Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Patrick John Duggan

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: META (59A: Like casting Michael Keaton in "Birdman" as an actor who used to play a superhero) —

adjective
US
(of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential. (google / Oxford Languages)

• • •

So far the main thing this puzzle has done is drive me crazy trying to remember the pop song I know that contains the lyrics "All good things are wild and free," which I only just learned, from this puzzle, is a Thoreau quote. There's another song in my head blocking the song I want to remember. That ever happen to you? You want to remember a song and you try to say the lyrics to yourself but then all of a sudden whatever tune is in your head segues into "The Macarena" or something? It's awful. Anyway, I've got "The High Road" by Broken Bells in my head and it won't leave, and I have no idea why. I think I heard it once in a brewpub in Los Angeles last week, and I haven't thought about it since. And yet here it is, blocking the song I want to remember. Anyway, whatever song it is, weird to find out lyrics you just thought were lyrics were actually a famous literary quote. I also forgot that OVID wrote "Fasti" despite having taken an entire course on Ovid and having written on him and everything. It's true that "Fasti" is minor work for him, but still, I should've known, and instead I was like "... RUMI?" My literary brain is BATting .000 today, for real. I mean, I get one bookish thing right away and it's RAND? Yuck.

This puzzle has two very worthy marquee answers. The rest is just OK. I wonder what the age cut-off is for "SMOOTH MOVE, EX-LAX" being a super-familiar "putdown to a klutz." Ex-Lax still exists, so there's no real reason the slang should be "dated," but it definitely is, so ... I'm quite sure Gen-X (and older) folks know it well. If you're younger, chime in, please. It's an excellent slangy 15, imho. "I WON'T MINCE WORDS" also has a nice colloquial quality. I no-looked the answer, having crossed it a bunch of times before ever bothering to look at the clue. Still good. Clue shmue. Outside the grid-spanners, though, this one is a bit limp. "I'VE HAD IT!" keeps some of the same energy as the longer answers, but the rest is mostly just adequate. The only real objection I have is (and continues to be) to TASE, which I find increasingly (and aptly?) jarring. I got an email from reader Arjun Byju the other day about this word, which I'm going to quote at length, because it's so clear and smart. I don't like TASE because it evokes police brutality specifically, but Arjun's email gets into greater detail about the term:

I'm writing because, like you, I was troubled by today's inclusion of TASE, which I've seen come up a time or two in the puzzle. You may already be aware of this (so apologies in advance) but it was only recently that I learned that the company that produces Taser — Axon International — has a pretty shady history of involvement with law enforcement, the courts, and medical examiners. This Reuters investigative piece examines many of Taser/Axon's connections to physicians and researchers who have advocated for the stun gun's safety and the pressure medical examiners have felt from the company.

Last year, I wrote an article about Excited Delirium, a highly questionable "diagnosis" that is often invoked when people die in police custody and has been supported by Axon/Taser as a way to shift blame away from their devices. Eg: "No, this person didn't die from cardiac arrhythmia induced by multiple shocks from our gun. They died from excited delirium." Axon has used this defense quite successfully in court.

So yeah, there's a lot to feel icky about when I see TASE in the NYT Crossword, and I thought I'd share some of the reasons why—beyond the basic unsavoriness of shocking civilians, it' tied up in a broader medico-legal controversy that allows police to avoid culpability for what would otherwise be considered murder.

So even if you love seeing TASE in your grid, now you know have some more context for why others might not be so happy to see it.

I got into this grid easily. Wanted GUAM at first for 1A: Former British colony whose national flag includes the Union Jack, but that's just because it's a four-letter colonized place. FAST (1D: Unfading) put me on the track to FIJI and then ANEW and IWO JIMA and off I went. Wanted ZOO for ADO (7D: Big scene) and had TIVA before TEVA there at the end (38A: Big name in sandals), but otherwise, no real struggles.

Add'l notes:

46A: Member of high society? (POT USER)— sure, OK. Mostly what I see when I look at this answer is that it contains "POTUS." Can one president be POTUSER than another?
39A: One in a state of disbelief (ATHEIST) — I adore the juxtaposition of this answer with ST. PETER (42A: Bigwig in the admissions dept.?). Great thematic opposition. ("admissions dept." because ST. PETER is the one who "admits" you (or not?) to heaven)
20A: They're open to change (TIP JARS)— smiled at this one as I roared past. A very nice clue.
29A: Opera daughter of Amonasro (AIDA) — wanted AIDA but the name in the clue sounded Italian, so I waited for crosses. I see now that it contains "Amon," as in "Amon-Ra," the most popular Egyptian deity in CrossWorld. "Opera daughter" is a bizarre, crosswords-only kind of phrase.
38D: Russian ___ (iconic restaurant near New York's Central Park) (TEA ROOM) — I ate here once with my mom and sister in the summer of 1983. It's where I first had Chicken Kiev. Family lore has it that my father apparently once barfed in the planters outside the Russian TEA ROOM. I wish there were a zany, drunken story to go with this fact, but I think he was just sick. Sorry for breaking my own rules and bringing vomit on stage. Won't happen again.
4D: Literally, "sulfur island" (IWO JIMA) — read this as [Literally, "surfer island"] and thought "wow ... that is *not* how I know it."

[me and my [Striped cat] Olive]

Explainers:

YOLO = "You only live ONCE"
"Green" in 30A: Green sort (INGENUE) means "inexperienced" or "naive"

Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Hemant Mehta

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: GOD YES!— a Biblical journey through just kidding it's themeless

Word of the Day: MONA Van Duyn, 1990s U.S. poet laureate (4D) —

Mona Jane Van Duyn (May 9, 1921 – December 2, 2004) was an American poet. She was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1992. [...] Van Duyn won every major U.S. prize for poetry, including the National Book Award(1971) for To See, To Take, the Bollingen Prize (1971), the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize(1989), and the Pulitzer Prize (1991) for Near Changes. She was the U.S. Poet Laureate between 1992 and 1993. Despite her accolades, her career fluctuated between praise and obscurity. Her views of love and marriage ranged from the scathing to the optimistic. In "What I Want to Say", she wrote of love:

It is the absolute narrowing of possibilities

and everyone, down to the last man

dreads it

But in "Late Loving", she wrote:

Love is finding the familiar dear

To See, To Take (1970) was a collection of poems that gathered together three previous books and some uncollected work and won the National Book Award for Poetry. In 1981 she became a fellow in the Academy of American Poets and then, in 1985, one of the twelve Chancellors who serve for life. Collected poems, If It Be Not I (1992) included four volumes that had appeared since her first collected poems. It was published simultaneously with a new collection of poetry, Firefall. (wikipedia)

• • •

I laughed out loud at "GOD YES!" (49A: "Oh, hallelujah!"). Why? Because today's constructor is known professionally as "The Friendly Atheist" (wikipedia page, blog, podcast). There was also something funny (in a good-natured way) about THE MAGI and the RED SEA finding their way into this puzzle. Speaking of God, this puzzle felt like the Wrath of God up front, as a combination of brutal cluing (17A: Moving film?), impossible-for-me proper nouns (the poet, mainly), and my own stupidity / forgetfulness led to some real stuckness. And I had UMS / UPSHOT pretty quickly!; I just couldn't make the crosses work off of UPSHOT, including ODIE, which come on what the hell, how did I forget Crosswordese's favorite dog (sorry ASTA and FALA)!? Even later, when I "got" him, I wrote in OPIE at first! Forgot what "Louche" meant; I knew it was bad, but forgot how bad (SORDID). I did remember ODIE's fellow comics page resident Cathy, so "ACK!" went in, but the first thing I put in with confidence ... sigh ... was AD MAN (7D: Pro pitcher => AD REP). The worst bit of crosswordese in the grid, one of the worst kealoas* there is, and I step Right In It. That wrong MAN was the real source of my slowness, as it made the already tough SHRINK WRAP virtually impossible, *and* it poisoned what was already a pretty poisonous stack of three-letter answers (BED, CAP, and by proximity, MAT). Further ADMAN caused me to write in CAB for 20A: Truck part, and let me tell you I was pretty satisfied with ADMAN / CAB. Ugh, I also thought HYDRA was COBRA (19A: Enemy organization in Marvel Comics). Bah! That NW just knocked me around badly. MALALA eventually ended up helping a lot, but still, coming out of the NW I was stuck. The one way out, the long Down, was a "?" clue, of course, and I just couldn't put it together from LOWB-

I ended up having to rebuild pretty much from the ground up; that is, from way down at the very bottom of the grid, with an answer I knew well: Juan SOTO (48A: M.L.B. star Juan). He recently turned down a 15-year, $440 million dollar contract with the Nationals. He's now a Padre, and he is expected to ink a contract worth northward of half a billion dollars. Why? He's one of the best hitters, through his very young age (23), in the history of the sport. He also helped me regain my FOOTING in this puzzle. Went from him and PSST and IDID to DONATED TO and very quickly the SW corner was done—that corner and the NE corner and frankly all the corners were much more forgiving than that NW corner was for me. The one real challenge left was the middle, where I was finally able to tease out LOW BATTERY (such a good clue!) (6D: Plight of the 1%?), and, with much struggle and quizzical grimacing, FORCED SMILE (30A: Expression in an uncomfortable situation) (absolutely diabolical use of "expression" there—I really wanted a spoken phrase). You know a puzzle is good when it smacks you around and yet ultimately makes you smile (in an unforced way). So I got FORCED SMILE, thought "yes, I UNDERSTAND," and then happily rode SISTER CITY down to an easy puzzle exit. Was the puzzle a satisfying Saturday experience? GOD YES!

More notables:

17A: Moving film? (SHRINK WRAP) — one of the hardest "?" clues I've ever seen. It's also borderline in terms of legibility. I guess that ... when the wrap (which is a kind of "film") is going on, it is shrinking and thus "moving." I honestly was looking at SHRINK-M-P at one point and thinking "what the hell is a SHRINKY MAP!?" [someone in comments suggests that you use SHRINK WRAP as packing material when "moving" to keep things from shifting around; I only know it as the material sometimes covering commercial products, though I guess even then the wrap probably does act as a stabilizing agent during transport]
25A: ___ Foundation (nonprofit with a history going back to 1984) (TED)— never heard of TED stuff until sometime in the '00s, I think, so this was a surprise.
26A: Locale for a pin (MAT) — had M-T, thought, "well, that's MAT ... but how does that make sense? You leave a *key* under the MAT, maybe, but a *pin"?? ... ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, pin. Like wrestling. Now I UNDERSTAND!"
23D: People born on the 4th of July, e.g. (CANCERS) — I have no idea what any of the summer signs are. Everyone I knew and loved growing up was autumn winter and early spring, so after ARIES and before LIBRA, I am Zodiacally illiterate. This is all to say that today I found out that GEMINIS and CANCERS have the same number of letters.
26D: King Arthur's slayer (MORDRED) — the most up-my-alley clue in the whole thing. Chivalry's MR. HYDE (2D: Literary character who "alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil"). An agent of absolute destruction. Love him.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*kealoa = short, common answer that you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.

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Constructor: Brooke Husic and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Stacking Up" — I don't think there's a theme; I think the idea is there are a lot of big "stacks" (i.e. long answers running alongside one another). If I'm missing something, well, someone will tell me

Word of the Day: COIMBRA (56D: Portuguese city with a historic university founded in 1290) —

Coimbra (/koʊˈɪmbrə/, also US: /kuˈ-, ˈkwɪmbrə/, UK: /ˈkɔɪmbrə/, Portuguese: [kuˈĩbɾɐ] (listen) or [ˈkwĩbɾɐ]) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2011 census was 143,397, in an area of 319.40 square kilometres (123.3 sq mi). The second-largest urban area in Portugal outside Lisbon and Porto Metropolitan Areas after Braga, it is the largest city of the district of Coimbra and the Centro Region. About 460,000 people live in the Região de Coimbra, comprising 19 municipalities and extending into an area of 4,336 square kilometres (1,674 sq mi).
Among the many archaeological structures dating back to the Roman era, when Coimbra was the settlement of Aeminium, are its well-preserved aqueduct and cryptoporticus. Similarly, buildings from the period when Coimbra was the capital of Portugal (from 1131 to 1255) still remain. During the late Middle Ages, with its decline as the political centre of the Kingdom of Portugal, Coimbra began to evolve into a major cultural centre. This was in large part helped by the establishment of the first Portuguese university in 1290 in Lisbon and its relocation to Coimbra in 1308, making it the oldest academic institution in the Portuguese-speaking world. Apart from attracting many European and international students, the university is visited by many tourists for its monuments and history. Its historical buildings were classified as a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2013: "Coimbra offers an outstanding example of an integrated university city with a specific urban typology as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions that have been kept alive through the ages."

