Kyrgyzstan mountain range / WED 1-10-24 / 2007 Michael Moore documentary about health care / "Magic that works," per Vonnegut / Preschool teacher's mantra / Less sharp, as footage

Constructor: Chloe Revery and Alissa Revness

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: SHARING IS CARING (60A: Preschool teacher's mantra ... or a hint to the answers to the starred clues) — "SH" is changed to "C" in familiar phrases, resulting in wacky phrases, clued wackily ("?"-style):

Theme answers:

• TAMING OF THE CREW (17A: *Job for a coxswain with rowdy rowers?)
• NO GREAT CAKES (23A: *Review for a so-so bakery?)
• GIFT COP (38A: *Person who assigns the order of opening presents?)
• GETS INTO CAPE (49A: *Completes a superhero transformation?)

Word of the Day: "no great shakes" (23A) —

Nothing out of the ordinary, mediocre, as in I'm afraid the new pitcher is no great shakes, or What I did with this decorating project was no great shakes. This term possibly alludes to the shaking of dice, which most often yields a mediocre result, but there is no evidence to support this theory. [Early 1800s] (dictionary.com) 

The most common suggestion is that this idiom arose from playing dice, where if you shake the dice and have a bad throw you have had ‘no great shake,’ or the odd but apparently common notion that if you shake the device you will always have a bad throw. There are other idioms using the word shake that seem also to be related to dice:

A fair shake – a fair chance or a fair bargain.
In two shakes – in a moment.

At one time, no great shake may have been used to mean ‘a bad bargain’ making it the opposite of a fair shake.

Another, quite old suggestion that turned up in the literature search is that it arose from the shaking of walnut trees to dislodge the nuts. If the walnut crop is not good, there will be ‘no great shakes.’

As well, at one time, it was thought that the idiom came from the idea that you could judge someone’s character from their handshake.

The most credible origin seems to be the first. (idioms.com)

• • •

***ATTENTION: READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** : Hello from Central New York and the first properly wintry week of the season! It's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. So ... 17 years ... not bad. At this time last year, I was recovering from COVID and still dealing with the very fresh grief brought on by the untimely death of my cat, Olive. I was very grateful for the blog at that point, since it grounded me in routine and gave me a place where I could lose myself in a pastime I love, and share that love with others. OK, yes, true, I don't always *love* crosswords. Sometimes it's more hate-love or love-hate or "Why are you being like this, you stupid puzzle!?" It ain't all positive vibes, as you know. But I realized last year that part of what makes this blog so fun for me, and what makes it a solace to many readers, is the sense of commiseration it provides. Sometimes the puzzle thrills you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't; and sometimes it infuriates you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't. But either way, the blog is here; it's *always* here. You get to have your feelings validated, or you get to shake your head at my errant judgment and often breathtaking ignorance, but either way, you get to share an experience that's an important part of your daily life, and maybe you learn something new. Above all, I hope you feel that there is a real person with a real life and real emotions and (very) real human flaws who's telling you what it was *really* like for him to solve the puzzle. I never wanted to be an expert, offering some kind of bloodless know-it-all advice and analysis. I wanted blood. Blood on the page. There will be blood! ... But also, music videos. And Words of the Day. And, if you hang around long enough, cat pictures. Like this one:

This is Ida (she put herself in the bin, I swear). Ida is the happy sequel to last year's grief. At the beginning of January, I was mourning. By the end of January, I was still mourning, but now I had a new companion (as did my other cat, Alfie, who *really* needed one). Why am I talking about my cats? Because they are constant, they give shape and rhythm to my day, and I love them even if they sometimes drive me crazy. Just like crossword puzzles! (See that! Segue! This is why you should pay me the big bucks!) 

However much I love writing this blog (and I do, a lot), it is, in fact, a job. This blog has covered the NYTXW every day, without fail, for 17 years, and except for two days a month (when my regular stand-ins Mali and Clare write for me), and an occasional vacation or sick day (when I hire substitutes to write for me), it's me who's doing the writing. Every day. At very ... let's say, inconvenient hours (my alarm goes off most mornings at 3:45am). Over the years, I have received all kinds of advice about "monetizing" the blog, invitations to turn it into a subscription-type deal à la Substack or Patreon. But that sort of thing has never felt right for me. I like being out here on Main, on this super old-school blogging platform, just giving it away for free and relying on conscientious addicts like yourselves to pay me what you think the blog's worth. It's just nicer that way. 

How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar on the homepage):

Second, a mailing address (checks can be made out to "Michael Sharp" or "Rex Parker"):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905-4013

The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All Venmo contributions will get a little heart emoji, at a minimum :) All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. My daughter (Ella Egan) has once again designed my annual thank-you cards, and once again those cards feature (wait for it) cats! My cats: Alfie & Ida. This year, an elegant set of five!

These really capture the combination of beauty and goofiness that I love in cats (and puzzles, frankly). I'd say "Collect All Five!" but every snail-mail contributor will get just one and (hopefully) like it! Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Please know that your support means a lot to me and my family. Now on to today's puzzle... 

