Collectible cardboard caps of the 1990s / MON 12-9-24 / Subjected to public condemnation, in modern slang / $100, in slang / 1986 hit song for Paul Simon / Crinkly kitchen wrap / Predator sometimes called "the wolf of the sea"

Constructor: Elliot Caroll

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: "YOU CAN CALL ME AL" (55A: 1986 hit song for Paul Simon ... or an instruction from the starts of 20-, 34- and 41-Across) — first words of themers can all be abbreviated "AL":

Theme answers:

• ALABAMA SLAMMER (20A: Cocktail made with Southern Comfort, sloe gin, amaretto and orange juice)
• ALUMINUM FOIL (34A: Crinkly kitchen wrap)
• ALBERT BROOKS (41A: Writer, director and co-star of "Defending Your Life," 1991)

Word of the Day: ON BLAST (44D: Subjected to public condemnation, in modern slang) —

put someone on blast (third-person singular simple present puts someone on blast, present participle putting someone on blast, simple past and past participle put someone on blast)

1. (slang) To embarrass by publicly denouncing or exposing, especially by using social media. (wiktionary)

• • •

[two "L"s, two "T"s]

OK, first of all, this constructor's name is like a double-dog-dare challenge. Is it the two-L "Elliot" or the two-T "Elliott" or the combo of both or is it just one "L" one "T," two "L"s one "T" ... if I didn't have a computer to remember it for me, I'd be misspelling it all day long, forever and ever. And then add in the last name of "Caroll," which has Exactly The Same Spelling Issues. One or two "R"s? One or two "L"s. Both? Neither? Nightmare. Surprised the constructor can even spell their own name. Clare Carroll has been writing for me (on the last Tuesday of every month) for years now, and I'm *still* like "... is it Claire with an 'I'? Without? Two "R"s? Two "L"s? Both? Neither?" Anyway, congrats on the debut, two-L's one-T one-R two-Ls Elliot Caroll. Man, I just realized that this name also has the two first names / two last names issue. Carol Eliot. Elliot Caroll. It's the slipperiest name imaginable. And so innocuous-looking. Also gender ambiguous! Most of the El(l)iot(t)s I know are men, but today's constructor is a woman. I'm really in awe of this name. It would be so much easier to just call her "Al," but where's the challenge in that? In semi-conclusion, Elliot Caroll is a lovely name, even if I am doomed to never spell it correctly on the first try.

But what about the puzzle, you might ask? Good question. I liked it. Simple, clean theme, perfect for a Monday. Name three things that "AL" can represent ... after the American League, these are, in fact, the three things you'd name: Alabama, Aluminum, shortened form of Albert. Fun musical revealer tying all the longer Acrosses together. Can't ask for much more from a Monday. Plus any puzzle that has ALBERT BROOKS in it has automatically established a vast reservoir of goodwill with me. If your grid has ALBERT BROOKS in it, the rest of it is gonna have to suh-uck for me to have anything less than generally positive feelings about it. A legendary and tremendously underrated filmmaker. I'd put his top five films (Mother, Defending Your Life, Lost in America, Modern Romance, Real Life) up against anyone else's. Plus, his acting credentials are nothing to sneeze at either (Taxi Driver, Broadcast News, Drive, etc. etc.). The documentary about him that came out earlier this year is well worth your time.

A few places in the grid felt somewhat tougher than the usual Monday fare, but these were also the most interesting / exciting / entertaining (non-theme) parts of the puzzle. I was initially surprised to see THE MENU, a movie I saw, but one that doesn't seem Monday-puzzle famous to me. Then, after a few beats, I remembered that it was actually a pretty popular movie—a genuine, money-making hit in theaters, with some rather big movie stars at the forefront (Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy). Plus, it's a seven-letter answer ending in "U," do you have any idea how rare those are? Valid terminal-"U" answers are always going to be crossword gold, so expect to see THE MENU for years to come. The other answer that made me raise my eyebrows (in an "Oh, OK, I see you, nice" way) was ON BLAST, a slang phrase I know well, and one I've known for years, but one that still feels very current. Like much slang attributed to "Gen Z," ON BLAST actually originated in (primarily) Black culture of an earlier generation, specifically the hip-hop culture and rap music of the '80s and '90s. Rap music is certainly how I learned it. To put someone ON BLAST is to publicly denounce or expose or otherwise humiliate them (started out as reference to playing music loud, then ... developed). Despite being decades old, the expression is still in use, and gives the grid a nice boost of fresh flavor. Oh, and HUNDO, same—surprised to see it, learned it from rap music, fresh fresh (63A: $100, in slang).

