Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Jeff Stillman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: INITIAL HERE (38A: Contract directive ... or a hint to what's missing from 17-, 20-, 58- and 62-Across) — The "initials" H, E, R, and E are (respectively) omitted in four names

Theme answers:

WILLIAM [H.] MACY (17A: "Fargo" actor)
ALFRED [E.] NEUMAN (20A: Mad magazine symbol)
EDWARD [R.] MURROW (58A: Pioneering journalist who helped expose McCarthyism)
CHUCK [E.] CHEESE (62A: Rodent with a restaurant chain)

Word of the Day: EDWARD R. MURROW (58A: Pioneering journalist who helped expose McCarthyism) —

Edward Roscoe Murrow (born Egbert Roscoe Murrow; April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965) was an American broadcast journalist and war correspondent. He first gained prominence during World War II with a series of live radio broadcasts from Europe for the news division of CBS. During the war he recruited and worked closely with a team of war correspondents who came to be known as the Murrow Boys.
A pioneer of radio and television news broadcasting, Murrow produced a series of reports on his television program See It Now which helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, Bill Downs, Dan Rather, and Alexander Kendrick consider Murrow one of journalism's greatest figures. (wikipedia)

• • •

Many moods for this puzzle. First, annoyance that WILLIAM MACY was in the grid without the damned "H," what the hell? Then, relief upon finding, with ALFRED NEUMAN, that the missing initial was actually a bit the puzzle was doing. Then, excitement upon wondering what these missing initials might spell, and what the revealer might be. Then (and mostly finally), disappointment at finding the revealer phrase so dull and bureaucratic, as well as ever-so-slightly ... off. I think part of the reason my brain is resisting this revealer is the fact that "initial" also means "coming first," which of course none of the "initials" do. I admit that this is not entirely fair—it's my brain refusing to let things just mean what they mean. But when I look at that revealer, all I can do is imagine an entirely different theme where the *first letters* H, E, R, E are missing, for some reason. Mostly the revealer just doesn't snap, both because it's inherently boring (as initially paperwork is boring), and because it doesn't quite describe what's going on, at least not in a perfect, dead-on way. I understand what the revealer wants me to think, but because it's INITIAL HERE and not (the nonsensical) INITIALS HERE, you keep having to back up and repeat the phrase in order to make it make sense: the initial "H" is missing, the initial "E" is missing, etc. So there's a very clever idea here somewhere (spelling something with the middle initials of famous people / spokesrodents), but that idea only gets so-so realization here.

The bigger, much bigger, problem is the fill, which is consistently weak despite two pairs of cheater squares (these are the black squares that do not change the answer count, the ones added to a grid solely to make filling easier—today, see the black squares after STAR and CARB, before CLAY and ROMP). It's a fairly dense theme, so I give the puzzle a little leeway where shorter junk is concerned, but there's an awful lot. Cheater squares should be used if they get you from iffy to smooth, but these appear only to have gotten the grid to iffy. Not sure why I'm seeing AHME and ALII and UPC CNET SSE, then AHS (when we Already Have an AH in AHME!? Such an easy fix, too ... baffling); then ISAY DAW SYS in one unfortunate clump, then that INLA LAALAA stack, my god, and then NRC YOHO (you use a cheater square and all it gets you is ... YOHO!?). Working my way through this grid was kind of a chore, with very few interesting or even smooth patches to brighten the journey.

I'm not sure about this COMMON SENSE clue (9D: Not standing in an open field during a lightning storm, say). I mean, yeah, that sounds like a bad idea, but I think COMMON SENSE would tell you to seek shelter under a tree and that is *definitely* the wrong thing to do. People died in DC this summer for that very reason. I distrust people's ideas of what COMMON SENSE is. But I suppose on a literal level, yes, COMMON SENSE does say come in (into a building) out of the storm, you weirdo / golfer. Not finding it easy to make LET and [Gave the OK] mean the same thing. That is, I'm trying to find the sentence where I can swap them out. I LET her = I gave the OK *to* her ... hmmm ... "Gave the OK" can just stand on its own, where LET is a transitive verb ... I'm sure there's a way to get them to line up perfectly, but the clue just feels off to me right now. Possibly coffee will help. To that end ... see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Bonus Content: here's the first page of the MAD paperback pictured above:

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jeremy Newton

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: IT'S A LOT TO UNPACK (62A: "So many layers here" ... or a hint to the circled squares) — the letters "ALOT" start out inside one square, and then with each successive themer, those letters get "unpacked." That is, one letter at a time is moved to its own square as you descend the grid, until all the letters are "unpacked" (into their own squares) in the final themer / revealer:

Theme answers:

"AND THAT'S SAYING [ALOT]" (16A: "Which is a big deal, considering!")
CALIFORNI[A LO][T]TO (26A: Contest for millions on the West Coast)
ALOE VER[A L][O][T]ION (47A: Popular skin moisturizer)
"IT'S [A] [L][O][T] TO UNPACK" (62A)

Word of the Day: King Harald (44A: Father of Norway's King Harald = OLAV) —

Harald V (Norwegian: Harald den femte, Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈhɑ̂rːɑɫ dɛn ˈfɛ̂mtə]; born 21 February 1937) is King of Norway. He acceded to the throne on 17 January 1991.
Harald was the third child and only son of King Olav V of Norway and Princess Märtha of Sweden. He was second in the line of succession at the time of his birth, behind his father. In 1940, as a result of the German occupation during World War II, the royal family went into exile. Harald spent part of his childhood in Sweden and the United States. He returned to Norway in 1945, and subsequently studied for periods at the University of Oslo, the Norwegian Military Academy, and Balliol College, Oxford.
Following the death of his grandfather Haakon VII in 1957, Harald became crown prince as his father became king. A keen sportsman, he represented Norway in sailing at the 1964, 1968, and 1972 Olympic Games, and later became patron of World Sailing. Harald married Sonja Haraldsen in 1968, their relationship having initially been controversial due to her status as a commoner. They have two children, Märtha Louise and Haakon. Harald became king following his father's death in 1991, with Haakon becoming his heir apparent. (wikipedia)

• • •

I will confess that I did not know Norway still had a king. Not sure why reasonably functional western democracies still keep these monarchical relics around, but my country's got its own problems, so ... I'll move on. This is a very clever theme. Take a common (if unappealing) buzzphrase and reimagine it in grid form! The main challenge for me, beyond figuring out the gimmick in the first place, was figuring out how the "unpacking" was going to play itself out, exactly. I wanted [ALOT] (one square) to go to [AL] and [OT] (two squares) in that second themer, but then I was looking at that third themer and thinking "well they can't divide the letters evenly there, so ..." Anyway, this one-at-a-time unpacking makes the most sense. The execution of the theme here is very neat. The unpacking goes 1-2-3-4, all on a straight line (seriously, you can run a straight edge through the "ALOT" parts, no problem), and then ends with the revealer doubling as the final theme answer (themers typically stand outside the theme and point at the theme). All the themers are solid, unforced phrases ... there's not much to fault here, thematically. This one gives you ALOT without being "ALOT" (i.e. overwhelming, hard to take, difficult).

Trouble getting started consisted mainly in having the front ends of things and not seeing how to get to the back ends of things. Had MADEA- at 3D: Appeared briefly and wanted only MADEANAPPEARANCE (impossible for many reasons) (MADE A CAMEO). With the first themer, I wanted the answer to be "AND THAT'S SAYING [SOMETHING]!" At first I didn't know where CALIFORNIA was leading either, but that ended up providing my initial insight into the theme. I must have gone around and gotten ORBS and TEAM and seen that the answer had to be LOTTO. But I wasn't quite sure what to do with the letters in LOTTO vis-a-vis the circles so I just "cheated" and went down to look at what I assumed (correctly) would be the revealer clue. And that, I got instantly.

As you can see, I got it, confirmed it with TECHNO BAND (nice answer), and then sorted out the circles up top. After this, the puzzle got much, much easier. As for the fill, it holds up fine. Lots and lots of short fill, but it all runs very clean. Even though SNAZZ looks kinda weird on its own, it might be my favorite thing in the grid—and it was also super-helpful, as "Z"s often are. Helped me sort out the answers in that NE corner, particularly ZEALOTS (12D: Extremist group), which I wanted to be something benign like SECT before I'd gotten the theme sorted. The only things I truly didn't like were the clues on SCAN (34A: It's a good look) and WOKE (59D: Socially "with it"). It's such an O(W)N GOAL when you give your answer a terrible clue just to make a successive-clue trick happen, as is the case today with the clue on SCAN. The puzzle wants to do its little [It's a good look] [It's a bad look] thing with SCAN and SNEER, but ugh the clue only works for one of those (SNEER). A SCAN is neutral. All SCANs are neutral. What's this "good look" nonsense? Is the idea that if you give something a good (as in "lengthy") look, you've "SCANned" it. If anything, SCAN suggests a *less* than good look. So many times, when a clue just clunks, it's because the puzzlemakers tried to make some kind of clue pairing happen. Such a bad idea, since even good clue pairings rarely pay off the way you want them too (solvers mostly don't solve Across clues successively, so what is the point!?). As for the WOKE clue, yeesh, don't do this. It's horrible and dismissive and plays right into the furiously racist and diseased right-wing use of "WOKE" that dominates the discourse these days. Not wanting women to go to jail for getting an abortion? WOKE. Thinking migrants should be treated humanely and not physically and psychologically tortured? WOKE. Hiring a Black person for literally anything? WOKE. The cutesy quotation marks, the quaint "with it" ... nah. Either clue it as part of the Black political discourse it came out of, or just clue it as a straight verb, no politics. Today's clue is, at best, condescending—the one big miss in a puzzle that's otherwise full of hits.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Karp

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BAHAIS (46D: Religious adherents governed by the Universal House of Justice) —

The Baháʼí Faith is a relatively new religion teaching the essential worth of all religions and the unity of all people. Established by Baháʼu'lláh in the 19th century, it initially developed in Iran and parts of the Middle East, where it has faced ongoing persecution since its inception. The religion is estimated to have 5–8 million adherents, known as Baháʼís, spread throughout most of the world's countries and territories. [...] According to Baháʼí teachings, religion is revealed in an orderly and progressive way by a single God through Manifestations of God, who are the founders of major world religions throughout history; Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad are noted as the most recent of these before the Báb and Baháʼu'lláh. Baháʼís regard the world's major religions as fundamentally unified in purpose, though varied in social practices and interpretations. The Baháʼí Faith stresses the unity of all people, explicitly rejecting racism, sexism, and nationalism. At the heart of Baháʼí teachings is the goal of a unified world order that ensures the prosperity of all nations, races, creeds, and classes. (wikipedia)

• • •

I've seen this exact grid structure before, with the latticework 15s, and it works pretty well if you can fill it right. You get a bunch of marquee answers (at least six!), and 15s are actually very easy to work with when you're building a grid because they don't add to the black squares that you have to manage. The *one* black square that a 14 gets you (in a 15x15 grid) sets off a cavalcade of grid challenges involving the crosses adjacent to that black square ... I'd draw you a picture, but trust me, 12s 13s and esp 14s are harder to build a clean grid around than 15s. So this grid locks down its 15s and then it's mostly just got easy little sections to fill, 4x4s, 4x5s. You got a couple of stray 9s (in the Downs), a couple of stray 8s (in the Acrosses), but *if* you can make the lattice 15s happen, the rest of the grid should be a relative walk in the park to fill cleanly. And today, yeah, mission mostly accomplished. I definitely got that zoom-zoom whoosh-whoosh feeling coming out of the NW. Had to apply a little pressure to make sense of CLAM (1A: Zip it, with "up") and LIBEL (2D: Run down illegally) and especially PLACATED (23A: Happy, now) (do *not* love that clue), but IBEX alone got me ...

... and then CRISP + ALEXA got me ...

Such is the power of the "X"! And so very early on, I had answers running from coast to coast, and coast to coast again. After this, there weren't many trouble spots, which may explain why the clues were trying so so hard, torturously hard, to be cutesy and misdirective. "?" clues abounding. If those things miss, they're jarring, and a bunch of them just missed for me today. The worst section for me, by far, was the POKER part of HIGH STAKES POKER, which I couldn't get for a comparatively long time, even with the "P"! HIGH STAKES ... WAGER? That's an "activity," maybe. I wanted only HIGH STAKES GAME but "game" was in the clue and also that answer didn't fit. (Sidenote: gambling / casino clues, as always, of zero interest to me ... and we already had the horrid ACETEN, come on ...). That clue on HIGH STAKES POKER is so horribly convoluted (37A: Activity for some big game hunters?). Are high rollers known as "big game"? I've heard fat-pocketed gamblers called "whales." Are whales the "big game?" Is the poker game itself the "big game"? But ... POKER is the "activity," presumably. Never considered POKER, mostly because I was looking (as the clue told me to) for an "activity," and did not think that "activity" was a "game" because "game" was Also In The Clue, Presumably Referring To Something Else. And then that section ... OK, a CORSET *has* ties that bind, but it itself is not "the ties that bind,""?" or no "?" (42A: The ties that bind?). Woof. And OAKS don't "throw" shade, literally no one would say that (28D: They may throw shade). Trees cast shadows, but they do not throw shade, so put a "?" on that (yes, I'm begging for a "?") or find another clue. I thought it was Hold the LINE at 30D: Hold the ___, not Hold the FORT, and I "confirmed" LINE with AÇAI (only to have AÇAI appear later in the solve, up top!). Finally, turns out the number of five-letter "S"-words that are plausible answers for 27A: Show disdain, in a way are manifold. Legion. I had, let's see ... first SNEER, then SNORT, then SCOWL, and only after figuring out FREE did I finally get SCOFF. Just a horrible, clunky way to end an otherwise fine puzzle.

