Hindu clerk / SAT 6-6-26 / Old blades / Groups of female elephant seals / Cleanse negative energy, in Indigenous tradition / Multinational communications giant founded in 1964 / Ce n'est pas du fast food / Pest with a repetitive name / Portmanteau nickname for politician Harris / Ski race that debuted at the Olympics in 1988

Constructor: Daniel Bodily

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: MUNSHI (4D: Hindu clerk) —

noun

Indian English.

1. an interpreter or language instructor.

2. a secretary or assistant. (dictionary.com)

During the Mughal Empire, Munshi (Persian: منشی) came to be used as a respected title for persons who achieved mastery over language and politics in the Indian subcontinent. (wikipedia)

• • •

I had this rated one star before I even looked at the first clue. The shape of the grid made me want to nope out immediately. This is my very least favorite kind of late-week puzzle—the exceedingly, violently quadranted puzzle that is basically four puzzles with no flow and almost no footholds (i.e. shorter answers). It's a show-offy kind of grid—those corners, with all their stacked and intersecting answers, are hard to construct. All that white space is meant to be daunting. But it's also bound to be filled with at least some if not a whole lotta garbage. MUNSHI?!!! ROSINED? SNEES (lol, there's a blast from the past—my first entry in the grid!)? HAREMS (with its desperate "Not Those Kind of HAREMS!" clue) (3D: Groups of female elephant seals)? I guess I've heard about someone being "on the RAGGED EDGE" but I don't remember when (7D: What those close to failure are said to be on). So I've basically *endured* like half a dozen entries, actively enjoyed or been thrilled by none, and I haven't even left the NW yet. To play MOMALA now, in 2026? Rough (16A: Portmanteau nickname for politician Harris). That was barely a thing two years ago, and now it just seems sad and dated. WTF is a CORN CRIB? (10D: Farm structure in which ears are stored). Who calls it AMENDMENT I?! What is INTELSAT? Where my Intels at!? (please just stare at the name INTELSAT for a few seconds and then tell me how anyone could "like" that answer). I actually think the bottom corners come out OK, but just OK. My point is, when you make a puzzle this shape, you've pretty much told me "this will not be fun." It might be hard, and hard can be ... refreshing ... but there's no real joy to be had here. GETS TAN? ATE CAKE!? BURN SAGE?!! It's the Random Verb Phrase Olympics up in here. There's a real ceiling on how good a puzzle with this shape can be. Even though this puzzle is a personal 1-star puzzle for me, I gave it some credit for being a decent example Of Its Type. And for the dim satisfaction I derived from just getting through it unscathed. 

["I pull out my fiddle and I rosin up the bow"]

Started this thing off with SNEES, which I had as SMEES for a second, confusing my dusty old crosswordese S-EEs for a moment (8D: Old blades). Off that "N" I got UHAUL VAN, which started to make the NW corner seem doable. MUNSHI threatened to kill me the whole time, but once I got done and saw MUNSHI there, I just had to assume it was a thing and move on. From there, it was down into the SE corner. Somehow the second "G" from GANG got me GETS TAN, though the whole time I'm writing in GETS TAN I'm laughing thinking "no, can't be GETS TAN, that's a terrible answer.” Off that second "T" I wanted MOTOROLA for 51A: Multinational communications giant founded in 1964 (INTELSAT), but none of the crosses worked. Then, off the (presumed) "S" at the end of 42D: Gentle hills (KNOLLS), I thought "oh, it's something-SIZE" at 55A: Giant, as a mattress. And the "Z" got me ERSATZ (44D: Faux), and from there I had enough traction to finish that corner. INTELSAT was my MUNSHI of the SE. Every corner in a puzzle like this tends to have at least one MUNSHI. Today's MUNSHIs were MUNSHI, INTELSAT, and CORN CRIB. The SW corner, to its credit, doesn't really have a MUNSHI. It's got the oddly spelled OUTATIME, but at worst that rates a mild shrug and not an outright "what? no!" I don't mind remembering Back to the Future. That might've been the most fun I had all solve, actually.

Got AERATOR off the initial "A" and ATE CAKE off of the last "E," which gave me immediate traction in both those corners. They were easier corners for that reason, and because they had two short (i.e. five-letter) answers instead of just the one that the NW and SE have. Short answers = easiest way to grab hold of a section. NE corner went AERATOR I'M FINE FRILLY, SW corner went ATE CAKE KINDER (how did I remember that?) (39D: ___ egg (chocolate treat with a toy)) SAFARI. Ended on OUTATIME crossing "I'M HOME"—Back to the Future crossing The Shining. And right next door to Laurel and Hardy (PIE FIGHT!) (30D: Staple of slapstick comedy). Something of a high point in an otherwise functional but somewhat bland slog of a Saturday puzzle.

