Women's surfwear brand / SAT 1-14-23 / Internet company whose logo is a cat wearing earphones / Fabled tooth-takers / Dated TV star?

Constructor: David Karp

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: None 

Word of the Day: SALLY Ride (27A: Ride in space) —

  ["Wheel of Fortune, ___ Ride, / Heavy metal suicide!"]

Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. She was the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space, having done so at the age of 32. [...] After completing her training in 1979, she served as the ground-based capsule communicator (CapCom) for the second and third Space Shuttle flights, and helped develop the Space Shuttle's robotic arm. In June 1983, she flew in space on the Space Shuttle Challenger on the STS-7 mission. The mission deployed two communications satellites and the first Shuttle pallet satellite (SPAS-1). Ride operated the robotic arm to deploy and retrieve SPAS-1. Her second space flight was the STS-41-G mission in 1984, also on board Challenger. She spent a total of more than 343 hours in space. She left NASA in 1987. [...] Having been married to astronaut Steven Hawley during her spaceflight years and in a private, long-term relationship with former Women's Tennis Association player Tam O'Shaughnessy, she is the first astronaut known to have been LGBT. She died of pancreatic cancer on July 23, 2012. (wikipedia)

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***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...

• • •

[36D: Internet company whose logo
is a cat wearing earphones]

Well, you hate to end on a BLAT (almost like ending on the proverbial [sad trombone] sound, wah-WAH), but that [Unpleasant sound from a tuba] is especially unBEFITting today, as this is the best puzzle I've seen all week. Big Friday Energy. Just whooshing and SKOSHing and SKORTing all over the place. Lots of bells and whistles and WHAPS (whatever those are). Lots of LIFE, is my point. Could've used more fight, more teeth, more HEART, more TIGER (56A: Go-getter) (hey, it's "getter" again, can't seem to shake that "word" this week). But I can't fault the puzzle's relative easiness—I'm just telling myself that this is the Real Friday puzzle that got bumped for that thematic WHATCHMACALLIT we got yesterday. Which reminds me: WHATCHAMACALLIT—spelled perfectly on the first try! Can't figure out the difference between BREACH and BREECH (see yesterday), but can spell enormous made-up near-nonsense words correctly, no sweat. Weird, but true. I really liked the shape of this grid, and the unexpected way it unfolded. It just has so much ... let's call it "flow." It basically has all the symmetries (mirror symmetry along the axes and diagonals, plus rotational symmetry—not just 180-degree, but 90-degree as well). It's essentially a cloverleaf, with four corner loops, so you can go spinning around the black squares in all different directions and then go shooting off down the road, and you never find yourself stuck in some dank corner with no one to come to your rescue. Never any "ugh, I'm stuck, what next," because there's always another way to come at things. I botched 1A: Terms of address right out of the gate. Misread it as a singular and wrote in MADAM, and the "confirmed" MADAM with ALT ... but that error never bogged me down. I just moved over to the adjacent top section and started in with THUDS at 6A: Hit sounds, which was also wrong, but then my beloved PHO came to my rescue, so I tried WHAPS for the [Hit sounds] and zooooom off I went. Pretty soon, the first sparkly long answer went streaking across the grid:

PHO! There for you in sickness, in health, and in grid. Truly a miracle worker. As for HOSTILE TAKEOVER, I mostly get bored by business-y economic-y IPO-type words, but it's hard not to like the '80s-movie energy of HOSTILE TAKEOVER. Why do I associate HOSTILE TAKEOVER with the '80s? Probably because that's when I learned the term, and also all "Wall Street" / "Working Girl"-type movie business shenanigans seem of a piece to me. At any rate, I like HOSTILE TAKEOVER as a crossword answer, a lot. I also liked the way my solve unfolded after that. It was just so ... visually odd. And symmetrical!

Once I drove those long spikes down through the HEART of the grid, I knew the rest of the solve was going to be a cinch. Like driving a stake through the HEART of Dracula, only ... nicer, less violent. From the above position, I got WALKIE-TALKIES and then pulled all the Down crosses through the center line, and thus through the answer that ended up being NO TRESPASSING—that was the one answer that did give me a brief (and welcome) struggle, as I had trouble parsing it (as well as grasping the meaning of its "?" clue). I had PASSI-- on the end and at first wanted something-PASSION (sincerely thought "enforced boundaries" was going to have something to do with bondage). Then got PASSING and figured PASSING was a word unto itself. Then the NOTRE part at the beginning ended up looking like the French word NOTRE as in NOTRE Dame ... until finally NO TRESPASSING sorted itself out. This is my kind of "difficulty"—stumbling through befuddlement to come out with clarity on the other side. Struggle ... then clarity! And "aha" clarity, not "ugh" clarity. Good stuff.

There was, of course, stuff I just didn't know. ROXY, for one (16D: Women's surfwear brand). Actually ... that might be it. Weird. I've had Monday puzzles that threw more unknowns at me.  Still, I thought the cluing made things sufficiently thorny—for a Friday, if not really for a Saturday. The SALLY Ride clue was good (if not terribly hard) (27A: Ride in space). I also liked the clue on DRUG (48D: Generic, e.g.). Now that's a proper Saturday clue—a noun posing as an adjective, and just the one word + e.g. Tough. But neighboring Téa LEONI was not tough and neighboring ERE was not tough, and with that much easy stuff lying around, the tough stuff never had a chance to really hold me up (or drag me down). "THE BACHELORETTE" is a scourge, but that is a great clue. This is the magic of crosswords—making me excited to encounter things I have no interest in or actively dislike. HOSTILE TAKEOVER! "THE BACHELORETTE"! Not what I would have called the makings of a Rex-pleasing puzzle, and yet Here We Are. Hope this one gave you a good workout or at least a bracing "good morning" slap in the face. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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