Sunday with just four themers? That is what I assumed. I finished this puzzle with (almost) no idea what was going on. I got the "Double" thing, but only for the longer Acrosses (you know, the ones that looked like themers). I did not see that all those longer answers had double numbers for their clues until well after I'd finished, and I didn't see that the double-number thing applied to Every double-numbered Across clue in the grid until I asked on Twitter how in the hell [Dealers do this] equals LIE. So many issues with this theme, but let's start with the fact that you really only have four (traditional, longer) theme answers and yet ... with a Sunday-sized grid, you expect ... more. And if not more by volume, well then you expect much more interesting things to be happening in the shorter fill. With just four (apparent) themers, I expect the grid to *sing*, and this one just sort of sat there. Not bad, but again, your theme is barely there, real estate-wise, so why isn't there more, and more interesting, stuff going on?

I also found the theme kind of muddled, in that it tries to do two things, when the title is really only referring to the *one* thing, which is the structural (clue-number) thing, which lots of people aren't going to notice (I mean, I didn't notice it at first, and didn't grasp the big idea of the theme without help, so ... if I'm alone, I'm alone, but that seems unlikely). Instead, people are going to wonder why the title is "Could You Repeat That Number?" when the theme *answers* have nothing to do with repeating a *number* — well, that first long one (double 07) kinda does, but then the rest do not, so ... yeah, it's baffling. I was baffled for something like 5-10 minutes after I finished, wondering what the hell "number" had to do with anything. And then I wondered "why are there only four themers? And then, just for visual reference for myself, I circled the (apparent) themer clues—and bam: 33, 55, 77, 99. All "double" numbers. Later (thanks, Eric Berlin), I learned that lots of short double-numbered Acrosses followed this same pattern. I'm sure this is a very impressive feat of construction, but as usual, feats like this often don't register with people, and even if/when they (eventually) do, they don't add in any way to a solver's actual solving enjoyment. So I guess we're supposed to clap for the feat, but as usual, I don't feel much like clapping for something that didn't make the solve better. The themers, as a set, seem fine, though if you don't know (old) baseball, then woe unto you I guess with TINKER TO EVERS TO CHANCE. And if you don't know hotels, then woe unto you as well. Woe unto me, actually. If I had to name a hundred hotel names, I would never have come up with INTERCONTINENTAL. First I'm hearing of it.

Today I learned that EULER was from the 18th century!??! (118A: "Elements of Algebra" author, 1770). LOL, I learned his name from crosswords, but in my head he was a much, much more recent figure. Like, 20th-century recent. Wow. The only things I really grooved on in this puzzle (besides the baseball themer) was KAREN O and TOM FORD (6D: American fashion designer who once served as the creative director of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent). Those seem pretty original. I remember putting KAREN O in a puzzle I made ... I forget where / for whom ... like a decade ago. She's kind of an irresistible 6-letter answer, with that terminal "O." I don't really know who TOM FORD is, but his name burrowed into my brain somehow, thank god. Struggled some with DWELT, COPTO, and "I CRIED," and obviously I struggled with the short "themers," which I just wrote off as "strange clues I don't really get" (except for the clue on VEE, which, as written, without the "Double" in front of it, is demonstrably wrong) (44A: "U" preceder). But mostly I found the fill, as I said up front, kind of listless. P.E. RATIO is never, ever gonna light my fire (13D: Equity valuation stat), and that's one of the more *lively* non-theme answers in the grid. Having to have a puzzle's theme (partially) explained to me is never a great feeling, and after having it explained, yes, I'm mad at myself I didn't see it, but seeing it isn't making me like it any more. So I'll grant you that some of the problem lies with me, but I wonder if the lack of clarity isn't something other solves will feel (and not particularly appreciate) as well. We'll see. Enjoy your day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Gareth Bain

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: About a foot — Theme answers end in words relating to feet.

Theme answers:

MARBLE ARCH (17A: Entranceway to London's Hyde Park)
TIC TAC TOE (25A: Kids' game that usually ends in a draw)
TAR HEEL (38A: North Carolinian)
LEMON SOLE (47A: Popular food fish that's actually a flounder)
ABOUT A FOOT (59A: How tall Barbie is...or what the ends of 17-, 25-, 38- and 47-Across are)

Word of the Day: VIREO (12D: "Black-capped" or "yellow-throated" songbird) —

The vireos /ˈvɪrioʊz/ make up a family, Vireonidae, of small to medium-sized passerine birds found in the New World (Canada to Argentina, including Bermuda and the West Indies) and Southeast Asia. "Vireo" is a Latin word referring to a green migratory bird, perhaps the female golden oriole, possibly the European greenfinch.^[1]^[2]
They are typically dull-plumaged and greenish in color, the smaller species resembling wood warblers apart from their heavier bills. They range in size from the Chocó vireo, dwarf vireo and lesser greenlet, all at around 10 centimeters and 8 grams, to the peppershrikes and shrike-vireos at up to 17 centimeters and 40 grams.^[3]

(Wikipedia)

• • •

It's the first Annabel Monday of graduate school! The homework is pretty intense so far--there's a lot of it and it deals with heavy philosophical stuff like "What is information?" I love it though. I'm so excited to be a librarian!

On to the puzzle. I felt like it was a solid little Monday. Not too hard, some typical eye-roll clues ("go 'boo-hoo-hoo'"?), decent fill. No AGO or ADO or any of the way overused three-letter word/clue combos, which is a win in my book. And no baseball clues, woo-hoo! In fact, this puzzle was light on obscure pop culture in general. As all Mondays should be. There weren't even really any tough crosses I noticed. If there's one complaint I have, it's that we didn't really learn what kind of NERD Bain is; I like when puzzles show the constructor's interests, like if there are a lot of science-based clues or a lot of answers in French.

Is Barbie really about a foot long? Can someone whose children have Barbies confirm? I thought six inches at the most (I even had FOUR INCHES written in). Other than that the theme was fine. Again, a pretty typical Monday, nothing to really write home about.

Bullets:

RAGE (31A: Ranter's emotion) — Sing, O Muse. Nah, but for real, this one really stumped me for a while because for some reason I really wanted to put RAVE. Like ranting and raving? But I knew logically that that wasn't an emotion. Ugh.
ANDRE (13D: ____ the Giant (legendary 7'4" wrestler)) — Let's take a look back. What a fantastic guy.
WORK (58A: Ending for "right to" or "put to") — Now I know what you're thinking. "Annabel, you're in graduate school, but where are you working?" In an independent bookstore! It's one of my favorite jobs I think I've ever had, second only perhaps to my stint at the library. I'm still getting used to working retail but it's all worth it when I get to call people to tell them their books are ready.
BIEL (42A: Actress Jessica) — Unbelievable. Un-Jessica-Biel-ievable.

If you only take one thing from my writeup, let it be this: Go read "If BEALE Street Could Talk." Amazing and relevant.

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired graduate student--hah, take that, commenters! Now that I've started grad school, I have a new excuse to include "tired" in my signature!

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

[Follow Annabel Thompson on Twitter]

Constructor: Kevin Christian and Brad Wilber

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:11)

THEME: PSY / CHO (4D: "Gangnam Style" performer / 60D: Comic Margaret) — a puzzle containing basic trivia about "Psycho," which was released 60 years ago today:

Theme answers:

"A BOY'S BEST FRIEND / IS HIS MOTHER" (17A: With 26-Across, quote from 4-/60-Down)
ANTHONY / PERKINS (34A: With 38-Across, star of 4-/60-Down)
NORMAN BATES (44A: Main character in 4-/60-Down)
ALFRED HITCHCOCK (58A: Director of 4-/60-Down, which was released on 9/8/60)

Word of the Day: Duchess of ALBA (2D: Duchess of ___ (Goya subject)) —

María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva-Álvarez de Toledo y Silva, 13th duchess of Alba, GE (full name, see infobox; 10 June 1762 – 23 July 1802), was a Spanish aristocrat and a popular subject of the painter Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. [...] The duchess' relationship with famed Spanish painter Francisco Goya and her somewhat eccentric personality have contributed greatly to a continuing interest in her life during the two centuries since her death. Goya executed several well-known portraits of the duchess, most of them during his stay at Sanlúcar de Barrameda (one of the Andalusian country seats of the House of Medina-Sidonia), shortly after the death of her husband, the Duke of Alba, who was also Duke of Medina Sidonia, in 1796. // Goya's accompaniment of the recently widowed duchess combined with certain innuendo expressed in his portraits of her have exacerbated rumors that the two were lovers. Although this has never been confirmed, the sheer number of portraits the artist painted of the duchess certainly suggests, at the very least, a close platonic relationship between the two. (wikipedia)

