Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Christina Iverson and Tom Pepper

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Jack Dempsey aka The Manassa MAULER (15A: The Manassa ___, nickname for boxer Jack Dempsey) —

William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey (June 24, 1895 – May 31, 1983), nicknamed Kid Blackie and The Manassa Mauler, was an American professional boxer who competed from 1914 to 1927, and reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926. A cultural icon of the 1920s, Dempsey's aggressive fighting style and exceptional punching power made him one of the most popular boxers in history. Many of his fights set financial and attendance records, including the first million-dollar gate. He pioneered the live broadcast of sporting events in general, and boxing matches in particular.
Dempsey is ranked tenth on The Ring magazine's list of all-time heavyweights and seventh among its Top 100 Greatest Punchers, while in 1950 the Associated Press voted him as the greatest fighter of the past 50 years. He is a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and was in the previous Boxing Hall of Fame. (wikipedia)

• • •

PUKEKO (6)

Greetings from Down Under, the Land of the Long White Cloud, Aotearoa, Kiwiville, Middle Earth, what have you. You know, there are all kind of endemic birds here, striking birds, birds with lovely calls, birds you see All The Time. There are tuis and fantails and wood pigeons galore down here on the South Island, so if you were looking for a national symbol that was also a bird, you wouldn't have to look far ... unless one of your criteria was that it be a weird roly-poly flightless thing that you never actually see. If weirdness and ungainliness are what you're after then ... well, honestly, even then, there are more striking birds that fit the bill (!) that are actually part of the everyday landscape. The pukeko ("they're like pests ... people shoot them" said one of my wife's delightfully unsentimental relatives) are striking purple-bodied orange-billed primeval chicken-like things that look like non-terrifying dinosaurs strutting across your backyard. I'd sooner be a pukeko than a kiwi. Kiwi are real enough, I'm told, but I've never seen one. They still seem mythical to me. Like Hobbits (another thing associated with NZ, the fascination with which I do not get). Anyway, I am Team Pukeko all the way. Or Haast's Eagle, have you heard of this thing!?!?! It's extinct (as are a lot of native birds now, thanks, humanity/rats) but in its day ... big as a Buick ... a flying Buick. Haast's eagles were so big, they preyed on moa. Moa! Have you seen a moa?! Well, no, of course, no one has since the Polynesians basically hunted them out of existence (mid 15c.), but they were bigger than me. I actually saw a moa tibia today, alongside a human tibia, at The Museum of Natural Mystery in Dunedin, and ... well, it was bigger, is what it was. Bigger than the human tibia. I also bought this moa t-shirt:

[Have I mentioned it's beautiful here?]

Where was I? Ah, this puzzle! Which, sadly, has no TUI, no KEA, no MOA, no NZ birds at all! Wait, does NZ have TERNS (39A: Forked-tailed fliers)? OMG there's something called a New Zealand fairy tern!!!! Look at this baby:

OK I'm going to pretend the TERNS in the puzzle are fairy TERNS, if you don't mind. That will help me enjoy it more. Not to say I didn't enjoy it. There just wasn't much, in terms of fill, that made me think "ooh" or "ahh." I never know how I'm supposed to spell "WEENIE," so WEENIE ROASTs are always gonna be kind of a bust for me. The clue on THERMOMETER was great (16D: Cold shower?) (it's showing you ... that it's cold), but the clue on SPOT REMOVER, meh, fill-in-the-blank jokes don't really work, joke-wise. Timing is thrown off, so groaners only get groanier (18D: "I spilled ___ on my dog. Now he's gone": Steven Wright). Really like ABOVE THE FRAY, but FAN THEORIES ... ugh, I now associate "fandom" with a horrid narrow online groupthink, buncha gatekeepers and nostalgia freaks, self-appointed brand police—sad mean people, basically, to say nothing of uncritical consumers of corporate IP. It's possible I'm thinking exclusively of "Star Wars" and Marvel fandom, but I doubt it. It's an original answer, that one, and I'm sure some will love it, but it didn't move the needle for me, unlike yesterday's puzzle, which was a sizzling masterpiece. Thursday's puzzle ... was there a puzzle on Thursday? who can remember that far back?

Here was my second big mistake:

My first big mistake was REVS UP for KEYS UP (1A: Psychs), with the "R" seeming correct because RAMA seemed correct at 1D: Hindu god of love and desire (KAMA). So "YOU'RE ON FIRE!" was slow-going. But that was the only slow-going part. The rest flew by (again, unlike yesterday). The clue on RED RYDER was weird, as I thought RED RYDER was the brand, not the BB gun itself (49A: Ralphie's wish in "A Christmas Story"). He doesn't say he wants a RED RYDER. He has a whole spiel, and it definitely involves the word "gun:"

Any tough clues? The ports in 14A: Place with multiple ports are wines, of course. "Retirement" means "sleeping" in 43A: No-frills retirement options? (COTS) (not really sure why that clue even needs a "?"). The "pitcher" in 27D: Pitcher's aim? is someone making a SALEs pitch. That should do it. If you have any other questions, I'm sure the very helpful folks in the comments section can, well, help. That's all for today. Can't tell you how nice it is to have the puzzle come out at 4pm!!!! Liberating. Gonna move here just for the sleep schedule benefits! See you tomorrow (when the puzzle comes out at noon!!!!).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Ryan McCarty

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"Some Theme's Missing"— so, no theme, then :(

Theme answers:

Word of the Day: RON Carter (39A: ___ Carter, most-recorded jazz bassist in history) —

Ronald Levin Carter (born May 4, 1937) is an American jazz double bassist. His appearances on 2,221 recording sessions make him the most-recorded jazz bassist in history. [Aargh, don't just lift your clues from the first paragraph of a wikipedia entry, come on!] He has won three Grammy awards, and is also a cellist who has recorded numerous times on that instrument.
Some of his studio albums as a leader include: Blues Farm (1973), All Blues (1973), Spanish Blue (1974), Anything Goes (1975), Yellow & Green (1976), Pastels(1976), Piccolo (1977), Third Plane (1977), Peg Leg(1978), A Song for You (1978), Etudes (1982), The Golden Striker (2003), Dear Miles (2006), and Ron Carter's Great Big Band (2011). (wikipedia) [emph. mine]

• • •

Look, Ryan McCarty is one of my favorite constructors and this is probably about as good a themeless Sunday as you can make, and yet my reaction is still [shrug]. I walked away several times mid-solve to get snacks. Themelesses work when they are a. tough and b. limited in size, and this one missed on both counts. So many entries that might be interesting, even eye-popping, in a 15x15 grid become just so much background noise in a grid this big. When you have such a huge space to work with, when there's no theme restricting you, all the 12s and 13s and 14s get lost amidst an ocean of other answers. There's a reason you frame art and display it in a way that gives it room to breathe rather than cramming all your art on one wall. How am I supposed to see or appreciate what you're doing when there's just so much other visual noise? Again, I didn't hate this, not even close, but where solving pleasure is concerned, it settles for a mostly flat and forgettable middle ground, avoiding the potential pitfalls of a tiresome theme but also giving up on the possibility of doing anything particularly flashy or memorable. It's a fine way to spend 10 minutes (or 20 or whatever it takes you). But it's essentially filler. High-grade filler, but filler nonetheless. It's not even trying to show me something new (even if some of the fill is, in fact, new). It's just here. Hanging out. Being a perfectly serviceable puzzle. I prefer crash-and-burns to this. There's just not much to say about this.

Nonetheless, I will try to say something. Oddly, I was most excited by a very short answer, which is also today's Word of the Day: RON Carter. I first learned about him, like many many people of my generation, from A Tribe Called Quest's landmark 1991 album The Low End Theory, specifically the song "Verses from the Abstract," which namechecks Carter:

RON Carter's All Blues sits out near my stereo at all times. I never reshelve it because I know I'm just gonna wanna play it again soon, so why bother. It's a staple. Love that guy. There were other highlights for me, more obvious, longer-than-three-letters highlights. Like this term, what the hell!

I didn't know there was such a term. How often do women play men in opera (when cross-dressing is not an integral part of the plot)? Ah, I see, it's a vocal range issue, with women playing adolescents / young men. So cross-dressing is not part of the plot—everyone just accepts that the character is male even though it's being played by a woman. Gotcha. The more common term for this role appears to be "breeches role" (that's the main wikipedia entry, anyway). Anyway, PANTS ROLE! That's my new affirmation exclamation for any time I have to do something conventionally masculine (and therefore out of character). Like change a tire or barbecue. "You can do this you can do this ... 'pants role' on three, one two three PANTS ROLE!"

Really not enjoying the SW corner. Are ONE-SHOT DEALS actual "deals" or is "deals" being used loosely / metaphorically, like "Are you gonna shave your head again this summer!?" / "Nah, that was just a one-shot deal" (97A: Some limited-time offers)? ONE-TIME OFFER googles way Way better than "one-shot deal" if we're talking about actual deals. POLICE REPORTS ... I could use less police presence in my puzzles. And while I can tolerate EL GRECO, multiple EL GRECOS ... that's asking a lot. Plurals galore in that corner. And a non-musical BANGLES, what a waste.

You can tell me HALLOWEEKEND (2D: Portmanteau for an extended autumn celebration) is a thing but I'm 53 and have never heard it, and since Oct. 31 is frequently nowhere near a weekend, I call BALONEY. That and MEMESTOCK (28D: Sort of investment purchase with a spike in popularity through social media) were both ostentatiously trying to be fresh, but ... not my kind of freshness. Balked at the quaint "AH, BLISS" but kind of enjoyed the ecstatic echo of "THIS IS THE LIFE!" Had REST AREAS before REST STOPS, which is about as boring a mistake as you can make. Wanted KNEELINGS (!?!?!) before KNEE BENDS, which is a ridiculous mistake, if not a boring one. Might've changed CARPS to something like CARNE in order to eliminate the double CARP up there (with "CARPENTER ANT"). Real close together, running in the same direction ... I found it oddly distracting. RAN AT / LASH AT / COMES AT / SIT AT was a little much, AT-wise. I'll give GO AT a pass :) See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. That GLENN Close clue was very cute (82A: Close up on the screen?)

P.P.S. Peter Gordon is doing his annual Kickstarter for his Fireball Newsflash Crossword subscription and it ends *today* Sunday 12-18-22 at 10pm EST. These are very doable and fun puzzles with entries ripped right from recent headlines. They are a great way to keep up with names and events you may have missed, including things that might very well end up appearing soon in more mainstream (less timely) puzzles (like the one you solve every day!). They're a part of my regular solving rotation. I like them a lot. You might like them too.

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Constructor: Jennifer Nutt

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday)

THEME: GIFT (38D: Something that can be wrapped with the starts of 17-, 24-, 40-, 51- and 64-Across) — things you use to wrap gifts:

Theme answers:

TAPE DELAY (17A: Built in lag time to allow bleeping during a live broadcast)
SCISSORS KICK (24A: Part of a swimmer's sidestroke)
BOX SEAT (40A: Good vantage point at an opera house or stadium)
PAPER TRAINED (51A: Like a puppy who's learned where to "go") ("quotation marks?""really?")
BOW STRING (64A: Archer's arrow launcher)

Word of the Day: ROLF (46A: Massage deeply) —

Rolfing (/ˈrɔːlfɪŋ, ˈrɒl-/) is a form of alternative medicine originally developed by Ida Rolf (1896–1979) as Structural Integration. Rolfing is marketed with unproven claims of various health benefits. It is based on Rolf's ideas about how the human body's "energy field" can benefit when aligned with the Earth's gravitational field.
Rolfing is typically delivered as a series of ten hands-on physical manipulation sessions sometimes called "the recipe". Practitioners combine superficial and deep manual therapy with movement prompts. The process is sometimes painful. The safety of Rolfing has not been confirmed.
The principles of Rolfing contradict established medical knowledge, and there is no good evidence Rolfing is effective for the treatment of any health condition. It is recognized as a pseudoscience and has been characterized as quackery. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was pretty lackluster, as seasonal themes go. The concept is OK, but it's basically just a ho-hum first-words puzzle—an extremely well-established theme type. Nothing about the theme execution here is particularly striking or creative or memorable. It's dense, I'll give it that. And it has an extremely oddly positioned revealer, with GIFT jammed all the way over there to the left. The puzzle would've been improved at least slightly if the symmetrical answer (in this case, MALI) had also been part of the theme. You could've gone with XMAS / GIFT—I know we like to stay inclusive and not default to Christianity, that's fine, but from a strictly crossword standpoint, XMAS / GIFT beats plain old GIFT. Some people get offended by the abbr. XMAS, though, did you know this? I did *not* know this ... until I had a reader or two yelling at me a few years back when I used the abbr. casually in one of my write-ups and they took it as, I dunno, some kind of blasphemy or anti-Christian statement. Bizarre. As for the theme answers themselves, they're OK. The two more ... unusual ones were also the ones I got tripped up on, for very different reasons. I thought the swim kick was a SCISSOR (no final "S") KICK, so once I got SCISSOR, and even after I got SCISSOR S-, I didn't know what I could possibly be dealing with. I had to jump up into that NE corner and work it from the inside out. The other themer that gave me trouble was PAPER TRAINED, which ... er ... I'm kind of grimacing right now, trying to think of how to express my various distastes here. First, I like to think about urination and defecation as little as possible when I'm solving a crossword, so there's that, but whatever, I can deal. Bigger issue for me was having no idea PAPER TRAINED was really a thing you did. Why are you doing this? I've HOUSE TRAINED (the One True Answer For This Clue) a puppy and not once ever did we train her to go (as opposed to "go") on paper, yikes. We went straight to training her to go outside, no half measures. Maybe apartment dwellers teach their dogs to go indoors? I'm not familiar with this. I have (vaguely) heard of paper training, but ... oof, I considered POTTY before PAPER. Needed most of the PAPER crosses to get it. Luckily, those were easily obtained.

