• VOODOO DOLL (17A: Figure in many hexes)
• CLOTH DIAPER (25A: Alternative to Huggies or Luvs)
• BOWLING LANE (46A: Place for splits and spares)
• ATM MACHINE (60A: $$$ dispenser)

I Lost It at the Movies is a 1965 book that serves as a compendium of movie reviews written by Pauline Kael, later a film critic from The New Yorker, from 1954 to 1965. The book was published prior to Kael's long stint at The New Yorker; as a result, the pieces in the book are culled from radio broadcasts that she did while she was at KPFA, as well as numerous periodicals, including Moviegoer, the Massachusetts Review, Sight and Sound, Film Culture, Film Quarterly and Partisan Review. It contains her negative review of the then widely acclaimed West Side Story, glowing reviews of other movies such as The Golden Coach and Seven Samurai, as well as longer polemical essays such as her largely negative critical responses to Siegfried Kracauer's Theory of Film and Andrew Sarris's Film Culture essay Notes on the Auteur Theory, 1962. The book was a bestseller upon its first release, and is now published by Marion Boyars Publishers.

Kael's first book is characterized by an approach where she would often quote contemporary critics such as Bosley Crowther and Dwight Macdonald as a springboard to debunk their assertions while advancing her own ideas. This approach was later abandoned in her subsequent reviews, but is notably referred to in Macdonald's book, Dwight Macdonald On Movies (1969).

When an interviewer asked her in later years as to what she had "lost", as indicated in the title, Kael averred: "There are so many kinds of innocence to be lost at the movies." It is the first in a series of titles of books that would have a deliberately erotic connotation, typifying the sensual relation Kael perceived herself as having with the movies, as opposed to the theoretical bent that some among her colleagues had. (wikipedia)

• SHOT [ACROSS] THE BOW (16A: With 1 Across, warning at sea)
• KNOCK [DOWN] DRAG OUT (26A: With 1 Down, like a free-for-all fight)
• HANDS [ACROSS] AMERICA (42A: With 1 Across, charity event involving a coast-to-coast human chain)
• UPSIDE [-DOWN[ CAKE (56A: With 1 Down, dessert sometimes made with pineapple)

Cicely Louise Tyson (December 19, 1924 – January 28, 2021) was an American actress. In a career which spanned more than seven decades in film, television and theatre, she became known for her portrayal of strong African-American women. Tyson received various awards including three Emmy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Tony Award, an Honorary Academy Award, and a Peabody Award.

Having appeared in minor film and television roles early in her career, Tyson garnered widespread attention and critical acclaim for her performance as Rebecca Morgan in Sounder (1972); she was nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for her work in the film. Tyson's portrayal of the title role in the 1974 television film The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, based on the 1971 novel of the same name by Ernest J. Gaines, won her further praise; among other accolades, the role won her two Emmy Awards and a nomination for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She received another Emmy Award nomination for her role as Binta in the acclaimed series Roots (1977).

Tyson continued to act on film and television in the 21st century in projects such as Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), A Lesson Before Dying (1999), Because of Winn-Dixie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman (both 2005), The Help (2011), The Trip to Bountiful (2014) and Last Flag Flying (2017). She also played the recurring role of Ophelia Harkness in the ABClegal drama TV series How to Get Away With Murder since the show's inception in 2014, for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series five times. (wikipedia)

The off-brand punctuation (or non-punctuation) in the first themer should've tipped you off immediately that something funky (if not STENCHy) was going on. When the NYTXW wants you to look at 1-Across or 1-Down, you get hyphens between the "1" and the "Across" (or "Down"). Today, no hyphen, which set off alarm bells. Which isn't to say that I didn't actually look at 1-Across at first. Thought maybe the [Warning at sea] was SHOT BACK ... something something. But then I thought "what if I mentally added the actual word "ACROSS" ...?" and there it was: SHOT [ACROSS] THE BOW. I wrote in SHOT THE BOW, it looked stupid and felt wrong, but then the crosses worked, so ... yay? After this, all the themers were a cinch because every theme clue essentially hands you one of the words in the answer. I absolutely no-looked "HANDS [ACROSS] AMERICA"—got HANDS, added ACROSS, and there was nowhere else for that answer to go. I don't think they actually got people to hold hands all the way Across America, but I'm realizing that my memory is heavily mediated by "The Simpsons"'s representation of the event, so who knows? (Well, someone knows, probably). Anyway, like "We Are The World,""HANDS [ACROSS] AMERICA" was one of those high-profile, bad song-driven charity thingies that feel like they happened only in the '80s, i.e. my adolescence. So though the actual event is a haze, the song, unfortunately, is seared forever in my brain—well, the chorus, for sure. 

• 3D: Benjamin (C-NOTE)— first thing I put in the grid. Always feels slightly like cheating when I lean heavily on old-school crosswordese for traction, and traction doesn't get any old-schoolier than C-NOTE ETNA ATHOS 
• 34A: 1930s Depression-fighting org. (NRA) — Nope. Nope nope nope. Nope. "But we've clued it as a different—" Nope. I look at the grid, I see NRA, and it's school shooting / hospital shootings (yesterday) / white supremacy and terrorism. There are actually very few answers I'd like to see wiped from the grid forever, no matter the clue; this is one of them.
• 28D: West of Malibu (KANYE) — So ... he lives there, I guess? Kinda weird. I get that you're going for a misdirection, a misdirection direction, a clue that makes us read "West" as a direction, but I can't imagine cluing any other celebrity by the place where they just happen to reside. Looks like he (famously?) bought a $57 million house there. Meh. Lifestyles of "celebrities," extremely not my beat.
• 15D: "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" actor Robinson (CRAIG) — had no idea here. Is this the Old Spice guy? Hey, wait, this is Darryl from "The Office"! OK (OK), I know exactly who this guy is. He was on that show for the whole damn run, whereas he's only been on 9 episodes of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," what the hell?! What a weird clue. (P.S. the "Old Spice guy" is Terry Crews)
• 48D: Mini freezer? (BRAKE)— the groaniest of groaners. Even after I had the answer, I wasn't entirely sure how "Mini" worked. "How is a BRAKE"mini"? Miniature in relation to what!?" But, sigh, they mean the car brand Mini. So the BRAKE makes a Mini (i.e. the car) freeze (i.e. stop). As the answer next door says, YIKES (49D: "Oh, no!"). 

Lenore "Lee" Krasner (born Lena Krassner; October 27, 1908 – June 19, 1984) was an American abstract expressionist painter, with a strong speciality in collage. She was married to Jackson Pollock. Although there was much cross-pollination between their two styles, the relationship somewhat overshadowed her contribution for some time. Krasner's training, influenced by George Bridgman and Hans Hofmann, was the more formalized, especially in the depiction of human anatomy, and this enriched Pollock's more intuitive and unstructured output.

