Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Rich Katz

Relative difficulty: Very, very easy

THEME: "Boxed Sets" — familiar phrases are clued via "sets" of terms (listed inside the curly brackets that indicate mathematical sets) —the sequential arrangement of the terms in the sets indicates the phrases:

Theme answers:

BABE IN THE WOODS (22A: {Elijah, Ruth, Natalie}) [BABE Ruth in [between] two WOODS]
BEATS AROUND THE BUSH (28A: {Kerouac, Dubya, Ginsberg}) ["Beats" = Beat Generation writers]
POWER BEHIND THE THRONE (41A: {WC, AC, DC}) [WC = water closet = toilet = "THRONE"]
HONOR AMONG THIEVES (66A: {Bonnie, Oscar, Clyde}) ["Oscar" here is the Academy Award]
TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE (88A: {Larry, Sue, Emma}) [Larry Bird, Sue Bird, Emma Stone]
ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES (97A: {Cinnabon, Kool-Aid, Hi-C})
DOWN IN THE DUMPS (113A: {Landfill, goose feathers, junkyard})

Word of the Day: The ODEON (120A: Longtime Tribeca restaurant where some say the Cosmopolitan was invented, with "the") —

The Odeon is a restaurant in New York City. The restaurant opened in 1980, in space previously occupied by Towers Cafeteria. The restaurant was founded by Lynn Wagenknecht, Keith McNally, and Brian McNally. Wagenknecht continues to run the restaurant. Wagenknecht has characterized the restaurant as a brasserie. [...] The Odeon has been referred to as a "classic" New York City restaurant. In his 1989 review, Bryan Miller commented that the restaurant was already "called an institution" despite having been open for less than ten years. William Grimes referred to The Odeon as "ageless and definitively downtown" in a 2000 review of Village, a restaurant opened by former Odeon chef Stephen Lyle. Stephen Heyman, writing for Surface, described The Odeon and other restaurants operated by Keith McNally as gradually transitioning from a "forward operating bases of gentrification" to "important parts of the city's heritage". The restaurant has been credited with inspiring imitators hoping to mimic its ambience and success. // Scenes in Jay McInerney's novel Bright Lights, Big City take place at The Odeon, and the exterior was depicted on the book's first edition cover. McInerney has said that attorneys at his publishing house were concerned about depictions of drug use at the restaurant in the novel, so McInerney sought Keith McNally's permission to portray the restaurant in and on the book. McNally granted permission assuming the novel would not sell well. The exterior was also featured in the opening credits of Saturday Night Live. A celebration commemorating the 20th anniversary of the novel's publication was held at the restaurant. // The Odeon is known for its celebrity clientele. Regulars at the restaurant have at points included Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Belushi, and Andy Warhol. Lena Dunham has a tattoo of the restaurant's sign. In addition to its popularity with celebrities, the restaurant was at one point popular among Wall Street quants. (wikipedia)

• • •

[19D: Bygone N.Y.C. music venue with rhyming initials]

There's something slightly cute about the basic idea here, but it's all so easy that it feels ... slight. Also, the fill, yeesh. At times, yikes. Real back-from-the-crosswordese-grave stuff like OBEAH (42D: Folk religion akin to voodoo) and BRAE (56D: Scottish hill); a single E-SPORT (13A: Gamer's pursuit); the completely made-up phrase SAID SHH; the almost-as-completely-made-up phrase US TIME. Maybe I should be grateful for those moments of wincing, because otherwise, I don't think anything outside of theme would be memorable at all, so fast did it all go by. Where is the resistance today? It's not in the theme, which is pretty dang easy to suss out. There was the odd thing I didn't know (ODEON ... actually, is that it? ODEON? I think I knew literally everything else in this grid, which is Insane on a Sunday. The puzzle feels barely here, is what I'm saying. Wispy. And the theme, for all its charms, doesn't really match the title. There's no "box" involved in any of these besides maybe the first one, where the WOODSes "box" in (i.e. flank) The BABE. I guess DOWN IN THE DUMPS follows the same principle. But really, this is just about sets, not "boxes." I thought the cluing was pretty clever at times, esp. the {WC, AC, DC} one—I'm not a huge fan of toilet humor, but the cluing on that one is so tight—all elements of the set are two letters ending in "C." Very nice. I've got no real beef with the theme. It's not mind-blowing, but it'll do. The rest of it ... if I didn't have a marked-up print-out in front of me, I don't think I could tell you anything about it—that's how memorable it was.

