Meaty dog treats "in a blanket" / FRI 10-17-25 / Customizable Nintendo avatars / Arizona tribe with matrilineal clans / Max ___, boxer nicknamed "Madcap Maxie" / Plant often confused with algae / Portmanteau for evidence based solely on personal accounts / Brand of rum mentioned in Hemingway novels / Drinking game with projectiles

Constructor: Karen Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Max BAER (36A: Max ___, boxer nicknamed "Madcap Maxie") —

 

Maximilian Adelbert Baer Sr. (February 11, 1909 – November 21, 1959) was an American professional boxer and the world heavyweight champion from June 14, 1934, to June 13, 1935. He was known in his time as the Livermore Larupper and Madcap Maxie. Two of his fights (a 1933 win over Max Schmeling and a 1935 loss to James J. Braddock) were rated Fight of the Year by The Ring magazine. Baer was also a boxing referee, and had occasional roles in film and television. He was the brother of heavyweight boxing contender Buddy Baer and father of actor Max Baer Jr. Baer is rated #22 on The Ring magazine's list of 100 greatest punchers of all time. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was easy and delightful. Crossing CHARLI XCX with SNAUSAGES (3D: Meaty dog treats "in a blanket") ... I don't know where a crossword can even go from there. That's peak Friday fun. The long answers are consistently interesting and the glue (the short stuff) is perfectly tolerable and the whole thing felt very whoosh whoosh so I'm happy. You've got portmanteaus and superheroes and Whoopi and WICCA. The puzzle really gets around. It's also a very, very drinky puzzle. A drunk puzzle, even. What's your preference? Pick your poison. We can start with some ICE WATER, if you insist, but then ... You want some RICE WINE? No? How about a game of BEER DARTS? Or maybe just sip BACARDI? Speaking of BACARDI, as I was googling trying to remember the song lyrics I want that are floating somewhere in the back of my head ("... something something sipping BACARDI ..."), I discovered there are hundreds of songs that mention BACARDI, and approximately half of them are by Lana Del Rey. 

• "Bartender" ("Crosby, Stills and Nash is playing / Wine is flowing with BACARDI")
• "Off to the Races" ("I'm off to the races, cases of BACARDI chase / Chasing me all over town")
• "Noir" ("I'm Miss Parlor Tricks, sips of the BACARDI")
• "Girl That Got Away" ("Come back, sugey, come back to me / Fix me up a mixed drink, BACARDI")

Either that's all of them or there are dozens more, I don't have time to wade through the (non-ANEC)DATA. The phrase "sipping BACARDI" alone is found in more rap songs than you can shake a stick at. I'm just scrolling and scrolling and the songs keep coming. There's just something musical about the way BACARDI sounds and flows. Also, it rhymes with "party," that probably helps.

Normally I start in the NW, but when I couldn't get 1A: What a comment might be made in (JEST) (me: "the comments ... section?"), I hopped over one section, to the due north section, and so my first word in the grid was ... MIIS. I can't believe I've lived long enough and solved long enough for neo-crosswordese like MIIS to become a gimme. MIIS is the new BAER. Of course the old BAER is BAER, Max BAER, who has been around long enough, and then disappeared long enough, that I'm actually kind of happy to see him. I imagine him in a Crossword Retirement Village, occasionally getting the old gang back together for drinks (some RICE WINE for Bert LAHR, BACARDI for ZASU Pitts, maybe just ICE WATER for ASTA). Like yesterday's Charles READE, Max BAER used to appear much more often than he does these days. Check out the BAER chart:

[from xwordinfo dot com]

Shortz didn't exactly cut BAER out entirely, but there's a definite drop off, and then it's almost like you can see him, some time around 2010, deciding to turn the BAER tap down to a trickle. Of course, there's also just time ... which tends to take even famous people down, eventually. So the chart probably represents a combination of editorial decision-making (less overcommon short stuff!) and just natural fame diminishment. Still, I think of BAER as very much the boxer of CrossWorld in the olden days (well, the boxer of CrossWorld is ALI, for all eternity, but among mortals, it was BAER). I'm too young ever to have seen him box, but I have seen him in movies, most recently as the winner of this very brutal boxing match in Humphrey Bogart's last movie, The Harder They Fall (1956).
 

My favorite parts of the puzzle came near the beginning, in the NW (CHARLI XCX / SNAUSAGES), and then again near the end, on the opposite side of the grid. At first I couldn't get into it. I had BRAIN but no idea what followed (ROT ... FART ... DRAIN ...?) I managed to remember "VOLARE" thanks to the very helpful "V" from VINE, but it took some thinking for me to get both SUPERMAN and MENOPAUSE. With SUPERMAN, I fell for the "DC figure" misdirect (i.e. I thought of politics), and with MENOPAUSE, I fell for the gender-free nature of "one's" (30D: Event typically occurring in one's late 40s or early 50s). Had the "M" and wanted something like MIDLIFE CRISIS. But what I failed to see, couldn't have seen, was that "one's" meant "women's." You got me. I somehow liked the surprise when I finally got the answer. I'm so vain, I probably thought the clue was about me. It wasn't.

