Caddies, in golf slang / THU 7-9-26 / Dinosaur named for a lizard tooth / Rowers' workout machines, informally / Caucasus region / Hit 1977 musical that included Franklin D. Roosevelt as a character / Show that ends in disarray? / Hydrox lookalike / One of the six sluggers on baseball's Murderer's Row / Double-decker checker / Hamilton author of the classic "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes"

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann and Nat Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Easy

[2D: "Star Wars" planet where Luke Skywalker rides a tauntaun (HOTH) / 44D: Padmé ___ (mother of Luke and Leia Skywalker (AMIDALA)]

THEME: FORGONE (38A: Renounced ... or a phonetic hint to reading the answers to the starred clues) — FORGONE = "four gone"; theme answers contain four letters (all the same) that must be removed in order for the clues to make sense:

Theme answers:

• STUTTGART (w/ four "T"s gone => SUGAR) (17A: *Honeybunch)
• TELL-ALLS (w/ four "L"s gone => TEAS) (25A: *Afternoon socials)
• BASSISTS (w/ four "S"s gone => BAIT) (49A: *Worms or flies, often)
• APIA, SAMOA (w/ four "A"s gone => PISMO) (60A: *___ Beach, Calif.)

Word of the Day: OSSETIA (42D: Caucasus region) —

Ossetia [...] is an ethnolinguistic region on both sides of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, largely inhabited by the Ossetians. The Ossetian language is part of the Eastern Iranian branch of the family of Indo-European languages. Most countries recognize the Ossetian-speaking area south of the main Caucasus ridge as lying within the borders of Georgia, but it has come under the control of the de facto government of the Russian-backed State of Alania. The northern portion of the region consists of the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania within the Russian Federation. (wikipedia)

• • •

This theme is kind of interesting, even if at its core it's just a bunch of ordinary clues for ordinary short fill. I mean, [Worm or flies often] = BAIT—you might see that in any puzzle and not give it a second look. The opposite of remarkable. But add those four letters (in the case of BAIT, four "S"s) and you've got yourself enough wackery and confusion for a Thursday theme, I guess. I say "I guess" because I'm not quite sure it's enough. Once you suss the theme—not hard to do, since the revealer is easy to uncover—then you really are just dealing with ordinary clue/answers and the only "mystery" is what those extra four letters are going to be and where they're going to go, and that's never hard to figure out, esp. with all four extra letters being the same letter. Plus the rest of the puzzle, the non-theme part, was something like Tuesday-easy. The concept feels Thursday-worthy, but in practice, it provided about as much resistance as a wet paper towel. Still, the wordplay at the core of the puzzle works, and it was kind of fun watching the four- or five-letter answers appear from inside the longer answers. It's got something, this puzzle, even if that something does feel a little slight.

Outside the theme, results are mixed. First of all, as usual, the puzzle is just too easy. I solve by working crosses rather than hopping around, and today this resulted, strangely, in my going coast-to-coast before I'd even really started. I drifted into the middle and once I got there I was like "can I just keep going?" and it turns out yes. All the way:

Corner to corner, nonstop! Across Down Across Down, bam bam bam bam all the way! I got to the bottom, looked back up, thought "well, that was weird," and then continued, knowing that whatever theme trickery awaited me, it probably wasn't going to hold me up for long. That first pass through the grid alone gave me So Much Traction. Without even knowing it, I'd already filled in almost half the revealer! While I liked much of the fill (AS WE SPEAK, IGUANODON, that clue on STRIPTEASE (28D: Show that ends in disarray?)), a little too much of it SWUNG toward crosswordese. A lot of overfamiliar stuff. From EGAD and ASONE and ASP in the SW to ELL and ENTS in the NE ... ATIT APU CEO ETAS ERGS IONA ... the always odious ODEA. And then there's SAPOR, a word I've only ever seen in crosswords (it's adjectival form is SAPID, so, you know, keep your eye out for that ... someday). It's been four years since we've seen SAPOR, which tells you how ungreat a word it is. With those letters? If it were anything like an ordinary word, we'd be seeing it way more often. I wouldn't really mind it if the puzzle weren't already drowning in crosswordy stuff. Also, even though I think it's a fair cross for APIA, SAMOA, I can easily imagine that some solver(s) wrote in SAVOR, which seems like a perfectly reasonable answer for 52D: Taste. That would give you AVIA, SAMOA, but if I'm being very very honest ... you could convince me that AVIA was, in fact, the capital of Samoa. Like, if you just called it that in conversation, I probably wouldn't blink. Of course AVIA is a shoe, not a city, but crosswordese lives in weird heaps and jumbles inside my brain, and I can't always tell one bit from the other when I'm fumbling around in the dark. Would love to know if there were any AVIA / SAVOR victims today. Confess! It's OK, you're pre-forgiven!

