THEME: "YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS!" (59A: Cry from someone seeking revenge ... or a hint to the ends of 16-, 22-, 37- and 49-Across) — last words of theme answers are things you might pay:
Theme answers:
THESIS STATEMENT (16A: Sentence that often appears in the first paragraph of an essay)
SANITY CHECK (22A: Quick confirmation of feasibility)
ACID TAB (37A: Dose for an LSD trip)
BUFFALO BILL (49A: Football player in upstate New York)
Word of the Day:Tenochtitlan(6D: Empire whose capital city was Tenochtitlán => AZTEC) —
At its peak, it was the largest city in the pre-ColumbianAmericas. It subsequently became a cabecera of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Today, the ruins of Tenochtitlan are in the historic center of the Mexican capital. The World Heritage Site of Xochimilco contains what remains of the geography (water, boats, floating gardens) of the Mexica capital.
A pretty basic "last words"-type puzzle (where the last words in the theme answers, in different contexts, all belong to the same category of thing—in this case, things you pay). I can't help but feel that STATEMENT is an outlier here. The others all feel like they belong to distinct contexts: you pay the CHECK at a restaurant, the TAB at a bar, and the BILL ... well, that could also be at a restaurant or bar, but you pay various BILLs (utility etc.) from home. A STATEMENT is just a subcategory of BILL. Your credit card STATEMENT is just a subcategory of "bill" in my mind. Also, you pay the check, pay the tab, pay the bill, but you don't "pay the statement." You might pay the statement balance (if you google ["pay the statement"], most all the hits involve "balance"). I think technically STATEMENT is perfectly defensible. It just doesn't land the way the others land, and seems like it doesn't quite fit. Doesn't quite have its own discreet lane. Bigger issue for me, though, was BUFFALO BILL, on two counts. The first, lesser count is the singular BUFFALO BILL. Something about using just one player seems sad and odd. Why not just clue BUFFALO BILL as the guy. You know, BUFFALO BILL Cody, the soldier, bison hunter, showman. He's a unique individual, unlike the BILLS, plural, which are a team. But non-pluralness isn't the real problem with BUFFALO BILL. No, the real problem is the clue. No Buffalonian (I think that's what they're called?) (just kidding, folks), I say no resident of Buffalo would ever say they live in "upstate New York." That is some provincial NYC crap right there. I know, I know, anything north of 96th is "upstate" to you all, but Buffalo is decidedly "western New York." It's nowhere near, say, Poughkeepsie (also, don't tell people from Poughkeepsie that they live "upstate," they hate it ... well, my students from there hate it, anyway). I generally think "upstate" is fine for most of non-NYC New York (including where I live, which is technically Central New York, or, more specifically, the Southern Tier), but Buffalo really is an entirely different ecosystem. It's the heart of western New York. Just ask any Buffaloer (I think that's what they're called).
The fill is surprisingly weak today. Cheater squares in the corners (NW, SE) and yet you've still got stuff like HAHAS and LIS and SOU and AONE and ANAL. That last one you could easily eliminate by changing TUNA to something like CORA or HORA or even TOGA—I'd take a partial like A GAL or A PAL or something like that over ANAL. It's not an offensive word, of course, it's just ... I dunno. I used it once in a puzzle and I've regretted it ever since. Don't make solvers think about anuses if you don't have to, that's my philosophy. One of them, anyway. Also, RETAIL SHOP kind of clanked. Feels like odd, formal, even dated phrasing. Ditto "mom-and-pop store." The clue did very little to help me get the answer. Needed lots of crosses. Otherwise, though, the Downs-only solve was pretty smooth. As usual, the longer Downs were the harder Downs, with MAIN IDEA and especially RETAIL SHOP taking a bit of work. But ELENA KAGAN (2D: Supreme Court justice appointed by Barack Obama) and BOOBIRDS (39D: Loud and unhappy sports fans, in slang) were gimmes, and nothing in the short stuff was too much of a problem either. As usual, I confused SERB and SLAV (31D: Balkan native), and I could not figure out the "word that can come before" clue (I'm truly bad at these). For 10D: Word before ended, handed or minded (OPEN), I originally wrote in EVEN. I know, "EVEN-ended" is not a thing. I see that now. What else? Oh, I tried every five-letter ancient American civilization I could think of (including OLMEC) before hitting on AZTEC. And I was slightly worried that PESKY might in fact be PESTY (is that a word?) (5D: Irksome).
