Gaming mogul Gabe / SUN 12-14-25 / Shylock's security / Jedi-in-training / Ren faire prop akin to a halberd / Early track star Jim / Marvel superhero who can manipulate weather patterns / 1980 horror film starring William Hurt / Nickname for Mark's unsevered best friend in "Severance" / Parts of many robots in robot-sumo / Hair-care item associated with Black culture / Sci-fi sequel of 1986

Constructor: Zachary Edward-Brown and John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Change Locations" — theme answers contain shaded squares that spell out the names of states, except for one circled square in each state name that is just ... wrong. Those "wrong" letters spell out "MISPLACED," and the whole theme is tied together by the revealer, ALTERED STATES (110A: 1980 horror film starring William Hurt ... or what the shaded squares contain?):

Theme answers:

• "OOH, I'M SO SCARED" (21A: False alarm announcement?)
• DENVER MINT (34A: Major coin producer)
• MARS LANDER (37A: Viking I or II)
• FLIP A HOUSE (47A: Remodel and resell some real estate)
• DRUM LINES (49A: Marching band tempo setters)
• "WHAT A HOOT!" (74A: "Hilarious!")
• "NOT EXACTLY ..." (77A: "I mean, kind of ...")
• "I OWE YOU ONE" (90A: "Much obliged")
• GAINED A DAY (92A: Crossed the International Date Line from east to west, or west to east (depending on how you look at it))

Word of the Day: Gabe NEWELL (51D: Gaming mogul Gabe) —

Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), also known by his nickname GabeN, is an American video game developer and businessman. He is the co-founder, president and majority owner of the video game company Valve Corporation.

Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. In 1996, he and Mike Harrington left Microsoft to found Valve and fund the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington sold his stake in Valve to Newell and left in 2000. Newell led the development of Valve's digital distribution service, Steam, which launched in 2003 and controlled most of the market for downloaded PC games by 2011.

As of 2021, Newell owned at least one quarter of Valve; Forbes estimated that he owned at least half as of 2025. He is also the owner of the marine research organization Inkfish, the neuroscience company Starfish Neuroscience, and the custom yacht manufacturer Oceanco. Newell has been estimated as one of the wealthiest people in the United States and the wealthiest person in the video games industry, with an estimated net worth of $11 billion as of 2025. (wikipedia)

• • •

I guess locations are changed and states are altered, but why? For MISPLACED? But ... nothing is "misplaced." Misspelled, yes, but misplaced? Long, long way to go for an inapt spelled-out word. I enjoyed very little of this puzzle. The SW corner, the SICKBAY / POLEAXE / "I WANT IN" triad—that I liked. But otherwise the solving experience was largely unpleasant, due primarily to the extremely choppy grid. This thing is bullet-ridden with black squares, especially all through the middle. So most of the time I felt like I was hacking my way through short answer after short answer after short answer. And when you add to all those black squares all the shaded squares, and then the circled squares on top of that, the whole thing is a visual mess. It was fussy to navigate, and, stacked as it is with short stuff, there were very few highlights. 

Some of the themers were great as standalone answers ("OOH, I'M SO SCARED!" Nice), but not one, not two, but three (!!!!!?) of them are ___ A ___ phrases. It's an EAT A SANDWICH extravaganza. FLIP A HOUSE, WHAT A HOOT!, GAINED A DAY, ugh. Actually, I'll let "WHAT A HOOT!" slide, since that's a coherent phrase. But still ... there just wasn't a ton to like. RFID? Somebody named ELISHA (sorry, not up on my Bell rivals / 19c. engineers) (42D: Engineer Gray who, arguably, invented the telephone — and battled Alexander Graham Bell over it in court for years). Somebody named NEWELL (who's clearly a big deal in his field, but to me ... ???). More Star Wars baloney (PADAWAN) (23A: Jedi-in-training). It really is tiresome how frequently the crossword goes to the Star Wars universe for answers. I've mostly heard of the answers—I literally have a Star Wars (1977) poster on my living room wall—but even I'm exhausted. You can give me OREOs and EELs all day long, but please put the brakes on Star Wars ffs. If you wanted to dial back Marvel (STORM) and Game of Thrones, that would also be OK with me! I knew STORM; I did not know AIDAN. But my knowing / not knowing isn't the point. It's the unimaginative return to the same wells over and over and over ... that's the point. I like the pivot to Severance, but even there, yeesh, PETEY!?!?! (40A: Nickname for Mark's unsevered best friend in "Severance"). That's a deep cut even for people (like me) who have seen every episode of that show. If you had to list the most important characters on Severance, PETEY wouldn't even make the top ten. I remember when the puzzle would ask me to know, like, the fourth most important character on Ally McBeal and that would make me mad. I wouldn't mind a little marginal pop culture now and then, but in a puzzle that's already drenched in pop culture ... I don't love it. 

