Gen Z slang for awesome style / THU 4-30-26 / Former carrier over Mauna Kea / Chess-playing Mechanical Turk of 1770, for one / Holder of a large bed / Mocking name for failed businesses of the early 2000s / Seafood dish known as the King of Salads / Tour guide's admonition

Constructor: Lance Enfinger and John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: OSCAR BAIT (59A: Film angling for awards ... or what's depicted three times in this puzzle?) — Best Picture Oscar winners, appearing in circled-square formations shaped like hooks, drop down and snag three different fish, which are lurking in the shaded squares inside longer answers:

Theme answers:

• EXIT ROUTE (17A: Part of an evacuation plan) — the TROUT is hooked by PATTON
• PSALM ONE (21A: It ends "But the way of the ungodly shall perish") — the SALMON is hooked by RAIN MAN
• POP CHART (50A: Hit list) — the CHAR is hooked by BEN-HUR

Word of the Day: Mechanical Turk (31A: Chess-playing Mechanical Turk of 1770, for one = HOAX) —

The Mechanical Turk (German: Schachtürke, lit. 'chess Turk'), also known as the Automaton Chess Player or simply the Turk (Hungarian: A Török), was a chess-playing machine first displayed in 1770, which appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess autonomously, but whose pieces were in reality moved via levers and magnets by a chess master hidden in its lower cavity. The machine was toured and exhibited for 84 years as an automaton, and continued giving occasional exhibitions until 1854, when it was destroyed in a fire. In 1857, an article published by the owner's son provided the first full explanation of the mechanism, which had been widely suspected to be a hoax but never accurately described while the machine still existed.

Constructed by Wolfgang von Kempelen to impress Empress Maria Theresa, the Turk won most games, including those against statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. It was purchased in 1804 by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, who continued to exhibit it. Chess masters who operated it over this later period included Johann Allgaier, Boncourt, Aaron Alexandre, William Lewis, Jacques Mouret and William Schlumberger, but its operators during Kempelen's original tour remain unknown. The device could also perform the knight's tour, a puzzle that required the player to move a knight to visit every square of a chessboard exactly once. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Oscars won: 0
Ships destroyed: many]

This puzzle won me over with its ridiculousness. The concept here works because the puzzle really commits to the bit, elaborately literalizing a common phrase to the point of extreme silliness. A deconstructed, reconstructed metaphor, with the movie titles "fishing" not for Oscars, but for literal fish. Does it make any sense for Patton to catch a TROUT? No! But who cares. It's the arbitrariness of the fish that makes it truly loopy. So much crossword "wackiness" is lukewarm at best—subdadjoke, barely chuckleworthy. But this one? This one follows the golden wackiness rule, which is Go Big or Go Home. Also, Go Fish! Are there some problems with the theme execution? Yeah, a few. First of all, there's some visual ambiguity—the movies are supposed to be OSCAR BAIT, but they look more like hooks. Maybe they've been threaded onto their hooks so perfectly that they just *look* like hooks. Or maybe those shapes aren't hooks but worms. They look like inverted candy canes to me. But I think you could argue that the circled squares are the hooks and then you "bait" those hooks with movie titles. That's how I'm choosing to see it. I don't love the CHAR answer for a couple of reasons: one, the CHAR is a much much less familiar fish than the other two, but two, and more importantly, the CHAR does not break across the two words in its theme answer. SALMON touches both words in its answer, TROUT touches both words in its answer, but CHAR belongs only to CHART, so POP's just hanging out there doing nothing. The ideal embedded-word scenario has that word involved with every element in its host answer. It's clear Shortz doesn't care about this, given how often this weakness occurs—but I learned from the great constructor/editor Patrick Berry, so I will cling to my belief that this is how embedded words should work! But it's an admittedly minor point, esp. when there's so much entertaining visual chaos going on. I don't love PSALM ONE, written out like that, but as with POP CHART's failure to properly embed CHAR, sometimes you have to do what you have to do to make a worthily wacky theme work out.

The short stuff is kind of a drag today—a real onslaught of repeaters. So many crossword names (OGDEN IHOP RUBE AYN OATES CHER etc.) and then ENTS OSHA ICAN SYNE AETNA LODE, the always ugly SNES. It's a good thing the theme is so shiny and loud, and that the longer non-theme answers are admirably strong. EMBALMER and RAINMAKER really hold down the fort in the NW, and STAY CLOSE and BEN HOGAN do the same in the SE, those "STAY CLOSE!" is not an "admonition" I've heard on tours before (34D: Tour guide's admonition). Anyway, it's more a request or instruction. "Admonition" would be more like "Don't touch that Monet!" Because the instruction was unexpected, if not entirely unfamiliar to me, that SE corner was by far the hardest part of the puzzle for me. I got quadruple stymied heading into that corner. The quadfecta! I blanked on BEN ___, POP ___, "STAY ___," and CRAB ___. My favorite ("favorite") part was that I kept wanting 58A: Seafood dish known as the King of Salads to be CRAB ... SALAD. Should've remembered BEN HOGAN but kept getting interference from his main rival, Crossworld's own Sammy SNEAD. Knowing the theme actually helped me get into that corner (another thing in this theme's favor), as I was able to infer BEN-HUR from BEN and then got the CHART part of POP CHART from there, which got me RIALS, which was wrong (it's RIELS), but it was right enough to get me traction. Outside of that patch, the puzzle seemed quite easy.