Bullets:

• 1A: Spreads out in the morning? (SCHMEARS) — do you really put out multiple SCHMEARS? Second question: do you own a bagel shop?
• 9A: Tool in the opening scene of Disney's "Frozen" (ICE SAW) — so ... not ICE AXE? OK. I knew it had to be one of those crosswordy ice tools. 
• 20A: Showing signs of spring, say (IN LEAF) — timely! My brain wanted IN BUD or IN BLOOM, but we're talking about other parts of plants today. My maples are fully IN LEAF now and prepared to protect my house from the summer sun. Good trees. Best part of this house.
• 35A: Rainer who was the first person ever to win two consecutive acting Academy Awards (LUISE) — ask your grandparents, kids? Actually, don't, she was before their time too. She won her Oscars for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937), where she played the Chinese farm wife O-LAN of ancient crossword fame (212 NYTXW appearances!) (acting in yellowface used to be very popular).

• 12D: 0% in New Hampshire, Oregon, Montana, Alaska and Delaware (SALES TAX) — good clue. I was trying to think of something about the climate or the population. 
• 24D: Religious right? (AMENDMENT I) — leaving aside the awkwardly formal phrasing here, I don't know if the clue is working, even punnily. Freedom of Religion is a "right" conferred by the First Amendment, but the Amendment is not itself a "right." Though it is part of the "Bill of Rights," maybe that's the idea?
• 31D: Ce n'est pas du fast food (ESCARGOT) — wow, I never saw this clue, which is too bad, 'cause it's a good one. Not "fast" food in two senses!
• 45D: Pest with a repetitive name (TSETSE) — I'm guessing this was many people's first word in the SE—one of the few answers I would call an outright gimme. Sadly, getting TSETSE in the farthest corner of the puzzle isn't likely to provide all that much traction. Getting KINGSIZE was the real key to that corner. That "K"!  That "Z"! That terminal "I"! A real bonanza if you can work it out. 

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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So-called "Champagne of Spain" / FRI 6-5-26 / Seaweed-based gels / What might give a hand in a casino? / Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP / ___ Neal, co-star of TV's "The Hughleys" / Actor Gilliam of "The Wire" / Pioneering civil rights activist ___ Arnold Hedgeman / Opposite of "stay silent"

Constructor: Kelly Morenus

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: POTOROO (37D: Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP) —

Potoroo is a common name for species of Potorous, a genus of smaller marsupials. They are allied to the Macropodiformes, the suborder of kangaroo, wallaby, and other rat-kangaroo genera and is the only genus in the tribe Potoroini. All three extant species are threatened by ecological changes since the colonisation of Australia, especially the long-footed potoroo Potorous longipes (endangered) and P. gilbertii (critically endangered). The broad-faced potoroo P. platyops disappeared after its first description in the 19th century. The main threats are predation by introduced species (especially foxes) and habitat loss.

Potoroos were formerly very common in Australia, and early settlers reported them as being significant pests to their crops. (wikipedia)

• • •

The long answers up top and down below are just fine. Chatty, breezy, in-the-language. Nice. The rest ... I really don't see the appeal of any of it. This is Friday, you can do anything! All that space. And what do I get? DEALER'S SHOE?! (10D: What might give a hand in a casino?). I barely know what a "shoe" is in this context, but thank god I did, because otherwise I'd still be wondering what the hell the dealer was doing, using, or possibly wearing. In case you are unfamiliar, a "shoe" is a thingie that holds cards, looks like this:

The other marquee Down is PARASAILING, which is fine, but not terribly interesting, and the rest of the puzzle is fairly blah. Fridays should not be blah. On top of the blahness, there was the barrage of names. I laughed out loud when I hit my third ???? name. Some guy who won a Chemistry Nobel 45 years ago? I guess this is the price we pay for canceling ROALD Dahl. Crossword needs better ROALDs! We have a ROALD emergency! Calling all ROALDs! Well, not all ROALDs. Not this ROALD. Yeesh. Also, somebody who acted on The Hughleys? (28D: ___ Neal, co-star of TV's "The Hughleys"). A pioneering civil rights person? (46D: Pioneering civil rights activist ___ Arnold Hedgeman). It's not that these people are totally uncrossworthy, it's just ... name name name. Or more like "unfamous name unfamous name unfamous name." Oh, dang, I forgot about SETH, another TV actor (13D: Actor Gilliam of "The Wire"). Throw him in there too. Just not my day for names. At all. But I think it was the POTOROO that really made me ... "mad" isn't the right word, but—that is not an animal I've ever heard of. And that clue! (37D: Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP) ... you know your animal is obscure when the puzzle has to resort to telling you "it has these letters in it!" Also, what is "TROP"? Why "TROP" and not, say, "PORT"? PORT has the virtue of being a word. An English word, I should say. "TROP" is a French word (meaning "too" as in "excessively"). I think it's also the nickname of a ballfield where the Marlins ... played? Play? The TROP! Gah, no. Not the Marlins. Close, but no. The Tampa Bay Rays play there, not the Miami Marlins. Shows you how much I care about Florida baseball. I still don't think of those Florida teams as real because I didn't grow up with them. Also, they both used to. have different names (The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the Florida Marlins). Anyway, POTOROO! It's a thing, apparently! Sounds like an Australian music festival, but nope. Tiny marsupial. Who knew (besides all the Australians)?

