Clergyman known for his verbal gaffes / SUN 6-21-26 / Farm play area / Launch points in disc golf / Long, hooded cloak that's also an author's name / Debuted to stockholders, in Wall St. lingo / Hindu god with an elephant head / Physician specializing in reproductive health, informally / Mathematical constant equal to two times pi

Constructor: Hannah Slovut-Einertson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

[122D: "Star Wars" character whose species is never named]

THEME: "Big Draw" — apparently it's WORLD GIRAFFE DAY (???), and you get to celebrate the "big" animal by "drawing" it (76A: Annual June 21 celebration of the animal depicted in this puzzle by connecting the circled letters from A to T and back to A); additionally, there are seven more giraffe-related answers in the grid:

Theme answers:

• NECKING (21A: Fighting technique used by [circled letters] (as explained at 76-Across))
• "THAT'S A TALL ORDER" (67A: "Boy, you're asking too much" ... or what you might say after following the instructions at 76-Across?)
• SAVANNA (124A: Habitat for [circled letters])
• OKAPI (20D: Closing living relative of the [circled letters])
• TOWERS (39D: Term for groups of [circled letters])
• ACACIA (81D: Tree whose leaves are eaten by [circled letters])
• SPOTS (109D: Fur pattern on a [circled letters])

Word of the Day: Yani TSENG (25D: Golfer Yani) —

Yani Tseng (Chinese: 曾雅妮; pinyin: Zēng Yǎní; born 23 January 1989) is a Taiwanese professional golfer playing on the U.S.-based LPGA Tour. She is the youngest player ever, male or female, to win five major championships. She was ranked number 1 in the Women's World Golf Rankings for 109 consecutive weeks from 2011 to 2013. (wikipedia)

• • •

My actual feelings about this puzzle are more in two-star territory, but I want to give the puzzle credit for originality (i.e. weirdness), and for a few of the longer non-theme answers, which were strong and occasionally delightful (BEAR WITNESS, STORE CREDIT, "LEVEL WITH ME," COFFEE RUN). But the theme, yeah, no, what? What is even happening? Did people know this was a "Day"? Are you all "celebrating" this today? Is anyone? God love and preserve the giraffes of the world, but this is such (Such!) a weird puzzle to run on a day that is Notably A Holiday! A non-giraffe holiday. Unless your father is a giraffe, in which case ... wow, I have questions. Anyway, it's Father's Day. I don't need a Father's Day-themed puzzle, but to celebrate a different, and (I think it's safe to say) less popular "holiday" on Father's Day is bizarre. Not all bizarre things are bad, but this ... is child's placemat stuff. Connect the dots, draw a long-necked horsey. Mkay. Done and done, I guess, but why? It's not like there were any surprises here. There's one pun, which gives the theme a very (very) mild playfulness, but otherwise it's just giraffe trivia (mostly short answers you might see on any day), and then ... you draw. I knew I was dealing with a giraffe-related puzzle very early—as soon as I got OKAPI, in fact. At that point, I thought the "circled letters" were going to spell "GIRAFFE" somehow, so I got very confused as A B C D etc. started to show up. Eventually I realized that I was going to be asked to connect the circled squares in alphabetical order, which then made it pretty easy to find and fill in the circled squares. Here's what happened immediately after I grasped the connect-the-dots angle:

After this point, the puzzle was basically a tall and somewhat dull themeless. There are few things I like less than being asked to draw a picture on my puzzle when I'm done. Maybe the app did some cool giraffe-related animation, I dunno. Mine just sat there. Not that a graphic would've improved the solving experience. The puzzle isn't bad, it's just ... it's only interesting as a novelty. It has novelty dimensions. Wacky tallness. Beyond that, there's really not much to it. Oh, and one last thing about the theme, specifically the revealer clue: if you ask me to "connect the circled letters from A to T and back to A" (my emphasis), then I am going to assume that you want me to actually go back, i.e. retrace my steps, T to A (the long way). Just a little thought told me that my interpretation made no sense from a drawing perspective, but I still maintain that that instruction is clumsily worded.

