THEME:LA LA LAND (59A: 2016 film starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling ... or a hint to 17-, 23-, 36- and 46-Across) — theme answers contain the letter string "LALA":
Theme answers:
L.A. LAKERS (17A: N.B.A. team with LeBron and Bronny James, for short)
RURAL ALABAMA (23A: Setting for "My Cousin Vinny")
MALALA YOUSAFZAI (36A: Youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner)
VANILLA LATTE (46A: Sweet Starbucks order)
Word of the Day: POMELO (56A: Fruit that's a citrus, not a hybrid of a pomegranate and melon) —
The pomelo (/ˈpɒmɪloʊ,ˈpʌm-/POM-il-oh, PUM-;Citrus maxima), also known as a shaddock and from the family Rutaceae, is the largest citrus fruit, and the principal ancestor of the grapefruit. It is a natural, non-hybrid, citrus fruit, native to Southeast Asia. Similar in taste to a sweet grapefruit, the pomelo is commonly consumed and used for festive occasions throughout Southeast Asia and East Asia. As with the grapefruit, phytochemicals in the pomelo have the potential for drug interactions. (wikipedia)
• • •
Nah, this doesn't quite work. Specifically, the "LAND" part of the revealer has nothing to do. The only one of these answers that's an actual "LAND" is RURAL ALABAMA ... which also happens to be the most contrived answer of the lot. I know that the theme answers can be conceived of as "lands" in some vague metaphorical sense, but that's weak. If you give me LA LA LAND, that LAND part better mean something. And it doesn't. A simple letter string isn't that interesting, and it's especially uninteresting if one of the resulting answers is something as tenuous as RURAL ALABAMA. Moreover, MALALA YOUSAFZAI isn't a great fit either, given that "LALA" breaks across two words in every theme answer *except* that one. The LALA is contained entirely in her first name, leaving her last name just hanging out to dry. No, this one just doesn't have the next-level concept of the polish to make for a very good Monday (or any day). It's not bad, but it's not good enough.
Solving this Downs-only was easy enough, except for one part that felt pretty harrowing, namely, the tail end of YOUSAFZAI. I threw those Downs down and got plausible crosses, but something about -ZAI felt wrong/off, so went to the end of this puzzle worried I was not going to get a "Congratulations!" message at the end. So I guess that part wasn't "hard" so much as dangerous-feeling. The harder part—the hardest part for me, by far—was figuring out 21D: Decided to skip. At first I assumed it ended -ED, but when that didn't work out I eventually got it down to -A- OUT ... but then nothing. For a while, the only thing I could think to make out of that first word was "RAN," but RAN OUT didn't feel like a good answer for [Decided to skip] (perhaps because it's not). Thankfully, NONY is not a word, or I might've written in RAN OUT and left it. But NONY looked like a definite no-no, so I waited a bit and ran some other scenarios and finally hit on SAT OUT. And yes, that looked much better. TONY > NONY, for sure.
Otherwise, the only other real hesitations I had today came right away, at 1D: Org. with the motto "Because Freedom Can't Protect Itself" (ACLU), and then "OK, BUT," which is a really odd standalone answer (odd enough that it's only ever appeared one other time, ten years ago). Oh, and BLABBY, which seems like a borderline nonsense word (10D: Loose-lipped). No hope there until I finally got inferred the "B" in GWBUSH (8A: POTUS #43). One thing I liked about BLABBY, though, was it helped me guess the "F" in FLAB (43A: What "muffin top" and "spare tire" are euphemisms for). See, since I was solving Downs-only (i.e. not looking at Across clues), I was staring at -LAB, which gave me multiple options for that first letter, but since I could eliminate BLAB (because BLABBY was already in the grid), I went ahead and tested FLAB ... and it worked. I realize now it could've been SLAB, not sure why that didn't occur to me, but once the "F" went in, FINEST immediately followed. I had MAMA before DADA (no surprise there) (53D: Baby's first word, perhaps). Forgot the first letter in P-TRAP (45D: Letter-shaped plumbing piece), but thankfully S-ELLS wasn't likely to be anything but SPELLS (or, rather, P-TRAP rang a bell, whereas M-TRAP and W-TRAP and H-TRAP seemed ... unlikely). I was surprised to see LILLE, which seems kind of a minor French city for a Monday, but I was able to get it off just the "L," so maybe it's more major than I thought. In crosswords, at any rate.
