Garment for a vaquero / FRI 7-26-24 / Feat on a beat / Fan associated with a red, white and blue skull logo / Breed once known as the "Tax Collector's Dog" / Radiohead's highest-selling single / Letters of coverage

Constructor: Andy Kravis

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ANGIE THOMAS (59A: Best-selling author of 2017's "The Hate U Give") —

Angie Thomas (born September 20, 1988) is an American young adult author, best known for writing The Hate U Give (2017). Her second young adult novel, On the Come Up, was released on February 25, 2019. [...] Thomas' initial intention was to write fantasy and middle grade novels; however, she was worried that her stories would not matter. While querying her first manuscript, she began another that would soon turn out to be her first novel, The Hate U Give. While she was a college student, one of her professors suggested that her experiences were unique and that her writing could give a voice to those who had been silenced and whose stories had not been told. During this time, Thomas also heard about the shooting of Oscar Grant on the news. This story, compounded by the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland, was a major influence on the novel. [...] The Hate U Give, originally written as a short story, debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for young adult hardcover books within the first week of its release in 2017. The Hate U Give was written, as Thomas says, to bring light to the controversial issue of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. The book's plot follows a teenage girl, Starr Carter, and how her life is impacted by the death of her friend, Khalil, an unarmed black teen shot by a white police officer. The Hate U Give deals with the effect of police brutality on the communities of those around the victim. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think I'm just tired. I mean, moreso. I ran the second part of the Broome County Parks 5K Series yesterday, and while 5K is a pretty short distance, I am not (I mean *not*) used to running at any time except the morning and this race took place at 6:30PM. That's *PM*. That's basically a night race for me. My body was like "OK what are we doing here? We should be finished with dinner and watching 'Love Boat' right now." It was perfect weather for a run, and I finished somewhere in the middle of the pack (respectable!), so I enjoyed myself, but by the time I finished the race, cooled down, drove the half hour home, and had a celebratory / "cool-down" drink, it was basically my bedtime. But I wasn't tired. So my bedtime was late ... but the alarm, she goes off at 3:45am no matter what. So I'm staggering around this morning, mentally and physically. More than usual. This is the excuse I'm giving myself for blanking on something as easy as BARTLEBY (27A: Melville character with the mantra "I would prefer not to"). I Own A Damned BARTLEBY-themed T-Shirt And I Still Just Stared At BAR- like ????? Sigh. I also had SLAM D-N-- at 36A: Jam session? (SLAM DUNK CONTEST) and could think only of slam-dancing. "SLAM DANCE ... PARTY? No, that's only 14 letters. Uh ... PARTAY?" The brain was not warmed-up to "puzzle-solving" standards. And yet the whole thing still felt pretty easy. When the only hang-ups you have are on things you actually know but that your brain refuses to retrieve or put together, then the problem is you, not the puzzle. 

The puzzle felt a little tepid to me. Plenty of whoosh, but the answers themselves rarely felt that exciting to me. Solid, but plain. If ANGIE THOMAS had meant more to me, I might have felt differently. I saw The Hate U Give on the new/popular YA shelf at the front of my local bookstore every time I went in there for what felt like years. It may still be there. But who wrote it somehow never registered with me. She's the "Word of the Day" today in part so that I can make her name stick. YA is not my thing, but she is a very big deal. I can see how seeing her name in the grid would excite some solvers. So that answer was original / different / interesting. But not enough of the rest of the grid was. For me. But again, I am willing to chalk my less-than-excited response up to night race-induced sleep deprivation brain fog. It's 4:30am and I haven't eaten more than a handful of nuts/raisins since noon yesterday! Basically if anything f's with my routine, I fall apart and forget how to live. I don't even know how to end this paragraph. It's bad. Let's get me to coffee, quickly, OK? OK.

