Stool pigeons, in police shorthand / TUE 5-12-26 / Some limb-moving muscles / Sandlot QB's order to a receiver / Listing at an ice cream shop in Ipswich / Al Sharpton's title, for short

Constructor: John Ruff

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH(?)" (58A: "Hmm, why use the spellings of 17-, 27- and 46-Across?) — theme answers have British spellings (words spelled with "O-U-R" instead of the American "OR"):

Theme answers:

• FLAVOUR OF THE DAY (17A: Listing at an ice cream shop in Ipswich)
• COLOURING BOOKS (27A: Kids' items at a day care in Derby) 
• NEIGHBOURHOODS (46A: Areas on a map of Manchester)

Word of the Day: CIS (24D: Stool pigeons, in police shorthand) —

[I know]

An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a "snitch", "rat", "canary", "stool pigeon", "stoolie", "tout" or "grass", among other terms) is a person who provides privileged information, or (usually damaging) information intended to be intimate, concealed, or secret, about a person or organization to an agency, often a government or law enforcement agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informants are officially known as confidential human sources (CHS), or criminal informants (CI). It can also refer pejoratively to someone who supplies information without the consent of the involved parties. The term is commonly used in politics, industry, entertainment, and academia. // In the United States, a confidential informant or "CI" is "any individual who provides useful and credible information to a law enforcement agency regarding felonious criminal activities and from whom the agency expects or intends to obtain additional useful and credible information regarding such activities in the future".(wikipedia)

• • •

Oh, this again? Actually, no, not again. Yesterday's "OH DEAR!" theme worked really well—surprising, playful, funny. Today's puzzle just didn't have enough oomph. The revealer has to be absolutely On The Money in this one because the theme answers are so preposterously dull. A bunch of words spelled Britishly isn't anyone's idea of a good time, I don't imagine. So OK, revealer, whaddya got for me? Oh ... oh, are you kidding? First of all, I see your "O-U-R" pun, and that's cute, but what exactly is this phrase? "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH." Is someone saying that as a statement? Asking it as a question? The clue for it is phrased so badly that I honestly don't know (58A: "Hmm, why use the spellings of 17-, 27- and 46-Across?). Normally, when a clue is a quotation, the answer has to be an equivalent of that quotation, not a response to it, so ... that would mean "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH?" is interrogative ("OH, YOU ARE BRITISH?"). But that makes no sense at all. "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH!" only makes sense as a statement of mild surprise. "OH, I see: YOU ARE BRITISH!" If you know the person is British, then it makes no sense that you are asking why. Also, who would phrase a question that way?? "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH?"??? That sounds like someone whose first language is not English (if this were a question, you would of course phrase it "OH, ARE YOU BRITISH???"). 

But then if we say "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH" is in fact a statement, not a question, then why is it clued as a question? The idea here seems to want to be that these are things (the clue and then the answer) that you might say, sequentially, to yourself, as a solver (?). "Hmmm, why would you do this British spelling thing? ... oh, I see, you are doing it because you are British!" But the clue makes an absolute muddle of the linguistic situation—answer and clue have to have equivalency (such that one can be swapped out for the other), and yet imagining "OH, YOU ARE BRITISH?" as a question, as we've established, is ridiculous. So the mild cutesiness of the "OUR" pun is completely undone by the disastrously muddled phrasing of the revealer clue.

The rest of the puzzle was mostly a heap of dull short stuff, though there are a couple of 7s and a couple of 8s and a couple of 9s crammed in there as well, all of them solid. Still, I felt like I was drowning in 3s and 4s. I think the relative dullness of those theme answers really costs the puzzle today. Usually, the theme is where most of the interest lies, but today, those three themers are just a kind of bland set-up for the Big Reveal (which, as I say, was, for me, a bust). Felt like a lot of URDUs and EYREs and ERSTs and ESAUs and OGLEs and OGEEs and OMANIs and IPOS. The roughest bit for me came right near the center, with CIS / ESTE / OGEE. I know OGEE well, but I couldn't accept it because of ESTE, which I only ever remember encountering as Spanish for "East"—when it comes to indicating "this," I feel like it's always ESTO or ESTA (33A: Spanish for "this"). In fact ... 201 appearances of ESTE in the Shortz Era and this is literally the first time it's been clued as Spanish for "this" (!?). It's always the direction, or else a Renaissance family name, or part of some place name—never Spanish "this." Bizarre. And so I balked at OGEE because it gave me ESTE. As for CIS, I didn't balk at that—I simply had no idea. I read a lot of crime fiction—teach it, even—and I guess I don't read enough contemporary police procedurals because that abbr. meant nothing to me. I could infer its meaning once all the letters were in place, but CIS on its own ... that's the counterpart of TRANS in gender terminology. That's the only way I'm used to CIS being clued. So the fill got ugly and bumpy through there. I also had a weird lot of trouble with JAM IN (32: Pack tightly). No good reason, just couldn't parse it—had to get it to -AMIN before I saw it. 

