Record-keeping device made of strings and knots / SAT 7-5-25 / Glass production / Brendon of Panic! at the Disco / French musician/composer ___ Tiersen / Fortnite developer / Dance move that slid into English as "sashay" / Getting in one guess, as Wordle / Subject of the books "Jonathan Loves David" and "Take Back the Word" / Dance move that slid into English as "sashay" / Eerie phenomenon when a robot seems too lifelike

Constructor: Tracy Bennett

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: QUIPU (46D: Record-keeping device made of strings and knots) —

Quipu (/ˈkiːpuː/ KEE-poo), also spelled khipu (Ayacucho Quechua: kipu, [ˈkipu]; Cusco Quechua: khipu, [kʰipu]), are record keeping devices fashioned from knotted cords. They were historically used by various cultures in the central Andes of South America, most prominently by the Inca Empire.

A quipu usually consists of cotton or camelid fiber cords, and contains categorized information based on dimensions like color, order and number. The Inca, in particular, used knots tied in a decimal positional system to store numbers and other values in quipu cords. Depending on its use and the amount of information it stored, a given quipu may have anywhere from a few to several thousand cords.

Objects which can unambiguously be identified as quipus first appear in the archaeological record during 1st millennium CE, likely attributable to the Wari Empire. Quipus subsequently played a key part in the administration of the Kingdom of Cusco of the 13th to 15th centuries, and later of the Inca Empire (1438–1533), flourishing across the Andes from c. 1100 to 1532. Inca administration used quipus extensively for a variety of uses: monitoring tax obligations, collecting census records, keeping calendrical information, military organization, and potentially for recording simple and stereotyped historical "annales". (wikipedia)

• • •

[37A: Babe, for one]

Lots of stuff I flat-out didn't know in this one, though it was still very doable—didn't play any harder than an average Saturday. I had no idea there was such a thing as QUEER THEOLOGY (46A: Subject of the books "Jonathan Loves David" and "Take Back the Word"). QUEER THEORY, sure—I went to grad school in the Humanities, after all. But THEOLOGY, no, that got by me. I mean of course there's QUEER THEOLOGY, there's QUEER everything, and yet still, this particular phrase—unknown to me. Got the QUEER part and then... no idea. QUEER TEENAGER? Sadly, no. Never heard the "8" / asterisk key called the STAR KEY, though as with QUEER THEOLOGY, that was eventually inferable (34A: *, to a typist). Never heard of QUIPU ... though I have this weird feeling that I "learned" it from crosswords and then forgot it (solve for long enough and this will happen to you, over and over and over and...). Looks like this is the first NYTXW appearance of QUIPU in over fifty-four years (!), so I don't feel so bad now about not recognizing it. Never would've remembered URIE without help from crosses (56A: Brendon of Panic! at the Disco). Absolutely no idea who this YANN composer person is (5A: French musician/composer ___ Tiersen). If the YANN is not Martel, I do not know the YANN. Looks like he scored the popular French movie Amélie (2001). Huh. OK. Ultimately, all the crosses on YANN are fair, though that second "N," yeesh. Who calls it NEAT VODKA? (8D: It's a straight shot). You can order any liquor "neat" but somehow the phrase "NEAT [insert liquor]"—while understandable and defensible—just sounds off. I would say someone was drinking whiskey neat, not neat whiskey. Of course I don't understand drinking vodka any way at all—it's the least interesting (and least taste-having) of all your major liquors. We have a well-stocked liquor cabinet—no vodka. But that's neither here nor there. The big-picture point here is that I got held up a lot by stuff beyond my ken. But through the magic of fair crosses, I got through it easily enough (easier as I went along, easiest at the finish, in the SE, where I didn't really know EPIC GAMES but had -IC GAMES filled in before I ever even saw the clue, so what else was it gonna be?) (30D: Fortnite developer).

