Word of the Day: Climbing chalk (see 55A: BOULDERERS) —
Climbing chalk is a dry powder substance that climbers use to improve grip and prevent slipping on holds. It is also known as magnesium carbonate or gym chalk. Chalk is made from magnesium carbonate, which is a naturally occurring compound. Magnesium carbonate absorbs moisture and reduces friction on the skin. Applying chalk to your hands keeps your hands dry, reduces slippage, and provides a better grip on holds. Chalk is commonly used in bouldering, gym, and other rock climbing. Climbers often carry it in a chalk bag or ball for easy access and application during a climb. (climbdaily dot com)
• • •
The final themer meant nothing to me. I have barely heard the term "BOULDERERS" and certainly had no idea they used some kind of chalk. All the other CHALKED UP things are superfamiliar. So the theme works fine, but it landed with a thud there, for me, at the end. The weirdness of BOULDERERS also made that SE section by far the hardest part of the grid to solve Downs-only, as I could infer SIDEWALK and CUE STICK from just a few crosses, but had a lot more trouble doing same with BOULDERERS. It's such an outlier, that answer: in terms of overall familiarity, in terms of it being human beings and not things, in terms of its being anomalously plural. It kinda ruins an otherwise adequate theme. Mars it, anyway. Otherwise, the theme seemed fine, except the part where the "UP " in CHALKED UP crossed the "UP" in SCREWS UP. It really is bad form, no matter how often we see this kind of thing. I don't care that the editor doesn't care. I'm not going to let it go. Constructors / editors should care more about polishing their grids and avoiding obvious / flagrant dupes wherever possible (today, I wouldn't care about the "UP" dupe if the "UP"s were in different parts of the grid. But crossing? Boo).
This was a toughie from a Downs-only perspective, or should've been. It was certainly daunting to go into every one of those corners and stare down a succession of long Downs. The longer the answer, the harder it is (generally) to get with no help from crosses, so starting off with three 7s and a 6 looked tough ... but aside from a pretty understandable ILLEGAL-for-ILLICIT error, I got all those answers (and then corrected ILLICIT with no trouble). Whole NW was a cinch. Things got dicier in the NE, as I couldn't get either SCREWS UP (10D: Makes an oopsie) or SPOOK (13D: Give the heebie-jeebies)at first pass, and bizarrely inferred SIDE TALK (?) before SIDEWALK. ICK before EWW (an awful "spelling") (36D: "Gro-o-oss!") made CHALKED UP kinda hard to see for a bit. The SW was relatively easy, except I could figure out what a 37D: Black-and-white dessert that's sliced might be at first. Then, because I was looking at AS-N in one of the crosses, I wrote in ASSN (short for "association") where AS IN should've gone, making the PIE part of OREO PIE hard to see. But eventually the OREO part came to me and I just forced PIE in there and voila! Done. The SE, as I said earlier, was the roughest. STREAM before SCROLL (43D: Use TikTok, say); HON before BAE (55D: Sweetie). Uncertainty as to the spelling of KAUAI (KAWAI?). NENE and NIÑO before BEBÉ (45D: Spanish newborn). Couldn't get anything for 41D: Pushes down, as with the thumb at first. Wanted SPURTS at first but was not at all sure (46D: Small gushes). Very patchy and comparatively slow, that corner.
The one thing I kinda liked about this grid was DIDDLY / DOODLED. Couple of silly words that sound double silly together. Nothing else was terribly interesting or entertaining. Unless you're entertained by DIRT BAG (27A: Slimeball). It's colorful, I'll give it that.
Bullets:
17A: Obsolescent classroom wall fixture (BLACKBOARD) — "Obsolescent"?? LOL tell that to my University, where I have had a BLACKBOARD in at least one of my classrooms for every semester going back to I can't remember when. In fact, this semester may be the first where both my boards are whiteboards. Even the room in the building built in the 21st century that I taught in last year had a damn BLACKBOARD in it. Lots of money going into building and expansion on this campus, but it ain't going into the rooms where Humanities courses get taught, that's for sure.
10A: Uncomfortable health class subject, for short (STDS) — "Uncomfortable"?? Weird claim. It might be uncomfortable to have an STD, but to learn about them? Shrug.
22A: Martial art that uses bamboo swords (KENDO) — every time I see KENDO in the xword, I think of Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono (1959), which is (I think) the only context in which I've ever seen people practicing KENDO:
51A: Female name that's a body part spelled backward (RAE) — glad I never saw this clue, because I'd've been like "GEL? That's a name? MRA? PIL? EOT? Who names their kids these things?"