THEME: "The Ayes Have It" — an "aye" pun ... the letter "I" is added to both words in familiar two-word phrases, creating wacky answers, which are clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style)
Theme answers:
CORNIER STORIES (22A: Anecdotes that are more likely to elicit eye rolls?)
TIRADE IDEALS (39A: Qualities of the perfect rant?)
WIRY SIMILE (47A: "Skinny as a beanpole" or "thin as a rail"?)
STEAMIER CLAIM (68A: More risqué assertion?)
TAXI BIASES (87A: Reasons that commuters might prefer Uber?)
WAITER METIER (95A: In-depth knowledge of the menu, perhaps?)
PLIANT GENIUSES (118A: Ones with flexible minds and bodies?)
Word of the Day: Ragamuffin (1A: Establishment where you might eat a muffin while petting a ragamuffin => CAT CAFE) —
The Ragamuffin is a breed of domestic cat. It was once considered to be a variant of the Ragdoll cat but was established as a separate breed in 1994. Ragamuffins are notable for their friendly personalities and thick fur. // The physical traits of the breed include a rectangular, broad-chested body with shoulders supporting a short neck. These cats are classified as having heavy bonesand a "substantial" body type. // The head is a broad, modified wedge with a moderately rounded forehead with short or medium-short muzzle and an obvious nose dip. The muzzle is wide with puffy whisker pads.The body should appear rectangular with a broad chest and broad shoulders and moderately heavy muscling in the hindquarters, with the hindquarters being equally broad as the shoulders. A tendency toward a fatty pad in the lower abdomen is expected. // Fur length is to be slightly longer around the neck and outer edges of the face, resulting in the appearance of a ruff. Texture is to be soft, dense and silky. Ragamuffin kittens are usually born white and develop a color pattern as they mature.Every color and pattern is allowable, with or without white.Their coats can be solid color, stripes, spots or patches of white, black, blue, red, cream, chocolate,lilac, cinnamon,seal brownor mixed colors.Their eyes can be any solid color, with some exhibitingheterochromia.
• • •
The concept here is lackluster. There's just not enough oomph or pizzazz or charm to carry a Sunday-sized puzzle. The title seems like a shrug—an obvious, corny pun with no real cleverness to it. Sometimes simple themes can yield funny results, but today's just yields ... results. Virtually all the puzzle's difficulty is in those themers, primarily because they are so preposterous, but without any of the enjoyable zaniness that sometimes comes with preposterousness. Plus, some of the theme clues and answers just seemed off. The worst, for me, was the clue on PLIANT GENIUSES (118A: Ones with flexible minds and bodies?). Nothing about this clue suggests "genius." Nothing. Flexibility and genius are not the same. They are not. They aren't. A genius might have a flexible mind (whatever that means), but so might anybody. I had PL(I)ANT and then no idea what was supposed to follow. Because the clue was bad. Boo to that clue, for sure. As far as the answers themselves go, WIRY SIMILE was the one that stood out as a bit of a clunker because—unlike every other theme answer—the base term ("wry smile") already has an "I" in it. So instead of the two "I"s you get in every other theme answer, you end up with three. A three-ayed monster. Not a fatal flaw, but an inelegance, nonetheless. But again, the bigger problem today is that there's just not enough zing overall. The "I"-added answers just don't shine the way they ought to.
The real stars of this grid are the long Downs, particularly "RHAPSODY IN BLUE" (49D: Gershwin composition that opens with a famous clarinet glissando). I think STAG PARTIES and PUBLIC RADIO are also lovely, solid entries. I'm more neutral on SEE WHAT HAPPENS, mainly because it's a verb phrase that really could use ... context? More? "LET'S SEE WHAT HAPPENS," maybe? Or maybe it would be better clued as a kind of exasperated "what did I tell you?" type of expression. "See!? SEE WHAT HAPPENS!? He just sits there! I call his name, I whistle, but nothing. He just sits there. Oh why did I ever get a ragamuffin cat!? They're so standoffish, cool, and eremitic! Yes, I'm reading from a thesaurus, that's how sad I am, boo hoo! Well, I've had it. I'm gonna give Mr. Floofberry here to the CAT CAFE. Maybe he'll be happier there. Boo hoo." Etc. Annnnyway, those four long Downs were the highlight of the puzzle for me. The rest of it didn't seem to have much to offer.