[this is not the band in question—it's a song on a CD compilation that came with some NZ music mag I bought years and years ago. The compilation is called Awesome Feeling II. Presumably there was an Awesome Feeling I, but I don't own it]

Struggled up front with LONE, which really should've been SOLE, shouldn't it? LONE tracks, but SOLE alliterates, which is what all good crossword answers are supposed to do. Just discovered that Sole Survivor was the name of a 1970 TV movie starring William Shatner, about a WWII bombing mission gone awry, if that's of any interest to you. It's also the name of a 1984 horror movie whose poster has a cool-ass '80s digital font:

LONE survivor is just not as poetic or evocative as SOLE, though I can imagine someone saying it on the 6 o'clock news, so OK. Sticking with the NW corner—when I [Careen wildly], I do not SLUE. I VEER. So there was that. I had the 3D imaging as a CAT SCAN at first (my retired radiologist father would be disappointed). I know what ONION ROLLs are but I confess I didn't know they were particularly Jewish (3D: Jewish bakery specialty). So... struggle struggle struggle ... then I built that NW corner from the bottom up, and then ... the easiest answer in the NW, which I almost wish I'd looked at first:

I don't think UNCANNY VALLEY is clued quite right (22A: Eerie phenomenon when a robot seems too lifelike). The point isn't that it's "too lifelike"—it's that it's both too lifelike *and* not lifelike enough. That's the valley. The "eeriness" is when the robot crosses that threshold into "close but not there." Lots of A.I.-created animation falls in this category for me. See also, famously, the animation in Polar Express (2004). Anyway, you can't have the titular "valley" if you don't have both the concept of "too lifelike" *and* the concept of "not lifelike enough." See ... the valley is not a mythical place, it's a literal shape on a graph:

Though there was lots I didn't know, and some stuff I didn't love, in this grid, there were a few winners, for sure. I liked UNCANNY VALLEY as an answer (just not the clue). QUEER THEOLOGY looks great (my ignorance of the term notwithstanding). RINKY-DINK is hard not to like. GUTTER BALL—funny (in real life, and as clued) (50A: Alley oops) (i.e. a mistake ("oops!") made in a bowling alley). And I like CADET BLUE, which was an answer I found myself writing in off the first few letters without really knowing if it was real (27D: Uniform shade). That is, the phrase occurred to me, so I wrote it in, but I didn't know how I knew it or what shade of blue it was, exactly. Sometimes your brain just whispers the answer to you and you go with it. Of course sometimes your brain whispers VEER and CAT SCAN, so you've got to keep your eye on it.

[originally entitled "LOAN Provider" ... I mean, probably]

What else?:

• 29A: Michigan's ___ Marquette River (waterway named for a missionary) (PÈRE)— I guess the "missionary" part of the clue was supposed to suggest the religious PÈRE ("father"). No help to me. Tracy (today's constructor) is from Michigan, so this seems like one of at least two little personal flourishes in the puzzle. The other, perhaps more obvious flourish is the Wordle clue (41A: Getting in one guess, as Wordle). Tracy happens to be the editor of Wordle, in case you didn't know. I didn't love ACING as the answer there, but I guess in the golf sense, in the hole-in-one sense, it's true. In the sense of "ACING a test," though, no. ACING in that sense implies a demonstration of ability, whereas getting Wordle in 1 is just dumb luck.
• 55A: Glass production (OPERA) — as in Philip Glass. He has written 15 operas, including The Perfect American, a portrait of Walt Disney in his later years as a "power-hungry racist." Gotta check that one out.
• 60A: Somewhat audible disparagements (TSKS) — not getting the "somewhat" on this clue and the identical (if singular) clue on HISS. They are both definitely audible, or else they don't work. If a disparagement falls in the woods and nobody hears it ... did you even disparage, bro?
• 19D: Dance move that slid into English as "sashay" (CHASSÉ) — love the "slid into" part of this clue, since sliding is what's involved with a CHASSÉ.

That's it. Gonna go do Wordle now. Probably not in 1 (my starter word this week is BORIC—if I get it in 3, I'll feel like a hero). See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Paypal 
• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• Boswords (Boston) (Sun. July 27, 2025)
• Lollapuzzoola 18 (NYC) (Sat., Aug. 9, 2025) 
• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

The "p" in Paddington Station? / FRI 7-4-25 / What comes before B? / Gossip, informally / Rapper who won his first Grammy with "King's Disease" / Hefty herbivore / RIghtmost column on the periodic table / Tree goop / Put a pilot back into action? / Nickname for basketball's Mike Krzyzewski

