Windows forerunner, in brief / FRI 11-8-24 / Spoken-word performer Scott-Heron / Pricey flight options / Turn upside down, as a Monopoly deed / Cinematic friend of Scuttle, Flounder and Sebastian / Co-star of Netflix's "The Umbrella Academy" / Sitcom that popularized the phrase "What'choo talkin' 'bout, Willis?" / "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious ___": Arthur Conan Doyle

Constructor: Evans Clinchy

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: guitarrón (35D: Style of music with a vihuela and guitarrón = MARIACHI) —

The guitarrón mexicano (Spanish for "big Mexican guitar", the suffix -ón being a Spanish augmentative) or Mexican guitarrón is a very large, deep-bodied Mexican six-string acoustic bass guitar played traditionally in Mariachi groups. Although similar to the guitar, it is not a derivative of that instrument, but was independently developed from the sixteenth-century Spanish bajo de uña ("fingernail[-plucked] bass"). Because its great size gives it volume, it does not require electric amplification for performances in small venues. The guitarrón is fretless with heavy gauge strings, most commonly nylon for the high three and wound metal for the low three. [...] The guitarrón is used in Mexican Mariachi groups, which usually consist of at least two violins, two trumpets, one Spanish guitar, a vihuela (a high-pitched, five-string guitar-type instrument), and the guitarrón. A strap is usually used to keep the instrument up and playable. The guitarrón is the principal rhythm instrument in the mariachi group, and it serves as the bass instrument, playing deep pitches. The rhythmic propulsion of the basslines played on it help to keep the other instruments together. It is unusual for a group to have more than one guitarrón player. (wikipedia)

• • •

There is nothing more deceptive than a fill-in-the-blank quotation clue, apparently. There are only two reasons why I rated this puzzle "Easy-Medium" as opposed to just "Easy," and one of them was right there waiting to greet me at the door: 1A: "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious ___": Arthur Conan Doyle. I took one look at that clue and thought, "I dunno ..." Then I got the "F" from FEED and thought, "There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious ... FAKE?" And then I tested the crosses and bam, the "A" was right, and I was like "yessss, nailed it." But then came the last two crosses. EURO and EDAM were undeniable, and their letters were making FAKE impossible. Could not get 3D: Pricey flight options, perhaps from KRAF- and couldn't come close to 4D: Doofuses from EOMF-. In fact, I couldn't come close to 4D: Doofuses even without the "E" there. -OMF- was just ??? All I could think was this was some form of "dummkopfs?" Is that how you spell it? But without the -KE from FAKE, I couldn't think of anything that worked. I mean, I just couldn't see FACT. I had DRAFT BEERS in there for a bit and thought, "those ... aren't particularly 'pricey,' are they?" I really should've seen FACT, but also, TOMFOOLS is a truly awful answer. TOMFOOLERY is an absolutely acceptable term that I have heard and seen in the wild. But TOMFOOLS is some awful junk no one says. Pointing at the dictionary and saying "see!" isn't gonna help you hear, counselor. TOMFOOLS is junk. Not as disqualifying as IRES, which makes TOMFOOLS look commonplace, but pretty bad nonetheless. Mad at myself for not getting the -CT in FACT, but mad at the puzzle for the "only in crosswords" garbage that is TOMFOOLS and IRES. I don't know how constructors tolerate this stuff. TOMFOOL me once, shame on Tom; TOMFOOL me twice ... also shame on Tom, what is his problem?

The other trouble spot for me was the front end of *everything* down below—the long Acrosses, anyway. I came at that section from the back end, so I was staring at -ATTACHÉ and -CAKE and -ATIES like "???" Some kind of ATTACHÉ. Some kind of CAKE. Some word ending -ATIES. Making matters worse was 37D: Examines closely (PERUSES), which I had as ZOOMS IN or ZEROS IN because I had the ["Lord of the Flies" boy] as ZIGGY (haven't read LOTF since high school). Short downs in the SW weren't helping much either. Wanted "AS IF" for (the now dreadfully common and always ambiguous) "UH, NO" (the hesitancy of "UH" kind of contradicts the exclamation point of "Dream on!" there, though I guess you can say "UH, NO" with all kinds of different inflections, including semi-sarcastically, with an implied "!" on the end). CCED was unclear (44D: Kept up to speed, in a way). DOS ... I know only from MS/DOS, so I couldn't get that either (55A: Windows forerunner, in brief). Of course now, looking over my finished puzzle, of course it's PIGGY and CULTURAL ATTACHÉ and CHEESECAKE. And I probably didn't spend that much time working all this out. But compared to the rest of the puzzle, this section (along with the TOMFOOLS section, ugh) was a significant slow patch.

