Natural wonder in Venezuela / MON 8-24-26 / Clerical vestment / Presentations with an 18-minute limit / Word after Georgia, Virginia or low / Leave the cocoon / Zing ___ (brand of Bloody Mary mix) / "The Magicians" novelist Grossman

Constructor: Steven Jopek

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

[8 days without a Star Wars reference, in case you're wondering]

THEME: HELL OR HIGH WATER (35A: Any foreseeable difficulty ... with a hint to 17-, 25-, 50- and 60-Across) — four theme answers, two of which are (allegedly) examples of "hell," two of which are examples of (literally) "high water":

Theme answers:

• UNDERWORLD (17A: Criminals' sphere)
• TIDAL WAVE (25A: Tsunami)
• PURGATORY (50A: Stop in the afterlife)
• ANGEL FALLS (60A: Natural wonder in Venezuela)

Word of the Day: ANGEL FALLS (60A) —

Angel Falls (Spanish: Salto Ángel; Pemon: Körepakupai Vená) is a waterfall in Venezuela. It is the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, with a height of 979 metres (3,212 ft), and a plunge of 807 m (2,648 ft). The waterfall drops over the edge of the Auyán-tepui mountain in the Canaima National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Canaima), a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State. The height figure, 979 m (3,212 ft), mostly consists of the main plunge but also includes about 400 metres (1,300 ft) of sloped cascade and rapids below the drop and then a 30-metre-high (100 ft) plunge downstream of these talus rapids.

The falls are along a fork of the Río Körepa which flows into the Churún River, a tributary of the Carrao River, itself a tributary of the Orinoco River.

With regard to overall height, a revisited validation of waterfall measurements is not available, and there is still uncertainty whether Angel Falls or South Africa's Tugela Falls is the tallest (both measurements were taken at considerable distance from the two waterfalls). (wikipedia)

• • •

I really wanted to like this. At the halfway point, I did. I got the revealer, looked back at the two themers I'd already gotten, realized one was a word for "hell" and one was an example of "high water," and thought, "oh, that's fun." HELL OR HIGH WATER is a really nice phrase. OK, the full phrase is COME HELL OR HIGH WATER, but it's fine as it is. So, halfway through, feeling alright. And then I hit PURGATORY. Let me tell you something about PURGATORY. First, as any MEDIEVAList (and probably lots of other people) can tell you, it is not "hell." I mean, it is decidedly, definitively, absolutely positively not "hell." The very fact that the clue tells you it is a "stop" in the afterlife tells you that it is not hell. If you know anything about hell, it's that it's not a stop. You go in, and that's it; you don't get out. "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here." Ever heard of it? Kind of famous. Do you know how much PURGATORY is not hell? It's so much not hell that Dante wrote a book about hell (Inferno) and then wrote An Entirely Separate Book about purgatory (Purgatorio), an Entirely Separate Realm of the Afterlife. They are distinct and non-overlapping places. If you are in Purgatory, despite the fact that you might be there for a long time doing unpleasant things over and over, you are Very Very Happy to be there and doing your punishment with great alacrity because (say it with me) you are Not in hell. People in Purgatory get out! They are, in fact, Heaven- (Paradiso-) bound. People in hell, not so much. Not at all. Virgil can leave hell for a bit to show Dante around the first part of purgatory, but eventually he has to hand Dante off to Beatrice because even he, the most important and revered denizen of Inferno (the only one who can get out even temporarily), can only go so far. So ... fatal thematic error. I mean, mind-spinningly fatal. Good theme idea, utterly ruined.

The fill also got a little weak on the back end. CMA ALB ELA (and ELLA?) ... so much overcommon gunk ... and ZANG!?!?!?! (45A: Zing ___ (brand of Bloody Mary mix)). "Brand of Bloody Mary mix" lol what? Seriously, what? LOL. I know you wanted that "Z," but what in the world is happening there? This is the debut of ZANG. You can see why no one ever bothered to use it before. It's awful. A partial Bloody Mary mix name???? Purge your wordlist!!! The great Japanese director Yasujiro OZU is still waiting to make his first appearance in the NYTXW, and meanwhile this frickin' Bloody Mary mix half-name is like "hey, you mind if I cut the line, cool, thanks!" Jeez louise. I do like ZURICH as an answer. Still, not worth the ZANG of it all. Also, so many names in this one. None of them are particularly tough (except maybe LEV, if you're not familiar with modern fantasy lit), but ugh so many: NADIA OLGA POE ESTEE RHEA RIAN LOEW ELBA LEV ELI REGAN ERNIE APU, make it stop (I could've added ARETHA to that list, but you will Never hear me complain about Aretha being in the puzzle).