I had several quibbles today. I am really not a fan of the CITY, COUNTRY answer, so LIMA, PERU felt bad to me (5D: Capital city whose main governmental building is known as the "House of Pizarro"). I get that you built yourself a grid where you require an 8-letter "U"-ending word, but the whole CITY, COUNTRY thing always feels so arbitrary. Of course LIMA, PERU. What other LIMA is it gonna be? Seems unlikely that the "House of Pizarro" would be in LIMA, OHIO. I'd be mad at PARIS, FRANCE too, the way I'm mad at ERIEPA every time I see it. Feels contrived, somehow. Also, I've been in English departments ... forever, basically, and I swear I have never heard the term "LIT CRIT" irl (30D: Rhyming subject for an English major). Every time I see CRIT clued this way,  I cringe, and seeing the full LIT CRIT was no better. CRIT is a crossword contrivance. Bah. Plus the whole answer creates a really unpleasant "IT" pile-up in the eastern part of the grid. Call it the LIT CRIT GIT PIT. And hey, are OLIVEs really "divisive" (63A: Divisive pizza topping)? Anchovies, sure, that's canon, but OLIVEs? More than other toppings? Weird. OLIVEs rule, though it's true I rarely have them on pizza. If I found them on my pizza, however, I would not mind. "Divisive"? You folks are weird.

Other things:

• 18A: Departure announcement ("I'M OUTTA HERE") — wrote in "I'M OUT OF HERE" and was mad it wasn't the more properly colloquial "I'M OUTTA HERE" ... but then it was. It was ... that. More evidence of a brain on Power Save mode.
• 55D: Subatomic particle named for a Greek letter (PION) — I went with MUON, which is also a Subatomic particle named for a Greek letter, so I don't feel too bad.
• 33D: Feat on a beat (SCOOP) — another one where my brain just didn't have the processing power. "Beat" made me think "cop" ... or else "music" ... and I had S-OOP before I had any idea what was happening. It's a news beat. You probably knew that by now.
• 10D: "I didn't see you there!" ("OH, HI!") — a fine answer, but it dupes the "OH" in "OH, BEHAVE!" (38D: Catchphrase for Austin Powers). I figure you get one "OH" per puzzle. That seems like plenty.
• 58D: Mother of the Titans (GAEA) — I never know if it's GAEA or GAIA. That's because there's no way to know. Same figure from classical mythology, different spellings ... just 'cause.
• 37D: Fan associated with a red, white and blue skull logo (DEADHEAD) — me: "Wait ... fans of The Punisher have a name!?!?" All I could picture were those awful "Back The Blue"-type stickers that dudes put on their trucks to look tough. I guess they generally lack a red component, but that skull logo is a fav of the flag-wavey types, so ... yeah, this one confused me. The Dead, like YA literature, is really not my thing, though I'm vaguely aware of the skull thing. 

[No]

[Yes]

• 46A: Breed once known as the "Tax Collector's Dog" (DOBERMAN) — this is a grim, grim way to clue the poor pooch. Economic oppression and violence against the underclass: not the image I'm looking for on a breezy Friday. See also the colonialist clue on LIMA, PERU. Lots of ways to clue LIMA without name-checking the guy most closely associated with the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. 

• 45D: Two-piece? (DUET) — I wanted DYAD. Again, as with MUON, I don't feel too bad about the mistake.
• 49D: "... oops, my mistake" ("... OR NOT") — This clue rings wrong to my ear. There's absolutely nothing about "... OR NOT" that suggests apology or acknowledgment of error. Tonally, the clue and answer here are on completely different planets.
• 1A: Letters of coverage (SPF) — first clue I looked at, and immediately there was sputtering. First, IOU. As in "I will cover this bet ... later." No. Wrong. Ooh, OK, how about cell phone coverage? LTE! ... no. Damn. I was so proud of that one. Then, just before I abandoned the answer all together, sunscreen coverage came to me. SPF! I used a 50 SPF sunscreen before the race yesterday. I'm unsunburned, but, as we've seen today, perhaps not entirely undamaged. 