Last bits:

• 5A: Plant often confused with algae (MOSS) — had the "MO-," wrote in MOLD :(
• 17A: British singer with the top 10 albums "Crash" and "Brat" (CHARLI XCX) — if you're not up on your pop stars, you should probably get up on this one. She's gonna be used in BRAT clues for a long time to come. Wouldn't be surprised to see XCX show up occasionally on its own. She is a megastar whose album BRAT was all over the news last year, turning the term BRAT into an entire cultural phenomenon (BRAT was Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year last year) (Here's a Times article from last summer entitled "It's the Summer of 'Brats'"). Charli is feud-with-Taylor-Swift famous, and though she's never going to be as crossword-common as other pop stars with more grid-friendly names, like ADELE or RITA ORA (26D: British singer with the hits "R.I.P." and "Radioactive"), you should expect to see her name in clues and in the grid for some time to come. 

[You: "Hey, you know that song 'Radioactive'?" Me: "Oh hell yeah" [starts singing this song]]

• 46A: Portmanteau for evidence based solely on personal accounts (ANECDATA) — portmanteaus (portmanteaux?) are not always pleasing to my eye/ear (see SKORT, for instance), but I love ANECDATA. It somehow both sounds good and is a perfect expression of what it is.
• 41D: "Stop the presses!" ("HOLD IT!") — wanted something more press-specific here at first, but the "presses" part is just metaphorical. The clue could just as easily have been ["Stop!"], but ... every other clue in that SE section is trying to throw you off, why not this one!?

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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Tonkatsu coating / THU 10-16-25 / What allows Neo to disconnect from the Matrix / Certain Windows hard drive malfunction / Horned creature in "Pan's Labyrinth" / Novelist Charles who wrote "The Cloister and the Hearth" / Prefix with botanist / Performed amazing, in slang

Constructor: Kareem Ayas

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: ROCKS OUT (35D: Enjoys oneself uninhibitedly ... or a punny title for this puzzle) — answers to the starred clues appear to be inapt, but they just lack "ICE" (or, in bartenderspeak, "rocks"); that is, they're served NEAT (61A: How whiskey might be served ... with a hint to the answers to the seven starred clues):

Theme answers:

• BENTO (5A: *Treat with kindness) ("be nice to")
• PRY (24A: *Expensive) ("pricey")
• SLR (48A: *Deli device) ("slicer")
• DROLL (62A: *Risky endeavor, idiomatically) ("dice roll")
• NOTABLE (3D: *Conspicuous) ("noticeable")
• OFF HOURS (10D: *Chance to meet one-on-one with a professor) ("office hours")
• APPENDS (41D: *Book addenda) ("appendices")

Word of the Day: Charles READE (30D: Novelist Charles who wrote "The Cloister and the Hearth") —

Charles Reade (8 June 1814 – 11 April 1884) was a British novelist and dramatist, best known for the 1861 historical novel The Cloister and the Hearth. (wikipedia)

The Cloister and the Hearth (1861) is an historical novel by British author Charles Reade. Set in the 15th century, it relates the travels of a young scribe and illuminator, Gerard Eliassoen, through several European countries. The Cloister and the Hearth often describes the events, people and their practices in minute detail. Its main theme is the struggle between man's obligations to family and to Church.

Based on a few lines by the humanist Erasmus about the life of his parents, the novel began as a serial in Once a Week magazine in 1859 under the title "A Good Fight", but when Reade disagreed with the proprietors of the magazine over some of the subject matter (principally the unmarried pregnancy of the heroine), he curtailed the serialisation with a false happy ending. Reade continued to work on the novel and published it in 1861, thoroughly revised and extended, as The Cloister and the Hearth. (wikipedia)