THEME: "One for the Books" — book titles with punny "___book" clues
Theme answers:
HIGH FIDELITY (21A: Record book?)
MERRIAM-WEBSTER (31A: Spell book?)
THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (46A: Green book?)
THE GIVING TREE (65A: Logbook?)
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (83A: Yearbook?)
A GAME OF THRONES (97A: Rule book?)
FRANKENSTEIN (113A: Scrapbook?)
Word of the Day: Kristin OTTO (117A: Kristin ___, first woman to win six gold medals at a single Olympic games) —
Kristin Otto (German pronunciation:[ˈkʁɪstɪnˈʔɔtoː][...]; born 7 February 1966) is a former German swimmer, becoming Olympic, World and European champion, multiple times. She is most famous for being the first woman to win six gold medals at a single Olympic Games, doing so at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. In long course, she held the world records in the 100 meter and 200 meter freestyle events. Otto was also the first woman to swim the short course 100 meter backstroke in under a minute, doing so at an international short course meet at Indiana University in 1983. (wikipedia)
• • •
[cover: Milton Glaser (1973)]
Hard to have feelings about this one because it was over so fast. There were book titles, they were easy to figures out, and ... that was that. The wordplay in the themer clues all made sense for the most part. HIGH FIDELITY is a book about a record shop, so [Record book?], sure. I balked a little at MERRIAM-WEBSTER since that didn't seem like the full title of the "book" in question (which surely must include the word "dictionary" somewhere, right?) (31A: Spell book?). Also, I thought "spellbook" was one word. Anyway, dictionaries are what you consult for spell-ing, so, sure, fine. "Green" is slang for "money" so [Green book?] => THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, OK. I forget the plot of THE GIVING TREE. I feel like the tree maybe gives and gives until ... does it actually become a stump, or a "log" (65A: Logbook?)? That clue seemed a little tenuous, but again, I haven't thought about this book since I was a child. NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR is indeed a year, so [Yearbook?], fantastic. Did not know there was an indefinite article at the beginning of (A) GAME OF THRONES, isn't that funny? (97A: Rule book?). I guess there are families that "rule" (i.e. reign, hold power) in that "book," so that explains that. And then lastly there's FRANKENSTEIN ... whose monster is made out of ... scraps, is that it? (113A: Scrapbook?). Seems like this theme could've gone on forever. Surely there are [Notebook?]s out there, either famous books about music, or maybe an epistolary novel like Clarissa. [Blue Book?] ... well, anything smutty will do there. Or a novel about sadness. Or the sky. It's a cute idea for a theme, but it feels very loose and somehow not entirely satisfying. The cluing felt clever on FRANKENSTEIN and NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, less so on the others. But again, it was all over in a flash, so I didn't have time to feel much of anything.
I liked the NE corner, home to some of the more interesting non-thematic fill today, like GHOSTED (14D: Suddenly stopped texting), and the SLOW BURN / FOOD WASTE cross. Otherwise, though, it was all pretty much PRO FORMA (70A: Perfunctory). Good chance to flex your crosswordese muscle today. AYLA is a go-to. A staple. A standard. Gotta have it in your arsenal. You just ... know it. I have never read and have no real interest in reading Clan of the Cave Bear, but I know AYLA well. See also ST. LEO (94D: "The Great" pope), by far the most namechecked pope in crossworld (papacy = 440-61). He also comes in LEOI form (three straight vowels, can't beat that!). But he's not the only "great" Leo! There's a different "Leo the Great" who was a Roman Emperor from 457-74. If you confuse them, well, sure, that makes sense—they're both "Great" and were alive at the same dang time, what the hell? Anyway, the Roman Emperor "Leo the Great" is easy to recognize, as he is probably most famous for His Insane Eyes!!