• • •

I know this movie well. Very well. I watch it every year on Halloween. I've watched it more than any other movie except "Dazed & Confused," which I think I watched every week for two years in the mid-'90s. I've read books about this movie. So it's weird to me that I actually don't get why PSY and CHO are broken up like that. I mean, I have educated guesses. He's a split personality, of a sort, part NORMAN BATES, part his mother (until the very end, when he is entirely his mother) ("she wouldn't even harm a fly"). So that's my guess. But it also seems like it's maybe related to the movie's famous opening credits, with the jagged strings of the Bernard Hermann score playing over the austere linear text that occasionally, as when the actual title "PSYCHO" is on the screen, breaks up:

But since the title doesn't literally snap in half, I'm guessing, but only guessing, that the PSY / CHO break is about the mother / son thing, especially since that's the topic of the TAGLINE included in the grid (42D: Quotable bit on a movie poster). I just wish the PSY/CHO chopped--in-half thing had more spot-on resonance. Also, the rest of the theme is just trivia, very basic trivia, with nothing terribly interesting going on. So even though this is one of my very favorite movies, I'm kinda lukewarm on the puzzle as a whole. Filled in the themers without even having to think. The PSY/CHO thing was an interesting twist, but since I can't definitively say why it's presented the way it's presented, I found it slightly disappointing. Tuesday revealers shouldn't require a "constructor's notes" explanation.

Fill-wise, TOOTLE, why does this word exist? It seems so informal and dumb and ye oldey and honestly, fifers, is this how you describe your music? Lots and lots of crosswordese in this one, and not a lot of interesting longer non-theme fill. Cool that TAGLINE is in here, since "A BOY'S BEST FRIEND / IS HIS MOTHER" feels like a TAGLINE (even if it wasn't on any "poster" I've seen). But most of the fill feels a little dated and rough to me. I didn't know ALBA. I didn't know NITRIC ("aqua fortis"?). I had TAILOR before TANNER (22A: Leather processing professional), and had no idea there was a "law" of SINES (12D: Trigonometry's law of ___). Never very sure about IONE v. IONA (26D: College in New Rochelle, N.Y.). Dumbest thing I did today was (off the -OR) write in HORROR before AUTHOR (47D: Stephen King or Ellery Queen). That's what happens when you just do word association with the first words you see in the clue instead of reading the clue in its entirety. So all that hassle was probably why my time was not a record time, because, as I say, this theme stuff was like asking me to fill out my name, age, date of birth. All second nature.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jakob Weisblat

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (low 4s)

THEME: September 9— clues are all [99, in [some field]]; today's date is 9/9:

Theme answers:

EINSTEINIUM (17A: 99, in chemistry)
NAMES OF ALLAH (28A: 99, in Islam)
WAYNE GRETZKY (47A: 99, in hockey)
LUFTBALLONS (60A: 99, in pop music)

Word of the Day: DFC (38A: U.S.A.F. honor) —

The Distinguished Flying Cross is a military decoration awarded to any officer or enlisted member of the United States Armed Forces who distinguishes himself or herself in support of operations by "heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight, subsequent to November 11, 1918." (wikipedia)

• • •

Nine is my favorite number, so this puzzle should've been pleasing to me. And yet. And yet. And yet this answer set feels totally arbitrary and not terribly interesting. I love remembering '80s music as much as the next person, but something about this concept felt tinny and cheap. And the fill had some highs (a few of the longer Downs), but enough awful lows that those were the things I remembered. DEP? (22A: Terminal abbr.) Is that short for "departure"??? Yikes. I generally look at a screen marked "Arrivals" and "Departures," and can't recall seeing that exact abbr. at a "terminal." I genuinely thought it was short for "DEPot" (as in "train depot") before I started writing this paragraph. Note: DEP hasn't been clued as an abbr. for "Departures" since Before I Started Blogging (mid-2006). It's always short for "deposit" (as in "bank deposit"). There's one sheriff DEPuty in there too. You'd think you'd've gone with SEP today—I mean ... look at your theme. Then there was DFC, which was just a random series of letters. I thought, after nearly fourteen years of writing every day about the NYTXW, that I'd seen the entire alphabet-soup collection of three-letter military award abbrs. (truly the junk drawer of crosswordese), but DFC, wow, you gotta go back to 1999 to find an appearance of that little gem. LLCS is probably clued correctly (56D: Hybrid business entities: Abbr.) but financial abbrs. (again, junk drawer) are not my thing and also even financial experts will have to agree (I insist) that the plural here is yuck. The worst thing about the grid for me was PEEP (1D: Look-see). I wrote in PEEK. Because that's the best answer. It swaps out perfectly: "Let's have a look-see,""Let's have a PEEK." See. Perfect. "Let's have a PEEP"!?!?! That's something you say to a baby chick who refuses to come in on cue in your poultry chorus. I get that eyes are "peepers," but yuck and ugh. I had KENCAP at 19A: Something removed before signing (PEN CAP) and just stared. All the crosses were correct, as far as I was concerned. What the hell was a KENCAP? Well, it's nothing. A typo for "kneecap," maybe.

Monday's puzzle had a gratuitous reference to so-called "right-to-work" laws, which are some anti-union right-wing bullshit, and today, right up front at 1-Across, we get a right-wing PAC: Citizens United. Look, if you thought the racism and sexism and other garbage that creeps into the NYTXW from time to time was just a matter of ignorance or well-intentioned misunderstanding about word meaning, maybe it's time you start to rethink this. There's no reason, with either of the clues I've mentioned, to showcase right-wing bullshit. You can clue PAC and WORK just fine without doing flak work for bad-faith political orgs. This kind of cluing is highly intentional. As shorthand for a landmark Supreme Court decision, Citizens United is fine. I was actually thinking "what's a three-letter abbr. for a Supreme Court decision? DEC???" But as a PAC, it's garbage. Corporations aren't people and "right-to-work" is some Orwellian nonsense.

What else. Oh, I misspelled GRETSKY, like so. That made me think 34D: Something that just might work (CRAZY IDEA) was a CRASH ... something. I might even have written in CRASH IDEA before I got wise to my screw-up. And that's it. That's all I've got on this one. Happy September 9th, I guess.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (low 5s, first thing in the a.m.)

THEME: a bunch of BEETHOVEN stuff (in honor, I assume, of his 250th birthday, which is this year) — you've got his name and then a bunch of longer answers that have nothing to do with him, but which contain, in non-consecutive circles, the nicknames of three of his symphonies, which are, we are told, SYMPHONIC, and then you've got the opening eight notes of his 5th symphony, appearing in letter form, with one of those notes being a rebus because you have to put the full name of the note in the box and that note is E FLAT (inside DEFLATED) (4D: Released air from, as a balloon). So GGG[EFLAT]! FFFD! (13A: With 70-Across, dramatic opening of 62-Across's Fifth)

Symphony name-containing answers:

PUERTO RICAN (30A: Ricky Martin, e.g. [Third]) (3rd = "Eroica"
SPANISH TUTORIAL (39A: Exercise before a trip to Latin America, say [Sixth]) (6th = the PASTORAL symphony)
SCHOOL RALLY (48A: Event before a college football game [Ninth]) (9th = the CHORAL symphony)

Word of the Day: SHEBAT (23A: Jewish month of 30 days) —

Shevat (Hebrew: שְׁבָט, Standard Šəvat Tiberian Šəḇāṭ ; from Akkadian Šabātu) is the fifth month of the civil year starting in Tishre (or Tishri) and the eleventh month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar starting in Nisan. It is a winter month of 30 days. Shevat usually occurs in January–February on the Gregorian calendar. The name of the month was taken from the Akkadian language during the Babylonian Captivity. The assumed Akkadian origin of the month is Šabātu meaning strike that refers to the heavy rains of the season. In Jewish sources the month is first mentioned by this name in the bible book of prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 1). (wikipedia)

• • •

This feels like one of those rushed tribute puzzles you sometimes see shortly after a famous person dies, only in this case the famous person has been dead for going on two centuries, so why this should be so conceptually ragged, I don't know. This here is the (everything but the) kitchen-sink approach to making a tribute puzzle, which is, in the absence of a core concept, you just throw as much different kinds of junk in there as possible. And I love Beethoven. It would be weird not to. Just this week I've listened to "Eroica," Piano Sonata No. 21 ("Waldstein"), and the Violin Concerto in D major (Op. 61). So insofar as I have Beethoven dancing around my head right now, I can say this puzzle was enjoyable. But as a puzzle, it was a bit of a mess. The very cutest thing about it was the "opening notes of the 5th" gimmick, which felt original and creative (even though I didn't know the exact notes and had to get them from crosses ... I could infer that the first three of each four-note set were the same note, but what that note was, shrug).

