Bull rings? / SUN 7-12-26 / 2020 Christopher Nolan sci-fi movie / Mesoamerican staple cooked in a cornhusk / Spot treatment provider? / Dude in Jamaica / Noted example of oligopoly, in brief / Professional responsibilities, colloquially / Dress for a job you probably don't want? / The Big Crunch, theoretically, for our universe / What fighter pilots fight, for short / Gridiron unit that includes the nose tackle, informally / Video game setting for noobs / Obsessive supporters, in modern lingo

Constructor: Collin Drown

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Slight Adjustments" — theme answers are familiar two-word phrases that are critical things describe things someone might say ("slights"), clued with examples that require that you interpret the first word of the phrase in a punny manner:

Theme answers:

• BITING REMARK (23A: "I vant to suck your blood!") (a remark about wanting to bite ... you)
  
• GROUNDLESS ACCUSATION (33A: "I know you're the one who used up the last of my artisanal coffee!") (an accusation about missing coffee, which I guess has already been ground, though usually "grounds" refers to the post-brewing remnants ...)
• THINLY VEILED THREAT (55A: "If you don't find the rings this instant, I'm calling off the wedding!") (a threat from one who is, or will be, thinly veiled, i.e. a bride)
• PATRONIZING REMARK (66A: "I love your paintings so much, I'd like to finance your next exhibition!") (a remark about patronizing an artist)
• BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT (87A: "Wow! With form like that, you're headed to Wimbledon!") (a compliment that is literally (possibly) about someone's tennis backhand)
• BALD-FACED LIE (107A: "I'm so glad you shaved! I hated when you looked like a sexy lumberjack!") (a lie that is literally about someone's bald face)

Word of the Day: EOIN Colfer (62A: Author Colfer of the "Artemis Fowl" series) —

Eoin Colfer (/ˈoʊ.ɪn/; born 14 May 1965) is an Irish writer of children's literature. He is best known for being the author of the Artemis Fowl series, a set of eleven fantasy books. As of 2013, the novels had sold more than 21 million copies worldwide and had been translated into 44 languages, making them one of the best-selling series of all time. In a 2010 public poll, readers also voted Artemis Fowl as their favorite Puffin Books title of all time.

Colfer worked as a primary school teacher before he became a full-time writer. In September 2008, Colfer was commissioned to write the sixth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, titled And Another Thing ..., which was published in October 2009. In October 2016, in a contract with Marvel Comics, he released Iron Man: The Gauntlet. He served as Laureate na nÓg (Ireland's Children's Laureate) between 2014 and 2016. (wikipedia)

• • •

[you can get this on a t-shirt]

Just not enough humor or thematic coherence for me. Also, the grid is weirdly boring. It's not bad, just dull. It took me a while to understand the title—since the clues themselves are not "slights" (some of them are just statements, some of them are outright compliments), I didn't notice that the answers themselves are typically, in their normal, non-pun contexts, all examples of "slights," i.e. slightly to very derogatory things one might say to another person. "Adjustments" doesn't really get at anything except the punny clues, I guess. So you take negative comments and clue them in exceedingly literal ways. OK. The humor here tops out at mild, and honestly you don't even need to pay that much attention to the clues because the puzzle is so dang easy that if you just work the crosses, the theme answers just kind of fill themselves in. This is true of the longer non-theme answers as well. I literally never saw the clue for HAZMAT SUIT. The puzzle just didn't feel substantive enough on any level. There's a somewhat cute concept at the core, but execution is tepid, and the solving experience was a bit of a yawn. It's all very adequate, but not at all exciting or provocative, in any way.

The theme clues also get a bit wonky in places. If you're mad that someone took the last of your artisanal coffee, you aren't mad about missing "grounds," since the grounds are what you're left with after you make the coffee. I just signed up for a coffee club last week—it's a weekly dealie where you can opt to buy whatever special coffee they are featuring. They text you telling you what the weekly coffee is, you text back if you want some. So it's not really a subscription since you never have to buy. It's kind of cool if you are into coffee and want to experiment with fanciness every once in a while. I ordered my first batch just this week—something co-fermented with peaches (!?). I made my first cup just this morning. It was ... a little too peachy for me. But fun to try. Anyway, if you stole my grounds, I wouldn't care since that would mean I'd already enjoyed the coffee. Weird clue. Also, is the bride threatening the groom literally at the altar!? That's the only way THINLY-VEILED THREAT makes sense. But ... why does the groom have both the rings? Isn't she supposed to have one? I got married so long ago (23 years this September), I forgot how it all works. And there's nothing particularly "backhand"-y about that BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT clue. Just something about "form," which refers to the entire way you play, not just your backhand. So the clues not only don't rise to LOL levels, they're also a bit clunky around the edges.

