Where Docs and Sheets are stored / WED 8-12-26 / Throw, for instance / Jordan joined it in 1984, for short / 2024 film that won Best Picture / Nickname for MLB's Angels / Greek letter representing elasticity in economics / "Battles" of those busting moves / Mentions by user name on social media

Constructor: Adrianne Baik

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: INTERNET TRAFFIC (38A: Web volume measured in hits ... or a hint to 17-, 23-, 49- and 61-Across) — internet-related terms that contain (street) traffic-related terms:

Theme answers:

• GOOGLE DRIVE (17A: Where Docs and Sheets are stored)
• NETWORK SPEEDS (23A: Measurements of Wi-Fi performance)
• COMPUTER CRASH (49A: Major consequence of a virus, perhaps)
• SERVER DELAY (61A: Cause of some slow data transfers)

Word of the Day: ANORA (42A: 2024 film that won Best Picture) —

Anora is a 2024 American romantic comedy-drama film written, directed, produced, and edited by Sean Baker. It stars Mikey Madison as Anora "Ani" Mikheeva, a lap dancer from New York who marries the wealthy son of a Russian oligarch played by Mark Eydelshteyn. The supporting cast includes Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Darya Ekamasova, and Aleksei Serebryakov.

Anora premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2024, where it received critical acclaim and won the Palme d'Or. It was released theatrically on October 18, 2024, by Neon, with Focus Features releasing in other territories. It grossed $59.3 million worldwide against a $6 million budget, making it Baker's highest-grossing film.

Anora received numerous accolades and was named one of the top ten films of 2024 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute. It received six nominations at the 97th Academy Awards, winning five for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Madison), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. It is one of only four films to win both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Picture. (wikipedia)

• • •

Didn't notice the theme until I was nearly completely done. I just thought it was a bunch of dreary computer-related terms. Couldn't see how they fit together. I wish I could say the "aha" moments saved it, but it just wasn't big enough. Connecting car traffic to computer traffic is vaguely interesting, but it's been a central metaphor of the internet forever—remember the "Information Superhighway"?—so it's not like there's a real Revelation here, and several of these terms feel a little wonky. "SITE TRAFFIC" is the "traffic" term I hear the most—it outgoogles "INTERNET TRAFFIC" by twenty-fold. Similarly, SERVER CRASH seems like a more common term than SERVER DELAY (again google agrees). "Delay" is the weakest link of the day by far. It just doesn't evoke either world (digital, automotive) very strongly. And then NETWORK SPEEDS seems strange in the plural, when none of the other theme answers are in the plural. Plus, again, the term I think of is "INTERNET SPEED(S)," not "NETWORK SPEED(S)" (and again, google agrees). So the terms just don't land as perfectly as they ought to. But maybe, the whole topic is kind of dreary. No one likes traffic or crashes or delays. I appreciate the parallel here, but it's just not playful or surprising enough. 

The fill isn't helping matters much. Lots of ultra-common 3-4-5s, with very little in the way of bounce or pop. DANCE-OFFS (11D: "Battles" of those busting moves) and STORMS OUT (31D: Leaves in a huff) give the grid some life, but otherwise, it's just loaded with abbrevs. (LOTR CIA SCI TIK ICU TSPS ARO NBA PARA DMS) and foreign words (OTRA, ÉTÉ, HAI) and a lot of nondescript crosswordese (ALEC, OWLET, LAMA, etc.). We do get a nice cameo from WESLEY Snipes, and the first ever appearance of ANORA, a film title that, given its size and letter combinations, seems like it should've appeared a long time ago (months ago, anyway). A five-letter movie with an alternating V-C-V-C-V pattern sweeps the Oscars—that seems like it would create conditions for a new crossword staple. ANORA is a movie with "Future Crosswordese" written all over it. But for now—it's new. A debut! Let's enjoy the novelty while it lasts. 

I don't see any real difficulty in this grid. HARROW was weird, in that you mostly encounter that word in the adjectival form ("harrowing") (15A: Torment). You very rarely hear about how a monster or serial killer or yeti or whatever "harrowed" the inhabitants of an old house or the kids at sleepaway camp or whatever. I know HARROW as a part of a plow. Actually, no, the plow is a different agricultural instrument. The HARROW is dragged over plowed land to break up and smooth the soil surface.

Bullets:

• 29A: Identity prefix (CIS) — this is a pretty bare-bones, nondescript clue. "Identity" doesn't tell you much. Doesn't make much difference to puzzle difficulty—I don't even remember seeing this clue while solving—but it's strange to follow up an ORNATE clue for ARO (28A: Feeling little to no amorous attraction, in L.G.B.T.Q.+ lingo) with this oddly plain one. 
• 45A: Throw, for instance (RUG) — one of the few times today where the puzzle seemed to try to get a little tricky, playing on the ambiguity of "Throw" (here, a noun, not a verb). I think of standalone "throw" as being more of a woman's garment, a light wrap or scarf, or else a light cover for a bedspread. I know the term "Throw RUG," of course, but this clue seems to imply that "Throw" on its own can mean RUG. Not sure about that.
• 60A: "Sorry, it's ___ from me" ("A 'NO'") — this is one way to get around the Spanish anus problem. The other is by cluing it as a Wheel of Fortune purchase: "I'd like to buy a vowel ... may I have AN 'O,' please?"
• 3D: Bad thing to pull while running (GROIN) — ouch. This answer took me longer than most of the answers in this puzzle because I was looking for a muscle like hamstring (HAMMY?), or else I thought "pull" was maybe being used in some metaphorical / tricky way, the way you "pull" a stunt ... but no. It's GROIN, everyone's favorite-sounding body part. The "moist" of anatomical terms. No one says GROIN or even thinks about the GROIN unless something has gone horribly wrong. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Longtime Disney boss Bob / TUE 8-11-26 / Big name in food wholesale / Big export of Myanmar / Head of a noted animal rescue project / Psychedelic rock band with the 2003 tune "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" / Hip-hop group that wrote "C.R.E.A.M." and "Protect Ya Neck" / German film composer who wrote "Cornfield Chase" and "Time" / Red denizen of Sesame Street / "This is probably dumb but I'm doing it anyway" hashtag