And then there's the little rebus twist with E FLAT going in one square. Clever. Also, potentially destructive, as people won't be looking for a rebus and will possibly rationalize some other answer for DEFLATED. I myself had an error in that square because of dumb morning brain. I got the gimmick, but instead of writing in the E (which the software will accept for the full EFLAT—it generally accepts just the first letters of rebus elements), I wrote in "F"—you know, for FLAT ... wah wah wah WAH. My brain somehow accepted "D" FLATED as a correct rendering of 4D. Ha. Anyway, as I say, that part was original and interesting. But the non-consecutive squares garbage, wow. And two of those answers just felt awkward: forced on the one hand (SPANISH TUTORIAL???) and dated weirdly phrased on the other (SCHOOL RALLY). "Hiding" a name in non-consecutive squares never ever ever feels like an accomplishment. It just looks a mess. And then there's the very sad SYMPHONIC, an adjective, which is here instead of the much more appropriate noun (singular or plural) entirely because of reasons of symmetry, i.e. neither SYMPHONY nor SYMPHONIES has the same number of letters as BEETHOVEN. So we get SYMPHONIC. Not the things themselves, but the word describing those things. Sigh.

The fill is largely OK, though it also feels pretty old in its general orientation, and there are some Rough patches. UNPILE???? And that ... is somehow related to "disentangling?" (31D: Disentangle, in a way). Have you ever used the word UNPILE in your life? No, really? Maybe there's some niche activity where that's a thing, but if something is in a pile, and I take it out of a pile, I would never say, for instance, "I'll be there in one moment, I'm just unpiling my laundry!" I actually had UNPOLE at one point before I noticed that TOS didn't work for 44A: "___ So Sweet to Trust in Jesus" (hymn). That "X" in the SW is total Scrabble-f***ing, as XED isn't good fill so what are you even doing??? Just put two solid real words in there, no one cares about your "X." No idea what NEOcortex is, but that was easy enough to infer (34D: Prefix with cortex). No idea about SHEBAT either (23A: Jewish month of 30 days). I'm familiar with SHABBAT, but not the month SHEBAT. And it's a variant spelling ... not that the non-variant spelling would've been easier. That answer took every cross. No other real problems, though. I'm fluent in crosswordese, so the fill was not tough (OGEE! OGLE! INRE!), and as I say, I'm a BEETHOVEN fan, so the theme stuff was largely a cakewalk.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Caitlin Reid and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:08)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: WHOLE / BLOOD (34D: With 36-Down, what plasma may be removed from) —

: blood with all its components (as white and red blood cells, platelets, and plasma) intact that has been withdrawn from a donor into an anticoagulant solution (merriam-webster)

• • •

Well this was fun. This is the Friday puzzle I want to see every Friday. Not this *exact* puzzle, of course—that would get boring quickly. But a puzzle in this mold. A wide-open, highly interconnected grid (as opposed to a heavily segmented grid where parts are almost completely cut off from other parts, yuck), chock full o' lively and interesting phrases. And when I struggled, as I did a few times today, I felt rewarded when I finally got the answer (PALM FRONDS!) rather than punished, as is so often the case. It's a tough thing to do—make me struggle and make me like it. But nobody said greatness was easy. And all puzzles at this level (i.e. the NYTXW) should be great, to be honest. It's hard for me to imagine not liking this puzzle. There's hardly any obscurities and almost no proper nouns at all—those are the things that are dangerous because they can really divide solvers along various kinds of lines (most notably generational). And I have no problems with names. But I'm noticing that they're kept to a bare minimum today. Cicely TYSON and AC/DC and OAHU are all, or nearly all, that you need to know. ITALY and LAO too, I guess, but you see what I mean: none of these are exactly dealbreakers. They're common knowledge. This means that there's ... a weird kind of inclusiveness to this puzzle. Feels like older people could find lots to like but also younger people won't be alienated by it. I'm just pointing this out because I think making a puzzle like this (broadly accessible but also fresh and vibrant) is actually a remarkable accomplishment.

There's only one part that made me grimace a little, and that was BASE WAGE, largely because the only phrase I've ever heard is BASE PAY (39D: It comes before overtime). BASE WAGE just sounds weird or off to me, though I'm sure it has currency somewhere. I had BASE and PAY wouldn't fit so I was making faces at the puzzle for a bit there. But I got over it. It was easy to get over, considering the puzzle was abounding with delightful fill, such as: "OH, FORGET IT!"; MANGO LASSI; SLEEPYHEAD; CASH ON HAND; and especially FASHIONABLY LATE (37A: Not on time, but that's OK). I made more mistakes than I usually do on a Friday. I wrote in TAKES for 4D: Nets (MAKES), only to encounter TAKES right there in the same quadrant (19A: Perspectives). That error made PALM FRONDS very hard to see. I also did not understand "units" in 15A: Apartment units *and* I tried to force an "S" onto the end of the answer (because plural!) so SQUARE FEET was tough to see as well. I wrote in BEA at 27A: "Auntie," on the telly (BBC), because of "The Andy Griffith Show." I knew LASSI but needed a cross or two to remember, "oh, right, MANGO!" (64A: Sweet Indian beverage). Had BLACK M- and went with MOODS before MAGIC (28D: Bad spells). Had A- and went with ATARI (?!) before ARENA (48D: Game site). In the end I was saved by Abba and AC/DC. The music of 1980 will always save me. It's who I am. It's in my (WHOLE) BLOOD. Abba was especially important, as "S.O.S." got me started and busted the whole NE corner open almost as soon as I wrote it in the grid. Got all the "S.O.S." crosses instantly, and then vroom, off I went. And then when I was bogged down in the SW, AC/DC swooped in and cleared up that whole BLACK MOODS / ATARI mess. In short, I had fun. I hope you did too. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I almost forgot the best mistake, which was actually just a clue misreading. Took me a long time to get SUCKED FACE because even though my brain was seeing [Necked], what it was hearing was [Nekkid] (i.e. a colloquial spelling of "naked"). I think the "jocularly" part of that clue was somehow skewing my brain nekkid-ward. I dunno. I just know that realizing that I'd been staring at "Necked" all along was a startling revelation.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ryan McCarty

Relative difficulty: Easy(3/4)-Challenging (1/4) (7:34)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: OTTAVA (43A: Score marking to play higher or lower than written) —

: at an octave higher or lower than written —used as a direction in music (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Not bad, but almost completely devoid of the things that made me love yesterday's puzzle. First off, the grid, which is highly segmented—those NW and SE corners are pretty cut off from the rest of the grid, which means they're apt to play as puzzles within the puzzle, and lord help you if you get bogged down, because there's no escape. I find cut-off corners claustrophobic and annoying, and today, mainly because they can make the solve feel so uneven. Today, the NW corner was a total nightmare, difficulty-wise, whereas the entire rest of the puzzle provided only Wednesday-like resistance. That unevenness was unpleasant. And then unlike yesterday's puzzle, today's is awash in *names* (and also niche vocabulary). I laughed when I got REDBONE (one of the only things I actually *knew* in the NW) because I thought "hollllly moly is anyone under 50 (my age) gonna know that? Most people who know that *song* don't know that" (1D: Band with the 1974 hit "Come and Get Your Love"). Can you name a second REDBONE song? You cannot, thanks for playing. And then BILGERATS? (19A: Lowly sorts, in pirate lingo). Whatever, no idea, matey. Just none. I was kind of able to infer BILGE somehow at the very end, but yikes. AIMEE Bender? (5D: Novelist Bender). Dunno. ZAPOTECAN? (26A: Mesoamerican language family with about half a million speakers). Ultimately inferable for me, but still, not exactly common knowledge. OTTAVA I had to piece together letter by letter, with that first "A" being guessable only because of SIBILATE (which, again, who uses that word? No one) (30D: Hiss). I don't mind the names and obscurities when I can fight through them, and I fought through these, but ... this is an old-school way to achieve "difficulty." I'll take clever cluing of (somewhat more) common knowledge for my "difficulty" any day. Again, did not dislike this, just found it somewhat more of a drag than yesterday's (which, admittedly, is an unfair comparison, as yesterday's puzzle was Fire).

