Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Daniel Mauer

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: TURN SIGNAL (56A: Automotive safety feature represented (and to be followed) eight times in this puzzle) —

Theme answers:

MODERATE / BOREDOM (both answers take a "right" turn at the "R")
"I'M ALIVE" / EVIL ONE (both answers take a "left" turn at the "L")
CAST LOTS / STOLES (both answers take a "left" turn at the "L")
DEGRADE / CHARGED (both answers take a "right" turn at the "R")

Word of the Day: BORATE (one of the eight answers in this puzzle that have no clue ... this one looks like it's 5D) —

: a salt or ester of a boric acid (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Answers that turn at some point ... I have seen that a bunch of times before. Turning on the L or the R? Not sure. Don't know. The TURN SIGNAL angle is interesting, conceptually. But there's something missing here, some element to make it really pop. Two Ls, two Rs ... no real rhyme or reason to the execution. The answers veer left two times, then they veer R two times. The theme basically does what it says it does, but it feels really workmanlike and underwhelming. The thing that really isn't sitting well with me is the unclued stuff—that is, the answers that occur if you just read straight instead of turning. Actually, unclued entries are bound to happen with turning answers, so it's not just the uncluedness of eight answers; it's specifically the *uncrossed*ness of four of the answers. So BORATE isn't clued, but it's got the BOR from BOREDOM (which is clued) and the RATE from MODERATE, so every part of BORATE is clued in some way, even if the word itself isn't clued. But now let's look at MODERNISTS (the apparent 17A). You've got the MODER part, from MODERATE, but the -NISTS ... what is cluing the -NISTS. Nothing, that's what. In crosswords, every square has to be crossed in some way; that is, you have to have two ways (at least) of getting any given square. And with four letter strings in this puzzle (the NISTS in MODERNISTS, the EYE in EVIL EYE, the I in STOLI, and the EES in DEGREES), there simply are no crosses. I guess the idea is that ... whatever letters go there ... have to make ... *some* kind of (unclued) word. This is the deeply unfortunate byproduct of having both your crossing answers turn the same direction. If you get one turning left and the other turning right, then all paths out from the L or R are covered by clues. But when both theme crosses turn the same direction, one of those paths out from the L or R is left totally unaccounted for, cluewise. It makes my eye twitch.

The fill is also unaccountably unappealing in some corners. GAI SITKA ELIA AUS MFR ... all of that in the SE is really unappealing. AUS ... I thought that was the abbr. for Austria? Looks like Austria is AUT? Wow, sucks for Austria. Things aren't much nicer in the NE, with ICEE STENOS ODEDON (I'm a little tired of the puzzle's over-reliance on all things O.D.-related). CDC CDS is a not-great cross (also, terrible music, probably). And yikes, AMOEBOID?! -BOID? Sigh. There's good stuff sprinkled in here (BAD TAKES, COGNAC, PURE CHANCE), but CAN I? AREN'T I? ANTI? STOLI? (more than one stolus) ... too much of this clanks instead of hums. I like that NAS and RAP are symmetrical. That's probably PURE CHANCE, but I like it nonetheless. Missed a couple good chances to cross-reference clues (YES OR NO and ANS., BIPED and AUS ... actually, that last one only occurred to me because "kangaroo" (an AUS. BIPED) is in the clue for BIPED; maybe it's not the most natural cross-referencing opportunity). Overall, interesting twist on a been-done theme, but the execution leaves some parts unacceptably uncrossed. And then the fill is hit/miss. OK, back to basking in this weird feeling of living in a country run by basically good, basically competent people. Ahh. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Daniel Larsen

Relative difficulty: Medium, I think

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Rabindranath Tagore (41D: Language of the Literature Nobelist Rabindranath Tagore => BENGALI) —

Rabindranath Tagore FRAS (/rəˈbɪndrənɑːt tæˈɡɔːr/ (listen); born Robindronath Thakur, 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941; sobriquet Gurudev, Kobiguru, Biswakobi) was a Bengalipoet, writer, composer, philosopher and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse" of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European as well as the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.Tagore's poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal. He is sometimes referred to as "the Bard of Bengal". (wikipedia)

• • •

All the symmetries! 180º rotational, 90º rotational, axial, mirror ... wait, are axial and mirror the same thing? Looks like axial is more for 3D objects. Whatever. The black squares are arranged here to give the grid the made-up term I (now) like to call "hypersymmetry." None of this has anything to do with how good the puzzle is; just something I noticed. The grid is also shaped (in the white squares) a bit like a wandering path, one that you can walk through (clockwise or counter-), solving the entire puzzle, without having to take any detours or double back on yourself or anything. That's not exactly how I solved it (I went west to east and then got mildly hung up and went back to the west and then down and counterclockwise around). The only real downside of this grid shape is that there are no long answers. Literally nothing about seven letters. This kept the grid feeling pretty reserved and conservative. I like splashy long stuff, a grid that has answers that zing and slash and burst open across the grid. This grid, while solid, stays in a very safe lane the whole time. Well, I say safe, but apparently it thinks you should catch a GRENADE, what the hell!? (31A: Dangerous thing to catch). Such a weirdly morbid clue there. But overall, tame. Fine. OK. Nothing splashy. A calming if somewhat eventless stroll.

I think maybe they should retire LOLCATS. It feels like an answer from 2004. Or one that should've been from 2004, but since the NYTXW is routinely on a cultural time lag, it's probably an answer that started showing up much later. Feels very early-internet speak. Cats still definitely rule the internet, but LOLCATS has a whiff of dust on it. Internet dust. It did help me get started early, though. I went CDS to TRULY to LOLCATS. Unfortunately, I then gutted TRULY when I assumed that the answer to 15A: Apple product launched in 2015 was IPADAIR. Ended up having to build most of that NW corner before finally seeing the PRO. My MacBook (this MacBook in front of me) is a PRO. I have never owned an iPad, so I missed that the PRO came out. Or I noticed and promptly forgot. Cannot keep up with the Apple product permutations, which, considering how often they appear in grids, is sometimes a problem. Like today. But I just made the correct answer out of Apple product parts—a little IPAD here, a little PRO there, voilà! Correct answer. After that, not much trouble. Except for the part where I spelled DAYAN correctly but then swapped the "Y" for an "I" when I (very incompletely) read the clue on the cross: 35A: Do or ___ (punny hair salon name). My eyes only went as far as the fill-in-the-blank. The apex hair salon pun name is, of course, "Curl Up and Dye," though "Do" (with its pun on "hairdo") is not bad either. The "or" is off, though, since presumably it is the do that you are dying. But back to the point: I finished with an error because I "fixed"DAYAN. After having it right the first time. The second time I did that today (see TRULY), only this time, it was fatal. I did indeed d(i)e. TRULY.

The one thing that keeps this long answer-free grid from being lifeless is the high number of multi-word phrases in the seven-letter stuff, particularly the weirdly high number of two-letter parts inside those phrases. It can be more fun, but also more difficult, to parse multi-word phrases, especially if they are reasonably short and therefore you are not really expecting them. And two-letter elements can really make things challenging. Today we get OE in "ALOHA OE" (59A: Elvis Presley sings it in "Blue Hawaii"), OP in PHOTO OP (37D: When a poser might be presented?), OK in "OK, SHOOT" (43D: "Yeah, I'm listening") and E.R. in E.R. NURSE (16A: Vital hosp. worker). That last one wasn't exactly hard, though it did make me think there was a very important guy working in the hospital named ERNESTO. I did not know SLUMDOG was an actual word that had been coined, as I've only heard it followed by "Millionaire." I thought 21A: Attachment to Christ? (MAS) (because Christ + MAS = Christmas) was IAN. I don't think of HAIL as "bad"—weirdly judgey weather clue there (54D: Bad fall?). I enjoyed remembering "Battlestar Galactica" and "48 Hours." All in all, a pleasant enough experience.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Doug Peterson and Brad Wilber

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Jimmy Nelson (3D: Danny ___, ventriloquist dummy for Jimmy Nelson => O'DAY)—

James Edward Nelson (December 15, 1928 – September 24, 2019) was an American ventriloquist who appeared on television in the 1950s and 1960s. He is most famous for commercials for Nestlé chocolate featuring Farfel the Dog. He also hosted a children's show sponsored by Nestlé. [what the actual *&!$?] (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello! It's the 23rd of the month once again, so I hopped on the old Zoom machine and taped myself solving the puzzle with my good friend Rachel Fabi. I'll post that at the end of the write-up. What did we encounter? Well, it was quite a ride—mostly a pleasant one. I did spend a good amount of time just starting, baffled, at 3D: Danny ___, Ventriloquist dummy for Jimmy Nelson, and then, when I filled in the answer (entirely from crosses), spent some more time just staring at that answer (O'DAY). I've never had a clue mean less to me in my life. Never ever Ever heard of Jimmy Nelson, and then just add some "ever"s to the amount I've never heard of Danny O'DAY. Three decades of solving puzzles, never once seen Jimmy Nelson, never once seen this O'DAY clue. Anita O'DAY is the O'DAY I know. Possibly the only O'DAY I know. If you're gonna give me a new O'DAY, at least ... I don't know, make sure that person exists in the realm of current human knowledge. As you can see from the "Word of the Day" entry above, Danny O'DAY isn't even Jimmy Nelson's primary dummy!!!! Danny doesn't even get mentioned in the opening paragraph. No, instead it's Farfel the Dog (!?!?!?!) who was apparently the A-list dummy. If you put FARFEL in your grid (please don't), then sure, you sorta have to go to Jimmy Nelson for your clue, but O'DAY, as I say, Has A Perfectly Good Clue. I am really hung up on this. Danny O'DAY? I almost don't want to look him up. I feel like the reality will only be disappointing. Oh well, let's go ahead and look ... oh ... my ... I ... wow

The dummy clue was the only real baffler. Didn't know MABEL, either, but at least I've heard of "The Pirates of Penzance," so that didn't bother me nearly so much (16A: "The Pirates of Penzance" ingénue). Rachel hadn't heard of Esther ROLLE, who was a lot more common in crosswords of yore, i.e. crosswords that came out closer to when "Good Times" was on the air (i.e. the '70s) (21A: Esther of TV's "Good Times"). ROLLE was a gimme for me, but I'm 20 years older than Rachel, so no big surprise there. She also didn't know LAURA NYRO, who's before my time, even, but she's a pretty famous songwriter, so I know her name well (51A: "Stoned Soul Picnic" songwriter). Rachel did make a decent point, though, about the NYRO / DYNE crossing, which is that people might try an "I" there ... Seems possible, but I'd say it's even more likely that solvers will screw up a different crossing, which Rachel also noticed—the KRUPA / KOLA cross. If you don't know Gene KRUPA, then it seems very possible that you will imagine that the nut in question is a COLA. Someone somewhere is making that mistake, for sure. Both NYRO and KRUPA are gonna be much better known to older solvers, and since their names aren't exactly inferrable, there's plenty of opportunity for younger solvers to screw them up. Proper nouns, man. You have got to watch out. See, with MABEL and O'DAY, those are proper nouns, and I didn't know either of them, but they are both recognizable, familiar names, and the crosses were in no way confusing, so I could get at them. KRUPA and NYRO I knew ... but if I hadn't, yikes.

