Emblem with an Ojibwe name / THU 10-15-26 / Overzealous fan, in modern slang / Bygone org. for the Houston Oilers / Southern California city with a Spanish name / Classic cartoon dog with the catchphrase "You eediot!" / Hipster of times past / Card that's the source for "blue mana" in Magic: The Gathering / Platform for Duck Hunt, in brief / Actor Stephen of "V for Vendetta"

Constructor: McKay Fritz

Relative difficulty: Far Too Easy For a Thursday

THEME: FIRE BLANKS (55A: One way to start a race ... or a hint to understanding seven clues in this puzzle) — the blank spaces in what look like fill-in-the-blank clues must be filled with "fire" in order for the clues to make sense:

Theme answers:

• COMET (9A: ___ ball) [Fireball]
• GUARANTEED (20A: Sure ___) [Surefire]
• LAMBASTED (37A: Put under ___) [Put under fire]
• TRUCE (64A: Cease ___) [Ceasefire]
• DRAGONS (1D: ___ breathers) [Firebreathers]
• MATCHES (11D: ___ starters) [Firestarters]
• HEARTH (46D: ___ place) [Fireplace]

Word of the Day: BREA (34A: Southern California city with a Spanish name) —

 

Brea (/ˈbreɪə/ BRAY-uh; Spanish for 'tar') is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States. The population as of the 2020 census was 47,325. It is 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Los Angeles. Brea is part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

The city began as a center of crude oil production and was later propelled by citrus production. It is a significant retail center, including the Carbon Canyon Dam, Carbon Canyon Regional Park, Brea Mall and downtown Brea. The city has an extensive public art program that began in 1975 and has over 140 artworks placed throughout the city. (wikipedia)

• • •

[5D: "Metropolitan Life" author Lebowitz]

I like the idea of turning a crossword convention (in this case, the fill-in-the-blank clue) on its head—usually, the missing word is the answer, but here you have to discover and supply the missing word ("fire"), working backwards from answers that apparently make no sense. So the theme clues function just like normal clues after all (just add "fire"). The array of theme answers, though, was pretty unremarkable. No flashy longer answers—in fact, hardly any longer answers at all: only GUARANTEED and LAMBASTED go longer than 7 letters, and those aren't exactly words to light up a marquee. So the interest, themewise, is *entirely* in the clues, as well as, I suppose, the revealer, which ... is the part of the puzzle that I like least, actually. The phrase FIRE BLANKS means exactly one thing to me, as a standalone phrase, and it relates to male infertility (though the phrase "shoot blanks" may be more common in that respect). 

[thefreedictionary.com]

Yes, a starter pistol does, technically, FIRE BLANKS, but you'd never use that phrase to describe how a race starts. Further, as the clue says, it's "a" race, one, singular. You would never FIRE BLANKS, plural, to start a race. You fire once, right? Who's firing off multiple rounds to start a single race?? Is that a thing? Maybe I don't watch enough racing sports. Since you take "fire" away from the theme clues, why not go with "FIRE AWAY!" as your revealer? That way, my puzzle doesn't end on a weak-sperm note (not one of your more pleasant notes).

The grid overall isn't bad. It's certainly got more zing than yesterday's lifeless thing. I really liked the whole READ LIPS / HOOPLA / LOADS UP / ORNERY section (I love the word "ORNERY"—I must've learned it at a very early age, from my mom, I wonder why...). But once again the puzzle's biggest defect is that it's simply too easy. Once you grasp the whole missing "fire" gimmick—which I did right ... here:

—the puzzle offers no more resistance than a typical Tuesday would offer. I should say that [Sure ___] didn't actually give me the theme, since [Sure] and GUARANTEED seem like synonyms to me, so I didn't notice a missing "fire." No, what gave me the theme was the "G" from GUARANTEED, which completed the theretofore inscrutable DRAGONS, and that's what allowed me to see the missing "Fire" (in 1D: ___ breathers). So I guess it did take a reasonable amount of fuss to get the theme to drop, but "fuss" isn't exactly "difficulty." Thursdays need to have some punch, some pop, some fight, something. This puzzle may have contained SINEW in a literal sense, but figuratively, not really. 