The fill was not bad, just drab. ASA ITWAS ENIAC ORANG LEI LUAU ASSN AMOR etc. The answer ROLF always makes me laugh, in that I always knew it as a slang word for "barf" and anyway ROLF is not [Massage deeply], it is proprietary pseudoscientific gobbledygook (see "Word of the Day" entry, above). Isn't ROLF the dog on "The Muppet Show"? Oh, darn, he's ROWLF (put *that* in your puzzle and smoke it!). Anyway, ROLF is silly, which is better than bad and/or boring, I suppose. Hey, what (the hell) is the difference between SEAR and CHAR (23A: Scorch)!?!? Definition of "SEAR" that I'm reading right now says it means "burn or scorch the surface of (something) with a sudden, intense heat" (google). That [Scorch] works for both words is ... confusing, not least because they both end in -AR (making that pair a hard kealoa*) (soft kealoas* only have one letter in common ... I'm making this stuff up as I go along, you understand ...). Hope the rest of your day is nice, or at least not EXECRABLE. Do not have A FOUL day, is what I'm saying. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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

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Constructor: Peter Koetters

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging?? (maybe a bit on the harder side because of the initially tricky theme...)

THEME: "___between the ___" — theme answers follow this pattern, but are represented in the grid "Literally," i.e. by the spatial arrangement of the words, with the first word positioned "between" two singular versions of the last word:

Theme answers:

17A: Gets overlooked, literally (CRACK FALLS CRACK) (i.e. "falls between the cracks")
24A: Gets into bed, literally (SHEET SLIPS SHEET) (i.e. "slips between the sheets")
45A: Makes suddenly aware of something, literally (EYE HITS RIGHT EYE) (i.e. "hits right between the eyes")
58A: Finding hidden meaning, literally (LINE READING LINE) (i.e. "reading between the lines")

Word of the Day: slivovitz (51D: Fruit used to make slivovitz => PLUM) —

Slivovitz is a fruit spirit (or fruit brandy) made from damson plums, often referred to as plum spirit (or plum brandy). Slivovitz is produced in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, both commercially and privately. Primary producers include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. In the Balkans, slivovitz is considered a kind of rakia. In Central Europe it is considered a kind of pálinka (Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine—pálenka, or Greece, Romania and Italy-pălincă), and similar to Romanian țuică, corresponding to the distilled spirits category. UNESCO put it in a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists in 2022 on request of the county of geographic origin Serbia. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's a simple elegance to the *concept* here, but the execution of the concept ended up breaking down as the puzzle went along (i.e. as you descended the grid). The first two answers work perfectly, and work perfectly together—same 3rd person singular verb tense, same opening clue word ("Gets..."). Great. The third themer keeps the verb tense but now there are two words getting sandwiched "between" the end words instead of one, and gone is the opening "Gets..." (replaced by "Makes...") but OK, wobbly, but not fatal. And then comes the last one, and I guess the most charitable reading of the last one is that it is some kind of meta-answer, referring to what you, the solver, have to do (very metaphorically) in order to make sense of the theme as a whole ... so maybe it's almost a kind of revealer (????), but what it looks like is just a clunky outlier, with a present participle ("READING") where the 3rd person singular verb should be. So the opening clue words go: Gets, Gets, Makes ... Finding?! I know people's brains all work differently, but my brain is wondering how the puzzlemakers don't hear (or care about) the "clunk clunk" there. This puzzle is very reliant on the theme, as there's not much else of interest in the grid, so for me it was a bit of a miss. A good idea not very well realized.

NICENE doesn't strike me as a very Tuesday word (4D: ___ Creed (Christian avowal)). I say this as someone who knew it, but also misspelled it (NICEAN) (!?). I sort of winced as I wrote that one in, as I did when I had to guess the letter in GO_ARTS (5D: Amusement park racers). And again when I had to guess the letter in OLA_ (11D: Father of Norway's King Harald). Brendan FRASER always seems like his name should be spelled FRASIER (like the Crane). I'm slightly surprised they just left the clue [Actor Brendan] and didn't even give you a movie to work off of / think about. He is probably going to win an Oscar in the coming months for his performance in "The Whale." He's definitely going to get nominated. I haven't seen it yet, but buzz is buzz and there is a lot of buzz. Whale buzz. FRASER buzz. Yesterday I pondered the seeming non-difference between CHAR and SEAR, and today I have a similar question about OVATE v. OVOID (62A: Like the shape of an eggplant). They both seem to mean (more or less) "egg-shaped." I think we should ditch one of them on account of redundancy. You all can decide which one goes.

I call b.s. on SAY AAH because once you open up (!) the "ah" beyond two letters, you're in free-for-all territory. Why stop at two "A"s? Further, why two "A"s and not two "H"s!? It's madness. Maadness I say. Outside the theme, the puzzle wasn't very HAIRY, except for HAIRY, which took me several goes to get (25D: Difficult to sort out, informally). SCHEMERS was also kinda hard, as I didn't know which kind of "plot" I was dealing with (35D: Plot developers). I enjoyed remembering EDDIE Rabbitt (26D: Country singer/songwriter Rabbitt), as I love a rainy night, but frankly the nights here in Dunedin have been a bit too rainy for my tastes. I mean, it's paradise otherwise, so I can't actually complain, but yeah, lotta rain since I landed down here about a week ago. I was promised summer! Or at least late spring! But the high has barely made it above 60 since I've been here, at the hottest. But again, as I say, my weather consternation pales beside my overall awe at how lush, verdant, liveable, and bird-dense this place is. Dunedin is one of my favorite places on earth, and not just because my wife and several cool NZ bands are from here. You should go. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. NRA is unwelcome no matter the clue; also P.E.D.S stands for "performance-enhancing drugs."

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Constructor: Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?" (63A: "Why are you making such a fuss?" ... or a hint to 17-, 36- and 43-Across) — theme answers are all different kinds of "big deals":

Theme answers:

FIFTY PERCENT OFF (17A: Sign in a clearance section)
MEGAMERGER (36A: Large-scale corporate union)
ROYAL FLUSH (Dream hand for a poker player)

Word of the Day: AGNI (30D: Hindu fire god) —

Agni (Sanskrit: अग्नि, romanized: Agni, Sanskrit pronunciation: [ˈɐgnɪ]) is a Sanskrit word meaning fire and connotes the Vedic fire deity of Hinduism. He is also the guardian deity of the southeast direction and is typically found in southeast corners of Hindu temples. In the classical cosmology of the Indian religions, Agni as fire is one of the five inert impermanent elements (pañcabhūtá) along with space (ākāśa), water (ap), air (vāyu) and earth (pṛthvī), the five combining to form the empirically perceived material existence (Prakṛti).
In Vedic literature, Agni is a major and oft-invoked god along with Indra and Soma. Agni is considered the mouth of the gods and goddesses and the medium that conveys offerings to them in a homa (votive ritual). (wikipedia)

• • •

Hmm. OK, so ... hmm. The theme works in a very general sense. The first two themers, however, feel arbitrary: very and somewhat, respectively. It's not inaccurate to say that either one is a "big deal," though, so my main problem with those first two is really with the second, which is that it is dull. And "mega" is just standing in for "big," so ... a big merger is a big deal, yes, that is true. FIFTY PERCENT OFF has a snap to it, where MEGAMERGER is just a depressing sludge of a word. But OK, technically both answers are apt. But ROYAL FLUSH kinda goes off the rail. Do you call a good hand a "big deal"? I get that "big" is (now) being used metaphorically, and that a ROYAL FLUSH is "big" in that it is the best hand you can hold, but the thing is "big deal" is a perfect description of themers 1 and 2, but an iffy one of 3. The revealer is the best part of the puzzle, as an answer in its own right. It would be welcome in any puzzle at any time. And as a revealer, it has some sass, it's clever. Thank god they didn't just hand us BIG DEAL, that would've been dull. Still, even with the good revealer, the theme as a whole feels workmanlike. Functional, but not exciting.

I don't really understand some of the fill choices today. Specifically, above all, RHENIUM? That seems like one of your more obscure elements. If I've heard of it, I've barely heard of it. I think it's reasonable to expect solvers to know *a lot* of the elements of the periodic table. But some deep cuts ... feel desperate. And aren't so fun to encounter. At least the last time this answer appeared, the clue told us it was named after a German river. Today: "next to tungsten"??? What the hell? How is that supposed to help? It's Wednesday. The rest of your fill is widely accessible and familiar, and then you just drop RHENIUM in? With *that* clue? As I say, I don't understand these choices. RHENIUM was jarring. AGNI was also jarring, as I still see it as ye olden fill meaning "lambs" (Lat.).

Just as I wonder how deep into the periodic table is fair game, so I wonder about the Hindu pantheon, though AGNI is pretty major (per the "Word of the Day" description, above), so you (I) can't really complain. But HUFFISH? Hoo boy, I can complain there. What ... is that? Is it like the normal word "HUFFY?" I asked my wife if she'd heard of "HUFFY": "Kind of ... I've heard of 'in a huff'...""OK, well have you heard of HUFFISH?""[long pause] ... no." Again, not a choice I understand. And because FWORDS was also bad (what, are we just doing any letter of the alphabet+WORDS now!?!?!) I quickly rewrote the whole damn grid (well, the east side, anyway). Just to satisfy myself. I managed to pick up both HASHISH and ARSE, which pleases me, if no one else.

[dang, looks like I duplicated ERA ... ah well, just make it EPA, it's fine...]
[oh no, NEEDY dupes NO NEED ... this is why you have proofreaders!!! I could
fix it, but I'm not getting paid to fix it, so I'm not gonna.]
[OK, I'm gonna ...]

[Why has no one used PGUP before!?! It's a perfectly cromulent abbr.!!]
[If I had more time, I'd open up the constructing software and go after RHENIUM!]

I had O--T at 49A: Expel and was mad when the answer was OMIT because that is not accurate cluing. Thankfully, the answer was not, in fact, OMIT, but OUST, a much more accurate answer. The only good thing about FWORDS (plural!?!?) is that it crosses SALTY, and if any language qualifies as SALTY, it's the F-word. The real F-word. Not "fie" or "fiddlesticks." I liked FOIST ON, for reasons even I don't quite understand. There's just something ... I dunno, oddly energetic about it. Maybe I just like the clue (44D: Shove down the throat of). I like that the puzzle went for BAFTA / BODE over the more obvious but dated choice, NAFTA / NODE. Remember NAFTA? Remember Ross Perot? I mostly try not to. Gotta wrap things up, as wife will be back soon with dosa and samosa and probably some other -osa I forgot. See you tomorrow (assuming I can get the wifi hotspot on my phone to work in the nowheresville no-wifi place we're headed to tomorrow).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy, I think? Solved on paper, did not really look at the theme clues because they were long and I didn't feel like reading them, but it's pretty easy to notice that they all start with CARs coming in from the edges of the grid, and the crossings there are pretty fair, so you don't really need to the clues to solve, but it was an excellent aha moment post-solve when I could actually be arsed to read them and figure out the theme

THEME: ROUNDABOUT ROUTE— four entries are clued as if they are cars entering roundabouts, with three total clues: one for turning right, one for continuing straight, and one for turning left; in all cases the cars enter from the edge of the grid (and turns are oriented w/r/t that), and all turns result in valid entries both with and without the CAR (in some cases with the second part being backwards relative to the direction of the CAR word)

Word of the Day: TED (31D: California congressman ___ Lieu) —

Ted W. Lieu is an American politician and Air Force Reserve Command colonel who has represented California's 33rd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2015. The district includes much of western and west Valley Los Angeles, as well as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Bel Air, Calabasas, Agoura Hills, the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Beach Cities.
A member of the Democratic Party, Lieu is one of 18 members of Congress who are naturalized U.S. citizens. He represented the 28th district in the California State Senate from 2011 to 2014, after being elected to fill the seat of deceased Senator Jenny Oropeza. From 2005 to 2010 he was a California State Assemblyman, representing the 53rd district, after being elected to fill the seat of deceased Assemblyman Mike Gordon.
Lieu actively served in the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General's Corps from 1995 to 1999 and since 2000 has served in the Air Force Reserve Command with his current rank of colonel upon his promotion in 2015. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi appointed Lieu Assistant whip of the 115th Congress in 2017.