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Classic children's song about a lark / THU 7-25-24 / Slogan in the 2016 Republican presidential primary / Hit the ball well, in baseball slang / English town known for its mineral springs / Singer who coaches on "The Voice," familiarly / First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954) / Willa Cather novel set in 1880s Nebraska / Major fantasy sports platform / Spanish region with a namesake wine

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy (as rebus puzzles go)

THEME: GOES OUT WITH A BANG (37A: Finishes in grand style, like the answers to the starred clues?) — theme answers are brand names and titles and slogans that end (or "go out") with a "!"; that "!" (which, like all punctuation, would normally not be represented in a crossword answer) is represented by the letters "BANG" in all the crosses. So, it's a rebus puzzle where you have "!" in the Across and "BANG" in the Down (“bang” being an informal term for an exclamation point): 

Theme answers:

• CHIPS AHOY! / SHEBANG (21A: *Nabisco cookie brand / 9D: The whole ___)
• YAHOO! / SLAM-BANG (25A: *Major fantasy sports platform / 14D: Exciting in a noisy or violent way)
• O, PIONEERS! / BANGLES (53A: *Willa Cather novel set in 1880s Nebraska / 57D: Rigid bracelets)
• JEB! / HEADBANGS (61A: *Slogan in the 2016 Republican presidential primary / 44D: Rocks out to heavy metal, say)

Word of the Day: "ALOUETTE" (39D: Classic children's song about a lark) —

 

"Alouette" (pronounced [alwɛt]) is a popular Quebecois children's song, commonly thought to be about plucking the feathers from a lark. Although it is in French, it is well known among speakers of other languages; in this respect, it is similar to "Frère Jacques". Many US Marines and other Allied soldiers learnt the song while serving in France during World War I and took it home with them, passing it on to their children and grandchildren. [...] "Alouette" has become a symbol of French Canada for the world, an unofficial national song. Today, the song is used to teach French and English-speaking children in Canada, and others learning French around the world, the names of body parts. Singers will point to or touch the part of their body that corresponds to the word being sung in the song. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one mostly worked for me, though the nature of the theme made it Awfully easy. All the rebus squares come at the ends of their Across answers and all those squares are "BANG!"s. Once you pick up the gimmick (which was not terribly hard), you aren't likely to be tortured by the potentially destructive presence of hidden rebus squares. You know they're out there, and you know they're "BANG!"s, so if a corner isn't coming together as easily as it should, you just have to ask yourself, "could a 'BANG!' go somewhere in here," and voila! Actually, I never really had to ask. The "BANG!"s seemed to announce themselves, loudly, as you might expect (they're "BANG!"s, after all, not whimpers). I had CHIPS AHOY and then extra square—checked the cross on that square and could see clearly that the answer was SHEBANG. And that was that. Well, at that point, I didn't know the theme concept—I didn't know why we were doing "BANG!"s—but like 20 seconds later the revealer showed up, and that cracked it. "BANG!"s ahoy! There's something slightly monotonous about the theme, and the revealer was kind of anticlimactic (it explained, but it didn't surprise) ... and yet whatever slightly tired feelings I was having about the theme were all blown away by one glorious, bygone slogan; a mere syllable that sent my jaded heart soaring. That slogan, that syllable, that short burst of low-key energy that is perhaps the only amusing memory I have of the 2016 presidential race? Why, it's JEB!, of course. JEB! I laughed for real. The guts you gotta have to bring that one back. The confidence that anyone will remember! I am surprised by how much I loved remembering the delightful quaintness and completely ineffectual "enthusiasm" of that slogan. Man ... good times. Dude had no idea what hit him. Then the election happened and we were all JEB! Oof. See, I don't like remembering the whole 2016 SHEBANG. I prefer remembering *just* the plucky, go-get-'em slogan. The three letters least likely to precede an exclamation point. J-E-B! The little engine that couldn't, god bless him.

[it hurts to watch]

Oh, look at that, the puzzle is 16 wide. Didn't even notice. I guess your options were: go with GO OUT... and a narrow 14 or go with GOES OUT... and expand to 16. Wise choice. Give yourself room. 

