Small stretches, perhaps / FRI 1-3-25 / Woody's crush in "Toy Story" / Motif in 1995's "Se7en" / Simple question on a high schooler's hand-drawn poster / Subpar dining hall food / Common nap times, in brief / Much-sought-after commodity in "Dune" / Dutch constituent in the Caribbean / Area between the ribs and the round

Constructor: Colin Adams

Relative difficulty: Easy or Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PROMposal (48D: Simple question on a high schooler's hand-drawn poster = PROM) —

The teenage rite of passage known as prom (short for promenade meaning "a ceremonious opening of a formal ball consisting of a grand march of all the guests") began in the late 1800's as a formal dinner held by American colleges and universities in the northeast to teach the graduating class etiquette before students set off into the world. Some high schools began to adopt the tradition around the turn of the century, and by 1950 it was the norm in American high schools. These days the prom has become somewhat of a competitive sport with students and even schools competing to have the best venue, attire, transportation, and, in recent years, the best invitation. // Asking someone to prom is almost as old as prom itself, but as the act of asking grows more and more elaborate the phrase "asking someone to prom" is no longer sufficient. The portmanteau from prom and proposal is a fairly recent creation apparently only dating back to 2011, and it's a fun new word used to refer to the surprising ways people are asking dates to prom. [...] So what makes asking someone to prom a promposal? You can ask someone to prom by presenting them with flowers and saying "Will you go to prom with me?" but a promposal often involves a little something more, and usually includes a special or elaborate act or presentation that took some thought and time to prepare. A promposal can be as simple as giving your intended date a giant cookie that reads "Prom?" or as over-the-top as jumping out of a plane holding a sign that reads "I'm Falling 4 U, PROM?" (merriam hyphen webster dot com)

• • •

This one felt flat, until the end (SE corner) when it really SPICEd up and closed strong. Hard to feel like you're gonna be going anywhere good when your opening word is AFTS :( (1D: Common nap times, in brief) and your next word is a -LOP kealoa* (2D: Subpar dining hall food) (we get SLOP, but GLOP has been clued via dining hall and cafeteria fare lots of times). And then a Hindu god, if only I could keep them straight (I wrote in RAMA—that's a god, right? Yes) (3D: Hindu god of love = KAMA). And then fourthly, up front, there was ESC (4D: F1 neighbor), with a clue that was *identical* to one we had just last week, I'm pretty sure (almost identical: [What's left of F1] (12/28/24)). That cruddy opening does resolve into FLASH FLOOD (14A: Sudden weather phenomenon) and TOM COLLINS (17A: Cocktail that's called a French 75 if you use Champagne instead of soda water), a decent long pairing, which helped ease the pain, but still, the first half or so of this puzzle was mostly just workmanlike, not exactly fun. It wasn't til "SUCKS TO BE YOU" that I thought "hey, there we go, there's the energy, hello, nice of you to show up." And when I threw JERSEY SWAP across the SE corner to close, I thought "Nice." Closing strong really makes a difference to one's overall impression of the puzzle (and vice versa—nothing worse than having a good time and having the ending of your solve just go pffffffft). 

Actually, my finish today was marred by tragedy, but it wasn't the puzzle's fault. Not exactly. I had gotten sloppy on the way down and ended up leaving an obviously wrong letter in one of the squares (one of the hardest squares in the puzzle, I think). I went past 45A: Small stretches, perhaps when I had only --BS because I had no idea. When I picked up the "I" (for "-IBS"), rather than relooking at the "-IBS" clue, I went by memory ... and misremembered it as a different clue that asked for a part (or "stretch"???) of the body ... so I wrote in RIBS. Turns out, I was thinking of the LOIN clue (22A: Area between the ribs and round). Which, I see now, actually has "RIBS" in it (!?!?! editor / test-solver / proofreader should've caught that). Anyway, I was just SLOPpy. Or GLOPpy. One of those. Thankfully, RISTS is not a word, and so my mistake was easy to find (45D: Hitmakers? = FISTS). Crossing that very deceptive FIBS clue with a "?" clue made that single square oddly treacherous, at least to me. But there was nothing treacherous at all about the rest of the grid. Breezy Friday, on the whole.

