Bacchanal honoree / SUN 11-15-26 / Landmark 1988 Japanese animated film / Emmitt and kin, in "Zootopia" / Another name for the Slayer Handbook, in the "Buffy" franchise / Giving thought to somebody? / Singer longtime cast member on the Real Housewives of New York City / "Hang tight," in textspeak / Lead-in to "curious," for a food website / "Gilmore Girls" creator ___ Sherman-Palladino / Sherlock's sister on TV / Instrument with an endpin / One-named singer who collaborated with the Velvet Underground / Clergyperson on the bimah / ___ Beth Denberg, original cast member of "All That"

Constructor: Sala Wanetick and Emily Biegas

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Side Tracks" — theme answers are PARENTHETICAL parts of famous songs (69A: What six answers in this puzzle are vis-à-vis the song titles in their clues)

Theme answers:

• (EVERYBODY DANCE NOW) (23A: "Gonna Make You Sweat" (1990)) (by C&C Music Factory)

• (SHE'S SO HEAVY) (34A: "I Want You" (1969)) (by the Beatles)

• (PUT A RING ON IT) (43A: "Single Ladies" (2008)) (by Beyoncé)

• (OH, WHAT A NIGHT) (93A: "December, 1963" (1975)) (by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons)

• (NAIVE MELODY) (103A: "This Must Be the Place" (1983)) (by Talking Heads)

• (THE PIÑA COLADA SONG) (116A: "Escape" (1979)) (by Rupert Holmes)

Word of the Day: SPOT TESTS (36D: Some quick chemical assessments) —

 

Spot analysis, spot test analysis, or a spot test is a chemical test, a simple and efficient technique where analytic assays are executed in only one, or a few drops, of a chemical solution, preferably in a great piece of filter paper, without using any sophisticated instrumentation. The development and popularization of the test is credited to Fritz Feigl. [...] A spot assay or spot test can also refer to a specific test in microbiology. This test is often used to check the growth rate of bacterial or yeast cells on different media or to perform serial dilution tests of micro-organisms. Usually a 96-pinner (often called frogger) is used to perform these spot assay. Another application is high-throughput screening, which often uses spot assays to determine the growth of eg. mated cells or to check for protein-protein interactions in a yeast two-hybrid test. This is often done with a robot.(wikipedia)

• • •

Look, I enjoy remembering songs, and so I enjoyed this puzzle, but I think it has one serious problem: namely (!), that it leans so heavily into names, particularly pop culture names, when the puzzle is already, thematically, entirely pop culture-based. Like, you should be leaning strongly away from pop culture in the fill when you've got a theme like this—a theme that requires solvers to have very specific knowledge of bygone songs. But instead, right off the bat, we've got Real Housewives "stars" (???) and Gilmore Girls creators and comedians and animated OTTERS (48A: Emmitt and kin, in "Zootopia") and some elephant named ELMER and whatever VAMPYR is ... on and on and on. Don't make solvers choke on your pop culture hobby horses. OK, OK, you love Buffy and Gilmore Girls, great, but yeesh, dial it back. Back. Farther. That AKIRA / LORI crossing is potentially hairy. I don't even know what All That is, let alone who was in the "original cast" (?!?!!), so LORI was an absolute WTF for me (100D: ___ Beth Denberg, original cast member of "All That"), but I do know something about manga and anime, so AKIRA was easy (109A: Landmark 1988 Japanese animated film). I guess if I hadn't known AKIRA or LORI (and I suspect there are many such people), I could've inferred the "R," but still ... there's a carelessness, bordering on recklessness, to the profusion of pop culture today. Luckily for me, today's songs and their PARENTHETICALs were all well known to me. Softballs. I crushed this thing. Not a record time, I don't think, but getting down near that territory.

