Shaggy Scottish grazer / SAT 9-28-24 / Intercessor for the frequently forgetful / Military leader who helped capture Detroit in 1812 / Tucker who played drums for the Velvet Underground / Speckled steeds / Rustic respites / Pancake topper / Noncompetitive races / First name for the third second-in-command / Variable in Euler's polyhedron formula (V — E + F = 2) / Anonymous online handle, at times

Constructor: Margaret Seikel

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: dark MODE (45A: Dark ___) —

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.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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