Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar and Brooke Husic

Relative difficulty: on the harder side, but it's oversized (15x16), so maybe it's just bigger, not harder

THEME: none

Word of the Day: STOP-TIME (46A: Rhythmic pattern in jazz) —

In tap dancing, jazz, and blues, stop-time is an accompaniment pattern interrupting, or stopping, the normal time and featuring regular accented attacks on the first beat of each or every other measure, alternating with silence or instrumental solos. Stop-time occasionally appears in ragtime music. The characteristics of stop-time are heavy accents, frequent rests, and a stereotyped cadential pattern. Stop-timing may create the impression that the tempo has changed, though it has not, as the soloist continues without accompaniment. Stop-time is common in African-American popular music including R&B, soul music, and led to the development of the break in hip hop. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is oversized for some reason. Usually it's a theme that drives a grid into unexpected dimensions, but I guess they couldn't do what they wanted to do in a 15x15, so here we are. More puzzle for the buck, I guess. Lots of thorniness in this one, but nothing that really dragged matters to a halt. The NW opened up pretty easily with IBM& IMS both being gimmes and then bam, BEQUEATH dropped right in (2D: Pass on after passing on), and the "Q" made SQUALL the likely first word there (17A: Narrow band of storms), and the rest of that corner just kinda fell into place. But getting into the center proved mildly challenging. Had TAKES but couldn't come up with AIM (25A: Gets ready to throw), and sadly AIM had all the letters I needed to be able to turn the corner there. I don't know what's being thrown that aim has to be taken. A dart I guess. Or an axe. I associate aiming with guns or bows or weapons like that, hence my blankness here. Also missed the turn into the center when I went with "I'M OUT" at 23D: "It's game over for me" ("I LOST"). That clue is bad, actually. It's bad to have a slangy clue and then have an absolutely plain, literal answer. Clue is idiomatic, answer should be too. "I LOST," my god it's so plain that no one actually says it. Also, the verb tense is off (present in the clue, past in the answer). Bah. And I was so proud of getting LIFER right away (24D: Die-hard fan no matter what, in slang), really thought I was gonna zoom down into the center there. But no.

Everything else was pretty doable, except the SW corner, where, even after I got UNDERSTOOD *and* NEEDS, I couldn't drop the Downs. Three opportunities (UN-, NE-, DE-), three strikes. I actually wanted UNSEATS at 41D: Wins a race against, but wasn't sure. And NEUTRAL was well disguised (42D: N as in Nissan?) (NEUTRAL being a transmission setting in an automobile such as a Nissan; cute). And DEBACLE was invisible to me, as I think of people having "meltdowns" and DEBACLEs just being situations. Oh, and I also couldn't figure 49A: I, for one (SUBJECT), even with -JECT in place. That's bad on my part. Shoulda seen that. So I had to dive into the unknown and build my way back out of that corner. Luckily TALE was right! (worried it might be DUST) (62A: Fairy ___), as was SLEW, and so building my way back out of that corner was less painful than I feared. Slowed a little by not knowing the word that was supposed to go before RISE at 63A: Order in the court. My brain just kept shouting "ALL." Me to brain: "It doesn't fit!" Brain: "ALL!" Me: "Stop it." Brain: "... ... ... try ALLLLL!" Me: "omg shut up."

PEACES is one of those slang terms I know exists but that I don't hear much, probably because it seems like it would be really easy for others to think you were saying something else. "Peace out!" has the "out" indicating departure. And if you are signing off or leaving, saying "PEACE" makes sense. But as a verb in the 3rd-person present indicative, it's awkward-feeling. But I'm old so he PEACES she PEACES it PEACES great whatever, go to town. Only bad things in this puzzle were ET ALIBI (I have some experience looking at bibliographies and yikes I can't remember ever seeing this—the term I'm familiar with is passim), and -TUPLE, up there with the worst suffixes ever to grace a grid (with the understanding that suffixes never truly "grace" anything) (51D: Mathematical suffix). Much of the rest was fun and entertaining. I was very excited to see PLUOT, which I guessed straight off (32D: Hybrid fruit also known as an aprium). Proudest, tastiest, happiest moment of the puzzle. Those things are delicious. I miss summer already. Let's see, any tricksy clues need explaining? [Pings] = IMS = "contacts someone via internet messaging" ("ping" comes from "the name of the sound a sonar makes when it detects another vessel"). Everything else seems reasonably straightforward. I'd like to thank Anna Karenina for teaching me about TATARs (48D: Siberian native). Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Dan Margolis

Relative difficulty: Easy (8:43, even with a stupidly slow start)

THEME:"Cinema Vérité" — clues sound like varieties or genres of film, but they are actually extremely literal (punny! wacky!) descriptions of films:

Theme answers:

"RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK" (26A: Indy film? (1981)) ('cause "Indy" is the nickname of the movie's main character, Indiana Jones)
"SUNSET BOULEVARD" (36A: Road movie? (1950)) ('cause the title is literally a road)
"PATRIOT GAMES" (56A: PG movie? (1992)) ('cause the initials of the movie title are "P.G.")
"THE GODFATHER" (81A: Family film? (1972)) ('cause it's about a mafia "family")
"ON THE WATERFRONT" (103A: Dock-udrama? (1954)) ('cause it takes place on the "docks")
"HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS" (114A: Short film? (1989)) ('cause when you shrink kids, they get "short"!?)

Word of the Day: ANNO mundi (6D: ___ mundi) —

Anno Mundi (Latin for "in the year of the world"; Hebrew: לבריאת העולם‎, "to the creation of the world"), abbreviated as AM, or Year After Creation, is a calendar era based on the biblical accounts of the creation of the world and subsequent history. Two such calendar eras have seen notable use historically:
The Byzantine calendar was used in the Byzantine Empire and many Christian Orthodox countries and Eastern Orthodox Churches and was based on the Septuagint text of the Bible. That calendar is similar to the Julian calendar except that its epoch is equivalent to 1 September 5509 BC on the Julian proleptic calendar.
Since the Middle Ages, the Hebrew calendar has been based on rabbinic calculations of the year of creation from the Hebrew Masoretic Text of the bible. This calendar is used within Jewish communities for religious and other purposes. On the Hebrew calendar, the day begins at sunset. The calendar's epoch, corresponding to the calculated date of the world's creation, is equivalent to sunset on the Julian proleptic calendar date 6 October 3761 BC. The new year begins at Rosh Hashanah, in Tishrei. Year anno mundi 5781, or AM 5781, began at sunset on 18 September 2020 on the Gregorian calendar. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme has a dad-joke vibe but I was fond of it anyway. You can get away with this sort of corny humor when the puzzle a. is easy, b. is not filled with garbage, c. has very well-known theme answers. All of these movies are famous to exceedingly famous, so there's little chance you won't have heard of most if not all of them. In fact, the only one I can imagine someone's not having heard of is "PATRIOT GAMES," which was also a novel, which gives you another way to have heard of it before. The oldness of the cinematic frame of reference is part of its dad-joke charm. Who cares about the entire 21st century!? They don't make movies like they used to, etc. The dumbest and therefore best clue is, in fact, the one on "PATRIOT GAMES" (56A: PG movie? (1992)). It's got nothing to do with the content of the movie, nothing to do with the literal meaning of "PATRIOT GAMES," it's just ... initials. The most tenuous connection imaginable. I think I'm laughing mostly at all the ways this kind of cluing could go. [R movie? (1981)] = "REDS." [G movie? (1997)] = "GATTACA." [X movie? (1980)] = "XANADU." [B movie? (1988)] = "BIG." Etc. Etc. Please somebody figure out how to do a whole puzzle using this concept. The only theme clue I sort of halfway object to is the one on "HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS" (114A: Short film? (1989)), since that movie does not star Martin Short, which is really the "Short" I thought they were going for, the ideal Short for this type of punning situation, le Short juste. Anyway, you wouldn't call shrunken people "short." If you are a quarter of an inch tall, no one is going to describe you as "short." You wish you were short. So that clue/answer is a miss, but the others are just fine.

And the grid as a whole—just fine also. I've written down some ugly stuff here: UPAT OSAY ONOR EES ANNO INE ... but almost all the rest seems at least tolerable, and most of it is acceptably solid. I had real trouble up front. Got DAN and IMAM easily but couldn't work the Downs in the NW, then couldn't do much with the next little over from there, the NNW, where FLAT (4A: Out of tune ... or bubbles) and LONG O (!) (18A: Opening opening?) and FLIRT (4D: Toy (with), as an idea) all stayed hidden. I think I finally got traction at POET RTES CAR PLENTY etc. in the NNE. I continued to have periodic trouble in the upper third of the grid. Both SPOIL (25A: Turn) and BOOKBAG (13D: Kids use it for texts) took some work in the NE, and MEDIA was totally unexpected at 17D: Pastels and charcoal, for two—I had that answer ending "S" and so had 35A: Sound from a flock (BLEAT) as BLESS at first (logic shmogic, something about flock, preacher, religion, blessing, I dunno...). Had YIPE and YELL before YELP (43A: React to a stubbed toe, maybe). But then, once that upper third was settled, wow did I take off. Scorching pace. Made up a ton of time and ended up only about a minute or so off my record. MYSORE was the only thing to give me a moment's pause, and even then, I actually *wanted* MYSORE, I just wasn't at all confident that I wasn't botching the name of the place (110A: ___ Palace, Indian tourist attraction). Wanted STIRRUP for STETSON (99D: Bit of ranch dressing?). But otherwise, no trouble. Just destroyed this thing. Which probably predisposed me to look AMIABLE-y upon the puzzle as a whole, but whatever it takes, man. I was finally not disappointed in a Sunday. Hallelujah.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jessie Bullock & Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: About average for a Monday

THEME: WOMEN OF LETTERS (Female scholars ... or a hint to 19-, 28-, 34- and 42-Across) — The puzzle contains four theme entries that are WOMEN whose first or last names represent the sounds OF LETTERS

Theme answers:

ELLE MACPHERSON (Model/TV host on a record five Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue covers)
SANDRA OH ("Grey's Anatomy" actress)
SAMANTHA BEE ("Full Frontal" Host)
KAY HAGAN (North Carolina senator who unseated Elizabeth Dole)

Word of the Day: ELLE MACPHERSON (Model/TV host on a record five Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue covers) —

Eleanor Nancy "Elle" Macpherson (/məkˈfɜːrsən/; née Gow; born 29 March 1964) is an Australian model, businesswoman, television host and actress.
She is known for her record five cover appearances for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue beginning in the 1980s, leading to her nickname "The Body", coined by Time in 1989. She is the founder, primary model, and creative director for a series of business ventures, including Elle Macpherson Intimates, a lingerie line, and The Body, a line of skin care products. She has been the host and executive producer of Britain & Ireland's Next Top Model from 2010 to 2013. She is an executive producer of NBC's Fashion Star and was the host for the first season.
As an actress, Macpherson appeared in supporting roles in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) and as Julie Madison in Batman and Robin (1997) as well as lead roles in The Edge (1997) and South Kensington (2001). She also had a recurring role on Friends and hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live.