I think the puzzle probably doesn't deserve three stars, but I really like a lot of these songs, so I can't say I didn't have a good time. That said, the revealer is weak (merely descriptive), and merely being PARENTHETICAL doesn't really make the answers that interesting, especially if you don't know the songs (or the PARENTHETICAL part, at any rate). But if you're my age (soon to be 57), and you pay even passing attention to popular music, then these songs should mostly be very familiar. The only one I balked at was 93A: "December, 1963" (1975)—I know the song well, but I would've told you it was called "OH WHAT A NIGHT." Late December back in '63. What a very special time for me. As I remember. What a night. (Me, I wasn't born yet—in '63, that is; in 1975, when the song came out, definitely born). The theme answer I expect to be least well known to solvers is NAIVE MELODY, since that song has the least claim to "hit" out of all of these (peaking at no. 62 on the U.S. charts).* The song has special crossword relevance, though, as it features strongly in the 2005 crossword tournament documentary Wordplay (in a melancholy cover by Shawn Colvin).

The hardest parts of the puzzle by far, for me, were the edges—those colonnades of 9s. Never heard of SPOT TESTS (which really looks like something a wordlist barfed up, all 1-pt Scrabble tiles (+ "P"), bleh). ATTESTS TO is basically its more familiar doppelgänger (again, all 1-pt tiles, no "P" this time). The other side of the grid is much prettier. No complaints there. But I had to work a lot of those 3-letter crosses to figure those longer answers out. Not getting from "bunny ears" to PEACE SIGN since "bunny ears" involve specific placement of the fingers behind someone's head, don't they? Then TELEPATHY had a "?" clue (good, but not easy) (53D: Giving thought to somebody?). But unless you are completely pop culture illiterate, there aren't any genuinely tough parts of this puzzle. 

Bullets:

• 59A: Relating to Leo XIV, e.g. (PAPAL) — me: "why another random Leo, crossword!? What is it with you and LEOs??" Of course he's not a random LEO (like LEOI, LEOII, LEOV, all of whom have been xword answers)—he's the current pope. Chicago, baby! U!S!A!, U!S!A!

 

• 64A: [Wags finger] ("UH UH") — needed crosses here, for sure. I guess this is the Dikembe Mutombo kind of finger wag:

• 76A: Lead-in to "curious," for a food website (EPI-) — I know the site (by name, anyway), but this clue is still awkward. I read "for a food website" as "for any food website" (which is how "for a ___" parts of clues usually work). [One of six, supposedly, for a seer] = SENSE (actual clue/answer from earlier this year). Not one specific seer—all seers. I get that EPI- is garbage fill and you want to make it interesting, but the phrasing just gets awkward here.
• 28A: "Hang tight," in textspeak (BRB) — "be right back"
• 87A: Feminist scholar Butler (JUDITH) — Gender Trouble! The cover of this book is soooo familiar to me because every "Women's Studies" student I knew circa 1990 (and I knew a bunch) owned a copy. I must've owned a copy at some point too. 

• 35D; Broccoli unit (HEAD) — me: "SPEAR ... SPEAR ... fit, damn you!"

• 70D: One-named singer who collaborated with the Velvet Underground (NICO) — I knew this, but spelling eluded me. NIKO? NEKO? NECO?

• 6D: Clergyperson on the bimah (RABBI) — hell yeah! Last week's Word of the Day, coming in handy! Knowing what a "bimah" is (elevated platform from which the Torah is read) made this clue a gimme.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Puzzlemaker Eric Berlin has made a suite of puzzles as a fundraiser for the National Immigrant Justice Center. It's called "Patchwork Country." Here's an explanation of the project, from Eric himself: 

I am a puzzle constructor for the New York Times, LinkedIn, and other venues, and the author of many puzzle books. (Perhaps you or your kids read my "Winston Breen" novels at some point.) [...] And what are these puzzles? It's a set of 18 Patchworks. This is a variation on the common crossword. Instead of words reading across and down, you have words reading across and then other answers in irregular patches throughout the grid. You'll need to figure out where each Patch answer should be placed, using the Across answers to guide you.

If you've never tried a Patchwork before, you can try one right now -- I post a new one most Fridays on my Puzzlesnacks site.