[BEN HOGAN not pictured]

Mistakes? Not many. The RIALS/RIELS thing, and then CRUDE for CRASS (1D: Vulgar). Had one of those "malapops" where you want a word that's wrong, but then that word actually appears elsewhere later in the solve. Today, I wanted TADA for VOILA (obviously impossible given the word length, but that's what popped into my head first) (55A: "There it is!"). And then later ... TADA! There's TADA (26A: Revealing statement?). I'd never heard of the Chess-playing Mechanical Turk of 1770 and assumed that that was its (his?) full name. Kind of disappointing to discover it's just called "the Mechanical Turk" and the other bits in the clue are just descriptors. I was like "The Chess-Playing Mechanical Turk of 1770, what a badass name. If that were my name, I'd insist on being called by my full name at all times. I might have to become a pro wrestler with that name. Anyway, HOAX took some crosses, is what I'm saying. 

Bullets:

• 19D: ___ good turn (DO A) — it's funny to me that there are non-Oscar winning movie titles trying to catch the fish as well. D.O.A. is probably the best of them—a classic 1950 film noir in which Edmond O'Brien has to solve his own murder! (dum dum dum!). But there's also the '90s legal drama The RAINMAKER out there trying to catch a fish. And then there's the Jaws ripoff ORCA! Very sad when an ORCA can't catch a fish. Can't believe ORCA lost out to PATTON today. Real upset, fishing-wise. 

• 18A: Former carrier over Mauna Kea (ISLAND AIR) — boo to "former carriers." Luckily, the answer is very inferable with a few crosses. The clue mentions something Hawaiian, so there's your "ISLAND" part, and then ... well yeah, "carrier," there's your AIR part. VOILA! TADA! VOILDA!
• 5D: Holder of a large bed (OCEAN) — "Holder" is weird, but I guess defensible. I wanted this to be PAPA, as in PAPA Bear, but I think his bed was defined by firmness, not bigness. Wait, do we ever learn which bed belongs to which bear? English professor can't remember plot of Goldilocks and the Three Bears! Shameful.
• 11A: What am I, chopped liver? (PATÉ) — still laughing at this one. Again, like the theme, so stupid it's genius. I read the clue as if it were in quotation marks so I tried to make the four-letter answer mean something equivalent to "What am I, chopped liver?" Not easy. "I'M ME!" "UH, ME?" "IT ME!" But no, it's literally chopped liver. Better, it's the existential musing of chopped liver. "I'm chopped liver, therefore I am ... PATÉ!" Unlike PATTON, PATÉ won no Oscars because it is a film that does not exist.
• 13D: Gen Z slang for awesome style (DRIP) — pretty sure it was part of hip-hop vernacular before it was "Gen Z slang" but whatever. 

• 22A: Toys for tots, perhaps (TYPO) — you'd've gotten it quickly if they'd put "toys" and "tots" in quotation marks like they should be, but where's the fun in that?
• 41A: What "R" might stand for on an envelope (RHODE) — as in "RHODE Island," commonly abbreviated "RI." Too deep for me. I kept wanting ROUTE and then remembering that ROUTE was already in the grid.
• 38A: Mocking name for failed businesses of the early 2000s (DOT BOMB) — nice to follow up yesterday's tepid (DOT) COM puzzle with this colorful (if dated) zinger.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Poles tossed in a highland competition / WED 4-29-26 / Rinse with water, as grain in the brewing process / Guofeng, successor to Mao Zedong / Coastal resort city in southern California / Shoe with a "kitten" variety / Swabbie's tool / "Wall Street," for the U.S. financial industry

Constructor: Joseph Gangi

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "internet company" puns — words starting with "COM" are imagined as descriptions of internet companies (you have to mentally supply the DOT before the "COM" ... until the end, when the puzzle limply hands it to you (58D: Preceder of the answer to each of this puzzle's starred clues)

Theme answers:

• COM BUST (1A: *Failed internet company)
• COM PROMISE (25A: *Assurance from an internet company)
• COM POSER (31A: *Puzzling question from an internet company)
• COM PRESS (39A: *Exposure for an internet company?)
• COM PARABLE (46A: *Illustrative story from an internet company)
• COM POST (62A: *Blog message from an internet company)

Word of the Day: SPARGE (8A: Rinse with water, as grain in the brewing process) —

Sparging in brewing is the process of rinsing grain with hot water to extract fermentable sugars after the initial mash. This critical step allows brewers to maximize sugar extraction efficiency, typically recovering 75-85% of available sugars from malted grains. Understanding proper sparging techniques is essential for both home brewers and commercial operations to achieve consistent beer quality and optimal yields. (beersnobwrites DOT COM!)