• • •

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read this blog for any length of time that this type of puzzle—the Sunday 21x21 themeless—does nothing for me, and this particular incarnation, despite being loaded with what I'd generally consider good and sometimes great fill, is no exception. I just can't get excited about setting records for the lowest number of answers in a Sunday puzzle, or about oceans of white space, or about ... really anything. When you get a canvas this big, all the stuff that would seem impressive in a more restrictive 15x15 format suddenly feels cheap. Like, yeah, you have a huge wordlist and constructing software and two top-notch constructors, you can put a lot of debut long answers in a puzzle this huge. Lots of space. No theme restrictions. You can just go to town. The themeless form just loses meaning to me when the size gets this expansive. I'm not really gonna remember anything in this grid because there's just so much. It's like when I went to Westminster Abbey and there was so much interesting old stuff but it was all just crammed in there like some kind of medieval garage sale so none of it really made an impression (besides Poet's Corner, but that's just because I studied Chaucer). Like, yeah, NEOPRONOUNS is kinda cool, and FACE TATTOOS and "DO ME A SOLID" and a few others, but most of the rest is just, you know, pretty good, and there's just so much that ... nothing feels truly marquee. I didn't love the Friday puzzle, but I remember the marquee fill even 48 hours later ("SMOOTH MOVE, EX-LAX,""I WON'T MINCE WORDS"). Why? Because those answers occurred under more restrictive grid circumstances and also were not crowded, i.e. drowned out, by so much other longer fill. Again, this is a specific, personal distaste ... actually more disinterest ... that I have regarding giant themelesses like this. I doubt many people could do this type of thing better than Brooke and Will do it here. But it's decidedly not for me.

The hardest "stack" for me was easily HEADSPRING (?) (19D: Dance move that resembles a front flip) alongside PASSACAGLIA (!!??) (16D: Italian dance form from the Spanish for "walk in the street"), though the answer that slowed me down the most was definitely COIMBRA, which somehow I am just hearing about for the first time today and which looks like a string of random letters. I am a medievalist but my Iberian knowledge has always been poor, so no huge surprise there. There were some other things in here that I didn't really know, but nothing that gave me real trouble. I found the middle of this puzzle kinda gummy. CONCRETE over CONCURRENCE, and all of the Es and Rs through there, made the whole section feel like a monochromatic slab (except GAY PRIDE PARADE, which definitely brought some color and energy). Again, everything through there is solid, and the Es and Rs etc. are not surprising given just how many long answers are running through there—the fact that they got anything to work, let alone all unimpeachably solid answers, is really something. But from a solving experience standpoint, despite its architectural impressiveness, that just wasn't my favorite part of the grid.

Notes:

39D: Useless (OTIOSE) — I never use this word, but I like this word. I always forget exactly what it means, since it looks like a bunch of other words all mashed together, like ODIOUS meets OBESE meets TORTOISE or something.
20A: "We must wait to see what happens" ("TIME WILL TELL") — seems like not such a great thing to repeat TIME in your grid (see 103A: KILLING TIME), but again, in a grid this massive, with this much white space to fill, who's really going to notice (except me)?
56A: J.G. Ballard dystopia about a man stranded between motorways ("CONCRETE ISLAND") — if nothing else, this puzzle has made me want to put this in my reading queue. I keep meaning to read Ballard and never quite get around to it. He wrote, among other things, "Crash" ("a story about a renegade group of car crash fetishists." (wikipedia)), and the 1968 short story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan."True story.

Hey, next weekend is the best of the annual crossword tournaments, Lollapuzzoola. I can't make it this year (I'm all traveled out, plus my semester will already have started so I'm gonna be beat), but I love that it's back in person, in NYC. I've never not had a great time when I've gone. Importantly, though, it's also *online*, so anyone can participate! Here's the blurb provided to me by tournament founder, my friend and fellow central New Yorker, Brian Cimmet:

Lollapuzzoola, the greatest summertime crossword tournament ever held on a Saturday in August, is taking place concurrently in New York City and online on Saturday, August 27. This year's extravaganza is hosted by Brian Cimmet, Brooke Husic, and Sid Sivakumar, and features puzzles and games from over a dozen different creators. The tournament constructors are: Ella Dershowitz, Francis Heaney, Brooke Husic, Will Nediger, Paolo Pasco, and Pao Roy; and there's bonus content from Kate Chin Park, Kelsey Dixon, Shannon Rapp, Carly Schuna, Sid Sivakumar, and Foggy Brume. Visit www.bemoresmarter.com for more information and to purchase tickets.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Doug Burnikel and Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Challenging *for a Monday* (that is, it played slow ... which is at least partly because it's oversized)

THEME: Take the "A" Train ... — themers all start with words that refer to subterranean mass transit systems:

Theme answers:

SUBWAY SANDWICHES (17A: Black Forest Ham and Cold Cut Combo, for two)
METRO AREA (26A: Region encompassing a city and its suburbs)
TUBE SOCKS (49A: One-size-fits-all hosiery)
UNDERGROUND FILMS (62A: Nonmainstream productions like "Pink Flamingo" and "Eraserhead")

Word of the Day: AUGER (44D: Tool for boring holes) —

: any of various tools or devices with a helical shaft or part that are used for boring holes (as in wood, soil, or ice) or moving loose material (such as snow) (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

This felt off in a lot of ways. First, it just felt harder than most Mondays. It's built weird, so there's a Lot of longer answers and white space, especially in the middle, so even though there's also a lot of short stuff, I felt like I was having trouble getting toeholds. Plus the fill and cluing was slippery. Really could not come up with WHUP (2D: Clobber but good). WHAP? WHOMP? WHOOP? Looking at it now, I guess I see it, but it's still more sound than "word" to me, so ... yeah. ALOO is a food partial that I knew but needed crosses to remember (18D: ___ gobi (curry dish)). "I WAS RIGHT" wasn't easy to get off first letters. TOETAP ... weird, toughish. DOGGONEIT ... wasn't entirely sure what it was gonna be or how to spell it. Never heard of this particular OCHOA, but since I knew other OCHOAs, I got it with some crosses (10D: Ellen ___, first Hispanic woman in space). Still, I had to *work* a lot more than I usually do for Mondays. And that's OK, except the payoff wasn't great. This themer set is weird. SUBWAY SANDWICHES felt strange, in that nothing about either of those sandwiches in the clue suggest SUBWAY in particular. And the clue on TUBE SOCKS was befuddling—I had the SOCKS part and then no idea. Was not aware that the apparent lack of sizes was a distinguishing feature. Also, haven't seen anyone wear TUBE SOCKS unironically since the early '80s. A bit odd to have UNDERGROUND FILMS clued as "Nonmainstream" when you've already got [Not mainstream] as a clue in your puzzle, and for basically the same thing (INDIE). But the worst thing about the theme, from an execution standpoint, is METRO AREA. All the other themers repurpose the initial word—taking it out of "subway" context and putting it somewhere else (sandwiches, socks, movies). But the METRO AREA is specifically the place that the METRO takes you around. There's not even an attempted separation between the theme answer and the theme concept. It's weak. Anemic. Half-hearted.

The fill is also subpar in many places, esp. the S and SE (which includes, fittingly, SSE). ORO UAE ETRADE LEN AMMO MOE SSE. It's just a bit gunky down there. It's better elsewhere, but not too much better. I could not follow the logic of the clue on INDOORS (21A: Away from the sun, say). Really seems like the clue is suggesting something akin to "in the shade," not all the way INDOORS, where ... you would not necessarily be "Away from the sun" ("say" or no "say"). Just odd. Also odd: having "dog" in your IDTAG clue (19D: Attachment to a dog collar, informally) when you've already got it in your grid, DOGGONEIT! Worst moment for me, in terms of my own performance, was writing in the wrong AUGUR. There really shouldn't be two words that look and sound so much alike. AUGER is a noun, a tool for boring. AUGUR is primarily a verb ("portend"), though in the ancient Roman world, an augur was someone who foretold the will of the gods specifically through studying the flight behavior of birds, which sounds cool, if scientifically dubious. I'm about to re-re-re-re (ad inf..) embark on a reading of Virgil's Aeneid this week. Gonna keep my eye out for bird stuff. You keep your eyes on the birds as well, good people of Crossworld, and I'll see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trey Mendez

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: interstate plane travel— theme answers are about airplanes, and are clued as if they were related to plane travel from the state whose two-letter postal code they begin with to the state whose two-letter postal codes they end with. Thus:

Theme answers:

VAPOR TRAIL (18A: What follows a plane going from Richmond to Chicago?) (Virginia to Illinois)
LANDING GEAR (26A: 26A: Part of a plane traveling from New Orleans to Little Rock?) (Louisiana to Arkansas)
CONTINENTAL (45A: Former airline from Denver to Birmingham?) (Colorado to Alabama)
FLYING TIME (56A: Duration of air travel from Miami to Bangor?) (Florida to Maine)

Word of the Day: ENOS Strate (65A: Deputy on "The Dukes of Hazzard") —

Enos Strate is a fictional character in the American television series The Dukes of Hazzard. The character of Enos was on from 1979-1980 and then after short break was on 1982-1985. Enos was played by Sonny Shroyer. (dukesofhazzard.fandom.com) // Enos is a short-lived American action-comedy television series and a spin-off of The Dukes of Hazzard. It originally aired on CBS from November 12, 1980, to May 20, 1981. The series focused on the adventures of Enos Strate, a former deputy in rural Hazzard County, after he moved to Los Angeles to join the LAPD. Actor Sonny Shroyer played the character of Enos on both shows. The scene was set for Enos leaving Hazzard to become a Los Angeles lawman in the third season Dukes of Hazzard episode "Enos Strate To The Top". // Each episode of "Enos" featured the title character fighting crime alongside partner Turk Adams. Episodes usually began and ended with Enos writing a letter to "Dukes of Hazzard" character Daisy Duke in which he told her of his adventures in L.A. In an attempt to boost ratings, a number of characters from The Dukes of Hazzard (Daisy, Uncle Jesse and Rosco) were brought in as guest stars, but "Enos" still failed to catch on. It was canceled after one 18-episode season. (wikipedia)

• • •

HOOHA! Quite a month for HOOHA, yes sir. HOOHA yesterday, HOOHA today. Lots of online HOOHA discourse after yesterday's puzzle, and probably again today. If you want to know why, you can just look at the most upvoted definition of HOOHAhere. Dictionaries certainly back up the puzzle's definition of the term, but common usage goes a decidedly different way, so I love seeing HOOHA in the puzzle, because I look forward to the semi-startled online responses of people who were Not At All Aware that it meant "commotion," informally or otherwise. Very entertaining to see people learn new things, especially this new thing.

[first story in MAD Magazine #1]

Also very entertaining: the basic idea of this puzzle. It's trying to do something clever, and I think it mostly gets there. Air travel-related answers that "travel" from one state to another. Yes. The most I think about it, the more I like it. Doesn't matter whether Continental actually flew Denver to Birmingham—the air routes are fanciful, hence the "?"s on the ends of the theme clues (which alert you to the puzzle's secondary thematic content, i.e. the state codes). As far as this theme goes, I have no complaints. Good Tuesday stuff. The fill, however, has some issues. The biggest issue for me is ONALOG, which is a horribly awkward standalone phrase (long prepositional phrases always seem so strange and naked and bereft). It's also easily avoidable. Just change it to ANALOG (a real thing!) and then change GOT UP to GAS UP (also real) and TAP to SAP (really real!). Badda-bing, voilà, no more ants ON A LOG (for those of you somehow not familiar with this foodstuff, the log is celery and the ants are raisins and I think peanut butter is the adhesive, but maybe cream cheese works too? I don't know, never ate it, even as a child).

[cringe]

NEOLOGIC is also strange, for different reasons (36D: Like a recently coined word or phrase). It's not bad so much as esoteric. That is, I know what a "neologism" is, but I've never seen anyone use the term for the inherent quality of a neologism (and it turns out NEOLOGIC is actually the "less common" adjectival form of the word; see "neological,"here). I actually thought of "neologism" immediately but couldn't bring myself to write in NEOLOGIC because it didn't seem like a thing. Anyway, it's a very odd word to see hanging around a Tuesday grid. This is only its third appearance of the century, and both the other appearances came on Saturdays. The short fill is OK but a little on the limp and stale side—lots and lots of old friends like OLIO and ITO and ENOS and ESSO ... speaking of ESSO, I was surprised to see that Canada is considered "overseas" now (54D: Exxon, overseas).

A few more things:

10A: Woman's name hidden inside "assumed name" (EDNA) — still not understanding why the NYTXW has (of late) steered so hard toward this way of cluing short names. It's oddly childish and patronizing. Makes me want to repost the Bernie meme (courtesy of Christopher Adams, who filled in for me on Sunday):

26D: "___ at 'em!" ("LEMME") — I had "LET ME" at first. But of course that would be the more formal "LET ME at them, please."
34D: Production company behind "The Hunger Games" and the "Saw" films (LIONSGATE) — bold, original fill. As someone who once put VILLAGE ROADSHOW in a puzzle (because it contained "LAGER"), I approve.