• • •

Double revealer! This one definitely got better as it rolled along. Up front, I was wading through iffy fill (IOERROR, DOASIDO, Charles READE back from the dead...) and wondering why NOTABLE was the answer to a starred clue, when there didn't seem to be anything off or weird about it. Brain: "If something is [Conspicuous], it's NOTABLE ... works for me." Even after I got BENTO, I thought the "N" stood for "NICE" somehow and was trying to figure out what letter in NOTABLE could be doing something similar: "NICE-OTABLE? Hmm. Unlikely." At some point the "missing ICE" conceit dawned on me, and the starred clues were much easier from there on out, but merely taking "ICE" out of answers didn't seem all *that* interesting. Then I got to ROCKS OUT, and thought, "well, that's a good revealer at least. It's got the punny repurposing of the phrase, and the slang of "rocks" ... cool." At that point, I was reading the "ICE" as diamonds ("rocks" is also slang for diamonds), which is what made running into the second revealer (!?!?!?) doubly cool. First, I had the "aha" of realizing that the governing metaphor was literally ice, not diamonds, and that, when viewed in that light, all of the answers are served NEAT (i.e. without ice, like some whiskey). So the whiskey lover in me and the crossword lover in me were simultaneously satisfied. I honestly didn't even see the second revealer (NEAT) until after I was done and started doing the post mortem. It was like the puzzle going "psst, hey, I'm better than you think, look!" So despite the fact that the fill felt a little rough around the edges, I liked the concept here, and I really liked the 1-2 punch of the revealers. 

The puzzle was very easy, with only the ice-lessness posing a consistent solving challenge. I got slowed a little here and there, starting with IOERROR. I haven't used a Windows operating system in ages, but even if I used one currently, I can't imagine finding IOERROR a pleasant answer (2D: Certain Windows hard drive malfunction). I guess if you have one of those malfunctions, you could call an ITPRO (another answer I'm never that happy to see). I'm looking the grid over now and can't really see any significant sticking points. Had no idea there was such a thing as a PALEObotanist, but why not? PALEO is at least a recognizable prefix, and that's all I needed it to be. Crosses helped me figure it out. READE was not difficult for me (any very longtime solver knows his name), but I did slow down in a rubbernecking / "really?" kind of way. "We're still doing READE? And we're still cluing it via Charles? OK." No one reads Charles READE any more (put that irony in your clue!). I was an English major and then an English Ph.D. and even though the Victorian Era was not my thing, I had a passing familiarity with the period and I never once heard or saw his name during my entire formal education. I learned him from crosswords, some time in the '90s. If you want to know one of Shortz's main contributions to the NYTXW has been, it's (largely) turning off the Charles READE pipeline:

Those are READE appearances over the years. The blue represents when Shortz took over. Pretty dramatic, right? I mean, he was at war on all "crosswordese," but the history of READE serves as a good illustration (man, Maleska really liked READE—ten reads in a year!? That's too many READEs, man). And at least a handful of Shortz's READEs refer to the pharmacy chain Duane READE. I wonder who the first person was to clue READE via the pharmacy chain [... looks it up ...]. Well, what do you know—it was me ([Duane ___ (New York city pharmacy chain)], Dec. 22, 2010). Apparently Charles READE wrote not just The Cloister and the Hearth, but also something called Peg Waffington (the most commonly referenced work in ye olde READE clues). Some of those 20th-century clues for READE are rough. [Griffith Gaunt's creator]!?!?! 

Griffith Gaunt, or Jealousy is an 1866 sensation novel by Charles Reade. A best-selling book in its day, it was thought by Reade to be his best novel, but critics and posterity have generally preferred The Cloister and the Hearth (1861).

Is there a Charles READE fandom out there? Where's my Charles READE hive at? Should I bother with the guy? Lemme know.

Bullets:

• 35A: Practice chiromancy (READ PALMS) — one of the best answers in the grid. So funny to have a long answer sitting dead center and not have it be part of the theme. "Chiro" = "hand," "mancy" = divination or magic. [some fun TRIVIA: No one knows what Charles READE's palms looked like.]
• 40A: "Central Park in the Dark" composer (IVES) — I know IVES but do not know this work. Gonna listen to it today. A Charles READE novel seems like a big undertaking, but IVES I can do.

• 25D: What allows Neo to disconnect from the Matrix (RED PILL) — this term has found its (unfortunate) way into modern political discourse. "Individuals who identify as "red pilled" often espouse conspiracy theories, antisemitism, white supremacy, homophobia, and misogyny" (wikipedia)—you see, these chuds believe they're enlightened (i.e. disconnected from the oppressive and conformist "matrix" of ... I don't know, human decency, I guess), so they identify with Neo, which is a wild and flagrant misreading of the movie's politics (a movie made by two trans women), though no one ever accused these folks of being particularly literate. 
• 28D: Whom you might greet with open arms, for short? (TSA) — this made me laugh a kind of grim laugh. "Well if it isn't my old friend, Big Surveillance! Give me a hug!" But yeah, you do have to hold your arms out (open) when you go through that scanner dealie, so ... nice wordplay.
• 54D: Performed amazingly, in slang (ATE) — def a younger (than me) thing. I think I learned it from crosswords. I was familiar with the term "cooking" (slang for doing a great at something); then at some point "eating" followed. Seems logical. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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• Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (Ithaca) (Sat., Oct. 18, 2025) ***THIS WEEKEND***

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