One arriving tomorrow, supposedly / FRI 1-5-24 / ___ far niente (pleasant idleness) / Fashion label founded by Rihanna / Condiment sometimes mixed with mayonnaise / Campaigner, informally / Deceive, especially to avoid responsibility for something / The brachiocephalic trunk branches from it

• • •

The NW corner felt like its own separate puzzle today. I know that any place I start a puzzle is likely to be the hardest, since the start is the point at which I have the least in-the-grid information to go on (i.e. nothing), but the NW really seemed quite a bit tougher than any other section. Would I have felt that way about the SE if I'd started there? I dunno. Probably not. I know Alan THICKE—a no-question gimme (35D: Alan of "Growing Pains"). I did not have any no-question gimmes in the NW. Maybe HEE (26A: "Tee" follower). I wanted PLASMA right away (1A: ___ TV), but pulled it when P----H didn't seem to make any sense at 1D: "Amen to that!" (PREACH). Oh, I forgot APE, that seemed almost certain (6D: Mimic). But the clue on LEAGUE, yeesh (2D: American, for example). That's about as vague a baseball clue as I've ever seen. Wanted LITHE for AGILE (19A: Not stiff at all). No idea on CUTE. Wanted AD SITE, but that answer always feels like something crosswords just made up (are there sites that are just ads, popping up at you? And would *anyone* make that site their "destination"?) (3D: Pop-up destination). Eventually I recommitted to PLASMA, then AD SITE, then MARE helped out, and I got that damn corner down the missing square in ST-LE. My brain had so much trouble making any kind of grammatical sense out of 16A: Breeze for the beach, maybe. It just didn't compute, as a plausible series of words. Is it a wind? A cocktail, maybe? Is "Breeze for" some kind of verb phrase? Like, "hey, hepcats, let's get in the van and breeze for the beach today, whaddya say?" But no, it is an EASY thing for you to READ at the beach. Tortured, if superficially accurate. In other words, "CUTE." But once that section was done ... whoosh:

So excited to start the whooshing! And ... yet. Watch me make two quick errors right off this EAGER BEAVER pillar of letters (14D: Enthusiastic sort):

When I took that last screenshot, I was merely trying to chronicle the way EAGER BEAVER allowed me to shoot off into various corners of the grid. I did not, at that point, know that two of these new answers were wrong, one in a near-fatal way. I don't know my "brachiocephalic trunk" from a hole in the ground (27A: The brachiocephalic trunk branches from it), but things (limbs?) "branch" from your TORSO and "trunk" (I guess) suggested TORSO, so I wrote TORSO, not AORTA. That goof wasn't too hard to fix, eventually. The one that gutted me was the misspelling of FENTY. I wrote that answer in so proudly, so confidently ... sigh. The top of FENTY's wikipedia page says "Not to be confused with Fendi..." Now You Tell Me! I absolutely confused them, or conflated them, and that meant that when it came time to make sense of 21D: Concern for the 1%? ... I could not, because I had DEAD BAT DE-. It would've been much better for me to have been completely ignorant of Rihanna's fashion house (which only lasted two years???), then to be half-aware, as I was, and put that damn "D" in there. "Why are the 1% concerned with dead bats? Is this some Occupy slang that I never picked up on?" But no, it's FENTY / DEAD BATTERY. The clue on DEAD BATTERY is a fine one, but it was a "?" clue passing through an "error" I couldn't see, so ... unlucky me (FENTY is Rihanna's last name, btw: Robyn Rihanna FENTY). 

The rest of this puzzle was easy, so the overall difficulty was pretty close to Medium, I think. I had a lot of trouble with GODOT (again, as with LEAGUE, lack of crucial context makes clue hopelessly vague) (20A: One arriving tomorrow, supposedly). I had to wait for the cross to see who would win the DARNED v. DAMNED decision at 29A: "How about that!" (victory to DARNED). I can't see someone literally waving a white flag and saying "I LOSE." In fact, the idea that people say that phrase at all seems like something crosswords dreamed up. A white flag waver might say "I GIVE UP" or "I SURRENDER" or "STOP SHOOTING PLEASE." White flags imply the opponent should let up. "I LOSE" implies that the game is simply over. Also the SMART-ASS clue seems wrong as hell. "Clever enough to win every argument"? A SMART-ASS? I doubt it. A SMART-ASS would *believe* he was that clever. Maybe. But there's nothing genuinely clever about smartassery (trust me!). Plus smartassery has nothing to do with "arguments," really. It's more ... unwanted and unhelpful and smug and self-serving commentary (again, trust me!).

The clue on SLICED BREAD really missed because it seemed to kind of sort of want to go for the full Wonder (Bread) pun, but then balked and pulled back and ended up in some weird no-man's-land (31A: Innovation of the 1920s that's still spoken of with wonder today). I mean, "... spoken of with Wonder today?" was right there. I can't believe I'm sitting here *asking* for a question mark clue, but it's a new year, who knows what wonders (!) await. Anything need explaining? An alley-oop is an ASSIST in basketball (the pass caught *and* dunked mid-air, bam bam). A MARE is a "sea" on the moon (the dark spots) (5D: Dark side of the moon?). Everything else should be reasonably clear. 

More Holiday Pet Pics now—this is the last week! Soak it up!

[Longtime reader Kitty ironically has doggies—Cocopuff and Peppy. I'm supposed to say that they are the cutest, smartest, most loving doggies and please understand this is not a brag this is just a fact (thanks, Kitty)]

[Cutie & Zuzu! "Wonder Twin powers, activate! Form of ... aw, **** it, let's just sleep some more" (thanks, Sharon)]

[Mercury (named after Freddie, of course) enjoys the giant new cat toy that Becki has bought for him (thank, Becki!)]

["Norwegian forest cat, demanding a permanent installation" (thanks, Rhonda)]

[This romantically lit fluffball is Tommy, a rescued barn kitty—gone two years now, still remembered (thanks, Don)]

That's it for me. Coffee / cat time now. See you tomorrow. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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