Shady, in modern slang / WED 7-3-24 / Japanese rice cake often filled with ice cream / Totally tubular pasta / Three-player trick-taking game / Feature of high heels popularized in the 1920s /

Constructor: Juliana Tringali Golden

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy, were it not for one answer)

THEME: Prognostication puns — things used to tell the future get wacky pun clues:

Theme answers:

• TAROT CARDS (17A: Observation deck?)
• CRYSTAL BALL (33A: Glass eye?)
• I CHING COINS (41A: Metal detectors?)
• OUIJA BOARD (61A: Predictive text?)

Word of the Day: I CHING COINS (41A) —

The I Ching or Yijing [...]  usually translated Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. The I Ching was originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC). Over the course of the Warring States and early imperial periods (500–200 BC), it transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the Ten Wings. After becoming part of the Chinese Five Classicsin the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East and was the subject of scholarly commentary. Between the 18th and 20th centuries, it took on an influential role in Western understanding of East Asian philosophical thought.

As a divination text, the I Ching is used for a Chinese form of cleromancy known as I Ching divination in which bundles of yarrow stalks are manipulated to produce sets of six apparently random numbers ranging from 6 to 9. Each of the 64 possible sets corresponds to a hexagram, which can be looked up in the I Ching. The hexagrams are arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence. The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching has been discussed and debated over the centuries. Many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision-making, as informed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and been paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing. [...] 

The most common form of divination with the I Ching in use today is a reconstruction of the method described in these histories, in the 300 BC Great Commentary, and later in the Huainanzi and the Lunheng. From the Great Commentary's description, the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi reconstructed a method of yarrow stalk divination that is still used throughout the Far East. In the modern period, Gao Heng attempted his own reconstruction, which varies from Zhu Xi in places. Another divination method, employing coins, became widely used in the Tang dynasty and is still used today. In the modern period; alternative methods such as specialized dice and cartomancy have also appeared. (wikipedia)

• • •

This isn't much of a theme. It's just ... four of the same kind of thing. Four things from the same general category. It's like BUS CAR TRUCK VAN. Or four baseball player names. Or author names. Or U.S. states. True, it's drawing from a category with fewer items in it (not sure how many prognostication devices there are in the world). But still, this is just "Here are four items that are used for similar purposes." That doesn't really get us to Theme Territory. There's no hook, no revealer, nothing at all to make it make sense as a theme. The theme clues are just ... regular crossword clues!?!? I mean, yes, they're wacky "?" clues, but we see those Every Day. The first one was actually used by this very outlet back in August of 2017 (TAROT CARDS = [Observation deck of the future?]). The cluing is giving us nothing in terms of making the theme cohere. I'm baffled at how this made the grade. I would also say that I CHING COINS feels like a strong outlier here, familiarity-wise. I had to read way way down the wikipedia "I Ching" page to find anything about "coins," and even then, it was just in passing (turns out "I Ching divination" has its own separate page). I think of the I Ching as a text. I know it's used in various rituals of foretelling, but how those rituals are performed, pfft, no idea. Apparently, there's no one way. There are lots of ways. One of those ways involves coins. It seems. I did not have to wonder about how the other three theme answers worked. At all. But I CHING COINS is not a phrase I've ever heard. As a result, this puzzle was briefly Not Easy, which I should be grateful for, but it's a mild bummer to have the only difficulty in a puzzle concentrated on just one answer. I feel like what we've got here is a first draft of a theme idea, but there's nothing to elevate it to real Theme status. No snap, no pop. Just a list of things. Disappointing.

