Mediocre, in modern slang / SAT 9-7-24 / Surgeon/writer Gawande / Sausage grinder in Italy? / Methods for sharing pirated material / Fast-food chain with palm trees on its packaging / Experimental music documentary of 2024 / Mountain grouping / Relative of a heckelphone / First word in the opening crawl for "Star Wars: Episode I" / Like soffritto ingredients

Constructor: David P. Williams

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: None 

Word of the Day: BITTORRENTS (31A: Methods for sharing pirated material) —

BitTorrent, also referred to simply as torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.

To send or receive files, users use a BitTorrent client on their Internet-connected computer, which are available for a variety of computing platforms and operating systems, including an official client. BitTorrent trackers provide a list of files available for transfer and allow the client to find peer users, known as "seeds", who may transfer the files. BitTorrent downloading is considered to be faster than HTTP ("direct downloading") and FTP due to the lack of a central server that could limit bandwidth.

BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, such as digital video files containing TV shows and video clips, or digital audio files. BitTorrent accounted for a third of all internet traffic in 2004, according to a study by Cachelogic. As recently as 2019 BitTorrent remained a significant file sharing protocol according to Sandvine, generating a substantial amount of Internet traffic, with 2.46% of downstream, and 27.58% of upstream traffic, although this share has declined significantly since then. (wikipedia)

• • •

When I finished this puzzle, which I liked just fine, I looked at the constructor name and thought, "Wait, is this the guy ...?" And then I went and looked it up, and it is, in fact, the guy. What guy, you ask? This guy: 

 
 

Do you notice a pattern? Well, do ya, punk!? Literally, a pattern. The same grid pattern for Every Single One of his NYT crosswords. Is it art? Is he doing a bit? Well now we've all seen the bit. Can it be over now?* I can't say I haven't enjoyed the bit. Well, not the bit, per se, but the puzzles themselves (before I knew there was a bit). I think I've come down more positive than negative on these puzzles. So perhaps I shouldn't care what shape the grid is, or that this constructor seems to be unable (or unwilling) to work with any other grid pattern. But now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it, and if I see it again, it will officially be in beat-a-dead-horse / eyeroll territory. Still, though, if it's working for you ... I mean, I get it. They keep accepting them, why stop? Let me suggest a reason: dignity. Dignity. That's why. The talent is obviously there. Move some black squares around!!! Or just rotate your pet grid 90 degrees! Baby steps!

Besides an "OUT" dupe and a "___ TO" dupe (LOAN TO, SOAR TO) and a probably excessive reliance on foreign words (ORA, PERDU, DENTE, POCO, SEL), I liked this puzzle quite a bit. I wonder how many people fell into the STRIKE trap right away (1A: Labor tactic). That's certainly the first place my brain went, but then I checked the "K" cross and kouldn't do anything with it (5D: Whizzes). Then I just toggled: "Labor ... what's another 'labor'? ... aha." And in went LAMAZE and down went ZIPS, and then ENO, and well I felt very pleased with myself. Mission ... started. And pretty soon, I dropped a line all the way to the bottom, and I was off! Everything was, indeed, coming along great:

The clues were definitely punching with Saturday force, but for whatever reason I never got significantly bogged down. I had a flicker of panic in the NE when I couldn't push into that corner from either side at first (besides LOAN TO), but eventually I had a moment of self-recognition (DOOFUS!), and that got me to UPTAKES, and down that corner went. Speaking of UPTAKES (11D: Moments of comprehension, in an idiom), that's one of two answers today that really don't feel great in the plural. The other, much less great-feeling plural is BITTORRENTS. I had no idea you could pluralize that. I thought it was proprietary. On the "BitTorrent" wikipedia page, there's not one instance of the term in the plural. So it feels awkward—like something you maybe shouldn't have stuffed in your overstuffed wordlist in the first place. I'm sure one of you nerds (at least!) will tell me why it's just fine. Stuff a DONGLE in it, nerds! (37D: Computer accessory). Nah, I'm just kidding. Tech talk is slightly beyond my purview, so whatever you say, nerds. I'm happy to concede. There are worse things than awkward plurals, anyway.

Do you ever get mad—actively mid-solve mad—at yourself for not knowing something you feel you should know? A vocabulary word, for instance? For me, today, it was "Apologue," which I thought for sure meant a "defense." I knew that's what "apologia" meant, so ... how different could they be!? Well, plenty, apparently, because FABLE, I did not see coming (20A: Apologue). "A moral fable, especially one with animals as characters." The word appears just once in the "Aesop's Fables" wikipedia page, but it's there. I thought maybe the Fables were actually called "Apologues" in the original Greek, but no, the original title is Aesopica. (Are you having fun? Are these FUN FACTS!?). Also, if you google "Aesop," you get not the famous fabulist, but ... this. We're sorry, Aesop. You deserve better than to come in second place to this:

[Thanks, google! Your algorithms are enriching all our lives tremendously!:]

I was just on my game today. From grokking the LAMAZE trick early, to remembering ATUL Gawande's name somehow (42D: Surgeon/writer Gawande), to no-looking NITTY-GRITTY (!) (the letter pattern I had in place was undeniable) (32A: Details), I was just humming. Mad at myself about the "Apologue" / FABLE thing, and then re-mad at myself about forgetting the French word for "French toast" ("pain PERDU," literally "lost bread"), but those were the only real moments of frustration, and they were minor. Again, it's not as if everything was Easy—it was just steadily gettable.

More stuff:

• 48A: Fast-food chain with palm trees on its packaging (IN-N-OUT) — great answer, even if it does look pretty stupid in the grid (without its hyphens).

• 49A: First word in the opening crawl for "Star Wars: Episode I" (TURMOIL) — 10 demerits for forcing me to think about this movie for even one second. Also, huge LOL that I care about its completely non-ICONIC "opening crawl." The opening crawl for (so-called) "Episode IV" (i.e. the original Star Wars)—that is ICONIC. Who the hell remembers the "Episode I" crawl? (shut up, nerds!)
• 51A: Where you might say "That's the spirit!" (SEANCE) — wanted "bar" or the equivalent here (TAVERN?), but got to SEANCE quickly. Clever wordplay.
• 35A: Mediocre, in modern slang (MID) — so much Z/Alpha/TikTok slang is goofy and unusable, but this one really works. I like it a lot. Witheringly concise. Good stuff.
• 29A: Deep fears? (SEA SERPENTS) — look, SHARKS, sure, but is anyone out there on the ocean like ".... you guys, you guys ... I'm really afraid?" "Of what?" "Of ... don't laugh, OK? ... of SEA SERPENTS!" [Explosive laughter] "I said don't lau—Aaaaaaah, what's that what's that!?!?" "That's kelp, buddy." "Oh. OK. You guys, you guys ... can we go back on shore now?" Seems like more of a mythical (like, actual Greek and Roman mythical) "fear" than a real fear.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*Apparently he is, indeed, doing a bit. Here’s the notes from the first time he published a grid with this pattern—I’m sorry, “topology”:

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