Winners of a 1932 Australian "war" / THU 1-12-23 / Gossip, slangily / Fancy summer home / When doubled mouse-bopping bunny in a children's song / Winners of a 1932 Australian war / Passes but not with flying colors

Constructor: Grant Thackray

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: blankING blankER(S) — familiar phrases following the "blankING blankER(S)" pattern have the blanks reversed, creating wacky phrase:

Theme answers:

• STUFFING STOCKER (16A: Grocery store worker on the days leading up to Thanksgiving?) ("stocking stuffer")
• SAUCING FLYERS (25A: Pamphlets on how to use marinara?) ("flying saucer")
• BETTING GETTER (45A: Bookie?) ("getting better)
• NUMBING TRACKERS (60A: Devices that help dentists monitor anesthesia?) ("tracking number")

Word of the Day: LEE Shubert (59A: Shubert of Broadway's Shubert Theatre) —

Lee Shubert (born Levi Schubart; March 25, 1871– December 25, 1953) was a Lithuanian-born American theatre owner/operator and producer and the eldest of seven siblings of the theatrical Shubert family. [...] Shubert was 11 years old when the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Syracuse, New York, where a number of Jewish families from their hometown already were living. His father's alcoholism kept the family in difficult financial circumstances, and Lee Shubert went to work selling newspapers on a street corner. With borrowed money, he and younger brothers Sam and Jacob eventually embarked on a business venture that led to them to become the successful operators of several theaters in upstate New York. // The Shubert brothers decided to expand to the huge market in New York City, and at the end of March 1900 they leased the Herald Square Theatre at the corner of Broadway and 35th Street in Manhattan. Leaving younger brother Jacob at home to manage their existing theatres, Lee and Sam Shubert moved to New York City, where they laid the foundations for what was to become the largest theatre empire in the 20th century, including the Winter Garden and Shubert Theatres.

• • •

***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...

• • •

Whatever humor is available in this theme concept remains largely untapped. When your "wacky" phrases have to resort to "words" like SAUCING and GETTER, you're straining too hard, and what you get are groaners instead of laughers. Is "laugher" not a word? Would you prefer "GETTER of laughs?" Ugh, GETTER. That is not a word you're going to see, ever, unless it's preceded by GO-, which means it's at best a word part. And "self-SAUCING pudding" is the only thing that comes to mind when I try to think of a case where someone might use SAUCING, which makes SAUCING, like GETTER, something you (I) only ever encounter after a hyphen. The first and last themers work fine—they aren't laughers, but they're solid, they work, I can imagine the wackiness they are asking me to imagine. But BETTING GETTER, no, I can't imagine that. Am I really SAUCING my PASTA every time I put ... sauce on it? Sigh, I suppose. But SAUCING FLYERS just feels sooooo awkward, as if the flyers themselves were putting sauce on your PASTA. I just found the execution here terribly awkward. 

[GLEN!]

BETTING GETTER, in addition to being the worst of the bunch, was also the hardest of the bunch, with its one-word clue ([Bookie?]), and the answer itself cutting through the top of a big chunk of open space at the bottom, which made the Downs in that space hard to see. I mean absolutely no disrespect when I ask the question: Since when is TULANE "prestigious"? I've been in higher ed. for my whole adult life and I've never heard such an attribution / allegation. It's a fine school, for sure, but ... I just think you're stretching the concept of "prestige" a little thin. Please keep in mind that I think the concept of "prestige" in higher ed is almost complete bull****. That is, prestige exists, but there's no direct correspondence between prestige and quality of (undergraduate) education. Anyway, I teach at the "Crown Jewel of the SUNY System" and I would never call my own university "prestigious" either, so I just don't know what compelled anyone to put "Prestigious" in this clue for TULANE. It's patently unnecessary and face-scrunchingly / head-tiltingly inaccurate. "Prestigious" also made it somehow harder to get, as did the fact that it was cross-referenced to an answer in its own section, one that it actually crossed (NOLA). I thought I was dealing with a university in PISA for a bit, and so was trying to think of some "prestigious" old Italian university. This section also contains the ugliness of GETS A C (I just have "oof" written in the margin) and the outright ridiculousness of AGENTRY, which was my final answer. AGENTRY!? Now that's a laugher. As in, I literally laughed at how dumb a word it is as I wrote it in. Quite a way to finish up.

So the top half ended up being much more enjoyable, and easier, than the bottom half. And while I think SAUCING FLYERS is a ridiculous phrase, I have some fondness for it because it's soooo ridiculous, because it makes me think of ETS throwing PASTA sauce out of their UFO, and because it's the first themer that I got. I had STUFFING and SAUCING early and no idea what was supposed to come after. I actually wrote in STOCKING or something like that early on, but it didn't fit. And then I got the back end of FLYERS and all of a sudden made the "pamphlets" / FLYERS connection *and* saw the "flying saucers" inversion. It was a good "aha" moment, even if SAUCING FLYERS itself is just nuts. After that, I finally "got" the first themer, and from then on, I was in business.

It wasn't a ROUGH START, by any means, but it was a little slow. Trouble getting started coupled with trouble in the aforementioned BETTING GETTER / TULANE area meant that the puzzle almost felt like it rose to what I'd consider normal Thursday-level difficulty. Oh, that clue on LEE was brutal for me, but the crosses were EFFORTLESS (literally, one of the crosses is EFFORTLESS), so I survived. Any other tough stuff? Not really. I thought the [Maker of the first portable music player] was ZUNE for a bit, so that was fun. LOL at that KIA slogan, "The power to surprise" (62D). Recently they "surprised" the world with a logo that no one can make any sense of.

I was in Auckland when I first noticed this logo and figured I was dealing with some overseas brand of car that we just don't have in the States. But no. That "KN" is actually "KIA," somehow. What a (k)nightmare, design-wise. And the original oval logo was so nice (and clear). It's OK not to change things that don't need changing, it really is. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. what the hell "war" did the EMUS win!?!? (51A: Winners of a 1932 Australian "war") ... [Fires up Google] ... Wow, this is awful.

The Emu War, also known as the Great Emu War, was a nuisance wildlife management military operation undertaken in Australia over the later part of 1932 to address public concern over the number of emussaid to be running amok and destroying crops in the Campion district within the Wheatbelt of Western Australia. The unsuccessful attempts to curb the population of emus, a large flightless bird indigenous to Australia, employed Royal Australian Artillery soldiers armed with Lewis guns—leading the media to adopt the name "Emu War" when referring to the incident. While a number of the birds were killed, the emu population persisted and continued to cause crop destruction." (wikipedia)

Not how I'd clue EMUS, but if you like cutesy clues about the attempted slaughter of indigenous bird species, well, it's your lucky day, I guess.

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