Jörmungandr, in Norse mythology / FRI 1-17-25 / First capital of Alaska / Shakespearean counterpart to Logan on "Succession" / Milling byproduct / Borg who co-founded the Institute for Women in Technology / First Pixar film with a female protagonist / 2011 hit by Jay-Z and Kanye West that samples a 1966 soul performance

Constructor: Willa Angel Chen Miller

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: CALL option (18A: ___ option) —

In finance, a call option, often simply labeled a "call", is a contract between the buyer and the seller of the call option to exchange a security at a set price. The buyer of the call option has the right, but not the obligation, to buy an agreed quantity of a particular commodity or financial instrument (the underlying) from the seller of the option at or before a certain time (the expiration date) for a certain price (the strike price). This effectively gives the buyer a long position in the given asset. The seller (or "writer") is obliged to sell the commodity or financial instrument to the buyer if the buyer so decides. This effectively gives the seller a short position in the given asset. The buyer pays a fee (called a premium) for this right. The term "call" comes from the fact that the owner has the right to "call the stock away" from the seller.

• • •

[48D]

When I solve themeless puzzles, I put a premium on the longer answers, the marquee answers. These are the things you seed the grid with, your deliberate choices (in themed puzzles, it's the themers that seed the grid). So most longer answers are there because you really want them to be there. This is why I don't understand a puzzle like today's. With the exception of the SE corner, which had a nice pair of complementary colloquial marquees (NOT A LITTLE, GOOD ENOUGH), and SHAVED HEADS, which I liked for highly personal reasons (I shaved mine just last night!), I don't get actually wanting most of these long answers in your grid. UBER RATING is probably a debut, but as I've said a million times, Not All Debuts Are Good. I've seen a number of UBER answers and this has to be the most boring. (I know UBER's not paying the NYTXW, but sometimes it feels that way). And I practically fell asleep in the middle of writing BOARD SEATS ("seatszzzzz...") and DIRECT DEPOSIT. GRANDCHILD and SEA MONSTER are fine, but not headliner stuff. I like NO GREAT SHAKES as an answer, but today it takes us into triple-negative territory with the marquees, as we already have NOT A LITTLE, and "IT'S NOT A RACE" (which is the real problem, that duped "NOT A" being rather conspicuous today). There just wasn't enough zing here. BOARD SEATS, oof, more like "bored seats." It's a thing, but not a thing that livens up a grid. Not bad, this one, just bland.

The puzzle was very easy, so I didn't have much time to dwell on my disappointment. There were several things I didn't know, but the surrounding fill filled itself in so quickly that I blew right through every roadblock. ONE is a horizontal line in Chinese writing? Crosses say "yes," so yes. ANITA Borg is somebody? (14D: Borg who co-founded the Institute for Women in Technology). Kinda sounds familiar. Sure, why not? Crosses say "yes," so yes. Same with Douglas Carter BEANE (38A: Playwright/screenwriter Douglas Carter ___). He has written (or worked on) the book for big Broadway adaptations of movies like Sister Act and Xanadu. It's true he is a screenwriter, but I only see a single credit on his wikipedia page (To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)). He has had a big successful career, but I feel less bad not knowing him after reading his cv. Not sure how I'd know his name from any of it. Did you know who wrote the book for Sister Act? If so, congrats. Anyway, BEANE was a name, a worthy name I didn't know, and it only held me up for a few seconds, so no biggie. The one answer that really had me going "???? is that right?" was 18A: ___ option (CALL). Is that some kind of Wall St. / stock exchange term? Or poker slang? Well, I looked it up (as you can see—see Word of the Day above), and my eyes glazed over the same way they did with BOARD SEATS and DIRECT DEPOSIT (and IPO, frankly). My first guess was (roughly) correct. Commodities trading. I'm sure these answers are getting someone excited, but it ain't me.

Toughest part of the puzzle today was SUSSing out "IT'S NOT A RACE!" (6D: "Take your time!"). The clue is a totally non-judgmental, reassuring statement, whereas the answer is a highly judgmental substitute for "slow the f*** down!" so the cluing, needless to say, did not really work for me. I (mentally) tried a bunch of "IT'S NO —" answers, then at some point (literally) tried "IT'S NOT A RUSH!" before I finally arrived at the correct answer. On its own, it's a good answer. With that clue, and amid two other "NO/NOT" marquee answers, it loses some of its luster. I also struggled ("struggled") with GRANDCHILD because I weirdly insisted on making her a GRANDNIECE at first (going with NIECE of CHILD in this circumstance is an obvious symptom of Crossword Brain—NIECE beats CHILD 257 to 52 in overall crossword appearances, because of its preponderance of common letters, so the NIECE reflex just kicked in—never mind that GRANDCHILD is a thousand times more common a term than GRANDNIECE. Then there was the Great GRAHAME Spelling Adventure. I think my first pass looked something like GRAEHAM. Again, crosses ultimately made this problem insignificant.

