Flavoring in purple bubble tea / THU 6-27-24 / One of two heard in "This Kiss" / Prey for a moray eel / Noted name with an Oscar? / Material for some trifold display boards / Uruguayan soccer star Luis / Inn flowery setting for a Nancy Drew mystery / Laundry challenge for a mountain biker / Part of a row that might have a rho

Constructor: Paolo Pasco and Sarah Sinclair

Relative difficulty: Depends on how long it takes you to get the gimmick—after that, Easy

THEME: STUFFED CRUST pizza! (41A: Feature of a deluxe pie ... and of this puzzle?) — grid is shaped (roughly) like a pizza, and the boxes on the edge (or "crust") of it are all "stuffed" with two letters instead of the usual one. The black squares in the puzzle are supposed to represent PIZZA TOPPINGs (26A: Pepperoni, mushroom or green pepper ... or what each cluster of black squares represents in this puzzle)

The all-crust answers (clockwise from the top):

• CASTILLO (1A: Château : France :: ___ : Spain)
• ALPACA (5A: Llama relative with prized wool)
• KEEP TABS (21D: Closely monitor, with "on")
• STINKY (46D: Foul)
• REINDEER (66A: Vixen, e.g.)
• ONE-UPS (65A: Outdoes)
• MURALIST (36D: Artist whose work has a wide reach?)
• WHOOPI (18D: "Sister Act" star, familiarly)

Word of the Day: STUFFED CRUST pizza (41A) —

Stuffed crust pizza is pizza with cheese (typically mozzarella) or other ingredients added into the outer edge of the crust. The stuffed crust pizza was popularized by Pizza Hut, which debuted this style of pizza in 1995. // Pizza Hut introduced stuffed crust pizza, created by Patty Scheibmeir, and launched it on March 25, 1995. It was marketed in a commercial with Donald Trump. // Pizza Hut was sued by the family of Anthony Mongiello for $1 billion, over claims that Pizza Hut's stuffed crust infringed on Mongiello's 1987 patent (US4661361A) on making stuffed pizza shells. Pizza Hut was found to have not infringed on the Patent in 1999, the court stating "...[the] plaintiff does not have a product patent, and its method patent is not infringed simply because some examples of defendant's completed product approximate plaintiff's product." // DiGiorno began offering a cheese stuffed crust pizza in grocery stores in 2001. [...] Pizza Hut New Zealand has sold Marmite stuffed crust pizza, and Pizza Hut Japan introduced a pizza with a crust of pockets stuffed with, alternately, Camembert, shrimp, sausage, and mozzarella. Pizza Hut Japan offered a crust stuffed with shrimp and mayonnaise, and Pizza Hut Germany offered a "German King" with a sausage, bacon, and cheese-stuffed crust. Pizza Hut Japan and South Korea have sold pizza with shrimp and cheese-stuffed crust, and Pizza Hut Hong Kong made abalone sauce "Cheesy Lava"-stuffed crust pizza. Pizza Hut Australia made a pizza with a crust stuffed with miniature meat pies. (wikipedia) (dang, I've been to NZ five times and no one ever offered this to me! I feel cheated)

• • •

It is stupid how good this puzzle is. How good the puzzle has been two days in a row now. The concept is actually ... kind of simple. Stuff the crust (of the grid) with two letters instead of one. Change the shape of the grid from square to round (-ish). Make the black squares look (kinda) like PIZZA TOPPINGs. Conceptually, simple. Execution-wise, I'm guessing less simple. A lot less. So so so nice to have a puzzle that is obviously an architectural marvel but that doesn't feel overly fussy or complicated and that isn't either torturous or tedious to solve. This one was hard ... and then bam, the gimmick dropped and it was delightful. Maybe a touch too easy—once you know the outer edges are "stuffed," the puzzle drops to like a Tuesday/Wednesday difficulty level. But the grid is juicy and varied enough to remain interesting for the rest of the solve, and I will confess that I gasped (ever so slightly) when the grid went full COLOR at the end. I am on record as not caring for this kind of tech-assisted gimmickry, but I think I object to the gimmickry most when it seems to be the main point of interest, or when it seems to be trying to make up for mediocre puzzle quality. Today, I loved the puzzle so much that the post-solve pop of pizza—the visual transformation to color—felt like a nice little bonus. I mean, I wouldn't eat anything that looked like that, but I can see the pizzaness of it all maybe a little more clearly. Mainly I was just stunned that my software was capable of such a transformation. I stubbornly refuse to solve in-app (or on the site)—it's just not convenient for my purposes, and I don't like the idea of my solving data being harvested—so I use Black Ink, which has generally not had the color / animation / post-solve whistles and bells that the app has been leaning into. So when my grid burst into color in the end ... part of my gasp was genuine surprise that my software could even do something like that. But surface-level effects aside, this puzzle was a joy to solve as a puzzle. As long as a puzzle holds up as a puzzle, you can make it do whatever you want once I'm done solving. Make it self-destruct for all I care. The puzzle is the thing, and this one was a joy.

