Sweet Indian beverage / FRI 9-11-20 / Title of hits by Abba Rihanna / Phone-unlocking option / Proverbial back-breaker

Constructor: Caitlin Reid and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:08)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: WHOLE / BLOOD (34D: With 36-Down, what plasma may be removed from) —

: blood with all its components (as white and red blood cells, platelets, and plasma) intact that has been withdrawn from a donor into an anticoagulant solution (merriam-webster)

• • •

Well this was fun. This is the Friday puzzle I want to see every Friday. Not this *exact* puzzle, of course—that would get boring quickly. But a puzzle in this mold. A wide-open, highly interconnected grid (as opposed to a heavily segmented grid where parts are almost completely cut off from other parts, yuck), chock full o' lively and interesting phrases. And when I struggled, as I did a few times today, I felt rewarded when I finally got the answer (PALM FRONDS!) rather than punished, as is so often the case. It's a tough thing to do—make me struggle and make me like it. But nobody said greatness was easy. And all puzzles at this level (i.e. the NYTXW) should be great, to be honest. It's hard for me to imagine not liking this puzzle. There's hardly any obscurities and almost no proper nouns at all—those are the things that are dangerous because they can really divide solvers along various kinds of lines (most notably generational). And I have no problems with names. But I'm noticing that they're kept to a bare minimum today. Cicely TYSON and AC/DC and OAHU are all, or nearly all, that you need to know. ITALY and LAO too, I guess, but you see what I mean: none of these are exactly dealbreakers. They're common knowledge. This means that there's ... a weird kind of inclusiveness to this puzzle. Feels like older people could find lots to like but also younger people won't be alienated by it. I'm just pointing this out because I think making a puzzle like this (broadly accessible but also fresh and vibrant) is actually a remarkable accomplishment. 

There's only one part that made me grimace a little, and that was BASE WAGE, largely because the only phrase I've ever heard is BASE PAY (39D: It comes before overtime). BASE WAGE just sounds weird or off to me, though I'm sure it has currency somewhere. I had BASE and PAY wouldn't fit so I was making faces at the puzzle for a bit there. But I got over it. It was easy to get over, considering the puzzle was abounding with delightful fill, such as: "OH, FORGET IT!"; MANGO LASSI; SLEEPYHEAD; CASH ON HAND; and especially FASHIONABLY LATE (37A: Not on time, but that's OK). I made more mistakes than I usually do on a Friday. I wrote in TAKES for 4D: Nets (MAKES), only to encounter TAKES right there in the same quadrant (19A: Perspectives). That error made PALM FRONDS very hard to see. I also did not understand "units" in 15A: Apartment units *and* I tried to force an "S" onto the end of the answer (because plural!) so SQUARE FEET was tough to see as well. I wrote in BEA at 27A: "Auntie," on the telly (BBC), because of "The Andy Griffith Show." I knew LASSI but needed a cross or two to remember, "oh, right, MANGO!" (64A: Sweet Indian beverage). Had BLACK M- and went with MOODS before MAGIC (28D: Bad spells). Had A- and went with ATARI (?!) before ARENA (48D: Game site). In the end I was saved by Abba and AC/DC. The music of 1980 will always save me. It's who I am. It's in my (WHOLE) BLOOD. Abba was especially important, as "S.O.S." got me started and busted the whole NE corner open almost as soon as I wrote it in the grid. Got all the "S.O.S." crosses instantly, and then vroom, off I went. And then when I was bogged down in the SW, AC/DC swooped in and cleared up that whole BLACK MOODS / ATARI mess. In short, I had fun. I hope you did too. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. I almost forgot the best mistake, which was actually just a clue misreading. Took me a long time to get SUCKED FACE because even though my brain was seeing [Necked], what it was hearing was [Nekkid] (i.e. a colloquial spelling of "naked"). I think the "jocularly" part of that clue was somehow skewing my brain nekkid-ward. I dunno. I just know that realizing that I'd been staring at "Necked" all along was a startling revelation. 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]