The toughest part for me, besides my initial struggle with DRAGONS, was the four-letter stuff at the middle of the grid, specifically BREA and STAT. The former is a completely unremarkable small city I've never heard of, despite having lived in Southern California for four years. The only way anyone really knows BREA is from the La BREA Tar Pits (located not in BREA, but in Hancock Park) (currently closed for a two-year renovation that started in July). The clue on BREA was completely useless. 34A: Southern California city with a Spanish name? You know what California city has a Spanish name? All of them!! OK, not all, but scores of them, for sure. You could've at least said it was the Spanish name for "tar," or mentioned anything, anything at all, that was BREA-specific. But no. The clue basically tells you "this is a non-place that we're cluing this way only to avoid mentioning the tar pits, even though that's the only thing anyone knows about BREA." Pathetic. The other four-letter problem I had in there was ASAP. I had STAT. I hadn't realized that was a kealoa* until today. I had the "A" in the third position (from STAN) and chose wrong. The weirdness of BREA made that error a little harder to suss out than it would've been otherwise. This is literally the totality of my "struggle" today. Oh, wait, I also "struggled" with SITES (52D: Plots). Any place might be a "site." [Plots] looked like a verb. I needed crosses. They weren't hard to come by.

Bullets:

• 17A: Bygone org. for the Houston Oilers (AFL) — Because the Houston Oilers are themselves "bygone," I interpreted this as [Org. for the bygone Houston Oilers] and so wrote in simply N.F.L., which the Oilers were a part of until 1996 (after which they moved to Tennessee). I forgot the A.F.L. ever existed (perhaps because it ceased to exist before my first birthday).
• 24A: Frighteningly monstrous sorts (OGRES) — why is "Frighteningly" here? [Monstrous sorts] will do. "Frighteningly" adds nothing but bulk to the clue.
• 8D: Emblem with an Ojibwe name (TOTEM) — only recently put together that "Chippewa" and "Ojibwe" are the same thing. I grew up hearing only the former, probably because of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. It's where Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) is from in Annie Hall. Also where Jack Dawson (Leonard DiCaprio) is from in Titanic.
• 45D: Tabloid that's one of the 10 highest-circulation papers in the U.S. (NEWSDAY) — weird, I had no idea NEWSDAY was a "tabloid." Perhaps because I know them only for their crossword, which I only ever solved in syndication, in my local paper. I can't say I've ever seen a copy of NEWSDAY in my life. "As of 2025, Newsday is the sixth-largest circulation newspaper in the United States with a print circulation of 67,300" (wikipedia). Man, that number seems so small. RIP print.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*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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Sikorsky of aviation fame / WED 10-14-26 / Three-season star of the New York Cosmos / Literary title character who's mostly unseen / Flora and fauna, collectively / Sharp part of a kite / Who "turned my whole world upside down," in a 1970s rock hit / "A conversation carried out by other means," per Peter Ustinov / Bygone Mesoamerican civilization

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: a very short Zoom meeting where the person leading the meeting can't be heard because they never turn their mic on — imagined "responses" to the meeting leader:

Theme answers:

• "YOU'RE MUTED" (17A: Response to "Good morning, everybody!")
• "WE CAN'T HEAR YOU" (25A: "Response to "Let's get this meeting going")
• "TURN YOUR MIC ON" (43A: Response to "Why is everyone ignoring me?")
• "OH, FORGET IT" (58A: Reaction to the unsuccessful "conversation" in this puzzle)

Word of the Day: IGOR Sikorsky (46D: Sikorsky of aviation fame) —

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky (25 May 1889 – 26 October 1972) was a Russian-American aviation pioneer in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. His first success came with the Sikorsky S-2, the second aircraft of his design and construction. His fifth airplane, the S-5, won him national recognition in Russia and secured F.A.I. pilot's license number 64.^[8] His S-6-A received the highest award at the 1912 Moscow Aviation Exhibition, and in the fall of that year the aircraft won first prize for its young designer, builder and pilot in the military competition at Saint Petersburg. In 1913, the Sikorsky-designed Russky Vityaz (S-21) became the first successful four-engine aircraft to take flight. He also designed and built the Ilya Muromets (S-22 – S-27) family of four-engine aircraft, an airliner which he redesigned to be the world's first four-engine bomber when World War I broke out.