• • •

It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me. Christopher Adams here filling in for Rex while he may or may not be in wi-fi purgatory***; fingers crossed that this post doesn't interrupt his vacation like, uh, the last one did.

**Rex says, via wi-fi non-purgatory: "Dear Nora, your friends Mellie & Hilary (and I) want to wish you a very happy 21st birthday 🥳 🎉 🎂 I’m so glad you enjoy the blog, and I hope this blog birthday greeting from weirdo me (currently somewhere in central Otago, NZ) is as meaningful as your friends imagine. Have a wonderful day!"

Very glad that Rex is not in wi-fi purgatory, very glad to be able to relay (and second) the happy birthday greetings, and very glad to have this opportunity to apologize for parts of last Thursday's review, and especially the profanity and ad hominem stuff; that's 100% on me, and I should know better, but at the same time I was very much not in a mood to engage or spend time with a puzzle that (Roger Ebert voice) I hated, hated, hated, and ended up venting a bit too much; again, my sincerest, deepest apologies for that.

(I would also like to not take up too much time on that and get to today's puzzle, because the longer this intro goes, the more this becomes a recipe website where you have to go through five thousand or so words of family history before finding a fifty word recipe that's not as unique or as interesting as the food blogger thinks it is. ANYWAY, again, there's a lot of great puzzles out there, and I try to not solve ones that I don't enjoy. Which is not to say that I hate all NYT puzzles; I just generally don't solve the NYT unless it's by a constructor I know and enjoy (which is today's puzzle!), or if I hear from trusted friends that it's a good puzzle; recent puzzles I liked included Sid's themeless from the 10th and Ryan's Sunday themeless on the 18th.)

On to this puzzle! TL;DR I liked it! A lot! (More below the theme explanation!)

Theme answers:

26A: First exit: Milk containers · Second exit: Rebounded, in billiard · Third exit: Wheeled (away) [CARTONS / CAROMED / CARTED, w/ CAR going into SNOT, DEMO, TED as appropriate]
54A: First exit: Salad bar bowlful · Second exit: French watchmaker · Third exit: Thanksgiving role [CARROTS / CARTIER / CARVER, using ROTS, TIER, REV]
5D: First exit: Floor covers · Second exit: Addition signs · Third exit: Checking the IDs of [CARPETS / CARETS / CARDING, using STEP, ETS, DING]
66D: First exit: Writer Lewis · Second exit: Santana of Santana · Third exit: Dead meat [CARROLL / CARLOS / CARRION, using ROLL, SOL, and NOIR]

It's not terribly difficult to find words that become other words when you remove some letters; it's not terribly difficult, either, to find words that become other words when they're spelled backwards. And there's some flexibility here: since they all start with CAR, the ending parts can go anywhere where they're in the right direction (e.g. STEP could go at 19A, where it is, or 61A, but not at 20A). But: having four of them intersecting the (grid-spanning) revealer in symmetric spots, while accounting for all of the above? Now that's some good construction (and, perhaps, a bit of luck; you can't move the black squares that function as roundabouts around too much, but at the same time, when you're as talented and experienced as David is, sometimes you make your own luck). (I will quibble a little bit and say that I would've liked the NW and SE roundabouts to be visually set apart and not touch other black squares, even diagonally, but that's perhaps asking a bit too much here.)

update: David says in his XWI notes that getting the revealer to "run through the four thematic arrangements might just top the list of lucky moments in my crossword construction career", but I still think that there's still a fair bit of skill involved. I also wouldn't be disappointed if this was a Wednesday, like he thought this might be because he clued all the roundabout exits [which, again, were normal words] rather than leaving them unclued, but like David, I'm very happy to see this published period, and especially on a Thursday (and doubly so on a day I blog!).

Anyway, fun theme! A lot better than last week! Heck, even if I didn't like this, I still would've liked it more than last week, because it's at least trying to do something fun and inventive. (To be fair, I probably would've disliked last week's theme less if it were, say, on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday, but still...) And outside of that, there's some legit fun clues: the image of [What smoke coming out of the ears may signal in a cartoon] (ANGER), the "TIL interesting fact" of [Name derived from the Greek for "messenger"] (ANGELINA), the "tricky but fair" clue for CARETS (see below), plus fun fill like SANTA HAT, FROSH, AMBROSIA, etc.

c'mon, what else could the video be?

ROUNDABOUT (ARC)TANGENT: As a driver, I love roundabouts. As a pedestrian and (especially) a runner, not as much of a fan; I've noticed that at most intersections here in Iowa City where they've replaced stop signs / lights with roundabouts recently, it's a lot harder to cross the street because cars just don't slow down. At least with stop signs and lights, you know (well, at least hope) that cars will stop, and to some degree you can continue safely through the intersection without really stopping. But with roundabouts, cars don't even stop, let alone slow down, and the thought of them even thinking about looking for pedestrians is a pipe dream. ROUNDABOUT (ARC)TANGENT OVER.

Anyway, good puzzle! It's one I would've solved anyway, because I generally like David's puzzles (and know that if it's a Thursday, it's probably really creative), and I'm glad it's also on a day I'm blogging. More fun that way.

Olio:

CARETS [5D: Addition signs] — As a math person, my first thought here was that this was a mistake; carets are usually used for exponentiation. Realized, after a bit, that this is referring to copyediting / proofreading, where carets are used to signal additions to the text
THE [71A: French beverage] — Sure, I guess; not a fan of this angle, and it's not like you're avoiding dupes with clues here (because there's quite a few instances of "the" in the clues elsewhere). Would've liked this more if it'd've leaned into that and clued it as [The most common word in the English language, or in the clue for this answer], or if the next clue ([Chinwags], for CHATS) had continued the trend with [French pets] or something
ROSIE [66A: Funny O'Donnell] — [citation needed] (at least, not recently, and it's not like you're hurting for other clue angles here)
TRIO [52A: Hip-hop's Salt-N-Pepa, contrary to what their name suggest] — on the one hand, yes, DJ Spinderella was absolutely a vital member of that group in their heyday; on the other hand, iirc, she hasn't been part of the group for a few years now, and so it technically isn't a trio right now? FWIW, I like the cluing angle, and think it works, but might've been better to pick a different act (Tony Orlando and Dawn, anybody?)
ETS [23D: "We come in peace" speakers, in brief] — no no no no no no no no; the only valid cluing angles here, imo, are the lawful good and maybe the lawful neutral ones on this chart
LATIN I [50D: Course in which you might learn "cave canem" — One of the few answers I had to erase, in that I knew the answer in that area was longer than five letters, and so I jumped straight to AP LATI..and whoops, that doesn't fit. Meh on the I, but it's fair, I suppose. ["Cave canem" is "beware of dog", btw.]
TAR [35A: Dinosaur bone preserver] — We would also have accepted [2022 film starring Cate Blanchett]

Yours in puzzling, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Easy(ish); SW seemed to be a bit harder, but nothing too tricky, and footholds abound to help you get into all parts of the grid

THEME: none

Word of the Day: YOUNG MC (Co-writer of Tone Loc's "Wild Thing" and "Funky Cold Medina") —

Marvin Young (born May 10, 1967), better known by his stage name Young M.C., is a British-born American rapper, singer and actor. He is best known for his 1989 hit "Bust a Move". His debut album Stone Cold Rhymin' found international acclaim; however, subsequent albums have not reached the same level of success. Young has also appeared in film in acting roles and cameo appearances and has appeared in several television programs.

• • •

Once again, Christopher filling in for Rex, and wishing you a happy Festivus! Time for the airing of grievances; I got a lotta problems with this puzzle, and now you're going to hear about it. Was hoping for another banger puzzle, which would've been a Festivus miracle. As it turns out, didn't like this puzzle anywhere near as much as yesterday's puzzle; kinda expect certain things out of freestyles (and especially those with 70+ words), and this one just didn't have that.

A lot of the long fill didn't quite vibe with me—I know FLOAT TANKs more as "sensory deprivation tanks", the L in RETINAL SCANNER feels weird to have, DANCE TUNE feels pretty green painty in a "does anyone actually say that" way, and stuff like TISSUE SAMPLE, CANNIBAL, and all the sevens (save YOUNG MC) are much more neutral than an asset to me. Nothing god-awful in the short fill, but still more DAG DSL OYS GTOS ITIS OHSO ROUE MYOB MYMAN etc. stuff than I care to see in a a puzzle like this. And almost two thirds of the entries are five letters or less, so that, plus the relative lack of good long answers that landed for me, meant I didn't really enjoy solving this.

One of the few things I did enjoy was STARING CONTEST, both because it's the best answer in this puzzle but also because the clue was one of my favorite. At first, it brings to mind images of sore losers crying, and doesn't really narrow down what the game could be. Then, I was convinced that this was a misdirect, and "tears" was supposed to rhyme with "bears", not "beers", and so I was trying to think about games that involved ripping. Didn't help that the quinceañera clues had me thinking of piñatas. Finally saw (heh) STARING CONTEST, and had a nice aha moment about why there'd be tears. Makes perfect sense in hindsight, provides a journey before solving, and I wish more clues were like that.

On the other hand, didn't really like the clue for MUST-READS [30D: Novel purchases that everyone's talking about?]. Just doesn't feel right in a way I can't quite put my finger on; like, even allowing for some hyperbole, "everyone" is definitely way too over the top, especially since this is very much a subjective thing—a must-read for who? De gustibus, etc. etc.; one reader might get lost in Sylvia Plath, another might tell Sylvia Plath to get lost. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for reading; I just don't think this clue quite works as is. And honestly, my first thought on reading this clue was that the answer would involve audiobooks in some way, and if AUDIOBOOKS had actually fit in the grid, I'd've plunked that down so fast.

"sing for the moment", from "the EMINEM show"(10D); warning for some language, but in general it's one of my favorites from the album

In other news, currently going through a bit of a COLD SPELL [11D: Follower of an arctic blast] here; as I write this, it's currently eight below with wind chills down to -35 (and at this point, it makes very little difference as to whether you use Fahrenheit or Celsius). Fun weather if you're inside, maybe not so much if you're out running, and tbh, the hard part about that is getting through all the snow, between the people who haven't cleared their sidewalks off and the wind blowing all the snow back onto the sidewalks that have been cleared. (I've already cleared mine twice, once while it was still snowing (a Sisyphean task if there ever was one), once after, and I can see that it needs a third clearing already.)

Anyway, stay warm, drive safely in the snow, etc. etc., and again, happy Festivus!

Olio:

OLAF [4D: Character in "Frozen" who...] — stopped reading the clue there, because I don't particularly care for this franchise (and having to sit through 21 minutes of "Olaf's Frozen Adventure" before getting to see "Coco" counts, imo, as a Geneva Convention violation) but also because basically all the important "Frozen" characters have four letter names, so you really just wait for crosses to tell you which of Anna Elsa Hans Olaf Sven it is.
IRIS [52D: Good name for...] — stopped reading the clue there, because I don't particularly care for this kind of cluing angle and find it lazy and hackneyed; if you're gonna clue it as a name, then clue it as an actual person / character with that name. (In general, one of my biggest complaints about Will Shortz / the NYT is that they seem to go out of their way to clue names as anything but a person with that name, and this seems especially true for female names.)
TESSIE [43D: "Technicolor ___", nickname for Lucille Ball] — sure, pure YEKIOYD trivia, and I'm not sure how you get "Tessie" from "Lucille" (also, the comma is not part of the nickname and therefore does not belong inside the quote marks, and I will die on this hill)
ASTERISKS [58A: Things not good to have next to one's records] — cf. the cheating cheaters at 5D
TAR [37D: Pine ___ (baseball player's grip enhancer)] — We would also have accepted [2022 film starring Cate Blanchett]

Yours in puzzling, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy (very)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Pontiac (33A: Pontiac, for one => OTTAWA) —

Pontiac or Obwaandi'eyaag (c. 1714/20 – April 20, 1769) was an Odawa war chief known for his role in the war named for him, from 1763 to 1766 leading Native Americans in an armed struggle against the British in the Great Lakes region due to, among other reasons, dissatisfaction with British policies. It followed the British victory in the French and Indian War, the American front of the Seven Years' War. Pontiac's importance in the war that bears his name has been debated. Nineteenth-century accounts portrayed him as the mastermind and leader of the revolt, but some subsequent scholars argued that his role had been exaggerated. Historians today generally view him as an important local leader who influenced a wider movement that he did not command.
The war began in May 1763 when Pontiac and 300 followers attempted to take Fort Detroit by surprise. His plan foiled, Pontiac laid siege to the fort, where he was eventually joined by more than 900 warriors from a half-dozen tribes. Meanwhile, messengers spread the word of Pontiac's actions, and the war expanded far beyond Detroit. In July 1763, Pontiac defeated a British detachment at the Battle of Bloody Run, but he was unable to capture the fort. In October, he lifted the siege and withdrew to the Illinois Country. Pontiac's actions contributed to the British Crown's issuance of the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited any settlers west of the Appalachian Mountains to preserve an area for Native Americans.
Pontiac's influence declined around Detroit because of the siege but he gained stature as he continued to encourage the various tribal leaders to fight against the British. Seeking to end the war, British officials made him the focus of their diplomatic efforts. In July 1766, he made peace with British Superintendent of Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson. The British attention to Pontiac aroused resentment among other tribal leaders, as the war effort was decentralized. Pontiac claimed greater authority than he possessed. He was increasingly ostracized and in 1769 he was assassinated by a Peoria warrior. (wikipedia)

• • •

["SO CLOSE / SO CLOSE
and YET SO FAR"]

Nice way to be welcomed back from the hinterlands—with a fantastically easy Saturday puzzle. There's a bit more emphasis on architecture than content (i.e. it's showing off a bit with those pairs of 15s around the perimeter, which end up being the only interesting parts of the grid), but several of the 15s are strong enough, and the grid is clean enough, for an overall enjoyable solving experience. Truthfully, it was going to be hard for the puzzle to lose my goodwill after the first bunch of 15s opened up in a way that felt like a personal love letter to me. My first long answer, the gimme that opened the puzzle right up, was J.D. Souther's crooning late-70s pop rock classic, "YOU'RE ONLY LONELY" (13A: 1979 J.D. Souther hit with a rhyming title). Such an underrated / underheralded songwriter, that guy. He co-wrote many of the Eagles' hits, including the beautiful "New Kid in Town" (1976), as well as the similarly wistful (and gorgeous) "Her Town Too," which he sang as a duet with James Taylor (it went to #11 in 1981). Songs about loneliness and towns—he had the market cornered on those circa 1980. I'm a big fan.

