Sikorsky of aviation fame / WED 10-14-26 / Three-season star of the New York Cosmos / Literary title character who's mostly unseen / Flora and fauna, collectively / Sharp part of a kite / Who "turned my whole world upside down," in a 1970s rock hit / "A conversation carried out by other means," per Peter Ustinov / Bygone Mesoamerican civilization

Constructor: Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: a very short Zoom meeting where the person leading the meeting can't be heard because they never turn their mic on — imagined "responses" to the meeting leader:

Theme answers:

• "YOU'RE MUTED" (17A: Response to "Good morning, everybody!")
• "WE CAN'T HEAR YOU" (25A: "Response to "Let's get this meeting going")
• "TURN YOUR MIC ON" (43A: Response to "Why is everyone ignoring me?")
• "OH, FORGET IT" (58A: Reaction to the unsuccessful "conversation" in this puzzle)

Word of the Day: IGOR Sikorsky (46D: Sikorsky of aviation fame) —

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky (25 May 1889 – 26 October 1972) was a Russian-American aviation pioneer in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. His first success came with the Sikorsky S-2, the second aircraft of his design and construction. His fifth airplane, the S-5, won him national recognition in Russia and secured F.A.I. pilot's license number 64.^[8] His S-6-A received the highest award at the 1912 Moscow Aviation Exhibition, and in the fall of that year the aircraft won first prize for its young designer, builder and pilot in the military competition at Saint Petersburg. In 1913, the Sikorsky-designed Russky Vityaz (S-21) became the first successful four-engine aircraft to take flight. He also designed and built the Ilya Muromets (S-22 – S-27) family of four-engine aircraft, an airliner which he redesigned to be the world's first four-engine bomber when World War I broke out.

After emigrating to the United States in 1919 because of the Russian Revolution, Sikorsky founded the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation in 1923 and developed the first of Pan American Airways' ocean-crossing flying boats in the 1930s, including the Sikorsky S-42 "Flying Clipper".

In 1939, Sikorsky designed and flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, the first viable American helicopter, which pioneered the single main rotor and a single antitorque tail rotor configuration used by most helicopters today. Sikorsky modified the design into the Sikorsky R-4, which became the world's first mass-produced helicopter in 1942. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Butt-HEAD "American Gothic”!]

[32A: Word before or after butt (HEAD)]

[51D: "American Gothic" setting (IOWA)]

The first time is funny. The next two are kinda funny, in that we're just stuck in the same place. But the end is not at all realistic. Who are you saying "OH, FORGET IT" to? Also, you wouldn't forget it. If you've been on any of these meetings, you know there are many, many ways to indicate to a speaker that their mic isn't on. I mean, just unmute yourself and tell them! Then, I guess if they also have their speakers off (???), then you can move on to physical gestures, which are pretty effective. Or you can just text them or something. "OH, FORGET IT" has a quality of frustration and resignation that I understand, but we've all been doing this stuff too long for the scenario here to make any sense. Maybe it's the "funniest" resolution available, but it felt like the theme just petered out. Gave up. Bailed out. Good opening, weak ending. Anyway, I like the theme fine, for the most part. What doesn't work is the fill, which is about as dull and plain as it comes. 3-4-5s as far as the eye can see, and the puzzle doesn't even bother to spring for clever clues or mild trickiness. Everything is painfully straightforward. So outside of the theme, and a quaint term of appreciation (PEACHY KEEN), there really Nothing of interest in this grid, on either the clue or the answer side. Have a look for yourself. Remarkably arid. There's one half-hearted try at a "?" clue (60A: Off base? = AWOL), but that's transparent. Beyond that, there are only two clues that have any life at all: The HEADbutt / butt-HEAD thing (32A: Word before or after butt), and the Ustinov SEX quote (36A: "A conversation carried out by other means," per Peter Ustinov). Not sure I need the thought of Peter Ustinov having SEX first thing in the morning, but at least it broke the monotony!

