THEME: "UNDER THE SEA" (59A: Song from "The Little Mermaid" that's a phonetic hint to interpreting the answers to the starred clues) — four Down answers have "C" appended to the beginning (giving you different, wrong-looking answers in the grid); so the actual answer to the clue appears (literally) under the "C":
Theme answers:
(C) OVERCHARGE (25D: *Rip off)
(C) RAMPS UP (18D: *Increases sharply)
(C) LEAN-CUT (31D: *Like 10%-fat beef)
(C) LOSING TIME (11D: *Not moving fast enough)
Word of the Day: Manx (inspired by the clue for BLOKE—6A: Man, on the Isle of Man) —
Although few children native to the Isle of Man speak Manx as a first language, there has been a steady increase in the number of speakers since the death of Ned Maddrell in 1974. He was considered to be the last speaker to grow up in a Manx-speaking community environment. Despite this, the language has never fallen completely out of use, with a minority having some knowledge of it as a heritage language, and it is still an important part of the island's culture and cultural heritage.
Manx is often cited as a good example of language revitalization efforts; in 2015, around 1,800 people had varying levels of second-language conversational ability. Since the late 20th century, Manx has become more visible on the island, with increased signage, radio broadcasts and a Manx-medium primary school. The revival of Manx has been made easier because the language was well recorded, e.g. the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer had been translated into Manx, and audio recordings had been made of native speakers. (wikipedia)
• • •
This was kind of echo of yesterday's puzzle. Yesterday, I went from "what the hell is this weak theme?" to "Oh, ha ha, good one." Today, I went from "what the hell is this inscrutable theme?" to "Oh, ha ha, good one." This is to say that the revealer did its job both days. "Huh?" to "Oh!"—that is the trajectory you want to follow from the beginning of a puzzle to the moment you hit the revealer. Today's theme is definitely trickier than yesterday's—yesterday, the only mystery was what was linking all the answers, while today there was real mystery as to how in the world the answers fit the clues at all. But overall yesterday's puzzle felt cleaner. Leaner. And the revealer was slightly funnier (or loopier). Also, there's one major problem with the execution of this theme, to my eyes, which is that in two of the theme answers (COVER CHARGE, CLEAN-CUT), there are actually two (2) "C"s. So the answer is, in fact, under the "C" ... but only the first one. When your answer has two of them, the elegance of the whole design suffers. The extra "C"s don't cause any real confusion at the solving level, but they diminish the force of the revealer. "UNDER THE SEA ... get it? under the "C" ... no not that "C," the other one. Just ignore that one." Still, the revealer did give me a little pop of "aha," instead of a sad slap of "oh" or "ugh" or "oof," so on the whole I'd still put this one in the Thumbs-up column. The ideal version of this theme would have no "C"s but the thematically relevant "C"s, but ... this is fine.
The theme answers were about the only thing in the grid causing any difficulty today, at least for me. I have almost no ink on my printed-out grid, which means that there was both very little in the way of toughness and (more sadly) very little in the way of real interest. I had HULU before ROKU (42A: Video streaming giant) and GO ON before GUSH (56A: Rave (about)), but that's it for missteps or even serious hesitations. I wanted (C)LOSING TIME to be (C)LOSING GROUND for more than a few seconds, but of course it wouldn't fit. Otherwise, the puzzle was pretty straightforward and the fill a little on the dull side. Liked seeing BRAD PITT; hated seeing FOIE GRAS, as always (for animal cruelty reasons) (39D: Duck delicacy). I was contemplating seeing Tarantino's Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood at Tarantino's own New Beverly Cinema when I'm out in Southern California next week—BRAD PITT is great in that—but I decided I'd use my one New Beverly visit on a matinee screening of The Godfather, Part II instead). I.B. Technicolor 35mm. I've never seen it on the big screen, with an audience. Can't wait. But back to the puzzle. I kinda wish BROADCASTER (17A: Television pro) had been thematic somehow—would've made the theme symmetrical. Really feels like it's occupying a thematic position, but it isn't, oh well. I also wish they hadn't duped "UP," especially considering one of the "UP's appears in a theme (i.e. marquee) answer (OPENS UP, (C)RAMPS UP).
What else?:
19A: "... ___ lack thereof" ("OR A") — I don't usually use an indefinite article when I say this. That is, "or lack thereof" feels like the right phrase. No "a." Obviously, you can say it that way. But I don't.
20A: Passionately discuss minutiae, with "out" (NERD) — I think I wanted HASH here but the crosses wouldn't allow it. This is a decent / original clue for NERD.