Bullets:

• 19A: Narrow passage: Abbr. (STR.) — short for "strait" (a (relatively) "narrow" waterway)
• 35A: First Pixar film with a female protagonist (BRAVE) — first thought: Finding Nemo! But Nemo is not "female." I'm just remembering Ellen Degeneres's prominent role (as Dory, the blue tang with short-term memory loss)
• 39A: First capital of Alaska (SITKA) — flexed my crosswordese muscle here. I would've said "you used to see this a lot more in the olden days," but I just looked at its frequency chart and honestly, it appears as much now (infrequently, but regularly) as it ever did. Oddly, no significant abatement in the modern era (not so with most answers I'd tag as "crosswordese"). 
• 50A: 2011 hit by Jay-Z and Kanye West that samples a 1966 soul performance ("OTIS") — never heard of this "hit," got it entirely from the helpful "1966 soul performance" part:

• 48D: ___ Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature (OLGA) — absolutely loved Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I've got Empusium sitting here on my (figurative) to-read pile. I'll get to it right after I finish this first book in the Reykjavik Noir trilogy by Lilja Sigurðardóttir (Snare) ... and the next book in the magnificent 10-book Martin Beck series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (I'm up to number 6: Murder at the Savoy) ... and Box Office Poison and Miss May Does Not Exist and and and. But I will get to it. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Last week during my yearly fundraising drive I decided to add Zelle as a payment method on the last day, which worked fine ... until it didn't. Several contributions were mysteriously rejected. It is not a big deal, but if you contributed that way, it's possible it didn't go through (this applies to only like a dozen of you). The problem was on my end ("MY BAD!"). I apologize. The bank and I have spoken. I should have the kinks ironed out for next year. For now, it's still just PayPal, Venmo, and snail mail. Thanks! 

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Cornhole action / THU 1-16-25 / What follows T.S.A., weirdly / Sent a reminder text, in lingo / Gaming ___ (console alternatives, for short) / Part of a makeup routine / Something a meter reader reads? / Word that becomes its own synonym if you add a 'k" to the end / Affirmation not usually spoken at a Jewish wedding / First half of a two-volume encyclopedia on physics, aptly?

Constructor: Rebecca Goldstein and Adam Wagner

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: COMMON CORE (52A: Set of educational standards ... or a hint to 17-, 23-, 34- and 46-Across) — theme answers are double-clued and look like nonsense but make sense once you realize they all have COMMON COREs; that is, they are really two answers that overlap (all letters except the first letter of the first answer and the last letter of the second answer overlap)

Theme answers:

• MOBSCENEST(17A: Brouhahas / Most appalling) [mob scene + obscenest]
• EDNAMODEL (23A: "The Incredibles" costumer / Science class display) [Edna Mode + DNA model]
• CLOSESHOPE (34A: Lock up for the night / Despairs) [close shop + loses hope]
• APRESSKIT (46A: Like some activities at a mountain lodge / Marketing fodder) [après-ski + press kit]

Word of the Day: COMMON CORE (52A) —

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, also known as simply Common Core, was an American, multi-state educational initiative begun in 2010 with the goal of increasing consistency across state standards, or what K–12 students throughout the United States should know in English language arts and mathematics at the conclusion of each school grade. The initiative was sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The initiative also sought to provide states and schools with articulated expectations around the skills students graduating from high school needed in order to be prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two- or four-year college programs or to enter the workforce.

• • •

[37D: Housing bubble?]

I enjoyed this, but on some literal level it doesn't quite work, spatially. Or ... what I mean is the two overlapping theme answers don't actually have a common core. The whole (nonsense) answer has a core (everything but the first and last letters) that belongs to both answer parts, so the CORE of the (nonsense) answer is held in COMMON by both overlapping answers, so ... OK maybe it does work. But the phrase COMMON CORE suggests the two (non-nonsense) answers have their cores in common, and they don't. I think the fact that the revealer, COMMON CORE, requires that I take the nonsense total answer as my frame of reference for the "core" part is what's throwing me. Anyway, the core of What I Write In The Grid is held in common by both answer parts ... yes, when I say it that way, it makes sense. Anyway, I liked this, though it was very easy, as you have two different ways to come at each themer (obviously). Double-clued, double-easy. I was like "well her name is EDNA MODE ... not EDNA MODEL ... although she does work in fashion, so maybe "MODEL" is related to that ... somehow ... no, wait, "Science class display" ... that's DNA MODEL ... OK, so they overlap. Huh. I wonder why." And that was my understanding of the theme until I hit the revealer down below. Sometimes on Thursdays, if the theme isn't apparent to me quickly, I'll hunt down the revealer to see if I can get a grip, but today, I had the concept quickly, so I just waited for the revealer to reveal itself naturally, in the normal course of solving, so that it could do its job, i.e. make me go "oh!" or "aha!" or "good one" or whatever. That mostly worked today. My reaction to COMMON CORE maybe didn't reach "oh!" or "aha!" or "good one" levels, but I think that's a fine way to make sense of what's going on in the themers (despite my real-time convoluted thinking at the beginning of this paragraph).