Patchwork Country starts off with three introductory puzzles for the newcomers, then a suite of ten Patchworks with an additional twist, and then five more bonus puzzles. If you like word puzzles, I think you'll really enjoy these!

Eric is a witty and experienced puzzlemaker. I donated to this project as soon as he told me about it. I hope you'll consider doing the same. For details on how to donate to the National Immigrant Justice Center and receive your Patchwork Country puzzle suite, please go here.

P.P.S. happy belated birthday, Rebekah!  

*"I Want You (SHE'S SO HEAVY)" is technically the song with least claim to being a "hit," since it's the only one of today's theme set that was not released as a single, but it's on Abbey Road, which makes it, like every song on that album, pretty dang famous. More famous than the Talking Heads song? Probably. But I have no way of measuring this. I know both songs like the back of my hand.

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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Confection named for Yankee legend Phil Rizzuto / SAT 11-14-26 / Fast bowler, in cricket / S-shaped hanger / Eponymous Ontario brewer John / First Day observers / Actress/comedian Benaderet / 1988 comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ivan Danko / Leaves with a pungent taste in one's mouth? / Processed with bloodroot or butternut / Ethnic group in China's Xinjiang region / Noted DC locale since 1939 / Spicy, savory South Asian dish

Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: RED HEAT (10D: 1988 comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ivan Danko) —

Red Heat is a 1988 American buddy cop action comedy thriller film directed, co-written, and co-produced by Walter Hill and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Soviet policeman Ivan Danko, and Jim Belushi as Chicago police detective Art Ridzik. The film centers on the duo who, finding themselves on the same case, work as partners to catch a cunning and deadly Georgian drug kingpin, Viktor Rostavili (Ed O'Ross), who killed Danko's previous partner. Most of the scenes set in the Soviet Union were actually shot in Hungary. Schwarzenegger was paid $8 million for his role in the film. The film is dedicated to the memory of Bennie Dobbins, who died while filming in Austria. (wikipedia)

• • •

Fairly short write-up today because the NYTXW was unavailable this morning for some unknown reason and so my normal writing window evaporated (I'm usually done by now, 5:55am). I need to get on with my day, so ... sorry, puzzle, but you're getting short shrift. Probably for the best, since most of what I'd be doing is groaning about how hard it was. I don't know if my rhythm just got thrown off by the outage or what but sitting down to solve a hard puzzle at 5:30am vs. sitting down to solve it right when I wake up (~4:15am) felt very different. I am extremely routinized when it comes to this blog, and so I don't know if my struggles today were the result of the puzzle itself or of my being off-schedule (for instance, I've already done some light exercise, I've already got the coffee made ... maybe these things have addled me). Anyway, woof, I had some moments there early on where I was like "Am I ever going to be able to solve this thing?" Just couldn't get a foothold. CHAW??? (1A: Leaves with a pungent taste in one's mouth?). LOL, not in a million years with that clue. Is CHAW a word for "chewing tobacco?" Yes, it is. I knew I was dealing with actual leaves (i.e. foliage), but I still couldn't think of an answer. I think I had COCA in there for a bit. But after that, only CLAM (tentative) and ATRA (certain) in the NW. NE wasn't much friendlier. Ended up way down in the SE before I finally got my (MEAT)HOOKs into this one, starting with AGED (wrong! it's DYED (46D: Processed with bloodroot or butternut)) but then ARSE (correct!) and SEED (53A: Sow what?) (genuinely funny clue—I wanted something to do with a pig, at first). Then ARKS CLERK FEAR (a guess), and then finally a sigh of relief as the corner started to really come together. 

From there, I made steady if slow progress up the east coast, then through the middle—where I stalled out again when I couldn't get PACKS (29D: Starts to make a move) and wrote in TO LET instead of UNLET (32D: Available, as an apartment). But then down to the SW corner (thank you, LABATT's!) (42A: Eponymous Ontario brewer John), and then up and ta da, finishing where I started: CHAW! Disgusting way to end. But it was a good puzzle, in that I had to work, and the fill was decent. (In the morning puzzle confusion, I forgot to open the puzzle with the new version of the software, the one w/ the post-solve animation and timer, so I don't know how long it took me, but ... I wanna say 10? For me, an absolute whooping.)

