Old explosive used to breach castle walls / TUE 1-10-23 / Rent character who sings Light My Candle / Lewis Carroll character with a disembodied smile / Old Apple picture-editing app / Shaggy Beatles hairdos / Ambient music trailblazer Brian / 1840s White House family / Fictional feline from Japan

Constructor: Emily Rourke

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "HELLO KITTY!" (39A: Fictional feline from Japan ... or how one might greet 17-, 24-, 54- or 65-Across) — fictional felines!

Theme answers:

• PINK PANTHER (17A: Titular animated character whose theme music is by Henry Mancini)
• TONY THE TIGER (24A: Cereal mascot who says "They're gr-r-reat!")
• COWARDLY LION (54A: Oz resident lacking in courage)
• CHESHIRE CAT (65A: Lewis Carroll character with a disembodied smile)

Word of the Day: HELLO KITTY (39A) —

Hello Kitty (Japanese: ハロー・キティ, Hepburn: Harō Kiti), also known by her full name Kitty White (キティ・ホワイト, Kiti Howaito), is a fictional character created by Yuko Shimizu, currently designed by Yuko Yamaguchi, and owned by the Japanese company Sanrio. Sanrio depicts Hello Kitty as an anthropomorphized white cat with a red bow and no visible mouth. According to her backstory, she lives in a London suburb with her family, and is close to her twin sister Mimmy, who is depicted with a yellow bow.

Hello Kitty was created in 1974 and the first item, a vinyl coin purse, was introduced in 1975. Originally Hello Kitty was only marketed towards  pre-teenage girls, but beginning in the 1990s, the brand found commercial success among teenage and adult consumers as well. Hello Kitty's popularity also grew with the emergence of kawaii (cute) culture. The brand went into decline in Japan after the 1990s, but continued to grow in the international market. By 2010 the character was worth $5 billion a year and The New York Times called her a "global marketing phenomenon". By 2014, when Hello Kitty was 40 years old, she was worth about $8 billion a year. (wikipedia)

• • •

***HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** 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...

• • •

Hard laugh at today's revealer, as it reminded me of the time Shortz rejected a puzzle because it had HELLO KITTY in it and, I mean, who had ever heard of that? Certainly not *his* audience. HELLO KITTY was thus deemed "not well known enough" and that was that. This was... I wanna say in the late '00s, well after HELLO KITTY had become a global phenomenon, an icon that could be seen all over the place, most notably (from my perspective as a parent) on little girls' backpacks and lunch boxes and watches and what not all over North America and beyond. The best part of the story (if I'm remembering it correctly) is that Will was flying on a plane not long thereafter and ran into HELLO KITTY in the in-flight magazine, and then later told the constructor about it: "Isn't that a funny coincidence"? I forget what the constructor's reaction was, but mine would've been "yeah, haha, TAKE MY PUZZLE NOW!" Anyway, the constructor in this story is Andrea Carla Michaels (yesterday's co-constructor!), so if I botched it substantially, she can correct me. It's just so great to see HELLO KITTY dead-center, not only *in* the puzzle but *anchoring* it, all these years later. [I'm just remembering now that this story was actually the inspiration for the first puzzle I ever submitted for publication—a hidden Norse gods theme (e.g., HELLOKITTY) that was rejected by crossword legend Patrick Berry because the Chronicle of Higher Ed., whose puzzle he was editing, had published a similar type of theme recently; I put the puzzle aside, and then later I discovered that a puzzle with the identical theme had been published, somewhere (the New York Sun!), by the great Joon Pahk. And I remember all this because of Andrea's HELLO KITTY story, which lives in my head as the quintessential example of editorial blindness and hubris—thanks, Andrea!] [UPDATE: Oh, wow, looks like this "hidden Norse gods" theme has been done a lot—here's one from the NYT in 2015 that I forgot about (by Kevin Christian and my friend Brad Wilber!), and it looks like the Patrick Berry eventually *did* run the theme in the Chronicle when a version of it was submitted years later by the talented and wildly prolific Zhouqin Burnikel; anyway, this is a good example of how a bunch of people can independently come up with a very specific theme idea] [UPDATE to the UPDATE: I almost forgot—every incarnation of this theme would of course have featured ODIN among the hidden gods—I think most of us hid him in "MOOD INDIGO"]

As for *this* theme ... it's fictional cats! I like cats, and these certainly are some. Kind of an arbitrary set—fictionality is the only thing holding the set together, as far as I can tell, and there must be lots of fictional cats, but this is definitely an iconic set, and they all fit symmetrically in the grid, so maybe that's good enough. Not like I can think of any glaring "how dare you!?" omissions. As a concept, there's not much to this, but the theme does have one truly original thing about it—a revealer (HELLO KITTY) that is also a theme answer in its own right. That is, it's a self-referential revealer—it points to all the other theme answer, but also to itself, so much so that I'm surprised "39-Across" was not included among the examples of fictional felines one might greet this way. Wait ... oh no, is HELLO KITTY not the kitty's name? LOL I just took it for granted that the cat was actually called HELLO KITTY, but maybe that is completely wrong, and she's like a Julie or Inga or Kimiko or something!? Anyway, in my mind, that cat is actually *named* HELLO KITTY, and she's at least as iconic as all the other cats, so ... don't take this away from me. It's the one thing that's making this puzzle feel special to me.

The puzzle played Very easy and somewhat old-fashioned. The grid is crammed with fill that has been (over-) familiar for years, esp. where names are concerned: ENOLA, OTT, LAHTI, ENO, REN, IPHOTO, ITT, LAO-TSE (the last of which gives me that "howsitspelled?!" feeling every time!) (it can be LAO-TZU as well). The cats themselves were all very last century, with HELLO KITTY being the most current thing about the themer set, so you wouldn't exactly call the grid TOPICAL, but I didn't find it stale, either. DOWN PAT, MONSTER, and GLASGOW all give the grid some much-needed life, and the theme itself is so vibrant (animated, even!) that all the fill really has to do is stay on its feet, which I'd say it does. I winced at the A TREE / A TASTE juxtaposition, but that's a minor thing. The only slowness / hesitation I had today came at NOBLE (I wanted INERT, which, to my enormous, self-extended credit, is not completely wrong), TOPICAL, and LAO-TSE (for the aforementioned spelling reasons). Otherwise, this was a write-em-as-fast-as-you-can-read-em situation. Oh, I did hesitate right out of the box, at 1A: "Rent" character who sings "Light My Candle" (MIMI). I went from "pfff, I *saw* "Rent" and I don't know that" to "wait, why do I want to say MIMI!?" to "it's based on 'La Bohéme,' right? Maybe there's a MIMI in that!?!" (there is!) to just writing it in, where the crosses immediately confirmed it. So it turns out you can actually know a lot about something you don't know at all. More of the magic of crosswords. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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