THEME: "Two-For-One Special" — thirteen different boxes contain two letters (instead of one); italicized clues that contain these two-for-one boxes are familiar phrases split in two by a slash; each side of the slash is actually a separate clue—for one of the clues, one of the two-for-one works, and for the other clue, the other letter works; in the crosses, *both* letters work [apparently every letter of the alphabet is used in those two-letter boxes exactly once—an added “achievement” that also explains so much of the awkwardness]:
Theme answers:
SLIM SWIM (18D: Skinny/dip) / RACHEL WEISZ (22A: Lead actress in "The Lovely Bones" (2009) and "The Bourne Legacy" (2012))
QUICK BUICK (24A: Fast/car) / PDQ BACH (8D: Fictional composer whose first three initials mean "A.S.A.P.")
ZANY MANY (25A: Wild/bunch) / DUTCH DITCH (48A: Holland/tunnel) / HAZMAT SUITS (13D: Protective outfits for handling radioactive material)
COLT VOLT (31D: Horse/power) / MMMDCV (30A: 3,605, in ancient Rome)
METRODOME METRONOME (61A: Stadium/timekeeper) / ROAD NOISE (45D: Honking or screeching, for example)
STAGE NAME STATE NAME (77A: Denver/Colorado) / YOUNG TURK (53D: One eager for radical change)
SIESTA FIESTA (102D: Slumber/party) / US FLAG (101A: Stars and Stripes)
PAR PAY (74A: Average/income) / FLATTERY (36D: Excessive praise)
JOKER POKER (117A: Card/game) / JPEG (117D: Digital picture format)
4. an informal word foragiotage (collinsdictionary.com)
• • •
[28D: Seasoning brand that dropped the first part of its name in 2020]
"Make it stop." That was what I was thinking for much of the back half of this. I'd had enough. The sheer volume of these awkward / fussy two-letter squares, which have nothing linking them besides their two-letterness, was just exhausting. It is, to a certain extent, impressive that all the slash clues a. are familiar (or familiarish) phrases, and b. work for two different answers that are just a single letter apart. That does, admittedly, make the theme tighter and therefore more impressive than it would be otherwise. But solving this thing was an exercise in diminishing returns. The initial "oh! OK..." soon gave way to "oh ... there are a lot of these," which gave way to "oh ... is this it?" to "omg how many of these are there when will it end?!" Constructors often try to make up for weak (or one-dimensional) themes with volume, Volume, VOLUME, and that was definitely the case today. And the problem is that with this many 2fer squares ... not all of them work all that well. I mean, are the double-answers phrases supposed to make some kind of wacky sense when taken together. A SLIM SWIM, what is that? A QUICK BUICK is at least something I can imagine, but a PATH PATE is not. DUTCH DITCH really really doesn't work, as [Holland] is a noun and DUTCH is an adjective, and before you go saying "but Holland is functioning adjectivally," please keep in mind that the Holland Tunnel is not, in fact, a DUTCH DITCH, as it's located in New York City. Also, as I say, it's not At All clear that the two answers to the italicized theme clues are supposed to be taken as a single phrase. We have to endure a ridiculously enormous Roman numeral in order for this theme to "work." We have to endure the duplication of TOAST in order for this theme to "work." It's a stunt puzzle that gives no consideration to what it would actually feel like to solve it. You gotta ask yourself, would this be any fun to solve? For me, the answer, by about midway, was a pretty strong "no."
IN A BAR!!? ( Man, EAT A SANDWICH looks like brilliant fill next to IN A BAR (note: I would EAT A SANDWICH IN A BAR). How is IN A BAR any different from IN A BOOKSTORE or IN AN ELEVATOR!? You know you're high on your own ideas when you let junk like that just get by. This is what test-solvers and editors are for! There are some admittedly interesting "solutions" to the double-letter problem today, including the double double-letter feat at HAZMAT SUITS. RACHEL WEISZ and YOUNG TURK are interesting standalone answers, and PDQBACH is a clever way of handling the "QB" situation. But JAGUAR XKES, plural, felt like an awkward way to get "XK" together, not to mention it's one of the few long themers that doesn't break the two letters across two different parts of the cross (see, by contrast, YOUNG TURK, ROAD NOISE, PDQ BACH, RACHEL WEISZ). JAGUAR's just hanging out there, not involved in the double-letter square at all. This flood-the-zone approach to theme execution leaves things an awful mess. Really uneven. Crowded. Fussy. And the fill quality (again, IN A BAR, wtf?) suffered as well. YESM OENO ... AKIO *and* AGIO, neither of which I've seen in a dog's age!? Yeesh and double yeesh.