The Downs-only solve was pretty easy today. If I hadn't known THE MENU and ON BLAST, I might've been in real trouble. As it was, the only trouble came, first, from PULL-ON (2D: Like many comfy pants) (aren't all pants ... PULL-ON? How else are you getting your ... pants ... on ... even if you zip or button them up, you still have to pull them on, don't you? I associate PULL-ON with diapers. I guess it's just that the pants have an elastic waistband, that's what makes them PULL-ON); and then from ONE DAY, which I had as IN TIME (48D: Eventually). I also hypothesized BERNIE in the cross instead of BEANIE because I assumed the answer to 54D: Change, as a bill or a will (AMEND) started with RE-. So ... IN TIME / BERNIE / RE-something, that was the clog there for a bit. But I cleared it without much struggle. I think I had enough of the revealer to pick it up, and once "...CALL ME AL" slid into that SE section, I was good. Overall, this was a good time, from start to finish.

[7D: Collectible cardboard caps of the 1990s]

That's all for the puzzle, now it's time for more Holiday Pet Pics (I started posting these yesterday).

Coco appeared last year, so even though there's nothing particularly "Holiday" about this picture, she gets in because of seniority. And that tongue.

[Thanks, Kitty]

Stanley appreciates this elaborate cat bed that you have built especially for him, please go away now, he needs to sleep

[Thanks, Sarah]

Next up is Pumpernickel! Look how hard he's trying! "Is this ... seasonal?" It is, Pumpernickel! What a good boy!

[Thanks, Marty]

These last two are memorial photos. R.I.P. to sweet Harpo here, who was the best tree guarder of all time, clearly

[Thanks, Pamela]

And as for Lex, well, what can you say about a cat that gets itself into this kind of predicament. 

You can almost hear the needle scratch followed by the voiceover ("I'll bet you're wondering how I ended up here..."). I'll let Barbara tell it: "This is Lex – petite, mercurial, fierce – sadly departed, but vivid in memory.  She’s stoned here on what must have been ultra-potent catnip (in a new Christmas toy), having just wriggled her way into this paper hat, which had been lying discarded on a footstool." We love a high and mischievous cat. You are missed, Lex.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Spice planet in the "Dune" universe / SUN 12-8-24 / Tusked Warcraft race / Chewy Japanese dessert / Candy that resembles a tube of lipstick / Canonized king of Norway / Biggums, memorable character on "Chappelle's Show" / Group formed from the 2023 W.W.E.-U.F.C. merger / Dutch astronomer with an eponymous ice cloud / "Aladdin" character who hates crackers / Toy-centered theme park / Wand-waving words

Constructor: John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Just for Fun" — Familiar "___ FOR ___" phrases have the first and second parts reversed, creating alleged wackiness 

Theme answers:

• COMPLIMENTS FOR FISHING (23A: "What a beautiful tackle box!," "Nice casting!" and such?)
• A LOOP FOR THROWING (35A: Lasso?)
• POSITION FOR JOCKEYS (53A: Leaning forward and holding the reins?)
• DISASTER FOR A RECIPE (73A: Accidentally using salt instead of sugar, say?)
• ONE'S MONEY FOR A RUN (92A: Marathon fee or campaign donation?)
• PUNISHMENT FOR A GLUTTON (106A: Not being allowed to lick the spatula clean?)

Word of the Day: Steve ZAHN (30A: Actor Steve of "The White Lotus") —

 

Steven James Zahn (/zɑːn/ ZAHN; born November 13, 1967), nicknamed "The Zahn", is an American actor. The accolades he has received include an Independent Spirit Award, alongside nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

In film, Zahn is best known for his lead roles in That Thing You Do! (1996), Happy, Texas (1999), Joy Ride (2001), National Security (2003), A Perfect Getaway (2009), the Diary of a Wimpy Kid film series (2010–2012), Cowboys (2020), and LaRoy, Texas (2023). His notable supporting roles in films include Reality Bites (1994), Out of Sight (1998), Forces of Nature (1999), Employee of the Month (2004), the Stuart Little film series (1999–2002), Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Chicken Little (2005), Sahara (2005), Rescue Dawn (2006), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), The Good Dinosaur (2015), Captain Fantastic (2016) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017).

