Colonial-era Indian soldier / SUN 11-8-26 / Attempt at a royal flush? / Yemeni port with a namesake beverage / Meme throwing shade on seemingly attractive boyfriend candidates / Wipe from visual memory, facetiously / Device in a hydrogen atomic clock / Bean or gourd / Petty cash holder? / "Bumping," as a party / 2013 Eminem hit that tops out at 9.5 syllables per second

Constructor: Simeon Seigel

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Mixed Results" — six lines of the puzzle function somewhat like equations, where the black space between two answers has an equals sign ("=") in it; on one side of the "=" sign is an answer that ends up being the clue for the answer on the other side of the "=" sign. The clue answer is made up of circled and uncircled squares that spell out completely different things, and is clued as [one thing] + [another thing]. So ... [One thing} + [another thing] gives you an (actually unclued) answer, which then functions as a clue for the answer on the other side of the equals sign. 

Theme answers:

• ZEALOTS = TRUE BELIEVERS (TUBERS + RELIEVE) (27A: Potatoes, e.g. + Soothe)
• QUIT IN PROTEST (QUINTET + I.T. PROS) (33A: The Great Lakes, e.g. + Computer gurus) = WALK OUT
• SUCK-UPS = COMPLIMENTERS (COMMENT + PLIERS) (58A: Remark + Gripping tool)
• SOUND ONE'S HORN (SO DONE + UNSHORN) (66A: Totally over it + Still woolly) = SHOW OFF
• BULGING = BARREL-BELLIED (BARBELL + RELIED) (90A: Gym weight + Counted (on))
• SPA TREATMENTS (STREAMS + PATENT) (96A: Online broadcasts + Obvious) = FACIALS 

Word of the Day: SEPOY (94A: Colonial-era Indian soldier) —

A sepoy (/ˈsiːpɔɪ/) is a South Asian soldier. Originating from the Persian word sepāhī (سپاهی), the term was anglicised to "sepoy" by the British. In the army of the Mughal Empire sepāhī referred to a type of infantryman, while in colonial India it was used as a term for native troops in European service. During the early modern era European colonial authorities in India, most prominently those of the British East India Company, raised units of sepoys for service against native states or other European powers. The term is used today as the equivalent rank of private in the Indian, Pakistani and Nepalese armies. (wikipedia)

• • •

OK, where have all these "Sarah, but call me SAL" people been living literally all my life that I have never, not once, heard of such a thing? SAL!?!?!?! Where is the "L" coming from???! My mom is named Sarah, lol calling her Sal. Although ... her birth name was Sally, so maybe she's not the best example. Anyway, SAL was a shocker. Not just a shocker, a complete WTF? The "S" was the last thing I filled in. I've known dozens of Sarahs. Not a one of them has ever gone by SAL. Is this regional? What is this? Seriously, what? 

I know I say "it's gonna have to be a short write-up today..." a lot and then I go on to not do a short write-up but today I really do feel like I have to keep this short because I viscerally disliked this puzzle—solving it, trying to describe the theme, the works. It was a type of puzzle I have never been able to enjoy, i.e. "watch me do this very complex architectural thing that is indeed very impressive, architecturally, but is actually an incredible drag to solve." I don't know what kind of code it is that allowed for these kinds of "discoveries" (i.e. circled squares + uncircled squares = some third unclued thing), but it's making me regret that computers and crosswords ever met. COMPLIMENTERS is not a word anyone would use and even if it were, it's miles, light-years from SUCKUPS. SOUND ONE'S HORN is one of the worst "one's" phrases I've ever seen in crosswords, and anyway, it's "toot one's own horn." I've heard of "beer-bellied" but not "BARREL-BELLIED." Barrel-chested, yes. BARREL-BELLIED, uh uh, not until just now. In addition to the overly fussy (for my tastes) theme and the frequently off-seeming theme answers, the puzzle was just Harder than usual for whatever reason, so I had to spend longer doing it, pfffft. And then, cherry on top, I had a typo that I had to spend minutes hunting down (I'd written in CAR instead of CAB at 72D: Elevator unit and never checked the cross (RULGING = not a word ... that I know of). So people who love this sort of thing should chime in with their love. I am going to do some bullet points and then sign off.

I will say that PALACE COUP is a great answer with an inspired clue (103A: Attempt at a royal flush?). Hard as hell, but very good. Would've loved it on, like, a nice Saturday themeless puzzle.

Bullets:

• 104A: Meme throwing shade on seemingly attractive boyfriend candidates ("HE'S A TEN BUT...") — I'm sure this will thrill the meme-lovers out there. Me, despite the fact that it rings a faint bell, I couldn't parse it to save my life. The "S" in SAL is the "S" in this answer, so of course it was my last square.

