Epitome of completeness / SAT 10-5-24 / Oldest city in France / "Reward" for altruism, maybe / Lover of Pyramus, in Ovid / Political activist who organized 1963's March on Washington / Mercedes ___, icon of Argentine folk music / Feature of Garamond or Perpetua / Penalty taker's lament / Beer whose name means "morning sun" / Erroneous justification for a 2003 invasion, for short

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BAYARD RUSTIN (5D: Political activist who organized 1963's March on Washington) —

Bayard Rustin (/ˈbaɪ.ərd/ BY-ərd; March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American political activist, a prominent leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin was the principal organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

Rustin worked in 1941 with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement to press for an end to racial discrimination in the military and defense employment. Rustin later organized Freedom Rides, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership; he taught King about non-violence. Rustin worked alongside Ella Baker, a co-director of the Crusade for Citizenship, in 1954; and before the Montgomery bus boycott, he helped organize a group called "In Friendship" to provide material and legal assistance to people threatened with eviction from their tenant farms and homes. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO's A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia. 

Rustin was a gay man and, due to criticism over his sexuality, usually advised other civil rights leaders from behind the scenes. During the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes, speaking at events as an activist and supporter of human rights. [...] 

On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey, wanna see someone luck out? Watch:

Ha ha, look at those first two answers, 1-Across and 1-Down. Wrong and wrong ... And Yet! Somehow that "Y" in TYNE ended up in the right place, which was all I needed to get "YOU FOOL!," which I then confirmed with FBI LAB. When I took the above screenshot, I had no idea I had any wrong answers; I was just documenting my progress, as I often do on late-week puzzles. "Look at me, coming out of the gate on fire!" Little did I know I was literally on fire, i.e. my first two answers were a mini trash fire. Luckily I was able to put that fire out real quick—probably ten seconds after I took the screenshot. But I just wanted to show you how skill is great and all, but you can't beat dumb luck. Wrong answers ... lead to right answers ... and the puzzle opens right up. Amazing. Thank you, OOXTEPLERNON (He's the God of Short Bad Fill, but I assume his purview extends to all things crossword-related—when He's angry, you get lots of EER and EEN and EEK thrown at you, but sometimes he exhibits generosity and blesses even your FLUBS).

100% of the difficulty in today's puzzle came from proper nouns. Natan makes puzzles for the New Yorker, and this felt a lot like a "Moderately Challenging" New Yorker puzzle—i.e. a themeless that's somewhat heavy on proper nouns I've never heard of, ones for which I sometimes have to work every cross (to be clear, I do “Moderately Challenging” New Yorker puzzles in ~6 minutes—their difficulty ratings are, uh, idiosyncratic). Today, the "yipes" proper noun, for me, was BAYARD RUSTIN. When I read his bio, I think, "jeez, how do you not know him, you should really know him—he was a central figure in the civil rights movement." Then I see that he was gay and (therefore, in a more homophobic era) worked largely behind the scenes. Still, he's a huge deal, Presidential Medal of Freedom and all that, so ... can't complain about his presence here. Happy to learn (or possibly relearn) his name. But man, every single cross I needed! I don't know any BAYARDs or any RUSTINs. At all. Those are not names on my list of name possibilities. BAYARD has appeared six times in the NYTXW, but ... well, here's the complete list of clues for those BAYARDs:

[xwordinfo.com]

Gotta be honest, every single one of those clues is gibberish to me. "Legendary horse"? Who's "Rinaldo"?

Bayard (Modern French: [bajaʁ]; Dutch: Ros Beiaard or just Beiaard; Italian: Baiardo) is a magical bay horse in the legends derived from the medieval chansons de geste. These texts, especially that of The Four Sons of Aymon, attribute to him magical qualities and a supernatural origin. He is known for his strength and intelligence, and possesses the supernatural ability to adjust his size to his riders.

Looks like "Rinaldo" is one of the Four Sons of Aymon. LOL I went to grad school for medieval literature and didn't know any of this! (Don't blame UM, though, I was really a very lazy student). So that's a brief crossword history of BAYARD. What of RUSTIN? Any RUSTINs? Hey, wow ... looks like Bayard RUSTIN has appeared in the NYTXW before ... once, way back in February of 1984! Clue: [Bayard ___, Washington March organizer: 1963]. I can't believe the crossword discovered him and then mislaid him for forty years. Welcome back, buddy!

