Poles tossed in a highland competition / WED 4-29-26 / Rinse with water, as grain in the brewing process / Guofeng, successor to Mao Zedong / Coastal resort city in southern California / Shoe with a "kitten" variety / Swabbie's tool / "Wall Street," for the U.S. financial industry

Constructor: Joseph Gangi

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "internet company" puns — words starting with "COM" are imagined as descriptions of internet companies (you have to mentally supply the DOT before the "COM" ... until the end, when the puzzle limply hands it to you (58D: Preceder of the answer to each of this puzzle's starred clues)

Theme answers:

• COM BUST (1A: *Failed internet company)
• COM PROMISE (25A: *Assurance from an internet company)
• COM POSER (31A: *Puzzling question from an internet company)
• COM PRESS (39A: *Exposure for an internet company?)
• COM PARABLE (46A: *Illustrative story from an internet company)
• COM POST (62A: *Blog message from an internet company)

Word of the Day: SPARGE (8A: Rinse with water, as grain in the brewing process) —

Sparging in brewing is the process of rinsing grain with hot water to extract fermentable sugars after the initial mash. This critical step allows brewers to maximize sugar extraction efficiency, typically recovering 75-85% of available sugars from malted grains. Understanding proper sparging techniques is essential for both home brewers and commercial operations to achieve consistent beer quality and optimal yields. (beersnobwrites DOT COM!)

• • •

I have to say, I don't understand what DOT is doing in this puzzle? By the time I got down to that corner—in fact, from the moment I got the first themer—I understood that the COMs were DOTCOMs. I didn't really think about the fact that the DOT was missing. I didn't even think there was going to be a revealer at all, so transparent was the gimmick. You break COM- words into two parts so that the COM stands on its own, and that phrase describes your hypothetical "internet company." The end. When I hit DOT, what I felt was not "OH, COOL, an interesting answer to make it all make sense!" It was more like ".... oh, I guess COMs are preceded by DOTs ... huh." It's possibly the Most Anticlimactic Revealer of All Time. For a brief moment, I thought maybe the stars (*) at the start of each theme clue were supposed to be little DOTs, and so the "DOT" was there all along ... but that's impossible, since the DOT clue specifically refers to those stars as (surprise!) "stars" ("starred clues," technically). So ... DOT then. DOT. I guess this puzzle ends ... on the DOT! That's ... something. In my mind, it's something. A thing I have contrived to make DOT enjoyable. Otherwise, this puzzle is a bunch of repetitive dadjoke "com" puns, and I appreciate that this will be ample entertainment for some folks. Wasn't quite enough for me.

I appreciate that the clues were tightened up a bit, difficulty-wise, given how much it was giving away on the thematic end (i.e. after you get the first couple of "COM-" answers, you can just plunk down COM down four more times without thinking). Answers like TOURNAMENT (29D: Where seeds might be placed) and PATIENCE (17A: Trait for a good waiter?) had tricky clues, and then there were fancyish words like METONYM and obscure words like SPARGE, so the puzzle stayed fairly interesting even if you (like me) thought the theme was just so-so. There are some less than lovely moments, though. That SPARGE / SOPOR cross is yeesh—niche word + word I only ever see in xwords. Then there's crosswordese couple ZAC and ONO holding hands, a PREOP and an OPED, the second "I DO CARE" in the last four days (weird to have an answer debut on Sunday and reappear already by Wednesday (I hope we're done with IDOCAREs for a while). I don't really know the phrase PHOTO DUMPS—I guess it's just the place where you dump all your photos. My phone is my photo dump. It's extremely uncurated. Not sure why anyone would want to make their "uncurated" photos accessible to the world, but there's lots of things about this world I don't get. It's fine. Oh, now that I think of it ... I guess I have seen social media posts where people appear to have just "dumped" all their photos, from a vacation or an event, into one place for others to leaf through. I do like the term, even though I think curation is your (and everybody's) friend. The internet is already full of gunk. A little ... judicious culling of the clutter would be nice.