The difficulty today is getting started. If you're like me (maybe??) you probably wrote in CASA at 1A: Château : France :: ___ : Spain and then quickly ground to a halt. Maybe you got mad that certain words you knew had to be right just wouldn't fit ("I know it's Steve CARELL ... or is it CARREL? Or CARRELL? Those don't fit either. Wait, is it CAREL? That ... looks wrong"). The secret to getting started on this one, for me, was Get Away From The Edge. "Step away from the crust, sir." God bless you, TORI Amos. Once I finally found an answer that I *knew* and that *fit*, I felt like I had some kind of chance. The puzzle bloomed out from TORI to IPO and ORSO. Then I looked at that long answer, which turned out to be the first themer. The answer seemed to be "PIZZA TOPPING" *and* I had some letters to confirm it, so I inched my way west via crosses, filling in PIZZA TOPPING backwards as I went. PINTA, ODISTS, APT ... And then, I was like "OK, so we're gonna run out of room here real quick. We're ... one letter short. So ... is it ... is it just a two letters / one square trick!!??! (puts in the "PI" and then checks 18D: "Sister Act" star, familiarly) Yes, that's it! OMG, it's a STUFFED CRUST pizza!!!!" I actually mentally shouted the revealer before I ever even got to the revealer itself. I just knew instantly that that's what was up. I had the pizza part and then the "PI" went in and whooooosh the whole theme came to me in a rush. 

Of course I still had to finish, and it seemed like the stuffed squares could potentially get perilous at points. I definitely tiptoed my way to CASTILLO (totally unknown to me), and struggled to make something ending in "-US" from 12A: Parting words ("CALL US!"?) (I like my ADIEUX to end with a proper "X" thank you very much). 

 

But mostly the crust didn't give me any flak. If anything, the crust was easy to get because every time you punched a cross through it, you got two letters to work from instead of just one. When crosses are giving you two letters, well, that's twice as much info they're providing. So the crust actually helped more than hurt, I think. My only complaint with the theme is the cluing on STUFFED CRUST (41A: Feature of a deluxe pie...). I have had many "deluxe" pies in my life and precisely zero of them have had STUFFED CRUST (if a pizza is actually *good* then the crust is good and I don't want any gunk in it, thanks). "Deluxe" has to do with toppings, not crust (just google if you don't believe me). Also, there are *plenty* of STUFFED CRUST options that are not "deluxe" at all. Just plain-ass pepperoni or whatever. If you really think there's some connection between STUFFED CRUST and the concept of "deluxe," at least put a qualifier in there ([Feature of some deluxe pies...]). Probably better off finding another clue entirely. A "Deluxe"-free clue.

Deluxe answers:

• 9A: ___ Inn, "flowery" setting for a Nancy Drew mystery (LILAC) — seems like a tough clue, but I had the "AC" from ACERB (a word I've still only ever seen in crosswords ... irl we say "acerbic," I think).
• 19A: Potential goal for a unicorn, in brief (IPO) — I forget the specific corporate meaning of "unicorn," but I've picked up enough dumb bizspeak from crosswords that I saw right through this and went straight to the crosswordesey IPO, no problem. (Here's the def of "unicorn" if you're interested) (IPO = initial public offering)
• 50A: Rough houses? (STUCCOS) — I know stucco as a house-coating material. I did not know you called the whole damn house a "stucco." Still, I knew what stucco was, and that it was rough, and found on houses, so no trouble.
• 3D: College team whose name is its home state minus two letters (ILLINI) — The Fighting ILLINI! (just two letters short of their home state, ILLINIDO)
• 11D: Uruguayan soccer star Luis (SUAREZ) — now that I see his name, I have actually heard of him. I feel like he gets thrown out of games a lot, is that right? Oh, I see. He bites. And says racist stuff. Fun! (Here's a huge article him from the NYT last year) ("banned on three separate occasions for biting opponents during matches")
• 17D: One of two heard in "This Kiss" (SHORT "I") — a "letteral" clue. I misread this as "The Kiss," as in the Klimt painting. "How am I supposed to hear a painting!?"

• 28D: Mixed bag? (TEA) — the tea ... is mixed ... inside the TEA bag ... I guess?
• 36D: Artist whose work has a wide reach? (MURALIST) — Is this because murals are (often) big (i.e. "wide") or because murals are so often outdoors, in public view, and thus available to a "wide" audience (wider than a painting in a museum would have)? Both? Neither? Shrug.
• 43D: Material for some trifold display boards (FOAMCORE) — been 40+ years since my last science fair project, and if I ever knew the name of this stuff I forgot it. Still, not hard to infer.
• 58D: Duane ___ (pharmacy chain) (READE) — obvious to New Yorkers, a lot less obvious (I think) to the rest of the world. I have never seen a Duane READE outside NYC.
• 33A: "That one's mine!" ("I GOT DIBS!") — one of the delightful answers that made this puzzle a pleasure to solve even beyond the theme reveal. See also RUMOR MILLS, MUD STAIN, GO BROKE, LOLLIPOP, etc.
• 59D: Noted name with an Oscar? (MAYER) — as in "wiener." Some STUFFED CRUST pizzas are stuffed with wieners. Wouldn't want that in my crust any more than I'd want REINDEER, ALPACA, or WHOOPI Goldberg in there. Let crust be crust and toppings be toppings! These are my conservative pizza views! Unstuff your crusts, people! The fact that I loved a puzzle based on a food abomination is a real Christmas miracle. This puzzle has powers. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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