The hardest part of this puzzle for me was just getting started. I sort of forgot that RACHEL WEISZ existed and definitely forgot that her last name was WEISZ and not WEISS, so encountering her right away, as a themer, before I had any grasp on the theme, was a challenge. I think I figured out the double-letter gimmick at the stupid Roman numeral, since there was absolutely no way to make sense of it in the number of squares provided. After I got the gimmick sorted, the only trouble was the occasional answer that made no sense to me, or that I'd never heard of. Like GLIDE-ON, that was tough. How else would eyeliners work? JAB-ON? SLAP-ON? No idea how GLIDE-ON is different from any other kind of eyeliner. Also, this is a weirdly eye makeup-obsessed puzzle (65D: Sephora purchase = MASCARA). I remembered GITANOS (75A: Jeans popular in the 1980s), but then immediately balked at GITANOS because I thought "nah, those are French cigarettes ... aren't they?" (those are GITANES ... also GAULOISES). AKIO and AGIO went in only because eventually both were vaguely familiar to me. Man, AGIO, feels like it's been a while. Holy cow, look at this chart (from xwordinfo):
[Like GITANOS, AGIO was "popular in the 1980s"]
That's AGIO frequency over time. The blue is where Shortz took over. That little blip way way over on the right? That's us. If you're seeing AGIO eight (!) times a year, as they apparently were in the '80s, then AGIO probably quickly becomes second-nature, but in the year of our lord 2025, heaven help you. Help me. Actually, I at least had the experience of a few of those other blue blips, but as you can see it's been well over a decade. Eliminating crosswordese—great. Bringing it back after a loooong hiatus, when no one really knows it anymore—brutal. AKIO, on the other hand, has appeared solely under Shortz (the earlier administrations were far less tolerant of proper nouns), but even then, it's been about eight years (seven appearances total) (110D: Sony co-founder Morita). Putting AGIO and AKIO in the same grid after something like a combined 25-year absence ... is not a choice I'd make if I had the choice to make. Hey, have you heard this joke? AKIO and AGIO walk IN A BAR ... see, even *that* context doesn't work for IN A BAR. It's "INto A BAR." Bah.
Some notes:
4D: Indigenous people's name for Mount Rainier (TAHOMA) — another toughie. I sat there for several seconds trying to figure out a way to make this TACOMA, which at least I've heard of (TACOMA is the "Tac" in "SEA-TAC" airport (I'll let you guess what the "SEA" is).
16D: Small entryway receptacle that might also house loose change (KEY DISH) — just stared blankly at this. I had no idea this sort of thing had a name. I have a little bowl near the door where I keep miscellaneous things I might need when leaving the house. Yes, there are keys there. But lots of other stuff too. I would never think to call it a KEY DISH, perhaps because it is a bowl made out of a discarded vinyl record (heated, reshaped ... someone made it for me; great use for unplayable LPs).
56D: Kind of line that no one just stands in (CONGA) — good clue.
41D: Major shops (EMPORIA) — I admit this is nitpicky, but it's something I definitely would've thought about had this been my puzzle—not sure EMPORIA and EMP (short for "empress") should share gridspace. But if you're letting two whole TOASTs in, then I'm guessing you don't really have a duplication policy at all, which is a shame. Makes the puzzles seem sloppy.
35D: What Hester Prynne wore in a Hawthorne novel (LETTER A) — ask any high school kid (or former high school kid) what Hester Prynne wore in a Hawthorne novel, I guarantee you none of them say "LETTER A!" It's not untrue. But come on.
83D: What parallel lines never do (CONVERGE) — weird to know the answer but not know the answer. I could see the lines, but my brain was like "well they don't CROSS ... nope, hmmm ... CONNECT? ... too short ... COLLIDE!?" Etc.
70A: Your business start-up? (NONE OF) — NONE OF is truly awful fill, but I have to give at least polite applause to this clue, which is trying so hard to make everything not just OK, but entertaining (the clue refers to the phrase "NONE OF your business"). This is only the second NONEOF in NYTXW history. Kind of mad at the first guy who thought it was OK. Had to be some kind of encouragement to this second guy.
