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.

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