"Oscar" of the French film industry / FRI 5-29-26 / Currency in The Legend of Zelda / Road maneuvers featuring lazy braking / "La Tulipe Noire" novelist, 1850 / Someone attracted to intellect over looks, say / Swing dance originating in Harlem / Adhere to the kashrut dietary rules / Smurf who is more than 500 years old / Dream interrupter / Redheaded monster on TV

Constructor: Hemant Mehta

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LINDY / HOP (20A: With 19-Across, swing dance originating in Harlem) —

The Lindy Hop is an American dance which was born in the African-American communities of Harlem, New York City, in 1928 and has evolved since then. It was very popular during the swing era of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Lindy is a fusion of many dances that preceded it or were popular during its development but is mainly based on jazz, tap, breakaway, and Charleston. It is frequently described as a jazz dance and is a member of the swing dance family.

In its development, the Lindy Hop combined elements of both partnered and solo dancing by using the movements and improvisation of African-American dances along with the formal eight-count structure of European partner dances – most clearly illustrated in the Lindy's defining move, the swingout. In this step's open position, each dancer is generally connected hand-to-hand; in its closed position, leads and follows are connected as though in an embrace on one side and holding hands on the other. [...] 

Lindy Hop is sometimes referred to as a street dance, referring to its improvisational and social nature. In 1932, twelve-year-old Norma Miller did the Lindy Hop outside the Savoy Ballroom with her friends for tips. In 1935, 15,000 people danced on Bradhurst Avenue for the second of a dance series held by the Parks Department. Between 147th and 148th street, Harlem "threw itself into the Lindy Hop with abandon" as Sugar Hill residents watched from the bluffs along Edgecombe Avenue.

• • •

This played somewhat harder than most recent Fridays, which isn't saying too much, but it's saying something. The bulk of it was fairly whooshy, but I got very bogged down in a couple of places: the NE and especially the dead center. Could not get into the center of the puzzle via either HOLY (... MOLEY?) or ZEN (... KOANS? MASTER?). I figured with momentum on my side and two paths in, handling the center would be a breeze, but ... nope. I also didn't recognize the word "kashrut" and so could not parse EAT KOSHER (30D: Adhere to the kashrut dietary rules). So ... I ended up stopped dead right here, around the halfway point:

That's right, I had ZEN STA- and still no idea what the answer was supposed to be. In retrospect, the problem for me was the cluing—ZEN STATES don't "make you" one with everything. If you're in a zen state, then you already are "one with everything." That's the state. The state you are in. Whatever you use to get into that state, that is what "makes you" one with everything. The clue seemed to be confusing cause with effect, at least the way I was reading it. This is why ZEN MASTER or ZEN KOANS were the only things my brain could think up. ZEN MEDITATION, maybe, but that (like the others) just wouldn't fit. As for HOLY MOSES, I should've remembered that, but MOLEY really ran interference, and then COW jumped in there and started mooing and I couldn't think of anything else. I had to start all over in the NE, which was not nearly as welcoming to me as the NW had been. I knew SARA, but RUPEE? (12D: Currency in The Legend of Zelda). No clue. ALARM? (11D: Dream interrupter). I had APNEA!!!! ALUM? Of course, makes sense, but w/o crosses I couldn't see it. I figured the 500yo Smurf had to be PAPA (there is no MAMA, that I recall), but even his "P"s didn't help much. I think I finally plunked down AMASS (13D: Hoard), and that got me the traction I needed. Oh, and SAPIOSEXUAL?! (10D: Someone attracted to intellect over looks, say). Come on, man. No one says that. I guess I've heard it before, but it's such a made-up, created-in-a-lab media-driven non-thing. No one is attracted to one thing alone. The fact that you find smartness hot does not mean you have some niche sexuality that needs a name. You're just straight, or gay, or whatever you are. Boo to this dumb word.

Outside the middle and the NE, though, the puzzle was pretty simple, and largely delightful. Nice start with ALL TOO SOON and "SMALL WORLD!" and then the puzzle rolls right into ROLLING STOPS, which I loved as answer almost as much as I hate them in real life, especially as a pedestrian (5D: Road maneuvers featuring lazy braking). We called them "California stops" when I was growing up, but I grew up in California, so ... maybe every state thinks they invented it. Hmm, looks like only Rhode Island wants a piece of the action (wikipedia is telling me that in addition to "California stop," the rolling stop is also called the "Rhode Island roll"). I think the vast majority of people do ROLLING STOPS at lightly-trafficked stop signs. But I love coming to a complete stop. It feels almost perverse, especially when there's no one around. But I find it satisfying, especially if someone is behind me and seems, let's say, impatient. I don't hang out at the stop sign, but I damn sure come to a full and complete stop. Just for a little treat. And for the children and animals and cyclists and other drivers etc. It's a little reset. A road awareness check-in. Stop. Look. Go. Relax. Have a nice day. 

