Social media community for avid readers / SAT 3-14-26 / Animal identity in role play / Latvian, old-style / Title role for Paul Newman, 1963 / Behave like an ass / Like Thunderdell, the monster slain by Jack the Giant Killer / Flour used to make paratha / Some deflections for argument's sake / Writer of the 1969 hit "The Boxer"

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Thunderdell (17A: Like Thunderdell, the monster slain by Jack the Giant Killer) —

Thunderdell (Welsh: Taranau), also recorded as Thunderdel, Thunderel, Thundrel, Thunderdale, or Thunderbore, was a two-headed giant of Cornwall slain by Jack the Giant-Killer in the stories of Tabart and others. [...] In Jack the Giant Killer, Thunderdell first appeared where he crashed a banquet that was prepared for Jack. During this time, he chanted "fee fau fum." Jack defeats and beheads the two-headed giant with a trick involving the house's moat and drawbridge. // According to one version of the story from 1800, Thunderdell (here identified as "Thunderful") hails from the North Pole. He attacks Jack's banquet in order to avenge the deaths of two giants he had earlier slain, but is himself defeated and his heads sent to the court of King Arthur.

• • •

[Title role for Paul Newman, 1963]

I thought this was sensational, but I do have a few questions. First of all BLOTTY? BLOTTY? I would definitely accept BLOTCHY, but I believe this is the first I'm ever seeing the word BLOTTY (19A: Mottled). I was so mad when BLOTCHY wouldn't fit, and then I thought "... well, it can't be BLOTTO? Wait, can it? No. No, it really can't." So I went with BLOTTY, but boy was I unhappy with that. It will surprise no one that BLOTTY is making its NYTXW debut (!) today. Actually, no, I take it back—that does surprise me, in that I figured that something as ugly as BLOTTY could only have come from a database gunked up with olden fill. So, there's BLOTTY, however much I really wish there weren't. Moving on to a different, somewhat less irritating "huh?"—BREAST PIN (27A: Jewelry that may double as a fastener). I simply don't know what this is. I know what a LAPEL PIN is. I know what a brooch is (namely, something pinned to your shirt breast). Whoa, I just looked up "brooch" and one of the definitions was BREAST PIN. Well, alright. I guess that settles that. Sort of. BREAST PIN sounds like a piercing. Why not just say "brooch?" After the BLOTTY BREAST PIN, there's the final "B" mystery: BELTLINES (one word? two? huh, Merriam-Webster Dot Com says it can be either!). I know what WAISTLINES are, but BELTLINES ... well, I could infer that they're basically just waistlines (which they are), but since "hips" are not "waists," I'm slightly confused by the clue (33A: Hip places?). Also, BELT LOOPS are a thing, and man that answer felt so right. Those are definitely "places" (for your belt) and if you wear your belt around your hips, then there you go: Hip places! BELT LOOPS! After I got the LIN- part, my brain wanted LINKS (?) before it finally acceded to LINES. So lots of "B" confusion and aversion today. 

But otherwise, The 3 "B"s aside, I was pretty impressed by this puzzle, which managed to be both smooth and sparkly. With the possible exception of two of those aforementioned "B"s (BELTLINES, BREAST PIN), the long answers that converge in the middle of this grid are strong and vibrant. GOD-FEARING and WHATABOUTISM really shine, and the clues on both POLLIWOGS (37A: They croak as soon as they grow up) and SESAME STREET (21D: Noted series with over 200 Emmys ... and an Oscar) are spectacular. In case you're somehow wondering how SESAME STREET ever got an Oscar, here, I'll show you:

Loved seeing the great PAUL SIMON sitting dead center, and though I cannot call MOONRAKER great, I still loved seeing it here today. That's the thing about seeing a movie on the big screen at a repertory theater with a sizable audience—as I did with MOONRAKER a few years ago—even not-that-great movies can be very enjoyable. I also have a very cool paperback edition of MOONRAKER, so ... I am the target audience for this answer, is what I'm saying. Did you know (I'm pretty sure you didn't): MOONRAKER actually debuted in 1944 (!!!), clued as [Sail above the skysail.]??? It then debuted as the Bond film in 1999, and now here it is again, 27 years later. "Mooooonraker / Wiiiiider than a mile ..."

