Afghan language / MON 4-13-26 / Big banking inits. in the U.K. / City NE of Manchester / "The Thin Man" terrier / Places to stick wallets / Risky time for beach property owners / Pleasingly round

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Medium (actually kind of tough when solved Downs-only)

THEME: THREE CHEERS (62A: "Woo-hoo!" ... as suggested by the starts of 17-, 24-, 39- and 49-Across) — the theme answers start with HIP, HIP, HUR- and RAY, respectively:

Theme answers:

• HIP-HOP MUSIC (17A: Rap songs and such)
• HIP POCKETS (24A: Places to stick wallets)
• HURRICANE SEASON (39A: Risky time for beach property owners)
• RAY CHARLES (49A: Singer with the 1961 #1 hit "Hit the Road Jack")

Word of the Day: PASHTO (46D: Afghan language) —

Pashto (/ˈpʌʃtoʊ/,/ˈpæʃtoʊ/ PASH-toh; پښتو, Pəx̌tó, [pəʂˈto, pʊxˈto, pəʃˈto, pəçˈto]) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan. It was also known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (افغانی, Afghāni).

Spoken as a native language mainly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan alongside Dari, and the second-largest language in Pakistan, spoken mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the northern districts of Balochistan. Likewise, it is the primary language of the Pashtun diaspora around the world. The total number of Pashto speakers is estimated at around 35 million to 55 million. Pashto is "one of the primary markers of ethnic identity" amongst Pashtuns. (wikipedia)

• • •

[the preferred spelling, I'd say]

Well, this was very nearly a fail. PASHTO got me. I'm sure I've seen it before—in fact, this appears to be the fourth appearance of the word since I started blogging—but this is the first appearance in over a decade, and those other appearances were on Saturday, Saturday, and Sunday, respectively. That is, historically, PASHTO is both a rare and a decidedly late-week word. I had to infer virtually every letter, and the "SHT" part just felt ... wrong. Would've started it KASH- (like "Kashmir???) if TAK had been at all intelligible. But my next guess after that was PASH- (like "pasha"???), which just left the -TO part, but yikes. ATAD seemed the most likely A-AD word, but ACAD. is real thing, and I can imagine all kinds of partials there (A BAD idea, it's just A FAD, when I was but A LAD...). And then there was T-NS, and I really wanted the answer to end with "A" ... but PASHTA sounded like a drunk person ordering "pasta," so PASHTO was the "winner" and it was right but honestly I don't think I should be rewarded for pure guesswork and luck. I flat-out didn't know PASHTO and so despite my nominal success, I'm taking an L on this one. A moral L. I think I'm punishing myself for taking waaaaaay too long to see "AS WE SPEAK" (36D: Right now). This is largely due to a terrible assumption I made at BAS-ET. The only thing that came to mind was BASSET. This is possibly because we saw a BASSET hound in the park today. At any rate, if I'd had the "K" in there, I think "AS WE SPEAK" would've been much easier to see. As it was ... yipes. So many letters to guess at. -ED. ELL-. A-TA. TY-OS (again, my brain glitched and could only see TYROS–a real crossword-brain f***-up) (60A: Tehre are two in tihs clue = TYPOS). PASHTO and "AS WE SPEAK" ground me down today, but it was PASHTO that dealt the real near-lethal blow.

As for the theme: kind of bland. Not my thing. Not that exciting. Do the three cheers in THREE CHEERS represent the single phrase HIP HIP HURRAY (which is made up of three words) or is the idea that you say "HIP HIP HURRAY" three times. I thought the latter, in which case THREE CHEERS isn't a great revealer, since what you've got here with the fronts of the four theme answers is precisely one cheer. But even if I accept that the revealer was a bullseye, the whole concept just feels weak and rudimentary to me. Not enough good wordplay to constitute a good Monday theme. I think my brain is slightly bothered also by the extra "R" in HURRICANE. I assume I'm supposed to pay attention only to the first three letters of each answer, but with the other three answers, those are standalone words (or, in the case of HIP-HOP, word parts). With HURRICANE, I have to mentally break the answer myself, and breaking it between the two "R"s feels odd / arbitrary, especially since "HURRAY" has two "R"s in it. Or maybe the whole theme works on sound, not spelling (?). But this is a minor detail, a petty objection. The real issue is blandness.

