Insulating sleeve for a beverage / SUN 4-30-23 / 2020 film starring a cartoon dog / One of cinq in Tartuffe / Curved edges formed by intersecting vaults in architecture / 5 6 or 7 in golf / Bit of vocal fanfare / Pain reliever with oxymoronic name / Title woman who has children at her feet in a 1968 hit / It means waterless place in Mongolian / 2004 Don Cheadle film set in Africa / Popular singer who has recorded in Elvish

Constructor: Lewis Rothlein and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Name Dropping" — In order to make sense of six Downs at the bottom of the grid, you have to "drop" the "names" that have been embedded in an answers directly above them:

Theme answers:

• "LADY MADONNA" (90D: Title woman who has children at her feet, in a 1968 hit) ("DONNA" drops down from 28D: Cautious (of) (CHAR(DONNA)Y))
• TAKE THE L (110D: Accept defeat, in modern slang) ("ETHEL" drops down from 42D: Longtime anchor of "NBC Nightly News" (BROK(ETHEL)AW))
• FLY FISHERMAN (91D: Person dealing with casting and lines)  ("HERMAN" drops down from (S(HERMAN)TANK))
• "HOTEL RWANDA" (92D: 2004 Don Cheadle film set in Africa) ("WANDA" drops down from 19D: Check out, as a book (BO(WANDA)RROW))
• KUBRICK (115D: Director of "The Shining" and "Dr. Strangelove") ("RICK" drops down from 44D: Guarding, as a goal (T(RICK)ENDING))
• ELIZABETHAN (94D: Like England in the late 16th century) ("ETHAN" drops down from 34D: Informants, informally (FIN(ETHAN)KS))

Word of the Day: DIABOLO (118A: String-and-spool toy) —

The diabolo (/diːˈæbəloʊ/ dee-AB-ə-loh; commonly misspelled diablo) is a juggling or circus prop consisting of an axle (British English: bobbin) and two cups (hourglass/egg timer shaped) or discs derived from the Chinese yo-yo. This object is spun using a string attached to two hand sticks ("batons" or "wands"). A large variety of tricks are possible with the diabolo, including tosses, and various types of interaction with the sticks, string, and various parts of the user's body. Multiple diabolos can be spun on a single string.

Like the Western yo-yo (which has an independent origin), it maintains its spinning motion through a rotating effect based on conservation of angular momentum. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well at least this one is trying. I mean, it's definitely more enjoyable than most Sundays I've done of late. I assume that if you solve on the app, there's some cutesy animation at the end where the "names" "drop" down from above and settle into their "proper" place at the bottom of the grid. But with static answers, the puzzle's title makes no sense. I guess the title is saying that *I*, the solver, have to mentally "drop" the names in order to make sense of the Down answers along the bottom. But the names are represented in the grid as if they have risen. Not dropped. Name Rising. That is what the puzzle should've been called. If you'd done this very same theme but put the partial themers at the *top* of the grid instead of the bottom, then bam, there you are, the names drop ... "Name Dropping." As is, the title feels inapt. Unapt? I can never tell the difference. Wrong. That's what the title feels like. [UPDATE: I slept on this and mostly changed my mind, especially since there’s the double meaning of “drop” here (“take out” and “put lower”)—it’s fine that *I’m* doing the dropping.]  But the basic concept is pretty slick, I think ... not a huge fan of gibberish in the grid (i.e. LADY MA, TAK, HOTELR, etc.), but since the missing letters are actually clearly represented elsewhere in the grid, I don't mind the gibberish that much. There are unclued answers here—a bunch of them. All the name-containing answers, totally unclued (that is, for example, CHARY is clued but CHARDONNAY is not). But every one of those answers a. makes a real word or phrase and b. can be filled in via the missing "name" supplied by those truncated themers at the bottom, so despite the non-cluing, the puzzle remains quite fair. I will say that of all the theme-related stuff, TRICK ENDING feels like the worst. The shakiest by far in terms of its relative "real thing"-ness. When I google ["trick ending"] all I get are crossword sites, and while it's true that google knows who I am and is probably apt to push me toward crossword sites, I google stuff in quotation marks all the time and it never just lines up an array like this:

I guess they mean a "surprise" or "twist" ending? Something "gotcha" that suggests you've been thinking about things wrong all along? The phrase just doesn't land right to my ear. No EARGASM at all. Speaking of ... if I don't see TAKE THE L or EARGASM again for a few years, that would be just fine. Feel like we've worn those babies out in the past few months. Like, one EARGASM a year and I'm good, frankly. But back to the theme: I don't know that it does what it says it does, but what it does is at least clever and structurally ... interesting. As I say, I've had much worse times with Sundays of late. So yeah, sure, I'll take this.

