Home of Bach Ma Temple / WED 1-3-2024 / Musical instrument also called a chac-chac / Letters that are fittingly part of "f_mily _ _ i _"

Constructor: Jared Goudsmit

Relative difficulty: Medium (12:32)

THEME: "RE" "FUSE" — The letter string RE is "fused" between two words

Theme answers:

• [Was worth another mention] for BO[RE]PEATING
• [Travel discount] for FA[RE]DUCTION
• [Not inflammatory?] for FI[RE]SISTANT
• [Sanctuary like Yellowstone] for NATU[RE]SERVE

Word of the Day: MII (Customizable Nintendo avatar) —

A Mii is a customizable avatar used on several Nintendo video game consoles and mobile apps. The name Mii is a portmanteau of "Wii" and "me", referring to them typically being avatars of the players. Miis were first introduced on the Wii console in 2006 and later appeared on the DS, 3DS, the Wii U, the Switch, and various apps for smart devices such as Miitomo. Miis can be created using different body, facial and clothing features. [wiki]

• • •

Hey friends, and welcome back to Malaika MWednesday! First and foremost, happy new year! This is my second-favorite holiday of the year. I do not typically like "resolutions" but I like to set goals. This year, my goals are to become a notary, get my Canadian passport renewed (easier said than done for dual citizens), make at least one data visualization using R Shiny, and attend thirty yoga classes. Please let me know your goals or resolutions below!

This played easy for me, until I got to the six boxes in the upper right of the puzzle, B-L-A alongside B-O-X. The corner is not the cleanest fill that's possible up there, but it's totally fine and it's clear the constructor wanted this puzzle to have every letter in the alphabet (Puzzle Heads call this a "pangram"), so he needed the X and the Q. It was the clues that struck me as extremely unnecessarily hard-- I spent over four minutes on those six squares alone, before ultimately resorting to "check puzzle."  Referencing AXE as a verb is tough, and "informally" to me (in the clue for BBQ) is a really subtle indicator for an abbreviation-- NYT sometimes uses it to mean slang.

When I Google the term "The Lou" nothing really comes up for St Louis but the constructor is from there so I trust him

I like this style of theme! I've seen it often with add-a-letter ("attach" "e") or drop-a-letter puzzles, and this one seemed like a slightly cuter and more interesting version. The downside is perhaps that the long theme answers weren't super zingy (BORE REPEATING especially felt a little blah to me). Actually, in this puzzle, the mid-length answers, like MACBETH, BREYERS, MCJOB, and MARACA were some of my favorites. And while there weren't a ton of question mark clues (I thought [Resting place?] for SEAT didn't need one at all tbh), I liked the references to "The Good Place" (DEREK is Janet's boyfriend) and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" ("TIS but a scratch!").

Rex if this is too risque for this blog please delete it

Bullets:

• [Eartha who sang "I Want to Be Evil"] for KITT — I wanted a "Santa Baby" reference! But I guess Christmas is over.
• [Rural shindig] for BARN DANCE — Had a rewrite here; initially I put "barn raise" 
• [Sort of poem not usually pluralized by adding an -s] for HAIKU — This is a cute way of the NYT saying oops for using the entry "haikus" thrice in the past.... although once was as recently as 2022
• ["___ que sí!" (Spanish "Of course!")] for CLARO — Claro is one of my favorite Special Occasion Restaurants in NYC, although I will say they did the thing where they became popular and raised their prices by 20%. Please tell me y'all's favorites as I have a couple of Special Occasions coming up soon!

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]