Other things we reacted to:

29A: Left on deck (APORT)— boy, did we REACT to that one. If I could wish one answer in this puzzle away (aweigh?) it would be that one. I guess it means in the direction of ... port (which is what "left on deck" means in most cases). I jokingly asked if there's such a word as "astarboard" ... but, in fact, there is.
14D: Unwelcome forecast (SLEET)— I got mad at the puzzle for calling hail "bad" yesterday, but I'm not as mad at this SLEET clue, because "unwelcome" isn't a moral absolute; it's a human judgment.
53A: Counterpart of butch (FEMME) — Rachel took particular exception to this, as it reinforces a limited, binary way of thinking (about lesbians in particular). That binary does have a meaningful history, and I thought that "counterpart" was better than, say, "opposite." Rachel is right, though, that you can get to FEMME without "butch." We also discussed the fact that the answer to 7D contains a word that can be a racial slur, and some constructors (including Rachel) have deleted it from their wordlists entirely. Oh, and HIT LIST—I thought it was a little too grim (23A: Offer sheet?). Rachel, who grew up like many in her generation, doing active shooter drills in school, associating the term HIT LIST with the targets of would-be school shooters—she had an even stronger negative reaction than I did.
11D: Classic film that gave us the term "paparazzi" ("LA DOLCE VITA") — I loved this one, and we both generally liked all the long answers. SHARK WEEK, "WORDS FAIL ME," POT DE CRÈME ... all nice.

Here's the video of us solving in real-time.

Two corrections re: this video. I talk about "TREES" poet Joyce Kilmer as if Joyce were a woman. Joyce Kilmer was a man. Alfred Joyce Kilmer. My fellow former UM English grad student friend Michele pointed this out to me just now, and so I'm properly humiliated. Also, I think somewhere in this video, I reimagine the phrase "any port in a storm" as "any storm in APORT," so you can ignore that as well.

Hope you liked the puzzle at least as well as we did (despite the issues detailed above, I did think it was an enjoyably solid effort).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Lucy Howard and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy (8:47)

THEME:"Sugar, Sugar"— wacky phrases made out of candy names:

Theme answers:

NERDS RING POP (22A: Bookworms call dad?)
BABY RUTH SNICKERS (31A: A young Justice Ginsburg chuckles?)
CRUNCH NOW AND LATER (47A: Do core exercises all day, every day?)
WHOPPERS SPREE (67A: Burger King bingefest?)
MILKY WAY STARBURST (84A: Supernova in our galaxy?)
LIFESAVERS PAYDAY (103A: When E.M.T.s bring home the bacon?)
MARS SMARTIES (115A: Some astronomy PhD.s?)

Word of the Day: Tones and I (37A: Singer Watson, a.k.a. Tones and I with the 2019 dance hit "Dance Monkey" => TONI) —

Toni Watson, known professionally as Tones and I, is an Australian singer and songwriter. Her breakout single, "Dance Monkey", was released in May 2019 and reached number one in over 30 countries.
In 2019, she broke the Australian record for the most weeks at number one on the ARIA Singles Chart by any artist with 16 weeks. By mid-January 2020, "Dance Monkey" had spent its 24th and final week at number one, beating Bing Crosby's all-time Australian record for his version of "White Christmas", which spent 22 weeks (five months, namely June to October) at the top spot in 1943.
"Dance Monkey" was accredited 13× platinum by ARIA for shipments of over 910,000 units, in October 2020. Tones was the most awarded artist at the ARIA Music Awards of 2019, winning four from eight nominations. Tones and I released her debut extended play, The Kids Are Coming, on 30 August 2019, which peaked at number three in Australia, and top 10 in several countries. (wikipedia)

• • •

Tame wacky is always so depressing. There are no laughs here, and not much in the way of real cleverness. There's a core idea—a theme type I've seen before ... I'd be stunned if I hadn't seen this exact theme at some point in my life. But once you piece the first themer together, once you grasp the concept, solving mainly just involves thinking of candy names. The particular humor of the clue doesn't matter much, and in most cases isn't really there. Remember some candies! That's all you do here. Except for FANTASY SERIES (which felt new / interesting) the fill doesn't do much that's interesting either. This is placeholder stuff; just absolutely typical, run-of-the-mill, utterly characteristic late 20th-century NYTXW fare. It clears the bar. It's passable. But it's not innovative, and it doesn't even offer much of a new or vibrant take on an old concept. It's just there. It's fine. It'll pass the time for 15 minutes or a half hour or an hour or whatever. Ho + hum. Still not sure how the marquee puzzle remains this tepid, week in and week out.

The image of a snickering baby Ruth Ginsburg is probably the highlight of the puzzle, in that it's bizarre, and therefore offers a memorable image. something to sear your brain. Everything else is so milquetoast. Wacky puzzles have to get weird, or else they get very tedious (polite smile-quaint) very quickly. NERDS calling their dad, also on the better side of this theme set. But the rest are forgettable. They don't even seem to be really trying. Smaller nit—I don't think "now and later" means "all day, every day." If I do something now and later, then I do it at two discrete times, with a gap in between. The clue is incorrect on a literal level (never a good thing). I did blow through the puzzle pretty quickly, which is always a nice feeling. As usual, the struggles came in the first half of the solve, and the second half was a sprint by comparison (if you watch the solving video I made for yesterday's puzzle, you can see this phenomenon happen quite clearly—2/3 of the time to solve the first half, and 1/3 to solve the last; night and day).

The NW of course tripped me up a bit. I always start there, and since you start with nothing, that's when you're likeliest to go wrong. Small wrong was ONS for INS (5D: Walk-___). Bigger wrong was PACK UP for TANK UP (not a phrase I heard growing up, and I grew up in car country, i.e. California). Had NEMEANS (!?!?) before NUBIANS, so that slowed things down a bit (also no idea about TONI, who isn't even known by her real name, so ????). The slowest part by far, though, was the NE. Fill-in-the-blank clue (BRAIN) and BMW and WMD all eluded me (wanted a 3-letter version of ICBM, or maybe IED, for that last one) (I never think of WMD as real ... the only time I've ever heard it used is in Bush-era war propaganda) (14D: Subject of intl. treaties). Wanted NGO instead of the mere ORG. at 15A: Doctors Without Borders, e.g.: Abbr.). Haven't played Stratego since I was maybe 14, so SPY was meaningless to me (in general, I find puzzles overestimate how common board game knowledge is ... which reminds me ... maybe I've seen this puzzle type done with board games before? Cereal brands? I know I've seen it ... movie titles, maybe? The whole "making wacky phrases out of names from some category" is definitely a thing). I don't think of what a pen does to your shirt pocket as a mere INK MARK (wanted BLOT or something equally evocative of mess). So I fumbled a bunch up there. But after I escaped, whoosh. No trouble except for the SERIES part of FANTASY SERIES (after I couldn't get NOVEL to fit, I was stuck until crosses came to the rescue). Now I have an urge to reread the "Earthsea" series. If a puzzle inspires you to read Ursula K. LeGuin, it can't be all bad.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. LAST CHANCE: Boswords is gearing up for another online crossword tournament in the very near future. Here's the blurb from co-organizer, John Lieb:

Registration is now open for the Boswords 2021 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament, which will be held on Sunday, January 31 from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org.

Many of my readers and friends really enjoyed the last one of these, so even if you've never competed in a crossword tourney before, you should consider it. ("Competition" isn't really the point)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:01) (normalish M time)

THEME: "YOU'RE FIRED!" (62A: Dreaded cry from a boss ... or a hint to the ends of 18-, 23-, 40- and 53-Across) — familiar phrases where final words (which are nouns) can also be verbs meaning "fired" (as from a job):

Theme answers:

GARBAGE CAN (18A: Oscar the Grouch's home)
BATTLE AXE (23A: Old weapon in hand-to-hand combat)
QUARTERBACK SACK (40A: Result of a football blitz, maybe)
ANKLE BOOT (53A: Bit of fashionable footwear)

Word of the Day: SQUAB (33D: Fledgling pigeon) —

1a: COUCH
b: a cushion for a chair or couch
2or plural squab : a fledgling birdspecifically : a fledgling pigeon about four weeks old
3: a short fat person (merriam-webster)

• • •

Not sure I'd run this puzzle in *this* economy, but whatever. Today's big revelation, for me, is definition 1 and 3 in the SQUAB entry (above). Wow. COUCH!? Bizarre. If you clued SQUAB as [Couch] ... would it make a sound? I mean, who would get that? And the "short fat person" just sounds mean. SQUAT or SQUAD is better for a Monday, but this grid is really committed to RED BIRDS, which, uh ... let's just say, not my fav franchise (though Bob Gibson *is* one of my fav players). Just pull everything after RED and refill the grid, IMO. This will help you get rid of not only SQUAB, but also AANDM, a really ugly ampersandwich that has no business being in a grid that has no real thematic pressure on it and should therefore be relatively easy to fill cleanly. The fill on this one is STALER than I'd like, but overall this grid, and it's theme, is very very 20th-century normal. The puzzle is partying like it's 1999. Very straightforward, very consistent, just fine. No zing, but no clank either. It's fine. Thematically, the only part I hesitated on was the BOOT part of ANKLE BOOT, as I had no idea those were inherently "fashionable." Or is "fashionable" just there to get you your cutesy alliteration in the clue? Anyway, I was expecting something more "fashionable"-sounding than a mere BOOT. Still, not much here to cheer or get mad at. It ticks the Monday box. Done.

I always try to do the first three Acrosses in a row on Mondays, and if I can bang them out 1 2 3, I know I'm gonna do well. Today, 1 2 ... not three. Couldn't get ADAPT from just 9A: Become acclimated. Somehow, the clue doesn't suggest ADAPT to me at all. I think more of "change" rather than merely "getting used to," oh well. I tried to run all the crosses off IRAN next, and only got one (1) (!) of them at first pass. I got AMIGA. That's it. I kinda misread 1D: Not give an ___ (be stubborn), with my brain thinking the "an" was going to be part of the answer ... I do not understand this elaborate, clunky fill-in-the-blank clue for something as simple as INCH. And REHAB as a verb, clued very plainly (and with no injury or drug/alcohol frame of reference) really threw me (2D: Give a makeover, informally). "NO CUTS" was easily the toughest, in that it's highly colloquial and childish, neither of which is suggested by the clue (4D: "Hey, don't jump in front of me in the line!"). Had DIS before DIG (5D: Insult). That is a weirdly mid-to-late-week clue on DIG. "MERCY!" was way too quaint for me to get quickly (28D: "Goodness gracious!"). And I honestly couldn't remember if the fledgling bird was SQUIB or SQUAB, and I definitely wrote in SQUIB at first (though I did realize I'd have to check that cross very shortly thereafter, and I did, and so I fixed the error quickly). Two cross-references made things a tad slower today than they might've been as well. But still, as I say, totally normal (i.e. fast) Monday time today. Very average. Everything about this puzzle: average. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hello! It’s Clare back for the last Tuesday in January. Hope you’ve all been staying as safe and as entertained as possible. I’m over here starting to feel like I may be losing my mind — I’ve finally reached the stage of quarantine where I’m making a sourdough starter and have spent way too much time on TikTok and Twitter and have dyed my blonde hair red and am contemplating surrounding myself with 800 plants (but I’m worried that they’d just judge me for my random BTS dance parties).

Anywho, let’s get on with the puzzle before I expose any more of my oddities...

Constructor:Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty:Difficult

THEME: SCRABBLE (60A: Game in which the answers to the starred clues are legal plays but cannot be formed even if you have both blanks) — words that can’t be played in Scrabble because of a limited number of certain tiles

Theme answers:

PIZZAZZY (17A: Having panache)
KNICKNACK (25A: Trinket)
STRESSLESSNESS (35A: State that many people want to get to on vacation)
RAZZMATAZZ (50A: Gaudy display)

Word of the Day: NARWHAL (45A: Tusked marine creature of the Arctic)—

The narwhal is a medium-sized toothed whale that possesses a large "tusk" from a protruding canine tooth. It lives year-round in the Arctic waters around Greenland, Canada, and Russia. It is one of two living species of whale in the family Monodontidae, along with the beluga whale. The narwhal males are distinguished by a long, straight, helical tusk, which is an elongated upper left canine.

