Citrus-based sauce in Japanese cuisine / WED 6-24-26 / Retro kind of hairstyle / Pinkglow pineapples and GloFish, for short / Marketing team's goal with a new product launch, informally / Hand-held radios used by the speakers of the italicized clues and their answers? / Important creatures in Inuit culture / Band whose spelled-out name translates to "Bulletproof Boy Scouts"

Constructor: Kevin Curry and Zhou Zhang

Relative difficulty: Medium (and then some?)

THEME: WALKIE-TALKIES (36A: Hand-held radios used by the speakers of the italicized clues and their answers?) — familiar phrases that contain walkie-talkie lingo, clued as if they were, in fact, responses on a walkie-talkie:

Theme answers:

• "JOLLY, ROGER!" (17A: "Sleigh's loaded and ready! How are you feeling, Santa?")
• "GLAZED, OVER!" (25A: "I'm at the bakery—what kind of doughnut do you want?")
  "CARBON, COPY!" (49A: "What's tomorrow's chemistry exam about again?")
• "CHICKEN, OUT!" (60A: "Before you go, what animal crosses the road in that old joke?")

Word of the Day: RAMONA Shelburne (46D: Sportswriter Shelburne) —

Ramona Leor Shelburne (born July 19, 1979) is an American sportswriter and NBA Insider for ESPN. She is also a former softball player; in high school, she was the 1997 L.A. City Softball Co-Player of the Year, and in college she played outfield for Stanford Cardinal for four years. [...] Prior to joining ESPN, Shelburne spent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily News as a reporter and columnist from 2002-2009. At ESPN, Ramona gained a national following writing about Frank and Jaime McCourt's divorce and the 2010-2011 Los Angeles Dodgers ownership dispute. On February 14, 2016, Shelburne made her radio debut in a national radio show called Beadle & Shelburne which she co-hosts with ESPN SportsNation host Michelle Beadle. // Since the mid 2010s, Shelburne has been a Senior Writer at ESPN. She also regularly contributes to the network’s NBA coverage on NBA Today, ESPN Radio and SportsCenter. (wikipedia)

• • •

I should probably start with the one thing about the theme that seems off. I don't talk on WALKIE-TALKIES much (or ever), but aren't "Roger!" and "Copy!" things you say at the *beginning* of your response? Like, you don't wait until after you say something to say "Roger!," do you? Is that ... realistic? "Over!" and "Out!" (and "Over and out!") are definitely response-ending bits of W-T speak, but somehow having "Roger!" and "Copy!" at the *ends* of their respective phrases feels less than authentic. But somehow I didn't need authenticity today because the power of wackiness compelled me. Like, the theme was just so cute and original that I managed not to care about a little syntactical strangeness here and there. The revealer was completely unnecessary, as I knew after the first, and certainly after the second, themer that I was dealing with radio lingo, but WALKIE-TALKIES is such a bouncy and bright and "K"-ful central answer that I didn't resent its presence. It's pleasantly decorative, even if it isn't (or wasn't, for me) necessary to figuring out the theme concept. I have often said about wackiness-based themes that they have to Go Big or Go Home, and I thought this one leaned into the silliness plenty. The fact that I start out this conversation talking to Santa puts things on real wacky ground right away. The remaining clues maybe could have been wackier, but if you imagine that you're talking to Santa the whole time, then wackiness abides. I totally believe that Santa wants a donut. I'm not sure I believe that he's in your Chemistry class, but I *want* to believe it. I absolutely don't believe you, or anyone, forgot which animal crosses the road, but again, the absurdity makes it work. 

