She played Serena on "Gossip Girl" / MON 3-17-25 / Chile de ___ (very spicy pepper) / Rapper ___ Cat / "S.N.L." regular who played Gemma and Cathy Anne / Chaney who played Quasimodo

Leonidas Frank "Lon" Chaney (April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930) was an American actor and makeup artist. He is regarded as one of the most versatile and powerful actors of cinema, renowned for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted, characters and for his groundbreaking artistry with makeup. Chaney was known for his starring roles in such silent horror films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). His ability to transform himself using makeup techniques that he developed earned him the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Faces". (wikipedia)

Ah, a pop culture name-based theme, I'm sure it will be beloved by all. Just kidding, I know that a good portion of the solving population will not care for it, largely because I guarantee you a good portion of the solving population doesn't really know who CECILY STRONG *or* BLAKE LIVELY is. I know, I know, they're pretty dang famous, but their generational reach doesn't really ... reach far above Millennials. I knew all these women's names, but I had stopped watching SNL by the time Strong was on, so I can only kinda sorta identify her, and BLAKE LIVELY, LOL, I had to ask my students last semester "Why is BLAKE LIVELY famous?" I kept hearing the name, and she was in a movie that was out last fall and I could tell she was a "star" but I had no idea why. Gossip Girl, you say? Well, that's why I missed her. Never seen a single episode (I was a ~40yo man when that show aired—not exactly the demo). If you know today's names, then this puzzle probably played like a regular old easy Monday, and if not, well, not. The first two names are unimpeachable. JEAN SMART is a decorated veteran of TV shows going back at least thirty-five years. I first saw her in Designing Women. (late '80s / early '90s). And now I watch her in Hacks, which is fantastic. As for TAYLOR SWIFT, anyone famous enough to be Time's Person of the Year is famous enough to be in a Monday puzzle, for sure. But fame aside, how does the theme hold up? I dunno. So-so. Does the phrase GIRL POWER really mean what the clue says it does? That definition seemed made up on the spot. Seems like GIRL POWER might mean whatever you wanted it to mean, depending on context. Also, JEAN SMART is not a "girl," not a "young woman" by any stretch, so GIRL POWER (esp. as clued) seems an odd fit for her. And is an adjective really a "power"? You've got a coherent set here (women whose last names are adjectives), but I don't think GIRL POWER really hits the mark as a revealer.

Also, don't love when there are non-theme Acrosses that are as long or longer than the theme Answers (when those also run Across), so THOUSANDS and BITES INTO are a distraction, in a way they wouldn't be if they were Downs. They create visual interference. They're not breaking any law, I just don't like them, aesthetically. Long non-theme answers are better off running perpendicular to theme answers. There are only a handful of Downs longer than five letters today. Four, in fact. And those provided the only real drama in my Downs-only solve. Up top, no problem, but down below, I couldn't get either 7-letter Down to drop at first, largely because I couldn't / wouldn't guess what --TESINTO was supposed to be (43A: Reduces, as profits). I guess BITES is the only good guess there, but I needed confirmation and wasn't getting it. And since I don't know the Greek alphabet's order, I didn't know RHO (64D: Letter after pi), which means I didn't have the first three letters of the revealer. I also had YES instead of YUP at 53D: "Uh-huh", which made seeing GIRL POWER even harder. I had LODE at 57D: Vein of ore, but then retracted it and put in SEAM when I couldn't make anything out of that SE corner. Finally, I put LODE back in and tried YUP instead of YES, which allowed me to see POWER, which (after I'd looked back at the theme answers and what they had in common) helped me get to infer GIRL POWER. That "G" and "I," coupled with my finally committing to BITES INTO, helped me get INVOICE and BRING ON, and that was that.

Bullets:

• 19A: Chile de ___ (very spicy pepper) (ARBOL) — and here I thought BLAKE LIVELY was maybe a little unfamiliar for a Monday. By comparison, ARBOL is a rank obscurity. Never heard of it. It appears to have appeared twice before, on a Sunday and Saturday, respectively, both times back in 2012. And now it reemerges ... on a Monday? If you know you're making a Monday-level puzzle, you kind of have an obligation to make your fill not only smooth, but also familiar. More familiar than this. No excuse for ARBOL here. That corner can be quickly and cleanly filled a bunch of ways. Much more user-friendly and familiar ways.
• 1D: Rapper ___ Cat (DOJA) — only her second appearance, but she already feels like a crossword regular to me. I must be seeing her in other, non-NYTXW puzzles. Four letters, half vowels, oddly-placed "J" ... you can see how this name might, occasionally, come in handy when you're filling a grid, specifically when you're filling your way around a (fixed) "J." If DÉJÀ is reasonably prevalent (37 appearances in the Shortz Era), then you can see how DOJA might proliferate. If you "don't like rappers" in your crossword, oh well, too bad. Just learn DOJA Cat now and spare yourself a lot of pain later. (sidenote: DÉJÀ is a rare bit of crosswordese—a four-letter foreign partial (!?)—that somehow increased in prevalence under Shortz, though we're really just talking about a couple of strangely anomalous years. What the hell were constructors doing in 2019? Seven DÉJÀs? We won't see the likes of that again ... or we will ... in which case ... it'll be like ...)

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[xwordinfo]

• 49D: Sired (BEGOT) — someone besides me must've written in BEGAT here, right? What the heck is the difference??? Oh here, let's see, this first hit on my [begat v begot] search will surely be helpful. OK, first sentence: "As verbs the difference between begat and begot is that begat is simple past of beget while begot is simple past of beget." I do love a clear explanation. Clean, succinct. Mwah! Chef's kiss! Thank you ... [squints] ...  Wikidiff.com. Your definitional skills are unrivaled. God bless you and the A.I. that powers you. Truly, the future of our informational ecosystem looks bright with you leading the way.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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