91D: Grabbed, as an opportunity (LEAPT ON) — the thing you do with opportunities is you leap at them. "Leap at the chance" is an idiom. "Leap on the chance" is not. Yes, there is a defense to be made for LEAPT ON. But no puzzle should require this many defenses.
Word of the Day: "AIN'T I A WOMAN?" (28A: Sojourner Truth speech in which she said "You need not be afraid to give us our rights") —
"Ain't I a Woman?" is a speech, generally considered to have been delivered extemporaneously, by Sojourner Truth (1797–1883), born into slavery in the state of New York. Some time after gaining her freedom in 1827, she became a well known anti-slavery speaker. Her speech was delivered at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, and did not originally have a title.
The speech was briefly reported in two contemporary newspapers, and a transcript of the speech was published in the Anti-Slavery Bugle on June 21, 1851. It received wider publicity in 1863 during the American Civil War when Frances Dana Barker Gage published a different version, one which became known as "Ain't I a Woman?", because of its oft-repeated question. This later, better known and more widely available version was the one commonly referenced in popular culture and, until historian Nell Irvin Painter's 1996 biography of Truth, by historians as well.
Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfree, in 1797 in Ulster County, New York. Truth ran from her enslaver in 1827 after he went back on his promise of her freedom. She became a preacher and an activist throughout the 1840s–1850s. She delivered her speech, "Ain't I a Woman?", at the Women's Rights Convention in 1851. Truth questions the treatment of white women compared to Black women. Seemingly pointing out a man in the room, Truth says, "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere." In the Gage version, she exclaims that no one ever does any of these things for her, repeating the question, "And ain't I a woman?" several times. She says that she has worked and birthed many children, making her as much a woman as anyone else. Despite giving birth to children just like white women did, black women were not treated with the same respect as white women. Black women were women, but because their race was seen as inferior, being a woman did not mean much if they were not white. There is no official published version of her speech; many rewritings of it were published anywhere from one month to 12 years after it was spoken. (wikipedia)
• • •
[28D: "Till one has loved an ANIMAL PIZZA, a part of one's soul remains unawakened": Anatole France]
Lovely but far too easy for a Saturday. Or maybe I just lucked out. I put down ACID TRIP first thing (1A: Experience that'll change your mind) and then was semi-stunned to find that the crosses all checked out:
The clue just seemed to be shouting "mind-altering drug experience" so I put down the first thing that came to mind, AND VOILA! (funny, I was going to say the "AND" part of "AND VOILA!" was a bit tacked-on and contrived, but apparently it's not!) (33D: "Ta-da!"). On Saturday, you expect the trickiness, which is why the "change one's mind" part of that 1A clue seemed obviously drug-related to me. It's not going to be merely "change one's opinion" (probably). So how else are minds changed? Chemically! Anyway, ACID TRIP went straight in and the crosses all checked (and checked Easily), and so that NW corner was done in maybe 30 seconds to a minute. After I dropped down in the middle, I had another "I can't believe my initial guesses are correct!" moment when I went clear around those middle three black squares with a good guess followed by another good guess. Again, I was writing these things in dubiously, like "it can't be this easy." But it was:
LOUPES (45A: Tools for certain appraisers) to ANIMAL (28D: "Till one has loved an ___ a part of one's soul remains unawakened": Anatole France), with almost no assistance from crosses, genuinely startled me. After this, I kept waiting for the Saturday shoe to drop (and kick me in the ass, or worse), but it never did. It's a very smooth grid with many winning answers, but there's almost no real resistance anywhere. (In case the word is unfamiliar, the LOUPES in question are jewelers' LOUPES—the magnifying thingies they use to inspect stones)
OK, there is *some* resistance if you've never heard of "AIN'T I A WOMAN?" I knew far too many Women's Studies majors in college for that answer to be a problem for me, but I think it's probably one of the two most-likely-to-be-unknown answers in the grid today. The other such answer is HIRAGANA, which was the one answer in this grid I absolutely didn't know (12D: Main script of written Japanese). Just reading about the various components of Japanese writing just now made my head hurt a little. I'm familiar with KANJI, but get any more complicated than that and I'm lost. Kanji are the more ancient logographic characters, whereas HIRAGANA is a subsequently-derived syllabic script. Then there's katakana:
In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for Japanese words not covered by kanji and for grammatical inflections, the katakana syllabary usage is comparable to italics in English; specifically, it is used for transcription of foreign-language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively gairaigo); for emphasis; to represent onomatopoeia; for technical and scientific terms; and for names of plants, animals, minerals and often Japanese companies" (wikipedia)
So look for KATAKANA ... I dunno, someday (actually, it already appeared once, nearly a decade ago, Sat. Dec. 26, 2015—[Form of Japanese syllabic writing]). Anyway, if you got held up there, I understand. I too was at a loss. But everything around that answer was so easily clued that I didn't really get slowed down.