I also appreciated how spicy the fill was. PICANTE, even. Lots of tastiness everywhere you turn, from SPUN cotton candy and LemonADE to OAT milk and TARTs and some kind of OLIVE + PECAN + CHICKEN + HAM + FAVA bean (+ PEPA!) concoction at the bottom of the grid—with PONZU sauce (65A: Citrus-based sauce in Japanese cuisine). PONZU!? Is that a debut? Yup, it sure is. We used to put that in / on lots of things. Not sure why we stopped. Maybe we're just on PONZU hiatus. It's tasty! NOM NOM NOM. Anyway, this is a real OMNIVORE's puzzle. GOOD EATS abound (12D: A satisfying meal, informally). I also liked the fact that I finished the puzzle on "WE MADE IT!" Couldn't have scripted it any better. The puzzle gets pretty name-y at times, esp. through the middle (ZARA / BTS / ERIC Carle / Paul SIMON / MRS. Brown and her lovely daughter). I think lots of people are going to blank on RAMONA Shelburne in the SE corner, which already has the never-before-seen PONZU, and the unexpected and weird-to-parse PRBUZZ in it (47D: Marketing team's goal with a new product launch, informally). I can see some solvers struggling there. But I didn't find the name-iness excessive today. But then again, there were no names I didn't know. Always easier to like names when you know them. Oh, NESS, I guess I didn't *really* know that name, but the "Van" part kind of gave me a boost ("Van NESS" just sounded familiar—I grew up in a city with a Van NESS Avenue, so maybe that helped).

I actually found the NW corner a little thorny. I accept Venmo (wink) and I've used Venmo to pay people but I guess I've never made (or accepted) a Venmo "request" for payment, so PAYS (5D: Approves a Venmo request, perhaps) ... seemed right, but I wasn't sure about it. I also wasn't sure about NO LESS, which fits the clue fine, it's just ... rarer than plain old [Equally], and seems more situation-specific (like something you say after you've added something to your previous statement—almost like an emphatic conclusion). So my brain just had some contextual trouble. The biggest problem up there, though, was that clue on PIN-UP (1A: Retro kind of hairstyle). What? There's a hair style called "PIN-UP?" Is pinning your hair up "retro?" That clue seemed like a desperate way to avoid the cheesecake angle. A PIN-UP is, of course, a picture of a sexy model featured in magazines and calendars. Men (typically) would pin these pictures up for display in various locker-room and bar and other male-dominated environments. Popularized sometime around WWII, I think. It's objectifying, the way most modeling is, but I really love good mid-century PIN-UP art. There's some in our downstairs bathroom! The art form has its Grand Masters (Vargas! Elvgren!). "Retro kind of hairstyle" evokes nothing for me. [Does some image searching] Oh, hey ... weird, apparently the hairstyle in question is actually related to PIN-UP models, in that everything I'm seeing online has a real throwback vibe—hair that a PIN-UP model might've had in the '40s. Unsurprisingly, modern trends in women's hair ... not on my radar. 

[Betty Grable, the most famous PIN-UP girl]

Bullets:

• 6A: Pinkglow pineapples and GloFish, for short (GMOS) — another reason the top of the puzzle was a little on the hard side for me. Shouldn't this clue have a "for instance" in it. Like, these are examples of GMOS. You wouldn't clue CAT as merely [Siamese]. You'd write [Siamese, for one]. But leaving that cluing convention nitpickery aside, I had no idea what I was looking at here. I thought maybe Pokémons. Or some kind of reward in some kind of game on some kind of app I'm never going to use.
• 44A: Fish with a Kohaku variety (KOI) — sticking with fish for a moment ... I had no idea there were varieties of KOI. I mean, of course there are, I'm not surprised, I've just never been required to think beyond the simple fact of KOI, crossworld's favorite fish (sorry, MAHI MAHI, you lose).
• 1D: Kind of pants worn on a rainy day, perhaps (PAJAMA) — ??? because you are staying inside, in your pajamas? I can tell you that my students will wear PAJAMA pants (as in pajama bottoms) in any weather. Just ... out and about. Regular-ass streetwear to them (well, some of them). They're probably least likely to wear them on rainy days, but that's because (unlike you, apparently) they are wearing them out of doors.