There were moments I loved in this puzzle, like spelling DIFF'RENT STROKES correctly on the first try (19A: Sitcom that popularized the phrase "What'choo talkin' 'bout , Willis?"). I know there was an elision in there somewhere, and that first "E" seemed most likely, so I went for it, and nailed it! Right in my childhood TV-watching wheelhouse. DIFF'RENT STROKES was also the very first thing I saw on French television when I arrived there for the first time. Well, that and advertisements for shampoo where you could see women's naked breasts. Or did my 17yo brain fever-dream that? Well, the DIFF'RENT STROKES part was real, at any rate. The culture shock of being overseas for the first time was fun. Riding the Metro. Discovering how lousy my straight-A French was. Eating pain au everything—all the pain. Really wish I were back watching DIFF'RENT STROKES in a French hotel room right now ... good times (which is an entirely different sitcom; not sure if the French got that one). Anyway, "Il faut de tout pour faire un monde..." still lives in my brain.

["De quoi tu parles, Willis?"]

I also loved TRES LECHES (27D: Dairy-heavy dessert popular throughout Latin America), primarily because I actually love TRES LECHES, especially as prepared by my chef friend Ely. She does pop-up sales of Mexican food from time to time, out of her home (this was especially welcome during COVID shutdown times), and, well, good Mexican food is hard to get around here, so I ate a Lot of her food, including the TRES LECHES. TRES LECHES next to MARIACHI is especially nice. Culturally coherent. Complementary. I don't like ZEALOTRY irl but I love it in the grid. It ZINGS. All in all, a hit-and-miss kind of day. If I could kill one crosswordese word, it would be IRES. Never, no one, no-how, no. Not said. Drive a stake through its miserable little heart. Only TOMFOOLS use IRES. Down with IRES, up with CHEESECAKE, that's my motto.

Notes and explainers:

• 23A: Big brothers? (ABBOTS) — "brothers" being members of a fraternal order (monks), ABBOTS being the leaders (the "big" members) of said orders—the heads of abbeys, which are types of monasteries.
• 56A: Lowdown (SKINNY) — tough one, particularly if you are a non-native speaker of English. "Lowdown" looks like it means "cruel, mean, base, rotten," etc. But here it means "news, gossip, intel, inside info, dope." Extra-confusingly, SKINNY (which typically means "thin") also means "news, gossip, intel, inside info, dope." "What's the SKINNY?" or "to get the SKINNY" is some old-tymey idiom. "SKINNY: Information or gossip from a reliable source" (Collins Dictionary). Not sure why I know it. But there it is. English is weird, man.
• 3D: Pricey flight options, perhaps (CRAFT BEERS) — so ... not DRAFT BEERS. A "flight" is a kind of sampler that you might order at a bar with fancy beer (or wine, or bourbon, or cheese, or whatever). 
• 9D: Turn upside down, as a Monopoly deed card (MORTGAGE) — haven't played this boring game since about the last time I read Lord of the Flies, but the answer wasn't hard to infer.
• 16D: ___ Banchero, 2023 N.B.A. Rookie of the Year (PAOLO) — no idea, but got it off the "-AO-" What other name has that vowel combo?

• 49D: It comes down hard (HAIL) — a very old clue pun. Not "it comes down with great force" but "it comes down in solid as opposed to liquid form."
• 50D: "Sommes" and "serai" are forms of it (ÊTRE) — First we get French bread (EURO), then we get French ... non-bread. French irregular verb. Seven years of French really coming in handy today. Also, ÊTRE gives us the rarely seen double diacritical square! We get É in the Across (CULTURAL ATTACHÉ) and Ê in the Down (ÊTRE). 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

***

Important Note:

As of Monday, 11/4/24, the NYT Tech Guild is on strike. 

From The Guardian:

The Guild is asking that readers honor their picket line by boycotting the Times’ selection of games, including Wordle and the daily digital crossword, and to avoid other digital extensions such as the Cooking app.

Annie Shields, a campaign lead for the News Guild of New York, encouraged people to sacrifice their streaks in the wildly popular Wordle and Connections games in order to support the strike.

You can read more about the strike here (nyguild.org).

There were some anti-union talking points being credulously repeated in the comments recently, so just to be clear (per Vanity Fair): "The union said Tech Guild workers' main concerns that remain unresolved are: remote/hybrid work protections; “just cause” job protections, which “the newsroom union has had for decades”; limits on subcontracting; and pay equity/fair pay." 

Since the picket line is "digital," it would appear to apply only to Games solved in the NYT digital environment—basically anything you solve on your phone or on the NYT website per se. If you get the puzzle in an actual dead-tree newspaper, or if you solve it outside the NYT's proprietary environment (via a third-party app, as I do), then technically you're not crossing the picket line by solving. You can honor the digital picket line by not using the Games app (or the Cooking app) at all until the strike is resolved. No Spelling Bee, no Connections ... none of it. My morning Wordle ritual is was very important to me, but ... I'll survive, I assume.  

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