I had one other minor trouble spot—very minor, as it was caused entirely by a four-letter word that I had half wrong. At 30D: Center of revolution (AXIS), I had AXLE. Just two letters wrong, and yet those two letters were perfectly placed to block the two longer Across answers I needed to get from the center to the west, so (briefly), my access to the SW corner was cut off. Couldn't believe I was staring down yet another variation on "honeymoon" (36A: Brief getaway for newlyweds). Almost exactly a year ago, I had to contend with BABYMOON, a term I had never heard, and now here I was looking at some other damn made-up -MOON, which (because of AXLE), I had as ---LMOON. FULLMOON? MALLMOON? SMALMOON? Eventually, ODDS AND ENDS would not be denied, though honestly I have no idea what a "grab bag" means in this instance (39A: Grab bag contents). I was thinking of "go bag," and was like "uh, you need more than ODDS AND ENDS if you have to disappear in a hurry. Cash. Passport. Those are not ODDS AND ENDS." But "grab bag" is just a thing full of, like, party favors ... and it can be a metaphor for any miscellany:
1. a receptacle (such as a bag) containing small articles which are to be drawn (as at a party or fair) without being seen
2. a miscellaneous collection: POTPOURRI (merriam-webster.com)
But as I say, ODDS AND ENDS was eventually, obviously the answer, which changed AXLE to AXIS, which made MINIMOON highly inferrable. The SW corner went down from there. Ended up in the SE, where only CLASSMATE gave me any cause to ponder (53A: Figure in history or math?). In history class or math class. Got it. I wish this one had taken a little more work, if only so that I could've had a bit more time to appreciate the grid. It doesn't really have the stunning highs that I might like to see in a late-week grid, but it's got solid, high-quality longer answers throughout, and there is very, very little in the way of grid gunk. An EST here, an OTOE there ... just the bare minimum of crosswordese mortar holding things together today. No BIG NONOS. In short, I'M A FAN. Just wish it had had a little more fight in it.
Bullets:
34D: Share the bill (GO DUTCH) — I got this easily, but was ... mildly startled? ... as I thought this was kind of a slur (against the Dutch, for being cheap). "The Oxford English Dictionary connects "go Dutch" / "Dutch treat" to other phrases which have "an opprobrious or derisive application, largely due to the rivalry and enmity between the English and Dutch in the 17th century", the period of the Anglo-Dutch Wars. Another example is "Dutch courage". A term bearing some similarities is Dutch oven." (wikipedia). But dictionary dot com says: "Going Dutch appears to come from a 19th century Americanism, a Dutch treat (or Dutch lunch/supper), which also refers to each person paying their own way in a meal. The Dutch, here, apparently refers not to people from the Netherlands, but from Germany and Switzerland: the Pennsylvania Dutch, who supposedly had a custom of bringing their own food to gatherings, like a potluck."
31A: E to F, for example (SEMITONE) — I will confess that I "knew" this only in the sense that I had heard the term before, and once I had a few crosses, I could infer it. It's just the interval between two adjacent notes in a twelve-tone scale. Think piano keyboard. Since there is no (black) E sharp key, one note up from E is F.
50A: Pseudoscientific bodily emanations (AURAS) — sounds like something they'd try to sell you a spray or a roll-on for. "Stop pseudoscientific bodily emanations in their tracks with new AuraKwench!" I'm just glad the answer wasn't AURAE. Hurray for regular old English plurals!
58A: Five-limbed marine creatures (SEA STARS) — growing up, we just called these "starfish." Got this one easily from SEA-.
9D: Dubious, in modern lingo (SUS) — I am dubious about most things "in modern lingo," but I had to say I love "SUS." It's just so compact and evocative, with a deeper undercurrent of "that ain't right" than the full "suspicious" can convey. I remember my sister and I abbreviating "sketchy" to "sketch." Maybe lots of people did that. Anyway, same idea. I wouldn't use it, as I'm too old to be picking up new slang without sounding ... well, SUS ... but I do not mind seeing SUS in the grid at all.