Speaking of movies, as is typical for a KAC puzzle, this one had a bunch of good cinema content (Kameron is a movie critic for Rolling Stone and a member of the New York Film Critics Circle). You've got HUD and HEDY Lamarr and MOONRAKER. And while three answers doesn't seem like a lot, I'd bet dollars to donuts that LOCAL HERO originally had a movie clue. It should have, anyway, as LOCAL HERO is one of the very best movies of the '80s (of all time, frankly). I love the movie so much that I am choosing to read LOCAL HERO as cinema content today, clue be damned.

Bullets:

• 1A: Behave like an ass (BRAY) — hee haw, a gimme, right off the bat! Definitely helped me get started.
• 4D: Vulgarians (YAHOOS) — if BRAY helped me get started, then this one helped me get stopped: I decided to go with YOKELS for a bit.
• 48A: Where travelers might take the plunge on vacation (HOTEL POOL) — something about "take the plunge" had me thinking not of a pool, but of something spa-related. I had the HOT- and figured it was an adjective (not the first three letters in "HOTEL").
• 15D: Latvian, old-style (LETT) — got this easily. Not sure I knew it was "old-style." 
• 33D: Social media community for avid readers (BOOKTOK) — great answer, although as a phenomenon ... I dunno. I mean, I really don't know, as I have no intention of ever using TikTok. I hate the whole Amazon review phenomenon, I think goodreads is wholly unappealing, so yeah, BookTok is several bridges too far for me. Here's a story about some brilliant BookTok influencer who says: "I HATE third person POV books." So that's ... something. I'm not sure it's pro-reading, but it's something.
• 35D: Animal identity in role play (FURSONA) — OK I don't need to know any details about what the "role play" entails, exactly, but I like this portmanteau a lot.

[FURSONA, d. Bergman, 1966]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Guitar player's percussive technique / FRI 3-13-26 / Chuck who created "Young Sheldon" / Holly or Monty, for Queen Elizabeth II / Aids for competitive marathon runners / Implement with mousse or pudding / Showed subservience, in a way / The 1930s-'40s, to a jazz aficionado / Scandinavian woman's name meaning "blessed" / President whose wife was nicknamed "Lemonade Lucy" for refusing to serve alcohol in the White House / Piece that can't movie to a different-colored square

Constructor: James McCarron and Rachel Souza

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Lucy Ware HAYES (18A: President whose wife was nicknamed "Lemonade Lucy" for refusing to serve alcohol in the White House) —

Lucy Ware Hayes (née Webb; August 28, 1831 – June 25, 1889) was the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes and served as the 19th first lady of the United States from 1877 to 1881. Opposed to alcohol, she never served it in the White House, a move that was highly controversial. She died of a stroke aged 57 after her husband's presidency. She was also, while her husband was governor, First Lady of Ohio. She served in this position two non-consecutive times, from 1868 to 1872, and again from 1876 until 1877, when her husband was elected as President of the United States. He resigned the governorship effective March 2, 1877, and was sworn in in the next day.

Hayes was the first First Lady to have a college degree. She was also a more egalitarian hostess than previous First Ladies. An advocate for African Americans both before and after the American Civil War, she invited the first African-American professional musician to appear at the White House. She was a Past Grand of Lincoln Rebekah Lodge, a body of the International Association of Rebekah Assemblies, the women's auxiliary of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, together with her husband.

Historians have christened her "Lemonade Lucy" due to her staunch support of the temperance movement. However, contrary to popular belief, she was never referred to by that nickname while living. It was her husband who banned alcohol from the White House. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

A reasonably sparkly but (once again) way too easy puzzle. Lots of Friday whoosh, but maybe too much. Puzzle seemed over before it began. I guess I had to do some fiddling to get the NW in order, but after that, yikes. I came rocketing out of that corner. Both the long Downs that come out of there (DESSERT SPOON and T-SHIRT CANNONS) were gimmes off their first letters. That initial "TS-" is kind of a head-scratcher at first, but once you accept that both the "T" and the "S" are unimpeachable, well, there aren't a lot of directions an answer starting "TS-" can go. T.S. Eliot ... TSE TSE flies ... T-SHIRT something ... and there you are. I feel like I used TSHIRTCANNON(S?) in a puzzle one time. Not an NYTXW puzzle. I don't remember, but it feels real familiar. Anyway, it's not an NYTXW debut—or, rather, it is in the plural, but it's been used two times before in the singular (one of those times it even had the same clue, or almost the same clue: [Top Gun] — the theme involved movie titles taken literally). It's a fun answer, but here, a very very easy answer (once you have the first two letters), so the middle of the puzzle opened right up and I just branched out from there into one corner after another. The quality of the longer fill picked up after that. I smiled at POETS' CORNER and actually said "nice" when I got ONE-HORSE TOWN (again, not a debut, but it's been 26 years, so it may as well be). Also really enjoyed "CAN YOU NOT?" (third NYTXW appearance). The grid seemed light on gunk and the cluing was sufficiently interesting (teetotaling First Ladies! Royal CORGIs!), so I was happy (despite its all being over far too quickly).