I was a little disappointed in patches with the short fill, which ran a little olden, especially olden-namey: ALEC ESTEE IVOR LORNA, 20th-century stalwarts all. There was also APERS and ITTY and ATSEA and AGAR and ODED and other hardcore repeaters of various levels of irksomeness. But the theme was strong enough to carry the day, and some of the longer answers had real pizzazz. I do enjoy a MOCHA LATTE and I especially enjoy PETER LORRE (30D: First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954)) whose name I was happy to see in full today (Have you seen M, you should see M ... also The Maltese Falcon ... but I digress). I had no idea (or forgot) that "ALOUETTE" was about a lark. I think it was the name of a cheese when I was growing up, so the whole "plucking" thing didn't quite make sense in French class, at first. Yeah, here we go: a cheese spread, actually:

As for the song: it's an oddly jaunty and sunny tune considering the topic of the lyrics appears to be bird torture. Probably one of those things you're just not supposed to think too hard about. 

Bullets:

• 46A: Get more of the same, maybe (REORDER) — there used to be a kind of rule (a soft rule, but a reasonable rule, I think) that you weren't supposed to repeat letter strings of longer than, say, 4 letters. It's hard to imagine someone even noticing let alone caring about having PARAGON and AGONY in the same grid, for instance, but get over 4 letters and the duplicated letter strings can start to become conspicuous. I mention this because I found "ORDER" crossing "ORDER" (i.e. REORDER crossing BORDERED) kind of jarring. If they hadn't been crossing, I probably wouldn't have noticed. But they were and I did.
• 26A: Feature of "woulda," "coulda" or "shoulda" (SILENT L) — I love this clue. It's such great misdirection. Gets you looking at the slanginess of those "a" endings and then hits you with "Psych! It was the 'L' I was talking about all along! Yeah, I coulda (!) just used 'would,' 'could,' and 'should,' but where's the fun in that!?" Brilliant.

• 22D: Counsel: Abbr. (ATT.) — I was telling myself this was short for "attaché" right up until I started writing this bullet point, when I realized "oh it's just 'attorney,' duh."
• 35D: Oscar-winning Hathaway (ANNE) — as you know if you read the P.S. on Tuesday's blog, I was inspired by the puzzle to watch The Princess Diaries earlier this week and it was indeed enjoyable. Yes there are tiresome Disney qualities to it, and the treatment of high school is, like most movie treatments of high school, eye-rollingly simplistic and caricatured, but ANNE Hathaway and Julie Andrews and especially Heather Matarazzo (as the best friend) are all super charming and funny. Oh, and Hector Elizondo is in it! He makes everything better. And he and Andrews are kinda hot together (Andrews is the widowed queen of Genovia (!) and Elizondo's her bodyguard / driver who becomes a kind of low-key love interest ... they dance ... it's nice). Mandy Moore is also in it. Garry Marshall directs. There's lots and lots and lots of great shots of San Francisco. It's not Vertigo or Bullitt, but you could do worse.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Ticketmaster alternative / WED 7-24-24 / Fashion designer Cohn with an eponymous rhinestone-encrusted suit / Small vessel in the deep ocean / Alfred for whom a coffee chain is named / Joystick-controlled contraption depicted in this puzzle

Constructor: Shaun Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium 

THEME: CLAW MACHINE GAME (35A: Joystick-controlled contraption depicted in this puzzle) — black squares in the upper middle are supposed to be the "claw" and I guess the "+"-shaped black square formation is supposed to be one of the prizes in the machines. Maybe the black square formations on the bottom are involved too, I don't know ... Also:

Theme answers:

• "HOLD ON A MINUTE" (5D: "Wait!" ... or hopeful words while playing a 35-Across?)
• CRANE OPERATOR (10D: Professional who might expect to do well with a 35-Across?)
• AMUSEMENT ARCADE (54A: Setting for a 35-Across)

Word of the Day: NUDIE Cohn (49D: Fashion designer Cohn with an eponymous rhinestone-encrusted suit) —