Krasner is now seen as a key transitional figure within abstraction, who connected early-20th-century art with the new ideas of postwar America, and her work fetches high prices at auction. She is also one of the few female artists to have had a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art. (wikipedia)

And then, to borrow another metaphor, it's just fireworks—long, vivid answers just exploding in first one direction and then another. The puzzle could've stood to be a little harder, but if you make it Too hard, then the solver doesn't get the propulsive feeling that makes the puzzle so exhilarating. Only halfway through the puzzle and I already feel like I've been rocketing through space (with STARFLEET, past ICE PLANETs and god knows what else):

I had to work a bit to get started, which is normal. Wanted REBUS in that 1-Across slot (1A: Puzzle genre = LOGIC). Wanted LOBO but wasn't Sure sure, so had to fiddle around. Neither OLE nor OPAL immediately leapt out at me (though I did consider OLE), but then I hit GENE, and rode that backwards through my earlier failures, GENE to OLE to LOBO and OPAL, and then LOGIC was visible and off we go. Had a tad more trouble trying to get CANOLA and EBOLA from their back ends (-LA and -A, respectively) as I was trying to make my way down the west side. CELS would've helped a lot, by giving me the first letters of both words, but CELS was well and truly hidden—I went looking in space when the answer was in animation (25D: Images of Pluto, perhaps), so I used LEVAR to get LEVARage in there, and after I changed my initial misspelling of his name (from LAVAR to LEVAR), then ABET slid in there and things started moving. There were no other sticking points thereafter. Meanwhile, the fireworks just never stopped, even when I was making the final turn, counterclockwise up into the NE, colorful bursts of fill were still, uh, filling the grid:

If I have any criticism of this grid (and it's pretty weak, as criticisms go), it's that it's Too much for me. That is, it's a super duper Gen-X'y puzzle. If you had parents who were into Jimi Hendrix and/or The Monkees (mine weren't, but I certainly knew who those acts were since childhood), and then spent at least part of your childhood watching "The Carol Burnett Show" on CBS or Farrah Fawcett on "Charlie's Angels" (or had that iconic Farrah poster over your bed, as my stepbrother did) (15D: Designer Kamali who made Farrah Fawcett's iconic red swimsuit = NORMA) ... if you waited in huge lines to see "The Empire Strikes Back" on opening day (guilty), spent your adolescence watching George WENDT on "Cheers," discovered Judi DENCH movies in your '20s and then maybe watched "Gilmore Girls" or at least grew up to eventually discover and watch the show with your own child (23A: Graham of "Gilmore Girls" = LAUREN) ... if any or all of those things were true for you or those adjacent to you, then you probably had a reasonably easy time with this one. Of course, you might be 18 or 81 and still have found it easy. I am just slightly cautious in my raving in case I'm missing some kind of generational exclusivity that might make others feel different.

Bullets:

• 17A: Supplied with dough, as a bakery (BANKROLLED) — I can't tell what this clue thinks it's doing. [Supplied with dough] is plenty. The "bakery" thing not only doesn't add clear context, it distracts by attempting a clunky misdirection. I see that they are trying to do something with "dough" here, but when you add "as a bakery," it's like you're taking what should be a natural ambiguity / misdirection and forcing the issue. "Think of the wrong kind of dough!" the clue seems to be begging. Seems a cheap move. Also, I can't tell if there's some kind of pun on "roll" going on here or not. Puns are bad enough when you *know* they're happening.
• 21A: It's down in France (DUVET)— yeah, it's down elsewhere, too. We have DUVETs here now. And they're called DUVETs. So, again, weird additional clue words try to force the misdirection.
• 53A: Buildings with many wings (BIRDHOUSES) — OK, but this actually reads gruesomely, since I have to imagine disembodied wings, which I've seen plenty of at the base of the Security Mutual building downtown, where falcons absolutely feast on pigeons and leave the less edible pigeon parts for us to find on the sidewalk. So I just imagined BIRDHOUSES full of bird murder, is what I'm saying. Still, it's not a bad clue, and the misdirection is natural, not forced.

• 40A: Dressed, so to speak (DECENT) — this expression is old-fashioned in a way that I find adorable, despite the implication that there is anything indecent about being unclothed. It's got a colloquial quality I like, even if it's not something I would say.
• 48D: Private dining room (MESS)— more natural misdirection (not your typical adjectival "private"—the "private" here is in the Army)
• 6D: Looks like a jerk (OGLES) — about as good a clue as you're going to get on this leering bit of crosswordese. You could also have figured out a way to cross-reference CREEP here; I wouldn't have minded.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

When an aspiring drag queen is just starting out in the world, she needs someone to turn to for guidance, support, and makeup tips. When a more seasoned queen takes an ingénue under her wing, that usually means she becomes her “mother.” RuPaul herself is regarded as such a pioneer and trailblazer that many drag queens deferentially call her “mother,” as well.

It’s a beautiful mentor-apprentice relationship that can help a younger queen learn the tricks of the trade, including how to get bookings around her city. Most new queens find a drag mother by exploring the club scene or having friends in the community who dabble in the art. (fandom.com)

(33D: It gets hatched in a fantasy novel)

Since the [March word] is not really a "word" but more of a noise or grunt ... well, I always thought it was HUT, or at least thought HUT was an option. I know HUT is more, uh, football snap count, but .. I don't know, it sounds military to my ears. What about "Ten HUT!"? That's something, right? Yes! In fact, it's "used to bring a marching band or group of soldiers to attention" (wiktionary) (my emph.). Ugh. This exemplifies my experience of this puzzle as a whole, which is that the longer answers were generally a breeze, but I did get slightly bogged down in oddly clued short stuff, all of the place (not the most pleasant kind of struggle). Let's start with the absolutely absurd "PER year" (7D: ___ year). Any length of time might follow PER, as might "person,""capita,""annum,""axle," etc. Anything, really. Any unit. It's about the vaguest fill-in-the-blank I've ever seen. Really had to stop and think about that "P." Never really heard GEN Chem as an abbr. In college, it was O-Chem this and P-Chem that, but I don't remember anyone's saying GEN Chem. Isn't that just ... Chem? Anyway, I had GEO-Chem there at one point. I thought the CIA was some random CPA from, like, Topeka or something (32A: Actual employer of some "government consultants," in brief); tax pros might have to ... consult ... the government ... right? ... then I forgot that FOY was FOY and wrote in FEY as PER yoozhe, and then the puzzle did that pointedly obnoxious thing where it cross-references two intersecting clues in the vaguest way possible, effectively eliminating one of the crosses needed to get either of the two words (LOCK / KEY). So I enjoyed the longer fill a lot, but unlike on Friday, when the longer fill was really dominating my attention, today, these little 3-letter tar pits were making it harder to feel the whoosh and the zoom of the nice stuff.

But there was a lot of nice stuff, or at least no real weak stuff. Good colloquial energy in "YEAH, SAME" and "OH FORGET IT!" Bouncy slanginess with TIE THE KNOT and COOTIE SHOT. You've got the deaf community (NAME SIGN) and the drag community (DRAG MOTHER) and the pronoun trio (SHEHERHERS) and then, my personal favorite: ALONE TIME (by "favorite" I don't mean it's my favorite answer, I mean irl ALONE TIME rules! I love my family dearly but me without ALONE TIME is ... you don't wanna know. Let's just say "not peak me"). It's a solid grid overall, with lots of original fill. It's oddly free of the less common letters (Z X Q J ... even V). Couple of Ks and Ws are about the only crooked letters in this thing (I like "crooked letters," since it evokes the concept of a "crooked number" on a baseball scoreboard, where it refers to any number other than a zero or a one on a baseball scoreboard. Such numbers are literally crooked by comparison with "0" and "1", but also rarer by comparison, just as Z X Q J are rarer by comparison with other letters ... I'm gonna try using "crooked letters" instead of "Scrabbly letters" and see how that goes). Annnnyway, lots of RLSTNE action here today, but that doesn't keep the answers themselves from being fresh.  