[The one and only ... makeup by Max Factor (seriously!)]

There's some wood I've never heard of (IRON WOOD??) and then GOAL NET? (43A: Football blocker?). At first I thought they meant "football" as in soccer, and the GOAL NET was just the ... net. The net in the goal. But now I think it's actually American Football that's being referred to here, and the GOAL NET is the thing that gets hoisted behind the goal posts to keep the football from, like, hitting the spectators or something? As you can see, I was desperate for anything to like today. I like ALTERED STATES! (the movie). That's something. But conceptually, I didn't think this worked well, and the grid and fill, no, they also didn't work for me.

I pretty much mentally noped out right away with this ... let's say, creative ... demonym:

I've had to suffer through UTAHN and UTAHAN and god knows how many other odd demonyms, but OAHUAN feels outerspaceian. PADAWAN looks like a more plausible demonym than OAHUAN. Is MAUIAN a thing? MAUWEGIAN? Needless to say, OAHUAN is a debut. My apologies to all the proud OAHUANs out there, but do you really call yourselves that? At least the puzzle spelled DURAG correctly today (87D: Hair-care item associated with Black culture). That's progress, of a sort. Twenty-two DORAG appearances before someone caught on that that's not how it's most commonly spelled or marketed (though the earliest dictionary defs do spell it DO-RAG). I expect DORAG will reappear some day, but for now, since 2020, it's DURAG (though this is only DURAG's second appearance, I'm surprised to find out).

Bullets:

• 4D: Touchless payment tech (RFID) — so ugly. By now, it's recognizable to me, but it's still ugly as hell, as abbrevs. go. And alongside OAHUAN, hoo boy.
• 39A: Astronaut Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman in space (ELLEN)  — well there's a famous golfer named LORENA Ochoa, and somehow, between her and this astronaut Ochoa, my brain has managed to convince itself that all Ochoas are ELENAs. Really really thought ELENA Ochoa was right. It just sounds so right. But it's a mash-up of two different Ochoas. Perhaps by saying all this out loud, I will be able to disentangle the Ochoa Knot.
• 8D: Video game character with an endless appetite (PAC-MAN) — I guess he does just keep "eating" those dots or whatever, and yet I've never thought of him as being particularly hungry. Evading the damn ghosts and navigating the maze, that's what PAC-MAN does. Also, he's yellow, circular, has no legs, his girlfriend and son both have their own video games, etc. ... so many things I associate with PAC-MAN before "endless appetite." Wait, are PAC-MAN and Ms. PAC-MAN married? LOL, wikipedia just gave me the funniest sentence it's ever given me: "She was originally called Miss Pac-Man, though this was changed to avoid implying that she had her son out of wedlock."
• 32D: Word used 10 times in Roger Ebert's review of "North" (1994) ("HATED") — that's what's known as a callback (to this puzzle, which came out on my birthday)
• 78D: He had a Billboard Hot 100 hit with "Rubber Duckie" (ERNIE) — musically, Sesame Street was on point. Stevie Wonder's Sesame Street rendition of "Superstition" (the greatest song ever recorded) is rightly legendary. And just yesterday I was listening to a '70s playlist and I heard this Pointer Sisters tune that I swear I haven't heard since I was five. Absolute banger. 