All difficulty for me came in and around ICHINGCOINS. I briefly forgot MOCHI but then crosses helped me remember (5A: Japanese rice cake often filled with ice cream). Didn't know ALYSSA at all but easy crosses made that irrelevant (23A: ___ Thompson, U.S. soccer star who made her World Cup debut at 18). It wasn't until CRISCO for CANOLA (33D: Kind of cooking oil) that I started to struggle a bit. Didn't take *too* long to see that the I CHING was involved in that third theme answer, but what was supposed to follow I CHING ... I had no idea. And so ... let's see, I had DEAD before DAMN (31D: Word with "straight" or "right") (a bad guess, I admit), ADO before IRK (44D: Bother), didn't have enough info to get CONSUME straight away (42D: Eat), and could think only of the expression I actually use (GO SOUTH), not the one that ended up being in the grid (GO SOUR) (46A: Take a turn for the worse). Concentrated struggle. But brief struggle, as struggles go. After that, back to Monday-easy.

MISC. (28D: This and that: Abbr.):

• 56A: Pass up, using a less common spelling (FOREGO) — to be quite honest, if you'd left out the "using a less common spelling," I'm not sure I'd've blinked. It's like the clue is calling attention to a weakness I didn't know it had, and making the clue ungainly in the process. Better just to find another word entirely. It wouldn't be hard to do a mild tear-down in this corner and start over.
• 2D: Three-player trick-taking game (SKAT) — I wrote in SPIT. My family (or some members of it) used to play a card game called "SPIT in the Ocean," which must be why my brain went that way. Don't know SKAT, but it was what I guessed off the SK- so I must've heard of it before. SKAT is the "national game of Germany" (wikipedia); you know, in case anyone ever asks you "hey, what's the national game of Germany?" Now you know.
• 25D: Shady, in modern slang (SUS) — short for "suspicious." And yes it's common. I'm stunned to find that this is its Modern Era NYTXW debut, as I've seen it a whole lot in other, apparently more contemporary crosswords. The last time SUS appeared in the NYTXW (1986) it was as a [Swine genus], wow, yeesh, and yipes. Twenty-one "swine genus" appearances between 1949 and 1986. 
• 39D: Totally tubular pasta (RIGATONI) — speaking of 1986, glad to see this clue lean into '80s slang. Made me smile. "Tubular" was slang for "awesome" (like "radical"). I think it's originally surfer slang. I want to say I first heard it from Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but I can't confirm that. I *can* confirm that the word appears in "Valley Girl" by Moon Unit Zappa. Please enjoy one of the most unlikely and strange Solid Gold performances of all time.

• 34D: Activities that might require 20-sided dice, for short (RPGS) — role-playing games. I almost wrote in DNDS here (!?). 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Estefan with a Presidential Medal of Freedom / TUE 7-2-24 / Flurry of finger-pointing / Natural phenomenon first witnessed in 1968 / Unleashing emotion in a less-than-attractive way / One performing a barrel roll or tailslide / Rogers' partner in classic Hollywood

Constructor: Josh Goodman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "All signs point to YES" — Words that precede "sign" (found in circled squares) are all oriented toward the word "YES," which sits in the center of the grid

The "signs" (clockwise from the top):

• PLUS
• DOLLAR
• STAR
• NEON
• STOP
• PEACE
• EXIT
• CALL

Word of the Day: "Cranachan" (57D: Ingredients in the Scottish dessert cranachan => OATS) —

Cranachan (Scottish Gaelic: Crannachan pronounced [ˈkʰɾan̪ˠəxan]) is a traditional Scottish dessert. It was originally a celebration of harvest, made following the raspberry harvest in August. The dessert of cream and fresh seasonal raspberries is bolstered by Scottish oats and whisky. It has been called 'the uncontested king of Scottish desserts'. Cranachan owes its origins to crowdie, a popular breakfast in which crowdie cheese is combined with lightly toasted oatmeal, cream, and local honey. Raspberries, when in season, might be added to the dish.