Bullets:

• 19A: Formal name for 11-Down, in brief (ACA) — at this point, I had the "C" from NECCO (which I always think is NECCA, btw), and truthfully I knew immediately, without looking at 11-Down, that this was going to be ACA and that OBAMACARE must be lurking over at 11-Down. I didn't even bother to jump over and fill OBAMACARE in. I just knew it would be waiting for me, a ginormous freebie. Weird to just know that it was ACA with literally nothing specific in the clue.
• 55D: What might be a strain in a theater? (ARIA)— so a "strain" means a "tune" or "song," but also, yeah, I bet singing an ARIA is strenuous work.
• 57A: L.G.B.T. rights activist Windsor (EDIE)— literally just seeing this clue now. That's how easy this section of the puzzle was, I guess. EDIE Windsor (1929-2017) was the lead plaintiff in United States v. Windsor (2013), which was a landmark Supreme Court case concerning same-sex marriage, one that paved the way for the legalization of said marriages in this country following Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). It's Pride Month, so though she seems a worthy answer in general, it's especially nice to see her acknowledged this month.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

• COMES OUT OF ONE'S SHELLEY (23A: Looks up from reading "Frankenstein"?) (Mary Shelley)
• GOES THROUGH HELLER (33A: Reads "Catch-22",""Closing Time" and Something Happened" -- and doesn't stop there?) (Joseph Heller)
• TAKES A LONG WALKER (55A: Borrows "The Color Purple" from the library instead of "The Flowers"?) (Alice Walker)
• PLAYS THE FIELDING (81A: Listens to "Tom Jones" on audiobook?) (Henry Fielding)
• BREAKS THE LAWRENCE (100A: Reads "Lady Chatterley's Lover" so many times its spine splits?) (D.H. Lawrence)
• GIVES A FAIR SHAKESPEARE (117A: Donates some copies of "King Lear" to the Renaissance Festival?) (Gary Shakespeare)

Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho (born 9 August 2000), known professionally as Arlo Parks, is a British singer-songwriter and poet. Her debut studio album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, was released in 2021 to critical acclaim and peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart. It earned her nominations for Album of the Year, Best New Artist and Best British Female Solo Artist at the 2021 Brit Awards. It won the 2021 Hyundai Mercury Prize for best album. (wikipedia)

I shrugged numerous times at proper nouns I was expected to know. I discovered ARLO Parks some time last year, both because her music is enjoyable and because I saw her name and thought, "Oh ... she's coming ... move over, Mr. Guthrie." And here she is! But ELFUDGE!? Is that one word? or is it pseudo-Spanish, like: El Fudge! Currently in my head it rhymes with "roughage." Anyway, it's not a famous cookie type. I mean, it's no MILANO. Also, who is this SAL person? (54D: Blueberry-picking girl of children's literature). I am aware of ... let's see, I think SAL is a mule in some song ("I got a mule and her name is SAL / Fifteen miles on the Erie (!) Canal..."). And SAL owns a pizza parlor in "Do The Right Thing." That is all of my SAL knowledge. Oh, and the baseball player SAL Bando, I know him. This SAL ... is from "Blueberries for SAL" by Robert McCloskey (1948). It is apparently a very famous picture books. I read a metric ton of midcentury picture books as a child. This one somehow completely got by me. And what is TEX Richman? Or, rather, what "The Muppets" are we talking about. Is this a recent movie incarnation? Looks like the 2011 movie version. Huh. OK. I missed that, and even if I'd seen it, I think I'd probably wonder how culturally iconic this TEX person is. He doesn't seem to be part of the broader Muppet universe (if that's a thing). I watched a lot of "Muppet Show" and various Muppet Movies as a kid, and no TEX. But the crosses were fair. OK.

Notes:

• 1A: Precursor to a circuit breaker (FUSE) — really truly didn't understand what "precursor" meant here. Then again, I know squat-all about electrical systems. We have a circuit box in our basement. Sometimes something, uh, blows, and we have to go down there and flip switches back and forth to reset things. You can see that I am very handy.
• 56D: "Yuck!" ("EWW!") — one of those rare answers that is also my feeling about the answer. I want to blame the double-W spelling, but it might be even eewier in the double-E version (which I have also seen). 
• 71A: "Wow!" ("OOH!") — realized just now that the first thing I wrote in as an answer here (off of the middle "O") was ... "WOW!" Just ... wow.
• 8D: Person in a head set? (CEO)— so the various C-O's are ... a "set" of "head" (or "chief") people? CEO, CFO, CIO ... Is that the "set?" Because if it's not, I don't really know what this clue is doing.
• 69A: Lifewater and Elixir brand (SOBE) — D'oh! I confused the beverage brand and the noodle type (SOBA), which then led me to write in AGE instead of ERA for 70D: Geological span.
• 10A: Pointed remark (BARB) — Just before coming upstairs to solve this puzzle and write ... well, this, these words that I am writing right now ... I watched the final episode of Season 4, Part 1 of "Stranger Things." How is this relevant? Well, if you've watched that show from Episode 1 of Season 1, you might be able to guess. BARB is Back! (well, briefly ... sorta ... you'll see for yourself ... or not). 

I want to plug Peter Gordon's latest puzzle project, "A-to-Z Crosswords 2022," which he calls "Petite Pangram Puzzles"—these are 9x11 Easy to Medium puzzles that contain every letter of the alphabet. My experience is that these are very tasty snacks. More meaty than a mini, but small enough and doable enough to knock off during a spare 5, 10, 15 minutes or so (depending on your skill level). The pangramitude means that the fill gets pretty lively in places, and you also always know, if you're struggling, that until you've ticked off all 26 letters, well, those remaining letters are definitely out there ... somewhere. Knowing you gotta touch all 26 actually helps with the solving at times. These puzzles are unusual and fun and snackable. Worth it, for sure. Go here to get your subscription! 

Now for this week's ... 

Letter to the Editor! 

This week's letter comes from Jerome Walker, and it's a response to one of my bullet-point comments on this past Thursday's puzzle (June 2, 2022). For reference, here is my original comment, in its entirety.

• 15D: "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" actor Robinson (CRAIG) — had no idea here. Is this the Old Spice guy? Hey, wait, this is Darryl from "The Office"! OK (OK), I know exactly who this guy is. He was on that show for the whole damn run, whereas he's only been on 9 episodes of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," what the hell?! What a weird clue. (P.S. the "Old Spice guy" is Terry Crews)

My initial response to the following letter was fairly defensive, but after I sat with it for a while, I felt it offered a valuable perspective. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Parker,

I started doing the NYT crossword in January 2021, and for the last 463 days I have done the crossword and read your blog each day. I like it when you loved a puzzle and I didn’t, and vice versa. Mostly this is a matter of personal preference and awareness, and I think it’s okay for a good puzzle day for one to be a tough puzzle day for another: it’s what makes being part of a puzzle community exciting! And I like that your write-ups so often push the puzzle to make more good puzzle days for more people. As a relatively new solver, I appreciate any time that I can have fun with a puzzle without having to know some esoteric initialism that’s been in the puzzle 42 times since 2002 but seen little elsewhere. And as a young, Black, queer man, I like to see references in the puzzle that feel contemporary to me as well — I love 20th century actresses as much as the next person who could stomach 463 NYT crossword puzzles, but there’s so much opportunity for new fill and new joy in puzzles when we expand what is puzzle-eligible.