In television, Zahn is best known for his main cast credits as Davis McAlary in the HBO series Treme (2010–2013), Cobi in the Amazon Prime Video series Mad Dogs (2015–2016), Jude Ellis in the ABC science fiction series The Crossing (2018), and Mark Mossbacher in season 1 of the HBO anthology series The White Lotus (2021). (wikipedia)

• • •

Gonna make this quick because I haven't disliked a Sunday puzzle (or any puzzle) this much in a long time. I was actively, repeatedly yelling at this thing throughout the solve, as I watched a weak theme somehow get weaker the deeper I got in. The fill was dull (with occasional cringe) from top to bottom. And after all that, I finished with an error, and at the most obvious, predictable place, too—and yet I still couldn't see it. My knowledge of Dune is almost nil. Never read it, never seen any of the movie versions—not Lynch's, not the more recent Chalamet/Zendaya ones directed by that French (sorry) Canadian guy ... nada. Nothing. Which means that ARRAKIS... LOL. Just a string of letters to me. You could've replaced any one of those letters with any other letter, told me it was the "real Spice planet," and I'd've believed you. So when I ended up with MADAME / ERRAKIS, that looked just fine to me. True, if I'd really carefully thought about the clue at 8A: Italian title for Puccini's "Butterfly," I would've maybe taken the "Italian" part more seriously, and realized that MADAME is not an "Italian title," but whatever: "MADAME BUTTERFLY" is definitely the name of the Puccini opera in the English-speaking world, so that's what I wrote in without blinking. But to be clear, my dumb "E"-for-"A" mistake is not why this puzzle was awful. That was just an unpleasantness "bonus." The core problem is that the theme is rudimentary—head-shakingly rudimentary—and has almost No Juice (i.e. not nearly enough humor). 

Simple themes can be great if they land, but this one ... never did. It's all so forced, the phrasing on all the themers. Why FISHING and THROWING but JOCKEYS (not JOCKEYING)? and then why the weird, abrupt switch to noun phrases that begin with indefinite articles (?!) in the bottom half of the grid? A RECIPE, A RUN, A GLUTTON ... those bottom themers were especially awkward to parse. I wanted at least two of those last three to end in plurals (e.g. PUNISHMENT FOR GLUTTONS, DISASTERS FOR RECIPES ... you know, just like POSITION FOR JOCKEYS). But the real crime here is how unfunny it all is. And the cluing doesn't help at all. Not even a saucy underwear clue on the POSITION FOR JOCKEYS? I mean, come on—the concept is paper thin, you could at least try to liven it up a little. Overall, the themer cluing is not nearly outrageous or bold enough to lift this thing off the ground.

And the fill doesn't come to the rescue. At all. I mean, ARRAKIS might be the most lively thing in the grid, and as we've established, to me that just looked like someone mashed the keyboard randomly. Looking around the grid now, I see ... MONIST? ASUS? UNA and UNE? Bleeping ETERNE?! And the awful RINO again!? (it debuted just two weeks ago, and here it is again, like a cockroach or fruit fly or other unwelcome guest). "GO LOCO"? Wince. What kind of "white guy drunk on Cinco de Mayo" energy is that? (and it's a debut: shocker). And then that spelling on the CHANGO part of PRESTO-CHANGO (59D: Wand-waving words), which I know has validity but if ever a word ("word") was not meant to be spelled out, it's CHANGO, which, if there were any justice in the spelling universe, would only ever be spelled "CHANGE-O." Otherwise, it looks like it rhymes with MANGO. Which it doesn't. The closest thing to an actively good answer in this puzzle is AS YOU DO, except I hear it more often as "AS ONE DOES," so even there, I'm not entirely satisfied. The theme was conceptually empty, with middling execution, and the fill just ... fills. The NYTXW Sunday should be much much (much) better than this. I'll take an ambitious failure over whatever this is, any day. 

Lastly, there's the title—what is it doing? I see that it is its own "___ FOR ___" phrase, but ... shouldn't it be "Fun for Just" or something like that. "Just for Fun" gives no indication of the theme. Like the theme itself, void of life. That could be the theme of any puzzle, or words in a child's activity book. It evokes nothing. The best reading that I can come up with is that the puzzle is "Just" (as in "merely") having some "fun" with phrases that contain "for." That must be it. Not exactly snappy. I should not have to talk my way into justifying the title. A minor, superficial concern, perhaps, but the title is not just decoration—it's supposed to give you some indication of what the theme is about. And this one didn't really seem to be trying.

Bullet points:

• 1A: Candy that resembles a tube of lipstick (PUSH POP) — I can visualize this, but have no real idea what it is. Turns out this candy debuted in 1986, which was a good 5-10 years after my real candy-eating prime.