[4D: Supergroup that performed at Woodstock, familiarly]
Speaking of "OFFER," that is what I had at first for 107D: Put forward (OPINE), which is part of what made that SE corner the toughest section by far (still not properly tough, but tougher, for sure). OPTIMA as an actual word (as opposed to a bygone Kia model), that was also trouble (114A: Most favorable conditions). You'd say "optimal conditions" ... you just would. If you said OPTIMA, you would be asked to repeat yourself, at which point you'd probably revert to speaking like a normal person, if only to save time. I don't think of the SUN BELT as a meaningful place. As a place at all. I am aware that it is a place of some geographical meaning and coherence, but if you ask me the place that's [Home to eight of the 10 fastest-growing cities in the U.S.], I'm gonna look for a state, probably. I don't mind the clue as is, just explaining why it added to my problems down there in the SE corner. Lastly, there was BUTTON UP, which is an expression I just wouldn't use (89D: Complete in a tidy manner). PUT A BOW ON IT, maybe. SEW UP, possibly. But not BUTTON UP. I had the -UT and was quite sure it must be PUT-something, so I tried PUT TO BED. That's kinda sorta in the ballpark of the [Complete in a tidy manner], right? Idiomatically? PUT TO BED: "to successfully deal with something or solve a problem." I'd call that ballparkish. But wrong. It's BUTTON UP. Again, not an idiom in my idiom ... bag? Canister? Quiver? Wherever one keeps idioms.
Bullets:
8D: Hwy. that includes a Lake Michigan ferry crossing (U.S. TEN) — this highway doesn't seem nearly major enough to be puzzle-worthy. I thought the answer referred to the interstate, but no, that highway is major and transcontinental (also, further south), whereas this highway is just a stretch of road through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I lived in Michigan for eight years and I go to Minnesota regularly and I'm not sure I've ever been on it (?):
9D: Virtual animal companion (NEOPET) — Are these still things? Feels so turn-of-the-century.
53D: Comparatively low (AS SAD) — woof, the cure is worse than the disease here. I am happy that you decided not to include a murdering tyrant in the puzzle (ASSAD), but I think maybe the real solution isn't so much a different clue as never including these particular letters in this particular order. AS SAD is about as clunky an answer as they come.
44D: Latin name for ancient Troy (ILIUM) — probably most familiar to English speakers from Doctor Faustus: "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships, / And burned the topless towers of Illium?" I guess he spelled it with two "L"s, but it's the same place. I wrote in ILION, which would've been correct, if the clue had said "Greek name ..."
31A: Players who straddle two positions, in hoops lingo (TWEENERS) — oof. I guess this is recent lingo? I used to be a big "hoops" fan in my youth and this term is unknown to me.
46A: Yodel alternatives (HO-HOS) — Yodels are snack cakes. I haven't thought about them since roughly 1983.
46A: Two for an opinion (CENTS) — I like that inflation has truly made the average opinion nearly worthless. Social media confirms this valuation daily.
72A: Ending of many designer dog breed names (POO) — about as good a clue as you're going to get for POO. The least shitty. The "POO" here is short for "poodle," I think. Most of your poodle crossbreeds are "doodles," but some of them are POOs, who can say why? Here's a Westiepoo:
103A: "Mulan" adversaries (HUNS) — I wrote in HANS. Like ... HAN Chinese. I haven't seen Mulan since the mid-90s when it came out.
18D: Menu items that McDonald's no longer offers in America, as of 2020 (SALADS) — man, COVID was more powerful than I thought. It killed SALADS. RIP, SALADS.
96D: No ___ May (pollinator-friendly movement) — if you're lucky, you live in a neighborhood where your neighbors don't call Code on you for participating in this "movement.". My neighbors won't call Code, but they *will* loudly complain from their neatly mown backyards, for sure.