And I think you do a great job of pushing this position forward! Even when it means including fill that you’re not already familiar with. Again, I have learned from you that not everyone has to have the same good puzzle days. But on Thursday, June 2, when Craig Robinson was in the grid, while you didn’t disparage his inclusion (rather, his being clued by a few appearances on Brooklyn Nine-Nine), you first asked if he was the Old Spice guy, Isaiah Mustafa, and then misattributed the Old Spice guy as Terry Crews, a third, separate, Black actor. Yes, Terry Crews has appeared in Old Spice commercials, but Isaiah Mustafa is the “Look at your man, now look at me,” quintessential, original Old Spice guy. A Google search for “Old Spice guy” returns Isaiah Mustafa. I know you probably did not mean anything by it, and I wouldn’t say Mustafa is exactly grid-level famous (though how great would it be to find MUSTAFA in the grid!), but my point here is that eliding these three Black actors, at least two of which are certainly grid-level famous and television staples for nearly 20 years now, does feel disrespectful in a way that is unusual for your blog. It is not sin to confuse an actor or two, but to jumble these three up and publish an incorrect attribution does feel reminiscent of the classic racist idea that Black people are hard to distinguish from one another, which I imagine is part of why Black names have historically found their way into the grid so relatively infrequently. I would flag it as something to be aware of: if we really want the crossword to be a space for all people, and why shouldn’t it be, then we should be careful about who and what is distinguishable enough to recognize in the grid.

All best,
Jerome Walker

I could quibble with some of the details here, but I think the gist of the letter remains worthy of consideration. I have a flippancy that I bring to lots of my riffs on pop culture and celebrity names. This letter is a good reminder that flippancy can read differently to different readers, and that perhaps there's some reason to be careful about not seeming to be dismissive or diminishing when discussing Black people, as well as other people from groups that have long been underrepresented in the grid. I'm always going to have a light, goofy, even somewhat irreverent tone to my writing, but I think there's a way to maintain that tone without conveying disrespect. I found Mr. Walker's sincerity and good will disarming. I'll keep his criticism in mind going forward.

If you have any crossword-related thoughts that you'd like to put into letter form, feel free to send it to me at rexparker at icloud dot com, and be sure to label it OK TO PRINT. Thanks, everyone. See you soon.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

• DELLA STREET (17A: *Secretary of Perry Mason)
• TWELVE STEPS (23A: *Alcoholics Anonymous program)
• STICK THE LANDING (39A: *Finish a gymnastics routine perfectly)
• BOY NEXT DOOR (52A: *Description of a wholesome, clean-cut guy)

Della Street is the fictional secretary of Perry Mason in the long-running series of novels, short stories, films, and radio and television programs featuring the fictional defense attorney created by Erle Stanley Gardner. [...] In the first Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, written in the early days of the Great Depression, Della Street is revealed to have come from a wealthy, or at least well-to-do, family that was wiped out by the stock market crash of 1929. Della was forced to get a job as a secretary. By the time of the TV series in the 1950s and 1960s, this would not have fitted well with the age of the characters as then portrayed. According to The Case of The Caretaker's Cat, she is about 15 years younger than Perry Mason. // Several instances of sexual tension are seen between Mason and Street in the Gardner novels, multiple glances, kisses, and so on, and several proposals of marriage, all of which Della turned down because, at the time, wives of professional men did not work. Thus, she could not have continued as his secretary (and effective partner) and she did not want to give up this aspect of her life. (wikipedia)

["Amiable handmaiden"!? The disrespect!]

I finished up at O'NEAL and didn't get a "Congrats, you're done!" message from my software, so I checked the cross and corrected that final answer to O'NEIL (53D: Baseball great Buck), but that still didn't get me the all clear, so I scanned the grid for my mistake and it looks like I never fully corrected my very very early and completely inexplicable hiccup on 1D: "Veni, ___, vici":

Caught that one early when I was like "uh, her name is *not* NELLA STREET!?" but apparently forgot to change EDOL to IDOL, blargh. Otherwise, not much happened between start and finish for me. Oh, I wrote in ELENA instead of SONIA (43A: Justice Sotomayor)—got my five-letter Supreme Court first names ending in "A" wires crossed. Thankfully no ALITO today. Had a brief feeling of drawing a blank at PLASMA, since I honestly thought solid & gas & liquid were it (5A: Alternative to solid, liquid or gas). Did they used to teach that to kids in science? Anyway, per wikipedia: "Like a gas, plasma does not have definite shape or volume. Unlike gases, plasmas are electrically conductive, produce magnetic fields and electric currents, and respond strongly to electromagnetic forces" (wikipedia). Weirdly (for someone as scientifically semi-literate as I am), I got ISOMER no problem (67A: Similar chemical compound). Even more weirdly, for someone who does as many puzzles as I do, CIPHER did not come quickly (15A: Coded message). But overall, it's a Monday, there's so much easy stuff floating around the grid that any slight hold-ups were quickly taken care of. 

The only truly remarkable thing happening in the puzzle today is the weird "B" run that the Down clues go on toward the bottom of the grid. Check out the alliteration in 50- through 53-Down: [Baby buggy to Brits / Beauty and the Beast heroine / Baseball great Buck]. I feel like this alliterative indulgence is a sneaky little whim, like someone is trying to see if we'll notice. Well, I noticed, and all I have to say is: respect. Fly your freak flag, you ... Fill Folks. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. here are my ERLE Stanley Gardner shelves (each shelf two rows deep);

[A.A. FAIR = Gardner pseudonym for his Cool & Lam mysteries, which  I actually prefer to the Perry Mason ones]

P.P.S. LOL I just got this (57A: Element suggested phonetically by NOPQ STUV ...). It's just a segment of the alphabet with the "R" missing, or "gone," thus ... ARGON :/

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• PICKETH LINES (18A: Doth choose a comedy routine?)
• PUBLIC TOILETH (24A: Citizenry doth work hard?)
• FAD DIETH (38A: Once-popular activity hath no more fans?)
• MARKETH PLACES (49A: Doth apply graffiti?)
• MODEL ROCKETH (58A: Runway walker hath megatalent?)

Abu Simbel is a historic site comprising two massive rock-cut temples in the village of Abu Simbel (Arabic: أبو سمبل), Aswan Governorate, Upper Egypt, near the border with Sudan. It is situated on the western bank of Lake Nasser, about 230 km (140 mi) southwest of Aswan (about 300 km (190 mi) by road). The complex is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Nubian Monuments", which run from Abu Simbel downriver to Philae (near Aswan), and include Amada, Wadi es-Sebua, and other Nubian sites. The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside in the 13th century BC, during the 19th Dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Ramesses II. They serve as a lasting monument to the king Ramesses II. His wife  Nefertari and children can be seen in smaller figures by his feet, considered to be of lesser importance and were not given the same position of scale. This commemorates his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Their huge external rock relief figures have become iconic.

The complex was relocated in its entirety in 1968 under the supervision of a Polish archaeologist, Kazimierz Michałowski, from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw, on an artificial hill made from a domed structure, high above the Aswan High Dam reservoir. The relocation of the temples was necessary or they would have been submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser, the massive artificial water reservoir formed after the building of the Aswan High Dam on the River Nile. The project was carried out as part of the UNESCO Nubian Salvage Campaign. (wikipedia)

• ARETHA / MEET-CUTES ("E.T") (17A: "Queen" of 40-Down / 3D: Rom-com staples)
• RADIO EDITS / AHI TUNA ("It") (18A: CeeLo Green's "Forget You" and the Black Eyed Peas'"Don't Mess With My Heart")
• SUPERSTORM / GROUPON ("Up") (61A: Increasingly common weather event akin to a hurricane / 47D: E-commerce site with a portmanteau name)
• PC USER / SOUL MUSIC ("Us") (63A: One with Windows / 40D: Otis Redding's genre)

Us is a 2019 American horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele, starring Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, and Tim Heidecker. The film follows Adelaide Wilson (Nyong'o) and her family, who are attacked by a group of menacing doppelgängers. [...] Us had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 8, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on March 22, 2019, by Universal Pictures. It was a critical and commercial success, grossing $255 million worldwide against a budget of $20 million, and received praise for Peele's screenplay and direction, Nyong'o's performance, and Michael Abels' musical score. (wikipedia)

Pierre Paul Broca (/ˈbroʊkə/, also UK: /ˈbrɒkə/, US: /ˈbroʊkɑː/, French: [pɔl bʁɔka]; 28 June 1824 – 9 July 1880) was a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that is named after him. Broca's area is involved with language. His work revealed that the brains of patients with aphasia contained lesions in a particular part of the cortex, in the left frontal region. This was the first anatomical proof of localization of brain function. Broca's work also contributed to the development of physical anthropology, advancing the science of anthropometry.