Lots of little stumbles on my Downs-only solve. Wanted only APPLE PIE, and so was reluctant to put in any other "pastry" for a bit (3D: Fruit pastry that pairs well with vanilla ice cream). Absolutely and completely blanked on 30D: Baking quantity (CUP), even with the "U" in place. Once TSP. wouldn't work, I was out of ideas. Had ADHERE before COHERE (4D: Stick together). And as for "GET ME?" ... bah. Sure, I guess people say that, somewhere, but it was not immediately clear to me, at all. Oh, and I had some trouble inferring HIP POCKETS because I kept wanting it to have something to do with HIPPOs. And then HIPPOCRAT(E)S. There's not much to like in this puzzle, besides RAY CHARLES, and "AS WE SPEAK," which, despite its bedeviling me, I have to admit is a pretty colorful longer answer.

Bullets:

• 19A: Certain endurance race, in brief (TRI) — as in "triathlon" 
• 28A: "There's ___ in 'team,' but there is one in 'win'" ("NO 'I'") — it's not bad enough we have to endure the terrible partial NOI, we have to get in the form of this corny bumper sticker aphorism. The cliché "there's NO 'I' in team" was bad enough on its own. Trying to make it funny isn't helping. It's just taking up more space.

• 55A: "The Thin Man" terrier (ASTA) — one piece of crosswordese that will not die, which is also a piece of crosswordese that I don't mind (assuming the rest of the grid isn't drowning in it). Dogs and cats get a pass. ASTA, fine. TOTO, welcome. LASSIE ... sure, whatever. Are there any crosswordese cats? Oh, right, ELSA. You used to see ELSA (the lion from Born Free) all the time. Now you usually find ELSA in the Frozen section of the crosswordese supermarket. ELSA the lion is not to be confused with ILSA, Ingrid Bergman's character in Casablanca, even though I do, in fact, confuse them, all the time. to this day.

[FYI this is the first thing that comes up when I search ASTA now 🙁]

• 24D: Big banking inits. in the U.K. (HSBC) — one of those initialisms that just kills a puzzle's vibe. Initials? Banking? U.K.? It's just a letter string to me, every time I see it (which always feels like too often and yet not often enough for the letters to stick). I think I went with HMBC this time, so I was at least close. Thankfully, the cross (TESS) was indisputably an "S".
• 53D: City NE of Manchester (LEEDS) — again, this puzzle is asking me to know way too much about the U.K., esp. on a Monday. I actually got this fairly quickly ... after I determined that Manchester was the one in England and not the one in New Hampshire.

That's all. See you next time. And congratulations to Erik Agard, crossword editor and constructor extraordinaire, for winning the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament yesterday for (I believe) the second time. Beat the fastest solvers in the world on the final puzzle by over a minute. Crazy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Basic drumming pattern / SUN 4-12-26 / Hip-hop artists with unintelligible lyrics / Trading card error / Squishy part of a cat's paw, cutesily / Under, poetically / A.I.-powered video hoaxes / Treaty of ___, official close to the War of 1812 / Council of ___ (Counter-Reformation body) / Socialite Sedgwick, the supposed inspiration for Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"

Constructor: Lance Enfinger and John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Initial Thoughts" — clues contain words (IN ALL CAPS) that are actually the initials of the answer:

Theme answers:

• HELEN OF TROY (22A: HOT woman worth fighting for?)
• GIVE OR TAKE (28A: GOT in the ballpark?)
• BLONDE ON BLONDE (43A: BOB Dylan album?)
• MAIL-ORDER BRIDES (64A: MOB wives?)
• SNAKES ON A PLANE (89A: SOAP film?)
• "KEEP IT DOWN!" (104A: KID napper's demand?)
• TEXAS HOLD 'EM (113A: THE big game?)