6A: Man, on the Isle of Man (BLOKE) — since the (historical) language of the Isle of Man is Manx (see "Word of the Day," above), I really thought this was going to be some Isle-of-Man-specific thing, maybe a slang term derived from Manx, but it's just ... a general British word for "man."
1D: Vaccine, informally (JAB) — this also feels British. Are we calling it the JAB now, too?
3D: What it would be a mistake to write twice? (BOO) — can't decide if this is great or awful. If you write BOO twice, it *is* literally a (word meaning) mistake: BOO-BOO. I can't argue with that.
Gotta go get the coffee started and then get to the gym, where I think it probably is a LEG DAY (48D: Gym session devoted to squats, dead lifts, etc.). Thanks for reminding me, puzzle. See you all tomorrow.
THEME: RSVPING (60A: Acknowledging and invitation ... or a hint to the starts of 19-, 32-, 39- and 49-Across) — the letters R, S, V and P precede "-ING" in the first word of each theme answer; so the puzzle itself is RSVPING, in a way; it's "R"ing, then it's "S"ing, then it's "V"ing, then it's "P"ing ... (!)
Theme answers:
RING ANNOUNCER (19A: "And in this corner..." speaker)
SING BACK-UP (32A: Use non-lead pipes?)
VING RHAMES (39A: Actor who plays Luther Stickell in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise)
PING-PONG BALLS (49A: Projectiles tossed into cups of beer, in a drinking game)
Word of the Day: Beer pong (the "drinking game" in the clue for PING-PONG BALLS) —
Beer pong, also known as Beirut, is a drinking game in which players throw a ping pongball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in a cup of beer on the other end. The game typically consists of opposing teams of two or more players per side with 6 or 10 cups set up in a triangle formation on each side. Each team then takes turns attempting to throw ping-pong balls into the opponent's cups. If the team "makes" a cup - that is, the ball lands in it, and stays in it - the contents of the cup are consumed by the other team and the cup is removed from the table. The first team to eliminate all of the opponent's cups is the winner. [...] The game was originally believed to have evolved from the originalbeer pong played with paddleswhich is generally regarded to have had its origins within the fraternities ofDartmouth Collegein the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, where it has since become part of the social culture of the campus. The original version resembled an actualping ponggame with a net and one or more cups of beer on each side of the table.Eventually, a version withoutpaddleswas invented and the namesBeer PongandBeirutwere adopted in some areas of the United States sometime in the 1980s.In some places,Beer Pongrefers to the version of the game with paddles, andBeirutto the version without. // Bucknell University's student-run newspaper,The Bucknellian, claimsDelta Upsilonfraternity members at Bucknell created "Throw Pong", a game very similar to beer pong, during the 1970s,and that "Throw Pong" was then brought toLehigh Universityby fraternity brothers who visited Bucknell and this led to the creation of the version of beer pong that is played today. // The origin of the name "Beirut" is disputed. A 2004 op-ed article inThe Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper atPrinceton University, suggested that the name was possibly coined at Bucknell or Lehigh University around the time of theLebanese Civil War.Beirut, the capital ofLebanon, was the scene of much fighting during the war, particularlymortar fire. (wikipedia)
• • •
Easy but not boring, with a revealer that does what it's supposed to do—reveal, in a surprising way. I could see the "-ING" repetition but thought "that is not a theme, what are we even doing here?" And then I hit RSVPING and had a sincere "ohhhhhhhh, OK" moment. It's silly, but it works, and I don't know that I want anything more out of my Tuesday revealer than that. It's R'ing, it's S'ing, it's V'ing, it's P'ing, it's here it's there it's everywhere, ing ing ing, ding ding ding, great. And if the RING and SING answers aren't *that* exciting, the SING and VING answers make up for it. Well, let's start with the VING answer, because it seems like there *aren't* any other VING answers besides this one. I don't know if VING RHAMES was the inspiration for this puzzle, but he's certainly the person you can't make this puzzle without. The necessary ingredient. I assume he's a household name by now—I've known his name for three decades, ever since his Extremely Memorable performance as Marcellus in Pulp Fiction (1994). The plot with him and Bruce Willis is extremely violent (Rhames tries to kill Bruce Willis, but then they both get taken hostage in the basement of a pawn shop ... very bad things happen ...), but what I remember most about his performance in that movie is the back of his neck. The first time you see him, the camera is trained on the back of his very thick neck and bald head for a very long time, as he sits at a table in a bar. Makes him seem very cool and imposing. His neck has a band-aid on it, which apparently inspired a ton of fan theories ("the devil takes your soul from the back of your neck" "he cut himself shaving" etc.).