If I could chuck one part of this puzzle into the sea and then shoot it into the moon and then detonate it, it would be that NE corner. Everything from ERHU EBSEN ESPNU all the way through to the improbably singular E-SPORT. Not sure why that answer hits my ear so wrong in the singular, but it does. But the real dealbreaker up there is SAIDSHH. I have "OOF" written in the margins next to that answer. The term is SHUSHED. If you can have SAIDSHH in your puzzle, then you can have SAIDanything in your puzzle. Total garbage. There are other parts of the puzzle that are less than lovely (HAREMS BRAE APRS LAB RATS, for instance), but nothing can compete, uglinesswise, with that NE corner. I liked that the puzzle was cocktail curious. Or, in the case of Angel's SHARE, cocktail adjacent (1D: Angel's ___ (distiller's term for the whiskey that evaporates during aging)). I heard a whole podcast episode once with the inventor of the Cosmopolitan, but I forgot his name, and I most definitely forgot the name of the bar where he worked. I was happy to (re-)learn these facts, as well as learn various things about the ODEON in general (see Word of the Day, above), including the fact that it is depicted on the cover of the Vintage Contemporaries edition of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, a book I definitely owned at one point in my life: those Vintage Contemporaries were a real feat of design, the first imprint (besides maybe Penguin) that I remember being able to recognize at sight.

Bullets:

21A: Kind of costume that includes a round hat and kerchief (SAILOR) — such a weird clue for SAILOR. I was like "'kerchief,' wtf?" but yeah, I guess ... conventionally, you've got the kerchief around the neck:

25A: "___ it and rip it!" (aggressive golfer's mantra) ("GRIP") — ugh, golf lingo. There are different "mantras" based on how "aggressive" you are?
27A: Product displays seen at entrances to store aisles (END CAPS) — not sure why this term came to me so easily. Seems pretty ... technical. I did do inventory work (with a ten-key on my hip!) one summer in college, so maybe store display terminology soaked in somehow.
75A: 30-ounce Starbucks size (TRENTA) — these feel mythical. Never seen this size on an actual Starbucks menu. Then again, I go into Starbucks as seldom as possible. It's usually an airport-type situation.
16D: Lingerie brand with a Slavic-sounding name (OLGA) — almost went with OLAF, which is more Scandinavian than Slavic.

32D: What has flatter feet? (ODE) — the best clue of the day. Kind of a thinker ... in that I had to think about it for a bit before I understood it. An ODE is a poem of praise, i.e. a poem intended to "flatter," and poetry is (frequently) composed of metrical units called "feet" (like iambs, for instance). So ... ODEs have "feet" that "flatter" ... or "flatter feet." It's ... a little awkward, but I admire the ambition.
75D: They might be up in arms (TATS) — LOL wish this clue had appeared yesterday (in case you missed it, yesterday I revealed that while on vacation, I got my first tattoo—and (up) on my (left) arm, no less:

87D: Satirist Freberg (STAN) — I know who this is. Unfortunately, I thought his name was SAUL. Also, now that I think of it, I have him confused with the cartoonist Saul Steinberg. So ... yeah, I have no idea who STAN Freberg is. Let's see ... OK, here we go. Happy 5th of July!