I've never closed a (browser) window with an ESCAPE KEY ever, so that was weird (35D: Tool for closing a window). The clue on NAPTIMES is the epitome of "trying too hard" (49A: Stretches for the rest of us?). It can't lay off the (admittedly) clever "rest of us" misdirection even though "us" makes nooooooo sense here. Why are "we" taking a tap? I don't even take naps. Also, NAPTIMES has a scheduled, kindergarteny vibe, so "us" (that is, we solvers, mostly not in kindergarten, I'm guessing) doesn't work well here at all. I see what you're doing (using "rest of us" to mean "our rest"), and it's definitely ingenious wordplay, but it just comes across as forced here, as a clue for this particular answer. But as I said early on, the fill here is mostly clean and enjoyable. You can take ACETEN and HEN'S TEETH and put them ... somewhere else, but the 15s all sing. Well, the non-poker ones, anyway. And all the small nooks and crannies of this grid appear to have been reasonably well polished, so even if I thought the cluing was in the weeds a bit today, I still think the grid itself is admirable. Happy last day of September. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Easy (for me ... not sure how the names are gonna play for the gen pop)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: OCEAN VUONG (27D: "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" novelist, 2019) —

Ocean Vuong (born Vương Quốc Vinh, Vietnamese: [vɨəŋ˧ kuək˧˥ viɲ˧]; October 14, 1988) is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. Vuong is a recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry. His debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019. He received a MacArthur Grant the same year. (wikipedia)

• • •

LOL, Natan, who created the "Natan Last Sucks" blog label!?! I go to key in your name, the way I key in every constructor's name, and it gives me two options: "Natan Last" and "Natan Last Sucks" ... so I just used both today, I hope that's OK. I assume one of my subs was just razzing you a long time ago. Why am I writing this like an open letter?! Anyway, the "Natan Last Sucks" label is surely an honor. No other constructor has a "Sucks" label (though I think Tom McCoy has a "Tom McCoy the GAWD" label ... you see how I really do let my subs have free run of the place when I'm gone). Anyway, Natan Last does not suck, not at making puzzles anyway, which you know if you solved this truly sparkling gem (or JEWEL, if you will). This had all the bounce and flow of a great Friday, with just a dash more toughness. I could've stood for more toughness, actually, but it turns out Natan and I apparently read the same books (or at least read New Yorker articles about the same books), because this puzzle was unabashedly literary and I ate it all up, happily. I no-looked GERTRUDE STEIN, that's how in the (literary) zone I was today. TONE LOC on GERTRUDE STEIN ... that may be my juxtaposition of the year. That is the sweet stack I've been longing to see. Literary scholars need to bring this kind of unexpected imagination to their work: "Tender Buttons and Wild Things: The Transgressive Erotics of GERTRUDE STEIN and TONE LOC," *that* is the academic paper I want to read. Maybe OCEAN VUONG's work has something to offer as well ... he's someone I've been meaning to read, but as yet know only from my aforementioned reading of the New Yorker. But at least I knew him. Or knew most of him. I wrote his name down as OCEAN VUOCO—where the hell did that come from?

Anyway, the literature angle was pleasing to me, but of course that is not what makes the puzzle great. The real joy came from how chock full o' original answers this one, as well as how smoothly it flowed. I kept being happily surprised every time I turned a corner. There was no part that felt thrown away or neglected. From CROWDSURFS to SHOOED AWAY, I found this one charming. I might have found it easier than most because I solve the New Yorker crossword every day, and Natan is a regular constructor there. Their puzzles definitely run more literary than the NYTXW (Natan's most recent puzzle for them had ALLEN GINSBURG crossing NIKKI GIOVANNI!). So I've been secretly training for this, you might say. I recommend this same training to you. (YES, YOU!)

I had my first "oh, dang, that's good" moment early on, when I stared at 19A: Final four? and then stared at HORS- and thought "what the hell do horses ... have to do ... with ... finality ... Ohhhhhhhhhhh! Dang, that's good."

[... of the Apocalypse]

After that, the hits just kept coming. From CROWDSURFS to "BLUE'S CLUES" to POSE NUDE to SLUMPED to SUPEREGO, there's really nowhere to get bored. I think the NE corner was probably the weakest section, but it's not actually weak, it just looks a little STALE only by comparison to everything else, so ... we're good. I love the energy of B.S. METER (14D: Ability to detect misinformation, slangily) though I've only ever heard it referred to as a "bullshit detector." If someone said "B.S. METER" I'd probably ask them to repeat themselves. But it feeeeels like something someone would say, and I had no problem getting it, so OK. The only real grimace-face I made today was at DELINT (17D: Use a roller on, in a way), which I don't like as a word despite the fact that with two cats in the house I DELINT (i.e. DECATHAIR) quite a bit. As for MECHA, I recommend (mecha-mend?) that you store that one away, as I have seen it a bunch in other puzzles lately (most recently, I think, the LAT) (1D: Anime and manga genre involving robots). Constructors seem to have gotten wind that it is a thing, and they are beginning to put it into heavy rotation. Had a little trouble in the RAMA / MEMO area, for some reason (mainly just couldn't get MEMO (53A: Format of some N.S.A. leaks)), and then wrote in GAME ROOM and later GAME AREA before finally alighting on GALLERIA at 31D: Indoor arcade. Otherwise, this one was truly right on my wavelength, in the most delightful of ways. Hope your day was brightened by the solving experience, as mine was. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kathy Bloomer

Relative difficulty: Easy (easiest Sunday in recent memory)

THEME: "Le Puzzle" — wacky phrases created by adding "LE" to familiar phrases:

Theme answers:

TRICKLE QUESTION (22A: "When will the leaky faucet get fixed?," e.g.?)
ALL OVER THE MAPLE (106A: Where you'd find the sap for syrup?)
SKIPS A BEATLE (3D: Says "John, Paul ... and Ringo"?)
CLASS TRIPLE (63D: The three R's?)
WORDLE OF MOUTH (31D: M_U_H?)
LOTTERY PICKLE (34D: Loss of the winning ticket?)
STARTLE DATE (15D: Show up naked, perhaps?)
PALACE COUPLE (60D: King and queen?)

Word of the Day: OH HENRY! (64A: Candy bar whose name is an exclamation) —

Oh Henry! is a candy bar containing peanuts, caramel, and fudge coated in chocolate.
There are multiple versions of the Oh Henry! bar origin story. The manufacturer Nestlé says that the bar was introduced by George Williamson and his Williamson Candy Company of Chicago in 1920 in United States.The most popular alternate story is that Thomas Henry, manager of the Peerless Candy Co. in Arkansas City, Kansas, invented a bar he called the "Tom Henry Bar" in the late 1910s, and sold the recipe to George Williamson in 1920. There is no credible documentation of this story.
There are other alternate accounts of the origin of the name of the bar. The story supported by Nestlé is that there was a boy named Henry who frequented George Williamson's second candy shop. He became a favorite of the young girls who worked there, who would say "Oh Henry" when speaking to or about him, and Williamson used this phrase to name his new confection. The other (undocumented) story is that the name was changed from the Tom Henry Bar to Oh Henry! when it was purchased by Williamson. Popular myths are that it was named after O. Henry or Henry Aaron.
The Williamson Company was sold to Warner-Lambert in 1965, which soon sold Oh Henry! to Terson, Inc. Nestlé acquired the United States rights to the brand from Terson in 1984. In 2018, Nestlé sold the rights to its U.S. confectionery products to Ferrara Candy Company, a subsidiary of Ferrero SpA. Ferrara quietly discontinued the US version of Oh Henry! in 2019. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

So ... [Erstwhile candy bar whose name was an exclamation], then. Good thing they discontinued the candy bar "quietly," otherwise, my god, you can imagine the uproar ...

This is one of those themes that feels like it belongs in some other publication. The concept is pretty stale. You're just adding letters. Two letters: "LE." Why? I don't know. The title, "Le Puzzle" ... is that supposed to evoke Le Car? What is that? It's as if the title is admitting, "yeah, there's not much of a concept here, but there's wackiness, so, you know, enjoy." Seems like you could add "LE" to words all day long, and then the number of phrases you might use those words in, hoo boy, that list has gotta go on forever. So you find some and you arrange them symmetrically and here you are, but where are you, really, besides killing 10 min. to a half hour on a Sunday morning. The wacky really Really has to pay off for a theme this conceptually thin to work, and it's hard to argue that the payoff is very substantial here. I gotta give credit to WORDLE OF MOUTH for at least trying hard. That answer is grammatically tortured but it's got the right idea: as with all things wacky, go big or go home. The clue is innovative and cute and the answer is current, so props to that themer for sure, but the rest of this is pretty lackluster. Well, STARTLE DATE is pretty startling, and that's better than just being chuckleworthy, so we'll count that one as a plus as well. The rest, shrug. There they are.

The non-thematic fill is pretty unremarkable, and occasionally wobbly. RATEDAAA and AAH ... I feel like there's a potential theme here somewhere [Like bonds issued at a spa] (RATED AAH), something like that. But all the AAAAAA action here is weird. The TNOTE / NOTPC (ugh) / O'MEARA section is pretty thick with mustiness as well. SEE ME!? I LAY! The fill never gets above mediocre. The grid's main problem is that it's poorly filled so much as that it's just loaded with ordinary, unremarkable 3-to-5-letter answers. Not a lot of fun to be had there. Second day in a row for HORSEMAN, which is the bizarro fact of the day (okay yesterday was HORSEMEN plural but close enough). I didn't have a lick of trouble anywhere with this one. Maybe getting from [Boos] to HONEYS took me a few beats, or acceding to ASSHAT, that might've cost me some seconds, but mostly I was writing in answers as fast as I could read clues. I wish there was more to talk about today, but this grid just isn't giving me a lot to work with. I had PROD before CROP (101A: Whip) and couldn't remember the Nickelodeon brothers' names (PETE) (102D: Name of either brother in a classic Nickelodeon sitcom) (that show missed me completely, though honestly that's true of virtually every show on Nickelodeon; I was too old for that network, and my daughter just never cared).

The clue on ALL OVER THE MAPLE feels very weird (106A: Where you'd find sap for syrup?). Imagine if your maples were actually covered in sap ... because that's what I was imagining, because the image the clue evokes. You know what's actually ALL OVER THE MAPLEs (outside my house) right now? The damn screaming blue jays. What is it with the blue jays this late summer / early autumn? I've never heard more damn jay yelling. I mean, jays are notoriously pushy jerks, but they are really going at it, screaming-wise, this year. They are beautiful birds, but I am looking forward to shut-the-hell-up season, whenever that is.

I'll leave you with a couple of bonus features today. First, video of the crossword round-table discussion I participated in last week as part of the opening festivities of the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (it's me and "Wordplay" blogger Deb Amlen and constructor Adam Perl, moderated by New Yorker constructor (and Cornell professor) Anna Shechtman):

And then, finally, an email I got from a reader this week. It had the subject heading: "A Will Weng story" so naturally I was intrigued (Weng was the NYTXW editor in the '70s, the successor to the original editor Margaret Farrar and the immediate predecessor of Eugene Maleska, who was Shortz's predecessor ... mind-boggling that in 80 years there have been only 4 NYTXW editors!). Anyway, here it is, your Crossword Anecdote (from reader Oliver)!

It is 1970. I was doing my two-year Vietnam military obligation in San Francisco, working for the Yellow Berets in the U. S. Public Health Service (q.v. — “Yellow Berets”).

I was then married to Lisa Ferris Brown [ed.: not her real name], a cruciverbalist and cryptogram solver.

Lisa, then 25, decided to compose an X-word puz for the NYT. It took some prodding on my part (not re: content, but re: persistence), but eventually Lisa completed the puzzle and sent it off to Will Weng. A few weeks later, a poorly typed letter on undersized and mis-aligned stationery (poorly typed because of a number of overstrikes with ribbon-clogged keys) arrived from Mr. Weng.

Mr. Weng wrote: “Change ‘Ahab to arab' and we’ll publish it.” There was one other change Mr. Weng wanted — I cannot recall. After some more encouragement, Lisa made the suggested changes and mailed the revised puzzle back to New York. Lisa also sent a Xerox (a Big Deal in 1970) of the puzzle to my dad, who, as I noted in my test email to you, was a 30-year veteran NYT X-word pro — could even do the Friday puzzle between Lexington and Wall Street.

