Hawaiian word for "family" / SAT 11-7-26 / Atari release of 1972 / Texting tech, for short / Forest Service employee responsible for winter rescues / Fizzy cocktail flavor / Nostalgia-inducing illustrations and typography / Women's soccer coach Sundhage

Constructor: Adrian Johnson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PIA Sundhage (36D: Women's soccer coach Sundhage) — 

Pia Mariane Sundhage (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈpîːa ˈsɵ̂nːdˌhɑːɡɛ], born 13 February 1960) is a Swedish football manager and former player who currently manages the Haiti national team. As a player, Sundhage played most of her career as a forward and retired as the top scorer for the Sweden national team.

Sundhage was the head coach of the United States national team from 2008 to 2012 and led the team to two Olympic gold medals and a silver medal at the World Cup. Her success led to her winning the 2012 FIFA World Coach of the Year. Sundhage later became the head coach of her native Sweden from 2012 to 2017, winning an Olympic silver medal in 2016. She coached the Brazil national team from 2019 to 2023. She later managed Switzerland, the hosts of the UEFA Women's Euro 2025. (wikipedia)

• • •

[MINI COOPERs]

Very well made. Polished. Smooth. Impressive craftsmanship. The highs aren't very high, but there really are no lows, so my overall solving experience was a good one. Once again I decided to time myself, and once again I came in with what feels like a fast time, but as I said yesterday, I've lost all sense of historical norms since I turned the clock off on my solving software (Black Ink) many years ago. I finished this one in 5:37, just a half minute or so slower than yesterday. 

[GIF from beta version of Black Ink software]

This one actually felt faster, probably because there were fewer memorable sticking points. The overall cluing must've been a shade harder, as it should be on Saturday. OHANA was the first thing to trip me up (7D: Hawaiian word for "family"). I tried SHAKA in there, for some reason, and being 60% correct, SHAKA held up. Until it didn't. I also wrote in E-TYPE (?!) for 28A: Sporty car type (COUPE) (wow, "type" is right there in the clue so E-TYPE was truly ill-advised—some might say "stupid"). I needed to get to MAN- before I understood what 43A: Job for which you might offer a hand, informally (MANI) was getting at. But each of these mistakes was more hiccup than hangup. The only thing that really stopped me dead, if only for a bit, was the TREE POSE / PIA crossing. I simply didn't know PIA at all, so every letter of that name felt treacherous. As for TREE POSE (34A: It features one leg perpendicular to the other), I've done a thousand of them in my life, so I'm embarrassed I didn't get that one sooner, but in my defense, the clue is ... odd. 

In TREE POSE, the lower part of one (raised) leg is indeed (roughly) perpendicular to the other (standing), but since the raised leg as a whole ends up forming a kind of triangle, and so the alleged perpendicularity of leg to leg just wasn't computing, visually, for me. And since there was nothing in the clue that said (or even whispered) "yoga," I was at a loss. If you look at TREE POSEs online, you will see that no two look exactly alike and the perpendicularity of even the lower part of the raised leg is often aspirational. Anyway, I appreciate the clue's attempted trickery, even if it was, like me in TREE POSE sometimes, a little wobbly.

I love that TREE POSE is symmetrical with GOAT FARM, largely because as soon as I read the clue at 25A: Kid-friendly business?, my immediate and only thought was ... GOAT YOGA. Which is a thing. Or was. I guess you do yoga with goats. Kids, probably. Around you. On you? I'm not sure, novelty yogas have never been my thing, but it does look cute.

None of the longer answers gave me a thrill today. They were mostly solid but unsurprising. Didn't go "ooh, nice" once. I've seen SERENA SLAM a bunch, and things like MASTER KEYS, ATM RECEIPT, and ROAD WORKER are more, well, workmanlike. But again, the overall cleanness of the fill meant I was never unhappy or bored. I do think SOUR GRAPES and PURE GENIUS is a lovely pairing, and the thing in the grid today, to my ears, is "DO WE HAVE TO!?" Not really big on whiny kids, but as colloquial phrases go, I could really hear that one. Amusing. I was less amused by "ONE CAN HOPE," which seems a lot less certain, a lot more dubious about the outcome than "Lord willing!" (14A: "Lord willing!"). "ONE CAN HOPE" sounds like it's said with a resigned sigh, whereas "Lord willing!" sounds like there's some oomph and some hope in there. The puzzle finishes with "IT'S NOT EASY," but that was not at all my experience today. It was, in fact, pretty easy. I finished things up in the SE without having to look at the clues for any of those last three Downs (IKEA, PETS, TROY).

