The Scales, zodiacally / MON 9-28-26 / Store, as ashes / ___ Guofeng, successor of Mao Zedong / Tropical tree whose product is sometimes used as a meat substitute / Coconut Girl Scout cookies / City NE of Oklahoma City

Constructor: Helen Chen

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

[67A: Kylo ___ of "Star Wars"]

THEME: LEAD-OFF / HOME RUN (38A: With 41-Across, ball hit out of the park by the very first batter for either side ... or a hint to the starts of 18-, 27-, 46- and 60-Across) — theme answers are phrases that start with a word that is baseball slang for a "home run":

Theme answers:

• BOMBSHELL (18A: Complete shocker)
• TATER TOTS (27A: Alternative to French fries)
• BLAST ZONE (46A: Detonation region)
• JACKFRUIT (60A: Tropical tree whose product is sometimes used as a meat substitute)

Word of the Day: HUA Guofeng (41D: ___ Guofeng, successor of Mao Zedong) —

Hua Guofeng (born Su Zhu (苏铸); 16 February 1921 – 20 August 2008; also spelled as Hua Kuo-feng) was a Chinese politician who served as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and the premier of China. As the successor of Mao Zedong, Hua held the top offices of the government, party, and the military after the deaths of Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai, but was gradually forced out of power between December 1978 and June 1981, and subsequently retreated from the political limelight, though still remaining a member of the Central Committee until 2002. [...] While Hua ended the Cultural Revolution's most notorious policies, such as the constant ideological campaigns, he remained generally committed to a command economy and the continuation of the Maoist line. Between December 1978 and June 1981, Deng Xiaoping and his supporters forced Hua from his position of paramount leader but allowed him to retain some titles. Hua gradually faded into political obscurity, but continued to insist on the correctness of Maoist principles. (wikipedia)

• • •

Nearly had a Downs-only DNF today. The whole central-southern part of the grid—from the FRUIT part of JACKFRUIT over to ZENITH—was mostly empty for what felt like a good while there at the end. Things started to go south with HUA, a name I don't remember ever seeing. Every letter of that was a mystery to me. Trying to move down from there, I guessed BOX SET, but neither ALL TIED nor TRAGIC (47D: Like the fate of Ophelia) nor ZENITH (48D: Peak) were at all clear to me. All these Down fails left BLAST hard for me to infer despite the fact that by that point I was fully aware of the theme and how it worked. In addition to my total ignorance of HUA, there were two other major problems for me today. The first was that, when presented with JACK F---T, I just assumed the answer would be JACK FROST. The second problem was that I couldn't find any connection between BANANA and the letter pattern I was getting at 50D: See 37-Across (37-Across being BANANA). BANANA ... BREAD? BANANA ... SPLIT? I just assumed I was dealing with a two-part phrase. I had BANANA --R--, and ... no idea. As of this very second, I still haven't looked at the clue for 37-Across, so ... let's do that now, SHALL we? 37A: "Time flies like an [50-Down]; fruit flies like a ___" (BANANA). Jeez louise, no wonder I couldn't intuit the connection between BANANA and ARROW. That's the most tenuous connection I've ever seen! Unintuitable, I say! Eventually, I realized JACK F[ROS]T could also be JACKFRUIT, which allowed me to see BLOUSE (46D: Top to accompany a skirt). Somehow I was also able to come up with ALL TIED, and from there, I got BLAST ZONE, which took care of my TRAGIC ZENITH problems. The end. After a considerable amount of stumbling around, finally, The End.

The theme here is perfect for a Monday, and it's timely as well, given that the regular season of Major League Baseball ended just yesterday. Congrats to the Phillies and the Astros, who clinched the final playoff spots on the last day of the season. Playoffs start tomorrow. Baseball has lots of words for "home run," and these are four of them, and they all "lead off" their respective answers, so ... yeah, what more do you want? Besides good fill, I mean. I could've used more of that. The theme is very dense, which means there's not a lot of room for any other snazzy entries; in fact, nothing at all over seven letters long (and only two of those). The short fill gets pretty icky in places, most notably at INURN (100% pure crosswordese) (33D: Store, as ashes) and URE, an answer so bad I thought for sure I had an error over there in the west (35A: Suffix with fail or forfeit). I thought, "No way they let Midge URE into a Monday puzzle. That's crazy." And in fact, they did not let Midge URE into a Monday puzzle. Worse—they let in an ugly suffix. Who is Midge URE, you ask? Aside from co-writing and producing "Do They Know It's Christmas?," he was, among other things, the leader of the band Ultravox from 1979-1987. Look, I told you he wasn't a Monday answer. But now you are armed against his eventual appearance on some future Saturday. Other UREs (according to former NYTXW clues) include a Yorkshire river, a chemistry pioneer Andrew, and an actress Mary (Academy Award-nominated for Sons and Lovers (1960)). Go back far enough, and you'll get [Old Orkney land unit] (1973), [Mist, in Scotland] (1972), and [Ounce in Shetland] (1948). I doubt you'll be seeing any of those ever again. 