Word of the Day:

Noomi Rapace (Swedish: [ˈnǒːmɪ raˈpasː] née Norén; born 28 December 1979) is a Swedish actress. She achieved international fame with her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish film adaptations of the Millennium series: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. In 2010, she was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and for an International Emmy Award for Best Actress for the miniseries version of the trilogy. She has also starred as Anna in Daisy Diamond (2007), Leena in Beyond (2010), Anna in The Monitor (2011), Madame Simza Heron in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus (2012), Beatrice in Dead Man Down (2013), Nadia in The Drop (2014), Raisa Demidova in Child 44 (2015), and the seven lead roles in What Happened to Monday(2017). (wikipedia)

Notes:

• 19A: "Weird ..." ("IT'S ODD...")— had "HOW ODD..." at first. "Weird" means "odd," so I don't love the clue / phrase correspondence here (no accounting for "IT'S"), but the phrases do mean roughly the same thing, so whatever.
• 7D: Authority in the field, informally (REF)— anything might be a REFerence. Capital "A" Authority not actually required. Again, not sure what the clues are trying to do today. [I'm being told this clue is referring (!) to a REFeree. Ah, *that* "field." Got it. That makes much more sense.]
• 20A: Button on a Facebook post (REACTION) — really trying to stay off Facebook, which is, in general, both cesspool and timesuck. I thought this would be an actual button, but it's just a broad category of button. The "button" on my FB is just "Like," which you hover over in order to see REACTION options. Which are also "buttons"? OK.
• 25D: One side of a fast-food restaurant (COLESLAW) — "of" is doing a loooooooooot of work here. "In" or "at" are way, way more apt, but then you wouldn't get misdirected (as I def. was), so sure, "of."
• 17D: Study buds? (EAR PLUGS) — I work at a University and you know what students have in their ears when they are "study"ing (and seemingly all other times). Ear Buds. That was all I could think of. To me, EAR PLUGS are for concerts. But apparently there's also a whole ear plug industry aimed at students. I did not know this.

• 26A: Ollas, e.g. (STEW POTS) — embarrassingly confused my crosswordese here and imagined an OAST, not an Olla ... and therefore was looking for some kind of ... oven, I think. I knew Ollas were for food, but, yeah, just glitched on how they were for food.
• 43A: Willingness to listen (OPEN EARS)— well I didn't want EARS for (glaringly) obvious reasons. I wanted OPENNESS. Because "EAR," as we've seen, is Already In The Grid. A truly bizarre and unfortunate dupe.
• 38D: Wrapping weights (TARES) — i.e. the weight of the wrapping (or other container). When you're trying to measure the weight of something, you don't want to measure its "wrapping," so you correct for the weight of the wrapping—that's the tare weight. TARES are also injurious weeds in the Bible, but only if you're solving a puzzle circa 1978. Seriously, Shortz ditched that [Biblical weed] clue as soon as he took over (~1994) and it hasn't been heard from since (last appearance: Aug., 1993).
• 41D: Banned backyard game (JARTS)— oh to have grown up in a time of great backyard danger! Wait a second, I did grow up in that time! It was great! I mean, if you ignore the impaled body parts! Great, I say! JARTS are a brand of lawn darts. The game has largely been superseded by Cornhole (at least in these parts).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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• "... AND ANOTHER THING" (27A: Argument extender [ref. 18-Across]) (18A = THING)
• "THIS ISN'T MY / FIRST RODEO" (48A: With 87-Across, "I've been around the block a few times" [ref. 23-Across]) (23A = RODEO)
• "IT'S DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN" (70A: Classic Yogi Berra quote [ref. 33-Across]) (33A = DEJA VU)
• "BABY ONE MORE TIME" (111A: Debut album by Britney Spears [ref. 82-Across]) (82A = BABY)

Word of the Day:

The beauty of Twitter is that every message is constrained to 280 characters and under, but sometimes you simply can’t get all your thoughts across in just a single tweet. Or perhaps you’re following a live news story and you need to follow the thread to read the news as it develops so there’s context for what happened earlier.

Whatever the reason, sometimes Twitter threads can get long, which can make them difficult to follow. Thankfully, there’s a bot that can help piece those tweets together into one piece of text without all the extra replies from anyone other than the person who originally started the thread. This is called “unrolling” a thread, and it’s created by a tool called @threadreaderapp, which lets you combine tweetstorms into one single post simply by using the keyword “unroll.” (theverge.com)

And not just the first theme answer, but the whole dang theme concept:

Maybe if both THING and RODEO hadn't both been in a solver's most likely starting point (i.e. the NW), things would've been a tiny bit tougher, and maybe that would've made the solve a little more satisfying, I don't know. Also, maybe if the theme clues had found some (much) more elegant way of handling the cross-references than just plunking them down in aggressively straightforward, workmanlike, non-wordplay fashion, i.e. in brackets with instructions that are roughly the equivalent of "just go look at this other answer"—maybe that would've provided the elegance, the oomph, that this puzzle seemed to lack. Promising concept, fizzling execution, not much grid spice to offset the thematic thinness. That was how things looked from where I was solving. I do want to praise [Monocle-dropping exclamation], which is a hilariously specific and vivid clue for "I SAY!"

Buncha stuff I did not know today. For instance COCO Palm, which sounds like a stage name, not a tree name (5A: ___ palm (tropical tree)). If you'd told me the tree was a COCOA palm, well, I wouldn't have known that either, but it definitely would've felt more plausible. Also, been eating doughnuts (donuts?) and other pastry for half a century-ish and somehow never heard of a LONGJOHN (12D: Doughnut similar to an éclair). Put an "S" on the end of that LONGJOHN, and then it's something I'm plenty familiar with. But in the singular, doughnut form: new to me. I had RIALS before RIYAL (57A: Currency of Qatar) because RIAL is the name of the currency of lots and lots of places (hmm, apparently just three places (Iran, Yemen, Oman), but ... it feels like a lot, is what I'm saying). Qatar puts a "Y" in there for some reason. More international currency things for me to learn and then forget! Non-human primates don't have CHINs??? (25A: Body part that humans have that other primates don't). Also, not a thing I knew. I would've thought any creature with a jawbone technically had a CHIN, but apparently not. Thought flubber might've been made out of BORON (76A: Chemical ingredient in flubber = BORAX), and that the alleged 2018 legal drama might then have been called "On the Basis of SIN" (66D: "On the Basis of ___" (2018 legal drama) = SEX), so that was a fun little alternate-universe diversion. I don't have anything else marked on my puzzle, so I guess I'm done. 

Time once again for ...