The next 15 that felt like it was aimed right at me came right after "YOU'RE ONLY LONELY"—it was similarly easy, and when I got it, I knew the ride was going to be over almost before it had begun. That answer: EUCALYPTUS TREES (3D: Bush growths). Really *really* helped to be (currently) Down Under, where (even in NZ) "the bush" is the term for all wild areas. With the answer starting "EU-" there was really only one direction it could go, and it went there. After those easy 15s, the short crosses proved simple, the parallel 15s followed, before I knew it (!) I had done an easy lap around the track. I just filled in the missing spaces from there, no sweat:

You can see from this screenshot that I botched the ATL clue at first (21A: N.L. East team, on scoreboards). That was just casual negligence—I know very well STL is in the N.L. Central. My brain just glitched. It was a very St. Louis-y puzzle, what with the L.A. RAMS being clued via their former St. Louis home (45A: Team that moved back from St. Louis in 2016, informally), and CST being clued via St. Louis as well, and ... I dunno, ATL and PTL kinda dressing up like STL a little. That error was easily spotted and fixed. I don't think I had any struggles after the opening 1A: Ancient arts venue (ODEON), which I wanted to be AGORA. I wasn't sure what was going to follow FLY- at 6D: Casting choice (FLYROD), but it wasn't hard to find out. I'm not as big a "Mockingbird" fan as some of y'all, so EWELL is not in my primary storehouse of literary (or cinematic) names, but it came to me, eventually, from somewhere, so thank you, crossword gods. I forgot ROSA Bonheur despite having seen her ... feels like just a month or so ago ... Yes! She was Word of the Day on Nov. 18! I feel bad that I forgot her but clearly I didn't *completely* forget her, so maybe next time. Only other real trouble spot (and it wasn't too real) came at 59A: Takes credit, in a way (OWES), which I had as OWNS. Not in love with "take credit" here, but I guess if a lender *extends* you credit, then ... you take it, sure, OK.

Explanations and what not:

50D: Roman emperor who overthrew Galba (OTHO) — I know OTHO (exclusively) from Crosswords of Yore. I love that this clue thinks enough of my learnedness that it offers me Galba as a hint (I have no idea who Galba is, sorry) (LOL he ruled for one, count 'em, one year, but he was Nero's immediate successor, which is probably why people remember him)
22D: Actor George of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (SEGAL) — brilliant comic actor probably best known for his role as Jack Gallo on the long-running sitcom "Just Shoot Me," or as Pops on the more recent "The Goldbergs," but I like him best paired with the great Elliott Gould in Robert Altman's "California Split" (1974):

48A: ___ Productions, media company since 1986 (HARPO) — "Oprah" spelled backwards is ...
25A: Edmond ___, a.k.a. the "Father of Whist" (HOYLE) — this clue made me literally LOL ("Father of Whist," timely and relevant! Now do "Father of Euchre,""Father of Écarté," and "Father of Ombre"!!). No way do I know him by his alleged title, but as a guy who gave his name to a book of game rules ... yeah, I know him.
47A: Letters used in the absence of a letter (NMI) — "No Middle Initial"
39D: "Things Fall Apart" novelist (ACHEBE) — absolute gimme. This is like cluing TWAIN as ["Huckleberry Finn" novelist]. Surprised Chinua ACHEBE is not more prevalent in crosswords (in both first- and last-name versions).
46D: 1970s-'80s sitcom setting (MEL'S)— from the sitcom "Alice." Not to be confused with "Al's" from the sitcom "Happy Days."
57A: Symphony originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte (BEETHOVEN'S THIRD) — otherwise known by that crosswordiest of symphony names, "EROICA"—fun fact, this is the record on Norman Bates's turntable in "Psycho"!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. [Axe target] is ODOR because Axe is a body spray / deodorant (in case that wasn't clear)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: John Martz

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME:"Novel Thinking"— ordinary phrases are clued as if they related to famous novels:

[not by RLS!]

Theme answers:

HOME PAGES (24A: "Little House on the Prairie," e.g.?) (because it's "pages" ... about a "home") (!?!?)
GHOSTWRITING (26A: "The Haunting of Hill House," e.g.?) (because it's "writing" ... about a "ghost")
FLUID VOLUME (40A: "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," e.g.?) (because it's a "volume" ... set in "fluid" (i.e. the sea))
SECOND STORY (45A: "Back to Treasure Island," e.g.?) (because it's the "second" part of the "Treasure Island""story") (?!?!?!)
PRISON SENTENCES (61A: "Crime and Punishment," e.g.?) (because it's "sentences" about a "prison") (there's not really a prison in this book, I don't think, but ... OK)
ADDRESS BOOK (80A: "If Beale Street Could Talk," e.g.?) (because it's a "book" about an ... "address")
ANIMAL PRINT (89A: "Fantastic Mr. Fox," e.g.?) (because it is a "print" (well, printed material, anyway) about an "animal")
WORKING TITLE (99A: "The Help," e.g.?) (because it is a "title" about people who are "working")
BUZZ WORDS (105A: "The Secret Life of Bees," e.g.?) (because it is "words" about creatures that "buzz")

Word of the Day:"The Haunting of Hill House" (26A) —

The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. A finalist for the National Book Award and considered one of the best literary ghost stories published during the 20th century, it has been made into two feature films and a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series. Jackson's novel relies on terror rather than horror to elicit emotion in the reader, using complex relationships between the mysterious events in the house and the characters' psyches. (wikipedia)

• • •

So much Christmas disappointment. First of all, the holiday *actually* falls on the crossword's big day (literally, the biggest day), and you ... pass? I've seen so many holiday puzzles published on holiday-adjacent days, but here you have the opportunity to hit it right on the money and ... nothing. But OK, you're not feeling festive, that's fine, but it's a big holiday, lots of people sitting around doing nothing, avoiding family, whatever, so lots of people are going to be doing this one; surely you're gonna put forth your "A" game—something really impressive. But ... no. It's an ordinary, workmanlike effort that stretches the concept of "wordplay" too thin and generally yields no laughs, chuckles, guffaws, or other gleeful noises. The "novel" concept just doesn't work here, in that so many of these "novel"-related terms are only horrifically vaguely related to actual novels. "Book,""volume," great, "story," OK, but after that the connection becomes tenuous and the words become fragments of novels so small that they could relate to any piece of writing. Like "writing." Or "title." And "sentences?""Words?" The whole "Novel" conceit just doesn't hold up.

And yet ... if the theme answers were themselves snappy and fun and clearly novel-related, I would still have been happy. But ..."HOME"?? The connection to "Little House on the Prairie" is just ... HOME? They're PAGES about ... HOME? Because ... what, "house" means "HOME?" The whole thing is literal to a painful degree, such that it doesn't even matter what the novels are actually about. A fox *is* an animal, the help ... work, I guess. So you don't even get the spark of some real thematic connection between novels and theme answers. In the case of PRISON SENTENCES, it's like there's no connection at all. I just read a summary of "Crime and Punishment" and (as I thought) there's no "PRISON" in it at all, except in the epilogue. But I guess that "punishment" for "crime" is (often) "PRISON," so ... good enough? In the case of SECOND STORY, the content of the novel really really Really doesn't matter. Nothing particularly "Treasure Island"-y at all there. Could've used literally any sequel in that clue. Sigh. I love novels, but I just don't get this theme. Or I do get it, but I cannot feel whatever it is that's supposed to make it joyful to solve.

The puzzle was not hard, but it was slow-going with the theme answers, mostly due to issues discussed above (i.e. I could not make sense of the answers because their connections to the novels in question seemed so wispy). I'd get the front end of an answer and still have no idea about the back end, and then vice versa. But this just meant hacking at crosses—never really getting stuck. I could easily have finished with an error, since I had *no* idea what the animator's nickname was supposed to be at 1A: Nickname of Looney Tunes animator Ben Hardaway (who???), so I had to get it all from crosses, and let me tell you, GONG seemed like a very good answer to 1D: Hit it! When that gave me GUGS for the animator's nickname, I figured it must be right—obscure clue for an obscure answer. But then my brain went, "yeesh, why didn't they change that first letter to something like [rolodexes through -UGS words] BUGS ... oh ... oh, hang on! BUGS ... BUGS Bunny ... and then BONG for [Hit it!] ... yeah, that must be it. And now we're back to 'yeesh'." If you'd had a reasonable clue on BUGS, then you wouldn't have had "Ben" in the clue and *then* you could've turned 76-Across from BON to BEN, which is better, but also much Much better in the cross (changing NOONS :( to NEONS :).

Part of the puzzle I loved was the clue on T-BONE STEAK (69D: Cut with a letter opener?). That is all kinds of devilish and brilliant. Just a great double misdirect, with both "Cut" and "letter opener" knocking you off balance. That answer next to BAD VIBES was the highlight of the puzzle for me, for sure. LOOT BAGS threw me, as I know them as MONEYBAGS, if I know them at all. And PETRA really threw me, as there was no "ancient" in the clue and the only "Rose City" I know (I thought!) was Portland, OR. Yes, I remembered correctly: Portland is the "City of Roses" or "Rose City" (per wikipedia). And it's an actual city that still exists, whereas PETRA is more UNESCO site than city now. What else? I had TEMPLE before CHAPEL (14D: Place of worship), but that's the only real mistake I made (besides GUGS, of course, LOL). Hope you liked this one more than I did, and that you are having a lovely Christmas or just a lovely Sunday, whichever is more meaningful to you. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Kurt Weller

Relative difficulty: No Idea (did it Downs-Only to escape potential boredom)

THEME: CLOCKWORK (59A: Epitome of precision ... or a description of 20-, 34- and 43-Across?) — familiar phrases that also sound like verb phrases related to "working" on a "clock":

Theme answers:

MAKE A FACE (20A: Stick your tongue out, say)
SWITCH GEARS (34A: Move onto a new topic of conversation, metaphorically)
CHANGE HANDS (43A: Pass to a different owner, as a business)

Word of the Day:"The Wall" (3D: Pink Floyd's "The Wall," for one => ROCK OPERA) —

The Wall is the eleventh studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released on 30 November 1979 by Harvest/EMI and Columbia/CBS Records. It is a rock opera that explores Pink, a jaded rock star whose eventual self-imposed isolation from society forms a figurative wall. The album was a commercial success, topping the US charts for 15 weeks and reaching number three in the UK. It initially received mixed reviews from critics, many of whom found it overblown and pretentious, but later received accolades as one of the greatest albums of all time and one of the band's finest works. [...] The Wall is one of the best-known concept albums. With over 30 million copies sold, it is the second best-selling album in the band's catalogue (behind The Dark Side of the Moon), the best selling double-album of all time, and one of the best-selling albums of all time overall. Some of the outtakes from the recording sessions were used on the group's next album, The Final Cut (1983). In 2000, it was voted number 30 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2003, 2012, and 2020, it was included in Rolling Stone's lists of the greatest albums of all time. From 2010 to 2013, Waters staged a new Wall live tour that became the highest-grossing tour by a solo musician. (wikipedia)

• • •

This seemed like a pretty remedial theme at first—parts of a watch, big whoop. But then I read the revealer clue a little more closely and realized that the theme answers didn't just have watch parts as their final words, they appeared to specific things one might do while "working" on a "clock"—someone engaged in such CLOCKWORK might MAKE A (clock) FACE or SWITCH (clock) GEARS or CHANGE (clock) HANDS. This gives the theme a little something extra. Not that it made it any more interesting to solve, but conceptually, at least, it's got the kind of next-level ambition and elegance that you'd hope to find every day in your NYTXW themed puzzles. I can't really speak to what it was like to solve normally, as I solved it very abnormally—by looking only at the Down clues. Downs-only solving puts you into a whole other world, one where you avoid the help—and the pitfalls—that Across clues normally provide. So you can go very very fast, but also, you can get very, very stuck. I did a little of both today. The hardest thing was probably (to my mind) the iffiest thing in the grid: MUDFLOW. Uh, what? What is ... that? Is it ... mud ... that flows? I was not aware that that was a phenomenon noteworthy enough to be its own answer. I've damn sure heard of MUDSLIDES, but just MUDFLOWs? Mmm, no. And since I couldn't get ZINC (7D: 97.5% of a penny) I was trying to make the first themer into MAKE A .... DATE? Something like that. Really not a fan of the MUDFLOW.