And let's just play the Stevie while we're at it. If these videos don't brighten up your day, I can't help you, man.

• 85D: Ren faire prop akin to a halberd (POLEAXE) — it was hilarious (to me) how fast my 1980s-D&D-playing ass plunked down POLEAXE here. Like, off the "P," and I'm not sure I even needed it. I don't know what D&D is like now, but at age 12 I can tell you I had an outsized medieval weaponry vocabulary. The fact that I know what a "halberd" is in the first place, I owe to hours and hours spent with weapons lists. 
• 93D: Interview guest whom Ali G calls "my man Buzz Lightyear here" (ALDRIN) — I don't think I've ever actually watched a full ... episode? ... of Ali G's show. I know ALI G mainly from crosswords. I know ALDRIN primarily for uttering the immortal lines: "Careful! They're ruffled!"

Time once again for 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲. But first, please—I'm gonna put this in ALL CAPS today because yesterday's lowercase plea didn't seem to work: I CAN'T ACCEPT ANY MORE PET PICS THIS YEAR. I'm so happy to have so many great pics, but there just aren't enough days in the holiday season ...

Alright, let's see who we've got today. Here's Felicity, who is very sweet but no you may not have her candy cane pillow get your own.

[Thanks, Jordan!]

Maddie is a young Havanese. It doesn't snow in Havana, so naturally, for Ohio winters, she needs a little coat.

[thanks, Isaac!]

Musical interlude now—hit it, Urbie!

["O holy night, / The stars are brightly shiiiiiiiiiiining / It's is the night / When you give / Urbie treeeeeats!"]
[Thanks, Angela!]

Mel here has Resting Mean Face (RMF), but I'm assured she is a sweet and happy little cat who loves Christmas. Same, Mel. Same.

[Thanks, Jenny]

This is Malcolm. Malcolm likes carpets. Malcolm is a carpet. Malcolm has killed the traditional Christmas badger-raccoon-squirrel, so the holidays have officially begun!

[Thanks, Steve!]

And lastly ... whoa! Haven't seen one of these before. What kind of dog is this!?!?

[This is Atherton the Barn Princess, and I'm told that she's a "horse"]
[Thanks, Pat & Emma]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Rapper with the 2022 hit "Big Energy" / SAT 12-13-25 / Board of creatives? / Orangutan, by another name / Connect to the internet via mobile hotspot, as a device / Harbor bobber / Pitch, roll and ___ (rotations along the three-dimensional axes) / Actress Birch of "Hocus Pocus"

Constructor: Gene Louise De Vera

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: ONE OF EVERYTHING (48A: Gluttonous request ... or what this puzzle has vis-à-vis the possible answer lengths?) — there is at least one answer of every possible length, 3 to 15 letters, in this puzzle:

Word of the Day: LATTO (41D: Rapper with the 2022 hit "Big Energy") —

Alyssa Michelle Stephens (born December 22, 1998), known professionally as Latto (formerly known as Mulatto), is an American rapper and singer from Atlanta. She first appeared on Jermaine Dupri's reality television series The Rap Game in 2016, where she was known as Miss Mulatto and won the show's first season, but rejected its award of a recording contract with Dupri's So So Def Recordings. [...] After a name change to Latto, she reached wider mainstream recognition after the release of her 2021 single, "Big Energy." The song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, received triple platinum certification by the RIAA, and landed at number seven on the Year-End Hot 100 chart; its live performance was nominated for Best Melodic Rap Performance, while Latto herself was nominated for Best New Artist at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. [...] In May 2021, she confirmed in various interviews that she had officially settled on a new stage name after scrutiny for the racially charged nature of her name. On May 18, it was reported that on streaming platforms, Mulatto's name had been changed to simply Latto, a change first reflected on her guest appearance on Toosii's album Thank You for Believing, where she was credited as Latto. She released a new single titled "The Biggest" along with the announcement of her new name.^[26] On September 24 of the same year, Latto released the lead single from her then-upcoming second studio album, "Big Energy". The song became Latto's highest charting song on the Billboard Hot 100 peaking at number three. American singer Mariah Carey appeared on the official remix, which was released in March 2022.