Bullets:

• 49D: City east of Ithaca (TROY) — speaking of TROY, this clue is so weird. I think it refers to ancient Ithaca and TROY—you know, the eastern Mediterranean / Aegean versions featured in The Odyssey. But I live in central NY and I can tell you that TROY, NY (just outside Albany) is also a [City east of Ithaca]. The "c" (as opposed to "k") spelling of "Ithaca" had me thinking "maybe they do mean Ithaca, NY...." But the "c" spelling is how the Greek place is commonly spelled as well, so I don't know. TROY, NY may seem like a small, obscurish city to feature in the NYTXW, but the Times is a NY paper, after all, and TROY, NY has in fact been in the puzzle, more than once, both in clues and as an answer (it's the home of RPI). Strangely, the NY cities stand in almost exactly the same directional relationship to one another. More ENE than "east," but ... well, here, you can see:

• 1A: Beetle alternative beginning in 1961 (MINI COOPER) — this is a fine answer in its own right, but what I really like is the "Beetle" echo at 20A: Beatles song subject who is "filling in a ticket in her little white book" (RITA), and that both clues deal, in their own ways, with cars:

• 31A: "12 Angry Men" director, 1957 (LUMET) — you are not allowed to not know Sidney LUMET any more. At this point, he is crosswordese. This is his fifth appearance this year (!?), making 2026 the Lumettiest year in NYTXW history, by far (no previous year featured more than two appearances). I read his book Making Movies once and loved it. 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon are two of the greatest films ever made. So I don't want to hear "boo hoo, names" or "I didn't know him." You've seen him a million times. Five times this year! That's four times more than Elizabeth ARDEN, and I think of her as crosswordese, so ... yeah, LUMET. Still waiting on OZU and VARDA, but .... LUMET, we got plenty of.
• 11A: Texting tech, for short (SMS) — why did I want RSS??? Ah, RSS is blogging tech, that's why.
• 3D: Titular Pixar character who's mistakenly called names like Bingo, Chico and Fabio (NEMO) — me: "... COCO?" No (no). 

• 50A: Beowulfian, say (EPIC) — I'm making a face at "Beowulfian." It's nominally an epic, but if something were described to me as "Beowulfian," I'd think of something much more poem-specific. Maybe it's about a hero's journey, or hubris, or the Anglo-Saxon world, or it's got monsters in it, etc. Using "Beowulfian" merely to indicate that something is EPIC feels improbable.
• 13D: Fizzy cocktail flavor (SLOE) — SLOE! The crosswordesiest of drupes. I learned the term from crosswords, where it used to appear allllll the damn time. I made one once with my friend Lena on an episode of the crossword podcast we did briefly in the '10s, and I just remember that the only SLOE gin we could get in Binghamton was terrible and the drink ended up looking insane and we couldn't stop laughing. Bubbly carnage. "It looks like someone murdered a pixie!" I assume that, properly made, they are delicious.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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California's locale, according to natives lingo / FRI 11-6-26 / Greenish black rock? / Main role in "The Nutcracker" / Service replaced by Teams / Soda once advertised as "Shockingly refreshing" / Video game character with a spiky head / Spalding, 1984 Oscar-winning role for Sally Field / Popular hangout spots of the 1990s / Flatbread that might be served with cuajada / City north of Chandler / Kimono closers

Constructor: Aidan Deshong

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: bimah (28A: Scrolls that may be read from a bimah = TORAHS) —

: a raised platform in a synagogue from which the Torah is read (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

[17A: Soda once advertised as "Shockingly refreshing"]

It's been a long time since I timed my solves. At some point, I just found the clock a distraction and a pressure that I didn't want, so I usually solve now at a casual and untroubled pace. But my solving software is going to get an update soon and one of the new features is a post-solve GIF showing you (in fast motion) exactly the route you took through the puzzle, followed by your solving time. I'd tested the feature a few times on other puzzles, but I thought I'd try it out officially today. So here it is.

I've got it set so that the clock stays hidden while I'm solving, so it's not hovering in my periphery, taunting me. I see it only at the end. When the GIF finished and showed me a time of 4:58, I was ... hmm, what was I? I forget what my average times used to be on Friday. Somewhere in the 6s? I'm pretty sure that breaking 5 always felt like an accomplishment. My speed-solving typing feels much, much worse now. I'm pretty fat-fingered under ordinary typing circumstances, but speed me up and oof, the miscues come hot and heavy.  Anyway, I may keep the post-solve GIF feature turned off much of the time, as I don't really want to get all wrapped up in the clock again, but I do love being able to see exactly what path I took through the grid, errors and all. Very handy when it comes to reconstructing what the hell just happened, esp. if what the hell just happened was all over in under 5. 