Other proper nouns of my not-knowing: well, LYME, you saw that. I was thinking of Newcastle-Upon-TYNE, which is another Newcastle-___-___ place in England (how many are there!?) (1A: Newcastle-under-___, Staffordshire, England). Then there was SOSA, which gave me a bit of a fright because I had SO-A and no idea what letter to put there. This is because I didn't know LYME and so had LY-E, which gave me -OBBO-S for 3D: Don, and I absolutely Could Not parse it. Brain kept trying to make -OBBO-S into one word. Thought maybe the Argentinian singer was SONA (25A: Mercedes ___, icon of Argentine folk music). Certainly never expected SOSA, since the only SOSA I know is the late-'90s, PED-enhanced baseball slugger. But eventually my brain kicked in with the "hey, maybe it's two words" wisdom and I got through (MOB BOSS). Later on, there was MONSTRO—no idea (32D: Name of the whale in "Pinocchio"). I didn't see the recent Guillermo del Toro remake of Pinocchio, and I never cared much for that whole story when I was growing up, so once you get past the whole "I wanna be a real boy" / nose-growth stuff, I'm kind of tapped out on Pinocchio lore. I guess that's mostly it for proper nouns, except for THISBE (12D: Lover of Pyramus, in Ovid), ROME (37A: W.H. Auden's "The Fall of ___"), BIALIK (36D: Post-Trebek "Jeopardy!" host), and MARSEILLE (32A: Oldest city in France), which I'd at least heard of, and The LAST BATTLE, which I actually knew (again, dumb luck—I happen to be married to world's foremost reader of The Chronicles of Narnia; those books pretty much define her childhood. Please don't tell her I initially confused two of the books today and wrote in The LAST PRINCE) (8D: Seventh and final "Chronicles of Narnia" book, with "The").

Outside the proper nouns, almost zero trouble today. If there was stuff I didn't know, I was able to flow right around it. And "flow" is a good word for what this puzzle had. Really enjoyed whooshing around the grid, particularly through that lovely, creamy center. There's nothing flashy in there, but it's all incredibly smooth and lively, especially given how dense the long answers are there. Had a little trouble dropping into the SE corner, only because at 21D: It's nothing new, I wanted SAME OLD SONG or SAME OLD SAME OLD, neither of which fit. But I thought "maybe STORY?" and yes, that was it. Finished up easily from there.



Notes:

• 16A: Beer whose name means "morning sun" (ASAHI) — ASAHI, the official beer of crosswords. When in doubt, guess ASAHI (esp. if it's five letters and you already have the "A")
• 18A: Feature of Garamond or Perpetua (SERIF) — Garamond and Perpetua are fonts.
• 44A: Double duty? (STUNTS) — my proudest moment of the day. Got this off the first "S"! The "duty" of a stunt double is ... yeah it's right there in the name: STUNTS. I think I wanted "STAND IN" at first, but it didn't fit.
• 7D: Erroneous justification for a 2003 invasion, for short (WMD) — it's great when a clue can be factually accurate while also being, at the same time, a great "fuck-you" to an entire lying, warmongering administration. [Chef's kiss] to this clue!
• 34D: Penalty taker's lament ("I MISSED") — "Penalty" here is a "penalty shot" (as in football, which is to say, "soccer").

• 35D: Chest bump? (PEC) — nice cross with DIP (33A: Bodyweight exercise). A wide-grip DIP can help build your PECs. 
• 41D: Cheek ('TUDE) — short for "attitude." "Cheek" here means "sass," "backtalk," etc.
• 48D: Whirl, so to speak (TRY) — As in, "Give it a whirl!" Like this clue a lot.
• 17A: Pitches low and inside? (SUBWAY ADS) — best clue of the day, a word-perfect misdirection. Looks like baseball ... isn't baseball. (Congrats to the New York Metropolitans for advancing to the NLDS ... maybe we'll get a Subway Series this year, but that is not my wish: go Tigers!)
• 33D: Epitome of completeness (DOTTED i) — unsurprisingly, CROSSEDT has never, not once, appeared in the NYTXW. Eight DOTTEDIs in the last decade, but no CROSSEDTs! I am officially waging a complaint on behalf of all of T-dom.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Speed reading, for short / FRI 10-4-24 / Liu regarded as China's first supermodel / Indian fried bread / High-end skin-care brand / Frequent Missy Elliott collaborator / Cannes "confirm"? / Acrobat displays / Demo for many parents of Alphas / Onetime home of the world's largest pineapple plantation

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Extremely easy (like a Tuesday or Wednesday)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: POORI (6D: Indian fried bread) —

Puri, also poori, is a type of deep-fried bread, made from unleavened whole-wheat flour, originated from the Indian subcontinent.

