Rap group with the 1992 #1 hit "Rump Shaker" / SAT 10-31-26 / F in physics / Canadian coin, informally / Opera with the shepherd's song "Io de' sospiri" / Schöningen ___, German mine discoveries that may be up to 300,000 years old / Surgical tool with a namesake medical journal / Count on one's fingers?

Constructor: Erik Agard and Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Schöningen SPEARS (46A: Schöningen ___, German mine discoveries that may be up to 300,000 years old) —

The Schöningen spears are a set of ten Palaeolithic wooden weapons that were excavated between 1994 and 1999 from the 'Spear Horizon' in the open-cast lignite mine in Schöningen, Helmstedt district, Germany. The spears are among the oldest hunting weapons yet discovered and were found together with animal bones and stone and bone tools. Being used by the oldest known group of human hunters, they provided unique proof that early human ancestors were much closer to modern humans in both complex social structure and technical ability than thought previously. [...] thermoluminescence dating of heated flints in a deposit beneath that which contained the spears, dates the spears to between 337,000 and 300,000 years old, placing them at the end of the interglacial Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 9, and recent scholarship has tended to support an MIS 9 date for the spears. However, a 2025 study suggested an even younger age of approximately 200,000 years ago, and manufacture by Neanderthals. The Schöningen spears are the oldest complete wooden weapons and, along with the incomplete British Clacton spear point, among the oldest known worked wooden implements. // The spears were constructed from Norway spruce as well as pine. They are suggested to have been used both as throwing weapons, as well as thrusting spears for personal defense. // To date, hominin remains have not been discovered from the Schöningen Pleistocene deposits and, therefore, the species that crafted and used the wooden weapons and other tools at Schöningen remains uncertain. (wikipedia)

• • •

"I DON'T BITE"—nice way for a Saturday puzzle to open (14A: "No need to worry around me"). Do I trust you, puzzle? I do not. But I appreciate the warmISH welcome (also, "I DON'T BITE" is just a great standalone phrase). Turns out, though, that the puzzle's claims about itself were largely truthful. I waded in with trepidation, the puzzle, seeming to sense that trepidation, said "I DON'T BITE," and then almost immediately thereafter I found out that yes, compared to many other Saturday puzzles I've done, this one was going to be a TOTAL SWEETHEART (3D: That's a good one!). A bright long answer that seems to confirm the claims of an earlier answer? Amazing. So amazing that I only choked on RATES A TEN for a second or two instead of my customary all-puzzle-long (1A: Couldn't get any higher?). You ever EAT A SANDWICH that RATES A TEN? Peak human experience. Oh man I want a 10 sandwich now (it's currently 4:51am, so I'm gonna have to wait). I came shooting out of the NW on the wings of TOTAL SWEETHEART and while things stayed interesting and occasionally challenging throughout, it's true, the puzzle didn't bite. It did playfully nip at me, though, in the middle of the puzzle, but that's just because it was having fun with me—I literally laughed out loud when I realized I was gonna have to spell WRECKX-N-EFFECT for this puzzle (29A: Rap group with the 1992 #1 hit "Rump Shaker"). Straight out of a Gen X spelling bee nightmare, that one. To my enormous pop cultural credit, I made just one mistake on the first pass: WRECKS-N-EFFECT. But the "X"! Of course the "X," there had to be an "X," I knew the spelling got wild somewhere. One thing I love in a puzzle, besides non-biting, is good music. Something to set the mood, get in your head, provide accompaniment for your solving journey. This puzzle gives you options. In one room, you've got your choice of TOSCA or John LENNON. In the main room, however...

[Hope you weren't REKT by this answer (Quite a week for variant spellings of "wreck") (see 3D, here)]

This one had great flow and it stayed fun throughout. There's crosswordese around the edges, here and there, but well below maximum tolerance levels—I got no problem with a stray ORC ÊTES or STAT or TSAR or Slammin' Sammy SNEAD or even a RIATA/TIARA combo as long as the marquee answer are plentiful and lit up like this. You've got the oratorical flair of Jesse with "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" and the cocksure certainty of "IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE," a host of other solid answers, and really very little in the way of garbage. The clues weren't quite as playful as they were yesterday, but I liked the way this one played a teeny bit better, which may be because yesterday's puzzle was just too easy. This one to me felt like a proper Friday ... so difficulty basically dropped a notch for both the F and Sat puzzles, leaving Saturday as the only late-week puzzle putting up a proper fight. 