• • •

Wow, I really did not like this puzzle. I know Rex is usually the one who rails against Scrabble-ish puzzles, but I’ll give it a shot today! My uncle is a former Scrabble national champion, so I should probably know a lot about the game, but, alas, I did not pick it up. To be honest, I didn’t even understand the point of the theme until afterward with some quick Googling — there’s only one Z-tile, one K-tile and four S-tiles, so even with the two blank tiles you can’t play words with four Z’s, four K’s or seven S’s. And once I understood the point.... I still didn’t like the theme. First of all, in terms of construction, to work down through the puzzle and go from Z’s to K’s to S’s and then back to Z’s seems off. I hated STRESSLESSNESS with a passion and don’t think it should be a thing at all. Who goes on a vacation and says, “Ah, yes, when I come back I shall have achieved some STRESSLESSNESS”? Same with PIZZAZZY. Pizzazz is a great word. I love that word. But get that Y out of there.

I liked TANZANIA (36D) as a long down, but the others in the NE and SW corners made the puzzle a bit harder than usual. POTTAGES (11D: Thick soups) and TREACLES (12D: Thick syrups) are cool words, but both made me reach into the far corners of my brain to figure them out. And I’m not especially familiar with the Glass-STEAGALL Act (35D), so that made me stare at the puzzle as I tried to work it out.

Sorry, I’m on a roll — and my brain feels fried from classes — so I think I just have to keep ranting now… THE CIA (59D and 61D: org. once headed by George W. Bush) was really quite dumb. I spent way too long trying to puzzle this out. Just… maybe don’t use “THE” in a puzzle? Who is Horatio SANZ (38D)? (It’s awesome that he was the show’s first Hispanic cast member, but he made me long for the days of Cheri Oteri as a name I’d know) Lava may be legit as a type of SOAP (15A), but it is verrry old-fashioned. Its logo alone looks like it belongs in the ‘70s. Please leave it there. There were two characters from St. Elmo’s Fire in the puzzle (54A and 2D), which is odd to me. Having SEAEAGLE (31A) and then STEAGALL (35D) in the same puzzle also feels like a lot of overlap.

I don’t know if I just wasn’t on the puzzle’s wavelength or if it was a bit old for me or if I’m just way too exhausted to be thinking straight, but getting through the puzzle was a struggle. Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer today! (By the way, Debbie Downer is an SNL character played by Rachel Dratch, in case any future crossword constructors are looking for names people might know.)

Misc.:

I had “icicle” rather than ICE DAM (29D: Cold weather roofing problem) for a while in the puzzle, which messed me up in that whole lower left area.
I think HOBBES should be in every puzzle — I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes, and it’s just objectively the best.
It’s like the puzzle constructor was speaking directly to me because I am most definitely feeling SLEEPY (20A: Feeling ready for bed)…
When I hear RAZZMATAZZ, I can only think of it as the Jamba Juice flavor I used to get every single time.
Here’s a Scrabble story for those of you who have gotten this far: When my dad congratulated his older brother on winning the Scrabble title, my incredibly and wildly rational mathematician uncle replied, “I was lucky.” Oh? How so? “I came up through the loser's bracket to the final and had to beat the best player in the world by more than 150 points. I drew both blanks and all four S's, and beat him by 185. I was lucky.”

Signed, Clare Carroll, a stressfullness-ed law student

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Mike Knobler

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: What lies beneath... — familiar phrases that start with "beneath,""under," and "below" (respectively) are situated in the grid literally "beneath" (or "below" or "under") a word defined by the latter part of the familiar phrases. Thus:

Theme answers:

BENEATH CONTEMPT is situated "beneath" a word meaning "contempt" (i.e. SCORN)

17A: Despicable ... or where this answer goes? + 15A: "Silence is the most perfect expression of ___" (line in a Shaw play)

UNDER THE WEATHER is situated "under" a form of "weather"(i.e. MONSOON)

39A: Sick ... or where this answer goes? + 36A: What to expect between June and September in India

BELOW THE SURFACE is situated "below" a type of "surface" (i.e. FACET)

62A: Latent ... or where this answer goes? + 57A: Side to be considered

Word of the Day: AGAR (14A: Vegetarian substitute for gelatin) —

1: a gelatinous colloidal extract of a red alga (as of the genera Gelidium, Gracilaria, and Eucheuma) used especially in culture media or as a gelling and stabilizing agent in foods
2: a culture medium containing agar (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

I think this theme is fantastic, and the me who started this puzzle is very surprised to hear himself say that, because things did not start out so promising. The fill early on (and throughout, honestly) just EKEs BY. Lots of short, overfamiliar stuff including not one but two of the dreaded playground retorts. Loved JANE FONDA, but everything around her suggested to me that we weren't going anywhere good:

This corner suggests that a very crusty, olden puzzle is about to roll right over you. So bad of an omen did it seem that I stopped (as you can see) and took a screenshot. But immediately (and I mean immediately) after I redug into the puzzle after this screenshot, the theme leapt across the grid. I got both grid-spanning themers, bam bam:

So I thought, well, if nothing else, this puzzle just got a whole lot easier, real quick. I could tell pretty quickly where the theme was going, but I didn't stop to work it out; I just went back to filling the grid as fast as I could, knowing the theme would reveal itself in time. And while filling the grid wasn't exactly joyful (the fill remains in a kind of dry 1980s state throughout, with almost no sparkle or personality and an abundance dull short answers), the theme, when it came into full view at the very end, really does come out looking great. All the phrases are perfect 15 grid-spanners, all of them "under" phrases, all of them have their crowning word centered directly on top of them. The mirror symmetry of the grid allows for a visually pleasing execution of the theme. So while the fill is meh, the theme itself feels very thoughtfully worked out and very polished. There's really nowhere to go with the fill, considering the way the grid is built (i.e. with almost all the answers being 3, 4, or 5 letters in length. JANE FONDA and TUMMYACHE really pop against the drabness of the rest of it. But today, merely not being terrible is enough for the fill. The theme is a gem, and that is plenty.

Five things:

26D: Enlist again (RE-UP) — this was the very last answer I filled in on the very first Sunday puzzle I ever successfully completed (spring of '91). I was solving with friends and said "Roop ... roip ... that can't be ... oh, wait, is it RE-UP? Oh my god, it's RE-UP, it's right, we're done!" Much celebration, in the form of milkshake-drinking, ensued, probably. And yet when I see RE-UP today, it just seems like crummy crosswordese.
5A: Frequent sights in Road Runner cartoons (CACTI) — I know you put MESAS in here at first so don't even try to pretend you didn't.
38A: What's what, in Italy (CHE) — got this entirely from crosses and when I checked the clue, I was startled not to see the famous revolutionary staring at me. I do not mind this cluing of CHE at all (if you *have* to use CHE).
67A: Burnish (RUB)— weirdly, one of the harder moments of the puzzle for me, since I only ever hear "burnish" used metaphorically (as something one does to one's reputation). EKE BY is rough, as is so much of the dregs of this grid (or maybe the "lees" of this grid, since it's all just settled on the bottom, this gunky mess of EKE BY and WSW crossing WDS crossing AHAS plural next to UEY. You can see REX down there, huddled in the SW corner trying to keep his distance from all that mess.

41D: Drive ... or drive mad? (TEE OFF)— another hard moment; clue writer tries to get cute, and doesn't really hit the nail on the head with either halves of the clue, frankly. I had the TE- and the terminal -F and no idea what to do with it. But then James Brown came to the FUNKy rescue (61A: "I only got a seventh-grade education, but I have a doctorate in ___": James Brown), and that second "F" helped me parse it correctly. I'm on the record as not enjoying fill-in-the-blank quote clues, but James Brown gets a pass. You know who doesn't get a pass. George Bernard Shaw. At least I assume it's George Bernard and not, I don't know, Artie that we're talking about at 15A: "Silence is the most perfect expression of ___" (line in a Shaw play) (SCORN). *A* Shaw play? You're gonna fill-in-the-blank me on a quote from a play you won't even name, by an author you won't even fully name???? No. I'm fine with Shaw standing on its own, actually, but *a* play is awful. At least name the play. (Haha, here's why they fudged it: the quote is from the fifth part of Back to Methuselah, which is really a series of five plays—this quote being from the part entitled "As Far As Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920"; since the play is not famous and is really five plays ... you can see why they just threw up their hands and went with "*a* Shaw play" (still very unsatisfying))

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Steve Mossberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: ily — familiar expressions have their last words turned into adverb (through addition of "ily"), and are clued as if the newly-made adverb referred to the cluing of the pre-adverb part of the sentence. So, in essence, the answers are the clues ... for the clues ... the answers end up describing the ways the theme clues are written:

Theme answers:

THE LAST WORDILY (20A: Something directly following a penultimate position — that is to say, diametrically opposed to primary one) (so ... the clue describes THE LAST and the clue is written WORDILY)
HOT MESSILY (34A: L iKe aN Ov eN) (so ... the clue describes HOT and the clue is written MESSILY)
HAY LOFTILY (39A: Golden blades that may be tenderly chew'd by equine or bovine beings) (clue describes HAY, is written LOFTILY)
ALL THAT JAZZILY (53A: The cat's meow, baby. Dig?) (clue describes ALL THAT, is written JAZZILY (is it, though...?)

Word of the Day: crystal jellies (29D: What crystal jellies do when disturbed) —

Aequorea victoria, also sometimes called the crystal jelly, is a bioluminescent hydrozoan jellyfish, or hydromedusa, that is found off the west coast of North America.
The species is best known as the source of two proteins involved in bioluminescence, aequorin, a photoprotein, and green fluorescent protein (GFP). Their discoverers, Osamu Shimomura and colleagues, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on GFP.

• • •

Themes where the clue writing is *everything* are always dicey and usually fall flat because of the editorial voice. You have to be good, and funny, to make stuff like this land, and today, the clues were really off the mark. Forced, awkward, somewhat inaccurate or misleading. I literally heaved a heavy sigh when I got the first themer, as I realized two things. Well three. One, nonsense would be in the grid. Two, we would be in one of these "answers are really the clues" situations, which almost never go well. And three, we would be subject to three more stabs at humorous clue writing, the first of which, wow, did not go well. I'm just gonna type out the first theme clue again, so you can re-experience the magic: "Something directly following a penultimate position ... that is to say, diametrically opposed to a primary one." Awful clue writing is bad enough, but now we get not just a parody of awful clue writing, but a bad parody of it, which takes us from bad to possibly good to nope still bad again. It is painful to read this clue, which I get is the point, but still, painful is painful. If you're going to deliberately subject me to pain, man there had better be relief at the end. And there was not. The clue doesn't even describe THE LAST very well at all. First of all, you would (probably) never have THE LAST in a puzzle all on its own, so cluing it at all is a bizarre idea. Second, this clue doesn't even do that well; it's not "wordy" (which is what it's *supposed* to be) as confusing, inaccurate, and pompous. The clarifying phrase ("that is to say" and following) only obfuscates by using the word "diametrically," which brings shape or the idea of antithesis into the equation, neither of which has anything to do with THE LAST. What does "diameter" have to do with "(the) first" and "(the) last"? "Wordy" does not mean inaccurate or confusing, necessarily. Also, the clue isn't even that wordy relative to clues you see every day in the NYTXW. There are more words in the LEAR clue!!!!! I guess that makes this clue penultimately wordy, which is by far my favorite thing about this clue now—its ironic self-referentiality. This first theme clue is so important for setting the tone, and it was just so unpleasant. Other theme clues were better, but how could they not be? The whole concept left me pretty cold.