Cranachan is now served all year round, and typically on special occasions. A traditional way to serve cranachan is to bring dishes of each ingredient to the table so that each person can assemble their own dessert to taste. (wikipedia)

• • •

Lotta circles. It's actually pretty hard to build a clean grid when you've got fixed diagonals slicing through it every which way. You'd think with no real theme answers in the whole puzzle (besides the revealer) and a modest 37 squares total real estate given over to thematic material, the constructor might have some freedom, but the reverse is true. You've got a situation where most of the answers in the grid (Across and Down) have a circled letter in them somewhere. This makes maneuverability very very tight, everywhere you turn as a constructor. The grid has to be carefully built to contain and cleanly handle each answer that appears on a BIAS. Now that I look at it, that's really just four short "signs" in the corners, but that's still a tall order, construction-wise. The "signs" that appear in "normal" Across and Down positions, no big deal—they don't add any additional stress to the grid, obviously. There's just the challenge of finding two "signs" that also read backward (!) as actual words (RATS, POTS). There aren't any real theme answers today, in the sense that there's no real "sign" content, no longer (8+) clued answers with "sign" relevance, so the whole thing plays like a very easy themeless. I wanna say I miss the thematic content, but then I remember how often Tuesday themes go south, and I look at how clean this grid is overall, and I think "no, yeah, this is fine. I'll take this." 

Conceptually, I like the puzzle as an evocation of the Magic 8 Ball toy we used to play (i.e. fake-prognosticate) with as kids, even though the actual message in the 8 Ball appears to have been just "Signs Point To YES" (no "All" up front). I guess "All Signs Point to YES" is a familiar phrase in general? I've never heard it from anyone but the Ball. I even thought the fact that there were *eight* types of "sign" in the puzzle was a nod to the "8" in "Magic *8*-Ball." Whatever the intent, the Ball is what I thought of, and that was a satisfactory referent. "Hey, I know that toy!" Childhood memory triggered, literal interpretation of the message executed, grid not falling apart under the weight of junk fill. . . mission accomplished. In a grid with no real themers, it's nice to have some longer answers that are colorful so that the whole solving experience isn't just a grim march to the finish. I felt like I was in good hands today as soon as I got UGLY CRYING (3D: Unleashing emotion in a less-than-attractive way). Some phrases you're just happy to write in, and that was one of them. I also liked SOCKHOP and "THAT'S AMORE" and STUNT PILOT and PROWESS. The latter two were among the only two answers to slow me down at all. I didn't really pick up the *kind* of stunt being referenced in 17A: One performing a barrel roll or tailslide so I tried STUNTWOMAN at first, and then, though I didn't write it in, actually considered STUNT CLOWN (I think I was thinking "rodeo clown"—I blame the "barrel"). As for PROWESS (45D: Exceptional ability), after POWERS didn't fit ... I dunno, I just ran out of ideas until crosses helped me out.

I was less happy to see the stupid term BLAMESTORM, which has now appeared *twice* in the grid since late last year, and which I have now, as a result, heard precisely twice in my life (29D: Flurry of finger-pointing). I'm told this term is sometimes used in corporate / business / tech contexts when there is some kind of major failure? Whatever, it's had its day now, let's retire it for a decade at least. Twice in one year for a long answer like this is *plenty*. Please remove it from your wordlists. Also, while you're in there, take out BLAMESTORMS and BLAMESTORMING (and don't go trying to sneak BLAMESTORMER or BLAMESTORMERS in there either! ... and no BLAMESTORMED! You thought I forgot that one, didn't you? No such luck). 

Notes:

• 35A: Estefan with a Presidential Medal of Freedom (EMILIO) — in a puzzle that was otherwise exceedingly easy, this one was a real outlier. I forgot there even was an EMILIO Estefan, or any non-Gloria Estefan. The only Estefan I know is GLORIA, just like the only EMILIO I knew is Estevez. The only Amedeo I know is Modigliani. But that's beside the point.