62A: High style? (UPDO) — yes, I see the three (3) "UP"s in this grid (UPDO, BUTTON UP, TEEUP). That's right at, but not over, my "UP" limit. Innocuous two-letter words get a pass, especially if they aren't crossing one another.
Two more things: One, the Boswords Fall Themeless League is starting up again, with their first puzzle dropping next Monday, Oct. 7. Here's coordinator John Lieb with the deets:
Registration for the Boswords 2024 Fall Themeless League is open! This 10-week event starts with a Preseason puzzle on Monday, September 30 and features weekly themeless puzzles -- clued at three levels of difficulty -- from an all-star roster of constructors and are edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to solve a practice puzzle, to view the constructor line-up, and to learn more, go to www.boswords.org.
Also, congrats Richard Lichtenstein, Sandy Levine, and Seymour Gurion, who were the lucky winners of last week's Spy School: Entrance Exam book giveaway. And thanks to everyone who entered. I have yet to respond to all of your lovely notes, but I will ... :)
A light-on-dark color scheme, better known as dark mode, dark theme or night mode, is a color scheme that uses light-colored text, icons, and graphical user interface elements on a dark background. It is often discussed in terms of computer user interface design and web design. Many modern websites and operating systems offer the user an optional light-on-dark display mode.
Some users find dark mode displays more visually appealing, and claim that it can reduce eye strain. Displaying white at full brightness uses roughly six times as much power as pure black on a 2016 Google Pixel, which has an OLED display. However, conventional LED displays cannot benefit from reduced power consumption. Most modern operating systems support an optional light-on-dark color scheme. (wikipedia)
• • •
Quick write-up today, as I have an oddly full schedule, including a little crossword tournament up in Ithaca. But I often say "quick write-up" and it rarely comes to fruition, so let's see how this goes. This was a second day in a row where the marquee answers didn't seem quite up to snuff. I had a good reaction to REACTION GIF, but HIGHLAND COW ended up being oddly anticlimactic (17D: Shaggy Scottish grazer), as I got HIGHLAND easy enough, then just looked at those last three letters and thought "... is it just ... COW? Is that a thing?" It is! Anyhow, good enough answer, but the cow's got BACNE (i.e. back acne), so points off for repulsiveness (no offense to BACNE-havers, we've all been there, I presume, but ... not exactly an appealing bit of fill). And then there was SEED CAPITAL (14D: Angel's contribution), and this was the one that really killed the potentially creamy vibe of this triple-stack center. First, it's from the world of business/finance, and so the likelihood that it's going to be *scintillating* is ... low. And here's why—the self-importance. The inflated language. The businessspeakiness of it all. SEED ... CAPITAL? I had the SEED part, easy, but in my mind, the basic phrase here is "SEED money." Simple, direct, precise, common. A very in-the-language phrase. An angel (investor) provides seed money (i.e. initial funding) for any kind of business venture. But of course SEED MONEY wouldn't fit here—two letters short. So now I'm like "what are other words for 'money?' ugh, this is the last 'problem' my brain wants to be working on, now or ever: synonyms for 'money,' make it stop." I try FUNDING, but the crosses just don't work. So I just give up and work crosses. And the puzzle is so easy today that I get to CAPITAL eventually, but ... I mean, CAPITAL? La di dah, CAPITAL. It's just money, call it 'money.' This is like when everyone in business suddenly became an "entrepreneur." Oh, pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon, Monsieur Entrepreneur?" You're a businessman and you deal with money. Those are the nice plain terms. SEED CAPITAL, bah. (LOL, the entry at wikipedia is "Seed money" (vindication!), but wikipedia goes on to say, "also known as seed funding or SEED CAPITAL." Oh, money, then funding, then capital? You Don't Say!)