Word of the Day: PARADIDDLE (73D: Basic drumming pattern) —

: a quick succession of drumbeats slower than a roll and alternating left- and right-hand strokes in a typical L-R-L-L, R-L-R-R pattern (wikipedia)

• • •

There's a cute idea here, but as is, the theme doesn't really work. Some of the clues seem to work pretty well—BLONDE ON BLONDE is a Bob Dylan album, as well as a B.O.B. album; HELEN OF TROY is a "hot woman," as well as a woman with the initials H.O.T.—but others are just loose plays on words, where the clue has no relationship to the answer beyond the initials. SNAKES ON A PLANE, for instance. Definitely has the initials S.O.A.P., but there's no connection between the literal meaning of "soap film" and the movie title. So we get some clues that are both literal and initialism-based, and some that ... aren't. Then there's the fact that MAIL-ORDER BRIDES has a huge ick factor, and the clues on GIVE OR TAKE and "KEEP IT DOWN!" are really awkward on the surface level. [GOT in the ballpark?]?? I get that "GIVE OR TAKE" is a phrase expressing a rough equality, like when your guess is not exact but "in the ballpark," but the phrase "got in the ballpark" isn't really evocative of anything. The "KEEP IT DOWN!" clue is worse because, first of all, "kid napper," as two words??? And second of all, if that is your premise, that the napper is a kid, well, that makes no sense, as a "kid" would never say "KEEP IT DOWN!" That's definitely an adult phrase. When the clues work, they work, but too many of these are forced or clunky. Also, again, can't stress enough how off-putting MAIL-ORDER BRIDES is (way too "human trafficking"-adjacent). Along with DEEP FAKES (58A: A.I.-powered video hoaxes), it gives this puzzle a very unpleasant vibe. Including the recently decimated USAID in the grid did nothing to improve the vibe (82A: Org. founded to fund foreign projects). 

I did like a few non-theme things about this puzzle. "I'LL ALLOW IT" is a great answer in its own right, and the clue on it today is pretty spectacular (2D: Line of latitude?). Perfect surface meaning, perfect figurative meaning. I like that the puzzle comes out throwing NINJA STARs, and I like that the clue included their Japanese name (which I didn't know) (24A: Throwing weapon known in Japanese as a shuriken). I want to like MUMBLE RAPPERS (54D: Hip-hop artists with unintelligible lyrics), and I guess I do. I've certainly heard it, but I don't know much about it. "Mumble rap" is a term that's frequently derogatory and possibly bygone, or at least fading. It grew out of the SoundCloud rap of the mid-'10s.

Mumble rap is used mostly as a derogatory term, in reference to a perceived incoherence of the artist's lyrics. Oscar Harold of the Cardinal Times stated that "mumble rap" is misleading, arguing that the rappers such as Future rely more upon pop melodies and vocal effects, such as auto tune, than mumbling. Justin Charity, a staff writer at The Ringer, argues that the term is unnecessarily reductive and does not in fact refer to one specific type of rapping. He wrote that many of the artists often scapegoated in conversations about the subgenre do not actually mumble, which "is the red flag that the term isn't a useful subcategorization." (wikipedia)

The only "mumble" art form I know comes from film, specifically the genre "mumblecore" (NYTXW appearances: zero), which wikipedia helpfully tells me is "not to be confused with mumble rap." Mumblecore features naturalistic acting, low budgets, and an emphasis on dialogue over plot. As with mumble rap, many people grouped under the category "mumblecore" reject the concept entirely. It's almost as if "mumble" has negative connotations! Anyway, MUMBLE RAPPERS. That happened.