• 48A: Natural phenomenon first witnessed in 1968 (EARTHRISE) — OK I'll be the dummy who asks "1968? I thought the moon landing was 1969! Who saw an EARTHRISE in 1968?" Looks like the famous photo was taken from lunar orbit (on the Apollo 8 mission), not the lunar surface. Apollo 8 was the "first crewed voyage to orbit the moon" (wikipedia).
• 28D: Actress Dianne of 1989's "Parenthood" (WIEST) — she won two Academy Awards (for Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway). I thought Parenthood was kind of a random pull from her filmography, but no: she got her only other Academy Award nomination for that one. She apparently has a major role in The Mayor of Kingstown, a TV show I know about solely because I'm subjected to ads for it every time I watch another episode of Love Boat (on Amazon/Paramount+). The ads are terrible (like a parody of every cop show you've ever seen) but people seem to like the show? Question mark? 
• 9D: Rogers' partner in classic Hollywood (ASTAIRE) — this wasn't tough (Ginger Rogers, Fred ASTAIRE), but it did remind me of how many Rogers (Rogerses?) famously had partners. OK, so those other "Rogers" were "Rodgers," but still—Ro(d)gers and Hammerstein. Ro(d)gers and Hart. And then Rogers and ASTAIRE (who were obviously known (much) better as "Fred & Ginger"). Ginger Rogers appeared on a Season 3 Love Boat episode as a show biz legend who makes an appearance as the chairperson of the ship's charity cruise (supporting a Mexican orphanage), and as part of the cruise festivities, just to show how hip and current and with-it she still is, she performs ... well, just brace yourselves, because I promise you you are not prepared for all ... this:

 Thank you for allowing me to share my ongoing Love Boat journey with you. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Mark of literary distinction / MON 7-1-24 / Onetime rival of Volvo / Title in Italian nobility / Letter-shaped opening for a bolt / Comedian ___ Von / Like wetsuits and leotards / Othello's treacherous "friend"

Constructor: Margi Stevenson

Relative difficulty: Challenging (as a Downs-only solve)

THEME: FORTHRIGHT (55A: Straight to the point ... or, homophonically, what this answer is relative to this puzzle?) — there are four different "right" homophones (FORTHRIGHT is the "fourth" "right"):

Theme answers:

• GHOSTWRITE (15A: Author on behalf of someone else)
• RELIGIOUS RITE (21A: Bat mitzvah, for example)
• ORVILLE WRIGHT (45A: One half of a noted aviation team)
• FORTH (4TH!) RIGHT

Word of the Day: THEO Von (52D: Comedian ___ Von) —

Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III (born March 19, 1980), known professionally as Theo Von, is an American stand-up comedian, podcaster, actor, and former reality television personality. He is the host of the This Past Weekend podcast and former co-host of The King and the Sting podcast with former UFC fighter Brendan Schaub. [...] Von appeared on MTV's Road Rules: Maximum Velocity Tour in 2000 at age nineteen. He was recruited to the show while studying at Louisiana State University. // Von was on four seasons of MTV's reality game show The Challenge (formerly known as Real World/Road Rules Challenge), a combined spinoff of MTV's The Real World and Road Rules. He was a part of the cast of Battle of the Seasons (2002), The Gauntlet (2003–2004), Battle of the Sexes II (2004–2005), and Fresh Meat (2006). Von was runner-up in 2002, and was the winner of the following two seasons [...] In 2006, Von competed on season 4 of Last Comic Standing, winning the online competition. // In mid-2008, Von was a member of the Comedy Central sketch/competition show Reality Bites Back. He won the show, beating fellow comedians, including Amy Schumer, Bert Kreischer, and Tiffany Haddish. [...] He has been a recurring guest on many comedians' podcasts, including The Joe Rogan Experience, Joey Diaz's The Church of What's Happening Now, The Fighter and the Kid, and Bobby Lee's TigerBelly, and Adam Carolla show. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well if you're going to do a (rather dull, been-done) last words = homophones puzzle, I guess this is how you do it. Give the people a revealer that makes the whole enterprise seem worthwhile. It's an OK but lackluster experience overall, until the revealer, which is genuinely clever. Nice wordplay. Well done. Still, thematically, it's about average. The revealer gives it a little bump, but the grid as a whole is kind of flavorless, so you end up in pretty middling territory overall. SKIN TIGHT adds a little sass and sexiness (30D: Like wetsuits and leotards), but otherwise, it's just OK, maybe even leaning toward below average—lots of ordinary / crosswordy fill (esp. T-SLOT, but also ENE LES OSHA URNS ROFL EEL etc.), and not a lot of spice. Nothing cringey, though. That's something. Well, THEO Von ... I wouldn't call that name "cringey," but it was completely unknown to me. Even after looking him up, I don't know how I would ever have heard of him. Just ... completely in one of my demographic blindspots. An early '00s reality TV star who is a frequent guest on the Joe Rogan Experience? It would be hard to engineer a more perfectly out-of-my-wheelhouse "celebrity" than that. A total and utter blank. Don't usually encounter those on Monday. THEOs I know include Epstein, Huxtable ... uh, Vincent Van Gogh's brother THEO. Apparently there is also a THEO James (an actor I don't know) and THEO Johnson (an NFL tight end I don't know). I just remembered the name THEO Ratliff but forgot how I knew it (16-year NBA veteran, 1995-2011). Ooh, there's also THEO Chocolate, which is pretty delicious (he said, hoping someone who works there would send him a complimentary box of chocolates). THEO is an extreme outlier today, familiarity-wise, for me, and (I'm willing to bet) for many of you too. Not a problem. Gettable from crosses. Not sure I'd call him Monday-famous, but I'm an out-of-touch old man; judge for yourself.