[33A: Video game character with a spiky head]

As for the puzzle itself, lots of whoosh and zoom and lots of fresh answers with very little gunk, so I was satisfied. As a native Californian (San Francisco, 1969), the puzzle won me over at BEST COAST (8D: California's locale, according to natives' lingo)—although I will say that I never heard that expression until well after I'd left California for colder climes. This may be because I grew up in Fresno, which is far from any actual "coast." In fact, I think the first time I ever heard the term was when I learned of the band BEST COAST—I bought their album The Only Place back in 2012. It has an adorable California cover:

It's also just a great album. So, big smile there. My joy at BEST COAST was ultimately undone by CLEAN COAL, both because there's no such thing (it's a talking point of the worst climate change deniers in the world), and because the answer really held me up, more than any other answer (30D: Greenish black rock?). Unfortunate coincidence of tricky "?" clue and a crossing error that I made earlier, trying to spell DOGGONE IT (I had written in DOGGONNIT, like one word, which ... is a variant, but only with one "N," I think). That "N"-where-an-"E"-should be really gummed things up, especially because that answer (CLEAN COAL) was the only path through the extremely narrow passage into the SE (one of my least favorite grid features, the one-square-wide passage way—real flow-killer). So—a perfect storm of off-putting answer, tough clue, error, and puzzle architecture made that area By Far the toughest in the grid for me. If you watch the solving GIF, above, you can see that it's the very last part of the grid that I figured out. 

This puzzle has some good pairings, namely "HANG ON A SEC" next to "BE RIGHT BACK" and "DOGGONE IT!" over "OH, DEAR"—with both pairs getting identical clues (["Give me one moment..."] and ["Good grief!"], respectively). I'm normally not a fan of doubling clues —usually one of the answers doesn't quite work for the clue—also, why waste a cluing opportunity? Give me something new! That's how I usually feel. But today, the clues worked fine for all the answers, and the relevant answers were actually adjacent, so the twinning of the clues made sense. Beyond the CLEAN COAL fiasco, my main problem today was the back ends of longer answers. I had EMAIL and wanted SCAMS (10D: Messages sent from @nicrosoft.com addresses, perhaps = EMAIL HOAXES), then later had STARTER and wanted KITS (21D: Some collections of essentials = STARTER PACKS). Fortunately, neither wrong impulse actually fit in the space allotted, so I didn't write either of them in and get bogged down. But I definitely had to hack at crosses to uncover the correct second word in both cases. I also wanted "A BET'S A BET" not "A BET IS A BET," which sounds like a robot trying to be human. The phrase, as said in real time by real people, is "A BET'S A BET." I fixed my "mistake" easily, but didn't like it. But as I say, I otherwise, for the most part, liked this puzzle quite a bit.

Bullets:

• 16A: Stock exchange? (MOOS) — Had the -OS, wrote in "I DOs"—it's a stock exchange, your IDOS. Standard (stock) exchange (of vows). I really liked my answer! I get that cows are (live)stock, but who are the cows talking to that they're "exchanging" MOOS? Each other? Bah. When cows get married, do they exchange "I MOOs"? Also, can we pretend I didn't just say that. I'm too young to be the corny punning old man! (57 later this month ... that's too young, right? Right!?)
• 57A: Service replaced by Teams (SKYPE) — wait, SKYPE doesn't exist anymore? LOL I don't think I ever used it once, but I just assumed it was still around. I wrote in SLACK here before remembering that I actually use SLACK, so it can't have been "replaced."
• 10A: ___ Spalding, 1984 Oscar-winning role for Sally Field (EDNA) — yeesh, yikes, ouch. Who? I mean, I know who Sally Field is, but this character, this role... they don't even tell you the movie. I hate when clues leave this kind of pertinent information out. Not that knowing the title would've helped me remember the character, but still, it would've been nice. Is it Places in the Heart? It is!! Hurray, brain! Never saw it, but I have a pretty good memory for '80s Oscar bait. 

• 45A: Main role in "The Nutcracker" (CLARA) — another no-idea name. It's a ballet. Do people say her name? I don't remember any speaking or singing at all. But then I haven't seen it performed since I was a child.
• 30A: Popular hangout spots of the 1990s (CHAT ROOMS) — we used to be a real country!
• 41A: Item for a desert hike (CANTEEN) — me: "mmmm, dessert hike. Hmm. PIEEEEE?"
• 1A: Dating around? (CIRCA) — cute clue (CIRCA means "around" and is used when "dating" an object or event of an uncertain time). I got the answer quickly—so quickly that I doubted myself. But then I confirmed the "C" with CAST (1D: Something often signed by friends) and I was off.
• 42D: Flatbread that might be served with cuajada (AREPA) — one thing about modern crosswords—you really gotta know your flatbreads. In five letters, it's almost certainly AREPA. As for "cuajada":

Cuajada (milk curd) is a dairy product traditionally made from sheep's milk, but now it is more often made industrially from cow's milk. It is popular in the northern regions of Spain (Asturias, Cantabria, Basque Country, Navarre, Aragon, Castile and Leon, and La Rioja). In Latin America it is popular in Colombia, Venezuela, and in the Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and in the northern region of Costa Rica.

Raw warmed milk is mixed with rennet or plant extracts and left to curdle. It was traditionally made in a wooden vessel called kaiku and heated with a red-hot poker, giving it a distinct faintly burned taste. Commercial individual servings of cuajada are sold refrigerated in earthenware pots, but modernly plastic containers such as those of yogurt are also sold. Cuajada means "curdled" in Spanish. (wikipedia)

 

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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