Signature scent introduced in 1968 / FRI 6-24-22 / Historian Schomberg of the Harlem Renaissance / Kind of architectural movement with the philosophy of living with less / Place to slurp ramen / Marsupium, by another name / Group photo pose during a rush / Literally skewer

Constructor: Sophia Maymudes and Margaret Seikel

Relative difficulty: Challenging (possibly, I dunno; felt way harder than most Fridays, to me, but all puzzles have been so easy lately that maybe this was just Medium)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ARTURO Schomberg (30A: Historian Schomberg of the Harlem Renaissance) —

 

 

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (January 24, 1874 – June 10, 1938), was a historian writer, collector, and activist. Schomburg was a Puerto Rican of African and German descent. He moved to the United States in 1891, where he researched and raised awareness of the contributions that Afro-Latin Americans and African Americans have made to society. He was an important intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Over the years, he collected literature, art, slave narratives, and other materials of African history, which were purchased to become the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, named in his honor, at the New York Public Library (NYPL) branch in Harlem. (wikipedia)

• • •

I am in no condition to write clearly or fairly about this puzzle, as my morning has been a complete disaster. The cat has complicated new meds which just arrived yesterday, and there are glass bottles, and cheap syringes that I can't read or wield easily, and viscous liquids, and just a whole lot of fussiness involved. "Shoot the liquid into your cat's cheek," like LOL am I supposed to grow a third hand? Anyway, it was weirdly traumatic all around. So traumatic that I just abandoned all cat-feeding plans and went straight into my office to solve and write. There, I discovered ... non-operative internet! The indicator lights all looked good, but ... nothing. So I rebooted the modem and that worked ... for a while! Long enough for me to download and solve the puzzle. But then it faded out again. Then the modem rebooted itself (!?). And now I seem to be typing in some spirit world between connectivity and disconnectivity. I keep hitting "Update" so that I can be sure this post is getting through, if only incrementally. If you are somehow reading this early in the morning and it seems, uh, unfinished, it probably is! [Update: it's finished now] Anyway, I couldn't have been in a worse mood / headspace when I solved this puzzle, so I don't have a lot of good vibes to spread. I don't know if it was genuinely harder than usual because of names and concepts I didn't know, or if I was just so distracted by all the morning frustration that I couldn't think straight. The grid looks fine, but the cluing was out of my wheelhouse, a lot, and there wasn't much that gave me genuine joy. Maybe LOVER'S QUARREL (16D: Cause of a breakup), which is a nice phrase that also looks kind of like LOVER SQUIRREL, which is providing me with an amusing visual.

SORORITY SQUAT (34A: Group photo pose during a rush) is original and will be very entertaining to someone, but my general feelings about campus Greek like are ... not ... too positive ... so that answer doesn't hold the charm for me that it might for others. But again, my particularly terrible morning is probably coloring a lot of my solving experience today.

I don't care about royal weddings At All, so the TIARA clue meant nothing to me (17A: Meghan Markle's "something borrowed"). I had KANGAROO but absolutely no idea what was supposed to follow at 14D: Marsupium, by another name—it was so weird that I started doubting KANGAROO. That clue is so weird. Other marsupials have marsupia (marsupiums?) but surely those are not called KANGAROO POUCHes. Surely koalas and opossums don't have KANGAROO POUCHes. You would call a *kangaroo*'s marsupium a KANGAROO POUCH, but that's not a term for the "marsupium" generally. Very confusing. Also confusing: getting -OOD- at 15A: Place to slurp ramen and writing in FOOD COURT (it fit!). Probably the worst hole I fell into. To me, [Not alcoholic] = VIRGIN (yeah, not a great term, but that's the term I know). Never even thought that SOFT might mean "not alcoholic," which means I never questioned where the term "SOFT drink" might come from. That was rough. IVLINE was rough (you "run an IV," if medical shows are to be believed—the IVLINE formality threw me). That clue on ESTEE was hard (27D: Signature scent introduced in 1968), but I eventually defaulted to ESTEE because of crossword experience. When in doubt... ESTEE! Didn't know she had a "signature scent." No idea about Drake's label (doesn't make the answer OVO—classic Latin crosswordese—any better, frankly). I had no idea TINY HOUSE was a "movement," LOL. Was just reading about LLOSA yesterday, for reasons I can't remember (59A: Author Mario Vargas ___). His politics came up, somehow. He once ran for president of Peru (1990)! He seems to be pretty accommodating of right-wing authoritarianism lately (see "Peru" and "Chile" here), but admittedly, South American politics are not my area of expertise. I don't think I've ever read LLOSA, which is shameful. Reading shame! I have so much of it. OK, now that I have internet and my wife and I have figured out how to administer the cat's meds non-traumatically, I have to go sit quietly somewhere with my coffee. Again, my apologies to all concerned for being temperamentally out of sorts this morning (yes, more than usual!). See you tomorrow!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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