IGN's #1 Video Game Console of All Time / WED 9-7-22 / Potables in kiddush and the Eucharist / "___ Diaboliques," 1955 Simone Signoret film

Constructor: Ekua Ewool

Relative difficulty: Easy? (11:07)

Hey besties! It's your pal Malaika, here for another Malaika MWednesday. I solved this puzzle after a downright luxurious meal of Korean barbecue + craft cocktails. On the train home I listened to this song and this song.

THEME: The NYT Crossword! — How solvers might feel while solving the puzzle

Theme answers:

• Newbie crossword solver's thought on a Monday: I'VE GOT THIS
• ... on a Tuesday: WISH ME LUCK
• ... on a Wednesday: I'D LIKE SOME HINTS
• ... on a Thursday: WHAT IN HELL
• ... on a Friday: GOOGLE TIME

Word of the Day: ANNA ("Veep" actress Chlumsky) —

In 2009, she appeared in Armando Iannucci's BBC Films political satire In The Loop, co-starring with Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Chris Addison, James Gandolfini, and Mimi Kennedy, a quasi-spinoff of Iannucci's BBC TV series The Thick of It.[15] She plays Liza, a State Department assistant in the movie. From 2012 to 2019, Chlumsky played Amy Brookheimer, aide to Julia Louis-Dreyfus's character in HBO's Veep, also produced by Iannucci.

• • •

Congrats to Ms. Ewool on her debut! This puzzle had a lot of little NYC factoids, so I got to feel cool and special for filling them in easily. (Stolen valor, perhaps-- I've only lived here for four years.) LEX is between Park and Third, which, by the way, I hate. Why can't we just commit to numbered avenues??? I also hate how tenth just randomly turns into Amsterdam. (Sorry, that's not related to this puzzle, now I'm just thinking about my Manhattan Geography Quibbles.) I didn't get tripped up on the terse and mis-direct-y [JFK alternative] for LGA. And I put in RINKS (winter sights at Rockefeller Center and Bryant Park) with no crosses. But wait, circling back, can we talk about the new fountain, I mean water feature, at LaGuardia airport???? Oh my god. I watched it slack-jawed for like thirty minutes. Better than television.

The theme entries were missing a little something for me.... a little sparkle, a little dazzle. Is it fair of me to ask to be dazzled every single day at 10pm? Perhaps not. But in particular, it feels a little meh when a term seems to be adjusted in order to have the correct amount of letters. For example, I think a more natural phrasing is "I need a hint" or "I'd like a hint," but neither of these have fifteen letters, so instead we get the phrase ID LIKE SOME HINTS. Of course, it's tough to tell with these conversational phrases. I still remember when we had #discourse about whether it's called "apple cider" or "hot cider" or "hot apple cider." 

Also... (time for me to get grumpy!!) I don't really like how in the TCCU (This Crossword Cinematic Universe), the NYT puzzle is the only one that exists. Look-- I totally get that the (vaaast!) majority of crossword solvers in the US solve one or fewer puzzles a day, and that puzzle is the Times puzzle. But still.... We've got the USA Today and Universal puzzles, which are easy every day of the week. And the New Yorker, which is easiest on Friday and has their Monday puzzle as GOOGLE TIME. (What are LAT and WSJ like? I actually don't solve theirs daily.) As someone who solves many puzzles, the clues were factually wrong to me, and I feel the Times is usually such a stickler about that kind of thing.

(No mention of the Saturday or Sunday puzzle, by the way-- seven theme answers were probably too many to fit into a weekday-sized grid!)

Some excellent non-theme fill in this, like LAVA CAKE and DO THE DEW, and even shorter stuff like ENIGMA and SESAME. And I like the shape of those curvy tendrils of blocks emanating from either side of the grid. And, obviously, I like the reminder that you should Google answers you don't know. That's my number one rule of crosswords, and I feel like now its been endorsed by the Times themselves! Happy Wednesday, everyone!

Bullets:

• [Item of wear named after an island] for BIKINI — I was discussing monokinis with my friend, and that led us to wonder if bikinis were genuinely called that because they have two ("bi") pieces. (They are not, as this clue indicates.) This is, I believe, an instance of "rebracketing" where words are assumed to have a certain etymology (e.g., BI / KINI) and then altered according that (incorrect!) composition (e.g., MONO / KINI).
• [Bank statement abbr.] for INT — This really slowed me down because I know INT as an abbreviation in programming (for the integer datatype). I was thinking more along the lines of end-of-month or year-to-date.
• [Like Legos, originally] for DANISH — I thought this was kind of a funny way to think about the toy. I suppose it's referring to the fact that they were invented in Denmark? But at what point did they stop being Danish? Also, are we going to fight in the comments about whether the plural is "Legos" or "Lego"? Go forth, I suppose.
  

xoxo Malaika

P.S. In the past, I've had people ask why my grid looks blue-- When I "check puzzle," it turns the correct letters blue. Anything I add between "check puzzle"-ing and successfully solving, stay black. (In this case, you can see my error was at TIMID-- I originally had "humid.")

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