Genre for Gabriel García Márquez and Haruki Murakami / FRI 6-23-23 / Game played on yaks in Mongolia and Pakistan / Target of a biometric scanner / by that kiss I vow an endless bliss Keats / Quick impression as of a person / Frankincense and myrrh but not gold

Constructor: Kunal Nabar

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: None 

Word of the Day: ASMARA (39D: Capital of Eritrea) —

Asmara (/æsˈmɑːrə/ əs-MAHR-ə), or Asmera, is the capital and most populous city of Eritrea, in the country's Central Region. It sits at an elevation of 2,325 metres (7,628 ft), making it the sixth highest capital in the world by altitude and the second highest capital in Africa. The city is located at the tip of an escarpment that is both the northwestern edge of the Eritrean Highlands and the Great Rift Valley in neighbouring Ethiopia. In 2017, the city was declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its well-preserved modernist architecture. The site of Asmera was first settled in 800 BC with a population ranging from 100 to 1,000. The city was then founded in the 12th century AD after four separate villages unified to live together peacefully after long periods of conflict. Under Italian rule the city of Asmara was made capital of Eritrea in the last years of the 19th century. [...] In 1952, the United Nations resolved to federate the former colony under Ethiopian rule. During the Federation, Asmara was no longer the capital city. The capital was now Addis Ababa, over 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) to the south. The national language of the city was therefore replaced from the Tigrinya language to the Ethiopian Amharic language. In 1961, Emperor Haile Selassie I ended the "federal" arrangement and declared the territory to be the 14th province of the Ethiopian Empire. Ethiopia's biggest ally was the United States. The city was home to the US Army's Kagnew Station installation from 1943 until 1977. The Eritrean War of Independence began in 1961 and ended in 1991, resulting in the independence of Eritrea. Asmara was left relatively undamaged throughout the war, as were the majority of highland regions. After independence, Asmara again became the capital of Eritrea. (wikipedia)

• • •

I had some idea that this puzzle was going to be easy because yesterday I had seen this astonishingly condescending tweet from @NYTGames:

A tip for newer solvers: Skip tomorrow’s crossword and play Friday’s this week. Our editors say it’s a good one — and not as challenging as your typical Friday solve. 🧐

— New York Times Games (@NYTGames) June 21, 2023

I would never have seen the tweet, but friends of mine were rightly mocking it, which is basically what Twitter is now (i.e. stuff you'd rather not see but your friends keep pointing at it going "Can you believe this ****!?"). Anyway, telling your subscribers not to try, LOL, that is one hell of a marketing strategy. I guess the "Ted Lasso" backlash really has begun. "Do Not Believe ... that you can do the Thursday puzzle!" And Thursday's puzzle was actually the *perfect* opportunity to ease newer solvers into the whole concept of the rebus puzzle, since as you know, the puzzle was pretty damn easy, as rebuses go. Surely there is a way to help newer solvers tackle tougher puzzles besides telling them simply to pass and wait for the next easy puzzle to come down the pike. And surely there's a way to sell today's (quite nice!) puzzle to solvers without saying "Hey, you'll like it, we dumbed it down for you!" I hear that there's some scheme afoot in the NYT Games newsletter to offer themeless puzzles up with clues that have been completely rewritten by in-house staff (gutting the original constructor's cluing voice completely, without their consent). Editors change clues all the time, of course, but that's ... editing. Not wholesale rewriting. Maybe I have misunderstood, and the plan is less heavy-handed and constructor-unfriendly. But I'm not liking this marketing trend that says "new solvers are impatient dummies who need to be coddled so that we get more engagement on the app." And today's puzzle deserves much better framing than "not as challenging as your typical Friday solve." What's remarkable about it isn't that it's easy, but that it's good, and fun. No reason you can't hype its quality and relative accessibility while also leaving the poor Thursday puzzle completely out of the conversation.

This puzzle is built in such a way that the whoosh-whoosh comes early and dramatically ... and then the puzzle settles down to a more regular Friday pace. This is because all of your very long answers originate in the NW corner, which (if you're me, a reasonably normal human solver) is where you start. I don't start with the long stuff. I got right to the short stuff in order to hack at the long stuff, so that when I finally look at the long stuff, I have some reasonable hope of getting it. I tried 1A: Like some knowledge and commitments, but that makes this clue basically a "word that can go with"-type clue, and as I told you yesterday, my brain cannot handle those. Today was no different. But the Downs were much friendlier. POLO RNA IOTAS bam bam bam. Wanted OPEN-something and ROCK-something for the next two Downs, but wouldn't commit. Saw that 12A: Playbills? seemed to open with MONO- but couldn't do anything with that. Eventually committed to OPEN MIC and ROCK ON and then decided to check the "M" in 1A's (apparent) MONO- by looking at the Down cross. And that ... that was the moment the roller coaster car crested ... and dropped!

That's a 14-letter answer I could've gotten with no letters in place. You say "Gabriel Gar-" and I'm already shouting "MAGICAL REALISM" back at you (12D: Genre for Gabriel García Márquez and Haruki Murakami). What a beautiful answer to have as your initial grid-buster, the answer that goes shooting across the grid, opening up ... A Whole New World (I know, Aladdin is not technically MAGICAL REALISM, just go with it). MAGICAL REALISM / MONOPOLY MONEY followed by PEOPLE PLEASER / PALATE CLEANSER was like getting the big fireworks finale at the beginning of the fireworks show. So many beautiful explosions! And then that's it for the long stuff. The grid has mirror symmetry on the diagonal, which means we don't have to work our way to the other side of the grid to get our symmetrical long answers—both pairs of long answers instead come flying out of that one point in the NW. As for the rest of the grid—to its credit, it's not a letdown. I mean, nothing's gonna beat that initial burst of highly alliterative goodness, but the middle and SE corners are still pretty dynamic, and loaded with solid and interesting answers. The colorful KOI PONDS and the UNCTUOUS TIME LOOP. There's even a weird little [Apt cry...] pair stacked one atop the other in the dead center of the grid. One big joy up front and then a host of little joys thereafter. This ticks all my Friday boxes. And I think it's a debut (?!). So next time, NYT Games, try hyping the quality (and the constructor!) and not just the easiness. Also, show more respect for tough puzzles—and for the newer solvers who aspire to solve them.

Other things:

• 29A: Quick impression, as of a person (READ) — all the difficulty for me today came in small packages. This answer, for instance. I was thinking of something "doing" impressions, not "getting" them. 
• 25D: Like many gift packages and old messages (TAPED) — this one too, oof, just couldn't get it. "Gift packages" had me thinking something like "gift baskets," and "old messages"—that could've been a million things. I considered TYPED (!?). 
• 47A: Drones, e.g. (MALES) — again, tough by reasons of vagueness (today's drones are bees)
• 44D: Oil and film, for two (MEDIA) — I like this clue a lot. Again, toughness through vagueness.
• 13D: Spanish American cowboy (LLANERO) — I knew LLANO (South American grasslands) but not the dudes who ride them! Was able to infer the -ERO ending relatively easily by analogy with ... I dunno, "ranchero" "caballero" etc.
• 23D: City formerly known as Christiania (OSLO) — in a bizarre coincidence, just last night I read aloud to my wife a short blurb about Nobel Prize-winning author Knut Hamsun (who was Norwegian), and in that blurb was this exact bit of trivia. Kind of a depressing read (Hamsun wrote about despair, and also ended up a Nazi sympathizer), but at least I got a crossword answer out of it!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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