I rewatched the movie recently, which is to say I sat next to two guys (one right next to me, another one row up) who were both watching the movie on an airplane, and so I kept jumping back and forth between screens, watching the movie without sound. It's amazing how much I didn't need sound. It all came back. Great movie. VING RHAMES is also fantastic in one of the other great crime films of the '90s: Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight (1998), where he plays George Clooney's longtime partner in crime (the crime being heists, mostly banks). Apparently, he's also in the Mission: Impossible franchise. That, I'm less familiar with. But I didn't need the clue today: I no-looked his name just from letters I already had in place (I tend to work short crosses before I ever even look at longer answers). As I say, not many things start with "VING."
The other themer I enjoyed was SING BACK-UP. It's an original answer *and* it has a wicked trick (32A: Use non-lead pipes?)—one of the only challenging moments of the puzzle. Not the element lead, as the clue implies, but "lead" as in "lead singer," and not "pipes" as in plumbing but "pipes" as a metaphor for one's singing voice. Late-week trickery on a Tuesday. I like it. So, as for the theme—it was too thin ... until it wasn't. Revealer to the rescue. I wonder why they went with PING PONG BALLS and not PING PONG TABLE. Is "BALLS" just an inherently funnier word? I think I just answered my own question. There's something about the BALLS portion of this grid that is both messy and interesting. A pile-up of consonants and odd letter juxtapositions, with RSVP running through NHLMVP (44D: Hart Memorial Trophy recipient, for short) running through THX (48A: Text of appreciation), with the odd "XL" in OXLIP (45D: Yellow primrose) and the odd "-SI" ending on TARSI (48D: Ankle bones), all with the very smooth and original AIR MILES running through it. Like it or not, it's got character, that corner. Does it also have BALLS? Well, literally, yes. You can see that.
If I look at my Mac keyboard ... well, actually, it's a wireless keyboard, not the one on my actual Mac (laptop). I was gonna say, if I look at my keyboard, I see "ALT" printed just above "option," so I can see easily that they're the same key. But the key on my actual laptop just says "option." This is all to say I could've guessed ALT (1A: Option : Mac :: ___ : PC), but I cheated and looked down, just to be sure. Is Voodoo Ranger a known beer!!? (4A: Voodoo Ranger, e.g., for short). I got IPA easily from crosses but remember thinking "what the hell is that?" (as you know, I'm more a cocktail drinker; cocktails, wine, beer, in that order (order of preference, obviously, not order of consumption, that would be ... a lot)). Interesting clue on TL;DR today (3D: "To recap," in an initialism). I first knew the initialism as a dismissive comment made in response to some other commenter's longwindedness (it stands for "too long; didn't read," after all). It was created to ridicule, but has apparently morphed into a more neutral summing-up term. Language is funny.
Bullets:
6D: Soprano Netrebko (ANNA) — kind of a big deal. She is a Russian who made some comments at the start of the Ukraine invasion that got her into trouble. They don't seem terribly controversial, tbh (she condemned the war but thought artists should be allowed to be apolitical and not be forced to speak out against their homeland), but the blowback was harsh. Performances were canceled, etc. Then she opposed the war more clearly and forcefully and was denounced as a traitor by Russia. I am just now discovering that "Netrebko made a cameo appearance as herself in the 2004 film The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement" (wikipedia), so having recently waded into the whole Princess Diaries universe (one week ago today), I may have to check this one out. It still has Julie Andrews, right? OK, good. I own one Netrebko album and while I'm no opera expert, I think she sounds sensational.
51D: Brooklyn squad (NETS) — I hesitated at -ETS, but I'm not sure why. The NETS are in Brooklyn, the METS are in Queens, and the JETS ... I dunno, New Jersey somewhere, I think. Those, Ladies and Gentlemen, are your New York -ETS!
42A: Uber- relative (MEGA) — really should've taken that dash into consideration. I didn't write in LYFT here, but I definitely considered it.
For the second day in a row, the puzzle is truly giving me nothing. Scratch that—at least yesterday I got a pretty picture of Olympic rings and a theme concept that was intricate and impressive (if simple and one-note). Today ... ___ [some word] ___. That's it. There is nothing else. I mean, there is really nothing else. No interesting fill outside the four themers, which aren't that exciting themselves. The longest non-theme answer is six letters long, and none of those are interesting in the slightest. A non-EVENT, this puzzle. AYESIR ABEL OMANIS ENOS NCIS OOHS ASHE EELS NYSE USERID MELEE and on and on with the same tired fill you've been seeing since you started solving (however old you are). All that (!) and the puzzle manages not only to dupe "UP," but to cross those dupes (BANG-UP, UPENDS). Oh, and then there's duped "NY" abbrevs. (NYSE, NYC). Just a depressing offering, all around. The theme concept isn't restrictive enough to be interesting in the first place. FIRST THINGS FIRST. HEART TO HEART. BLONDE ON BLONDE. GAME RECOGNIZE GAME (look it up). I'm not even trying and yet I can rattle off alternative themers no problem. For days. What are we doing here?