After emigrating to the United States in 1919 because of the Russian Revolution, Sikorsky founded the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation in 1923 and developed the first of Pan American Airways' ocean-crossing flying boats in the 1930s, including the Sikorsky S-42 "Flying Clipper".

In 1939, Sikorsky designed and flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, the first viable American helicopter, which pioneered the single main rotor and a single antitorque tail rotor configuration used by most helicopters today. Sikorsky modified the design into the Sikorsky R-4, which became the world's first mass-produced helicopter in 1942. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Butt-HEAD "American Gothic”!]

[32A: Word before or after butt (HEAD)]

[51D: "American Gothic" setting (IOWA)]

The first time is funny. The next two are kinda funny, in that we're just stuck in the same place. But the end is not at all realistic. Who are you saying "OH, FORGET IT" to? Also, you wouldn't forget it. If you've been on any of these meetings, you know there are many, many ways to indicate to a speaker that their mic isn't on. I mean, just unmute yourself and tell them! Then, I guess if they also have their speakers off (???), then you can move on to physical gestures, which are pretty effective. Or you can just text them or something. "OH, FORGET IT" has a quality of frustration and resignation that I understand, but we've all been doing this stuff too long for the scenario here to make any sense. Maybe it's the "funniest" resolution available, but it felt like the theme just petered out. Gave up. Bailed out. Good opening, weak ending. Anyway, I like the theme fine, for the most part. What doesn't work is the fill, which is about as dull and plain as it comes. 3-4-5s as far as the eye can see, and the puzzle doesn't even bother to spring for clever clues or mild trickiness. Everything is painfully straightforward. So outside of the theme, and a quaint term of appreciation (PEACHY KEEN), there really Nothing of interest in this grid, on either the clue or the answer side. Have a look for yourself. Remarkably arid. There's one half-hearted try at a "?" clue (60A: Off base? = AWOL), but that's transparent. Beyond that, there are only two clues that have any life at all: The HEADbutt / butt-HEAD thing (32A: Word before or after butt), and the Ustinov SEX quote (36A: "A conversation carried out by other means," per Peter Ustinov). Not sure I need the thought of Peter Ustinov having SEX first thing in the morning, but at least it broke the monotony!

There were no tricky or tough parts today. My mistakes were few and boring. Wrote in BIOME before BIOTA, for instance (50A: Flora and fauna, collectively). And RATTLE before NETTLE (44D: Irk). Thrilling, right? That's it as far as struggle goes. I'm sure it took me a few passes to parse the theme answers, since they are wholly imagined, but otherwise, no resistance today. Just ALTI PESO APSE EKE ALLAN AWOL ORB AFAR IPOS IGOR EGOS ELI ETON and of course "LAYLA" (35D: Who "turned my whole world upside down," in a 1970s rock hit). I will admit that I couldn't place "LAYLA" immediately from the lyric. I somehow wanted "RHODA," which is a TV show, not a "rock hit," but I think that what my brain was really searching for was the star of the show "RHODA" spun off from: Mary Tyler Moore ("Who can turn the world on with her smile...?").

Bullets:

• 52A: Sharp part of a kite (TALON) — a kite is a raptor, a hawklike bird found all over the world. The kind of kite that Charlie Brown tries to fly does not have TALONs, though it has been known to attack him:

• 25D: Literary title character who's mostly unseen (WIZARD OF ID) — "Literary" is killing me. Congrats to the puzzle on taking comic strips seriously. Is the dude in the cone hat with moons and stars on his tunic not the WIZARD OF ID? If he's "mostly unseen," why can I picture him? [LOL the answer is actually WIZARD OF *OZ* nevermiiiiind!]

• 36D: "Rugrats" dad (STU) — I think there's also a "Rugrats" character named GIL. No, wait: DIL? Yes, DIL. I've never seen an episode of Rugrats in my life, but these three-letter characters recur and recur, so I got STU no problem. (I also got STEW no problem) (56D: Hearty dish). 

That's all for today. See you next time.

And to Penelope (who reads me every day and sends me texts of my typos), happy birthday, honey

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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