Bullets:

• 4D: Leave the cocoon (EMERGE) — this was maybe the hardest Down in my Downs-only solve. An odd way to come at EMERGE. Luckily, adjacent Downs allowed me to infer the first few letters of EMERGE, so no great tragedy.
• 65A: Arctic creatures with flippers (SEALS) — "Arctic" ... I mean, sure, but they're just ... creatures with flippers. There are SEALS in plenty of non-Arctic places. Coincidentally, we're in the middle of John Sayles's The Secret of Roan Inish (1994) (I stopped it halfway through to come up and write just now). It's the movie we're watching this week in my Movie Club. It's very seal-centric, and it's set in Ireland, which, last I checked ... not Arctic.

• 25D: Word after Georgia, Virginia or low (TECH) — well you got me. I was like "... REEL?" Seems kinda weak to have two of the three examples be schools, but at least it was unusual. Not "partial Bloody Mary mix name" unusual—just plain old "kinda interesting unusual." You know, the good "unusual."
• 38D: Like many horror flicks (GORY) — speaking of GORY horror flicks, I just saw and really liked Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. The goriness is comically hyperbolic, and I'm not sure I'd actually call it a "horror film"—more a film about horror films, specifically, about the relationship between a young director tasked with rebooting a slasher franchise and the star of the original movie in the franchise (made some forty years earlier), now a reclusive figure living in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. The latter character is played by Gillian Anderson (of X-Files fame), who ends up playing a kind of spiritual/sexual Virgil to Hannah Einbinder's Dante, and let me tell you—you've never seen anything like this relationship on screen. Also, you will never look at Kentucky Fried Chicken, or hear the Counting Crows' "Long December," quite the same way again.

[I was gonna play the Counting Crows song for you here but then I stumbled on this surprising and gorgeous solo version by MJ Lenderman, enjoy]

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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Two farthings, informally / SUN 8-23-26 / Nursery rhyme street vendor's cry / Shoe originally known as a "Weejun" / Adage promoting thrift / Demonstrate frugality, in a way / Aggressive move allowed in some forms of kickboxing / Deuce topper / Street in Liverpool that has been immortalized in song / What a crush might make you do / "It's Your Business" sloganeer, for short / Tree where the Buddha found enlightenment / Protected space for women in the Ottoman Empire

Constructor: Jill Singer

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (actually Easy, but it might've taken some people a while to get the whole rebus angle...)

THEME: "Small Change" — a puzzle where you PUT IN YOUR TWO CENTS (121A: Offer advice ... or a hint to 24- and 72-Across); that is, you enter "PENNY" in a single square twice, in two different answers; there are also assorted features of the penny strewn about the grid:

The "PENNY" rebus answers:

• "A [PENNY] SAVED IS A [PENNY] EARNED" (24A: Adage promoting thrift) / HA'PENNY (5D: Two farthings, informally) / [PENNY]PINCH (26D: Demonstrate frugality, in a way)
• "ONE A [PENNY], TWO A [PENNY], HOT CROSS BUNS" (72A: Nursery rhyme street vendor's cry) / [PENNY] LOAFER (74D: Shoe originally known as a "Weejun") / "[PENNY] LANE" (75D: Street in Liverpool that has been immortalized in song)

Penny features:

• ABRAHAM LINCOLN (32A: Image on one side of this puzzle's subject)
• U.S. MINT (50A: Where this puzzle's subject was last made for circulation (in November 2025))
• THE UNION SHIELD (112A: Image on one side of this puzzle's subject)

Word of the Day: THE UNION SHIELD (112A) —

The 2005 act that authorized the redesign for the Bicentennial stated that another redesigned reverse for the Lincoln cent will be minted which "shall bear an image emblematic of President Lincoln's preservation of the United States of America as a single and united country". Eighteen designs were proposed for the reverse of the 2010 cent. In April 2009, the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) met and selected a design that showed 13 wheat sheaves bound together with a ring symbolizing American unity as one nation.

Later this design was withdrawn because it was similar to coinage issued in Germany in the 1920s. The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee later met and chose a design showing a Union shield with ONE CENT superimposed in a scroll. E Pluribus Unum was also depicted in the upper portion of the shield. In June 2009 the CFA met again and chose a design featuring a modern rendition of the American flag. As a part of the release ceremony for the last of the 2009 cents on November 12, the design for the 2010 cent was announced.

The design chosen was the one that was chosen earlier by the CCAC. The 13 stripes on the shield "represent the states joined in one compact union to support the Federal government, represented by the horizontal bar above". The Mint also noted that a shield was commonly used in paintings in the Capitol hallways painted by Constantino Brumidi, an artist in the Capitol active during the Lincoln Presidency.