At first I thought "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH" was going to be EIGHT IS ENOUGH, which would've been an astonishing coincidence, as last night's Love Boat (the first part of a season 4 two-parter—what is it with this season and two-parters?) featured not one but two members of the case of EIGHT IS ENOUGH: Dick Van Patten (the EIE patriarch) as some friend of Captain Stubing's who tries to entice the Captain away from his captainship with a lucrative job offer at Van Patten's mysterious and frankly ominously-named company, CDI (Captains Do It? Cake Decorating Industries? Cruel Death, Incorporated?); and Lani O'Grady (the eldest EIE sister, Mary) as an insanely jealous fiancée of some generic guy who thinks Julie is trying to steal her man. You never see LANI O'Grady in crosswords*. It's always LANI Guinier or ... I think that's it, actually. Anyway, the answer was "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH," not EIGHT IS ENOUGH, sadly. "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH" does, however, evoke the whole early '80s EIE / Love Boat era, in its (musical) way...
As for the Downs-only solve: no problem. I guess I needed a bit to get COOLER (3D: Where beers can be found at a tailgate party) and [GASP!] (7D: [Oh, no!]), and I thought maybe the OOHS were AAHS for a half second (12D: Audibly reacts to fireworks). I had OSAGE before OZARK (18D: Missouri's ___ Mountains), that was my one actual flub. But that was easily fixable when I was left with SEUS at 21-Across (SEUS not being a thing I've ever heard of—not without another "S" on the end, anyway). So out with the "S" and then obviously in with the "Z" for ZEUS. No other issues. None. Not anywhere. I want to call the puzzle "vanilla" but I like vanilla too much to do that. This is more ... unflavored. Unflavored what, you ask? Good Question.
Hoping for something more substantial next time (July really has been kind of a dumping ground). See you then.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
*spoke too soon. LANI was clued as LANI O'Grady (and not Guinier), exactly once, back in late '95 ([O'Grady of "Eight Is Enough"]); before that (in the Pre-Shortz Era), all LANIs were clued as [Wool: Prefix] or [Wool: Comb. form], and then once, in 1957, as [Famous diva.] (!?!?!). One weird thing I noticed is that Mel Taub (!?) appears to have been editor of the NYTXW for a hot second somewhere in the (very small, I imagine) gap between Maleska and Shortz. I had no idea. I just know he's listed as the ed. for the Sep. 12, 1993 puzzle (where LANI is clued [Wool: Comb. form]). Looks like Taub was interim editor from Sep. '93 until the first puzzle of the Shortz Era, two months later (Nov. 21, 1993—a rainbow-themed Sunday puzzle by a young Peter Gordon ("Spectral Analysis")):
[image: xwordinfo]
INDIGO GIRLS were in the very first NYTXW puzzle Shortz edited ... and then they appeared in the documentary about him 13 years later. Adorable.
Relative difficulty: Easy (Ultra-Easy, maybe the easiest Sunday of all time)
THEME: "The Big Five-O"—a puzzle depicting the OLYMPIC FLAG (114A: This puzzle's subject) — Five olympic rings are represented by colored squares; every answer that forms a part of a ring has, as its first word/first part, the color of that ring:
BLUE:
-PRINT (36A: Detailed plan of action)
STATE (45D: Democratic stronghold)
"BAYOU" (79A: Signature hit for Linda Ronstadt)
-BIRDS (43D: Thy fly somewhere over the rainbow)
BLACK:
MAGIC (38A: Malevolent sorcery)
-MAILS (47D: Extorts from, in a way)
OLIVE (81A: Supreme pizza topping)
SHEEP (46D: Ostracized family member)
RED:
ROBIN (40A: Restaurant chain with an avian mascot)
SCARE (50D: Phenomenon allegorized in "The Crucible")
ALERT (82A: "Danger! Danger!")
PANDA (48D: Raccoonlike mammal of China)
YELLOW:
PAGES (59A: Obsolescent book)
BELLY (65D: Milquetoast)
CARDS (98A: Results of some fouls in soccer)
-STONE (63D: National park since 1872)
GREEN:
GIANT (60A: Brand in the frozen food section)
SALSA (69D: Dip made from tomatillos)
-HOUSE (100A: What has a lot of room to grow?)