As for the fill ... what was there? GODSPEED got my attention (in a good way), and HAZMAT SUIT is nice, even if I never did see the clue (14D: Dress for a job you probably don't want?). Otherwise, it's pretty smooth, but also very forgettable. I think the most remarkable thing is the way they decided to clue MON (71D: Dude in Jamaica). I wrote in "MAN" since I thought the pronunciation was just a matter of accent, not spelling, but then I realized "no, no way they're specifying Jamaica if they're not changing the spelling." And sure enough! I like it, I think. Better than just an abbrev. for Monday. Or a French possessive. Oh, I forgot: I really liked the clue on PRANK CALLS (66D: Bull rings?). Took me a while to get, and when I did, I was like "Hey hey hey, look who decided to show up ... finally." Wish the puzzle had exhibited more of that kind of cleverness.

Not much struggle today. No idea who David YATES is. Peter YATES, yes. Dude directed Bullitt, ffs (1968). Classic. David? Shrug, never seen a Harry Potter movie, never gonna. There's also Richard YATES, a novelist who wrote Revolutionary Road (which I remember really liking). "His daughter Monica dated comedian Larry David and was the inspiration for Elaine Benes on David's sitcom Seinfeld" (!?!?!) (wikipedia). What else gave me trouble. Oh, HATS, yeesh (88D: Professional responsibilities, colloquially). I think of HATS as roles, not "responsibilities," so that was rough. I've never heard of ABBA Arena, and resent the exclusion of one of the greatest pop bands of all time. If you're gonna use ABBA in your puzzle (yet again!) you may as well let me have fun by putting a catchy song in my head! Lastly, where struggles are concerned, I took one look at 73A: What fighter pilots fight, for short, saw that it ended with "-CES," and wrote in AIR ACES! Woo hoo! So smart! [fiery crash]

Bullets:

• 11A: You might need to lose a few to get them (ABS) — "lose a few (pounds)"
• 32A: Turkey part (ANKARA) — weird to call a city a "part," though it technically is. I guess the clue wanted me to think of the bird. Mission not accomplished. 
• 114A: The Big Crunch, theoretically, for our universe (END) — first: bleak. Why? Second, I thought the universe was expanding. What's this "crunch" business? The Big Crunch sounds like a Cap 'n' Crunch variant. Or a movie about some dude who's really into his ABS. "The Big Crunch is a hypothetical scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the expansion of the universe eventually reverses and the universe recollapses, ultimately causing the cosmic scale factor to reach absolute zero, an event potentially followed by a reformation of the universe starting with another Big Bang. The vast majority of valid evidence, however, indicates that this hypothesis is not correct" (wikipedia). Extreme LOL. 

• 15D: Apt name for a tuxedo cat (OREO) — so not TUXY? Or ORCA? Or MR. FANCYPANTS? Okay, it's your cat ...

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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Voltaire's penultimate play / SAT 7-11-26 / Bandleader who mentored Louis Armstrong / Statue in East Asian temples / Nookie nook? / G-rated verbal double-take / Julia Child catchphrase / Angsty feeling associated with exclusion / "Splendid" things in a Khaled Hosseini title / Target of a therapeutic tea bag / Boxing ring encouragement

Constructor: Jim Quinlan

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: KING OLIVER (3D: Bandleader who mentored Louis Armstrong) —

Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver (December 19, 1881 – c. April 10, 1938^:) was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style and his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. Also a notable composer, he wrote many tunes still played today, including "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz". He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong. His influence was such that Armstrong claimed, "if it had not been for Joe Oliver, jazz would not be what it is today." (wikipedia)

• • •

So many would-be Words of the Day today, which is to say, so many things I didn't know or barely knew, starting with KING OLIVER (embarrassing, since I own a bunch of Armstrong records and have a picture of Armstrong on my wall downstairs (on a movie poster) (The Beat Generation (1959))). He died in the late '30s, so maybe I shouldn't feel too bad, but still ... gap in knowledge, revealed. Another gap: IRENE. Voltaire's penultimate play? What was his ultimate play? His first play? What were literally any plays he wrote? What else did he write besides Candide? Legit LOL'd when I (finally) got IRENE. Oh, IRENE, of course, how could I forget, penultimate, yes, I thought maybe ultimate, but no, no, silly me. I don't know JOSS as anything but a stick (23A: Statue in East Asian temples). A JOSS stick? That's like incense, right? Well, yes, but it turns out that a JOSS stick is just a "stick" of incense that you burn before a JOSS, which is a Chinese idol: "A joss is an English term used to refer to a Chinese deity or idol. It generally describes a Chinese religious statue, object (such as joss paper), or idol in many Chinese folk religions." (wikipedia). I'm sure I've heard of the SAVANNAH BANANAS, but I forgot about them—certainly forgot about the BANANAS part. Luckily I knew the plot of Sweeney Todd, I'd actually read BOSSYPANTS (Tina Fey's autobiography) and I'd at least heard of A Thousand Splendid SUNS. I still haven't seen the APU TRILOGY (throw that on my Shame Pile with KING OLIVER), but it's very, very famous, so at least that didn't give me any trouble. Mostly I enjoyed how wide-ranging the fill was today, but yeah, it asks or some very specific, often proper noun-related knowledge today, so you gotta be a polymath or else fight a little. I fought a little.