Bullets:

• 29A: Lightly strike, as a windowpane (TAP AT) — wrote this right in, then pulled the "T" when realized "hmm, it could be RAP AT" (the way the narrator hears something "rapping at his chamber door" in "The Raven")

• 18A: Ingredient in shepherd's pie (POTATO) — me: "Peas ... PEEEAS!"
• 12D: Visit (GO TO SEE) — I'd like this answer a hell of a lot better if it had a "D" on the end.
• 53D: Control center? (TEE) — a "letteral" clue—the TEE here is the letter "T" (which sits at the "center" of the word "Control"
• 39D: Poles tossed in a Highland competition (CABERS) — spelling challenge for me, as I always want CABORS (the fact that I can unironically say "always" re: CABERS tells you how many damned puzzles I do, it's unnatural). CABER is one of those five-letter words where, when you know it, you can't unknow it, and so if you're playing Wordle or Quordle it will get in your head — you know (probably!?) that that is never going to be the correct answer, but you can't be sure. It's doubly a problem if (like me) you couldn't spell it correctly even if it was the answer.
• 6D: Recipient of many dad jokes (SON) — is the person who is forced to hear the "joke" the "recipient." Do I "receive" a comedian's jokes? If he's not sending them through the mail ... I dunno ... 
• 48A: What a track athlete may do three times in one attempt (JUMP) — if this clue seems slightly confusing to you, it's because it's referring to the specific event the triple jump without directly referring to it.

• 50A: Just (MERE) — this is what I mean about the puzzle tightening up the difficulty a little. The clue isn't hard, just ... extremely ambiguous. "Just" means an awful lot of things, and since the answer today ran through CAR (which I had as CAB) and CABERS (which, as we've established, I had as CABORS), I got more bogged down here than anywhere else in the puzzle (as you can see from my finished grid image, above, the "E" at CABERS / MERE was my last letter).
• 51A: ___ Guofeng, successor to Mao Zedong (HUA) — the only answer in the grid (besides SPARGE) that I wasn't familiar with. Thank god for crosses.
• 60A: Shoe with a "kitten" variety (STILETTO) — I would've had kitten heels and STILETTOs as entirely different animals but this is because I do not wear women's shoes (or pay very close attention to them). The "kitten" heels are a more practical height (< 2 in.) than typical STILETTOs
• 15D: Coastal resort city in southern California (DEL MAR) — I think there's a racetrack there. Yeah, a pretty famous one. I ate lunch in DEL MAR once, after an L.A. Crossword Tournament at Loyola Marymount University back around 2010. I think constructors Andrea Carla Michaels and Doug Peterson were there. That is my exciting DEL MAR story. Oh wait, no—that was probably Marina del Rey, not DEL MAR. Never mind...

That's all. See you next time!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Sink-or-swim competition? / TUES 4-28-26 / Part of a piano or loom / Kid-lit girl with a blueberry pail / Greek goddess of the earth / Some cantina fare

Hello, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday of April! Hope everyone has been enjoying it, as spring has (mostly) sprung, and we’re yet to get the most stifling heat possible. I got to hike yesterday with my pup midday without dying from the heat. She loved it and got exhausted and absolutely filthy and tried to refuse a bath. I’m crossing my fingers for my Penguins (now down just 2-3 in the series against the hated Flyers) and have been going to Washington Spirit NWSL games here in DC. I also started watching the F1 documentary on Netflix and have gotten very invested in the outcome of this season, so I may be watching come racetime here in the US in a few days. Not a whole lot else going on with me… but my sister is currently on day three of walking the Camino de Santiago via el Camino Francés (French Way). She’ll be walking about 15 miles a day for over 30 days to reach Santiago, Spain. So join me in wishing her a Buen Camino! 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Hal Moore

Relative difficulty: Average for a Tuesday

THEME: SEEN AND NOT HEARD (58A: Like children, ideally, in an old adage … or a hint to a four-letter word hidden in 17-, 32- and 40-Across) — The word “seen” can be, well, seen in each of the three theme answers but isn’t pronounced in the phrases 

Theme answers:

• TIES UP LOOSE ENDS (17A: Handles a few unresolved issues)
• CLOSE ENOUGH (32A: Not perfect, but acceptable) 
• MISE EN PLACE (40A: Station set up in a kitchen)

Word of the Day: EDNA (57D: ___ Lewis, the "Grande Dame of Southern Cooking") —

Edna Regina Lewis (April 13, 1916 – February 13, 2006) was a renowned American chef, teacher, and author who helped refine the American view of Southern cooking. She championed the use of fresh, in-season ingredients and characterized Southern food as fried chicken (pan-, not deep-fried), pork, and fresh vegetables – most especially greens. She wrote and co-wrote four books, which covered Southern cooking and life in a small community of freed slaves and their descendants, including The Taste of Country Cooking and In Pursuit of Flavor… In 1979, Craig Claiborne of The New York Times wrote The Taste of Country Cooking "may well be the most entertaining regional cookbook in America". Food & Wine in 2025 said it was "widely regarded as one of the most important cookbooks of the 20th century." (Wiki)