21D: Play areas that, despite their name, are actually squares (DIAMONDS) — I love baseball and I love this clue, though *technically* a diamond can, in fact, be a square (see def. 1.3 here)
That's all. See you next time. Oh, and Happy February!
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy everywhere except the middle)
THEME: none
Word of the Day: SMART PILLS (18A: Capsules that can track health info) —
A digital pill (also known as a smart pill, or ingestible sensor) is a pharmaceuticaldosage form that contains an ingestible sensor inside of a pill. The sensor begins transmitting medical data after it is consumed. The technology that makes up the pill, as well as the data transmitted by the pill's sensor, are considered to be part of digital medicine. The purpose of the sensor is to determine whether the person is taking their medication or not (called "compliance").
There are privacy concerns with respect to who receives the data and what is done with it. Such concerns, along with uncertain economic benefits, have made the broad introduction of digital pills in the healthcare practice challenging, despite accumulating body of clinical evidence indicating their efficacy and safety. (wikipedia)
• • •
"We're going to record data from inside your body to see if you're being 'compliant'!?!" Huh, I wonder why those pills haven't caught on, they sound great and completely non-dystopian! Needless to say, SMART PILLS was one thing I'd never heard of. Sounded awful, seems awful, unless there are uses beyond checking "compliance," which maybe there are, but still, you'll pardon my suspicion of data-tracking devices implanted in my body. Moving on from privacy concerns, Big Data, etc., I thought this puzzle was mostly delightful. That is, there were enough good marquee answers to make the effort seem worthwhile. Whatever I think of SMART PILLS (not much), it's part of a very solid and vivid stack there in the NE. In fact aside from ADAB (which is fairly innocuous), that whole corner is beautifully smooth and clean—not easy when you're stacking four long answers like that. Its counterpart in the SW is also gorgeous. No compromises in the fill, anywhere, MAIER is about the softest thing down there, and, well, it's a real name, so if that's the weakest thing in your wide-open corner, you're doing your job right. Was thrilled to remember AYO today and even more thrilled to think that I helped some reader, somewhere remember AYO as well (I dwelled on my own forgetfulness of her name less than two weeks ago, and I'm hoping that highlighted her name enough for it to stick to the brains of other name-strugglers) (43A: Emmy-winning actress Edebiri of "The Bear"). There were some cluing choices here and there that I wasn't thrilled with ([Cat's scan?] ... oof, that was a groaner ... real stretch from "scan" to MICE, both in terms of sense and in terms of number (single clue, plural answer)). But on the whole, this was pitched at a reasonable Friday level and hit that breezy, whooshy Friday sweet spot more often than not.
Speaking of whooshing, I whooshed all around the outside of this grid, through all the corners with all their long answers, whoosh whoosh whoosh ... but the nucleus, the center hub, that thing locked up on me pretty good there for a bit (at least by comparison). The only place I had to pause, stop, think, hack. All the purple ink (I'm using a purple pen now, I don't know why) on my puzzle print-out is located in the center of my grid. OK not all of it, but most of it, for sure. I've got SMART PILLS squiggly-underlined with the word "dumb" written next to it, and then I've got the "NY" part of STONY circled (to remind me to mention that I had STOIC there at first, which seemed wrong for the clue ... and was). But all other ink on this print-out is in the middle. The real killer, for me, was 37A: Hinduism's "king of fruits" (MANGO). Me: "oh no, Hindu gods, you know how bad you are at remembering those ... let's get some crosses and hope for the best." Me a little later: "What ... Hindu god is this? In five letters, I think I only know SHIVA ... who is -ANG-?? The god of fruits? Man, I am lost." But, as you know, I wasn't supposed to be looking for a god, or an Actual “king,” but for a Metaphorical “king.” Of fruits. The top fruit, I guess. The most high fruit. MANGO! I do love MANGO, so I get it, but yeesh throwing "Hinduism" and "king" in a clue and having the answer not be a Hindu god? Wrecked me. (Is there a "god of fruits"? There should be a "god of fruits." If there is no such thing, I volunteer). Speaking of MANGO, I finished watch Dead Calm yesterday, a late-80s nautical thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, and Billy Zane. There's a hairwashing scene where Kidman fantasizes about the foods she's going to eat when they get back to land, and MANGO is one of them. It's a memorable scene. Oh look, it's on YouTube. Here you go (note: it's a pretty bad movie overall, and since they (the writers of the movie) kill a little dog with a harpoon, it's a disqualified movie in my book (I was so mad), but if you can get past the dead dog, the movie has its (thrilling, campy, ridiculous) moments).
