"Rise and shine!" / TUES 7-7-26 / "Barbie" actress Issa / Portmanteau for a screened-in feline lounge / Delphi prophet / Fruit from a tree that can self-pollinate

Hello, everyone! It’s Clare coming at you a little late (why does immigration court have so many deadlines?!), this time for the first Tuesday of July. I hope no one has suffered too much in this insane heat! D.C. was pretty miserable for a few days, and I had to get creative to find ways for my dog to run off some of the energy that she built up from not going on our usual walks or trips to the dog park. But staying inside has also coincided with getting to watch so many sports! The World Cup has been amazing (though I just watched the USMNT lose embarrassingly badly to Belgium). The England-Mexico game? The Argentina-Cabo Verde game? So great! Wimbledon has had some entertaining matches, too. Go, Coco! 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Brad Lively

Relative difficulty: Medium for a Tuesday

THEME: WARM AND FUZZY (50A: Like a feeling of tender happiness ... or how you might feel after reading both halves of the answers to the starred clues?) — The first half of each theme answer describes something “warm,” and the second half is an animal that’s “fuzzy.”

Theme answers:

• BEACH BUNNIES (20A: *Surfer girls, in old lingo) 
• HOT DOGS (28A: *Frankfurters) 
• SUN BEAR (36A: *Relative of a grizzly that's named for its bright chest patch) 
• FIREFOX (45A: *Internet browser borrowing a nickname for the red panda)

Word of the Day: SPAMALOT (36D: Monty Python musical with a portmanteau title)—

Spamalot, also known as Monty Python's Spamalot: A New Musical (Lovingly) Ripped Off from the Motion Picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail) is a musical with music by John Du Prez and Eric Idle, and lyrics and a book by Idle. Based on the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the musical offers a highly irreverent parody of Arthurian legend, with the title being a portmanteau of Spam and Camelot. The original 2005 Broadway production directed by Mike Nichols received 14 Tony Award nominations, winning in three categories, including Best Musical. During its initial run of 1,575 performances, the production was seen by more than two million people and grossed over $168 million (Wiki)

• • •

That was a pretty average Tuesday puzzle that made me feel somewhat WARM AND FUZZY inside. It’s a nice idea and a cute phrase, and I came around to liking the theme more than I thought I did initially. The theme was very straightforward: literally just a word that is (mostly) WARM followed directly by an animal that could plausibly be described as FUZZY. I have some qualms with the FUZZY answers, as I think “furry” might be a better descriptor — or even “fluffy.” I’m just not sure I’ve ever thought of BUNNIES or a FOX as being FUZZY. And a BEAR? (Even if Fuzzy Wuzzy was a fuzzy bear. Or was he?) My DOG is wonderfully cuddly and has some impressive hair on top of her head that I can make into a mohawk, but I still don’t think of her as FUZZY. And have you ever been to a BEACH in winter? I have, because my parents live in a beach town, and it’s not WARM… 

The puzzle had some nice pairings, with GET UP (9A: "Rise and shine!") directly above AWAKE (16A: No longer in dreamland). Then there’s LEIA (59A: Rebel Alliance princess) above TRON (62A: Sci-fi franchise with light cycles). MUSH (51D: Sled dog command) (which I know because of the movie “Snow Dogs”) was crossing SNOW (61A: Fresh powder, e.g.). Though in the opposite vein, we also had both HBO (21D: "Curb Your Enthusiasm" network) and PBS (33D: "This Old House" network) in the puzzle. Did we really need two network abbreviations?

I liked BABA (1A: ___ ghanouj) as the answer to start the puzzle. It’s delicious, and upon googling it for this write-up, I learned that it might translate to “father of coquetry.” GAME OVER (9D: Last words on a pinball machine) is a great expression and one that I unfortunately saw many times as I played my family’s pinball machine over and over as a kid. NAMES (49A: What to call people … or what not to call people) is basic fill that was clued in a clever way. I like the word FANDOM (45D: Obsessive pop culture subculture) (as I am in several fandoms myself. And only mildly obsessive.). GO POOF (25D: Vanish into thin air) is cute and fun to say. My favorite clue/answer was 30D: Start a long drive, in a way as TEE OFF, which got a chuckle out of me. 

I struggled a bit in random parts of the puzzle. I didn’t know LAYNE (7D: ___ Staley, original lead singer of Alice in Chains), who felt obscure for a Tuesday. I couldn’t come up with ELF HATS (43A: Accessories pointed at the North Pole?) for the longest time and wanted to make it “elf ears,” even though ears clearly aren’t an accessory. I forgot that a CATIO (60A: Portmanteau for a screened-in feline lounge) is a thing, and while I had CAT immediately, I had to rack my brain for a while as to how to finish the word. HAWAII (44D: Luau locale) also took me an inordinately long time to get, likely fueled by my confusion over CATIO (60A). Then I also just stared at ON AUTO (26D: Acting unthinkingly) for a while, reading it more as “on a uto” and being very, very confused. 