I kinda like the slanginess of HOT MESS and ALL THAT, which at least make the clues in those instances a little interesting. I worry about people not familiar with the expression "ALL THAT," which, yes, is decades old, but still might not be in some people's lexicons (there was a brief unfortunate period in the '90s when "all that and a bag of chips" was a popular expression). If you somehow missed the emergence of the expression ALL THAT (which OED dates to '89), it just means "something special" (i.e. as the clue says "the cat's meow" ... or "the cat's pajamas," I suppose. They sure liked their cats in the '20s ... or maybe it was one particularly awesome cat and people just lexically freaked out). "Cat's meow" is from the '20s and "Dig?" ... isn't ... and "baby" evokes Austin Powers, so I don't know what era or planet that clue is on, but at least it's entertaining, unlike the HAY LOFTILY clue (39A: Golden blades that may be tenderly chew'd by equine or bovine beings), which honestly sounds exactly like many ordinary NYTXW clues except for the ridiculous elided-e version of "chew'd." And about that: elision like that only happens in poetry, when you need to make the meter come out right (the elided "e" makes "chew'd" definitively one syllable, whereas without the elision, it could be pronounced with two). In poetry, elision might be "lofty," I guess, but in a prose crossword clue, it's nonsense. This clue and the first one are just cringey, whereas the other two at least have zaniness going for them. The fill, well, you can see, all 3 4 5s, nothing interesting going on. TOSH, ugh, that bit of archaic nonsense (I had BOSH!) crossing LATTE as clued (1D: Drink from a machine) was the worst. You use a machine to make a latte, "From a machine" makes it sound like it's dispensed out of a machine like an ICEE or something. Blargh. TOSH! The venerable AOL / NETZERO pairing tells you exactly how current the fill in this puzzle feels, generally (is NETZERO still a thing!?). But the fill's not bad. Just blah. Well, ONE TO GO is kinda bad. Like yesterday, this one relies entirely on its theme for entertainment. Unlike yesterday, this one couldn't execute the concept well at all.

Seems possible that the AT-AT / TARTT crossing might've flummoxed someone somewhere, but all the other names seem fairly crossed. That's all for today.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy (maybe too easy? I mean, that's not a terribly valid criticism, but I really wish I'd been timing myself because this felt close to the 3-minute mark)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Tarboosh (1A: Article of attire akin to a tarboosh => FEZ) —

A tarboosh is a man's hat that is typically made of felt. It has a flat top, no brim, and fits firmly on the head. It is commonly worn by Muslim men, either by itself or under a turban. The tarboosh also often has a silk tassel attached to the top. Red is the most common color for this hat.
Derived from the Persian word sarpush, meaning 'headdress,' the tarboosh is also known as a tarbush. It has also been called a fez and a checheya. The fez is a hat originally only produced in Fez, Morocco, and is slightly smaller than a tarboosh. Regardless of the name, all hats of this type have a similar truncated cone shape, that narrows as they extend upward from the head. (wisegeek.com)

• • •

Few things are as reliably good as a Robyn Weintraub Friday crossword. Even with my rage-response set to ultra-sensitive, I don't know that this puzzle would set off any alarms. Whatever crosswordese there is ... is scattered and unremarkable. I mean, what? ATRA? Maybe ATTY? What's in this puzzle that's gonna make you mad, make you ugh or eye-roll? Whatever it is, there ain't much of it. Maybe I wouldn't put two initialisms right next to each other? (SPCA / AARP). You can see, you have to really reach to find fault today. The one issue—which I mentioned at the very tiptop of the write-up—is that it's soooo easy. I know those of you who struggle to finish a Friday hate hearing stuff like this, but truly, relative to even a normally breezy Friday, this one felt toothless. Resistance-free. What little green ink there is on my puzzle print-out merely indicates an occasional slight slow-down. No actual battles or bafflements. It's nice to have to wrestle with a puzzle at least a little. I know that's what Saturday's for, and I do love crushing a Friday, or any day, but this one almost didn't feel like a worthy opponent. But only at the difficulty level. In every other way, it's worthy as hell. Smooth, clean, lively, broadly accessible. Oh, I am gonna ding it for introducing me to the term "Lubrastrip," which is a particularly off-putting bit of adspeak. A horrid portmanteau? A snortmanteau? Portmant-d'oh!? I managed not to see that clue at all while I was solving, and I was so much happier in the before-Lubrastrip time. Still, even Lubrastrip can't eliminate the warm glow that this lovely puzzle leaves behind.

Hardest part of the puzzle was probably 1A: Article of attire akin to a tarboosh, as I didn't know what a tarboosh was. First instinct was HAT (close!), but "akin to" didn't feel right. Seemed like tarboosh might be a "type of" HAT, but not "akin to" a HAT, so my brain switched to some more specific article of clothing and ... well, it's a crossword we're solving here ... three letters ... so ... OBI? Maybe a "tarboosh" was some kind of non-Japanese sash, I wrongly thought. Checked 1D: Achievements, instantly guessed FEATS, and as soon as the "F" went in, I thought, "oh, it's FEZ." And it was. And once you've got a "Z" in an initial position on a long answer at the top of your grid, well, hold on to your tarboosh because you're about to take off. Whoosh. High speeds, no looking back.

Here are the little bits of resistance the puzzle offered:

22A: Spacewalk, e.g., in NASA shorthand (EVA) — I was pretty sure that the BERT of BERT AND ERNIE was an "E" BERT (!) and not a "U" BURT, but I thought, "better check the cross." And then the cross was this. I knew it wasn't UVA, so cool, but I totally forgot what EVA was "shorthand" for. It's "Extravehicular activity." So I didn't "forget" what EVA meant so much as "never knew until this second." Cool.
49D: Symbol of opportunity (DOOR)— this was eerily vague to me, and it ran right through a *bunch* of answers I was not entirely sure about. I've seen "Sweeney Todd," but ___ Lovett didn't evoke anything for me, and it seemed such a bizarre way to clue something simple like MRS. that I didn't write the "R" in despite having the "M" and "S." Further, I had PARENT but didn't yet know HOOD, and CRISIS but wasn't yet sure of MODE (though I had at least tentatively written it in). I actually had to reach over and get DONE DEAL at 49A: "100% happening!" in order to get the "D," and then write in -HOOD at PARENTHOOD and then take a second to look back at DOO-, which had to be DOOR, which left me with MRS. Lovett, which seemed entirely plausible. Easily the roughest part of the grid for me (by normal Friday standards, not that rough).
45D: Spacecraft activity (FLY-BY)— clearly space is my enemy today. I think of planes doing FLY-BYs, not spacecraft. Eventually got the two "Y"s and then saw the answer. Parsing short two-word answers can be difficult, since you only ever expect to see a one-word answer in a space that small. See also SUM UP (26D: Recapitulate), which took a few crosses to get.

That's it. Everything else was read-it / fill-it. We had YOGA MAT very recently, didn't we? (yes: yesterday) So the MATT clue was not as tricky as it might've been (10D: Apt name for a yoga instructor?). I have never seen "The Sound of Music" (it's true!), but I damn sure know LIESL, a favorite of crossword constructors for her highly common letters in uncommon configuration (not much ends -SL). Didn't know DEPP did the voice of the title character in "Sherlock Gnomes" (whatever that is) but I had D--P before I ever saw the clue, so my eyes only got as far as [Actor who voiced...]. That was enough. Loved all the long stuff, esp ZERO CHANCE, EXTRA SPICY, BERT AND ERNIE, SECRET RECIPE ... at this point, I'm just writing out all the long answers, so let's just say all of them. Everything 8+. This is a model puzzle, the cluing difficulty of which could've been turned up a notch. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Nam Jin Yoon

Relative difficulty: Easy (more Friday than Saturday)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Milan KUNDERA (34D: Milan ___, author of 1984's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being") —

Milan Kundera (UK: /ˈkʊndərə, ˈkʌn-/, Czech: [ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra] (listen); born 1 April 1929) is a Czech writer who went into exile in France in 1975, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1981. Kundera's Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979. He received Czech citizenship in 2019. He "sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores".
Kundera's best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Prior to the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the communist régime in Czechoslovakia banned his books. He leads a low-profile life and rarely speaks to the media. He was thought to be a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was also a nominee for other awards. (wikipedia)

• • •

A smashing success. And I smashed it. As with yesterday, this felt very very easy for a NYTXW themeless. I have not been timing myself regularly these days, but it genuinely feels like the NYTXW is deliberately making its F and Sat puzzles more accessible (i.e. easier), bringing them (in that respect) more into line with the New Yorker themelesses (which come out M, W, F and get progressively *easier* as the week goes on, but which are never harder than an NYT Friday). There's something to be said for easier themelesses. They're great fun, and there's no reason only the most experienced solvers should be able to enjoy them fully. Still, if you solve a lot, it's nice to encounter puzzles with real bite once a week or so. The Saturday Newsday crossword (formerly the "Saturday Stumper") recently changed its name to the "Saturday Themeless" (worst name change ever) and is being made somewhat easier now (though I'm happy to report it's still pretty ****ing hard). The upshot here is that I have adored the last two NYTXW puzzles (today, Friday), but didn't get to spend enough time with them because they were clued so easily. I am not asking for torture. Just a little fight. But on to the puzzle...

This one started with a gimme at 1A: Hero of Philadelphia (HOAGIE). If you've done enough puzzles, the word "Hero" (esp. on a Saturday) is gonna shout "sandwich" at you, the way any number of clue words (on a Saturday) radiate with potential doubleness of meaning (or tripleness, or quad- etc.). "They mean the sandwich," dropped in HOAGIE, immediately checked the crosses, and got enough of them to confirm HOAGIE's correctness. Fast start in the NW (where the front ends of the long answers are) heralds speed, and sure enough, immediately after HOAGIE confirmation, this happened:

Counterpoint: I do not hate to see it. I love this answer. Such a great way to have the puzzle blow open. Very current and colloquial and just mwah. I feel like this is more a social media phrase than an irl (in real life) phrase, but then most of my human interaction these days is online so separating online from irl languages is getting increasingly difficult. Anyway, YOU HATE TO SEE IT brought me joy. It's not ROCKET SCIENCE! Give me pizzazz in the long answers on a Fri/Sat and just don't botch the short fill and tighten up your cluing and boom I am Happy! Seemed like almost no time until I was already at the halfway point. Here:

From here I dipped into the SW corner, where I am happy to report, that yes, I knew *and* misspelled both AXOLOTL (AXOLATL) and SAOIRSE (SAORSIE): quite a pair, those two. Luckily, the crosses for those were fairly transparent, so I didn't wallow in my misspellings too long, and then, just as easily as I threw the long answers across the top, I repeated the feat down below:

This is the only point at which I ran into a little resistance, as I couldn't see CROW or DOO-WOP there in the crosses. I *should* have just looked at the Down clue over, because KUNDERA would've been a gimme, but instead I jumped over the the SE corner and hammered at the short stuff, swung up into the middle via KITTY CAT (keety!!), and down around and done, finally, at RODE (47A: Was on). The answers that were hardest for me in this puzzle were all short. SCAB clue didn't mean anything to me (15D: Natural cover), even with SC- and then SCA- in place. Even then, I guessed SCAR. And then CROW, even with -OW in place, couldn't see how you get from the end of a magic trick ("ta-da!") to CROW. I guess you are boasting about your accomplishment. OK.

PASTED was also hard, as there are soooo many words for defeating someone soundly (54A: Absolutely trounced). Clues on TET (51D: Banh ___ (sticky rice cake)) and AKA (3D: America's first historically black sorority, in brief) were also new to me (nice new clues on overfamiliar stuff), so there was hesitation there. But mostly there was just speed. And delight. This is really good. I haven't yet seen a ton of puzzles from this constructor, but I must've seen a few because my reaction on seeing the byline was "oh ... this is a good sign, I think." And I was right. Was worried it was going to get over-tech-y on me there early on (ITERATE, CODE), but no, it was nicely restrained. And then it gave me a KITTY CAT, COATES, CRUST (my favorite part of the pie!) and KUNDERA—all things I enjoy. Really lively, really wide-ranging fill. Hurray. Until tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. just realized that it's possible one might not know either ALI G or GENA Rowlands, in which case that cross would be a harrowing guess. If this was you, my sympathies. Proper nouns, man ...