I got the top third of this puzzle easy but then oof. Right around ROALD, things got rocky. Rocky ROALD! Also, the clue on PANTRIES was tough (26A: Grocery stores?). And I thought 27D: I I I (IOTAS) was THREE. And then ELISE is there in the east gumming things up. Managed to raggedly hack my way down to the bottom, only to encounter POTOROO (again I say, "!?"), and that's where I made my biggest mistake. Put in DEMS instead of LEFT at 41D: Blue side, with "the". Blue does not apply to the LEFT. The LEFT and the DEMS are Not The Same. Just ask the LEFT. Blue is associated with the DEMS. Red, Republicans, Blue, DEMS. That is how those colors work in this country. So ... DEMS left me wondering how 41A: Not so rich, so to speak could be DIRE (answer: it couldn't be, the answer is LITE). Didn't know ANNA. Had END for AIM (46A: Destination). Was not at all confident that HOGANS were structures of the SW, but thank god that guess was correct, otherwise I might still be solving this thing. Because of all this, I had trouble seeing the long Acrosses down below. Tried to get the front ends of them, and while MRIS and AUDI were easy enough, that ugly fill-in-the-blank clue on IN ON, that got me (44D: __ a secret). I had "IT'S A" and later tried "I GOT." The clue isn't a quotation, so both those guesses were bound to be wrong, but I couldn't really see that. This made SING hard to get (53A: Opposite of "stay silent"). All of this fussing with mediocre fill and crummy clues and for what? A few good long answers. This just wasn't for me at all.

Bullets:

• 14A: "Can anyone explain this?!" ("MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!") — the clue is a question and the answer isn't, and the clue makes it sound like you're addressing a crowd, while the answer feels like the kind of thing you'd say to a specific person. But I guess the idea was to make this clue (14A: "Can anyone explain this?!") rhyme with the next clue (17A: "Let me try to explain ..."). It's a nice idea. But I still don't think this clue is right.
• 20A: Coat on a tip? (POLISH) — the coat on the "tip" of your finger, i.e. your nail. Nail POLISH.
• 30A: Seaweed-based gels (AGARS) — I'm enduring AGARS and IOTAS and EKES and EMTS and OROs rather than getting four to six more entertaining longer answers. I don't get it.
• 32A: So-called "Champagne of Spain" (CAVA) — pfft. Nope. I maybe have heard of this, but completely forgot it. I know KAVA (Polynesian plant used to make a psychoactive beverage). But CAVA, not so much. "Champagne of Spain" sounds like "Champagne of Beers," i.e. a highly dubious marketing slogan:

• 40A: Something you can see right through (IRIS) — another rough clue. You see through your IRIS. You don't see "right" through it. No one would say that. But I guess that's the point. Still, I didn't need more aggravation from the slew of short stuff today. Not helping.
• 45A: New wave band with the 1979 album "Duty Now for the Future" (DEVO) — got this easily, but I really thought the 1979 album was Freedom of Choice. Maybe that was 1980 ... yup, May 1980. I got it as a present at my 11th birthday party, at Aldo's Pizza. I got Abba: The Album. I remember very clearly disdaining the Abba (not cool by young boy standards in 1980) and my mom giving me a very stern talking-to, right then and there, about gratitude. Years later I would come to think Abba was awesome. And that is my DEVO story. DEVO: cool then, cool now ... but the album in this clue is slightly obscure. It peaked at #73 and provided only one recognizable single: their semi-cover (?) of "Secret Agent [not 'Asian'] Man":

• 49A: Provide proactive help, in a way (RUN INTERFERENCE) — that clue did little to get me to the answer. It's accurate enough, I guess, but it doesn't quite get at the whole idea of "handling a bunch of secondary problems or distractions for someone so that person can focus on the primary task," which is how I think of the phrase RUN INTERFERENCE.
• 23D: 500 competitor (RACER) — no "Indy" or "Daytona" for you, solver. Just ... 500! Is that normal racing slang? Car racing, like casino shoes, and casinos in general—not my thing.
• 31D: People not to argue with, they say (FOOLS) — this was also weirdly hard. Do "they" really say this? I mean, it seems like good advice, but this is not a saying about FOOLS that I know. A fool and his money are soon parted, I know that one. Fool me once, shame on me, etc. That's another "fool" saying. You certainly shouldn't argue with people on the internet, ever (ever), but "don't argue with fools" does not have the zippy, memorable quality I associate with "sayings."

That's all for today. See you next time, hopefully with functioning internet (still using the hotspot on my phone until the new router arrives, later today)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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