I’m feeling slightly more WARM AND FUZZY about the puzzle than when I finished it. Or maybe that’s the herbal tea I’m drinking. Who’s to say?

Misc:

• It felt fun to have REF (47D: Yellow card wielder) in the puzzle as I was watching yellow cards be given in the U.S. men’s game against Belgium. But no red cards. Not that it would have mattered. 
• I used to play the Alphabet Game in the car with my soccer carpool as our parents took turns driving us the 30 minutes to and from practice twice a week, and we always had the particular PED (13D: ___ Xing) sign we’d use to get “X.” Playing this game on a road trip with my dad and sister, I got so excited when I finally got a “Q” that I yelled out “Quality [Inn]” so loudly that my dad nearly drove off the freeway. 
• I was following along on TikTok and social media with Kelsey Pfendler as she rowed from California to HAWAII (44D), and she just arrived! It took her just under 44 days to row 2,400 miles solo, setting the record for the fastest solo journey — man or woman. 
• I’ve hiked ZION (53D: Last U.S. national park alphabetically), and it was beautiful… for the most part. When I hiked Angel’s Landing, I slipped on a rock near the edge and saw my life flash before my eyes. 
• If anyone is looking to try a new OREO (32A: Subject of Weird Al Yankovic's "The White Stuff") flavor, my favorite band, BTS, has a collab with OREO. The two released a brown sugar-pancake-flavored OREO that's inspired by a common Korean street food called hotteok. Can confirm: They’re quite tasty! 
• Because I know you were all waiting, here’s a picture of Red’s mohawk, where she’s very furry and maybe just a little FUZZY.

Signed, Clare Carroll, writing from a very hot and not at all fuzzy DC (unless you count the algae in the Reflecting Pool)

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Hall-of-Fame hoopster Thomas / MON 7-6-26 / Modern lead-in to coin or stock / Temporary suspensions / Cybertruck maker / European capital that's home to the Little Mermaid statue / Muppet with a noted feud with a pet rock / Instrument played by a Muse / Event that might include juggling, singing and magic tricks / 2009 comedy about a bachelor party and its aftermath / Steve ___, 2003 N.F.L. M.V.P.-winning quarterback / 1960s Pontiac muscle car / Serpent seen on a sarcophagus

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: VOICE PARTS (56A: Sections of a choir ... as hinted at by this puzzle's circled letters) — the circled letters contain the voice parts ALTO, BASS, SOPRANO, and TENOR, respectively. I think (maybe???) the fact that the circled letters are non-consecutive is supposed to indicate "parting" in some way—like, the voices have been chopped into "parts" or been "parted" from one another (!?); otherwise, I'm not sure what the revealer is doing besides telling me something I can already clearly see for myself, i.e. that the circled letters contain voice parts:

Theme answers:

• TALENT SHOW (17A: Event that might include juggling, singing and magic tricks)
• BLANK STARES (24A: Looks of total confusion)
• STOP, DROP AND ROLL (36A: Three-part fire safety technique)
• THE HANGOVER (46A: 2009 comedy about a bachelor party and its aftermath)

Word of the Day: Chappell ROAN (37D: Singer Chappell with the double-platinum album "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess") —

Kayleigh Rose Amstutz (born February 19, 1998), known professionally as Chappell Roan ([...]CHAP-əl ROHN), is an American singer and songwriter. She is known for her camp and drag queen–influenced style.

After signing to Amusement Records—in partnership with Island Records—in 2023, Roan released her debut studio album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. The next year, Roan achieved global recognition with the single "Good Luck, Babe!", which reached number four on the US Billboard Hot 100 and became an international top-five single. The song's popularity led to a resurgence of her debut album, which became a sleeper hit and peaked at number two on the US Billboard 200. It yielded the multi-platinum single "Hot to Go!", while her 2020 single, "Pink Pony Club", reached number one on the UK singles chart. In 2025, Roan won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist and earned her second UK number-one single with "The Subway". (wikipedia)

• • •

I was kind of high on the puzzle coming out of the NW, before I knew what the theme was. The fill felt fresh—I ran GALAPAGOS, SONGBIRD, and COPENHAGEN in pretty short order: a strong triad. But then I saw the theme, which is to say, I saw the ALTO in TALENT SHOW, and that ... was that? I had the first few circled squares of the next two themers and proceeded to just write in every voice part I could think of (without looking at the Across clues, of course):