SPEED ROUND:

• 9A: ___ pad (CRASH) — lots of "????" fill-in-the-blanks (or "word that goes with") today. None of them transparent to me. TAG (8D: Word with dog or ear). TREAT (23D: "My ___"). Neither of the quotations were familiar (though I got "FEAR" a lot more easily than I got "CRAG"). I wrote in "Go GREEN" (of course) before "Go SOLAR" (boo!) (20D: "Go ___" (environmentalist's catchphrase). Over and over, I tripped and stalled.
• 9D: Bunch of dubious characters? (CHICKEN SCRATCH) — fun (to me) fact—I debuted this answer back in 2012 (this is its first appearance since):

• 14A: Country that celebrates Stork Day on March 25 to honor the return of its national bird (LITHUANIA) — cool triv but lol my knowing this. It's just [Country] and wait for crosses.
• 26A: Light refreshments? (PALE ALES) — they're light in color, presumably.
• 31A: First Day observers (QUAKERS) — really needed that "Q" because I had -T-KERS (from the TO LET error) and nearly wrote in STOKERS, just assuming they were some sect I'd never heard of. First Day is just ... Sunday?
• 36A: Break dancing? (CUT IN) — very nice clue.

• 38A: Alex Honnold's "How I climbed a 3,000-foot vertical cliff — without ropes" and others (TED TALKS) — briefly thought 29D: Starts to make a move (PACKS) was PACES (!?) and so was surprised to find that there were things called TED TALES now ... (there aren't, it turns out). 
• 39A: Kind of concrete that does not require pre-mixing (DRY-SET) — oof. Not PRE-SET, then? I ended up with DRI-SET, figuring it was some kind of industry spelling, since I was certain that UIGHURS was spelled with the "I" (u(i)gh!) (37D: Ethnic group in China's Xinjiang region). 
• 6D: Whopper topper (ONION) — saw this for the hamburger clue it was, but wasn't sure it wasn't about lying ... when I think of the "top" of a Whopper, I think of sesame seeds, but I may be confusing it with a Big Mac. Looks like both burgers feature sesame seed buns, though only one has a jingle that mentions them. Whatever, the answer was ONION, which "tops" the beef, OK, but not the whole Whopper, so boo.

• 7A: Bad tipper? (FINK) — don't love this. Is the idea that he's bad for talking to the cops (presumably)? Is this clue pro-crime, pro-code of silence, pro-Omerta? Or is the FINK just a bad guy (in the generic sense of the term) and he's squealing? His tips probably aren't bad. They're good tips? Otherwise he wouldn't really be a FINK, would he?
• 12D: Confection named for Yankee legend Phil Rizzuto (SCOOTER PIE) — lol no, no idea. Don't know what that is, don't know what it's got to do with baseball, nothing nothing nothing. I had heard the term before, probably, since I was able to guess the SCOOTER part, eventually, but woof, no, I had nothing here. The internet is telling me it's just a knock-off of a moon pie.

["Holy cow! They're named after me.”]

• 13D: Finishes a shift? (HEMS) — shift = dress. I wrote in SEWS at first, then took the "finishes" part seriously and changed it to HEMS.
• 15D: Country house? (U.N. HEADQUARTERS) — great fill, clever clue.
• 22D: Fast bowler, in cricket (PACER) — lol please be serious. Cricket? Jeez louise.
• 48D: Actress/comedian Benaderet (BEA) — lol again no. The sheer number of things outside my ken today, ouch and woof and ugh. But again, I did appreciate the fight. Byron is one of my favs. Just wasn't on (or near) his wavelength today.

[BEA Benaderet was, among other things, the voice of Betty on The Flintstones]

That's it, see you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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