Wide-reaching green light / WED 2-19-25 / Dewy-eyed heroine / Synergy-seeking move / Small British hunting dog / End-of-level enemies in video games / Onetime place to shop while high? / Destination of a walk / Something good for an angler, bad for a dog trainer / French pointillism pioneer / Biological bags / Programming conditionals

Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: QUILTING BEE (59A: Social sewing event ... and a hint to the starts of 17-, 29-, 34- and 44-Across) — starts of four theme answers all have to do with "quilting" and all start with "B":

Theme answers:

• BLOCKBUSTER (17A: Film megahit)
• BLANKET APPROVAL (29A: Wide-reaching green light)
• BORDER TERRIER (34A: Small British hunting dog)
• BATTING PRACTICE (44A: Slugger's pregame warm-up)

Word of the Day: Robinson CANÓ (25D: Baseballer Robinson ___) —

Robinson José Canó Mercedes (Spanish pronunciation: [ka'no]; born October 22, 1982) is a Dominican-American professional baseball second baseman for the Diablos Rojos del México of the Mexican League; he also captains the Estrellas Orientales of the Dominican Professional Baseball League. He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees, Seattle Mariners, New York Mets, San Diego Padres, and Atlanta Braves.

A native of San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic, Canó signed with the Yankees organization as an amateur free agent in 2001. He played for the Yankees from 2005 to 2013, also winning the 2009 World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies. In December 2013, Canó signed a 10-year, $240 million contract with the Mariners and he played for them from 2014 to 2018, when he was traded to the Mets. Canó recorded 1,695 hits in the 2010s, the most of any major league player during that decade. He is an eight-time MLB All-Star, a five-time Silver Slugger Award winner, and a two-time Gold Glove Award winner. Canó is also the 2017 All-Star Game MVP and the 2011 Home Run Derby winner.

Canó has tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs twice. In 2018, Canó was suspended from MLB for 80 games for violating the league's joint drug agreement by using furosemide. Canó was also suspended for the entire 2021 season after testing positive for stanozolol. (wikipedia)

• • •

[6D: French pointillism pioneer]

The theme is OK, I guess, but solving this was something less than a joy because the fill was wall-to-wall blah—and frequently downright bad. I actually stopped in disbelief at the godawfulness that is TSK-TSKED. I mean, TSKED is bad enough—you see it from time to time in the grid because it's five letters and it's got an odd letter combination—but TSKED is short gunk and you can ignore it pretty easily, especially if the rest of the puzzle is OK. But TSKTSKED?! (5D: Orally admonished). Aside from something that's said by precisely no one, it's a complete waste of a longer answer. It's crosswordese on steroids (speaking of steroids ... see Robinson CANÓ, above!). Here's me catching my breath and bracing for the worst, after starting superfast and reasonably optimistic:

I was half hoping that TSKTSKED was somehow wrong, but that "K" slid in so nicely at the end of "BLOCK" that I knew, sadly, it was right. You then get not one but two biting dog clues—one of which was totally unnecessary. SIC 'EM, ugh, more crosswordese, but what else are you gonna do but clue that with reference to dogs? But BITE ... I get that you're trying to be clever, but leave dogs out of your violent scenarios (18D: Something good for an angler, bad for a dog trainer). No biting dogs if you don't absolutely need biting dogs. And certainly not *two* biting dogs. Doggos are good. Lawful Good. Treat them that way. It's humans who are EVIL (39D: "Most of the ___ in this world is done by people with good intentions": T.S. Eliot) (T.S. Eliot ... not sure I agree with your math, there, T.S. Look around, T.S.).

IVANIV and SEAEEL are a grim pair of 6s to put in one corner, in a grid that needs all the solid and interesting fill it can get. ABA EMO ERN RICA ASONE TIETO ÉTÉ SIA ... this was very easy and very unfun. The theme answers were interesting as standalone answers, but they were the only thing that was interesting. This puzzle really really needed that revealer to land, and ... shrug. I guess those are, in fact, quilting terms. You piece together quilts out of BLOCKs, you use quilts as BLANKETs (this one seems kinda weak), you sew BORDERs onto quilts, and you fill them with BATTING. All quilts, all "B" ("Bee")s. Adequate revealer, reasonable theme, but it can't make up for the truly listless grid today. The solving experience was less than enjoyable, the grid definitely subPAR (so annoying that "subpar" means "below average" but if you shoot below PAR in golf, that's above average—truly one of the stupidest mutations in the English language).