Struggled mightily in the NW to start, then switched to the NE and it was like a completely different, much more remedial puzzle. TCM and "The Simpsons" right off the bat? That is definitely my alley. Ants on a log: easy. BYES: easy. Dumb plural EL GRECOS: ultimately easy because everything else up there was easy and that corner was done in maybe 30 seconds. And then I went PER PERSON, PAVES OVER, JELLO, JOWL, 1 2 3 4, without hesitation, and they were all right. East coast to southwest coast in maybe 10 seconds. This is what I mean about how separated and stand-alone the NW corner felt. Now I had to work a little to fill in the SW and the middle, but because I had the *front* ends of the Acrosses in the SE, as opposed to the *back* ends in the NW, the SE was *much* easier to open up. That left me back in the NW at the end, where every answer was surprising. When I abandoned it, all I had was REDBONE, ENEMIES, WEIR, OSAGE, and ERS. That would normally be enough to make a corner fall, but not today. I think I eventually guessed RIPSAW and (more tentatively) BILGE, and that got me over. The end. Not many outright mistakes today, except: SMUDGY (?) for SMOGGY (4D: Polluted, in a way), and DYNAMICS (!?!) for DC COMICS (16A: Flash setting) (you may know him as *The* Flash). Not much more to say ... except SNOW CONE does not have a "W," thank you for coming to my carnival food lecture (45A: Summer carnival treat). Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: MaryEllen Uthlaut

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (not sure why, just slow, ~12min ... maybe the drink?)

THEME:"Final Offer"— the final "ER" is taken "OFF" of familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, blah blah blah:

Theme answers:

HAPPILY EVER AFT (23A: Always glad to be seated in the back of the boat?)
ABSOLUTE POW (28A: Perfectly placed "Batman" punch?)
RECYCLING CENT (50A: Penny going through the wash once again?)
AMEN, BROTH (56A: Soup served at the church social?)
BRAIN TEAS (77A: Afternoon gatherings of Mensa?) (ugh, Mensa, stop promoting that crap as shorthand for "intelligence")
CELLPHONE NUMB (85A: Having no feeling in one's texting hand?)
RELIEF PITCH (103A: Ad for heartburn medication?)
NO LAUGHING, MATT (15A: "Quit your snickering, Damon!"?)

Word of the Day: FENESTRA (93A: Small anatomical opening, as in a bone) —

n. pl. fe·nes·trae (-trē′)
1. Anatomy A small anatomical opening, as in a bone. [emph. mine] :( :( :(
2. An opening in a bone made by surgical fenestration.
3. Zoology A transparent spot or marking, as on the wing of a moth or butterfly.

• • •

This was pretty gruesome. Felt like a throwback puzzle. Very 1990s. It's just ... a variation on the remove-a-letter theme. The oldest theme type in the book, and one to which we have not been subjected in what feels like (merciful) eons. Somehow manages to combine monotonous and predictable with difficult, as some of these theme phrases were weirdly hard to dredge up from the wacky "?" clues. the BROTH part of AMEN, BROTH(ER). The BRAIN part of BRAIN TEAS(ER). I kept getting stuck wondering what the hell the base phrase could be. And never, not once, did I feel rewarded or happy when I finally got the answer. "NO LAUGHING, MATT!" is probably the best of the lot, and if they'd all been that good ... maybe. But they weren't, not even close, so this one was just shrug after eye roll after shrug. Further, there is zero interest in the non-theme fill. In fact, there are hardly any non-theme answers longer than seven letters. There's just nothing to sink your teeth into, nothing to enjoy. And you absolutely blow one of your few longer answers on the rank obscurity FENESTRA!?!?! I just don't understand the mindset here.

I'm looking around for things to admire and just not finding very many. I guess the fill could've been worse. It's reasonably solid. But it's just fill. Space filler. Not weak, exactly, but not wowing anyone either. The only things I have to remark on today are trouble spots / wrong answers. Not sure I knew CALICO was a fabric (26A: Printed cotton fabric). I know it only as a cat (26A: Printed cotton fabric). Had to guess most of PHENOL (33D: Caustic compound). Wanted CRUSTY and (especially) CRABBY before CRANKY (60D: Irascible). Holy moly I could not get to the very very general REGION from the weirdly oddly specific 59D: Map section. I will never understand why the puzzle thinks everyone watches "GOT" or why anyone thinks it's better to clue BRAN as a "GOT" character than as the ordinary English word that it is. Ugh. ANONYM is [frowny face]. How is a DOG like a canary? I honestly don't know, and was totally baffled by that clue / answer (82D: Animal for which the Canary Islands are named). Here's wikipedia on the subject:

The name Islas Canarias is likely derived from the Latin name Canariae Insulae, meaning "Islands of the Dogs", a name that was evidently generalized from the ancient name of one of these islands, Canaria – presumably Gran Canaria. According to the historian Pliny the Elder, the island Canaria contained "vast multitudes of dogs of very large size".

I think that's all I have the energy for today. I wish the puzzle could find some happy medium between the wildly ambitious but kinda solver-hating Sunday puzzle of last week with the very clear but very dull puzzle of this week. All with a sprinkling of sparkle. That would be cool. Take care.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (2:50)

THEME: HAS IT BOTH WAYS (55A: Comes out ahead in either case ... as exemplified by 19-, 29-, 36- and 44-Across?) — theme answers have "IT" running "BOTH WAYS," i.e. they contain the letter string "ITTI" (mirrored "IT"s):

Theme answers:

DETROIT TIGERS (19A: Major-league team from the Motor City)
SIT TIGHT (29A: "Hold your horses!")
SPLIT TICKET (36A: Ballot for candidates of more than one party)
WAIT TIME (44A: Number of minutes on hold before getting a customer representative)

Word of the Day: GNP (10A: Fig. of total economic output) —

The gross national income (GNI), previously known as gross national product (GNP), is the total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country, consisting of gross domestic product (GDP), plus factor incomes earned by foreign residents, minus income earned in the domestic economy by nonresidents (Todaro & Smith, 2011: 44).Comparing GNI to GDP shows the degree to which a nation's GDP represents domestic or international activity. GNI has gradually replaced GNP in international statistics. While being conceptually identical, it is calculated differently. GNI is the basis of calculation of the largest part of contributions to the budget of the European Union. In February 2017, Ireland's GDP became so distorted from the base erosion and profit shifting ("BEPS") tax planning tools of U.S. multinationals, that the Central Bank of Ireland replaced Irish GDP with a new metric, Irish Modified GNI*. In 2017, Irish GDP was 162% of Irish Modified GNI*. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

Yeah, you know what, this actually works. I'm slightly distracted by the four answers that have "IT" just the one way (WIT TIM KEITH ELITE), but that's just because I have ridiculously high elegance standards (i.e. in this puzzle I want "IT" and "TI" to appear *exclusively* in the themers ... just seems ideal, somehow). But I really like that these answers don't just have "IT" both ways, but have "IT" palindromically, split (!) across two words each time. Also, the DETROIT TIGERS are my team, which has been a miserable experience for the better part of the last decade, thanks for asking, but still I enjoyed seeing them here. Wish the clue had somehow been more Tigers-specific, but I'll take what I can get. Anyway, themewise, I thought this was a very clever revealer, and the execution of the theme was very tight. No iffy or ragged answers, and a real "nailed-it" (!!) consistency across the board.

[wait ... Lou ... Lou Piniella??]