Constructor: Colin Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy 

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: CHIN (50D: Gossip, informally) —

intransitive verb

slang : to talk idly (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Got off on the wrong foot with this one, as it wanted not one but two pop culture names from me right off the bat, before I ever got out of the NW. This is bad editing. It's bad when a single section gets too (TOO!) dense with any one kind of proper noun. Since NAS can't very well be changed, then ELLE should be. Scads of other ways to clue ELLE. SLEWs, even. To be hit with a 2014 song title and a 2020 album title within the first ten seconds of the solve ... unpleasant. I know that ELLE King exists, and that's about all I know about ELLE King. And I certainly had no idea NAS did anything in 2020, let alone anything Grammy-winning. So before I even got started, my feeling toward this one was "bah." But at least I knew NAS and knew that ELLE King was a musical name of note, and that latter bit of knowledge eventually got me straight up there, but still—inhospitable opening. I'm pro pop culture in puzzles, just ... spread it out. Luckily, the puzzle did not continue in this irksome fashion. There are only a handful of names in the entire rest of the puzzle, which is (for the most part) solid and nicely varied in terms of its frame of reference. Some might say it's a little too sportsy (COACH K, SHOHEI OHTANI, BATTER'S BOX, that clue on SERVE (44D: Start to rally, maybe)), or a little too CORPORATE (shilling, unnecessarily, for UBER and ORAL-B). Count me among the latter group. But there were enough nice marquee answers here to keep me relatively happy. The first time the puzzle tilted my feelings from negative to positive was with "THIS OLD THING?" an answer I could see materializing before I ever looked at the clue (such is the power of short crosses). Great colloquial phrase. Pair it with the greatest player in the history of Major League Baseball (sorry, Babe Ruth), and you've got two powerful pillars to build your grid around. This ended up being an enjoyable experience overall, even if it ended somewhat as it began, with a disappointing small corner, this time in the SE. The UBER ad + OXES (?) = no. Put those OXES in an UBER and get them out of my sight.

[TONI!]

With the exception of the very beginning, there weren't many places in this grid where I wasn't flying. Frequently felt like I was solving a Tuesday-level puzzle. By far the hardest part, the stickiest area, was the "GOD" part of "GOD, YES," ugh (42D: "Abso-freakin'-lutely!"). As with the "UH" in "UH, OK" (12D: "Fine, I guess"), I had no idea what the puzzle was going to do with the first half of the answer. Seemed completely arbitrary. I had "-O-, YES" and was kind of alternating between "WOW, YES!" and "BOY, YES!" (kinda like "BOY, BYE"* but more positive). Now, I could've wiggled my way out of this impasse if I'd only remembered that the rightmost column on the periodic table was GASES, but the only thing my brain could remember was INERT ... because that's what those GASES are. More commonly called the Noble GASES now, they were def known as "inert GASES" when I took chemistry in high school ("historically," wikipedia tells me—thanks for that, wikipedia). Remembered the INERT part but forgot the GASES part, that is just so typically me. So anyway, GOD/GASES was my hang-up. Didn't help that those answers were right on top of MEDIA SHY, which was also tough for me to get from the clue (51A: Avoiding coverage, in a way). But that was it for me, difficulty-wise. Everything else was slam-bang fast. 

Had a couple of weird moments where it felt like this puzzle had been hanging out with me for the past few days, as it was throwing me stuff I had just been thinking or talking about. I remarked the other day to my wife, out of the blue (mostly), that I thought my favorite living actress, and one that didn't get nearly enough credit for her greatness as she should, was TONI Collette. And that was just one week after my best friend asked me (during our lake vacation) if I'd ever seen Muriel's Wedding, to which I replied as if she'd insulted me: "Of course I did. I think I saw it with you!" Yes, 1994, Abba, I'm almost certain we saw it together during grad school when I put way more energy into movies and my friends than I did into my ostensible reason for being in grad school. Good times! Anyway, TONI has been freshly on my mind. And only yesterday I was listening to Conan O'Brien's recent interview with Martin Short, in which they talk a bunch about Short's being inducted into the "Five Timers Club" on SNL (8D: Show with an illustrious "Five-Timers Club," in brief) (a made-up "club" for people who have hosted the show at least five times).  And speaking of watching movies in grad school with my friends (as I was, just ... above [points with finger] right there), last week at the lake we rewatched our most-watched (by far) movie of the '90s, Dazed & Confused, which opens with Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" playing over a slo-mo shot of a MUSCLE CAR (a GTO) cruising into the high school parking lot. So even if ELLE and NAS did nothing for me up front, the puzzle eventually got around to things that have been on my mind, and for that, I was grateful.