• • •

Nice to see women's names on the bylines today, as it has truly been a Dry January so far (with 8.5 of the first 9 puzzles of this year made by men). Honestly December was pretty dire as well, in that regard. But things can always turn around! (said Charlie Brown, as Lucy once again held the football steady ...). Let's hope. Today's puzzle is a wacky letter swap—a tried and true theme type, coming to you today wrapped in a cute little revealer. Do preschool teachers really say SHARING IS CARING. Even 4yo me would've found that inane. I feel like this phrase became popular sometime (well) after my childhood. The '90s maybe? Feels associated with a TV show somehow, but I may be confusing it with the Care Bears (also after my time, if only just). But yeah, if you google SHARING IS CARING you get a lot of insipid videos trying to teach your children values that you apparently failed to teach them, all while training them to be tolerant of terrible music. Don't get me wrong, I love sharing, I just hate ... I dunno, rhyming? Cloying cutesiness? But this is no knock against the theme, which I think is just fine. And it yields mostly chuckleworthy theme answers. I liked the first two better than the second two. GIFT COP has a hilariously pejorative ring to it, but the clue totally missed that potential, and instead just gave us a limp neutral clue (*Person who assigns the order of opening presents?). My favorite was NO GREAT CAKES, which I got without even looking at the clue, but which I could tell immediately had the best cluing potential. The clue is a good one (*Review for a so-so bakery?), but again, it's a little tepid. Maybe tepidness is in the interest of clarity? Or ... causing the least offense? I don't know. I just know that I like my wacky Wacky, and this one came in a little light in that regard. Still, overall, this is a nice expression of a common theme type, with the revealer elevating it above your run-of-the-mill letter-swap puzzles.

The puzzle played Easy with one major exception. Well, maybe two. One major, one minor. First the major, which, once again, came via my old nemesis: The Northwest. I started there easily enough, with MICS MITT IMAC SCIENCE, but then ... ??? Absolutely could not get to "I MAY" from 2D: "Not sure yet" even with IM- in place. Not loving the non-correspondence there between clue and answer (the answer is a complete sentence, whereas the clue is just a fragment, an incomplete sentence, with the verb only implied). I was looking for "I'M ... something." TORN, actually, but it wouldn't fit. And then CAMP, yeesh, no hope, even from the CA- (3D: Something to make or break). But the worst holder-upper was 20A: What's tolerated by every body?, for which I had T--EO, in response to which I said to myself, "Well, nothing fits T--EO. No word fits that pattern," which led me to my brilliant conclusion, "MITT must be wrong." I just abandoned this section and followed SCIENCE (4D: "Magic that works," per Vonnegut) down to SICKO (which I was lucky enough to remember) (26A: 2007 Michael Moore documentary about health care) and then solved in this bizarre way where I fell down the entire left side of the grid, arriving at the revealer before I'd ever even looked at a theme clue (?!). Once I'd discarded SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE as a possibility, SHARING IS CARING went in, and the themers were Very easy to pick up as a result. Cart before the horse! Pre-vealer! 

This "prevelation" (getting the revealer first) ended up being very instrumental in my eventually solving not only that pesky Northwest area, but also its annoying if somewhat less difficult cousin, the Northeast. I threw ONE SCOOP up there, but neither the "O" nor the "N" was any help at all in getting those Acrosses in the NE. These also happened to be two of the worst-looking Acrosses in the whole puzzle, which made me sad, but also made me happy, as I felt less bad about not getting clunkiness like "OH, SAY" and especially NOT DO (?) than I would have if those answers had ended up being more ordinary. Anyway, knowing the theme helped me get CREW, and then it was Shakespeare To The Rescue, as TAMING went in, and I saw that T--EO was TIMEO or TOREO or some word I'd never imagined but a mere blood type: TYPE O, the "universal donor" blood type.

The fill kind of floundered a bit in places today. ALAI was the big, uh, throwback, where crosswordese was concerned (45A: Kyrgyzstan mountain range) (Jai ALAI is also crosswordese, but at least it's auto-fill familiar—ALAI was last clued as mountain range in 2013). But the puzzle also thought it would be cute to throw ADELE back into the guise she wore in grids of yore (12D: One of the Astaires). The pop singer has been the preferred clue by about a 10-to-1 margin since roughly 2010, so if you're younger or a newer solver and were baffled by Fred's sister there, that's understandable. Gimme for longtime solvers (like me), maybe not so much for others. The oldies keep rolling in with a Leon Uris novel ??? for MILA (57D: "___ 18" (novel by Leon Uris)) and Doris Day (SERA) and a silent-movie melodrama complete with mustache-twirling villain! (66A: Expression that might accompany a mustache twirl). The most jarring bit of fill, though, was the completely execrable UPSA (48D: "___-daisy!"). That's about as bad as a partial is going to get. It's cutesy and it's partial and it's Not Even The Preferred Spelling. If you're going to hurl a half-expression like this at me, at least make it accurate. All decent people say "UPSY-Daisy." I don't know what the rest of you are doing here with this UPSA nonsense, but it has to stop. The other big Violation today was the doubling of THAT. Normally, this wouldn't set off my Violationometer so violently, but you've gone and put THAT is both of the marquee Downs! ("STRIKE THAT" / "IN THAT CASE..."). That's like putting the THATs in flashing neon. You're supposed to disguise your GAFFEs, not highlight them. 

["Hello ... no, seriously, Hell-oooo! Yoo hoo! It's me. Did you forget? Who's this Astaire person?"]

Favorite clue of the day was the one on AGES (59D: Wrinkles in time?). A literary allusion and a noun-verb switcheroo! Nice. That's all for the puzzle. Time for the last of (or nearly the last of) the Holiday Pet Pics!

[Cats on Crosswords! My favorite picture genre! Keep at it, Frodo! (thanks, Stuart)]

[Harper and Stitch, mid-shenanigans (thanks, Hunter)]

[Aaaaaaah, what happened to your cat!? (I'm being told all is well, this is Leo and he's actually a gecko) (thanks, Marc)]

[Meeka will seat you now, madam, right this way... (thanks, Mark!)]

[Ollie decorating the tree in France]

[And Ollie learning French! (thanks, Lana)]

[Excited to see this gangster movie, looks terrifying! (starring Uni, Pip, and gangleader (i.e. mother) Mimz!) (thanks, Anne)]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]