Letters to the Editor

No new topics in my Letters to the Editor this week, but a few letters did harken back to the subject of the first letter I published a few weeks back by Gene Weingarten—the question of what fill, if any, should be off-limits in a crossword puzzle (read Gene's original letter here, and a few reader responses from the following week here). Several writers this week shared Gene's (mostly) anything-goes attitude toward crossword fill, and (implicitly or explicitly) dismissed "sensitivity" as a valid concern. Toby S. writes:

I think we’re of a similar age/era (I was b. in ‘68) and so I have a hard time believing that men of our era do not have the ‘…but words will never hurt me’ ethos burned into your (our) lizard brainstem. Yes, I get the idea that certain names and phrases have the power to turn on the horror movie projector inside one’s mind. But…as Gene gets at, it is just a crossword puzzle, reflecting the world as it is. Such clues / words do. not. imply. approval. They just don’t. So why do you let them ‘take up residence’ in your mind even for a moment? Has this always been your ‘human response’ or is it possible that over time your internal algorithm has noticed that the fussier you comment the more emails / comments you get?

And Julian Rosenblum basically agrees:

I don’t think being included as part of a crossword puzzle’s fill is inherently much of a pedestal. If it were, we’d probably have far more statues of ERNEs and WRENs. Filling a crossword puzzle is not easy. I doubt that someone writing a puzzle is thinking, you know what this thing really needs? Phlegm. That’s just not how those words come to be part of the puzzle. And it would be a shame to reject someone’s beautifully constructed puzzle because it required them to incorporate a word that some people find mildly distasteful.

There are absolutely certain words that should not appear in a crossword (racial slurs, for example), but I think the criteria for being, let’s call it, de-worded, should be very high.

I also posit that Elon Musk, self-proclaimed champion of free speech, would be elated to know that a bunch of pearl-clutching liberals are trying to remove his name from the New York Times crossword puzzle. Plays right into his hand.

Allison Hughes, however, has a much different take on the issue:

I think there’s value in thinking about why some people have a strong reaction to certain words, and some people have no reaction. Please excuse me, but I’m going to use Trump as an example, because that is a name that I personally have a reaction to.

When I say “reaction”, I mean hearing his name evokes a feeling in me. When I hear the word “Trump”, I think of that moment during his campaign when he bragged about repeatedly sexually assaulting women. I am a woman. 

There are multiple layers to my feelings. First are the feelings that I would have if any person on earth bragged of hurting women simply because they are women. Of hurting me just because they can. I feel helpless, despairing, sad, and pessimistic [...]

I don’t want to see the word Trump in the crossword because I don’t want to feel all of those feelings his name evokes. Presumably you have similar reasons or feelings as to why you don’t want to see his name in the crossword as well.

I’m sure there are people out there who feel happiness at the thought of women having fewer rights or being assaulted, and presumably those people want to see Trump’s name more often in the crossword. But what of these people who feel neutral about his name? Those who say that Trump is simply “one of 46 presidents of the United States”. This is a fact, they say, and facts are neutral.

What a blessing to see his name and not feel sad or anxious. What a blessing it is to not worry about your future equality. What a blessing it is to not think about being intentionally hurt because of an intrinsic part of your existence.

B.K.S. Fisher isn't troubled by unpleasant people or topics in the crossword, but would like us to consider the premium some solvers put on "currency" (or "recency" or "contemporariness" in crossword fill), particularly when that push for currency involves the denigration of the "old":

I have a broad tolerance for the words, people, organizations and events that land in my crossword puzzle.  I may grimace or shake my head at certain clues or certain answers, but it’s a reaction of the moment which colors no more than 15 seconds of my day.  These things exist (or existed) in the world in which I live, and I don’t expect the crossword to be walled off from them.  It’s a learning experience when something I know little or nothing about provokes a strong negative reaction from you or the people who comment on this site.  I look it up with as much interest as I would something positive or neutral.  That said, hate-speech has no place in this or any forum.  I want pleasure from my crossword puzzle just as much as the next person.  But I don’t find that references to the unpleasant detract from my enjoyment in any significant way.  Moreover, I find no reason to gripe when someone else takes offense at something I don’t.  We all have our sensibilities and I’m disinclined to call anyone a prude or a pearl-clutcher.

In my mind, this question of crossword suitability based on propriety dovetails with the question of suitability based on currency.  In both cases, the issue is what individuals and which aspects of the human endeavor are to be considered crossword-appropriate.  It seems the dudgeon can climb just as high for older references as for mucus, McConnell and Musk.  I think that history offers a rich trove of material for puzzles, and I don’t just mean our friends Tut and Homer.  A few months ago, one of the stars of the silent-movie era, Theda Bara, appeared in a puzzle.  When commenters complained about her being decades out of date, I didn’t know whether to laugh or groan (and did both).  Out of date!  Of course, she’s out of date!  She’s part of the very beginning of the history of Hollywood, a history which has taken us from the Kinetograph to digital cinema, and from the antics of the Keystone Kops to sophisticated explorations of the human heart and mind.  For Theda Bara’s particular legacy, I refer you to Rita Hayworth (Gilda), Kathleen Turner (Body Heat) and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl).  I understand that solvers don’t want their puzzles laden with historical fact at the expense of current references.  I, too, want a balance.  But it’s too prescriptive to require each puzzle to strike parity with the age of its references.  And I regret the growing tendency to see history, within the solving community and without, as random occurrences with no contemporary relevance, rather than as “a chronological record of significant events” (Merriam-Webster) which informs every aspect of our lived reality.  

Thanks for the letters. Feel free to write me about anything crossword-related that you'd like to get off your chest (rexparker at icloud dot com). Be sure to mark any letters "OK TO PRINT." Please try to keep future letters to 300 words or less, just so I can accommodate several of them if I need to. Thanks so much,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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• there are none (just look at the grid)

A jib is a triangular sail that sets ahead of the foremast of a sailing vessel. Its tack is fixed to the bowsprit, to the bows, or to the deck between the bowsprit and the foremost mast. Jibs and spinnakers are the two main types of headsails on a modern boat. (wikipedia)

[forgot to take screenshot of finished grid before I closed puzzle, so rather than type it all back in, I just hit "Reveal All," which puts accusing little eyeballs in  every revealed square, my apologies]

• BLACK COFFEE (17A: Easy order for a barista) (Black Rock, coffee roll)
• BEDSPRING (33A: Coil in a mattress) (bedrock, spring roll)
• MOON JELLY (40A: Ocean invertebrate with a round, translucent body) (moon rock, jellyroll)

BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment management corporation based in New York City. Founded in 1988, initially as a risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with US$10 trillion in assets under management as of January 2022. BlackRock operates globally with 70 offices in 30 countries and clients in 100 countries.

BlackRock has sought to position itself as an industry leader in environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG). The company has faced criticism for worsening climate change, its close ties with the Federal Reserve System during the COVID-19 pandemic, anticompetitive behavior, and its unprecedented investments in China. (wikipedia)

Is that the right BlackRock, the asset management corporation? (see "Word of the Day," above). I mean, is that what I'm supposed to think of when I say "Black Rock" at the end of this puzzle, when I'm adding ROCK AND / or ROLL to all the theme answer parts? Because I had no idea this "asset manager" BlackRock was a thing. If you wanted to play the evil corporation in a cheesy Hollywood thriller, you could do worse than to call yourself BlackRock. It's like an off-the-cuff approximation of "Death Star" that was supposed to be a placeholder name but ended up sticking. It's depressing that I'm supposed to know the names of famous (?) "asset management corporations" in order to solve my Tuesday puzzle. But maybe this isn't the intended BlackRock. Maybe the intended Black Rock is the only Black Rock I actually know, the titular Black Rock from the glorious Technicolor (actually Eastman Color) 1955 Noir-Western, Bad Day at Black Rock, starring a gruff and redoubtable Spencer Tracy, and co-starring every tough guy who ever toughed his way through Tough Town, including Robert Ryan (King Bad Guy), Lee Marvin (Cool Bad Guy), and Ernest Borgnine (who I think won a Best Actor Academy Award for Marty that same year). Eddie Muller just screened Bad Day at Black Rock on TCM's "Noir Alley" a few weeks back. See it if you like trains, sunbaked landscapes, barely inhabited near-ghost towns, anti-racism message films, or lots of dudes just standing around laconically. Yes, this is the "Black Rock" that I will imagine this puzzle is referring to. Asset management, shmasset shmanagement. 

