Discount Chinese e-tailer / SUN 8-30-26 / Inuit watercraft / Periods of 730 days / Heat setting, in brief / Chef Hussain of "The Great British Bake Off" fame / Musician/actress Haim / Discontinued Swedish cars / Double-breasted pieces of menswear / Supreme Egyptian god / Bootlegger's concern / Musical comedy that was 1968's highest-grossing film

Constructor: Daniel Grinberg

Relative difficulty: way too easy

THEME: "Written in the Stars" — clues and answers are both "stars" whose names are made up of letters drawn from the same letter bank; because the same letters occur in both names, they might be said to be RECURRING CHARACTERS (69A: Ones making periodic appearances ... or the link between the capitalized clues and their answers):

Theme answers:

• HENRI MATISSE (22A: MARTIN SHEEN) (H, E, N, R, I, M, A, T, S)
• SAL MINEO (24A: LIAM NEESON) (S, A, L, M, I, N, E, O)
• DONNA SUMMER (33A: NORMAN REEDUS) (D, O, N, A, S, U, M, E, R)
• REGINA KING (37A: GREG KINNEAR) (R, E, G, I, N, A, K)
• GEORGE FOREMAN (48A: MORGAN FREEMAN) (G, E, O, R, F, M, A, N)
• ELAINE STRITCH (84A: CHRISTIAN SLATER) (E, L, A, I, N, S, T, R, C, H)
• BRIE LARSON (102A: ISABELLA ROSSELLINI) (B, R, I, E, L, A, S, O, N)
• EVEL KNIEVEL (104A: KEVIN KLINE) (E, V, L, K, N, I)
• BABE RUTH (114A: BEA ARTHUR) (B, A, E, R, U, T, H)
• ORLANDO BLOOM (118A: MARLON BRANDO) (M, A, R, L, O, N, B, D)

Word of the Day: NADIYA Hussain (25A: Chef Hussain of "The Great British Bake Off" fame) —

Nadiya Jamir Hussain (née Begum; born 25 December 1984) is a British television chef, author and television personality. She rose to fame after winning the sixth series of BBC's The Great British Bake Off in 2015. Since winning, she has signed contracts with the BBC to host the documentary The Chronicles of Nadiya and TV cookery series Nadiya's British Food Adventure and Nadiya's Family Favourites; co-presented The Big Family Cooking Showdown; and has become a regular contributor on The One Show.

Hussain is a columnist for The Times Magazine and has signed publishing deals with Penguin Random House, Hodder Children's Books and Harlequin. She has appeared as a guest panellist on ITV's Loose Women. She was invited to bake a cake for the 90th birthday celebrations of Elizabeth II.

In 2017, Hussain was named by Debrett's as one of the 500 most influential people in the UK and was on BBC News' 100 Women list. She was also shortlisted for Children's Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards for Bake Me A Story and was nominated for Breakthrough Star at the Royal Television Society Awards for The Chronicles of Nadiya. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Matisse, Icarus (@MoMA)]

I know it's tiresome when I complain about the puzzle's being too easy but boy oh boy this was a new low. I don't time myself any more but at a leisurely pace, I probably finished thing in under 8 minutes, which would be near an all-time record for me—again, without trying, without racing. NADIYA was the only thing in the whole puzzle that stumped me. All the other names were known to me, and none of the clues seemed to be trying too hard today at all. I guess POLO COATS took a few crosses to get, because ... what are those? (44D: Double-breasted pieces of menswear). But after I got POLO, the COATS part seemed obvious, so ... yeah, the easiest Sunday puzzle I've ever done? Ever? Maybe. Really disappointing. As for the theme, I guess there's probably some bit of code you can write that can tell you which "stars" (from whatever bank of "star" names you have) share the same building-block letters. It's hard to get excited about this particular phenomenon. With the themers, I basically just got a few crosses, looked at the clue, and the answer generally seemed obvious. Sometimes, looking at the clue wasn't even necessary. I had DONNA and the only famous DONNA I could think of (that fit) was SUMMER, so I just wrote her in. There was no resistance, nothing to really wrestle with or get. You just fill in pretty standard crossword answers with pretty straightforward clues and then ... watch names appear? The RECURRING CHARACTERS pun might've resonated a little more if all the "stars" had been actors (actors play "characters," after all). But of the twenty "stars" in play here, you've got five non-actors. And one of those you would never call a "star" (in the sense that all the others are "stars"). Yes, HENRI MATISSE is a "star" (as in "luminary") of the art world, but he's not a "star" in the modern "celebrity" sense, as Every Other One of these "stars" is. Just bizarre, his inclusion here. I don't understand the appeal of this one. I truly hoped you enjoyed it more than I did.

