Smallish smart device from Amazon / SAT 8-31-24 / 10-point play / Liquid found in some pens / Rapper who shares his name with the 29th president / Some start-up funding, in brief / Franchise that moved back to Vegas in 2021 / Reach for the cars? / Drink once sold as Fruit Smack

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: WARREN G (44A: Rapper who shares his name with the 29th president) —

Warren Griffin III (born November 10, 1970) is an American rapper, record producer, and DJ who helped popularize West Coast hip hop during the 1990s.^[2] A pioneer of G-funk, he attained mainstream success with his 1994 single "Regulate" (featuring Nate Dogg). He is credited with discovering Snoop Dogg, having introduced the then-unknown rapper to record producer Dr. Dre.

His debut studio album, Regulate... G Funk Era (1994), debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200, selling 176,000 in its first week. The album has since received triple platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), signifying sales of three million copies. "Regulate" spent 18 weeks within the top 40 of the BillboardHot 100, with three weeks at number two, while its follow-up, "This D.J.", peaked at number nine. At the 37th Annual Grammy Awards, both songs received nominations for Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Solo Performance, respectively. (wikipedia)

• • •

If nothing else, this puzzle was suitably challenging, for once. There were at least two times (NE, SW) where I experienced significant stoppage, significant "WTF!?"-age. And there were enough tiny traps along the way (INES v INEZ, ADD-ONS v ADD-INS, etc.), that solving became a truly interesting and engaging endeavor. Hurray for stopping the slow dumbing down of the crossword puzzle (which I assume the NYT will eventually phase out as the fan base dies and the rest of their subscriber population becomes addicted to their other little, shorter, far less demanding games with names like "Blorp" or "Chunk" or "Spelling Bee"). But today, I got an old-fashioned Saturday workout, though not with old-fashioned fill. Well ... scratch that. There was definitely some old-fashioned fill gunking up the grid here and there. I mean, Aunt ELLER dancing GALOPS (46D: Dances in duple time), yee-haw, my eyes definitely widened and then squinted suspiciously at that cross, just as they had when I reluctantly filled in ENSILE (which I was not entirely sure wasn't ENSILO—if you wrote ENSILO, my condolences, hope you enjoyed your OCHO DOT ... eight dots, that's good value!). NIHIL(O) pleasure in ENSILE. In addition to harboring some occasionally ugly answers, the puzzle was not exactly filled with my favorite things (venture capital and vaping, right out of the box?! LOL, it's like there was a bouncer at the door telling me "this puzzle ain't for you, bub."). And yet even though I might not groove on it, the fill in this puzzle definitely has a lot of energy and originality. It doesn't just lie there, like yesterday's grid (mostly) did. VAPE JUICE and VC MONEY! (1A: Liquid found in some pens / 1D: Some start-up funding, in brief). They don't make me happy as *things*, but they are original, and (more importantly) they took *work* and *thought* to piece together. And the cluing, yikes, what a minefield, but a ... good minefield? Basically what I'm saying is that there was an enjoyable unpleasantness to this puzzle that made it consistently engaging and interesting. It's the same enjoyable unpleasantness I experience when I drink a cocktail with Suze in it. Have you ever had Suze? "Jeezus this tastes like bitter grass and dirt and vinegar, like cough medicine for rabbits ... wait, no, don't take it away, I wasn't complaining!"

OK, let's hit the trouble spots. Lucked out on my first pass at the NW, where I did my usual "work the short crosses first" thing and all three short crosses came up correct!

 

EMU JAG UGG! Right off the bat, bang, we've got traction! I had no idea there were four specific, named (!) shapes of MCNUGGETS. I thought they were just random blobs, but then I haven't eaten them since high school, so I'm certainly no Nugficionado. No Nuggeteer, I. All I know is "-UGG-" gave me MCNUGGETS and I was on my way. That corner was tough, but gettable, with the S/Z question at 7D: Name that's another form of Agnes (INEZ) being the only real potential puzzle-killer. I wouldn't even know INES was a name if crosswords hadn't taught it to me, whereas INEZ was my grandmother's name. I wrote in INES but STI-wasn't giving me any ideas at 19A: 10-point play and then I realized "oh, we're doing the Scrabble thing again." Yet another way this puzzle is interested in things I'm not interested in. But I do know that a Z-TILE is worth ten points, so ... there we go. Seems like there's a non-zero chance that at least one solver out there ended up wondering how the hell STILE was a [10-point play]. If that person is you, I see you, and I understand.