But back to the middle of the grid. MANGO was the king of tough answers, but I ALSO struggled with ALSO (26D: It's followed by an extra point) ("extra" = "subsequent") and VALET (31A: Short-distance driver) and the front end of "MAY I TRY?" (37D: Request following some failed attempts). It's possible I also wrote in ROSE at first for 31D: Bougainvillea, for one (VINE), despite thinking, as I was doing it, "yeah, that's not right." I never think of BANGS as a "Hairstyle." It always seems like just the front part of a "hairstyle." Like, Violet has her hair in a bun, typically, right? Yeah, here we go:
That "bun" part is the part I think of as the "hairstyle." The BANGS are just some front-end business. Anyway, this is just to say that it took me a few beats to get BANGS despite knowing Violet's profile well.
Notes and explainers:
1A: Many job fair attendees: Abbr. (SRS.) — a gimme at 1-Across, always welcome
16A: One with sound judgment? (AUDIOPHILE) — one of my favorite answer/clue pairs today. I have a 😀 written next to this clue and 54A: Focus group? (CAMERA CREW)
46A: He's taken! (MARRIED MAN) — this clue seemed so obviously to be talking about a MARRIED MAN that I assumed there was no way it could be about a MARRIED MAN. But then it was.
57A: Wanders around a terminal, for short? (TSA) — maybe you've seen this pun before. I have. The TSA sometimes use "wands" to scan your body for weapons or other metal. Thus, they are "wanders" (as in "users of wands"). It's rough, yes—that is not a way that anyone has ever used "wander"; even wizards are like "really? come on"—but extreme corniness of pun has its limited place in Crossworld.
5D: "The most engaging cowardice," per Robert Frost (HUMOR) — he sounds fun.
30D: Palestinian, e.g. (ARAB) — Adrian (today's constructor) is one of the organizers of Puzzles for Palestine 2, a collection I told you about last time Adrian had a puzzle in the Times. The puzzles are out now (available with any donation to the Palestine Aid Society of America). Adrian has also shared some food distribution photos and extends his thanks to those of you who supported this project. Worth noting: the puzzles in the collection are really inventive and entertaining.
44D: Hermann ___, champion skier known as "The Herminator" (MAIER) — a big name in late '90s / early '00s skiing. "His 54 World Cup race victories – 24 super-G, 15 downhills, 14 giant slaloms, and 1 combined – rank third on the men's all-time list behind Ingemar Stenmark's 86 victories and Marcel Hirscher's 67 victories" (wikipedia). Today, I weirdly got him confused with Eddie the Eagle (a not-so-champion British ski jumper)
39D: Passionate, domineering sort, it's said (LEO) — because it is three letters, and two-thirds vowels, LEO makes more appearances in the grid than any other sign of the zodiac, and I therefore know a disproportionate amount about what LEOs are "said" to be (LIBRA gives it a run for its money—fewer overall appearances, but *all* LIBRA clues are zodiacal, whereas only some LEO's are). As a SAGITTARIUS, I'm not likely to see myself in the puzzle very oft- ... wait, never!? SAGITTARIUS has literally never been in the grid? Any grid? Going back to Margaret Farrar? Never? Wow. OK, so, hey, all you constructors who seem so eager to debut half-baked garbage, why not SAGITTARIUS—the only sign of the zodiac never to appear in a crossword. On second thought, don't, it's fine. We like our privacy.
THEME: UPS AND DOWNS (57A: Uncertainties of life ... or a feature of four answers in this puzzle?) — circled squares contain letters that go UP and DOWN inside four longer Across answers:
Theme answers:
SOLDIER OF / FORTUNE (18A: Mercenary)
HEART / TRANSPLANT (23A: Groundbreaking medical procedure first accomplished in 1967)
USER / RESEARCH (38A: Focus of a product development test)
CAN'T SE / E STRAIGHT (52A: Has a clouded mind)
Word of the Day: Walter Pidgeon (34D: Pidgeon, Hawke or Crowe = ACTOR) —
Walter Davis Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Canadian-American actor. A major leading man during the Golden Age of Hollywood, known for his "portrayals of men who prove both sturdy and wise,"[2] Pidgeon earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, for his roles in Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Madame Curie (1943).