OK. Silence for another few weeks, and then…. a letter to Lisa Ferris Brown (née as written, but may have sent her letter to Mr. Weng as Lisa Brown Kelman) from the New York Times arrived. Well, an envelope arrived, not exactly a letter. In the envelope was a check for $15.00 from the NYT’s bank. No hint what it was for.

A few more weeks passed. Then my dad called me: “Lisa's puzzle is in today’s paper!” I have no recollection whether it was a Monday or any other weekday.

End of story? No.

In April, 1970 Lisa and I took the Italy Grand Tour. On the way back, we checked in at Fiumicino in Rome for our flight to SFO. A guy in the window seat had the International Herald Tribune (which carried a mishmash of Euro stringers and NYT stuff) opened to the crossword puzzle. Lisa was sitting next to him. At some point, the guy turns to Lisa and asks, “Hey what’s a 4-letter word for XXXX?”

Lisa says, “May I please see that puzzle for a moment and may I borrow your pencil?”

The guy surrenders the folded Herald Tribune and his pencil. Maybe it was a pen.

It’s Lisa's puzzle, the rights to which she had surrendered when she sold it to the NYT for a small fortune.

So Lisa proceeds to complete the puzzle in mere seconds without looking at the clues and hands it back to the guy in the window seat. The guy makes a few feeble efforts to check the clues against Lisa's fill-ins to make sure she had not entered just a bunch of letters, and then says:

“How did you do this?”

Lisa answers:

“I wrote it.”

The guy does not know which is more improbable — that she wrote it or that she was some kind of 200 IQ genius. But Lisa convinces him it was just a freak coincidence. They guy was a shrink from Berkeley.

We shared some drinks.

Y'all are free to send me random crossword-related stories like this *any* time you like. They entertain me no end. Take care, and see you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sarah Sinclair

Relative difficulty: Definitely skewed "Challenging" (***FOR A MONDAY!***)

THEME: DATING APP (59A: Modern medium for meeting someone ... or what each of the starts of 17-, 25-, 37- and 50-Across is) — first words of themers are names of DATING APPs:

Theme answers:

HINGE UPON (17A: Be determined by)
MATCH POINT (25A: Critical moment in tennis)
TINDER DRY (37A: Extremely flammable, as vegetation)
BUMBLEBEES (50A: Fuzzy buzzers)

Word of the Day: SLAYER (46A: Vampire vanquisher, e.g.) —

Slayer was an American thrash metal band from Huntington Park, California. The band was formed in 1981 by guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, drummer Dave Lombardo and bassist/vocalist Tom Araya. Slayer's fast and aggressive musical style made them one of the "big four" bands of thrash metal, alongside Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax. Slayer's final lineup comprised Araya, King, drummer Paul Bostaph (who replaced Lombardo in 1992 and again in 2013) and guitarist Gary Holt (who replaced Hanneman in 2011). Drummer Jon Dette was also a member of the band. [...] Slayer released twelve studio albums, three live albums, a box set, six music videos, two extended plays and a cover album. Four of the band's studio albums have received gold certification in the United States. Slayer sold 5 million copies in the United States from 1991 to 2013, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and over 20 million worldwide. The band has received five Grammy Award nominations, winning one in 2007 for the song "Eyes of the Insane" and one in 2008 for the song "Final Six", both of which were from the album Christ Illusion (2006). After more than three decades of recording and performing, Slayer announced in January 2018 that it would embark on a farewell tour, which took place from May 2018 to November 2019, after which the band disbanded. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow, way too old / married for this one. Actually, I know all these apps except HINGE, which I'm just hearing of for the first time right here and now. I'm less mad about not knowing HINGE (doesn't affect the solve at all) than I am about the super-awkward / what-the-hell answer TINDER DRY (!?). I had to get virtually every cross to come up with that one. At one point I wanted KINDLE DRY (I think my brain was thinking KINDLING DRY, but who knows). Why that answer isn't TINDER BOX (a real, familiar thing), I cannot fathom. Crossing PEDROS (!?!?) (27D: Five Portuguese kings), that answer slowed me way, way down. When you factor in the enormous (for a Monday) corners on this one, it just didn't play like a Monday at all. If the theme had been really juicy, and it had played like a good Tuesday or even Wednesday, I wouldn't really have minded. But I've seen this exact theme before (not sure where) and this incarnation doesn't do anything interesting with it. There's just the straightforward reveal, DATING APP. Slightly dull. If the large corners had yielded a bunch of interesting longer answers, that would've helped right the ship somewhat, but there's not much there. The answers are solid, but there's not really any life to any of them except maybe CAT'S PAW (44D: Person being used by another) and TOYBOATS (37D: Playthings in bathtubs). The BEHEADS clue seemed oddly callous (1D: Gives the Anne Boleyn treatment). I just wasn't feeling this one today.

Aha, here it is: C.C. Burnikel did this theme, with very similar theme answers, three years ago in the LATXW:

[screengrab from crosswordfiend.com]

There's nothing wrong with duplicating a theme—people come up with the same ideas, independently of one another, all the time. My point is that it's a bit ho-hum at this point, and today's NYTXW version doesn't do anything particularly original with it. It's a fine idea, but pretty run-of-the-mill in terms of both concept and execution. The real revelation here is that, if I did this C.C. Burnikel puzzle three years ago, as I suspect did, then I have, in fact, heard of HINGE ... I just immediately forgot it and have literally never heard anyone refer to it ever irl, and so three years later, I'm back to never having heard of it again. Oh, wait, this is that "designed to be deleted" dating app I've seen horrible ads for on Hulu???? I still do not get the concept. At all. Like, delete your dating app, don't delete your dating app, what the hell is this self-destruct feature? Is dating really this hard now? [Rhetorical question]

Notes:

EXALT (52D: Laud) — realizing that this is a bad kealoa* for me, in that EXALT, EXULT, and EXTOL are all wadded up in a gooey ball somewhere in my brain and I have awful trouble prying them apart.
IRENE (35D: Adler in the Sherlock Holmes canon) — the adversary so nice her name is crosswordese twice (IRENE& ADLER). I remembered her first name was crosswordese but I forgot which one (I tried ILENE) ("Come on! ILENE!?").
BIEN (4D: Good, in Guatemala) — to me, BIEN is "good" (actually "well") in Grenoble, not Guatemala, so I had BUEN here ... I know BUENO is a thing. I'm guessing BUEN ... isn't.

Have a nice Monday. 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.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Medium (parts played easy, parts played hard, not much in-between)

THEME: EYES ON THE PRIZE (57A: "Stay focused" ... or a punny description of the placement of this puzzle's circled letters) — circled "I"s sit "on" top (at either end) of a word meaning "prize"

Theme answers:

ASTROPHYSICIST (15A: Neil deGrasse Tyson, for one)
PLAYED CUPID (27A: Set up a couple on a blind date, say)
ZOOMED ALONG (43A: Kept moving quickly)
EYES ON THE PRIZE

Word of the Day: John CIARDI (55A: John who wrote "How Does a Poem Mean?") —

John Anthony Ciardi (/ˈtʃɑːrdi/ CHAR-dee; Italian: [ˈtʃardi]; June 24, 1916 – March 30, 1986) was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet and translator of Dante's Divine Comedy, he also wrote several volumes of children's poetry, pursued etymology, contributed to the Saturday Review as a columnist and long-time poetry editor, directed the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont, and recorded commentaries for National Public Radio.
In 1959, Ciardi published a book on how to read, write, and teach poetry, How Does a Poem Mean?, which has proven to be among the most-used books of its kind. At the peak of his popularity in the early 1960s, Ciardi also had a network television program on CBS, Accent. Ciardi's impact on poetry is perhaps best measured through the younger poets whom he influenced as a teacher and as editor of the Saturday Review. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was strange. First, it's undersized (14x15), so if it seemed like you finished more quickly than usual today, there's one reason. I, however, did not finish appreciably faster than usual, despite the fact that the puzzle was just giving "I"s away. Totally unknown-to-me COHAN (14A: "The Walking Dead" actress Lauren) crossing not-your-typical-Tuesday-fare PHILIPPIC (9D: Damning verbal attack) next to not-too-familiar-to-me CIGNA (25D: Big name in insurance) slowed me down enough that my overall experience actually felt like a toughish Tuesday, maybe even Wednesday. Then there's the theme, which actually took me a while to see. I finished and ... nothing. I wonder if the app somehow gives you more visual indication of how the theme works. Once I saw it, it was obvious, but it's definitely more of a later-week theme, conceptually. And while it did give me a definite "aha" moment when I finally saw how it worked, that "aha" did not end up feeling worth the journey. The grid felt creaky and musty right from the jump, with IPASS SHE'S MITRE and LEOI setting a tone and then CRU ENS ILE ESO EDSEL ... it just felt considerably less fresh and clean than a puzzle with this little theme material should feel. Now maybe we can blame the "I"s, which must have brought considerable pressure to bear on this grid; a stray "I" here and there may not seem like it should complicate matters, but every letter you fix in place makes the grid that much harder to work out cleanly. Every "I" really narrows the possibilities for both the Down and Across it appears in. The "I"s also explain why we get the bygone names we get, specifically the "I"-ending YANNI and CIARDI (apologies to YANNI, who is not actually "bygone," but I haven't seen a reference to YANNI outside of crosswords in thirty years, since roughly the time of the whole Acropolis concert thing). By the time I finished with that SE corner, with its CIARDI ETAS ADZES ESE, I was done. *I* CONCEDE. *I* PASS. AYE ay ay! Hook up my *I*V LINE and get me my *I*PAD ... the "I"s have it today, and by "it" I mean "a swarmy, exhausting quality." The wordplay involved in the revealer phrase is not without cleverness, but in the end, I don't think just setting "I"s on top of words meaning "prize" was worth it. Not in this incarnation, anyway.

[a YANNI update]

I'm stunned that the puzzle thinks CIARDI is a Tuesday answer. I teach Inferno regularly, so I know the guy's name (he was a prominent translator of Dante), but yeesh and wow he was never what you'd call a household name and I can't believe very many people under 60 would have any clue who he is. And yet it's not the first time he's appeared in the NYTXW, by a longshot—this is the 6th appearance in the Shortz era, and the first time he's appeared earlier than *Thursday*. He was probably a reasonably well-known public intellectual in the mid-20th century, someone whom college-educated, northeastern NPR listeners might know. But now, 50 years later, I dunno. If you need him on Saturday or even Sunday, I guess, but Tuesday?

PLAYED CUPID is the weakest of the themers simply because "CUP" isn't broken across words in its answer. Probably very, very hard to split up "CUP," but still, these "hidden word" themes are more elegant when every word in the theme answers touches every "hidden word" somehow. Exception can be made for the final theme answer, since it's already doing double duty (as a revealer *and* a theme answer). But "CUP" just seems sad. Or, rather, PLAYED seems sad. Sitting there. Looking on. With no PRIZE of its own to hold. Theme is executed best with ZOOMED ALONG—the PRIZE is broken across both words in the phrase, and the phrase itself is vibrant and fun. There are other good answers here as well. PLAYED CUPID is wonderful as a standalone answer, as is UP TO SPEED. And I actually like the word PHILIPPIC. It just startled me to see it on a Tuesday. PHILIPPIC: Good phil! Weird day to see it. This puzzle gets high marks for imagination, but falters in the execution.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Initialisms aren't always familiar to everyone, so to whom it may concern: RPGS = role-playing games (34A: Dungeons & Dragons and Diablo, in brief)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jason Reich

Relative difficulty: Medium? I "check puzzle"-ed once (8:48)

THEME:We are adding an O to some phrases for absolutely no reason in the entire world!!!!!

Theme answers:

Memoirs of a dance contest champion?-- LIFE AND LIMBO
Brushing, flossing, and avoiding sugar?-- FINE TOOTH COMBO
Disney classic without any extra features?-- JUST PLAIN DUMBO
What Mary might have had if she were into Italian sports cars?-- A LITTLE LAMBO

Word of the Day: HEDY (Actress / inventor Lamarr) —

At the beginning of World War II, she and avant-garde composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. Although the U.S. Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are incorporated into Bluetooth and GPS technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

• • •

Hey besties! It's Malaika, here to hang out on a rainy, fall Malaika MWednesday, and before we dive in I would like to briefly advertise the Boswords fall themeless league. Every Monday for eight weeks, a new themeless puzzle is released. One of them is written by me, but I'm not allowed to say which one :) We've already released the first puzzle, but there's still time to join and solve and compete with us!

Okay, onwards to our regularly scheduled programming. This puzzle took me under ten minutes to solve. I listened to this song (it starts at 1:38) three times during the solve. I got trapped at the top: I refused to believe the Times would allow such an egregious dupe in ARE NOT / ARE SO, and I had "said no" rather than TOLD NO, and "Doom" rather than THEM (I don't watch old movies or horror movies). So I hit the trusty "check puzzle" button and that helped me see where I went wrong.

I think some people consider that to be a DNF, or a "did not finish" but that kind of confuses me... I did finish the puzzle! And, to be clear, there are some puzzles that I simply do not finish. Natan's on Saturday is an example; it was too hard-- I got a few entries, and then stopped solving. I did not reveal the grid, or look anything up. I just put it down and never came back. To me, that's a DNF. But maybe I am just not clear on the jargon.

