1963 Kingsmen hit with a repetitive title / MON 8-17-26 / "Pink" animal of film / Boozy brunch drink / Well-dressed guy / ___ tofu (Sichuan dish) / Hot pepper named for Cuba's capital / It catches ballpark smooches

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (solved Downs-only) 

THEME: "YES AND YES!" (62A: "Totally agree!" ... or what the circled letters are, in different languages) — each theme answer contains two sets of circled squares, each of which contains a word meaning "yes" in a foreign language:

Theme answers:

• DAPPER DAN (16A: Well-dressed guy)
• JAM JARS (38A: Containers for fruit preserves)
• "LOUIE LOUIE" (10D: 1963 Kingsmen hit with a repetitive title)
• SITE VISITS (27D: On-location inspections)

Word of the Day: "LOUIE, LOUIE" (10D) —

"Louie Louie" is a rhythm and blues song written, composed, and recorded by American musician Richard Berry in 1956 and released in 1957. In 1963, a version by the Kingsmen attracted controversy over allegedly profane lyrics. The song is based on the tune "El Loco Cha Cha" popularized by bandleader René Touzet and is an example of Afro-Cuban influence on American popular music. // The song's historical impact and ongoing popularity, attested by books, articles, rankings, and hundreds of cover versions, have earned it a reputation as "a cornerstone of rock". 

"Louie Louie" tells, in simple verse–chorus form, the first-person story of a "lovesick sailor's lament to a bartender about wanting to get back home to his girl". [...] On April 6, 1963, the Kingsmen, a rock and roll group from Portland, Oregon, chose "Louie Louie" for their second recording. The session took place at Northwestern Inc. Motion Pictures & Recording Studios at 411 SW 13th Avenue in Portland. The one hour session, originally intended to produce an audition tape for a summer cruise ship gig, cost either $36, $50, or somewhere in between, and the band split the cost. [...] First released in May 1963, the single was initially issued by the small Jerden label, before being picked up by the larger Wand Records in October 1963. Wand president Florence Greenberg said, "it was forced down my throat by friends. I was ashamed to put it out." Herb Alpert and A&M Records passed on the distribution opportunity, deeming it "too long" and "out of tune". [...]

Sales of the Kingsmen record were initially so low (reportedly 600) that the group considered disbanding. Things changed when Boston's biggest DJ, Arnie Ginsburg, was given the record by a pitchman. Amused by its slapdash sound, he played it on his program as "The Worst Record of the Week". Despite the slam, listener response was swift and positive.Another factor in the success of the record may have been the rumour that the vocals were intentionally slurred by the Kingsmen to cover up lyrics that were allegedly laced with profanity, graphically depicting sex between the sailor and his lady. Crumpled pieces of paper professing to be "the real lyrics" to "Louie Louie" circulated among teens. The song was banned on many radio stations and in many places in the United States, including Indiana, where a ban was requested by Governor Matthew Welsh. These actions were taken despite the fact that practically no one could distinguish the actual lyrics. Denials of chicanery by Kingsmen and Ely did not stop the controversy. The FBI started a 31-month investigation into the matter and concluded they were "unable to interpret any of the wording in the record." However, drummer Lynn Easton later admitted that he yelled "fuck" after fumbling a drum fill at 0:54 on the record. (wikipedia)

• • •

I confess I don't really know this expression, "YES AND YES!" I'm sure I've heard it, and it would be totally recognizable as a kind of emphatic affirmative, but it's not something I hear people say, or can hear in my head very clearly. I frequently use the phrase "Done and done!" to mean roughly the same thing ("I will do that thing," "consider it done," "yes I will do it"), but "YES AND YES!" ... not sure why it's not really ringing a bell. But it's not really a problem for me today—I recognize it as a thing one might say, and it leads to a pretty nifty, simple Monday theme. Kinda cheating to get your two "oui"s by using "LOUIE" twice, but then again, I enjoy remembering that song, which is one of the day's most colorful answers so cheating objection ... overruled! My only real complaint involves SITE VISITS, which is a singularly unattractive phrase. I'm stunned that there wasn't some better, more colorful, less blandly businesslike phrase that has two "SI"s in it. I realize you've got symmetry considerations, and the answer (assuming you keep all the other themers where they are) had to come in at ten letters long, but still ... I think you gotta hunt harder. That answer was also the hardest for me to get, from a Downs-only standpoint, despite my being fairly certain of the "SI"s (it was the only commonly known foreign "yes" that was left). But again, overall, the puzzle was cute. Entertaining. Interesting to solve Downs-only. Reverse KOA!