The other main Downs-only issue I had was ANTITOXIN (36D: Venom neutralizer, e.g.). My brain was like "ANTIVENOM!" and I was like "look, brain, 'venom' is in the clue, it can't be ANTIVENOM" and then brain was like "ah well, can't help you, gonna think about Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' now" and I said "oh come on, brain" but it plugged its ears and started shout-singing: "We Don't Need No / ANTIVENOM!" So childish, sometimes, brain is. Probably the funniest part of Downs-only solving was getting PENI- (!) over EREC- (!!) there in the SW corner and thinking "well, I've gotta have an error there ... I hope I have an error there ... because ... OK, what is happening!?" I couldn't think of anything that could complete PENI- and also be allowable in mainstream crosswords. Crosses were leading me to PENIN but all I could think was "well, that's not a word." Then I thought "oof, it could be an awful partial." And then I thought, oh, it's just a verb phrase ... OK, then." Remarkably hard, from a Downs-only standpoint, was 30D: Bitter part of an orange (PITH). You think, "how many four-letter answers can there be?" Well three, at least, I can tell you from experience. I had PEEL at first (back when I wanted CHANGE HANDS to be CHANGE LANES). Then I thought, "well, if it's not that, then maybe ... RIND?" Maybe, but also maybe not. Sigh. Your brain really has to work in weird ways to suss out these Down-only dilemmas (or trilemmas).

I've never really heard anyone say "CLOCKWORK" unless they said "like" first, or happened to be discussing a very famous Kubrick film. But that's alright. It's a word, you can't dispute that. Overall, the experience was entertaining, though I think most of the entertainment came from the self-imposed Downs-only restriction, rather than from anything inherent in the theme or fill. Putting together those long Across themers with absolutely no clues was an adventure: MAKE A DATE! CHANGE LANES! CLONE WARS! (before CLOCKWORK, LOL). SWITCH GEARS was the only themer that really wanted to stay put.

I'm leaving Dunedin tomorrow and will be in transit for a few days, so after your regular monthly Clare Tuesday tomorrow, you'll have Mali one of the days and I think Eli the other two. Then I'm back for good on Saturday. I'll fill you in a bit on my NZ adventures then. Here's a picture of me today at the beach, where it was sunny and 75 degrees and ice cream trucks had long lines and a seal kept trying to play with all the surfers who were out there floating, waiting for waves. Then the seal tried to play with people just walking on the beach and that was a little less fun, a little more frightening. But everyone gave Mr. Frolic Seal a lot of room and he headed back to sea. Good times.

Oh and then a seagull got on my car and said 'hey'; slightly menacing, but mostly just ... close.

Oh, and since [A rainbow may be seen as a good one] is in the puzzle today (OMEN!), here's an incredible full rainbow I saw walking home from Christmas lunch at my mother-in-law's yesterday:

OK, enough pics. See you later this week.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hello, everyone! It’s Clare, back for the last Tuesday of December, which feels wild to say. How is it almost 2023?! It’s been quite the year — starting my first law-related job, learning I have to be gluten-free, getting into rock climbing, watching all the sports possible, and, of course, continuing to blog about crosswords here with you all. Hope that each and every one of you had a great and fulfilling 2022 and that 2023 continues in the same vein (or is even better).

As you might expect, I’ve been spending this final month of the year watching World Cup soccer and cheering on the GOAT (Messi, of course; who’d you think?) and, like the rest of this country, falling a little in love with USMNT captain Tyler Adams. The Premier League is finally back, and I gasped in relief at seeing Mo Salah,Virgil van Dijk, and Jordan Henderson all back on the same pitch. This year’s iteration of the Steelers is, to put it kindly, a work in progress, but I was rooting for them hardcore on Christmas Eve against the Raiders in the 50th anniversary game of the Immaculate Reception, especially because the absolutely wonderful Franco Harris died just a few days before.

I’ve been sequestered from the bad weather while I’m out in California with my family; I hope all of you have been able to stay safe and cozy. I’m sending warm wishes your way. Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor:Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME:DOUBLE CROSS— (64A: Betray … or a hint to what’s found in this puzzle’s shaded squares)— There are four shaded crosses in the puzzle where the intersecting words each could be placed after the word “double” to form a common phrase

Theme answers:

STAND AT EASE / SPARKLE(17A: Command for a soldier to relax / 6D: Glisten)
BEAGLE / MAGENTA(34A: Snoopy’s breed / 25D: Reddish purple)
BILLY / BEANSTALK(Melville’s “____ Budd” / 11D: Means to a goose laying golden eggs, in a fairy tale)
CHINA / DIPLOMACY(39A: Tableware for special guests / 33D: Negotiator’s skill)

Word of the Day: MOSELLE (9A: White wine named for the European river valley where it’s produced) —

A river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. A small part of Belgium is in its basin as it includes the Sauer and the Our. Moselle wines are mainly white and are made in some of the coldest climates used for commercial winemaking. (Wikipedia)

• • •

I was so hoping for a puzzle I could rave about to close out 2022. And this… isn’t that. I mean, it’s fine. It’s inoffensive. It’s sort of interesting. It moves smoothly enough. But it didn’t give me any of the “aha!” moments I craved.

My main issue with the puzzle centered on the theme. I wanted some pizazz, but this theme just fell flat. The positioning of the themers was odd — they’re just kind of thrown in at random spots with abandon, which means giant sections of the puzzle (aka the bottom third of the puzzle) have no theme answers. Also, thinking about the breadth of options that could have gone alongside “double” and then looking at what we got was a bit disappointing. Sure, DOUBLE DATE and DOUBLE EAGLE, etc… work, but why choose them among a whole host of other options, such as: double entendre, double trouble, double whammy, double check, double shot, double scoop, etc? Then, the theme didn’t help with the solve, because, even though I got DOUBLE CROSS (64A) easily, I wasn’t using it to go back and figure out what the shaded sections could possibly correspond to.

I hit a snag at 26A: Pretends with LETS ON. The colloquial expression LETS ON to me means something much different from “pretends.” I Googled it, and “pretend” does show up as the second definition for “let on,” but I maintain that the phrase means something much different… As my ninth grade English teacher might remind me, connotation and denotation are different things. I also had such a hard time getting LETS ON partially because I didn’t know MOSELLE (9D), which strikes me as a slightly hard word for a Tuesday (or maybe I’m just salty because I like white wine, yet this style was not in my vocabulary). It also took me a bit to get the “e” for STEREO (10D: Sound upgrade from mono) but that just might be on me.

The rest of the puzzle was decent. Words such as DIPLOMACY, BEANSTALK, DERANGE, RENEGE, CORRAL, LAMENTS, and GRAVEST worked nicely and are ones that don’t often populate an early-week crossword, even though, as Lynn Lempel showed here, they easily could.

I noticed a mini-theme in the puzzle with animals. There was BAA (11A: Sheepish utterance?) with EMU(16A: Relative of an ostrich) right below it. Then, there was a BEE(42D: Helpful pollinator) in the crossword, CORRAL (50D) was clued with horses, Snoopy a BEAGLE (34A) was almost smack dab in the middle of the puzzle, and LARVA (52D) was clued as a caterpillar or tadpole.

There was some of the usual three-letter fill such as ALA/LOL/BAA/EMU/FCC/AHA/IRA/SAY that irked me a bit. Some other three-letter fill, SYD/PLY/FAD/AID/PVC, worked a little better. ATARI (22D) and OREO (67A) were other crosswordese. I didn’t know KYD(46A: "The Spanish Tragedy" dramatist Thomas) or NEA (23A), so those threw me for a few seconds.

Misc.:

W.H. AUDEN’s (13D) poem “Funeral Blues” is probably my favorite poem ever. It’s absolutely stunning. I’ll put just this stanza below, but I encourage you to check the full poem out here.

"He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."

My family has a Snoopy ornament we all fight over to hang on the Christmas tree, and I got to be the person to hang him on the tree this year. Then, a day after we decorated the tree, it decided to go timberrrrr… While we had several ornament casualties, Snoopy luckily came out unscathed.
SYD (38D) and KYD (46A) crossing each other was fun for a Pittsburgh fan like me. Although I assume the cross wasn’t intended as a reference to “Sid the Kid” Crosby, I thought of the Penguin player who, at 35, might not be such a “kid” (or KYD) any more but who is still worthy of loads of notice.
I quite liked the clue/answer for 28D: Org. that oversees court battles as NBA. I was wracking my brain trying to think of a law-based answer for this (getting so far as putting “ABA” in as the answer) before I realized what the clue was getting at.

And that’s all from me! Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season and stays safe and warm. See you next month IN 2023!!

Signed, Clare Carroll, a doubly invested Liverpool fan

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Josh Goodman

Relative difficulty: Easy-ish (felt pretty fast for me, but it was also straight in my wheelhouse)

THEME: Once, Twice, er... Two Times a Lady — 53A - With 60-Across institution in which 19-, 25- and 37-Across are (thus far) the only three women ever to be inducted twice

Word of the Day: NANAIMO (12D: Vancouver Island city for which a chocolate treat is named)—

Nanaimo (/nəˈnaɪmoʊ/ nə-NY-moh) is a city on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. As of the 2021 census, it had a population of 99,863,^[2] and it is known as "The Harbour City." The city was previously known as the "Hub City," which was attributed to its original layout design, whose streets radiated from the shoreline like the spokes of a wagon wheel, and to its central location on Vancouver Island.^[4]^[5] Nanaimo is the headquarters of the Regional District of Nanaimo. (wikipedia)

ALSO

The Nanaimo bar /nəˈnaɪmoʊ/ is a bar dessert that requires no baking and is named after the Canadian city of Nanaimo in British Columbia.^[1] It consists of three layers: a wafer, nut (walnuts, almonds, or pecans), and coconut crumb base; custard icing in the middle; and a layer of chocolate ganache on top. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey everyone, it's Eli back for another day of fun (and apparently your second day in a row be a Liverpool fan)! I'm spending a rare rainy few days in LA catching up on some of the movies I missed in the last year - Glass Onion, Bros, RRR, Top Gun Maverick, and Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe. It's a pretty eclectic mix, but I actually liked all of them quite a lot. Today's puzzle appears to be the NYT debut for Josh Goodman, and according to his Twitter bio he's also remixed the Comedy Bang Bang plug bag theme 3 times, so he's good people in my book (#OhNo).

As for the puzzle itself, I think I enjoyed it. The fill stretches thin in a few places, but it's a lot of theme to fit in for a Wednesday. By its very nature, the puzzle has a lot of proper nouns, which I know can throw some people off, but the trivia head in me has never really minded.

Theme answers:

TINA TURNER (19A: As part of a performing duo in 1991; as a solo artist in 2021)

STEVIE NICKS (25A: As part of a band in 1998; as a solo artist in 2019)

CAROLE KING (37A: As part of a songwriting duo in 1990; as a solo artist in 2021)

ROCK AND ROLL (53A: With 60-Across institution in which 19-, 25- and 37-Across are (thus far) the only three women ever to be inducted twice)
HALL OF FAME (60A: See 53-Across)

Regarding the theme, I guess my only question is, "Why now?" This year's induction ceremony was almost 2 months ago. If you're going to run something that feels like a tribute or event puzzle, I'm going to look for a reason. Ah well. At least it's a tight group of themers and a good excuse to post some great music. Tina Turner and Carole King also have had biographical jukebox musicals on Broadway, but not Stevie Nicks (what a story that could be). I digress.

I said above that the puzzle was easy-ish, but looking back over it to blog, I'm seeing a few things that would have tripped me up if I had noticed them at all while solving. I know I already highlighted it above, both in the title and the word of the day, but Nanaimo is a complete blank for me. Don't know the city, don't know the treat. It's fun to learn! I also didn't know BENNET (47A: Brit who wrote "The Vanishing Half"), and looking her up I was surprised to learn that her NAME is Brit and that she's actually American. That's some really solid cluing, assuming you know the name.