Anywayyyyyy... themes like this are doomed from the start on the "Impress Malaika" front because I simply do not think that a phrase can be made funny by adding a letter. I am a lost cause. I have solved many puzzles and these never make me laugh. The only hope is to find a good revealer, like ATTACHE, to make me say "Okay, cool, yeah." When there is no revealer, I shake my fist at the sky and say "What was the point of all of this???"

On top of that, there were no long answers that were non-theme (although FAIL UP was nice). And some weird stuff like RIEN and LIC and OLAS and TRA and ACT I and NHL FAN and SMALL B and NON US. I suppose I am, in a word, underwhelmed! What about y'all? Whelmed? Overwhelmed? Let me know in the comments.

Bullets:

[Stars that are blowing up?] for NOVAE — I don't like how there are some plural words (like NOVAE / novas) where both answers are acceptable and the clue doesn't give us any hint to the final letter. It's the same vibe as [That, in Spanish] and you don't know if it's "eso" or "esa."
[Inc. or Ms.] for MAG — This took me a sec because I expected titles to be stylized in some way (italics or quotes)
San Luis OBISPO— I filled this in with no crossings and I have no idea why. Why do I know this?? Is this in crosswords? I don't even know what this is! A city, presumably? But where? Who put this info into my brain???
[Champagne name] for MOET— Me and my sister were discussing whether we could tell champagne from Prosecco in a blind taste test. She thinks we both could, I think that she could but I couldn't. We both agree that we don't prefer one to the other.

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Simeon Seigel

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: MERGE LEFT / PARES DOWN (16A: What you might have to do for some highway construction ... or a first hint to solving this puzzle's theme / 63A: Gradually trims ... or a phonetic second hint to solving this puzzle's theme) — "pairs" of "Down" answers run alongside each other; individually, these are unclued, but if you MERGE one of them LEFT (I guess....?), you get one answer made out of both of them, and that answer *is* clued:

Theme answers:

COLLUDES (11D: With 12-Down, secretly plots (with)) (CLUE next to OLDS)
ALTERNATIONS (25D: With 26-Down, repeated occurrences of things in turn) (A-TRAIN next to LENTOS)
SCHOOLED (28D: With 29-Down, taught a lesson) (SHOE next to COLD)
HAIRNETS (34D: With 35-Down, some common attire for cooks) (HINT next to ARES)
COUNTESS (56D: With 57-Down, noble title) (CUTS next to ONES)

Word of the Day: CIVET (1A: Musky "cat") —

A civet (/ˈsɪvɪt/) is a small, lean, mostly nocturnal mammal native to tropical Asia and Africa, especially the tropical forests. The term civet applies to over a dozen different species, mostly from the family Viverridae. Most of the species diversity is found in southeast Asia. The best-known species is the African civet, Civettictis civetta, which historically has been the main species from which a musky scent used in perfumery, also referred to as "civet", was obtained.

• • •

I wish there were some—any—part of this that I enjoyed, but it was a chore from front to back. Felt more like a prank someone was pulling than an experience someone was inviting you to enjoy. The puzzle is all theme, and that theme is all architecture; that is, the puzzle does this weird MERGE LEFT / "PARES" DOWN thing for no particular reason, with no real thematic coherence at all. I'm supposed to ooh and aah at the physical manipulation of letters in space, but those letters don't spell words that have anything to do with anything. MERGE LEFT and PARES DOWN ... not from the same conceptual universe. They explain how to read answers, but aren't not meaningful otherwise. They don't relate to one another. And they don't relate to the theme answers. And the theme answers themselves—all of them, the individual unclued ones and the "merged" clued ones—also have nothing to do with each other, or with anything. And the themers themselves are kinda tedious. ALTERNATIONS? Snooze. Is it supposed to be meta-thematic? Because you have to "alternate" between answers in adjacent Downs to make sense of the theme clues? Yeah, that's not making me like it more. And do you really want me to accept LENTOS (??) as one element of your Down "pares"? What is that, a plural musical tempo? Me: "Hey, Google: define lentos." Google: "Did you mean "define lentils?" I wish I meant lentils. Those are tasty.

This is a stunt puzzle. A "watch-me-do-this-thing" puzzle that never answers the question "but why though?" And the non-theme fill offers nothing in the way of diversion. I might've liked HAWTHORNE (34A: Dedicatee of "Moby-Dick") but I couldn't even see HAWTHORNE, so shrouded was he in theme gunk. And THE NOW?!?! (55A: "I never look back, dahling. It distracts from ___": Pixar's Edna Mode). I'm so torn—it's awful, but it's also the most interesting answer in the grid, so ... shrug. On top of all this, the cluing was all "?"-ridden and tricky, so the whole solve felt like wading through muck. A complete slog. It's enough to make a STENO say "NERTS!," truly.

Grid is a weird shape (14x16), which at least adds some visual interest to the experience today. There is a tidiness (and symmetry) to the circled-square arrangements that some might also find pleasing. I felt like I couldn't get my head around any of the answers early on, but some of that may just have been early-morning cobwebs. Like [Shiner?]—needed "R" and "Y" to have any idea there (RAY). [Shifts from neutral, in a way]? No hope there for a long time (ACIDIFIES). Wanted EASE IN for EDGE IN (4D: Enter cautiously) and DORK for DEFT (7D: Expert). Would not write in "MA'AM" for the longest time because it seemed weird that you'd call women officers something different from men (20D: Officer's title). Somehow I thought women just got the "SIR" treatment too. "MA'AM" is what a cowboy says while tipping his hat as he passes a lady on the street. Seems weird as a military thing. But ... not my purview! SWANN'S is weird as a standalone answer ("SWANN'S Way" is the first volume of "Remembrance of Things Past") (newly retranslated as "In Search of Lost Time," originally "À la récherche du temps perdu"), but I appreciated it because it was one of the few gimmes I got today. Does sexting happen as much in the real world as it does in crosswords, because it happens A Lot in crosswords. I did like the clue on SEXTS today, so there's that at least (54D: Blue notes?). Oh, and as always I liked seeing RIAN Johnson (58D: Johnson who directed "The Last Jedi"). He seems nice. Really looking forward to the expanded "Knives Out" universe. Let's end there, with me thinking happy thoughts. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Weirdly Challenging

THEME: "KETANJI / BROWN / JACKSON" (33A: With 38- and 43-Across, history-making SCOTUS appointee — it's actually themeless, but Justice Jackson takes up the whole middle of the puzzle, and is *by far* the best thing in the grid

Word of the Day: BOGO (37A: Sale incentive, informally) —

: a sales promotion in which an item is offered free or at a reduced price when another item is purchased at full price (merriam-webster.com) [short for "buy one, get one"]

• • •

Wonderful to see that KETANJI / BROWN / JACKSON stack in the middle of the puzzle today, but a lot less wonderful to see almost everything else in this grid. I do not understand why this puzzle was accepted beyond the very cool Supreme Court Justice name arrangement. The average New Yorker puzzle absolutely torches this puzzle at the level of overall grid quality. If you are going to pay tribute to this "history-making SCOTUS appointee," you should either build an actual theme around her, or else drop her into the middle of an absolutely Fire grid. She deserves better than this, is what I'm saying. The only thing besides her name that took the needle into "happy" territory today was the clue on MAC 'N' CHEESE (26D: Comfort food with shortening?). Good answer, great clue—nice misdirection there with "shortening" (which here refers to the "shortening," i.e. abbreviation, MAC ... and 'N', I guess). In all other parts of the grid, I was either COOLLY filling in boxes or else grimacing at yet another cutesy clue. Puzzle: "How fast does a ___ have to run before it looks gray?"Me: "... HOUND?" Puzzle: [4D: One in a galley]. Me: "No idea." Puzzle later: [6D: One in a galley]. Me again: "We've been over this." And then the puzzle pulls the identical clue gimmick *again* with STALE / HUMID? It all feels like distraction from the fact that there are no marquee answers in this thing besides Justice Jackson. KONA COAST and EGGBEATER are fine, as is HANGER-ON, but not much else here is worth the price of admission.

["Am I ... gray?"]

What is with the prudish clue on CLEAVAGE? (6A: Sharp divide). We know what you were thinking breasts, why not just clue it that way? It's fine. Nothing wrong with CLEAVAGE. You have GOES ALL IN in your puzzle and yet you refuse to "go all in" with the CLEAVAGE clue. Come on. The most annoying thing about the puzzle was all the ambiguity, especially around two-part answers, like ___ GAME, ___ NAME, END ___, and especially TEA ___, which half the solving world will have written in as ROOM, since that is the much much much more likely term for the place where you actually have a "spot" of tea. I think of a TEA SHOP as a place where you buy the tea that you then make at home yourself. I'm sure the clue is technically right, on some level, but putting in ROOM and then having to pull it for something worse in a puzzle that was already short on joy ... not a highlight. First I'm ever hearing of someone named FDR, JR. so that was an interesting one to parse (21D: First chairman of the E.E.O.C., familiarly). Besides writing in HOUND at 1A, my other errors included "I SWEAR" before "I SAW IT" (17A: Words from a witness), STREUDEL (sp.!?) before STREUSEL (67A: Crumbly topping), ALPACA before ANGORA (41A: Fluffy fur source), and EMINEM before EILISH (66A: At 18, the youngest person to sweep the four main Grammy categories (Song, Album, Record, Best New Artist)), although there I knew EMINEM was wrong even as I was writing the letters in. I was just stalling to give myself time to remember Billie EILISH's name.

You're really going with Vikki Carr (!?!?!?!) for your HIM clue (64D: Vikki Carr's "It Must Be ___"). That ... is a choice. I wouldn't mind seeing VIKKI in a puzzle, but ... eh, well, it was a #3 song in 1967, so it's worthy enough, I guess. Just nowhere near my wheelhouse (and I spent years listening almost exclusively to "oldies" stations as a teenager). Speaking of 1967, the Monkees. And speaking of Car(r)s—they had a -mobile. I would've guessed it was a (VW) BUG, but no, it's GTO, which is also a 3-letter car from that era (27D: Car modified into the Monkeemobile). The Pontiac GTO was Motor Trend Car of the Year in 1968. They stopped making them in 1974. And yet GTO appeared more times in 2018 (seven) than it did in 2008 (four) or 1998 (three). How is GTO getting *more* popular? Curious. Fascinating, actually. Most bygone three-letter crosswordese has abated in recent years, but the GTO just keeps cruising along. Bizarrely—extremely bizarrely—there was only one occurrence of GTO before the Shortz era!? And that was in 1984, ten years after they stopped making the damn car. Quite a crossword afterlife this car is having.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kyle Dolan

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: REMY Ma (55A: Rap artist ___ Ma) —

Reminisce Mackie (née Smith; born May 30, 1980), known professionally as Remy Ma, is an American rapper. Discovered by Big Pun, she came to prominence for her work as a member of Fat Joe's group, Terror Squad. In 2006, she released her debut studio album There's Something About Remy: Based on a True Story, which became a modest success, peaking at number 33 on the Billboard 200 chart. Ma's most commercially successful songs include "Whuteva", "Ante Up (Remix)", "Lean Back", "Conceited", and "All the Way Up".
She is one of only four multiple winners of the BET Award for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist, which she won in 2005 and 2017. Ma is the recipient of two Vibe awards, two Source awards, and has been nominated for three Grammy awards. Since 2015, she has starred on VH1's reality series Love & Hip Hop: New York, alongside her husband Papoose. (wikipedia)

• • •

If you look at this grid, it looks fine. Solid. Lots of long answers, no real junk. Well, one bit of long junk, but we'll get to that. For the most part, grid looks healthy. But the solving experience was strangely unpleasant, and that's (almost) entirely down to the editorial voice, i.e. the cluing. "?" clue crossing "?" clue *crossing* "?" clue *adjacent to* yet another "?" clue, very early on. There are only five such clues in the entire puzzle, but somehow four of them are wadded up together in the NW (Pop tribute? / Someone to push around? / Show runner? / Bad time to take stock?). These clues are notoriously [shrug]-inducing at first glance, so you move to crosses ... only to find it's just more "?" clues. Ugh. When "?" clues are spaced out, and (esp.) when they really, truly land, I like them quite a bit. But this clumping of them all up front sapped a lot of my good will. I *love* Friday and Saturday puzzles—if you read regularly, you know these are the ones I'm most likely to enjoy, the ones most likely to shine (sidenote: what this means is that themed puzzles are actually very hard to do well, which is why I love and respect well-executed themes, even when they are really simple). But today's puzzle just didn't deliver for me. Some of it was simple demographics, i.e. I don't care about many of these things. Marvel movies, for instance, or Animal Crossing, LOL. No, not my thing. I did like how the Animal Crossing clue at least gave me a chance to think about REDD Foxx, that was fun. But "Thor," no. Well, I saw untold Marvel movies before I finally got tired of being disappointed and just gave up. I even saw "Thor," I think. But who can remember any individual Marvel movie? Anyway, I know who RENE RUSSO is, fine, I can get her from crosses, I can do this puzzle, but none of it is really speaking to me. The bigger problem, however, as I say, was the cluing, which was hard to understand and frequently had no payoff (bad combo).

