Maori ceremonial dance / WED 11-27-24 / Singer known as the "Queen of Tejano Music" / Good-looking couple? / Possesses a certain je ne sais quoi

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare (again)! You thought you were rid of me for a month, but I’m actually back to cover the last Wednesday of November, too. Let’s all collectively wish Rex a happy (now belated) birthday! And let’s also just forget I signed off yesterday by saying I’d see everyone in December and already wished people a happy Thanksgiving. We’ll just apply that all to this write-up, instead. The peril of doing these posts back-to-back is that I don’t have anything exciting to tell you about my sports teams, and I know how much you all look forward to that. 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Jill Singer

Relative difficulty: Medium-challenging (for a Wednesday)

THEME: THE THREE SISTERS — (39A: Corn, beans and squash, in Mesoamerican tradition ... or a hint to six answers in this puzzle) — the theme answers are two groups of three famous sisters

Theme answers:

• ANNE (5A: Member of an 1800s literary family) 
• CHARLOTTE (17A: Member of an 1800s literary family) 
• EMILY (18A: Member of an 1800s literary family) 
• KOURTNEY (45A: Member of a 2000s showbiz family) 
• KIM (50A: Member of a 2000s showbiz family) 
• KHLOE (61A: Member of a 2000s showbiz family)

Word of the Day: H MART (3D: "Crying in ___," best-selling memoir of 2021)) —

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir is a 2021 memoir by Michelle Zauner, singer and guitarist of the musical project Japanese Breakfast. It is her debut book, published on April 20, 2021, by Alfred A. Knopf. It is an expansion of Zauner's essay of the same name which was published in The New Yorker on August 20, 2018. The title mentions H Mart, a North American supermarket chain that specializes in Korean and other Asian products. After Zauner's mother Chongmi died of pancreatic cancer in October 2014, Zauner frequently made trips to H Mart, an experience she chronicled in her New Yorker essay and in "Real Life: Love, Loss and Kimchi" which won Glamour Magazine's 11th essay contest. (Wiki)

• • •

The idea of THE THREE SISTERS (39A) is clever — as long as you’re OK with the Bronte and Kardashian sisters being put on the same level. (I’m not.) Basically, I like how the groupings are structured and that the puzzle focuses on women. And it’s executed well. But… the Kardashian sisters in the puzzle? Really? I get that the idea was to have an older reference juxtaposed with a more modern one — and there are fewer famous trios of sisters than you might imagine — but it just felt wrong to have these two families together. As much as I hate “Wuthering Heights,” I was more than happy to see EMILY Bronte (18A) in the puzzle but groaned when I realized the puzzle was going to make me put in each Kardashian sister. One family had talent! Contributed to society! Wrote some of the best books in literary history! The other… 

If you can get past the Kardashian thing, there were a number of points to like about the puzzle. In particular, I enjoyed ROOT WORDS (63A: Linguistic "stems"), ERSATZ (30D: Fake), and GATEAU (25D: Patisserie purchase). I loved TORTOISES (37A: Symbols of longevity in Chinese iconography) and how the answer was clued. Having ICU (31A: Hospital dept. that sounds like a sentence), indicating the sentence “I see you,” crossing I SEE (31D: “Understood”) was clever. There was a thread in the puzzle of words in different languages, which I rather enjoyed — BEL ESPRIT (66A) (French), ERSATZ (30D) (German), GATEAU (25D) (French), NOEL (58D) (French), EIRE (4D) (Gaelic), SAN (48A) (Spanish), OLE (64D) (Spanish), and HAKA (40D) (Maori). The foreign words did make things slightly more challenging in spots. I’m glad Anthony DOERR (29D: Pulitzer-winning novelist) is in the puzzle — he’s the author of “All the Light We Cannot See,” which is a fantastic book, and “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” which pales only in comparison with the perfection of the former. 

This puzzle was so very heavy on proper nouns. I mentioned the proper nouns yesterday because there seemed to be a fair number. But today? Wow! I counted 26 in this puzzle. I mean you have to have the six names of the sisters, but even just starting the puzzle (going with the downs), you have five proper nouns in a row (ACCRA, COHEN, H MART, EIRE, and CLARA). CLARA Schumann (15D) was one I didn’t know (even though she’s *so* close to having the perfect name). She was a German pianist and composer and was apparently one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era (at least according to Wikipedia). 

My struggle in the puzzle mainly came with BEL ESPRIT (66A: Clever person), which is a term I’ve just never heard before, and the literal translation, “pretty spirit,” doesn’t really suggest a clever person. That was atop SLED (68A: Flexible Flyer, for one), which was another challenging one for me because I’d never heard of a Flexible Flyer (though in hindsight the clue makes sense). Combine those difficulties with 46D: Fit together, where I tried to put “nestle” instead of NESTED, and I spent some precious time working that section out. I wish we didn’t need to have THE SAHARA (42A: Home to horned vipers and deathstalker scorpions), which looks especially clunky right on top of THE THREE SISTERS (39A) (even if the construction may have been deliberate). My last little gripe is with the clue for TYPE O (67A: Universal donor's classification) because O-negative is the universal donor. O-positive is not.

Misc.:

• The lyrics of “Over the Rainbow” (21D) made me think about the movie “Wicked” and its press tour. So here’s your daily reminder to really hold space for the lyrics to “Defying Gravity” today. (And if you don’t know what I mean, congrats on not being chronically online. You can see what I’m talking about here, which has been all over my social media feeds and is too iconic not to share. Holding hands is out — holding pointer fingers is in.) 
• I tried to close my window by only hitting ESC (20A: Key to close a window), but it didn’t work. I suppose that, these days, it needs to be used in combination with another key. 
• I’ve always been partial to TORTOISEs and turtles — did you know there’s a tortoise named Jonathan who hatched in 1832 who’s still alive?! And there are several mythologies that feature the idea of a turtle carrying the world on their back (either supporting or containing it), which is an idea I love.
• If you somehow managed to miss the HAKA (40D: Maori ceremonial dance) being performed in the New Zealand Parliament by MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke to protest and halt a bill being introduced, you must watch this powerful video. 
• My worlds collided a bit with "Crying in H MART" and BTS. The author was really excited when a BTS member, Jungkook, held up the book during a livestream, and she’s also said she’d love to cast another BTS member, RM, in the film adaptation! 

And that’s all from me!

Signed, Clare Carroll, who really won’t be back now until December (probably)

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