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jim Hilger

Relative difficulty: Medium (10-ish)

THEME:"Product Misplacement"— familiar expression where some general category of thing has been replaced with a specific brand of said thing, and then clued wackily. Thus:

Theme answers:

MONSTER RAM RALLY (23A: Huge celebration after L.A.'s football team wins the Super Bowl?) (so ... it's "monster truck rally" ... and the RAM, clued here as a football team, is a brand of truck ...)
NATURE ABHORS A HOOVER (38A: Reason that the prestigious scientific journal refuses articles from President Herbert's relatives?) ("natures abhors a vacuum," and HOOVER. clued here as a president, is a brand of vacuum) (etc.)
MY SOLO RUNNETH OVER (57A: Apology from a musician to the other band members?) (Solo cups are a thing)
WORKED FOR PLANTERS (79A: Volunteered at a nursery?) (so ... the clue wants you to think of the kind of nursery with plants ... where you'd maybe see ... planters?) (also PLANTERS is a brand of peanut, obvs)
THROWING IN THE BOUNTY (97A: Adding a historic ship as a deal sweetener?)
TALE OF THE SCOTCH (117A: Story about a drinking binge?)

Word of the Day: Ad VALOREM tax (44D: Ad ___ tax) —

An ad valorem tax (Latin for "according to value") is a tax whose amount is based on the value of a transaction or of property. It is typically imposed at the time of a transaction, as in the case of a sales tax or value-added tax (VAT). An ad valorem tax may also be imposed annually, as in the case of a real or personal property tax, or in connection with another significant event (e.g. inheritance tax, expatriation tax, or tariff). In some countries a stamp duty is imposed as an ad valorem tax. (wikipedia)

• • •

I can't give much time to this because it's so depressing. This puzzle is depressing, and the general state of the NYTXW Sunday is so depressing. The editors are busy bragging that they're getting more submissions than ever, but as far as I know they don't have a great explanation for why Sundays continue to be so completely terrible the large majority of the time. It's stunning to me how stale Sundays are, week in and week out. Not sure why the best constructors seem to avoid them. Paolo Pasco had one a few weeks back that was fantastic. But most of what comes out just rehashes the corny, stale wordplay of yesteryear, with fill to match. Today's theme didn't even make sense. Or, rather, the title in no way accurately represented what the theme was about. "Product Misplacement?" Nothing ... is misplaced. Placement ... is not an issue. At all. In every case, you are making the general specific (for some reason ... I guess this amuses you ... we'll leave the specific merits of the theme aside for the moment). That's not "misplacement?" The product is in the same "place" as it ever was. But instead of the general (e.g. "towel"), we get the specific (i.e. "BOUNTY"). So it's awful from the jump, on its face, in the title. This is elementary stuff. It's fine to have a title that only faintly captures what the theme is about—not all themes are reducible to a pithy title. But to have one that actively misstates the premise. That is bad.

Then there's the inconsistency. The truck that's turned into a RAM is actually a truck, whereas the vacuum that's turned into a HOOVER is not a household-appliance vacuum. "Peanuts" are metaphorical, but still, the basis of the metaphor is the food, which is what PLANTERS are: peanuts. But you don't throw in a *paper* towel, which is what BOUNTY is. And I get that SCOTCH tape is a thing, and that SCOTCH is a brand (even though it's used generically to mean a kind of tape, like Kleenex ... I think). But wow, that answer. First of all, "tale of the tape" is the kind of phrase that ... I don't even really know what it means. I know I've heard it, but it's not exactly evocative of ... anything for me. Apparently it comes from boxing (which used to be a big deal in the 20th century, kids, ask your folks), where you'd compare boxers' stats, including their reaches, which I guess ... you measured with tape. So the base phrase feels archaic to me. And SCOTCH, well, SCOTCH is not something I readily associate with a *brand*; no, Scotch is something I drink, and something I desperately want to drink right about now, as the conceptual deficiencies of this puzzle are really too much.

Imagine thinking VALOREM is a good thing to put in your puzzle. I don't know how something like that—a *long* *partial* *Latin* answer—gets in here. Maybe Jimmy Dorsey or Paul ANKA or Johnny UNITAS knows the answer. Which is to say, holy smokes this puzzle is living in the past (and *only* in the distant past). Please, don't accuse me of I not enjoying old things—I'm a medievalist, for pete's sake (shout-out to all the ANGLO-Norman fans out there!)—the issue is how aggressively, er, AGO a puzzle is, and this one's about as aggressive as they come. BAILOR? NUNCIO? What am I supposed to do with this? I can handle some antiquated rough stuff here and there, if there's, you know, amelioration somewhere else in the grid. But alas. All I get is IRISH LINEN, which I'd like to like, but honestly, again, I don't even know what that is.

[123A: Puccini piece]

I struggled in the NE because of VALOREM (???) and then because I had GROAN instead of GRUNT (possibly because I was groaning, not grunting, while solving) (22A: Sound of exertion). Ran into the old ALOT v. ATON dilemma (31A: Oodles and oodles). Couldn't see "MERCI" as a "nicety" (26A: Nice nicety) (ugh, why do you let your cutesy alliterating and rhyming take precedence over precision!?) (Oh, and "Nice" is a city in France, in case that didn't register). Clue on SPA DAY was way too vague for me to have much hope there (48A: Restorative indulgence). Oh, and I misspelled FOIE (Fr. for "liver") as FOIS (Fr. for "times"), thus ending up with ASONS at 43D: Units in the life span of a galaxy (AEONS), which I was *almost* willing to believe was some astronomical term I'd just never heard. But thankfully I caught the mistake on FOIE and fixed it. The rest of the puzzle was uneventful (unless groans are events). Alright, that's all. Sorry, Sunday-only solvers. I wish I could be more chipper for you, but truly you have chosen the worst day of the week to solve. Trust me, I solve them all.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Soleil Saint-Cyr

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: HIVE MIND — Theme answers end in...bee-related words? Types of bee?

Theme answers:

ESSENTIAL WORKER (19A: One on the front lines during a crisis)
HOMECOMING QUEEN (35A: Crown wearer at fall football game)
US MILITARY DRONE (52A: Unmanned Dept. of Defense aircraft)
HIVE (57A: With 58-Across, collective consciousness ... or a hint to the ends of 19-, 35- and 52-Across)
MIND (58A: See 57-Across)

Word of the Day: EMIR (60A: Qatari leader) —

An emir (/əˈmɪər, eɪˈmɪər, ˈeɪmɪər/; Arabic: أمير‎ ʾamīr [ʔaˈmiːr]), sometimes transliterated amir, amier, or ameer, can refer to a king or an aristocratic or noble and military title of high office used in a variety of places in the Arab countries, West Africa, Afghanistan and in the Indian subcontinent. The term has been widely used to denote a "commander", "general", or "leader" i.e. Amir al-Mu'min. The feminine form is emira (أميرة ʾamīrah). When translated as "prince", the word "emirate" is analogous to a sovereign principality. In contemporary usage, the term may indicate a Muslim head of state of an Emirate or a leader of an Islamic organization.
(Wikipedia)

• • •

Before we get started, it's Black History Month, and this week is all Black constructors! Soleil Saint-Cyr is also a high school student, so 1) BE NICE TO HER ON TWITTER and 2) that's the coolest thing ever, I wish I was getting published in the NYT in high school! I hope she knows how awesome she is!

It's a very snowy August Monday! I'm writing this with my pajamas inside out and an ice cube flushed down the toilet hoping that I get to stay home from work tomorrow. Just kidding--I love my job. Who wouldn't want to work somewhere surrounded by books? Sigh.

On to the puzzle! I'm gonna say it: US MILITARY DRONE is crosswordese, you'd normally call it an "unmanned drone," and also please don't get me started on the way the U.S. military actually uses the things. Are Yale students really called YALIES? Oof. I like the nod to OREO without actually putting OREO in the puzzle; I think my opinions on the amount of STUF the cookies should have in them have been well-stated over the years. Overall, pretty solid Monday despite the one gripe.

The theme was simple and, well, sweet. (Like honey? Anyone?) BEAR HUG is good in a bee-themed puzzle too. I did a presentation on bees in sixth grade where I had to present in character as a bee and my best friend told me I was weird for getting so into it and for saving pictures of bees as "selfies" on my computer, but you know what, Kyra, I still think bees are cool, so take that.

Bullets:

NSYNC (20D: "Bye Bye Bye" boy band) — The boy band craze just about missed me. I did have a favorite Jonas brother (Joe, of course, he had the best smile) but 'NSync was a little before my time. The craze is kind of back, though, with K-Pop. I don't have a favorite member of BTS but I'm actually really impressed by the vocal and dance talent some of these groups have! Don't get me started on Loona's choreography...
OSHA (34A: Factory-inspecting org.) — I'm just linking this video because it's really fun to watch a guy do a lot of work about something that really doesn't matter at all in the real world.
AHAB (29D: "Moby-Dick" captain) — My favorite Moby Dick quote: "Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies." ....Well, sperm whales are now considered "vulnerable [to endangerment/extinction]" by the IUCN, but in Melville's defense he was writing in 1851, so.
IMMA (31D: "___ Be" by the Black-Eyed Peas) — Throwback time!

Signed, August Thompson, tired graduate student.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

[Follow August Thompson on Twitter]

Constructor: Adesina O. Koiki

Relative difficulty: Challenging (NW corner alone put me well over my normal Tuesday time) (I think ... clock wasn't on)

THEME: TENNIS COURT (56A: Playing area usually having one of the surfaces seen at the starts of 16-, 28- and 43-Across) — GRASS, HARD, and CLAY:

Theme answers:

GRASSHOPPER (16A: Insect with powerful hind legs)
HARD KNOCKS (28A: Difficulties in life)
CLAYMATION (43A: Film technique used in old California Raisins ads)

Word of the Day: HATTON Garden (1A: ___ Garden, London district known for diamond trading) —

Hatton Garden is a street and commercial area in the Holborn district of the London Borough of Camden, close to the boundary with the City of London. It takes its name from Sir Christopher Hatton, a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, who established a mansion here and gained possession of the garden and orchard of Ely Place, the London seat of the Bishops of Ely. It remained in the Hatton family and was built up as a stylish residential development in the reign of King Charles II. [...] Hatton Garden is famous as London's jewellery quarter and the centre of diamond trade in the United Kingdom. This specialisation grew up in the early 19th century, spreading out from its more ancient centre in nearby Clerkenwell. Today there are nearly 300 businesses here in the jewellery industry and over 55 shops, representing the largest cluster of jewellery retailers in the UK.The largest of these businesses was De Beers, the international family of companies which dominated the international diamond trade. Their headquarters were in an office and warehouse complex just behind the main Hatton Garden shopping street. (wikipedia)

• • •

Pretty straightforward stuff here, themewise. I have been in Queens, with today's constructor (at a Mets game), just before he was scheduled to cover the U.S. Open (Adesina is a sportswriter and broadcaster), so it was fun to solve this and finally discover the theme. It felt very ... him. (Sidenote: Adesina makes puzzles regular for the Vox crossword, so you'll want to check those out if you've somehow got time left in your solving schedule) My only issue with the theme is more an issue of colloquial usage, which is to say, players play on clay and they play on grass but you wouldn't say they "play on hard." I would call that third surface "hard court." The "court" just doesn't come off it in common speech the way it comes easily off "grass" and "clay" (which are definable substances, whereas "hard" is some kind of ... polymer ... something? What do I know? Read about it here. The brand name is Laykold. Please don't put that in a puzzle). My only stumble in theme territory came when I tried to make the California Raisins (commercial scourge of my California childhood) STOPMOTION instead of CLAYMATION (which, in my limited defense, is a *form* of "stop-motion" animation). So there you go, all the first words are surfaces, all the surface types are covered, bing bang boom.