• • •

Hi all, Rachel Fabi in for Rex today. And, ok, I'll be honest, I didn't know ELLE MACPHERSON or KAY HAGAN, but that didn't slow me down too much, since the theme was pretty clear even before I hit the revealer, and it's a Monday, so most of the crosses were pretty straightforward. The solve was fairly smooth, with just a couple tough spots (again, by Monday standards), and a couple patches of fill that I could live without.

The themers today were all women with a letter sound as either their first or last name. Although I'd probably have preferred consistency on that variable (either all first or all last names), I still appreciate this theme a lot— it's simple enough for a Monday, and the revealer WOMEN OF LETTERS [53a: Female scholars... or a hint to 19-, 28-, 34- and 42-Across] is *excellent*. It is also, coincidentally, the name of a fabulous crossword puzzle pack edited by Patti Varol and Amy Reynaldo, which solvers can receive in exchange for proof of a $10 donation to a women-centric charity. And today's puzzle is a debut for Jessie Bullock, who is herself a woman of letters, pursuing a doctorate in Government. Coincidentally, this puzzle puts the spotlight on [Female scholars] just as a(nother) national culture war is erupting around whether people with doctorates (and, in particular, one very important woman) should use the title "Doctor." (I'm not going to link to the piece, because it is garbage). In another strange twist of fate, this puzzle also coincides with the death of John LeCarré, whose work in the SPY NOVEL genre is celebrated at 34d [Typical John le Carré work].

Theme and serendipity aside, I have some issues with the fill of this puzzle (although of course clunky fill is hard to avoid when you have four theme entries and a revealer in a 15x15 puzzle!). Still, I could live without OTAY,YSL, ACH, SHA, and, especially, HAMAS (43d: Gaza Strip governing group) which the U.S. and several other countries classify as a terrorist organization. Not getting into the history or politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it seems likely that many solvers will be upset by their inclusion in the puzzle. These entries aside, the puzzle was pretty smooth, and the representation of groups that are often underrepresented in puzzles was excellent. Alongside the four WOMEN OF LETTERS, I was glad to see Kendrick LAMAR and ALVIN Ailey.

Overall, a nice debut by Jessie Bullock (and 35th puzzle for co-constructor Ross Trudeau!). If you missed the link above, definitely consider looking into the WOMEN OF LETTERS puzzle pack.

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

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Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Easyish (untimed)

THEME: newspaper wackiness — familiar phrases are clued ("?"-style) as if they have something to do with famous U.S. newspapers:

Theme answers:

AROUND THE GLOBE (20A: Where one might find Boston news reporters?)
UNDER THE SUN (37A: Where a Baltimore news reader's desk might be found?)
BEHIND THE TIMES (56A: Beaten to a news scoop in Los Angeles?)

Word of the Day: EVO (55A: Annual video game competition, for short) —

The Evolution Championship Series, commonly known as Evo, is an annual esports event that focuses exclusively on fighting games. The tournaments are completely open and use the double elimination format.^[1] As with Super Battle Opera, contestants travel from all over the world to participate, most notably from Japan. The first Evolution was originally held as a Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 2 tournament called the Battle by the Bay. It changed its name to Evo in 2002. Every successive tournament has seen an increase of attendees. It has been held at various venues across the Las Vegas Valley since 2005. (wikipedia)

• • •

Woof. Tuesday. This is the kind of Tuesday that gave Tuesday its reputation as Tuezday, the puzzle day that couldn't. It's just nowheresville—a thin and ill-conceived theme, plus fill that made me wince repeatedly, audibly, starting at 1A: All-encompassing (ATOZ). It's a little hard to explain, but sometimes you get a sense *right* away that something is going to be wrong, and ATOZ was the red flag. It's fine, we've all seen it before (way more in crosswords than in real life, but whatever). It's just you really want 1-Across to be snappy or solid or at least not shout "Crosswordese!" at you. I knew it was ATOZ right away, or thought so, and then when I confirmed it with (Speaking Of Crosswordese) ZEBU (!?), well, I was no longer on this puzzle's side at all, and I was all of two answers in. Unfair, you say? Of course it's unfair. That's why you keep solving. But then that really didn't help. TOTIE fields was one section over—again, fine, but in keeping with the Older Crosswordese vibe that the puzzle was quickly picking up, and for younger people, not even close to a Tuesday-level answer (15A: Comic Fields on old Ed Sullivan shows ... are there *new* Ed Sullivan shows???). Speaking of not Tuesday level, EVO (55A: Annual video game competition for short). This feels like a clue the editors changed to make the puzzle more current / harder. But it's def not Tuesday. EVO is three random letters (shout-out to everyone who, like me, assumed it was an acronym and tried to make the letters stand for something) (it's short for "Evolution," see Word of the Day, above). I'm sure it's a big-deal competition in the world of eSport fighting games, but for the bulk of crossword solvers, this is a Saturday clue, not a Tuesday, and (more importantly) EVO is just bad fill. If you had to make a list of Top 5 Answers In This Puzzle That I'd Throw Into The Sun If I Could, EVO would be on the list, no matter what the clue (sorry, EVO Morales).

But on to the theme: Got AROUND THE on the first themer but struggled to get GLOBE, largely because AROUND THE GLOBE ... yeah, I hear it, it's a phrase, but so are lots and lots of AROUND THE phrases. Anyway, when I got it, I thought, "so the Globe here is ... the building? ... that the reporters ... work ... in? Huh." Then I got UNDER THE SUN and honestly had no idea what the clue meant. Had to actually stop and think about what the clue wanted me to imagine. "A news reader's desk" is the least evocative image ever. Who is reading news at their desk? Scratch that—of course people *might* read news there, but it's not exactly an iconic image. Breakfast table is a more likely place. The "desk" thing made me think we were in a newspaper *building* again, but we aren't. It's just that when you read The Sun at your ... desk, was it? ... your desk is literally UNDER ... THE SUN :( And here's the problem—if Globe is the news building in the first themer (AROUND THE GLOBE), Sun is the ... actual literal paper newspaper in the second themer (UNDER THE SUN)? And then Times in the last themer (BEHIND THE TIMES) is just the abstract *entity* / corporation. This theme execution is a complete mess. Also, POST seems conspicuously missing. FIRST PAST THE POST is a grid-spanning 15. If you're gonna do this theme (which actually seems OK, in theory) then maybe really open it up and go for a Sunday. I dunno. I just know this was painful.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ed Salners and Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium (untimed)

THEME: GOVERNMENT BONDS (59A: Treasury notes ... or what the two sides of 17-, 23-, 37- and 52-Across are joined with?) — two-word phrases, each with a three-letter "government" agency embedded inside (in circles), spanning ("bonding?") both of the phrase words:

Theme answers:

AIRCRAFT CARRIER (17A: Place to land that's not on land) (Federal Trade Commission)
HAIRSPRAY (23A: 2002 musical that won eight Tonys) (Internal Revenue Service)
SCREEN SAVER (37A: Very picture of idleness?) (National Security Agency)
NEAT FREAK (52A: Felix of "The Odd Couple," for one) (Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms)

Word of the Day: OHIO ART (2D: Toy company that made Etch A Sketch a success) —

The Ohio Art Company is an American toy manufacturing company founded in 1908. Based in Bryan, Ohio, the company is principally engaged in two lines of business. The first line of business is the sales, marketing, and distribution of toys. The second line of business is the company's Diversified Products segment which manufactures custom metal lithography products for food container and specialty premium markets. Examples of these are food tins, enclosures, DVD cases, and nostalgic signs. [...] In the late 1950s, a French electrician named André Cassagnes created a drawing toy that used a joystick, glass and aluminum powder. The combination, which he called the "Telecran", gave users the ability to draw a picture and also erase it. After much collaboration with many individuals, the system they developed in the late 1950s is the same one used today. The name of the product was Etch A Sketch. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sorry, short write-up today. Forgot to set the alarm. Woke up at 3 something because my legs were all cramped because the kitty cat (we got a second kitten, did I ever mention that?) was asleep right next to me and I couldn't roll over without squishing her so, yeah, cramped, and anyway I thought "well, it's 3 something, and I'm up, looks like I'm getting an early start on the puzzle," and then bang it was almost 6 and I had apparently forgotten to set my alarm for 5 and then I had to feed the cats before they mauled me to death from hunger panic and now well here we are. Giant opening sentence. Still: short write-up. I can't think of anything duller than government agencies—they're a necessary evil in crosswords, as they tend to be useful / necessary for caulking up little three-letter crannies in the grid structure, but no one likes them. Initialisms, specifically government initialisms, are tedious. Yawn. Now here's an entire puzzle based on them! Enjoy! In these answers, they're really government *agency* bonds. "Governments" are things like "republics" and "monarchies" and, uh, ochlocracies and so on. The concept was thematically uninteresting to me, and the three-letter agencies were arbitrary. Except NEAT FREAK, answers they resulted in weren't that interesting. Also, again, the editor or someone decided it would be cute to use a "?" clue on a themer when other themers aren't clued that way. Always awful. Never not an awful decision. Unless your theme requires "?" clues for *all* the themers, get your "?"s out of your system with the fill—there's so much of it! Putting a "?" on one themer and not the others just confuses matters. Boo.