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Louis Allen Rawls (December 1, 1933 – January 6, 2006) was an American record producer, singer, composer and actor. Rawls released more than 60 albums, sold more than 40 million records, and had numerous charting singles, most notably his song "You'll Never Find Another Love like Mine". He worked as a film, television, and voice actor. He was also a three-time Grammy-winner, all for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. (wikipedia)

• NNNNIC SCIENTIST = "forensic scientist" (NNNNIC => "four N's" + -IC => "forensic")
• TOMOOOOOOOO = "tomatoes" (TOMOOOOOOOO =>  TOM + "eight O's" => "tomatoes")
• CUTIE PATT = "cutie patooties" (PATT => PA- + "two Ts" => "patooties")
• ADDDDDDDDDD = "attendees" (ADDDDDDDDDD => A- + "10 D's" => "attendees")

Moonraker is a 1979 spy-fi film, the eleventh in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the fourth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The third and final film in the series to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, it co-stars Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Corinne Cléry, and Richard Kiel. Bond investigates the theft of a Space Shuttle, leading him to Hugo Drax, the owner of the Shuttle's manufacturing firm. Along with space scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead, Bond follows the trail from California to Venice, Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon rainforest, and finally into outer space to prevent a plot to wipe out the world population and to recreate humanity with a master race. (wikipedia)

I was on this puzzle's side from 1-Across (1A: Good or bad vacuum review? = "SUCKS!"). Yeah, I know it's kind of childish, but so am I, so there. Those four N's in the first themer came together very quickly, and the only way I could make sense of them was, it turns out, the right way. Just say the number of letters out loud! Only ... at that point, I thought it was more an equation-type dealie, where I was supposed to say 4N, i.e. "foreign." So I was trying to make the "palm print analysis" performer into some kind of "foreign" person ... I had to build the rest of that answer from back to front, and then look at it again. "What's a "foreign I.C. SCIENTIST!?" And then I saw it. Boom. Truly one of the most satisfying Aha moments of the year. What I really loved was that the next themer didn't just throw me more N's!  I wasn't paying close attention to how the theme clues were marked (with quotation marks, so you know that in order to be correct, the answer must be *spoken*). So I went into the "tomato" answer trying to make it work normally. And since I had CAN instead of MAO (45A: Repeated Warhol subject), I had trouble seeing the "O"-string clearly at first. But then the "O"s kept piling up and I thought "ah, it's tomato something!" But no, once you put in 8 O's, you're out of room. It's just "tomatoes." I can't believe someone turned "tomatoes" and "attendees" into fascinating theme answers. Highly unlikely scenario. And the two T's! So wee! So cute! You got these ostentatious letter strings on the side of the grid, and then tucked down there at the bottom, just two little T's ... inside an answer that is *about* cuteness. Ha ha, there is no part of this ridiculous theme that doesn't work. 

I had little bits of trouble here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary for a Thursday. LOL'd at the "goldang" in 9D: "That's a goldang lie!" ("AIN'T SO"). Is that how HICKS talk? (HICKS felt a little icky, in that it's got an elitist / derogatory tone to it, but that was the only part of the puzzle where my joy wobbled a little ... I guess I didn't mind "HICKS" so much because it's the name of one of my favorite TV shows ... oh wait, that's "HACKS" ... nevermind). Anyway, that "goldang" answer held me up for several goldang seconds because I couldn't figure out what kind of goldang HICKSpeak they were going for. Then I put Samantha Bee on TNT (sorry, Sam) (12D: "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee" airer) ... then I couldn't make any sense out of 8D: Something that's asked (PRICE). After the top was sorted, though, the puzzle was very much a fast ride to the finish. I somehow remembered that RAJ was a character on that show I never could stand (39D: "The Big Bang Theory" role). I never saw "Moonraker," which feels like a betrayal of my gender/age cohort, but it wasn't hard to work out RIO. 

I love that the puzzle went to D&D instead of social media for DMS (49A: Leads, as a D&D campaign). The "DM" stands for "Dungeon Master," and to DM is to play that role in the game. Retro! (although people still play D&D ... it's just that in my mind, anyone playing it is automatically transported back in time to the early '80s ... a wormhole opens up the second you start playing ... it's weird). I balked a tiny bit at BUDDY MOVIES, since "BUDDY COMEDY" feels like the more correct phrase, esp. for this clue, but sure, BUDDY MOVIES, that sounds fine (26D: "Booksmart" and "Dumb and Dumber," e.g.). Certainly not "off" enough to ruin my enjoyment of this puzzle. Wow, look at that! Done with the write-up at 5am! What a ride. And the thunderstorm has (mostly) passed. And the birds are singing their "WTF!?!"s. Cool. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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\The Paladins (or Twelve Peers) are twelve fictional knights of legend, the foremost members of Charlemagne's court in the 8th century. They first appear in the medieval (12th century) chanson de geste cycle of the Matter of France, where they play a similar role to the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian romance. In these romantic portrayals, the chivalric paladins represent Christianity against a Saracen (Muslim) invasion of Europe. The names of the paladins vary between sources, but there are always twelve of them (a number with Christian associations) led by Roland (spelled Orlando in later Italian sources). The paladins' most influential appearance is in The Song of Roland, written between 1050 and 1115, which narrates the heroic death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.

The legend is based on the historical Umayyad invasion of Gaul and subsequent conflict in the Marca Hispanica between the Frankish Empire and the Emirate of Córdoba. The term paladinis from Old French, deriving from the Latin comes palatinus (count palatine), a title given to close retainers.

The paladins remained a popular subject throughout medieval French literature. Literature of the Italian Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) introduced more fantasy elements into the legend, which later became a popular subject for operas in the Baroque music of the 16th and 17th centuries. During the 19th and early 20th centuries the term was reused outside fiction for small numbers of close military confidants serving national leaders. Modern depictions of paladins are often an individual knight-errant holy warrior or combat healer, influenced by the paladin character class that appeared in Dungeons & Dragons in 1975. (wikipedia)