Puris are most commonly served as breakfast or snacks. It is also served at special or ceremonial functions as part of ceremonial rituals along with other vegetarian food offered in Hindu prayer as prasadam. When hosting guests it is common in some households to serve puri in place of roti, as a small gesture of formality. (wikipedia)

• • •

A zippy little puzzle, but maybe too zippy. I blew through it like it wasn't there, like walking through smoke, just ... no resistance, anywhere. Even when I didn't know something, or immediately recall it (as with POORI), I seemed to flow right over and around it via adjacent answers and crosses without any apparent speed-drop or extra effort. I think the first time I actually pulled up, once I got started, was way down in the SE corner, when I couldn't get BUFFET off the "BU" ... and honestly, in retrospect, that should've been obvious. Before that, I'd basically tumbled down the grid, from NW to SE, seemingly by sheer force of gravity as opposed to any real cogitation on my part. First guesses were going right in and proving correct every time. I mean, I even remembered every damn letter in LGBTQIA, in order, on my first try (29A: Initialism that precedes "+"). I guess it's really only those last two that are (somewhat) hard to come up with, since they're latecomers to the letter string, and anyway it seemed unlikely to be "AI" since all that does is evoke our dystopian robot-controlled future (which is to say, present), so "IA" it was! And this happened over and over—I'd throw down the first thing that came to me and damned if it wasn't right. HIDEY HOLE off the "IDE" (16A: Place to conceal oneself), TYPE 'A'S off the "Y" (14D: Go-getters, often), the GIRL part of DREAM GIRL (8D: Certain romantic ideal), the HERO part of ITALIAN HERO (are there other HEROs? and how is this different from an "Italian sub," which definitely sounds more familiar?) (11D: Long lunch?)—even stuff I didn't really know, like AESOP ("is it ... AESOP? it is!? ha ha, look at me, remembering beauty product stuff!") (34D: High-end skin-care brand). It all just went right in. Overall, the puzzle was very smooth and very easy, but it wasn't terribly exciting. The marquee answers are fine, but as with lots of Fridays lately, there wasn't a ton of sparkle. Nothing I was really thrilled or surprised to see. But still, it all holds up. A not unpleasant experience, for sure.

There's one square that seems potentially problematic—one where I can imagine solvers making a bad guess (because most of them will not have heard of one of the answers, for sure). That square is the "E" in the WEN / AU NATUREL crossing. I'm sure Liu WEN is a big deal in her profession (56D: Liu regarded as China's first supermodel), but in this grid, she's the least familiar name (at least to me), and proper nouns are always dangerous, especially at the vowels, so the "E" here is a potential "yikes" moment. Yes, you should probably know that it's AU NATUREL, not AU NATURAL (59A: In the buff) ... but I feel like people (mis)pronounce it "NATURAL" all the time (with the last syllable accented and sounding like a guy named "AL"). And yes, WAN is less probable as a name, especially considering that it's a perfectly ordinary English word and would likely get clued that way. But WAN is a name—a Chinese name at that—so if you don't know the supermodel here (and I know a lot of you, like me, didn't), then WAN wouldn't be a bad guess. I'm just saying that this is the one and only square in the puzzle that made me go "yeesh, I am not 100% here... oh well, fingers crossed." Ideally, there should be zero of those squares in a puzzle.* Then again, I'm on record as not giving a damn about "supermodels" and having no real knowledge of that world, so it's possible Liu WEN is like Cindy Crawford-famous and I'm alone, or nearly alone, in even hesitating at this square.

It's a debut for POORI, which is cool, but it's a little weird that we got POORI before PURI, if only because four-letter answers are generally more plentiful than 5s. Actually, PURI was in a puzzle once ... in 1976, as a [Hindu pilgrimage center]. Maybe it appears more often on Indian menus in America as POORI? Yes, based on this single randomly selected menu from an Indian restaurant in Milwaukee, it looks like POORI is the preferred menu spelling in this country. 