The fill also seemed subpar. Plain, common, somewhat stale: EDY'S IBET AMONRA ESL ELI RECTO ERRED ADES NAS EARP ARIA ENT MOUE SOLI SAABS ESSO EIEIO TSK SKORTS EUIE TMC HES EDIE LIRAS EDIE TBAR SOYA ... and that's just the stuff that stands out. FUNNY GIRL alongside ABRASIVE was probably the highlight of the grid for me (not that FUNNY GIRL is ABRASIVE, I just think that's a nice pair of answers) (3D: Musical comedy that was 1968's highest-grossing film / 4D: Caustic). And I definitely loved seeing ELAINE STRITCH, whom I know best from the D.A. Pennebaker documentary Original Cast Album: Company. Everything about her struggle to sing "The Ladies Who Lunch" (and her back-and-forth with Sondheim) is mesmerizing and inspiring.

Bullets:

• 14A: Heat setting, in brief (NBA) — the Miami Heat are an NBA team
• 26A: Discount Chinese e-tailer (TEMU) — famous for their mascot, the TEMU Emu. (srsly, tho, I somehow remembered TEMU today, so congratulations to my memory because I don't even know how I know TEMU) (this is only its second NYTXW appearance; the first was earlier this year)
• 33A: NORMAN REEDUS ...— it occurs to me that of all the names in the theme answers/clues, his is probably the least well known. I know him from the TV show The Walking Dead.

• 124A: Musician/actress Haim (ALANA) — love her. She and Cooper Hoffman in Licorice Pizza are one of my favorite on-screen couples—problematic, yes, adorable, also yes. I put that movie on when I just want to be happy. She's also great in ... well, everything she's in. One Battle After Another, The Mastermind, whatever. Charming, funny, good. She's also in a band with her sisters. Also good.

• 18D: Inuit watercraft (KAYAKS) — for not the first time, I pulled UMIAKS out of my Bag of Crosswordese, only to find that I was dealing with plain old ordinary KAYAKS. What good is this useless, highly specific Inuit watercraft terminology if I can't use it!!!?
• 71D: Along with "CODA" and "Argo," the only other four-letter Best Picture winner (GIGI) — I like this clue a lot. The movie title itself isn't that exciting, but I had some fun trying to think of candidates. JAWS? Nope. BABE? Nope. COMA? Weird guess, also no.

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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Neck topper / SAT 8-29-26 / Half-spoken, half-sung passages of an opera / Nonhuman provider of medical advice / Green day star, for short / Skin-care brand known for its pore strips / Main characters for an early reader / Depicting the world bleakly and cynically / Green day star, for short / Humongous, slangily / Inverse of an exponential function

Constructor: Rafael Musa and Kate Chin Park

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ANA Huang (21A: Romance author Huang) —

Ana Huang is a Chinese-American author who primarily writes novels in the romance and new adult fiction genres. She is a #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. [...]  After 2019, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Huang began writing and self-publishing novels, and promoting them on TikTok. Her Twisted series went viral, and was republished by Bloom Books in 2022. [...] In 2023, her novel King of Greed reached #1 on the Paperback Trade Fiction section of The New York Times Best Seller list. King of Sloth was a #1 New York Times Best Seller, and reached #1 on the USA Today Booklist. Twisted Love stayed on the Paperback Trade Fiction section of The New York Times Best Seller list for 61 weeks. // In 2024, Huang, with 1,474,194 print copies sold, is the fourth highest selling BookTok author. (wikipedia)

• • •

Kind of a tough one today, which is to say, just about the right difficulty level for a Saturday. So weird to have Rafa do an emergency fill-in for me yesterday and then open the puzzle and see his name on the byline this morning. While there is much that I loved about this puzzle, most of the good vibes immediately evaporated when I got "A.I. DOCTOR" (1D: Nonhuman provider of medical advice). I realize that my aversion to A.I. creep in the puzzle is largely personal and perhaps idiosyncratic, but I can't help it, I just find the proliferation of everything A.I. completely disheartening. Hate to see the puzzle heedlessly dive into All Things A.I. the way the rest of the world seems to be doing. I know that there are various professional applications for A.I. that are useful and non-dehumanizing, but most of it seems like a way to eliminate jobs, mislead people, and make a few people very rich. Even the idea of calling any A.I. a "doctor" is, or should be, abhorrent. It's not and never can be a "doctor." It's *trained* on work that millions of actual doctors have done, but it is not and cannot be a doctor. Also, various "A.I. DOCTORS" are being offered as substitutes for traditional medical service, in some cases specifically because the user might not have medical insurance, and so ... all this A.I. crap is just papery over structural failures in society. I hate it. Every time we anthropomorphize one of these things by treating it like it's human, giving in a human name (or job title), we're a. pretending it's something it isn't and b. conceding some piece of our humanity to corporate-owned proprietary machinery. This is why "A.I." will give dystopian vibes to me Every Time I see it in a puzzle. I would love if constructors had their own personal "no A.I." policy, but I can see that's not going to happen. I'm not mad (don't say I GOT MAD). Just sad and disappointed. And tired.