The obverse of the cent was also changed to a modern rendition of Brenner's design. The new Union Shield design replaces the Lincoln Memorial in use since 1959. (wikipedia)

• • •

I guess I haven't really looked closely at a penny in a long time, because I still thought the image on the obverse side was the Lincoln Memorial. That was true in my childhood, and my young adulthood, and my early middle age, but apparently all that changed in 2010 for some reason. And now the penny is extinct. Weird. Anyway, I don't understand the appeal of this subject matter. The rebus thing is kind of cute (the bit where you literally put two cents (or "PENNY"s) into two of the answers), but that's a really thin gimmick, padded out with just a handful of assorted, extremely dull penny-related facts. Just ... physical features of the penny. Very boring. The definition of filler. And U.S. MINT? I mean, that answer doesn't even have a symmetrical equivalent. What a weird, extraneous, and not-at-all-interesting answer. You gotta be some kind of hardcore penny enthusiast to love this one. I am not numismatically inclined, so this was a snooze for me—a puzzle with an OK concept but only two workable answers ... and then some real obvious trivia about the penny. I love a good rebus, but there's just not enough of it, and no amount of penny-description is going to make up for that. 

The puzzle was also hampered by extremely ordinary fill. Standard, plain, unexciting stuff. Filler. That's how I felt about most of this puzzle. There was the rebus angle ... and when that proved thin, there was just a lot of cheap stuffing to fill the grid out. What is there to get excited about today? AL PASTOR tacos are pretty good, that answer was fun, and plays nicely / funnily off of AL CAPONE (54D: Notorious Chicago bootlegger), I liked that, but what else? LINE ITEM? TOOL CASE (shouldn't it be "kit" or "box"?)? WISE OFF? (62D: Say something fresh). Is that still an expression? Feels very '50s to me, somehow. I think we "mouth off" now. A wiseacre might make wise cracks (or crack wise), but I don't remember the last time any of this "wise" stuff had much ... currency. Maybe back when a penny could buy you candy. The fill just LIMPS along, never really offering any surprises or laughs or ... anything. Flat flat flat. Like a penny. Like a penny you leave on the railroad tracks. Did people used to do that? Am I hallucinating that? Nope, it's a real phenomenon. I feel (slightly) better now. About my brain. Not about this puzzle.

There were no real hard parts to this thing. I had trouble with "OHH" because of course I did, what the hell? (76D: "Wow!"). OMG = "Wow!" I have no idea what "OHH" is ... except a dupe of "OH FUN" (that extra "H" isn't fooling anyone) (99A: "Sounds like a blast!"). Speaking of dupes: STINK UP and ANTE UP. I'm much more likely to notice (and be bothered by) small dupes like this when the fill is monotonous and the theme isn't theming very well. Besides "OHH," the other answers I needed a little time to get were COCOONED (which I have never once used as a verb, even when talking about butterflies) (93D: Made cozy) and KNEEING (?) (96A: Aggressive move allowed in some forms of kickboxing). I had the KNEE part and figured the answer would be something technical, like KNEE HIT or KNEE JAB or KNEE TAP or KNEE POP or KNEE RIP, but no. Just KNEEING.

Bullets:

• 8A: What a crush might make you do (FLIRT) — I'm sorry, "make you"?? "Make you"???? [What you might do with a crush], sure. [What a crush might make you do]???? No. Even if the "crush" here is the feeling and not the person involved, no. "Make you," LOL, take some responsibility for your choices, yeesh.
• 55A: Genre for Siouxsie and the Banshees (GOTH) — I would've said "post-punk," but I see "gothic rock" listed among their genres there on wikipedia; in fact, they are the first band mentioned on the "gothic rock" wikipedia page:

Gothic rock (also known as goth rock or simply goth) is a subgenre of rock music which grew out of British post-punk in the late 1970s. The genre draws from gothic literature, nihilism, dark romanticism, poetry and tragedy. The style evolved through early post-punk bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus, and the Cure, who shifted their music toward darker gothic overtones through an emphasis on minor chords, reverb, dark arrangements, and melancholic melodies. (wikipedia) 

 

• 112D: Deuce topper (THREE) — since "Deuce" is slang for "two," I would've expected something like "TREY" here, not the standard/formal THREE. 
• 104A: Meeting that goes above and beyond? (SEANCE) — things get interestingly otherworldly here for a sec. Nice "?" clue. Definitely a highlight of the puzzle. Have you ever seen SEANCE on a Wet Afternoon (1964)? You can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube. A tense and creepy and beautiful film.

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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