If I could UNLADE any answer, it would be ... guess. Guess which one. If you guessed UNLADE, congratulations, smart guy/gal! UNLADE has an ODOR. Definitely the LEPER of the puzzle. No doubt it's a real term, but it's also a real ugly term, so FIE and/or bah (46D: "Bah!," to Lady Macbeth) (would Lady Macbeth really not say "Bah!"? Had they not invented "Bah!" in 1606? "Bah"and "Fie" feel equally olde-tymey to me, but I guess Lady Macbeth said only one of them?). Nothing else bothered me on an aesthetic level so much as UNLADE. I was disappointed to get a Chuck LORRE and not a Peter LORRE today. I suppose Chuck is the less-famous (and therefore harder-to-get?) LORRE, but I'll take "remembering M or The Maltese Falcon" over "remembering Young Sheldon" any day. Wasn't there a game show host named Chuck LORRE in the '70s? LOL I just realized I'm probably thinking of Chuck Woolery, wow. Hard nevermind.

I had a single parsing adventure today, and it came at BENT THE KNEE (27A: Showed subservience, in a way). I don't know if I love the phrase, but I know I love it way way more than what I thought it was going to be at first. I could see KNEE was going to be involved and that the answer started with -ENT, but instead of going with BENT, I kept trying WENT ... so I wanted some version of "went down on one knee," just, you know, shorter. "WENT TO ONE KNEE? Nope, still too long. WENT TO A KNEE? Lord, I hope not." There was a second or two there where I legit thought the answer was going to be WENT ON A KNEE and I had an "EAT A SANDWICH" comment all cued up (one knee being my preferred stance for eating a sandwich at a picnic, something like that). So you can see how BENT THE KNEE might look very good after what I thought the answer was going to be.

Bullets:

• 5D: Oranges, but not apples (ORBS) — Hmm. OK. I think I might've gone with a (far) less ORB-y fruit than an apple here. [Oranges, but not bananas], say. Apples are at least vaguely spherical, is all I'm saying.
• 31A: Film character who says "Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate" (JACK SPARROW) — pretty banal movie quote, but I guess you get the "mate" part in there to cue the pirate-ness, so it's a useful quote if not a very profound one.
• 48A: The 1930s-'40s, to a jazz aficionado (SWING ERA) — surprisingly, this is a debut. It only took 80+ years to get here, but SWING ERA finally got here. A genuinely tough clue would've left "to a jazz aficionado" off entirely.
• 1D: Piece that can't move to a different-colored square (BISHOP) — a chess clue so easy even I could get it (instantly).
• 11D: Dangerous item whose first six letters are an anagram of DANGER (GRENADE) — partial anagrams ... can't say I'm a fan. Something either anagrams or it doesn't. My brain had trouble (at speed) even understanding what the clue was saying. I can usually take in clues at a glance, but that one was like a wrench in the gears of my poor brain.

• 32D: Aids for competitive marathon runners (PACERS) — I was imagining some kind of device, but the "aids" here are just other runners who help the competitive runner keep their pace and morale during a long race. 
• 40D: Scandinavian woman's name meaning "blessed" (HELGA) — an OK clue, but it got me wondering "Are there no famous HELGAs?" Isn't Hagar the Horrible's wife a HELGA? Yes. Yes she is. There's also a character in the animated series Hey, Arnold! named HELGA G. Pataki. So apparently all famous HELGAs are cartoons. Weird. Oh,  yeah, there's the subject of the Wyeth paintings. She's a HELGA. Still famous only in two dimensions, though.

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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