If you look into his eyes, you turn to stone. That's how he turned to stone—looked in a mirror, and bam, instant statue. There's more crosswordese: ETNA and APSE and EWES EWER NTH EEL UTE and and and IBIS ... but at least I learned something with that IBIS clue (76A: Sebastian the ___, University of Miami mascot). This is about as weird as Alabama having an elephant mascot. The Crimson Tide has an elephant, and the Hurricanes have ... an IBIS!? Amazing, improbable animal life in mascotland.
[That's an IBIS? It's giving Howard the Duck]
Bullet Points:
1A: "Here's looking at you, kid" or "You can't handle the truth!," famously (AD LIB) — had to LOL at "famously" because I had no idea (the first quote is Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, the second is Jim Varney in Ernest Goes to Camp)
29A: Altima alternative (SENTRA) — I thought it would be an alternative make, and so I jumped from Nissan to Hyundai and wrote in SONATA. Like the Altima, the SONATA is a mid-sized sedan, whereas the SENTRA is a compact (recategorized from subcompact in 1999, though the EPA now rates it as "mid-size" due to its interior volume—look at me, car guy! Thanks, wikipedia!). The SENTRA is known as the SYLPHY in East Asian and other markets. That's a great-looking car model (crosswordwise). No AIEOUs! And now you know about it, so it's fair game. So if you are an elemental spirit (or a slender, graceful woman) and you're in the market for a vehicle for which you are aptly named, consider a SYLPHY. You're gonna have to move to China, but ... probably worth it.
41A: Creature whose mating habitats are a scientific mystery (EEL) — to quote Friday's puzzle, CITATION NEEDED. "A scientific mystery"? You're gonna have to give me more info here. Sincerely (if briefly) thought the puzzle was being cheeky and the answer was gonna be MAN. Anyway, looks like eel breeding is slightly less of a "mystery" now than it was even a few years ago.
For years, the epic life cycle of European eels remained an unproven theory. It was only in 2022 that scientists tracked silver eels to their spawning grounds, where the females release millions of eggs that are externally fertilised by the male eels. (BBC Science Focus, 2022)
73A: Mother of Perseus (DANAE) — you ever just *know* something but you don't know how you know it and you think "why do I know that?" and your knowledge surprises you so much that you don't actually trust it? That was me and this answer.
112A: Chugging a bottle of hot sauce, perhaps (DARE) — you do something *on* a dare, but your doing of it is not the DARE itself. There's just something ... slightly off about the clue phrasing here, to my ear.
118A: Late-night host who once wrote for "The Simpsons" (O'BRIEN) — someday I will enter that last vowel with confidence. Today was not that day.
79D: A Tyrannosaurus rex's was nearly 17 inches long (EGG) — I do not think of eggs as being "long," as being measured by "length," so this was weird. I mean, of course, they aren't perfect spheres, not even close, so they have length and width, but the clue was phrased to suggest body part so I thought body part. EAR? That seemed ... small for a T-rex. But then its arms are disproportionately small, right, so who knows!? Oh, whoops, looks like dinosaurs didn't have external ear tissue at all. Rex Parker—come for the crossword commentary, but ... well, leave for the paleontology, really not his thing.
Word of the Day: Puppy chow (51D: Puppy chow ingredient => CHEX) —
Puppy chow, also known as monkey munch, muddy buddies, muddy munch, reindeer chow, or doggy bag, is the name for a homemade candy made in the United States, primarily in the Midwestern States. The recipe's name and ingredients can differ depending on the version, but most recipes will typically include cereal, melted chocolate, peanut butter (or other nut butters), and powdered sugar. Nut free versions can be made using nut butter alternatives, like Notnuts or sun butter. Corn, wheat, or rice cereal can be used, usually Chex and/or Crispix. The true origins of the candy are not known.