Nuta Kotlyarenko (Ukrainian: Нута Котляренко; December 15, 1902 – May 9, 1984), known professionally as Nudie Cohn, was a Ukrainian-American tailor who designed decorative rhinestone-covered suits, known popularly as "Nudie Suits", and other elaborate outfits for some of the most famous celebrities of his era. He also became famous for his outrageous customized automobiles. [...] Cohn's designs brought the already-flamboyant western style to a new level of ostentation with the liberal use of rhinestones and themed images in chain stitch embroidery. One of his early designs, in 1962, for singer Porter Wagoner, was a peach-colored suit featuring rhinestones, a covered wagon on the back, and wagon wheels on the legs. He offered the suit to Wagoner for free, confident that the popular performer would serve as a billboard for his clothing line. His confidence proved justified and the business grew rapidly. In 1963 the Cohns relocated their business to a larger facility on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood and renamed it "Nudie's Rodeo Tailors". //

Many of Cohn's designs became signature looks for their owners. Among his most famous creations was Elvis Presley's $10,000 gold lamé suit worn by the singer on the cover of his 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong album. Cohn created Hank Williams' white cowboy suit with musical notations on the sleeves, and Gram Parsons' infamous suit for the cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers' 1969 album The Gilded Palace of Sin, featuring pills, poppies, marijuana leaves, naked women, and a huge cross. He designed the iconic costume worn by Robert Redford in the 1979 film Electric Horseman, which was exhibited by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. // Many of the film costumes worn by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were Nudie designs. John Lennon was a customer, as were John Wayne, Gene Autry, George Jones, Cher, Ronald Reagan, Elton John, Robert Mitchum, Pat Buttram, Tony Curtis, Michael Landon, Glen Campbell, Michael Nesmith, Hank Snow, Hank Thompson, and numerous musical groups, notably America and Chicago. ZZ Top band members Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill sported Nudie suits on the cover photo of their 1975 album Fandango!. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's not nearly enough pictorial oomph here to make this endeavor worthwhile. You've got a kind of claw at the top of the grid, but nothing else evokes "claw machine," and the claw just looks like an ordinary black-square formation anyway, so ... I dunno. Very little visual impact, and very slight resemblance to the "game" in question. And that's the next big problem. "Game." It's a "claw machine." That's what it's called. The wikipedia entry: "Claw machine." It appears to be "crane machine" in some contexts, but mostly, it's a "claw machine." It is decidedly not a "CLAW MACHINE GAME." Yes, you need "game" to get you to a grid-spanning 15 letters, but oof you gotta get the terminology just right or Don't Do The Puzzle. This problem—the "slightly off" / "extra word" problem—kept happening, over and over with the themers today. Every. Single. One of the themers has a word in it that doesn't quite work or relate or make sense. Actually, CRANE OPERATOR is OK. I had OPERATOR and no idea what the first word could be (SMOOTH?), but when I got CRANE, I thought "OK, yeah, I guess that works." But "HOLD ON A ___?" Why MINUTE? You definitely don't need to hold on that long. Arbitrary. And then there's AMUSEMENT. What in the world is an "AMUSEMENT ARCADE?" It's an ... arcade. Maybe it's a video arcade? A penny arcade? Looks like "AMUSEMENT ARCADE" is in fact the title of the wikipedia entry on the general category of arcades, but I've never heard that term used, so I had ARCADE and literally no idea what was supposed to come before it. Forever. I had -EMENT before AMUSEMENT occurred to me. I don't think. AMUSEMENT ARCADE is a foul, since it's a real term, but it's not being terribly in-the-language added to my overall feeling that the themers were slightly to very ... off. Everywhere. All the time. And worst of all in the revealer itself, with the addition of the extremely redundant "GAME."

Fill-wise ... well, a lotta names. Right out of the box, once again (as with yesterday), we're inundated with proper nouns. STUBHUB over PIER ONE crossing UEFA, followed quickly by JOANN over O'SHEA. That's five names before you ever get out of the NW (I'm not counting OSLO as a name since OSLO has pretty much achieved the status of background noise in crossword puzzles). I knew all the names, including STUBHUB (which I got immediately, with no crosses in place), so I flew through that part, but I could tell that it was gonna be thorny for some. The NE corner was less name-y but also less clean, with the crosswordesey EENIE and ESAU and the improbable MINISUB (20A: Small vessel in the deep ocean) and the apostrophe-S-less PEET (22A: Alfred for whom a coffee chain is named) and the awkward RERINSE. And why doesn't TECHIES have something in its clue implying slang (8A: Some experts on viruses)? You wanna abbreviate to TECHIES, the clue should indicate that you're going slangy, and it doesn't. Sigh. The rest of the puzzle was solid enough. Highlight for me was NUDIE, for sure. Great new (and non-porno) clue for that one. I learned about the NUDIE Suit by listening to "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs," specifically the episodes about Gram Parsons. I went from "how the hell am I supposed to know designers!?" to "OMG the NUDIE Suit! Yes!" pretty quickly on that one. Those suits are flash. They scream Americana. All performers should wear them (contemporary artists like Lady Gaga, Kesha, Taylor Swift, and crossword favorite Lil Nas X all have). Love love love. The rest of the puzzle didn't do nearly so much for me.

