With even stronger reasoning, in law / SAT 7-18-26 / Titular animated dog of children's TV / Nairobi-based collection of NGOs / Bygone recorders / Figures listed on Zocdoc, for short / Cosmetic additive that comes from the Southwest / Smartphone feature that debuted worldwide in 2011 / Song whose titular subject has a "dark brown voice" / Retailer with mountains in its logo / Instrument that's held at about a 45-degree angle from the player's body

Constructor: Ryan Judge

Relative difficulty: Easy 

[33D: Actor who plays the title role on TV's "Andor"]

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Moe Berg (59A: W.W. II-era occupation for baseball's Moe Berg, following his playing career = SPY) —

Morris Berg (May 3, 1902 – May 29, 1972) was an American professional baseball catcher and coach in Major League Baseball who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, though he was never more than an average player and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball." Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball."

Berg was a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, spoke several languages, and regularly read ten newspapers a day. His reputation as an intellectual was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information Please, in which he answered questions about the etymology of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.

As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups which the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the German nuclear weapons program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, successor to the Office of Strategic Services. (wikipedia)

• • •

[20D: Gustav Klimt masterpiece]

Hey, my Friday puzzle! A day late, but still, better late than never. This one had the flow and the oomph and the zing, as well as the lowkey fighting spirit, that yesterday's puzzle lacked. Give me a grid with all-over flow like this over a series of 15-stacks Any Day. More challenge, more fun today. Not really a Saturday-level challenge, but enough resistance to make it interesting, at least. You only get a couple of answers 10+-letters long (two 13s, to be exact, both great), but you do a get a host of 7-8-9s, which keep things crackling throughout, and while there's plenty of short fill to help you get traction, you never feel like you're drowning in it (which is how I felt yesterday when practically everything besides the puzzle's nine 15s was short filler). Today's puzzle is a little too pop-culturey for my tastes, but there was nothing obscure, to my mind, nothing that I hadn't picked up from either paying attention to the world generally or solving crosswords, specifically (everything I know about Elio and Andor, for instance, I learned from (writing about) crosswords). The puzzle covers a wide range of topics and moves from formal (A FORTIORI) to informal ("I JUST WORK HERE"). Fresh and surprising. Just what I like in a late-week puzzle. 

[7D: Results of one's labors, so to speak]

It wasn't a long journey today, from start to finish, but it was ... a journey. Please, come along with me, won't you, as I retrace my eventful and occasionally hilarious path to puzzle completion. Let's start in the NW corner, where we usually start, and where I made my first and possibly only outright mistake. And what a mistake it was. A gift from the gods! How often are mistakes gifts? Well, OOXTEPLERNON (the god of short bad fill, hallowed be his name) was uncharacteristically playful and generous today. He offered me a regrettable French possessive as my opening toehold (14D: "Bonjour, ___ amis!" = MES). Not an auspicious beginning, but what followed was ... epic. Historic. I was so proud that I remembered the [Nairobi-based collection of NGOs] (OXFAM). That "X" gave me "EXCUSE ME" (2D: "Um ... what?!") and so I was off and running ... or so I thought. My next move, however ... fatal. Silent, but deadly, you might say. You see, I crossed the "E" in MES not with SCORE (the correct answer) but with SCALE (17A: Conductor's reference). In retrospect, SCORE is soooo much better, but my brain was like "music, five letters, ends in "E" ... [pictures sheet music ... a progression of notes] ... SCALE! By dumb luck, SCALE and SCORE end up sharing 60% of the same letter DNA. So I "confirm" SCALE with TO SPARE, so now SCALE is really locked in ... which sets the stage for perhaps the greatest wrong answer I've ever entered into a grid—any grid, ever. Now, I don't know much about Latin legal terms, but I was pretty sure that this ... was wrong:

Lawyers, judges: I demand that one of you use "A FARTIRIORI" the next time you object to some line of argument on the grounds that it stinks. "Objection, your honor! A FARTIRIORI reasoning!" "Sustained! Clear the court!" Maybe you can work MALIO in there too, when the reasoning is particularly bad-faith. "A MALIO FARTIORI, your honor! I demand a retrial! Contempt of court!" Oh, man, A FARTIRIORI, I love you so much. Thank you for appearing to me in a crossword. What a blessing. 

Another great thing about the FARTIRIORI error is that I was able to catch it immediately, so it didn't bog me down. A lot easier to laugh at your mistakes when you catch them quickly. With the NW fixed, I zoomed into the center of the grid, for the first big whoosh of the day. I briefly considered EMOJIKEPEDIA (?) for 30A: Smartphone feature that debuted worldwide in 2011, but then ... success.