• • •
Considered making this whole write-up just a list of bullet points, since seemingly every clue is, well, SO EXTRA (12D: Trying way too hard, in modern slang). Feels like lots of things might need explaining today. We'll see. In what feels like a late-week trend for me lately, I totally washed out in the NW at first pass. Yes, ESSO, I got that, but otherwise, zilch. I was thinking of the Phillie PHANATIC when I read the mascot clue, but I've only ever heard him (him?) referred to by his whole name, and anyway didn't really know that you spelled it in that phunny way. ASHAMED seems obvious in retrospect (1A: Red in the face, say), but after BLUSHED (?), I had no ideas. Abandon ship. Finally got traction with FIR FISTS IDAHO IDES STAX, and you'd think that "X" would've sent me flying out of that corner, but no, "modern slang" (unsurprisingly) held me up. There's just so damn much of it, and it keeps changing, and I'm really hoping that millennials and even Gen Z are beginning, now and then, to feel that feeling of "wait, the kids are saying what now?" because it's a special feeling. Pfft. I've actually heard "SO EXTRA" plenty, I think, but I wasn't sure exactly how "modern" we were talking and I took one look at that clue (12D: Trying way too hard, in modern lingo) and was like "SO-X---? The clue says 'Trying,' so ... Something-ING? SOXXING? Are people SOXXING now?"
Might've busted out of the NE more easily except I got fooled by the (unexpectedly) cryptic clue on RENEE (18A: Woman in dire need?) (i.e. the woman's name found inside the phrase "dire need"). The "?" had me wondering where the wordplay was in "dire" or "need," but there's no play, or no play related to word meaning. Just consecutive letters. So I had to work for that first corner, but I got through, and then (finally) was able to throw WINDOW WASHER into the middle of the grid (27A: Job that anyone could see themselves doing?), and then a couple longer answers off of that, and so that awful feeling of "am I even gonna be able to do this?" (which I often feel on Saturdays, actually) went away, or abated, at any rate (even if you're making good progress on a late-week puzzle, you never know when some corner, some cross, is gonna leap out and bite you)
[I like that YODELERS is coming down from on high ... like a yodel (34D: Some long-distance callers)]
The only Weaving I know in the world of acting (or anywhere) is Hugo Weaving, so SAMARA was a ??? but she weirdly posed very little problem. Had her as SAHARA for a hot second, but SMALL CRAFT eventually took care of that (29D: Kind of boat affected by a wind advisory). As pop culture clues go, SAMARA was not nearly as brutal as LOTTA Sea Lice, a 2017 album that was on a lot of "Best of" lists that year but still, yikes. I say "yikes" as someone who has actually heard of the album, someone who has listened to Courtney Barnett (if not Kurt Vile) a great deal. I'm 100% certain that a huge chunk of you won't recognize even the names of the artists, let alone the name of the album. Its chart success was extremely modest (51 on the US album chart), so if you're not an indie rock fan, I feel for you today. The crosses all seem fair, so there's that.
Anyway, after escaping the NE and getting into the middle of the grid, there were no terrible trouble spots, just a steady Saturday struggle. Backed into the NW—the -THS got me POLYMATHS—and made pretty short work of it. The SW was a little tougher. I actually blanked on FINCHES, though that's really a gimme, or should've been (36D: "To Kill a Mockingbird" family). I could picture the "family" but the only name coming to me was "Scout." Anyway, easy with a few crosses, but the FITS part of FITS IN, not easy (36A: Doesn't stick out). ART STUDIO, not easy (30D: Setting for a sitting)—I had ART SCHOOL! Then there was "CHUG!" which I (of course?) had as "TOGA!" (showing my age, I s'pose) (48A: When repeated, college party chant). So there was futzing to be done in there, but nothing too hard. Finished in the SE ... sadly, I finished with CHEX, which I didn't understand at all. In the end, I reasoned that there must be some kind of snack called "puppy chow" made with CHEX that I'd just never heard of ... and I was right (see Word of the Day, above). Supposedly a midwestern thing. I lived in the "midwest" for the better part of a decade, never heard of it. There are many midwests, you learn, if you live long enough.
Bullets:
1D: Gala, e.g. (APPLE) — obviously a very vague clue, so I needed help from crosses. But even after I got it, I thought Gala was an Apple product, like the iPad... then I remembered no, it's an honest-to-god edible apple variety.
59A: Apollo was conceived in them (SIXTIES) — needs the "the," but OK. "Apollo" here is the space program.
4D: Where the average American lives (ANYTOWN, USA) — Because PEORIA, IL wouldn't fit.
