Epitome of completeness / SAT 10-5-24 / Oldest city in France / "Reward" for altruism, maybe / Lover of Pyramus, in Ovid / Political activist who organized 1963's March on Washington / Mercedes ___, icon of Argentine folk music / Feature of Garamond or Perpetua / Penalty taker's lament / Beer whose name means "morning sun" / Erroneous justification for a 2003 invasion, for short

• • •

Ha ha, look at those first two answers, 1-Across and 1-Down. Wrong and wrong ... And Yet! Somehow that "Y" in TYNE ended up in the right place, which was all I needed to get "YOU FOOL!," which I then confirmed with FBI LAB. When I took the above screenshot, I had no idea I had any wrong answers; I was just documenting my progress, as I often do on late-week puzzles. "Look at me, coming out of the gate on fire!" Little did I know I was literally on fire, i.e. my first two answers were a mini trash fire. Luckily I was able to put that fire out real quick—probably ten seconds after I took the screenshot. But I just wanted to show you how skill is great and all, but you can't beat dumb luck. Wrong answers ... lead to right answers ... and the puzzle opens right up. Amazing. Thank you, OOXTEPLERNON (He's the God of Short Bad Fill, but I assume his purview extends to all things crossword-related—when He's angry, you get lots of EER and EEN and EEK thrown at you, but sometimes he exhibits generosity and blesses even your FLUBS).

100% of the difficulty in today's puzzle came from proper nouns. Natan makes puzzles for the New Yorker, and this felt a lot like a "Moderately Challenging"New Yorker puzzle—i.e. a themeless that's somewhat heavy on proper nouns I've never heard of, ones for which I sometimes have to work every cross. Today, the "yipes" proper noun, for me, was BAYARD RUSTIN. When I read his bio, I think, "jeez, how do you not know him, you should really know him—he was a central figure in the civil rights movement." Then I see that he was gay and (therefore, in a more homophobic era) worked largely behind the scenes. Still, he's a huge deal, Presidential Medal of Freedom and all that, so ... can't complain about his presence here. Happy to learn (or possibly relearn) his name. But man, every single cross I needed! I don't know any BAYARDs or any RUSTINs. At all. Those are not names on my list of name possibilities. BAYARD has appeared six times in the NYTXW, but ... well, here's the complete list of clues for those BAYARDs:

[xwordinfo.com]

Gotta be honest, every single one of those clues is gibberish to me. "Legendary horse"? Who's "Rinaldo"?

Bayard (Modern French: [bajaʁ]; Dutch: Ros Beiaard or just Beiaard; Italian: Baiardo) is a magical bay horse in the legends derived from the medieval chansons de geste. These texts, especially that of The Four Sons of Aymon, attribute to him magical qualities and a supernatural origin. He is known for his strength and intelligence, and possesses the supernatural ability to adjust his size to his riders.

Looks like "Rinaldo" is one of the Four Sons of Aymon. LOL I went to grad school for medieval literature and didn't know any of this! (Don't blame UM, though, I was really a very lazy student). So that's a brief crossword history of BAYARD. What of RUSTIN? Any RUSTINs? Hey, wow ... looks like Bayard RUSTIN has appeared in the NYTXW before ... once, way back in February of 1984! Clue: [Bayard ___, Washington March organizer: 1963]. I can't believe the crossword discovered him and then mislaid him for forty years. Welcome back, buddy!

Other proper nouns of my not-knowing: well, LYME, you saw that. I was thinking of Newcastle-Upon-TYNE, which is another Newcastle-___-___ place in England (how many are there!?) (1A: Newcastle-under-___, Staffordshire, England). Then there was SOSA, which gave me a bit of a fright because I had SO-A and no idea what letter to put there. This is because I didn't know LYME and so had LY-E, which gave me -OBBO-S for 3D: Don, and I absolutely Could Not parse it. Brain kept trying to make -OBBO-S into one word. Thought maybe the Argentinian singer was SONA (25A: Mercedes ___, icon of Argentine folk music). Certainly never expected SOSA, since the only SOSA I know is the late-'90s, PED-enhanced baseball slugger. But eventually my brain kicked in with the "hey, maybe it's two words" wisdom and I got through (MOB BOSS). Later on, there was MONSTRO—no idea (32D: Name of the whale in "Pinocchio"). I didn't see the recent Guillermo del Toro remake of Pinocchio, and I never cared much for that whole story when I was growing up, so once you get past the whole "I wanna be a real boy" / nose-growth stuff, I'm kind of tapped out on Pinocchio lore. I guess that's mostly it for proper nouns, except for THISBE (12D: Lover of Pyramus, in Ovid), ROME (37A: W.H. Auden's "The Fall of ___"), BIALIK (36D: Post-Trebek "Jeopardy!" host), and MARSEILLE (32A: Oldest city in France), which I'd at least heard of, and The LAST BATTLE, which I actually knew (again, dumb luck—I happen to be married to world's foremost reader of The Chronicles of Narnia; those books pretty much define her childhood. Please don't tell her I initially confused two of the books today and wrote in The LAST PRINCE) (8D: Seventh and final "Chronicles of Narnia" book, with "The").
Outside the proper nouns, almost zero trouble today. If there was stuff I didn't know, I was able to flow right around it. And "flow" is a good word for what this puzzle had. Really enjoyed whooshing around the grid, particularly through that lovely, creamy center. There's nothing flashy in there, but it's all incredibly smooth and lively, especially given how dense the long answers are there. Had a little trouble dropping into the SE corner, only because at 21D: It's nothing new, I wanted SAME OLD SONG or SAME OLD SAME OLD, neither of which fit. But I thought "maybe STORY?" and yes, that was it. Finished up easily from there.



Notes:

• 16A: Beer whose name means "morning sun" (ASAHI) — ASAHI, the official beer of crosswords. When in doubt, guess ASAHI (esp. if it's five letters and you already have the "A")
• 18A: Feature of Garamond or Perpetua (SERIF)— Garamond and Perpetua are fonts.
• 44A: Double duty? (STUNTS) — my proudest moment of the day. Got this off the first "S"! The "duty" of a stunt double is ... yeah it's right there in the name: STUNTS. I think I wanted "STAND IN" at first, but it didn't fit.
• 7D: Erroneous justification for a 2003 invasion, for short (WMD) — it's great when a clue can be factually accurate while also being, at the same time, a great "fuck-you" to an entire lying, warmongering administration. [Chef's kiss] to this clue!
• 34D: Penalty taker's lament ("I MISSED") — "Penalty" here is a "penalty shot" (as in football, which is to say, "soccer").

• 35D: Chest bump? (PEC) — nice cross with DIP (33A: Bodyweight exercise). A wide-grip DIP can help build your PECs. 
• 41D: Cheek ('TUDE) — short for "attitude.""Cheek" here means "sass,""backtalk," etc.
• 48D: Whirl, so to speak (TRY) — As in, "Give it a whirl!" Like this clue a lot.
• 17A: Pitches low and inside? (SUBWAY ADS) — best clue of the day, a word-perfect misdirection. Looks like baseball ... isn't baseball. (Congrats to the New York Metropolitans for advancing to the NLDS ... maybe we'll get a Subway Series this year, but that is not my wish: go Tigers!)
• 33D: Epitome of completeness (DOTTED i) — unsurprisingly, CROSSEDT has never, not once, appeared in the NYTXW. Eight DOTTEDIs in the last decade, but no CROSSEDTs! I am officially waging a complaint on behalf of all of T-dom.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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