Not much difficulty today for me. Misread 7D: "Cool ___!" as merely ["Cool!"]—that is, somehow didn't see the blank space following "Cool"—and was So Mad that the answer was BEANS. "The expression is 'Cool BEANS!,' not just 'BEANS!' Who is saying just 'BEANS!'? Have we shortened it to just 'BEANS' now!? Damn slang changes, I can't keep up mutter mutter mutter." But no, my eye just missed the blank space. Not reading clues correctly has caused me more pain over the years than simple ignorance ever did. Had AJAR before A TAD, that was weird (42A: Ever so slightly). I guess my brain just supplied "open" at the end (or beginning) of that clue. Balked at spelling CAROTID, even though, looking at it now, I'm not sure how else I would've spelled it. I left the first two vowels blank because I didn't want to F' up and I figured the crosses would take care of things. And they did. Had "IS IT?" before "IT IS?," since "IS IT?" reads way more question-y on its surface than "IT IS?" does. "IS IT?" has question syntax, whereas you need to mentally supply the question mark to make "IT IS?" a question. Anyway, this created minor havoc around the awful (truly awful) Biz OPS (60A: Biz ___ (corporate team, informally)). Are "corporate" people never embarrassed by this jargon? BizOPS sounds like '90s hip-hop slang that got "bygone" real quick. Like a variation on "bops" that someone tried to make happen in late '95 and that maybe caught on at a handful of east coast radio stations for like three months. "We got some phat bizops comin' at ya in the next hour..." Or if Biz Markie had a spy movie-inspired alter ego: Biz OPS! That would've been cool. As "corporate" lingo, though, it's just sad.

Bullets:

• 15A: Longtime home decor chain with a name that anagrams to PIONEER (PIER ONE) — always hate the "anagrams to" clues, but I guess PIER ONE is sufficiently bygone now that people need help. Not sure why, but I was leafing (digitally) through a list of "chains that no longer exist" just the other day and there was PIER ONE and I thought "wait, that's not still out on the Vestal Parkway?" Like, literally, we had one in town and I just assumed it was still there. If a PIER ONE disappears from the Parkway, does it make a sound? Apparently not. Circuit City, that disappearance registered. But PIER ONE ... poof, just gone. I bought some really ugly blue-tinted wine glasses there once. That is my PIER ONE memory. What's yours!? [side note: it's really "Pier 1," numeral "1" ... I was trying to figure out why PIER ONE looks so bad. And that's why. This spelling issue makes today's clue actually wrong. Flat-out wrong. You can represent a number as a word in the puzzle, but anagramming is a very specific thing involving the actual characters of the actual name, so ... [annoying buzzer sound!] this clue is DQd]

• 3D: Soccer org. that runs the Champions League (UEFA) — knew this one but my first spelling of it came out UIFA. Like FIFA and UEFA had a baby: Baby UIFA. I think I was under the influence of other famous UI-starting words, like the UINTA Mountains of Utah, or ... uh ... (do not say "UIES" we all know that is not and has never been a thing no matter how many times the crossword tries to make it so)
• 32D: "Your" of yore (THY) — I just like this clue. I like its lilting rhyminess. I also just like the phrase "of yore." As you're (!) probably aware of by now.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Fictional country in "The Princess Diaries" / TUE 7-23-24 / Pickle, to a Brit / Freshwater fish named for its shoreline habitat / Cipher machine of W.W. II / Ken's Mojo Dojo ___ House (redundantly named dwelling in "Barbie") / Rock climber's notch

Constructor: Sarah Sinclair and Amie Walker

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Tues.)