Aside from his acting career, Pidgeon served as the 10th President of the Screen Actors Guild, between 1952 and 1957. He received the Guild's Life Achievement Award in 1975, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, for his contributions to the motion picture industry. (wikipedia)
• • •
A very easy "trick" puzzle. Kind of a Wednesday Thursday. And the grid as a whole ... it's really remedial. I'd say "smooth," but "bland" gets at it better. Lots of boring short stuff, and longer stuff that doesn't do much to liven up the joint. So once again, *everything* rests on the theme today ... which I think is clever, for sure. I'm very aware now that "finding" these kinds of answers (in this case, ones that have a palindromic set of three-up / three-back letters inside them) is more than likely the work of computers than any human "finding," but the effect on the page is still nice. I like that the three-up / three-back segments all involve every word in the theme answers. No tacked-on extra bits. Parts (or all) of every word get caught up in the up/down swing. I especially like the two answers that get three words involved, where the middle word appears entirely in the up/down. And thankfully, these were the last two themers I got. The first got an "oh, OK, I see what you're doing" from me (HEART TRANSPLANT). The next got an "oof, what a boring answer" from me (USER RESEARCH). But the next two really shined (had to look up "shone" v. "shined" there, and since I'm American ... "shined" it is!). CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT got a genuine "Nice!" out of me (not sure if I literally said it, but I definitely thought it), and then later I went up and got the last themer, the one in the NE corner (SOLDIER OF FORTUNE) and that one also impressed with its three-worder-ness. So the theme (as I solved it) finished strong, at least. So I really enjoyed half the themers. Don't have much more good to say about this one, I'm afraid. But while I was in the theme material, I was more than sufficiently entertained.
[ARETHA! (1D: Singer with the 1972 album "Young, Gifted and Black," informally)]
The fill was on the (very) weak side. But as I said up front, it was mostly just dull. Looking the grid over to try to find a Word of the Day, I was struck by how nothing seemed worthy. Nothing seemed interesting or extraordinary or weird enough to merit such a designation. It's mostly very plain language or very familiar crosswordese. It tries a couple longer proper nouns, but ... honestly, I'd rather it hadn't. Horrible to see HP content (AZKABAN) (26D: Fictional prison guarded by Dementors) centered in the grid the day after Rowling's anti-trans bigotry finally got its political expression in the form of an Executive Order hunting trans kids and the people who support them. Congrats on that, all you "protect women's spaces" / "save women's sports" people. Nice job. Pat selves on back. ("No one comes here for your political opinions" — cool cool please go enjoy one of those highly entertaining apolitical crossword blogs then, no one's stopping you!). The other attempt at adding some proper-noun color to this grid (TED LASSO) ends up creating a less-than-ideal TV character / TV character crossing (TED LASSO / HOLT). No one's likely to get stuck there (all the crosses on HOLT are easy), but ... that is not how I would've clued HOLT in this specific situation. I mean, it's not how I would've clued HOLT ever, but as editor, in this instance, I probably would've nudged that clue toward HOLT's regular meaning (a wood, grove, or copse; or the lair of an otter!) ... non-proper-noun HOLT is not exactly a common word, but hey, it's Thursday, some part of this puzzle should actually be a little challenging.
["Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth / Inspired hath in every HOLT and heeth / The tendre croppes..."]
My errors today were, like much of this grid, super-boring. Wanted SKOSH before SPECK (32A: Tiny bit). Wanted -ANE before -ENE (12D: Suffix with methyl). Oof, suffix confusion ... fun! Were those my only missteps? It looks like it. I had trouble with FARCE, but only because it crossed ENE-not-ANE. HOLT is really the only thing I can see holding people up today, and as I said, there's no reason it should hold anyone up for long.
Notes:
1A: First U.S. prez to be born outside the original 13 Colonies (ABE) — I started to actually think about this one, but then some (wise, experienced) part of my brain was like "just write ABE, it's probably ABE." And so it was.
51A: Supermodel Carangi (GIA) — I know one other GIA. Actress GIA Scala. There's apparently some social media "influencer" named GIA, but I don't want to give constructors / editors any ideas.
31D: Division of the Dept. of Labor (OSHA) — Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Do we still have one of these? I can't keep up with the deregulatory news this week.
64A: This is "plagiarism or revolution," per Gauguin (ART) — ideally you would not have a standalone answer that essentially dupes one of your up/down three-letter strings (the "ART" in HEART / TRANSPLANT). See also EST (17A: "Sic vita ___" ("Such is life")) / CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT.
49D: Possible answer to "Whose?" (THE I.R.S.) — As in, "Whose (money is this)?" It's a question you ask around April.*
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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