[Antique Indian Restaurant]

Explainers:

• 1D: Speed reading, for short (MPH) — maybe the hardest part of the puzzle, in that it was the second clue I looked at (after getting MWAH immediately), and ... well, I had no idea what was going on here. I didn't know "speed reading" had an initialism or acronym or whatever. Turns out, the clue isn't about speed reading (as in, reading quickly) at all; it's the "reading" of your "speed" on your speedometer (or the cop's radar gun, or any speed measuring device). And (car) speed is, in fact (in this country, anyway), measured in miles per hour (MPH). 
• 5A: Tablet that's impossible to swallow? (IPAD) — I like the "?" here. Like ... someone somewhere is definitely thinking "'Impossible,' eh? ... hold my beer..."
• 44A: Business name abbr. (LLC) — had the "C" and went with INC. This is what passes for "difficulty" today.
• 23D: What often carries a U.S.D.A. seal (ORGANIC BEEF) — really wish this clue had been more BEEF-specific. I mean, ORGANIC anything might carry this seal, right? Yes, pretty much. The USDA website has a subsection labeled "Honey, mushrooms, pet food," and uses "organic dill" (!) as an example at one point. Did anyone guess ORGANIC DILL here? PORK? FIGS? DUCK? My point is, if you're gonna have a BEEF answer, get a BEEF clue. 

• 43A: Once, for one (NUMERO) — "Once" is Spanish for the number (NUMERO) "eleven."
• 15D: So-called "explosion shot" from a sand trap (BLAST) — this one tried to confuse me with golf lingo but joke's on you, clue—I had the "-AST," took one look at "explosion," and had my answer. This clue could've just been [Explosion]. But I guess the golf demographic must be served.
• 57D: Apt letters missing from __ipper_ (SLY) — first, "Apt letters missing" feels all kinds of grammatically wrong. "Letters aptly missing," maybe? Second, there was at least a couple seconds where I was thinking "What is SLS?" But then I got saved by GEN Y. Speaking of ... 
• 62A: Demo for many parents of Alphas (GEN Y) — ugh no one calls it that. Only crosswords call Millennials "GEN Y." It goes Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, and, I guess, Alphas (a default reset so we could start over at the beginning of the (Greek) alphabet??). But GENY? GENY? 

• 50A: Acrobat displays (PDFS) — Acrobat is software (from Adobe) that allows you to view and manipulate PDF files.
• 54D: Cannes "confirm"? (OUI) — clue of the day. If you "confirm" something in Cannes, you might simply say OUI. It's a pun on "Can confirm" (a common affirmative reply, esp. online). 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*It's at least theoretically possible that solvers might botch the CIARA / SABRA crossing as well (36A: Frequent Missy Elliott collaborator / 20D: Big name in hummus). Two not-universally-famous propers crossing at a vowel—never not dicey.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Cocido or callaloo / THU 10-3-24 / Human-shaped board game piece / Major media campaign, say / Animal cry that sounds like a Greek letter / City that's absolutely gorges / Female friend, casually / TV character who said "Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but i have no wish to serve under them"

Constructor: Rena Cohen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: POLYGRAPH (53A: Test required for all C.I.A. applicants ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme) — three theme answers are visual representations of failed POLYGRAPH tests, with the letters "LIE" representing a SPIKE in the readout (52A: 53-Across feature, as seen three times in this puzzle); that is, "LIE" appears in a single box, elevated above the plane of its answer (up and over a black square).

Theme answers:

          [LIE]

WHILE SUPP     S LAST (19A: Disclaimer on a sale poster)

    [LIE]

CHAR     SHEEN (26A: Actor who played a character with the same first name of "Two and a Half Men")

     [LIE]

NONBE     VERS (46A: Skeptics)

"LIE" crosses:

• 5D: Metal marble (STEE[LIE]) / 23A: Contradict (BE[LIE])
• 7D: Singer/songwriter Goulding (EL[LIE]) / 17A: More slippery (EE[LIE]R)
• 33D: Half sister of Kim, Khloé and Kourtney (KY[LIE]) / 41A: First name in student loans (SAL[LIE])

Word of the Day: Girls, INC. (9A: Girls, ___ (nonprofit since 1864)) —

Girls Inc. (established in 1864) is an American nonprofit organization which encourages girls to be "Strong, Smart, and Bold" through direct service and advocacy. // The Girls Inc. (Girls Club of America) movement was founded in 1864 in Waterbury, Connecticut. The organization's mission was to help young women who had migrated from rural communities in search of job opportunities, experiencing upheaval in the aftermath of the Civil War. In 1945, fourteen charter Girls Clubs joined together to form a national organization. In 1990 the Girls Club of America changed their name to Girls Incorporated. // Rachel Harris Johnson founded the organization. In 1919, she became secretary of the Worcester Girls Club, which her mother helped found. She later became the club's president and in 1945 formed a national organization and served as its first president until 1952. (wikipedia)

