Mediocre, in modern slang / SAT 9-7-24 / Surgeon/writer Gawande / Sausage grinder in Italy? / Methods for sharing pirated material / Fast-food chain with palm trees on its packaging / Experimental music documentary of 2024 / Mountain grouping / Relative of a heckelphone / First word in the opening crawl for "Star Wars: Episode I" / Like soffritto ingredients

Constructor: David P. Williams

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: None 

Word of the Day: BITTORRENTS (31A: Methods for sharing pirated material) —

BitTorrent, also referred to simply as torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.

To send or receive files, users use a BitTorrent client on their Internet-connected computer, which are available for a variety of computing platforms and operating systems, including an official client. BitTorrent trackers provide a list of files available for transfer and allow the client to find peer users, known as "seeds", who may transfer the files. BitTorrent downloading is considered to be faster than HTTP ("direct downloading") and FTP due to the lack of a central server that could limit bandwidth.

BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, such as digital video files containing TV shows and video clips, or digital audio files. BitTorrent accounted for a third of all internet traffic in 2004, according to a study by Cachelogic. As recently as 2019 BitTorrent remained a significant file sharing protocol according to Sandvine, generating a substantial amount of Internet traffic, with 2.46% of downstream, and 27.58% of upstream traffic, although this share has declined significantly since then. (wikipedia)

• • •

When I finished this puzzle, which I liked just fine, I looked at the constructor name and thought, "Wait, is this the guy ...?" And then I went and looked it up, and it is, in fact, the guy. What guy, you ask? This guy: 

 
 

Do you notice a pattern? Well, do ya, punk!? Literally, a pattern. The same grid pattern for Every Single One of his NYT crosswords. Is it art? Is he doing a bit? Well now we've all seen the bit. Can it be over now?* I can't say I haven't enjoyed the bit. Well, not the bit, per se, but the puzzles themselves (before I knew there was a bit). I think I've come down more positive than negative on these puzzles. So perhaps I shouldn't care what shape the grid is, or that this constructor seems to be unable (or unwilling) to work with any other grid pattern. But now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it, and if I see it again, it will officially be in beat-a-dead-horse / eyeroll territory. Still, though, if it's working for you ... I mean, I get it. They keep accepting them, why stop? Let me suggest a reason: dignity. Dignity. That's why. The talent is obviously there. Move some black squares around!!! Or just rotate your pet grid 90 degrees! Baby steps!

Besides an "OUT" dupe and a "___ TO" dupe (LOAN TO, SOAR TO) and a probably excessive reliance on foreign words (ORA, PERDU, DENTE, POCO, SEL), I liked this puzzle quite a bit. I wonder how many people fell into the STRIKE trap right away (1A: Labor tactic). That's certainly the first place my brain went, but then I checked the "K" cross and kouldn't do anything with it (5D: Whizzes). Then I just toggled: "Labor ... what's another 'labor'? ... aha." And in went LAMAZE and down went ZIPS, and then ENO, and well I felt very pleased with myself. Mission ... started. And pretty soon, I dropped a line all the way to the bottom, and I was off! Everything was, indeed, coming along great:

The clues were definitely punching with Saturday force, but for whatever reason I never got significantly bogged down. I had a flicker of panic in the NE when I couldn't push into that corner from either side at first (besides LOAN TO), but eventually I had a moment of self-recognition (DOOFUS!), and that got me to UPTAKES, and down that corner went. Speaking of UPTAKES (11D: Moments of comprehension, in an idiom), that's one of two answers today that really don't feel great in the plural. The other, much less great-feeling plural is BITTORRENTS. I had no idea you could pluralize that. I thought it was proprietary. On the "BitTorrent" wikipedia page, there's not one instance of the term in the plural. So it feels awkward—like something you maybe shouldn't have stuffed in your overstuffed wordlist in the first place. I'm sure one of you nerds (at least!) will tell me why it's just fine. Stuff a DONGLE in it, nerds! (37D: Computer accessory). Nah, I'm just kidding. Tech talk is slightly beyond my purview, so whatever you say, nerds. I'm happy to concede. There are worse things than awkward plurals, anyway.

Do you ever get mad—actively mid-solve mad—at yourself for not knowing something you feel you should know? A vocabulary word, for instance? For me, today, it was "Apologue," which I thought for sure meant a "defense." I knew that's what "apologia" meant, so ... how different could they be!? Well, plenty, apparently, because FABLE, I did not see coming (20A: Apologue). "A moral fable, especially one with animals as characters." The word appears just once in the "Aesop's Fables" wikipedia page, but it's there. I thought maybe the Fables were actually called "Apologues" in the original Greek, but no, the original title is Aesopica. (Are you having fun? Are these FUN FACTS!?). Also, if you google "Aesop," you get not the famous fabulist, but ... this. We're sorry, Aesop. You deserve better than to come in second place to this:

[Thanks, google! Your algorithms are enriching all our lives tremendously!:]

I was just on my game today. From grokking the LAMAZE trick early, to remembering ATUL Gawande's name somehow (42D: Surgeon/writer Gawande), to no-looking NITTY-GRITTY (!) (the letter pattern I had in place was undeniable) (32A: Details), I was just humming. Mad at myself about the "Apologue" / FABLE thing, and then re-mad at myself about forgetting the French word for "French toast" ("pain PERDU," literally "lost bread"), but those were the only real moments of frustration, and they were minor. Again, it's not as if everything was Easy—it was just steadily gettable.