The one ????? today was OSSETIA. Talk about a no-hoper. I had -SSETIA and still wasn't sure how to finish it off. The Times used it once back in 1956, and then once again in the mid '90s, and then I guess it's in constructors' wordlists now. A real "my software said it's real!" kind of answer. Of course, OSSETIA is located precisely in that part of the world where my geographical knowledge (only semi-reliable on a good day) is the absolute worst. That Europe-Asia blur. Near the western Stans. Just a mental-map dead zone for me. Doesn't help that OSSETIA is not a country but a region, one that straddles countries and is divided into a North and South. North OSSETIA is in Russia and South OSSETIA is in Georgia ... but South OSSETIA has now apparently been annexed by Russia, or is essentially under Russian control, so who the hell knows? All I know is that answer stood out like a fly in my cereal—the one thing I didn't know today, and I really didn't know it. Extreme not-knowing. Random letters. Between AVIA I mean APIA, SAMOA and OSSETIA, a real geographical adventure today.

[62A: Hit 1977 musical that included Franklin D. Roosevelt as a character]

Bullets:

• 19A: Group of spellers? (COVEN) — "spellers?" = ones who cast spells. It's a (very) old pun.
• 21A: Back-to-basics regimen (PALEO DIET) — does this clue work for the PALEO DIET industry? Big Paleo? "Back-to-basics" is ... questionable. What is "basics?" This is PR, not science. Avoiding heavily processed food is a good idea, sure, but this idea that you can (or should) eat like Paleolithic Man seems dubious at best:

The diet avoids food processing and typically includes vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots, and meat and excludes dairy products, grains, sugar, legumes, processed oils, salt, alcohol, and coffee.^[Historians can trace the ideas behind the diet to "primitive" diets advocated in the 19th century. In the 1970s, Walter L. Voegtlin popularized a meat-centric "Stone Age" diet; in the 21st century, the best-selling books of Loren Cordain popularized the "Paleo diet". As of 2019 the Paleolithic diet industry was worth approximately US$500 million.

In the 21st century, the sequencing of the human genome and DNA analysis of the remains of anatomically modern humans have found evidence that humans evolved rapidly in response to changing diet. This evidence undermines a core premise of the Paleolithic diet—that human digestion has remained essentially unchanged over time. Paleoanthropological evidence has indicated that prehistoric humans ate plant-heavy diets that regularly included grains and other starchy vegetables, in contrast to the claims made by proponents of the Paleolithic diet. (wikipedia)

• 26A: Caddies, in golf slang (LOOPERS) — golf slang, BRODATEs, and PALEO DIET—puzzle's trying real hard to flex its manliness. I weirdly knew LOOPERS from ... some dimly remembered James Ellroy novel? One of his early ones? I'm reading online that Ellroy himself was a golf caddy for years, so the connection makes sense, even if I can't remember what exactly I read. I just remember thinking LOOPERS was pretty cool, as golf slang goes.

• 33A: Scare off (DETER) — for some reason, this was the second-hardest thing in the puzzle for me to get (after OSSETIA, lol). I had -TER and no idea what to do with it. In my mind, there's some kind of intensity gap between "scaring" and merely "deterring." 
• 24D: Hydrox lookalike (OREO) — I like that the clue gets the timeline right here. Hydrox preceded OREO by five years or so.