• • •

Theme good, fill bad. That is the tl;dr review today. I don't know that this is the best visual representation of what a polygraph SPIKE looks like—I'm used to seeing not one but several "spikes" when the testee lies, but then again, I've only seen POLYGRAPH readouts in movies, so who knows—but it's close enough. Anyway, it just has to evoke the idea, not mirror it perfectly, and this theme evokes the lie detector readout just fine. Cleverly, in fact. The answers SPIKE when there's a "LIE"—what more do you want from your lie detector theme!? My only complaint about the theme is that there are just three theme answers. Seems light, especially since I had two of the themers knocked off before the puzzle had really gotten underway. Picked up the "LIE" fast at STEE[LIE] / BE[LIE], and once I got to WHILE S- in the NW corner (19A: Disclaimer on a sale poster), it was no trouble at all to extrapolate from there to WHILE SUPP[LIE]S LAST, even though I didn't yet know how the whole "LIE" thing was gonna work yet. So I just wrote in WHILE SUPP, then got USHER, then read the clue at 28-Across and saw it was just a "—" ... and that was when I realized I had a split-answer-type theme on my hands. STEE[LIE] / BE[LIE] made the "LIE" look like a regular old rebus square. No indication of answers spiking. It was only when I hit the [—] clue that I knew something else was going on, that answers were jumping, and then, in a blink, bim bam boom, I'm 2/3 of the way through the theme before I really know what's happening:

So I went from thinking it was a simple "LIE" rebus, to realizing that the "LIE"s were jumping over black squares, but still no idea what the concept was. It was a bit weird to back into it through SPIKE. That is, it feels like the better revealer, the primary revealer, is POLYGRAPH, but I got to SPIKE first, so the "revelation" felt odd, slightly backward, but no matter. The revealers did their job, and provided good justification for all the jumping rebus action.  

As I say, I would've enjoyed a fourth themer, but then I probably wouldn't actually want this theme to get any denser, as it would likely compromise the fill, which is already gunked up pretty bad. I was wincing throughout, from the cruelty of the ANTIBARK collar, to the avalanche of bad (overcommon and/or ugly) short fill (RELO IPSO POR YER PEI AER INOT AST DHS NAE HEH etc.), to the cloying quaint cutesiness of "OH, POOH," to ... well, a bunch of clues that just seemed off. I hate that MEEPLE is clued as a singular noun (6D: Human-shaped board game piece), when the word itself is clearly meant to sound like "people," which is (obviously) plural. I also just hate MEEPLE on principle, since it's also got a cloying cutesiness about it, but the singular/plural thing is particularly irksome. Who "commutes" via cab?? If you are a commuter, it seems highly unlikely that you could afford to get to work this way. Bus, subway, train, car ... all these things are likely "commuter" vehicles; cabs are not (the problem here is entirely with the clue, as SPLIT A CAB is otherwise a fine answer). And oof, PR PUSH (44D: Major media campaign, say), yet another unwelcome "original" / debut answer  (this has been happening more and more lately, as inflated and badly curated wordlists pollute the crossword airwaves). The crossword is already annoyingly awash in "PR" answers—PRMAN, PRMEN, PRTEAM(S)—just as the world is annoyingly awash in PR. I don't need or want more PR answers. Please refrain.

Bullet points:

• 51D: Longhorn's college rival (AGGIE) — an AGGIE is also a type of marble, and since this answer is symmetrical with STEE[LIE], I can't believe the marble angle didn't occur to anyone. Maybe it did, but seemed too dated / obscure (since no one plays marbles any more—even I (an oldish person) only know these damn terms from crosswords of yore)
• 6A: Animal cry that sounds like a Greek letter (MEW) — Speaking of old, I was 54 years old before I learned that the "U" in "Mu" was a diphthong. That is, I learned it just now. I'd been (mostly mentally) pronouncing it like a cow's "moo" for as long as I knew the letter existed. Oh, man, "Nu" isn't pronounced "nyoo," is it? Please say no. Or "Nyo," I guess. (phew, it's "new," crisis averted)

• 1D: Cocido or callaloo (STEW) — I had the "S" and went with SOUP ... so close! Just ... too thin.
• 9D: City that's absolutely "gorges" (ITHACA) — that pun is a whole thing up there. There's a t-shirt and everything. No "absolutely," but I can see why this clue went that way.