Overall, it's a pretty easy puzzle. I had real trouble with TSENG / NOUN, and only wrote that "N" in at the very end. I still can't really accept that [Whatchamacallit] is NOUN. How? In the sense that any ... thing (whether you can remember its name or not) is a NOUN, I guess the clue is, at some basic level, accurate, but you'd never (ever) swap either of those words for the other. Absolutely insane cluing choice. My not knowing a golfer: not a surprise. My not knowing NOUN: strange. I had EYE-to-EYE before TOE-to-TOE (47A: Word on either side of "to"). Struggled with GANESHA because I really (really) thought the god was called simply GANESH ... which it is, though apparently GANESHA is the preferred / more common spelling (89A: Hindu god with an elephant head). It's the primary spelling at the wikipedia entry, at any rate. My trouble there was compounded by my uncertainty about neighboring ACES OUT (the "OUT" part, specifically) and by the tough clue on RANSOM, which crosses both of the aforementioned answers (78D: Price for a return, perhaps). I had ANNOY before ANGER (99D: Tick off). I've never heard of a CORN PIT and can barely imagine it. CORN MAZE? Sure. CORN PIT??? Weirdly, not an element of any farm I've ever seen. I assume they're real, or why would this answer be here, but ... yeah, I needed lots of crosses there. "BEATS ME!" I might've said (but didn't).


Bullets:

• 23A: Verify, as an editor (FACTCHECK) — I think of an editor and a factchecker as being separate jobs. I knew a factchecker for National Geographic, and she was not an editor. But I guess some editors do FACTCHECK, so, fine.
• 132A: Debuted to stockholders, in Wall St. lingo (WENT IPO) — awful. Just a horrible, ugly bit of "lingo." A total wordlist answer (i.e. one you use only because your software recommended it). No one wants this. 
• 106D: Small superhero whose catchphrase starts "Up and at 'em" (ATOM ANT) — had the first "A" and tried to make ANT MAN work, to no avail.
• 52D: R&B group Bell Biv ___ (DEVOE) — they were popular for precisely the years that I was in college. I don't remember hearing about them again after 1991. But they were pretty damn big in that '90-'91 window. I see now that they released other albums besides their massive 1990 debut (Poison). Bell Biv DEVOE (also known as "BBD," yes, really) was made up of three former members of the '80s boy band New Edition, whose other members included Ralph Tresvant, Johnny Gill, and (most famously) Bobby Brown. Bell Biv DEVOE are: Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe. So, if you didn't know about Bell Biv DEVOE, well ... now you know.

• 53A: Long, hooded cloak that's also an author's name (CAPOTE) — ooh, I forgot this name had a sartorial angle. I think I knew that. But I also think I would've said it was something a bullfighter wore. No idea how my brain ever made that association. 
• 119A: Clergyman known for his verbal gaffes (SPOONER) — if you don't know the Reverend, then you have probably never solved a cryptic crossword in your life. Man, those setters (don't call them "constructors") love their spoonerisms. A "spoonerism"is when you transpose the first sounds of two-word phrases, so ... uh ... a "cakewalk" would be a "wake cock" ... that's not really a good example, but it's the first thing that came to mind, sorry / you're welcome.
• 110A: Common holder of pens (MUG) — yes. In fact there's a MUG holding pens (and pencils) on my desk right now. But I got a bit screwed up by the alphabetical sequencing of the circled letters and thought that there should be a "J" where the "M" should be, which resulted in a JAR holding the pens. And then, however improbably, a JUG.

