Rap pioneers, slangily / SAT 1-20-24 / Jazz trumpeter Woody / Cousins of sirens / Plant-based protein brand / Nonkosher Wendy's offering / Beverage with an oxymoronic name / Initialism for a pleasant tingling on the scalp or back of the neck / Onetime source of toothbrush bristles / Dead-tree edition

Constructor: Caitlin Reid and Matthew Stock

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Woody SHAW (20D: Jazz trumpeter Woody) —

Woody Herman Shaw Jr. (December 24, 1944 – May 10, 1989) was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer, arranger, band leader, and educator. Shaw is widely known as one of the most important and influential jazz trumpeters and composers of the twentieth century. He is often credited with revolutionizing the technical and harmonic language of modern jazz trumpet playing, and to this day is regarded by many as one of the major innovators of the instrument. He was an acclaimed virtuoso, mentor, and spokesperson for jazz and worked and recorded alongside many of the leading musicians of his time. [...] By the late 1980s, Shaw was nearly blind from retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable degenerative eye disease. A user of heroin throughout his adult life, Shaw was in poor health when he returned to the U.S. in early 1989 from a lengthy stay in Europe—he needed a wheelchair at the airport. On the morning of February 27, 1989, Shaw was struck by a subway car in Brooklyn, New York, which mangled his left arm and caused other injuries including head trauma; doctors were forced to amputate his arm. The night before the accident, Max Roach sent a limousine to Newark where Shaw was staying, to take Shaw to the Village Vanguard to listen to Roach play. After the set, Roach put Shaw into a taxicab at around midnight with enough money to get back to Newark. Shaw did not go to Newark; it is unclear what led to the accident later that morning. During his hospital stay at Bellevue, Shaw suffered kidney failure, was put on a respirator and lost consciousness for more than a month. He died from kidney failure on May 10, 1989, at the age of 44.(wikipedia)

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A very Bay Area, very "meaty" puzzle. Sorry to call yet another puzzle "Easy-Medium" but it plays how it plays and that's how it played. Really a story of single squares today. I got three individual squares circled on the printed-out version of my solved puzzle today. The first trouble square was the "M" in INCOGMEATO, a name I have never seen before. That was the one answer keeping the NW from being a breeze, so I hacked at it until I *thought* I figured out the pun! "AHA! It's a pun on 'incognito'! And 'Neato!' INCOGNEATO! Clever." I guess that's more "portmanteau" than pun. Anyway, it was wrong. If your fake meat purports to look and act like real meat, then your fake meat might be said to be 'incognito," ergo INCOGMEATO (which sounds like a truly terrible superhero, TO BE HONEST). I later got doubly slowed up by single squares in the NE, where I couldn't remember which of several possible animals belonged to the order Chiroptera (it's BAT, not CAT, not RAT), and I thought a [Mélange] was a MASH (it was a HASH). The BACONATOR took care of my Chiroptera problem pretty quick, but the "M" was peskier. Luckily, MATEWATCH, while it *sounds* potentially intriguing, is not a plausible thing. So, "H," HATEWATCH, there we go. 

I predict that a couple initialisms are gonna flummox a few people today. ASMR has appeared once before, a little over a year back and it was my "Word of the Day" then (12D: Initialism for a pleasant tingling on the scalp or back of the neck). I still can't remember what it stands for, but if I really want to remember, I can just look back at the December 3, 2022 write-up and find out (which I just did: it stands for "autonomous sensory meridian response"). I guess there are sounds that trigger this feeling ... and people watch videos that feature these sounds ... on YouTube or something? Seems like maybe it helps some people sleep? I really don't get it, but I did *remember* it, which is the important thing, puzzlewise. The other initialism likely to trip some solvers is OGS (5D: Rap pioneers, slangily). The term is used widely (if sometimes ironically / facetiously) to refer to elders in any field, but technically, if memory serves, an "OG" is an "Original Gangster." And by "memory" I mean "memory of that song from the '90s by crossword elder ICE-T":

The hardest part of the puzzle for me was the very end, the SE corner, where the puzzle decided to do that thing that is always terrible: double successive clues. I've written about this a lot, how Every Time the puzzle thinks this will be a cute move, at least one of the clues feels forced as hell for its answer, and that was sure enough the case today for [More golden, say]. It works fine for PURER, but for RARER, oof, not as good a fit. I guess the reference there is supposed to be to the phrase "golden opportunity," which is an ideal moment, which would by inference be "rare," I suppose. But you're making me go all over hell and gone to try to justify that clue in my mind. I got AVAST easy down there but did not trust it at all, since AVAST is a command, not a "direction." ABAFT, ASTERN, ALEE, those are directions. AVAST just means "stop." It was only after I'd finished the puzzle that I realized that "direction" can, in fact, mean "command." That is, it's not an orientation-type direction, it's an instruction-type direction. If you say AVAST, you "direct" someone to stop. Fair enough. I also had no idea what the siren-newt connection was and had to look it up. Sure enough, sirens are a type of amphibian, like unto NEWTS. Here's a picture—this little guy is a lesser siren, but I'm sure if he tries hard he'll be an OG siren someday:

Is FIREWATER a "beverage"? (31A: Beverage with an oxymoronic name). Really? I mean, yes, you drink it, but "beverage," la di dah, that sounds like something on a restaurant menu, and I've never seen slang like this on a menu. This is like calling HOOCH a "beverage." Strange. Also strange, PRINT ISSUE (46A: Dead-tree edition). More wrong than strange. No one says PRINT ISSUE. The term is PRINT EDITION. Yes it is. That is the term. Please be honest, the term is PRINT EDITION. The WSJ, the NYT, they all refer to it as the "PRINT EDITION." PRINT ISSUE is some made-up &^#% your bloated wordlist convinced you was real. You gotta fight back in those situations, constructors, please. As for ATTAWAY ... I don't know what to day about ATTAWAY. ATTA BOY! ATTA GIRL! Those sound right, and crosswords have, over the years, convinced me that people still say those things. ATTA WAY!? That sounds like someone's last name. Or someone's full name ("... well if it isn't Miss Atta Way!"). Or like you elided a "th" sound in a cliché chase-scene expression: 'They went ATTAWAY!" Does Bugs Bunny say that? Sounds like something Bugs would've said. Possibly to Elmer FUDD (Sexiest Cartoon Hunter Alive, 1937-present). I feel like there was a '90s band called ATTAWAY? Maybe a singer? Who am I thinking of, it's killing me. OMG I just did it! I pulled a memory out of my head in real time, literally as I was typing these last sentences. I just started adding random consonants to the beginning of ATTAWAY and bam, HADDAWAY! Amazing. Well, *I* feel better, anyway.

What else? Loved remembering "STAR SEARCH," and EURIPIDES, and HATEWATCH is very good, esp. as clued (15D: View with disdain). None of the tricky clues seems very much in need of explaining. CIDER might be "hard to drink" because the CIDER might be "hard CIDER" (wordplay!). [Tried to take a seat?] is RAN because the "seat" you're trying to take is in Congress (or on the school board or city council or whatever), and you have to "run" for office in order to get that seat. The EAVE is on the house because that's where EAVEs are, literally. EAVEs aren't free! "But you said it was on the house!" "It is! Look at it there, on your house! Now pay me for my EAVE installation!" Has this happened to you? Probably not. The thing that made me happiest today, in that it literally made me laugh, was the clue on THEN (23A: Not now!). Sometimes, it's the little things ... See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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