Nabokov's longest novel / TUE 1-11-22 / Rhyming descriptor for Obama / Spelling of "BH90210" / Threepio's Star Wars companion / Some old tape players briefly / Festive French season / Precipice of exposed bedrock

Constructor: Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (not hard, really, but names can slow people down, and there's a lot of white space here, so the puzzle might run a little slower than usual)

THEME: COUNTRY STAR (26D: Grand Ole Opry performer ... or a hint to 17-/18- Across and 23- and 36-Down) — each theme answer is a STAR whose first name is a COUNTRY:

Theme answers:

• AMERICA / FERRERA (17A: With 18-Across, Emmy-winning "Ugly Betty" actress)
• JORDAN PEELE (23D: Oscar-winning director of "Get Out")
• INDIA ARIE (36D: Grammy-winning singer of "Little Things")

Word of the Day: INDIA ARIE (36D) —

India Arie Simpson (born October 3, 1975), also known as India Arie (sometimes styled as india.arie), is an American singer and songwriter. She has sold over 3.3 million records in the US and 10 million worldwide. She has won four Grammy Awards from her 23 nominations, including Best R&B Album. [...] Arie released her debut album Acoustic Soul on March 27, 2001. The album was met with positive reviews and commercial success. "Acoustic Soul" debuted at number ten on the U.S. Billboard 200 and number three on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Within months, without the concentrated radio airplay that typically powers pop and rap albums, Acoustic Soul was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), selling 2,180,000 copies in the U.S. and 3,000,000 copies worldwide [...] While Arie and the album were nominated for seven Grammy awards in 2002, they won no awards, losing in five of seven categories to Alicia Keys. She closed the ceremony with a performance of her song "Video". Arie performed a duet with jazz singer Cassandra Wilson on the song "Just Another Parade" for her 2002 album Belly of the Sun. // Arie followed the success of her debut on September 24, 2002 with the release of Voyage to India. It debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 with first week sales of 109,000 copies and topped the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, with the RIAA certifying it Platinum. At the 2003 Grammy Awards, it won Best R&B Album, and the single "Little Things" won Best Urban/Alternative Performance. (wikipedia)

• • •

***HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** . Happy Newish Year! 2022! I hope you are holding up during these cold, dark days. It's early January, which 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. 

2021 was an important year for me, as my blog (this blog, the one you are reading right now) turned 15 years old! [noisemaker sounds!!!!]. That's a lot of years old. For a blog, anyway. 15 is also a pretty important crossword-related anniversary—maybe the only important crossword-related anniversary. The standard US crossword grid is 15x15, and now Rex Parker is also 15! Rex Parker, spanning the grid to give you the constant variety of crossword commentary: the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat (dum dum dum DUM!) The human drama of ... OK now I'm just channeling Jim McKay from the '70s-era introduction to "Wide World of Sports," but I do hope this blog has provided some insight, some entertainment, some commiseration, some solace, some sense of regularity during what are obviously pretty tumultuous and often lonely times. I hope it has enhanced your solving pleasure, giving you something to look forward to even (especially?) when the puzzle lets you down, and someone to celebrate with when the puzzle is wonderful. If it's also given you someone to shout at in disagreement, that's OK too.

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 there's illumination 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

I'll 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 I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)

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. Last year's thank-you postcards featured various portraits of my cat, Alfie, designed by artist Ella Egan, a.k.a. my daughter. They were such a hit that I asked Ella to design this year's thank-you postcard as well, this time featuring both my cats. And this is the result. Behold this year's thank-you card: "Alfie and Olive: Exploring the Grid":

We went back and forth on whether she should add more black squares to make the grid look more plausibly fillable (that's a Lot of white space), but in the end we decided not to crowd the jumping (or hanging?) Olive with more black squares, and instead just to leave the card as is, with the idea that the cats are exploring a grid that is ... under construction. Anyway, this card is personally meaningful to me, and also, I believe, objectively lovely. I can't wait to share it with snail-mailers (and oh, what the hell, if you are a PayPal / Venmo donor and you want one too, just say so in the message). 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...