So 2/3 of those middle Downs were reasonably pleasing, but all the other long stuff only really gets up to the level of "OK." There's nothing that really pops or surprises in any of the corners. The grid's not bad, or ugly, it's just a little blah, and the puzzle as a whole was very, very easy, so there wasn't even the joy of the struggle today. Clues were mostly transparent. I was shocked that AGATHA was right at 1A: First name in mysteries. It's the first thing I thought of, which, on a Saturday, I assume is going to be wrong-o! Not EXACTO! (Do people really say EXACTO, "informally" or otherwise? Fonzie says "Exactamundo!"—now that's informal. Baroque, elaborate, hypersyllabic, yes, but still informal. To me X-ACTO is a knife brand, and that's all it is.). Was surprised to just glide through this whole grid, from AGATHA on down, with very little resistance. I just fell down the puzzle like a stream down the hill, inexorably pulled by gravity rather than anything that felt like real effort on my part—corner to corner in no time at all:
Not that there weren't hiccups along the way. One of those came right out of the gate. I "confirmed" AGATHA by crossing it with the [Shaving brand], which, of course is ... ATRA! 😕 And then I confirmed that wrong answer with ASHE (another right answer)! Sigh. Really locked into a four-letter mistake there. I went further—so certain of ATRA that off the (wrong) "T," I wrote in TUNE-UPS for 13A: Noncompetitive races (FUN RUNS), and you can see how many answers I can "confirm" off of TUNE-UPS. So that's a monumental snafu, first thing ... and yet all it really took to get out was remembering AFTA exists. After that, whoosh, no more stuckness. As you can see from the midsolve screenshot, above, I had ONCE instead of ONLY (41A: And no more), so that made the NE corner a little harder to get into than the others, but the others were Monday/Tuesday level, so saying the NE was "harder" isn't saying much. I got AORTAS off the "A" (nevermind that it was the stupid Latin plural AORTAE) (18A: Vital carriers), and EXO / EXACTO was easy, and INNS was a gimme (22A: Rustic respites), so that corner was over quickly. Oh, earlier, I did stop and stare at -AT for 35A: Pancake topper. First thought: "OAT?" Second, more desperate thought: "FAT?" I guess you do, conventionally (certainly pictorially), put a PAT of butter on top of your pancakes, but oof, still awful as clued. "What would you like on your pancakes?" "PAT! PAT! Can I have PAT?!" "We ... we have butter ..." "PAAAAAAAT!" "OK, OK, take it easy ... Who's PAT?"
Lightning round:
28D: First name for the third second-in-command (AARON) — ugh, presidential math, the worst. "OK, third president, so ... that's Jefferson, and then his veep was ... wait, was it really Burr? Huh, in all the Hamilton / "AARON Burr, sir" mania, I somehow forgot that very basic fact, LOL." Burr was VP during Jefferson's first term. For Jefferson's second term, it was George Clinton, who went on to be Madison's VP as well (?!), before ultimately abandoning the American political system altogether and joining Parliament:
11D: Intercessor for the frequently forgetful (ST. ANTHONY) — so he's the patron saint of people with memory problems. I did not know that. Kinda miffed that there's no abbr. indicator in the clue (as ST. is most def an abbr.), but on Saturdays especially I think they just throw basic decorum like that out the window.
37D: How some Hollywood relationships start (ON SCREEN) — really wanted this to be ON SET. We're talking about the actors, right? Not the fictional "relationships" in the movies themselves? I guess people who play lovers then become lovers, OK.
24A: Variable in Euler's polyhedron formula (V — E + F = 2) (EDGES) — no idea. None. "Polyhedron" was probably supposed to help me think of a shape with EDGES, but it did not. That's OK. I expect to have things baffle me, especially on Saturday. Way less bothered by EDGES (something I simply didn't know) than by the CAPITAL in SEED CAPITAL (a pretentious stand-in for a more basic term)—I know, I know: "Rex, it's a real term, I'm so tired of your etc.," relax, business guy; you have your reaction, I'll have mine.
Word of the Day: EGO death (9D: ___ death, concept associated with LSD trips) —
Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity". The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. The 19th-century philosopher and psychologist William James uses the synonymous term "self-surrender" and Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term psychic death, referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche. In death and rebirth mythology, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition, as described later by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero's Journey. It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking.
In descriptions of drugs, the term is used synonymously with ego-loss to refer to (temporary) loss of one's sense of self due to the use of drugs. The term was used as such by Timothy Learyet al. to describe the death of the ego in the first phase of an LSD trip, in which a "complete transcendence" of the self occurs.