LINT SCREENS is another good answer, and I love "WHAT'D I MISS?" over TERRY GROSS, as you can imagine a car passenger listening to "Fresh Air," popping out of the car to run a quick errand, then getting back into the car and asking "WHAT'D I MISS!!?" Oh, nothing, just Christian Bale admitting on air that he's doing this interview and all his Batman Begins promotional interviews not in his natural voice, but in a put-on more-or-less inflection-less American accent. Also, he thanked Terry for noticing that his body in Batman looked like it was bulky and muscly from real physical activity, not like it was sculpted at the gym. Hard bod, not gym bod. (Why do I remember the details of this one Terry Gross interview from over two decades ago so clearly??). 

Bullets:

• 23A: Only player to win three Super Bowl M.V.P. awards before turning 30 (MAHOMES) — I stopped paying attention to the NFL a long time ago now, but this guy's name definitely broke through to me at some point. It's pretty crossword-friendly, as seven-letter words go. I saw this clue and my mind went to older players (Brady, Favre, Montana, Bradshaw...), but of those, only MONTANA fit, and crosses made that impossible. Once I had the answer to MAH- ... well, then it was easy. MAHOMES has played in five Super Bowls and won three (all with the Kansas City Chiefs).
• 39A: "La Tulipe Noire" novelist, 1850 (DUMAS) — because ["The Three Musketeers" novelist, 1844] and ["The Count of Monte Cristo" novelist, 1846] would've been too obvious, I guess. I'm rereading the first two books of Colson Whitehead's Harlem trilogy in anticipation of the third installment (which comes out this summer), and in those books, there's an elite association of Black leaders and businessmen called The DUMAS Club (DUMAS‘s father, Thomas-Alexandre, was born in present-day Haiti, the son of a French nobleman and an enslaved woman).

• 15D: Outstanding, in a way (OWING) — there's nothing remarkable about this answer except that it starts an -ING avalanche: OWING ROLLING RAZING ICING ing ing ing ing. It's like the grid is glitching and I need to smack it in order to get regular reception back.
• 28A: Apt anagram of NOTES (TONES) — me, confidently: "STENO!"

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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Blue stop sign? / THU 5-28-26 / Walking-around money for Pavarotti? / Icy passage to Antarctica's McMurdo Station / Guardians of bushido tradition / Whistling stickup man on "The Wire" / McGwire's rival in the 1990s M.L.B. / Dark and sultry, like a femme fatale's gaze

Constructor: John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: A major "OR" deal... — "___ OR ___" phrases are clued as if the "OR" were affixed to the end of the first word:

Theme answers:

• TENOR TWENTY (17A: Walking-around money for Pavarotti?)
• PASTOR PRESENT (27A: Preacher's gift?)
• FACTOR FICTION (41A: 5 and 8 go into 42, for example?)
• MAYOR MAY NOT (55A: Local leader is prohibited?)

Word of the Day: Jimmy CARR (43D: Comedian Jimmy) —

James Anthony Patrick Carr (born 15 September 1972) is a British and Irish comedian. He began his stand-up career in 1997. He has regularly appeared on television as the host of Channel 4 panel shows such as The Big Fat Quiz of the Year (2004-present), 8 Out of 10 Cats (2005–2021), and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (2012-present). Carr is known for his rapid-fire deadpan delivery of one-liners and often controversial and edgy dark humour. [...] Carr was the first British comedian to have a Netflix stand-up special with his show Funny Business. [...] In a stand-up comedy performance released as a Christmas 2021 Netflix special titled His Dark Material, Carr joked:

When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.

During the show, Carr said the joke was meant to raise awareness of Romani victims of the Holocaust. The joke later received widespread attention the following February after a clip was posted and shared online. He was condemned by the Auschwitz Memorial, Hope not Hate and The Traveller Movement, who called anti-Romani prejudice the "last acceptable form of racism" in the UK. [...] In 2025, Jimmy Carr performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival. The event was criticised by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as an attempt to whitewash human rights abuses committed in Saudi Arabia. Comedians who played at the festival faced backlash from journalists and fellow artists for participating. Carr defended his performance at the festival, stating: "I played it. I loved it. I think we need to give up on the idea that the Middle East becomes Western Europe." (wikipedia)

• • •

Didn't think much of this theme, but appreciated that the puzzle gave me a boatload of interesting non-theme fill, so that at times I could pretend like I was solving a pretty decent mid-week themeless. Those NE and SW corners are hot, and other longer answers like TERTIARY, LOTHARIO, SLOE-EYED, and DOORMATS (as clued!) (4D: People who get walked all over) really keep things lively all over. But yeah, no, the theme ... real mild on the HAR (har). Real "Jeremy's Iron" stuff. And even if you really liked it, I think it's much more of a Wednesday than a Thursday puzzle. There's nothing particularly tricky going on. You just PARSE (!) the phrases differently, and even if it takes you some time to get the first one because you don't know yet where the wackiness is going, after that, every themer is cake. In fact, I was able to no-look that third themer, no problem. I had most of its front end worked out from crosses, and the phrase was simply obvious. I was also able to no-look "OH, NO REASON," TERTIARY, and MENAGERIE—the puzzle was so easy that by the time I would look at a longer answer, it would be sufficiently filled in, such that looking at the clue was unnecessary (I don't recommend solving this way under tournament conditions, or any conditions, really, as it can bite you in the ass, but my pattern recognition was on point today). There was precisely one answer in the clue I didn't know: Jimmy CARR. I was like, "Kimmel? Fallon? .... Choo?" But no, he's just shoes. Anyway, once again, crosses easy, so even CARR didn't do much to slow me down. It is mildly interesting that there are (at least) four different cases where an "OR"-ending word can, if you break the "OR" off, form the front end of a familiar "___ OR ___" phrase. But still, the humor here never got above a single HAR, and mostly didn't even get there. But again, I'm grateful for all the longer answers, which, even if they weren't challenging, at least brightened up the solve a bit.

