Stiff bristle, botanically / WED 12-20-23 / Fabric whose name is French for "cloth" / Gooey addition to a charcuterie board / Swiss mathematician who introduced functional notation

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: DEAR ABBY (66A: With 67-Across, one of two pen names punnily hinted at by 20-, 37- and 52-Across (can you find the other one?)) — theme answers are ordinary phrases that are also apt puns for letter-writing advice columnists who are also (identical twin!) sisters: DEAR ABBY and (the name you're supposed to find) ANN / LANDERS (24A: Author Patchett / 27A: Components of Mars's Viking and Pathfinder)

Theme answers:

• WOMEN OF LETTERS (20A: Female scholars)
• STEERING COLUMNS (37A: Where turn signals are found)
• POINTERS SISTERS (52A: Grammy winners for "Jump (for My Love)" (1984))

Word of the Day: DEAR / ABBY (66A) —

Pauline Esther Phillips (born Friedman; July 4, 1918 – January 16, 2013), also known as Abigail Van Buren, was an American advice columnist and radio show host who began the well-known "Dear Abby" newspaper column in 1956. It became the most widely syndicated newspaper column in the world, syndicated in 1,400 newspapers with 110 million readers.

From 1963 to 1975, Phillips also hosted a daily Dear Abby program on CBS Radio. TV anchorwoman Diane Sawyer calls her the "pioneering queen of salty advice". She was also the paternal stepgrandmother of U.S. Congressman Dean Phillips. 

Pauline Friedman, nicknamed "Popo", was born in Sioux City, Iowa, to Russian Jewish immigrants Rebecca (née Rushall) and Abraham B. Friedman, owner of a chain of movie theaters. She was the youngest of four sisters and grew up in Sioux City. Her identical twin Esther Pauline Friedman (married name Lederer) was columnist Ann Landers. Lederer had become Ann Landers in 1955, and Phillips soon followed suit by launching her own advice column. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

It was the 20th century, kids. People read paper newspapers and wrote letters by hand, and darkness ruled the land. When I finished this my first thought was "wow, they really don't want anyone under 40 to have any ****ing idea what's going on today, do they?" Both these women wrote their last column in 2002 ("Abby" had Alzheimer's by that point, and "Landers" died). They were nationally famous in the last century, for the better part of half a century, so if you were alive then, OK, no problem knowing who ANN / LANDERS is, but if you weren't, the whole "finding game" at the end becomes absurd. DEAR / ABBY is still syndicated and has a website that gets (allegedly) 10,000 letters a week, but ANN / LANDERS? The question isn't "Can I find her name?" I'm not 3 years old, and this is not a restaurant placemat game, so yes, of course I can find her name (you didn't exactly "hide" it). The only question is do I *know* that sister's name *at all*. I know the name well, and I still blanked on it at first (I was trying to remember without scanning the grid). If I had (initial) trouble coming up with ANN / LANDERS, I can't imagine what someone who (understandably) didn't know her name at all was supposed to do with the little "can you find it?" game at the end. I guess you just scan the grid for something name-looking and ... hope? Anyway, if your guess for the "hidden" name was ABBA ACRE (which, after all, is symmetrical with "DEAR / ABBY"), I'm gonna say that today, yes, that is correct: ABBA ACRE, the evil twin sister of "DEAR / ABBY," wrote the parodic "Dear Abba" column, in which she gave very bad advice and taunted her readers for not knowing how to run their own damn lives. Both ABBY and ABBA perished in a duel fought with light sabers atop the Empire State Building in 2002.

This is an easy trivia test for older folks (self included). I don't think much of the little "find the sister" game, but I have to say, that set of theme answers really is on the money, pun-wise. At first I was just looking at the last words: LETTERS, COLUMNS, SISTERS—yes yes yes, those all fit the topic. But then I realized no, it's not just the last words of the themers that are apt, it's the whole dang answer. They are WOMEN OF LETTERS (i.e. women who receive letters from advice-needers); they write STEERING COLUMNS, in the sense that they attempt to "steer" people via their advice; and they are POINTER SISTERS in the sense that they are "sisters" who give "pointers" (i.e. advice). I want "I HATE TO ASK..." to be another themer, but their readers clearly did not "hate to ask." The three actual themers, though, are really impressive as a set. The puns aren't forced at all. I can't believe I'm actually sitting here admiring puns, but miracles happen, I suppose.

The fill, however, was a bit clunky on this one. Lots of short stuff, much of it on the stale or olden side (ITT INRE AAS ET AL et al). Haven't seen AESIR in a long time, and while AMON-RA does show up from time to time, he has multiple spellings that keep his name from ever being a joy to see (he's his own kealoa*, with at least three ways to spell that AM-N part). I dropped in IMARET without blinking, but then I've been solving crosswords for over three decades. As I wrote it in, I thought "is this a normal word or do I know this only from crosswords." Pretty sure it's a crosswords-only type of deal. I've never seen it outside crosswords. I'm confident it exists, but I'm also confident it doesn't exist in the vast majority of non-crossword solvers' vocabularies. The worst of the fill, though, was the obscurity ARISTA alongside the monstrosity TUSKER. TUSKER? I ... we ... it's ... TUSKER? Really? I'll grant you that an animal can be a BITER, but a TUSKER? Wow, that is dumb. That answer would be so much better as TUSKED (which actually describes the animals) but that would result in a DEAD ABBY, which, while literally true, makes for a more depressing theme.

Not much else. I absolutely muffed the COLUMNS part of STEERING COLUMNS because I processed "turn signals" as "traffic signals" (you know, stoplights), which of course appear at corners ... so I wrote in STEERING CORNERS, wondering "Who calls them that!?!?! There's no such thing as a "steering corner"! You have to steer at every corner!" I then changed the answer to ... STEERING CONSOLE. Sigh. At last I messed up in a semi-entertaining way. 

OK, that's all for the puzzle, it's time for more Holiday Pet Pics! For today's cats, we've got Riggins, Franky, and Figaro.

[Riggins says "Please remove this hat so I can scratch my post with dignity" (thanks, Lea)]

[Franky, guarder of the CDs, wants to know what's up with this
one pink candle business (thanks, Marietta)]

[Where's Figaro?]

[There's Figaro! (thanks, Erin)]

And now the puppers. First, the energetic!

[And I quote: "This is The Turd running away from his brother, The Ood."
No "holiday" element to this pic, but I don't care: gorgeous dogs (thanks, Ray)]

And now finally, the ... less energetic dogs. Good night, everyone.

[Bijou's giving "Go away I'm trying to sleep" sideeye (thanks, Christopher)]

[Mabel is just gonna wait here for Santa, and maybe snooze a little.
Staring at this photo is so soothing. (thanks, Rob)]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.  

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