Never got stuck anywhere in this puzzle once I got out of the NW. Changing that "S" to an "X" in WRECKX-N-EFFECT was easy, and then ... I dunno, I'm not seeing any sticking points. I wrote in TREASURE CHEST before TREASURE TROVE, but again, that was an easy fix—via the very nicely clued FIVE (33D: Count on one's fingers?). It took me a while to accede to CRAFT, which didn't feel like a very precise answer to 41D: Mastery. You master your CRAFT, but is CRAFT itself "Mastery"? Apparently yes, but my brain doesn't like it. I sure as heck didn't know the German cave SPEARS, but again, the crosses were kind. I know a fellow Upstate NY crossword person who plays CARILLON —or although I may be thinking of the Cornell Chimes, which are not (I'm sternly told) a CARILLON, as a "true carillon has at least 23 bells, and a different playing console" (wikipedia). Anyway, knowing that instrument helped a bunch in the SE. The clue on MAIL threw me (10A: Stamp collector?) but everything around it just sorta filled itself in, and I finished up MAIL (and the whole puzzle) by writing in the "L" in LICORICE without ever even seeing the LICORICE clue. So, in the end, as promised, no biting, TOTAL SWEETHEART.

Bullets:

• 42D: F in physics (FARAD) — woo hoo, remembered this despite having absolutely no memory of what a FARAD actually is. "The farad (symbol: F) is the unit of electrical capacitance, the ability of a body to store an electrical charge, in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to 1 coulomb per volt (C/V). It is named after the English physicist Michael Faraday (1791–1867)." (wikipedia)
• 39D: Canadian coin, informally (TOONIE) — well it's either gonna be the LOONIE or the TOONIE (the $1 and $2 Canadian coins, respectively). "Two" + "Loonie" = TOONIE. Portmanteau! (which, coincidentally, is the name of their never-minted $3 coin, as well as a small town on Lake Winnipeg)
• 23D: "Boulevard des Capucines" painter (MONET) — I'd like to thank EON for clearing up any possible MONET/MANET confusion here. Did you know there are two MONET paintings with this title? (both from 1873-74).  It's true. And they're really different. I think I prefer the grayish one better, but I'd have to see them in person to really know. "Capucines" = nasturtiums, and not, as I thought, monkeys (those are "capuchins").

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

Signed, Rex (-N-EFFECT) Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S.

P.P.S. 😎 

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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2019 film co-starring Taylor Swift as Bombalurina / FRI 10-30-26 / Hindu god with three eyes / Monitors for accuracy, just because / Cover-up in an old detective film? / Macronutrient group? / Tony-winning actress Stroker / Cordless heaters that you might order cords for? / Result of keeping a lid on too long / Trees whose nuts and leaves are toxic to humans / Classic potluck dish

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub and Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: mirepoix (30A: Like the ingredients in a French chef's mirepoix) —

A mirepoix (/mɪərˈpwɑː/ meer-PWAH, French: [miʁ.pwa]) is a mixture of diced vegetables cooked with fat (usually butter) for a long time on low heat without colouring or browning. The ingredients are not sautéed or otherwise hard-cooked, because the intention is to sweeten rather than caramelise them. Historically including various meats before settling at its current meaning as a vegetable base, mirepoix is a long-standing part of French cuisine and is the flavour base for a wide variety of dishes, including stocks, soups, stews, and sauces.

When the mirepoix is not precooked, the constituent vegetables may be cut to a larger size, depending on the overall cooking time for the dish. Usually the vegetable mixture is onions, carrots, and celery (either common 'Pascal' celery or celeriac), with the traditional ratio being 2:1:1—two parts onion, one part carrot, and one part celery.^[1][2] Further cooking, with the addition of tomato purée, creates a darkened brown mixture called pinçage. (wikipedia