[I know I posted this opening scene very recently but it's classic so I don't care]

Bullet points:

• 16A: Hurly-burly (HOO-HA) — crossword puzzle really loves this one. Me, not so much. As Google's A.I. will tell you (correctly, it turns out) if you search [hoo ha], HOO-HA is commonly used as slang for "vagina." This meaning has really taken off, so much so that I'd say it's the dominant meaning for many, if they know the term at all. I'm not big on cringey euphemisms for genitalia. Duluth Trading Co. has an underwear line called "Bullpen" (you know ... for your balls?) and a line of jeans called "Ballroom" and I won't come anywhere near either (though I love their products in general). As for HOO-HA, a cursory image search yields prodigious evidence of what I'm talking about:

• 60A: To pieces? (ODES) — "pieces" of poetry that are frequently titled "To [something]"
• 6D: Put a pilot back into action? (REAIR) — since aviator-type pilots fly through the air, it seems like it might be worth noting, just in case there's some confusion, that the "pilot" in question here is a television pilot.
• 7D: Healthful smoothie ingredient (KALE) — a couple years back, my daughter designed Rex Parker thank-you cards with pictures of my cat Alfie on them. She did five versions. One was of Alfie standing on his hind legs to get at some KALE:

[original photo]

That's all. Well, not all. In honor of our country's birthday ... here's one more thing from Dazed & Confused:

["Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes."]

Happy 4th, everyone!

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*[from "16 Slang Terms You Should Know To Stay Hip With Your Kids"]: "Yes, “girl, bye” is a slang term. Yes, you can use “boy, bye” as well. And yes, they do in fact mean goodbye. Sort of. Similar to “bye, Felicia,” these slang terms are meant to express disbelief, disagreement, or disapproval towards someone or something. They’re often used in a sassy or assertive manner to express that the speaker is uninterested, fed up, or annoyed with the person they are addressing. Basically, it means the speaker is done with the interaction and wants to move on."

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Paypal 
• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• Boswords (Boston) (Sun. July 27, 2025)
• Lollapuzzoola 18 (NYC) (Sat., Aug. 9, 2025) 
• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

State park in the Santa Monica Mountains / THU 7-3-25 / Portuguese currency before the euro / Swerve, as an airplane / Pac-Man ghost with the shortest name / Losing roll in a casino / School of higher learning, in Britain / House cry that sounds like a horse cry

Constructor: Adam Wagner

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BLINKERS (60A: Directional signals that flash on and off, as suggested by the circles in this puzzle) — the two circled squares in each theme answer function as car BLINKERS—every answer is double-clued, with the first clue working if your left blinker is on (i.e. there's an "L" in the left circle and nothing in the right), and the second clue working if your right. blinker is on (i.e. there's an "R" in the right circle and nothing in the left) (double-clued crosses work in a similar way, with first clue working if the blinker is on, and second working if the blinker is off):

Theme answers:

• LIMBORED (16A: Played a bar game? / [Yawn]) (LIMBOED / "I'M BORED")
• BOLOTIE (1D: Southwestern neckwear / Baby's foot warmer) (BOLO TIE / BOOTIE)
• HARM (5D: Injury / Christmas entree) (HARM / HAM)
• LOVERDONE (25A: Friend or family member / Clichéd) (LOVED ONE / OVERDONE)
• IDEAL (6D: Perfect / Concept) (IDEAL / IDEA)
• RANDRY (8D: Was exhausted / Lustful) (RAN DRY / RANDY)
• BLACKTIRE (35A: Formal dress code / what may "burn" in a drag race) (BLACK TIE / BACK TIRE)
• LOLL (24D: Idle / Texter's chuckle) (LOLL / LOL)
• ROIL (37D: Perturb / Frying need) (ROIL / OIL)
• BALDSPORT (50A: Area with no coverage? / Sore loser) (BALD SPOT / BAD SPORT)
• SPLICES (40D: Does some genetic manipulation on / Some aromatics) (SPLICES / SPICES)
• RABBI (51D: Religious leader / Actress Jacobson) (RABBI / ABBI)

Word of the Day: TOPANGA State Park (11D: State park in the Santa Monica Mountains) —

Topanga State Park (/təˈpæŋɡə/ ^ⓘ) is a California state park located in the Santa Monica Mountains, within Los Angeles County, California. It is part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

The park is located adjacent to the Topanga neighborhood of Los Angeles. Covering 11,000 acres (4,500 ha), with 36 miles (58 km) of trails and unimproved roads, the park's boundaries stretch from Topanga Canyon to Pacific Palisades and Mulholland Drive. There are more than 60 trail entrances. Topanga State Park is not only the largest park in the Santa Monica Mountains, but it is also considered the largest park located in the limits of a city.