There were no tricky or tough parts today. My mistakes were few and boring. Wrote in BIOME before BIOTA, for instance (50A: Flora and fauna, collectively). And RATTLE before NETTLE (44D: Irk). Thrilling, right? That's it as far as struggle goes. I'm sure it took me a few passes to parse the theme answers, since they are wholly imagined, but otherwise, no resistance today. Just ALTI PESO APSE EKE ALLAN AWOL ORB AFAR IPOS IGOR EGOS ELI ETON and of course "LAYLA" (35D: Who "turned my whole world upside down," in a 1970s rock hit). I will admit that I couldn't place "LAYLA" immediately from the lyric. I somehow wanted "RHODA," which is a TV show, not a "rock hit," but I think that what my brain was really searching for was the star of the show "RHODA" spun off from: Mary Tyler Moore ("Who can turn the world on with her smile...?").

Bullets:

• 52A: Sharp part of a kite (TALON) — a kite is a raptor, a hawklike bird found all over the world. The kind of kite that Charlie Brown tries to fly does not have TALONs, though it has been known to attack him:

• 25D: Literary title character who's mostly unseen (WIZARD OF ID) — "Literary" is killing me. Congrats to the puzzle on taking comic strips seriously. Is the dude in the cone hat with moons and stars on his tunic not the WIZARD OF ID? If he's "mostly unseen," why can I picture him? [LOL the answer is actually WIZARD OF *OZ* nevermiiiiind!]

• 36D: "Rugrats" dad (STU) — I think there's also a "Rugrats" character named GIL. No, wait: DIL? Yes, DIL. I've never seen an episode of Rugrats in my life, but these three-letter characters recur and recur, so I got STU no problem. (I also got STEW no problem) (56D: Hearty dish). 

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

And to Penelope (who reads me every day and sends me texts of my typos), happy birthday, honey

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Ceremonial Maori dance / TUE 10-13-26 / Greek goddesses of the seasons / Wolf in "The Jungle Book" / Tropical cocktail with bananas, strawberries, rum and coconut cream / Jazz singer Sylvia / Whole that's greater than the sum of its parts, from the German / Second-largest city in Northern Ireland / Polynesian brew

Constructor: Gia Bosko

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (**for a Tuesday**)

THEME: WRAP / PARTY (66A: Shindig for the cast and crew after filming is done ... with a hint to entering this answer and three others in the grid) — different types of parties "wrap" from the right side of the grid around to the left side (one row down):

Theme answers:

• GENDER / REVEAL (21A: Shindig for someone to announce whether they're having a boy or a girl)
• HOUSE- / WARMING (36A: Shindig for someone settling into a new home)
• BRIDAL / SHOWER (52A: Shindig for someone who's about to tie the knot)

Word of the Day: GENDER / REVEAL party (see 21A) —

A gender reveal party is a party held during pregnancy to reveal the baby's sex to the expectant parents' family and friends, and sometimes to the parents themselves. Prenatal sex discernment technology furnishes the necessary information. The practice originated in the United States during the late 2000s.

It is distinct from, but sometimes combined with, a baby shower, where the primary activity is giving expecting parents gifts for their future child. The gender reveal party often involves gender stereotypes such as pink and blue denoting girls and boys, respectively.

The practice has been criticized for the use of elaborate and dangerous special effects, which have directly contributed to multiple deaths, injuries and large-scale forest fires, namely the 2017 Sawmill Fire and the 2020 El Dorado Fire. The practice has also been criticized for reinforcing gender stereotypes and the gender binary. [...] Overall, the practice reinforces stereotypical gender roles, often utilizing polarizing gender dichotomies in party materials such as "Guns or Glitter", "Pistols or Pearls", or "Wheels or Heels". Critics say that there is no reason to assume a neat fit into the essentialist dichotomy even in the case of a cisgender, non-intersex child. In 2019, Jenna Karvunidis, considered one of the pioneers of gender reveal parties, called for re-evaluation of the practice due to how it might affect transgender and non-binary individuals, writing about her own daughter's gender nonconformity.

The practice has also been criticised for sometimes involving dangerous stunts and animal abuse. After the El Dorado Fire in 2020, Karvunidis decried the parties and pleaded for people to stop having them.(wikipedia)

• • •

I love the concept here—much more architecturally interesting than most Tuesday puzzles—but the execution ... maybe not as disastrous as that one GENDER REVEAL party in Mexico where the stunt pilot died, or that other GENDER REVEAL party that started the El Dorado fire, burning over twenty-two thousand acres and killing a firefighter, but semi-disastrous nonetheless. I have a huge "UGH" written next to GENDER / REVEAL—a corny, culturally conservative, and sometimes stupidly dangerous practice that I really thought we were past. You can't reveal "gender," only "sex," and even then, intersex children exist, and even then, why? Why all this pink / blue, boys like guns / girls like flowers bullshit? When the person who pioneered the party format tells you you should Stop, you should maybe consider stopping:

In her own words, she now sees how these parties “overemphasize one aspect of a person”—reducing children to a pink-or-blue storyline before they even arrive. Karvunidis’s daughter, interestingly, now identifies in ways that challenge traditional gender norms—a reality that changed her mother’s perspective entirely. (kidsaintcheap.com) (full story at The Guardian)

Hurray to babies, boo to enforced gender conformity! The other issue with this theme is much more technical. It's a GENDER REVEAL party, a HOUSEWARMING party, but it's not a BRIDAL SHOWER party. That is, BRIDAL SHOWER stands all on its own, with no need of "party" to complete it. The others don't. Well, the revealer does, but that's because it's hogging the "PARTY" part of the answer. GENDER REVEAL and HOUSEWARMING are left out to dry. You need PARTY in the WRAP PARTY answer for it to work as a revealer, which is what makes BRIDAL SHOWER feel like the awkward outlier. You usually put "party" after the first two themers, but you absolutely cannot put "party" after BRIDAL SHOWER without sounding idiotic (or just redundant—that's kinder).

I forgot the Everything Everywhere All at Once actor's name (not for the first time) (18D: Ke Huy ___, "Everything Everywhere All at Once" actor) and when one of his crosses was a clue with nothing in it (22A: —), I got a little worried. Tuesdays don't usually have empty clues like that. Eventually I was able to infer the "A" in REVEAL, and a bit later, I stumbled on the whole theme concept and the puzzle became a normal Tuesday-level puzzle once again. A few other things make this puzzle maybe a little tougher than usual. There's that clue on LAVA FLOW (26A: Tropical cocktail with bananas, strawberries, rum and coconut cream). Never heard of it, and nothing about its ingredients screams "lava." I love cocktails, but I tend to avoid the excessively fruity stuff—maybe it's more familiar to tiki drink enthusiasts, but it was a total mystery to me. Then there's QUAN and SYMS (69A: Jazz singer Sylvia) and HORAE (16A: Greek goddesses of the seasons), two of which I knew but all of which seem on the toughish side, where names are concerned (Jennifer EGAN, you really should know by now) (43A: Jennifer who wrote "A Visit From the Goon Squad"). I know the HAKA very well (having a Kiwi wife helps) (57D: Ceremonial Maori dance) but I'm wondering if there aren't going to be a few people out there today thrown by the HAKA / AKELA cross. I know AKELA only from crosswords (64A: Wolf in "The Jungle Book"). Jungle Book no longer has the cultural resonance that crosswords thinks it has, and hasn't for a while, so that "K" could flatten a solver or two. I think HAKA and AKELA are probably both too well known for that cross to be a true Natick, but we'll see.

[I guess there is a vague resemblance]

Bullets:

• 46A: Cowboy's kerchief (BANDANNA) — one of those weird situations where the dictionary says one thing but every spelling I've ever seen says another. That double-"N" looks super wrong to me, but I would never spell that word any way but "BANDANA." Most of the (internet) world seems to agree. And yet Merriam-Webster.com has BANDANNA as the lead entry and BANDANA as the "variant." Lexicographers, what will it take to make you flip their statuses? (earnest question, actually)

• 3D: High-def flat screen, for short (LCDTV) — a hairball of an answer. Look what the cat coughed up: consonants!
• 7D: Whole that's greater than the sum of its parts, from the German (GESTALT) — this feels like something urban intellectuals said in the '70s. I thought it had to do with the overall vibe of something, like a culture, but I clearly have no idea what I'm talking about here, which is why I have never, ever used this word. 
• 39D: "'Tis entirely likely" ("I DARE SAY") — I don't mind the answer, but that clue is tortured. Trying so hard to get around using "I" in the clue that you end up with a phrase no one would actually say.
• 53D: Second-largest city in Northern Ireland (DERRY) — I couldn't have named (with confidence) another city in Northern Ireland besides Belfast. I've heard of DERRY, but mostly because of the TV show DERRY Girls. The Derry Urban Area has only about 100K people in it. By comparison, the Binghamton Urban Area has ~150K. Doesn't feel that big, but stats are stats. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...