Towering figure in The Two Towers / FRI 1-7-22 / What Babe aspires to be in "Babe" / Speedy sci-fi technology / Dressing room encouragement / Secretly unionize? / ID seen at the post office / Broadway show where everyone knows the ending

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Kake UDON (10D: Kake ___ (Japanese dish)) —

Udon (うどん or 饂飩) is a thick noodle made from wheat flour, used in Japanese cuisine. It is a comfort food for many Japanese people. There are a variety of ways it is prepared and served. Its simplest form is in a hot soup as kake udon with a mild broth called kakejiru made from dashi, soy sauce, and mirin. It is usually topped with thinly chopped scallions. Other common toppings include prawn tempura, kakiage (mixed tempura fritter), abura-age (sweet, deep-fried tofu pouches), kamaboko (sliced fish cake), and shichimi spice added to taste.

Standard broth differs by region. Dark (koikuchi) soy sauce is added in eastern Japan, while light (usukuchi) soy sauce is added in the west. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

Vintage Weintraub. Delightful. Bouncy answers in an open, flowing grid. Zing zing. This started very, very easy, as every answer I wanted was correct for the first seven answers (at least): ACNE ERIN THOR TONI ATTIC COP and then pow, NON-APOLOGY (great answer) catapulted me into the center of the grid. But my pace slowed down as I decided to move not down NON-APOLOGY Street, but across the grid on "I CAN DO IT" Way, which was always an iffier route to take, considering the DO IT part was at that point pretty tentative. In fact, that's probably why I went that way—to confirm the tentative part. Anyway, that upper middle section put up some resistance: I went with GIST instead of MEAT off the "T" (7D: Substance), and then had trouble understanding what the "scavenger hunt" clue was after. My understanding of scavenger hunts is that they involve you finding a series of different things, possibly in a specific order, with more elaborate versions having you running all over town. So "GOT ONE!" just didn't square with what I had in mind, as it implies you are supposed to find many of the same things (like Easter eggs on an Easter egg hunt). If there is "ONE!," there are many more like it to come. So clearly "scavenger hunt" has a broader meaning than I imagined, and "GOT ONE!" seems fine to me. Just tough to wrangle. Once I determined that Othello was a GAME and not a MOOR, I got out of that section ... only to plow right into a much stickier section, i.e. the Northeast. 

The biggest roadblock of the day was 18A: Dressing room encouragement ("THAT'S SO YOU!"). I have to believe that clue was written with the express intent of having me (and possibly you) misunderstand its context. First, I had the wrong dressing room in mind (I was thinking "back stage," not "department store"). Then there's the word "encouragement," which I thought would be ... well, clearly an encouragement. Something like "BREAK A LEG!" only with "THAT'S" at the front end. But it wasn't that kind of "dressing room" and it wasn't that kind of "encouragement." It's actually a compliment, which I *guess* is an "encouragement" to buy the dress / jacket / tiara / whatever, but obviously none of the words in the clue tracked for me. That answer's difficulty was compounded severely by a couple of very tricksy clues in that same NE section. Just above "THAT'S SO YOU!" was the brilliant but brutal 16A: ID seen at the post office (IDAHO). I had the "O" from SOUS (the one gimme up there), so I kept wanting PHOTO. And just below "THAT'S SO YOU!" was the "?" clue 22A: A counting job? (CENSUS). Is that supposed to be a pun on "accounting"??? :( Because the CENSUS literally is a counting job, so there's no need for the "?" unless there's some cutesy wordplay. The short stuff up there wasn't helping out the way I thought it might. The SAYS answer was cross-referenced, so that was off the table. Not knowing Kake UDON and not having enough info to get the vaguely clued RUSTS (9A: Loses sheen, perhaps), and not even knowing what Eva Perón was supposed to be (25A: Eva Perón was one: Abbr. = SRA), I flailed around quite terribly up there. 

My next move was a coin toss between COIN FLIP and COIN TOSS, and I guessed correctly, somehow! The FRIAR and the PENS helped confirm FLIP.  Eventually I got SIMON, which gave me SAYS back in that NE corner, and that alone was enough to untangle things. After that, the puzzle reverted to Easy the rest of the way. No hiccups at all. The only hesitation was brief, and it came as I was backing into DOZEN ROSES, which seemed to want an "A" or "ONE" at the end. Seems rather odd just sitting there on its own.  But just odd, not difficult. And that's where I finished things off: the SW corner. I had such fun zooming around this grid. Loved LIMITED RUN and especially loved its clever misdirective clue (30D: Broadway show where everyone knows the ending?). Congratulations to Robyn or Will or whoever finally found the only good clue for OGLES (46D: Looks like a jerk). The CHOCOHOLIC clue was also a winner (2D: One constantly craving kisses?). I'm now craving chocolate myself, even though it's only 5:30 in the morning, so I'm off now to Treat Myself (or distract myself with coffee, haven't decided). Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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