RIVER (67D: Creedence Clearwater Revival song named after a place "where cool water flows")
Bonus themers:
RING BEARER (17A: Wedding role ... or a description of 114-Across?)
COLOR WHEEL (20A: Artist's diagram ... or one of five for 114-Across?)
Word of the Day: JOSÉ Rizal (28A: ___ Rizal, national hero of the Philippines) —
He was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime of rebellion after the Philippine Revolution broke out; it was inspired by his writings. Though he was not actively involved in its planning or conduct, he ultimately approved of its goals which eventually resulted in Philippine independence.
Rizal is widely considered one of the greatest heroes of the Philippines and has been recommended to be so honored by an officially empaneled National Heroes Committee. However, no law, executive order or proclamation has been enacted or issued officially proclaiming any Filipino historical figure as a national hero. He wrote the novels Noli Me Tángere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891), which together are taken as a national epic, in addition to numerous poems and essays. (wikipedia)
• • •
This is a clever and seemingly intricate construction—what with so much theme content, and so much of it interlocking, plus the revealer and the two bonus theme answers—but as a solving experience, it was pretty ... hollow, I guess. I mean, it was slight. It was like a mini, blown up to maxi proportions. Lots of five-letter answers, all of them extremely easy to suss out. Once you grok the concept—and it ain't hard—then chances are you can immediately get all or most of the way to here (as I did):
I got [BLACK]MAGIC, thought "Oh, is that it?," kept solving like normal for a bit, then thought, "What the hell..." and tried to get every answer in every ring. And succeeded. I had to think for a second about [GREEN]HOUSE (100A: What has a lot of room to grow?), but otherwise, everything went right in. When you just hand readers the first part of That many answers, a lot of the fun and All of the challenge goes right out the door. This is a bright, shiny thing, a good-looking thing, a cute thing, but it's not much of a puzzle. I mean, its purpose seems to be primarily decorative. There's nothing really to figure out. Filling in the answers almost feels beside the point. Superfluous. Even the revealer feels pretty redundant. It's obviously the OLYMPIC FLAG. I can see that. You're describing the obvious. So while this is well made, it feels like it's made for a child's placemat. A precocious child, I guess. But still. There's no heft to this. I neither enjoyed nor unenjoyed it. I hardly had the time to work up any feeling at all.
So, yeah, the Olympic Games started this week in Paris, so the puzzle is at least timely. I'm really struggling to find anything to say about it. The bonus themers are pretty clever, as puns go? Uh ... I like the BRA clue? (1A: Word following "push-up" that anagrams to a word following "pull-up") (it's "pull-up bar," which I assume you've figured out by now) (they can't say "bar" because BAR is an answer elsewhere in the puzzle) (65A: Cheers, for one). I was just thinking today how great Cheers was. Actually, I was remembering what a huge crush I had on Diane as a kid. Actually actually, what I was thinking about was the 1982 movie Night Shift, and how much Bruce Willis, in the first season of Moonlighting (which I've started rewatching) often appears to be channeling the voice and mannerisms and occasionally exact expressions of Michael Keaton's character (Bill) in Night Shift (a 1982 movie about two guys—Keaton and Henry Winkler who decide to run a prostitution ring out of a morgue). And then I thought of Shelley Long because she's also in Night Shift (as the quintessential "hooker with a heart of gold"). And then I thought of Cheers. And then I did this puzzle. And here we are. If Star Wars was the most formative moviegoing experience of my childhood, Night Shift was the most formative movie-watching experience of my adolescence—can't say "moviegoing" because I only ever saw it on "laser disc," which were those giant, LP-sized discs that were precursors to DVDs. My dad was always an early adopter of gadgetry. I mean, we had a damned Betamax player. We eventually got a VHS player, like normal people, but mostly, in the early/mid-80s, we watched movies on laser disc, and we watched Night Shift over and over and over and over. I'm sure (quite sure) the movie is dated and politically ... uh, questionable on many, many levels. But Michael Keaton in that movie was ... just ... iconic for me. Bill Murray and Steve Martin were the obvious comedy heroes of boys my age, but for me, in terms of movie performances, it was Keaton in Night Shift. The gold standard. "Call Starkist." If you know, you know. Anyway, as I was saying: BAR ... is an answer in this puzzle.