Bullets:

• 1A: Appropriate answer for 1-Across (START) — since this was the first clue I looked at, I cannot argue with its logic
• 23A: Some limb-moving muscles (ABDUCTORS) — I always thought of these as hip muscles, and thus leg-moving muscles exclusively, but I see now that there are ABDUCTORS all over; they move limbs away from the midline of the body, and are involved in spreading your fingers and toes as well. Nice to get an anatomical clue here instead of a kidnapping clue.
• 5D: Instrument with a Renaissance-era ancestor called a sackbut (TROMBONE) — "76 Sackbuts Led the Big Parade" just doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Or maybe it does and I'm just used to TROMBONE. Trading butt for bone ... seems like a lateral move in terms of mellifluousness. Still, "sackbut" does sound slightly more like a medical condition, so maybe we are better off.

• 42D: Lowe on TV (ROB) — balked at this one too. "TV? When was he on TV?" Mentally, I have him locked in as a big-screen heartthrob of the '80s. This isn't a sex tape clue, is it? Oh, crap, he was on West Wing and Parks and Rec. Of course. Never mind.

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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Take fowl foully / MON 5-11-26 / Listened, poetically / Cameroon neighbor / Contents of l'océan / Movie production facilities with controlled acoustics / Winning a blue ribbon / Request from someone craving more

Constructor: Joel Woodford

Relative difficulty: Easyish (solved Downs-only)

[54D: Jabba the ___ ("Star Wars" villain)]

THEME: "OH, DEAR!" (45D: "Goodness me!" ... or a phonetic hint to 17-, 31-, 39- and 55-Across) — in four answers, an "O" ("oh!") is followed (many letters later) by a string of letters that spells out a type of deer ("dear!"):

Theme answers:

• BILLBOARD CHARTS (17A: Rankings of song popularity used as the music industry standard)
• HORS D'OEUVRE (31A: Canapé or deviled egg, for example)
• SOUND STAGES (39A: Movie production facilities with controlled acoustics)
• DROP IN THE BUCKET (55A: Insignificant amount)

Word of the Day: GABON (15A: Cameroon neighbor) —

Gabon (/ɡəˈbɒn/ gə-BON; French pronunciation: [ɡabɔ̃] ^ⓘ), officially the Gabonese Republic (French: République gabonaise), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and the Gulf of Guinea to the west. It has an area of 270,000 square kilometres (100,000 sq mi) and a population of 2.3 million people. There are coastal plains, mountains (the Cristal Mountains and the Chaillu Massif in the centre), and a savanna in the east. Libreville is the country's capital and largest city. // Gabon's original inhabitants were the Bambenga. In the 14th century, Bantu migrants also began settling in the area. The Kingdom of Orungu was established around 1700. France colonised the region in the late 19th century. Since its independence from France in 1960, Gabon has had four presidents. In the 1990s, it introduced a multi-party system and a democratic constitution that aimed for a more transparent electoral process and reformed some governmental institutions. Despite this, the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) remained the dominant party until its removal from power during the 2023 Gabonese coup d'état. (wikipedia)

• • •

What, no HIND? With three males to one female, the herd could use a little evening out. But then "hind" is not exactly an everyday word. The only reason I know it is that it appears in the first line of a fairly famous sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt called "Whoso List to Hunt..."

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

But as for me, hélas, I may no more.

The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind

Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore

Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,

Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.

Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,

As well as I may spend his time in vain.