5D: Word with the same meaning in English, Swahili and Mandarin, among other languages (MAMA) — interesting, but the clue was initially no help at all.
42A: It once ran the headline "Santa Dies on Xmas Trip": Abbr. (NYT) — I don't get it. Like, I don't get the joke or reference or anything. I guess it's funny but ... why? Is this a known headline? I guess they wanted to make it sound (kinda?) like The Onion, so you wouldn't immediately think "oh, you're talking about yourself, good one, NYT." [Looks up headline] ... Oh. Oh wow. You are not prepared, I promise you, for how maudlin or mawkish or one of those "m"-words this story is—from the front page of the Christmas Day edition, 1913 ... I give you this apparently legendary story about a dude w/ TB who died doing cosplay for the neighbor boy:
Annnnnyway, Merry Christmas, everybody! See you next time.
Word of the Day: XENOMORPH (36A: Extraterrestrial menace in 5-Down) —
The xenomorph (also known as a Xenomorph XX121, Internecivus raptus, or simply the alien or the creature) is a fictional endoparasitoidextraterrestrialspeciesthat serves as the titular main antagonist of the Alien and Alien vs. Predator franchises. [...] The xenomorph's design is credited toSwisssurrealist and artistH. R. Giger, originating in alithographtitledNecronom IVand refined for the series's first film,Alien. The practical effects for the xenomorph's head were designed and constructed byItalianspecial effects designerCarlo Rambaldi. Species design and life cycle have been extensively augmented, sometimes inconsistently, throughout each film // Unlike many other extraterrestrial races in film and television science fiction (such as theDaleksandCybermeninDoctor Who, or theKlingonsandBorginStar Trek), the xenomorphs are notsapienttoolmakers — they lack a technological civilization of any kind, and are instead primal,predatorycreatures with no higher goal than the preservation and propagation of their own species by any means necessary, up to and including the elimination of other lifeforms that may pose a threat to their existence. Likewaspsortermites, xenomorphs areeusocial, with a single fertilequeenbreeding a caste of warriors, workers, or other specialist strains. The xenomorphs'biological life cycleinvolves traumatic implantation ofendoparasitoidlarvae inside living hosts; these "chestburster" larvae erupt from the host's body after a short incubation period, mature into adulthood within hours, and seek out more hosts for implantation.
• • •
I have awakened / awoken with an absolutely terrible headache neckache jawache, lord knows why, but lord, thy vassal doth not deserve this, truly. Anyway, I'm quite certain this has colored my solving experience, and maybe made the puzzle seem tougher than it was. All three of the short Acrosses in the NW were totally inscrutable to me, which made starting the puzzle ... difficult. Short crosses are supposed to come through for me, and those ... didn't. Even (finally) guessing ACME at 1D: Summit didn't help much. No idea what "jackknives" are or what they "cut," would never (ever) say "CRAP out" (I had CONK), and as for a cob ... I guess that's a male swan (?) ... yes, my crossword memory is telling me that's correct ... but I couldn't get off corn, or ... I wanna say "salad," but I know that's the two-B "cobb." Since I had CONK (not CRAP, ugh), the "bit of foam" in 13D: Bit of foam, perhaps (PEANUT) remained a mystery, even though I knew immediately that it was *packing* foam. I wanted KERNEL, gah. Abandoning this section and moving one over gave me ALIEN and ALAMO and LAX and IMF and (after a few beats) VALID, but "DO-" as a 8D: Enthusiastic assent??? No idea. "D'OH!? That's not an assent," I correctly reasoned. Oof. So just getting the ball rolling today was ... well, I got the ball rolling the way Sisyphus got the ball rolling, basically. Rough.