• • •

Not a fan of themed puzzles on Fri or Sat, but as themes go, this isn't much of one. There's basically one theme answer (the "revealer"). Otherwise, the "theme" doesn't affect grid content at all, only answer length. I like the phrase "ONE OF EVERYTHING!" on its own, but the fact that there are all possible answer lengths in the grid ... shrug. Is this hard to do? Is it a first? Do I care? The answer to that last one is, definitely no. I NOT DO care. I also NOT DO care for NOT DO and some of the other, smaller bits of fill in this thing. ARD, for instance. Oof. ARD. Just look at it. Keep looking. You can't do it, can you? You turn away instinctively from the horror. The horror of ARD. ARD-horror. "NO I don't! I NOT DO that!" Yes, you do. Don't lie. Luckily, the marquee fill (i.e. all the stuff around the perimeter) is good. Good to very good. I especially like the BAD BREATH emanating from CURRIED CRAB, which itself is lying on a bed of FOOD ADDITIVES. Basically a CURRIED CRAB sandwich with terrible bread (terrible irl, not terrible as crossword answers). Can't say I'm a fan of CORPORATE GREED (in any context), but GET THE MEMO and FASHION ICONS keep that side of the grid strong. On the other side of the grid, one big issue: the way the clue is written (11D: "Remember ..."), with the ellipsis implying more to come, strongly implies that the answer is going to be BEAR THIS IN MIND, the "THIS" being the thing you are about to say (after you say "Remember ..."). I had PALETTE in there and tore it out because BEAR THIS IN MIND seemed so right. But then I got nowhere. And then realized that "THIS" could be "THAT." And that was THAT. But THAT was not something I was happy about. So it's a mixed bag today, but I sort of liked the non-theme theme—why not give your themeless a little zip, a little sassiness, a little unexpected glitter. As long as it doesn't go Full Theme on me, I think it's fine. I guess you could quibble with ONE OF EVERYTHING, in that there's technically more than one of most answer lengths, but there's no need to be hyper-literal about it.

Only one real mystery today, and that was LATTO, a name I saw the first time ... just now. Kinda surprised that I've never seen it (or don't remember seeing it) and also that it's never been in the crossword before. It's probably been in some crossword, but not the NYTXW. That is a name that wants to be in crosswords. Whether you want it to be in crosswords is another question entirely. Her fame seems legit but fairly recent and semi-marginal. Not exactly CARDI B or NICKI MINAJ or LIZZO levels of cultural penetration (though she did open for LIZZO at one point, wikipedia tells me, so she's LIZZO-adjacent. If you don't know who LIZZO is, this news won't be helpful or reassuring). The fact that her name is a shortening of "mulatto" ... is probably what allows it to appear in the NYTXW. Doubt MULATTO (for obvious reasons) has ever been an answer. [Whoa, I am wrong about that—four appearances, including once under Shortz in 2014; before that, it had been 41 years! And before that, another 29 years—back to 1944, when MULATTO was clued as [Half-breed] (!!!!!?!)]. I can't say that I thought LATTO was NEATO (never feels great to have a series of letters you've never seen before and have to take it on faith that it's right), but as long as it doesn't wreck my solve, I do like learning about parts of the cultural landscape I'm completely ignorant of. 

If nothing else, I will remember this puzzle for its POCO DONGS. POCO DONGS is giving me life. It answers the question: "Will there be a lot of DONGS?" As in the following imagined scenario: "Will there be a lot of DONGS at this party?" "Qué?" "Mucho DONGS? Will there be mucho DONGS?" "No. POCO. POCO DONGS, señor." I don't know in what context you'd ask such a question, or why you're asking the question to a native Spanish speaker. But that's the beauty of POCO DONGS—its shimmering ambiguity. Its thusness. Its jenesaisquoi. All I know is I've never been happier to change an answer than when I changed DINGS to DONGS. Because of POCO. POCO gave me DONGS. POCO DONGS. Q.E.D. A rap name. A band name. The universe.