• • •

I was enjoying this one just fine without really noticing what the theme was supposed to be. Even after moving through the revealer, nothing was clicking (I didn't really stop to think about it), so I just plowed toward the end assuming (correctly) that I'd just look back when I was through and all would be revealed. The very last answer I put in the grid as the FERRERA of AMERICA / FERRERA—actually, the last answer I wrote in was STAVING, but then I checked the crosses and realized that I had misspelled FERRERA as FERRARA (thank god IRA was not a plausible answer for 12D: Wrath (IRE)). At that point, looking at AMERICA / FERRERA, I thought, "huh ... weird to have a non-theme answer take up that much real estate"; then I went back and looked at the clue on COUNTRY STAR and had a very genuine, very satisfying "Aha!" moment. She is a theme answer! And so was JORDAN PEELE and INDIA ARIE! Man, I was *wondering* why INDIA ARIE was showing up with her full name all of a sudden. Usually she just shows up as ARIE, but yeah, today, makes sense to show up all formal-like—special occasion. Seriously, it feels so good to look at a revealer and think "Ohhhhhh!" and not "... huh?" or, worse, "pffffft, really?" And to have each "star" be from a different artistic universe (TV, movies, music), and to have none of them be actual COUNTRY STARs (well, not yet, anyway), and to have all of them be winners of the major awards in their fields (thus justifying the claim of "STAR")—it's all really elegant, really tight, really satisfying. There's not much competition at this point, obviously, but this is definitely my favorite themed puzzle of 2022!!! Very clever indeed. And this is one time I didn't mind the puzzle doing a little bit of self-congratulation: TUESDAYS are so rarely filled with NICE IDEAs.

Not only was the theme on point, but the fill held up very nicely despite the abundance of very short answers and the demands of multiple long stacks (or whatever a stack is called when it's made up of Downs and not Acrosses). Today's grid has mirror symmetry (as opposed to more typical rotational symmetry), and this is almost certainly to handle AMERICA / FERRERA. You could've done this puzzle with AMERICA in the first Across and FERRERA in the last Across, and then the other themers (11, 9, 11) positioned symmetrically in conventional thematic format (i.e. running Across), but it's much nicer to keep Ms. FERRERA in something closer to one piece, with her name parts side by side. Also, the grid just looks cooler this way. Mirror symmetry grids are a nice visual change of pace. 

Trouble spots ... hmmm, let's see ... well, the names might be trouble spots for some solvers. Names are often an all-or-nothing proposition, manna to those who know them, poison to those who don't. These were all known to me, and all of them seem objectively famous—true, my sense of INDIA ARIE's fame comes primarily from crosswords, but looking over her wikipedia page, you can see she's had a very accomplished 20+-year career. The name that got me today, briefly, was MUFASA, which is a name I know, now that I look at it, but my first guess was something like MAHASA (still haven't gotten around to seeing "The Lion King" ... maybe this decade?). I had ADELA as my "Word of the Day" not too long ago and *still* forgot whether her name ended "E" or "A." ADELA Rogers St. John or ADELE Rogers St. John?—The eternal question, one that will never be answered ... or, one that has a very definite answer that I am simply doomed to forget. 

I had some trouble getting EDIFY (34A: Enlighten), which meant I was a little slower than I wouldn't liked getting those long Downs in the bottom middle. It also meant that after getting ANNUS (which I had written in as ANNUM at that point), I had the first "N" at 35D: Half of a double helix, but instead of writing in DNA STRAND, I (very unhappily!) wrote in ONE STRAND, with a mental note of "Oh, come on! ONE STRAND!? That's awful. You can't do that!" And, turns out, the puzzle didn't do that—another pleasant "aha" moment. Had one other false outrage alarm at 1D: ___ Tour (PGA), where, after getting the "P" from PROTONS, I wrote in ... PRO. "You can't cross PRO with PROTONS, that's weak, that's ... oh, that's not actually the answer, nevermind." I remain opposed to the transliteration of R2D2's name, despite abundant precedence, so ARTOO made me briefly frown, but otherwise there was no pain to be found. I even enjoyed the poker clue (56A: Come over the top, in poker (RERAISE)), despite my complete lack of interest in poker and all its related clues (sorry, ANTE). I liked it because I nailed it off the first letter; it always feels good to hit an answer solid like that, especially when it's outside your area of interest.  So things were good all over. FUDGSICLE good. And on a Tuesday, the day most likely to go wrong (or "Tuez," in common parlance). This puzzle did not Tuez. Hope you liked it half as well as I did. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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