After that, things settled into normalish Friday territory, but I was still thrown off repeatedly by a cluing style or voice, and a cultural frame of reference, that I just didn't connect with. I had the SH- at 23D: Improve, as an argument, and was certain it was SHORE UP ... only to find out it was SHARPEN. Had the -MORPH part of the Alien answer but absolutely no idea what the first part should be. Eventually reasoned XENO- from my knowledge of what that prefix means (namely, "alien"), and assumed (then) that XENOMORPH was a generic term for "alien life form" ... only to find out (Word of the Day!) that it's a franchise-specific life form found exclusively in Alien properties. Huh. Not a franchise I've spent a lot of time with, so ... shrug. No idea what this alleged country "standard" is ("Old SHEP"), and no idea who SHANE Gillis is, so that cross was ... fun! (Though absolutely not a Natick—"S" is the only good guess there, though it would've been hilarious (to me and my headache) if it had been "Old WHEP" and WHANE Gillis, which sounds like a comedy duo to rival Wayland Flowers and Madame.
I don't know what you call this particular clue style: 49D: A good way to feel / 34A: Bad thing to be out of (or why one of those clues starts with an indefinite article and the other doesn't), but it's not my favorite. It could be bad to be out of ... TIME, LUCK, YOUR MIND, TOILET PAPER ... sigh. That SEEN / DEN crossing was oddly hard for me, as I thought the ottoman itself had a setting (low?) or else we were dealing with actual historical Ottomans, and thus some location in the Middle East (or its time zone?). Do homes still have DENs? It's such a funny word. It's just a room with a couch and a TV, possibly a fireplace? What any of that has to do with bears, I have no idea. Speaking of bears, I liked SALMON RUN, as well as "DON'T ANSWER THAT" and "CITATION NEEDED," though those are the only answers that rise to the zingy standards I have for marquee answers on a Friday. SIX FIGURES and ACTION POSE aren't bad, or at least they seem original, but SIX FIGURES is kind of off-putting (innocent enough, but my brain keeps hearing it in the voice of a certain kind of guy who likes to talk about what he earns and what other people earn ... he's not a pleasant guy), and ACTION POSE ... not sure why I'm neutral on that one. I think it's a standard enough term from drawing and comics. A static rendering of a body in movement. I guess one could pose *as if* one were performing an action, that might count too. I dunno ... answer's fine, just not exciting the way the more colloquial stuff, and the grizzly bear stuff, was.
Bullets:
9D: Account of a wild night out? (TAB) — if you have a wild night out of drinking, then you might end up with a sizable bar TAB (an actual, financial "account" of your drinking)
48A: Sources of high-quality wool (ALPACAS) — read this as "high-quality wood" and was briefly flummoxed. "AL...DERS? AL...ABAMA?"
9D: Numbers 1 through 36 are found in it (TORAH) — lol no idea. Baffled. Completely got me. Even when I got it, I didn't get it. Figured that my not being Jewish was the problem here, but ... no. No specialized knowledge required, really. There are 36 chapters in (the Book of) Numbers, which is one of the first five books of the Bible, i.e. the TORAH.
[Warning: aggressively sentimental dog death]
33A: Sch. in Ypsilanti whose mascot is an eagle, not another large bird (EMU) — Eastern Michigan University, right down the street from where I went to grad school (Go Blue). YPSI has been in the puzzle just once, but I would welcome it back with open arms.
45D: Eyed food, informally (TATER) — read this as "Eye food," which I assumed was something like "eye candy" (!??), and thought "do we call hot people TATERs now? What TikTok trend did I miss this time!?" Did I mention I woke up with a headache? Ugh.
Gonna go eye some (non-potato) food now. Actually, first coffee, then sit in "DEN" do Wordle, later food. Good day.
Relative difficulty: no idea how difficult the theme is, I solved this without looking at the theme entries because the puzzle itself is very easy; hooray for themes where the entries are valid words + phrases in the grid, so you can fill them in from crosses
THEME: it's actually not a hard theme; phrases of the form "X and Y" are repurposed with Y as the clue and the entry being "X + (word that means "companion")"; see below
Word of the Day: RAIN [Petrichor is the aroma produced by this] — look, I'm not gonna post a definition per se here, but "petrichor" is my favorite word, and tbh I'd go so far as to say it's the prettiest word in the English language; anyway, it comes from the Greek words "petra" (rock) and "ichor" (this is a crossword staple, you already know it's the blood of the gods), which tells you just how beautiful that scent really is, and why I love both the scent and the word...