Constructor: Wade Bednar

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (just 'cause the musical names might be unknown to many solvers)

THEME: SONG DYNASTY (64A: First Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy ... or a hint to 17-, 30- and 47-Across) — musical acts (i.e. writers of "songs") have the names of various Chinese dynasties embedded in their names:

Theme answers:

• FLAMING LIPS (17A: Psychedelic rock band with the 2003 tune "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1," with "the")
• HANS ZIMMER (30A: German film composer who wrote "Cornfield Chase" and "Time")
• WU-TANG CLAN (47A: Hip-hop group that wrote "C.R.E.A.M." and "Protect Ya Neck")

Word of the Day: FLAMING LIPS (17A) —

The Flaming Lips are an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1983 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The band currently consists of Wayne Coyne (vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards), Derek Brown (keyboards, guitars, percussion), Matt Duckworth Kirksey (drums, percussion, keyboards), AJ Slaughter (guitar, keyboards, pedal steel) and Tommy McKenzie (bass). Coyne is the only remaining founding member following the departure of bassist and keyboardist Michael Ivins in 2021. From 1991 to 2024, Steven Drozd played a crucial role in the band as co-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.

The band started out playing garage punk and noise pop, before branching into more psychedelic and experimental territory. They recorded several albums and EPs on an indie label, Restless, in the 1980s and early 1990s. After signing to Warner Brothers they released Hit to Death in the Future Head (1992), followed by Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (1993) and the hit single "She Don't Use Jelly" which broke the band into the mainstream. They later released The Soft Bulletin (1999), which was NME magazine's Album of the Year, followed by the critically acclaimed Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002). In February 2007, they were nominated for a BRIT Award for "Best International Act". The group has won three Grammy Awards, including two for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. They were placed on Q magazine's list of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die" in 2002. (wikipedia)

• • •

Points for originality, for sure. Before I ever knew what was going on with the theme, I was enjoying the (unexpected!) musical acts. FLAMING LIPS—bold opener! Of the three dynasty-containing answers, I think this will be the least well known by the crossword-solving population, but that band is old enough and big enough for me to know who they are despite never having really listened to their work, so the answer seems fair. HANS ZIMMER, definitely fair, but ... he's not really known as a "song" writer, is he? He's a (decorated) film composer. He's known for scores, not songs. Those "songs" in his clue ("Cornfield Chase"? "Time"?) were unrecognizable to me. I had to look them up. "Cornfield Chase" is the second cut on the Interstellar soundtrack, and "Time" was apparently a track from Inception, though it was remixed in a collaboration with Norwegian DJ Alan Walker in 2020, to some acclaim.

Probably the weakest part of the theme is the "song" part. There's no doubt that all these acts composed and released "songs," but none of the songs mentioned in the clues are what you'd call iconic or universally known. The theme might've made more sense if the dynasty names had been embedded in actual songs. Like, say:

or

or

So, the "songs" in question are not superpopular and Zimmer isn't even really known for "songs." And I think the theme would've been more elegant if there had been absolutely no other "song" people in the grid (no DRE, no NIALL, no SYMS)—keep the theme tight! And yet, this puzzle is really imaginative, and it was fun to solve—way more fun than your typical Tuesday. So I'm for it. I'm not for that spelling of AOKAY (?) (tragic mess) and SYSCO and IGER feel stale, but otherwise, the fill is solid, occasionally vibrant. Yeah, it's got Reagan :( but it's also got DUMPLINGS :) You lose, you win, you eat, you drink, the facts of life, the facts of life. 

[Joe Jackson knew]

Beyond the proper nouns, the puzzle was appropriately easy. Tuesday-easy. I slipped up with SLIP instead of SKIP (8D: Go past), and NIALS instead of NIALL (31D: Singer Horan of One Direction). The answer that gave me the most trouble was, ironically, the tiniest answer in the puzzle (well, tied for the tiniest with several other answers)—it was "DO I!" (56A: "Abso-freakin-lutely!"). I got the terminal "I" first and thought "... 'OUI!'?" Then got the "O" and thought "... 'MOI!'?" But no, two words!! Bah! Parsing fail! I'm supposed to be an OLD PRO. And yet! 

Bullets:

• 28D: Island that's the world's third-smallest country, after Vatican City and Monaco (NAURU) — I think this is, technically, an error. In a bizarre coincidence, I learned just yesterday that NAURU recently changed its name to NAOERO. How did I learn this? From a crossword puzzle, of course. One of Peter Gordon's "Newsflash" puzzles, I think (these are puzzles that take their content straight from current headlines). " In May 2026, a constitutional amendment was passed to change the English name to "Republic of Naoero", matching the spelling in the Nauruan language." (wikipedia)
• 71A: Prey for polar bears (SEALS) — well that's a grim way to come at SEALS. Accurate, but ...
• 39A: Mario's video game brother (LUIGI) — another Marioverse answer. Giving the Star Wars universe a run for its money.
• 63A: Ingredient in a Dark 'n' Stormy (RUM) — the other ingredients: ginger beer, lime slice.

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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