The fill did make me wince in places, though. HEROIZE ... why does that "word" hurt my brain so much? It's awful. I am happy for you to LIONIZE someone, but HEROIZE sounds like the kind of thing that someone with a limited vocabulary just made up and then everybody ran with it? Strangely, I have no problem with the word "villainize." "Villanize?" How the hell do you spell that? My software is red-underlining both my attempts. I guess it thinks I mean "vilify" but I don't. Hmm. Anyway, HEROIZE sounds like something you do to sandwich meat. The "O" into "-IZE" is particularly awkward and unmellifluous. It's like "ghettoize," a somewhat more real term that I also can't stand the sound of. I also balked hard at FLORAE. Multiple ... FLORAE. FLORA already applies to a totality of plant life in a given area. And the way FLORAE is clued here, as "specimens" ... not seeing that definition. FLORA belongs to a region—"specimen" implies a singular example. Hard to believe there weren't other less awkward options there. LOL this is a Shortz-era *debut*—that should tell you how iffy it is. Hasn't appeared in the NYTXW since the mid-'80s. Here's to another 40 years in the vault! And please take GROINS with you! (Looks like GROINS made it into the Shortz era, possibly via an already-accepted Maleska-era puzzle, during Shortz's first full year of editing, in 1994, but hadn't been heard from since ... until today.)

DIABOLO was a huge ??? I feel like maybe I saw some tie dye-wearing, patchouli-smelling, jam band-listening dudes playing with one of these on the quad in the '90s, once, maybe? The same kind of dudes who are still having HEAD TRIPS decades after the '60s ended. Not sure. Not really up on the extended yo-yo family of toys.  SIN BINS sounds too precious for so rough a sport, but looks like it's legit, and across a number of sports, actually (including rugby and roller derby). The golf clue was ??? to me too, in that I understand the concept of numbered irons, but did not know MIDIRON was an actual category (generally, the higher the number, the more loft / less distance). Only thing I truly didn't know in the grid besides DIABOLO was Marian ANDERSON (84A: Singer Marian, the first African American to perform at the Met). Overall, pretty easy without being dull. Answers like KOOZIE and "I JUST ATE" and FRACAS and NO JOKE kept things bouncy and relatively interesting throughout.

Bullets:

• "SCOOB" (18A: 2020 film starring a cartoon dog) — people tell me movies came out in 2020 and I have no choice but to believe them but there's a real tree falling / woods / sound thing going on with early COVID-era cinema. If you can call "SCOOB" "cinema." Which I invite you to do.
• RIMS (37A: Pair of glasses?) — in that ... glasses have RIMS. A pair of them? It's awful, yes, I know, not sure why anyone thought this was cute.
• SATIRE (49A: Cutting part of The Onion?) — The Onion is *entirely* SATIRE, so again, I have no idea whose idea of "humor" this "?" clue was. The phrase is clunky and evokes nothing except ... partially cutting onions? Big miss. 
• SNOW (45A: Angels can be found in it) — No. They "might" be found in it, in that one "might" make a SNOW angel, but "can" implies a much greater degree of certainty about angels' presence. Like, I could search SNOW forevvvvvvvvver and find no angels. The fact that the angel "might" be there doesn't mean I "can" find it. Boo. Choose the right word. Choose "might."
• DO IT (32D: Two-thirds of 105-Across — Deeply awful. Cynical, even. It's bad fill to begin with, but it also dupes part of something already in the grid (DIY), so instead of trying harder for better fill, you just ... point to the fact that you couldn't bother?
• SDSU (24A: Southern California sch.) — San Diego State University. They recently made it to the finals of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, where they were routed by UConn.

It's the last day of April—time to highlight the best NYTXW puzzles I've solved this month (two themed puzzles, and one themeless). So here it is, the Best of April 2023:

• Themed: Robin Yu, "TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE" (Thu., Apr. 13); Katherine Baicker and Scott Earl, "THERE ARE NO WORDS" (Mon., Apr. 17) 
• Themeless: Kameron Austin Collins (UFOLOGISTS / "MEANING WHAT?" / "DO YOU MIND?" / LAURA DERN) (Sat., Apr. 15)

Themeless competition was particularly tough this month. Both themelesses from this weekend (Handa/Agard, Steinberg) were exceedingly worthy. But I had to give the edge to KAC's magisterial grid. Take care, see you later. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]