Mythical figure often pictured holding a book / THU 12-15-2022 / Surname derived from the Chinese word for "plum" / Soup made with this puzzle's ingredients / Start of a classic question in Shakespeare / Pulling up pots in Chesapeake Bay, say

[Dear readers, Rex here, it’s Friday morning where I am, I just woke up and I see several of you are angry, for various reasons, about the write-up by Christopher today (below). I have not solved or thought about a crossword in days. I did not solve today’s puzzle. I’m still recovering from jet lag. I have taken the profanity out of today’s write-up and removed one remark I thought was too personal. Otherwise, the write-up stands. Solvers have different experiences—this is a record of one of them. I’ll be back on the blog (writing from New Zealand) starting on Saturday. Thank you thank you]

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Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: medium? idk, i was way more than three sheets to the wind and still finished in under four minutes [ETA: also apparently it's slightly larger than usual at 15x16, which just means it's an extra dose of "why am I slogging through this"]

THEME: VICHYSSOISE — theme entries are just ingredients in the soup? and the clues are just instructions on how to make this? tbh who cares? is this what passes for a $750 puzzle in the new york times these days? hard pass

Word of the Day: VICHYSSOISE (Soup made with this puzzle's ingredients) —

Vichyssoise, also known as potage Parmentier, velouté Parmentier, or crème Parmentier, is a thick soup made of boiled and puréed leeks, onions, potatoes, cream, and chicken stock. It is traditionally served cold, but it can be eaten hot.

Recipes for soup made of pureed leeks and potatoes were common by the 19th century in France. In 19th-century cookbooks, and still today, they are often named "Potage Parmentier" or "Potage à la Parmentier" after Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the French nutritionist and scholar who popularized the use of potatoes in France in the 18th century. The French military cookbook of 1938 includes a recipe for "Potage Parmentier for 100 men" using milk instead of cream but with proportions and directions that are similar to the recipe for "Vichyssoise Soup" given later by Julia Child.

The origins of the name Vichyssoise are a subject of debate among culinary historians; one version of the story is that Louis XV of France was afraid of being poisoned and had so many servants taste the potato leek soup that, by the time he tried it, the soup was cold, and since he enjoyed it that way it became a cold soup. Julia Child called it "an American invention", whereas others observe that "the origin of the soup is questionable in whether it's genuinely French or an American creation".  

• • •

***HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS IN SYNDICATION*** (if it's mid-January 2023, that's you!) How is the new year treating you? Well, I hope. Me, uh, not great so far (COVID, you know), but I'm 95% better, and was never terribly sick to begin with, so I have every reason to believe things will turn around for me shortly, thank God (and vaccines). Anyway, it's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. I'm not sure what to say about this past year. This will sound weird, or melodramatic—or maybe it won't—but every time I try to write about 2022, all I can think is "well, my cat died." She (Olive) died this past October, very young, of a stupid congenital heart problem that we just couldn't fix (thank you all for your kind words of condolence, by the way). I'm looking at the photo I used for last year's fundraising pitch, and it's a picture of me sitting at my desk (this desk, the one I'm typing at right now, the one I write at every day) with Olive sitting on my shoulder, staring at me, and making me laugh. It's a joyous picture. Here, I'm just gonna post it again:

I love the photo both because you can tell how goofy she is, and how goofy she made me. Her loss hurt for the obvious reasons, but also because she was so much a part of my daily routine, my daily rhythms and rituals. She was everyday. Quotidian. Just ... on me, near me, being a weirdo, especially in the (very) early mornings when I was writing this blog. She took me out of myself. She also made me aware of how much the quotidian matters, how daily rituals break up and organize the day, mark time, ground you. They're easy to trivialize, these rituals, precisely because they *aren't* special. Feed the cats again, make the coffee again, solve the crossword again, etc. But losing Olive made me reevaluate the daily, the quotidian, the apparently trivial. In a fundamental way, those small daily things *are* life. No one day is so important, or so different from the others, but cumulatively, they add up, and through the days upon days you develop a practice—a practice of love, care, and attention given to the things that matter. If you're reading this, then crossword puzzles are undoubtedly an important ritual for you, just as writing about crosswords for you all is an important ritual for me. It gives me so much. I hope that even at my most critical, my genuine love for crosswords—for the way my brain lights up on crosswords—comes through. I also hope that the blog brings you entertainment, insight, laughter ... even (especially) if you disagree with me much (most? all?) of the time. 

[man, I really wear the hell 
out of this red fleece...]