• 10D: Workout program that's a portmanteau of two different sports (TAE BO) — in the '90s, Billy Blanks made history by combining sports that scientists had previously thought uncombinable: Tae Kwon Do and Bowling. The rest is home exercise history.
• 39D: A little foxy? (KIT) — a baby fox is a kit. "Little foxy" is something I would call a fox if I saw one in the wild. "Oh, hello, little foxy, what are you up to? Killing rodents! Nice!" (really witnessed this once, very cool) (also witnessed fox kits once, even cooler).

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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$100 bills, slangily / TUE 6-23-26 / Peak in Greek myth / Region of Oakland and Alameda / "Blue" locale in a 1977 Linda Ronstadt classic / "Hyde and ___" (1955 Bugs Bunny short) / Neural signal conductor / Kind of clef used for the viola / The Rev. Leonard Clement, in an Agatha Christie novel / Notable features of the Charleston, S.C. skyline / Most dangerous animal in Maine, it's said

Constructor: Kathy Bloomer

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BENDS THE TR(UTH) (50A: Doesn't lie, exactly ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — theme answers are instances of lying, and contain letter strings (in circled squares) that "bend" (ninety degrees) to form words meaning "truth":

Theme answers:

• COVER STORY (contains first part of "bent" VERITY)
• TAX SCANDAL (contains first part of "bent" CANDOR)
• FAKE NAME (contains first part of "bent" FACTS)
• PHONE SCAMS (contains first part of "bent" HONESTY) (28D: Bad calls?)
• BENDS THE TR[UTH] (contains "bent" TRUTH)

Word of the Day: HALE-BOPP Comet (38D: Comet discovered in 1995) —

Comet Hale–Bopp (formally designated C/1995 O1) is a long-period comet that was one of the most widely observed of the 20th century and one of the brightest seen for many decades.

Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp discovered Comet Hale–Bopp separately on July 23, 1995, before it became visible to the naked eye. It is difficult to predict the maximum brightness of new comets with any degree of certainty, but Hale–Bopp exceeded most predictions when it passed perihelion on April 1, 1997, reaching about magnitude −1.8. Its massive nucleus size made it visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months. This is twice as long as the Great Comet of 1811, the previous record holder. Accordingly, Hale–Bopp was dubbed the Great Comet of 1997. (wikipedia)

• • •

The further this puzzle gets in my rearview mirror, the more I like it. Actually, that implies that I want to leave it behind me and that I like it better when I can't see it clearly, and that's not right, so ... let's say the more I sit with the completed puzzle, the more I like it. The more I look it over, the more I like it. I cannot say I enjoyed it too much while solving, largely because the fill was routinely crusty and musty in a way that I started to grate after a while. FDIC, IDINA, partial AVIV ... the opening was not promising, and after that the fill never got above middling and frequently went somewhat lower than that: C-SPOTS, OLEO, plural TSKS, plural NOES (that pl. always looks like a typo for "nose"), ET ALIA, AAS, ARRET. And what's a good old-fashioned puzzle without a STYE? So I flew through this wondering why the fill was creaky, and never actually seeing the theme—I mean, I saw the "bent" words, but I didn't really get that the four theme answers had "lying" in common. I just know that TAX SCANDAL felt like a strange phrase to me. Do we have TAX SCANDALs any more? Do we have scandals? I'm not sure it's possible any more, with a gutted regulatory system and a largely lawless oligarchy. Also, with the very concept of "scandal" seeming quaint, as the human capacity for shame seems to be fading into nothingness. Anyway, if there is a famous TAX SCANDAL, I have forgotten it. 

