1992 rap song that popularized term bootylicious / TUE 6--16-20 / Waze technology for short / Hawaii's Forbidden Isle / Descend by rope as in mountaineering / Evil alter ego in Robert Louis Stevenson story / Bulky herbivorous dinosaur

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:31)

THEME: GRAY AREAS (61A: Ill-defined situations ... as seen four times in this puzzle?)— I'm guessing the grid in the app / paper has "gray areas" where the circled squares appear in my grid; these squares spell out units of measurement, which, if preceded by the word "square," become units of area. So the square inch, square foot, square yard, and square mile are all gray (literally) areas (figuratively)

Word of the Day: NI'IHAU (11D: Hawaii's "Forbidden Isle") —

Niʻihau (Hawaiian: [ˈniʔiˈhɐw]) anglicized as Niihau (/ˈniː.haʊ, ˈniː.iːˌhaʊ/ NEE-how, NEE-ee-how) is the westernmost main and seventh largest inhabited island in Hawaii. It is 17.5 miles (28.2 km) southwest of Kauaʻi across the Kaulakahi Channel. Its area is 69.5 square miles (180 km²). Several intermittent playa lakes provide wetland habitats for the Hawaiian coot, the Hawaiian stilt, and the Hawaiian duck. The island is designated as critical habitat for Brighamia insignis, an endemic and endangered species of Hawaiian lobelioid. The United States Census Bureau defines Niʻihau and the neighboring island and State Seabird Sanctuary of Lehua as Census Tract 410 of Kauai County, Hawaii. Its 2000 census population was 160; Its 2010 census population was 170.

Elizabeth Sinclair purchased Niʻihau in 1864 for $10,000 from the Kingdom of Hawaii. The island's private ownership passed on to her descendants, the Robinsons. During World War II, the island was the site of the Niʻihau Incident, in which, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese navy fighter pilot crashed on the island, then terrorized its residents for a week. 

The island, known as "the Forbidden Isle", is off-limits to all but the Robinson family and their relatives, U.S. Navy personnel, government officials, and invited guests. From 1987 onwards, a limited number of supervised activity tours and hunting safaris have opened to tourists. The island is currently managed by brothers Bruce and Keith Robinson. The people of Niʻihau are noted for their gemlike lei pūpū (shell lei) craftsmanship. They speak Hawaiian as a primary language. (wikipedia)

Kind of a non-event, this one. There's just very little theme material, and you certainly don't have to have any sense of the theme to finish (I certainly didn't). Then when you're done, what do you have? Sixteen total squares of theme material?? And ... they're just basic units of measurement. And you have to infer the missing "square" part to get the "area""joke" ... but there's just a big "But Why?" question hanging over the whole thing. No payoff. The solve wasn't too bad, if you take it as an easy themeless. But it wasn't exciting or interesting enough to be a themeless, and it also wasn't exciting or interesting enough as a themed puzzle, so it's just ... here. The NYTXW is gonna have to step up its game at least a little, as other publications are definitely coming after them, quality-wise. The USA Today is definitely more thoughtfully and carefully edited at this point (though its puzzles rarely get above Tuesday-level difficulty), and the New Yorker just made a big push into their burgeoning puzzle business, adding a Wednesday puzzle to go with their Monday and Friday offerings, and hiring three new regular constructors—all women. All. Women. This is great news for puzzledom and a pretty obvious slap in the face to the all-male-edited NYTXW, which has been so indifferent to the issue of gender equity and has had such a dismal recent record of publishing women. The NYTXW is a huge business, and won't feel any real heat from competition any time soon, but it's at least worth noting, for historical purposes if nothing else, that the non-NYT puzzle ecosystem has never been stronger than it is at this current moment. Right now. The NYTXW just isn't leading the way anymore. The NYTXW is stagnating. Same men making the same puzzles they've been making: competent, occasionally very good, but too often bad. At this point, it is definitely looking backward, not forward—completely contrary to Shortz's early editorship, which was revolutionary and important.

TESLA ORKIN YSL RONCO ALTOID LEGO TGEL—I don't know if that's more or less than the normal amount of brand names in a puzzle, but it feels like a lot, and they're awfully concentrated up top, particularly in that NW corner. I can tell you precisely where solvers are going to have trouble today: two answers that may as well be in neon, they're so different from the others in terms of general familiarity. NI'IHAU is the first and ABSEIL (45D: Descend by rope, as in mountaineering) is the second. If people have trouble, this is where they will have it. Oh, and the plural of CONCHS is super-weird-looking, so maybe folks had trouble there. Or maybe you never heard of T/GEL (37D: Neutrogena dandruff shampoo) (I think the shampoo I use is called T/SAL, also Neutrogena; I'm not in favor of either one as crossword material). FURL remains dumb without the UN- in front of it.


I had DULL before DRAB (26D: Lacking pizazz), but I think that's the only out-and-out error I had. I struggled with the two neon answers, but nothing else gave me much trouble. I liked the clue on ROCKS (66A: Wears stylishly, in slang). [Message with a hashtag] is the kind of clue for TWEET that only someone who had never seen Twitter could write. Tweets might contain hashtags. Or they might not. They might also contain links or pictures? Or nothing but text. Further, other social media posts feature hashtags. The clue just feels lazy. I wouldn't say this puzzle GOTANF (ugh), but it didn't GETANA, either.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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