Oreo was created in 1912 as an imitation of Hydrox, but eventually surpassed it in popularity. This resulted in the Hydrox cookies being perceived by many as an imitation of Oreo, despite the opposite being the case. Compared to Oreos, Hydrox cookies have a less sweet filling and a crunchier cookie shell that is less soggy when dipped in milk. (wikipedia)

• 32D: Long time follower? (AGO) — in the common phrase "a long time AGO" (in a galaxy far, far away) (double Star Wars day today! that happens once in a blue moon ... therefore, the double Star Wars clue phenomenon will be known henceforth as a Blue Endor)

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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Low-quality synthetic images, informally / WED 7-8-26 / Fish, roads or weapons that are long and thin / Prominent features of tarsiers / Weekly reward for a strict dieter, maybe / Mickey with an Oscar nomination for "The Wrestler" / Fitness fad popularized by Billy Blanks

Constructor: Mason Hyunjin Lee

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: This or that — phrases following the pattern "___ OR ___" are clued via a single word where the first letter has been presented as an alternative (two letters on either side of a slash)—use one letter and you get the clue for the first term in the phrase, use the second and you get the clue for the latter:

Theme answers:

• MAKE OR BREAK (17A: [C/P]ause) ("Cause" = "make" / "Pause" = "break")
• TRICK OR TREAT (27A: [L/C]ure) ("Lure" = "trick" / "Cure" = "treat")
• HEADS OR TAILS (46A: [M/H]inds) ("Minds" = "heads" / "Hinds" = "tails")
• LIFE OR DEATH (62A: [Z/R]est) ("Zest" = "life" / "Rest" = "death")

Word of the Day: tarsiers (45A: Prominent features of tarsiers = EYES) —

Tarsiers (/ˈtɑːrsiərz/ TAR-see-ərz) are haplorhine primates of the family Tarsiidae, which is the lone extant family within the infraorder Tarsiiformes. Although the group was prehistorically more globally widespread, all of the existing species are restricted to Maritime Southeast Asia, predominantly in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. // They are found primarily in forested habitats, especially forests that have liana, since the vine gives tarsiers vertical support when climbing trees. (wikipedia)

• • •

What I like about this theme is its elegant simplicity. The theme answers are all solid and familiar, nothing wobbly or strange or made-up sounding, which is nice, but it's the cluing strategy that's most impressive—one word, first letter bracketed to offer a choice of two letters, with the first first letter making a perfect definition for the first half of the "___ OR ___" phrase, and the second letter making a perfect definition for the second half. No frills, no extra words, no fussiness. Spare. Compact. Almost poetic. At first my EYES rejected the theme cluing ("what is this nonsense?"), but once my EYES adjusted, they were able to see the coherence and precision. The concept here is not mind-blowing, but it's clean and clever. It does what it does perfectly. EASY PEASY. Maybe too easy—I know it's only Wednesday, but there were only a handful of answers that caused me to pause at all, and the only part that really required me to slow down and hack at the crosses was the MEAL part of CHEAT MEAL (34D: Weekly reward for a strict dieter, maybe). I've heard of a "cheat day," but never a CHEAT MEAL (this moralistic language around diet seems really unhealthy, but it's certainly common). CHEAT MEAL makes sense, but it doesn't ring as true in my ears as CHEAT DAY. When I got the "M"  I was like "CHEAT MONTH? seems like a long time. Also, won't fit." CHEAT DAY does Google better than CHEAT MEAL, but not by that much, actually (7.7 v. 6.9 million hits). Anyway, I needed Mia HAMM and one of her GAL pals to get me to MEAL. Speaking of cheating and HAMM, did you know there's a new movie out this week about a woman whose boyfriend cheats on her with his "celebrity sex pass" (you know, the one celebrity you're allowed to sleep with if you have the chance ... which seems like it isn't really "cheating" but whatever ...) and so to make things even she goes on a quest to sleep with her "celebrity sex pass": Jon HAMM. It's called Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. I know nothing else about this movie. I just learned of its existence yesterday because it's coming to Cinemapolis in Ithaca this week and I'm considering seeing it. No spoilers!