Getting back to movies of the year, Weird Al went to Cal State Poly in San Luis OBISPO (6A) and wrote a song about it before he had made a name for himself:

The "biopic" WEIRD was one of the silliest things I've ever seen, and I loved every minute of it. Daniel Radcliffe deserves an Oscar for his commitment to the bit. Also, Janelle MONAE (67A) was in Glass Onion, and she was fantastic in it, as one might expect. Pretty sure I highlighted her last time I blogged here, too.

Hey, look! I'm in the grid! ELI (51A: Former Giants QB Manning). One of my goals in life is to be prominent enough to become a new cluing option. I have a ways to go.

Overall, this felt like a solid debut puzzle, bearing the heavy burden of trying to figure out what a Wednesday puzzle should be. I think you have Rafa here tomorrow, but I'll be back again on Friday. See you all then!

Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld

[Follow Eli Selzer on Twitter]

Constructor: Rachel Fabi and Claire Rimkus

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: LATE SHIFT — In four rows of the grid, the word LATE "shifts" from one entry to the other

Word of the Day: CLAMATO (42D: Hybrid beverage in a Bloody Caesar cocktail) —

Clamato /kləˈmætoʊ/ is a commercial drink made of reconstituted tomato juice concentrate and sugar, which is flavored with spices, dried clam broth and MSG.^[1] Made by Mott's, the name is a portmanteau of clam and tomato. It is also referred to colloquially as "clamato juice". It is consumed in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, to a lesser extent. It is very often mixed with alcohol to make a drink similar to a Bloody Mary.

• • •

Theme answers:

(LATE)RALLY / TEMP(LATE)S (17A: Gathering of protesters / 19A: Models used in copying)
CIRCU(LATE)S / EMUS (24A: Makes the rounds / 26A: Large, flightless birds)
COLD / CLEAN S(LATE) (51A: Chilly / 54A: Fresh start, metaphorically)
TRANS(LATE) / VENTI(LATE) (59A: Work as an interpreter / 62A: Size option at Starbucks)
LATE SHIFT (37A: Overnight work assignment ... or a hint to understanding four rows of answers in this puzzle)

Hi everyone -- it's Rafa back for another puzzle write-up! Hope everyone is having a pleasant and restful holiday period. I'm catsitting so it's a one-human two-cat household around here these days. Sadly they do not get along and have to be kept in different rooms, but I've been enjoying plenty of feline snuggles.

Onto the puzzle! I really enjoyed this, as expected by these two constructors I really admire! LATE SHIFT is the perfect revealer to explain what's going on with the theme answers. And the theme answers (both the "shifted" versions in the grid and the "unshifted" versions that are clued) are super solid in-the-language words and phrases. One downside of this type of theme is that you often end up with single-word answers that are maybe less "exciting" entries -- stuff like LATERALLY and COLLATED and CIRCULATES etc -- but one benefit is you get twice as many theme entries because each one has to work both with and without the LATE!

Big Sur! Mac OS but also very pretty!

The theme was solid, but my absolute favorite part about this puzzle was the fun clue echoes. We had both TEN and CHI clued as [X], consecutive [Chicken king?] for PERDUE and [Chicken ___ king] for ALA, [Camper's protection] for DEET and [Camper's detritus] for ASH -- great stuff! I also loved [Euphemism for a lesbian couple] for GAL PALS, both because it's a fresh angle and because I'm a fan of Gay Things In My Puzzles.

If there's one thing I learned from doing crosswords, it's that the EDSEL was a flop

Not much else to say here! The grid was super clean so there's really nothing to complain about ... maybe IN SO is a weird partial? But that's me looking really hard for something to ding. Just super solid gridwork and a delightful theme.

Bullets:

TYVM (15D: "I really appreciate it!," in textspeak)— It's rare that a 4-letter entry is my favorite in a puzzle but this might be it for me! I'd never seen this in a puzzle before (turns out it is a NYT debut) but it's something I use all the time!
BLAISE (49A: Good name for a firefighter?) — This seems like an apt name for a pyromaniac ... or I guess a particularly self-loathing firefighter
SCYTHE (45D: Cutter with a curve) — This is a fun word
ELIOT (14A: George who wrote "Romola") — I recommend everyone read "Middlemarch" if you haven't already!

Signed, Rafa

[Follow Rafa on Twitter]

Constructor: Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Medium (my time was a little slow for a Friday, but I wasn't really rushing).

THEME: NONE— Welcome to Friday

Word of the Day: ANNATTO (16A: Peppery orange-red condiment) —

Annatto (/əˈnætoʊ/ or /əˈnɑːtoʊ/) is an orange-red condiment and food coloring derived from the seeds of the achiote tree (Bixa orellana), native to tropical America.^[1] It is often used to impart a yellow or orange color to foods, but sometimes also for its flavor and aroma. Its scent is described as "slightly peppery with a hint of nutmeg" and flavor as "slightly nutty, sweet and peppery". (wikipedia)

• • •

Happy Friday! It's Eli back again after a one day hiatus. I'm writing this on Thursday night, which means I'm sipping on a strong rum drink from a fancy carved mug. At the beginning of home isolation during the pandemic, my wife and I setup a weekly Thursday happy hour over Zoom with some friends who had moved to Maryland. Those friends have now moved back to Los Angeles, but the happy hour tradition has carried on. Tiki is the order of the evening this week, so I'm in an exceptionally good mood. Oh, right, the puzzle. Let's get into it!

Today's puzzle is by the man, the myth, the legend: Brendan Emmett Quigley. BEQ was the first indie crossword blog I discovered, and it really opened up the puzzle world to me. I still solve his puzzles twice a week, and he's one of the first constructors I recommend if people ask me for NYT alternatives. This wasn't my favorite puzzle of his that I've solved, but I didn't really have many issues with it. Maybe it's the rum. I'm also blaming the rum for my slower than average solve time. The cocktail is called the Spirit of Aloha, and I guess I'm feeling that spirit tonight.

I like a themeless, and I felt like this played appropriately for a Friday. Starting off with SOFA LEG at 1A wasn't an auspicious beginning. It took me a long time to see and something about it just seems off to me. Don't know why. It's not quite Green Paint, and seems legit enough, it just feels a little arbitrary somehow. Maybe it's just me. DOG SHOW JUDGE has a similar vibe to me, though the clue is top notch (18A: Toy inspector?). A OR B (33A: Simplest choice) jumps out as less than ideal, and I've never liked having to figure out how a puzzle wants me to spell UEY (21A: Missed-the-turn manuever). Other than that, I'm not seeing anything to really carp on.

Overall, it was a pretty straight-forward themeless. The grid-spanning answers are fine and in the language but not the flashiest phrases. Maybe I'll just throw out a few of the things that crossed my mind while I solved.

Highlights:

ELTON JOHN (6D: His "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" was the first album to debut at #1 on Billboard) — Fun trivia, but I mostly wanted to brag that I was on the field for his final concert at Dodger Stadium (the one that was streamed on Disney+). It was an amazing night. Here's a picture of the hoodie I bought there with my tiki drink setup for the evening:

SCROOGE (54A: One who is mean as the Dickens?) — I liked the clue and the seasonality, but I've used weaker excuses to share Muppet Christmas Carol clips:

JOE D (39A: M.L.B. great with a famous "unbreakable" streak, familiarly) — I knew this was Joe DiMaggio immediately, but I don't think I've ever heard him called Joe D. Joltin' Joe is the nickname I always think of.
BAT (45A: Mexican free-tailed ___ (world's fastest horizontal flier) — BAT!

ANNATTO (16A: Peppery orange-red condiment) — I cook a lot, but this is entirely new to me. I'll have to try it!

That's about all I've got for today. Wishing you all a happy end to the holiday season. Whether you're celebrating Kwanzaa (I believe tonight the focus is Nia or "Purpose," but I'm no expert; I just think it's nice) or looking forward to New Year Celebrations, stay safe and enjoy your festivities. Thanks to Rex for letting me crash here again, and enjoy the weekend ahead!

Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld

[Follow Eli Selzer on Twitter]

Constructor: Billy Bratton

Relative difficulty: Easy (extremely easy for a puzzle wherein I had little-to-no clue about at least three longish answers)

THEME: UP, UP and ... UP ... and another UP ... I mean, there's no theme, I'm just counting "UP"s at this point, you can move on ...

Word of the Day: ESPERANTO (34D: Language with its own "green star" flag) (why is "green star" in quotes?—there's literally a green star on the flag) —

Esperanto (/ˌɛspəˈrɑːntoʊ/ or /ˌɛspəˈræntoʊ/) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (la lingvo internacia). Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language (Esperanto: Unua Libro), which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto. Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes". [...] Esperanto is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers, of which there are perhaps several thousand. Usage estimates are difficult, but two estimates put the number of people who know how to speak Esperanto at around 100,000. Concentration of speakers is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, Esperantujo ("Esperanto-land") is used as a name for the collection of places where it is spoken. The language has also gained a noticeable presence on the internet in recent years, as it became increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, Wikipedia, Amikumu and Google Translate. Esperanto speakers are often called "Esperantists" (Esperantistoj). (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello, I'm currently "celebrating" my considerable jet lag by staying up to blog the crossword instead of getting up at 4:30am to do it, which is the normal M.O. Any unsavory, untoward, or incoherent parts of this write-up are to be blamed on the jet lag, whereas any good parts are to be credited to my talent, handsomeness, and heroic commitment to the public good. Let's begin. This puzzle is extremely online and really Really wants you to know it. Like, really. OK, message received. On computers, playing games, asking Reddit things for some reason ... got it. Not a huge fan of getting your freshness exclusively from a rash of proper nouns that really require you to belong to certain FAN BASES in order to know them. To be clear, I actually like the answer FAN BASES, but TOADETTE (18A: Mario character with a mushroom head and pink braids) ... not so much. I have "oof" and [frowny face] written in the margin of my puzzle next to ASKREDDIT. Also, does BuzzFeed even exist any more? When it stopped having a crossword, I stopped paying attention, and honestly I don't see anyone linking to it much, if at all, any more. As for Reddit, I know people who are DEDICATEd Redditors (ugh, that word) and find a lot of value in it, but I have been there for a few things, including certain crossword conversations, and the vibe ... not for me. I don't like hive minds and I don't like being online more than I already am, so ASKREDDIT, I will not be doing. I'd sooner Ask Jeeves, which was a thing, in the last century, or else I fever-dreamed it, also possible. Much of the '90s internet feels that way (not always in a bad way). Is "SO DOPE" really the equivalent of "Da bomb" (speaking of the last century ...)? [Da bomb, today] feels like it would've been closer to correct, and at least gets at "Da bomb"'s semi-comical datedness. There is something trying-too-hard about this puzzle's attempts at Now-ness. But then there are undeniably interesting parts to it. My Goodwill Meter went down to about zero after ASKREDDIT but the puzzle got all of it back with ZIGGY STARDUST—would've loved a (much) harder clue on that one, but ... it's hard not to love a puzzle with *that* as the central, marquee answer.

And then BAD HAIR DAY and MCGRIDDLES (two things I never have) take the puzzle all kinds of funky places, as does the made-up (sorry, "constructed") language of ESPERANTO, which I always thought was a Utopian (IDEALIST) goof but apparently the dream is still alive. Actually, lots of really interesting connections to spiritism. For instance: "The Brazilian Spiritist Federation publishes Esperanto coursebooks, translations of Spiritism's basic books, and encourages Spiritists to become Esperantists." And: "William T. Stead, a famous spiritualist and occultist in the United Kingdom, co-founded the first Esperanto club in the U.K." (wikipedia). Did you know that William Shatner starred in a 1966 horror film ("Incubus") filmed entirely in ESPERANTO!? Well, now you do:

The one objectively terrible thing about this puzzle is not one not two not three but four UPs. What the hell? Are you doing a bit? Is there a hidden UP theme? Because ... yeesh. And three of those UPs are crammed into the bottom left corner, and two of them are crossing. Just a sloppy wreck. Lots of other preposition-ending answers: SIT BY, ACT ON, FIT IN, WISE TO ... But those prepositions are all fine, largely because There Aren't Four Of Them. TERAFLOP is another one of those "extremely online" answers that alienated me a bit (37D: Large unit of computing speed), but that one's entirely on me. There are some things that you don't know that you just know you should know, you know? I, like many of you, probably, some of you, surely, went with TERABYTE and then couldn't square the (intriguing!) -YY ending on 57A: At a high interest rate? (KEENLY) and so SCRAPPEDTERABYTE. Then wanted something like TERAFLOW (reasoning—reasonably, I thought—that "computer speed" might be measured in terms of "flow"). But nope. FLOP. My solving skills there, not SO DOPE. But despite being occasionally way out of my wheelhouse and tonally ... not my thing (much of the time), I did enjoy working it all out. I'm oddly impressed by "OW! OW!" (48A: "Man, that hurts!"). Feels original. I like its compactness, as well as its expressiveness. I had YEOW there at first, as, again, I'm sure, many, or at least some, of you did as well.

