Wolf-headed god of Egyptian myth / SAT 1-9-21 / Plumlike fruits / Southwestern shrub that yields a cosmetic oil / Crawford NBA's all-time leader in four-point plays / Coltrane's rendition of My Favorite Things / Sarcastic response to backpedaling / Biblical character who lived to be 912 / Sea serpent in the night sky

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Medium? (untimed)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SCUD (20A: Move fast, as clouds) —

1: to move or run swiftly especially as if driven forward clouds scudding across the sky

2: to run before a gale (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

***HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS!**. The calendar has turned on another year (thank God), and while that might mean a lot of things to a lot of people, for me it means it's time for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask regular readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. Last year at this time, I wrote about what a melancholy year 2019 was; my oldest dog had died and the world was kind of a wreck. And then 2020 happened, and I learned what a real wreck looks like. In February, my other dog died (R.I.P. Gabby). And then, well, COVID. And let's be honest, even with a new president, 2021 is going to be, uh, challenging as well. But I hope that the regular ritual of solving crosswords brought some solace and stability to your lives this past year, and I hope that my blog added to your enjoyment of the solving experience in some way. This year my blog will celebrate its 15th anniversary! I feel so proud! And old! A lot of labor goes into producing this blog every day (Every. Day.) and the hours are, let's say, less than ideal (I'm either solving and writing at night, after 10pm, or in the morning, before 6am). Most days, I really do love the writing, but it is work, and once a year (right now!) I acknowledge that fact. As I've said before, I have no interest in "monetizing" the blog beyond a simple, direct contribution request once a year. No ads, no gimmicks. Just here for you, every day, rain or shine, whether you like it or, perhaps, on occasion, not :) It's just me and my laptop and some free blogging software and, you know, a lot of rage, but hopefully some insight and levity along the way. I do genuinely love this gig, and whether you're an everyday reader or a Sunday-only reader or a flat-out hatereader, I appreciate you more than you'll ever know.

How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address (checks should be made out to "Rex Parker"):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

And heck, why don't I throw my Venmo handle in here too, just in case that's your preferred way of moving money around; it's @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which they did that one time someone contributed that way—but it worked!)

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. And my thank-you postcards this year are really special. They are portraits of my new cat Alfie (a bright spot of 2020), designed by artist Ella Egan, a.k.a. my daughter. And they look like this:

He's eating kale in that middle one, in case you're wondering. Anyway, these cards are personally meaningful to me, and also, I believe, objectively lovely. I can't wait to share them with the snail-mailers. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD."  Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Now on to today's puzzle...

* * *

This grid seems fine, and yet I kept finding the experience of solving it off-putting. I have this reflexive disdain for puzzles where the constructor gets a Scrabble-tile bee in his bonnet. As soon as I sense that it's going to be "watch me put Zs and Qs and Js in as many places as I can!" type of deal, my eyes start to roll and my interest starts to wane. Jamming the grid with high-value Scrabble tiles is some early-aughts puzzboy idea of excellence (it's very much a male constructor move ... though, it's a very male constructor world, still, especially on Saturdays, so maybe the actual data would be less conclusive). As I say, though, the puzzle seems to handle all the Scrabbliness OK. I'd just rather have a grid driven by thoughtfulness and freshness and liveliness than one driven by Scrabbliness, because *most* of the time, JQZ fireworks aren't worth it. Again, this one holds up pretty well. I just can't help my nails-on-a-chalkboard response to unchecked JQZ fervor, which feels like a bad instinct to encourage. The only answer that really made me smile today was "NICE SAVE" (not a rare letter in sight). I'll take genuine freshness over superficial dazzle any day.

Things began weirdly and inauspiciously:

SCUD is the dumbest word, and its dumbness is here compounded by my own dumbness: knowing enough to be in the ballpark, but not enough to get it right. SCUT ... means something else. They're both equally ugly words (this is probably due to their cousin, SCUM, who is both much more popular and iconically ugly). But they all have negative associations. SCUT means "tedious or menial" (in relation to work, usually), and SCUD is probably best known for being a kind of missile used by the Iraqis in the first Gulf War. Anyway, SCUT was wrong, but close enough that I was able to get going. Soon I ended up here:

And then was very much stuck. Stunned that I had the fat back ends of all those answers and no idea what their fronts might be. You can put anything in front of -ESQUE, so no hope there. I thought -RMORE was going to be one word (can't believe I've been solving this long and still forget to shake that one-word impulse out of my brain when I get stuck, ugh). And then there was blank WALTZ. Of course Coltrane plays JAZZ—it's the obviousness of it that kept me from seeing it. I thought a waltz was a waltz was a waltz, 1 2 3 1 2 3, wherever you found it. SAX WALTZ wouldn't fit, FREE WALTZ (which I considered because of association with "free JAZZ!") seemed improbable—contradictory, in fact. I tried the short answers in there, but had this weird balk at OBI because I thought maybe LEI (!?!?!) (19A: Accessory that might have a netsuke attached), and then BIT could also have been TAD (22A: Modicum). Sigh. It was only when my brain finally went "uh, it's not just *JAZZ* WALTZ, is it?" that I had a most deflating "aha" moment. An "oof" moment. It really was the "ha ha, look at us, we're a bunch of valuable Scrabble tiles, TADA!" quality of that moment that made me resent every bit of JQZ glitter that followed.

After that corner, though, things got considerably easier. But then I knew JAMAL, which seems like the kind of answer where if you knew it, wheeeeee, and if you didn't, uh oh (35A: ___ Crawford, the N.B.A.'s all-time leader in four-point plays). Again, the high-value "J" comes into play. I went JAMAL to JOESCHMO with no trouble, and that corner was over quickly. In fact, looking over the grid now, no part of it offered much resistance after I escaped the NW. The cluing was a normal level of toughness for Saturday, I think, but there were no places to get bogged down. But maybe my just happening to know PAMELA Hayden's name very well gave me an unusual advantage down there (46D: ___ Hayden, actress who voices Milhouse on "The Simpsons"). 

If you luck into knowing the proper names in a tough puzzle, you can really fly, and if those names aren't exceedingly well known by the general population, your sense of how easy the puzzle was can really be skewed. So as I say, this felt normal to me, but on a Saturday, just one unknown name can be the difference between success and stuckville. Last letter into the grid was, appropriately (and anticlimactically) the bra size, i.e. the "D" in DCUP (21D: Certain bra spec). No way to know what letter goes there til you get the cross. So I signed the DOTTED line and was done. It's a better-than-SOSO puzzle, I can see that. I just got put off by it early, and the joy never came back—though I guess the ODE TO JOY there at the end did help, a little. Gonna play that now to try to brighten this dark-in-so-many-ways winter day. I wish you all joy as well.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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