The one low point for me today, you won't be surprised to hear, was A.I. SLOP (23A: Low-quality synthetic images, informally). It's a very current phrase, very much in-the-news, very "now," I'm just ... exhausted by A.I. everything. Asking me to get excited about A.I. SLOP is like asking me to get excited about oozing wounds or police brutality or pickup trucks the size of tanks. I know those things exist, but ugh. Extreme ugh. I mean, it's got the word "slop" right in it. "Slop" is never going to improve the look of your puzzle, or anything. If you want to give me a six-letter answer with "A.I." in it, just move "A.I." to the back of the answer and put a four-letter word in front of it. That, I will accept.

I had a few small missteps today. Needed help from crosses to get PIKES (3D: Fish, roads or weapons that are long and thin). Had ONSET before RESET (60A: New beginning). And, best/worst of all, I had Mickey ROONEY as the Mickey with the Oscar nomination instead of Mickey ROURKE (whose name I initially spelled ROARKE) (15A: Mickey with an Oscar nomination for "The Wrestler"). Mickey ROONEY had a long career, but I don't think he ever played a wrestler. He did play a race car driver, though. Drive a Crooked Road (1954) is a really underrated film noir with an exciting heist/chase scene toward the end and a dramatic beach climax surpassed only by the dramatic beach climax of Kiss Me, Deadly (1955) (which involves a beach house exploding in a miniature nuclear holocaust). I sometimes forget that Mickey ROONEY looks over me every day, over every word I type. His screaming face is on the movie poster that hangs directly behind me:

[I went through a Mamie Van Doren phase, what can I say ...]

Anyway, if you've got 90 minutes to spare and want to see Mickey ROONEY do some pretty good, non scenery-chewing acting, I recommend Drive a Crooked Road.

Bullets:

• 11A: Helpful skill for guessers (ESP) — not an actual "skill." Can't be "helpful" if it's not real.
• 21A: What "Eat" stands for in the mnemonic "Never Eat Soggy Waffles" (EAST) — this needed a "mnemonic"???? There's only four in the set, and they're everyday, common things. I understand needing a mnemonic for the colors of the rainbow (really useful, in fact) (ROY G BIV), or the planets (My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nachos), or the lines on a treble staff (Every Good Boy Does Fine), but the directions??? Why not just NEWS? Is it that you need them to go in order, clockwise? Hmm. Maybe this will help me with my (profound) East / West dyslexia (every time I hear them paired, the sequence is "east/west," but on a map (reading left to right) they're "west/east," and my brain just can't reconcile these things, so I have to think about which is which Literally Every Time I want to give/receive directions ... whereas North and South are never unclear to me (perhaps because they are based on fixed poles ... who knows how brains work!?!?)
• 38A: "Way to go, kid!" ("ATTA BOY!") — sticking with the surprise movie theme of today's write-up, I watched The Bad News Bears yesterday (50th anniversary!) (streaming free on Hoopla), which meant that I weirdly heard this clue in the voice of Walter Matthau. Also, when I got to 55D: Rest like a bat, I was imagining a bat "resting" on the batter's shoulder. Like so:

• 50A: Fitness fad popularized by Billy Blanks (TAE BO) — the fitness fad that will never die, at least not in crosswords. It's not even slowing down. The year is only half over and already we've had more TAE BOs this year (three) than in any year since 2016. The record is four (in 2015), so 2026 could end up being the TAE BO-iest year ever. And it stopped being "popular" ages ago! A real zombie word. We're all on TAE BO Watch now.
• 28D: "Sleep is like a ___: It only comes to you if you ignore it": Gillian Flynn ("CAT") — since when did Gillian Flynn become a source of aphorisms? I guess this line is in one of her novels (?). Not sure about the truth value of this clue. My cats come to me when I shake their food containers. Or if I have string. Well, one cat couldn't care less about string, but the other cannot focus on anything else if there is string in the room. Absolute maniac for string. Such a weird boy.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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