Sometimes "?" clues work. I liked [Pop tribute?] for SODA TAX because it's on the money, and the answer itself is interesting. The clue looks like one (real) thing, but ends up being another (real) thing. Unexpected, clever, good. But the BEAR MARKET clue, eerrrrgughwoof, ouch (19A: Bad time to take stock?). I had the BEAR and no idea because I could not get BEAR to square with "time." BEAR ... SEASON? That's a time. A hunting time. But I could not think of any "times" that started with BEAR. The whole idea of "time" = MARKET, my grammatically sensitive brain just could not process. Markets exist in time, but I don't think of them *as* times. This is where "?" clues get irritating: when they're hard ... and then the reveal leaves you feeling "what? come on..." rather than "oh, yeah, good one."SODA TAX = "oh, yeah, good one."BEAR MARKET, yeesh. Worse, far worse was the "?" clue on WEST (34A: What was once due to American pioneers?). So "due" is an oft-played with word in crossword clues, esp. when it's the Italian word for "two" in disguise, as exemplified in the classic crossword clue, [It's past due] for TRE. But I can't make the Italian work in today's clue. I get it down to -EST, still no idea. As you can see (in the grid screenshot, above), I basically end the puzzle at this square, getting the "W" in WEST from WAY AHEAD (34D: Unlikely to be caught). But WEST, man, I can't tell you how groany that is—worse, it's just ... arbitrary and weird. Pioneers headed west, sure, but "due" West? West is not "due" to the pioneers any more than it is to anyone standing on the globe. Also, the grammar is preposterous. Due west is due west no matter who you are or what you're doing. It's due no more to the pioneers than to you or me. "Once due?" Why would due west stop being due west? You can make this due pun some other way, some way that makes some kind of sense and is not an elaborate, jury-rigged, duct-taped fantasia of a clue. [Ye old name?] = WEST. There. You can have that one for free.

VUVUZELAS feels like an answer that thinks it's being current but is actually being very 2010 or whenever that word entered the general lexicon as a result of fan's blowing them at one of the World Cups, I forget which (oh, look, South Africa, 2010! Nailed it). I've seen the answer a number of times and it was a gimme; it's basically lost any freshness or luster it might've had. It had its moment, the moment passed. I realize I am basically describing half of the answers in any given crossword, but somehow, VUVUZELAS seems frozen in a very particular moment in time. Apparently they can cause serious hearing damage. Just FYI. Hardest thing about the puzzle ended up being the fact that there were So Many answers where I would get the first word and have no idea what was supposed to follow. Here's the grid, at peak "What Is The Next Word!?!?"

As you can see, I've got BEAR something, DRY something, SUN something, and PET something all lined up and ... not moving forward. I had DRY HANDS at first. So I was stuck in a lot of places, and stuck in this very specific, very irritating kind of way. Four (4!) different answers where the first word doesn't give me the next? That's some very bad luck. Worst moment of the puzzle for me, though, came when struggling mightily to make any sense of the SW. Bad enough that I don't really truly know what SEA NETTLE or SUNBURST are ... they seem like familiar words, but I did not know the mere clearing of cloud cover was a SUNBURST, for instance. Sounds more ... astronomical. Anyway, rough section. Never would've called BACOS a "meat substitute" (I might've thought it was actually bacon). The clue on ZEROSTAR was brutal (good, but brutal) (33D: Awful, or worse). Even after I got the "Z" from the "oh is that how we're spelling it?"ZHUZH, I had no idea. And speaking of problems with the editorial voice / cluing, what the hell is "Sockdolager"? It's so awful to use one of these olde-timey words no one knows, esp. for a word which is itself olde-timey (though at least familiar) (LULU). I know bocks and lagers and the actor Clu Gulager (RIP), but "Sockdolager," oof, that is up there with the most nonsense word I've ever seen in a clue. It's like the clue is *trying* to make the experience unpleasant. And then ... all these SW answers I've been discussing run through, or are adjacent to, the Real problem in this SW corner, which is ... PET CUSHION. Cushion!?!? I had PET and could not make *anything* out of the latter part. There are dog beds and cat beds, but PET (?) CUSHION (?), er, maybe for your SEA NETTLE? Maybe it's a marketing thing, where said "cushions" are made to be used by all manner of creatures. But in reality, in your house, they are dog and/or cat beds. Cushion, jeez. "Where's the dog?""She's on her PET CUSHION." No. Never.

[CLU GULAGER! LEE MARVIN! JOHN CASSAVETES! ANGIE DICKINSON!]

Gonna go have coffee with my cat now. She has "cushions" galore to choose from, but she doesn't use them. She's more a couch / floor / lap / paper bag kind of gal. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jessie Trudeau and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Rise to the Challenge" — every theme answer is a person who (literally) CLIMBS THE LADDER (65A: Advances through corporate ranks ... and what the answer to each starred clue in this puzzle does). The entire middle visually depicts a ladder (all "H"s) (8D: Visual depiction of the apparatus used by the starred professionals). Several themers are split, in two, with the first part coming at the ladder from from the west and then the second part continuing on across the grid from several "rungs" higher up the ladder (as many rungs higher as are indicated at the end of each theme clue) (Note: For all non-theme, "ladder"-intersecting answers, the "H"s in the "ladder" are just "H"s):

Theme answers:

CHIMNEY / SWEEP (25A: *Worker with a brush [three rungs])
SUBMARINE / COMMANDER (56A: *Captain with a periscope [four rungs])
CHERRY / PICKER (90A: *Seasonal orchard worker [eight rungs])
TELEPHONE / REPAIRMAN (101A: *Worker for AT&T or Verizon [four rungs])
HOUSE / PAINTER (123A: *One putting a coat on outside [three rungs])

Word of the Day: PAUL VI (82D: Pope of 1963-78) —

Pope Paul VI (Latin: Paulus VI; Italian: Paolo VI; born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, Italian: [dʒoˈvanni batˈtista enˈriːko anˈtɔːnjo maˈriːa monˈtiːni]; 26 September 1897 – 6 August 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 to his death in 1978. Succeeding John XXIII, he continued the Second Vatican Council, which he closed in 1965, implementing its numerous reforms. He fostered improved ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodoxand Protestant churches, which resulted in many historic meetings and agreements. [...] His positions on birth control, promulgated famously in the 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, were often contested, especially in Western Europe and North America. [...] Pope Francis canonised Paul VI on 14 October 2018. (wikipedia)

• • •

The visual gag here is clever, and the way the theme answers actually, physically "climb" the ladder is pretty nifty as well. That said, this was absurdly easy and all the interesting parts were over very quickly, leaving only the rather dull work of filling in an acceptable but fairly unremarkable Sunday-sized grid. I got the theme very early:

... and then decided to see if I could go through and get all the climbing people quickly, with as little help as possible. This turned out to be pretty doable:

You can see I got distracted and did some extra filling of the grid on the way down, but REPAIRMAN was pretty much the only part of the entire themer set that gave me any trouble. I don't know how you keep a theme like this from unfolding all at once, from giving away the entire game early on. There was some fun involved in seeing just what kind of person would be "climbing the ladder," but those answers themselves were just ... answers. The climbing part was cool, but they themselves were just ordinary, and occasionally a little arbitrary. Why should it be a SUBMARINE COMMANDER as opposed to anyone else on that submarine? And is cherry-picking really a ladder-associated activity. I know that the machine known as a "cherry picker" elevates workers into air ... coincidentally, the people I associate most with cherry pickers are actually TELEPHONE / REPAIRMeN, though any kind of person doing maintenance or construction work might use them. But back to my cherry point: I google image searched "cherry picking" and none of the images featured ladders. Not too laddery, that one. But the others work very well. Roofers and gutter cleaners are the main ladder climbers in my neighborhood, but HOUSE / PAINTER is in that same category. I don't really know what a CHIMNEY / SWEEP does, at a nuts and bolts level, but I assume they have to get on your roof somehow, so ... sure, why not? Anyway, I thought the theme was cute, the overall solving experience just so-so. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing thrilling about it either. All the interest is in the theme, and with a theme this visually elaborate, perhaps that is enough.

From one perspective, 1-Across is just one answer in the puzzle, no better or worse than any other answer. From a more correct perspective, however, 1-Across matters more because it sets a tone—it's the first thing a solver is likely to see, and to try to tackle. So it's nice to open boldly, or at the very least, cleanly. This is all to say that I'm not too big a fan of opening the puzzle IN A COMA (1A: Like the protagonist at the start of "28 Days Later"). Never saw it, but I think it's a vampire movie (???), so I assumed the answer was something like UNDEAD or NOT DEAD or PRE-DEAD or something. IN A COMA, aside from being a prepositional phrase and thus semi-awkward as a standalone answer, is just grim. Sidenote: I watched "Coma" (1978) for the first time last week—also grim, and not just because of the comas, though it's cool to see late-career Richard Widmark, especially since he's still playing creeps (perfectly) well into his later years. Oh hey, double sidenote: there's a great ladder scene in "Coma"—in fact, the ladder in question is depicted on the cover of the home video release of the movie!

The point is, I wouldn't open my puzzle IN A COMA if I could help it. And SOA, as well as ONI next to MDC, weren't doing anyone any favors either. But mostly the constructors do a NICE JOB of filling the grid. Well, random popes are about as welcome as random Roman numerals, but since PAUL VI was actually pope with many solvers' living memory, he's not as random as, say, LEO VIII (whom I just made up ... I'm just assuming there was a LEO VIII ... yup, he was both pope and antipope!!! OK, now I've gone and tricked myself into liking LEO VIII, dammit!). The clue on RON was about the only thing in the grid that gave me any actual trouble (92D: Bacardi, e.g., in México). Beth ORTON> Kyle ORTON. That's about all I have to say about this one.

Hope you enjoyed this one's ups and downs. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. ENBY = N.B. = non-binary (108D: Genderqueer identity). It's been in the puzzle before and it will be in the puzzle again so if you don't know it, learn it.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: PAR TWO (67A: Common miniature golf goal ... or a hint to what's found in 17-, 39- and 60-Across) — "PAR" appears "TWO" times in each of the three theme answers:

Theme answers:

SPARRING PARTNER (17A: Opponent who helps train a boxer)
PARALLEL PARKING (39A: Most difficult challenge for many a student driver)
PARTS DEPARTMENT (60A: Place in an auto dealership to pick up wiper blades or spark plugs)

Word of the Day: MALTESES (42A: White dogs, or bluish-gray cats) —

Maltese dog refers both to an ancient variety of dwarf canine generally associated with the island of Malta and to a modern breed of dog in the toy group. [...] The modern variety traditionally has a silky, pure-white coat, hanging ears and a tail that curves over its back, and weighs up to 3–4 kg (7–9 lb). The Maltese does not shed. /// A Maltese (Italian: [malˈteːze]) is any cat whose fur is either completely, or primarily, gray or blue and is of indeterminate breed. (wikipedia)

• • •

As for the theme, I don't know ... I love that the themers are all 15s; gives a pleasing visual consistency to the set. But I can't say that any of the answers on their own is that exciting, and the two "PAR"s concept just doesn't have much inherent interest. You gotta go to mini-golf for the concept, which is fine, but ... I'm just not feeling much thematic PEP here today. As for the grid as a whole, I really like it. Played like a (very) easy Monday themeless. A whopping eight (!) 9-letter answers in addition to the three 15s from the theme. That's eleven long answers total, all of which are somehow crammed into a regular 15x15 grid that actually plays like a Monday. Not sure when I've seen so many long answers in an early-week grid. The answer count is slightly low for a Monday (74, instead of the usu. 78 or 76), but not that low. I feel like there's some kind of weird clown-car magic going on here. I just don't see how he got all those long answers in there, and still managed to keep the grid butter-smooth. It's really quite a constructing feat, and one that's so low-key that I doubt many people will notice or appreciate it. So I'm tepid on the theme itself, but kind of in awe of the grid as a whole. Think of it like a themeless and I think you've got a fine Monday solving experience on your hands. I'm not that hard to please on Mondays. Gimme some CHEAP WINE and some BOY GEORGE, maybe a TACO or two, and I'm good.

I just watched a "Rockford Files" episode where Jim owned a piece of an up-and-coming boxer, and there were definitely SPARRING PARTNERs in there somewhere. The episode also featured a car dealership (run by Mary Frann, of "Newhart" fame), which must've had a PARTS DEPARTMENT. And now that I think of it, Jim runs into some PARALLEL PARKING trouble outside the young boxer's house when some goons arrive and box in his iconic Pontiac Firebird (lic. CA 853 OKG). He has to ram his way out of the curbside spot. Very inelegant, but desperate times etc. Basically I'm saying that I just watched this crossword puzzle in "Rockford" form, not 30 minutes ago, so I probably had an advantage over most of you. Probably accounts for why I barely broke stride from beginning to end. PREENS before PRIMPS (1A: Fusses in front of the mirror), but after that, absolutely no hesitation on any clue until I went with EASY AS PIE and then EASY AS ABC before finally realizing it was EASY-PEASY at 34D: "So simple!"Then I weirdly wrote in PEONY before POPPY at 50D: Red flower of wartime remembrance, and then refused to pull the trigger on the inane INANER and just let the crosses do the work, which slowed me down slightly. Otherwise, again, about as easy a puzzle as I've ever done. Even the long stuff came easy. And yet it was colorful enough to be interesting, despite the easiness.