• • •
Hey hi howdy hello, Christopher Adams once again filling in for Rex on a Thursday where the theme is...well, it's not what I would've thought for a Thursday. Could pass for a Wednesday, maybe a Tuesday even. I wonder if OTAKU is the reason why this is a Thursday; to me it's not a difficult word, but YMMV wildly there, and Will Shortz is definitely not the target demographic for it, so I can see why this was a Thursday puzzle on the logic that "it's harder than Wednesday", even if (a) I don't agree and (b) it's not the usual sort of trickiness one would expect from a Thursday.
Theme answers:
[LIMB] for LIFE PARTNER ("life and limb")
[FOREMOST] for FIRST MATE ("first and foremost")
[READY] for GOOD BUDDY ("good and ready")
[DINE] for WINE PAIRING ("wine and dine")
Gonna be honest, I don't remember most of the solve; words filled themselves in, clues didn't offer much resistance, and I was at the right level of tired that I skipped over clues I couldn't fill in immediately. Hence the figuring out of the theme post-solve; if this were a trickier puzzle, I would've had to stop and figure things out, but very little in this puzzle put up a resistance, and even the parts that did got much easier once I had a letter or two in place from clues that really were that easy.
And still, a fun puzzle, a nice aha moment deciphering the theme post-solve, some fun phrases (AM I TOO LATE, ALASKA ROLL, some theme entries) scattered throughout, as well as fun clues (BRAT, NFL, OGRE, etc.). Even the clues that were straightforward often felt fun and (more importantly) felt like they were written by an actual constructor: BERET, RAIN, PETS, etc. Overall an enjoyable puzzle; it's not at all what I wanted or expected from a Thursday, but when it's a fun, clean solve, you can't complain too much about it not being tricksy or difficult.
40A: [Insert, as a video in a post]
52D: [2024 Charli XCX album with a lime green cover] BRAT (but brat summer is over, so now we're pumpkin that; also, per charli, "kamala is brat", please register to vote, and vote for kamala)
Olio:
RISES [Gets ready for the national anthem, maybe] — The "maybe" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I do not care to have the national anthem played at sporting events. To put it bluntly: it's jingoistic. It has no place at domestic sporting events, full stop, and I hate how it's been co-opted and turned into a big deal in a post-9/11 world. It's the same sort of "patriotism" (there needs to be more quote marks there) that gave us a certain strain of country music that I also abhor and also wish would go away. I fully support those who refuse to stand for the national anthem (especially in a country that often does not stand for or support you), and even more fully support movements to stop playing the damn thing, period.
BELOW ["Fathoms ___" (opening song of "The Little Mermaid")] — Did not know the title of this song, but I love the clue because it's fun, you learn something, and you can get the answer immediately even without knowing it; it's the sort of thing I enjoy including when I write trivia, for those reasons.
OCTET [Large wedding band, say] — Gonna be honest, filled in the -ET at the end immediately and let the downs disambiguate between OCTET and NONET and anything else it might've been.
SPAYS [Neuters] — How many of you read this clue/answer pair in Bob Barker's (or Drew Carey's) voice?
Yours truly, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld
This was slower-starting than it should've been. That's how it felt anyway. Completely broke down right out of the gate because of STELLA Parks (1D: Parks whose cookbook "BraveTart" won the James Beard Award), whose first name could've been any name in all of namedom as far as I was concerned. Looking her up just now, she seems to be known primarily for the one book (the title of which is only reminding me how much I hated Braveheart). I guess if you're a serious Serious Eats fan (where she wrote for a time), then her name may be quite familiar, but otherwise she seems kind of obscure, as crossword-famous people go. I mean, I don't know *lots* of names, but usually when I look them up, it seems like they're legit famous and I just missed them. Didn't quite seem that way with this name. And so my whole NW corner just caved in. Got SOB but then couldn't confirm it with any of the Downs and after a stab or two at some other things, I just abandoned the corner and went over to the adjacent section, where I got traction: TOO OAF OLE OLAF etc., but even there things were a little on the slow side, as it took me Every Single Letter to get that first theme. Nothing about the phrase seemed familiar. What is the pun? I wondered. I wanted, like, a Life of Pi pun, but no. Life of Riley? Sincerely, I had LIFE OF -AWS and thought maybe a giant tiger was ramming the boat (still on Life of Pi, I guess), and that the answer was going to be LIFE OF PAWS (!?!?!). Then IN JEST gave me LIFE OF JAWS and I just stared for a few seconds, not seeing it. Then I saw it—swap "LIFE" and "JAWS" and you get JAWS OF LIFE (a recognizable phrase!). So ... that's it. It's a word swap puzzle. Swap words, get wacky. Puzzle got a lot easier from there on out.