• • •

One of the things I love about this puzzle is that it's genuinely an architectural marvel, but it doesn't *feel* like one—which is to say, the fill doesn't feel strained or compromised, and the grid itself doesn't look very flashy at all. In fact, but for the circled squares, it looks completely ordinary. But I promise you that getting this theme to work inside an innocuous-seeming 15x15 grid, with both the themers and the Down crosses yielding perfectly acceptable answers when the blinkers are "on" and when they're "off"—that's really something. It's hard enough to fill a grid cleanly under ordinary circumstances, but when you've got themer running in both directions—twice as many in the Downs as in the showier Acrosses—it's doubly hard, maybe harder. Except for four very short Acrosses in the SE corner, I don't think there's an answer in the entire grid that doesn't cross a theme-affected answer. That means that virtually every non-theme answer in the puzzle had one square in place that was fixed and immovable (because those themers go in first and then they stay put—they're load-bearing). A fixed square in every answer before you've even started filling? Nightmare. Severely limits your leeway as a constructor. And yet all that work is disguised / hidden / invisible, as the puzzle plays so smoothly (once you figure out the gimmick). This puzzle makes it look easy and it is Not. So many times, look-at-me gimmicks yield awful or at least disappointing results for an actual solver actually solving the puzzle. This puzzle, on the other hand, was a blast, and most of the really impressive work (i.e. simply getting a clean grid to work at all) is inconspicuous. From a craftsmanship perspective, I'm really impressed with this one.

There's a little conceptual glitch, I think, in that there's nothing in the Across themers that captures the "blinking" of BLINKERS. In the Downs, the "blinking" works perfectly—blinker on, one answer, blinker off, another answer. But in the four Acrosses, you have to turn either one ("L") or the other ("R") on for answers to work. In real life, BLINKERS don't "blink" from "L" to "R"; either the left one blinks on (and off) or the right one does, and that particular phenomenon (the actuality of how BLINKERS blink) isn't quite adequately represented by the four main themers. So on a (very) technical level, those main themers don't quite work. But the level of intricacy and cleverness is such that I'm willing to say "close enough." Yes, a completely filled grid gets you funny-looking nonsense like LIMBORED and BALD SPORT, but I can tolerate that, given that the "correct" answers are easy to see. I found this very entertaining, and any infelicities in the grid (there aren't many) I can forgive given how hard the task at hand was. A fun, if (once again) overly easy puzzle. 

Aside from the pop cultural names (which are always dangerous, depending on your demographic), there are really only two answers in this puzzle I can see giving solvers any grief. The first, and probably toughest (if you're not from CA) is TOPANGA. If people know that word at all, they probably know it as the name of Cory's girlfriend on the long-running '90s sitcom Boy Meets World. Pretty sure she was named after TOPANGA Canyon, which is how I (originally) knew the word TOPANGA (I went to school in S. California). I had no idea there was a TOPANGA State Park. But I knew the Canyon, so I knew it was a place name, so I got there without much trouble. I gotta believe Adam's original clue was a Boy Meets World clue. That would've driven a bunch of solvers crazy, so ... fair change, but still, kind of obscurish (relative to everything else in the grid). The other potential stumper was ESCUDO (46D: Portuguese currency before the euro). It certainly stumped me. Or semi-stumped—the word sort of crawled out of the back of my brain once I had a couple of crosses. So I've seen it before, but it is not one of the go-to bygone crossword currencies, so it took a bit of effort. Nothing much else about this puzzle took anything like effort. The double-cluing on all the themers actually made the puzzle much easier to solve. The gimmick is supposed to be the tricky part, but instead, today, all it did was smooth the path to solving victory.

["Buffalo soldier, dreadlock RASTA"]

Notes:

• 22A: Swerve, as an airplane (YAW) — not a word I use a lot, one I'm vaguely aware of. Really glad I knew this couldn't be YEW, because I really thought TOPENGA was spelled just like that, with the "E." I always heard that letter like the "E" in PENGUIN.
• 29A: Comment that might be said with a push ("IN YOU GO!") — my favorite clue / answer of the day. A playful, colloquial three-word phrase. Great mid-range fill. I don't recommend pushing people into the pool this 4th of July weekend, though. Or any weekend. Dangerous, not to mention rude. But still, a fun answer. 
• 34A: Actor Sebastian ___ of Marvel Studios films (STAN) — two ughs here, one for the uninteresting and vague clue ("Marvel Studios films" ???), and another for returning to the pop culture well at all here. You've already got ALI "don't write in ALY, you idiot" WONG and PEDRO Pascal in there. Why not go to tennis (STAN Smith) or just the generic word for "superfan"? Did not need another actor, especially one whose films you can't even be bothered to name.
• 57A: Losing roll in a casino (CRAP) — also what you might exclaim after said losing roll
• 66A: Pac-Man ghost with the shortest name (INKY) — one part of my brain: "damn it how am I supposed to know all those stupid ghost names?!" Other part of my brain: "Bro, relax, it's INKY." Seriously, almost simultaneous thoughts. I was more a Donkey Kong person. My sister was the Pac-Man player, though Ms. Pac-Man was more her thing.
• 17D: Animal whose Greek name is the etymology of the word "arctic" (BEAR) — so ... not DEER, then? OK.
• 28D: Olympic sprinter ___'Carri Richardson (SHA) — Did not know "SHA" was a separable name part. Glad I knew her name was not SLA'Carri Richardson, because I Swear To God I still don't know how to spell LHASA (keep wanting it to be LLASA, which looks atrocious, why would I want that?) (31A: City where the Dalai Lama [not Llama] was enthroned)