PHONE SCAMS also seemed slightly alien to me, as a phrase, though that one I fully acknowledge is a real thing. I just haven't answered the phone for a number I didn't recognize in eons. But I have (older) family members who were preyed upon by phone scammers, so I'm not sure why my brain blanked there. Oh, right, the "?" clue, that's why (28D: Bad calls?). The theme answers did not appear to cohere to me until I was finished and looking the puzzle over. It's thematically impressive that not only does the puzzle bend "truths," but it does so directly out of theme answers that involve truth-bending. The one incongruity is that some of the themers involve outright lying, so the clue on BENDS THE TRUTH (50A: Doesn't lie, exactly...) seems inapt. But still, structurally, the theme is impressive—and intricate, which likely accounts for some of the subpar fill.

Overall the puzzle was very easy. I had one small and one somewhat larger moment of "???" The first was with VICAR (35A: The Rev. Leonard Clement, in an Agatha Christie novel). Which Agatha Christie novel? I am familiar with the concept of quaint village murder mysteries involving VICARs, but if there's an iconic one, I forgot it. Is it ... Murder at the Vicarage? Is that a thing? Yes! 1930. The first of her novels featuring Miss Marple. I don't think of it as among Christie's more famous titles, but that's probably because they haven't made a movie out of it in my lifetime, or ever (though there have been British and French TV series). Considering how simple all the other answers were to get, the VICAR hit like a very rough road bump. I also, as I said, had some trouble around the PHONE part of PHONE SCAMS, which was exacerbated by the made-up, could-be-anything [Casual greeting] (today, "OH, HEY"), as well as the clue on SHOUT (27D: Big whoop) (I was looking for a word for a "big deal" ... or a "party"? But no, a literal whoop. Fooled me!). Otherwise, not much friction today, which is fine, for a Tuesday.

["Blue" locale in a 1977 Linda Ronstadt classic]

Bullets:

• 18A: ___ fresca (Latin American refreshment) (AGUA) — I had AGUE here at first because I was on autopilot, saw AGU-, and just wrote in the only answer that seemed to fit. This led me to a brief flirtation with OKEY DOKE at 9D: "All right! Enough already!"). Again, I didn't really read the clue there either. It pays not to be complacent, but good luck telling me that on a Tuesday at 4:15am. 
• 43A: Notable features of the Charleston, S.C. skyline (STEEPLES) — having never been to Charleston, and knowing almost nothing about Charleston, I had no idea what this was all about, but between "skyline" and easy-to-get crosses, I could guess. Weirdly, there's nothing on the city's wikipedia page about STEEPLES, but it does have "spires." 

Charleston is known as "the Holy City". Despite beliefs that the term dates to the city's earliest days and refers to its religiously tolerant culture, the expression was coined in the 20th century, likely as a mockery of Charlestonians' self-satisfied attitude about their city. Many sources, however, traditionally link the term to the many old church spires dotting the skyline of downtown Charleston. (wikipedia) 

• 36A: Hide ___ hair (NOR) — only just now noticing how this clue echoes 53D: "Hyde and ___" (1955 Bugs Bunny short) ("HARE"). Nice.

• 63A: Peak in Greek myth (OSSA) — had the "A" and reflexively wrote in ETNA. But no, it's that even crosswordesier mythological mountain, OSSA (ETNA is in Sicily, whereas OSSA is in Greece, near the coast of the northern Aegean.

• 32D: Most dangerous animal in Maine, it's said (MOOSE) — this sounds like a joke but it is not a joke. I was listening to a podcast about the National Parks and at some point the host asked the guides she was with (who were Native American, I believe) what animals were most dangerous and they did not hesitate. MOOSE. Like bears, they are generally human-averse, but you are much more likely to encounter a MOOSE (if you are in MOOSE country) and their sheer size, and their fierce protectiveness of calves, means that more people are injured by MOOSE than by bears every year (at least in Alaska).
• 38D: Comet discovered in 1995 (HALE-BOPP) — did they have to name yet another comet "HAL-" something? I remembered this comet's name, but was not entirely sure how to spell the HALE part (HAIL?). Of all the names of celestial bodies that I know, this one is the most fun to say.

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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❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

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