The concept is also used in contemporary New Age spirituality and in the modern understanding of Eastern religions to describe a permanent loss of "attachment to a separate sense of self" and self-centeredness. This conception is an influential part of Eckhart Tolle's teachings, where Ego is presented as an accumulation of thoughts and emotions, continuously identified with, which creates the idea and feeling of being a separate entity from one's self, and only by disidentifying one's consciousness from it can one truly be free from suffering.
• • •
[11D: Simply delectable]
This seems like a fine, ordinary Friday puzzle, but it lost my good will at 1-Across and never really got it back. Poker lingo, ugh. There's something uniquely repulsive about it to me. Other lingos that aren't my own don't bug me nearly so much. But poker lingo, barf. BAD BEAT? Sounds like a dance music problem to me. I think I had BAD DEAL in there at one point. It's such an unpleasant, ugly-sounding phrase, BAD BEAT. And hey, look at that, No Surprise, it's a debut answer today. Constructors have been debuting some winners losers of late. Just 'cause it's new doesn't mean it's good. I realize this is a highly personal reaction based on my finding the whole poker phenomenon uniquely unattractive. Poker on television, that was really the beginning of the end for me. The elevation of poker players to household names. Pass. Hard hard pass. I'm just saying, poker brings nothing good to the world so let's all memory-hole it forever. Thanks.
[The poker player has spoken!]
Once I got out of that NW corner (which, despite the putrid BAD BEAT, wasn't all that hard to work out), things leveled off. But they just leveled, that is, they were fine. Things were fine. Adequate. Of the marquee stuff, only VICTORY LAPS is really giving us some ZESTY Friday flavor. ON AUTOPILOT is a bit dull, plus it's part of this phenomenon today where answers are unnecessarily long. Like, we get the formal or redundant versions of several answers. First, ON AUTO is a common phrase (16 NYTXW appearances!), but today we get the full, unexpurgated ON AUTOPILOT (I had ON AUTOMATIC here at first). Then there's SPOT ADS, which is a thing, I admit, but it's a thing I see in puzzles way way more than I hear or see it irl, probably because "spot" and "ad" mean the same thing so most people just say one of them. Ugh. Then there's "ARE YOU IN?," a valid interrogative phrase, but, as with ON AUTOPILOT, we see more often in shortened form—as "YOU IN?" (10 NYTXW appearances!). I don't think of these answers as faults so much as ... a tendency to bloat for the sake of "originality." So your "original" answer feels like something we've seen (a lot) before, just ... bigger.
I really like the clue on MOSQUITO NET (24D: Debugging soft wear?) except I don't really think of the net as something you "wear." I guess you might have one hanging off your ... what, pith helmet? Whatever, the clue's commitment to the computer programming pun is so enthusiastic that I can't help but be charmed. "LET'S ROLL" and "YOUR CALL" lend some nice colloquial energy to their respective corners. And while I generally hate ICER as a word, and more in the plural, today I that hatred was defused by the visual pun of having the ICERS (if not the actual icing) right on top of the CUPCAKES.
My primary difficulty (to the extent there was any difficulty) occurred in and around the verb phrase WINS GOLD (32A: Triumphs for one's country, maybe). I read "triumphs" as a noun, so that was my problem there. Then there was the kind-of-clever but very ambiguous clue on STS. (i.e. "streets") (26D: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.: Abbr.) and the not-clever, very clunky clue on GULL (33D: Port caller). I get it, you see GULLs near "ports" and the noises they make are in the general category of bird "calls" but what sort of phrase is "Port caller"? Are you trying to evoke "port of call"? It's such an awkward phrase. If you're gonna go awkward, there should at least be some wordplay reason for doing so, but I don't see it / hear it. I wanted BELL here at first because I had the "LL" and ... isn't there some nautical time-telling thing involving "BELLs"? Yes. Yes there is. But that's on a ship, not (only) in "port." Needed crosses to get FLEET (65A: Side in a game of Battleship) (which was the only way I was gonna get that second CHOPIN answer, IN E), and I had ALETAP before ALE KEG (47D: Source of a draft). Other than that, this puzzle was a breeze.