OHIO ART is awful. I am sure I have seen this before and complained about it before, but it's simply not famous. Maybe it was, but it's not. Also, you had one toy hit in the '50s and we're supposed to remember your ridiculous, long, not intuitive 7-letter name? Nothing about the Etch A Sketch says OHIO and hardly anything about it says ART. If you're desperate enough to need it, at least, I don't know, have something in the clue that indicates there's a midwestern state in there or something. "... named after the state it's based in," something. Old and arcane and taking up a ton of real estate. Yuck. Send INAREA back to wherever it came from to (55A: How Russia ranks first among all countries). Truly terrible. Surprised it's legal. INHEIGHT? INWEIGHT? INPOPULATION? You see how dumb this is, right? Makes INOT look like good fill (it isn't). First thing I got in the grid was PAREN (oof) and that was clearly a bad omen. Or a trendsetter, I guess, as the rest of the puzzle was about that interesting. Most of the grid actually holds up fine, to be fair, but there was no joy to be had today. ACT NICE I almost like (25D: Show decorum). Oh, LEAD DOG, I do love dogs, that was nice (42D: Iditarod pace setter). And NEAT FREAK, as I said, is good. But I don't know what you'd want to take one of the more boring aspects of solving crosswords (i.e. negotiating 3-letter gov. agencies) and make a whole puzzle about it, let alone one with an absolutely anti-scintillating revealer like GOVERNMENT BONDS. Harrumph. Gonna go play with kitties. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Kathryn Ladner

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BEETHOVEN'S FIFTH (36A: Work suggested by this puzzle's circled squares)— the opening notes of the symphony are in the circled squares (G, G, G, E FLAT); there are a smattering of other theme-related things in random positions around the grid:

Theme answers:

C MINOR (2D: Key to this puzzle's theme)
LUDWIG (49D: First name of this puzzle's dedicatee, born December 1770)
FATE (!?) (29D: What the opening motif of 36-Across is said to represent)
OBOE (7D: Instrument featured in 36-Across)
DEAF (56D: What 49-Down became in later life)

Word of the Day: RIGI (64A: Swiss Alp next to Lake Lucerne) —

The Rigi (or Mount Rigi; also known as Queen of the Mountains) is a mountain massif of the Alps, located in Central Switzerland. The whole massif is almost entirely surrounded by the water of three different bodies of water: Lake Lucerne, Lake Zug and Lake Lauerz. The range is in the Schwyzer Alps, and is split between the cantons of Schwyz and Lucerne, although the main summit, named Rigi Kulm, at 1,798 meters above sea level, lies within the canton of Schwyz.
The Rigi Kulm and other areas, such as the resort of Rigi Kaltbad, are served by Europe's oldest mountain railways, the Rigi Railways. The whole area offers many activities such as skiing or sledging in the winter, and hiking in the summer. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle shouldn't have been published on two grounds. First, it's really rough. There's not really a theme here. One grid-spanner, a smattering of circled squares, and then some absolutely random short fill clued as if it were related, only it's *barely* related. I feel like you could find this much Beethoven "theme" material in any random grid if you really tried. The FATE thing in particular seemed like a huge stretch. And the theme stuff isn't even organized. There's no symmetry (except for DEAF and OBOE (again, !?!?!?! you can find OBOE in like 37% of all grids, how is that "theme"?!). It's just not a polished puzzle, and it's definitely not a Thursday-level puzzle (except for RIGI, which I've never heard of, the puzzle played like a Tuesday or easy Wednesday).

The second reason this never should've made it to print is that we've already had a Beethoven's birthday tribute puzzle this year. Just three short months ago. Not only that, it featured This Exact Musical Gimmick. The. Exact. One. This one. The opening notes of BEETHOVEN'S FIFTH. Only in *that* puzzle, there was an actual theme, with long theme answers and the nicknames of various symphonies "hidden" in (non-consecutive) circled squares inside those answers. And the opening four notes of the 5th symphony were a little bonus, represented in four squares in the NW, and then followed by the *next* four notes in the SE. The tricksy thing was that you had to rebus EFLAT into a single square. Tough! I didn't adore that puzzle, but now, in retrospect, after having solved this one, it looks like a work of genius. I'll link to that puzzle (by David J. Kahn, 9/10/20) now, but also I'll just show you the finished grid, here you go:

See the "EFLAT" square up there in the NW, making D(EFLAT)ED in the Down. Cute, right? And then the subsequent FFFD in the SE. And it's offered up as just a little something extra. And yet there's more theme material in those eight squares than in the entire raison d'etre of today's puzzle (the circled G G G EFLAT). And while today's puzzle offers only a ragged patchwork of barely-related theme stuff beyond those opening notes, September's puzzle had, in addition to the opening notes, An Entire Theme. It is grossly incompetent to run today's puzzle after having so recently run the September puzzle. It's unfair to today's constructor, and it's insulting to regular solvers. All I want for Christmas from now and forever is better and more careful editorial leadership at the NYTXW. Now to go dig my sidewalk out from under snow mountains big enough to hide a small YETI. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Given everything I said today, I kinda gotta admire BOOMERANGS (18A: Items that are hard to throw away). I mean, I thought I threw this theme away in September, but ...

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Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easyish (well under 7, and that was a. going slowly, b. taking screenshots along the way)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Demi LOVATO (52A: Demi of pop) —

Demetria Devonne Lovato (/ləˈvɑːtoʊ/ lə-VAH-toh; born August 20, 1992) is an American singer and actress. After appearing in the children's television series Barney & Friends (2002–2004), she rose to prominence for her role as Mitchie Torres in the Disney Channelmusical television film Camp Rock (2008) and its sequel Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam (2010), as well as the titular character on Sonny with a Chance (2009–2011). The former film's soundtrack included "This Is Me", Lovato's duet with Joe Jonas, which peaked in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100. After signing with Hollywood Records, Lovato released her pop rock debut album, Don't Forget (2008), which charted at number two on the Billboard 200. Its follow-up, Here We Go Again (2009), debuted at number one in the US and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). [...] As of 2017, Billboard reported that Lovato has sold over two million albums and 20 million singles in the US. Her accolades include an MTV Video Music Award, 14 Teen Choice Awards, five People's Choice Awards, two Latin American Music Awards, and one Guinness World Record. Lovato was also included on the Time 100 list in 2017. Aside from music, Lovato served as a judge and mentor on The X Factor USA for two seasons, appeared as a recurring character on Glee (2013–2014) and on the sitcom Will & Grace (2020), and voiced Smurfette in the Sony Pictures Animation film Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017). (wikipedia)

• • •

Happy second snow day (US Northeast Only)! We broke records here in Binghamton so the street-clearing fleet is overwhelmed so my wife gets a second actual Day Off (doesn't even have to Zoom teach! legit Snow Day!). The cats are happy. They like me fine but they live for the lady. And for food. And for sleeping atop the radiators. And for ASHLAR (I actually have no idea what ASHLAR is—I assume the cats would like it, they're pretty amenable) (10D: Square-cut masonry). Speaking of ASHLAR, that was the only thing in this grid that made me go ???????? The rest was a typical Friday delight (Friday being the only day about which I can say it is typically delightful). The 3x3 interlacing of 15-letter answers provides the base structure for this thing, and when your base is solid, good things follow. Also, having so many grid-spanners made helped give the puzzle flow (that all-important but somewhat ineffable feature of a good puzzle). Lots of room to move, few places to get truly stuck. My only issue with the 15s was, in the case of two of them, figuring out the right phrasing. Wanted something like BETTER GET A MOVE ON instead of BETTER GET MOVING at 3D: "Let's go!" and BECAUSE IT WAS THERE instead of the oddly informal / contracted "BECAUSE IT (apostrophe) S THERE" at 11D: George Mallory's famous response to "Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?"I thought Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest. Who is George Mallory? Anyway, I expect vintage mountaineers to spurn contractions! IT'S indeed! I say! EGAD!

Had a tiny bit of trouble starting off, as the NW (the weakest little nook in this puzzle, fill-wise) was a bit eely. Wanted maybe AURA at 1A: Vague sense (VIBE) and wanted nothing and/or RIMA (?!) for 1D: Mezza ___ (VOCE). Dante wrote the Divine Comedy in terza rima. Annnnyway, IPAD got me going and soon after, Bam! We're off:

17A: Using any means necessary

After that, I went whooshing around, easily knocking out most of the short fill, pausing briefly to stare at the mysterious ASHLAR, about which I eventually just crossed my fingers and moved on. The next, and only other, trouble spot in the puzzle came in the east, specifically the patch beneath the word CRIME in what would become SCENE OF THE CRIME (37A: Setting for forensic investigations):

As you can see, I hadn't worked out the exact wording of the Everest quote, and then none of the other answers for which I had letters in place wanted to show their faces. Couldn't think of an "R" word for 40D: Path except ROUTE. No idea what 39D: Censure starting with "C" was. Thought [Sacked] at 43A was referring to being fired, and no way I was going to get from the very vague [Rank] to NASTY at 48A, "Rank" having many meanings and NASTY being an exceedingly general and non-smell-specific synonym of "Rank." But again given how free-flowing and interconnected the whole grid was, it wasn't necessary to get bogged down in that patch of eastern thorniness. I just moved over to the center and then the west and worked my way back.

What else?:

5A: Nick ___, football coach who led both L.S.U. and Alabama to national championships (SABAN) — gave up paying any attention to college sports fairly recently, since the NCAA is exploitative of athlete labor, and I especially don't care about good ol' boy / CTE-promoting culture of football. But I was paying attention when SABAN became famous, so, from a solving perspective, lucky me.
52A: Demi of pop (LOVATO)— couldn't tell you a thing she has done, but she is Very famous. I had the -ATO when I got to her clue and thought, "Oh, yeah, this is good—nice to be inclusive of genuinely famous people, especially younger people, especially women, who aren't necessarily popular with the typical NYTXW solver demographic. Yes, I certainly am pleased to see Demi [types in name] NOVATO" (turns out NOVATO is a town in northern Marin County, where my aunt lives; sorry Demi).
20A: Supermodel Wek (ALEK) — I wish I had a handy way for you to remember this very crosswordesey name. Her name parts rhyme? Kinda. I am having fun saying "wek-a-lek" right now, so maybe that will help you.
41A: Bit of needle work (TAT) — OK so the funny (not haha but "hmmm" funny) thing here is I wrote this right in ... assuming it was about *lace-making* (which also, I believe, counts as "needle work," since "tatting needles" are a thing). In the olden days, i.e. the early '90s, before TAT was a universally-known abbr. for "tattoo,"TAT got clued almost exclusively via its lace-making meaning (which I wouldn't even know if I hadn't learned it from crosswords). "Tatting is a technique for handcrafting a particularly durable lace from a series of knots and loops" (wikipedia). But with lace, TAT is a verb, so this clue must be referring to the TAT that is a noun, i.e. a tattoo.
61D: One of the Beastie Boys (MCA) — all the Beastie Boys have great-for-crossword names, but you're probably never gonna see AD-ROCK or MIKE D in your grid, so if you aren't a fan, the best thing to do is try to remember MCA, aka Adam Yauch (R.I.P.).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Caitlin Reid and Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium, I think (untimed)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: OTIS Williams (1A: Williams who was one of the original Temptations) —

Otis Williams (born Otis Miles Jr.; October 30, 1941) is an American baritone singer. Nicknamed "Big Daddy", he is occasionally also a songwriter and a record producer.
Williams is the founder and last surviving original member of the Motown vocal group The Temptations, a group in which he continues to perform; he also owns the rights to the Temptations name. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was a really nice puzzle. It was built like a Friday but clued like a Saturday, or at least like a semi-Saturday. A Friday/Saturday. A Friturday. Grid has room for a slew of 7+-letter answers but also has an interconnectedness and *flow* that means (for me) never getting truly bogged down anywhere. You can really hack away at a puzzle like this. It's true that part of the cost of having a hackable grid is having a lot of short fill, but if your longer fill is nice and your short fill is inconspicuous, i.e. not spit-in-your-face bad, you'll do fine. It's a very sassy, youngish grid, with a colloquialism that, bless its heart, is almost actually very current. Yesterday we got LIT, and today we get Gen Y 102: TURNT (24D: Excited, in modern slang). Pretty sure this refers to inebriation most of the time, but "excited," sure, by extension, I'm sure that works too. It has a party context. Or so I'm told by my Youth Translator. Speaking of my Youth Translator, I woke to a very excited (but not TURNT ... I don't think) text from my daughter this morning, who had very important news for me:

If I'd been fully awake, I would've cried :) So, parents, if you want your kids to share your interests, the key is a. make it seem awesome (or delude yourself into believing that you make it seem awesome!) and b. never ever push it. I would get her kids crosswords when she was little and she would do a few, but the whole crossword bug never really caught her. Then she went to college, and she started finding different ways to waste time, then her friends got into doing crosswords too, sometimes together, then COVID hit and shutdowns hit and she had a lot more "free" time on her hands ... and anyway, here we are. I have a feeling the pandemic, which has been a mismanaged disaster in so many ways, is going to end up having been very good for people's crossword skills. You take the good where you can find it. Anyway, congrats to the girl, and to everyone who got over the Saturday (or Friday, or Thursday, or Wednesday...) hump during this terrible year.