I think this is Trey Mendez's NYTXW debut, so congrats to him.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. EMS make "clay clammy" (44A) because EMS = plural of the letter "M"

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Constructor: Colin Ernst

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easier up top, Mediumer down below)

THEME: REAL ESTATE AGENT (56A: Source of the euphemisms found in the clues for 17-, 23- and 48-Across) — clues are real estate "euphemisms" for the following residences:

Theme answers:

STUDIO APARTMENT (17A: "It's super-cozy, and a breeze to clean!")
FIVE FLOOR WALK-UP (23A: "You can cancel that gym membership!")
MAJOR FIXER-UPPER (48A: "The space has endless possibilities!")

Word of the Day: MORIA (48D: Where Gandalf declares "You shall not pass!") —

In the fictional world of J. R. R. Tolkien, Moria, also named Khazad-dûm, is an ancient subterranean complex in Middle-earth, comprising a vast labyrinthine network of tunnels, chambers, mines and halls under the Misty Mountains, with doors on both the western and the eastern sides of the mountain range. Moria is introduced in Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, and is a major scene of action in The Lord of the Rings.
In much of Middle-earth's fictional history, Moria was the greatest city of the Dwarves. The city's wealth was founded on its mines, which produced mithril, a fictional metal of great beauty and strength, suitable for armour. The Dwarves dug too deep, greedy for mithril, and disturbed a demon of great power: a Balrog, which destroyed their kingdom. By the end of the Third Age, Moria had long been abandoned by the Dwarves, and was a place of evil repute. It was dark, in dangerous disrepair, and in its labyrinths lurked Orcs and the Balrog. (wikipedia)

• • •

Maybe this is supposed to be of particular appeal to New Yorkers? It mostly missed me. Only one of these potential residences sounds like it requires a "euphemism" (the last one). The first two just seem like places one might live in a city. Maybe some people would find them undesirable, I dunno, but presumably you'd have some idea of the kind of apartment you were looking at before you looked at it. And about MAJOR FIXER-UPPER ... a few things. First, the MAJOR part felt a little wobbly. The expression that came to mind for me was "it's a REAL FIXER-UPPER." I needed several crosses to get MAJOR (and one of those crosses was MORIA (!?) ... this is partly why the bottom of this puzzle was more "Medium" than the "Easy" top). Second, MAJOR FIXER-UPPER seems like something you'd say about a house, or something you own, not (like the other two themers) an apartment or something you'd rent. So it's a bit odd-man-out. Third, MAJOR FIXER-UPPER*is* the euphemism here. The other residence types are just ... residence types. This one screams "euphemism." So the puzzle is telling me the *clue* is the euphemism, but the *answer* is actually way more euphemismy. Which brings me to maybe the off-est seeming thing about the theme: I usually (always?) think of "euphemisms" as specific words or phrases, not entire sentences, so that was weird. Here's the explanation of "euphemisms" from Merriam-Webster, and you can see that complete sentences are not really part of the discussion:

Euphemisms can take different forms, but they all involve substituting a word or phrase considered to be less offensive than another. The substituted word might, for example, be viewed as a less coarse choice, as when dang or darn is used instead of damn or damned. Or it might replace a word viewed as insulting to a religious figure, such as the various euphemisms for God (gad, gadzooks, gosh) or Jesus (gee, jeepers, jeez). A euphemism may also consist of an indirect softening phrase that is substituted for the straightforward naming of something unpalatable. Thus, we hear of people being “let go” rather than “fired”; civilians killed in war described as “collateral damage”; or someone who has died having “kicked the bucket,” “passed away, “given up the ghost,” or “joined one’s ancestors.” (emph. mine)

There's a kernel of an interesting idea behind this theme, but I thought the execution here was a bit rough.

The longer Downs add some life to the grid, with the pair in the SE being the real bright spot of the day, fill-wise (SCOOP NECK next to SHAKE ON IT). Sadly, that pairing also results in the gunkiest part of the grid, fill-wise: that tiny section in the far SE—CIVKTSTVS. Actually, TVS is OK, but it adds to the horrid pile-up of abbrs. there. The clues for CIV (62A: ___ engr.) and KTS (65A: Gold stds.) are themselves hard to look at, with [___ engr.] being about as ugly a clue as I can imagine. Elsewhere, the short fill is better but not by much. ASSAM is interesting because it's a real enough place but my brain flags it immediately as crosswordese because, well, it used to be everywhere. One of those geographical terms you'd learn very early on, if you didn't know it already, because you could count on seeing it regularly. Its popularity peaked in 1973—nine appearances in the NYTXW that year. But this is its first appearance this year, so ... especially since it's an actual point-to-able region, I can't really call it "crosswordese" anymore. Like, if ASTA showed up in the puzzle tomorrow ... is he crossworese anymore? Ten ASTAs the first full year I wrote this blog (2007), but just one last year (2021). If the crosswordese unwears out its welcome, is it even crosswordese any more? I realize I've wandered into some thorny existential territory here, but ... think about it.

ASSAM aside, there seemed to be a lot of stale short words. AHS CLIO EDAM ACER AFTS IOTAS ELL ERM PAH (ERM-PAH!—the sound of the hesitant tuba! ERM-PAH lerm-pah derpity der, I've got some ugly short words for you!). I don't know what to say about MORIA. I've read "The Hobbit" and seen all those boring LOTR movies and somehow MORIA hasn't stuck. Never even appeared in the grid until 2014, but this makes four appearances now. We already have one fictional place down in this corner (AVONLEA), I'm not sure we really need another. I enjoyed seeing AUGHT again (25D: Zero), clued as a fitting retort to everyone who doubted its "Zero" meaning last Thursday. While this puzzle played easyish overall, there was one crossing that felt like a fastball aimed at my head. I could not process the quotation marks in 47A: "Practical" thing (JOKE). I was looking for some colloquial phrase, some ... saying ... or an actual quote or anything that might justify those quotation marks. No idea. [It might be practical] would've tracked, but this clue didn't. Cross that with the "?" clue at 47D: Form of attachment? and you've got me in a bit of a pickle, esp. since there are contexts where you do indeed "attach" things with "pegs." Me: "What kind of weird bit of hardware am I dealing with here? T-NUT, L-BAR ... what letter goes before a PEG!?" But the "attachment" in question is just an email attachment, and a JPEG is just a run-of-the-mill electronic image. I never got truly stuck there, but I did have to work both words down to the last letter (the "J") before understanding either of them.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Olivia Mitra Framke and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: TRI-STATE AREA (54A: U.S. geographical grouping ... or a hint to 20-, 27- and 47-Across)—theme answers are three states all run together (with overlapping letters), clued by the states official self-designations (e.g. Show-Me, Golden, whatever):

Theme answers:

OHIOWALABAMA (20A: "Buckeye-Hawkeye-Yellowhammer")
MAINEBRASKANSAS (27A: "Pine Tree-Cornhusker-Sunflower")
VERMONTANALASKA (47A :"Green Mountain-Treasure-Last Frontier")

Word of the Day: EREBUS (8D: Deity born from Chaos) —

In Greek mythology, Erebus (/ˈɛrɪbəs/; Ancient Greek: Ἔρεβος, romanized: Érebos, "deep darkness, shadow"), or Erebos, is the personification of darkness and one of the primordial deities. Hesiod's Theogony identifies him as one of the first five beings in existence, born of Chaos.(wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

Tuesdays and Thursdays might get a bit abbreviated for a while, since I solve and write first thing in the morning and then turn around and teach shortly thereafter. And since I have a 7-something AM bus to catch, and I don't like to be rushed getting out the door, I can't linger over these write-ups the way I sometimes do on T and Th. Then again every time I say the write-up is going to be short, I end up going into normal writing mode and doing the same thing I always do, so who knows? I'm already wasting valuable time writing about the fact that I don't have that much time! The point is, if T and/or Th seem clipped in the near future, now you know why (or what my official excuse is). My cat (OLIVE!) woke me up at 3:30am today, so I Have More Time Than I Want Actually. But still, 5:30am finish time is going to be the goal! We'll see how that works out.

[I let her sleep. Anywhere. She is less obliging.]

I was happy the puzzle obliged my schedule today by being easy, but that's one of the few things about it I genuinely liked. I don't quite understand how this rises to NYTXW levels of Thursday trickiness. I've seen some version of this conceit before, I'm fairly sure, but that's not the problem—the dullness of the overall idea is the problem. Yes, you can run state names together, many of them famously share letter strings, so what? TRI-STATE AREA is a fine phrase but I don't think of a crossword answer as an "area" and there's nothing particular lovely or clever or funny about three state names mushed together, so I guess I'm just failing to see the appeal, particularly the *Thursday NYTXW!* appeal. And as for the tri-state Frankenstein's monster answers ... there really should be a higher bar for amount of overlap. Something to make the concept seem unusual and worthwhile. What I'm saying is that the overlaps are much more interesting when they comprise two or more letters—VERMONTANA! That's almost fun. But when the overlap is just one letter (as it is, twice, in this puzzle) ... that hardly seems worth doing. A cheap way to get overlap. There's not even entertaining wackiness to provide some auxiliary enjoyment. VERMONTALASKA is kind of fun to say, but the others, not so much. Hard to know how to say NEBRASKANSAS since whichever way you choose, you butcher one of the state's actual pronunciations, and with OHIOWALABAMA you can't even hear the IOWA part. It's like it's not there. I'm just finding it hard to see the Thursday-worthiness today.

Love the phrase I'M DOWN (as well as the fact that it is, in fact, Down) (4D: "Sounds like a plan!") and I like the clue on SALAD BAR (5D: Place to pick some vegetables?), and I'm never gonna be mad at finding a cocktail in my crossword (60A: Cocktail made with gin, soda, lemon juice and sugar => TOM COLLINS), but that's really it for high points. The fill is just OK, and actually a bit old-fashioned and creaky. EINandNIE? And then TSO and ABU and ORD and USAUSA and ASTERS and SLOE and ACER and ICAL (!?) and the old sandwich partial ON RYE ... there's just a crustiness that is not adequately balanced out by freshness. DOGROSE is "fresh" in the sense of "never heard of it" and "hasn't been in the NYTXW since 1962," and I don't mind seeing it here, but ... well, there are over 300 species of rose, so finding one I haven't seen or heard of is not going to be hard. If I were more botanically inclined, DOGROSE might've delighted me more. Those are the breaks. But even if I throw DOGROSE on the "Fresh" pile today, it's still not much of a pile.

[I don't love APER, but I really don't love
ICAL / ACER, so I prefer this way ... oh wait,
you could turn APER into AVER if you want!
Yes, I think that's even better.]

Not too many problem areas today. Wanted REND for WEEP (21D: Tear a lot). Wanted MURDER before MOTIVE (27D: Whodunit plot element). Tried to mentally stretch out BAE to make it fit at 41A: Sweetheart before remembering that BEAU was also a word. That's all. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Robert Logan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: EVEN ODDS (64A: A 50/50 chance ... or a description of the lengths of this puzzle's Across and Down answers respectively) — Acrosses have even number of letters in them, Downs have odd

Theme answers:

all of them, I guess

Word of the Day: Aidy BRYANT (9A: Aidy of "Saturday Night Live") —

Aidan Mackenzy Bryant (born May 7, 1987) is an American actress and comedian. She was a cast member on the late-night variety series Saturday Night Live (2012–2022), beginning in season 38, and leaving at the end of season 47. For her work on the series, she has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards, including two nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. Her other work includes a voice role in the animated series Danger & Eggs (2017) and a starring role in the sitcom Shrill (2019–2021); for the latter, she also served as writer and executive producer and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. (wikipedia)

• • •

I got bad, eerie vibe off of this one right from the start. The grid has a weird look—boxy and plain, like a generic "crossword grid," with no answers over 10 letters long, so it looked like it was gonna have bad "flow" and few if any real marquee answers. So my gut was telling me something was up, and then I dove in and that gut feeling only got stronger. I finished the NW corner and there was nothing shiny or sparkly about it, nothing that seemed purpose-built—why would you stack 8s in a themeless? What good could come of that? The best you're gonna get is "OK." And the worst you're gonna get is ... well ADP (5D: Big inits in payroll services). That answer alone was like a giant red alert. It's a terrible bit of fill, the kind you'd only trot out if you needed it to hold together an *amazing* corner ... and that NW corner is not amazing. I kept going, of course, and found that the fill wasn't bad so much as blah. Then I got a bit worried a theme was developing when "YOU BETCHA" crossed "YES, INDEEDY." This worry only intensified when I hit "OKEY DOKEY" ... Am I really enduring this bone-dry grid just so I can have a "folksy phrases of agreement" theme? Because that would be bad. But then "HARD TO TELL" interrupted the apparent theme pattern, and I was back to just an inexplicably bland puzzle. But then, at the end, explicability. Tragic explicability. A genuine revealer, one that brings sudden and, in this case, truly horrid illumination. A Bizarro revealer with an upside-down "AHA" (which is "AHA" spelled backward ... see, you can't even tell it's Evil. It looks just like the Good "AHA"! Scary!). The jolting, abrupt ending to all this Uncanny-Valley Friday nonsense was the revelation that the puzzle did, in fact, have a theme. Not "folksy phrases of agreement." No, that theme actually seems reasonable now. No, our theme is a completely invisible, no-enjoyment-added letter-count theme. The Acrosses have even letter counts and the Downs have odd. This would've been disappointing on a *Wednesday* (which is about where the difficulty level was); on a Friday, it's criminal.