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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Constructor: Kareem Ayas

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ALMA Thomas (39A: Painter ___ Thomas, first Black woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum) —

[Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music, 1976]

Alma Woodsey Thomas (September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) was an American artist and art teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. She is the first African-American woman to be included in the White House's permanent art collection. Thomas is best known for the "exuberant", colorful, abstract paintings that she created after she retired from a 35-year career teaching art at Washington's Shaw Junior High School.
Thomas, who is often considered a member of the Washington Color School art movement but alternatively classified by some as an Expressionist and/or Black Abstractionist, earned her teaching degree from University of the District of Columbia (known as Miner Normal School at the time). She was the first graduate of Howard University's art department, and maintained connections to that university through her life. She achieved success as an African-American female artist despite the segregation and prejudice of her time.
Thomas's reputation has continued to grow since her death. Her paintings are displayed in notable museums and collections and have been the subject of several books and solo museum exhibitions. The Smithsonian American Art Museum maintains the world's largest public collection of her work. In 2021, a museum sold Thomas's painting Alma's Flower Garden in a private transaction for $2.8 million. (wikipedia)

• • •

[5D: Milky Way's nearest major galaxy]

Woke up at 4am (for the first time in ... I don't know, however long I've been away) and thought "oh god, how do you solve crosswords again?" Didn't solve a single puzzle on my Lake Huron vacation. Solved a few jigsaw puzzles. Well, two and a half jigsaw puzzles. Two and three quarters, maybe. We thought we could squeeze that Sherlock Holmes puzzle in there at the end, but fate intervened. Well, not fate. We decided to spend the last night of the trip watching You've Got Mail. I think that was our fifth romcom of the trip. What can I say? We got curious (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and then we got carried away (Jerry Maguire, Four Weddings and a Funeral, 13 Going on 30, You've Got Mail). We also spent that last day doing something we said we were gonna do four years ago, when we started our Great Lakes Summer Vacation Extravaganza—once we'd been to every lake, the plan was that we'd all get Great Lakes tattoos. Easy for tattooless me to say in 2022, but in 2026 ... neither Penelope nor I was entirely sure we'd go through with it. We thought, Maybe we should wait? Do it later on, in Minneapolis, after we'd figured out the best design and the best artist and blah blah blah but in a moment of extremely uncharacteristic "ah f--- it, let's just do it," we did it.

So we ended up packing up the Sherlock Holmes jigsaw puzzle and taking it home for another day. It might have to wait until our next vacation, as our cats do not have a history of tolerating jigsaw puzzles in their presence.

Anyway, I was grateful, for once, that my Saturday puzzle was (very) easy, because I felt very rusty after nine days or so away. I'm also grateful that the puzzle is so strong, because I didn't really want to resume blogging with a lot of ughs and aarghs and "why"s? Gotta keep those good vacation vibes going ... just like Cabo Verde did last night against Argentina, omg, did you see that match? Inspiring. The (extreme) underdogs ultimately lost, but not before stunning everyone (not least Argentina) by coming back to tie the match not once but twice, taking the reigning World Cup champs deep into overtime before finally losing 3-2. Funny to see the clue on OTS this morning (35A: Golden goal periods, for short), as there is no "Golden Goal" in World Cup play (as posted broadcast messages kept reminding me). You play two 15-minute OT segments, and if no one is ahead after that, you go to PKs (penalty kicks) to decide it. Argentina scored in the second OT period and that ended up being that, but Cabo Verde kept coming at them til the very end. It was the biggest world ranking disparity (no. 1 vs. no. 64) in the history of the World Cup knockout rounds and for a while there it seemed bizarrely possible that the match might go to PKs and I might witness a truly historic upset. But alas, that was not to be. Still, great, great match. And this was a great, great puzzle. Sorry, that segue was terrible. I told you I was out of practice.

