Dweller on the Musandam Peninsula / SAT 3-25-23 / Traffic sign near a jughandle, maybe / Ancient Nahuatl speaker / Tech for 1970s TV characters Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers / Software surprises named for holiday treats / Musical with a preteen title character / Tech for time travel in Back to the Future

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy 

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: jughandle (26D: Traffic sign near a jughandle, maybe => NO LEFT TURN) —

A jughandle is a type of ramp or slip road that changes the way traffic turns left at an at-grade intersection (in a country where traffic drives on the right). Instead of a standard left turn being made from the left lane, left-turning traffic uses a ramp on the right side of the road. In a standard forward jughandle or near-side jughandle, the ramp leaves before the intersection, and left-turning traffic turns left off of it rather than the through road; right turns are also made using the jughandle. In a reverse jughandle or far-side jughandle, the ramp leaves after the intersection, and left-turning traffic loops around to the right and merges with the crossroad before the intersection. 

The jughandle is also known as a Jersey left due to its high prevalence within the U.S. state of New Jersey(though this term is also locally used for an abrupt left at the beginning of a green light cycle). The New Jersey Department of Transportation defines three types of jughandles. "Type A" is the standard forward jughandle. "Type B" is a variant with no cross-street intersected by the jughandle; it curves 90 degrees left to meet the main street, and is either used at a "T" intersection or for a U-turn only. "Type C" is the standard reverse jughandle. (wikipedia)

23A: Tech for 1970s TV characters Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers (BIONICS)

Once again I find that my beloved Friday puzzle has been moved to Saturday. It's a bizarre trend that has been making Fridays kind of miserable but Saturdays delightful, so I can't decide how I feel about it. If both days could be delightful, that would be great. But if Saturday wants to act more like a traditional Friday puzzle ("whoosh-whoosh""zoom-zoom" etc.), it can be my guest. Today's puzzle has everything I want in a themeless puzzle—no stunt grids, no architectural showing off, just a boatload of fun, including twelve answers of 8+ letters, all of them criss-crossing in a way that gives the grid life and flow, and all of them ... well, at least solid, and frequently vibrant, zingy, colloquial ... just fantastic. Now I will admit that at least some of my enjoyment of this puzzle came from the fact that this is one of the most Gen X puzzles I've ever done. Robyn and I are roughly the same age, and if there is anything I could fault this puzzle for, it's that she really really stays in her (i.e. my) generational lane. How much of my '70s & '80s childhood is on display here? I've got the original Star Wars (1977), which was the most important and transformative movie-going experience of my life (still, to this date; I saw it seven times that summer); I've got "The Six-Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman" (The same way I had the "Six-Million Dollar Man" action figure and my sister had the "Bionic Woman" Jaime Sommers hair-styling toy that melted in front of the fireplace on Christmas Day); I've got ANNIE (1982) and Back to the Future (1985), and then I've got R.E.M. and Nora DUNN-era SNL ... there's hardly a speck of pop culture that's *outside* my specific life experience today, which hardly ever happens. I hope that the puzzle was still accessible and entertaining to those not born between roughly 1965 and 1980. I think there's plenty here for everyone. But boy oh boy was this puzzle Of An Age (namely, mine).