I like themes on Friday (or Saturday) even less than I like themelesses on Sunday, but at least a themed Friday (or Saturday) has a chance with me. The theme just has to be stellar. You took away my favorite puzzle of the week from me (the themeless Friday), so OK, replace it with something better then. But this ... isn't better. It's so far from better that it has left "better"'s gravitational pull entirely and floated off to become basically space junk. There was some incidental fill that I would've liked in a better conceived puzzle that wasn't intruding on my Friday themeless pleasure. I actually like "A WORD..." and "YES, YOU!" They're terse yet colorful. Colorful is hard to do in short fill. But on a Friday I should not be telling you that my favorite fill was 5 or 6 letters long. Why make a less-than-mediocre themeless just so you can make the EVEN ODDS joke!? Which doesn't even really work on a literal level—as a "description of the lengths of this puzzle's Across" answers, EVEN is (adjectivally) correct. As a "description of the lengths of this puzzle's [...] Down answers," ODDS is non-adjectival, and thus not really a "description" at all. Ill-conceived and extremely ill-slotted on a Friday, this puzzle. Baffling, truly. But people will likely be so focused on their personal best Friday times (YES, YOU) that they won't care much that the puzzle was, at best, a shrug. To which I say, great. Take your enjoyment where you can get it!

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Happy to see the wonderful Aidy BRYANT in the puzzle, but surprised we didn't up seeing her as AIDY first. Seems like a potentially useful four-letter answer. If y'all wanted to make AIDY the next ENYA, I would not be mad.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew Linzer

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Rhadamanthine (29D: STERN) —

: rigorously strict or just [...] In Greek mythology, there were three judges of the underworld: Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus. Minos, a son of Zeus and Europa, had been the king of Crete before becoming supreme judge in the underworld after his death. Aeacus, another son of Zeus, was king of Aegina before joining the underworld triumvirate. Rhadamanthus, brother of Minos and king of the Cyclades Islands, was especially known for being inflexible when administering his judgment - hence, the meaning of "rhadamanthine" as "rigorously strict or just." (wikipedia)

• • •

A solid, proper Saturday. Textbook. Hard but doable. Had some real trouble getting started, but once I did, the puzzle opened up nicely, and I never really lost traction again after I finally got out of the top and into the middle of the grid. The only feature I didn't really care for are the highly isolated NW and SE corners. You've just got these teeny tiny corridors to get through, so your flow is maximally interrupted. The consequences of this segmentation were far more dire for me at the beginning than at the end of the solve. It took some work to flesh out the NW corner—I had ORE before EMO (15A: Rock variety) and DIP before SAG (17A: Temporary decline) (I think "DIP" expresses "temporariness" much better, but that's neither here nor there), but I took a chance on ORAL (!) (26A: Kind of health) and then MELvin came in and confirmed ORAL and then JAMES I was like ""Hey, I'm right here! You teach an entire period of literature named after me, how are you not seeing me!?" so that helped, and shortly thereafter: corner done. And yet ...

I could not get from [Taxes] to TRIES with just the -ES in place, nor could I get to IMAGED (such an odd word) from [Scanned, perhaps] with just the "I." So I had to go fishing for short stuff in the adjacent NE corner just so I could get my footing once again. . . and let me tell you, things went very, very badly at first. My opening pass at alllll the short Downs in the NE was an 0fer ("O"-fer? ... how do you spell that? Anyway, rhymes with "gopher," means "zero for [however many attempts you made]"). Nothing, Nada. No HEM ALAS TEXT SATÉ ASHE FEEL or IDA. I spell "SATAY" like that, so even though that's the answer I wanted, I never thought to spell it "SATÉ," and I definitely considered "FEEL" at 10D: Vibe but I thought MOOD fit better (technically it does, but again, as with DIP, it's simply wrong *for this puzzle*). Incredibly for me to scan an entire bank of short answers and come up with absolutely nothing. Weirdly, the longer Down up there came much more quickly. I took an educated guess with TAM (22A: Flat topper) and ELMS (25A: Trees that canopy Central Park's Literary Walk), which got me STEAMY and RATTLES. Then I changed MOOD to FEEL and the tail ends of those long Acrosses started coming into view. Finally, it was time to embark on the big, creamy middle:

And once I correctly guessed EKES for 25D: Squeezes, I had KEY at the end of 27A: Super-useful item?, and MASTER KEY seemed the only possibility (such keys are undoubtedly "super-useful," but they are also "useful to the super ... intendent ... of a building ... which is what the clue is going for with its "?" today). With MASTER KEY in place, the middle didn't stand much of a chance. Also, I lucked into HUGUENOTS, an answer which, like JAMES I, is a prominent part of the early-modern European political landscape, and thus my early English literature courses (the HUGUENOTS are French protestants who faced a lot of hostility and persecution from the Catholic crown) (35A: Religious group affected by the Edict of Nantes).

The middle of the puzzle ended up falling very fast, and then the bottom half of the grid played like a Bizarro top half, with JOANNE WADDLED easily opening up the front ends of the long Acrosses, and the secluded SE corner being much more easy to break into than the NW corner was to break out of. SHAZAM, a gimme, BAZOOKA, a gimme, ALADDIN and KIA, both gimmes, the end. Ultimately, all smiles, no cringe on this one. I especially like the stacks up top and down below, each of which suggests a coherent scene THAT'S A FIRST! RELEASE DATE! IMAX THEATER! sounds like hype for a big movie's opening weekend, whereas ONLINE POKER ONE MORE TIME MED STUDENTS sounds like a pitch for a movie about how gambling addiction leads to desperate, criminal behavior at a big-city teaching hospital. Whatever the answers in this puzzle suggest to you, I hope you ultimately saw what I saw: a very well put-together piece of work.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ori Brian

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME:"Animal Hybrids" — themers are regular clues with regular answers ... but they are also anagrams of several different kinds of animal [animals given in brackets at end of clues]:

Theme answers:

BREAK THE ICE (22A: Get a party started? [bee, hare, tick])
WET BLANKET (28A: Buzzkill [bat, elk, newt])
PARKING SPACE (34A: A little of a lot? [carp, pig, snake])
WATERMELON PATCH (47A: Locale of many vines [cat, elephant, worm])
BATHROOM SCALE (62A: Something you might step on by the shower [cobra, moth, seal])
"GENERAL HOSPITAL" (78A: Long-running soap opera that debuted in 1963 [ant, gorilla, sheep])
GLOBE THEATRE (91A: London landmark [beetle, hog, rat])
GOLDEN GATE (98A: Bridge that's painted International Orange [dog, eel, gnat])

Word of the Day: UMAR (52D: Second caliph of Sunni Islam) —

ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (Arabic: عمر بن الخطاب, also spelled Omar, c. 583/584 – 644) was the second Rashidun caliph, ruling from August 634 until his assassination in 644. He succeeded Abu Bakr (r. 632–634) as the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate on 23 August 634. Umar was a senior companion and father-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He was also an expert Muslim jurist known for his pious and just nature, which earned him the epithet al-Faruq ("the one who distinguishes (between right and wrong)").
Umar initially opposed Muhammad, his distant Qurayshite kinsman and later son-in-law. Following his conversion to Islam in 616, he became the first Muslim to openly pray at the Kaaba. Umar participated in almost all battles and expeditions under Muhammad, who bestowed the title al-Faruq ('the Distinguisher') upon Umar, for his judgements. After Muhammad's death in June 632, Umar pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr (r. 632–634) as the first caliph and served as the closest adviser to the latter until August 634, when the dying Abu Bakr nominated Umar as his successor.
Under Umar, the caliphate expanded at an unprecedented rate, ruling the Sasanian Empire and more than two-thirds of the Byzantine Empire. His attacks against the Sasanian Empire resulted in the conquest of Persia in less than two years (642–644). According to Jewish tradition, Umar set aside the Christian ban on Jews and allowed them into Jerusalem and to worship. Umar was assassinated by the Persian slave Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz in 644. (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme is oddly decorative here, to the point of being, for the most part, genuinely optional. That is, you don't have to know anything about why there are animals in brackets at the ends of your theme clues. The clues are just normal, straightforward clues, and the answers are normal, straightforward, and (sadly) mostly bland answers. Actually, they're fine answers, but because they aren't really doing anything—because their whole "animal hybrid" nature is a completely non-integral part of the solving experience—they're just like any ordinary answers you might encounter anywhere. Nothing special about them. All the "theme" does is kinda give you an extra hint to the answers of the themers. Like "Here, here's a clue, but if you somehow can't get it from the perfectly ordinary clue, psst, here's a little hint ... but you actually have to *work* a little to figure out what that "hint" is ... so it isn't really a "hint" ... you're probably better off just figuring out the answer from crosses, like you normally would ..." You can see, I hope, how the [bracketed] portion of the theme clues doesn't seem to really know what its purpose is, beyond kinda / sorta giving a little extra hint to solvers, assuming the solver has grokked *how* the animal names are a hint. Sigh. Annnnnyway, there's really nothing there. The [bracketed] part is extraneous to the solving experience. Furthermore, the revealer is extraneous, in the sense that it's redundant. I already figured out what the animals were doing in [brackets] from the Title of The Puzzle. When your revealer contributes no information that isn't already largely provided by the title ... then why is the revealer there at all. CROSSBREEDS doesn't even really make sense, since the animals in [brackets] at the ends of the theme clues aren't really "breeds" so much as "different kinds of animals." Conceptually, this one is kind of a mess. Execution-wise ... it's just blah. May as well be themeless. This one actually has me missing last week's *actual* themeless, which was at least built that way by design.

I weirdly had trouble getting started with this one, mostly because I wasn't understanding how the puzzle was using the word "Gaelic" (or TARTAN, for that matter) (1A: Gaelic garment). I had -ARTA- and still no clue. I think of Gaelic primarily as a language, and when I think of it culturally, I think primarily of Ireland, not Scotland, whereas TARTAN is, in my mind, exclusively a Scottish thing. Also, TARTAN makes me think "pattern" far more than it makes me think "garment." But technically both "Gaelic" and "garment" are used correctly here—I just couldn't process it all, and thought maybe there was a garment called a CARTAN (like ... an Irish caftan??). I also found NOT MANY very hard (6D: A handful). The term "a handful" sounds like something very difficult—specifically, someone very difficult, esp. if that someone is, say, a toddler. "He can be a handful." The idea that "a handful" meant "just a few," i.e. NOT MANY ... that did not occur to me until very late. Beyond that, I had just one significant sticking point, and that was everything in and around and especially including UMAR, which ... wow, OK, that's a new name. I don't even think I've seen the *first* "caliph of Sunni Islam" in the grid before, and you expect me to know the second? That's a big ask, considering that in my 30+ years of solving ...

It looks like the constructor got into a real tight spot with theme answer placement. Things get especially restricted once you decide to run RUNS AMOK in there. You can't do much with that area connecting WATERMELON and BATHROOM unless you do a pretty significant grid tear-down. You can feel the desperation in this tight space, and it's not only because of UMAR. I mean, INRE is in there too, and it's not like that is high-quality fill. I think I would've done whatever I could, including rebuilding the surrounding areas, to get rid of the UMAR / INRE unsightliness. But ... maybe UMAR is a very, very important name that crosswords have unfairly neglected over the years. Lord knows I (continue to) feel that way about OZU and VARDA ...