That's all for today. Happy Father's Day to all who celebrate. If that's not you, well then, Happy WORLD GIRAFFE TODAY. Today's got something for everyone!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Dad's pop, perhaps / SAT 6-20-26 / Moment of high spirits? / Turnovers, but not crumpets / Jokey warning before diving into a niche topic / Destination for a day trip from Sorrento / Big name in lights / Website with a "Submit a Rumor" tab / ___ Howard, activist known as te "Mother of Pride" / Helen with the podcast "Go Fact Yourself" / Man's name whose first four letters spell a word describing its last letter / State-sponsored "wealth redistribution" scheme

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BRENDA Howard (21A: ___ Howard, activist known as the "Mother of Pride") —

[glaad.org]

Brenda Howard (December 24, 1946 – June 28, 2005) was an American bisexual rights activist and sex-positive feminist. The Brenda Howard Memorial Award is named for her. [...] A militant activist who helped plan and participated in LGBT rights actions for over three decades, Howard was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front^[2] and for several years chair of the Gay Activists Alliance's Speakers Bureau^[3] in the post-Stonewall era. A fixture in New York City's LGBT Community, Howard was active in the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights which helped guide New York City's Gay rights law through the City Council in 1986 as well as ACT UP and Queer Nation. (wikipedia)

• • •

[14D: One of a noted quintet]

This started out very hard, but that's often the way Saturdays start—with me just picking around for a while trying to find a seam I can grab hold of so that I can tear the lid off. For some reason I'm thinking of the jars of peanut butter we get, which come with a foil top under the regular jar lid and you have to pull it off but it's always an ordeal and then when you do find the little (very little) bit that you're supposed to pull on, you pull it and instead of taking the whole top off it just rips off in your hand and so you have to actually get a knife and run it along the edge of the jar to get the damn thing off. It's like that. I think various toiletries come with similar annoying foil covers—lotions and toothpastes and what not. Anyway, you hunt for the little bit that will give you some leverage and then you pull and hope for the best. Today, I hunted all over the NW and got nothing. Well, I kinda thought CAPRI might be right (1D: Destination for a day trip from Sorrento), but otherwise, nothing. First thing in the grid that I was certain about was SPOT (20A: Be prepared to take a weight off someone's shoulders?), which probably should've given me ONION (7D: Bulb that becomes translucent when heated), but it didn't, so I decamped for the NE, which was much friendlier. Despite knowing neither STAR (??) (10D: Big name in lights) or BRENDA, I got into the NE via TIMER, WIDEST (I knew it was an -EST, at least), and STAT (26A: Turnovers, but not crumpets). And then the big breakthrough, GREAT LAKE (14D: One of a noted quintet)—which is where I will be in exactly five days: Lake Huron, the last lake on our annual summer GREAT LAKE vacation adventure (Michigan 2022, Superior 2023, Erie 2024, Ontario 2025, Huron 2026). Not sure if we're gonna embark on some new collection of places to visit, or if we're just gonna accept that Superior is superior and go there every summer. Either way, we get to see my best friends every summer, which is the point. Actually, the point point is our moving to Minnesota to live in the same city (if not the same neighborhood) as my best friends, but that's another story ... where was I? GREAT LAKE! It helped me get started. Helped me greatly. Pretty soon I was here:

[WHOO? Oh, right, I had SHOO and hadn't yet fixed the whole thing (39D: "Get outta here!" = "WHOA!"—a statement of disbelief, not a command to leave)]

Once the middle was sorted, I had access to all the remaining corners, and while the NW remained the toughest (I had to come in through the back ends of answers, which is always harder than coming in through the front), the whole puzzle got a lot easier. SW went down in Tuesday fashion, and SE wasn't much tougher, although HONG (?) forced me to work a little (56A: Helen with the podcast "Go Fact Yourself"), as did the tough (and clever) clue on TOAST (49D: Moment of high spirits?) ("high" as in "lifted," as in "Raise a glass...!"). I also took a while to commit to SEA DRAGON down there because it sounds fictional (60A: Creature whose appendages allow it to camouflage in masses of kelp). But no, it's real alright.

As for that pesky NW, even after I got going in there, I still had trouble with ___ CANNON (I wanted TEE, since I've only ever heard them called "T-shirt cannons") and ___ POINT (17A: That's not the whole story!) (I thought maybe "story" was being used punnily to refer to a level of a building ... which actually did happen elsewhere in the puzzle: 23D: Stories of college students? (DORM). I like that Katie wrote NOT MY FINEST WORK right across the middle of this puzzle—funny bit of self-deprecation. It's probably not her finest work, but it's very good. Colorful and varied answers, no real moments of wincing, and enough bite to make things interesting.