More stuff:

• 48A: Fast-food chain with palm trees on its packaging (IN-N-OUT) — great answer, even if it does look pretty stupid in the grid (without its hyphens).

• 49A: First word in the opening crawl for "Star Wars: Episode I" (TURMOIL) — 10 demerits for forcing me to think about this movie for even one second. Also, huge LOL that I care about its completely non-ICONIC "opening crawl." The opening crawl for (so-called) "Episode IV" (i.e. the original Star Wars)—that is ICONIC. Who the hell remembers the "Episode I" crawl? (shut up, nerds!)
• 51A: Where you might say "That's the spirit!" (SEANCE) — wanted "bar" or the equivalent here (TAVERN?), but got to SEANCE quickly. Clever wordplay.
• 35A: Mediocre, in modern slang (MID) — so much Z/Alpha/TikTok slang is goofy and unusable, but this one really works. I like it a lot. Witheringly concise. Good stuff.
• 29A: Deep fears? (SEA SERPENTS) — look, SHARKS, sure, but is anyone out there on the ocean like ".... you guys, you guys ... I'm really afraid?" "Of what?" "Of ... don't laugh, OK? ... of SEA SERPENTS!" [Explosive laughter] "I said don't lau—Aaaaaaah, what's that what's that!?!?" "That's kelp, buddy." "Oh. OK. You guys, you guys ... can we go back on shore now?" Seems like more of a mythical (like, actual Greek and Roman mythical) "fear" than a real fear.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*Apparently he is, indeed, doing a bit. Here’s the notes from the first time he published a grid with this pattern—I’m sorry, “topology”:

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Relative of a pupusa / FRI 9-6-24 / Hyperbolic ordinal / Hindu gentleman / Frankfurter's cry / Youth-centric magazine spinoff / Shade akin to mauve / Crimean town in 1945 headlines / What female llamas do to show disinterest in a mate / Spy's assumption

Constructor: Adrian Johnson

Relative difficulty: Medium

[ignore the little blue eyeballs—I had to "Reveal > Entire Puzzle" because I stupidly cleared my finished grid (so I could print a puzzle for my wife) before taking a screenshot]

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DIANA (63A: Roman goddess of childbirth) —

Diana is a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside and nature, hunters, wildlife, childbirth, crossroads, the night, and the Moon. She is equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, and absorbed much of Artemis' mythology early in Roman history, including a birth on the island of Delos to parents Jupiterand Latona, and a twin brother, Apollo, though she had an independent origin in Italy.

Diana is considered a virgin goddess and protector of childbirth. Historically, Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.

Diana is revered in modern neopagan religions including Roman neopaganism, Stregheria, and Wicca. In the ancient, medieval, and modern periods, Diana has been considered a triple deity, merged with a goddess of the moon (Luna/Selene) and the underworld (usually Hecate). (wikipedia)

• • •

Not a lot of whoosh on this one, for me, but the grid is loaded with good answers, and it put up a properly Friday fight, so I had a good time. The whooshiest moment probably came here, early on, when I threw this answer across the grid, not certain, but hopeful, that it was right: 

The other long central answers came fairly easily as well, so you'd think that would give me the exhilarating zoom-zoom whoosh feeling I'm always looking for on Fridays. But I just didn't navigate from section to section that easily. The puzzle is overall a little too ... quadranted? ... to make for good whoosh. After a slow start, I kept getting bogged down in corners (most notably, the NE and SW), so my experience was one not of flying but of grinding. Plus, it's hard to get a joyful whoosh feeling when you're riding an answer like BIG PHARMA (ugh), or when you throw down MEAT PATTY instead of BEEF PATTY, or when most of the long Acrosses in the NE and SW do *not* come easily at all. The puzzle wasn't Hard hard, but every part that was *not* the center took some working out. So the feeling was one of being stuck in corners, not one of flying around the grid from explosive answer to explosive answer. Still, as I say, the quality of the fill is generally high, and I enjoyed the ride, even if I never got much above the 55mph speed limit.