"A Fast Count" ("The Rockford Files" Season 5, ep. 11) (100th episode overall!)
Guest starring Mary Frann (Newhart's wife on "Newhart"!) and
Kennth McMillan, who was in everything in the '70s and '80s, usually playing
dads and cops ... my fav role of his was the borough chief
in The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (1974), or maybe Rhoda's boss on "Rhoda"

Enjoy the start of your week. See you back here tomorrow, I hope.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ailee Yoshida

Relative difficulty: Medium+ (on the tough side for a Tuesday)

THEME: SUPERGIRL (62A: Kara Zor-El's identity in DC Comics ... or a punny hint to the answers to the starred clues)— answers follow the pattern: [word meaning "super"] + ["girl"'s name]"

Theme answers:

GOOD FAITH (17A: *Sincere intentions)
ROCKIN' ROBIN (25A: *One who's "Hoppin' and a-boppin' and a singin' his song," in a 1958 hit)
STAR / LILY (38A: *With 39-Across, flower named for its distinctive shape)
PRETTY PENNY (51A: *Considerable amount of money, in an idiom)

Word of the Day: TERRINE (12D: French loaf baked in a rectangular mold) —

A terrine (French pronunciation: [tɛ.ʁin]), in traditional French cuisine, is a loaf of forcemeat or aspic, similar to a pâté, that is cooked in a covered pottery mold (also called a terrine) in a bain-marie. Modern terrines do not necessarily contain meat or animal fat, but still contain meat-like textures and fat substitutes, such as mushrooms and pureed fruits or vegetables high in pectin. They may also be cooked in a wide variety of non-pottery terrine moulds, such as stainless steel, aluminium, enameled cast iron, and ovenproof plastic.
Terrines are usually served cold or at room temperature. Most terrines contain a large amount of fat, although it is often not the main ingredient, and pork; many terrines are made with typical game meat, such as pheasant and hare. In the past, terrines were under the province of professional charcutiers, along with sausages, pâtés, galantines, and confit. Less commonly, a terrine may be another food cooked or served in the cooking dish called a 'terrine'. (wikipedia)

• • •

So much good energy here. YEETED! (58A: Chucked forcefully, in modern lingo). So many of y'all are gonna hate that one, I can feel it, but it's one of my favorite slang terms, partly because it seems to double as a sound effect, and also because I never really know *exactly* what it means and I've never heard anyone use it who wasn't half-making fun of themselves for using it. As soon as you say "Yeet!' you have pretty much taken the attention away from whatever it was you were talking about and put it squarely on the loopiness of the "word" you've now chosen to use. I'm never quite sure how to use it and so I never do. I'm almost entirely sure that it's not a word that people over 30 should really mess with. But it's fun to me. To my ears. The puzzle's theme also has good energy, though I think it is one answer short of working perfectly. The first three themers work pretty well, but that last one ... I truly love PRETTY PENNY as a standalone answer, but "PRETTY" doesn't come close enough to meaning "SUPER," I don't think. Maybe if you use it metaphorically to mean "really artfully done" (to describe an athletic feat, maybe), it works, but the primary meaning of PRETTY is aesthetically pleasing, which doesn't feel nearly as close to the heart of the SUPER-verse as the other first words are. Still, I think a good lawyer could exonerate PRETTY PENNY, and the theme as a whole is very imaginative, with theme answers that really sing ("ROCKIN' ROBIN, yeet! yeet! yeet!")

The bad part of this puzzle is the NE, and by "bad" I mean, "badly edited." First of all, TERRINE is a really, really hard word for a Tuesday. Despite its incredibly useful letters, the word has appeared only three other times in the Shortz era, and never before Thursday. It's a specialty word. I've actually heard it before, but (and here's where the editing comes in, for sure), I couldn't get to the word because "loaf" is such a strong evoker of bread that all I was thinking about was bread. After I finally got it from crosses, I was like "wow I thought TERRINE was a savory meaty aspicy thingie..." And it is. It is, yes, technically a "loaf," but yeesh. The word is already relatively obscure (I said "relatively!") for a Tuesday; trying to make it further inaccessible with a bread-looking clue does not feel like a sporting thing to do. Again, it is Tuesday. Which brings me to the other, far more bizarre editing call in the NE—that clue on PACER (9D: Kind of fitness test for K-12 students). What ... in the ... what? What is that? I'm ... well, old, and I've had a kid recently go through the K-12 system, and today, right now, is the first I'm hearing of whatever this is. In my experience, PACER = [Indiana hoopster] or ... maybe a bygone car of some kind (?) (aw yeah, the AMC PACER! What a looker!). Also, one who paces, presumably. From my perspective, as clued, PACER was a succession of arbitrary letters. So throw the bizarre (for me, brutal) PACER clue into a corner that's already got a toughly-clued TERRINE in it, and yeah, that's a lot more strange roughness than I ever want to see in a Tuesday corner, or any corner. I pity the solver who did not know that miso was a "PASTE" (also, not the easiest clue) (9A: Miso, for one). That corner was needlessly made much more inaccessible than it should've been. Completely out of keeping with the rest of the grid, and the general good vibes of the rest of the puzzle.

Love that there are NOODLES in my PHO this morning. Perfect. I will always eat PHO. Relatedly, I will never yeet PHO. Now that I have, actually, used "yeet" in a sentence, I feel like I've had my moment of personal growth, so I'm gonna head off to enjoy my coffee + cat time. Have a nice day.

[1A: Word said twice before "pants on fire"]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I think this is the constructor's NYTXW debut. Strong work. Congratulations to her.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Drew Schmenner

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: AUTOTUNE (60A: Modern music staple that's a punny description of 17-, 24-, 38- and 48-Across)— songs ("tunes") with cars ("autos") in their names:

Theme answers:

"LOW RIDER" (17A: Top 10 funk hit from War with an iconic bass line (1975))
"MUSTANG SALLY" (24A: Classic Wilson Pickett cover (1966))
"FAST CAR" (38A: Tracy Chapman hit with the line "I had a feeling I could be someone" (1988))
"MERCEDES BENZ" (48A: Janis Joplin's final recording, which had an anticonsumerism message (1970))

Word of the Day:"LOW RIDER" (17A) —

"Low Rider" is a song written by American funk band War and producer Jerry Goldstein, which appeared on their album Why Can't We Be Friends?, released in 1975. It reached number one on the Billboard R&B singles chart, peaked at number seven on the Hot 100 singles chart, and number six in Canada.
According to the AllMusic review of the song, "the lyric takes the cool, laidback image of the lowrider—the Chicano culture practice of hydraulically hot-rodding classic cars—and using innuendo, extends the image to a lifestyle". The song features a driving bass line by B. B. Dickerson, which is present almost throughout, and an alto saxophone riff by Charles Miller, who also provides lead vocals and a saxophone solo towards the end of the song that includes a siren-like noise. This song is the theme song for the TV series George Lopez, which ran from 2002 to 2007.

• • •

OK, that's good. And so seemingly obvious, so right-out-there-for-the-taking that I can't believe this theme hasn't been done before. Maybe it has, but if so, I missed it. AUTOTUNE ... tunes ... about autos. I mean, the puzzle practically writes itself. If I have any issues with the theme, it's the execution, specifically the themer set, which must have been heavily determined by symmetry potential. There's a type of car, a make of car (that is actually a person), a ... car (?), and then another make of car (that is actually a car). I guess my only real quibble here is with "FAST CAR," a song I love, and love seeing in the grid, but ... it seems really different from all the other answers, car-wise. The rest of the answers give you *types* of car, and "FAST CAR" just gives you .. car. Granted, it's not just any car. It's a FAST CAR. But still, pretty generic compared to the brand names and the specific car type that make up the rest of the themers. There must be tons of other "AUTOTUNE"s out there. Seems like the theme has good Sunday-sized grid potential. "LITTLE DEUCE COUPE" ... "PINK CADILLAC" ... "BIG YELLOW TAXI" ... If someone wants to redo this theme on a bigger scale, with totally different answers, I wouldn't mind. The core idea is good, and remembering songs is fun.

I got "MERCEDES BENZ" without looking at the clue because I had the BENZ part filled in from crosses, but I actually would've known the answer to that clue cold, with no help, thanks to WFMU (my fav station, hello New Jersey!). "What was Janis Joplin's final recording?" was a trivia question on "Wake 'N' Bake" (hosted by Clay Pigeon, weekdays 6-9am) just last week, or recently, anyway. After the listener got, and/or missed, the question, Clay played the song, so I've had it in my ears. It's pretty indelible (sung a cappella). I also learned this week that MCJOB was a term popularized by Douglas Coupland in his generation-naming novel "Generation X" (1991); I learned this from reading Chuck Klosterman's new book about the '90s entitled, enigmatically, "The Nineties," which is completely enthralling—way, way more than a catalog of kitsch. It's a lot about memory, especially collective memory—how it works, and how it changed, drastically, over the course of roughly one decade. But it's also a hilarious trip through music, politics, movies, etc. Just a joy to read. In retrospect, the decade comes off as way, way more momentous than I would've believed while I was living through it.

TMC is not a [Cable option for cinephiles]. I keep saying this, to no avail. TCM (Turner Classic Movies) is the [Cable option for cinephiles]. It's also the only TV channel I watch. TMC (The Movie Channel) ... I don't know who watches that, or why, but stop calling them "cinephiles." Also, stop hiding names inside words (36D: Name hidden in "paleontology"). It feels so condescending. "Can you find the man's name in 'paleontologist'? Good boy!" Child's placemat stuff. Boo. LEON Bridges would like a word. Here he is now (No idea if he has a song about a car, so this'll have to do):

Bullets:

5A: Undergrad conferrals, for short (BAS)— had -AS and wanted either TAS or RAS (because you "confer" with them? Maybe?). This kept BADASS hidden from me for a while ("a while" being, in actuality, probably like 5-10 seconds) (5D: Supercool individual).
9D: "___ más!" ("UNO") — huh ... I wanted "NO más!" (the Roberto Duran quotation), but it wouldn't fit so I wanted something like "A! NO más!" or "O! No más!" UNO was a surprise.
11D: Many messages in spam folders (EMAIL SCAMS) — dead stop after EMAIL. Just staring at the space, thinking "well, it can't be SPAM, so ..." I never go in my spam folder so how the hell do I know what's in there?
40A: What "XXX" might represent in comics (ALE)— more likely moonshine, right? Maybe not. I think of "XXX" as something harder than ALE. One "X" for each distilling? Something like that.
30A: Some damning evidence (TAPES) — I'm too old to believe this is true. People do and say horrible *&%^ on tapes all the time and somehow don't end up "damned" at all. Also, we're entering the age of Deep Fakes, which makes the future persuasive value of TAPES even more dubious. Have a nice day!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Lewis Rothlein

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: SKIP TOWN (62A: Run off ... or how to make the answers to 17-, 21-, 34-, 44- and 53-Across fit their clues)— "skip" the name of a "town" (from the state in parentheses at the end of each theme clue) to find a regular word, which is the answer to the clue. The actual answer you see in the grid? Completely unclued:

Theme answers:

RE~~BUTTE~~D (17A: Sunset shade? (MT)) = RED
B~~LARED O~~UT (21A: Start of an objection? (TX)) = BUT
CHE~~ERIE~~ST (34A: Booty spot? (PA)) = CHEST
HO~~ME SA~~LES (44A: They're the pits (AZ)) = HOLES
~~PROVO~~LONE (53A: Sole (UT)) = LONE

Word of the Day: ELAINE Thompson-Herah (64A: Jamaican sprinter Thompson-Herah with five Olympic golds) —

Elaine Sandra-Lee Thompson-Herah OD (née Thompson; born June 28, 1992) is a Jamaican sprinter who competes in the 60 metres, 100 metresand 200 metres. Regarded as one of the greatest sprinters of all time, she is a five-time Olympic champion, the fastest woman alive over the 100 m, and the third-fastest ever over 200 m.
Thompson-Herah is the first female sprinter in history, and the second sprinter after Usain Bolt, to win the "sprint double" at consecutive Olympics, capturing 100 m and 200 m gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics and again at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. A six-time Olympic medallist, she rose to prominence at the 2015 World Athletics Championships, winning a silver in the 200 m. At the Rio Olympics, she became the first woman since Florence Griffith-Joynerin 1988 to win 100 m and 200 m gold at the Olympics. (wikipedia)

• • •

Much as I hate saying this (and I do), this was not enjoyable to me at all. The theme didn't seem to be playing fair, and the "reveal" was completely deflating. The worst part of all, from a puzzle-enjoyment standpoint, was that the answers in the grid are not clued. There is literally nothing pointing to them at the level of meaning or sense. This is an *especially* galling problem when getting those answers is so hard. I've seen unclued puzzle elements before, but usually they aren't your endpoint. They aren't your goal. They're incidental, or you get them relatively easily but don't quite know why? But here ... a lot of work for an answer with no apparent relationship to anything. You have to put the themers together from a formula ... for no reason. You just do. There is no thematic coherence to the set. What does REBUTTED have to do with BLARED OUT (an awkward phrase to begin with)? Nothing. At the level of meaning: nothing. None of the answers have anything to do with each other (at the definitional level) and none of the answers are even clued (at the definitional level). So you have this incredibly arduous task of having to figure out what the formula is for making the clues make any sense, and then you have to make a plausible (again, unclued) answer from that formula. When I say that the puzzle wasn't playing fair, I mean not just that the answers are unclued, but that they are unrelated to one another. I was really, really expecting the non-town elements of the theme answers to have *something* to do with each other. I somehow got REBUTTED (slowly, completely from crosses—had REBUTTAL in there at one point), and then thought "oh, ok, colors are involved" (because "BUTTE" appeared inside "RED"), and then ... well, the next themer started "BL-" so obviously that was going to have something to do with "BLUE," right? Ugh, wrong. With CHEERIEST I realized that the container words, i.e. the literal clue answers (RED, BUT, CHEST, etc.), unlike the "towns," were *also* not going to have anything to do with each other. It's just arbitrariness after arbitrariness, and for an extremely anticlimactic payoff. Anticlimactic at the level of the individual answer ("the answer to the clue .. is just ... BUT?"), and anticlimactic at the revealer (SKIP doesn't even accurately describe what's happening in every case—see below).