[This may be the only time I've laughed at a YouTube comments section: "Twenty Month Ten!" "Toning my tanner!" "When you accidentally invent one of the biggest sub-genres of Rap by being high"]

EMOTERS aren't really a thing despite crossword puzzles doing heavy PR for them (91D: Hams). I'm not even sure a single EMOTER is a thing, but I know that if an EMOTER is a thing, it definitely doesn't travel in packs. I had the same old same old same old BRIAR/BRIER problem today (46D: Prickly patch). BRIER is a "less common spelling of BRIAR" (thanks, merriam dash webster dot com! That will help me ... not at all!). Luckily I knew how to spell MADEIRA (61A: Portuguese wine). Will this be true of everybody? I do not know. MADAIRA ... looks wrong, but it seems quite possible that someone might drop an "A" in there and never see the error. Oh well. I had CHAZ before CHAS (18D: Nickname that's an alternative to Chuck), but I ZELENA Gomez looks even worse than MADAIRA, so that error wasn't hard to fix. I had TUG AT before TOUCH (79A: Affect emotionally), which is a weird, inventive mistake on my part. My answer kind of requires you to imagine "heartstrings," but that's fine, it still works. Sometimes you make mistakes and you think, "nope, I did nothing wrong. Good answer, me." Mostly you're lying to yourself, but sometimes you're right. 


Bullets:

• 61D: Trading card error (MISCUT) — big collector of baseball cards as a kid, and I've got some other trading cards I picked up on my way through adulthood. Never considered MISCUT. That was my last word in the grid. After MISPRINT wouldn't fit ... flummoxed, even with the MIS- in there. Needed every cross.
• 57D: Council of ___ (Counter-Reformation body) (TRENT) — whoa ... I just dropped in the Treaty of GHENT (28D: Treaty of ___, official close to the War of 1812), and now you want the Council of TRENT?! I know they don't have anything to do with each other, technically, but those words are roommates in my brain. I'm sure the rhyming has something to do with it. Also, there's something World History Quiz about both of them. They even scan the same: Treaty of GHENT / Council of TRENT / Fasting for LENT / Elbow is BENT / Paying the RENT / Not what I MEANT / da da da DA / one two three FOUR ... etc. etc. etc.
• 19A: "The game's ___": Henry V ("AFOOT") — really thought this was Sherlock Holmes. And it is Sherlock Holmes. Famously. But apparently he "cribbed it" from Shakespeare.

• 31A: Under, poetically ('NEATH) — I teach medieval and early modern poetry and I can tell you I've seen 'NEATH in crosswords more than I've ever seen it used "poetically." Only EMOTERS use 'NEATH. And maybe Keats, but ... he was Keats, he's allowed.

Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire
Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;
Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod
With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god.
Now while the earth was drinking it, and while
Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,
And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright
'NEATH smothering parsley, and a hazy light

Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang... 

[from Endymion: A Poetic Romance]

• 50A: "It's ___. Do you know where your children are?" (old P.S.A.) (TEN P.M.) — Ominous. I remember this. Vaguely. But I (mis)remember it as "ten o'clock." Presumably people watching TV at night know it's P.M., not A.M., but whatever. If it's P.M., it's P.M. "Do you know where your children are?" is a question used as a public service announcement (PSA) for parents on American television from the late 1960s through the late 1990s. Accompanied by a time announcement, this phrase is typically used as a direct introduction for the originating station's late-evening newscast, typically at either 10:00 p.m. or 11:00 p.m." (wikipedia)

• 3D: Squishy part of a cat's paw, cutesily (TOE BEAN) — I am pro TOE BEAN. Put TOE BEANs in every grid, I won't mind. Never gonna be unhappy to see a TOE BEAN.

[Alfie as a kitten (he'll be six next month)]

That's all for today. See you next time. And best of luck to all the competitors at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT). Just one more to go! (unless you're in the A B or C finals, in which case, there's two more).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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