THEME: CHORAL GROUP (62A: What the ends of 17-, 31-, 37- and 48-Across are, collectively) — theme answers end with SOPRANO, ALTO, TENOR, and BASS, respectively:

Theme answers:

• TONY SOPRANO (17A: Role for which James Gandolfini won three Emmys)
• PALO ALTO (31A: Silicon Valley city whose name translates to "tall stick")
• EVEN TENOR (37A: Stable temperament)
• ROCK BASS (48A: Freshwater fish named for its shoreline habitat)

Word of the Day: THE Ohio State University (10A: Article that Ohio State University surprisingly managed to trademark in 2022) —

Ohio State University has received a trademark for one of the most common words in the English language, one that the school’s supporters often forcefully emphasize when uttering its name: “The.”

While athletes from other schools may simply say they went to Michigan or Penn State, a Buckeye rarely cuts corners: “The Ohio State University,” they’ll say, usually adding a dramatic pause after stressing the “the.” The school’s players, alumni and supporters often speak its name in that consistent cadence, as football fans who have watched N.F.L. starting lineups introduce themselves on Sundays or Monday nights have most likely heard

To Ohio State’s supporters, the tradition is cherished and sets the school apart from the rest. (To Ohio State’s rivals, it’s nauseatingly pompous. To each their own.)

The trademark, issued on Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, won’t unleash heavy-handed lawyers in search of anyone using the word “the” — its protections are limited to a narrow set of circumstances that people are unlikely to cross unless they are selling knockoff Ohio State merchandise. But it gives the university some protection against unlicensed sellers, and adds to the school’s efforts to link itself to the very common word. (NYT) (6/23/22)

• • •

Stopped to take a deep breath about five seconds into this one when not one but two of the long answers in the NW were pop culture trivia. And not exactly universally known pop culture trivia, either (in that I didn't know either one off the top of my head). You want to lean into a pop culture thing that you like here, or there, that's fine, that's normal, but two answers, right out of the box, both of them among the longer answers you have in the puzzle ... off-putting. Off-putting to clue MATTHEW that way (via Succession) when you've already got an HBO (now Max?) show as one of your themers—the very themer that is *crossing* MATTHEW. Crossing HBO answers ... feels like shilling. As for GENOVIA, I actually saw (and enjoyed) The Princess Diaries at some point, but shrug, the fake country name was not a bit of info that I retained. Both MATTHEW (1D: Actor Macfadyen of "Succession") and GENOVIA (3D: Fictional country in "The Princess Diaries") are easy enough to suss out from crosses, but cramming the opening section of a puzzle with your pet trivia feels slightly obnoxious. I know many of you are Succession fans, so your experience of the trivia here may be very different. I have never understood why anyone would want to watch a show about billionaires. I can't think of people I'm less interested in. I'm *quite* sure the writing and acting on that show is phenomenal, you don't have to convince me. But the subject matter is a hard pass. But this is beside the point, the point being: spread your pop culture trivia out. Please and thank you (I say this as a huge fan of The Sopranos, always happy to see James Gandolfini's name, go watch Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said (2013), with Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus) (actually, maybe I'll do that today...).  