Mistakes? Besides the ones I've already covered, not many. SHOO before WHOA (39D: "Get outta here!"). AIR before ACT (4D: What one might put on to impress others). HELM before DESK (55D: Anchor position). I thought maybe Helen HUNT had a podcast I hadn't heard about (56A: Helen with the podcast "Go Fact Yourself" = HONG). We have to know podcasters now? But there are Sooooooo Many, ugh. If I needed a HONG (that wasn't just [___ Kong]), I think I'd've gone with HONG Chau, whose presence in a movie is one of the most reliable indicators that I will see said movie. I would not have thought that was true until just now, but when I looked at her filmography, I realized I'd seen five of her last eight movies (The Menu, Showing Up, Asteroid City, Wuthering Heights, The Sheep Detectives). She got an Academy Award nomination for The Whale, which I never saw. She's never been in the puzzle, neither as HONG nor as CHAU. She should be a name double threat! Like ISAO AOKI, but for the 21st century.

["We gel!"]

Bullets:

• 34A: Soprano Fleming (RENÉE) — a very helpful gimme. She gave me the "R" for the other name in the middle of the grid, which had a much more elaborate (and funnier) clue (34D: Man's name whose first four letters spell a word describing its last letter = RINGO). I don't normally like these non-specific clues that ask you to drop or add or move letters around to figure them out, but this one was different. Sufficiently clever, such that I wasn't annoyed. My first thought for a man's name in five letters starting with "R" was ROGER, but then I was like "'how does 'ROGE' describe 'R'?" (Later, ROGER actually showed up (51D: "Got it")). Cryptic crosswords have primed me to think "O" when I see "ring," so this clue felt very comfy.
• 62A: N.B.A. analyst Burke (DORIS) — I don't follow pro sports too closely any more but I still know who DORIS Burke is. Big name in basketball commentary. She's got a lot of "First woman to ..." credits and is just a well respected analyst generally.

• 43A: ___ Ewbank, Hall-of-Fame football coach (WEEB) — the puzzle does get a little name-y (seven people, plus ROGER and RINGO), and this is probably the crosswordesiest of them all. I wrote in WEEB thinking "it's WEEB, right? Really, WEEB? But yeah ... I think so." It's a name I know solely from doing crosswords lo these many years. He coached the Jets to their one and only Super Bowl ... the year I was born. Reading about him just now led me to discover that there was a game he coached in that's famous enough to have a name: The Heidi Game. How in the world does a professional football game end up named after a 19th-century children's novel about a five-year-old girl? Well ... funny story:

The Heidi Game was a 1968 American Football League (AFL) game between the Oakland Raiders and the visiting New York Jets. The contest, held on November 17, 1968, was notable for its exciting finish, in which Oakland scored two touchdowns in the final minute to win the game 43–32. However, NBC, the game's television broadcaster, decided to break away from its coverage on the East Coast to broadcast the television film Heidi, which caused many viewers to miss the Raiders' comeback. (wikipedia)

• 6D: Website with a "Submit a Rumor" tab (SNOPES) — TMZ wouldn't fit, and so I was out of ideas until I got a few crosses.
• 31D: Fair weather followers (SNOWBIRDS) — we get a lot of these in the NE—retirees (mostly) who leave for warmer climes during the colder months but come back to the NE for the summers and the notably gorgeous falls. And here I am planning to retire to Minnesota. Is there a cute avian name for those of us who want to spend our later years in the freezing cold of Minnesota? LOONS?

That's all for today. See you next time. Happy last day of spring!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Wait, CREAM SODA is "Dad's pop"!? Man, I have really entered old man territory, I guess. I love the stuff. You're missing out, kids.

P.P.S. I’m being told that “Dad’s” refers to the brand of soda, and not the fact that only old men drink it. Ok. CREAM SODA *does* seem old-fashioned, as soda types go. Also, I was not aware that Dad’s made any soda besides root beer. 

[Got this one at a bagel shop in NYC at the end of a hot day. Delicious]

   

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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