["He's a 7 but he cuts his hair with a chainsaw" "He's a 9 but his eyes are actually tiny muffins" "He's a 12 but I'm a manatee"—hey, this is fun]

• 21A: "Bumping," as a party (ALIVE) — lol, this clue / answer reeks of "Hello, fellow youths, this party is really 'bumping,' isn't it? Yes yes, very ... ALIVE." 

• 50A: Petty cash holder? (MISER) — "?" clues were murder today. This one was in a whole nexus of ??? stuff like MOW (46A: Take an inch from a yard, say) and MELON (46D: Bean or gourd) and MASER-not-LASER (59D: Device in a hydrogen atomic clock) and ONION (54D: Main ingredient in a German Zwiebelkuchen cake). The dreaded SESHES (plural, ugh) is also in there, but that was actually easy (53D: Get-togethers). Unfortunate, but easy.
• 69A: Pro tip? (NOD) — the murderiest of the "?" clues, for me, in that I had no idea what it meant even after I got it. I believe the idea is that if you are a "pro" something (i.e. you approve of it), then you might "tip" your head, or ... NOD.
• 94A: Colonial-era Indian soldier (SEPOY) — yeeeeikes. Blast from the past. Thought I'd seen my last SEPOY, but apparently not. It's been a while—nearly 13 years, to be exact. So long that I forgot the term. "Oh, oh, it's that ... thing ... that I used to know ... because crossword fill used to be much worse." A few crosses got me there.
• 50D: Yemeni port with a namesake beverage (MOCHA) — Me: "How am I supposed to know some Yemeni bev- ... oh, right."
• 65A: Chart showing almost a third of the world's land (ASIA MAP) — here, try this: AFRICA MAP. EUROPE MAP. Do you hear it? Do you hear how it's bad? I feel like if you tried to pull off EUROPE MAP you'd get booed so hard. (this is, to no one's surprise, the first [CONTINENT]MAP answer ever to appear in the NYTXW)

• 86D: Golfing boo-boo (SLICE) — what's with the goo-goo baby talk here? I think of "boo-boos" as owies—you know, scrapes or bruises you get When You Are A Child. But "boo-boo" can also be simply a mistake or error. It's still baby talk, though.
• 99D: Field of inquiry that so far has not had any provable success (SETI)— Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
• 82D: Wipe from visual memory, facetiously (UNSEE) — gonna go try to UNSEE this puzzle now. Hope your experience was much more enjoyable than mine. 

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

(That was short, right?)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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Hawaiian word for "family" / SAT 11-7-26 / Atari release of 1972 / Texting tech, for short / Forest Service employee responsible for winter rescues / Fizzy cocktail flavor / Nostalgia-inducing illustrations and typography / Women's soccer coach Sundhage

Constructor: Adrian Johnson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PIA Sundhage (36D: Women's soccer coach Sundhage) — 

Pia Mariane Sundhage (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈpîːa ˈsɵ̂nːdˌhɑːɡɛ], born 13 February 1960) is a Swedish football manager and former player who currently manages the Haiti national team. As a player, Sundhage played most of her career as a forward and retired as the top scorer for the Sweden national team.

Sundhage was the head coach of the United States national team from 2008 to 2012 and led the team to two Olympic gold medals and a silver medal at the World Cup. Her success led to her winning the 2012 FIFA World Coach of the Year. Sundhage later became the head coach of her native Sweden from 2012 to 2017, winning an Olympic silver medal in 2016. She coached the Brazil national team from 2019 to 2023. She later managed Switzerland, the hosts of the UEFA Women's Euro 2025. (wikipedia)

• • •

[MINI COOPERs]

Very well made. Polished. Smooth. Impressive craftsmanship. The highs aren't very high, but there really are no lows, so my overall solving experience was a good one. Once again I decided to time myself, and once again I came in with what feels like a fast time, but as I said yesterday, I've lost all sense of historical norms since I turned the clock off on my solving software (Black Ink) many years ago. I finished this one in 5:37, just a half minute or so slower than yesterday. 

[GIF from beta version of Black Ink software]

This one actually felt faster, probably because there were fewer memorable sticking points. The overall cluing must've been a shade harder, as it should be on Saturday. OHANA was the first thing to trip me up (7D: Hawaiian word for "family"). I tried SHAKA in there, for some reason, and being 60% correct, SHAKA held up. Until it didn't. I also wrote in E-TYPE (?!) for 28A: Sporty car type (COUPE) (wow, "type" is right there in the clue so E-TYPE was truly ill-advised—some might say "stupid"). I needed to get to MAN- before I understood what 43A: Job for which you might offer a hand, informally (MANI) was getting at. But each of these mistakes was more hiccup than hangup. The only thing that really stopped me dead, if only for a bit, was the TREE POSE / PIA crossing. I simply didn't know PIA at all, so every letter of that name felt treacherous. As for TREE POSE (34A: It features one leg perpendicular to the other), I've done a thousand of them in my life, so I'm embarrassed I didn't get that one sooner, but in my defense, the clue is ... odd. 