• • •

Clever enough theme for a Tuesday puzzle, for which your enjoyment may have depended on how well you know — or at least how quickly you could get — MISE EN PLACE (40A). I know the phrase well, but it did take me a little bit to see it just because it looks so horrible (and confusing) when written out like MISEENPLACE. I think I had MISEExPxxx and just couldn’t see it. Luckily, the downs weren’t too hard, but I expect some people might’ve felt stuck there. The other theme answers were fine. That you don’t hear “seen” pronounced in any of the theme answers is interesting and adds a dimension to the NOT HEARD part of the revealer. I suspect SEEN could have appeared in any number of possible answers, though I may be overstating the range of potential theme answers. I’d always thought of the phrase as SEEN but NOT HEARD, though a Google search tells me the phrases are interchangeable. Regardless, while the theme didn’t help with the solve, the revealer was nice. 

There just weren’t a lot of answers that popped, which made the puzzle feel somewhat boring. My favorite was definitely WATER POLO (15A: Sink-or-swim competition?), and I love the use of TEA (21A: Gossip, slangily) to describe gossip. PAPAYAS (47A: Ingredients in some tropical smoothies) is fun. And I suppose CONTINUITY (10D: Script supervisor's concern) is a good long word. But I can’t drum up excitement for AXIS POWERS (29D: Coalition that opposed the Allies in W.W. II) or CANST (43D: "___ thou not minister to a mind diseased …?": Macbeth) or ARREAR (48D: Overdue debt) or GRAMMAR (27A: Linguist's concern) or… Looking back, it was hard to find much to describe about the non-theme answers because it all blended together in one ball of meh in my head. 

I didn’t like how vague 24A: Welcome at the door, say was. I originally had “let in” and then “see in,” and it turned out to be ASK IN. YES I AM as 4D: Emphatic confirmation doesn’t seem to fit because it isn't inherently an emphatic phrase. Phrases like ADD TO (22A: Build on) and AT IT (36A: Bickering) also don't inspire much interest. 

There seemed to be more proper nouns than usual, such as: SOSA, KROC, RUN DMC, OPI, ROSA, IAGO , PEETE, SAGAN, and EDNA. I learned today that Calvin PEETE and Rodney PEETE (49D) were cousins. The puzzle also had a sort of mini theme with words with their origin in another country: PAOLO, CIAO, TACOS, PESOS, SEÑOR, SERAPE, MISE EN PLACE, LOX, TRE, and SUNNI.

Misc.:

• I might’ve gotten the most excited today over SAL (33D: Kid-lit girl with a blueberry pail) in the puzzle. I hadn’t thought of “Blueberries for Sal” in so many years, but that was one of my favorite books growing up. 
• Seeing LOX (31A: Bagel topping) in the puzzle reminds me of how many times I’ve gone to a bagel place near me in DC called Call Your Mother. I moved just a few minutes closer to it, but I’ve already gone probably four times in the last few weeks to get a bagel with cream cheese, capers, and LOX. They’re so delicious. 
• I used to use OPI (5A: Nail polish brand) nail polish all the time. Then I started rock climbing, and my nails would chip after climbing just once. So I’ve barely had my nails painted at all in years. 
• For National Independent Bookstore Day this past Saturday, I went to a couple local bookstores and managed to snag a print from a special edition Inciardi print. The machine to get the print requires four quarters, and when I put mine in at one point, I realized it wasn’t working because I was trying it with three quarters and one PESO (46A: Coins of Cuba) I apparently brought back with me from Mexico. Oops! I also got the book “Lost Lambs” by Madeline Cash, which comes highly recommended from my sister, and “Weavingshaw” by Heba Al-Wasity, a fantasy book I’m already halfway into and loving! 
• In other very important news, BTS is now on tour!! I’m counting down the days until I get to see them in Baltimore in August and get to see something like this. 
• I’m feeling a little ACHY (1A: Sore) after my hike yesterday. And Red might be, too, after our many miles…
• 

(and a bonus

(a bonus pic from when Red wanted some of my happy hour TACOS (8A))

And that's all from me, folks! Have a great month of May.

Signed, Clare Carroll, who's always both seen and heard :)

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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