I was also a little put off by the name blitz up top (ANA CHENG EWING BAIN BIORE etc.) but the names dissipated in the lower half of the grid, so the overall experience of hacking through said names (the ones I didn't know) wasn't So bad. I knew some of the names (The PITT, August WILSON, Patrick EWING, BAIN Capital (another depresso-answer to go with the A.I. DOCTOR) (27A: ___ Capital, investment firm co-founded by Mitt Romney). But those pore strips, ugh. I had like six different letter combinations before I finally got to BIORE (14A: Skin-care brand known for its pore strips). BIERO? I think that was one of them. No way I am going to know a Chinese character's meaning, so CHENG could've been "any Chinese name." ANA Huang writes about as far away from where I read as possible (see "Word of the Day," above). I've read and enjoyed a romance novel or two in my time, but "New Adult Fiction" and "BookTok" are alien territory to me (perhaps brought down to earth on some kind of ALIEN SHIP, which is also kind of an alien term to me—isn't it just SPACE SHIP?). The fact that they have subdivided younger readers even further in order to create new markets. "New Adult"? "The genre originally faced criticism as a marketing scheme." Yeah, I bet it did. I guess "new adult fiction" is like YA fiction but the protagonist is 18-29?? So it's still written at an 8th-grade reading level but with a grown-up-ish character? Look, as I told my daughter when she was in her "dystopian scifi/fantasy teen trilogy" phase, if you're reading, you're reading, and I'm happy. But ... maybe some day think about leaving the algorithmically-created rut you've been channeled into by your corporate overlords? Some day? Just think about it. Meanwhile, for all I know ANA Huang is a fantastic writer and I'm missing out by being a grumpy old man. Very, very possible.

The marquee stuff was a little on the tepid side today. It's a lovely center stack, but it's not exactly crackling. More just ... pleasant. SOCIAL LADDER, TENNIS LESSON, PATIO HEATERS (whatever those are ...) they're solid, doing their job, but not exactly wowing anyone. Are PATIO HEATERS those things at restaurants that allow you to eat outside even when the weather is a bit crisp? Maybe rich people have them at their "parties" too. I weirdly liked ERSTWHILE more than almost anything in the grid. Its quaintness and oldenness look especially fetching hanging out right next to the much more modern "SO RANDOM" (36D: "Wow ... what are the chances?!"). But I do think that the longest answer in the grid is probably also the best. It's the one thing that feels unimpeachably marquee-worthy. It also gave me a delightful moment of coincidence, where the first thing I wrote in fit ... but was incorrect. I had BULLI and thought "what in the world starts 'BULLI-???" Then after muttering things like "bullying" and "bullion" to myself for a bit, I thought "Oh, BULL IN ... something ... what's that expression? Oh right! BULL IN THE HEATHER!"

This is what happens when you were a Gen X kid who listened to too much '90s alt rock. I mean, BULL IN THE HEATHER slid right in. When it fit (!) I was like "woo hoo! nailed it!" But then a few seconds later, I was like "wait, isn't the expression BULL IN A CHINA SHOP?" And then *that* fit. So I tested a cross and when NOIR worked at 41A: Depicting the world bleakly and cynically, I knew which BULL phrase was the right one. So thanks to Sonic Youth for nearly derailing my solving experience today, it was thrilling.

[15A: Large restaurant vessel shaped like another vessel]

Bullets:

• 1A: Main characters for an early reader (ABCS) — "characters" as in "letters"
• 16A: Conference handout (ID TAG) — no abbr. indicator in the clue made this extra hard for me
• 43A: "Sweet dreams are made of cheese / Who am I to dis a ___?" (parody lyrics) ("BRIE") — so incredibly dumb. I kind of love it.
• 47A: "It is not easy for a ___ to balance himself on a ladder": "Animal Farm" ("PIG") — first of all, true. Second of all, timely—the first American edition of Animal Farm was published 80 years ago this month (it was published a year earlier in England).

• 39D: Half-spoken, half-sung passages of an opera (ARIOSI) — a little old-school crosswordese for you. Vowel city! Terminal "I"! Useful! (though you don't see it around much any more—this is its first appearance in seven years).
• 48A: A word in closing (THUS) — I thought maybe "PLUS ..." Kinda like a "P.S."? Kinda?
• 14D: Humongous, slangily (BIG-ASS) — the NYTXW remains firmly in its ASS era. Expect ASS-suffixing to continue indefinitely. Conditions may worsen. Who knows?
• 2D: Neck topper (BOTTLE CAP) — I stared at this clue wondering what in the world it could mean. On top of a neck is a ... head. "Topper?" I get that bottles have "necks" and that bottle caps are "tops," but I can't quite imagine someone saying "top that neck, will ya?" and then someone else putting a bottle cap back on a bottle. But literally, the clue checks out.
• 13D: Green day star, for short (ST. PAT) — again, I don't think you'd actually call St. Patrick's Day "Green day" but literally, sure, people wear green, whatever. I just hope you didn't think the clue was asking for a member of the band Green Day—the lowercase "d" on "day" should've disabused you of that notion.

• 38D: Publisher of the front-page headline "This sport is stupid anyway" after a U.S. loss at the World Cup, in brief (N.Y. POST) — ... speaking of "American Idiot"—the New York Post! I miss the World Cup. Though I was reminded yesterday (in a New Yorker article about lethal European heatwaves) that Spain won and thought "oh ... right, I guess they did." Somehow the totality of the experience looms larger in my mind than the actual winner of the whole thing. 

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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