[Kwilt Kitties!]

No real resistance today. This should've been yesterday's puzzle. And I wish it had been more like yesterday, at least in terms of inventiveness and overall personality. I'll take "flashy but with three names I've never heard of" over "zzzzzzzzzzz" any day. Can't believe I didn't like a puzzle with this much baseball content (three answers!) and this much dog content (three answers!). Started quick by getting FIRST easily (the first of the baseball clues) (1A: Destination of a walk), and then all the Downs crossing first, the last of which was ... well, we already covered the TSKTSKED debacle, no need to revisit. After that, the only hesitations I had were, which IVAN is it (II or IV?), and then SPELLING and even KNITTING before QUILTING, strangely ("strangely" because my mother's side of the family were big quilters and there are quilts on her walls, quilts in our bedroom, in our daughter's old bedroom, etc.). SEWING BEE also came to mind, but obviously it didn't fit *and* "sewing" was in the clue, so that was out. Still, it's not like any of this cost me much time, as no other answer in the grid held me up (slight hesitation at BOSSES, maybe, but I've heard the term "boss level" so much that even that one just rolled over) (44D: End-of-level enemies in video games).

[Mom's house]

Bullet points:

• 21A: Dewy-eyed heroine (INGENUE) — I like this term. It's weirdly dated and kinda ... infantilizing? Sexist? But it's a term that reminds me of old Hollywood, which is where I like to spend a lot of my time (calming my brain in order to remain functional in The Real World, whatever that is). 

• 54A: Onetime place to shop while high? (SKYMALL) — huh, SKYMALL is bygone? I missed that. Maybe because I never made an in-air purchase in my life (I don't even buy the food you can eat right then and there unless I'm truly desperate). Anyway, not getting on any plane for another six months, thank god ... although why do I expect the air traffic control situation to be any better by then? MACA! (Make Airplanes Crash Again! It's a more honest slogan)
• 32A: Birchbark, e.g. (CANOE) — last night, I solved a variety puzzle from Joon Pahk's "Outside the Box" puzzles (highly recommended), and it had this exact clue / answer pairing. The puzzle was trickier than a straight crossword, but solving it involved knowing that one thing meant the other thing, so it was deja-vuish to see this clue/answer today. I like the CANÓ / CANOE crossing for ... well, if you were alive in the '80s, maybe you know:

• 4D: Biological bags (SACS) — if ever a clue made me go "ew," this one did
• 45D: World capital said to have been founded by King Midas (ANKARA) — ooh, did not know that. I wanted this to have something to do with Crete ... but that's Minos, not Midas.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Palestinian activist Tamimi / TUE 2-18-25 / Kennewick ___ (ancient ancestor discovered in 1996) / Black and/or white water bird / New Mexico site of the largest radioactive accident in U.S. history / ___ trail (rhyming path that formerly had tracks) / Currency common to Cyprus and Croatia / 918 or 539, on the Cherokee Nation

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Challenging (**for a Tuesday**)

THEME: "Seriously?!" — same clue for four answers (the context being an imagined reaction to someone behaving outrageously):

Theme answers:

• "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!" (17A: "Seriously?!")
• "WHO DOES THAT?!" (36A: "Seriously?!")
• "THE AUDACITY!" (44A: "Seriously?!")
• "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!" (66A: "Seriously?!")