This thing opened way too easy. GANDHI to GOTO to OMAR to NINA and whoosh it was all over. Well, I did have to move over to the next little section to figure out what the "walking-around money" was going to be. Not sure where or when Pavarotti is "walking around," but TWENTY seems kind of low. If he were your child, then sure, here's a twenty, knock yourself out, kid. But for a grown-up, I dunno. Twenty seemed arbitrary, given the clue. But as I say, not hard. I weirdly enjoyed mentally spelling AARGH correctly on the first try, confirming it with WING (which got a funnyish misdirective clue—8D: Bit of a lark), and then confirming that with OWLS. Double bird surprise! We're working our way through season 2 of Twin Peaks (which is like being stuck in a long dark weird but kinda boring dream), and the OWLS, the OWLS (which, I've been told, are not what they seem) are making their presence felt a little more (due to some vaguely owl-shaped petroglyph, which was found in a cave, which, when manipulated, seemed to set off some kind of earthquake ... I told you it was like a dark weird boring dream!). Anyway, AARGH / WING / OWLS amused me. I think of throwing overhand, not OVERARM. Are they the same. The wikipedia entry is for "overhand throw" exclusively. It looks like they're basically synonymous (one of the cited sources on the page uses "OVERARM" in the title). The only thing besides CARR that gave me any pause was SENSATE, which I think of as merely "having the ability to sense (or perceive)," not as "perceptive" (in the sense of "insightful"). Maybe there's a meaning of "perceptive" that's just "capable of perceiving things." Yes, a neutral meaning. It exists. I never hear "perceptive" used that way (there's always the implication of keen perception), but the neutral "capable of perceiving" definition exists. Awkward. But not so awkward that you're likely to get held up for very long.

Bullets:

• 35A: Icy passage to Antarctica's McMurdo Station (ROSS SEA) — one of your more common seven-letter xword answers, due to all those common letters, including a rarely-seen triple-"S"! I probably should've made McMurdo Station my Word of the Day. "McMurdo Station is an American Antarctic research station on the southern tip of Ross Island. It is operated by the United States through the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), a branch of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The station is the largest community in Antarctica, capable of supporting up to 1,200 residents, though the population fluctuates seasonally" (wikipedia). 23 NYTXW appearances all-time for ROSSSEA, 16 in the Shortz Era.
• 40A: Billionaire Musk (ELON) — I would be furious if the editors decided to change my non-racist ELON clue into this racist one. Truly one of the most execrable human beings on the planet. Essentially a mass murder. Just disgusting that he's here at all. Pardon my french, but fuck that guy.
• 26D: Guardians of bushido tradition (SENSEIS) — stupid me, I thought "sensei" was just a generic word for "teacher." Wait ... I was right, that is basically what it means. There are definitely SENSEIS in the "bushido tradition," but the narrowness of the clue had me imagining a much narrower, more Bushido-specific answer (Bushido = samurai moral code) (saw a beautiful (and bloody!) samurai movie yesterday called Hitokiri as part of my ongoing birth-year movie challenge (see 56 movies from the year I was born (1969) before I turn 57 (Nov. 26)). Eight down, only 48 to go (roughly 2 / week ... I can do it! I believe in myself! My couch-sitting powers are unrivaled!)

• 11D: Answer to "Why's your report card in the trash?" ("OH, NO REASON") — great answer, but this clue ... I dunno. This kid seems pretty dumb. You (presumably) suck at school and you have absolutely no idea how to hide shit from your parents? What skill set are you bringing to life, exactly, kid. 
• 32D: Blue stop sign? (SAFE WORD) — if the surrounding answers had been harder to come up with, this one might've proved more of a problem. "Blue" here means "sexual" ("profane" "indecent" "risqué"). Some sex activity (esp. BDSM) requires a SAFE WORD, which functions as an unambiguous stand-in for "stop," as the actual word "stop" may be part of the role-playing.
• 39D: Comes on little cat feet (TIPTOES) — I have never heard this expression (apparently from a poem about fog). My cats do not tiptoe. They would be insulted if you said that. Undignified. How dare you. They are naturally ninja-quiet. Stalking skills: unparalleled. No "tiptoeing" required.

That's all. 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 ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

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