So according to wikipedia, GNP is a dated term. It's GNI now (so, crossword constructors—go nuts!). I am dinging the puzzle for this error (that is, for not cluing GNP as erstwhile). But I didn't know. I didn't know about the terminology change. Never heard of GNI. In fact, I clearly don't know the difference between GNP and GDP, which is the answer that I wrote into the grid at first. But even if GNP were a current term, I still think you yank it from that corner. GNP / NEV isn't doing you any favors. There are cleaner ways to go. Other things that slowed me down a bit: ODELL (because I really really misunderstood "Pro Bowler") (20D: Three-time Pro Bowler ___ Beckham Jr.); SETTE (because Italian numbers, blargh; I went with the wrong language: SIETE) (29D: Italian for "seven"); TEASE (because I didn't catch the "trailers" part of the clue and instead read [What good movies do]) (45D: What good movie trailers do); and SASSON (because I just forgot my '80s jeans brands ... I remember Gloria Vanderbilt and Chemin de Fer being big-deal girl jeans ... but SASSON, I forgot) (50D: Jeans brand popular in the 1980s). Otherwise, a pretty typically easy Monday puzzle, this was.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Medium (high 3s)

THEME: "KEEP YOUR PANTS ON!" (38A: "Be patient!" ... or advice seemingly ignored by 17-, 24-, 52- and 62-Across) — cartoon characters that don't wear pants, largely because they're all animals, but whatever:

Theme answers:

PORKY PIG (17A: Who says "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!")
SCROOGE MCDUCK (24A: Disney character based on a Dickens character)
WINNIE THE POOH (52A: "Hunny"-loving A.A. Milne character)
YOGI BEAR (62A: Jellystone Park "pic-a-nic basket" thief)

Word of the Day: ALDO (57A: Brand of shoes or handbags) —

The ALDO Group is a Canadian retailer that owns and operates a worldwide chain of shoe and accessories stores. The company was founded by Aldo Bensadoun in Montreal, Quebec, in 1972, where its corporate headquarters remain today. It has grown to become a worldwide corporation, with nearly 3,000 stores across 100 countries, under three retail banners: ALDO, Call It Spring/Spring and GLOBO. Stores in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Ireland are owned by the Group, while international stores are franchised. The company once operated the now closed or rebranded banners Little Burgundy (which it sold to Genesco), Simard & Voyer, Christian Shoes, Access, Pegabo, Transit, Stoneridge, Locale, Feetfirst and FIRST (which was the American version of Feetfirst). (wikipedia) [the word "handbag" doesn't even appear on the wikipedia page, but I'm sure that's just an oversight]

• • •

Garfield doesn't wear pants. Snoopy doesn't wear pants. Huckleberry Hound doesn't wear pants. Snagglepuss doesn't wear pants. Bugs Bunny? Pantsless. Cartoon animals frequently don't wear pants. And now there's a theme about that, for some reason. I guess that since the themers all wear tops of some kind (???) they seem particularly pantsless. Really seems like a phrase as colorful as "KEEP YOUR PANTS ON!" deserves a better theme than this. These aren't even all different animals. I don't know. Cartoons are fun. The revealer phrase on its own is great. But the connection between them here seems really very forced. But honestly this puzzle never stood a chance because of a fill decision I can't believe neither of the constructors, none of the editors or proofers, no one, vetoed: that is, the OUT / OUTLIE crossing. You cannot just straight up cross OUT with OUT. I mean, if "OUT" were part of a word like STOUT, where the letter string had nothing to do with the word OUT, then fine, but OUTLIE is a compound word, and one of its parts is OUT. And that part crosses ... OUT. I wouldn't put OUT and OUTLIE in the same grid *at all*, let alone crossing one another. I'm now scanning the grid to see if LIE is in there somewhere. This feels like Constructing 101 stuff, which is weird, because no one involved in the making of this is a novice. I honestly thought I had an error, but then everything checked out and I didn't know what to do, so I moved on. And yeah, no error. Just OUT crossing OUT...LIE. That's just not good.

The longer Downs are OK, a little interesting, I guess, but the rest of the full is average or worse. Having to deal with TORIC and ALIA *and* OOP before ever departing the NW is not a fun way to open things. Why would you put a wacky "?" clue on weak fill like SNARER?? (47D: One catching the game?). You make people have to work for something very anticlimactic—never a good thing. I thought HULU was the streaming giant (15A: Giant in media streaming = ROKU). Needed every cross to get ALDO. No other real struggles, and the fill overall ... it's tolerable. Lots of crosswordese if you start to count it up (OREAD ORA OYE INHD and so on), but the theme answers are bright enough as stand-alone answers, and the long Downs are prominent enough, that the short fill doesn't have much opportunity to make a negative impression. I just thought the theme was a shrug, conceptually, and the OUT / OUTLIE cross was a total dealbreaker.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Paul Coulter

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:56)

THEME: HAPPY MEAL (64A: Certain fast-food offering ... or what 17-, 27- and 47-Across certainly don't add up to?) — themers are phrases that sound kinda like "negative fast-food reviews" (allegedly):

Theme answers:

WEAK SAUCE (17A: Negative fast-food review?)
NOTHING BURGER (27A: Negative fast-food review?)
NO GREAT SHAKES (48A: Negative fast-food review?)

Word of the Day: mulligan (9D: Do-over) —

: a free shot sometimes given a golfer in informal play when the previous shot was poorly played (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

WEAK SAUCE is in no way a plausible "fast-food review," negative or otherwise. "Sauce" is not a fast-food item, the way that BURGERs and SHAKES are. I just don't understand how this isn't totally and completely obvious to everyone involved in the making of this puzzle. Sometimes you have a theme that you think would be a really good idea, and you want it to work out, but you Just Don't Have The Right Themers to pull it off. The great constructors don't force it. Others ... do, I guess. Yeah, yeah, there's "sauce" on a Big Mac or whatever, stop your lawyering. That answer is so much of an outlier it ruins the whole shebang. With HAPPY MEAL as your revealer, I don't think you have to be *perfect* (i.e. you don't need the three themers all to be the exact elements of a HAPPY MEAL), but since you've already got two themers that land very cleanly and solidly in the "fast food" column, you need your third to do so as well. Here, watch. "Is a burger fast food?""Yes.""Is a milkshake fast food?""Yes.""Is sauce fast food?""What?" End scene. You see how this doesn't work, right? It's fine if you like the concept—so do I—but execution matters and bad execution just ruins everything. This thing isn't a full-on TRAIN WRECK, but it's definitely some kind of train malfunction where you have to detrain and get on a different train or maybe get bused to the next train station ... something non-fatal but incredibly annoying like that.

In fairly typical fashion, I started slowish and then really sped up. Under 4 is pretty fast for me on a Wednesday, and honestly I thought I was much faster. I must've been much slower to start than I imagined, because by about 1/3 of the way in I was flying, writing answers in as fast as I could look at the clues. I didn't even see many of the clues—for MALTA, for instance (52D: Country from which the name "Buttigieg" comes) (such a weird clue). I like the symmetry of RUBBERNECK and TRAIN WRECK since you might do one while driving by the other. Fill seems mostly OK, though there were moments (GRU SOLI CIE SRO AMS) that were slightly rough, and man could I do without horrid (criminal!) right-wing idiots in my puzzle. Again. Editor really loves to plug those guys. Not sure what's going on there. Didn't have many outright mistakes. Wrote in OMSK (!?) before OSLO (28D: City called a "kommune" by its inhabitants). Oh, and I wrote in CARTS for MARTS because I didn't read the clue accurately (9A: Shoppers' stops). Had a lot of trouble getting to COAL from 3D: Rock around the Christmas tree? I get it, you get COAL in your stocking if you're bad ... by legend ... though no one solving this puzzle has actually ever gotten COAL, and if they had it would've been in their stocking, not "around the tree," and COAL just isn't exactly iconically Christmasy. Sigh. I hate when try-hard "?" clues don't land. I also like when they do land, as is the case with the clue on ASIA (10D: Polo grounds?) (Marco Polo, that is). Looking forward to tomorrow's puzzle shenanigans. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Simeon Seigel

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:07) (felt easier, but it's Very early in the morning, so I must be running slow)