PLOT TWIST: I loved this one. ON A SIDE NOTE: I did not love ON A SIDE NOTE. The more I look at it, the more plausible it seems, sadly (for me), but as I was solving, that was the one answer I had the most trouble parsing. I was trying to parse it from its opening letters, and that's the problem: the opening letters feel extraneous. If I use that phrase, or hear that phrase, I feel like it just comes in the form, "SIDE NOTE ..." The "ON A" was ??? and then even after I had NOTE I didn't really get it. Mr. DEEDS to the rescue there, for sure (34D: Mr. of film). I have three frowny faces written in the margin of my puzzle next to ON A (!) SIDE NOTE. Most of the rest of the margins are filled with "good"s and asterisks and "!!!" and smiley faces. Oh, looks like I have an arrow pointing from the frowny faces to SOU ... but SOU (extremely old-school crosswordese) is extremely tolerable when it's not part of a crosswordese avalanche and is being used deliberately and strategically to hold larger, more interesting parts of the puzzle together (as it is here). Definitely got a good dose of that whoosh-whoosh feeling I look forward to on Fridays. I even got it from a "?" clue, as 27D: One with sound judgment? sent me plunging down the west side of the grid off of just the "AU-." And in the places where I did struggle (a bit), there was a payoff that made it worth it. I'm thinking primarily of the NE, where I threw "IT'S A DATE" over to the east side of the grid, filled a bunch of the 4-letter answers above it, and *still* couldn't make any of those long Downs work. Considered pulling "IT'S A DATE" because I wanted GALAHADS for PALADINS, couldn't figure out what word was supposed to follow DRAMA, and had no idea what was going on with -AKETA- at 12D. But I hung in there, realized the complicated-sounding "file type" was just PDF (10A: File type used in paper-to-digital archiving), and was rewarded for my patience with both PALADINS (ah, the figures from "The Matter of France" in medieval literature *and* the D&D character class, I know them both pretty well), and FAKE TATTOO, which is just fabulous. That is, the answer is solid, but that clue was fabulous, for sure (12D: "Mom" for a day, say). Really enjoyed this from start to finish, with very few bumps along the way.

Bicycle Wheel (1913) [36A: Like some Marcel Duchamp works (DADAIST)]

Nathaniel Carlyle Adderley (November 25, 1931 – January 2, 2000) was an American jazz trumpeter. He was the younger brother of saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, whom he supported and played with for many years.

Adderley's composition "Work Song" (1960) is a jazz standard, and also became a success on the pop charts after singer Oscar Brown Jr. wrote lyrics for it. [...] While he was an integral part of the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, this was not the only project occupying his time in his career as professional jazz musician. Since moving to New York, he had been recording outside the Adderley group. He worked with Kenny Clarke, Wes Montgomery, and Walter Booker.

Other projects included the film A Man Called Adam (1966). In the film, Sammy Davis Jr.'s character plays the trumpet. Since Davis could not himself play the trumpet, Adderley was hired to ghost everything that the character played. (wikipedia)

Also needed a bunch of crosses to see SKINCARE ROUTINE, but again, those crosses came quickly and in abundance, so no real struggle was involved. My one big miss was an experiment that I knew was likely to fail, but I wanted to plug it in and see. I had TIME IS... at 60A: "We don't need to rush"("TIME IS ON OUR SIDE") and wrote in TIME IS OUR FRIEND. Mwah, perfect fit. But I should've remembered Kurt Russell's famous words in Vanilla Sky:

[I've never actually seen this movie, what in the hell is happening!?]

This massive misstep wasn't so massive, since I knew it was a risk and was always willing to pull it quickly if need be. And need did be, although I did try to "confirm" TIME IS OUR FRIEND by writing in TENNIS at 47D: Match point? (TINDER). No dice, though, ultimately.

Pretty sexy vibe to this one, or ... at least there's lots sex-related stuff. From BATWOMAN's queerness to PAN-sexuality to TINDER "YOU UP?" ACHING RAWNESS SNOGging ... I wanna say JUMPS ON and NAIL should be in there too. So yeah ... WOW, just WOW, a lot of heat, a lot of FIRE in this one. Good morning. And good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

• INFRARED SPECTRUM / STOPGAPS (7A: Range of light that's invisible to the human eye)
• WINTERGREEN MINTS / GO STALE (23A: Strong breath fresheners / 27D: Lose its spark, as a relationship)
• VODKA RED BULL / HEART-STOPPING (60A: Cocktail with an energy boost / 35D: Thrilling)
• IN THE YELLOWPAGES / "I'LL (GO [or] STOP) NOW" (63A: Listed, obsolescently / 43D: "It's my turn" [or] Comment after rambling on)
• EVERGREEN STATE / "DON'T GO THERE" (66A: Washington, with "the" / 37D: "That's a touchy subject")
• CATCH RED-HANDED / MAKE A STOP (103A: Bust mid-crime / 77D: Pull off the road for gas or snacks, say)
• THE JOLLY GREEN GIANT / HAS A GO (109A: Mascot who made his Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade debut in 2017 / 80D: Tries)

Falcon (Samuel Thomas "Sam" Wilson) is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was introduced by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Gene Colan in Captain America #117 (Sept. 1969), and was the first African-American superhero in mainstream comic books.

As the superhero Falcon, Wilson uses mechanical wings to fly, and has limited telepathic and empathic control over birds. After Steve Rogers retires, Wilson becomes Captain America in All-New Captain America #1 (Jan. 2015) and leader of the Avengers. Wilson's deceased nephew was the Incredible Hulk's sometime-sidekick Jim Wilson, one of the first openly HIV-positive comic-book characters. Jim Wilson's father Gideon Wilson would go on to join the Gamma Corps.

Sam Wilson as Falcon and Captain America has made several media appearances, including in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where the character is portrayed by Anthony Mackie in the films Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Ant-Man (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019); and the television miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021). (wikipedia)

My instinct was, of course, "I'll show you who can solve what" and then I bumbled around and finally figured out the gimmick, but found it so dull so quickly that I decided "I'm not doing this blind solving stuff any more" and switched over to the puzzle page so I could see the colored grid. And then that made everything dramatically easier, though no less pleasant. Again, the grid looks sweet. But people gotta solve the thing. 

["Should I be reading STOP or GO / I don't know!"]

Notes:

• 85D: Avenger who stepped into the role of Captain America (FALCON) — just as BATWOMAN was right up my alley yesterday, so FALCON, today ... isn't. I couldn't care less about the MCU. I tried, Lord knows I tried. But that was hours and hours and hours of my life lost to forgettable mediocrity. I can't believe how many damn movies there have been and I don't believe for one second that twenty years from now anyone will be able to keep any of them straight or even remember them as discrete movies. It'll just be ... a haze of brands. Annnnnyway, FALCON. I was not aware. Or I was, and I forgot. I might be interested in reading those early comics, though. I thought Marvel's Luke Cage (aka Power Man) was the earliest mainstream Black superhero, with DC's Black Lightning shortly thereafter, so now I'm intrigued. But only from a strictly historical, and strictly comics perspective. The MCU can, as I say, BITE ME (4D: "Oh, shove it!").
• 45D: Marijuana strains said to be more invigorating (SATIVAS)— more invigorating ... than what? TWO PAIR? Your MEDS? PAULINE Kael? Help me out here.
• 92D: Prankster's smug shout ("GOT YA!") — there is no font big enough or italicized enough to capture how loudly I want to say "That Is Not How You Spell That!" The word is GOTCHA. There is a singer named GOTYE. Maybe you were thinking of him. You remember him. He's somebody that you used to know.

Now it's time for this week's

Letter to the Editor

This week's letter comes from Ellie Gottlieb, a teenager from Massachusetts, who has a special request. Ellie writes:

My name is Ellie and I'm a teenager from Massachusetts (near Natick!). I've grown up doing the NYT crossword with my dad, who is an avid reader of your blog. He does the crossword almost every day and then reads your blog (he agrees with you most of the time). I was wondering if you could give my dad a shout-out on your blog post for the crossword on Father's Day? His name is Daniel. I totally understand if it isn't possible, but I thought it was worth a try. 

I replied (and this is verbatim): "100% yes." Then I said maybe she should do the shout-out herself. And she agreed. And here it is:

Shout-out to Daniel, crossword enthusiast and the best dad ever! Happy Father's Day! We love you! 

Hope that brightens your day, Daniel. You seem pretty lucky :)

Take care, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[You can order the shirt here]