At this point, I had a toehold in the NE, and pretty good prospects for getting down into the SW and across the grid to the SE. This was the point at which the good answers felt like they started popping off like popcorn, in all directions. "I JUST WORK HERE," STUDY DATE, WIDE BERTH, etc. Not that there weren't some hiccups along the way. I misread "Zocdoc" (?) as "Zodiac" and so really really didn't understand when MDS ended up being the answer to 16D: Figures listed on Zocdoc, for short. I saw the -B-RT pattern at 26A and instinctively wrote in EBERT before deciding maybe I should actually read the clue and discovering that it was actually Q*BERT (26A: Orange video game character who appears in "Wreck-It-Ralph"). You ever watch the cartoon "Letterman" on the Electric Company back in the day? (this was the '70s, so you pretty much have to be over 50 for this). He was a superhero figure who would save the day by changing a letter in the name of something scary or bad, thereby rendering it harmless. Like turning a "gun" into "gum" or something. Anyway, I'm imagining Letterman changing EBERT into Q*BERT and it's making me happy.

Bullets:

• 31D: Cosmetic additive that comes from the Southwest (JOJOBA OIL) — I took one look at JOJO-, before looking at the clue, and the only thing I could imagine was JOJO DANCER (Your Life Is Calling). Luckily, I remembered JOJOBA OIL from ... I wanna say '70s shampoo commercials?

• 43A: Digs up by the roots (GRUBS) — this ... is not a word I know. I think of GRUBS as larvae. 
• 46D: Bygone recorders (TIVOS) — Today I learned that TIVOS are "bygone," LOL, wow, when did that happen. I rely on crosswords for all my TIVO-related information, so this is the first I'm hearing of it.
• 57A: What might add a bit of flavor to a salsa? (BONGO) — since I was having trouble coming up with EMBRYOS (39D: Items frozen in cryopreservation), I didn't have the final "O" here and thought that maybe people were livening up their salsa dancing by taking hits off of BONGS. Really adds flavor, they say!

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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Kaelin of the O.J. trial / FRI 7-17-26 / French seafood topping named after another country / Rod whom the A.L. batting title is named after / Google smartphone feature that edits the photographer into the group shot / Savory Chinese dish prepared on a griddle / Marvel antagonist who wears a metal mask / Island nation north of Fiji / Pulitzer-winning author whose only two novels were published 55 years apart / Historical figure known to have acquired and dissected human corpses / Landform commonly seen in a crescent shape on Mars / Disney antagonist who rules the Pride Lands

Constructor: Coz Berlin

Relative difficulty: Easiest Friday I've ever done

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SAUCE AMERICAINE (59A: French seafood topping named after another country) —

Sauce américaine (pronounced [sos ameʁikɛn]; French for 'American sauce') is a recipe from classic French cookery containing chopped onions, tomatoes, white wine, brandy, salt, cayenne pepper, butter and fish stock. It is sometimes incorrectly referred to as sauce armoricaine (pronounced [sos aʁmɔʁikɛn]), but in fact the sauce was invented by a cook from Sète, Hérault, who had worked in the United States. // Louis Saulnier gives the following recipe: Américaine - Treat as for Lobster Américaine. Pound shells and meat in the mortar and incorporate equal quantity of fish velouté, add butter. // As with many other classic dishes the original recipe has been adapted over time and almost every chef will prepare the sauce in a slightly different way. Modern recipes usually include tarragon and use lobster stock rather than pounded lobster, and often replace cayenne pepper with paprika. (wikipedia)

• • •

You don't see this triple-stack stuff much anymore. Used to be considered quite the feat (by some) back in the day. It's still a feat, but constructing software has made this "feat" far more accessible to the average constructor, so it's no longer quite as impressive-seeming. Since there are so many far more interesting and entertaining grid shapes that don't involve having most of your Downs (the stack crosses) being overfamiliar and/or clunky 3-4-5s, you just don't see 15 stacks like this as often. Ironically, though the stacks look daunting, because there are usually so many opportunities to hack into them via their short crosses, they frequently end up being easier than average. Once you get one element in the stack, the others tend to fall quickly. Today ... well, today. Today. Sigh. smh. Look, I think the grid is of perfectly ordinary and average quality. There's nothing wrong with it. The stacks are clean, their crosses never particularly irksome or off-putting. It's all fairly smooth. A puzzle-shaped puzzle, totally acceptable. But the difficulty level has been lowered to such an extent that it's not even fun, unless perhaps you are new to puzzles—always feels great to take down a late-week puzzle when you're just starting out. But if you're not new to puzzles, dear lord this one is over before it begins. Where's the fun in that? 