Probably the most interesting answer in this puzzle is RANGE WAR (37D: Cattle-driving dispute). I like it because it's original and because it makes me think of old westerns, which I both love and love to hate (racism against Native Americans is *pretty* standard, as is rather cruel treatment of the stunt horses, but I love me some handsome dudes strutting around trying to outdude each other, especially if Angie Dickinson or Grace Kelly or Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Collins is nearby). I also like PAN-ARAB, TAKE THE BAIT, and "I'M HUNGRY!" (41D: What "Meow!" might mean) ("Kitties! I just fed you! You want more? OK. What? What is it, Ida? You want me to physically carry you to your food bowl? Hmm. Alright. Seems fair. Whatever you need"). Like I say, the puzzle is not poorly made. Not at all. It just didn't have any fight in it. I didn't know JOSÉ Rizal, but otherwise, there wasn't a single answer that gave me any real trouble. EAR CANAL, maybe a little, but that's it (83D: Channel that gets audio only?).
Not sure about that "only" in the EAR CANAL clue. I guess in the sense of "not video," then yes, audio only. But it can also get, I dunno, pain, in circumstances. And wax. Definitely gets wax ("cerumen," it's called, I just learned) (don't click on that link if you don't want to see earwax, yikes, definite trigger warning there). Speaking of canals, on tonight's episode of The Love Boat (the back end of a two-parter from early in season 4), the Pacific Princess sailed through the Panama Canal. So many locks! So exciting! Donny Most! Erin Moran! Charlene Tilton! Peter Graves! Debbie bleeping Reynolds! So much fun. Well, except when Gopher got left behind in a Panamanian prison because police mistook him for an illegal drug dealer because Doc sent him ashore on a (legal) drug-buying errand in order to get Gopher out of the way so that Doc could have more time alone with the two comically, exaggeratedly, performatively flirty ladies (Dawn Wells! Ann Jillian!) who were the judges in some kind of wedding contest (it was a group wedding cruise, don't ask). But more on that another time. Don't worry. Gopher's fine.
Explainers:
9A: Israeli desert (NEGEV) — this sometimes appears as NEGEB. Never commit to that last letter without a crosscheck, even though it's far more likely to be NEGEV (32 appearances in the Shortz/Fagliano Era, versus only one for NEGEB (back in 2008))
28A: ___ Rizal, national hero of the Philippines (JOSÉ) — OK, back to this guy. Whenever I see a name like RIZAL (i.e. short, belonging to an allegedly famous person, completely unfamiliar to me), I think "Why haven't I seen this name in crosswords before?" Well, if you solve only the NYT crossword, then the last time you saw RIZAL would've been [drumroll] 1953! I was gonna say "that's a longggggg time between appearances," but of course RIZAL didn't appear today. JOSÉ did. I wonder if we'll ever see RIZAL again. If you remember solving the puzzle with the one and only appearance of RIZAL, you have an amazing memory, especially for someone who is at least 90 years old, congrats.
22A: Multipiece furniture purchases (OTTOMAN SETS) — this answer felt normal to me but my wife insisted it was weird so I ended up looking up OTTOMAN SETS last night on my phone just before bedtime and ... I guess you buy matching ottomans ... as a set? But also there are chair and ottoman sets, so when you search "OTTOMAN SETS" you get a jumble of things. I did not know ottomans came in sets, though I guess if you have a space where multiple ottomans are called for and you like things matchy-matchy, it makes sense.
68A: Letters after Lucasfilm (LTD) — what an odd and hyperspecific way to come at LTD. I was not at all sure. And there's a bit of a tricky clue on one of the crosses: [It's not long.] for LAT. (i.e. "latitude," which is not long- ... itude).
73A: Round up at the start? (PRELIMS) — an excellent trick clue. "Round up" looks like a verb but no, "Round" is a noun, as in a round of a tournament. PRELIMS come early ("up at the start") of some tournaments.
81A: Supreme pizza topping (OLIVE) — hey, the allegedly "divisive" pizza topping (see Friday's puzz) is back! Non-divisively. Could also have clued ONION this way too, but the puzzle went with [Fried rice add-on] instead.
93A: Concerning egg cells (OVULAR) — no problem with this answer, though I do have a slight problem with duping "cells" in the clue (which already appears in the grid in FUEL CELLS (85A: Power sources for some electric cars))
106D: Negative Nancy words? (NONS) — Nancy is a city in France. "Noes" (the plural of "no") are "negative words." So "Negative words" in "Nancy" are NONS (the plural of the French word for "no"—"non"). Pretty creative clue for a pretty ugly answer.
75D: Spice Girl Chisholm, casually (MEL) — if you're going to be that specific, including the last name and all, the answer really should be MEL C. That is how she typically appears in the grid (seven NYTXW appearances), to distinguish her from her colleague, MEL B (two NYTXW appearances). Not sure why you wade into Spice World when the answer is just MEL. Lotsa plain-old MELs in the world.