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Paypal 
• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• Boswords (Boston) (Sun. July 27, 2025)
• Lollapuzzoola 18 (NYC) (Sat., Aug. 9, 2025) 
• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Official currency of Ecuador and Guam: Abbr. / WED 7-2-2025 / Tube descender / "The Third Man" and "Kiss Me Deadly," for two

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Easy (11:31, on paper)

THEME: Did you know?! — Phrases about trivia that are re-parsed so that they are about trivia in a different way

Theme answers:

• [Did you know?! The most common bar name in the U.K. is The Red Lion] for PUB TRIVIA
• The answer is trivia that is about pubs
• [Did you know?! The oldest known porno movie is the 1907 short film "El Satario"] for GRAPHIC DETAIL
• The answer is a detail that about content that is graphic
• [Did you know?! Engaging in leisure activities has been shown to reduce stress levels by over 30%] for FUN FACT
• The answer is a fact about fun
• [Did you know?! Before mastering fire, cave men ate uncooked meat for the firs million years of human existence] for RAW DATA
• The answer is data regarding raw food
• [Did you know?! America's first chartered money supplier opened in Philadelphia on January 7, 1782] for BANK STATEMENT
• The answer is a statement about banks
• [Did you know?! Diamonds are 58 times more resistant to pressure than rubies or sapphires] for HARD TRUTHS
• The answer is a truth about mineral hardness

Word of the Day: NAVAHO (Language of W.W. II "code talkers": Var) —

Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles, proposed the use of the Navajo language to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. Johnston, a World War I veteran, was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of missionaries to the Navajo. He was able to converse in what is called "Trader's Navajo," a pidgin language. He was among a few non-Navajo who had enough exposure to it to understand some of its nuances. Many Navajo men enlisted shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and eagerly contributed to the war effort.

Because Navajo has a complex grammar, it is not mutually intelligible with even its closest relatives within the Na-Dene family to provide meaningful information. It was still an unwritten language at the time, and Johnston believed Navajo could satisfy the military requirement for an undecipherable code. Its complex syntax, phonology, and numerous dialects made it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. One estimate indicates that fewer than 30 non-Navajo could understand the language during World War II.

• • •

Hey crew, welcome to another Malaika MWednesday! This puzzle rocked!! It ticked every single one of my boxes. The theme construct was delightful and clever. The theme answers were great stand-alone phrases. The clues for the theme answers were actually cute and interesting. On top of that, we got six theme answers (really going above and beyond here, I'm happy with four and content with three!), and a couple of long non-theme entries in BABY GRAND and SABOTEURS. Honestly, what else is there to say!!!

I suppose we can talk about how I solved this. On paper, I jump around wayyy more than on a computer, just because of the interface. On a computer, the clue is highlighted and so my eye focuses there, and when I fill in the entry, the highlight moves down to the next sequential clue. On paper, everything is black and white and my eyes are free to wander. As a result, I was all over the place. I read all six of the theme answers and didn't really see what they were getting at, until I was able to fill in FUN FACT just from the letter pattern. Then, it all clicked, and the other entries fell right in place.

That and PUB TRIVIA were the entries that really, truly best nailed the theme, in my opinion. The clues were providing us with facts and trivia. I guess they were also truths and details. Data felt least fitting to me, and BANK STATEMENT was the odd one out because "statement" had sort of a double meaning. But that's just nitpicking, and to be clear, I didn't really care.

