Those who consume it become immortal, according to myth / THU 12-22-2022 / Methuselah's old man / English king called "the Great" / What smoke coming out of the ears may signal in a cartoon / Name derived from the Greek for "messenger"

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy, I think? Solved on paper, did not really look at the theme clues because they were long and I didn't feel like reading them, but it's pretty easy to notice that they all start with CARs coming in from the edges of the grid, and the crossings there are pretty fair, so you don't really need to the clues to solve, but it was an excellent aha moment post-solve when I could actually be arsed to read them and figure out the theme

THEME: ROUNDABOUT ROUTE — four entries are clued as if they are cars entering roundabouts, with three total clues: one for turning right, one for continuing straight, and one for turning left; in all cases the cars enter from the edge of the grid (and turns are oriented w/r/t that), and all turns result in valid entries both with and without the CAR (in some cases with the second part being backwards relative to the direction of the CAR word)

Word of the Day: TED (31D: California congressman ___ Lieu) —

Ted W. Lieu is an American politician and Air Force Reserve Command colonel who has represented California's 33rd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2015. The district includes much of western and west Valley Los Angeles, as well as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Bel Air, Calabasas, Agoura Hills, the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Beach Cities.

A member of the Democratic Party, Lieu is one of 18 members of Congress who are naturalized U.S. citizens. He represented the 28th district in the California State Senate from 2011 to 2014, after being elected to fill the seat of deceased Senator Jenny Oropeza. From 2005 to 2010 he was a California State Assemblyman, representing the 53rd district, after being elected to fill the seat of deceased Assemblyman Mike Gordon.

Lieu actively served in the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General's Corps from 1995 to 1999 and since 2000 has served in the Air Force Reserve Command with his current rank of colonel upon his promotion in 2015. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi appointed Lieu Assistant whip of the 115th Congress in 2017.

• • •

It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me. Christopher Adams here filling in for Rex while he may or may not be in wi-fi purgatory***; fingers crossed that this post doesn't interrupt his vacation like, uh, the last one did.

**Rex says, via wi-fi non-purgatory: "Dear Nora, your friends Mellie & Hilary (and I) want to wish you a very happy 21st birthday 🥳 🎉 🎂 I’m so glad you enjoy the blog, and I hope this blog birthday greeting from weirdo me (currently somewhere in central Otago, NZ) is as meaningful as your friends imagine. Have a wonderful day!"

Very glad that Rex is not in wi-fi purgatory, very glad to be able to relay (and second) the happy birthday greetings, and very glad to have this opportunity to apologize for parts of last Thursday's review, and especially the profanity and ad hominem stuff; that's 100% on me, and I should know better, but at the same time I was very much not in a mood to engage or spend time with a puzzle that (Roger Ebert voice) I hated, hated, hated, and ended up venting a bit too much; again, my sincerest, deepest apologies for that.

(I would also like to not take up too much time on that and get to today's puzzle, because the longer this intro goes, the more this becomes a recipe website where you have to go through five thousand or so words of family history before finding a fifty word recipe that's not as unique or as interesting as the food blogger thinks it is. ANYWAY, again, there's a lot of great puzzles out there, and I try to not solve ones that I don't enjoy. Which is not to say that I hate all NYT puzzles; I just generally don't solve the NYT unless it's by a constructor I know and enjoy (which is today's puzzle!), or if I hear from trusted friends that it's a good puzzle; recent puzzles I liked included Sid's themeless from the 10th and Ryan's Sunday themeless on the 18th.)

On to this puzzle! TL;DR I liked it! A lot! (More below the theme explanation!)

Theme answers:

• 26A: First exit: Milk containers · Second exit: Rebounded, in billiard · Third exit: Wheeled (away) [CARTONS / CAROMED / CARTED, w/ CAR going into SNOT, DEMO, TED as appropriate]
• 54A: First exit: Salad bar bowlful · Second exit: French watchmaker · Third exit: Thanksgiving role [CARROTS / CARTIER / CARVER, using ROTS, TIER, REV]
• 5D: First exit: Floor covers · Second exit: Addition signs · Third exit: Checking the IDs of [CARPETS / CARETS / CARDING, using STEP, ETS, DING]
• 66D: First exit: Writer Lewis · Second exit: Santana of Santana · Third exit: Dead meat [CARROLL / CARLOS / CARRION, using ROLL, SOL, and NOIR]