Bullets:
30A: Org. whose website has a "Register Your Drone" page (FAA) — Federal Aviation Administration. They should have a "Destroy Your Drone" page. "Smash drone with hammer. Get new hobby." There, I just wrote it for them. You're welcome, FAA.
3D: Middle's middle (DEES) — a "letteral" clue, i.e. you need to look at the letters in the clue to figure out the answer, namely the "middle" letters in the word "middle," i.e. the DEES.
[Rick DEES at the 3:00 mark but ... honestly I think you're gonna wanna watch it all]
13A: Root words? ("GO, TEAM, GO!") — the "words" one might use when "rooting" for one's team. I'm rooting for the Tigers, who (improbably) seem like they're about to make the playoffs? They were a sub-.500 team like [checks watch] 3 minutes ago. What a world. Go, Tigers, go.
38D: Who's cutting onions? (DICER) — not sure what this clue is trying to do. I think it wants to evoke the colloquial expression "Who's cutting onions?" (used when someone is crying and wants to blame something besides their emotions), but then ... it ultimately wants to be literal (a DICER cuts onions). I guess I can't figure out precisely what work the "?" is going here. A wordplay "?"? A simple interrogative "?"? Both?
18A: It'll rock your world (SEISM) —why is the word "seismic" so great but the word SEISM so so terrible? I think it's a pronunciation issue. "Size 'em?" Is that how you say it? But it looks like "Say-ism," or like a typo for "sexism." I don't even like looking at it, let alone saying it. Just say "tremor." Or, if you must be fancy, "temblor."
See you next time, and my apologies to poker and drone enthusiasts everywhere. You deserve a more understanding crossword blogger.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. Happy [counts on fingers ... runs out of fingers ... twice] 21st anniversary to my beautiful wife, Penelope, without whom ... well, I don't like to think about it. It's not pretty. Love you, honey.
THEME: DOUBLE / REVERSE (62A: With 63-Across, tricky football play ... as represented by this puzzle's shaded squares?) — each theme answer contains two sets of shaded squares in which the correct letters are reversed, resulting in a plausible answer ... that doesn't fit the clue:
Theme answers:
CRUELLA (i.e. CURE-ALL) (1A: Wonder drug)
GLOATS (i.e. GO LAST) (8A: Have the final turn)
SET POINT (i.e. STEP ON IT) (32A: Command to a getaway driver)
TARNATION (i.e. TARANTINO) (35A: Three-time nominee for Best Director (1994, 2009, 2019)
LAS VEGAS (i.e. SALVAGES) (39A: Rescues)
Word of the Day: SARA Bareilles (47A: Bareilles of Broadway) —
Sara Beth Bareilles (/bəˈrɛlɪs/bə-REL-iss; born December 7, 1979) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She has sold over three million albums and over 15 million singles in the United States. Bareilles has earned various accolades, including two Grammy Awards, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards. In 2012, VH1 named her one of the Top 100 Greatest Women in Music.
Bareilles rose to prominence with the release of her second studio album, Little Voice(2007), which was her first recording for a major record label (Epic). The album included the hit single "Love Song", which reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.
Started with a bang! Boom! PANACEA! (1A: Wonder drug). First thing in the grid! Me: "Yes! Nailed it! OK! Here we go! ... Here we ... Here ... Wait, isn't it LON Kruger? (5D: Longtime college basketball coach Kruger). Or maybe LEN, I forget, but definitely not CON. And how is [Makes a note of] gonna start with an 'E'? That doesn't work. Aw, man, is it not PANACEA? Well, that's deflating." Dispiriting, really. Just an embarrassing way to open, all full of confidence and certainty, only to fall flat on your face. Luckily, there were a bunch of gimmes in that NW corner to help hoist me back up, but once I had the corner all finished, I still had no idea why CRUELLA was right. I was trying to make the shaded squares mean something (RULLA?). And then the unshaded squares (CE?). Maybe run the shaded squares backwards (ALLUR?). I'm sure if I'd kept at it for a while, I would've gotten there, but tick tock, I gotta puzzle to solve, so I just moved on, assuming future themers would be more forthcoming ... and sure enough, the next one I got to was way more transparent. The only [Command to a getaway driver] I could think of was "STEP ON IT," and I looked at an answer that clearly had to be SET POINT ... and I saw it: the "STEP ON IT" hidden inside SET POINT. You just reverse the shaded squares and voilà! The whole thing ended up being a fairly typical Thursday experience: flail around until you grasp the gimmick, then just walk easily home. After SET POINT, there was nothing that would constitute real trouble the rest of the way.
