Louis who wrote "Holes" / SUN 8-18-24 / Part of an omakase meal / Jazz pianist Garner / Fruity Italian wine / Prominent feature of Tom Selleck or David Hasselhoff / Participate in a Lakota smudging ceremony / Indigenous people with a First Moccasin ceremony / A gilded one is seen on King Tut's crown

Constructor: Rebecca Goldstein and Will Nediger

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "For Your Amusement" — amusement park attractions that are depicted visually in the grid (in circled-square formations)

Theme answers:

• DROP TOWER (4D: Amusement park attraction depicted to the right of this answer)
• BUMPER CARS (25A: Amusement park attraction depicted above and below this answer)
• ROLLER COASTER (65A: Amusement park attraction depicted weaving through this answer)
• WATER SLIDE (111A: Amusement park attraction depicted above this answer)
• WHAC-A-MOLE (79D: Amusement park attraction depicted in and around this answer)

Word of the Day: Louis SACHAR (67D: Louis who wrote "Holes") —

Louis Sachar (/ˈsækər/ SAK-ər; born March 20, 1954) is an American young-adult mystery-comedy author. He is best known for the Wayside School series and the novel Holes.

Holes won the 1998 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the 1999 Newbery Medal for the year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children". In 2013, it was ranked sixth among all children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal. [...] Holes is a 1998 young adult novel written by Louis Sachar and first published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book centers on Stanley Yelnats, who is sent to Camp Green Lake, a correctional boot camp in a desert in Texas, after being falsely accused of theft. The plot explores the history of the area and how the actions of several characters in the past have affected Stanley's life in the present. These interconnecting stories touch on themes such as labor, boyhood and masculinity, friendship, meaning of names, illiteracy, and elements of fairy tales.

The book was both a critical and commercial success. Much of the praise for the book has centered around its complex plot, interesting characters, and representation of people of color and incarcerated youth. [...] Holes was adapted by Walt Disney Pictures as a feature film of the same name released in 2003. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, was commercially successful, and was released in conjunction with the book companion Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm normally a fan of these constructors, but this one fell flat for me. The visuals just aren't interesting or evocative enough. Tepid, if visuals can be called tepid, which they can, because I'm calling them that. The most creative of the "amusement park attraction" visual representations is the WHAC-A-MOLE, with those various "MOLE" parts peeking out from their (imagined) holes there at the bottom of the grid. That's cute. But the others? I dunno. The "slide" is just ... a diagonal? Five letters on a diagonal. And DROP TOWER is just five letters divided by one black square? I get that the "ER" is supposed to be "dropping" away, so ... I see it, but it just doesn't make much of a visual impression. Aside from weakness, one of the visuals is completely (I would argue, fatally) unlike the others, in that it completely fails to follow the representational logic of the set. See, for DROP TOWER, you get the "drop" represented by the circled-square arrangement of the letters in "TOWER"; for BUMPER CARS, you get the "bumper"ness of the cars represented by the circled-square arrangement of the letters in "CAR" (three times). One word in the straightforward answer ("DROP"; "BUMPER") forms the basis for the circled-square arrangement of the other word(s) in the straightforward answer ... except. Except for ROLLER COASTER. If ROLLER COASTER were done right (or done according the theme's own logic), then only the word "COASTER" would be "rolling," just like only "TOWER" is "dropping" and only "WATER" is "sliding" and only "MOLE" is "whac-a"-ble. It's such a glaring issue that ... yeah, I don't get it. I don't get why the inconsistency didn't bother anyone. Maybe it did and they just decided "who cares?" There's just not enough sizzle in this thing to make the inconsistent execution worth it. A more eye-popping or stunning or otherwise impressive themer set might've made the ROLLER COASTER thing overlookable. But as I said up front, the visuals are just too tepid, and so the inconsistency of ROLLER COASTER seems like more of a liability.

While there were some parts of this grid I didn't enjoy at all (ORRERY into RESPAWN into SACHAR (?), above all), for the most part the fill is solid and varied and even amusing. CHEST HAIR over HATERADE 
is easily the highlight of the puzzle for me (85A: Prominent feature of Tom Selleck or David Hasselhoff / 89A: Sour grapes drink?). Just imagining a bunch of dudes in the early-80s watching "Magnum P.I." and trying to convince themselves Tom Selleck isn't that sexy. Maybe mocking his short shorts, or his prodigious 'stache, or the Farrah-style pin-up posters on their sisters' bedroom walls ... just drinking the CHEST HAIR HATERADE ...