Bullets:

• 17A: Solid baseball hit (LINER) — with baseball as the main theme idea, it's maybe better to go a different direction here. See also the clue for ALL TIED (43D: Like the score going into extra innings). Or else, really lean into it—change the TEAMS clue from N.H.L. to MLB, for instance (29D: The N.H.L. has 32). There's another baseball clue opportunity at GIANT*, and, if you really want it, BANANA:

• 66A: Helper for computer problems, informally (I.T. GUY) — had the -GUY part and all I could think of was:

• 9D: The Scales, zodiacally (LIBRA) — we are currently in the LIBRA BLAST ZONE (Sep. 23-Oct. 23). Also, "zodiacally," top-tier adverb invention, thumbs up.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*Whoops, looks like GIANT actually did get a baseball ⚾️ clue (63A: San Francisco ballplayer) and I just didn’t notice, sorry

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️Upcoming Crossword Tournaments✏️:

• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago, IL, Sat., Oct. 3, 2026)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Shaders of gray? / SUN 9-27-26 / Sonic euphoria, colloquially / Disk-flipping strategy game / Greek PPP / Turned into an internet gag / German brewery since 1873 / Redheaded "Queen of Country" / DeVore who co-founded one of the first U.S. agencies for nonwhite models in 1946 / Portmanteau sandwich cookie with a layer of marshmallow / Cultural group of SW Britain / Buck enshrined in Cooperstown / Far from the target, in a guessing game

Constructor: Adam Wagner

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "The Full 12 Rounds" — twelve-letter answers that go 'round (or LOOP BACK) (85A: Return to an earlier topic of conversation ... or what six answers in this puzzle literally do), thus mimicking the CORIOLIS Effect (49A: Kind of effect that deflects motion in one direction in the Northern Hemisphere and the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere [with a hint to this puzzle's shaded squares]) (i.e. the answers go clockwise in the northern hemisphere, counterclockwise in the south) 

Theme answers:

• TRADE DISPUTE (19A: ... in global commerce)(Conflict ...)
• PORT-A-POTTIES (28A: ... outdoor festivals)(Bathrooms at ...)
• PERSONAL LIMO (66A: ... transport)(Bigwig's ...)
• ONE-CAR GARAGE (73A: ... park an auto)(Narrow space in which to ...)
• INTERPRETIVE (112A: ... clarify or explain)(Seeking to ...)
• IN RETROSPECT (124A: ... of hindsight)(With the benefit ...)

Word of the Day: OPHELIA DeVore (21A: DeVore who co-founded one of the first U.S. agencies for nonwhite models in 1946) —

Ophelia DeVore (August 12, 1921 – February 28, 2014) was an American businesswoman, publisher, and model. She was the first model of African-American descent in the United States. In 1946, she helped establish the Grace Del Marco Agency, one of the first modeling agencies in America. [...] Ophelia DeVore began modeling at the age of 16. As a fair-skinned person of African-American descent, DeVore could "pass" for Norwegian and gain contracts throughout Europe. In 1946, determined to create a new market for non-White women in the U.S., DeVore established The Grace Del Marco Agency. // In the agency's early days, it was a stepping stone for countless household names; Diahann Carroll, Helen Williams, Richard Roundtree, Cicely Tyson and others. Racism was rampant in New York's fashion business and the Grace Del Marco Agency was one of the few places non-White models could gain work. (Wikipedia)

• • •

There are two things I like about this theme. First, the cluing conceit is clever—looping the clues like that, very nice. Second, I like the first revealer, CORIOLIS. Would've been better if the whole phrase, CORIOLIS EFFECT, were in there, but this is still good, and the fact that the themers loop in different directions depending on what "hemisphere" of the puzzle they're in gives the puzzle a much-needed purpose. Simply "looping" isn't much of an idea, which is one of the reasons I don't think much of the second revealer: LOOP BACK—the other reason is that it's entirely unnecessary. We can see that the theme answers LOOP BACK. The arrows around those answers give that away. Thus LOOP BACK "reveals" nothing. It just takes up space. Whereas CORIOLIS points out a feature I would not have noticed otherwise (i.e. it reveals something). Anyway, two nice features. 