The colloquialism of the puzzle went beyond TURNT to "BE LIKE THAT" and HOT TAKE and "I'LL BITE" (my fav) and all the way to the so-old-it's-new tweenfluencerspeak of "ADIEU!" and "TATA!" (seriously, kids, please pick these up and run with them, I will love you for it). OTIS / SADIE could've been a dangerous cross, but OTI- can really only be an "S," so Natick averted. Here were the only struggles I had, all of them brief:

Struggles:

AHEM (5A: Audible nudge)— PSST! went in first, "confirmed" by PLAY at 5D: Preschool recital (ABCS). I played Billy Goat Gruff in my preschool PLAY
ROLL (25A: Dinner ___)— I had the -LL and went with BELL
ROMULUS (29D: Eponym of a European capital, by tradition) — hilarious that I had trouble here, since I teach the Aeneid every year, which is all about "where did Rome come from!?" I thought ROMULUS just *was* the eponym. I don't get the "by tradition" here. I mean, if he's not really a historical figure, wasn't suckled by a she-wolf, etc., he can still be the eponym, right?
BOOMERS (36D: Male kangaroos) — LOL, really? If you say so. I got a strong suspicion that this one was reclued so as not to infuriate a certain (giant) segment of the NYTXW solving audience
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (35A: Common material for a jacket) — had ABOUT THE A-T- and thought "ooh, good one" ... and wrote in ABOUT THE ARTIST!
COHOST (40D: Running mate?)— still not sure I get the "?" joke here. Like ... a show "runs" on television / radio ... and if two+ people host that show, they are "running" ... mates? Needs work.
TUSSAUD (20D: Wax figure?)— I should've gotten this immediately. Instead, I had -SSA- and at one point definitely tentatively wrote in MASSAGE, which ... I'm just gonna assume that a hot-wax MASSAGE is a real thing and not ask any further questions

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9-something)

THEME: AIM LOW ... just kidding, it's actually "Toy Story" — popular toys of yore, such as one might have received on CHRISTMAS (65A: Day to play with new toys)

Theme answers:

BARBIE DOLL (22A: She debuted on March 9, 1959, in a black-and-white striped swimsuit)
TAMAGOTCHI (24A: Virtual pet simulation game that won an Ig Nobel prize for its Japanese creators)
ETCH A SKETCH (39A: Toy that was originally called "L'Écran Magique" ("The Magic Screen"))
TWISTER (57A: Game that got a big boost when Johnny Carson demonstrated it with Eva Gabor on "The Tonight Show")
PLAY DOH (78A: Toy that was derived from a wallpaper cleaner)
CHATTY CATHY (95A: Toy with 18 spoken phrases, including "I love you" and "May I have a cookie?")
RUBIK'S CUBE (111A: Puzzle toy solved in a record 3.47 seconds in 2018)
SILLY PUTTY (114A: Toy that astronauts brought to space to secure tools in zero gravity)
MR. POTATO HEAD (38D: First toy to be advertised on TV)
CANDYLAND (46D: Its box once read "A sweet little game for sweet little folks")
COZY COUPE (!?!?!?!?!) (48D: Toy that sold more cars in American in 1991 than the Honda Accord or Ford Taurus)
TICKLE-ME ELMO (33D: By the end of 1996, one million of this toy was sold in a shopping frenzy)

Word of the Day: COZY COUPE (48D) —

The Cozy Coupe is a red and yellow toy car manufactured and distributed by Little Tikes, an American manufacturer of children's toys based in Hudson, Ohio. [...] First sold in 1979 as one of the first molded-plastic toy cars sold in the United States, it was called the "world's best-selling car for much of this decade" by The New York Times in 1998, outselling the Honda Accord and Ford Taurus. By 1991, the Cozy Coupe was selling 500,000 units per year, making it the top-selling model in the United States, outselling the 399,000 Accords and 299,000 Taurus vehicles sold that year. By 1997, its sales of 313,000 units in the US and another 100,000 sold in the United Kingdom in 1997, would have made it the fifth-best-selling car in the US among real vehicles. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

What a depressingly unambitious puzzle. I am once again stunned with what veteran constructors can get away with. Must be nice. There's nothing here. It's a bunch of old toys. The. End. "Toy Story" is a wildly inaccurate name, as there are only the faintest hints of "stories" about these toys, in the clues. And then the revealer is just ... CHRISTMAS? And then on top of all of that, the fill is weak all over the place. This puzzle could've run 20 years ago, with almost no changes, and it would've been sub-remarkable then, too. This is a shrug. It's an insult. Again, I say: this is just a list of popular toys. The revealer is a total thud. The fill is bad. How much do you have to hate Christmas to make let alone publish this? I don't know. This is either the worst kind of cronyism or astonishing editorial malpractice or both. Either way, yikes. The frame of reference is very old, and not just because the toys are old (though that is a lot of it). The creaking quaintness of the fill isn't helping. APEDOM? IRENIC? "ETTA KETT"? Then there's awkward stuff like AT STORES (we say "in stores") and AT A RISK (the "A" was giving me fits, ugh). Also, who cares who founded Investor's Business Daily, what even is that? There are really good O'NEILs in the world! Pick one of them! From stem to stern, this puzzle is just a heap of bad decisions. I love CHRISTMAS! I love toys! I'm sure it's fun to reminisce about toys, but, you know, run a little feature in the Arts section if that's what you want to do. If you want to turn the concept of "Toys through the years..." into a crossword, you need a hook, an actual *puzzle* concept, something ... well, something more than this.

What else to say? Not much. The biggest "??????" of the day by a long shot was COZY COUPE, which I first heard of ... today. Never ever heard of it. Ever. I get that the wikipedia page told you that COZY COUPE outsold Accords and Tauri in the U.S. but I have to insist that as far as Iconic Toys go, this one isn't anywhere near the others on the list. Also, the phrasing on the clue is bizarre: "Toy that sold more cars ..."???? The toy ... *is* the car. The COZY COUPE is not a car salesman. It's a car. [Toy automobile that outsold etc.], that might work. Anyway, not iconic, bad clue, clue language lifted from wikipedia (so, lazy clue). COZY COUPE is the biggest theme loser of the day. I didn't know what IODATE was, but that's pretty typical for me (98A: A halogen-containing salt). Had "I HOPE" for "I'M DUE" (101A: "My luck has to change at some point"). Balked / winced at the -AED ending of SAMBAED, but I guess you gotta spell it that way (107A: Performed a Latin ballroom dance). I'm gonna stop. Gonna go answer the question "Where are the CATS AT?" (96D: Took care of a tabby, say). Gonna ask Santa for much, much better puzzles this week. Take care.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Peter Gordon's Fireball Newsflash Crosswords will be starting a new season in 2021—twenty crosswords over the course of the year with content taken directly from current events. It's a great way to keep abreast of new, potentially crosswordy names before they go mainstream, and Peter's puzzles are always really professional and polished. Get a subscription for yourself or *give one* as a gift to a crossword-lover you know this holiday season. Go here for more details.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sarah Keller and Derek Bowman

Relative difficulty: Medium (somewhere in the 2:50s)

THEME:"SAY WHAT?" (71A: "Huh?" ... or a possible response to 1-, 19-, 25-, 48- and 57-Across — themers are ... what? Types of talk that are either incoherent or wrong or pointless or some combination, I guess:

Theme answers:

BLATHER (1A: Prattle)
MUMBO JUMBO (19A: Nonsense)
JIBBER JABBER (25A: Worthless talk)
GOBBLEDYGOOK (48A: Unintelligible jargon)
BALDERDASH (57A: Twaddle)

Word of the Day: EVA MARIE Saint (6D: Actress Saint of "North by Northwest") —

Eva Marie Saint (born July 4, 1924) is an American actress. In a career spanning over 75 years, she is best known for starring in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) and in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). The former won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Upon the death of Olivia de Havilland in 2020, she became the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award winner and one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.

• • •

This is roughly the Monday equivalent of yesterday's puzzle: a loose list of vaguely related things, all of them redolent of times of yore, and then a grid that's creaky and, like the themers, has a cultural center of gravity somewhere in the middle of the last century. Look, I *love* EVA MARIE Saint, and she's welcome any time, but come on. SCOOB (!?) is what passes for a "current" cultural reference in this thing. "ZORBA the Greek" ... Paul ANKA ... LOVE-INS ... RED (!) CHINA ... "PAL JOEY" ... even the HIP stuff reeks of one-hit wonder datedness (BAHA Men, PSY). G.B. SHAW is a real yikes (only one step up from GBS, which thankfully you don't really see anymore — it seems to have been well and truly exiled along with RLS, EAP, and other literary monograms once thought worthy of grid space). Even the video game is old ("MYST"). Even the "Internet" slang is old (THE WEB!). BAD! SAG! Again, this isn't about bygone things per se, which are obviously an important part of anyone's knowledge base. It's just over and over and over, relentlessly, the presumed knowledge in this thing (and so many NYTXWs) belongs to those who are 65+; there's an arrogance, really, to the idea that you don't even have to acknowledge that other things have happened lately. It's deeply exclusionary of younger solvers. And again, I'm talking about degree here. Balance. There is no balance here. No generational balance. It's just dust. Everywhere. And the theme accentuates this, as most of these terms (which, by the way, have very little in common except kooky-sounding names) are now quaint and used only ironically, if at all. I mean, really, BALDERDASH? Actually, I might use BLATHER or MUMBO JUMBO. But the others, man, I don't know...