57D: ___ Oyu, sixth-highest peak in the world (CHO) — should've made this the word of the day. Never heard of it. It's in the Himalayas, on the Nepal/Tibet border. CHO Oyu means "Turquoise Goddess" in Tibetan.
99D: "The ___ true for ..." (SAME'S) — I just have "oof" written next to this one. This is a thematically load-bearing answer, and there aren't a lot of good options. Still, oof.
95D: Part of a woman's anatomy named for Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg (G-SPOT) — trying to imagine some guy getting the "G" and going "Wait ... anatomy? Women's anatomy? ... I don't ... GRÄFE? ... is it GRÄFE? Do women have GRÄFEs? How did I not know this? GRÄFE?? What does it do? Honey!... Come here a minute. I have questions ..."
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. back to Love Boat for a sec—I just looked up Peter Graves and I am now the same age he was in Airplane! Howwwwwww? When it came out, I was the same age as this kid!:
Word of the Day: LUCIA (45D: Swedish holiday in which crowns of candles are worn, familiarly) —
Saint Lucy's Day, also called the Feast of Saint Lucy, is a Christianfeast day observed on 13 December. The observance commemorates Lucia of Syracuse, an early-fourth-century virgin martyr under the Diocletianic Persecution. According to legend, she brought food and aid to Christians hiding in the Roman catacombs, wearing a candle-lit wreath on her head to light her way, leaving both hands free to carry as much food as possible. Because her name means "light" and her feast day had at one time coincided with the shortest day of the year prior to calendar reforms, it is now widely celebrated as a festival of light. Falling within the Advent season, Saint Lucy's Day is viewed as a precursor of Christmastide, pointing to the arrival of the Light of Christ in the calendar on 25 December, Christmas Day.
Saint Lucy's Day is celebrated most widely in Scandinavia, Italy and the island nation of Saint Lucia, each emphasising a different aspect of her story. In Scandinavia, where Lucy is called Santa/Sankta Lucia, she is represented as a woman in a white dress symbolizing a baptismal robe and a red sash symbolizing the blood of her martyrdom, with a crown or wreath of candles on her head. (wikipedia)
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OK, much more alert this morning than yesterday morning, but I wish I could reverse things, i.e. I wish I'd been more alert yesterday than today, because yesterday's puzzle, in well-rested retrospect, seems better than I originally thought it was, whereas today's puzzle ... I wouldn't have minded being less alert for. Maybe then I wouldn't have noticed or cared about or even noticed so many of its unpleasant aspects. Or maybe I'd've noticed and cared about them more, who knows? All I know is that I did not DIG this one much at all, except for BARBIECORE(16A: Hot-pink fashion aesthetic), which really seems like the only reason for this puzzle to exist, and the good of which is almost completely undone by the odd gender-binary nonsense of FEMININE SIDE (20D: It might be expressed with emotion), my god I hate the concept. You'd only ever use it of men, first of all, and it's such a horrid idea—that emotion is "feminine." This is why men are broken (not you, you're great, I'm sure). Your Emotions Are Not Feminine, They Are Just Human—Feeling Things Is Human, Try It Some Time. Sigh. Is sighing "feminine?" Whatever. Moving on. Actually, let's rewind and start with the very worst thing about this puzzle—an absolute dealbreaker about which everyone involved should really be ashamed: the duplication of "EVEN" (EVENER, "I CAN'T EVEN"). That dupe is so jarring that when it came time to drop EVEN down into the SE, I just ... couldn't. "No way, they wouldn't," I thought. I mean, I already had to endure EVENER, which is barely a word (42D: Level, essentially), and now you want me (do you?) to write in "EVEN" ... again? Can't be. But it could be and did be. Awful. Not even sloppy, because surely everyone involved noticed. They just didn't care. That's malpractice, especially at the editorial level.