The puzzle gave the game away too quickly. But I figured at least I might get a good revealer out of it, something to make all the non-consecutive circles make sense (non-consecutive circles that spell out things not being much of a feat on their own). What I got, by way of revealer, was VOICE PARTS, which, if it doesn't involve wordplay, is painfully literal and obvious and unnecessary (yes, those are VOICE PARTS, please tell me something I don't know), and if it does involve wordplay ... I'm not totally sure I understand it. The clue for VOICE PARTS says that it's "hinted at" by the circled letters, and "hinted" implies something more than simple literal description. But the wordplay ... what is "PARTS" supposed to suggest? That the voice parts have been broken into ... parts? That the letters that make up the voice parts have been ... parted from one another? A very unstuck landing, this revealer. So what might've been a 3-star puzzle gets dropped to 2.5 stars for the wobbly revealer. I considered raising it back to three because the fill was actually above average, on the whole, but then I was forced to take the half star back because of TEHRAN, IRAN, an incredibly dumb redundancy (10D: Capital city between Baghdad, Iraq, and Ashgabat, Turkmenistan). TEHRAN, IRAN? What else is it gonna be, TEHRAN, SWEDEN? The totally unnecessary attachment of the country at the end of that answer earned a red card from me. And sorry, that decision is final, no appeals. Also, seeing plural APRS yet again (twice in two days??) didn't help. Also, don't park your stupid Cybertruck in my puzzle and expect anything more than a middling to negative review (6D: Cybertruck maker). That's two days in a row of including that white supremacist buffoon in the puzzle. Enough already. I ignored it yesterday, but yeesh. Neither TESLA nor ELON requires you to point to that guy. Please stop. 

The Downs-only solve was pretty dang smooth, aided as it was by all those free (circled) squares that the theme just handed to me. I had some trouble with TEHRAN, IRAN because wtf (see above), but not much trouble. My only real holdup was a dumb mistake: I wrote in TELE- instead of MEME at 45D: Modern lead-in to coin or stock. "Lead-in" had me thinking prefix and ... I dunno, maybe "telecoin" is a thing now. So many other dumb things are "coins," why shouldn't there be a telecoin? But the "T" and "L" from TELE really made the Acrosses lock up. Ended up with POLEL- and TCN-IR and it doesn't take a genius to see that those weren't going to work, so I looked to see which of my Down answers might be wrong and while at first I thought it might be DECREPIT (38D: Dilapidated), a second look made it clear it was TELE-. So, TELE- to MEME to victory, as MORATORIA finally fell into place (34D: Temporary suspensions).

Bullets:

• 15A: Muppet with a noted feud with a pet rock (ELMO) — "noted"? I see that yes, indeed, it has been noted. ELMO did not exist when I was a kid, so I still think of him the same way I think of the Jacksonville Jaguars—basically, he's an expansion Muppet. And since my daughter never watched Sesame Street (that I can remember) I've been blissfully unaware of whatever that annoyingly-voiced baby-talking puppet gets up to. But the pet rock thing has apparently been going on for over a quarter century, and there's even a book about this so-called "feud," so ... the clue is valid. Also, hats off to the EMO / ELMO cross. If you're having a "feud" with a pet rock ... yeah, you might be EMO. Ask your doctor. 

• 19A: ___ wave (summer phenomenon) (HEAT) — topical. Maybe too topical. NYC had a record-setting HEAT wave just this past week. The added presence of HUMID today (47D: Like sticky summer weather) made it feel like the puzzle was just rubbing it in.
• 39D: Instrument played by a Muse (LYRE) — had my typical LUTE/LYRE confusion here, which made the SE section (already gummed up by my TELE-for-MEME error) even dicier. 
• 35D: Basic skateboarding trick (OLLIE) — this was a gimme; it's in the crossword all the time. But today, perhaps because the puzzle was so name-y, I noticed how OLLIE was clued as a trick and not a name, and then I thought about how, before it was a skateboarding trick (first clued that way in 2011), OLLIE used to be clued as either one half of the comedy duo Laurel & Hardy (Stan Laurel and Oliver aka OLLIE Hardy) or as one part of the comedy trio Kukla, Fran & OLLIE (OLLIE was a dragon—also, a puppet, as was Kukla; Fran was just a regular human lady). OLLIE Hardy appears now only sporadically (as Stan's partner) and we haven't seen OLLIE the puppet dragon since 2015. Both old comedy OLLIEs were before my time, but ... I dunno, I kind of miss them. Skateboarding shmateboarding, I want my puppet dragon and/or bowler-wearing big guy!

[Did Tootsie Roll MINTEES ever catch on???]

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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