The theme could've been made a little more coherent if all the themers had had the same clue? Maybe? Like ... you probably could've gotten away with [Nonsense] for all of them. Probably. But what you have here is a not-terribly-coherent list, and it's weirdly extra long (just as yesterday's puzzle had an unusually high number of themers). More does not = better. It's just ... more of a just-OK, mostly boring thing, and all that "more" does is put pressure on the non-thematic elements of the fill, which is why it's not that great (OOO, ALAMB, BAAS, AER, LRON, etc.). That's all I have to say today. Hope springs eternal. Or, you know, hope stirs a little. Probably alive. Enjoy your day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Any Yanni and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: untimed, but felt much slower than a typical Tuesday

THEME: CLOUD "nine" (24A: With this puzzle's central black squares, ecstasy) — black squares in and around the center of the grid form the number "9"; other themers (I think) include:

Theme answers:

SHEER BLISS (18A: Rapture)
HAPPY PLACE (59A: Comforting mental state)
SHANGRI-LA (4D: Heaven)
WONDERLAND (31D: Realm of marvels)

Word of the Day: CORFU (9D: Greek tourist destination) —

Corfu (/kɔːrˈf(j)uː/, US also /ˈkɔːrf(j)uː/) or Kerkyra (Greek: Κέρκυρα, romanized: Kérkyra, pronounced [ˈcercira]) is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. of the Ionian Islands, and, including its small satellite islands, forms the margin of the northwestern frontier of Greece. The island is part of the Corfu regional unit, and is administered by three municipalities with the islands of Othonoi, Ereikoussa and Mathraki. The principal city of the island (pop. 32,095) is also named Corfu. Corfu is home to the Ionian University. (wikipedia)

• • •

It's my favorite number, but that didn't help enjoyment much here. It's an interesting idea that gets weirdly executed. HALF of me is happy that I got a Tuesday grid that is at least interesting—with a bunch of (eight!) longer (9+) answers that allowed for more interesting fill than you usually encounter on a Tuesday. But that happiness was offset considerably by two things—grid structure and theme execution. I don't know what CLOUD is where it is. Why isn't it at the top of the grid? The top is where a CLOUD should be. Plus, in that position, the whole grid would read "CLOUD 9" much more naturally. Here, the CLOUD is just sort of awkwardly jutting out of the top of the "9"; it looks sloppy. Further, the list of themers ... are they not really signaled as themers for a reason? As with yesterday's puzzle, this set seems very ragged and not consistently synonymous with each other, let alone with "CLOUD 9." SHEER BLISS feels right, but the list drifts away from the theme from there, with WONDERLAND being the farthest afield. WONDERLAND is a place (a literal physical space) filled with, well, wonders, and while a WONDERLAND might put you on CLOUD 9 (which is strictly a metaphorical emotional state), it does not necessarily do that. If you've read "Alice in WONDERLAND," you know that frequently she was nowhere near CLOUD 9. SHANGRI-LA is an ideal (if imaginary) *place* (again, not a state of being). HAPPY PLACE is close, but also suggests a state of denial, a place you retreat to comfort yourself when you are decidedly *not* on CLOUD 9.

The grid structure, necessitated by the whole "9" construction, also leads to some unpleasantness. I don't care for the long non-themers right along themers of the same length. Confusing. I thought IN A GOOD WAY was theme material for a bit, but ... I guess not. Not a fan of these false themers, which are as long as themers and in theme-seeming positions but are not, ultimately, themers. Bigger issue with the grid structure is the horrendous lack of flow. That is, it's a super-segmented grid, with both fussy little crannies in the middle and then isolated grid pockets literally everywhere, with the worst being the giant NW / SE corners, which are accessible from the rest of the grid only via the narrowest of apertures. May as well be separate puzzles. It was fiddly and annoying to solve this one. Very ragged / start-and-stop. Oh, and lots and lots of short fill (again, necessitated by the whole "9" thing), which ended up being less than entertaining to fill in. But again, I will say that the longer answers go a long way toward keeping this thing interesting. I just wish the execution of the theme here had been (much) more elegant.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Juliana Tringali Golden

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (?????) (I co-solved on Zoom ten minutes after waking up so I have no idea)

THEME: WEATHER BALLOONS (40A: Carriers of meteorological instruments ... as suggested by this puzzle's theme)— types of WEATHER are rebused inside four little BALLOONS (or circles):

Theme answers:

LAUNCH WINDOW / REWINDS
EXTRA INNINGS / EL TRAINS
TEAR ASUNDER / TSUNAMI
SLICED BREAD / CICERO

Word of the Day: SENNA (34D: Ingredient in some medicinal teas) —

1: any of a genus (Cassia synonym Senna) of leguminous herbs, shrubs, and trees native to warm regions : CASSIAsense 2especially : one used medicinally
2: the dried leaflets or pods of various sennas (especially Cassia angustifolia synonym Senna alexandrina) used as a purgative (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Good morning. It's getting late so I'm just gonna sketch the highlights and then refer you to the VIDEO SOLVE I did just now (sooooo early in the morning) with my friend and fellow crossword blogger (and fellow Central New Yorker) Rachel Fabi. I'll post the video at the end of the write-up. Aw, heck, I'll just post it here:

My main thoughts were that the theme was cute and well executed but the fill could've used some cleaning up. Weird (though not unheard of) to see a rebus on a Wednesday, but in this case the rebus squares are clearly flagged by the circles, which have been integrated into the theme *as circles*. Usually circles don't have any intrinsic value, puzzlewise; they just indicate letters that we are meant to notice for some reason. But here, the actual circle itself becomes part of the theme: clever. WEATHER BALLOONS is a perfect revealer and a perfect grid-spanner and so conceptually, this works. The one issue I have with the theme (and I didn't mention this in the video) is that with an embedded word (like the weather words today), the elegant thing to do is have that word touching both elements in the theme answer, the way RAIN, for instances, touches both EXTRA (RA-) and INNINGS (-IN). You break the word across the two elements of the theme answer. Today, that happened only once. Hiding WIND inside WINDOW ... meh. Not hard. There should be a reason you've hidden these inside flashy longer themers instead of just any old place on the grid. But here, LAUNCH and TEAR and BREAD are just hanging out with nothing to do—not touching the "weather" at all. Part of what makes themers in puzzles like this special is that the hidden word is hidden in this particular way, touching all the answer elements. To have one themer do this and the other three ... not ... makes this seem less polished, less carefully made.

Fillwise, the puzzle is actually pretty rough, but there are some reasons for that, most notably that the theme is pretty dense and puts pretty severe restrictions on the grid. You have the five themers plus the rebus element, which means the crosses of those rebus squares are all fixed parts of the theme as well. I still think the fill should've been a lot smoother, but it's definitely passable. The one huge no-no is the fault of the editor (yet again). You can't (canNOT) cross DQS and QUEEN at the "Q" if you are going to clue DQS as "Dairy Queens" plural. You can't even have DQS and QUEEN in the same puzzle if that is how you're going to clue DQS. That is a dupe. A duplication. An editing mistake. Incredibly shoddy. DQS can be an abbr. for "disqualifications," esp. in sports, so either a different clue should've been used for DQS or that whole section should've been redone. Again, you absolutely cannot have "Q" meaning "queen" in an answer and then have the actual word QUEEN as an entirely different answer, and you *especially* can't do this if the answers cross at the "Q" LOL who's steering the ship over there!? Somebody mutiny, please!

Today's constructor, Juliana Tringali Golden, is an editor at the The Inkubator Crossword, a 3x/month independent crossword made entirely by women ("cis women, trans women, and women-allied constructors"). You can subscribe here!

OK, bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Billy Ouska

Relative difficulty: Medium (untimed)

THEME: CAN'T FIND THE TIME (52A: Is unable to get away, say ... or a hint to 17-, 24- and 40-Across?) — familiar phrases with "TIME" in them have "TIME" pulled out of them, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):

Theme answers:

LET THE GOODS ROLL (17A: Spill a shipment of bowling balls?)
WAITS FOR NO ONE (24A: Works during a slow day at the restaurant?)
TAKE ONE'S SWEET (40A: Go on a date with a honeybun?)

Word of the Day:"Il Tabarro" (56A: French setting for Puccini's "Il Tabarro") —

Il tabarro (The Cloak) is an opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, based on Didier Gold [nl]'s play La houppelande. It is the first of the trio of operas known as Il trittico. The first performance was given on 14 December 1918 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. (wikipedia)

The scene is Michele's barge on the Seine, in a corner of Paris. Giorgetta, Michele's young wife, is in love with Luigi, a longshoreman hired by her husband during the loading of the barge. Michele, by mere accident, guesses the truth. Having overheard his wife giving a rendezvous to Luigi by night, Michele waits for the man, surprises him as he jumps on the barge, seizes him by the neck, compels him to admit he is his wife's lover and strangles him. Then he hides the body under his cloak, and when Giorgetta, in mortal fear, comes on deck and asks Michele if he does not wish her to come and rest near him under his cloak—for, according to the text, “every man carries a cloak, hiding sometimes a great joy, sometimes a terrible sorrow”—her wronged husband throws it open and Giorgetta utters a shriek of horror as her lover's body rolls at her feet. (opera.stanford.edu)

• • •

Not for me at all. This is the kind of theme where the wackiness really has to land perfectly, and this one only does that once (WAITS FOR NO ONE, that's good). And with only two other examples of the theme, there's no way to recover. It's an OK concept, but the execution was a let-down. The grid overall was pretty dull, and the cluing was just my bad luck, i.e. nothing that seemed very interesting to me, and a lot that didn't. I do want to single out the clue on HAT TRICK as particularly good (4D: Series of goals). A HAT TRICK is when you score three goals in a game (typically in hockey ... at least that's the context in which I've heard the term). But the clue is worded in such a way that makes you think of tasks or life goals, so when I couldn't make BUCKET LIST fit, I was stumped. Always nice to be mad at a clue only to have it turn out to be clever in an undeniable way. But most of this grid is just filler. Short dull stuff. Hard even to find a suitable Word of the Day today. AMBER / ALERTS was way too grim for me, to be honest. Something about the playfulness of the whole split-answer thing ([With 5-Down, etc.]) is really really really at odds with the answer itself. If you clued AMBER as [___ Alerts] or ALERTS as [Amber ___] I would wonder why, why in the world you were dragging child abduction into the grid for absolutely no reason. And in a grid with PREDATOR? Yeesh.