It's not terribly difficult to find words that become other words when you remove some letters; it's not terribly difficult, either, to find words that become other words when they're spelled backwards. And there's some flexibility here: since they all start with CAR, the ending parts can go anywhere where they're in the right direction (e.g. STEP could go at 19A, where it is, or 61A, but not at 20A). But: having four of them intersecting the (grid-spanning) revealer in symmetric spots, while accounting for all of the above? Now that's some good construction (and, perhaps, a bit of luck; you can't move the black squares that function as roundabouts around too much, but at the same time, when you're as talented and experienced as David is, sometimes you make your own luck). (I will quibble a little bit and say that I would've liked the NW and SE roundabouts to be visually set apart and not touch other black squares, even diagonally, but that's perhaps asking a bit too much here.)

update: David says in his XWI notes that getting the revealer to "run through the four thematic arrangements might just top the list of lucky moments in my crossword construction career", but I still think that there's still a fair bit of skill involved. I also wouldn't be disappointed if this was a Wednesday, like he thought this might be because he clued all the roundabout exits [which, again, were normal words] rather than leaving them unclued, but like David, I'm very happy to see this published period, and especially on a Thursday (and doubly so on a day I blog!).

Anyway, fun theme! A lot better than last week! Heck, even if I didn't like this, I still would've liked it more than last week, because it's at least trying to do something fun and inventive. (To be fair, I probably would've disliked last week's theme less if it were, say, on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday, but still...) And outside of that, there's some legit fun clues: the image of [What smoke coming out of the ears may signal in a cartoon] (ANGER), the "TIL interesting fact" of [Name derived from the Greek for "messenger"] (ANGELINA), the "tricky but fair" clue for CARETS (see below), plus fun fill like SANTA HAT, FROSH, AMBROSIA, etc.

c'mon, what else could the video be?

ROUNDABOUT (ARC)TANGENT: As a driver, I love roundabouts. As a pedestrian and (especially) a runner, not as much of a fan; I've noticed that at most intersections here in Iowa City where they've replaced stop signs / lights with roundabouts recently, it's a lot harder to cross the street because cars just don't slow down. At least with stop signs and lights, you know (well, at least hope) that cars will stop, and to some degree you can continue safely through the intersection without really stopping. But with roundabouts, cars don't even stop, let alone slow down, and the thought of them even thinking about looking for pedestrians is a pipe dream. ROUNDABOUT (ARC)TANGENT OVER.

Anyway, good puzzle! It's one I would've solved anyway, because I generally like David's puzzles (and know that if it's a Thursday, it's probably really creative), and I'm glad it's also on a day I'm blogging. More fun that way.

Olio:

• CARETS [5D: Addition signs] — As a math person, my first thought here was that this was a mistake; carets are usually used for exponentiation. Realized, after a bit, that this is referring to copyediting / proofreading, where carets are used to signal additions to the text
• THE [71A: French beverage] — Sure, I guess; not a fan of this angle, and it's not like you're avoiding dupes with clues here (because there's quite a few instances of "the" in the clues elsewhere). Would've liked this more if it'd've leaned into that and clued it as [The most common word in the English language, or in the clue for this answer], or if the next clue ([Chinwags], for CHATS) had continued the trend with [French pets] or something
• ROSIE [66A: Funny O'Donnell] — [citation needed] (at least, not recently, and it's not like you're hurting for other clue angles here)
• TRIO [52A: Hip-hop's Salt-N-Pepa, contrary to what their name suggest] — on the one hand, yes, DJ Spinderella was absolutely a vital member of that group in their heyday; on the other hand, iirc, she hasn't been part of the group for a few years now, and so it technically isn't a trio right now? FWIW, I like the cluing angle, and think it works, but might've been better to pick a different act (Tony Orlando and Dawn, anybody?) [ETA: apparently this is a print-only clue, possibly for these reasons; the online clue is [The Powerpuff Girls, e.g.] which avoids these issues.]
• ETS [23D: "We come in peace" speakers, in brief] — no no no no no no no no; the only valid cluing angles here, imo, are the lawful good and maybe the lawful neutral ones on this chart
• LATIN I [50D: Course in which you might learn "cave canem" — One of the few answers I had to erase, in that I knew the answer in that area was longer than five letters, and so I jumped straight to AP LATI..and whoops, that doesn't fit. Meh on the I, but it's fair, I suppose. ["Cave canem" is "beware of dog", btw.]
• TAR [35A: Dinosaur bone preserver] — We would also have accepted [2022 film starring Cate Blanchett]

Yours in puzzling, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

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