Moody North Yorkshire setting / SUN 6-5-22 / English indie pop singer Parks / 1960s activist Bobby / Gourmet mushroom with poisonous lookalikes / Common spa descriptor / Precursor to a circuit breaker / First in a line of 13 popes / Fashion guru Tim / Cryptids on snowy mountains / Mars bar with shortbread and chocolate / The Muppets villain Richman / Jimmies and corkscrews

Constructor: Christina Iverson and Katie Hale

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (assuming you are familiar with the author names)

THEME: "Let's Get Literature" — familiar phrases that end with a word that then becomes the first part of a famous author's name; answers are all wacky third-person verb phrases:

Theme answers:

• COMES OUT OF ONE'S SHELLEY (23A: Looks up from reading "Frankenstein"?) (Mary Shelley)
• GOES THROUGH HELLER (33A: Reads "Catch-22"," "Closing Time" and Something Happened" -- and doesn't stop there?) (Joseph Heller)
• TAKES A LONG WALKER (55A: Borrows "The Color Purple" from the library instead of "The Flowers"?) (Alice Walker)
• PLAYS THE FIELDING (81A: Listens to "Tom Jones" on audiobook?) (Henry Fielding)
• BREAKS THE LAWRENCE (100A: Reads "Lady Chatterley's Lover" so many times its spine splits?) (D.H. Lawrence)
• GIVES A FAIR SHAKESPEARE (117A: Donates some copies of "King Lear" to the Renaissance Festival?) (Gary Shakespeare)

Word of the Day: ARLO Parks (52A: English indie pop singer Parks) —

Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho (born 9 August 2000), known professionally as Arlo Parks, is a British singer-songwriter and poet. Her debut studio album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, was released in 2021 to critical acclaim and peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart. It earned her nominations for Album of the Year, Best New Artist and Best British Female Solo Artist at the 2021 Brit Awards. It won the 2021 Hyundai Mercury Prize for best album. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's very little about this theme that I didn't like. Confession: I am a literature professor. So there's that. But I genuinely think the theme is clever—simple but smart, with a consistency of phrasing (third-person verb phrases) that I found elegant. Seems like there are a lot of potential themers still out there, each of which has exceedingly wacky cluing potential: DELIVERS THE MAILER, JUMPS FOR JOYCE, GOES BEYOND THE PALEY, just to name a few. I think my favorite imagined answer so far is GETS FED UPDIKE, just for the morbid direction the "?" clue might go in. But the set we have here in this grid is strong in its own right. Straightforward, not exactly laugh-out-loud, but solid. The authors in question are all pretty to very well known, with Henry Fielding seeming (to me) to be probably the most likely to cause tilted heads and quizzical expressions. He's a big deal in the history of the novel, but not as much of a household name as he perhaps used to be, even a half century ago (when "Tom Jones" was a big-deal cinematic sensation). There's a nice breadth to the author selection, spanning four centuries, with Alice Walker being the only author still living. There should be some author here for everyone, unless you don't read, or don't read "literature." My point is, the author set seems adequately broad and non-obscure. The theme doesn't yield as much humor as it might, but it holds up OK, and at least doesn't involve the kind of groany, truly bad-pun answers you sometimes see in Sunday themes. And even if none of the answers are LOL funny, they're all cute enough, and the core idea of the theme just ... works. I think the weakest thing about the theme execution was the clue on TAKES A LONG WALKER? Is "The Color Purple" iconically long? (most recent Penguin edition: 304pp.). Would anyone know how long it is relative to "The Flowers"? I've actually never heard of "The Flowers," so I don't know how long it is. Looks like "The Flowers" is actually a short story, two pages long, so ... "The Color Purple" is a longer Walker, anyway. Anyway—Walker is famous and "The Color Purple" is famous and I like the answer phrase, but the clue is assuming an audience knowledge of relative page length that I doubt is there. Also, I didn't care for the title of this puzzle, with its forced, faux-youthy play on the idea of "getting lit," but the title is the title and has nothing to do with whether the puzzle is actually any good or not. Plus, the title *does* follow the basic rules of the theme, so it's got that going for it. 