• • •

I have to say, I don't understand what DOT is doing in this puzzle? By the time I got down to that corner—in fact, from the moment I got the first themer—I understood that the COMs were DOTCOMs. I didn't really think about the fact that the DOT was missing. I didn't even think there was going to be a revealer at all, so transparent was the gimmick. You break COM- words into two parts so that the COM stands on its own, and that phrase describes your hypothetical "internet company." The end. When I hit DOT, what I felt was not "OH, COOL, an interesting answer to make it all make sense!" It was more like ".... oh, I guess COMs are preceded by DOTs ... huh." It's possibly the Most Anticlimactic Revealer of All Time. For a brief moment, I thought maybe the stars (*) at the start of each theme clue were supposed to be little DOTs, and so the "DOT" was there all along ... but that's impossible, since the DOT clue specifically refers to those stars as (surprise!) "stars" ("starred clues," technically). So ... DOT then. DOT. I guess this puzzle ends ... on the DOT! That's ... something. In my mind, it's something. A thing I have contrived to make DOT enjoyable. Otherwise, this puzzle is a bunch of repetitive dadjoke "com" puns, and I appreciate that this will be ample entertainment for some folks. Wasn't quite enough for me.

I appreciate that the clues were tightened up a bit, difficulty-wise, given how much it was giving away on the thematic end (i.e. after you get the first couple of "COM-" answers, you can just plunk down COM down four more times without thinking). Answers like TOURNAMENT (29D: Where seeds might be placed) and PATIENCE (17A: Trait for a good waiter?) had tricky clues, and then there were fancyish words like METONYM and obscure words like SPARGE, so the puzzle stayed fairly interesting even if you (like me) thought the theme was just so-so. There are some less than lovely moments, though. That SPARGE / SOPOR cross is yeesh—niche word + word I only ever see in xwords. Then there's crosswordese couple ZAC and ONO holding hands, a PREOP and an OPED, the second "I DO CARE" in the last four days (weird to have an answer debut on Sunday and reappear already by Wednesday (I hope we're done with IDOCAREs for a while). I don't really know the phrase PHOTO DUMPS—I guess it's just the place where you dump all your photos. My phone is my photo dump. It's extremely uncurated. Not sure why anyone would want to make their "uncurated" photos accessible to the world, but there's lots of things about this world I don't get. It's fine. Oh, now that I think of it ... I guess I have seen social media posts where people appear to have just "dumped" all their photos, from a vacation or an event, into one place for others to leaf through. I do like the term, even though I think curation is your (and everybody's) friend. The internet is already full of gunk. A little ... judicious culling of the clutter would be nice.

Bullets:

• 29A: Lightly strike, as a windowpane (TAP AT) — wrote this right in, then pulled the "T" when realized "hmm, it could be RAP AT" (the way the narrator hears something "rapping at his chamber door" in "The Raven")

• 18A: Ingredient in shepherd's pie (POTATO) — me: "Peas ... PEEEAS!"
• 12D: Visit (GO TO SEE) — I'd like this answer a hell of a lot better if it had a "D" on the end.
• 53D: Control center? (TEE) — a "letteral" clue—the TEE here is the letter "T" (which sits at the "center" of the word "Control"
• 39D: Poles tossed in a Highland competition (CABERS) — spelling challenge for me, as I always want CABORS (the fact that I can unironically say "always" re: CABERS tells you how many damned puzzles I do, it's unnatural). CABER is one of those five-letter words where, when you know it, you can't unknow it, and so if you're playing Wordle or Quordle it will get in your head — you know (probably!?) that that is never going to be the correct answer, but you can't be sure. It's doubly a problem if (like me) you couldn't spell it correctly even if it was the answer.
• 6D: Recipient of many dad jokes (SON) — is the person who is forced to hear the "joke" the "recipient." Do I "receive" a comedian's jokes? If he's not sending them through the mail ... I dunno ... 
• 48A: What a track athlete may do three times in one attempt (JUMP) — if this clue seems slightly confusing to you, it's because it's referring to the specific event the triple jump without directly referring to it.

• 50A: Just (MERE) — this is what I mean about the puzzle tightening up the difficulty a little. The clue isn't hard, just ... extremely ambiguous. "Just" means an awful lot of things, and since the answer today ran through CAR (which I had as CAB) and CABERS (which, as we've established, I had as CABORS), I got more bogged down here than anywhere else in the puzzle (as you can see from my finished grid image, above, the "E" at CABERS / MERE was my last letter).
• 51A: ___ Guofeng, successor to Mao Zedong (HUA) — the only answer in the grid (besides SPARGE) that I wasn't familiar with. Thank god for crosses.
• 60A: Shoe with a "kitten" variety (STILETTO) — I would've had kitten heels and STILETTOs as entirely different animals but this is because I do not wear women's shoes (or pay very close attention to them). The "kitten" heels are a more practical height (< 2 in.) than typical STILETTOs
• 15D: Coastal resort city in southern California (DEL MAR) — I think there's a racetrack there. Yeah, a pretty famous one. I ate lunch in DEL MAR once, after an L.A. Crossword Tournament at Loyola Marymount University back around 2010. I think constructors Andrea Carla Michaels and Doug Peterson were there. That is my exciting DEL MAR story. Oh wait, no—that was probably Marina del Rey, not DEL MAR. Never mind...

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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