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written, her fair neck round about:

Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame. (poetryfoundation)

The more you read it, the weirder the deer gets. But back to the puzzle—it was bizarre, so I liked it. It's a nice, light, bright, quirky, easy puzzle. Yes, it involves non-consecutive circled squares, and those things often fail to yield very interesting results, but here, the double pun (on "oh" and "dear") makes the circled squares make perfect sense. And as a Downs-only solver, I was able to actually use the theme to help me get to the finish line, writing in BUCK in those last four circled squares as soon as I got the "B" in there. It's a charming idea for a theme and it was fun to solve (at least it was fun to solve Downs-only). Maybe it doesn't seem spectacular, but I honestly don't have any serious complaints about it. Didn't even find the short stuff that grating, perhaps because it was tempered by some interesting 7s and 8s and a boatload of 6s in the NW and SE corner. And then ACQUITS and UMPTEEN to boot. This one just has a lot more character than most Mondays.

There were precisely four Down answers that gave me trouble today. The first was "I WANT OUT!" (10D: "Don't involve me anymore"). Really wanted that one to start "I'M A..." (the "M" giving me SMEAR at S-EAR, which seemed more than plausible). But then ... stuckness. "I'M ALL OUT"? No, that makes no sense. "I'M A NO, BRO"? Oof, worse. Needed to get most of the crosses before I saw that the "M" was really supposed to be a "W," which made SMEAR into SWEAR (16A: Yell "#$%!"), and finally let me see "I WANT OUT!" The hardest thing for me to see today, though, was FIRST (23D: Winning a blue ribbon). Something about the ambiguity of the clue was throwing me; specifically, I couldn't tell what part of speech the answer wanted. "Winning" ... like, currently winning, in the process of winning? Or ... having won? I wanted AHEAD at first, but that implies the race (or whatever) hasn't been completed yet, and the clue specifically says "Winning." I kinda wanted an -ING word, but at five letters, that seemed unlikely. You wouldn't think a simple word like FIRST could flummox me like this, but ... that's what happened. I think the (apparent) unlikeliness of "F" as the correct start of "-ESS" also made FIRST hard to see. MESS BESS TESS LESS, all of them were in line before FESS. Another longer answer—in fact literally "ANOTHER!"—held me up for a bit down south (40D: Request from someone craving more). And then there was LIDS (52D: Tube tops?). I am a firm believer that tubes have CAPS, not LIDS. Jars have LIDS. Tubes (of toothpaste) have CAPS. So boo to that clue. My lone boo for the day.

[Swayze!]

Bullets:

• 15A: Cameroon neighbor (GABON) — got this from crosses, obviously (since I solved Downs-only), but I'm not sure I would've gotten it easily even if I had read the clue. My knowledge of African (particularly west African) geography remains pretty sketchy. GABON sits right on the equator (see map, above, under "Word of the Day"). Its capital, Libreville is the second-closest world capital to the equator (only crossword favorite QUITO, Ecuador—43 lifetime NYTXW appearances—is closer).
• 30A: Take fowl foully (POACH) — solving Downs-only means sometimes you miss fun clues. This one is funny to me not just because of the silly rhyme, but because when I think of poaching (as in illegal hunting), I think of ... deer! Wrote a whole chapter of my dissertation on the portrayal of poaching (deer) in late medieval England (specifically, in a poem called The Parlement of the Thre Ages). Looks like Parlement, like the aforementioned "Whoso List to Hunt...," also contains a "hynde" ("hind") in addition to a "hert" ("hart"). It's an appropriate poem for May. It opens:

In the monethe of Maye when mirthes bene fele,*    *many
And the sesone of somere when softe bene the wedres,*    *breezes
Als I went to the wodde my werdes to dreghe,*    *to try my luck
Into the schawes* myselfe a schotte me to gete    *thickets
At ane hert or ane hynde, happen as it myghte ... 

    (from The Parlement of the Thre Ages)

• 11D: French for "sea" (MER) — our second three-letter watery French answer. Surprised the clue for EAU wasn't [Contents of 11-Down] instead of [Contents of l'océan].
• 43D: Fashionable (CHIC) — I wonder how long it's going to take now before I look at the word CHIC without thinking of OHIO (see yesterday's puzzle...)
• 44D: Listened, poetically (HARKED) — [Listened, yuletidily]. If Parlement of the Thre Ages was appropriate for May, this song ... isn't. 

• 34D: Rapper ___ Rocky (A$AP) — Always Strive and Prosper. Good to know what the acronym means and get that dollar sign in there. Otherwise it just seems like Rocky is an efficient gofer or personal assistant: As Soon As Possible Rocky!

[starring Winona Ryder] [warning: profanity]

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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