Bullets:

• 29A: Connect to the internet via mobile hotspot, as a device (TETHER) — forgot this was a thing. Had the -ET and kept wanting GET-something, like GET ONLINE or GET WIFI or GET LTE or god knows what.
• 1D: Harbor bobber (BUOY) — an absolute gimme at 1D, one that immediately got me GARY (14A: City SE of Chicago), and set me up nicely to get BAD BREATH (1A: Possible turnoff on a first date).
• 5D: Orangutan, by another name (RED APE) — but does he smell as sweet? I don't "like" RED APE but I like imagining Letter Man swooping in and taking the "T" from RED TAPE, thus transforming the RED TAPE into a RED APE.  

• 9D: Order at a restaurant (HAVE) — as in "I'll HAVE the CURRIED CRAB." This one was tough for me. I was looking for a specific order (HAKE? Is that a food fish, HAKE?) or else a command ("HIKE!" "HALT!" "HERE! Over HERE! Garçon! "L'addition, s'il vous plait.")
• 17D: School viewing? (SNORKELING) — speaking of HAKE (?), I wanted this clue to have something to do with fish ("School" + "?" pretty much screams "fish!"), and I was right, but it didn't help me much initially. Needed many crosses.
• 28D: Pot user? (EELER) — thought we'd be moving away from fish by now, but apparently not. EELER made me laugh because it reminds me of [Hagfish lookalikes] from yesterday. The puzzle simply cannot lay off the eels and the eel pots and the eeling. EELER is a word you'll see only in crosswords. Did you know an EELER is also called a "sniggler." If you solved crosswords in prehistoric times, as I did, then you definitely knew that. [Sniggler] and [Conger catcher] have always been the most common clues for EELER. And I knew EELERs used pots because guess what—EEL POT has been an answer on multiple occasions. Not recently, probably, but back in the day for sure. Hmm, actually there was a 16-year cessation in EEL POT appearances between 1990 and 2006 (the EEL POT Gap, they call it*). But now it's back to being about as common as it ever was, i.e. uncommon, but, you know, a once-every-few-years type of answer (last EELPOT sighting = 2020).
• 50D: Pitch, roll and ___ (rotations along the three-dimensional axes) (YAW) — this is what you do if you catch on fire at sea. All the little pirate children learn to pitch, roll & YAW! It's basic nautical safety.

Time for more 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲. (Please note: I cannot accept any more pet pics this year. I adore them, but I've got more than enough for this year, for sure)

First up is Max on his holiday blanket in front of the fire. Max is always cold. I want to zip MAX up into my winter coat and carry him around all winter.

[Thanks, Edward!]

Here we see Flora miraculously surviving her encounter with a Yeti (a Yeti named Popcorn—which is a children's book title if ever there was one):

[Thanks, Kathryn!]

Coco's just happy she didn't get cropped out of this photo. Don't mind Coco. She'll just lie flat so she doesn't block the tree. She just wants to be a small part of the photo shoot. She won't be much trouble.

[Thanks, Kristi]

Next is Mel (short for "Caramel"), seen here plotting his path of destruction through the Christmas tree landscape. No ornaments will survive. Mel's owner Randy says: "He was a "foster fail," meaning that we were just supposed to foster him for the Humane Society for a few weeks until he was old enough to be neutered and then put up for adoption.  But we couldn't let him go.  His favorite holiday activity is stomping through the Christmas village like Godzilla in Tokyo." Happy stomping, Mel!

[Thanks, Randy!]

And we'll close today with a couple of cat duos. First there's Basko and Ping Pong, who are freaked out by and probably eventually going to murder this freaky little animatronic Santa (you have my blessing, kitties):

[Thanks, Andrew!]

And finally there's Streak & Freckles, a feline folk duo (I assume, with that name) who are also gift-wrapping enthusiasts. Skilled artisans. Very few cats are able to wrap a present from inside the wrapping paper, but these cats know what they're doing.

[Thanks, Carole!]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*they do not call it that

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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