I shrugged numerous times at proper nouns I was expected to know. I discovered ARLO Parks some time last year, both because her music is enjoyable and because I saw her name and thought, "Oh ... she's coming ... move over, Mr. Guthrie." And here she is! But ELFUDGE!? Is that one word? or is it pseudo-Spanish, like: El Fudge! Currently in my head it rhymes with "roughage." Anyway, it's not a famous cookie type. I mean, it's no MILANO. Also, who is this SAL person? (54D: Blueberry-picking girl of children's literature). I am aware of ... let's see, I think SAL is a mule in some song ("I got a mule and her name is SAL / Fifteen miles on the Erie (!) Canal..."). And SAL owns a pizza parlor in "Do The Right Thing." That is all of my SAL knowledge. Oh, and the baseball player SAL Bando, I know him. This SAL ... is from "Blueberries for SAL" by Robert McCloskey (1948). It is apparently a very famous picture books. I read a metric ton of midcentury picture books as a child. This one somehow completely got by me. And what is TEX Richman? Or, rather, what "The Muppets" are we talking about. Is this a recent movie incarnation? Looks like the 2011 movie version. Huh. OK. I missed that, and even if I'd seen it, I think I'd probably wonder how culturally iconic this TEX person is. He doesn't seem to be part of the broader Muppet universe (if that's a thing). I watched a lot of "Muppet Show" and various Muppet Movies as a kid, and no TEX. But the crosses were fair. OK.

Notes:

• 1A: Precursor to a circuit breaker (FUSE) — really truly didn't understand what "precursor" meant here. Then again, I know squat-all about electrical systems. We have a circuit box in our basement. Sometimes something, uh, blows, and we have to go down there and flip switches back and forth to reset things. You can see that I am very handy.
• 56D: "Yuck!" ("EWW!") — one of those rare answers that is also my feeling about the answer. I want to blame the double-W spelling, but it might be even eewier in the double-E version (which I have also seen). 
• 71A: "Wow!" ("OOH!") — realized just now that the first thing I wrote in as an answer here (off of the middle "O") was ... "WOW!" Just ... wow.
• 8D: Person in a head set? (CEO) — so the various C-O's are ... a "set" of "head" (or "chief") people? CEO, CFO, CIO ... Is that the "set?" Because if it's not, I don't really know what this clue is doing.
• 69A: Lifewater and Elixir brand (SOBE) — D'oh! I confused the beverage brand and the noodle type (SOBA), which then led me to write in AGE instead of ERA for 70D: Geological span.
• 10A: Pointed remark (BARB) — Just before coming upstairs to solve this puzzle and write ... well, this, these words that I am writing right now ... I watched the final episode of Season 4, Part 1 of "Stranger Things." How is this relevant? Well, if you've watched that show from Episode 1 of Season 1, you might be able to guess. BARB is Back! (well, briefly ... sorta ... you'll see for yourself ... or not). 

I want to plug Peter Gordon's latest puzzle project, "A-to-Z Crosswords 2022," which he calls "Petite Pangram Puzzles"—these are 9x11 Easy to Medium puzzles that contain every letter of the alphabet. My experience is that these are very tasty snacks. More meaty than a mini, but small enough and doable enough to knock off during a spare 5, 10, 15 minutes or so (depending on your skill level). The pangramitude means that the fill gets pretty lively in places, and you also always know, if you're struggling, that until you've ticked off all 26 letters, well, those remaining letters are definitely out there ... somewhere. Knowing you gotta touch all 26 actually helps with the solving at times. These puzzles are unusual and fun and snackable. Worth it, for sure. Go here to get your subscription! (The Kickstarter needs to meet its $$$ goal by tonight at 10pm EDT!)