I have this rated as "Challenging" (from a Downs-only perspective) because I just couldn't get any traction for the longest time. I count thirteen (13!) Downs that I couldn't come up with at first pass, and I couldn't get enough Downs in any one section to infer even a single Across answer for what seemed like forever. TSLOT TWAIN GARAGE and TOT (all adjacent) were busts for me at first pass. TOT occurred to me (7D: Youngster), but so did BOY, and LAD, and even TAD; the others ... just didn't occur to me at all. I think I had T-HOLE or some kind of HOLE where TSLOT was supposed to go (16D: Letter-shaped opening for a bolt), and I wanted CAR LOT instead of GARAGE. The TWAIN clue was a very tricky clue (with the capital-M of "Mark" masked by its first-letter position in the clue, making you think it just meant "mark" and not "Mark TWAIN"), so I don't feel bad about not knowing that (13D: Mark of literary distinction). But when you can't put any Acrosses together, things start to feel kinda desperate. EMERGE and UMAMI were also not showing up for me at first pass. [Savory flavor] just wasn't enough to get me to UMAMI. I was looking for a specific flavor, not the general flavor of savoriness. Sigh. My first breakthrough came late, when I took a look at "OR--LLE---GH-" and thought "that's ORVILLE WRIGHT!" And I was right. And the "rights" kept coming. First FORTH- and then on back up the grid, slowly but surely. So weird to feel like I was absolutely dying out there, and then to get that one themer and from there be able to crawl my way back to ultimate victory. Really thought I was gonna end up a Downs-only bust today. But I made it all the way back up to FLOORMATS and bam, the end. 

Made one guess today. A lucky guess, but also a semi-informed guess. The problem was that I forgot how R.L. STINE spelled his name (11D: "Goosebumps" author R.L.  ___). Was not 100% convinced it wasn't STYNE (which would've given me MANY in the cross—totally plausible). But I think the only STYNE I know ("know") is a composer (Jule STYNE? Is that somebody?), and the more I thought about it, the more STINE just seemed right. MANI- is not as good an entry as MANY, but it's definitely one I've seen before (in conjunction with "pedi," as it is here today) (17A: ___-pedi (spa treatment)). So I had some confidence in the "I." Just not total confidence. But my "guess" paid off. What else? Nothing else? Pretty straightforward Monday: familiar old theme type, slightly elevated by a clever revealer, and then ... fill. Standard-issue stuff. Not bad, not good, just there. It'll do. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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