• 58A: When sudden death can occur, for short (IN OT) — i.e. "in overtime." "Sudden death" is a "first-team-to-score-wins"-type situation.
• 41A: First name in student loans (SAL[LIE]) — if the first two [LIE] squares came easy, this one ... didn't. I just ... forgot to be on the lookout. The other two were so obvious that I figured the next one would be too, but no. I got all tangled up thinking the Kardashian sister was just three letters and the student loan name was just four and [Skeptics] was just five *and* ended in "S," which made me question INSOLE (25D: It fits under a tongue). This was by far the hardest part of the puzzle for me, all because I forgot to look for the theme element that I already knew existed :(

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Worm found in every ecosystem on Earth, even the deepest oceans / WED 10-2-24 / Literary ___ / A public speaking coach might tell you to avoid these

Constructor: Luke K. Schreiber

Relative difficulty: Hard (13:05)

THEME: ANIMAL CROSSING — Nintendo video game series suggested by every answer running through this one?

Theme answers:

• [U.C. Irvine athlete] for ANTEATER
• [Worm found in every ecosystem on Earth, even the deepest oceans] for NEMATODE
• [Experiment subject] for GUINEA PIG
• [Dollar, informally] for CLAM
• [Complain (about)] for CARP
• [Literary ___] for LION
• [Religious figure in red] for CARDINAL
• [Cupid, e.g.] for REINDEER
• [Airhead] for DODO
• [Member of a historically privileged U.S. group] for WASP
• [Close tightly] SEAL
• [World's largest venomous snake] for KING COBRA
• [State fossil of Indiana] for MASTODON
• [Jungle peeper] for TREE FROG

Word of the Day: NEMATODE —

The nematodes, roundworms or eelworms constitute the phylum Nematoda. They are a diverse animal phylum inhabiting a broad range of environments. Most species are free-living, feeding on microorganisms, but many species are parasitic. The parasitic worms are the cause of soil-transmitted helminthiases.

• • •

Hey squad! It's Malaika here, for your regularly scheduled Malaika MWednesday! I solved this while listening to one of Sabrina Carpenter's new songs. I loooove a sad woman who sings with a guitar! My favorite genre.

I really struggled to get a start with this puzzle-- I wasn't able to put in an answer until I hit ETS, nine entries into the puzzle. For me, that's a hard Wednesday. I suspected this wouldn't be a standard theme (i.e., 3-4 long across answers + one revealer) because of the shape of the grid, and indeed, I had literally no idea what was going on until I hit the revealer in the center. (I usually solve in order, so it took me a while to get there.) At that point, I was a little frustrated. The puzzle was hard for me, and I am really not a gamer at all, so I was preparing myself to have no idea what the theme was. But that wasn't the case!!

I've never played ANIMAL CROSSING, but I absolutely have heard of it from friends, The Internet, etc. And even if you don't know the game, you still understand the concept of animals crossing through the entry. Is every animal in this puzzle an animal that is in Animal Crossing? I have no idea, though my guess would be no. Playing as a NEMATODE does not seem cute and fulfilling, to be quite honest.

This is a real feat of construction, to have so many thematic entries all stacked like that! I can't even begin to think how I would approach making something like this. Actually I know how-- I would have the idea and then immediately go "Nope, that's impossible; moving on." As with every feat of construction, there are some trade-offs. I have never heard the word TEASEL before and I expect I never will again. And that top left corner, with NUMISMATIST, USURER, DOMINI, ERIN, and SENECA was where I spent roughly half of my solve time.

It seems like there was a concerted effort to clue the animals in non-animal ways, when possible. SEAL, for example, was clued as the verb. I liked this touch, which kept the theme hidden from me until I made it over to the down answers and clocked the revealer. Otherwise, I would have noticed all the animals much earlier and the gears would have started turning. I like to be tricked a little by the revealer and then go "Ohhhhh!"

Speaking of animals, this is a baby hippo called Moo Deng.
Will we remember his name six months from now???

The last thing I want to talk about it is only a little bit relevant to this puzzle. But I've been given a soapbox to stand on, so I will use it! (You are welcome to keep scrolling.) In the world of puzzles (the Crossworld, if you will), there's an ever-present tension between wanting to include entries that are "fresh," wanting to ensure that a large part of your audience is familiar with the entry, and handling the turnaround time between creating a puzzle and having it reach solvers. If there's a slang term that Kids These Days are using all the time, should it be in a crossword now, or should it wait until a broader audience is familiar with it? Or if you wait, will the term vanish from our lexicon?? Different publications have different goals and different timelines.