The puzzle felt much more like a Wednesday than a Tuesday. I haven't struggled that hard to start a Tuesday puzzle in I don't know how long. 1-Across (HATTON) was totally unknown to me, and uninferrable, and that corner was so large that it was hard to get traction: few short toeholds, and one of those (OUSTS) was completely opaque to me. Should've noted the hyphen in "Red-cards," then maybe I would've realized the clue wanted a verb, and then maybe, Maybe, I would've realized that the verb that the clue wanted was OUSTS (not a word I associate with getting ejected from a soccer match). The bottom of that corner had another short answer I thought I could use to get started, but Jeanette LEE, yeah, no chance there (30A: Jeanette ___, billiards legend nicknamed the Black Widow). I know less about billiards than I do about golf. She seems a fantastic LEE clue, but for later in the week. Unless the general public is way way more billiards-savvy than I am, which is absolutely possible, as it would be hard to be less so. This is all to say that that corner took me as long as a typical Saturday corner. Once I got beyond my billiards and diamond ignorance, things settled down to normal Tuesday levels.

KPS as a plural noun is not great (63A: Mil. mess personnel), and REE is one of those bottom-of-the-barrel answers I never like seeing (as clued) (20A: Riddle-me-___), but the fill seemed quite solid overall. I like that the clues are pointing (pointedly) to Black people and culture this week—makes Black constructor week (which we're in the middle of) something more than just a matter of constructor identity. Because of course the issue with how exclusionary the NYTXW has been (and in so many ways continues to be) is not only, or even primarily, a matter of who's making the puzzles; it's also a matter of who and what is included in the puzzle's cultural worldview. Every crossword is in some small way an assertion about what matters, about who "we" are. You make the puzzle more broadly inclusive not just by putting "new" names (and places and terms and events etc.) in the grid, but by expanding your way of cluing names (and places and terms and events etc.) that have been in the puzzle all along. You could easily clue RIOTS, NEON, ROC, and even BOP in completely different ways and drain the Blackness right out of the puzzle. Happens every day. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. happy Groundhog Day, and happy 80th birthday to my father :)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Yacob Yonas

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: JOHN LEWIS (35A: Civil rights icon who led a historic march from Selma to Montgomery on 3/7/1965)— theme answers are related to Lewis's career and activism:

Theme answers:

NON-VIOLENCE (16A: Principle of the type of activism practiced by 35-Across)
GEORGIA'S FIFTH (19A: Congressional district represented by 35-Across from 1987 to 2020)
FREEDOM RIDERS (53A: Group including 35-Across that protested the segregation of public buses)
GOOD TROUBLE (58A: Oxymoronic coinage of 35-Across)

Word of the Day: BIWA (37A: Japan's largest lake, located NE of Kyoto) —

Lake Biwa (Japanese: 琵琶湖, Hepburn: Biwa-ko) is the largest freshwater lake in Japan, located entirely within Shiga Prefecture (west-central Honshu), northeast of the former capital city of Kyoto. Lake Biwa is an ancient lake, over 4 million years old. It is estimated to be the 13th oldest lake in the world. Because of its proximity to the ancient capital, references to Lake Biwa appear frequently in Japanese literature, particularly in poetry and in historical accounts of battles. (wikipedia) ... ALSO ...

The biwa (琵琶) is a Japanese short necked lute, often used in narrative storytelling. The biwa is the chosen instrument of Benten, goddess of music, eloquence, poetry, and education in Japanese Buddhism. The biwa is a plucked string instrument that was first popular in China and then spread throughout East Asia. It is said to have arrived in Japan from China during the Nara period (710–794), and is even thought to have roots that trace back to Persia. It is generally 60 centimetres (24 in) to 106 centimetres (42 in) in length and made from wood. The instrument consists of a water drop shaped body with a handle, and while there are generally four strings, five stringed varieties also exist. In Japan, the biwa is generally plucked with a bachi instead of the fingers, and is often used to play gagaku. In addition, it is used as musical accompaniment when blind monks recite scriptural texts, or when reciting The Tale of the Heike, a war chronicle from the Kamakuraperiod (1185–1333). (wikipedia).

• • •

Straightforward tribute puzzle. Lewis makes a very worthy subject, of course, but this type of puzzle always feels flat to me. Pick a subject, pick some things related to that subject that fit symmetrically in a grid, done. You can do this for any famous person. There's just not much to it. I did think that the theme answer set was pretty lively—GEORGIA'S FIFTH is original, and the closer, GOOD TROUBLE, is fantastic. But puzzle-wise, there's not much here but a list. No playfulness, no trickery, none of the things that make the puzzle interesting at the *puzzle* level. As an example of the type, this is good. I just don't care for this type of puzzle very much. Also, my god if I never hear the term BITCOIN again it'll be too soon. I thought this puzzle was about *NON*-VIOLENCE, but then you went and made me think about tech billionaire BITCOIN bros. Just CRUEL, really. I did enjoy seeing AOC and the and all. And JAMIE Foxx. And NARUTO (it's a really popular manga title, but I wonder if it's really well known to NYTXW solvers yet). Speaking of comics, John Lewis co-wrote one called "March," a trilogy about his life in the Civil Right Movement. It's very popular and extremely well regarded. Worth (re-) reading this month.

I struggled a bit today in both the NW and SW corners. I love BANG OUT as an answer (3D: Do quickly, as an assignment), but wow I had trouble picking it up. BEAT OUT and then BASH OUT were keeping BANG OUT out of the picture until I got the first two themers up there. So that was a struggle I came out of happy. The struggle in the SW ended less happily. BIWA is totally new to me (37A: Japan's largest lake, located NE of Kyoto). Seems a fine answer—it's geographically significant in a number of ways. But there's nothing inferrable about it, so I needed every cross. Which leads me to BAD FATS (37D: Butter and margarine, nutritionally speaking). Bah. It's the clue, really, that threw me. If you tell me "nutritionally speaking," I expect something more specific and less slangy than BAD FATS. Also, man I hate the moral coding of fat, or anything related to food. In short, It never occurred to me that something as casual and common-parlance as BAD FATS would be the answer, considering nothing in the clue suggested the answer would be slangy or colloquial. In fact, "nutritionally speaking" appears to point me in the opposite direction—toward something more precisely scientific. So FATS wasn't hard, but the BAD part was both hard and, ultimately, disappointing.

ANNA Deavere Smith has been in a ton of shows, and her name is really familiar, but I couldn't place her today, especially without any specific information to go on beyond her name (you could throw a "West Wing" or "Nurse Jackie" or "black•ish" in there ... something) (6D: Actress ___ Deavere Smith). Could not process the clue on GPS (9A: Bookend letters of "Google Maps," appropriately); bookends are, almost by definition, symmetrical, and so the idea that the "G" (on the one hand) and the "PS" (on the other) of "Google Maps" might be thought of as "bookends"??? No, that did not track. Outside the theme, the answers that pleased me the most were POP TRIO and (ironically) OLD GAG. Just good, colorful middle-length phrases. Sometimes you find enjoyment in unexpected, smallish things. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Derek Allen

Relative difficulty: Easy (except maybe some song titles, depending on your knowledge base) (it's an oversized grid today: 15x16)

THEME: color songs— a rebus puzzle where the rebus squares are colors found in the titles of song; for each color square (four in all), the crosses are song titles in both directions (Across and Down):

Theme answers:

"JOHN DEERE [GREEN]" / "[GREEN] LIGHT" (17A: 1993 country hit by Joe Diffie / 19D: 2017 hit by Lorde (also a 2008 hit by John Legend, and a 1968 hit by the American Breed)
"PAINT IT [BLACK]" / "[BLACK] OR [WHITE]" / "[WHITE] WEDDING" (32A: 1966 hit by the Rolling Stones / 33D: 1991 hit by Michael Jackson / 45A: 1983 hit by Billy Idol)
"BODAK [YELLOW]" / "[YELLOW] SUBMARINE" (38D: 2017 hit by Cardi B / 61A: 1966 hit by the Beatles)

Word of the Day: EIN (22A: Fig. on some I.R.S. forms) —

The Employer Identification Number (EIN), also known as the Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN) or the Federal Tax Identification Number, is a unique nine-digit number assigned by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to business entities operating in the United States for the purposes of identification. When the number is used for identification rather than employment tax reporting, it is usually referred to as a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and when used for the purposes of reporting employment taxes, it is usually referred to as an EIN. These numbers are used for tax administration and must be not used for any other purpose. For example, the EIN should not be used in tax lien auction or sales, lotteries, etc. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was really disappointing, in that it was promising, but then never came together. Got "PAINT IT [BLACK]" early and thought there was just going to be a BLACK rebus (you know, for BLACK History Month ... somehow). I know the Michael Jackson song "[BLACK] OR WHITE" but at that point was not expecting to see a second rebus square in the same song, and so didn't get the BLACK cross. Eventually got to the Lorde song and thought "It's called 'BLACK Light?" I really thought it was ... oh, I see it is, it's 'GREEN LIGHT'." And thank god I knew that song because what on god's GREEN earth is "JOHN DEERE GREEN" and moreover who is Joe Diffie?? You'd think that if DIFFIE were really famous his name would've appeared in a puzzle at least once in the nearly 30 years since this "hit." You notice that his is the only one of the theme clues that has a genre qualifier in it ("country"). The rest are just "hits." I guess GREEN is an iconic color for John Deere products and so you're probably expected to infer the color that way? In terms of general well-knownedness, that answer is the mother of all outliers, wow. ("The song peaked at number 5 on the country charts"—wikipedia)

So at this point, after the GREEN square, I've got songs ... and colors ... and the songs cross at the colors ... so I'm looking for something to make it make sense. Are these flag colors? I was thinking about the Pan-African colors, but those are red, gold, and green. Maybe black and green will be involved in some other, as yet unknown flag. Or maybe there's some kind of wacky A-side / B-side gag going on with the two songs involved in the rebus squares, and I'll figure it out as I go along. I thought "well there must be a revealer somewhere to explain what's going on." But no. None. The explanation never came. The trick never came. The thing to tie it all together never came. Or, it had already come, and I just didn't know it. It's just songs that cross at colors. The colors ... are meaningless. The crosses ... are just crosses. There's no payoff. The payoff is ... I guess, finding the rebus? Or appreciating that the rebus squares have songs in both directions? I really wanted the colors (or the songs) to do something, to mean something. But they're just songs. And they're just colors. So the puzzle is very interesting from an architectural standpoint, but there's a giant "So what?" hovering over the whole endeavor. I finished feeling I must've missed something, only to find out later that I hadn't. It's not a great feeling to have at the end of a puzzle.

The puzzle was very easy for me. Almost no resistance. I knew every song except the country one, so I was lucky in that respect. My condolences to the less pop culture-savvy of you; this can't have been much fun. The puzzle really does rely on you having broad knowledge of this one aspect of pop culture, so if it's not your bag you are Really left out. "BODAK YELLOW" was a huge song and absolutely puzzle-worthy, but I can see people who haven't heard of the song looking at "BODAK" and going "What ... is a BODAK? Surely I have an error." (Sidenote: Have we seen BOJACK in a puzzle yet?)