I called Thursday's puzzle "Easy," which it very much was for me, but Apparently Not For Others, as I got yelled at a lot. Well, today, let me make it up to you by highlighting the very funny (to me) initial faceplant I did at the very beginning of this puzzle. First, a run-of-the-mill mistake:

But the first thing I did after AÇAI was check the "I" cross, and it wouldn't do anything with an "I" in the first position (4D: Greek counterpart of 12-Down). I then checked 12-Down ([Roman counterpart of 4-Down]). I thought then that maybe the Greek answer might be IOTA, but ... the Roman IOTA is just "I" so ... that was going nowhere. Out went AÇAI. Now what? Well, if you're thinking about four-letter words that are Greek/Roman equivalents of one another, there's only one answer! 

And LAIR "confirmed" it! Sigh. Turns out, there's not only one answer. There are two answers. At least. It's not like POKE bowl hadn't entered my mind, but I got so excited by the ARES/MARS find that I forgot all about POKE. Weirdly, the terminal "A" now made me think TUNA, which is a common POKE bowl ingredient. At any rate, comically inept start today as the wheels came off while the car was basically still in the garage. And then I ran immediately into KING OLIVER. So yeah, getting started today was something of a challenge. But once I got going, this felt like a pretty typical Saturday puzzle of recent vintage (that is, not as hard as the back-breaking Saturday puzzles of yore, back when the NYTXW absolutely did not care about your feelings, but kind of hard; new-era hard; modern hard; sufficiently hard for a Saturday in 2026).  

The marquee fill was very good today. OAHU, HAWAII is one of those geographical redundancies that always make me roll my eyes (see TEHRAN, IRAN, whenever that was ... recently), but everything else—all 11 of the other 10-letter answers—really pop. I enjoyed the crossing of FOMO and "I'M ALL ALONE"—gave the puzzle a really angsty, modern vibe. I object to the clue on "WHAT THE HEY?" (53A: G-rated verbal double-take). "WHAT THE HEY?" is more like "sure, why not? let's do it." There's a spirit of willingness, of gameness. The G-rated "double-take" (the thing you say when you can't believe what you just saw) is "WHAT THE HECK?" Also, I'm not sure LOVERS' LANE can plausibly be described as a "nook" (56: Nookie nook?). It's a lane. Is it not a literal lane? I think it's just a figurative term for any place you can park and make out. If you don't know what "nookie" is, ask your parents. Grandparents, actually. I think I learned it from '70s movies / TV. Maude? All in the Family? The Marin County satire Serial (1980), which my family owned on laser disc in the '80s and watched a lot? Wherever I learned it, I know I didn't learn it from this alleged children's TV show from 1981:

Bullets:

• 16A: .08 for 49 of the 50 states (LEGAL LIMIT) — this clue is basically begging you to ask the question, "Which state has a different LEGAL LIMIT than all the others!?" I don't know, but I'm going to find out for you now. I thought maybe Wisconsin's would be higher ("Some of the drunkest counties in America are in Wisconsin and the state has 7 of the 10 U.S. cities with the highest alcohol consumption per capita."), but no. The one state that's different actually has a lower limit. It's Utah, at .05.

• 19A: Some docking helpers (TUGS) — I wanted USBS. Later, USBS actually turned up (28D: Some ports, for short). We call that a "malapop." I think Andrea Carla Michaels came up with that name. It's a phenomenon that happens more than you'd think. Or ... no, you probably know, since, if you're solving a Saturday, you probably solve a lot.
• 42A: Get out of Dodge (BOLT) — really thought this clue was doing some kind of wordplay and the answer was going to have something to do with disembarking from a car.
• 44D: Boxing ring encouragement ("GET 'EM!") — since the opponent you are telling the boxer to "get" is just one person, 'EM feels slightly wrong. But then "GET 'IM!" also feels wrong. Do people even say this at boxing matches? Kinda savage.
• 36D: Arkansas : Nebraska :: Argon : ___ (NEON) — one of my favorite clues in a while.  Bizarrely incongruous, and yet simple, elegant, perfect (AR : NE :: AR : NE)

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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