Some of the clues just seemed obnoxious to me. The one on BRIDES, for instance (23D: There are more of these in the U.S. in October than any other month, surprisingly). First, ugh, trivia. Second, what's "surprising" is that "October" gives you absolutely zero information. I was expecting something ironic due to the Octoberness of it all. That wouldn't made sense, just as it would've made sense if the clue had actually included "not June"—then yes, that would've been surprising, and there would've been *some* hint (but not too obvious a hint) as to what the clue was getting at. You need the "surprising" part, the part that touches the point of it all, in the clue. Without "not June," this clue flops. I am terrible at [Word with X or Y]-type clues. Just awful. Today, no different. SLIDE?? LOL sure. Couldn't think of a single word that would go with "tackle," but SLIDE, sure, soccer, OK. I honestly thought SLIDE rule here referred to the rule in baseball about what defines a legal slide (nothing that could seriously harm a fielder, essentially). But of course a SLIDE rule is a ye olden measurement thing I've actually never seen. Like an abacus, as I understand it.

One last thing re: yesterday's puzzle. I have heard from a couple people that the DQS clue (26A: Blizzards are produced in them, familiarly) was OK because the theme was "weather." I cannot stress enough how wrong this is. The point is, you can't have an initial in your answer that stands for a word that appears elsewhere in the grid, and you *especially* can't do that when the initial *crosses* said word (as DQS, meaning Dairy QUEENs, was crossing QUEEN yesterday). The weatherness of the DQS clue is totally beside the point. First of all, DQS wasn't a themer. Second, sure, you can weather up all the non-theme clues you like in your weather puzzle, go to town, but you can't dupe a word like that. Cannot. I'm not making this up. I've seen editors scrub far less obvious dupes than this one. If they are careful, they pay close attention to these things. The idea that "Q" can't both stand for "queen" and *cross* QUEEN, that is not some random opinion. Here's a random opinion: poker clues suck (see 39A: Poker slang for three of a kind = TRIPS). That one's all mine. Precisely zero editors are gonna care about that opinion. But the duping thing, that's careless / bad editing. If you watched the solving video, you saw how fast Rachel reacted to the DQS / QUEEN crossing. No hesitation. Because everyone who works in the world of crosswords knows you can't do that. The fact that the theme was weather-related couldn't be less relevant. Doesn't justify the dupe at all. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Merry Christmas Eve.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Erik Agard and Wendy L. Brandes

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:25)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Madame NOIRE (57A: madame ___ (online lifestyle magazine)) —

MadameNoire is an international online magazine that is geared toward the lifestyles of African American women as well as popular culture.
In 2015, MadameNoire had 7,116,000 unique visitors monthly, making it the most trafficked site oriented to African Americans--ahead of The Root, BET.com, and Bossip.com. (wikipedia)

• • •

A very Friday Friday. Friday done right. A bouncy, easyish themeless, with interesting longer answers and mostly decent fill and some clever cluing. If I get this on Friday, I'm good. There were maybe a few more brief frowny moments than I expected from constructors of this caliber. AMEN RA and EELPOT are, of course, actual things, but they're the kind of old-school crosswordese I usually only see these days in grids that are struggling for one reason or another to keep their heads above water. The EELPOT section is actually conspicuous for how glutted it is with "E"s and "R"s. On my printed-out grid, I've drawn a boomerang shape with green pen encompassing I'M FREE over REFEREE and then turning south to pick up EELPOT and EERIE. I'd throw ÉTÉS in there too, as it is plural foreign crossordese abutting boomerang in question. That SW section isn't bad, it just has ... a little wobble. Not as tight as it might be, esp. in a highish-word-count themeless grid. I have trouble with GALOSH in the singular, although I guess if they come in pairs, there must be a singular, technically. Still, you hear "sock" and "shoe" but GALOSH ... not so much. But honestly, I don't hear the plural that much either. That's pretty much it for dings, and none of the dings really mitigated my overall enjoyment all that much. In the end, NOT BAD AT ALL.

As often happens, my experience with 1-Across set the tone for the whole puzzle. Today, got it right away, or, rather, thought I had it, and then tested the crosses to make sure. So RABBI AMEN RA BONE-IN (nice) and off I went. Got CZAR off the "R" and guessed the correct spelling because the rule is: actual former Russian leader = TSAR, honcho of some sort = CZAR. Use this rule for first guesses, with the understanding that the rule is not actually a rule, more a guideline (but a pretty reliable one). Struggled with both of the four-letter movie franchises in the middle of the grid, LOTR (i.e. "Lord of the Rings") because I just didn't have enough to go on (28D: Popular fantasy film franchise, for short), and HULK because I got GRETA THUNBERG confused (I think) with American movie producer Irving THALBERG, which gave me HA-K for 32D: "The Avengers" role, which made me think maybe someone named ... HAWK? ... was in "The Avengers." Hawkman is a superhero, but he's DC. Oh, yeah, I didn't have the "L" for HULK because 38A: Command after a crash (RELOAD) was not all clear to me. I have never had occasion to use said command. Reboot restart helpme ... but not RELOAD. Slowed me down considerably, that little snarl-up, but it was all ultimately very sortoutable. "Rent-to-own" is a familiar phrase to me, LEASE-TO-OWN isn't, but it wasn't hard to figure out the gist of that one. No idea about Madame NOIRE. Seems like the "most trafficked site oriented to African-Americans" might be worth knowing. And now I know.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Medium (untimed)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: NEC (62A: Major chip maker) —

NEC Corporation (日本電気株式会社, Nippon Denki Kabushiki-gaisha) is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics company, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, AI, IoT platform, and 5G network products, to business enterprises, communications services providers and to government agencies, and has also been the biggest PC vendor in Japan since the 1980s, when it launched the PC-8000 series.
NEC was the world's fourth largest PC manufacturer by 1990. Its semiconductors business unit was the world's largest semiconductor company by annual revenue from 1985 to 1992, the second largest in 1995, one of the top three in 2000, and one of the top 10 in 2006. NEC spun off its semiconductor business to Renesas Electronics and Elpida Memory. Once Japan's major electronics company, NEC has largely withdrawn from manufacturing since the beginning of the 21st century.
NEC was #463 on the 2017 Fortune 500 list. NEC is a member of the Sumitomo Group. (wikipedia)

• • •

Happy Boxing Day. This one was DRAB. There's not a single answer here that I was really excited to see. Maybe people think SELF-DRIVING CAR is pretty showy, but my feelings about cars in general, and these pedestrian-maiming data-collecting Matrix-serving cars in particular, are pretty negative, so no joy there. From tech bros to sports bros (LEFT TACKLE crossing AIKMAN) to poker bros (CARD SHARKS*), to political bros (ELDER STATESMAN), this puzzle bros its way through brosville. There's just one woman mentioned in the whole puzzle (also the puzzle's lone Black person) (22A: Singer India.___), and she's only there because she's crosswordese, i.e. short answer, favorable letters. You do get ANN, but the clue makes that a city name part, not a woman (42A: One "A" in the Michigan nickname). Please don't ask me to count DAMSEL, since that word evokes only distress. Compare this puzzle with yesterday's, and (I hope) you really see a difference in vision. Not only did yesterday's have more plain-old winners, but it deliberately included All Kinds of stuff, All Kinds of people. You could really feel the conscious inclusivity. This one, on the other hand, feels like not much thought was given to diversifying the fill or the cluing. Very traditional, in the sense that puzzles "traditionally" oriented themselves to an older, white audience. There's nothing terrible about this puzzle. It just has no sizzle and feels like it belongs to a bygone (more exclusionary) era. I think SPARKS was probably my favorite thing in the puzzle, mostly because I got a little jolt (!) of Aha. Nothing else in the puzzle gave me much of a jolt.

Found the west much easier than the east, mainly because the clue on SELF-DRIVING CAR is so contrived (10D: Something for which a dealer might tell customers "Hands off!"). It's trying so hard to be clever and misdirective that it ends up creating a completely implausible scenario on a literal level. Imagine any salesperson shouting "Hands off!" at customers. It's too harshly admonitory and too infantilizing to be realistic. The clue needed a "?" because it's doing a wordplay thing that distorts the literal plausibility of the clue too much. Again, if you're gonna get winky and clever with your clues, They Must Land. Bah. Anyway, the first time I felt stuck was here:

The NE was the real problem. Just after I took this screenshot, I looked at the clue for LEFT TACKLE and got it instantly (52A: Protector of a quarterback's blind side, often), so despite my having almost completely forgotten that Troy AIKMAN once existed, I managed to piece that corner together. But even with -INGCAR at the end of 10D, I couldn't understand what the clue wanted. So the NE looked bad for a little bit. It's possible I would've gotten DO-OVERS (not DOES OVER) eventually (36A: Retries; a noun!), and even possible that PICOT would've leapt into my brain (32A: Embroidery loop), but what weirdly saved me up there, what did actually leap into my head after I thought about it for two or three seconds, was POLAR ICE (11D: Cap material). Brain just rolodexed through cap types, hit ice cap, and bam, with just the "O" in place: POLAR ICE. And then all of a sudden, seemingly in a flash, a daunting, wide-open empty space was filled and the puzzle was done. Wish I'd liked it more.

Any tricky stuff that needs explaining? FAUX AMIS means "false friends," in case that was unclear (57A: Words in a foreign language that bear a deceptive resemblance to those in another, like the French "décevoir" ("disappoint") and the English "deceive"). I know the term "false cognates," but if I ever knew FAUX AMIS, I forgot it. Alas and alack. There are two "N"s in "pennies," so that's what that clue is about (56D: Couple of pennies? = ENS). I don't like it either, but it's an unfortunately common little gimmick for cluing double letters (ENS EMS PEES etc.). I think that's it. Enjoy your day. Good luck with all your boxing!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*I'm well aware that women *can* be CARD SHARKS, but every single one I've ever seen on screen or anywhere has been a dude, and the card-playing word is an absolute sausagefest so please don't "well, actually" me on this one, thx. Well, actually, you can "well, actually" me on this one, but only if it's to say, "well, actually, the term is CARD SHARPS"

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Constructor: Daniel Grinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium ? (untimed)

THEME:"Partnerships"— ___ AND ___ phrases, clued (punnily) as some kind of "partners":

Theme answers:

JUDGE AND JURY (Law partners)
PEACE AND QUIET (Silent partners)
PEN AND PAPER (Writing partners)
BREAKING AND ENTERING (Partners in crime)
BOOM AND BUST (Business partners)
HUGS AND KISSES (Romantic partners)
ROOM AND BOARD (110A: Domestic partners)

Word of the Day: GRENACHE (29D: Sweet red dessert wine) —

: a widely cultivated sweet red grape used especially in wine makingalso : a varietal wine made from this grape (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Hello, all. Can't spend long on this because I'm watching "Christmas in Connecticut" with friends in about an hour, and thank god, because I need something to gladden me after the dreariness of this puzzle. I remain baffled by how corny dull and dated the Sunday puzzle is, almost every week. Today, all the ... interest? cleverness? ... is in the clues. I guess you think of a bunch of types of "partners" (i.e. phrases that run "___ partners" or "partners in ___") and then you think of ___ AND ___ phrases that fall in the general category of whatever type of partners you're dealing with. So [Restaurant partners] could be SOUP AND SALAD or SALT AND PEPPER or HAM AND EGGS, [Dance partners] could be BUMP AND GRIND, etc. Yes, there is a coherent concept here, but the results are very tepid. Like dad jokes on simmer. And the fill is a real millstone; I can deal with a slightly ho-hum theme if there's lots of non-theme things to enjoy about the puzzle. But there aren't. The fill is frequently painful, with stuff like BIENNIA (?!) and SPECIE really stinking up the joint. QIN ISSO NTHS. ONO ONEG ROES. ADES + OGEES. Etc. IN REPAIR (?) and IN BETA :( ... It's no worse than your average Sunday, I guess, but the average Sunday is so much worse than it oughta be. This is the puzzle billing itself as the Best Puzzle in the World, and this is the marquee puzzle, the biggie, the one with the most cachet: the Sunday. And week after week, it's thud after thud. If I sound like a broken record, I'm just echoing the puzzle itself. It's stuck. Stuck. Stuck.