The fill seemed a little on the crosswordesey side (when you've got ELOI ACAI IVEY filling an entire row, that's a sign. PED WII. ATOB. ANEG. Even the longer stuff leans into crosswordese (ONE IOTA, IN SITU, LAO-TSE). Would've been nice to see some more MAJESTIC stuff (VERA WANG is nice). Is EYEWINKS redundant? (12D: Secret-indicating gestures) Because it feels redundant. What are you winking with if not your eye? Do I even want to know? Is it your Tiddly? What is a Tiddly, anyway!? I don't have many specific grievances in the fill. Mainly what I feel about this puzzle is a. it was easy, and b. it was a letdown. Again, I admire the construction, but the lack of clear unifying premise, the lack of an emphatic Aha at the end, made the solving experience less than satisfying.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BUICK Electra 225 (34A: "Deuce and a quarter" automaker) —

The Buick Electra is a full-size luxury car manufactured and marketed by Buick from 1959 to 1990 over six generations — having been named after heiress and sculptor Electra Waggoner Biggs by her brother-in-law Harlow H. Curtice, former president of Buick and later president of General Motors. The Electra was offered in coupe, convertible, sedan, and station wagon body styles over the course of its production — with rear-wheel drive (1959-1984) or front-wheel drive (1985-1990, except station wagon). For its entire production run, it utilized some form of GM's C platform. The Electra was superseded by the Buick Park Avenue in 1991. // For years, the Super and the Roadmaster constituted the upper echelon of Buick's lineup. The Limited, even more luxurious than the Roadmaster, returned for 1958. For 1959, the Super was renamed the Electra, the Roadmaster was renamed the Electra 225, and the unsuccessful Limited model was discontinued. The appearance was shared with two other Buick models, the mid-level Invicta and the entry level LeSabre. The Electra 225 nameplate was a nod to the latter car's overall length of over 225 in (5,715 mm), earning it the street name "deuce and a quarter." (wikipedia)

• • •

I say there's no theme today, but it's worth noting that this is the Blackest puzzle not only of this week, but possibly of all time. There's not a single human being in the clues or fill who isn't Black. Not one. Well, most of the 2019 NATS weren't Black, just as most sherpas aren't, but every specific person mentioned in this puzzle is. And yet this puzzle is also just a very solid Friday puzzle, as solvable as any other Friday I've ever done. In addition to being the fine, well-crafted puzzle I expect to see every time I see Erik Agard's name on the byline, this puzzle makes an important point: that centering Blackness is not an exclusionary move. That puzzle writers and editors have, And Have Always Had, the ability to make Black people more visible in their puzzles, while also keeping the puzzles broadly accessible; they simply haven't. The gravitational pull of precedent is surely a big part of the reason they haven't, but it's important to recognize that that precedent has been white—probably more by default than exclusionary intent, but the effects have been the same. In its total Blackness, this puzzle is itself a small form of REPARATIONS (the bull's-eye word of the day). But I hope this puzzle, and all the puzzles this week, aren't simply a token recognition that Black people exist, but a genuine call to all constructors to actively consider the breadth and depth of cultural focus in their puzzles, specifically where Black people are concerned, but ultimately where all people are concerned.

My Clue of the Year so far is 3D: A fine way to discourage foul language? (SWEAR JAR). Actually, it's a clue / answer combo, great on both fronts. The "fine" pun, mwah, perfect. Also great is the clue / answer combo at 13A: Pop up a lot, perhaps? (NEW DAD). Unlike SWEAR JAR, that one actually fooled me. I had NEW DA- and was still tilting my head and squinting bemusedly at the clue. Just delightful stuff. Hardest part of the grid for me today was the entire area in and around the FLOW part of FLOW STATE (29A: What you're in when you're in the zone). I had -OW STATE and still no idea. Weirdly, I have read about the concept of FLOW, but I'd never (to my knowledge) seen the concept expressed as the phrase FLOW STATE. So I thought I had errors. Actually I did have an error, a little earlier: PREZ instead of PROF (17D: Spelman figure, informally). As I am a PROF, I suppose this counts as irony. Also couldn't get to SOIL from S--L (which now seems awfully stupid on my part) (25A: Concern in geomorphology) and without so many crucial letters (including the "B" from BUICK, which I didn't know), there was no way for me to see OIL BARREL (21D: Unit officially defined as 42 gallons). I briefly wanted that answer to start "ONE-something." Outside of that area, I pretty much moved through the grid with a typical easy Friday flow.

Five Things:

10D: Revered Woman in Islam (FATIMA) — one of two Islam clues in the puzzle today (speaking of inclusivity) (see also 62A: Observes one of the Five Pillars of Islam => FASTS).
38A: Product from Bevel or Oui the People (RAZOR) — I was at a loss here (guessed it after I changed LOLL to LAZE at 33D: Do nothing). These are Black-owned businesses that make products specifically for Black skin/hair (Bevel / Oui the People).
8D: One-named rapper who became a co-host of CBS's "The Talk" (EVE)— baffled by this even though I *own music* by EVE. This should tell you exactly how much I pay attention to network television, of any type.

20A: Bit of ancient writing (SCROLL) — I think of the SCROLL as the thing the writing is *on*, and as containing something more than just a "bit" of writing, so I was looking for a 6-letter equivalent of something like RUNE here.
31D: Language in which you might be greeted "Hullo, hoo are ye?" (SCOTS) — For the third time today, I was slow getting an answer I have a lot of experience with. First PROF (I am one). Then EVE (I have her music). Now SCOTS. I studied abroad in Scotland and at one point was going to write my dissertation on Middle SCOTS literature. And yet I looked at this clue and thought "what kind of rural dialect are they trying to render here?" I needed a NAE or WEE or HAGGIS to tip me off.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BORSCHT BELT (21A: Once-popular resort area in the Catskills, informally) —

Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange and Ulster Counties in upstate New York, United States. These resorts were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ah, I was *hoping* Mr. Collins would get a puzzle in this week—he constructs regularly for The New Yorker and I always enjoy his work. Since he (like yours truly) studied Literature in graduate school, I frequently seem to be on his wavelength. Or maybe that's not the reason, but it sure feels like the reason. It sure felt like the reason today, as literary answers that are very close to my work or life came rushing at me time and again, starting with LEO Tolstoy at 1A: First name in Russian literature, whose Anna Karenina is among my very favorite novels, and then again with AENEAS (my boy! I'll see you again next week, buddy!) and SESTETs (I'll see *you* in April, guys). "Twain" is a very poetic way to say DUO, so that clue too felt literaryish. HERSTORIES feels very thirty-years-ago (18A: Chronicles from a feminist perspective), but it turns out I was just starting out in grad school thirty years ago, and have spent my whole life surrounded by (and married to) feminist scholars, so no problem there. My family's from IDAHO. I've never been called "TEACH," but I do TEACH. My first cinematic memory is "STAR WARS" (1977). So yeah, in literary ways and so many other ways, this puzzle felt made for me. Still never watched "THE WEST WING," though; the clue on that one (41A: Government program?) was one of the tougher things about the puzzle (see below), though with a few crosses, it wasn't all that tough.

I solved this one in a fairly regularly counterclockwise manner, starting in the NW and heading down the west side of the grid, mostly because that's where the short answers were, and those tend to be easiest to get quickly. Easy to slide down to DIRGE CARPS TEACH and then (because I had the front ends) into GREAT WORK BE PATIENT S-CLASS. I actually didn't have the WORK part of GREAT WORK at first, but I got OVERT off the "T" (46A: Plain as day) and then SHOVEL off that "V" (36D: Big scoop) and so the SW was over fairly quickly (though I did briefly write in C-NOTE instead of T-NOTE at 41D: Certain govt. security, resulting in a [Government program?] that appeared to be about CHEW-ing things). Had trouble with the second half of an answer again at NERDCORE (50A: Music genre that includes "geeksta rap"), but ROCK didn't make much sense, and once ETC. went in, I remembered HARDCORE and NORMCORE and DADCORE (I swear these are real)—in short, I remembered the "-CORE" suffix and off I went again. The one time that the puzzle appeared daunting was when I rounded the corner in the SE and tried to come up. Progress halted at the backend / bottom of those long Downs in the NE, and all of a sudden I was staring at what looked like a lot of empty white space. But at this point I hadn't gone back and checked those long Acrosses I hadn't pursued back at the beginning of the puzzle, and as soon as I set my eyes on one of those: bingo:

Saved by the Borscht! Only thing holding me back at that point was HOTWIRING, which I found to be by far the toughest answer to come up with today (16D: Getting started the wrong way?). But that's why they call them crosswords—because the crosses save you from your ignorance and/or befuddlement. The end. Only one actual mistake today (besides the C-NOTE / CHEW- thing): I thought that the [Nice pair of boxers?] (at 17A) was PAWS (not PECS). I thought we were playing with dogs, not ogling athletes ("nice pair"!?). Speaking of PAWS, gonna go play with my cats now. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I forgot to be mad about there's being three "IN"s in this puzzle (IN NEED OF, SEWN IN, TIE-IN) ... OK, now that that's done, goodbye for real.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Katie Hale and Christina Iverson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Toddler Talk"— familiar phrases are redone with "W" sounds in place of "R" sounds, resulting in wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):
Theme answers:

TAKE A WAYNE CHECK (24A: Accept payment from Batman?)
AN ELEPHANT IN THE WOMB (31A: Cause for celebration at a pachyderm sanctuary?)
HIT WOK BOTTOM (49A: Finish scooping out a big stir-fry?)
GET WITCH QUICK (65A: Puritan's goal in 17th-century Salem?)
THE WHEEL DEAL (86A: Something a Parmesan vendor might offer?)
WEED BETWEEN THE LINES (100A: What a stoner actor smoked during rehearsal?)
WHISKEY BUSINESS (111A: Domain for Jameson and Maker's Mark?)

Word of the Day: MOAB (77D: Ancient kingdom in modern-day Jordan) —

Moab (/ˈmoʊæb/) is the name of an ancient kingdom whose territory is today located in the modern state of Jordan. The land is mountainous and lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archaeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel, an episode also noted in 2 Kings 3. The Moabite capital was Dibon. According to the Hebrew Bible, Moab was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbours to the west. (wikipedia)

• • •

And so we return to earth. After a week of interesting and occasionally extraordinary puzzles, we get the same Sunday stuff we always get. Sound-change wackiness, writ large over a giant grid. I've certainly seen worse versions of this sort of thing. At least some of the themers are genuinely zany, if not LOL funny (GET WITCH QUICK is the winner of the day, for me). But baby talk, not something I enjoy or want to spend time with, thanks / no thanks. This theme is really thin, in that you do this sound-change thing with a ton of word pairs, and then for each of the "W" ones there are a theoretically infinite number of phrases you might find those words in. I mean, "rain" phrases alone must be pretty high in number. So the whole thing feels really slight, which means the themers really really (really) have to be exquisite in order for any of it to feel worthwhile. And I do think that some of the cluing really gives it the old college try (THE WHEEL DEAL isn't that interesting as a phrase, but the clue nearly rescues it, for instance). The concept just isn't that interesting to me, and the themers on the whole aren't funny / wacky enough. Plus, there's some wobbliness. It's "THE elephant in the room," not "AN elephant ..." Or, rather, that phrase would much much rather start THE than AN. You gotta do what you gotta do for symmetry's sake, but it still sounded weird to me with the indefinite article. Further, there's a "w" sound in QUICK that made me think it was gonna be involved in the sound-change theme (I had Q--CK first and I thought there was gonna be a "crack"-to-"QUACK" change there). They did a good job not having any unchanged "R"s in the themers, but that stray "w" sound threw me a bit. Also, what the stoner actor smoked was weed. He smoked weed. "Between the lines" was when he did it, but the clue doesn't ask for that. It asks for "What a stoner actor smoked during rehearsal." Grammatically, that clue wants a noun, and the noun is weed. He smoked weed. If there'd been an adjective before the noun, OK. But the prepositional phrase after: clunky and grammatically off, to my ears. The clue is really awkwardly written.

