Something ending in "K," perhaps / FRI 5-3-24 / Nickname for a Texas metropolis / Alternative to the online newspaper, colloquially / Phrase that inspired the title of Prince Harry's memoir / Athlete's affliction, informally / Game with a hands-down winner? / Pip's love in "Great Expectations" / Adornment for the unpierced

Constructor: Eli Cotham

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SPARE (20A: Phrase that inspired the title of Prince Harry's memoir) —

Spare is a memoir by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, which was released on 10 January 2023. It was ghostwritten by J. R. Moehringer and published by Penguin Random House. It is 416 pages long and available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats and has been translated into fifteen languages. There is also a 15-hour audiobook edition, which Harry narrates himself.

The book was highly anticipated and was accompanied by several major broadcast interviews. The title refers to the aristocratic adage that an "heir and a spare" was needed to ensure that an inheritance remained in the family. In the book, Harry details his childhood and the profound effect of the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as his teenage years, and subsequent deployment to Afghanistan with the British Army. He writes about his relationship with his older brother, Prince William, and his father, King Charles III, and his father's marriage to Queen Camilla, as well as his courtship and marriage to the American actress Meghan Markle and the couple's subsequent stepping back from their royal roles.

Spare received generally mixed reviews from critics, some who praised Harry's openness but were critical of the inclusion of too many personal details. According to Guinness World Records, Spare became "the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time" on the date of its release. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

So weird to have Fridays play like Saturdays for seemingly months now, and then encounter this Friday puzzle, which I blew through like it was barely there. Tuesday/Wednesday-level, tops. Difficulty-wise, this was wispy, but despite a barrage of subpar short fill, the longer answers overwhelmingly paid off, which is what's supposed to happen with a late-week themeless (particularly a Friday), so I'm pretty pleased with today's solving experience, overall. Typically, a puzzle (particularly a Friday/Saturday) will start slow or slowing, and then (ideally), there's a breakthrough followed by a whoosh that sends me careening happily around the grid. Today, the puzzle didn't even bother to start slow, and the whoosh came before I'd had a chance to even get settled, right out of the box. I wanted NORM for 1A: Average but instantly thought "maybe MEAN?" and kept that answer in my head as well as I tested the crosses. Since the first cross I checked, 4D: Juncture, wanted to be NODE, I decided to go MEAN->NODE, and then the "O" from NODE gave me ALSO and I decided that that was enough confirmation for me to write all those answers in. I've been doing crosswords long enough that ASAHI and ELENA Delle Donne are gimmes, so I was quickly ready to test my first long Across, and ... whoosh:

I should say that before I even looked at the clue for 20-Across, I had this odd moment of thinking "well, I assume the answer has something to do with ANHEUSER-BUSCH because what the hell else starts 'ANHE-'!?" So there was an extra zing to that first whoosh today—the "aha" of the odd letter-sequence revelation on top of the inherent greatness of the answer itself. If I'm stopping to take a screenshot, that either means it's very bad or very good, and here, it was very much the latter. I didn't even have time to be brought down by the rather lackluster NW before I went hurtling across the grid, and luckily the pleasing momentum provided by AN HEIR AND A SPARE largely continued, with sufficient power from smile-inducing answers to blow right through "ADIA" and NENE and ÉTÉS and the like without too much wincing.

DEAD-TREE EDITION didn't do much for me (feels like I've seen it before, so whatever freshness the term had has worn off), but I will admit that PET PSYCHIC, besides being the most absurd profession ("profession"?) on the planet, really got me, in a good way. Again, as with "ANHE-," I had this weird parsing problem where I was staring down "PETPS-" The "PETP-" part of it had me wondering if maybe there wasn't such a thing as PET PAINTING or PET PAINTS or PET PASTELS—that was how I first took "medium" in [Medium for animals]. But the "PS-" was unimpeachable and it didn't take me long to answer the question "What could possibly follow PET and start with PS-?" PET PSYCHIC. So dumb, I love it! I also have a soft spot for the term VALISES, which I did not realize until filling the answer in. "Hey, that's a nice word," I thought. And crossed with VAMOOSE! Imagining people VAMOOSE-ing with their VALISES down the AVENUES, I entered the bottom of the grid, which is the one and only area where my forward momentum stalled for a bit; I went right through the middle of those long answers, but couldn't get either of them from just their middle chunks. So I went back up to that RECOATS area and down via "NOW LET'S SEE..." (also nice), and from there quickly filled out the front ends of the long answers down below, and bang bang, big payoff there with "THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!" and (especially!) GAS STATION SUSHI (49A: Shell fish? What a clue!). I only wish that ASAMI and ASAHI had swapped places. because after that GAS STATION SUSHI you are definitely want something to wash it down, and ASAHI seems fitting. The SUSHI / ASAHI crossing would've been the cherry on top (which, coincidentally, is how they serve GAS STATION SUSHI. Me: [looks dubiously at plastic container of sushi next to the beef jerky jar] "Maraschino cherry?" Cashier: "Yup. It's sweet. Kinda hides the fishy taste, you know? You want a Miller Lite with that?" "Uh ... you got any ASAHI?"). 

Two trouble spots today. After I hit the bottom of the grid from the east, I tried to climb back up the west via the back end of 38D: One way to prepare steak, but with an -RE there, the only thing I could think was something-RARE, but MEDIUM didn't fit and I didn't know there were other RAREs besides maybe ... VERY? WAY? "How would you like your steak?" "Like ... rare." "How rare? "WAY RARE, man." Much as WAY RARE amused me, I (wisely) didn't write it in. This is the point at which I fled back to the RECOATS area and back down again. That area wasn't tough, but it did have one briefly toughish clue: 29D: Something ending in "K," perhaps (RACE). My fake-cultured self was like "Isn't that how they number the works in Mozart's catalogue—with numbers followed by K?" Yes, but irrelevant here, where we're dealing with (foot) RACEs of 5K and 10K and possibly other dimensions.

Notes:

• 25A: Athlete's affliction, informally (THE YIPS) — you know I hate it when they use the same clue for two different answers, but today was the day I wouldn't have minded, because [Golf difficulties, perhaps] is very close to perfect for THE YIPS (while being just OK for its actual answer, 60A: LIES). I know that anyone athlete can get some version of THE YIPS, but I associate it most closely with golf.
• 35A: Shared a bed with one's baby (COSLEPT) — loved seeing this rather common concept in the puzzle, though I would've liked COSLEEP or COSLEEPING a hair's breadth better.
• 9D: Game with a hands-down winner? (TWISTER) — not many "?" clues today, but the ones that they trot out really land. 

• 42A: Pip's love in "Great Expectations" (ESTELLA) — darn this girl and her ambiguous final vowel! Luckily there's no such thing as "steak TERTARE" (sounds like something you'd find next to the GAS STATION SUSHI) (eater beware)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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