There's not really much to say about this. Things I didn't know: GRENACHE. I guess I don't really drink dessert wines, red or otherwise. I had YTD before QTR (41D: Fiscal year div.), which means I didn't really read the clue very closely. Wanted ATTENDANCE but got ATTENDEES (14D: Event organizer's count). Am never going to know allllll the Chinese dynasties. Thought the clue on AFAR was pretty bad (100A: How Phileas Fogg traveled). Love GIMLETs, but only the kind you drink (91D: Small hole-drilling tool). Best thing in the grid is GOON SQUAD (1D: Group of heavies). That's all. Maybe you have other things you'd like to talk about, but I SOURedON this puzzle pretty early on, and nothing in the puzzle did much to change that. Will never understand why Sundays are such throwaway days. Seems a waste.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alan Massengill and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Medium (3 flat, I've had a drink)

THEME: apex — themers are all vertical and their first words, i.e. the word at the uppermost part of the grid, all mean "uppermost":

Theme answers:

ACME CORPORATION (3D: Wile E. Coyote's supplier)
PEAK PERFORMANCE (5D: Athlete's goal in competition)
HEIGHT OF FASHION (9D: Absolute chicness)
TOP OF THE MORNING (11D: Quaint greeting)

Word of the Day: MBE (66D: U.K. medal accepted and then returned by John Lennon, in brief)—

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V and comprises five classes across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of the order. [...] The five classes of appointment to the Order are, in descending order of precedence:

GBE – Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire^[b]
KBE or DBE – Knight Commander or Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
CBE – Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
OBE – Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
MBE – Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (wikipedia)

• • •

Like many recent puzzles, this one feels like it was made 25 years ago, but at least this one is solid, as 1995 puzzles go. ACME, PEAK, HEIGHT (metaphorically), TOP, yep, those all mean the same thing, and they all appear at the "top" or their answer, *and* they are all a grid-spanning 15 letters long. Simple, tight theme, elegantly expressed. The fill is ... well, it's from 1995. It's there. It's largely inoffensive. Don't look too hard. Just look at the theme. The theme is fine.

This one took me in the neighborhood of ten seconds longer than usual, but I'm attributing those seconds to my Manhattan (delicious), because looking over this grid, I don't really see any places that I got significantly hung up. I had ACME but no idea what followed. I had no idea re: PEAK PERFORMANCE because it doesn't sound like what the clue suggests. "What's your goal in this competition, athlete?""PEAK PERFORMANCE!" No, you want to win. Are you competing? Then you want to win. You want victory. PEAK PERFORMANCE, what kind of mumbo jumbo is that. You're trying to win or what are you even doing. HEIGHT OF FASHION I got off the "H," and TOP OF THE MORNING didn't take me that many crosses either (shouldn't it be "Top O' the morning"— I feel like past crosswords have insisted that that is the expression). Really thought having all the themers being 15s, and not struggling That much with any of them, would put me in a faster-than-average solving situation. But no. Had STAY before STUD (10A: Tuxedo shirt fastener) (You can tell I wear tuxedos a Lot). PDF before GIF (46A: Internet image file, familiarly). Honestly had no idea about WAX until I got all the crosses. Honeycomb stuff is honey. WAX? Sure, but come on—"stuff" should mean what the honeycomb contains, not what it's made of. Bah. The answer that took me longest, and was the last thing I filled in, was INTERACT (58A: Be sociable), perhaps because I haven't INTERACTed with anyone but my wife and cats for, oh, (looks at watch) 8 months.

British Empire medal abbrevs. (today, MBE) are the absolute lowest form of fill (after plural suffixes), a staple of a bygone era when constructors desperately needed *any* three-letter answers they could get their hands on because they didn't have access to software to make their lives easier and thus make solvers' lives more pleasurable. Such abbrevs. really have no place in an easy puzzle any more. If you're in a real tight spot, OK, fine, but ... well, I see how you've got two themers running through that section, so maybe that counts as a "tight spot" (you've got the awful ACAB in the symmetrical section up top). Still, though, if you're a constructor, consider banishing UK medals from your wordlist, or (better) just making them fill of last resort. Goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Once upon a time, there lived a 20-something-year-old named Clare who was so freaking done with 2020 and was counting down the minutes until the clock struck midnight on the new year. She, of course, wishes the stupid pandemic would be over already and the world could get back to normal. In the meantime, she’ll settle for more of the second-half Steelers she saw in their game against the Colts last weekend. She also hopes for another Liverpool title this year and, of course, a BTS Grammy win. Oh, yeah, and a successful final semester of law school.

Now on to the puzzle!

Constructor:Matthew Trout

Relative difficulty:A normal Tuesday

THEME:FAIRY TALE ENDING— (“Happily ever after” ... or what 17-, 27-, 39- or 47-Across has?) — The theme answers all end with words often associated with fairy tales

Theme answers:

WARRIOR PRINCESS (17A: Xena, notably)
KOMODO DRAGON (27A: Largest lizard on earth (up to 10 feet long))
CN TOWER (39A: Toronto landmark that’s the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere)
GLADYS KNIGHT (47A: Who sang the 1973 #1 hit “Midnight Train to Georgia”)

Word of the Day:NYALA (52D: Spiral-horned African antelope) —

The Nyala is a spiral-horned antelope native to southern Africa. The body length is 53–77 in, and it weighs 121–309 lb. The coat is maroon or rufous brown in females and juveniles, but grows a dark brown or slate grey, often tinged with blue, in adult males. Females and young males have ten or more white stripes on their sides. Only males have horns, 24–33 in long and yellow-tipped. As an herbivore, the nyala feeds upon foliage, fruits and grasses, with sufficient fresh water. A shy animal, it prefers water holes rather than open spaces. (Wiki)

• • •

I quite enjoyed the theme! I thought it was cute and clever and was done in a neat way. For what it’s worth, in my world, the order here would’ve been changed a bit so that it’s the princess vanquishing the dragon and saving the prince locked away in the tower. Still, who doesn’t love a good fairy tale?

The theme didn’t help me with the solve at all, but that didn’t detract from the puzzle for me in any way. The fill, however, did detract some from my enjoyment of the puzzle. I didn’t particularly enjoy the southeast corner, as pretty much all of that was just crosswordese (VIA, OTOE, SYNE, IN ON, AGEE). Also, I know my elands and goas and oribis and okapis, but I’ve never come across the word NYALA (52D) before. NYALA crossing ELLIE (66A: “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” actress Kemper), who some people might not know, felt a bit mean. It took me forever to get OWN for 29D: Cable channel named for a talk show host— I figured it must be Oprah, but I just couldn’t think of what the acronym for the network would be (I sometimes forget that she even has a last name). That then crossing CN TOWER (39A), which I didn’t know, was a bit hard for me, as well. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard hipsters say I DIG (19D: Hipsters “gotcha”)? My dad tells me that hippies were known for saying that, but, well, he’s ooolllddd.

All that being said, I do think the cute theme and otherwise nice puzzle trump any of those complaints. Plus, there were some nice downs — I liked LONGEVITY (35D: What the biblical Methuselah was known for) and WORLD MAPS (3D: Some classroom wall hangings), in particular.

I don’t have much else to say other than that — I simply liked the puzzle!

Misc.:

All I could think of when I got to the revealer and saw “ever after” (63A) was the movie “Enchanted,” which I just rewatched with my family, and Carrie Underwood’s “Ever Ever After” that plays during the credits. What a great movie. (Ooh, and *spoiler alert,* it ends with the princess saving her one true love!)
It took me forever to get RIME (15A: Frosty coating). The only thing I saw when I looked at the clue was something about frosting. I tried to come up with an answer related to icing.
Okay, I hated, hated, hated39A: The Golden State, familiarly. I’ve lived here most of my life. Trust me when I say that no one calls it CALI. Literally no one. That’s almost as bad as calling San Francisco “Frisco.” NorCal is fine. SoCal is fine. But never CALI.

Hope everyone gets off to a great start in the new year!

Signed, Clare Carroll, looking for a prince to save

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Constructor: Kate Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Easyish (untimed)

THEME: BILLY CLUB (66A: Nightstick ... or what might form if the beginnings of 14-, 20-, 37- and 58-Across started paying dues?) — first part of each theme answer is also the last name of a famous BILLY:

Theme answers:

OCEAN VIEW (14A: It might cost extra at a beach resort)
CRYSTAL BALL (20A: Clairvoyant's accessory)
GRAHAM CRACKER (37A: Key lime pie crust ingredient)
PORTERHOUSE (58A: Cut above the rest?)

Word of the Day: Billy Porter (see final theme answer at 58A) —

Billy Porter (born September 21, 1969) is an American actor and singer. He attended the Musical Theater program at Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School's School of Drama, graduated from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, and achieved fame performing on Broadway before starting a solo career as a singer and actor.
Porter won the 2013 Best Actor in a Musical for his role as Lola in Kinky Boots at the 67th Tony Awards. He credits the part for "cracking open" his feminine side to confront toxic masculinity. For the role, Porter also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. In 2014 Porter won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for Kinky Boots. He currently stars in the television series Pose for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won the 2019 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, becoming the first openly gay black man to be nominated and win in any lead acting category at the Primetime Emmys.
Porter is included in Time magazine 's 100 Most Influential People of 2020. (wikipedia)

• • •

Can't quibble with the core idea here. It works. Take a [blank] CLUB phrase, then make your themers' first words (or word parts) all types of [blank]. It's cookie-cutter, but cookie cutters make very neat shapes, so conceptually, this is fine. What made this puzzle completely off-putting for me was the revealer. I'll be blunt: I wring an enthusiastic "aha!" from an instrument of police brutality, especially not at the end of a year dominated by said brutality and the vocal, world-changing resistance thereto. I wouldn't want to see BILLY CLUB in any puzzle, in any position, and I especially don't want it posing for cute pictures in the revealer position. Themes are hard, so if you find one that works, I applaud you, but with some themes ... just because you can doesn't mean you should.