Add to all this the fact all the clues in the puzzle feel like they were turned way up, difficulty-wise. It was such a slog. I actually came to a dead stop with the entire SW mostly empty, wondering how in the world I was going to get in. I had DONNE and RELO written in there and that's about it. Couldn't get: SUITE, NPR (clue made it seem like something I'd never heard of) (46A: Congress-created media giant), TRAVAIL, RECIPROCAL, RADAR, MALTED (ugh), RECANT, ELAINE (just didn't know her), POLLED. But ... and maybe you can see where this is going ... the real issue in this section: PROVOLONE. Why? Because "SKIP" implies "jump over," i.e. start on one side and then continue on the other. But this answer Does Not Do That. The "answer,"LONE (53A: Sole), "skips" precisely *nothing*. You don't even deal with PROVO. It just sits off to the side, and then LONE comes after. That is not "skipping." And the letter combinations in that word meant that even though I knew PROVO was the "town" involved, I tried to put PROVO in using the "O"s from DONNE and HERO (i.e. the 2nd and 3rd "O"s) instead of those in RECIPROCAL and DONNE. And then of course couldn't make any answer fit. And since, as we've established, the full answers are Completely Unclued ... ugh. The only joy I got from this puzzle was writing in YEA HIGH, which is a fun thing to say (39A: "... about up to here"). The rest: a deliberately obtuse chore. I just don't understand where the fun is on this one.

Had a few wrong answers, like SOLO for CODA (1A: Extended feature of "Hey Jude" and "Layla"), and ODE for OED (15A: Meaningful work, for short?). But mainly I just couldn't get things. I knew people got their GEDS, but I didn't know they had "scores," and boy does that look weird in the plural (40D: Their scores are on some coll. applications). Speaking of abbreviations, it felt like an onslaught at times. NBA OED BEEB ADDL is just the densest example. There's other clusters too, like NCIS IFC. And NSFW WDS IDS. And it's not like there's a lot of lovely fill to make up for it. I had this theme that was slow and unpleasant to solve, and then this grid that was both full of less-than-sparkling fill *and* clued hard. It just wasn't my day. Ooh, sorry: LIMONCELLO. I do like that (both as fill and as beverage). Ultimately, it just felt like there was no consideration given to what it would feel like to solve this thing. If you're gonna put me through the wringer, at least give me a prize for my perseverance.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. worth noting / confessing that I once published a puzzle with unclued theme answers, and that PROVOLONE was actually one of those answers (!?). My themers were more in the "real things clued wackily" vein, so the sense of the answer was literally there in the clue. Anyway, it's highly possible that many solvers failed to enjoy my puzzle, the way I failed to enjoy this one. It happens.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: YAW (39D: Turn in the air, say) —

verb
(of a moving ship or aircraft) twist or oscillate about a vertical axis.
"the jet yawed sharply to the right"
noun
a twisting or oscillation of a moving ship or aircraft around a vertical axis.
"applying the opposite rudder will tend to reduce the yaw" (oxford languages / google)

• • •

Had a feeling this was gonna be a strong effort. Whenever I see bylines from people who are also crossword editors, I think, "OK, this has a shot. David edits the Universal Crossword and I've rarely been disappointed in his NYTXW puzzles of late (he's been at it a long time despite being still very young by crossword standards, or any standards). I guess we should start by talking about the only thing people are going to be talking about—the elephant (poop) in the room: POOP EMOJI (33A: Pile of texts?). Not sure how much the NYTXW has dabbled in defecation—feels like very, very little, if at all. There used to be a tacit rule in crosswords called "The Breakfast Test," which basically dictated that you wouldn't put anything in a puzzle that might spoil someone's breakfast. Nothing too bodily, nothing profane, nothing for the squeamish—nothing that wouldn't sit well with your food. That "Test" has been less stringently applied to the crossword in recent years, as standards for everyday speech change / relax and as the puzzles seek to represent a wider range of experience and language. It's not that the "Test" doesn't come into play anymore—you're still not going to see certain body parts / functions, or hard profanity, though you will see, I dunno, ASSHAT or FBOMB or "YOU'RE A JERK!" (13D: Rude response to rudeness). I feel like "poop" is new territory, though. So congrats to David Steinberg: the Leif Erikson of crossword poop. On the one hand, I guess there's a danger of opening a whole Pandora's Box of poop and of things suddenly getting very puerile and silly. But on the other hand (the hand I tend to YAW toward): that clue! (33A: Pile of texts?). It's hard to say no to this answer when the clue is that good. It has everything you want in a "?" clue. Looks like one thing, but is verrrrrry much something else. Misdirection in both elements ("Pile" and "texts")!! I'm not exactly wild about poop being flung around the grid, but if you can justify the flinging with clues that are that good, I am in.

Speaking of "?" clues, that was the only part of this puzzle that made me go "please stop." There were eight of them, about twice my comfort level. But my aversion wasn't too heavily triggered today since most of said clues were innocuous, and three of them actually landed. And the ones that landed ended up being on marquee answers (an ideal place to show off a great "?" clue). In addition to [Pile of texts?] (mwah!), I liked 17A: Cramming together? (STUDY DATE), and 33D: Big matter of concern for senior management? (PROM NIGHT). All three of the answers to the winning "?" clues today skew young, but not in an exclusionary way. I know exactly what all these phenomena are even if, in the case of studying and prom, it's been a while (jk I never went to prom or out of the house ever except to go to school or get McNuggets). This is a fine example of how a puzzle with a specific cultural / generational center of gravity, a specific voice, can still be for everyone.

I flew through this puzzle, for the most part. I got ILHAN OMAR with only like two letters in place (15A: Congresswoman who wrote "This Is What America Looks Like"), and I absolutely no-looked HANK AARON (60A: "Hammer with a bat")—the crosses just came so fast and thick down there that the longer Acrosses ended up being obvious. There was exactly one semi-sticky part of the grid for me, and that was the JOKE part of DIRTY JOKE (38A: Something that's cracked and gross). Would've appreciated a "?" clue there, but the clue is actually quite literal, despite being misdirective, so no need for the "?" It's a great clue, but man it stumped me, which meant my entry into the center of the grid was not as smooth (or quick) as it might've / could've been. Picking up JOKE was made much harder by my least favorite answer in the whole grid: PJTOP (36D: Half of an evening outfit, informally). Both PJS and PAJAMA TOP sound great to me, but PJTOP (a debut, no surprise) feels forced. I only got that "J" after arriving all the way at DIRTY-OKE. Along the way, I had occasion to wonder if there was such a thing as a DIRTY CAKE (besides the pornographic kind). I know there's a NAKED CAKE, so why not? (never seen NAKED CAKE in a puzzle ... consider that a challenge). Loved the symmetry of DIRTY JOKE and POOP EMOJI, which feels pointed (!). Also loved the colloquial energy of "C'MERE" (59A: Informal summons)—thought I had an error and the answer was gonna be "SEE ME!" but was happy to find both that I did not have an error and that the actual answer was far better than the crosswordese I had imagined.

That'll do it for me today. Enjoy your day. I gotta work til about noon, but then I'm just gonna spend the day hiking and eating and drinking with my wife, whose BDAY it is. Happy birthday, honey.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: John Hawksley

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (3/4 Medium, 1/4 Challenging)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SCAN (6D: What classic sonnets do) —

3.
analyze the meter of (a line of verse) by reading with the emphasis on its rhythm or by examining the pattern of feet or syllables.

• • •

Short write-up today as I have things to do before I head up to Ithaca and hang out with a certain all-star crossword constructor (and lovely human being). I took one look at this grid and knew it wasn't going to be my cup of tea. These low word-count, super-segmented, boxy, essentially four-part (four-quadrant) puzzles are always more Hard than they are Fun, and today's was no exception. When your grid requires you to use APISHLY (!?!), a word no human being has ever actually used and which even the clue doesn't seem to know the meaning of (12D: How an imitator or silly person acts), the rest of that grid better be sterling, and of course is demanding grids like this it never is. At its best, it's pretty good—that SE corner on its own is really impressive, and impressively smooth. Here, there is just the one less-than-stellar answer (LIM.) and that answer makes possible a whole array of great longer answers. The whole stack of Acrosses at the bottom is solid, especially "IT WASN'T ME" and CAN'T UNSEE, which are wonderful. From YESMAN around to CODPIECE, that corner works really really well. But it was hard to get excited about much else in the grid. SEVENTH SON? (27D: Potentially prophetic child). I don't really know what that is. Sounds biblical. I've heard it used metaphorically, I guess, but, well, it's no ATHLEISURE (one of the few longer answers outside the SE that I was excited to see) (26A: Fashion trend embraced by Fendi and Versace).

The truth is, though, that I don't remember much about this puzzle except for the NW because ugh, again, as I said, these things always break down into essentially four separate puzzles, and without real flow between the sections, once you get stuck, you get Stuck. And in the NW, hoo boy, I got stuck hard. How stuck? This stuck:

Very appropriate that one of the very few answers I had up there was IRKS (and *that* was a total guess). I teach "classic sonnets" (not a term I'd use) every single semester. All the time. From Petrarch to Donne, I really do have the sonnet form covered. And yet faced with the clue 6D: What classic sonnets do, I had no idea. I was like "Well, RHYME doesn't fit ... and I'm out." I deal with poetic meter in detail, all semester long, and yet I've never once asked myself if a poem SCANs or not. I guess SCANs just means "has a regular meter." This is obviously a case of my being (way) too close to the material. *All* poetry in the period that I teach (~1300-1700) SCANs (of course early on in the period you still have the odd alliterative poem, but ... this is probably more than you want to go into right now...). "Scanning" is common to lots and lots of lyric poetry; it's not particular to the "sonnet." So deflating to get such a general term after getting such a specific clue. Then there's the other end of the spectrum—the topic I know nothing and care nothing about: PORSCHES! (9D: Taycan and Macan) And corporate logos ("implied" umbrella?!?). Figured "Fortune favors the brave" was the motto of some org. My guess is that most actual RISKTAKERs have zero awareness of that concept. Never give it a thought. Thank god I knew HAKEEM, or I'd really have had no traction in that corner. Finally (finally!) I got *some* god to fit in the ---AS section (ATLAS!). And those three new letters, oddly, broke the whole quadrant open. First AMIRITE!? Then MARACAS. And things fell from there, but not with any great revelations. What's the last place I would ever find myself, question mark? That's right, a MAGIC SHOP (1A: Tricky spot to be in?). This is very much a case of my aversion to the physical form of the grid coupled with my highly personal, probably idiosyncratic distaste for much of the content of the grid, as well as the cluing. It was a proper Saturday workout for sure. Just didn't have enough high points for me. But again, props to that SE corner. It's a beauty.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME:"Terminal Connections"— five different pairs of (Down) answers turn at right angles (one east, one west) and their ends ("terminals") eventually meet up (make a "connection") at two circled squares—those squares end up spelling out MAKE ENDS MEET. Also, the horizontal (Across) parts of each pair of theme answers form a separate, clued answer:

Theme answers:

SIDE AR(M) (A)DAMAR (6D: *Baseball pitching style ... or a weapon = SIDEARM + 24A: Old-fashioned letter opener = DEAR MADAM + 14D: *Big name in hotels = RAMADA)
BITEMAR(K) (E)TINGIER (36D: *Indentation on a chew toy = BITE MARK + 53A: Online promotions, collectively = E-MARKETING + 38D: *Light again = REIGNITE)
LESTRAD(E) (N)AMESRON (40D: *Whom Holmes tells "You do find it very hard to tackle the facts" = LESTRADE + 56A: What businesses go by = TRADE NAMES + 43D: *Many a Viking = NORSEMAN)
THOUSAN(D) (S)TONEUGUH (62D: *Grands = THOUSANDS + 89A: Rock commonly used in asphalt = SANDSTONE + 65D: *Early French Protestants = HUGUENOTS)
US VS THE(M) (E)ROOM IMED (67D: *Basic rivalry = US VS. THEM + 91A: Part of a hotel with décor fitting a certain motif = THEME ROOM + 70D: *"G.I. Jane" star, 1997 = DEMI MOORE)
ANOTHER ON(E) (T)TESSAB (100D: *"Encore!" = "ANOTHER ONE!" + 122A: "Be My Baby" group, 1963 = THE RONETTES + 106D: *Actress Angela (BASSETT)

Word of the Day: Stop STREET (!?!?!) (61A: Word with easy or stop = STREET) —

: a street on which a vehicle must stop just before entering a through street (merriam-webster.com) [So it's just ... a street that has a stop sign on it perpendicular to one that doesn't? Is that it? This term is baffling to me]

• • •

Well, it took me about half an hour just to type in the theme answers, so I only have so much energy left to give. I am really torn about this puzzle. The theme is ingenious. Intricate and complex and brilliant. It is one of those "feat of construction" puzzles that, in this case, really feels worth it. I don't know if I *loved* solving it, but I at least liked solving it, and I really am impressed by all of its layers—the right angles, the separate, third answer formed by the connecting themers, the message spelled out by all the "Terminal Connection"—all of it, really quite amazing. Perhaps because the theme is so incredibly dense and demanding, I felt like the grid got in trouble in a few areas. And it definitely got outside (repeatedly, way outside) my knowledge base. Let's leave my ignorance aside for a moment and just deal with the grid roughness. The iffiest part of the grid is that REL (?!) / LESTRADE crossing. If I had to name four characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories, that ... would not be one of them. I don't Really know who LESTRADE is. I think I'm confusing him with the vampire Lestat. My point is that I needed crosses to get all of the "LEST" part, and that "L" was an out and out guess. "L" really did feel right, and it was right, but it seemed cruel to give REL (which is not good fill to begin with) a not-terribly-famous partial name clue. Anywhere else in the grid, I wouldn't have minded learning the name of Lil REL Howery, but I kinda minded learning the name *there*, in that specific place. Crossing proper nouns at a letter that I can't infer is the definition of a "Natick." Now, I *could* infer it, or at least I pulled it out of somewhere, but still, yeesh. That felt like a design flaw. Otherwise, the theme was well nigh flawless.

The fill, on the other hand, gave me some grief. ILIADS? Plural? (68A: Long, tragic stories). Not really buying that. Sunday SCARIES? That is some infantilizing dopey terminology right there (112A: Sunday ___ (end-of-week anxiety, casually)). DOOMER? (75D: Fatalistic sort, in slang). Come on, do people actually say that? I know that there are BOOMERs who DOOM-SCROLL but are they really DOOMERs? Also, being "fatalistic" and believing you are / the world is "doomed" are very different things, actually. Moving on: the clue on WHEY, wh(e)y!? (80D: No ___! (punnily named dairy-free chocolate brand)). So unnecessarily hard and proper-nounified. If you stuff something into a hole (say) (41A), you CRAM it down. RAMS DOWN is something you with an idea or concept, to someone's throat. REHOUSE was rough, esp. coming so close on the heels of the themer REIGNITE. There were two times when cross-references were in the same small section (IN RE / MEMO and AQUA / LUNG), which always makes solving said sections awkward / tougher. I just grew WEARIER as the puzzle went on because of a pile-up of these little annoyances. Again, the big picture = amazing theme. But I felt like the non-theme stuff was slowly pecking me to death. A little.

I loved "Parasite" but confess that I know none of the actors names, so PARK SO-DAM was a toughie. But since her name was largely free of theme entanglements, I could pick it up from crosses just fine. Not a fan of the TMNT, so "COWABUNGA" didn't amuse me the way it will amuse others, but I really Really liked seeing THE RONETTES plastered across the bottom of my grid. Just an amazing connector phrase for those two final theme answers. TEA CEREMONY is another lovely long answer (45A: Ritual with bamboo utensils). Biggest mistake was writing in YEN for WON (never watched "Squid Game," though if I'd thought about it for half a second, I did know it was Korean, not Japanese). This made the already hard DOOMER and WHEY even harder. Don't think I had any other out-and-out errors. Found "AS A FOLLOW-UP" really hard, esp. as clued (69D: "Continuing where we left off last time ..."). I had the first few letters and could only think of "AS AFOREMENTIONED..." which wouldn't fit. Speaking of fit, HONDA FIT, nice. I mean, cars, boo, product placement, boo, but I thought getting the whole make + model in there was at least original.

Not sure I'd've kept MEN in the puzzle (1D: Bachelors, e.g.) when NORSEMAN is already there, in a theme position (I've definitely had editors flag less flagrant etymological dupes than that), but that's a very minor consideration, especially consider how big the grid is and how far away those answers are from one another. The clue on IDAHO was fantastic (84D: U.S. ID?), maybe my favorite of the puzzle. So deceptively simple. All in all, far more fun than I have most Sundays. Paolo is truly gifted, and I think my standards for him are thus very, perhaps unfairly high. Hence the grousing. Anyway, that's all. See you ... whenever you come back again, I suppose.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Caryn L. Robbins

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"I'M ALL EARS" (61A: "You have my full attention" ... or something 17-, 24-, 38- and 51-Across) — fictional characters with distinctive and / or large ears:

Word of the Day: COATI (45A: South and Central American mammal related to the raccoon) —

Coatis, also known as coatimundis (/koʊˌɑːtɪˈmʌndi/), are members of the family Procyonidae in the genera Nasua and Nasuella. They are diurnal mammalsnative to South America, Central America, Mexico, and the southwestern United States. The name "coatimundi" comes from the Tupian languages of Brazil, where it means "lone coati". (wikipedia)

• • •

MAD Magazine fans must be thrilled. It's been a big month for ALFRED E. NEUMAN, I guess! Actually, that ALFRED (E.) NEUMAN / "INITIAL HERE" puzzle appeared in September (the 28th), but it was really recent is my point. But that doesn't matter, the more MAD the merrier, as far as I'm concerned. But while I do love MAD Magazine, and I enjoy ALFRED E. NEUMAN as a standalone answer, this theme felt a little on the weak side to me. It also felt ... oddly mean-spirited? I don't think it's cruel, exactly, but it felt like the puzzle was pointing out characters with "big ears"—and I know at least a few people who are sensitive about their ears and don't like even good-natured teasing. These characters are all fictional, so who cares ... mostly? But something about thinking that this group had something in common felt oddly ... I don't know. Let's just say that at a literal level it doesn't really make sense. I don't think of BUGS BUNNY's ears as iconic. His ears are rabbit's ears, they seem roughly proportional to the ears that a rabbit would have. He's no more "ALL EARS" then he is "ALL TEETH." If people didn't wear those dumb MICKEY MOUSE ears at Disneyland, I also wouldn't think too much about Mickey's ears either. NEUMAN's and SPOCK's ears, being attached to a cartoon human and a fictional humanoid, respectively, are more ... distinctive, in that they are either exaggeratedly large / out-sticking (NEUMAN) or pointy (SPOCK). OK ... but it's as if the puzzle is saying "look at the weird ears on all these things" and eh, it's not really working for me, coherence-wise.

What's more disappointing is the fill, which really hasn't been held up to a smooth Monday standard here. I recently had an editor send a grid back for revision precisely because she thought it would be better without the answer "I DIE" (among a few other little things), and she was right. And that grid probably isn't even going to be part of a Monday-easy puzzle. Five theme answers is on the dense side for a themed puzzle, but still, stuff like "I DIE" and "ÉTÉ" and LAMS and EDY and TRU and UTILE I would try really, really hard to chuck. You usually can't get *all* of the subpar fill out of your grid, but esp. on easy puzzles, you wanna keep it way, way down, and it just didn't feel down enough today. I did like the colloquial "IT ME" (I don't "like" the phrase irl, it feels cutesy and cliché by now, but it's still fresh by comparison to much NYTXW slang), and I had fondness for the colloquial elder statesman "NO DUH" as well. Not too keen on BOUGIE, which, like pointing at someone with big ears, feels insulting (Also, I spelled it "BOOGIE" at first and then looked at it like "... uh, I think, that means 'dance'!") (2D: Having a concern for wealth and respectability, in slang). I guess I wouldn't mind "BOUGIE" as a partial song title. Was gonna say you could clue it via the Migos song "Bad and BOUGIE," but it turns out that, as with many words in the world of hip-hop, the spelling of "BOUGIE" in that song title is ... creative ("BOUJEE!").

NOTES:

32D: Bill of fare at a smorgasbord (BUFFET MENU) — I thought the whole point of buffets was that there is no menu. You just go up there and start shoveling stuff onto your plate.
1D: Opportunities to face a pitcher (AT-BATS)— the better answer for the clue is PAS (Plate Appearances), but I don't wanna get too far into the weeds with baseball stats, so sure, AT-BATS, whatever... Actually, it's weird: the word is used casually (by announcers, even) to mean "the experience of being at the plate," regardless of outcome, but statistically, there are several outcomes (incl. walking or getting hit by a pitch) where a plate appearance would not count as an "at-bat." So ... maybe we'll just say the clue is using the term in the most general of ways. It's certainly defensible. Just not statistically precise.
27D: Middle of the leg (KNEECAP)— a very nice longer answer, though I think I've seen too many gangster movies and shows because the first thing I see when I look at that word is a verb.

Hope you've got a nice autumn day to enjoy. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Pioneering journalist who helped expose McCarthyism / WED 9-28-22 / Margarine whose ads once featured a talking tub / Team that signed to join the Big Ten in 2024 / BTS's V Suga and RM e.g. / Clergy house / Word that commentators may extend to five or more seconds

So many layers here or a hint to the circled squares / THU 9-29-22 / How many salsa dancers dance / God-knows-where casually / Tweeter's that said / Group putting out electronic music / Like a blocked penalty kick in soccer / Homeland of monsters Mothra and Gamera / Setting for operation Red Dawn

Robot maid on the Jetsons / FRI 9-30-22 / Stretches for the rest of us / Hawaiian crop threatened by the apple snail / Something to be filed in brief / Food pronounced in three syllables / Colorado NHL team casually / Martian day

Old-fashioned trial transcriber / SUN 10-2-22 / Menu eponym / Asset when playing cornhole / About 6.5 inches on a standard piano / Help page initialism / German physicist with an eponymous law / One-named singer whose last name is Adkins / 2015 inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame

Adler in the Sherlock Holmes canon / MON 10-3-22 / Extremely flammable as vegetation / Modern medium for meeting someone / Common eyeliner shape

John who wrote How Does a Poem Mean / TUE 10-4-22 / Walking Dead actress Lauren / Great pope between Sixtus III and Hilarius / Anglican bishop's headwear

"___ a lot!" (Dracula's expression of gratitude?) / WED 10-5-22 / Ancestor of a termite, surprisingly / "Silent" prez

Musky cat / THU 10-6-22 / Banned antimalarial / Dedicatee of Moby-Dick / Geiger of Geiger counter fame / Milk delivery point / Sudden source of rain informally / Europe's third-longest river / "I never look back, dahling. It distracts from ___": Pixar's Edna Mode

Title bestowed by a sultan / FRI 10-7-22 / Bagful purchased at a nursery / Car modified into the Monkeemobile / Priestess of Hecate / Coffee-growing region on the Big Island / Lead-in to a Southern Ville / Animal that the Aztecs called ayotochtli or turtle-rabbit

Sockdolager / SAT 10-8-22 / Frigga portrayer in Thor / Animal crossing fox whose name references a legendary comedian / Sudden effect of a cloud passing / Rightmost symbol on Alaska's state flag / Second line of a child's joke / Home to many John Constable works

Tropical fruit with highly nutritious seeds / MON 10-10-22 / Tuna type in sushi restaurants / White dogs or bluish-gray cats / Credential for a painter or sculptor / The Wire character portrayed by Michael K. Williams

Chucked forcefully in modern lingo / TUE 10-11-22 / French loaf baked in a rectangular mold / Kara Zor-El's identity in DC Comics / Kind of fitness test for K-12 students / 2021 Pixar film set on the Italian Riviera / Spinoff clothing store for children / Yoshi of Mario games is one for short

Classic Wilson Pickett cover / WED 10-12-22 / Top 10 funk hit from War with an iconic bass line / Friend of Telly and Zoe / Catfish airer / Rich, fashionable sorts

Old music halls / THU 10-13-22 / Extended feature of "Hey Jude" and "Layla" / Congress-created media giant / Churchill portrayer in 2017's Darkest Hour / Mankind biblically / Jamaican sprinter Thompson-Herah / Fruit liqueur from Italy / Evidence provider for some citations