Debugging soft wear? / FRI 9-27-24 / Tough loss for a poker player / Port caller / Middle's middle / Lines of text that are less useful on paper / Title for Bobby Flay on reality TV / Who's cutting onions? / Triumphs for one's country, maybe

Constructor: Jake Bunch

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

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 Leary et 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.

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