What else?:

21A: ___ Solo, son of Leia Organa (BEN)—LOL, BEN Solo, really? I am so tired of having to learn tertiary and even more minor characters in these damn IP universes I swear to god ... BEN Solo is the TOADETTE of the "Star Wars" universe.
20A: Jollity (MIRTH)—had the "M" and went with MERRY, as in "to make MERRY"
23A: Perfectly cromulent (FINE)—I believe I used "cromulent" the other day in a puzzle write-up. I love that a made-up word from a decades-old throwaway "Simpsons" joke has now become simply "a word":

56D: Patty and Selma's workplace on "The Simpsons," for short (DMV)—look, puzzle, if you're trying to win me over by leaning heavy into the sitcom that absolutely defined my young adulthood, then you can just ... keep going, actually. It's working great. Patty & Selma > BEN & TOADETTE

54A: Producer of many popular singles (KRAFT)—did someone say "64 slices of American cheese"!?

27A: His initial stands for Tureaud (MR. T)—this is Charles Entertainment Cheese-level inside info. SO DOPE!

OK, good enough. Happy New Year's Eve! See you tomorrow for the first puzzle of the new year!

P.S. anyone else give this answer a shot? [see below] I wrote it in as a mini-prayer: "please oh please let this be right so the Angry Villagers can burn CrossWorld to the ground and we can start anew..." But it was not to be [warning: profanity! run away!]:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Adam Wagner, Michael Liberman and Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"In Play" — playing around with (the meaning of) "IN". Circled squares in the first four themers contain words that become the basis for understanding the last four themers; that is, in the top half of the grid, the circled-square words are "In" the longer answers, providing "literal depictions" of the corresponding theme answers in the bottom half of the grid (where all answers follow the pattern ___ IN ___). Thus:

Theme answers:

RECTANGULAR PRISM (23A: Stick of butter geometrically)
"LOVE WILL TEAR US APART" (31A: Seminal 1980 hit by Joy Division)
MOUNTAIN STATES (50A: Colorado, Idaho and Wyoming, among others)
"DOCTOR DOLITTLE" (61A: Hit 1998 Eddie Murphy comedy based on books by Hugh Lofting)
GET BACK IN SHAPE (71A: Recommit to one's fitness ... or what 23-Across depicts literally) ("reclaim" (i.e. a word meaning "get back") is literally inside RECTANGULAR PRISM (a "shape")
BREAK OUT IN SONG (82A: What characters in musicals often do ... or what 31-Across depicts literally) ("erupt" (i.e. synonym of "break out") is literally inside "LOVE WILL TEAR US APART" (i.e. a "song" title)
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES (98A: Useful people to know ... or what 50-Across depicts literally) ("mates" (slang for "friends") is literally inside MOUNTAIN STATES (i.e. "high places")
PICTURE IN PICTURE (110A: Screen feature that facilitates multitasking ... or what 61-Across depicts literally) ("doodle" (i.e. a "picture") is literally inside "DOCTOR DOLITTLE" (i.e. a motion "picture")

Word of the Day: SNES (120A: Old video game console inits.) —

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea,1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania, and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the Super Famicom (SFC). In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.
The Super NES is Nintendo's second programmable home console, following the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The console introduced advanced graphics and sound capabilities compared with other systems at the time. It was designed to accommodate the ongoing development of a variety of enhancement chips integrated into game cartridges to be competitive into the next generation. (wikipedia)

• • •

Apologies for what will undoubtedly be a somewhat brief write-up—we actually have New Year's Eve plans! This never happens! But we are committed to an 8pm dinner reservation at Parlor City Vegan, a delightful local restaurant run by even more delightful people, and since I don't want to blog *after* dinner, and since I *definitely* don't want to try getting up early (yet ... still adjusting to this northern hemisphere / eastern time zone nonsense), I need to do this now, when the puzzle comes out (at 6pm on Saturday) and I need to do it fast (in time for me to shave and shower before dinner). There's going to be a tarot reader! I didn't even notice this part of the dinner until my wife pointed it out to me just now. I saw that there were various courses named "Water Sign,""Air Sign," etc. but I had no idea they were committing to the bit so hard. I've never had any formal occult experience, but I am Ready for anything New (no matter its Truth Value). OK, I still haven't started the write-up. You see how this is a problem. Remember: blame jet lag. Onward!

This was a three-parter—the first part, where I solve the puzzle normally, putting the theme answers together, top to bottom; the second part (the funnest part), where I hit the first "depicts literally" clue and then the entire theme concepts drops at once, and I solve all the remaining themers bam bam bam; and the third part, clean-up. I think it was worth it for part two alone. I decided to just gulp all the themers down at once. I challenged myself to see if I could solve them all with no help from crosses. And I'm happy to say: challenge ... risen to! That was awkward. Let's try again: mission accomplished!

Sometimes I take issue with themes that give themselves away so easily, but since there was a secondary puzzle element to those later themers, where you had not only the straight definitions but the visual cues from the earlier (upper half of the grid-) themers to help you out. This meant that getting those themers in the bottom half with no crosses went from highly unlikely to definitely possible. I enjoyed the adventure (and the success!). As for the rest of it (parts 1 and 3), yeah, sure, it all holds up fine—better than most Sundays, for sure. I had no idea butter was shaped like a "prism"—the only prisms I know are not rectangular, and they reflect light, but I just trust this is a mathematical / geometrical concept of which I am ignorant, fine. I really really Really loved the Joy Division clue. About as "in my wheelhouse" as you can get without actually taking the exact shape of my wheelhouse. I threw "LOVE WILL TEAR US APART" across the grid with only the "V" in place and was so happy that I actually thought "well, you probably f'd it up somehow ... isn't 'LOVE WILL TEAR US APART' an INXS song!? Do you even know anything about music?!" (this is how my brain treats me roughly 16 of the 24 hours of the day). But no, ha, happily, my Joy Division memory was spot on. I like the way the puzzle kinda sorta half-fudges "DOCTOR DOLITTLE" into being a "picture" (by simply cluing it as such). It's a book, but ... yes, also a (motion) picture, many times over, but most notably / recently with Eddie Murphy in the title role.

I was completely baffled by ENCELADUS (3D: Moon of Saturn found to have a potentially inhabitable ocean), which looks like Latin for "enchilada," so I needed every single cross there, but luckily those were all readily gettable. No other serious challenges. Had some hesitation over completing "IT'S NO ___" (coulda been "IT'S NOT ___" or ... well, it coulda been a lot of things). Wrote in OSAGES (!?!?!) before OZARKS because I have no idea why actually (62D: Region encompassing most of the Arkansas/Missouri border). Wrote in PERLS before PURLS because I really thought that's how it was spelled (48D: Makes certain knitting stitches). Got ING and AIG confused, as I often do (6D: Big inits. in insurance). Misremembered NIALL as NEALL at first. Thrilled that I remembered that SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) was a thing, because that is one ugly and hard-to-infer abbr. Otherwise, no struggle. Big thumbs-up to POSES NUDE, "IT'S NO BIGGIE," and POUR IT ON. OK, that's it, gotta get ready to go out and eat / get my tarot on! Happy New Year, everyone!

P.S. very cute that the three of them worked COLLABORATE into the grid. Yay team!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Seth Bisen-Hersh

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday)

THEME: 2(BU) — theme answers contain two words, each of which contains the letter pairing "BU," which gives you 2 "BU"s ... all tied together by the revealer, "IT HAD TO BE YOU" (50A: Classic song about a soulmate ... or a phonetic hint for repeated pairs of letters in 19-, 27- and 42-Across):

Theme answers:

TRIBUTE ALBUM (19A: The 2005 compilation "Killer Queen" is one honoring Queen)
BUNSEN BURNER (27A: Chemistry lab device)
HAMBURGER BUN (42A: Topper for a Whopper)

Word of the Day: BABKA (20D: Loaf-shaped cake) —

A babka is a sweet braided bread (not a cake) which originated in the Jewish communities of Poland and Ukraine. It is popular in Israel [...] and in the Jewish diaspora. It is prepared with a yeast-leavened dough that is rolled out and spread with a filling such as chocolate, cinnamon, fruit, or cheese, then rolled up and braided before baking. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

Was a little ho-hum on this one upon completion, but once I noticed that the revealer indicated not just "BU" ("... BE YOU") but actually the pair of "BU"S ("... TO BE YOU," i.e. 2(BU)), I was won over. Conceptually, this was on a somewhat higher plane than most Mondays. Plus the fill is whistle-clean, and occasionally even interesting. Further, there are no other stray "BU" pairs lying around the grid—every "BU" is involved in a themer. This indicates a certain measure of polish and attention to detail, and gives the puzzle a certain elegance, even if most people won't really notice it. The solve itself wasn't terribly exciting, but the revealer provided a good "aha," and with no grievous fill to distract your attention along the way, the strong revealer is enough. No real complaints. I do have a question, though: BABKA—what is it? I mean, is it cake or is it bread. Wikipedia insists it is "not a cake" (see "Word of the Day," above), and Merriam-Webster calls it "a glazed sweet bread made with dried fruit (such as raisins)." But then Google (Oxford Languages) calls it a "loaf-shaped coffee cake," and something called spoonuniversity.com says, "Babka is a dense cake, although it looks a little like a bread." I will say that BABKA was the answer that held me up the most. I had the "B" and could think only of BUNDT. There were more hold-ups than normal for me on a Monday, but then the non-hold-up parts were sub-Monday easy, so ... Medium, i.e. typical-Monday easy, for me.

Other hold-ups included ABOUT US (8D: Information header on a business's website)—just had trouble parsing it. And then I had CLASP for CLAMP (33D: Gripping tool) and could not see ORCHID from the -RC- (46A: Flower that vanilla comes from) (sadly, I don't think I knew that about vanilla!). TRIBUTE ALBUM also took more than just the TRI- to give itself away, which it shouldn't have, but it did. I hesitated over BIG IF, too—once again, issues with parsing. I really like BIG IF (3D: It's very unlikely to happen). Colloquial, in-the-language / current, makes a conjunction into a noun, squeezes two words into a small space—all fun. That should be enough for today. Hope you are continuing (or beginning) to enjoy the new year. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Margaret Seikel

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "MOVE FAST AND / BREAK THINGS" (17A: With 55-Across, modern principle of start-ups)— "THING" is "broken" in two, with "TH" on one side and "ING" on the other side of three long theme answers ... I confess I have no idea how the "MOVE FAST" part factors in:
Theme answers:

"THANKS FOR COMING" (23A: Host's farewell phrase)
"THE WEST WING" (34A: TV political drama known for its "walk and talks")
"THAT'S SURPRISING" (48A: "Never would have guessed it!")

Word of the Day: MEG CABOT (3D: "The Princess Diaries" author) —

Meggin Patricia Cabot (born February 1, 1967) is an American novelist. She has written and published over 50 novels of young adult and adult fiction and is best known for her young adult series Princess Diaries, which was later adapted by Walt Disney Pictures into two feature films. Cabot has been the recipient of numerous book awards, including the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, the American Library Association Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, the Tennessee Volunteer State TASL Book Award, the Book Sense Pick, the Evergreen Young Adult Book Award, the IRA/CBC Young Adult Choice, and many others. She has also had number-one New York Times bestsellers, and more than 25 million copies of her books are in print across the world. (wikipedia)

• • •

So I am going to move now from blaming my possible blogging impairment on jet lag to blaming it on illness (and also still somehow jet lag). I was on the couch all day watching movies while my wife was in bed all day just sleeping with the cat (who was Extremely happy with this development, thank you very much—nowhere he'd rather be than curled up next to "The Lady," which is what he, that is I-doing-his-voice, calls Penelope). It is currently 11-something PM and I just *woke up* from my latest short / fitful sleeping episode. The worst is over, but oof, sleep, it is not on schedule. Anyway, my solving skills seem to be still intact, but I feel like I must have missed something with the theme, as I cannot find the "MOVE FAST" component and I'm sure there must be one. Or else, I feel there should be one and so I'm stubbornly still searching. The lack of such a component, combined with my inherent revulsion at the revealer phrase (tech bro'y sloganeering can go jump in the sea), meant that I didn't really groove on this one. Its pop culture universe is also (largely) not my pop culture universe, but that's just ... the breaks (boom, big pun, even in sickness, still got it!). Don't know anything about "The Princess Diaries" so 2x "Princess Diaries" = 2x = [shrug] (22A: ___ Thermopolis, Anne Hathaway's role in "The Princess Diaries" => MIA). MEG CABOT's name does ring a bell, though—I've probably had her name in my eyeline countless times at the bookstore). Never did take to "THE WEST WING," but the whole Aaron Sorkin "walk and talk" thing, I have definitely heard of (I was a big fan of Sorkin's "Sports Night," which probably shares some dialogue characteristics with "West Wing"). I have read Sally ROONEY, though (61A: "Normal People" author Sally), and anyway, it's not like you needed to be Very familiar with any of these pop culture answers to solve the puzzle fairly quickly. My issues with the puzzle are, as I say, primarily thematic, in that it seems incompletely executed, and that revealer phrase, blargh.

