Pioneers, in hip-hop slang / THU 11-5-26 / Nickname of the protagonist in 2024's "Anora" / Sea urchin, on a sushi menu / ___ Batlló, Antoni Gaudí masterpiece whose roof arch mimics a dragon's back / Big Apple menagerie / Refueling spot / Call made with outstretched arms

Constructor: David P. Williams

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

or

THEME: "IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME" (39A: Admission of confusion ... or a hint for interpreting four answers in this puzzle) — circled squares contain Greek letters (spelled out) in the Acrosses and LATIN letters (i.e. regular letters) in the Downs (59A: Like the alphabet of the circled letters in the Down answers, but not in the Across answers):

Theme answers:

• WALKIE-TALKIES / ACHY (17A: Hand-held communication devices / 5D: Feeling tender)
• CLASSIC HITS / BRONX ZOO (26A: Songs played on an oldies station / 11D: Big Apple menagerie)
• POWERHOUSES / PISAN (55A: Juggernauts / 56: Galileo, for one)
• SILENT AUCTION / ITEM (64A: Popular fund-raising event / 61D: Couple)

Word of the Day: CASA Batlló (1A: ___ Batlló, Antoni Gaudí masterpiece whose roof arch mimics a dragon's back) —

Casa Batlló (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈkazə βəˈʎːo]) is a building in the center of Barcelona, Spain. It was designed by Antoni Gaudí, and is considered one of his masterpieces. A remodel of a previously built house, it was redesigned in 1904 by Gaudí (although the actual construction had not begun at this point) and has been refurbished several times since. Gaudí's assistants Domènec Sugrañes i Gras, Josep Canaleta and Joan Rubió also contributed to the renovation project.

Casa Batlló is located on the Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district and forms part of a row of houses known as the Illa de la Discòrdia (or Mansana de la Discòrdia, the "Block of Discord"), so named because it features four striking, and strikingly different, buildings by noted Modernista architects of Barcelona.

Like everything Gaudí designed, Casa Batlló is only identifiable as Modernisme in the broadest sense. The ground floor, in particular, has unusual tracery, irregular oval windows and sculpted stonework with sinuous, squiggly forms. There are few straight lines, and much of the façade is decorated with a colorful mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles (trencadís).

In 2005, Casa Batlló became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• • •

This theme is missing something. Latin letters one way, Greek the other, fine. The revealer ... well, it happens to be a perfectly grid-spanning15 letters long, which was probably the discovery that led to the theme. It's semi-apt, in that you might be confused by the theme answers, and "IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME" is an [Admission of confusion], but the "ALL" part seems like an overstatement and anyway, "it" is both Greek and LATIN, so I wouldn't say the revealer exactly sticks the landing, but it's close enough. The main issue for me was an overall feeling of "that's it?" Four letters? And they don't ... do anything? Add up to anything? Spell anything? There are so few theme elements that it really seemed like they should make sense as a group, somehow. But no, the letters are arbitrary. Four Greek letters, for no coherent reason besides the fact that they are Greek. They aren't even particularly ambitious letters—let's see you do OMICRON, you COWARDs! But seriously, in a great puzzle, the puzzle would've found a way to make the set of letters make sense—the series would've built to something. But here, it's just ... four letters. Shrug. The grid is pretty clean, so it wasn't unpleasant to solve, but ultimately it was a little disappointing, thematically.

The Greek/LATIN trick was easy to uncover—I couldn't make heads or tails of anything in the NW, so I trotted over to the N, got started there and then fell down to CLASSI---. I wanted something like CLASSIC ROCK (a somewhat more solid phrase than CLASSIC HITS), but nothing I could think of fit. Then the crosses went in (easily), which left me with CLASSIXTS, and I inferred the LATIN-to-Greek trick pretty quickly. From there, it was back to the first themer, which got me into the NW that I had whiffed on the first time around, and from there, no more real hangups. 

Tough parts: 

• Having no idea about the CASA at 1A (see "Word of the Day") really kneecapped my start. Without the first letters for all the Downs up there, I was hopeless. Struck out. Zero for four.
• I had NIT for IRK (7D: Peeve). Did not comprehend that [Peeve] was a verb. Mostly used to seeing it as a noun (following "pet").
• I know FLO & Eddie, but I totally blanked on FLO. It's been a while. FLO & Eddie were founding members of the Turtles who were not allowed to use the name "Turtles" *or* their own actual names in a musical context, for contractual reasons, so they started as The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie and eventually ... well, FLO just sounds nicer than Phlorescent Leech. Unlike the Turtles ("Happy Together," "She'd Rather Be With Me," "Elenore"), FLO & Eddie didn't really have any CLASSIC HITS. They worked with Zappa, and did a ton of backing vocal work for different artists, but I know only one actual FLO & Eddie song (it's a weird one, and a good one)

Bullets:

• 5A: Cheese that comes from northern Italy and not another continent! (ASIAGO) — first of all, "northern Italy" is not a "continent," so the phrasing here is, let's say, bad. I guess the "joke" of this clue is that the cheese name ASIAGO contains "ASIA" but that's not how you pronounce the name—it's not ASIA-GO, like "I want to GO to ASIA." If you really want a corny name-related joke, you'd be better off with a Shakespeare angle: [... and not how you'd go to an Othello-themed Halloween party!]. Something like that.
• 28D: British bottom (ARSE) — had the "R" and immediately and confidently wrote in PRAT. That's British slang for an incompetent or stupid person, but the word does also mean "buttocks."
• 46A: Political leader? (GEO) — in that GEO- can be a prefix for "Political." Yeah I don't love it either. Nor do I love the clue on ESS (66D: Letter indicating ownership?). I assume this is the possessive apostrophe-"S" that they're referring to (as in the phrase "dealer's choice").
• 10D: Refueling spot (OASIS) — so "refueling" is metaphorical, then? A place of refuge, where you can get water (in the desert), rest for a bit, eat something? 

• 2D: A gamer may use one (AVATAR) — Do you "use" them? Don't you just have them? An AVATAR is an image that represents the player. Not sure why, but "use" feels strange. Don't all players have AVATARs by default?
• 47A: Gray matter? (ODES) — yeesh, deep cut. Thomas Gray (1716-71) was a poet. Some of his poems were ODES. He's most famous for "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."
• 8D: Nickname of the protagonist in 2024's "Anora" (ANI) — first thing in the grid for me. Nice late-week way to dodge a Star Wars reference (I've seen enough of young Anakin's nickname)
• 72A: Governor Gavin (NEWSOM) — Ugh. I'm thrilled with Tuesday's election results, obviously, but now that that's over, I gotta watch this blowdried billionaire-loving blowhard run for president for the next two years and I am Not looking forward to it. 

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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Luxury brand known for its Rome-inspired designs / WED 11-4-26 / Magazine with "Decor" and "à Table" offshoots / She "dances on the sand" in a 1983 Duran Duran hit / Magical ally in "Argonautica"

Constructor: Peggy Sue Marlin

Relative difficulty: Hard (10:27)

THEME: ITS NOT A GOOD SIGN — "That spells trouble!" Literal signs that describe bad situations

Theme answers:

• SORRY WE'RE CLOSED for [56-Across on a store]
• OUT OF SERVICE for [56-Across on an elevator]
• EXPECT DELAYS for [56-Across on an interstate]
  

Word of the Day: HAIM (Rock band founded by three sisters) —

Sometimes I write a puzzle and complain about an entry like STAHL or ASTA or ESSO and commenters here tell me that I just have to memorize it and move in. Today I am here to tell you that y'all have to memorize HAIM. HAIM is going to appear in puzzles for the next decade, so let's all learn a little bit of info about them and commit them to memory. 

Haim, stylized in all caps as HAIM, is an American rock band, based in Los Angeles, composed of three sisters, Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim. The sisters grew up in a musical family, and began playing instruments from an early age. [wiki]

• • •

Hello, beautiful solvers! I am here for a Malaika MWednesday! Solving music for me was Choosin' Texas. Today's puzzle was a little hard for me, but not because of the theme, which fell into place quite easily. For some reason, I got super stuck in the lower-left. I think it's because the term MAN PURSES is so foreign to me. I vaguely remember the term "murse" being used at some point, but never this terminology and certainly not in the last decade.

I truly thought, until tonight while solving this puzzle, that the second letter in this brand name was a V

I loved the chatty tone of this puzzle! People like to praise themeless puzzles when they have multi-word, conversational entries. I think they are harder to use in themed puzzles, so it is more of a treat to see them here. I really wanted the revealer to be "that's not a good sign," but since the word "that" was used in the clue, I knew that wasn't possible. (I'll have to take your word that the third theme answer is accurate, I haven't driven on an interstate regularly in years.) The entries here are a perfect example of how to utilize a word that has two meanings in the revealer-- "sign" meaning symbolic omen and "sign" meaning a physical display.

The chatty tone continued in some of the clues. I've been writing crossword clues for about seven years now (compared to a lot of people, that's not very long by the way!) and learned that in newspaper puzzles, I should aim for concise, tight phrasing. Clues like [A cyclops has one] or [A secret message might be in this] sound wordy to me. But I also think that as the Crossworld begins to contain more and more digital-only puzzles (where succint-ness matters less), wordier clues are spreading. Do you notice these types of clues, like I do? Or do they sound normal to you?

Bullets:

• [Lines at a supermarket checkout, for short] for UPC — This was new to me! UPC is apparently another name for a bar code, hence "lines"
• [She "dances on the sand" in a 1983 Duran Duran hit] for RIO — The song is about the city, which they personify, but it reminded me of a discussion that I had with a friend about how there are so few traditionally female names that end with an O and so few traditionally male names that end with an A. (We didn't count things like Jonah or Noah.)
• [Sourdough starter?] for ESS — The answer is a spelled out letter S, which "starts" the word "sourdough"
• [Foot joint sprain, familiarly] for TURF TOE — Totally new term for me!

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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