Word of the Day: HEAD DANCER (3D: Important powwow figure) —

A powwow (also pow wow or pow-wow) is a gathering with dances held by many Native American and First Nations communities. Inaugurated in 1923, powwows today are an opportunity for Indigenous people to socialize, dance, sing, and honor their cultures. Powwows may be private or public, indoors or outdoors. Dancing events can be competitive with monetary prizes. Powwows vary in length from single-day to weeklong events. [...] The head dancers consist of the Head Man Dancer and the Head Woman Dancer, and often Head Teen Dancers, Head Little Boy and Girl Dancers, Head Golden Age Dancers, and a Head Gourd Dancer if the pow wow has a Gourd Dance. The head dancers lead the other dancers in the grand entry or parade of dancers that opens a pow-wow. In many cases, the head dancers are also responsible for leading the dancers during songs, and often dancers will not enter the arena unless the head dancers are already out dancing. (wikipedia)

• • •

I liked this theme. I didn't like it at first because the "YOU" part of "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!" seemed contrived. Like ... where was the context for "you?” I'd've believed "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" (an ordinary enough phrase), but "YOU?" It's something you might say to someone, sure, but the clue wasn't giving me enough to justify the far less common phrase. But then as I went on, I saw that all the clues were identical and all of them required you to imagine exactly the same context—a reaction to someone behaving ... badly? Inappropriately? Outrageously? One of those. So somehow the cumulative effect of the theme was enough to make that first themer OK. And that last themer was a fun adventure and a nice way to close things out. I started from the back end and as soon as I saw there was more than one "O" before that final W"," I was like "OK, how far is this going to go?" and I just kept assuming "O"s and solving the Down crosses until I got to the very front of the answer, the first letter, where I wrote in ... [drumroll] ... "H." "HOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!?" Seriously, how is it not "How?" LOL, I was looking at the black and/or white bird with the second letter "H" (56D: Black and/or white water bird), thinking, "What the hell bird is this? What has happened to my four-letter bird knowledge!?" But of course the second letter of the bird wasn't an "H"—it was a "W." Wow. OK, yes, that also makes sense. Puzzle, done.

When I saw Erik's name on the byline,* I thought "OK, so this is going to be good, but there are definitely going to be a handful of terms and names from marginalized cultures of one kind or another that I absolutely will not know and will have to piece together from crosses." And ... bingo. Three answers where I needed all (or almost all) the crosses to make sense of them: HEAD DANCER (3D: Important powwow figure), AHED (29D: Palestinian activist Tamimi), CHURCH ROCK (32D: New Mexico site of the largest radioactive accident in U.S. history). Never heard of any of those. CHURCH ROCK doesn't seem like it has anything to do with any particular culture on its surface, but the "radioactive accident" in question has been the source of much recent Native American activism (trying to get the environmental impact of the 1979 accident studied and, however possible, remedied). CHURCH ROCK is named after a rock formation that is sacred to the Navajo people. Anyway, I think this is a fine thing to do with your puzzle—include names and terms from groups you think are underrepresented. There's a predictable uptick in difficulty for a good chunk of solvers when you do this, but if the crosses are fair and the puzzle is appropriately slotted for its difficulty, that's fine. I thought this played much more like a Wednesday than a Tuesday, but again, that is solely because of the three answers I mentioned. Everything else was Tuesday Easy. 

Notes:

• 14A: 918 or 539, on the Cherokee Nation (AREA CODE) — love this clue. Great way of being inclusive without really adding any difficulty at all.
• 28A: Kennewick ___ (ancient ancestor discovered in 1996) (MAN) — oof, forgot about this one. Never heard of it. And it crossed AHED (another never-heard-of). Luckily, MAN was totally inferrable. This makes at least the fourth Native American-oriented clue in this puzzle:

Kennewick Man or Ancient One was a Native American man who lived during the early Holocene, whose skeletal remains were found washed out on a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. Radiocarbon tests show the man lived about 8,400 to 8,690 years Before Present, making his skeleton one of the most complete ever found this old in the Americas, and thus of high scientific interest for understanding the peopling of the Americas. (wikipedia)

 

• 43A: Currency common to Cyprus and Croatia (EURO) — nice, oblique way of coming at this very common crossword answer.
• 1D: ___ trail (rhyming path that formerly had tracks) (RAIL) — we love ours (well maintained, no cars to worry about). The weird thing was that even though I wanted RAIL right away, I briefly thought it had to be wrong because I'd never really thought about the term as a general term. "How would anyone solving the puzzle know about the RAIL Trail in Vestal behind the HomeGoods store?" But apparently they're everywhere. Which ... makes sense.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*In case you didn't know, Erik is a veteran constructor and former editor of the USA Today crossword, as well as the 2018 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champion

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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