So there were minor struggles, but the first Major struggle came in the SW, which I was sure I was going to sail through. I'd already thrown down LOUNGEWEAR (great answer) and WARREN G (I was like "WARREN G!? Jesus H! The pop culture / rapper haters are gonna be mad today!"), and I had the "WHAT?" part of what really seemed like it was going to be some version of "SAY WHAT?," so I was feeling pretty good. But then "SAY WHAT?" wouldn't fit. And "O, SAY WHAT?" felt preposterous. "O SAY can you see...," sure, but "O, SAY WHAT?," that felt wrong. The "O" was rock solid, but those other letters, yikes.

What kind of bar serves hot shots? I racked my brains for bar types. TAPAS bar? TAPA bar? Is IS BIG wrong (it's certainly ugly, but I couldn't get IS BIG to be anything else, so it had to stay). Of course I was reading the opening of [Risky bond designation] as one sound, a "BR-" sound, like in "bread," and not a letter ("B") and then another word (RATING), which is what it was. And then JET for [Spurt] ... I guess I just avoid thinking about spurting and its related word cloud as much as possible. Honestly, I wanted JAG, but already had JAG up top. I think I eventually stumbled on "OKAY" as a thing that could fit at the opening of 48A: "Uh ... did I hear that right?!" and that made me see the SAKE BAR (38D: Establishment serving hot shots), and boom, done. But before the "boom," ugh, stuckness. Probably didn't last too long, but dead stops are so rare that it felt like an eternity.

Worse, though, was the NE, where ... looks like I managed to get Z-TILE and KOOL-AID, but that's as far as I could press into that section at first. Momentum just died. Couldn't see ALASKANS because wow, that clue (26A: They're on their own time). I think I just didn't know Alaska had its own time zone (is that right?). Even with the first "A" and the “K" in place, nothing. And ECHO DOT, forget it (30A: Smallish smart device from Amazon). I don't know what these stupid devices are all called. Too many, can't keep track, don't want any gadgets in my house spying on me for Big Algorithm (any more than there already are—god save me from "smart" devices). And that brings me to the other longer answer that could've given me access to that corner, but didn't. And it's the worst answer in the grid. By far. I mean, the worst. And that answer is FRESH SALAD. I *had* the SALAD part, so how hard could the answer be!? Answer: extremely. Because who would guess that the answer would be something as inane and generic and not-a-thing as FRESH SALAD. What is that? What are these unfresh salads that people (implicitly) consume? I was like "PASTA SALAD? GREEN SALAD? ... CHEF'S SALAD? BERRY SALAD!?" The answer may as well have been TASTY SALAD for all that FRESH SALAD makes any standalone sense. I don't think I've ever resented a crossword answer this much. All that work, all that added difficulty, so that I could get ... FRESH?! And the clue. That "Leaves" trick is old as the hills, that wasn't a problem. The problem was "just in time for dinner" did nnootthhiinngg to indicate the idiocy that is FRESH. But I managed to conquer that corner by the grace of a very real and non-idiotic green food—that's right, by the grace of AVOCADO, hallowed be its name (11D: The Mexican state of Michoacán produces 5.5+ billion pounds of this annually). Really got me out of a jam there. Is there anything AVOCADO can't do? Truly a miracle ... fruit? (It's a fruit, right?)

Bullets:

• 10A: [I can't hear you!] ("LA LA...") — you have to imagine someone plugging their ears and saying way more "LA"s for this clue to fully make sense, but it's still kind of clever
• 53D: Teacher's handwritten note by an awkward sentence (REDO) — I've never (hand)written this "note" in my life, and I've graded a lot of papers. The industry standard in this situation is not REDO, but AWK. You should probably be more specific, but sometimes, you just throw your hands up and write AWK. 
• 57A: Line outside a box office ("ONE, PLEASE") — I had the "PLEASE" but held back on writing in the number because I held out some hope that the moviegoer had a date. But sadly, no. Or happily no (I *love* to go to the movies alone, though mostly I go with my wife, which I also love—we saw Between the Temples yesterday (darker—and infinitely socially awkwarder—than I thought it was gonna be, but still delightful, and genuinely funny), and we're seeing Blink Twice today)

• 35D: One party to 2020's Abraham Accords: Abbr. (UAE) — I had the "U" and wrote in USA. I don't know what these Accords are. I'm guessing the "Abraham" was supposed to indicate to me that Israel was involved. Yes? [looks it up]. Yes. They involve Arab-Israeli diplomatic relations.
• 27D: Drink once sold as Fruit Smack (KOOL-AID) — I had the "-L-ID" part and while the answer should've been obvious, I initially went looking for some kind of FLUID. I love that the original name of KOOL-AID had the slang term for heroin right in the name. "Yeah, your kids are gonna love it, Really love it, and yeah, it's horrible for them, but they're still gonna want it, a lot, like ... a lot, so ... well, good luck with that."

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]