These theme answers involve interesting word and phrase quirks, but I don't know how fun they were to figure out. I guess I had to work a little for SALVAGES (i.e. LAS VEGAS) because [Rescues] feels like it applies to a person, whereas SALVAGES ... doesn't. So I needed some help from crosses there, but the others (after CRUELLA, of course) were obvious. But that didn't make them total duds. I was kinda curious about what the unclued surface answer was going to be each time, so that, at least, was a surprise, and there was still the revealer to look forward to ... but that ended up being kind of a let-down. I mean, that is a football play, and it does literally explain what's going on with the shaded squares, but it's actually a little too literal. To be interesting. There's something anticlimactic about the explanation being so plain. There's no clever wordplay. Yes, there's a reverse ... twice ... a DOUBLE / REVERSE. I guess I wanted something more colorful, a repurposed colloquial phrase or something. DOUBLE / REVERSE felt too straightforward. Kinda dull. Maybe if I liked football more, I dunno...
Pretty easy puzzle overall, especially outside the themers. I might've spelled KIROV wrong at first pass (KIREV?) (24D: Russian ballet company), I don't remember. I couldn't remember the kind of LAP I was dealing with at 58A: Final circuit in a track race (BELL LAP). LAST LAP seemed right, and it fit, but ... no (also, GO LAST (i.e. GLOATS) was already in the grid). But the grid was just too full of gimmes for me ever to get significantly bogged down: ASSANGE ANGELOU OATES ANN KOTB ... the puzzle's just handing out freebies today. The one amusing (and nearly fatal) wrong answer I had today was RAT (25A: Something found near a trap). In retrospect, this clue was obviously written to elicit precisely this wrong answer, so RAT is less an anomalous personal pitfall than a predictable design feature (and therefore less amusing), but still, I did get a half-second or so of "What the hell biblical figure is this!?" before reading the *entire* clue, seeing Faulkner, and realizing my error. Again, they really make it easy on you today with the cluing. Oh, and if LAT doesn't make sense to you yet—it's a muscle (short for latissimus dorsi), as is "trap" (short for trapezius).
Bullets:
22A: Civil rights leader ___ B. Wells (IDA) — any opportunity to mention my cat (IDA), I'm gonna take. She was technically named after Lupino, but I call her "IDA B." a lot:
43A: What has posts all around a site (FENCE) — man, that clue is tortured. The surface meaning *wants* to sound like its internet-related, but just ends up sounding like some Uncanny Valley / AI-produced gibberish.
3D: Sudden riser in status (UPSTART) — again, such an ugly / weird clue. Recognizable words in an order no human would put them. "Riser" here is a ... person who is rising.
28D: "Wake word" for an Apple device (SIRI) — I've owned an iPhone since 2012 and have never, not once, used SIRI. Don't trust her. I'm sure she's still listening and telling her overlords everything I say, but I'm not "waking" her voluntarily. Afaic, she can stay dead. I think Apple devices should make you say SIRI three times, like "Beetlejuice." I still wouldn't use it, but that seems like it would at least be fun. Maybe they can rush a "Beetlejuice" setting for Halloween. Surely there's a lucrative movie tie-in here ... somewhere.
15A: Prominent feature of Hello Kitty (HAIR BOW) — I like all Hello Kitty answers because they remind me of the fact that Shortz once rejected a puzzle with HELLO KITTY in it (an Andrea Carla Michaels puzzle, I think), because he had never heard of it and didn't think people would know it. And then he read about it in an in-flight magazine immediately thereafter, and now it's everywhere, all over the grid. We even had the company that created Hello Kitty—SANRIO—in the puzzle last week, though that caused a lot of consternation because of its intersection with another not-too-familiar proper noun, LEO Rosten. So it looks like Natick now has a mayor: LEO SANRIO. Long may he reign.
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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