The blog began years ago as an experiment in treating the ephemeral—the here-today, gone-tomorrow—like it really mattered. I wanted to stop and look at this 15x15 (or 21x21 thing) and take it seriously, listen to it, see what it was trying to do, think about what I liked or didn't like about it. In short, I gave the puzzle my time and attention. And I continue to do that, every day (Every! Day!). And it is work. A lot of work. Asking for money once a year (and only once a year) is an acknowledgment of that fact. There is nothing to subscribe to here ... no Substack or Kickstarter or Patreon ... and there are no ads, ever. I prefer to keep financial matters simple and direct. I have no "hustle" in me beyond putting my ass in this chair every morning and writing.

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 three 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

The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @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. My daughter (Ella Egan) has designed a cat-related thank-you postcard for 2023, just as she has for the past two years, but this year, there's a bonus. Because this year ... the postcard is also a crossword puzzle! Yes, I made a little 9x9 blog-themed crossword puzzle for you all. It's light and goofy and I hope you enjoy it. It looks like this (clues blurred for your protection):

I had fun making this puzzle (thanks to Rachel Fabi and Neville Fogarty for proofing it for me!). For non-snail-mailers who want to solve the puzzle, don't worry: I'll make the puzzle available for everyone some time next month. 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...

• • •

You ever open a puzzle and react like "ah #%^*, here we go again"? That was me opening today's puzzle. There's a reason I don't solve the NYT puzzle most days; in general, it's not good! 

I had some hope halfway through this puzzle that the reveal would, you know, actually be a reveal, and tell me some cute and/or clever wordplay relating to the themers that I hadn't yet noticed. In all honesty, I don't really solve the NYT any longer, because 90+% of the puzzles are not worth solving; if anything, they're worse than puzzles you can get from (e.g.) the AVCX, Universal, USA Today, LA Times, etc., and imo this is 110% related to the editor and what they prioritize, and increasingly it's clear that the NYT is (pardon the pun) behind the times on catering to solvers who are online and/or actually constructors (rather than, say, your average syndicated solver in the middle of nowhere, Upper East Side and/or flyover country, USA).

Anyway, tl;dr, no, this puzzle did not have a clever reveal. I thought it might, because in the past italicized clues have generally been used to indicate some mischievous wordplay or something, but no, this is a puzzle whose theme clues could've just used an asterisk. It's a recipe, nothing more, nothing less, and all I have to say is: who cares? Is this what passes for a theme these days at the (alleged) standard-bearer of crosswords? 

Theme answers:

• Two pounds, peeled and chopped [NEW POTATOES, which, WTF, has anybody ever said this in their life]
• Five cups, after lengthy simmering [CHICKEN STOCK, at least this is a valid phrase]
• One cup, after cooling [HEAVY CREAM, sure, I guess rolls eyes at the clue; at least the answer's fine]
• Four cups, cleaned and sliced [SAUTEED LEEKS, again with the green paint here, this is not a valid entry by any stretch of the imagination]
• Soup made with this puzzle's ingredients [VICHYSSOISE, which, good luck spelling this correctly without crossing letters, and again let me reiterate: who cares? Why are you going to the crossword for your recipes when there's an entire section of the website (that they charge too much for) to give you such recipes (that probably don't rely on green paint phrases like NEW POTATOES or SAUTEED LEEKS, although I can't be arsed to look up any actual recipes on the NYT website for this)]

Anyway, I really have nothing nice to say about this. Absolutely nothing. Do yourself a favor for the holiday season: you have my permission to solve other puzzles. I listed a few above, but like really, anything that's made by and/or for people under forty years old (if not younger). At worst, they're more fun than this; at best, even with references to current pop culture / things some solvers might know, they're still constructed so that the solver has a fun time. (And if you're not sure where to look, then let me (once again) promote the daily crossword links newsletter.)

OLIO:

• CLIO [Mythical figure often pictured holding a book] — I actually liked this because I learned something here; you usually only see CLIO clued w/r/t the advertising award, so it's nice to learn something (while at the same time being able to figure it out from context w/ the "mythological figure" part; educational yet guessable / inferable; contrast w/ "mountain nymph" for OREAD, which is a boring-ass clue for a boring-ass answer)
• LEE [Surname derived from the Chinese word for "plum"] — Ditto for liking this because it's something that I didn't know but do now, and like the above answer, you can still infer it / easily get it from crossings; a rare fun fact in a sea of not-so-fun clues.
• I...really don't have anything else here? Almost every clue is obscenely short and boring (and incredibly straightforward—where's the fun? where's the wordplay?) and again, if I did not have to blog this puzzle, I wouldn't have just quit in the middle of it—I would not have started solving this. It's not a good puzzle by any stretch of the imagination. Like, if you were trying to get a friend or loved one into solving crosswords, would you give this puzzle to them? Absolutely not, because it's not interesting in any way, shape, or form, nor by any stretch of the imagination. It's almost actively (and aggressively) anti-crosswords.

Yours in puzzling, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

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