The fill on this one ran pretty easy. Crossing a gaming term with a makeup term at 1A/1D seemed like a hostile way to greet me, specifically (1A: Gaming ___ (console alternatives, for short) / 1D: Part of a makeup routine), but after that, nothing gave me much trouble at all. I though the soft drink named for a nut was actually the name of the nut (KOLA), and then there was the DANG / DAMN / DRAT / DARN hyperkealoa* at 40D: "Phooey!" crossing the BRUH / BRAH / BRUV hyperkealoa* at 50A: "My man!" And yes, BRUH, BRAH, and BRUV have all made NYTXW appearances in recent years. Did you know that on Friday, Aug. 11, 1972, BRUH was clued as [Macaque of the West Indies]!? And then (understandably) was not heard from again for 51 years, when it reappeared as this "bro" equivalent? You probably did not know that, it would be weird if you did. But it's true. BRUV is British, by the way, and likely to be clued that way in a crossword situation. But back to trouble spots ... just TROOPS, really (29D: North Korea has the fourth-highest number of these, after China, India and the U.S.). "Troop" has always been weird to me, in that I think of it primarily as a group noun (i.e. "troop" = group of soldiers), but then it's also the word for an individual soldier. They coulda made things clearer, honestly. Anyway, TROOPS was not the countable noun I was looking for. Oh, and I had NUDGED instead of PINGED at first (39A: Sent a reminder text, in lingo). The "reminder" bit suggested that somebody needed to be "nudged" into action; PINGED seems more neutral, i.e. it has no particular "reminding" connotations (to me).

Bullets:

• 21A: First half of a two-volume encyclopedia on physics, aptly? (ATOM) — I legit thought "aw that's cute" as I wrote this in. ATOM ... A-TO-M ... good one.
• 30A: Singer/songwriter Reznor (TRENT) — a gimme for any Gen Xer. I think of these days as primarily a composer. With collaborator Atticus Ross, he has two Academy Awards for Best Score (The Social Network, Soul) and an Emmy for Outstanding Musical Composition (Watchmen). Most recently, he and Ross did the music for Challengers (2024).

• 45A: Cornhole action (TOSS) — will admit my first reaction to this was a very Beavis & Butt-Heady "uh......" But it's just the beanbag TOSS game. Of course it's just the beanbag TOSS game. (If you have strict "breakfast test" rules re: the crossword, then definitely do not look at this definition of "cornhole")
• 49A: Affirmation not usually spoken at a Jewish wedding ("I DO!") — I don't think I knew this. And I've been to a Jewish wedding or two. Huh. Live and learn (and maybe pay closer attention next time)
• 8D: Something a meter reader reads? (POEM) — lol leave it to me to stumble over the one clue that is explicitly about my actual job. The second half of my Brit Lit I class covers meter in depth and yet today I was like "so ... someone who stares at a literal yardstick? No wait ... what's the word for a metric yardstick?"
• 42D: Button clicked to advance to a YouTube video (“SKIP AD”) — yes, I too wondered what a SKI PAD was, for a second…
• 56A: What follows T.S.A., weirdly (PRE) — "weirdly" because "PRE" is a prefix meaning "before," so it shouldn't follow anything. But it does. Here:

• 34D: Something to put stock in (CONSOMMÉ) — sincerely read this as [Something to put a sock in] and my only guess was "... 'IT'?"
• 53D: Word that becomes its own synonym if you add a 'k" to the end (MAR) — my eyes glazed over around "synonym" and I was like "nope" and just got this one from crosses. There's really no other way to come at an answer like this. What, are you gonna sit there all day thinking about every three- and four-letter answer in the language? No. I mean, I hope not.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Last week during my yearly fundraising drive I decided to add Zelle as a payment method on the last day, which worked fine ... until it didn't. Several contributions were mysteriously rejected. It is not a big deal, but if you contributed that way, it's possible it didn't go through (this applies to only like a dozen of you). The problem was on my end ("MY BAD!"). I apologize. The bank and I have spoken. I should have the kinks ironed out for next year. For now, it's still just PayPal, Venmo, and snail mail. Thanks!

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] => ATON or ALOT, ["Git!"] => "SHOO" or "SCAT," etc.  

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