• • •

Easy and beautiful with whoosh-whoosh and zoom-zoom galore. Coming out of the NW, however, I was not at all certain that this would be my experience. It's a throwaway corner, true, but it definitely felt thrown away, with overly common and vowely AERO EON and esp. AEIOU all in a tiny amount of space. I'm almost certain I've seen that exact AEIOU clue before, too (2D: Macronutrient group?) (yes ... [Macronutrient grouping?] appeared in 2024). So I had this moment of "What Is Happening!?" but then came the cavalry—a cavalcade of fresh long answer after fresh long answer, with frequently SASsy clues and very little to make you (me) wince the rest of the way. That NW corner ended up feeling like the slow climb up a rollercoaster arc before you're sent careening down the other side, or like a catapult being pulled back before it sends you hurtling through space. I mean, when a guy in a TRENCHCOAT shows up, I know things are about to get good (3D: Cover-up in an old detective film?). That guy is probably gonna be hard to KEEP(S) HONEST; he's probably gonna BEND THE RULES a little, but you hired him for a reason—he gets the job done. He's as comfortable in DONUT SHOPS (47A: "Hole-sale" outlets?) as he is in HOTEL SUITEs as he is on the SEASHORE(S), and somehow always manages to look ruggedly handsome—his fedora doesn't even give him HAT HEAD (40A: Result of keeping a lid on too long). So don't worry—no matter who he HURTS, not matter how many people IN POWER he has to ruffle, he'll find your stolen PAPERS. In fact, he'll probably find them so fast you'll be saying "BACK SO SOON?" (you know, when he drives back to your mansion, where you hired him in the first place) (21A: "Didn't we just say goodbye?"). In short, this was the best hardboiled detective story I've read all year. Also a good puzzle. The longer answers aren't always flashy, but they are smooth and familiar and charming and they were mostly clued in a playfully Friday way. It was over too quickly, but it was very enjoyable.

["All the cops in the DONUT SHOPS say..."]

One other very noticeable, and largely welcome, aspect of this puzzle is how little it leaned on names and popular culture. It's a very accessible puzzle that way, with a wide range of answers and no obvious generational bias—though it does lean a little bit into the contemporary musical environment with a Billie Eilish song and a Wicked song and a much-maligned feline musical remake. I went from "how should I know..." to "omg it's CATS!" pretty quickly there at 1A: 2019 film co-starring Taylor Swift as Bombalurina. Surprised she'd want a role that had both "bomb" and most of "urine" in it, but she's an artist, you never know what era she'll be in next! My greatest pop cultural success today was pulling ALI Stroker's name from ... god knows where (35A: Tony-winning actress Stroker). I think there's a bucket of ALIs in my head and she is one of them. There's an ALY in there too that I sometimes grab by mistake (that ALY is [Gymnast Raisman], btw). So apparently you can in fact build new crosswordese reflexes later in life. I saw "Stroker" and my brain immediately went "That's ALI" and I said "wait, how do you kn-?" and my brain was like "just write it in and keep going. You'll see." And damned if he wasn't right. ALI Stroker won her Tony for her performance in the 2019 revival of Oklahoma!:

Alyson Mackenzie Stroker (born June 16, 1987) is an American actress, author and singer. She is the first actor who uses a wheelchair to appear on a Broadway stage, and also the first to be nominated for and win a Tony Award. Stroker was a finalist on the second season of The Glee Project in 2012 and later appeared as a guest star on Glee in 2013. She played Anna in Deaf West Theatre's 2015 revival of Spring Awakening and won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance in Oklahoma!.

Bullets:

• 18A: Aid in evaluating some calls (SLOW MOTION) — "calls" made by referees or umpires
• 9D: They're at least 170 times hotter than Tabasco sauce (GHOST PEPPERS) — the Halloween vibes continue this week...

• 10D: Common fix for a problem? (AUTOCORRECT) — I don't get what the clue is doing. It just seems literal to me, so I don't know why there's a "?" on it. Oh ... LOL OK ... you got me, puzzle. I'm just now realizing that I have been mentally AUTOCORRECTing that clue this whole time. It's not [Common fix for a problem?]—it's [Common fix for a prolbem?], with "problem" misspelled. I finished this puzzle over an hour ago and it's still paying surprise dividends!
• 13D: Grp. of nine, divided in three? (SSN) — XXX-XX-XXXX. Three parts, not three equal parts.
• 27D: Cordless heaters that you might order cords for? (WOOD STOVES) — in case corny humor is not really your thing, here's some cordy humor for you. A "cord" is a unit of volume for stacked wood measuring 4 ft x 8 ft x 4 ft. 

• 48D: Eponym of the company that marketed the first escalator (OTIS) — man that guy really liked to go up and down, didn't he? (longtime solvers know OTIS well as the elevator guy) (actually, Elisha Otis himself (1811-61) was long dead before his eponymous company marketed the first escalator (1899)).

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

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✏️Upcoming Crossword Tournaments✏️:

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