It's weird that puzzleworld wants to perpetrate "I WAS HAD" on the world when my ear always wants it to be "I'VE BEEN HAD!" Now, "I WAS HAD" returns the most Google hits, but you get a whole bunch of odd hits for grammar sites, instances where there's a comma between "was" and "had," instances where the relevant phrase is something like "who I was had nothing to do with it." I think the phrase I'm *really* hearing in my head is "WE WAS ROBBED!" but I watch a lot of gangster films, which might explain why I hear what I hear. On the symmetrical side of the grid, "WANNA GO" feels perfect. Fresh, current, terse, bouncy, good. "SEEMS OK" is in the same general category. As for difficulty, there wasn't much today, but it didn't seem unusually easy, either, for a Tuesday. I had JET before SST (the retired FRANCo-British supersonic crosswordese that time forgot!) (47D: Concorde, e.g., in brief), but no other mistakes / write-overs. I am currently amusing myself by reading a couple of rows in this grid as if the answers went together. I'm particularly intrigued by the existential question "IS LAM LAM?" and by the potential animated series "EEL TEEN" or "TEEN EWE." I'm imagining a juvenile delinquent young sheep just hanging out under a street light, smoking, glaring defiantly at me as EEL TEEN rides up on his motorcycle and does the same. I would watch a show about the escapades of these two, for sure. Sorkin, call me.

See you tomorrow, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Laura Breiman and Tom Bachant

Relative difficulty: It felt hard but my time was standard-- 6:40

THEME: CELESTIAL BODIES — Various space things are spelled out in circles:

MOON
COMET
GALAXY
STAR
ASTEROID

Word of the Day: "The Song of the LARK" (Willa Cather novel) —

Cather achieved recognition as a novelist of the frontier and pioneer experience. She wrote of the spirit of those settlers moving into the western states, many of them European immigrants in the nineteenth century. Common themes in her work include nostalgia and exile. A sense of place is an important element in Cather's fiction: physical landscapes and domestic spaces are for Cather dynamic presences against which her characters struggle and find community.

• • •

Hey besties, welcome to another addition of Malaika MWednesday! I write to y'all from Mexico City where I will be vibing for the next several weeks. Tonight I was sipping on some mezcal from a brand called Mala Idea, which means "bad idea"-- I loooove that name. I have a zillion things to say about this puzzle, so let's dive in!

First of all.... I think I know one of the constructors?? Like not as in "we talk on Twitter" but as in she and my sister went to the same very small middle school together roughly fifteen years ago and we would sometimes give her a ride to school and watch episodes of Psych in the car but we have not interacted since then. Laura, if you are ISK Laura, hi! Crazy running into you here.

Next, let's talk about the theme. I think this type of theme sits very well on a Wednesday. It doesn't fit into one of the Standard Crossword Themes (TM), like "add a letter to make a wacky phrase" or "all the last words can follow the same word" but it isn't quite diabolical enough for a Thursday. And "reading the letters in the circles" is definitely a Known Crossword Concept, but I've never seen it executed with this subject matter.

Arranging letters into those patterns is very tough from a constructing standpoint, and I am impressed that we still got some fun answers like OREO THIN and WEIRDOS and MAGENTA. There were some harder things-- for example, I am very much a Tech Girl but had never heard of EERO. Had y'all? I also don't love to see random Roman numerals, like CDL, in a puzzle, but at least they gave it an easy clue! And, I am positive I have complained about NOES as the plural of "no" on this very website and I am also positive that the commenters have reassured me that it is correct actually. But it just looks so weird!!

What I loved most about this puzzle was the grid design (soo pretty) and the revealer, which reminded me of the "Heavenly Bodies" theme of the 2018 Met Gala. (Actually, I literally thought the theme was CELESTIAL BODIES until I just now Googled it to find out what year that happened.) Any entry that reminds me of these legends is a welcome sight.

My least favorite thing about the puzzle was the shapes of the theme answers. Whenever there's some attempt at turning the squares of a puzzle into a shape, people will argue about whether it was successful or not. For example, I loved this duck, but other people didn't see it at all. I liked the depiction of COMET here, but the rest didn't quite convince me.... MOON in particular was depicted as a square.... I don't know much but I know that moons are not squares. And isn't our GALAXY more of a spiral shape than a large circle? What did y'all think? Maybe I just don't know enough about space!

Bullets:

["Evita" setting: Abbr.] for ARG: One thing I hate is when an entry has an existing modern meaning, but the editors at The Times pick a clunkier or more dated reference. To me, ARG is a common term in Python programming, but instead they chose to use a kinda random abbreviation. :/ (See also, GIT and LOCS.)
[Type of car whose name comes from the French word for "cut"] for COUPE: A coupe is also a type of glassware. I was recently at a party where a friend was drinking out of one and she said "I have a fun fact-- but don't fact check it!!" The fact was that the first coupe glasses were molded after Marie Antoinette's breasts and indeed that is very fun and I will never fact check it.
[Circus barker?] for SEAL: Nothing to say here beyond I loved this clue!

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: SQUEEZE PLAY (54A: Risky baseball strategy that's indicated four times in this puzzle?) — the title of a "play" (a Broadway musical, to be much more specific) can be found "squeezed" into four boxes in this grid:

Theme answers:

LEVITATE / INEVITABLE (17A: Rise in the air / 2D: Certain to happen) ("Evita")
THAI RESTAURANT / COCHAIRS (21A: Establishment offering tom yum soup or pad woon sen noodles) [I think the "soup" and "noodles" bits here are redundant] / 5D: Runs together, in a way) ("Hair")
"CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM" / PARENTAL (36A: Acclaimed HBO comedy series whose creator stars as himself / 28D: Kind of guidance) ("Rent")
CAT SCAN / CATSUP (61A: Body image? / 61D: Condiment for a burger) ("Cats")

Word of the Day: SQUEEZE PLAY —

In baseball, the squeeze play (a.k.a. squeeze bunt) is a maneuver consisting of a sacrifice bunt with a runner on third base. The batter bunts the ball, expecting to be thrown out at first base, but providing the runner on third base an opportunity to score. Such a bunt is most common with one out. According to Baseball Almanac, the squeeze play was invented in 1894 by George Case and Dutch Carter during a college game at Yale University.
In a safety squeeze, the runner at third takes a lead, but does not run towards homeplate until the batter makes contact bunting.
In a suicide squeeze, the runner takes off as soon as the pitcher begins the windup to throw the pitch, and before releasing the ball. If properly executed, and the batter bunts the ball nearly anywhere in fair territory on the ground, a play at home plate is extremely unlikely. However, if the batter misses the ball the runner will likely be tagged out, and if the batter pops the ball up a double play is likely.
These plays are often used in the late innings of a close game to score a tying, winning, or insurance run. A pitcher's typical defense against a squeeze play, if he sees the batter getting into position to attempt a bunt, is to throw a high pitch that is difficult to bunt on the ground. (wikipedia)

• • •

The thing that stunned me most about this puzzle was the sudden realization that ... well, I like the band Squeeze, and I own many of their albums ("LPS" and "CDS"), and one of those albums is entitled "East Side Story" and another of those albums is entitled "Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti" but and one of those albums is entitled "Frank" but (most relevantly) still another of those albums is entitled simply "Play" ... and I never, not once, not until I was taking preliminary notes for this blog post, noticed (~30+ years late) the Squeeze / "Play" connection. The album is not baseball-themed, that I'm aware of, and the album cover, well, I don't really know what's happening there (pictured) but there's nothing to suggest the baseball angle, but dang ... I like Squeeze, I like baseball, and ... I never put 2 + 2 together. Maybe Squeeze intended no baseball implications when they named the album "Play," I don't know, but I should've noticed. *I* should've noticed. Again, I say, dang. As for the puzzle, this is a completely acceptable rebus theme, undermined only by the fact that "play" doesn't really fully capture what's being squozen here (these are musicals), but they take place on stage and have dialogue, so sure, "Plays," fine.

The only real difficulty is uncovering that first rebus square. To do this, I had to go down and find the revealer and solve it early. I was totally stumped in the NW despite having all but one square seemingly in place. The main problem was the not-as-clever-as-it-imagines clue on RAE (4D: Good name for a marine biologist). After rejecting ROE, I thought "ah, RAY, that works perfectly." Which left me L-TY for 17A: Rise in the air. No hope. With those "good name for a ___" clues, the right answer should be bam, spot-on, undeniable, not "eh, pick from half a dozen or so." But annnnnyway, that was why I couldn't get that square. Also, "EVITA" is way longer than your typical rebus string, so it's hard to parse the missing parts of INEVITABLE until you know more about the theme. After I got the revealer, and then that first rebus square, the rest of them came pretty easily. The hardest one was probably the "Cats" square crammed all the way down in the SE corner. I had SCAN at 61A: Body image? and (like RAY) it seemed perfect, so it took some doing before I figured out to put the "Cat" part in there too. I thought the rebus square was two squares down from there, and was seriously wondering if there was some play called, I dunno, "Oran Gep" or something (67A: Negroni garnish => PEEL). But "CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM" and THAI RESTAURANT were absolute gimmes, and the few names I didn't know (CORTEZ) or couldn't remember (CLEA) were not too hard to draw out.

Little problems, now. Read "flowers" as "followers" in 1D: The flowers in Amy Lowell's "Your great puffs of flowers / Are everywhere in this my New England" (LILACS), so I was looking for, I dunno, a religious sect or something like that for a bit. I thought the kind of "guidance" that was called for at 28D was MORAL, but that was before I got the theme. Oh, there was this:

But that was more of a goof. Less of a goof was when I had it as "TECH lab" and "PATH lab." Shrug. I remembered SENNA—how, I don't know (26A: Yellow-flowered medicinal plant). Very flowery puzzle, this one. I couldn't stand ISLATE so when I was done I just rewrote the section to make myself happy:

HEAT RASH sounds bad but it's a good answer (8D: Summer eruption). That's all I've got on this one. Overall: acceptable and enjoyable. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Start of an old advice column / SAT 12-17-22 / Forked-tailed fliers / Honorific that translates to born before / Eschews a cab, say / Outdoor event with long sticks informally / Some modern media-related speculations / Subject of a Nepali hunting license

Drifting platform for polar wildlife / MON 12-19-22 / Part of a swimmer's sidestroke / Archer's arrow launcher / Built in lag time to allow bleeping during a live broadcast

Fruit used to make slivovitz / TUE 12-20-22 / Banned substances in sports for short / Creed Christian avowal / Stringed instrument that rhymes with another stringed instrument / Behind-the-arc shots informally

Metal next to tungsten on the periodic table / WED 12-21-22 / Country with second-most Portuguese speakers / Large-scale corporate union / Manhattan on an envelope / Ideal for audiophiles in brief

Those who consume it become immortal, according to myth / THU 12-22-2022 / Methuselah's old man / English king called "the Great" / What smoke coming out of the ears may signal in a cartoon / Name derived from the Greek for "messenger"

Research university adjacent to the CDC / FRI 12-23-2022 / Language that gave us "cummerbund" / Novel purchases that everyone's talking about? / Palio di ___, annual Italian horse race held since the 13th century / "The Daily", to pick a popular example

Old televangelism org. / SAT 12-24-22 / Sockeye relative / Ancient arts venue / 1979 J.D. Souther hit with a rhyming title / Constantly evolving social phenomenon / Old pad holders / Letters used in absence of a letter / Roman emperor who overthrew Galba

Like old-fashioned railroad crossing signs / MON 12-26-22 / Landslide of wet sediment / Princess who says into the garbage chute flyboy / 97.5% of a penny / Bitter part of an orange /

Helpful pollinator / TUES 12-27-22 / Passing craze / "Honest" guy on a five / Reddish purple / Catching some Z's

Vancouver Island city for which a chocolate treat is named / WED 12-28-22 / Brit who wrote "The Vanishing Half" / "Rule" stating that the number of transistors per microchip doubles every two years / Compser Schumann

Easter starter? / THU 12-29-22 / Hayek who portrayed Frida Kahlo / Draped garment / World Cup datum / Sections of a barn / Cry of accomplishment

Peppery orange-red condiment / FRI 12-30-22 / "September 1, 1939" poet / Metric unit equal to 100 square meters / Cuppa from China / World capital whose name means "elephant trunk" in Arabic

Mario character with a mushroom head and pink braids / SAT 12-31-22 / Forum that provides material for many BuzzFeed articles / His initial stands for Tureaud / Rear-view feature on a Jeep / Fast-food fare in which two pancakes form a sandwich

Loaf-shaped cake / MON 1-2-23 / Classic song about a soulmate / Ford model that's also a zodiac sign / One born shortly after WW II informally

TV political drama known for its walk and talks / TUE 1-3-23 / Bird in Tootsie Pop commercials since 1970 / Epitome of slipperiness / Multitasker's browserful

Sorrento and Telluride / WED 1-4-23 / Amazon-owned home Wi-Fi brand / First of the Chinese dynasties