Warm drink served from a tokkuri / TUES 2-4-25 / Norse god capable of shape-shifting into animals / Chillax / Rock and roll, but not rhythm and blues

Theme answers:

• QUITE QUIET (17A: Noiseless?) 
• ANGEL ANGLE (25A: View of Earth from heaven?) 
• EXITS EXIST (49A: "There are ways to leave"?) 
• VENMO VENOM (58A: Spite over an incomplete mobile payment?)

Word of the Day:QUAN (18D: Actor Ke Huy ___ of "Everything Everywhere All at Once") —

Ke Huy Quan (Vietnamese: Quan Kế Huy; born August 20, 1971) is an American actor. As a child actor, Quan rose to fame playing Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Data in The Goonies (1985). Following a few roles as a young adult in the 1990s, he took a 19-year acting hiatus, during which he worked as a stunt choreographer and assistant director. Quan returned to acting with the family adventure Finding ʻOhana (2021), followed by the critically acclaimed Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), a performance that won him various accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He is the first Vietnam-born actor to win an Academy Award. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2023. He has since starred in the second season of the Disney+ series LOKI in 2023. (Wiki)

I QUITE enjoyed that puzzle. It had some stellar clues and a well-executed theme. The theme of flipping two letters isn’t particularly novel, but I liked the symmetry of all of the theme answers being made up of two five-letter words, and working in the Qs and Xs of the theme answers was impressive. QUITE QUIET (17A) and EXITS EXIST (49A) were my favorites, as they seem like phrases that you’d hear outside of the puzzle. ANGEL ANGLE (25A) was fine. But VENMO VENOM (58A) felt contrived. Knowing the theme did help me with the solve and tipped this one closer to the easy-medium side for me. But some of the question-mark clues and long downs kept the puzzle more to the middle of the road for difficulty. 

Really, though, some of these clues were remarkably clever. I loved the clue for EQUINOX (43D: Start to fall?) because it’s such a good misdirection. And then the word itself is one you don’t often see in puzzles and even has another “Q” that the constructor managed to work into the puzzle. VERBS (22A: Rock and roll, but not rhythm and blues) might’ve been my favorite clue; I’m smiling thinking about it long after my solve. MAIL MEN (3D: Guys whose profession sounds redundant) is another cute clue and answer. ERASERS (13D: Writers' blocks?) and QUIP (15A: Little crack) were also fun. 

In general, the long downs incorporated unusual words for a puzzle — such as: THE DUDE (38D), STIPEND (40D), EQUINOX (43D), GEORGIA (11D), RAMBLED (12D), andERASERS (13D). I suppose VAPE PEN (22D: Puff piece?) would count as a long down, but I don’t like seeing vapes in a puzzle (even if the clue is also pretty clever). ISOMER (46D) is another interesting word. OSMENT (10D: Actress Emily of "Hannah Montana") is an answer I imagine some people struggled with, but I luckily watched a lot of “Hannah Montana” and Disney Channel growing up. (Conversely, I had no idea about JAKE (32A: Guy's name that's old slang for "OK").) 

There wasn’t an overwhelming amount of crosswordese in the puzzle. And even then, some were clued in a decidedly not boring and obvious way, such as EWE (42A: Animal hidden in this clue, if you read it aloud), APT (9D: Like the names of the track athletes Usain Bolt and Lisa Lightfoot), ART (4D: "Making money is ___ and working is ___ and good business is the best ___": Andy Warhol), and IRA (56A: Good name for a long-term investor?). 

My least favorite section was the area with CUKE (35D: Common crudités veggie), which is just an ugly slang word, and K’NEX (36D: Toy set that can be used to build roller coasters), which I’ve never heard of. Combine that with the fact that my dad has ingrained in me that ATL is the Delta hub so I just couldn’t wrap my brain around that answer being JFK (32D: One hub for Delta and American Airlines, in brief); that I put “on a diet” at first instead of ON A FAST (29D: Not eating anything) for some reason; and that I took a while to get 41A because I think a “blue feeling” is akin to sadness in a way that I wouldn’t say is synonymous with being in a FUNK. In other words, I took a bit to get going in the bottom half of the puzzle. 

I liked the puzzle even more as I kept looking back at it. A nice Tuesday!

Misc.:

• “Dónde ESTÁ la biblioteca?”(6A) is fun to have in the puzzle. It’s one of those phrases that every beginner Spanish speaker learns, and it will always make me think of this incredible SNL skit. When my sister and I were in Mexico City last year for her 30th, we went to the incredible Biblioteca Vasconcelos and did a little TikTok skit with that line.
• We sold a “THE DUDE” (38D: Nickname for filmdom's Jeffrey Lebowski) pizza at the restaurant where I used to work; it had an amazing spicy vodka sauce. I’d add pepperoni to it and have that sometimes after work, and it was delicious. Great, now I’m hungry. 
• As someone who rock climbs and boulders, I have to get in on the conversation about “boulderers” in the puzzle yesterday. I’d say I’m a “climber” because I primarily climb with a partner and use a rope, and I boulder less frequently. But it’s a legit term and something I’ve heard people refer to themselves as, though it’s definitely not something I’d heard much before I started climbing and doesn’t seem to be in the public lexicon.
• I got IONIQS(46A: Hyundai electric cars) easily thanks to BTS, which has a sponsorship with Hyundai and made a song specifically for an ad for IONIQS. (Also PSA: T-minus four months until they’re all back from the military!!!!)
• I CARE (14A: "Your concerns matter to me") sounds like something Mr. Milkshake (OK, Mr. Milchick) would say to the innies on “Severance.” Even if I’m wrong, I needed an excuse to tell you to watch it. Right now. It’s a phenomenal show on Apple TV+, and I genuinely cannot recommend it highly enough. We’re about to hit episode four of the second season, and the show just keeps getting better! 
• As I was looking back at my finished puzzle, I discovered that EXITS / EXIST could instead be split as “EXIT, SEXIST,” which I like even better.

Signed, Clare Carroll, rooting on my Reds (Liverpool) and my Red (puppy)

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