The Times, with its long turnaround time (typically a year from Creation to Publish) and its frequently-published collections, tries to avoid fads, while still including newish terms that they think will have Staying Power. Meanwhile, an outlet like Vulture magazine*, whose puzzles are posted weeks after creation and then sort of disappear into the void days later, leans in to incredibly flash-in-the-pan entries. If "Animal Crossing" were to appear in a Vulture puzzle, it would have run in 2020, when "New Horizons" was released. When it appears in The Times, it runs in 2024, once the game has cemented itself culturally. (Some people might even think this is years after it's cemented itself!!)

Since I've been making puzzles (which is not long! Four-ish years.) it feels like the number of places that are publishing puzzles has tripled. This is good for so many reasons, but one of my favorites is that each publication gets to have its own goals. Five years ago, I think there was a lot more frustration that The Times was unwilling to accept ultra-current entries which could very well become "out" before the puzzle had even been published. Now, those entries find homes in places like the aforementioned Vulture crossword and so many others.

My roommate's KATANAs-- see below for the story

Stepping down from my soapbox now for some bullet points.

Bullets:

• [Samurai sword] for KATANA — When I was twenty, I borrowed my dad's minivan for a couple of weeks to help me move into my apartment. I let my roommate know that if he needed any furniture, he could find stuff on Craigslist and I could drive him there to pick it up. He let me know that he had found something to pick up. I remember thinking "Oh, good!" because this boy did not have a dresser, nightstand, or bed frame. We drove to collect his purchase and it was a set of three katanas.
• [Natty dresser] for DANDY — This clue skewed a little old-fashioned to me; I was surprised to find out the constructor is a teenager. Honestly, I only ever hear the word "natty" in relation to a Natty Light.
• [It might need to be recapped] for PEN — I loved the misdirect here!!
• [Fivers] for ABES — If you have ever used this term to refer to a five dollar bill, please let me know in the comments! I'm not convinced that anyone does this.

xoxo Malaika

*I write puzzles for Vulture magazine and it is delightful to include ridiculous slang like WORK ISLAND, BRAT SUMMER, and NEPO BABY, without needing to worry if people don't know what those are a month from now.

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Stuff in Santa's footprints / TUE 10-1-24 / Pretentious friend of Winnie-the-Pooh / Napoleon Dynamite's best friend / Santa Monica tourist attraction / Company that merged with Heinz in 2015 / Purchase for a white elephant exchange / Word repeated four times in the chorus of Taylor' Swift's "Shake It Off"

Constructor: Kevin Curry and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium? Maybe a little north of Medium... (**for a Tuesday**)

THEME: CRYPTOZOOLOGIST (57A: Pseudoscientist investigating the "sightings" in this puzzle) — false sightings of mythical creatures; that is, mythical creatures are almost spelled out inside the theme answers (with each creature having just one letter wrong):
Theme answers:

• TENNESSEE TITANS (17A: A.F.C. South team ("Look in the lake! It's  ... ah, never mind") (false NESSIE, i.e. Loch Ness Monster, sighting)
• MUCKRAKING (23A: Investigative journalism ("What was that in the sea?! I must be imagining things") (false KRAKEN sighting)
• CUBIC FOOT (35A: Imperial unit of volume ("There's another one! I swear he just slipped into those trees...") (false BIGFOOT sighting)
• COPY EDITOR (49A: Professional proofreader ("Over there, in the snow! That had to b something, right?!") (false YETI sighting)

Word of the Day: WASH. U. (6D: Sch. located in St. Louis, not Seattle) —

Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington, the first president of the United States.

Washington University comprises eight undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, including Arts and Sciences, George Warren Brown School, Olin Business School, Washington University School of Medicine, McKelvey School of Engineering, Washington University School of Law, School of Continuing & Professional Studies, and Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Washington University enrolls approximately 16,550 students across its campuses from all 50 states and more than 110 countries.