But what about the meat of the puzzle, the theme? Well, it's OK. The concept is very basic (a straightforward "Last Words"-type puzzle), and the revealer was a bit of a let-down. I could see very quickly, after the second themer, that we were doing the voice type thing with the last words, but instead of getting some funny or punny or wacky or wordplay-based revealer, we just get plain-old CHORAL GROUP. A flat, literal description. Ho hum. It's important, but not hugely remarkable, that all the theme answers feature the voice types in non-voice contexts. I probably should mind that BASS is pronounced differently in its answer (where the other voice types aren't), but I don't. ROCK BASS does bother me for a different reason, though. Well, first, for outlier reasons, i.e. what the hell is a ROCK BASS? Feels like the constructors were desperate for a four-letter word to precede BASS (because the whole answer needed to be 8 letters, for symmetry's sake), and so ROCK BASS won because ROCK BASS ... exist? But I have to believe that (nearly) everyone has heard of the other themers, whereas bunches of us will have no idea what a ROCK BASS is (besides a fish). The clue tried to help me with the "ROCK" part by saying something about the fish's "shoreline habitat," but that did Nothing for me. Needed most of the crosses to get ROCK. And speaking of ROCK, if you're going to have it in your grid, and especially if you're going to have it as your least-likely-to-be-known word in your theme answer set, you probably (almost certainly) shouldn't dupe the word in the clues (10A: Rock-climber's notch => TOEHOLD). Overall, the theme is fine, but it runs a bit to the dull side. 

Outside of the pop culture up front and the ROCK business, the puzzle was pretty easy, pretty straightforward. Pet and Dog and CATSPAs remain way, way (way x infinity) more popular in the crossword grid than they are in real life. Kinda tired of seeing variations on that answer at this point. But these animal SPAs appear so frequently now that it's hard to be too mad about it. Just another thing that xwords over-represent, like the character names on "Game of Thrones" or the enduring popularity of the BAHA Men. Never happy to see WOAH. In retrospect I think GENOVIA is a fun answer—possibly because it's the most original thing in the grid. It also doubles the Julie Andrews content—never a bad thing (Andrews is in The Princess Diaries ... and then we get 25D: Title for Julie Andrews or Maggie Smith). Every puzzle could use more Julie Andrews. Most situations in life could use more Julie Andrews. I know I mention Julia Louis-Dreyfus a lot (esp. for someone who never really cared for Seinfeld), but I highly recommend listening to the recent episode of her podcast "Wiser Than Me" where she interviews Andrews. Actually, the one where she interviews Carol Burnett is great, too. Oh, and the one where she interviews Bonnie Raitt (though she mostly cries through that one because she's so overcome by her fandom ... it's adorable). Anyway, Julie Andrews rules, is my point, today and always.

Bullets:

• 57D: Hillsboro ___, minor-league baseball team with a mascot named Barley (HOPS) — as with ROCK BASS, I had no idea what the answer was *and* the clue designed to help me get there did not help at all. Both "Barley" and HOPS are beer ingredients. OK. But "Barley" is just a grain, used in lots of things. Nothing about the clue screams "beer" to me. I don't even know where Hillsboro is, unless it's North Carolina. That's my guess. Final answer ... Oof, nope. Oregon. Oregon? LOL, that's about as un-North Carolina as a state can get, besides maybe Alaska or Hawaii. I don't mind this clue, but it's a bizarrely obscure piece of trivia for a Tuesday.

• 47D: Length from fingertip to fingertip (ARM SPAN) — I had ARM and then no idea. Just blanked. WINGSPAN is a front-of-the-brain term. ARM SPAN, apparently, not.
• 53D: Tangle (SNARL) — I had SNARE. SNARL is better, but they still seem remarkably, confusingly close in meaning. Kinda like their cousins, EVADE and ELUDE.
• 30D: Pickle, to a Brit (GHERKIN) — huh. I thought GHERKIN was just a type of pickle. "A small prickly fruit used for pickling" (m-w.com). I don't really eat pickles, i.e. the pickled cucumbers that come in jars, except when my local sandwich shop throws one in the bag. GHERKIN gives me old TV ad memories ... I think a pelican was involved ... oh, yeah, Vlasic. Why a pelican? What is the pelican/pickle connection? Oh, wait—it's a stork, not a pelican. A stork! I see, OK, that's ... no, I still don't get it. Although ... this (hilarious/insane) ad really leans into the stork business. Nothing sells pickles like ... an unexpected pregnancy joke!

I guess there is some connection between "pregnant women get weird food cravings" and "pickles," but still, this ad's whole "pregnancy scare" / "babies are pickles now" concept is ... bold. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P. S. So I’m literally watching The Princess Diaries right now, because why not, and … well, I was prepared to see GENOVIA, of course, but TOEHOLDs!? That was a surprise! 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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