Traction was never hard to come by today. Off the "C" in ACAI (sorry, AÇAI) (2D: Berry spelled with a cedilla), I got OCEANARIA. I kinda felt like I was making up a word while I was writing it in, but it fit and ... enough crosses confirmed it, so off we go. Couldn't remember TARANA or ROBB (I thought ARYA? Is that someone?) (1D: One of the Starks on "Game of Thrones"), but ANDROMEDA and TRACT and "EAT!" all went in off OCEANARIA, and I was able to piece that corner together from there. Love (love!) the clue on RAP BATTLE at 1A: Bar fight? "Bars" are rhymes in rap. The word "bars" is sometimes used to indicate someone is speaking truth eloquently—the rough equivalent of "amen to that," "you tell 'em," "testify!" After getting out of that NW corner, things got even easier. You can't give a middle-aged guy this clue on a Saturday—too easy:

Actually, I've never had a STRESS TEST, but I damn sure know what they are, and if my (temporary, harmless) palpitations had become a real problem, I might've had to have one. The short answers in that SW corner were so easy from here that I had most of CHILI PASTE and HELICOPTER in place before I ever saw their clues. The only resistance I got from this puzzle the rest of the way came in the middle of the puzzle, with the Oscar Wilde quote. I had LIFE I- and thought that the "observation" would be "LIFE IS ..." something. LIFE IS what!? A bowl of cherries? A box of chocolates? A highway? I didn't know LIFE IMITATES ART was Wilde (8D: Observation by Oscar Wilde about the relationship between reality and creativity). I've heard people talk about "life imitating art," but I don't think I've ever seen the phrase as a simple declarative sentence. Anyway, MEN / MEDS / VENI were all coming up bad/weird because I was trying to make LIFE IS happen. Eventually, the beatnik got me out of it. Never thought I'd be "happy" to see "I DIG," but life is (!) full of surprises. Really loved the remainder of the puzzle, esp. "GOD HELP ME!" and GOLDEN CALF and CREAM SODA, which, as I've definitely indicated in recent weeks, I ADORE. I seldom drink soda, but when I do, I like root beer or CREAM SODA. I tried two new kinds of cream soda on vacation. Something called Towne Club CREAM SODA, and then Faygo CREAM SODA (Faygo being an iconic Michigan soda brand). They were both fine! (59A: Soft drink originally made with egg whites)

Bullets:

10A: Brand of tights with an apostrophe in its name (L'EGGS) — I didn't know they made anything but pantyhose. Famous for their egg-shaped containers (and display cases):

17A: 1991 blockbuster with the tagline "One breath of oxygen and it explodes in a deadly rage" (BACKDRAFT) — really wanted a monster movie here. The "it" was very confusing, though in retrospect, it probably shouldn't have been.
47A: Second-smallest U.S. state capital by population (about 14,000 people) (PIERRE) — I somehow missed the word "capital" the first time I read this clue, and thought "what state starts PI-!? I knew I was gonna be rusty today, but ... I didn't think actual state names would fall out of my head." But yes, "capital." PIERRE, no problem (once you learn that there's a state capital with a French guy's name, it's oddly hard to forget) (it's pronounced 'peer' though, not "pee-AIR")

11D: Elysia (EDENS) — you don't often see "Elysium" in the plural. You don't often see "Elysium" at all, actually, unless you read (or teach) classical mythology (Elysium is the "good" part of the classical Underworld—Tartarus is the "bad" (think Tantalus, Sisyphus, etc.)
35D: One attracted to all gender identities, for short (OMNI) — I guess this is better than your typical [Luxury hotel chain] clue, but ... what happened to PAN? Is PAN not a thing anymore? How is OMNI different from PAN!? Hang on ... ah, here we go: "Pansexuality and omnisexuality are sometimes considered synonymous, but when a distinction is made between them, the former term emphasizes gender blindness, while the latter emphasizes the role of gender in attraction." (wikipedia). And now you (and, more importantly, I) know. If you tried to make PAN work today ("PANO?"), believe me, I understand.

That's all. Nice to be back. Thanks as ever to my capable and entertaining substitute bloggers, Rafa, Mali, and Eli. It's nice to know the blog is in reliable hands while I'm away. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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