Even with the cheater squares (black squares above PIC and below ESO, which are there only to make the grid easier to fill), there's still a bit of dull crosswordese around the edges here. ESO, for instance, and PAOLO OBIES ISEE EIN ANTE IMAM IMAC INUIT UAE OSSO EYRE ASTI ATTN EASEL AHA ... would've been nice if the puzzle hadn't been so reliant on allllllll the old stuff. But then of course the themers are strong, and the longer non-themers are decent as well. HABANERO is spicy and SCREEDS are ranty and MEANDER is wandery and SCORPION is sting-y and KISS CAM, well, those are kinda gross, actually, but who doesn't like the Pink PANTHER? SO THERE! If the crosswordese is bugging you, just have a MIMOSA and listen to your favorite ROCK BAND and relax. Or you could have some MAPO tofu and listen to Chappell ROAN, that's what I'd do if I hadn't already had dinner—a delicious dinner Penelope and I made together. Here, I have the pics to prove it.

[that NYT Cooking page-a-day calendar is a godsend—app, shmapp, just give me paper!]

Bullets:

• 16A: Well-dressed guy (DAPPER DAN) — I know DAPPER DAN exclusively as a doll that I (or my sister, or both of us) had when I was very little. I can still see his dumb felted face and rosy cheeks. Oh yeah, here we go:

[Well-dressed, smash-faced]

The phrase I know for "well-dressed man" is "handsome Dan," though that's probably just because of "Tougher Than the Rest," a Bruce Springsteen song that I first heard in an acoustic version by Everything But The Girl:

["Some girls they want a handsome Dan / Or some good-looking Joe..."]

• 36D: "Sounds like a plan!" ("LET'S") — one of the tougher answers, from a Downs-only perspective. I wanted "I'M IN!"
• 11D: Martini garnish (OLIVE) — ONION also works (and fits, and starts with "O") (though w/ an ONION, it’s called a Gibson Martini, or simply a Gibson)
• 59D: Enjoy a fantasy, say (READ) — I kinda like the mild misdirection here. They hide "novel" or "story" and just let "fantasy" be a substantive adjective. So your (my) first thought for "Enjoy a fantasy" is something like "dream," but ... no.
• 33D: Breakfast beverages, for short (OJS) — kind of an OJ overload situation here, as OJ both sits alongside MIMOSA and is a key ingredient of a MIMOSA (the other being champagne or other sparkling wine). 

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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Work parodied by Umberto Eco's "Granita" / SUN 8-16-26 / Member of the N.F.L.'s "Big Blue," in brief / Astonished, informally / Place for a sailor's anchor, informally / Fiber also knowns as viscose / Title that becomes loftier when an E is added / "Diminutive" Greek letter / Dizzying gallery works / Invention originally developed as a yellow dye / Infraction at an arcade

Constructor: Sam Brody

Relative difficulty: Easy

[33D: Ewoks' home moon]

THEME: "Take the Edge Off" — theme clues are words that are missing their "edges" (i.e. their first, or last, or first and last, letters); answers are familiar phrases that act as punny representations of those "edgeless" words:

Theme answers:

• DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS (23A: _ATSO_ and _EKYL_) ("Watson" and "Jekyll," both famous fictional "doctors," lack "borders" (i.e. first and last letters))
• NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION (36A: _RAVES) (the word "craves," which (kinda) means "needs," has "no introduction," i.e. no first letter)
• NEVERENDING STORY (56A: SAG_) (the word "saga," which is a kind of "story," never ends—because it lacks its last letter)
• HEADLESS HORSEMAN (79A: _NIGHT) (the word "knight," which is a kind of "horseman," is lacking its first letters, or "head")
• NOT COMPLETELY HONEST (99A: FRAN_) (the word "frank," which means "honest," is not complete)
• UNLIMITED TALK AND TEXTS (116A: _IALO_) (the word "dialog," a term which indicates either "talking" or "texting," has no "limits" (i.e first and last letters))

Word of the Day: Granita (1A: Work parodied by Umberto Eco's "Granita" = LOLITA) —

[man, I have no idea—when you search [Eco granita], mostly what you get is automated crossword answer sites, giving you the answer to this clue. There's hardly anything online about this ... looks like a short story, or a sketch of some time, written in the '50s in Italian but published in English in the '90s ... all the references to it (and there are hardly any) are from, like, somebody's private Tumblr accounts. There are a couple of very brief references to it in the NYT and Guardian—it appears to be a story about one "Umberto Umberto" (playing on the name of LOLITA's protagonist, Humbert Humbert) who develops a thing for geriatric women, whom he calls "Nornettes" (playing on Humbert's term for the young girls he's sexually attracted to, "nymphets"). Anyway, I think it's fair to say that this "work" of Eco's is very obscure—here's the summary from one of those aforementioned Tumblr accounts (it squares with what google's A.I. is trying to tell me): "Umberto Eco wrote a hilarious parody of Lolita that he called Granita. In his version of the story, a young man falls in love with an old lady. It would seem that the sight of her marbled flesh, glimpsed through a window as she removed her stockings, drove him wild with uncontrollable lust. When he runs away with her, he has to travel by bicycle (he doesn’t have a driver’s license yet) and pedals away with “Granita” holding on for dear life. The story appears in Eco’s anthology Misreadings." ]