In TREE POSE, the lower part of one (raised) leg is indeed (roughly) perpendicular to the other (standing), but since the raised leg as a whole ends up forming a kind of triangle, and so the alleged perpendicularity of leg to leg just wasn't computing, visually, for me. And since there was nothing in the clue that said (or even whispered) "yoga," I was at a loss. If you look at TREE POSEs online, you will see that no two look exactly alike and the perpendicularity of even the lower part of the raised leg is often aspirational. Anyway, I appreciate the clue's attempted trickery, even if it was, like me in TREE POSE sometimes, a little wobbly.

I love that TREE POSE is symmetrical with GOAT FARM, largely because as soon as I read the clue at 25A: Kid-friendly business?, my immediate and only thought was ... GOAT YOGA. Which is a thing. Or was. I guess you do yoga with goats. Kids, probably. Around you. On you? I'm not sure, novelty yogas have never been my thing, but it does look cute.

None of the longer answers gave me a thrill today. They were mostly solid but unsurprising. Didn't go "ooh, nice" once. I've seen SERENA SLAM a bunch, and things like MASTER KEYS, ATM RECEIPT, and ROAD WORKER are more, well, workmanlike. But again, the overall cleanness of the fill meant I was never unhappy or bored. I do think SOUR GRAPES and PURE GENIUS is a lovely pairing, and the thing in the grid today, to my ears, is "DO WE HAVE TO!?" Not really big on whiny kids, but as colloquial phrases go, I could really hear that one. Amusing. I was less amused by "ONE CAN HOPE," which seems a lot less certain, a lot more dubious about the outcome than "Lord willing!" (14A: "Lord willing!"). "ONE CAN HOPE" sounds like it's said with a resigned sigh, whereas "Lord willing!" sounds like there's some oomph and some hope in there. The puzzle finishes with "IT'S NOT EASY," but that was not at all my experience today. It was, in fact, pretty easy. I finished things up in the SE without having to look at the clues for any of those last three Downs (IKEA, PETS, TROY).

Bullets:

• 49D: City east of Ithaca (TROY) — speaking of TROY, this clue is so weird. I think it refers to ancient Ithaca and TROY—you know, the eastern Mediterranean / Aegean versions featured in The Odyssey. But I live in central NY and I can tell you that TROY, NY (just outside Albany) is also a [City east of Ithaca]. The "c" (as opposed to "k") spelling of "Ithaca" had me thinking "maybe they do mean Ithaca, NY...." But the "c" spelling is how the Greek place is commonly spelled as well, so I don't know. TROY, NY may seem like a small, obscurish city to feature in the NYTXW, but the Times is a NY paper, after all, and TROY, NY has in fact been in the puzzle, more than once, both in clues and as an answer (it's the home of RPI). Strangely, the NY cities stand in almost exactly the same directional relationship to one another. More ENE than "east," but ... well, here, you can see:

• 1A: Beetle alternative beginning in 1961 (MINI COOPER) — this is a fine answer in its own right, but what I really like is the "Beetle" echo at 20A: Beatles song subject who is "filling in a ticket in her little white book" (RITA), and that both clues deal, in their own ways, with cars:

• 31A: "12 Angry Men" director, 1957 (LUMET) — you are not allowed to not know Sidney LUMET any more. At this point, he is crosswordese. This is his fifth appearance this year (!?), making 2026 the Lumettiest year in NYTXW history, by far (no previous year featured more than two appearances). I read his book Making Movies once and loved it. 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon are two of the greatest films ever made. So I don't want to hear "boo hoo, names" or "I didn't know him." You've seen him a million times. Five times this year! That's four times more than Elizabeth ARDEN, and I think of her as crosswordese, so ... yeah, LUMET. Still waiting on OZU and VARDA, but .... LUMET, we got plenty of.
• 11A: Texting tech, for short (SMS) — why did I want RSS??? Ah, RSS is blogging tech, that's why.
• 3D: Titular Pixar character who's mistakenly called names like Bingo, Chico and Fabio (NEMO) — me: "... COCO?" No (no). 

• 50A: Beowulfian, say (EPIC) — I'm making a face at "Beowulfian." It's nominally an epic, but if something were described to me as "Beowulfian," I'd think of something much more poem-specific. Maybe it's about a hero's journey, or hubris, or the Anglo-Saxon world, or it's got monsters in it, etc. Using "Beowulfian" merely to indicate that something is EPIC feels improbable.
• 13D: Fizzy cocktail flavor (SLOE) — SLOE! The crosswordesiest of drupes. I learned the term from crosswords, where it used to appear allllll the damn time. I made one once with my friend Lena on an episode of the crossword podcast we did briefly in the '10s, and I just remember that the only SLOE gin we could get in Binghamton was terrible and the drink ended up looking insane and we couldn't stop laughing. Bubbly carnage. "It looks like someone murdered a pixie!" I assume that, properly made, they are delicious.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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