THEME: AND (39A: + ... with a hint to four pairs of answers in this puzzle) — the black-square formations that look like "+" stand for the letter string "AND" in the answers that run directly into and out of them. So:

Theme answers:

THE GRAND OLE OPRY (6D: Major Nashville landmark)
GOLDEN HANDCUFFS (9D: Financial incentive for an executive to stay at a company)
SHENANDOAH RIVER (34A: Tributary of the Potomac)
DAGWOOD SANDWICH (41A: Food item whose name is derived from a comic strip)

Word of the Day: APOLLO XI (15A: About 600 million viewers watched its pilot in 1969) —

Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin formed the American crew that landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC. Armstrong became the first person to step onto the lunar surface six hours and 39 minutes later on July 21 at 02:56 UTC; Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. They spent about two and a quarter hours together outside the spacecraft, and they collected 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of lunar material to bring back to Earth. Command module pilot Michael Collins flew the Command Module Columbia alone in lunar orbit while they were on the Moon's surface. Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours, 36 minutes on the lunar surface at a site they named Tranquility Base before lifting off to rejoin Columbia in lunar orbit. (wikipedia)

• • •

Quick write-up today. The theme concept was MEH (easy to ferret out, repetitive) but the actual theme answers are all really colorful and interesting, so the monotony of all the AND AND AND business was made up in large part by the AND answers themselves. This looks like an architectural feat—finding words with "AND" strings that line up at just the write places to make the little "+" signs, but honestly there's probably some pretty easy computer hack that lets you search all the 15s in some database and for answers with "AND" strings, and then you can just pick and choose from there. Still, the concept is cute, even if the "black squares-represent-letters" thing isn't particularly original. So I'm more warm than cold on the overall theme. The fill was just middling. Felt weirdly dated. Like, I'm 50 and have never heard THRIFT used this way (1A: Savings bank, informally). I was born the year of APOLLO XI, which I think is normally written with Arabic numerals, not Roman. There are no BELIEBERs any more. They all restocked their CD STANDs long ago, and then threw out their CD STANDs because they either stream their music or have gotten really into vinyl. Only someone Dagwood's age says "YESSIREE" unironically. Or HOORAH instead of "hooray!" Etc. But there's nothing particularly groan-y about the fill. Except BRAHS, wow, no (33D: Guy friends, in slang). That is not a plural noun. At best (very best), "brah" is something you'd use as a form of "bro" when speaking to some guy. But even that is usually "bruh." Your guy friends are not your BRAHS, and if they are, what are you even doing? Get help.

"FEEL ME?" still feels current, so that was a nice little colloquial flourish. Otherwise, the fill just sat there, mostly unobtrusively, holding the marquee theme answers in place. Today, that was probably enough. OK, gotta go. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Anne and Daniel Larsen

Relative difficulty: Easy (very, 4:46, first thing in the morning)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: EM SPACE (40D: Typographer's gap) —

An em is a unit in the field of typography, equal to the currently specified point size. For example, one em in a 16-point typeface is 16 points. Therefore, this unit is the same for all typefaces at a given point size.
The em dash (—) and em space ( ) are each one em wide.
Typographic measurements using this unit are frequently expressed in decimal notation (e.g., 0.7 em) or as fractions of 100 or 1000 (e.g., 70/100 em or 700/1000 em). The name em was originally a reference to the width of the capital M in the typeface and size being used, which was often the same as the point size. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

Totally acceptable if not terribly exciting offering today. A few nice, fresh phrases in a sea of tolerable if frequently overfamiliar stuff. There's something about certain phrases like NOT A HOPE and I DARE SAY and YOU BET I CAN that seem stiff and dated, and therefore seem as if they are arising from the graveyard of crosswords past (or a very extensive wordlist, which can amount to the same thing, since those are typically based on what's been in the puzzles before). Even IN A PANIC, which is a solid enough phrase, has an oddly crosswordy vibe to it—it's appeared eight times in the past decade, which doesn't sound like a lot, but for an eight-letter phrase, it's kind of a lot.. The grid shape here isn't helping. There aren't enough free-standing marquee answers; by "free-standing," I mean, "not tethered to another long answer of similar length" (see the pairs of long Downs in the NE and SW, which are noticeably less zingy than the best stuff, which in every case today (imho) is a longer answer that pops against the shorter fill surrounding it: DREAM ACT, BEYOND MEAT, NET NEUTRALITY. There was just something about this grid that felt closed in, like it couldn't quite breathe properly: too segmented, not built for the fill to really sing. But still, as I say, it holds up fine. I winced almost no times. You can send ATTA and ORANG back where they came from, but otherwise the grid is quite clean. And maybe I'm not giving enough credit to CHE GUEVARA / HOME PLANET as a colorful pair of answers, which I like more now than I did mid-solve. Anyway, good work. Just not as fresh and fun as the best Fridays.

TOE CAP ... I can't put my finger on it, or articulate it very well this morning, but this is another answer that feels squirmy to me—one of those "sure, whatever" phrases that I wouldn't use and haven't heard used. RICE BELT is interesting, but if I'd had to pick a belt to describe that area, I'd've gone with BIBLE. Honestly, needed crosses to get RICE. I've heard of em dashes but not EM SPACEs, though that wasn't hard to infer. Not thrilled about the dupe of "ACT" (DREAM ACT, ACTS ON), but at least today those answers are on opposite sides of the grids, i.e. the "ACT"s don't *intersect* the way those "OUT"s did earlier in the week, yeesh. I misread "South Asian" as "South African" so getting DESI was a real "D'oh!" moment (49D: Member of the South Asian diaspora). I had TOWED before TOTED (36A: Hauled), but that was the only mistake of the day, which may explain the sizzling fast time. Oh, no, sorry, one other mistake, of the utterly mundane and predictable variety: SODA before COLA (4D: Fountain option). Honestly, coming out of that NW corner, I was not terribly hopeful about where this puzzle was going, but it definitely wound up more enjoyable than not.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy (over 9 minutes lol but I was co-solving over zoom and chatting the whole time, so ... probably, realistically, more of a six-minute solve (fast)—this felt very much like a Friday puzzle)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Hot Springs, Ark. (20D: Historic sites in Hot Springs, Ark. => BATH HOUSES) —

Hot Springs is a resort city in the state of Arkansas and the county seat of Garland County. The city is located in the Ouachita Mountains among the U.S. Interior Highlands, and is set among several natural hot springs for which the city is named. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a population of 35,193. In 2019 the estimated population was 38,797.
The center of Hot Springs is the oldest federal reserve in the United States, today preserved as Hot Springs National Park. The hot spring water has been popularly believed for centuries to possess healing properties, and was a subject of legend among several Native American tribes. Following federal protection in 1832, the city developed into a successful spa town. Incorporated January 10, 1851, the city has been home to Major League Baseball spring training, illegal gambling, speakeasies and gangsters such as Al Capone, horse racing at Oaklawn Park, the Army and Navy Hospital, and 42nd President Bill Clinton. One of the largest Pentecostal denominations in the United States, the Assemblies of God, traces its beginnings to Hot Springs.
Today, much of Hot Springs's history is preserved by various government entities. Hot Springs National Park is maintained by the National Park Service, including Bathhouse Row, which preserves the eight historic bathhouse buildings and gardens along Central Avenue. Downtown Hot Springs is preserved as the Central Avenue Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city also contains dozens of historic hotels and motor courts, built during the Great Depression in the Art Deco style. Due to the popularity of the thermal waters, Hot Springs benefited from rapid growth during a period when many cities saw a sharp decline in building; much like Miami's art deco districts. As a result, Hot Springs's architecture is a key part of the city's blend of cultures, including a reputation as a tourist town and a Southern city. Also a destination for the arts, Hot Springs features the Hot Springs Music Festival, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and the Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival annually. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

Well I've had two drinks, which is one hundred percent more drinks than I typically have on a weekend night. The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg just kinda pushed me into two-drink land, what can I say, I'm human? Also, I had a 9pm Zoom meet-up with my professor / crossword friends and it's the closest thing I'm going to have to "drinks with friends" for a long time, so I drank. Bourbon. Rocks. Annnnnnyway, I was in no mood to solve / blog, but then I found out that the Saturday puzzle was going to be by my favorite *Friday* constructor, Robyn Weintraub, and so my will to solve returned. I'm always incredibly happy to see her byline because I know there's a high likelihood that the puzzle will be delightful. And once again, it was. Even her Saturdays feel like Fridays. That is, even when they're on the tougher side, they're joyful. Entertaining. Fun.