Bullets:

68D: "Beats me" ("I'VE NO IDEA") — so this one is weird because the contraction (unexpectedly?) makes the phrase feel more formal. Like, "beats me" is obviously slangy, but "I HAVE NO IDEA" feels more like what a person who says "beats me" would say, whereas "I'VE NO IDEA" sounds more like what someone who says "Pardon me, have you any Grey Poupon?" would say.
82D: Strong hold (IRON GRIP) — don't love the clue, which is basically just [synonym for iron + synonym for grip], but the answer is one of my favorite things in the grid, along with OVERCOOK, for reasons I don't quite understand myself (70A: Make dry, as salmon).
80D: ___ Malnati's, Chicago-style pizza chain (LOU) — absolutely no idea. If it's a chain, it's not a chain anywhere I've lived. A very hard-won three-letter name for me today.
54A: Al-___, family of Syrian leaders (ASSAD)— yeah, still war criminals, still in power, still unwelcome in my gridspace
113A: Gets around (EVADES) — total kealoa* train wreck, as I got the "V" first and (predictably) wrote in the wrong guess, AVOIDS. Sigh.

Congratulations to my friend Matt Gritzmacher for winning the Lollapuzzoola Crossword Tournament yesterday (Tyler Hinman, champion of many tournaments, many times over, won the online division, son congrats to him as well). I really wish I could've been there. COVID really decimated in-person tournaments, which means that I haven't seen many of my crossword friends in years now. Fingers crossed for a 2023 return to crossword tournament normalcy. It was great to see pics of Matt and his championship trophy.

[That's Matt with Brooke Husic, who constructed the
tournament's apparently lovely and punishing Final Puzzle]

[Pictures stolen from Matt's Twitter feed]

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Chase Dittrich and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium (i.e. average for a Monday)

THEME:"PIECE OF / MY HEART" (38A: With 41-Across, classic love song suggested by the ends to 18-, 24-, 50- and 60-Across)— theme answers are phrases that end with words that can refer to literal "pieces" of one's "heart":

Theme answers:

ECHO CHAMBER (18A: Environment that reinforces one's biases)
TRAFFIC ARTERY (24A: Major thoroughfare)
IN THE SAME VEIN (50A: "Similarly...")
SAFETY VALVE (60A: Precautionary device in a pneumatic machine)

Word of the Day: FADE (40D: Haircut common in the Marine Corps) —

The "fade" hairstyle is a popular short haircut for men—it actually made Google's "Year in Search" trending data list for 2020—and it's sometimes also called "military reg." It simply means that your hair tapers from the bottom to the top and it can be as close to the skin as you like. // The term "fade" originated in Black-owned barber shops and has become the popular term for an aggressively tight taper in men's hair. Hair at the sides and back is cut as close as possible with clippers and "fades," or tapers, up into almost any length on top. (byrdie.com)

• • •

I have some questions about this one. Like, why does the revealer not say who sang the song? I assume this is the Janis Joplin song, unless there are multiple "classic love songs" with this title, so ... why not say so? I don't think it makes the clue any easier. If anything, it just makes things more specific and clearer. It's bizarre to withhold the name, is what I'm saying. Also, are these "pieces" of "heart" really "heart-y" enough? I mean, the chambers have names that we all know, so "chamber" seems awfully broad / vague, and as for "veins" and "arteries," sure you can find them in the heart, but you can find them in every other part of your body too, so ... ??? I guess I'll give you "chamber" and "valve," but "vein" and "artery" seem pretty weak, as heart-specific answers go. And the phrase TRAFFIC ARTERY just feels clunky and off to me. I see that it is a term that exists, but on a technical level the much more popular term is "arterial road" (just google "arterial road" and then "TRAFFIC ARTERY," in quotation marks, and you'll see what I mean), and from a common usage stand point, we just refer to major thoroughfares being "arteries" -- it's a metaphor that doesn't really need the "traffic" in front of it because context alone is going to give you enough information. It's not like you're going to talk about a road being a "major artery" and someone's going to ask "you mean ... for the passage of blood?" No, I don't mean that, your question is ridiculous. Found this theme really conceptually clunky. Arrhythmic, even.

TRAFFIC ARTERY was the only answer that slowed me down at all today, though the VALVE part of SAFETY VALVE took some crosses because I found the "pneumatic machine" part of the clue distractingly specific. "SAFETY ... ???? ... oh, it's just VALVE? Oh, ok." I was taken aback a little bit by the clue on FADE, mainly because I think of that as a Black haircut, not a military haircut, but I have since learned that the cut is sometimes referred to as "military reg," so OK, there you go. Still, the term "originated in Black-owned barbershops" (see Word of the Day, above), and the "hi-top FADE" in particular was made broadly famous by hip-hop and R&B songs and cultural icons of my youth (late '80s, early '90s). The haircut I associate with marines is the CREW cut. But again, the clue is accurate enough. The only other brief trouble spot was IMOVIE, which I forgot existed, despite its being installed on my own damn computer, the one I am writing on right now (49D: Video editing program from Apple). Sigh. Oh, and I had a little trouble with SPLIT (33A: Skedaddle), mostly because I had the -IT and though it was going to be a two-word phrase ending in "IT," like ... I dunno, BEAT IT (too long) or LAM IT (is that a thing?) or something like that. OK, that's all, see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BUNNY / SLOPE (17A: With 69-Across, beginner's downhill challenge ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — four different "slopes" (downward diagonal answers formed by circled squares) contain types of "bunnies":

The Bunnies:

ENERGIZER
EASTER
DUST
BUGS

Word of the Day: STEROL (9D: Waxy biochemical compound) —

Sterol is an organic compound with formula C
17H
28O, whose molecule is derived from that of gonane by replacement of a hydrogen atom in position 3 by a hydroxyl group. It is therefore an alcohol of gonane. More generally, any compounds that contain the gonane structure, additional functional groups, and/or modified ring systems derived from gonane are called steroids. Therefore, sterols are a subgroup of the steroids. They occur naturally in most eukaryotes, including plants, animals, and fungi, and can also be produced by some bacteria (however likely with different functions). The most familiar type of animal sterol is cholesterol, which is vital to cell membrane structure, and functions as a precursor to fat-soluble vitamins and steroid hormones.
While technically alcohols, sterols are classified by biochemists as lipids (fats in the broader sense of the term). (wikipedia)

• • •

No PLAYBOY Bunny today, but that's probably for the best. As Tuesday theme ideas go, I think this one's pretty cute. Hard to be mad at bunnies—cuteness is their greatest defense. I might've enjoyed the puzzle more if I hadn't been a fast solver—I never saw the bunnies. At all. The puzzle is so easy that I just zipped through it and then looked back to see what the SLOPEs said. So at the level of actual solving, for me, it was almost as if there were no theme; the revealer is the only proper theme answer. No Bunny Content! But the concept works well. There's something aesthetically pleasing about the arrangement of the SLOPEs in the grid. They're not symmetrical, exactly, and yet there is a symmetry of sorts, with the NE and SW SLOPEs both extending from edge to edge, and the middle two SLOPEs both touching the edge on one side and then extending into the middle of the grid. I don't mind asymmetry in zany theme features like this (see also: rebus squares). I mind it more, however, in traditional theme answer alignment. That is, if you want / need to break symmetry, OK, but there had better be good reason. Which brings me to the one odd and somewhat ungainly feature of this theme: the placement of BUNNY. Or the placement of SLOPE, I guess. One of them really should move, so that they can be in sync with one another. Looks like there was no way to move SLOPE in this particular circled-square arrangement, so all I can guess is that the constructor just couldn't make BUNNY work in the 1-Across position, or else could make it work, but got a much cleaner result dropping BUNNY to the third row. There are no circled squares to make grid-filling difficult in that NW corner, so I don't know why BUNNY should've been so hard to put at 1-Across, but I'm also not going to tear down the NW corner and find out right now. Anyway, weird BUNNY placement, but it only detracted slightly from my overall enjoyment.

The fill was a bit rough at times, and this stood out more than it might've on other early-week themed puzzles because there were no proper theme answers or any notable longer answers to speak of at all. Nothing in the grid is longer than 8 letters, and there are only two of those, and they're solid, but neither one is terribly scintillating (ISRAELIS, BOASTFUL). I think SLY NOD is my favorite thing in the grid (5D: Subtle signal that might accompany a wink). That and SPLURGE, which is remarkably ugly-sounding word that I somehow feel affection for (39A: Spend indulgently). There's something almost grotesque about it. It's great. The toughest bits for me were STEROL (just didn't know it–wanted STERNO) (9D: Waxy biochemical compound); OWNED IT (I wanted OWNED UP ...) (4D: Took responsibility for something); and RUST (with the "T" in place, the only "red" color I could think of was BEET) (31A: Reddish hue). GELID is familiar to me but absolutely exclusively from crosswords (it's crosswordese for "cold") (40D: Freezing). The semi-staleness of some of the fill extended to the clues on occasion as well. Two of the "?" clues are ultra-recycled (6A: Puts away, as the groceries? = EATS and 36D: A couple of bucks? = DEER). The other two are pretty good, though (53D: Ones not inclined to make sweeping gestures? = SLOBSand 43D: Major let-downs for Rapunzel? = TRESSES). I can forgive staler-than usual fill in a puzzle like this–it's incredibly hard to fill a grid with diagonal answers cleanly. I've tried. Those diagonals really really restrict you and gum things up. But that's no reason for your clues, esp. your "?" clues, to be out of a box. Still, overall, I was pretty happy with this (fittingly) easy early-week puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Forgot to mention that I definitely cocked my head and looked quizzically at [Norwegian pie crust ingredient] ... only to realize (much later) that the clue actually read "Nonvegan..." (the answer is of course LARD) (thanks to Loren Muse Smith for making the same mistake and commenting on it and thus jogging my memory)

P.P.S. I am being told that the *E*LANTRA / ADRI*E*N crossing is annihilating some significant subset of solvers today. I know my Hyundai models reasonably well, but there's no reason everyone should. My condolences to those shipwrecked on the shoals of Natick today.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (though it will probably time out "Easy" because of the undersized grid (14x15))

THEME: FIVE-SECOND RULE (35A: Dubious food-eating guideline ... or a hint to the answers to this puzzle's starred clues) — the "second" letter in all the answers to the starred clues is "V," i.e. Roman numeral "five"; in each instance the letter appears as an initial, pronounced "VEE":

Theme answers:

TV DINNER (16A: *Type of meal first sold by C.A. Swanson & Sons)
IV FLUID (24A: *Hospital bagful)
AV CLUB (26A: *Multimedia-focused school org.)
RV PARK (44A: *Camper's place, maybe)
JV SQUAD (45A: *Up-and-coming group in high school athletics)
EV CREDIT (57A: *Federal tax incentive for buying a Tesla, say)

Word of the Day: IDI Amin (31A: Dictator Amin) —

Idi Amin Dada Oumee (/ˈiːdi ɑːˈmiːn, ˈɪdi -/, UK also /- æˈmiːn/; c. 1925 – 16 August 2003) was a Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He ruled as a military dictator and is considered one of the most brutal despots in modern world history. [...] Amin's rule was characterised by rampant human rights abuses, including political repression, ethnic persecution and extrajudicial killings, as well as nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement. International observers and human rights groups estimate that between 100,000 and 500,000 people were killed under his regime. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

You don't see 14-wide grids very much. Seems to me grids are more apt to bulk up than slim down if they're going to go off the standard 15x15 model. There's a good reason for slimming this one down, as the revealer is only 14 letters long, and 14s are really awkward to handle in 15x15 grids; plus you'd need another 14 to balance the revealer out symmetrically if you put it in a 15x15, whereas with a 14-wide grid you can just sit the revealer dead center. Much more elegant that way. As for the theme itself, I breezed through the NW and though I wasn't really paying attention to "starred clues," I figured something was up thematically with the "V"s after getting TV DINNER and AV CLUB. Then I hit the revealer, and got a double dose of delight, in that I loved the phrase itself ... and then several seconds later the thematic import of the phrase hit me, and I liked that too. "Five" in the "second" position of every themer. And it's not just that the second letter is "V," it's that it's pronounced as "VEE" in every case. It would be way, way too thin if the themers merely had "V" as the second letter. Having it as an initial, a stand-alone letter, really tightens the theme considerably ... which brings me to the one thing about the theme that I found truly jarring and inexplicable, namely the stray "V" in DMVS (37D: Real ID issuers, in brief). Why would you let *any* non-thematic stand-alone "V"s into this puzzle?! Your whole premise is FIVE-SECOND, i.e. "V" comes second, but now you've introduced an auxiliary FIVE-THIRD rule!? I'm sure it was tough to handle all those damn "V"s in the grid, but for the sake of sparkle and polish and elegance, not to mention consistency, you can't let a "V" get away from you like that. Nails + chalkboard.

["The stars are gonna spell out the answers to tomorrow's crossword..."]