My final thought is from a technical perspective. When I am advising new constructors on how to arrange the black squares in a grid (which is usually the hardest part, at the beginning) my advice is to make your grid have no sections that are 5x5 white squares. That's not a Crossword Law or anything, it's just something that has made my life easier while constructing. So I'm always impressed to see easy, smooth grids like this one with 5x5 sections-- although maybe LE ROI isn't exactly smooth... but the other entries were!

Bullets:

• The Red Lion — The trivia about The Red Lion reminded me of an awesome piece from a data viz site called The Pudding which mapped all the pubs in the UK
• [Room for growth?] for WOMB — This was almost such a good clue! I read the clue and then glanced at the grid hoping it would be "nursery" but alas, it was not. I don't think a womb is a room and thus I don't think this clue really works.
• [Only acting Oscar winner in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame] for CHER — She won for Moonstruck!
• [Outfit that might have satin lapels, informally] for TUX — My sister and I purchased some nice outfits for a wedding, but we didn't want to wear them just once, so we threw a Fancy Clothing Party and re-wore our outfits. Three people came in tuxedos, which was awesome, and yes, all of them had purchased their tuxes for wedding. In the spirit of "getting more eyes on the outfit," it's pictured below.

xoxo Malaika

P.S. If you are the type of person who listens to podcasts, I recently appeared on one and you can listen here. About half our conversation was about crosswords (starting around 10 minutes) and the other half was just chit-chat. (For what it's worth, I am not a person who listens to podcasts so I will absolutely not be offended if you do not listen.)

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Paypal 
• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• Boswords (Boston) (Sun. July 27, 2025)
• Lollapuzzoola 18 (NYC) (Sat., Aug. 9, 2025) 
• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

"Dead serious" in modern lingo / TUE 7-1-25 / Little tuber used to make Spanish horchata / Most "wasabi" at sushi bars, in actuality / Electronically produced echo effect / Tower of ___ (mathematical puzzle with disks)

Constructor: Adam Aaronson and Michael Garbus

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: VEGETARIAN (28D: Like the foods that answer the starred clues, despite how their names start) — fruits/vegetables that have an animal's name in them:

Theme answers:

• HORSERADISH (20A: *Most "wasabi" at sushi bars, in actuality)
• CRABAPPLE (23A: *Fruit whose name is also a synonym for a grouch)
• GOOSEBERRY (26D: *Fruit from a bush, much used in pies and jams)
• TIGER NUT (38D: *Little tuber used to make Spanish horchata)
• CHICKPEA (39D: *Garbanzo, by another name)

Word of the Day: EARL Sweatshirt (60A: Rapper ___ Sweatshirt) —

Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (born February 24, 1994), known professionally as Earl Sweatshirt, is an American rapper and record producer. Kgositsile was originally known by the moniker Sly Tendencies when he began rapping in 2008, but changed his name when Tyler, the Creator invited him to join his alternative hip hop collective Odd Future in late 2009. He is the son of South African political poet Keorapetse Kgositsile.

At the age of 16, he gained recognition and critical praise for his second mixtape, Earl (2010). Shortly after its release, he was sent to a boarding school in Samoa for at-risk teens by his mother, which he attended for a year and a half. Unable to record during his stay, he returned to Los Angeles in February 2012 before his eighteenth birthday. Kgositsile rejoined Odd Future and adopted a recording contract with the group's parent label, Columbia Records to release his debut studio album, Doris (2013).

The album peaked within the top five of the Billboard 200, while his second and third albums, I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside (2015) and Some Rap Songs (2018), both peaked within the top 20; each received critical praise. He then signed with Warner Records to release his second EP, Feet of Clay (2019)^[3] and fourth studio album, Sick! (2022). His fifth album, Voir Dire (2023), was a collaborative project with record producer the Alchemist.

• • •

Love the concept but hate the revealer. By "hate" I mean ... not really "hate," but ... it just didn't work for me, for the simple fact that I would never refer to a fruit / vegetable as "VEGETARIAN." "VEGETARIAN" is an adjective for people (who don't eat meat) and dishes (that don't have meat in them). It's a qualifier. You would never have to qualify an apple, say, or a banana. Those are plants. There's no question but that they are appropriate for people who don't eat meat. I get that the main idea of this theme is that the names of the plants suggest (superficially) that they have animal components, so VEGETARIAN would then clarify things, but still ... I had VEGETABLES and VEGETATION (!) before I had VEGETARIAN, so absurd does the idea of calling a simple plant "VEGETARIAN" seem to me. I've also never heard of a TIGER NUT, though I have heard of horchata, and I have never had a GOOSEBERRY pie or jam, despite the clues assuring me that the fruit is "much used" for those purposes. The end of VEGETARIAN, the front of GOOSEBERRY, and all of TIGER NUT—that was the extent of my troubles today. Everything else went in instantly, easier than a Monday. It's a pretty vibrant grid, despite a preponderance of 3-4-5's, and it's got interesting-looking mirror symmetry. I like all the mid-range fill in the center, particularly the dreaded STOMACH PIRANHA! Hey, did you know that NIRVANA and PIRANHA have three letters in exactly the same place? You learn this type of stuff when you get real cavalier and just fill in answers based on pattern recognition without actually looking at the clue. Not Recommended. (fun when it works, but still, not recommended).