My other substantial objection to the puzzle has nothing to do with the theme; it's the PINYON (?) / ESO crossing. That is a horrendous crossing. If you have never heard of the PINYON tree (raises hand) then that vowel in ESO is a complete and utter guess. Hell, even if you *have* heard of the PINYON tree, there's a reasonable chance that you're not certain how to spell it. The only way I guessed "O" correctly there was by "knowing" (erroneously, it turns out) that PINYAN was already a thing—the romanization system for Chinese. Turns out that's PINYIN, but whatever, I made the right choice, which is what counts, and yet ... that is not how anyone should have to make a choice on the final letter. 23A: That: Sp. can be ESO or ESA, so the cross for that last letter has to be crystal (!) clear and undeniable. I submit that the last vowel in a regional tree, in this case, is not clear and undeniable. I mean, if you tried to analogize from other trees that end -Y-blank-N, you probably *would* have gone with the "A," since the BANYAN tree exists (and is the national tree of India, in fact). All the editor had to do here is clue ESO in a way where grammatical gender was a given (I've never prayed for "ESO Beso" before, but Oh, Lord Anka, hear my plea!). But no. We get ambigu-clue. :/

Not a lot else to say here. The fill seems fine. I forgot that MAISIE was the title character in those detective novels, but I'm happy to be reminded. They're very popular (24A: ___ Dobbs, title detective in Jacqueline Winspear books). I don't think AFTRA is particularly great fill (9A: SAG-___ (media labor union)). If you wanna clue SAG as a union, that's fine, any time: the SAG Awards make that particular acronym well known and thus fair game. But AFTRA is just the butt-end of a hyphenated name. Not great stand-alone material. It sounds like an off-brand aftershave. Oh my god, "Afta" ... "after" ... is AFTA aftershave an aural pun? Wow, I just got that. Sorry I have no similar revelations about ATRA or AFLAC at this time. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. just found out AFTA makes something called a "pre-shave" lotion, and now I don't know what to think

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Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Easy (untimed) (didn't struggle anywhere)

THEME: SMALL BUSINESSES (7D: Local economy makeup ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme) — a rebus puzzle with different "business" abbrevs. made "small" (i.e. shoved into a single box):

Theme answers:

MARGIN CALL / TRAIN CAR (19A: Broker's request for funds / 4D: Diner or sleeper)
BITCOIN / EMOTICONS (26A: Digital currency / 8D: Faces of the digital age?)
MELTDOWN / WALT DISNEY (38A: Epic collapse / 31D: Winner of a record 26 Oscars)
SPELLCHECK / HELLCATS (46A: Highlighter of this clue? / 40D: Violently temperamental sorts)

Word of the Day: MARMOT (38D: Woodchuck of the western U.S.) —

: any of a genus (Marmota) of stout-bodied short-legged chiefly herbivorous burrowing rodents of the squirrel family that have coarse fur, a short bushy tail, and very small ears and that hibernate during the winter (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

As with yesterday's puzzle, I can't complain about the concept too much. This is standard NYTXW rebus fare: a rebus puzzle cued by a punny revealer that contains "small" or "little" or else "boxes" or something. Here, very literal: types of businesses (specifically, the abbrevs. that might follow a company name) are made "small" and put into individual boxes. Honey, I shrunk the companies. And there it is. Pretty plain, as rebuses go. Of course, if you've never seen a rebus before, this isn't going to seem plain at all, but trust me, this is about as plain as a rebus gets. For me, the theme was dreary, because in general, all things bizness and biznessssspeak make me want to leave the room. Drains the life out of, well, everything. Maybe if our economic system were more fair and transparent, my feelings about the wonderful world of modern business would be different. But nothing is more boring to me than news about BITCOINBARONs or whatever. And these abbrevs—are you ever excited to see INC in your puzzle? LLC? It's the slag heap of crosswordese showing up at your house trying to get you to come out and play some rebus games. No thanks. And then the puzzle got it in its head that I might enjoy *bonus* theme material like BARON DIP POOLED NESTEGGS. . . SIGH. This is a topic I care about not at all. As I say, conceptually, it works ... well, mostly. It's a little ugly to have the rebus squares be actually business-related at first (MARGIN CALL, BITCOIN), but then not so much (MELTDOWN) and then not at all (SPELLCHECK). Feels like the puzzle went off the rails. Fizzled out. Also, the rebus elements, besides being a mass of dullness, also involve repetition, which is normally (as I've said recently) a huge no-no. This is what the abbrevs. stand for:

INC = Incorporated
CO = Company
LTD = Limited (UK)
LLC = Limited Liability Company :(

First of all, "Company" is so generic that it doesn't really go with the others. The others are all abbrevs. that follow a comma in a company name, whereas CO. ... does not do that. And it's just two letters. *And* as you can see it's duped in LLC, i.e. the "C" there stands for "company." Notice that the "Limited" of LLC is also a dupe (of LTD, which stands for "limited"). There's not enough variety, and not nearly enough joy, to make this kind of thing fun.

I liked WALT DISNEY, in that I was able to get it off the rebus square alone, without looking at the clue. It's a solid answer, too, but I just like when my brain groks the pattern quick like that. I don't actually care too much for the Disney corporation or the man himself. Here, I'll let his niece, Abigail Disney, talk about him (from The Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 25, 2014) (she's responding to the fact that Meryl Streep had said some unfavorable things about her uncle):

I also like the WINGED IT / ART SCENE section, i.e. the SE. Very lively and interesting. Except SPUME. SPUME is one of those words that I would be happy never to see again. Big "moist" energy on SPUME. The fill overall on this one seemed quite solid, with short junk appearing only rarely. Probably wouldn't have clued ELS and DEE both as letters. DEE is a name, ELS are urban transport, mix it up. No idea who EMILIA is, but the puzzle's so easy that it hardly mattered (15A: Actress Clarke of "Game of Thrones"). Just needed enough crosses to make a plausible woman's name; only issue was whether she was gonna be an EMILIA or an AMELIA. I briefly got SUVA confused with APIA (another South Pacific capital), which created a mild delay in the south (49A: Capital of Fiji). Other than that, the only bit that slowed me down at all was at the very beginning, when I wrote in PCT at 1A: N.B.A. stat (PPG, which stands for "points per game"). Knew the next two short Acrosses in that section cold, and so had CLE- at the beginning of 2D: District attorney's offering, maybe (PLEA DEAL), and so I thought, "ooh, CLEMENCY, that's a cool word." And it is. It was just wrong.

Have a happy New Year's Eve (even if that means you're out by 10pm)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Tapenade discard / SAT 12-12-20 / Hybrid fruit also known as aprium / Luxury wear for showgoers / Longtime college basketball coach Kruger / Profession in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle / Jazzy Jeff per a 1988 3x platinum album title

Popular ABC programming block of the '90s / SUN 12-13-20 / Its name is derived from the Greek for I burn / Dock-udrama / World capital with Gangnam district / Palace Indian tourist attraction

Typical John le Carré work / MON 12-14-20 / Greek goddess of the dawn / "Gangnam Style" rapper / Kendrick with 13 Grammys and a Pulitzer Prize

Comic Fields on old Ed Sullivan shows / TUE 12-15-20 / Annual video game competition for short / Nickname of 1967 NFL Championship Game famously played at about -15

Toy company that made Etch A Sketch a success / WED 12-16-20 / 2002 musical that won eight Tonys / Iditarod pace setter / Home of Minoan civilization

Swiss Alp next to Lake Lucerne / THU 12-17-20 / Nadu Indian state / Sight on Disney World's Expedition Everest ride / Copland ballet with a hoedown / Longtime star of F.C. Barcelona

Longtime CBS News host Charles / FRI 12-18-20 / Target of 1972 ban / Stereotypical cry from a sailor / Mike Piazza beginning in 2006

Lyre holder in classical artwork / SAT 12-19-20 / Title woman in 1975 R&B hit by The Spinners / Eponym of European capital by tradition / Callisto's animal form in Greek mythology / Creature whose name comes from Tswana language / Sensationalistic opinion informally

Classic comics teen with good manners / SUN 12-20-20 / Mild light-colored cigar / William founder of Investor's Business Daily / Halogen-containing salt / Suffix suggested by wiggling of one's hand

1957 title role for Frank Sinatra / MON 12-21-20 / Old NASA moon-landing vehicle / Classic computer game set on an island / 1960s hippie gatherings / Great Dane of cartoons informally

Projecting rim of metal beam / TUE 12-22-20 / Field of mathematics pioneered by John von Neumann / Greek tourist destination / Italian name of six popes / Equine animal in rural dialect

Lawless figure with legendary fighting skills / WED 12-23-20 / Blizzards are produced in them familiarly / Overindulger of the grape / Locale of 1974's Rumble in the Jungle / Roebuck's onetime partner / Enemy of Antony in ancient Rome

Lover of Giorgetta in Puccini's Il Tabarro / THU 12-24-20 / What benchwarmers ride with the / High-quality French vineyard / Poker slang for three of a kind / Tract of low-growing vegetation

Sorting header in music app / FRI 12-25-20 / Fictional hero whose name is Spanish for fox / Supreme Egyptian god / Popular fantasy film franchise for short / Fishing gear left underwater / Toy associated with France

Creators of quipus / SAT 12-26-20 / Italian sculptor Lorenzo Bernini / Keogh alternative / No-nos at racetrack

First dynasty of imperial China / SUN 12-27-20 / Cocktail with rum curaçao fruit juice / Debut album for Etta James / Snapchatter's request / Small hole-drilling tool / Extinct flightless bird that once grew up to 12 feet / Workplace of the Cyclopes in Greek myth

Wile E. Coyote's supplier / MON 12-28-20 / UK medal accepted then returned by John Lennon in brief / Like Satan and some owls /

Tandoor bread / TUES 12-28-20 / Locales of wasps and spies / Xena, notably / Cantankerous

Chubby mouse in Disney's Cinderella / WED 12-30-20 / Ocher-like hue / corridor Northeast transportation route / Alternative to Lowe's

Woodchuck of the western U.S. / THU 12-31-20 / vivre ability to live elegantly / James Merritt pioneer in American lithography