Outside the theme, there's a little less to love. I like the long Downs OK, though the clue on "I CAN DREAM" feels tenuous (31D: "My lotto ticket might be the winner"). The clue phrase sounds like something a not terribly bright person would say; there's no inflection, no sense that the speaker has any sense of the preposterousness of the odds, which is why it's not a great clue for "I CAN DREAM," which situates lotto triumph securely in Fantasyland, where it belongs. There's also no reason a "busy day" should be a BLUR. I tend to remember busy days better than unbusy ones. The puzzle has always expected me to know a weird lot about "The Jungle Book," and MAN CUB went way beyond my normal store of crossword knowledge (KAA, BALOO, SHERE, etc.), but it was ultimately inferable from crosses (5D: Nickname for Mowgli in "The Jungle Book"). I didn't love the clue on MINUS (41A: -) because I kept wondering why they'd omitted the clue, or what clue this was the second part of ... took a few crosses to see that the dash was a MINUS symbol. I had CEDE before CAVE (28D: Give in) and while I got SCARFS on the first guess, I held that "C" very loosely, knowing that it could very easily be an "N" (8D: Devours, with "down") Thought the pun on ELISE ("a lease") was awful, but I can't yet decide if it's so awful it's good (59A: Good name for a home renter?). My current feeling is no, it's bad. But things change.

The worst thing about the puzzle for me was seeing IDI Amin's stupid face in it again. There are two good reasons to banish the dude forever. First, he was an ethnic-cleansing war criminal of the first order (see "Word of the Day," above). It has never been entirely clear to me why the world's most famous murderous dictator (white) is never* allowed to appear in the grid but IDI AMIN (Black) was a grid staple. Note: not interested in Comparative Atrocity Studies, only noting that war criminals are demonstrably more likely to appear in the grid if they aren't white. Maybe "foreign" names are just more tempting to constructors because of their "unusual" letter combinations. I dunno. The other good reason for IDI banishment is sheer name fatigue. That guy used to be ubiquitous, since both his name parts are incredibly useful, grid-wise. To the puzzle's (and constructors') immense credit, his visibility has radically decreased in recent years. AMIN hasn't appeared in the #NYTXW in almost three years, and today's is the first appearance of IDI in 2022. Here's the last ten years' worth of IDIs; you can see how the flow slows to a trickle in recent years:

source: xwordinfo

It would be great if the guy disappeared from grids entirely. I'm never gonna not notice, not comment on, not disparage the appearance of a murderer of this magnitude. Yes, it's just three letters, but it's an unnecessary distraction and a significant (albeit brief) downer. Puzzle vibes are real! Make them good!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Did you know?: HITLER used to appear in the grid reasonably regularly, mostly during and immediately after WWII itself. Look at these insane clues!

P.S. in case you somehow have never heard of the FIVE-SECOND RULE, it's the idea that if food falls on the floor and you pick it up before five seconds have elapsed, it's still good to eat. It's a pretty good rule: food I drop on the floor, I still eat. Food I *find* on the floor ... not so much.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: John Wrenholt

Relative difficulty: on the easy side, I think

THEME: NINETY-ONE (17A: This puzzle's solution) — the theme asks you to DO THE MATH (62A: "Figure it out!" ... or how to arrive at this puzzle's solution, using the answers to the italicized clues); the answers to the italicized clues, taken together, form an EQUATION (56A: Aid in some problem-solving), namely: TWO TIMES FIFTEEN TRIPLED PLUS ONE ... which gives you NINETY-ONE ... which ... I think is supposed to be a reference to today's date ... 9/1:

Theme answers:

TWO TIMES (21A: Cheats on)
FIFTEEN (23A: What comes after love)
TRIPLED (40A: Didn't quite make it home, say)
PLUS ONE (54A: Date for a party)

2 x 15 x 3 + 1 = 91

Word of the Day: Mireille ENOS (20A: Actress Mireille ___ of "Good Omens") —

Mireille Enos (/mɪəˈreɪ ˈiːnəs/; born September 22, 1975) is an American actress. Drawn to acting from a young age, she graduated in performing arts from Brigham Young University, where she was awarded the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship. Having made her acting debut in the 1994 television film Without Consent, she has since received nominations for a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, and an Emmy Award. [...] Enos' breakout role was on the AMC crime drama series The Killing; she played Sarah Linden, a Seattle-based police officer for the show's four seasons from 2011 to 2014. Her performance garnered her critical acclaim and earned her nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series at the Primetime Emmy Award and the Golden Globe Award. (wikipedia)

• • •

I enjoyed this one for its long Downs. The rest of it, I enjoyed somewhat less. The first problem was a technical one, which is that my software doesn't do italics so it put all the theme clues in "quotation marks," which made them much harder to interpret somehow. "What comes after love" ... I thought this was some kind of adage, but then I just ended up with a tennis answer (from the scoring progression: love, fifteen, thirty, forty, ad in, game). The whole time I'm thinking that the quotation marks have some ... meaning. But they're just italics substitutes. Not a big wrench in the system, but a wrench nonetheless. And yet even if my clues had been formatted perfectly ... you're asking me to do math, which is like asking me to draw on my crossword when I'm done with it, which is to say: this Better Be Good. As far as I'm concerned, every crossword has a "solution," and it's just ... the finished grid. This extra math stuff had better lead somewhere! And where it leads is NINETY-ONE ... [cough] ... which *I think* supposed to make us think of NINE / ONE or 9/1 or September 1, which is today's date. The only reason I arrived at this logic is because of the clue on DAY (42A: The 2 in 1/2, e.g.). Otherwise I might still be wondering what NINETY-ONE has to do with anything.

Strugglewise, the very worst part came inside the "solution." That is, since there is no real clue on NINETY-ONE, I had NINET- and when NINETEEN wouldn't fit, I got some end letters and decided that the answer was NINE TO ONE. This felt so right that I never even saw that an actual number, NINETY-ONE, would fit there. Compounding this problem inordinately was the clue on GEYSER (5D: Jumbo jet?), a "?" I could not make sense of to save my life, esp. since I was staring at GEOSER. Made me doubt GIG (5A: Short-term employment), but I couldn't get around it. Made me doubt EDEN (13A: Land next to the Land of Nod), which I thought was maybe ADEN (!?!?!), but still, stuck. Even when I pulled the "O" and looked at GE-SER, I couldn't see how any English word went there. I knew the clue was a fakeout clue, so I thought that instead of an airplane, the "jet" in question was ... the color black. "Jet" is a common synonym for "black" in the literature I teach, so that was my go-to Other Jet. But no, we're dealing instead with a "jet" of ... water. Great. Again, if the "solution" had been magnificent, if there'd been real pay-off, then my stupid struggles would've been forgotten as I marveled at the concept and execution. But instead I'm left with a NINETY-ONE trying to sell me on the idea that it's 9/1. A less-than-ideal conclusion.

As I say, I enjoyed the long Downs, though NADA COLADA is a pretty corny name for a drink (31D: Mocktail with a rhyming name). I guess that's what they're calling Virgin Coladas now, since the whole "virgin" thing has begun to feel inappropriately sexual and (thus) maybe a little creepy? Anyway, the "rhyming" part sure helped. Speaking of creepy, not sure why you'd want to evoke a (presumably sexual / romantic) student-teacher "relationship" with your clue on RATIO (44A: Relationship with a statistics teacher?). I guess it's "a" statistics teacher, not necessarily "your" statistics teacher. Still, that's how the clue read to me. Obviously literally the relationship is merely a mathematical one, but the "?" on the end of the clue feels like it's winking unethically at me. Seems like WINE FRIDGE should've had an abbr. or shortening signal somewhere in the clue—the term WINE REFRIGERATOR is the one I know—but I really like the clue, so ... it's OK (3D: Vintage appliance?) (nice bending of the word "vintage" here). Someone might order cannabis "by OUNCE"? That clue doesn't quite work for me, for obvious "the"-lacking reasons (22D: Someone might order cannabis by this). My [Biz bigwig] was a CEO at first, of course, and I could not get to the MUST of MUST-READS from the clue, which says only "recommendations" (8D: Bibliophile's recommendations). A "recommendation" is not a "must-read." If I "recommend" a book to you, I am not saying YOU MUST READ THIS! We've just let hyperbole take over everything and sometimes it's a drag. Worst drag ever. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Claire Rimkus

Relative difficulty: Medium (it's a name minefield, so who knows!?)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Tim REID (60A: Tim of "Sister, Sister") —

Timothy Lee Reid (born December 19, 1944) is an American actor, comedian and film director best known for his roles in prime time American television programs, such as Venus Flytrap on WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–82), Marcel "Downtown" Brown on Simon & Simon (1983–87), Ray Campbell on Sister, Sister (1994–99) and William Barnett on That '70s Show (2004–06). Reid starred in a CBS series, Frank's Place, as a professor who inherits a Louisiana restaurant. Reid is the founder and president of Legacy Media Institute, a non-profit organization "dedicated to bringing together leading professionals in the film and television industry, outstanding actors, and young men and women who wish to pursue a career in the entertainment media". (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this one got off to an interesting start:

The actual answer there (which I didn't get until near the very end of the solve) was far less interesting than my glorious wrong one, but luckily there were a lot of other longer answers that were sufficiently sparkly and delightful to give me that much-looked--forward-to Friday Feeling. Instead of starting in the NW (typical), I weirdly ended up opening this puzzle up from the middle, with WELL SELF GILL RASH SAUL providing my first real hold, and then LAUGH TRACK built on top of that (7D: Reel with hilarity?). I moved steadily through the puzzle after that, and largely enjoyed myself, but I will say I found the preponderance of names, particularly pop culture names, somewhat alarming. I got a good workout trying to maneuver my way over under and through those names, but at some point there got to be so many that they began to feel like a problem.

There are, by my count, ten (10!) short names in this grid. And of course, names appear in puzzles, no biggie, but when you rely so heavily on names, the very clue type gets exhausting. Names are tricky. They can be nice when you recognize them, and frustrating when you don't, and all of that is a normal part of solving, but as with most things, moderation is key. Today's names were mostly clued extremely straightforwardly. [Singer so-and-so], [Actor of "This Show"], etc. It added difficulty at times, which is fine, but it also made the cluing feel arid. When you clog the grid with names, you a. run the risk of making the puzzle feel exclusionary, and b. you diminish the prevalence of truly inventive clues. You squeeze out cleverness and trickery, two of solving's primary enjoyments, and replace it with a trivia test. Now the names today are reasonably diverse, in terms of the fields they come from and the eras they're being pulled from, but still, by the 7th one they were beginning to feel like speed bumps, and by the 10th, potholes. I was very grateful that all the names were handled fairly (to my mind) and none of them caused agonizing delays, but ... I'd probably be happier with about half this many. (To be clear, today's names were: EGO AVA KERI ANDY REID SAUL OSSIE DANNY IDA and Van NESS) (NEMO gets a pass, largely because he was afforded a clever clue) (16A: 2003 search-and-rescue target).

[WHEN IN ROME]

Lots of low-key missteps. None of them as good as VASECTOMY at 1-A, but many still worth noting. I imagined that there were people out there who identified as OMNI-sexual (8D: Prefix with sexual). And I think there are, but the prefix they take is actually PAN-. I don't know what AMBIsexual is, or how it differs from (mere?) BIsexual, hang on ... [furious research montage] ... wow, it's a polyvalent word. It can mean bi- or androgynous *or* unisex (like a garment). Cool, though it seems like using it might result in ambi-...-guity. But Maybe That's The Point. OK, what else? Oh, CHAS! That stopped me cold for a bit, mostly because I thought "Chuck" was meat ... or a verb meaning "toss" (54D: Chuck alternative). Definitely never considered "Charles" until I had 3/4 of the crosses. I thought AVA was ARI despite having seen this AVA before, for sure (32A: Pop singer ___ Max). And it took me a bit to see that the clue on FRAMED could be read as past tense (24A: Set up). I kept thinking "Why ... won't FRAME ... fit!?"

