Ivy descriptor / FRI 10-11-24 / Online provocateur, in slang / Called out on Instagram, informally / Alternative to blinds / Penalty box, in hockey slang / Array on a trolley / What hilarity often does, it's said / German beer historically consumed by monks / Southern hip-hop duo with the #1 hit "Ms. Jackson"

Constructor: Billy Bratton

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: kri-kri (19A: Island home of a goat known as the kri-kri (CRETE)) —

The kri-kri (Capra hircus cretica), sometimes called the Cretan goat, Agrimi, or Cretan Ibex, is a feral goat inhabiting the Eastern Mediterranean, previously considered a subspecies of wild goat. The kri-kri today is found only in Greece: specifically on Crete and on three small islands off its coast (Dia, Thodorou, and Agii Pantes); as well as on the island of Sapientza (Messenian Oinousses) off the southwestern coast of Peloponnese, where it was brought in great numbers in order to protect the species from extinction. [...] The kri-kri is not thought to be indigenous to Crete, most likely having been imported to the island during the time of the Minoan civilization. It was once common throughout the Aegean but the peaks of the 2,400 m (8,000 ft) White Mountains of Western Crete are their last strongholds—particularly a series of almost vertical 900 m (3,000 ft) cliffs called 'the Untrodden'—at the head of the Samaria Gorge. This mountain range, which hosts another 14 endemic animal species, is protected as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. In total, their range extends to the White Mountains, the Samaria National Forest and the islets of Dia, Thodorou, and Agii Pandes. Recently some were introduced onto two more islands. // By 1960, the kri-kri was under threat, with a population below 200. It had been the only meat available to mountain guerillas during the German occupation in World War II. Its status was one reason why the Samaria Gorge became a national park in 1962. There are still only about 2,000 animals on the island and they are considered vulnerable: hunters still seek them for their tender meat, grazing grounds have become scarcer and disease has affected them. Hybridization is also a threat, as the population has interbred with ordinary goats. Hunting them is strictly prohibited. [...] The kri-kri is a symbol of the island, much used in tourism marketing and official literature. // As molecular analyses demonstrate, the kri-kri is not, as previously thought, a distinct subspecies of wild goat. Rather, it is a feral domestic goat, derived from the first stocks of goats domesticated in the Levant and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean around 8000-7500 BCE. Therefore, it represents a nearly ten-thousand-year-old "snapshot" of the first domestication of goats.

• • •

This was a decidedly unpleasant puzzle, not because it's poorly made (the grid seems fine, for the most part), but because it's just loaded with the worst people and things. BOOBIRDS and EDGELORDs and CON ARTISTS and the angry mobs with TORCHES shouting "I'M MAD" and "THAT'S A LIE!" and then the REEK and the STANK and the JELLO SHOTS, like ... this is not the vibe I want on Friday. Not at all. If the parade of awfulness doesn't bug you, there are other potential turnoffs. Maybe you dislike the puzzle because it's loaded with sports (or, in the case of poker, "sports"): ANTE (46D: Alternative to blinds) and SINBIN (40D: Penalty box, in hockey slang) and at least three (3) American football clues (RTS, Andy REID, GOES DEEP). Or you might be put off by the preponderance of pop culture: BATWOMAN and OUTKAST and Taylor Swift (again) and LASSIE—actually, that doesn't seem like that much pop culture—none of it bothered me, but I know how some of you are. Anyway, there are lots of avenues to dislike. Choose your own adventure! Or, maybe all the negativity (or sports, or pop culture) really floated your boat. If so, that's cool. I'm happy for you. But I found this a downer. I mean, the marquee answer is WASTED POTENTIAL! Lord knows I am no fan of relentless positivity, or positivity for positivity's sake, but yeesh. This was depressing.