• • •

I've seen this kind of thing before. A bunch. Basically a reverse cryptic, where the answer is the clue and the clue is the answer. It's a giant shrug from me. Not very clever. Pretty rudimentary stuff, as cryptic clues go. Ugly gibberish for theme clues. OK but unremarkable theme answers. UNLIMITED TALK AND TEXTS is just wrong, though. The pluralized TEXTS, specifically. There are "unlimited talk & text" plans, for sure, but they are most definitely "talk & text" plans, not "talk & texts." It's not just that the theme was dull—it's that it was almost beside the point. I got the first themer without even looking at the clue:

After getting it, I looked up, saw the clue, knew instantly what the conceit was, and decided the only way this solve was going to be anything close to interesting was if I challenged myself not to look at any of the theme clues ever again. And I didn't. And it didn't make a bit of difference. Maybe it added a minute or so to my solve, I don't know, but I did not miss those clues. You can write them yourself once you get the answer. Nothing special about them. The whole thing was fantastically dull. And the fill didn't do much to liven things up. This was just one big 21x21 SLAB of a puzzle; there was some cleverness in the cluing, it turns out (the doctors clue, for instance), but for the most part the puzzle doesn't really have much to recommend it. I'm kind of surprised it was accepted. I PLODded through, but it never once gave me a reason to smile or wonder or struggle or ... anything. It's just there. Taking up space.

["Maybe another drink will take the edge off!"]

Does anything even need explaining, beyond the theme? The clues and answers all felt so straightforward. "Granita" was the only thing in the whole dang puzzle that made me go "huh?," that made me curious, that seemed to be trying to stretch the boundaries of the Totally Ordinary. I did laugh once, but that's only because I tried to give that wrestler guy ONE ARM instead of ONE LEG (100D: Feature of Anthony Robles, a 2011 N.C.A.A. national champion wrestler). Guy's only got one leg and now here I am trying to take his arm away as well? Not cool. Are there one-armed wrestlers? There was a one-handed Major League pitcher once, and a good one (Jim Abbott), so why not? I guess it would be especially hard to grapple with one arm, but wrestling with just the ONE LEG, that also seems impressive. I'm looking around this grid and trying to find anything, literally anything worth remarking on, and fran-ly I'm not having much success. It's all so, so plain. I think two stars might be too generous, but I'm just gonna leave it; perhaps it has virtues I just can't appreciate, for some reason.

Bullets:

• 27A: Astonished, informally (SHOOK) — this was the one moment where the puzzle seemed to be alive and living in the 21st century. This slangy use of SHOOK already seems to be on the wane, but it's at least familiar as a recentish expression. Anything with some life in it was welcome today.
• 53D: London park (HYDE) — this seems like a little NOD AT Dr. Jekyll (or Dr. -EKYL-, I guess).
• 64A: Place for a sailor's anchor, informally (BICEP) — hey, a bit of misdirection! Not a lot of misdirection, but some. Sometimes I think puzzles are trying too hard with the cluing, but hoo boy today is not one of those days. Speaking of sailors, I finally saw The Odyssey today. There was a SCYLLA, as I predicted (see yesterday's puzzle). But no anchor tattoos for Odysseus (that I could see). I think that's strictly a Popeye thing ... although no ... Popeye's anchor tattoo is on his forearm, not his BICEP:

• 118D: Park place? (LOT) — because you park ... your car ... there.
• 49D: Female rapper with a longtime feud with Foxy Brown (LIL KIM) — OK, this probably should've been my "Word of the Day." I know LIL KIM from ... the '90s? Can't say I've seen her name or thought about her for decades. Here is a long and embarrassing description of said feud., which started sometime in ... yep, the '90s. The last relevant incident in this recap happened in 2013, so I don't know what the state of their relationship is now. Nor do I care. There has to be a better, more dignified way to clue LIL KIM. How about this team-up? This was fun:

Sorry I don't have more to say about this puzzle. It's not giving me much to work with. I really hope you enjoyed it more than I did. For those of you who struggle on Sundays, this one should've been pretty doable, at least. Maybe you broke your Sunday speed record? If it made you happy, then as they say (or Sheryl Crow says), it can't be that bad. All it did for me, though, was make me wish I were reading a book, so I'm gonna go do that now. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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