[Sturgill Simpson covering WHEN IN ROME]

I'll close by saying how much I loved bounding from the thornier short name-dense patches into the brighter, longer, more exciting stuff like "REAL MATURE!" (11D: Response to a juvenile joke, perhaps) and "NOT BY A MILE!" (28D: "Far from it!") and HOOKED UP (!) (39D: Got together). Enjoyed the riddle-like quality of the clue on CAR TROUBLE (good answer, good clue) (17A: What pings might indicate). I'm weirdly entertained / impressed by the fact that IOTA and ATOM are not only symmetrical but have identical clues (27D: Tiny bit / 36D: Tiny bit). The answer placement is undoubtedly accidental, but to notice it and highlight it through cluing, that's the kind of attention to detail that I admire in puzzlecraft. Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Distenfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day:"DANNY Deever," Rudyard Kipling poem (7D) —

"Danny Deever" is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, one of the first of the Barrack-Room Ballads. It received wide critical and popular acclaim, and is often regarded as one of the most significant pieces of Kipling's early verse. The poem, a ballad, describes the execution of a British soldier in India for murder. His execution is viewed by his regiment, paraded to watch it, and the poem is composed of the comments they exchange as they see him hanged. [...] George Orwell considered Danny Deever as an example of Kipling "at his worst, and also his most vital ... almost a shameful pleasure, like the taste for cheap sweets that some people secretly carry into middle life". He felt the work was an example of what he described as "good bad poetry"; verse which is essentially vulgar, yet undeniably seductive and "a sign of the emotional overlap between the intellectual and the ordinary man." (wikipedia)

• • •

Yesterday, VASECTOMY. Today:

That's back-to-back immediate, confident, and wrong 1-Acrosses. Quite a triumph. In both cases, my imagination was much stronger and more creative than what the puzzles ultimately had to offer in that space, and in both cases the wrong answer was so obviously wrong (once I checked the crosses) that it didn't hold me up for too long. In fact, today, nothing held me up for long. I'd say most of my stuck time was spent trying to undo ZIGZAG, which meant attacking the short stuff to start with (ADO, PASS), and then getting EXPOSE / SEXILED, and on from there. I watched "Ford v Ferrari" earlier this year, and I know one of the guides at the Petersen Automotive Museum mentioned SHELBY's name while describing one of the cars when I visited there last month, but I still needed a bunch of crosses. So the NW played like a typical Saturday—took some real work to get going, but I got there. Once I got *out* of the NW, though, things got much, much easier, and for the last 1/3 of the puzzle or so I was going at Monday speed. Ended up in the opposite corner from where I started, with the opposite amount of resistance (little v lots).

The thing is, when you come out of that NW corner, you've got the front ends of all the long central Acrosses lined up, and those first few letters are all you need for any of them. I went DIRTY-MINDED YAM STEAMED OPEN ARMED FORCES in virtually no time. UNPIN was a gimme (36A: Remove, as a corsage) and made the SW easy to get into (though POP GUN was briefly elusive—I had POPPER, i.e. the one ... who pops ... the champagne, I guess? (38D: Cork launcher). I also had to sort out which of this century's seemingly infinite "Star Wars" movies was supposed to go in the slot at 50A: 2016 prequel to the highest-grossing movie of 1977 ("ROGUE ONE"). But after that, it was easy to whoosh, right up the middle of the grid with those long Downs. No resistance. Got RANK AND FILE without ever seeing the clue (14D: Ordinary members). Never ever heard of "DANNY Deever," so that was weird, but I just sort of tiptoed around him, which was very easy to do, and after that, the east side of the puzzle fell like dominoes. I went from top to bottom of the grid writing in answers as fast as I could read the clues. Once I hit bottom, I had only tiny details to work through—like changing SNOOTY to SNOTTY (41D: Stuck-up) and remembering that AMULETs are for "wearing in health" (I think of them as just a jewelry type). Unfortunately for this puzzle, I ended on the sourest possible note: the ridiculousness that is LET DRY. *LET*??? Do you know how dumb that sounds, esp. after you've written in the far better, far more appropriate AIR DRY (57A: Put on the line, say)? Oof. LET DRY ... I guess when you AIR DRY things, you are, in fact, LETting them DRY ... but I have written "LOL bad" in the margin there because it is. Unsurprisingly, this is the NYTXW debut of LET DRY. Congrats?

Luckily, most of this puzzle was nowhere near "LOL bad." It's sturdy and (LET DRY aside) cringe-free. SEXILED into DIRTY-MINDED is either clever or trying a little too hard, depending on your perspective, but I actually think it's the strongest part of the grid. I'll take show-offy naughtiness over dullness any day. Anything left to explain? Let's see ... ELI is the [First name in gin production?] because it's the cotton gin, not the gin that goes in a SIDECAR (just kidding, there's no gin in a SIDECAR: it's lemon juice, brandy, and an orange liqueur like triple sec, which I have typed as "triple sex" three times now) (24D: Cocktail named for a motorcycle attachment). Oh, I just remembered another mistake I made. Had the -R in 47D: Junior, perhaps (HEIR) and wrote in YEAR. As with ZIGZAG, I was verrrrry confident. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Tracy Gray

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Chutes and Ladders, kinda (actual title: "Ups and Downs") — circled squares on a slant spell out various slanted means of getting from one place to some other higher or lower place. These circled squares are inside longer theme answers, which follow the slanted squares "up" or "down" to another row, where they all end with a letter string that is also a stand-alone answer (clued separately):

Theme answers:

39A: *Went out of control (RAN RAMPANT) / 24A: Big huff? (PANT)
35A: *Mount Everest scaler (EDMUND HILLARY) / 22A: N.F.L. Hall-of-Famer Yale ___ (LARY)
60A: *"Cinderella" meanie (EVIL STEPSISTER) / 79A: One of seven represented in the Pleiades (SISTER)
73A: *Lateral-breaking pitches (BACKDOOR SLIDERS) / 95A: Sounds of hesitation (ERS)
80A: *Glide down from above (PARACHUTE IN) / 109A: Article in Aachen (EIN)
114A: *Portrayer of Scrooge in 1951's "A Christmas Carol" (ALISTAIR SIM) / 84A: ___ card (SIM)

Word of the Day: ALASTAIR SIM (114A) —

Alastair George Bell Sim, CBE (9 October 1900 – 19 August 1976) was a Scottish character actor who began his theatrical career at the age of thirty and quickly became established as a popular West End performer, remaining so until his death in 1976. Starting in 1935, he also appeared in more than fifty British films, including an iconic adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol, released in 1951 as Scrooge in Great Britain and as A Christmas Carol in the United States. Though an accomplished dramatic actor, he is often remembered for his comically sinister performances. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's nothing wrong with this theme conceptually, but it feels like one I've done many times before. Plus it was very easy to figure out, and once you'd figured it out, all those up / down parts got much, much easier. The theme actually gives you special insight into every single theme answer thereafter, which isn't necessarily how themes always work. There wasn't a single themer that gave me trouble; on the contrary, the up / down parts sped things along nicely. I wish the various up / down slopes had been better hidden within their respective answers. Half of those up / down words are component parts of the words they appear in (STEPS, SLIDE, CHUTE), so they aren't buried *at all*, and only the STAIRS feel properly buried (hidden inside the answer, split across both parts of the answer). Further, there's an odd messiness about the way the non-slanted parts of the theme answers are handled. The front parts (e.g. RANR-, PARAC-) cannot stand alone (mostly) but the last parts ... can? I don't really understand this decision. I get that it appears to add a layer of complexity to the construction, but are we all better off for having had to fill in answers like EIN and ERS and LARY (Whoever That Is!?!?)? The end of STEPSISTER just ends up being ... SISTER again? And SIM is just ... SIM? I dunno. It's kind of fun to go chutes and laddering around the grid, for sure, but the concept felt a little tired and the execution felt a little wobbly. It should be more exciting to climb hills and go down slides, is what I'm saying.

Never heard of an ABTEST at all ever. This is a NYTXW. I pray it does not catch on. If you're going to debut fill, it should be cool, and I'm guessing that even if you knew what an ABTEST was before you solved this puzzle, you did not think it was cool, nor do you now think it's cool. APTEST, a thing. ABTEST, oof, shoot it into space.* Also fit for space-shooting: NO EAR (94D: Lack of musicality). TIN EAR, a thing. NO EAR, no no. This has appeared four times in the Shortz era, two of those times from this constructor. Weird. Is RYE BEER real? (17D: Cousin of kvass). I've only ever seen it in crosswords (17D: Cousin of kvass). All the beer I've ever seen / drunk has been beer beer. Apparently there is such a thing as Rye IPA, or ... [drumroll] ... RYE-P-A. So that's fun. Everything else in this puzzle was pretty familiar. As I indicated earlier, never heard of the N.F.L. Hall-of-Famer LARY. I know Wyatt CENAC well (53D: Comedian Wyatt of "Problem Areas") but that didn't stop me from spelling it CYNAC the first time. Oh, and I thought the Potala Palace was maybe in TULSA (78A: Potala Palace city => LHASA). Not really familiar with CLAM BEDs, though the concept is vaguely familiar (85D: Place to wear muck boots). Tried to do a google image search and you know what I got?:

I'm guessing these are not where muck boots are worn (though if that's your thing, more power to you). I think I've said all I have to say about this one. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*[addendum: mea culpa for suggesting ABTEST was not a thing; it is, in fact, a thing—a singularly dull thing I hope never to encounter in my grid again, but nevertheless, a thing]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Adam Simpson

Relative difficulty: Easy? (I timed myself and the clock says 2:49 and I think that's on the fast side but since I don't time myself regularly any more, I have no idea)

THEME: DOUBLE CROSS (57A: Betray ... or a hint to what can precede each half of 17-, 25- and 43-Across)— the word "cross" can precede either of the two words in each theme answer:

Theme answers:

WIND SECTION (17A: Where flutes are played, in an orchestra)
BAR EXAMINATION (25A: Qualifying hurdle for practicing law)
REFERENCE CHECK (43A: Prehiring formality, often)

Word of the Day: AIDAN Gallagher (27D: Gallagher of "The Umbrella Academy") —

Aidan Gallagher (born September 18, 2003) is an American actor and musician. [...] Gallagher first appeared in a minor role in a 2013 episode of Modern Family. He was in the short film You & Me and was in the CBS television pilot Jacked Up, which was not picked up and never aired. He then landed a major role in Nickelodeon's Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn as Nicky Harper, for which he was nominated Favorite Male TV Star in the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in 2016 and 2017. He was in the show for four seasons until it ended in 2018.// In February 2019, Gallagher began starring in the Netflix superhero series The Umbrella Academy, an adaptation of the comic book series of the same name, as Number Five / The Boy, a 58-year-old time traveller who's stuck inside the body of his 13-year-old self due to an accidental time jump. His portrayal won him critical praise; as The New York Times'reviewer put it, he "carries the show as far as he can". Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "Gallagher is very good in the tricky part of a fifty-something-year-old man trapped in the body of a schoolboy". (wikipedia)

• • •

I haven't timed my solves in a long time because I found the clock becoming an annoying distraction—concern about time was actually detracting from my enjoyment, which is the best reason to stop doing something: no longer fun. But that doesn't mean that I don't still like the feeling of the wind rushing through my non-existent hair as I tear through the grid. I was never much of a sprinter (many ordinary solvers can absolutely smoke me on a M or T puzzle), but I thought oh why not just get out the clock and see what's what. And I'm happy to report that I seem to be in about as good a shape as I ever was. 2:49 on a Monday is on the low end of what used to be very normal for me, for Monday. The thing about speeding is wow you can really feel the bumps (i.e. the stuff that slows you down), so in that way, speed can actually be clarifying (as opposed to distracting). There are good bumps and bad bumps. Bad bumps = "dang is it ALII or ALIA, they are both so regrettable, and then having to guess at which one, on top of the ugliness ... bah!" (2D: Et ___ (and others: Lat.)). But then there are good bumps like "RICE BOWLS! ... wait, hang on, no ... omg, POKE BOWLS! That's better! And more specific! And more delicious!"

The toughest part for me, though was probably the dead center, what with the two names I didn't know (or, rather, one I didn't know, the other I forgot—sorry, ILENE) (29D: ___ Chaiken, co-creator of "The L Word"). With DDE crammed in there as well (36A: 1950s presidential inits.), that is probably the weakest part of the grid—but in the puzzle's semi-defense, it's also the part of the grid that was probably hardest to fill cleanly, given the way the grid is built. Trying to put three 5s alongside each other with their first and last letters all fixed in place by themers—weirdly hard. Like, try to refill it without really tearing down the grid. It's not easy. I didn't spend too much time at it, but early efforts were not getting anywhere better than AIDAN MEDIC ILENE. So that part of the grid is forgiven its proper noun roughness. As for the theme—there it is! It's a theme. One of the oldest theme types, and one that rarely YIELDs good results ... but today, you really can't argue with the solidity of this themer set. And the revealer is right on the nose. So sure, why not? Solid Monday execution.

Notes:

20A: Vanish into thin air (DISSIPATE)— anyone fall into a DISAPPEAR hole here? I would have, but the "I" from RESIDE kept me on my feet.
10D: Camera brand that merged with Minolta in 2003 (KONICA) — remember cameras?! I do, but damned if I could remember which part of KONICA was "K"s and which "C"s. KONIKA, CONIKA, CONICA, CSONKA ... so many permutations.
4D: "I'd wager that..." ("ODDS ARE...")— shout-out to middle-length fill that is actually fresh and colloquial and interesting. You don't want to let the longer answers have all the glory. See also RUN-DMC. Fun stuff.