And then there's VINY (3D: Ivy descriptor). I have never described ivy as VINY. I've never heard anyone describe anything as VINY, I don't think. Something overgrown with vines might be VINY, perhaps, but ivy simply is a vine. It's not VINY. It's ... vine. A vine. A type of vine. Fun fact (sorta): the wikipedia page for "ivy" contains not a single mention of the word "vine" (to say nothing of "VINY"). Luckily, VINY is the only answer that made my eye twitch today. The grid is actually pretty smooth overall. It's just smoothly filled with offputting stuff. I was happy to have to work a little today—puzzles have been running easy, and even if this one occasionally seemed to be Trying Too Hard (TTH) where "clever"/misleading cluing was concerned, I didn't mind that much. Weirdest mistake I made all day was reading 4D: Concourse info, in brief (ETA) as [Course intro, in brief], and then writing in APP ... you know, you order APPs before the main ... course (!?!?!). Luckily "AM I TOO LATE?!" would not be denied, and then I relooked at 4-Down and read it correctly. Oof. 

Definitely had to think a bit to get CON ARTISTS (16A: Builders of pyramids, perhaps) (those pyramids are made of "schemes," I guess). First real mistake came at 21A: Dish topped with lime, basil and hoisin sauce (PHO), where I had the "H" and wrote in ... AHI! What can I say: crossword reflexes sometimes fail you. I also (briefly, and strangely) had SECOND MENU (?) before SECRET MENU (24D: What might have sandwiches under wraps?) and LOAD (??) before LOAN (29D: Floated sum). On that last one, I think I was thinking of a different realm of finance, namely mutual funds. I dunno, I'm going so fast that who knows what logic my brain is using? Anyway, LOAD made the ENSUES clue (already hard) much harder (39A: What hilarity often does, it's said). I forgot the title of DFW's first novel (The BROOM of the System); he taught for a time at my (and Joel Fagliano's) alma mater, and he was a major author, but I never could get into him. I really liked his essays, but the fiction never hooked me. Still, I am familiar with his titles, and was mad at myself that BROOM didn't come to me more quickly. Everything else in the grid was pretty easy for me today.


Bullets:

• 15A: Musician's pitch? (DEMO) — when you are pitching (as in "selling" or "shopping" yourself) around as a musician, you might give people a DEMO tape of your music.
• 35A: Shells out for dinner, say (PASTA) — this is part of that Trying Too Hard (TTH) thing I was talking about. The "shells"-for-pasta misdirection is old as the hills, but the addition of "out" here makes the whole thing awkward. Great on the (fake-out) surface level, i.e. it definitely makes you think "pays for," but the “out” is completely gratuitous on the PASTA-meaning level. I guess the shells are "out" in that they are ... out ... on the table, ready to be eaten? It's bad. Clue needs a "?" to justify itself.
• 9D: Called out on Instagram, informally (ATTED) — is there a "formal" calling out on Instagram? Like, a black-tie version of letting someone know about the cat video you just posted? ATTED is great from a "modern! In-the-language!" perspective but truly awful from a word aesthetic perspective. Some terms weren't meant to be written out. (ATTED comes from the at-sign (@), which you put in front of someone's handle in a post if you want them to be notified about it. Replying to others' posts is also a form of atting. "Don't AT me" is a common statement of defiance (often facetious) from someone expressing an opinion they believe will be highly unpopular).
• 11D: They're set for a night of drinking (JELLO SHOTS) — Jell-O has to "set," i.e. firm up.

• 46D: Alternative to blinds (ANTE) — this is all the research I'm willing to do for you, so little do I care about poker: "Blinds are forced bets posted by players to the left of the dealer button in flop-style poker games. The number of blinds is usually two, but it can range from none to three. When there are two blinds they are called the small blind and the big blind." (wikipedia)
• 20D: Array on a trolley (TEA) — I wanted something to do with luggage. Then something to do with sushi (!?). You know, where you sit at the sushi bar and the items come around on a little conveyor belt ... I thought maybe that was called a "trolley." I have never seen tea on a trolley. Desserts, yes. TEA, no. But then the amount of time I have spent in tea houses is somewhere near nil.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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