Washington University has been a member of the Association of American Universities since 1923 and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". In 2021, the National Science Foundation ranked Washington University 25th among academic institutions in the United States for research and development expenditures. The university's athletic teams, Washington University Bears, play in NCAA Division III as a founding member of the University Athletic Association. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello and Happy October. I had two very different reactions to this one. At the start, I was lukewarm to cold on this puzzle, because both the fill and cluing seemed ... off. There's only one type of fire residue I associate with Santa, and it ain't ASH, what a weird clue (1A: Stuff in Santa's footprints). First, I hate to tell you, but Santa is not real, so there really should be some kind of iconic moment, a locus classicus, a piece of a poem or something, that confers ASH upon his soles. One can infer that if he lands feet first when he comes down the chimney, he's got ASH in his footprints, but oddly, you never (ever) hear about him tracking ASH around the house. But you do hear about the SOOT on his ridiculous suit, so ... ASH shmash is what I'm saying to that clue. And that was Answer One. Then came the crosswordese, AREEL and ASSAM and WASHU and ESE, and then the expectation that I'm going to remember Napoleon Dynamite at all, let alone the character's best friend (32A: Napoleon Dynamite's best friend).. Now, I *did* remember that people were wearing "Vote for PEDRO" t-shirts there for a while back in the ... whatever era it was. Early Aughts? Yes, '04-ish. But still, that is some weird millennial nostalgia right there. (See also the Taylor Swift clue—I know that song, but my brain couldn't produce any part of it except "Shake it off, shake it off!" (62A: Word repeated four times in the chorus of Taylor' Swift's "Shake It Off")). So the clues occasionally seemed off (or, in the case of Napoleon Dynamite and Tay Tay, oddly fandom-oriented), and the short fill (so much of it) just seemed weak ... 

['HATE' is said five times, but (therefore) "repeated" just four, so the clue is correct]

But then ... then the theme kicked in, and I have to say that it's completely original and highly entertaining. Love all the misspellings, especially BICFOOT, which ... how is this not already the mascot for Bic pens? He could leave cryptic messages for the CRYPTOZOOLOGIST with his pen feet! Come on, it's a good idea and you know it. Anyway, building the idea of the false sighting into the cryptozoology-themed puzzle = mwah, perfect. I wasn't cheering right away ("so you're just misspelling NESSIE? OK but ... I don't get it, what's the point"), but as the other creatures rolled in, I warmed to the concept, and then when the revealer dropped, I thought "oh, there it is! A great word *and* a perfect grid-spanner. Nice." CRYPTOZOOLOGIST also landed in the grid really dramatically—I had just the -IST, merely glanced at the clue, and whoooooosh, there it went, soaring across the grid:

One problem with the theme cluing, though: a CRYPTOZOOLOGIST would never say "I must be imagining things" (see clue for "KRAKIN" sighting). The CRYPTOZOOLOGIST would believe what she sees, or thought she saw, because it's what she's looking for, what she's hoping to see. The other imagined CRYPTOZOOLOGIST statements are great because they express real hope, or disappointment ... but never doubt in one's own cryptozoological enterprise. "I must be imagining things" is not a phrase in the CRYPTOZOOLOGIST's phrase arsenal. But, again, otherwise, this theme is stupendous. Clever, imaginative ... great fun.

Lots of little missteps today, but no real capital-T Trouble. "HOO BOY!" or "HOORAY!" before "HOORAH!" (20A: Triumphant shout), although I guess "HOO BOY!" is more "YIPES!" then "YIPEE!" ... which is what I had instead of YIPES at first (50D: "Yowzers!"). Who the hell says "Yowzers!" Is that different from "Yowza?" Because "Yowza!" seems excited, whereas "YIPES!" seems freaked out. So that's twice I tripped on ambiguously excited exclamations. I also wanted DECOR instead of DRAPE (48A: Window dressing). I think of DRAPES, plural, as the "dressing." I like DRAPE better as a verb is what I'm saying. Or you could talk about the DRAPE of an article of clothing, the way it hangs on the body, that's good too. A single DRAPE in the window strikes my ears as weird. No other problems for me, though. The fill isn't so great today. I actually (briefly) sat here and worked out different ways of eliminating LEASTS from the grid, so much did I hate it (66A: Bare minimums). So far, my favorite alternative changes OWL to OMB, and then the two Acrosses down there change to MOVE IN and BEASTS (or BOASTs), but there's gotta be even better options ... I don't actually like OMB (Office of Management and Budget) at all, let alone on a Tuesday, but I really Really hate LEASTS, so ... yeah, fix that, pls. If LEASTS were good, it would've appeared way more often. All those ultra-common letters and it's only appeared in the NYTXW twice in my lifetime! For a reason! Because it's not good! I did like GAG GIFT, though (43D: Purchase for a white elephant exchange). Easily the best answer in the grid. I just taught Manny Farber's "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art" in my "Moviegoing" class, so White Elephants are fresh on my mind.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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