But did it get more enjoyable? Yes and no. Yes, in that I knew what I was dealing with, and there was a lot less flailing, and there was nothing else in the puzzle that stumped me like STELLA. The theme, though, feels slight. Well, it's simple, for sure, but you can do big things with simple things if you really nail the execution. If every themer is a Truly Wacky banger, then who cares if the trick itself is rudimentary? But only two of these seem to rise to the appropriate wacky standards. The animal ones. I like both of those. LIFE OF JAWS (esp. its clue) is pretty funny, and LIONS OF PRIDE is pretty good too, though frankly I like it better (in my mind) if the LIONS are actual, feline lions and not just "lions" in the metaphorical "bigwig" sense. Queer lions, proudly marching in the parade, that is what I want to see (and am seeing, in my mind's eye, right now). The other themers are just OK. LOVE OF LABORS is weird with LABORS in the plural. FORTUNE OF CHANGE is kind of boring on its face, and anyway, it would be a fortune in change (not "of"). And ARMS OF COAT is ridiculous because it just gives you a literal ordinary thing, like "hem of dress" or "laces of shoe" or something. The "wackiness" just doesn't land with that one. So ... it's so-so, on the whole.
After I got LIFE OF JAWS worked out, as I say, the puzzle got a lot easier. No real hang-ups, and eventually backed my way into that initially disastrous NW corner, picking up THEN (12A: Not now) and "OH COOL" (2D: "That's pretty nifty!") and BEHAVIORAL (3D: Like problems a schoolteacher might deal with) and other things that had eluded me. Speaking of that corner, really loving the LOVE OF LABORS / COITUS / ALIBI, "laboring" being a common euphemism (at least in 17c. poetry) for COITUS, and ALIBI being something you'll need, maybe, if your COITUS is of the illicit kind. Gotta get that COITUSALIBI straight, for sure. "Did you do the COITUS!?" "No, I have an ALIBI!" "Well ... good, then." But back to difficulty (if any). I tried to spell Whoopi Goldberg's Oscar-winning role like the nail polish brand—well, not OPI MAE, but ODI MAE, for sure (49D: Whoopi's Oscar-winning role in "Ghost" => ODA MAE). I also had FUSS before FUTZ (54D: Mess (with)), and took what felt like an awful long time to get TOMATO (47D: Part of a club) (the "club" is a sandwich, it turns out). Otherwise, any part of the puzzle I haven't mentioned—piece of cake. The whole thing came out feeling just about right, difficulty-wise, for a Wednesday.
Bullet points:
57D: Lazarus with a sonnet on the Statue of Liberty (EMMA) — had the "E" and wrote in ... EZRA. I think the "z" in Lazarus, coupled with certain crossword-name reflexes, just ... pushed me in the wrong direction. Of course it's EMMA. Of course of course. EMMA is ... better than EZRA. EMMA is ... good:
23D: Usually dry streambeds (ARROYOS) — not a fan of froyo, but I am a fan of ARROYOS, as a word as well as a geographical feature. Would I eat froyo in an arroyo? Well first, I have questions about how I got in the arroyo in the first place, and second, no, I would not eat froyo in an arroyo. Just ice cream for me, thanks. I would eat gelato in a grotto, though, in case you were wondering.
52D: Statement of defeat ("I LOST") — I don't really have anything here, but the "LOST" part reminded me of this performance, which I became aware of only yesterday—one of the most improbable, jaw-dropping cover songs I've ever heard (do not press play unless you've got the 8 minutes to spare, because it's an experience you can't really shortcut): it's Kasey Chambers covering the Eminem classic "Lose Yourself" (from the movie 8 Mile):
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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