Streamlined type of baleen whale / FRI 1-13-23 / Onetime N.B.A. star Metta Sandiford-___ / Leonardo ___ (Fibonacci alias) / Jake's love interest in "The Sun Also Rises" / Shiny material in some guitars / Orbiter until 2001 / When said three times 2012 Taylor Swift song / Org with the highest-circulating mag in the U.S.

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Medium (jarring mix of simple and ?????)

THEME: (My) Bad Luck — a FRIDAY the 13th-themed puzzle, in which we find things that, like the day itself, are said to bring bad luck:

The bad luck stuff:

• STEPS (?) on a CRACK (the "S" really doesn't need to be involved here)
• "FRIDAY the 13th"
• A broken MIR / ROR
• A BLACK CAT crossing your PATH
• WALKS (?) under a LADDER (the "S" really doesn't need to be involved here)

Word of the Day: RORQUAL (31A: Streamlined type of baleen whale) —

Rorquals (/ˈrɔːrkwəlz/) are the largest group of baleen whales, which comprise the family Balaenopteridae, containing ten extant species in three genera. They include the largest animal that has ever lived, the blue whale, which can reach 180 tonnes (200 short tons), and the fin whale, which reaches 120 tonnes (130 short tons); even the smallest of the group, the northern minke whale, reaches 9 tonnes (10 short tons).

Rorquals take their name from French rorqual, which derives from the Norwegian word røyrkval: the first element røyr originated from the Old Norse name for this type of whale, reyðr, probably related to the Norse word for "red", and the second from the Norse word hvalr meaning "whale" in general.^[4] The family name Balaenopteridae is from the type genus, Balaenoptera.

• • •

***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...

• • •

A themed Friday on Friday the 13th—a bit on the nose. This could've been just another Friday, which is what Friday the 13ths actually are, but since there isn't any actual magical reason the day should bring bad luck, the puzzle has apparently decided to force the issue and give us ... this (while at the same time depriving us (i.e. me) of the breezy themeless puzzle that is the one reliably good thing the puzzle has to offer, week in and week out. Bad luck indeed. I don't actually mind the concept here—buncha superstitions represented visually. OK. But the execution was painful. Was it supposed to be? Like, I can't tell if this puzzle is doing some kind of performance art, where it's being obnoxious and uneven and ungainly, but ... knowingly? I mean, it starts out like a Tuesday, with the gimme PEI (1A: Architect of the Museum of Islamic Art) (not too many three-letter architects to choose from) leading to IDEALS  (3D: Things to live up to) and EELS (21A: Symbols of slipperiness) and bam the whole NW is just done, and there's STEPS on a CRACK, so everything is just revealing itself almost too fast, and then ... well, then, things get both slower and uglier. And that ugliness starts with EMITTER (7D: Pollution source, say). 

I mean ... EMITTER. One who ... emits, I guess. That word almost (but not quite) makes me miss yesterday's GETTER. So improbable is that word that I actually can't commit to the last letter. "Is it actually an EMITTEE?," I wonder (losing all perspective on the historic -ER v. -EE wars). Normally one would look to the cross to help sort things out, but ... RORQUAL? I ... I ... as the expression goes, I was today years old when I learned what a RORQUAL was. I've rarely seen a word that looks less like a word. I'm imagining a narwhal with a face like a Rorschach test. I actually had NARWHAL in there at some point, and finally committed to the initial "R" only after the broken MIR/ROR made it undeniable. EMITTER / RORQUAL is just awful—bad word into obscure word. But then we're back to ridiculous gimmes again with the theme revealer at 13D: With this answer's number, a hit horror movie franchise (FRIDAY). And then the pendulum (if not the PITT) swings back to rank obscurity again with the laughable WTFery of PISANO (!?!?!) (40D: Leonardo ___ (Fibonacci alias)), while also traversing the confusing corniness of LETTER C (apparently you can just do this with any letter of the alphabet if you're desperate enough). I finished up with something called a SEA ... LADDER? (55A: Dive boat feature). Sure, why not, at least it's inferrable, and both SEA and LADDER are words that I can recognize. I actually think this theme is a NEAT IDEA, but the emphasis is on IDEA. The themers are too often too straightforward, with the words in the various phrases not even trying to hide, just hanging out in street clothes (i.e. FRIDAY appears as FRIDAY, PATH as PATH, WALKS as WALKS ... they aren't hidden inside other words or in any other fashion). Then there's the one exception, the broken MIR/ROR, which is much more in the spirit of the tricky themed puzzle ... but the whole EMITTER / RORQUAL thing makes the execution painful instead of delightful. And as I say in the theme description, circling the last "S" in STEPS and WALKS doesn't make sense, or rather, it makes it all awkward by putting it into the third-person present indicative, leading me to wonder: who STEPS on a CRACK, exactly? Just circling STEP and WALK would've been fine (better). Look, I'm just mad they took my Friday themeless away. I was briefly consoled by the fact that there was a "good reason" (i.e. there's only one day you can do this theme, and Friday is the day), but then the ride was so uneven, the execution so ... well, also uneven ... that beyond the "aha" of getting FRIDAY (the 13th), there was mostly just disappointment.

I wonder what a Venn diagram representing "People who knew RORQUAL," "People who knew the man formerly known as Ron ARTEST," and "People who knew neither RORQUAL nor Ron ARTEST" would look like (28D: Onetime N.B.A. star Metta Sandiford-___). I know there's gonna be some overlap, but I also imagine that most solvers went "whaaa?" at at least one of those. I was fortunate enough to know the basketball one, but that is *only* because I knew that ARTEST's name had once been Metta World Peace. So I knew the "Metta," which was literally the only way I had of finding my way to ARTEST. Filling that in was one of the only times I've ever felt genuinely bad for all the sports-haters out there, because as sports clues go, that's kind of a deep cut. Beyond RORQUAL and PISANO, there wasn't much I hadn't seen before. BRETT was a total mystery (I've never been that big a Hemingway fan, frankly) (33A: Jake's love interest in "The Sun Also Rises"). I'm starting to wonder if the BRETT / ARTEST / LETTER C crosses messed people up today. Had DNA before RNA (of course). Couldn't decide which spelling of BREACH I was supposed to go with (of course) (42D: Violate, as etiquette). Forgot TAWS were a thing (53D: Fancy marbles). Had RUMBA before SAMBA for some reason (9D: Carnival music). But these are all minor snags that might happen on any day. I did not enjoy the puzzle, but I tip my hat to the puzzle for f***ing up Friday in bold thematic fashion (rather than just ordinarily and accidentally). Well played.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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