12D: AMC's "Better Call ___" (SAUL) — shout-out also to the greatest show (no longer) on television. Really rooting for everyone involved with that show to take home Emmys later this month, particularly RHEA Seehorn, who will (I hope) be with us in crosswords for a long time to come. What an actor.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: DOT DOT DOT (37A: Indication of more to come ... or a hint to a feature of three consecutive letters in 18-, 20-, 59- and 61-Across) — letter string "iji" appears in every themer (three "DOT"ted letters in a row):

Theme answers:

SEIJI OZAWA (18A: Longtime conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra)
HIJINKS (20A: Shenanigans)
BEIJING (59A: Host city of the 2008 Olympics)
FIJI DOLLAR (61A: South Pacific currency)

Word of the Day: Alan LOMAX (52A: Alan ___, folklorist who discovered legends like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger) —

Alan Lomax (/ˈloʊmæks/; January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in preserving folk music traditions in both countries, and helped start both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John Lomax, and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song, of which he was the director, at the Library of Congresson aluminum and acetate discs. (wikipedia)

• • •

I've definitely seen a three-dot theme exactly (or somewhat) like this before, but that's not really a problem. The idea is cute, still. I just don't know about the execution, which is to say the themers themselves just aren't that interesting. SEIJI OZAWA is cool, but I also see (or saw) him a lot in crosswords. HIJINKS and BEIJING are super-short and super-ordinary things, which leaves FIJI DOLLAR, which, well, points for originality, for sure, but that answer feels desperate. I have no doubt that the FIJI DOLLAR is a real thing, but on the world currency familiarity scale, which I just made up, FIJI DOLLAR has to be somewhere near the bottom. I guess it's hard to shoehorn FIJI into a longer answer in any way that would feel natural, so here we are. FIJI WATER is a thing, but not long enough to symmetrically balance out SEIJI OZAWA. FIJI ISLANDS and FIJI AIRWAYS are both too long by an "S." Now would be a good time to confess that I always (Always) forget if it's FIJI or FUJI, in almost every instance. Mount ___? ___ APPLES? I'm completely hopeless. Anyway, MOUNT FIJI is not a thing. FIJI APPLES (!) (57A: Galas, e.g.) would've fit, but sadly, also not a thing. So we get FIJI DOLLAR, which is less than satisfying. Very narrow theme specifications, not sure what you're gonna do, but the concept was much better than the execution today, for me.

The fill has some high points. Those big corners get you some bouncy 7s, like SIKHISM and FALAFEL and DONJUAN. ONE IOTA and "O CANADA" feel like 7-letter crosswordese, but they can't all be winners when you're doing stack after stack of 7s like that. I feel like the corners act as a kind of bonus themeless puzzle, in that they give you some open space and some longer, more colorful answers to look at beyond the theme, which actually doesn't have much in the way of colorful answers. Weird also that So Many answers in this grid are as long as two of the theme answers. Really makes those themers fade and disappear. Not what the eye cares about or wants to focus on. I mean, ZERO SUM pretty much upstages every theme element in this grid (25D: Like a balanced "game," in economics). So there are definitely solving pleasures to be had here.

Non-pleasures were not abundant, but they were jarring. That clue on ICEE meant nothing to me, and so to have the answer ultimately be the crosswordesiest beverage of them all ... that was disappointing (16A: Brand whose logo's letters are covered in snow). I was like "does the IKEA logo have snow? The IAMS logo? That would be weird ... Why would dogs be associated with snow? Snow dogs! So cute! I want to play with snow dogs! I wonder if that Saint Bernard is still available at the shelter, you should check later, gah, OK come on, you're solving a puzzle, focus! ... OK ... [solves some more] ... oh, it's ICEE ... sigh, yeah, sure, whatever." Did not enjoy the clue on OARS (19D: Rest on one's ___ (take it easy)) in that I completely forgot the expression existed and who says this (anymore?) anyway?! If you give me "Rest on one's ___," I've got LAURELS and absolutely nothing else. I had OA-S and wanted to know why anyone would rest on their OATS. Thought LOMAX was a fine answer ... for a Friday or Saturday. I have heard of him and *still* forgot him, and I'm quite sure many Tuesday solvers will have no idea. The place where my brain most wanted to reject this puzzle was at DISCS, which is not in the puzzle, but is what the answer should've been at 66A: Some Olympics projectiles (DISCI). What a terrible Latin plural. DISCUSES is a normal thing where when you say it people know what you're saying. DISCI, on the other hand, is plural for "disco" on Planet AMALFI ISUZU (a very real planet, look it up). To have to "correct" DISCS to DISCI, and to have to do so while also filling in super-crosswordese AERIE, that is not how I would've had the ending of this journey go. But such is fate.

[wikitionary]

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ekua Ewool

Relative difficulty: Easy? (11:07)

Hey besties! It's your pal Malaika, here for another Malaika MWednesday. I solved this puzzle after a downright luxurious meal of Korean barbecue + craft cocktails. On the train home I listened to this song and this song.

THEME: The NYT Crossword! — How solvers might feel while solving the puzzle

Theme answers:

Newbie crossword solver's thought on a Monday: I'VE GOT THIS
... on a Tuesday: WISH ME LUCK
... on a Wednesday: I'D LIKE SOME HINTS
... on a Thursday: WHAT IN HELL
... on a Friday: GOOGLE TIME

Word of the Day: ANNA ("Veep" actress Chlumsky) —

In 2009, she appeared in Armando Iannucci's BBC Films political satire In The Loop, co-starring with Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Chris Addison, James Gandolfini, and Mimi Kennedy, a quasi-spinoff of Iannucci's BBC TV series The Thick of It.[15] She plays Liza, a State Department assistant in the movie. From 2012 to 2019, Chlumsky played Amy Brookheimer, aide to Julia Louis-Dreyfus's character in HBO's Veep, also produced by Iannucci.

• • •

Congrats to Ms. Ewool on her debut! This puzzle had a lot of little NYC factoids, so I got to feel cool and special for filling them in easily. (Stolen valor, perhaps-- I've only lived here for four years.) LEX is between Park and Third, which, by the way, I hate. Why can't we just commit to numbered avenues??? I also hate how tenth just randomly turns into Amsterdam. (Sorry, that's not related to this puzzle, now I'm just thinking about my Manhattan Geography Quibbles.) I didn't get tripped up on the terse and mis-direct-y [JFK alternative] for LGA. And I put in RINKS (winter sights at Rockefeller Center and Bryant Park) with no crosses. But wait, circling back, can we talk about the new fountain, I mean water feature, at LaGuardia airport???? Oh my god. I watched it slack-jawed for like thirty minutes. Better than television.

The theme entries were missing a little something for me.... a little sparkle, a little dazzle. Is it fair of me to ask to be dazzled every single day at 10pm? Perhaps not. But in particular, it feels a little meh when a term seems to be adjusted in order to have the correct amount of letters. For example, I think a more natural phrasing is "I need a hint" or "I'd like a hint," but neither of these have fifteen letters, so instead we get the phrase ID LIKE SOME HINTS. Of course, it's tough to tell with these conversational phrases. I still remember when we had #discourse about whether it's called "apple cider" or "hot cider" or "hot apple cider."

Also... (time for me to get grumpy!!) I don't really like how in the TCCU (This Crossword Cinematic Universe), the NYT puzzle is the only one that exists. Look-- I totally get that the (vaaast!) majority of crossword solvers in the US solve one or fewer puzzles a day, and that puzzle is the Times puzzle. But still.... We've got the USA Today and Universal puzzles, which are easy every day of the week. And the New Yorker, which is easiest on Friday and has their Monday puzzle as GOOGLE TIME. (What are LAT and WSJ like? I actually don't solve theirs daily.) As someone who solves many puzzles, the clues were factually wrong to me, and I feel the Times is usually such a stickler about that kind of thing.

(No mention of the Saturday or Sunday puzzle, by the way-- seven theme answers were probably too many to fit into a weekday-sized grid!)

Some excellent non-theme fill in this, like LAVA CAKE and DO THE DEW, and even shorter stuff like ENIGMA and SESAME. And I like the shape of those curvy tendrils of blocks emanating from either side of the grid. And, obviously, I like the reminder that you should Google answers you don't know. That's my number one rule of crosswords, and I feel like now its been endorsed by the Times themselves! Happy Wednesday, everyone!

Bullets:

[Item of wear named after an island] for BIKINI — I was discussing monokinis with my friend, and that led us to wonder if bikinis were genuinely called that because they have two ("bi") pieces. (They are not, as this clue indicates.) This is, I believe, an instance of "rebracketing" where words are assumed to have a certain etymology (e.g., BI / KINI) and then altered according that (incorrect!) composition (e.g., MONO / KINI).
[Bank statement abbr.] for INT — This really slowed me down because I know INT as an abbreviation in programming (for the integer datatype). I was thinking more along the lines of end-of-month or year-to-date.
[Like Legos, originally] for DANISH — I thought this was kind of a funny way to think about the toy. I suppose it's referring to the fact that they were invented in Denmark? But at what point did they stop being Danish? Also, are we going to fight in the comments about whether the plural is "Legos" or "Lego"? Go forth, I suppose.

xoxo Malaika

P.S. In the past, I've had people ask why my grid looks blue-- When I "check puzzle," it turns the correct letters blue. Anything I add between "check puzzle"-ing and successfully solving, stay black. (In this case, you can see my error was at TIMID-- I originally had "humid.")

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Opera daughter of Amonasro / FRI 8-19-22 / Jazz great Evans / Putdown to a klutz in dated slang / Big purveyor of frozen desserts / Author of the six-book poem Fasti / Bigwig in the admissions dept.

King Arthur's slayer / SAT 8-20-22 / Moving film? / Locale for a pin / Enemy organization in Marvel Comics / Default avatar on Twitter once / Alternative to a finger poke / Van Duyn 1990s U.S. poet laureate / Bug-eyed toon with a big red tongue

Ellen first Hispanic woman in space / MON 8-22-22 / Clobber but good / gobi curry dish / Online brokerage pioneer

Ancient inhabitants of Crete / TUE 8-23-22 / Production company behind Hunger Games and Saw films / Where to find edible ants / Secluded narrow valley / Card game with a spinoff game called Dos / Commotion informally

Where Gandalf declares "You shall not pass!" / WED 8-24-22 / 1997 horror film with the tagline When you can't breathe, you can't scream

Deity born from Chaos / THU 8-25-22 / Device for Arachne in Greek myth / Aachen article / Fruity liqueur base / Wine container in a Poe title

Bottle of rum go-with / FRI 8-26-22 / Zoom call background effect / Old telecom inits. / A heavy one may want a lighter / Joey who doesn't wear pants / Fruit-bearing shrub known botanically as Prunus spinosa

Gaelic garment / SUN 8-28-22 / Second caliph of Sunni Islam / Gray-brown flycatchers / Sapa ancient emperor's title / N Sync member who later became a gay rights activist / Rhizome to a botanist / Natural source of glitter / Creatures described as catarrhine from the Latin for downward-nosed

Haircut common in the Marine Corps / MON 8-29-22 / Once-popular device in a den in brief / Precautionary device in a pneumatic machine / Home to more than 350 million vegetarians

Waxy biochemical compound / TUE 8-30-22 / Subtle signal that might accompany a wink / Major let-downs for Rapunzel / Club-wielding bogeywoman / Beginner's downhill challenge / Nonvegan pie crust ingredient

Egyptian ophidian / WED 8-31-22 / Dubious food-eating guideline / Type of meal first sold by C.A. Swanson & Sons / Nickname for Mowgli in the Jungle Book / Flux 1990s MTV series

Opera character whose first name is Floria / THU 9-1-22 / Symbols used for tagging / Juicers use them / Mocktail with a rhyming name

Chuck alternative / FRI 9-2-22 / Chemist Noddack who co-discovered rhenium / 2003 search and rescue target / Modern day locale of ancient Achaemenid empire / Hilson with 2010 hit Pretty Girl Rock / When said three times expression of mock surprise

Temporarily banished from a dorm room, in a way / SAT 9-3-22 / Cartoon known for bursting out of a drum / Somers in the hall of fame for infomercials / Yas and jas / First name in gin production / Cocktail named for motorcycle attachment / Cork launcher / Sometimes-purple tuber / Lead-in to hickey

Camera brand that merged with Minolta in 2003 / MON 9-5-22 / Vaping apparatus informally / Patch of loose rock that aptly rhymes with debris / Trio with hip-hop cover of Aerosmith's Walk This Way

Italian tourist town near Naples / TUE 9-6-22 / Alan folklorist who discovered legends like Woody Guthrie Pete Seeger / Yokohama-based automaker / Religion founded in Punjab / Longtime conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra / Brand whose logo's letters are covered in snow / Fried mideast fare

IGN's #1 Video Game Console of All Time / WED 9-7-22 / Potables in kiddush and the Eucharist / "___ Diaboliques," 1955 Simone Signoret film