Beyond that, though, I didn't enjoy much about this puzzle. It's yet another puzzle where the theme is almost entirely architectural. Answers go round, answers go round, answers go round. What those answers are, who cares? Irrelevant. It's only the going round that matters. There's no great aha with any of them. All six themers are pretty pedestrian. I guess we're supposed to be impressed that the Across segments of theme answers that aren't parts of longer answers are themselves viable answers—TRADE DISPUTE, for instance, gives us TETRAD (a real word) over UPSIDE (a real word). I suppose this adds a level of difficulty to the construction, but it doesn't add anything to the solving pleasure. Am I really supposed to delight in stuff like E-SPORT and MOPERS and RAGE ON (whatever that is) and SORTER (?!). Mainly I found the themers a joyless chore; you hack through them with a lot of short crosses and there's your answer, ta da. Not that interesting. 

And speaking of filling in short answers, wow did I have to do that a lot. A Lot. It's an astonishingly choppy grid, with nothing over eight letters outside the theme, and only two of those (SPLENDID, "ARE YOU IN?"). You've got banks of 7s in the NE and SW, but otherwise it's a sea of 3-4-5s. It got dreary after a while. And once again the fill was poor enough early on that I took a snapshot to document the moment it became alarming:

Few things are more crosswordesey than BRAES. And that came on top of MAHER (ugh), ORE CAR, THE WEB, TEPEE, ADE. I like MAD DASH and love Pam GRIER, but most of the short stuff ran from merely tolerable to regrettable. I'm probably never going be an enjoyer of purely architectural themes. The fill just ends up seeming like an afterthought, as opposed to the primary part of the solving experience.

Bullets:

• 116A: Disk-flipping strategy game (REVERSI) — I know this only from crosswords. And I don't know it perfectly—the first thing I wrote in was REVERSO. Othello is the modern variation of this game.

• 123A: Many a John Williams composition (THEME) — nearly counted this as a Star Wars reference, since the most famous of said THEMEs is most certainly the Star Wars theme, but Williams has written many, many movie themes, so ... judges say ... not a Star Wars reference!

• 3D: Unhelpful way to respond to "Hello?" ("IT'S ME") — Weird. "IT'S ME" might be very helpful, if the person you're responding to knows your voice very well. I can absolutely imagine saying it if my wife was not expecting me home and said "Hello?" from, like, the kitchen or upstairs. 
• 31D: Clothing brand named for perceived generational differences in the '60s (GAP)  — I had no idea. I did know that (The) GAP was founded in 1969, because ... so was I.

• 50D: Greek PPP (RHOS) — yesterday we got [H H H] as a clue for ETAS. That one always confuses a few people. Today, with "Greek" in the clue, the fact that we're dealing with Greek letters is much clearer.
• 52D: Chef Nosrat who wrote the best seller "Salt Fat Acid Heat" (SAMIN) — I know her book, and the show based on the book, and I've seen her on TV in many different contexts, and I still forgot her dang name. Really happy I knew that final "S" in CORIOLIS ...

• 74D: Portmanteau sandwich cookie with a layer of marshmallow (S'MOREO) — oh come on. What the hell is this? It sounds hellish. Or at the very least, unnecessary. Just eat a s'more or an Oreo, for god's sake. Speaking of hellish: "Banana Pudding" Oreos. Oreo is currently testing three potential new flavors, and while "Deep Fried" and "Chicken & Waffles" were good and weird-but-acceptable, respectively, "Banana Pudding" needs to be sent back to the pit of hell whence it came. Toxic levels of artificial banana flavor. I thought maybe it was just me, but then Penelope took all three of the test flavors into her grad students, and they were unanimous in their dead-last ranking of "Banana Pudding."

[1. Deep Fried; 2. Chicken & Waffles; 3. (disqualified on account of disgustingness) Banana Pudding]

• 86D: Fish hawk (OSPREY) — they're migratory. I just learned this. "American and Canadian breeders winter in South America" (wikipedia). For two weeks in late August / early September, there was one that hung out on a tree high above the Chenango River, and I'd see it nearly every day on my walk. I even saw it hunt a couple times (water go smash! so cool). Then it wasn't there any more. Then I learned they're migratory, so I probably won't see little fish-hunting buddy again. It was fun while it lasted.

• 97D: Astronomically demoted, as per a 2006 Word of the Year (PLUTOED) — I think it just means "demoted" now. Yes: pluto (v.) "to demote or devalue something." I mean, how often are things "astronomically" demoted. You can't use your Word of the Year very much if you just limit it to astronomy.
• 92D: Shaders of gray? (AGEISTS) — woof, this clue. "Shaders"??? As in "those who throw shade"??? Describing ageism as mere shade (i.e. disparagement) ... pretty flippant way of describing systemic discrimination. Also, the pun here Tortured.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Happy anniversary, honey ❤️❤️❤️ What're we drinking? What goes with "23"?

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️Upcoming Crossword Tournaments✏️:

• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago, IL, Sat., Oct. 3, 2026)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...