How easy was it? So easy that I literally never saw the clues for MADE A CLEAN BREAK, ORDERED A  LA CARTE, or STAND AT THE READY. Or REM or EWER or EWE either, but those are less remarkable. I took one look at 1A: Savory Chinese dish prepared on a griddle and thought "it's a PANCAKE ... an onion PANCAKE of some kind ... just write in PANCAKE." And so I did ("griddle" is a dead giveaway that you're dealing with a PANCAKE). If you write in PANCAKE there at the end of 1A ... well, for me, that was like tipping over the first domino is a long line of dominos—they all just ... fell. I mean, I ran those Downs backwards from the "E" in PANCAKE, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 ... or 7-6-5-4-3-2-1, I guess, if we're being precise. From there, it was clear the 2nd and 3rd long Downs ended CLEAN BREAK and A LA CARTE, respectively, so I wrote that much in, and more Downs fell, and I saw that the onion in the pancake was a SCALLION, and then all the Downs fell. All but one—a product placement clue written on behalf of Google smartphones.

Could've just made this ADDLE and gone with REL (or TEL, or KEL) in the cross, but instead we get this ADD ME garbage (3D: Google smartphone feature that edits the photographer into the group shot). How do you steer *into* ADD ME? Why? Whose tastes or interests are served there? Whatever, it hardly matters, the answer's easy to get, it's just so dispiriting to have the one answer that made me pause At All up there be an ad for Google products. But back to my initial point—from PANCAKE (obvious) I ran the table up there. No hesitations, ADD ME notwithstanding. I should not be able to walk through a third of a Friday puzzle in under a minute. The other two sections took a little more time, but only a little. I actually threw a couple of wrong answers down in the middle section, early, when I had almost nothing to go on. Wrote in SAMPLE for SWATCH (28D: Fabric fragment) and TAHITI for TUVALU (25D: Island nation north of Fiji). But EARTHA and DR. DOOM were easy and Margaret CHO got me to change SAMPLE to SWATCH and then the ANTI-WAR part of ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT because obvious and whoosh, there went the middle: ALMS NEON TOIL, bam bam bam, and all the long Acrosses were done for. I washed back across the grid, changing TAHITI to TUVALU along the way. 

I'm 2/3 down now and I don't think more than a few minutes have gone by. And I am by no means speed-solving at this point—just proceeding methodically, wondering when anything is going to leap out and fight me. Never happened. Once I got SHAMS and SKOR in there, every Down I threw into the lower section came up correct, immediately, effortlessly: REEDY OWNED KEIRA SPENT SICON, all off just their first letters. Like it was Monday. SICON to ACTI to ASIS CAST TUNA and now I've got the front ends of all the long Downs down there. I've never heard of SAUCE AMÉRICAINE, but it didn't stand a chance today. The surrounding fill was too easy, and the AMÉRICAINE part was ultimately inferable, and that was that. 

[my first thought when I saw SAUCE AMÉRICAINE]

If I'd been speed-solving, I think I might've broken 3 today, which is Insane. I can break 3 on a Monday. Rarely, on a Tuesday. On a Friday!?!?! At a very casual pace, taking screenshots along the way, I was done in probably 4 or 5. That should not be. If you struggled today, please don't be insulted. Everyone's different. But I'm genuinely curious where the struggle might've been. Maybe in the proper nouns? If you're young, it's possible KATO Kaelin means nothing to you (consider yourself Blessed). Maybe you've never heard the sultry, purring sounds of EARTHA Kitt (you should fix that). Perhaps Rod CAREW means nothing to you (he was a big deal when I was a baseball card-collecting boy in the '70s). DR. DOOM might be beyond your ken. We all have proper noun / pop culture gaps. But even with those gaps, it seems like the puzzle should've been very easy to handle for just about any regular solver today. Again, I like the stacks today. They are fine. But the only one I really loved, fittingly, was "IS NOTHING SACRED?!" Is the Friday puzzle not sacred? Can we not maintain late-week difficulty in the face of the overwhelming (economic?) pressure to dumb everything down into quick-solve nuggets!? Apparently not. 

Bullets:

• 40A: Historical figure known to have acquired and dissected human corpses (LEONARD DA VINCI) — this makes him sound like a serial killer. "Acquired" doing a lot of mysterious work here.
• 54A: They typically come in sets of four (PAWS) — I like this one, both because it actually made me ... pause (pun originally not intended, but as soon as I heard it, very much intended!), and it made me think of kitties and puppies, which is never a bad thing.

[high five]

• 4D: Pulitzer-winning author whose only two novels were published 55 years apart (LEE) — Stan LEE wrote novels? Actually, this is Harper LEE, author of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and Go Set a Watchman (2015). I had LE- and honest to god I Polish author Stanisław LEM for a half-second. He received a lot of honors in his life, but never the Pulitzer (a U.S. award).

• 52A: Something big when all the world's a stage? (CAST) — I got this from the "C," but I'm not sure the phrasing really works here. You could have a movie that roams the globe and still have a modest-sized CAST. I appreciate the attempt to give this puzzle some personality (finally), to make it seem like it was written by a human and not a machine. But the Shakespeare feels a little forced here.

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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