There are all kinds of answers today that are solidly 21st century, which is to say, they are going to be new to some people (despite having been in the puzzle before). Not living in a city with a lot of street food, I definitely learned what ELOTE was from crosswords (maybe a decade ago?). Whereas I only learned what "NO CAP" means about a year or two ago, probably also from crosswords (though not the New York Times). I remember very clearly asking my students about "NO CAP" and their confirming that it was a thing (and kinda laughing at said "thing" coming out of their middle-aged professor's mouth). I've probably written about "NO CAP" before ... oh yeah, here we go: CAP (as "lie") was a Word of the Day just last year. "NO CAP"'s first appearance as an answer only occurred two years ago, though, so if you haven't fully absorbed that bit of slang yet, that's understandable. But you should absorb it now. As for EARL Sweatshirt ... that's the name I expect to baffle more NYTXW solvers than any other today. This is actually the fourth appearance of this exact clue ([Rapper ___ Sweatshirt]), but the first appearance, was only in three years ago, so again, I think there will still be a lot of solver who don't know him and haven't assimilated him into their crossword vocabularies yet. Unlike NO CAP and ELOTE, EARL Sweatshirt didn't come to me from crosswords. I'd heard his music a bunch of times. He's great. I even bought a cassette (you heard me!) of his latest album (Voir Dire, a collab. with the Alchemist) just last year.

Bullet points:

• 54D: Muppet who posts on social media in the third person (ELMO) — "posts on social media"?? He just speaks that way generally, doesn't he? "Posts on social media" is a weird / odd attempt to sound "current." Holy (ca)moly, this Muppet wiki has catalogued Every Single Instance in which ELMO has (anomalously) used the first person, not only on the show (Sesame Street), but in all merch (!) (direct-to-video specials, CD-ROM games from the '90s, etc.). This is what we call the "good internet." Exhaustively nerdy lists designed solely for obsessive fans—this is why the Internet was invented.
• 38D: *Little tuber used to make Spanish horchata (TIGER NUT) — I was confused by "Spanish" horchata. Is that different from regular "horchata," I wondered? Well, turns out horchata is originally Spanish, made of soaked, ground, and sweetened TIGER NUTs, but in some parts of the Americas, "it is known as an agua fresca, and the base can be either jicaro (morro), rice, melon seeds, sesame seeds, along with various spices" (wikipedia).

• 51A: Electronically produced echo effect (REVERB) — some of that cool mid-range fill I was talking about. Liked this one.
• 53A: "Fine, I guess" ("OK, SURE") — liked this mid-range fill a whole lot less, in that the "OK" part seems totally arbitrary. "OH" "UH" "UM" all feel like they could work. I think I was an "UH" man myself. "UH" sounds less sure than "OK," and the clue seemed to be indicating some hesitancy or uncertainty.
• 23A: Fruit whose name is also a synonym for a grouch (CRABAPPLE) — "Crab" is a synonym for a grouch all on its own. Not sure why you'd tack "apple" on to it. 
• 2D: 1985 Kurosawa epic that is a retelling of "King Lear" (RAN) — our "local" (Ithaca) independent movie theater has a promotional video they show before movies that talks about the history of the theater, and apparently the first movie they ever screened, back in the mid-80s, was RAN. RAN was also the first Kurosawa movie I ever saw. It's been a while. I should rewatch. Speaking of great Japanese directors, I watched Ozu's Tokyo Story for the first time just last night—a beautiful film that had me wondering, once again, how in the world OZU has never appeared in the NYTXW—Tokyo Story was voted the Greatest Film Of All Time in the 2012 Sight + Sound directors poll ... that's got to be enough to get you in the crossword, come on.

Happy July, everyone. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Paypal 
• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• Boswords (Boston) (Sun. July 27, 2025)
• Lollapuzzoola 18 (NYC) (Sat., Aug. 9, 2025) 
• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...