• 2D: Troop grp. (USO) — tried both GSA and BSA before finally alighting on USO
• 26A: Youngest-ever World Cup winner (PELE) — doesn't the team win the "World Cup?" I know that [Youngest-ever member of a World Cup-winning team] is clunkier, but it feels more accurate.
• 34A: Group formed from the 2023 W.W.E.-U.F.C. merger (TKO) — so many letters I care nothing about, all to get to the crosswordese TKO, which I just inferred from the "K" in ANNIKA (which, despite caring nothing about golf, I did know).
• 44A: Canonized king of Norway (ST. OLAF) — that's "Saint Olaf," not some guy named STOLAF. The clue should've had an abbr. indicator, but the new editing standard appears to be there is no standard. Sometimes you get the indicator, sometimes you don't.
• 63A: Dutch astronomer with an eponymous ice cloud (OORT) — OORT is definitely a name I learned from crosswords, probably decades ago now. Always attached to the word "cloud." 

The Oort cloud (/ɔːrt, ʊərt/), sometimes called the Öpik–Oort cloud, is theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). The concept of such a cloud was proposed in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, in whose honor the idea was named. Oort proposed that the bodies in this cloud replenish and keep constant the number of long-period comets entering the inner Solar System—where they are eventually consumed and destroyed during close approaches to the Sun. (wikipedia)

• 90A: Tusked Warcraft race (ORCS) — I only know "World of Warcraft," but apparently that MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game) is set in a pre-existing Warcraft universe, about which (clearly) I know nothing. ORCS are from Tolkien. That is about the extent of my Orc knowledge.
• 95A: Agcy. that determined fluoride prevents tooth decay (NIH) — I reflexively wrote in ADA, because three-letter dental org. abbrevs. are usually ADA. This clue feels like a jab at a certain fluoride (and overall science) "skeptic" who is about to have a ridiculous amount of influence on U.S. public health policy.
• 116A: ___ Biggums, memorable character on "Chappelle's Show" (TYRONE) — "memorable character" is doing some ... work. Some masking work. Some non-specificity work. TYRONE Biggums is "memorably" a crack addict. If you're gonna use him in your puzzle, don't chicken out and hide the details:

• 32D: Chewy Japanese dessert (MOCHI) — a "doughlike mass" (merriam webster dot com) made from "cooked and pounded glutinous rice." They can be sweetened, colored, filled, etc.

• 77D: "Aladdin" character who hates crackers (IAGO) — he's a parrot, so ... hilarious incongruity, I guess.

That's all for the puzzle today. Now I'm gonna move on to the first installment of the Holiday Puzzle Gift Guide. I'll do physical products today, and then e-products (like puzzle subscriptions and the like) next week or the week after. If you have any good crossword gift ideas, or if you produce any such products yourself, let me know—I'll add them to the guide next week or the week after (note: I receive no financial consideration for promoting any of the following products)

For kids, there's the Spy School series of books by Stuart Gibbs, particularly the one with puzzles by longtime NYTXW constructor Jeff Chen, entitled Entrance Exam:

A reader of mine recommended Q-Less, the Crossword Solitaire Dice Word Game (which comes in physical and app form): 

Constructors Jeff Sinnock and Desirée Penner (who have constructed several NYTXW puzzles together in the past couple of years) have a new book of puzzles out called Name That Tune: A Year In Music. It features one pop music-themed crossword for each year from 1960 to 2010—each puzzle features hits from that year, and every puzzle has a bonus answer (another hit that you have to figure out by unscrambling circled letters in the grid). These play Easy but are still a lot of fun—great for the casual crossword fan in your life. Also great for brushing up on your pop culture knowledge across generations.

And lastly for today we have Adam Aaronson's 2025 Crossword Calendar, in which every monthly calendar grid is also a crossword (!). There's even a year-long meta-puzzle, where stray single letters in the calendar grids can be reassembled to spell an "apt word for the year." Adam is a talented young constructor (with many NYTXW credits to his name), and this is a really original and creative crossword concept. You like crosswords, you need a wall calendar ... bam, here you go.

More gift ideas next week (keep suggestions coming if you've got 'em). And now ... our first installment of Holiday Pet Pics! (this will be a daily feature from now until the end of the Holiday season (or until I run out of pics), so if you sent me a pic and don't see your pet right away, be patient! They're coming!

First up is Cleo. Good luck finding her

[Thanks, Nancy]

Then there's Kaylee, who ... will not be denied

[Thanks, Anne]

Here's Maverick, who is ... patient. Very on-brand for a chocolate lab :)

[Thanks, Joan]

Sweet Tommy basks in the Aspenglow ...

[Thanks, Don]

And lastly, for today, there's Scruffy. Won't someone spare a treat for Scruffy this Christmas? Support your local Scruffy. Look at this baby!

[Thanks, Donna!]

More puzzles, and more pets, tomorrow. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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