Now for this week's ... 

Letter to the Editor! 

This week's letter comes from Jerome Walker, and it's a response to one of my bullet-point comments on this past Thursday's puzzle (June 2, 2022). For reference, here is my original comment, in its entirety.

• 15D: "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" actor Robinson (CRAIG) — had no idea here. Is this the Old Spice guy? Hey, wait, this is Darryl from "The Office"! OK (OK), I know exactly who this guy is. He was on that show for the whole damn run, whereas he's only been on 9 episodes of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," what the hell?! What a weird clue. (P.S. the "Old Spice guy" is Terry Crews)

My initial response to the following letter was fairly defensive, but after I sat with it for a while, I felt it offered a valuable perspective. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Parker,

I started doing the NYT crossword in January 2021, and for the last 463 days I have done the crossword and read your blog each day. I like it when you loved a puzzle and I didn’t, and vice versa. Mostly this is a matter of personal preference and awareness, and I think it’s okay for a good puzzle day for one to be a tough puzzle day for another: it’s what makes being part of a puzzle community exciting! And I like that your write-ups so often push the puzzle to make more good puzzle days for more people. As a relatively new solver, I appreciate any time that I can have fun with a puzzle without having to know some esoteric initialism that’s been in the puzzle 42 times since 2002 but seen little elsewhere. And as a young, Black, queer man, I like to see references in the puzzle that feel contemporary to me as well — I love 20th century actresses as much as the next person who could stomach 463 NYT crossword puzzles, but there’s so much opportunity for new fill and new joy in puzzles when we expand what is puzzle-eligible.

And I think you do a great job of pushing this position forward! Even when it means including fill that you’re not already familiar with. Again, I have learned from you that not everyone has to have the same good puzzle days. But on Thursday, June 2, when Craig Robinson was in the grid, while you didn’t disparage his inclusion (rather, his being clued by a few appearances on Brooklyn Nine-Nine), you first asked if he was the Old Spice guy, Isaiah Mustafa, and then misattributed the Old Spice guy as Terry Crews, a third, separate, Black actor. Yes, Terry Crews has appeared in Old Spice commercials, but Isaiah Mustafa is the “Look at your man, now look at me,” quintessential, original Old Spice guy. A Google search for “Old Spice guy” returns Isaiah Mustafa. I know you probably did not mean anything by it, and I wouldn’t say Mustafa is exactly grid-level famous (though how great would it be to find MUSTAFA in the grid!), but my point here is that eliding these three Black actors, at least two of which are certainly grid-level famous and television staples for nearly 20 years now, does feel disrespectful in a way that is unusual for your blog. It is not sin to confuse an actor or two, but to jumble these three up and publish an incorrect attribution does feel reminiscent of the classic racist idea that Black people are hard to distinguish from one another, which I imagine is part of why Black names have historically found their way into the grid so relatively infrequently. I would flag it as something to be aware of: if we really want the crossword to be a space for all people, and why shouldn’t it be, then we should be careful about who and what is distinguishable enough to recognize in the grid.

All best,
Jerome Walker

I could quibble with some of the details here, but I think the gist of the letter remains worthy of consideration. I have a flippancy that I bring to lots of my riffs on pop culture and celebrity names. This letter is a good reminder that flippancy can read differently to different readers, and that perhaps there's some reason to be careful about not seeming to be dismissive or diminishing when discussing Black people, as well as other people from groups that have long been underrepresented in the grid. I'm always going to have a light, goofy, even somewhat irreverent tone to my writing, but I think there's a way to maintain that tone without conveying disrespect. I found Mr. Walker's sincerity and good will disarming. I'll keep his criticism in mind going forward.

If you have any crossword-related thoughts that you'd like to put into letter form, feel free to send it to me at rexparker at icloud dot com, and be sure to label it OK TO PRINT. Thanks, everyone. See you soon.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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