Common motifs in high art? / FRI 12-20-24 / Member of the Golden Horde / Goddess often depicted clothed in green / Rhea's relative / Ancient music halls / Subject of 199 silkscreen paintings by Warhol / Org. with towers / Aptly named descendant of Standard Oil

Constructor: Henry Josephson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: THE GOLDEN SPIKE (32A: Symbol of America's first transcontinental railroad) —

The Golden Spike (also known as The Last Spike) is the ceremonial 17.6-karat gold final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento and the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. The term last spike has been used to refer to one driven at the usually ceremonial completion of any new railroad construction projects, particularly those in which construction is undertaken from two disparate origins towards a common meeting point. The spike is now displayed in the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. [...] Completing the last link in the transcontinental railroad with a spike of gold was the brainchild of David Hewes, a San Francisco financier and contractor. [...] To drive the final spike, Stanford lifted a silver spike maul and drove the spike into the tie, completing the line. Stanford and Hewes missed the spike, but the single word "done" was nevertheless flashed by telegraph around the country. In the United States, the event has come to be considered one of the first nationwide media events. The locomotives were moved forward until their cowcatchers met, and photographs were taken. Immediately afterwards, the golden spike and the laurel tie were removed, lest they be stolen, and replaced with a regular iron spike and normal tie. At exactly 12:47 pm, the last iron spike was driven, finally completing the line. (wikipedia)

• • •

[56A: "Sorry, those secrets are
*beyond* classified"]

If this is a debut (as it appears to be, since the constructor's name is not in my database), then it's one of the more impressive debuts I've ever seen. The grid shape itself is arresting. At first glance, it looks too choppy—like, too many black squares, too many short answers, not promising. But then it unfolds and it has this really incredible flow—not all-over flow, but a kind of trickle-down, three-part flow, where one mini puzzle leads down to the next, that part fills up, and then down you go again to the bottom, with big, bright answers splashing across the grid along they way, leaping like KOI across the grid (I know, KOI don't really leap, just play along, for once!). And yes, there are a lot of short answers, but they are mostly clean and *all* in service of gorgeous marquee answers. That is the proper job of short fill—hold the longer, better, more impressive fill in place without being aggressively ugly. And today's marquee fill is indeed impressive. Eight (8) grid-spanners! Well, two are near-spanners, at 14 instead of 15 letters long, but that's another virtue of the grid: you get a couple of rarely-seen 14s (for structural reasons, 14s are often hard to accommodate in a 15x15 grid, generally), and you get a center stack that's leaning, staggered, a little off-kilter, which keeps the grid from being excessively blocky (yes, sometimes I just like (or don't like) the way the squares look in the grid—not as important as how the puzzle plays, but the eye likes what it likes). Yes, the puzzle was too easy, but it was fun while it lasted. Exhilarating to be able to drive ANSWERED TO NO ONE (7D: Had carte blanche) like a spike, right through the heart of the grid, and then have THE GOLDEN SPIKE show up as an answer. My spike didn't *complete* the puzzle, the way THE GOLDEN SPIKE completed the railroad, but man was it fun satisfying to hammer it home:

[one little mistake at this point: JOAN instead of JOÃO (15D: John, in Portuguese); I was thinking of Miró, who was Spanish, not Portuguese]

This puzzle has one pretty bad editing foul-up, which is that the word "GOLDEN" somehow made it into a clue (46D: Member of the Golden Horde), despite being already in the grid, and in a marquee position. This is fine with small words (articles, prepositions, ultra-common 3- or 4-letter words), but with longer words, it's obtrusive. Solvers are apt to notice. At best, it's a distraction. Reads like a glitch. At worst, a solver might second-guess an answer because "they wouldn't duplicate such a standout word, would they?" They shouldn't, that's for sure. Absolutely no need for "Golden" to be in that TATAR clue. Unforced error. (Although I have to say that that clue led to my favorite mistake (or near-mistake) in the puzzle—I had TAT-, looked at [Member of the Golden Horde], and thought "... TATER?" Gonna start calling my tater tots "The Golden Horde."

