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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Pioneers, in hip-hop slang / THU 11-5-26 / Nickname of the protagonist in 2024's "Anora" / Sea urchin, on a sushi menu / ___ Batlló, Antoni Gaudí masterpiece whose roof arch mimics a dragon's back / Big Apple menagerie / Refueling spot / Call made with outstretched arms

Constructor: David P. Williams

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

or

THEME: "IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME" (39A: Admission of confusion ... or a hint for interpreting four answers in this puzzle) — circled squares contain Greek letters (spelled out) in the Acrosses and LATIN letters (i.e. regular letters) in the Downs (59A: Like the alphabet of the circled letters in the Down answers, but not in the Across answers):

Theme answers:

• WALKIE-TALKIES / ACHY (17A: Hand-held communication devices / 5D: Feeling tender)
• CLASSIC HITS / BRONX ZOO (26A: Songs played on an oldies station / 11D: Big Apple menagerie)
• POWERHOUSES / PISAN (55A: Juggernauts / 56: Galileo, for one)
• SILENT AUCTION / ITEM (64A: Popular fund-raising event / 61D: Couple)

Word of the Day: CASA Batlló (1A: ___ Batlló, Antoni Gaudí masterpiece whose roof arch mimics a dragon's back) —

Casa Batlló (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈkazə βəˈʎːo]) is a building in the center of Barcelona, Spain. It was designed by Antoni Gaudí, and is considered one of his masterpieces. A remodel of a previously built house, it was redesigned in 1904 by Gaudí (although the actual construction had not begun at this point) and has been refurbished several times since. Gaudí's assistants Domènec Sugrañes i Gras, Josep Canaleta and Joan Rubió also contributed to the renovation project.

Casa Batlló is located on the Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district and forms part of a row of houses known as the Illa de la Discòrdia (or Mansana de la Discòrdia, the "Block of Discord"), so named because it features four striking, and strikingly different, buildings by noted Modernista architects of Barcelona.

Like everything Gaudí designed, Casa Batlló is only identifiable as Modernisme in the broadest sense. The ground floor, in particular, has unusual tracery, irregular oval windows and sculpted stonework with sinuous, squiggly forms. There are few straight lines, and much of the façade is decorated with a colorful mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles (trencadís).

In 2005, Casa Batlló became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• • •

This theme is missing something. Latin letters one way, Greek the other, fine. The revealer ... well, it happens to be a perfectly grid-spanning 15 letters long, which was probably the discovery that led to the theme. It's semi-apt, in that you might be confused by the theme answers, and "IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME" is an [Admission of confusion], but the "ALL" part seems like an overstatement and anyway, "it" is both Greek and LATIN, so I wouldn't say the revealer exactly sticks the landing, but it's close enough. The main issue for me was an overall feeling of "that's it?" Four letters? And they don't ... do anything? Add up to anything? Spell anything?” There are so few theme elements that it really seemed like those letters should make sense as a group, somehow. But no, the letters are arbitrary. Four Greek letters, for no coherent reason besides the fact that they are Greek. They aren't even particularly ambitious letters—let's see you do OMICRON, you COWARDs! But seriously, in a great puzzle, the puzzle would've found a way to make the set of letters make sense—the series would've built to something. But here, it's just ... four letters. Shrug. The grid is pretty clean, so it wasn't unpleasant to solve, but ultimately it was a little disappointing, thematically.

The Greek/LATIN trick was easy to uncover—I couldn't make heads or tails of anything in the NW, so I trotted over to the N, got started there and then fell down to CLASSI---. I wanted something like CLASSIC ROCK (a somewhat more solid phrase than CLASSIC HITS), but nothing I could think of fit. Then the crosses went in (easily), which left me with CLASSIXTS, and I inferred the LATIN-to-Greek trick pretty quickly. From there, it was back to the first themer, which got me into the NW that I had whiffed on the first time around, and from there, no more real hangups. 

Tough parts: 

• Having no idea about the CASA at 1A (see "Word of the Day") really kneecapped my start. Without the first letters for all the Downs up there, I was hopeless. Struck out. Zero for four.
• I had NIT for IRK (7D: Peeve). Did not comprehend that [Peeve] was a verb. Mostly used to seeing it as a noun (following "pet").
• I know FLO & Eddie, but I totally blanked on FLO. It's been a while. FLO & Eddie were founding members of the Turtles who were not allowed to use the name "Turtles" *or* their own actual names in a musical context, for contractual reasons, so they started as The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie and eventually ... well, FLO just sounds nicer than Phlorescent Leech. Unlike the Turtles ("Happy Together," "She'd Rather Be With Me," "Elenore"), FLO & Eddie didn't really have any CLASSIC HITS. They worked with Zappa, and did a ton of backing vocal work for different artists, but I know only one actual FLO & Eddie song (it's a weird one, and a good one)

Bullets:

• 5A: Cheese that comes from northern Italy and not another continent! (ASIAGO) — first of all, "northern Italy" is not a "continent," so the phrasing here is, let's say, bad. I guess the "joke" of this clue is that the cheese name ASIAGO contains "ASIA" but that's not how you pronounce the name—it's not ASIA-GO, like "I want to GO to ASIA." If you really want a corny name-related joke, you'd be better off with a Shakespeare angle: [... and not how you'd go to an Othello-themed Halloween party!]. Something like that.
• 28D: British bottom (ARSE) — had the "R" and immediately and confidently wrote in PRAT. That's British slang for an incompetent or stupid person, but the word does also mean "buttocks."
• 46A: Political leader? (GEO) — in that GEO- can be a prefix for "Political." Yeah I don't love it either. Nor do I love the clue on ESS (66D: Letter indicating ownership?). I assume this is the possessive apostrophe-"S" that they're referring to (as in the phrase "dealer's choice").
• 10D: Refueling spot (OASIS) — so "refueling" is metaphorical, then? A place of refuge, where you can get water (in the desert), rest for a bit, eat something? 

• 2D: A gamer may use one (AVATAR) — Do you "use" them? Don't you just have them? An AVATAR is an image that represents the player. Not sure why, but "use" feels strange. Don't all players have AVATARs by default?
• 47A: Gray matter? (ODES) — yeesh, deep cut. Thomas Gray (1716-71) was a poet. Some of his poems were ODES. He's most famous for "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."
• 8D: Nickname of the protagonist in 2024's "Anora" (ANI) — first thing in the grid for me. Nice late-week way to dodge a Star Wars reference (I've seen enough of young Anakin's nickname)
• 72A: Governor Gavin (NEWSOM) — Ugh. I'm thrilled with Tuesday's election results, obviously, but now that that's over, I gotta watch this blowdried billionaire-loving blowhard run for president for the next two years and I am Not looking forward to it. 

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. credit where credit is due:

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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