I co-solved this one on Zoom with my friend Rachel Fabi, so I'm just gonna post that video, but I'll give you some of the highlights here:

Highlights:

ICEES— we were really unsure what product the clue was referring to. ICEES are Slurpee-like drinks. I think ice pops come in (long thin plastic) "pouches," but ICEES? Not familiar. So we looked it up. And lo + behold, the ICEES (drink) brand also comes in pouches that you can buy? Weird.

TSE / HEME / KOA / HEP — this is just about the only stuff in the grid that I / we didn't like. There's a Russian letter called TSE?? Wow. OK. You can bet I double-checked every cross on that one.
Every Long Answer — LOL there are fifteen (15!!?!?!) 8+-letter answers in this puzzle, and none (0) of them are bad. I balked at RARE BOOK STORE just because something about an entire brick & mortar establishment dedicated to *rare* books seemed ... unlikely? (as you can hear me say in the video: "Rare book *room*, *used* book store!"). But everything else about the longer fill was fantastic. Highlights: HALF ASLEEP, NEVER FEAR, DON'T BE SO HASTY, DARK MONEY, DROP THE BALL. But honestly, they're all good, even the quaint WOEBEGONE. This thing is just crammed with marquee answers. Insane.
HEP (48D: Like the latest, in the past)— I can't quite tell what "Like" is doing here. Like, is it doing the normal thing where it means "akin to" or is it some kind of beatnik colloquialism where it's "Like, the latest, man!"? Not crazy about HEP, or about ENGEL, whom I loved on "MTM," but she's a very niche (and crosswordesey) proper name answer that lots of (younger) people will need every cross for.

Had DASHED before DARTED (23A: Ran rapidly) and AAA before KOA (47D: Roadside initials), but if you want to know what the solve was really like, you can just watch, here (side note: I say that it's the "Friday" puzzle—obviously, it's not):

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Trabucco

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (mid-11s)

THEME: "Word Ladders" — the words in the word ladder (succession of four-letter answers where one letter is changed with each iteration) are actually "ladders," in the sense that they act as paths along which a couple of Across answers drop or rise three levels respectively:

Theme answers:

SURPRISE PARTY / UNDESIRABLE
STERILE GLOVE / TRAVEL IRON
PROFILE PIC / FOR THE LIFE OF ME
FRUIT FILLING / MOLLIFYING
ROOT OF ALL EVIL / VANILLA FLAN

Word of the Day: LESTOIL (99A: Clorox cleanser) —

Lestoil is a registered trade name of Clorox for a heavy-duty multipurpose cleanser product, used to remove extremely difficult laundry stains, dissolve water-based and oil-based paints, and clean grease, oil, paint, and adhesives from floors and surfaces.
It was introduced as a dry cleaning fluid for laundry in 1933. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not sure how to describe my feelings here. As an architectural feat, it's pretty impressive. Takes the (awful, shopworn) theme concept of the word ladder (which here goes from RISE to FALL) and soups it up by making the rungs of the "ladder" into actual ladders by which themers "rise" and "fall" (three rows in either direction). Conceptually it is tight and interesting. And yet I found solving it tedious. Once I got the gist of the theme, I just had to remember that there was going to be rising and falling, so nothing interesting really happened except the fussiness of keeping the rising and falling straight, and then, further, there was so much jarring fill that it just ate into any of the whimsical pleasure the theme might have provided. LESTOIL ... ??? ... never heard of it. Never seen it. Hasn't appeared in the NYTXW since I started blogging (fourteen years ago this week!). CITRINE? (71A: Yellow variety of quartz) I'm sure it is what the puzzle says it is, but again, I got the answer and just had no way of knowing if what I had was right (though CITRINE at least sounded plausible—LESTOIL looked wrong as hell). And what year is "I Love It" even from? You could've at least included that in the clue, because ICONA (!?!?!?!), yeeow, no (36D: "I Love It" duo ___ Pop). One hit, eight years ago. I mean, even if ICONA Pop were somehow ABBA-famous, ICONA on its own is never, ever, ever gonna be good fill. There's also lots of crosswordesey stuff that made me make faces (PETERIV ATEIN USRDA ADREP EDO ETTU NEE EES (ugh) CINES EDA NOE LGS AOL ESAU ELL ESO ETC. etc.). So I acknowledge the architectural feat, but as frequently happens with architectural feats, the payoff at the level of solving pleasure just wasn't there. Maybe if the fill had been stronger, the thematic workmanship could've carried the day, I don't know.

Really hate the idea that asterisks are somehow stars. Also *, *** and ***** are not MIXED REVIEWS (66D) . Each is its own review. REVIEWS, maybe, maybe, but you'd need something like "collectively" to make this clue work, though even then it wouldn't work because, as I say, an asterisk is not a star. I read Jane Eyre but not in school so wow I really missed the fact that fire is somehow a MOTIF. Not among the first five or ten things I think of when I think of Jane Eyre but OK. Is LOLCAT still a thing? (105D: Internet meme with grammatically incorrect captions). Is BRODATE? (43A: Occasion for male bonding, in modern lingo). If it's a thing, it's an awful thing. "Modern lingo," my eye. Stop bro-ing everything. The NYTXW is enough of a brofest as it is. It's a date. Just say "date." Also not a thing, for future reference: MANCRUSH. Like, you have a crush on a dude. Accept it. Embrace it. It's a CRUSH. It's OK. You can still be straight or whatever. Yeesh. Twice today I had to wait for the cross to see what gender some word was gonna be—never fun. So it was CARA not CARO, and OTRO not OTRA. I think my favorite part of the puzzle was actually "I CALL DIBS!" (123A: "That one's mine!") though again, I do acknowledge that the theme is thoughtful and reasonably well executed. Just not as fun to solve as I'd like. OK bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Daniel Larsen and The Wave Learning Festival Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Medium (2:59)

THEME: two-word phrases where both words are "-ITE" rhymes

Theme answers:

FIGHT NIGHT (17A: Time to watch boxing on TV)
WHITE KNIGHT (30A: One rushing in to save the day)
BRIGHT LIGHT (47A: It makes your pupils constrict)
QUITE RIGHT (64A: "Precisely!")

Word of the Day: BUBBLE TEA (33D: Foamy drink invented in Taiwan) —

Bubble tea (also known as pearl milk tea, bubble milk tea, or boba) (Chinese: 珍珠奶茶; pinyin: zhēn zhū nǎi chá; 波霸奶茶; bō bà nǎi chá or 泡泡茶; pào pào chá) is a tea-based drink invented in Taiwan in the 1980s that includes chewy tapioca balls ("boba" or "pearls") or a wide range of other toppings.
Ice-blended versions are frozen and put into a blender, resulting in a slushy consistency.^[3]There are many varieties of the drink with a wide range of flavors. The two most popular varieties are black pearl milk tea and green pearl milk tea. (wikipedia)

• • •

Look, I don't know what the backstory is here, but this isn't a NYTXW-worthy theme. It's way, way, way too basic. Maybe, *maybe*, if the theme answers were, on their own, really vibrant phrases, you could get away with this, but as is, this isn't playful or interesting enough for *any* major daily crossword, let alone the "best puzzle in the world" or whatever. And the fill is oddly old and cruddy for a Monday. As I've said before, you can often gauge the overall quality of the puzzle before you're out of the NW corner, and that corner today, yeesh. I love baseball and knew OLIVA (2D: Tony who played for 15 seasons with the Minnesota Twins), but that is dated baseball crosswordese (esp. for a Monday), and LIGER and EVERSO had me worried that the fill was not headed anywhere good. It's certainly not much worse than average, I guess, but I expect much cleaner on a Monday. I mean, every Across from LANAI on down in the SW is just straight out of crossword central casting. The puzzle is also clumsily built, with giant Friday/Saturday-like corners in the NE and SW, as if the puzzle were trying to be a themeless and an easy Monday themed puzzle simultaneously, but succeeding at neither. Actually, the big corners are far better done than the themed portion of the puzzle. No idea how you can have that much wide open space and still end up at the maximum word count (78), but this puzzle did it. It just didn't feel like an experienced or careful hand was at the helm. I don't get it. If somehow a bunch of fourth-graders made this, then sure, I'll feel a little bad. But I never read constructor's notes at the Times' site and I'm not going to start today. This just isn't up to (what should be) NYTXW standards, theme-wise.