[for comparison]

You all know the term "HATERADE," right? It's what haters drink. When they're hating. They drink "HATERADE." It's metaphorical. A portmanteau of "hater" and "Gatorade." I feel like the term gained currency some time in the late 20th century ... yes, the OED's earliest evidence for "HATERADE" comes from 1993. Here's their definition: "A notional drink that engenders or embodies feelings of hatred, negativity, or resentment; chiefly as part of an extended metaphor, esp. in to drink…" Ooh, "notional." I like that better than "metaphorical." This is the fourth NYTXW appearance of HATERADE, so maybe you're all familiar with the term already. The clue for it today was diabolical, which is probably what's making it stand out to me (89A: Sour grapes drink?). I was like, "[Sour grapes drink?] ... well ... that's ... wine ... kind of, right? Some kind of ... wine?" No. Bigger problem for me in that section was the answer directly under HATERADE: I had -I-S at 95A: Lapel attachments and of course I wrote in PINS because, I mean, lapel PINS, that's what they are, literally, things attached to lapels, argh. So it took me a while to pull out PINS and put in MICS; PINS ensured that both SEMOLINA and WHAC-A-MOLE were slow in coming together.

[I went downstairs just now, where my wife is solving the puzzle on a clipboard, and the *first* thing she said is "What's going on with ROLLER COASTER?! 'ROLLER' should not be in those circled squares ... "COASTER" should be "rolling" in those squares ... those squares should say COASTER COASTER!" So I feel vindicated, and also "COASTER COASTER" is our new word for "ROLLER COASTER"] 

Further notes:

• 15A: Quick second? (ASST.) — "Quick" = abbrev. indicator, and "second" = (per merriam webster dot com, noun (1) def. 2) "one that assists or supports another, especially the assistant of a duelist or boxer." So "quick second" = "abbreviated assistant" = ASST.
• 36A: N.Y.C. home of "Christina's World" (MoMA) — extremely famous and oft-parodied Wyeth painting, in case you forgot or somehow didn't know ...

[Andrew, *not* N.C.]

• 51A: "Her Kind" poet Sexton (ANNE) —

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind. 

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind. 

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

• 114A: People who call New Zealand "Aotearoa" (MAORI) — pretty sure everyone calls it that now. "Beginning in the late 20th century, Aotearoa has become widespread in the bilingual naming of national organisations and institutions" (wikipedia). But yeah, it's a MAORI-language term.
• 117A: Nickname for the Los Angeles Angels (HALOS) — I got this easily, but semi-balked at the spelling, as I want most pluralized "O"-ending words to be spelled -OES. Don't I? HEROES, yes. But then ZEROS. And LASSOS and SOLOS. But definitely POTATOES. Man, English is insane.
• 5D: Participate in a Lakota smudging ceremony (BURN SAGE) — don't love this. That is, I do love it, or would, if SMUDGE or SMUDGING were the *answer* ... that feels like a coherent thing. BURN SAGE feels like an arbitrary verb phrase, like "paint walls" or "eat food" or whatever. Feels like a clue, not an answer.
• 10D: A gilded one is seen on King Tut's crown (COBRA) — had the -RA in place, so the word "crown" in the clue triggered an automatic TIARA response.
• 37D: Jazz pianist Garner (ERROLL) — A one-L ERROL, he's a drinker / A two-L ERROLL, he's a ... plinker?  

• 36D: Fruity Italian wine (MOSCATO) — never had MOSCATO, to my knowledge, but I have had (German, or maybe French) Muscat, which helped here. 
• 97D: Part of an omakase meal (SUSHI) — got this off the "I," but can't remember what "omakase" means ... I must've seen the term in Kamogawa Food Detectives, or heard it in Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011), but I just ... forgot. Here we go: 

The phrase omakase, literally 'I leave it up to you', is most commonly used when dining at Japanese restaurants where the customer leaves it up to the chef to select and serve seasonal specialties. The Japanese antonym for omakase is okonomi (from 好み konomi, "preference, what one likes"), which means choosing what to order. In American English, the expression is used by patrons at sushi restaurants to leave the selection to the chef, as opposed to ordering à la carte. The chef will present a series of plates, beginning with the lightest fare and proceeding to the heaviest dishes. The phrase is not exclusive to raw fish with rice and can incorporate grilling, simmering and other cooking techniques. (wikipedia) 

• 71D: Consequently (THENCE) — ugh you wouldn't think a word like this could flummox me, esp. with the "TH-" in place, but yeesh. THUSLY? THERETO? Whatever quaint and / or legalistic word was being asked of me, my brain just could not.

OK, that's all. This puzzle wasn't for my amusement, but maybe it was for yours. I hope so. See ya.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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