These puzzles with long stacks and lots of short crosses are often much easier than they look because just a few of those crosses can unlock a longer answer, and then you get a cascading effect from there. Cascading! That's the word for how this solve played out. It played out waterfallishly. Falling water, one third down to the next third down to the next. Well, there's the rapid descent of the central spike ("ANSWERED TO NO ONE"), but after that, back to the top and cascading commences. I have almost no ink on my printed-out grid, which means very few trouble spots. That JOAN-for-JOÃO error didn't last long. I had some minor trouble wondering what MARIJUANA was going to have to do with art ("motifs"), but they realized "oh, they're looking for a motif, not a specific art term" (14A: Common motifs in high art?). It's just LEAVES. The crosses there were so easy that LEAVES just materialized without much effort on my part. Had a couple seconds confusion trying to parse MINERAL DEPOSITS (38A: Veins, e.g.) because I had MINE- and figuring it was going to be some more specifically *mining* term. MINE ... something. But then the "R" from ORGAN slid in and that problem went away. I lucked into knowing the one not-terribly-famous name in the grid (ELLY) (47D: 2024 M.L.B. All-Star ___ De La Cruz). Baseball fans will know him, others, I'm guessing, not so much. He's very young (b. 2002, MLB debut 2023). But very good and likely an All-Star for years to come. I remember when I first saw his name and thought "hmm, good for crosswords." So now you know. ELLY. Be on the lookout. Move over, ELLY May Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies, there's a new ELLY in town.

Further notes:

• 1A: Abbr. in a scholarly paper (ET AL) — Me: "IBID!" (bzzt!)
• 18A: Goddess often depicted clothed in green (GAIA) — earth goddess. Never sure if it's GAEA or GAIA. Just gotta wait on that cross.
• 43A: Where to watch the cubs (DEN) — hmm, I'm gonna guess that park rangers don't recommend that you do this. Cubs are cute, but ...  you're gonna wanna stay out of the DEN.
• 1D: Rhea's relative (EMU) — a gimme ... and yet my crossword brain went "MOA! It's MOA! Write in MOA!" "But Rhea's are still around and the MOA's been extinct for over five hund-" "Write it!"
• 13D: Aptly named descendant of Standard Oil (ESSO) — if I ever knew this, I forgot it. "S" "O"—whaddya know.
• 23D: Move like a crab (SIDLE) — there's a very arresting shot of a sidling crab in the movie All We Imagine As Light, which I saw at Cinemapolis up in Ithaca yesterday. A remarkable, patient, subtle, lovely movie about three Mumbai nurses—their friendship and the challenges they face as (mostly) single women in the big city. Recommended.

• 26D: Place to take notes (ATM) — so bank notes, i.e. currency. Cute.
• 50D: Ancient music halls (ODEA) — there are lots of repeaters in the short fill, but this is the only one I would classify as hardcore "crosswordese." 
• 57D: Org. with towers (AAA) — they tried to get you with the towers/towers thing (tall structures v. things that tow .,. your automobile). Hope you survived. I never even saw this clue.
• 52A: Subject of 199 silkscreen paintings by Warhol (MAO) — same as with MOA-for-EMU above, except here my brain was shouting "ONO!" "Jeezus, brain, you know it's not ONO!" "Ooooooonoooooo!"

Holiday Pet Pics now! 

(reminder: submissions closed til next year!)

First up, a double shot of Roxy, who was Jewish, but also the most ardent Christmas enthusiast. She'd sport whatever look you wanted. Up for anything. What a sweet baby (RIP)

[Thanks, Liz]

Henry and Lily here look slightly less enthusiastic, but they are hungry for treats, so they will patiently abide your photo session, just hurry up with it.

[Thanks, Carol]

"Oh, hi, whatcha doin? Takin' a photo of the tree? Can I be in it?" Sure, Penny. You can be in it.

[Thanks, Ciara]

According to their owner, Cody thinks he hears Santa, but Bella knows it's just the mailman. "Go back to sleep, Cody." If it's not the real thing, Bella ain't budging.

[Thanks, Martha]

And finally, this hilarious chonkster and his microhouse. The cat's name is Rocky, and well, I guess you're wondering how he got into this predicament. I'll let his owner tell it: "This was a Xmas present for our then-feral then-outdoor cat, but I misunderestimated just how big he was in comparison to the house I bought online. Eventually, a friend used it as a model to make a 1.5x scale one he could fit in." Rocky says "It fits. I sits. Keep out!"

[Thanks, David]

See y'all tomorrow, I hope.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]