Are we still expected to know things about "Desperate Housewives"? When will that show's "currency" run out? I outlived the "Ally McBeal" era (when you would occasionally be asked to know tertiary characters on that show for some reason), but sadly it seems the "Desperate Housewives" era is still upon us. Anyway, I didn't know BREE (38A: One of the housewives on "Desperate Housewives"). Beyond that, and OLIVA, there's not much here that's going to throw anyone off their game. I weirdly don't like NIGHT and KNIGHT being successive last words in theme phrases. Feels like cheating. They're homophones. After I got them, I was like, "How many other homophones are there??" But then that wasn't the theme after all. I also think that there should be *no* other "-ight"-sounding words in the grid, outside of the themers, for the sake of elegance. So I'm finding EVITE slightly annoying. In short: keep the NE / SW corners, tear out everything else, and make a themeless. Thank you, goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeremy Newton

Relative difficulty: Easy (or Challenging, if superhero movies aren't really your thing) (3:11)

THEME: CHADWICK BOSEMAN (7D: Late portrayer of 40-Across)— I'd say it's a tribute puzzle to the late actor, but honestly it's just a rather boring THE BLACK PANTHER PUZZLE with the actor as just one element ... :(

Theme answers:

HEART-SHAPED HERB (17A: Source of 40-Across's 63-Across)
SUPERHUMAN POWER (63A: See 17-Across)
T'CHALLA (24D: Alter ego of 40-Across)
WAKANDA (25D: Home of 40-Across)

Word of the Day: Carli LLOYD (48A: U.S. women's soccer star Carli) —

Carli Anne Hollins (née Lloyd; born July 16, 1982), known as Carli Lloyd, is an American soccer player for the Sky Blue FC in the National Women's Soccer League and the United States women's national soccer team as a midfielder. She is a two-time Olympic gold medalist (2008 and 2012), two-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion (2015 and 2019), two-time FIFA Player of the Year (2015 and 2016), and a three-time Olympian (2008, 2012, and 2016). Lloyd scored the gold medal-winning goals in the finals of the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics. Lloyd also helped the United States win their titles at the 2015 and 2019 FIFA Women's World Cups and she played for the team at the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup where the U.S. finished in second place. Lloyd has made over 290 appearances for the U.S. national team, placing her third in caps, and has the fourth-most goals and seventh-most assists for the team. (wikipedia)

• • •

I know this looks like a tribute, but I have misgivings about tribute puzzles in general, and this one in particular feels thin, opportunistic, and just generally vulture-y. It's a rather ordinary, straightforward, pure trivia puzzle about a movie masquerading as a tribute puzzle. Feels like it was made before Boseman's death and was hastily trotted out in order to ... what, capitalize on some post mortem newsworthiness? Or else it was actually composed as a tribute, in which case it is a very weak example of the kind. Boseman was an accomplished actor who played many noteworthy roles, but this puzzle just defines him by one. An actual *Boseman* tribute might have dwelt on the actor's career in some way; even if it was just one of these typical plug-in-the-data-type tributes, it could have showcased the breadth of his career in some way. But no, what we get is a puzzle composed solely because the central Across and Down are 15s that cross perfectly at the center "K." However well-intentioned this was, it does a disservice to Boseman, and it's just not a great puzzle, conceptually. And the fill, yikes. Way below average. Then you've got FRENCH OPEN and "AMEN TO THAT!" out there looking weirdly like theme answers (longer than both the actual Down themers), but they're not. The whole thing plays real awkward. I was (morbidly, sadly, slightly drunkenly) joking with friends immediately after RBG's death about how long it would take [constructor's name redacted] to get a tribute puzzle into the NYTXW, but then one of my friends reminded me that there was already an RBG-themed puzzle very recently, so we would be spared that particular worst-case death-puzzle scenario. You don't "honor" anyone by churning out a mediocre puzzle. Or by pretending that your mediocre movie puzzle is actually a tribute puzzle.

And SUPERHUMAN POWER is a clunker. The word is SUPERPOWER. That is the word. When required word length forces you into bad or off answers, rethink things, please! And fillwise, rethink virtually everything here today. I mean, OSHA SLOE as ASDOI before I even got out of the gate? Red flag. And then MSS SOHOT DDE ALB AMFM ATAD OWIE FEMA (*and* OSHA!?) NOS and on and on. Plus an unfortunate and cringey "YO MAMA" (49D: Playground joke intro). In different hands, I can imagine a Boseman tribute (or a "Black Panther"-inspired puzzle) coming off quite well. But tributes actually have to be *better* than average to do what they're supposed to do, i.e. truly honor the deceased. Don't think just because you deign to build a puzzle around someone that you are perforce honoring them. You honor by doing good work. Period.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Fried Hanukkah treat / THU 9-3-20 / Sporting event profiled in 2014 documentary Queens Cowboys / Gaming novice slangily / Pixar film that premiered in Mexico / Fruity loaf with moist texture

Easternmost point of Silk Road / FRI 9-4-20 / prima painting technique / Brightest star in Lyra / Land east of eastern desert / Expensive beer chaser / Wedding dress that's often red

Roman foeman / SAT 9-5-20 / Dice in slang / Source of brachiocephalic trunk

Dutch requirements / SUN 9-6-20 / Weepy Patti Page hit / Author born Truman Streckfus Persons / Laundry soap since 1908 / Churchill's signature gesture / Some 1990s Toyotas / Jazz composer with Egyptian inspired name

Speaks impertinently to / MON 9-7-2020 / Designer Oscar ____ Renta / Where Jericho and Bethlehem are located / Entranceway to London's Hyde Park

Pilgrimage destination in central Italy / TUE 9-8-20 / Pluto's Egyptian counterpart / acid aqua fortis

Jazz pianist Hines / WED 9-9-20 / Upscale section of airport / Spice that comes in stars / Fermented milk drink / Holder of mitochondria

Jewish month of 30 days / THU 9-10-20 / What every infinitive in Esperanto ends with / David Lynch's first feature-length film / Loser to Wilson in 1912 / Vocal opponent of 2001's Patriot Act for short

Sweet Indian beverage / FRI 9-11-20 / Title of hits by Abba Rihanna / Phone-unlocking option / Proverbial back-breaker

Score marking to play higher or lower than written / SAT 9-12-20 / Slangy sedative / Mesoamerican language family with about half a million speakers / Onetime airer of Music City Tonight / Dolohov one of Death Eaters in Harry Potter books / Early movie mogul Marcus

Small anatomical opening as in bone / SUN 9-13-20 / Ground-dwelling songbird / Stark who was crowned king in Game of Thrones finale / Japanese city where Lexus is headquartered

Fig of total economic output / MON 9-14-20 / Jeans brand popular in the 1980s / Green-fleshed fruit / Lamented princess of Wales

Mountain nymph / TUE 9-15-20 / Giant in media streaming / Disney character based on Dickens character / Like gunpowder and seismometer by origin

Drum used in Indian music / WED 9-16-20 / Country from which name Buttigieg comes / Number written in parentheses on income statement / Archipelago that's part of Portugal

Savings bank informally / THU 9-17-20 / Superfan of certain 2010s pop star / Food item whose name is derived from comic strip / Gluten-free noodle variety / Thoughtless sender of emails

Typographer's gap / FRI 9-18-20 / Fortification-breaching bomb / Vacation locale for President Gerald Ford / Lucky thing to hit in ping-pong / Member of South Asian diaspora

Russian letter in spelling of tsar / SAT 9-19-20 / Symbols of hope during American French revolutions / Georgia who played Georgette on 1970s TV / Historic sites in Hot Springs Ark / Classic couples retreat / Treatment during sandal season informally

Tony who played 15 seasons with Minnesota Twins / MON 9-21-20 / Foamy drink invented in Taiwan / Horse developed in desert / Hawaiian kind of porch

Comic book character with title role in blockbuster 2018 film / TUE 9-22-20 / Captors of Frodo Baggins / Will Smith Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi hit for short