Constructor: Boaz Moser
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
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THEME: none
Word of the Day: XENOMORPH (36A: Extraterrestrial menace in 5-Down) —
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I have awakened / awoken with an absolutely terrible headache neckache jawache, lord knows why, but lord, thy vassal doth not deserve this, truly. Anyway, I'm quite certain this has colored my solving experience, and maybe made the puzzle seem tougher than it was. All three of the short Acrosses in the NW were totally inscrutable to me, which made starting the puzzle ... difficult. Short crosses are supposed to come through for me, and those ... didn't. Even (finally) guessing ACME at 1D: Summit didn't help much. No idea what "jackknives" are or what they "cut," would never (ever) say "CRAP out" (I had CONK), and as for a cob ... I guess that's a male swan (?) ... yes, my crossword memory is telling me that's correct ... but I couldn't get off corn, or ... I wanna say "salad," but I know that's the two-B "cobb." Since I had CONK (not CRAP, ugh), the "bit of foam" in 13D: Bit of foam, perhaps (PEANUT) remained a mystery, even though I knew immediately that it was *packing* foam. I wanted KERNEL, gah. Abandoning this section and moving one over gave me ALIEN and ALAMO and LAX and IMF and (after a few beats) VALID, but "DO-" as a 8D: Enthusiastic assent??? No idea. "D'OH!? That's not an assent," I correctly reasoned. Oof. So just getting the ball rolling today was ... well, I got the ball rolling the way Sisyphus got the ball rolling, basically. Rough.
Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging
Word of the Day: XENOMORPH (36A: Extraterrestrial menace in 5-Down) —
The xenomorph (also known as a Xenomorph XX121, Internecivus raptus, or simply the alien or the creature) is a fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species that serves as the titular main antagonist of the Alien and Alien vs. Predator franchises. [...] The xenomorph's design is credited to Swiss surrealist and artist H. R. Giger, originating in a lithograph titled Necronom IV and refined for the series's first film, Alien. The practical effects for the xenomorph's head were designed and constructed by Italian special effects designer Carlo Rambaldi. Species design and life cycle have been extensively augmented, sometimes inconsistently, throughout each film // Unlike many other extraterrestrial races in film and television science fiction (such as the Daleks and Cybermen in Doctor Who, or the Klingons and Borg in Star Trek), the xenomorphs are not sapient toolmakers — they lack a technological civilization of any kind, and are instead primal, predatory creatures with no higher goal than the preservation and propagation of their own species by any means necessary, up to and including the elimination of other lifeforms that may pose a threat to their existence. Like wasps or termites, xenomorphs are eusocial, with a single fertile queen breeding a caste of warriors, workers, or other specialist strains. The xenomorphs' biological life cycle involves traumatic implantation of endoparasitoid larvae inside living hosts; these "chestburster" larvae erupt from the host's body after a short incubation period, mature into adulthood within hours, and seek out more hosts for implantation.
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After that, things settled into normalish Friday territory, but I was still thrown off repeatedly by a cluing style or voice, and a cultural frame of reference, that I just didn't connect with. I had the SH- at 23D: Improve, as an argument, and was certain it was SHORE UP ... only to find out it was SHARPEN. Had the -MORPH part of the Alien answer but absolutely no idea what the first part should be. Eventually reasoned XENO- from my knowledge of what that prefix means (namely, "alien"), and assumed (then) that XENOMORPH was a generic term for "alien life form" ... only to find out (Word of the Day!) that it's a franchise-specific life form found exclusively in Alien properties. Huh. Not a franchise I've spent a lot of time with, so ... shrug. No idea what this alleged country "standard" is ("Old SHEP"), and no idea who SHANE Gillis is, so that cross was ... fun! (Though absolutely not a Natick—"S" is the only good guess there, though it would've been hilarious (to me and my headache) if it had been "Old WHEP" and WHANE Gillis, which sounds like a comedy duo to rival Wayland Flowers and Madame.
I don't know what you call this particular clue style: 49D: A good way to feel / 34A: Bad thing to be out of (or why one of those clues starts with an indefinite article and the other doesn't), but it's not my favorite. It could be bad to be out of ... TIME, LUCK, YOUR MIND, TOILET PAPER ... sigh. That SEEN / DEN crossing was oddly hard for me, as I thought the ottoman itself had a setting (low?) or else we were dealing with actual historical Ottomans, and thus some location in the Middle East (or its time zone?). Do homes still have DENs? It's such a funny word. It's just a room with a couch and a TV, possibly a fireplace? What any of that has to do with bears, I have no idea. Speaking of bears, I liked SALMON RUN, as well as "DON'T ANSWER THAT" and "CITATION NEEDED," though those are the only answers that rise to the zingy standards I have for marquee answers on a Friday. SIX FIGURES and ACTION POSE aren't bad, or at least they seem original, but SIX FIGURES is kind of off-putting (innocent enough, but my brain keeps hearing it in the voice of a certain kind of guy who likes to talk about what he earns and what other people earn ... he's not a pleasant guy), and ACTION POSE ... not sure why I'm neutral on that one. I think it's a standard enough term from drawing and comics. A static rendering of a body in movement. I guess one could pose *as if* one were performing an action, that might count too. I dunno ... answer's fine, just not exciting the way the more colloquial stuff, and the grizzly bear stuff, was.
Bullets:[Warning: aggressively sentimental dog death]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
- 9D: Account of a wild night out? (TAB)— if you have a wild night out of drinking, then you might end up with a sizable bar TAB (an actual, financial "account" of your drinking)
- 48A: Sources of high-quality wool (ALPACAS) — read this as "high-quality wood" and was briefly flummoxed. "AL...DERS? AL...ABAMA?"
- 9D: Numbers 1 through 36 are found in it (TORAH) — lol no idea. Baffled. Completely got me. Even when I got it, I didn't get it. Figured that my not being Jewish was the problem here, but ... no. No specialized knowledge required, really. There are 36 chapters in (the Book of) Numbers, which is one of the first five books of the Bible, i.e. the TORAH.
- 33A: Sch. in Ypsilanti whose mascot is an eagle, not another large bird (EMU) — Eastern Michigan University, right down the street from where I went to grad school (Go Blue). YPSI has been in the puzzle just once, but I would welcome it back with open arms.
- 45D: Eyed food, informally (TATER) — read this as "Eye food," which I assumed was something like "eye candy" (!??), and thought "do we call hot people TATERs now? What TikTok trend did I miss this time!?" Did I mention I woke up with a headache? Ugh.
Gonna go eye some (non-potato) food now. Actually, first coffee, then sit in "DEN" do Wordle, later food. Good day.
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]