Fill-wise, the thing that irked the most was the name barrage, once again. The puzzle was very very easy, in general, getting (almost) all of its "difficulty" (for me) from name grenades. For me, these were FELIX, VAL and KIVA (!?), with FELIX (because of its position), being the worst damage-doer of all. Just couldn't flow up and into the NE corner because FELIX was 80% blank (F----!). I was able to push through VAL and KIVA by overwhelming them with the surrounding fill. But I was lucky. I actually had at least heard of ETONIC and NORA and Nick NOLTE and WIM Wenders and TIG Notaro (the last of which was a *huge* help—first letters of all the long Downs in the SE!). But I can easily imagine other solvers not knowing one or many of those. I don't care so much about the fact of the names, which I think are mostly gettable, as I do about the fact that there were so many and that they were the only real speed bumps in this thing. Cluing was not that clever or thoughtful today. So it played like a triviafest—never my favorite kind of puzzle. But back to KIVA for a second ... I've never heard of it (55A: Big name in small loans). It is really well known. Merriam-webster dot com defines KIVA as "a Pueblo Indian ceremonial structure that is usually round and partly underground," so they're no help. Looks like it's a San Francisco-based microloan nonprofit. I will confess that financial stuff is really Really not my specialty, so I wouldn't be shocked if I was just part of an ignorant minority today. But as financial terms and names go, when the answer wasn't FICA (which I actually entertained, despite knowing full well it was wrong), I had nothing. KIVA sounds like a god, or something you'd name your SPCA rescue dog. I finished on the -IVA / -EG square and actually had to run the alphabet. I mourn for the people who both didn't know KIVA and had never heard of a KEG stand. I can only assume you wrote in "LEG stand" here. My condolences.
The puzzle started out like a Monday or Tuesday for me. Had those first three Acrosses in the NW done inside of five seconds (yes, really), and then in another ten seconds or so, I had the whole NW in place:
I hesitated on the word following STEM. Wanted SCIENCE, but it wouldn't fit. Blanked on the golf apparel, but it eventually came to me, and I was off and running. The only real trouble spot for me today, besides the FELIX dam, was the spot just east of the TOWER part of LEANING TOWER. Speaking of "east"—that was one of the problems there. I had the "-T" part of 37D: Left, in a way (PORT) and blithely wrote in EAST. I mean WEST. Damn it, my E/W dyslexia is so bad I can't even explain myself right. I definitely *thought* about a map, visualized it in my head, and wrote in WEST. WEST is "left," EAST is "right"—never gonna get over the fact that we *say* "east/west" (i.e "north south east and west," "from the east to the west, I love you the best," etc.) and "east/west" are the alphabetical order, but on the map, reading L to R, it's "west/east," ugh. Annnnyway, WEST screwed me up. Also, I couldn't figure out what 36A: Lap, say could be if it wasn't OUTRUN. I even tried OUTSWIM. Bah. Wanted LOOK AT at 41A: Check out, but the "K" seemed dicey, so I briefly tried LOCATE (?!). Before I had TOWER, I had no idea about WRENS (44A: Birds that can emit a "teakettle, teakettle, teakettle" call). So even though I guessed the TATS part of FACE TATS right (48A: Decorations for a mug?), I was stuck for a bit trying to make the SE happen. But everywhere else in this puzzle, I CRUISED.
Notes:
22A: Small crater in auto-body paint (FISH EYES) — not familiar. Didn't know if they were EYES or EGGS, and neither one of those options was any help in pushing through FELIX.
56A: One meaning of 👍 ("I NEED A RIDE") — The emoji does not mean that—an actual human thumb held out by someone on the roadside means that—so this was confusing.
23D: He passed Babe in 1974 (HANK) — as in Aaron, as in "All-Time Home Run Leader." Bonds eventually passed Aaron in 2007, when he hit number 756, finishing up his career with 762 (a record that still stands, with or without an asterisk, whether you like it or not).
See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. here is an explanation of the "-CORE" suffix (as seen in BARBIECORE), in case it's unfamiliar to you
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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This was kind of echo of yesterday's puzzle. Yesterday, I went from "what the hell is this weak theme?" to "Oh, ha ha, good one." Today, I went from "what the hell is this inscrutable theme?" to "Oh, ha ha, good one." This is to say that the revealer did its job both days. "Huh?" to "Oh!"—that is the trajectory you want to follow from the beginning of a puzzle to the moment you hit the revealer. Today's theme is definitely trickier than yesterday's—yesterday, the only mystery was what was linking all the answers, while today there was real mystery as to how in the world the answers fit the clues at all. But overall yesterday's puzzle felt cleaner. Leaner. And the revealer was slightly funnier (or loopier). Also, there's one major problem with the execution of this theme, to my eyes, which is that in two of the theme answers (COVER CHARGE, CLEAN-CUT), there are actually two (2) "C"s. So the answer is, in fact, under the "C" ... but only the first one. When your answer has two of them, the elegance of the whole design suffers. The extra "C"s don't cause any real confusion at the solving level, but they diminish the force of the revealer. "UNDER THE SEA ... get it? under the "C" ... no not that "C," the other one. Just ignore that one." Still, the revealer did give me a little pop of "aha," instead of a sad slap of "oh" or "ugh" or "oof," so on the whole I'd still put this one in the Thumbs-up column. The ideal version of this theme would have no "C"s but the thematically relevant "C"s, but ... this is fine.