It's a very first-person grid, with "I" "ME" and "MY" answers all colliding near the center of the grid. I like that "THAT WASN'T MY IDEA, / I PROMISE" feels like one complete statement, though I will say there is something *slightly* off about "THAT WASN'T MY IDEA." I think it's the "THAT." If I just google ["wasn't my idea"], all the hits I get are either "IT WASN'T MY IDEA" or just "WASN'T MY IDEA" (both of which feel more colloquially correct). "THAT WASN'T MY IDEA" feels like someone trying to overstuff a wordlist. It's a perfectly comprehensible phrase, but it just doesn't land as perfectly as it ought, to my ear. Not nearly as perfectly as, say, "IT MEANS A LOT TO ME." The only thing that actively bugged me about the puzzle was BIG PHARMA + CITI, particularly that clue on CITI (31D: "___ Never Sleeps" (banking slogan)). It's not that the clue's inaccurate, it's just that it combines with BIG PHARMA to give the puzzle a creepy Blade Runner-esque corporate dystopia vibe. Maybe CITI should sleep. "CITI Never Sleeps" is a half step from "Big Brother is watching you." Also, about BIG PHARMA—I think "familiarly" is maybe missing the vibe. I'd say "contemptuously" is probably closer to reality. No one is saying "BIG PHARMA" with affection, is what I'm saying. It's either someone (rightly) complaining about profiteering and irresponsible marketing, or someone (wrongly) railing against vaccines. I know the puzzle is never gonna sneer at Big Business the way I think Big Business deserves, but, still, I can't imagine voluntarily putting something like BIG PHARMA in your grid. Is anyone going to be happy to see that?

On the other hand, I was happy to see TEEN VOGUE (59A: Youth-centric magazine spinoff). That publication seems (generally) like a force for good, and it also helped me tremendously in getting through that SW corner, where I had PUCE as PLUM (55D: Shade akin to mauve) and had no idea what kind of RACE or SALE I was dealing with, and where the clue on ONCD was entirely inscrutable (53D: Ready for a drive, perhaps?) (I mean, I get it now, but not then). I also loved seeing "Kia ORA" down here (a phrase you'll hear if you ever fly Air New Zealand, which I have, many times), and, I mean, who doesn't love AREPAs (45D: Relative of a pupusa). I had my first AREPA at Hola AREPA on Nicollet in Minneapolis. I was visiting my best friends, Shaun & Steve, and then my friend Rob Ford, who calls games for the Astros, was also in town (because the Astros were in town), and so we all went to Hola AREPA ... I think it might've even been Rob's birthday (!?). All the stars were weirdly aligned to make the debut of AREPAs in my life a memorable one. And today's constructor lives (or at least went to school) in the Twin Cities, so it's all ... it's all coming together. I really want an AREPA. It's 5:11a.m. ... Patience.

The hardest section of the puzzle for me was the NE, without question. Started with my stupid MEAT PATTY mistake, but switching to BEEF PATTY only helped a little. I had no idea PIN was a chess thing, so I was out there, and of course I couldn't remember the OCH v. ACH distinction (7D: Frankfurter's cry), so I left a square blank there, and I wasn't certain about CATHY v. KATHY, and I got completely fooled by the mashed potato / chicken clue, and wow, yeah, SKA BANDS are not a front-of-the-brain thing for me, so parsing that one = yikes (5A: They often have multiple horns). No idea how to take "horns" in that clue. So that corner verged on Saturday difficulty for me, but everything else was solidly Friday, with the center being more Tuesday or Wednesday.

[multiple horns!]

More Points:

• 63A: Roman goddess of childbirth (DIANA) — this flummoxed me, as DIANA is so strongly associated with virginity that "childbirth" seemed ... an unlikely bailiwick for her. I mean, she's really into virginity. Demands it of all her followers. She favors and watches over Camilla, the virgin warrior who has a prominent role in the Aeneid. She banished the nymph Callisto from her inner circle when she discovered Callisto was pregnant (by Jupiter, who "seduced" or "raped" her, depending on whom you read). So in my mind, DIANA => virginity, and since virginity does not (except in one famous case) lead to childbirth, I resisted DIANA for as long as I could. 
• 32A: Rembrandt and Sargent, notably (PORTRAIT ARTISTS) — wrote in PORTRAIT PAINTER even though the answer is obviously plural. Just a reflex. That's the phrase I want. The opening paragraph of Sargent's wikipedia page features a quotation calling him the "leading portrait painter of his generation." Sargent is the artist who first got me to see portrait painting as something other than static and boring. As I've probably said before, I stood in front of this painting for ... well, it was probably 15 minutes or so, but it felt like hours. I was mesmerized. I kept noticing new details. Everything about it was engrossing. I love you, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw!

• 1D: Hindu gentleman (BABU) — no idea. I had BABA in there at one point.
• 57D: Burrell of the Food Network (ANNE) — less than no idea. Isn't there a Ty Burrell who is ... someone? Oh yeah, look at that, he's the dad on Modern Family. As for ANNE Burrell ... wow, she was born on the same day (not the same date, but the same damn day) as my best friend Shaun, who is now making her second appearance in this write-up. September 21, 1969! It's an auspicious birthday, Sep. 21. It's the Earth, Wind & Fire birthday!

See you next time,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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