The fill on this one is ok but really very boring. Besides THE 'F' WORD (nice), there's nothing memorable here at all. It's almost all short and familiar, and what little longer stuff there is isn't terribly interesting. BEER BREWER feels ... I don't know, off, somehow. Redundant-y. I'd call said person either a "beer maker" or simply a "brewer."HERE'S TO is a really jarring partial, and, again, kudos to the clue for trying to make things right (19D: Slice of toast?), but nothing's gonna rescue HERE'S TO. There are no significantly difficult parts in this puzzle. You really can just run right through it. I had some slight trouble with OUTWEIGH (52D: Be more important than). It was only after I got it all from crosses and thought "that clue makes no sense" that I eventually realized "oh, no, as a metaphor for measuring, say, costs and benefits, it definitely makes sense." Beyond that, though, the only fight this puzzle put up was when I tried to parse NCAA GAME early on (when I had only the two "A"s), or when I had to leave a square blank because who can say if it's HEE haw or YEE haw (112D: "___-haw!") (actually, "HEE-Haw" is the title of a show and probably would have the "Haw" part capitalized, so ... at least I taught myself something today). Other than that, it's Monday-easy throughout. As Sundays go, this was better than average, but "average" is a dreary affair these days. Quaintness and corniness reign. I find myself wishing for bold failures instead of typical passable fare. Oh, I did enjoy full-named BO DEREK. If you didn't know the answer straight off (as I did not), then watching her name emerge from crosses was kind of fun. Like NCAA GAME, a parsing challenge. So there was some pleasure to be had. Just wish there'd been a lot more of it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Portia Lundie

Relative difficulty: Challenging (3:45 ... normalish Tuesday / fastish Wednesday)

THEME: LET YOUR HAIR DOWN (10D: "Loosen up!" ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — hairdo types are found embedded (in circled squares) inside long Down theme answers:

Theme answers:

DISCOMBOBULATED (3D: Completely confused)
"TOMB RAIDER" (6D: Lara Croft, in film)
PERMAFROST (31D: Layer of soil that never thaws)

Word of the Day: ROC-A-FELLA (35D: Record label co-founded by Jay-Z) —

Roc-A-Fella Records was an American hip hop record label founded by rapper/entrepreneur Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, Damon "Dame" Dash, and Kareem "Biggs" Burke in 1995. It was operated as a division of Def Jam Recordings. [note: it's been defunct for eight years] (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a good theme, and the revealer is very good. It really, really should've been a Tuesday or Wednesday, because it was on the tippy-top high end of my Monday times, just above my Tuesday average and well within my normal Wednesday range. Long answers next to long answers, unclear cluing, and a weirdly isolated center all conspired to make this very slow (for a Monday). I don't want to focus on this misplacement too much, because, again, the theme is well conceived and pretty well executed. But place your puzzles on the correct days! Bah. Anyway, the theme. "BOB" does not break across two words in its answer, which is the gold standard for embedded words, but DISCOMBOBULATED is such a weird / cool word that it more than makes up for BOB's anomalous embeddedness. DISCOMBOBULATED was also part of what made the puzzle hard. I had DISCO- and still no idea what it could be. BRAID and AFRO break nicely across the two parts of their respective answers, and as I say, the revealer is superb. I'm just going to pretend it's Tuesday so I can force myself to have only, or primarily, positive feelings about this one. Hard to pull off an early-week themed puzzle with any kind of panache, so give respect where respect is due.

So mad at myself about being so slow on ROC-A-FELLA, and for botching J-LO as well (21D: Musical artist "from the block," familiarly). In both cases, I was in Monday clue-reading mode (i.e. very cursory, quick-glance mode), and with ROC-A-FELLA I didn't really register the Jay-Z part of the clue, and then with J-LO, I didn't pick up anything after [Musical artist...], and since I had "NICE ONE!" instead of "NICE JOB!" at 20A: "You did it!," my [Musical artist...] was three letters starting with not a "J" but an "O," so (OH SO!) so ... so, my musical artist came out ONO! "ONO from the block!" Yes, that very famous song lyric!: "Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got / I'm still, I'm still ONO from the block!" Wow. That is some kind of miss. In my very feeble defense, if you are gonna use "from the block" in your clue, the answer better damn well be JENNY. It's "JENNY from the Block," not "J-LO from the Block." Lyric specificity matters!! Speaking of JENNY (almost), I didn't know Liz and JENNA were "best friends," though I've only dabbled in "30 Rock" viewership, so maybe the clue is apt (1D: Liz's best friend on "30 Rock"). LYRA was hard (25A: Harp-shaped constellation). MCCOY should've been easy (5D: "Star Trek" doctor), but between wanting BONES, having one of the crosses wrong, *and* not knowing what ****ing letter the musical answer was supposed to be (*C* MINOR), I got slowed up badly there. PRIESTESS was weirdly hard, the "High" part of the clue only making sense in retrospect (11D: "High" figure in a tarot deck). LOL my knowing anything about a tarot deck. It's enough that I know TAROT is a thing that might appear in xwords. TOUTS was wicked-hard (32A: Ballyhoos). I had TO-TS and even then honestly wanted TOOTS. Yeesh. THERMO, yipes, again, only intelligible in retrospect (43A: Lead-in to -stat). Just nowhere near Monday-normal. But again, for a T or W, it's nice work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Colin Ernst

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:19)

THEME: "[verb] YOUR [article of clothing]" — idioms in the imperative voice that follow this pattern:

Theme answers:

KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON (17A: Stay cool)
HANG ON TO YOUR HAT (37A: Get ready for something amazing)
TIGHTEN YOUR BELT (58A: Don't spend so much money)

Word of the Day: FLORA (31D: Goddess of spring) —

Flora (Latin: Flōra) is a Roman goddess of flowers and of the season of spring – a symbol for nature and flowers (especially the may-flower). While she was otherwise a relatively minor figure in Roman mythology, being one among several fertility goddesses, her association with the spring gave her particular importance at the coming of springtime, as did her role as goddess of youth.^[3] She was one of the fifteen deities who had their own flamen, the Floralis, one of the flamines minores. Her Greek counterpart is Chloris. (wikipedia)

• • •

Quick write-up this evening. Not much going on here. There's a kind of unity, in that all the phrases are 15-letters long and all are in the imperative voice and all have YOUR in them and all involve an article of clothing. And yet KEEP and HANG ON TO, being precise synonyms, set up a pattern that the last themer, which begins TIGHTEN, breaks. You end up with the last themer feeling like a clunky outlier. Retain an article of clothing, retain an article of clothing, and then ... merely cinch up ... an article of clothing. It's a weirdly deflating climax. With this little theme pressure, the fill should be much Much better than it is. It's not bad, but this is about the easiest-to-fill grid that you're ever going to see. Only three themers, and since they're 15s, there's no pesky black squares hanging off the ends, complicating your grid-building (hard to explain in brief, but 15s are Really easy to deal with for this reason ... unless you stack them ... but I digress). There should be more long fill in a grid this simple, and certainly there should be sparklier fill. FRIVOLOUS and MONOLITHS are fine, but they're all there is today, interest-wise. Everything else is in the 3-to-6-letter range, and even for 3-to-6-letter fill it's pretty pale stuff. There's no way we should be dealing with obscure-ish, crosswordesey stuff like MERL in a grid that's this easy to fill (7D: Old World blackbird). Actually, if you'd wanted to use crossword constructing legend MERL Reagle as the clue, my objection wouldn't be so strenuous, though even that should be reserved for a later-in-the-week puzzle. Fill is flat and stale overall.

Only struggle was in the center, where ... what in the world is going on with that FLORA clue? She's goddess of the spring!? Clue doesn't even bother mentioning that it's a *Roman* goddess, first of all. We're just supposed to know? Or assume? Second, five-letter goddesses ... I wanted CERES and (for some reason) VESTA before FLORA, because I never wanted FLORA, because I didn't actually know she *was* a goddess, because she's so minor that even the first paragraph of her wikipedia page mentions how minor she is. Also, FLORA is just a regular word. Goes with FAUNA. The whole FLORA thing is from outer space, especially when compared to every other straightforward clue in this puzzle.

I also had OWNS before OFFS (not sure what my brain was doing there) (29A: Slays, in gang talk) and had no idea what "swoooosh" was supposed to sound like at 34A: What a "swoooosh" sound may signal is on its way (EMAIL). So I stumbled through that center part, but beyond that, only BENDS (65A: Doesn't follow to the letter, as rules) and an -ER v. -RE hesitation at 53D: Cavalry weapon caused me even a moment's trouble. Oh, and the clue on ENSURE forced me to ponder a bit (51A: Nutritional drink brand). Somehow "Nutritional" was far too vague, did not quite capture ... whatever it is that ENSURE is. There's just not much here: not much good, not much bad, not much hard. Don't think anything really needs explaining. "?" clues are corny but not thorny. I'm gonna go spend some time with Dickens now. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

First capital of Alaska /THU 1-21-21 / Classic figure killed off in a 2019 Super Bowl ad campaign / Devices rendered obsolescent by smartphones, in brief / Where to find the Egyptian Temple of Dendur

Beheader of Medusa in Greek myth / FRI 1-22-21 / Murphy's co-star in 1982's 48 Hours / army villainous force in Disney's Mulan

Danny ventriloquist dummy for Jimmy Nelson / SAT 1-23-21 / Snow-capped peak of song / Pirates of Penzance ingenue / Nut chewed as stimulant / Classic film that gave us term paparazzi / Museo contents / Gene who's considered the founding father of the modern drum set

Diarist who documented Great Plague of London / SUN 1-24-21 / Blueberries for kid-lit classic / Only Stratego piece with letter on it / Maker of X6 and Z4

Fledgling pigeon / MON 1-25-21 / Nickname for Cardinals with the / Old weapon in hand-to-hand combat

Blows one's top / TUES 1-26-21 / Snoring symbols / California's motto / Bigfoot or yeti

Drug trafficker informally / WED 1-27-21 / Servius Tullius e.g. in ancient Rome / Texas politico O'Rourke / Longtime actress co-starring in Netflix's Grace and Frankie

TV producer Chaiken / THU 1-28-21 / Giant walking combat vehicle in Star Wars films / Golden blades that may be tenderly chew'd by equine or bovine beings / Girl group with 1999 #1 album FanMail / Release as song in modern lingo / Funerary burners

TV roommates for 50+ years / FRI 1-29-21 / Indian lentil dish / Creature in Liberty Mutual ads / Apt name for a yoga instructor / Article of attire akin to a tarboosh

Amphibian that Ogden Nash once rhymed with bottle / SAT 1-30-21 / Singing style with African-American roots / Longtime Sacha Baron Cohen persona

1957 Jimmy Dorsey hit / SUN 1-31-21 / Oldest tech. school in U.S. founded 1824 / Lonely Boy singer 1959 / Prairie east of the Andes / Cloth woven from flax fibre / On a seder plate it represents the arrival of springtime

Jessica of "Fantastic Four" / MON 2-1-2021 / Bête _ / Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, for two / _ Reader (magazine with the slogan "Cure ignorance")

1990 Fox dramedy with Charles S. Dutton / TUE 2-2-21 / Garden London district known for diamond trading / Jeanette billiards legend nicknamed Black Widow / Film technique used in old California Raisins ads / Responses of the unheard per Martin Luther King Jr

1993 country hit by Joe Diffie / THU 2-4-21 / People who believe that all natural objects have souls / Post-human race of sci-fi

Online magazine co-founded by Henry Louis Gates / FRI 2-5-21 / Revered woman in Islam / Distinctive features of Marcus Garvey's helmet / Jazz great Mary ___ Williams / Product from Bevel or Oui the People / Spelman figure informally

Once-popular resort area in the Catskills informally / SAT 2-6-21 / World leader with role in 1961's annexation of Goa / Music genre that includes geeksta rap

Ancient kingdom in modern-day Jordan / SUN 1-7-21 / Soul singer Bridges / Specialist publication for short / First Asian tennis player to be ranked #1 in singles / Celebrity who hold Guinness world record for Most Frequent Clapper

Harp-shaped constellation / MON 2-8-21 / Record label co-founded by Jay-Z / Liz's best friend on 30 Rock / Banned pollutant in brief

Old World blackbird / TUE 2-9-21 / Supply for an indebted tattoo artist / Goddess of spring