Sautéed-and-simmered Japanese dish / FRI 11-29-24 / Ghanaian author ___ Kwei Armah / Half of a noted arcade pair / Light lager variety, casually / Mohawk culture / XXX, in a way / Hit podcast beginning in 2014 / Mystic associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls /

Constructor: Willa Angel Chen Miller and Matthew Stock

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (very challenging up top, very easy down below)

THEME: none, for the most part — there's a little two-clue Beauty and the Beast "joke" in the middle of the grid, but I wouldn't call it a "theme"

Word of the Day: DAVE & Busters (56D: Half of a noted arcade pair) —

Dave & Buster's Entertainment, Inc. (stylized in all caps) is an American restaurant and entertainment business headquartered in Dallas. Each Dave & Buster's location has a full-service restaurant, full bar, and a video arcade; the latter of which is known as the "Million Dollar Midway". As of September 2023, the company currently has a total of 156 locations in the United States, with two in Puerto Rico and two in Canada. // In 1982, David "Dave" Corriveau (1951-2015) and James "Buster" Corley (1951-2023) opened the first Dave & Buster’s in Dallas. (wikipedia)

• • •

This wasn't for me. I don't know if it's a food hangover or what, but I could barely get started on this grid in the N/NW. The shape of that corner is such that there are no short crosses at the front ends of the longer answers, to help you get started, and the first short cross I found and tried was a name I'd never heard of (not the answer, not the two name parts in the clue, nothing) (4D: Ghanaian author ___ Kwei Armah). Yes, I should know more about world literature, but still, I won't be anywhere near alone in not knowing that name today. I went through all the short crosses up top and the only things I had, even semi-confidently, were TOMB and TWO (which I also thought might be VEE). I thought TEE UP might work at 11D: Begin a hole, but I also thought DRIVE seemed plausible; anyway, TEE OFF seemed like a much better answer for that clue than TEE UP. So I left it. And eventually I left that corner altogether—for the northeast, where I finally got some real traction with RNS, EAU, AMP. Once again, it's the names that were the main problem for me today; that, and what seemed like Saturday-level cluing all over the place. As for names, "NO TIME TO DIE" meant nothing to me except as some hackneyed phrase anyone might've used at any point in history for any crime- or adventure-related anything (17A: Bond theme song that won an Academy Award in 2022). AYI, no way, PATON I know as an author, not as an "Anti-apartheid activist," and then KINPIRA, LOL, that answer was just letters to me. First I've ever seen such a "dish" (43D: Sautéed-and-simmered Japanese dish). 

There were other names I knew (-ish) but needed crosses to get to (speaking of CROSSES, yeesh, that clue (2D: XXX, in a way)—I'm not British, this isn't a British paper, so we don't call it "Noughts & CROSSES"—we call it "tic tac toe") (I suppose you could also argue that "X" represents "cross" in road signs, e.g. "Ped Xing"—either way, that clue was ???). I saw Beauty and the Beast once 30+ years ago, so LUMIÈRE eventually came back to me, but he wasn't an instant get. And I stared at -AVE for more than a second before running the alphabet, hitting "D" for DAVE, and recalling that yes, I had seen many ads for a place called DAVE & Busters that looked like the awfulest place on earth. A place designed to keep me out. Like a Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups, which is to say, like some place in hell—one of the noisier, more chaotic rings ... maybe level three (gluttons) or four (hoarders/spenders)?  Anyway, as I said, this puzzle was simply not for me. Over and over, just outside my frame of reference.

The proper nounification of the grid continues to run amok here, with a bunch of names, including at least a couple of names that didn't need to be names at all. When your grid is already choked with names, why that clue on ARM? (60A: "The ___ of the Starfish" (1965 sequel to "A Wrinkle in Time")). Why that clue on SERIAL? (48D: Hit podcast beginning in 2014). Either clue would be OK in a grid that wasn't already awash in names. The editor should have a greater sense of balance. The geographical names don't rankle nearly so much, since they seem equally available to all solvers. Not exclusionary. Anyway, the names (some of which I knew, more of which I didn't) distracted from some of the grid's finer points. The central Beauty and the Beast cross is cute, and those wide-open NW and SE corners are not bad, especially the Acrosses. And as hard as the top of this puzzle was for me, the bottom was easy. At times, very easy. Really uneven difficulty on the puzzle overall, with NW running like a Saturday, NE like a proper Friday, SE more like a Wednesday (KINPIRA notwithstanding), and SW like a Monday (done in seconds—never even saw the clues on ARM or RIA). In short, liked the Acrosses in the NW and SE, liked the Beauty and the Beast conceit, but didn't really groove on the much of the connective tissue, which I found sloggy, namey, oddly clued. The whole experience was less whoosh-whoosh than tromp-tromp-tromp. 

Bullet points:

• 21A: Chemistry research centers? (NUCLEI) — I learned about the components of cells in Biology, not Chemistry, but the clue is still kind of cute. (Forgot there are two kinds of NUCLEI—cellular (which I was thinking of) and atomic (which the clue was referring to))
• 43D: Sautéed-and-simmered Japanese dish (KINPIRA) — I'm writing a note about this in the hopes that it helps me remember (this worked once with BIRYANI, which you can also spell BIRIYANI; see, I remembered that too!):

Kinpira (金平) is a Japanese side dish, usually made of root vegetables that have been sautéed and simmered. The most common variety is kinpira gobō, or braised burdock root. Other vegetables used include carrots, lotus root; skins of squash such as kabocha, mushrooms or broccoli; and seaweeds such as arame and hijiki. Other foods including tofu, capsicums, wheat gluten (namafu); chicken thigh, pork, and beef. // The simmering sauce is made up of soy sauce, mirin, sugar, and chili peppers. // Kinpira is named after the son of Kintarō, a Japanese folk hero. (!?) (wikipedia)

• 34A: Mystic associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls (ESSENE) — ancient answer that is also ancient crosswordese. All super-common letters. A real crutch. If you've never encountered the ESSENEs before, commit that name to memory, you'll see it again. Its convenient letters ensure that it will show up in grids, maybe not frequently, but forever and ever.
• 42A: They might be down for a ski trip (PARKAS) — A "down" pun clue. "Down" here = insulation provided by goose (or other waterfowl) feathers.
• 57A: Ones receiving free room and board, for short (RAS) — Resident Assistants. Student overseers of college dormitories. 
• 9D: Bore (HAD) — think "___ children"
• 12D: One whose hard work is showing? (REALTOR) — They "show" properties. 
• 25A: Light lager variety, casually (PILS) — short for "pilsner." I guess it's reasonably common among beer aficionados. Seems like a horrible cute-ified abbrev. to let loose on the grid, but someone debuted it in 2023 so now you're gonna see it forever.
• 39D: Piece of a children's book, perhaps (FLAP) — totally inscrutable to me. I was picturing illustrations, pop-up features, maybe tactile features like in Pat the Bunny, but FLAP, well, you got me there. I'm sure there are, in fact, FLAPs in children's books—you lift them, you find things, etc.—but that's not really a front-of-the-brain "piece of a children's book" for me.
• 31A: Mohawk culture (PUNK) — really thought this was going to have a Native American frame of reference, but then I live near Mohawk country. But the "Mohawk" in question here is the haircut, which is iconically associated with PUNK rock "culture."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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