Still, there were a few slow points. Weird that so many A- words fit the clue at 1A: Out of whack. Well, there's ASKEW and AMISS. There's also AWRY, though that "fits" only at the level of sense (not letter count). That wasn't a slow point, actually, just a bumpy point. I got slowed down significantly only in trying to get in and out of the middle. Specifically, I couldn't fill out the phrase "DON'T ___" at 8D: Command to stay. Without the second part of that answer, I had no access to the center. "DON'T" is contained entirely in that upper-left quadrant. One more letter would've given me at least a little light. But nope. "LEAVE" seems straightforward now, but my only thought was "BUDGE," and when that didn't work ... stuckness. I got at the center from the west, using "SAY CHEESE" to pry my way in, but it didn't help much with the center, and also left me with the same word-break problem at LOGIC PUZZLE that I had with "DON'T LEAVE," i.e. I got the first word and had no idea about the second. LOGIC .... shrug. I work off crosses from start to finish when I solve, jumping around *only* when that method breaks down. It was in danger of breaking down today, but then, from just "-ECI-" I got PRECISELY, and I was back in business. PRECISELY to PERCH to LOGIC PUZZLE took care of the SW, and PRECISELY to REV to LEAVE to PRANK CALL took care of the middle and got me access to the east. No problems after that.

Bullets:

• 5D: Challenge to an intruder ("WHO GOES THERE?") — if you're the watchman in Hamlet, sure. Actually, I have misremembered this—the opening question of Hamlet is "Who's there?" I blame The Brady Bunch (Peter played a watchman in a play (maybe Hamlet??) and he had only one line, as I remember):

• 10A: What a bodybuilder builds during a bulk cycle (MASS) — "This meeting could've been an email" is how I think of clues like this, only what I mean is "This long clue could've been reduced to just one of the words in the clue": Today, [Bulk]. Just "bulk." That would do it.
• 20A: Basis of some admissions (GUILT) — tricky. Sounds like it wants something to do with college admissions (to my ears, anyway)
• 23A: Heaps of dressing? (LAUNDRY) — When I had "DON'T BUDGE" in place (at 8D: Command to stay), I wanted this to be BEDDING. So close!
• 47A: Much-sought-after commodity in "Dune" (SPICE) — since our last Dune clue a month ago ([Spice planet in the "Dune" universe] => ARRAKIS), I have watched a Dune—the first part of the newer Dune starring Timothée Chaladune and Dunedaya. I also watched the first half hour or so of David Lynch's Dune, which I really should finish, as I prefer its Lynchian bizarreness to the slick humorless spectacle of NuDune. Anyway, you don't have to watch much of any version of Dune to know SPICE is involved. It's the first order of business and main topic.
• 54D: Motif in 1995's "Se7en" (SIN) — true enough, though "motif" makes it sound almost ... decorative. Which it's not. Unless you decorate in gore. By the way, happy 30th birthday to this movie. I wish I could give the movie a present, just so the movie could ask me...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

We're down to the last of the Holiday Pet Pics (no more please!)

Here's Curly. He came with the name "Squirrel" but then one day he chased a squirrel in the park and his owner was shouting "squirrel!" and it was all a little too ridiculous

[Thanks, Karl]

Millie Bean and Tula will do anything (apparently) for Christmas treats...

[Thanks, Patrick]

Knope seems unsure what the fuss is all about. "Is this bed?" That's really the only question that matters, and if you're a cat, the answer is always "yup."

[Thanks, Allison]

This is Bulldog. He's actually a standard poodle working undercover. Here he is in one of his many disguises, posing as a harmless family pet named "Santa Baby"

[Thanks, Karen and Joe]

Finally today we have Casey, who always loved stocking time. RIP, Casey, what a good dog.

[Thanks, Tom]

See you next time.

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] => ATON or ALOT, ["Git!"] => "SHOO" or "SCAT," etc.  

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Early text messager / THU 1-2-25 / Flower whose name means "flame" in ancient Greek / Start of a quip by comic Steven Wright / Epic with the line "Come, friend, you too must die" / Urban addr. specification / Youngest golfer to score below his age in a P.G.A. Tour event

Constructor: Robert Charlton

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: F/PH — eight squares contain both "F" and "PH" ("F" for the Down answer, "PH" for the Across); the reason for the F/PH confusion is expressed by a quip running across three lines of the puzzle: "WHY ISN'T THE WORD / [PH]ONETICALLY / SPELLED WITH AN 'F'"(20A: Start of a quip by comic Steven Wright)

The eight "F/PH" squares:

• ALPHA / FRAYED
• IPHONE / FELTS
• PHOTO / FUTON
• PHONETICALLY / FILIPINO
• GRAPHED / "AFRAID SO"
• PHLOX / ELF
• NYMPHO / DWARF
• PHASE / HALF

Word of the Day: TELEX (49D: Early text messager) —

Telex is a telecommunication system that allows text-based messages to be sent and received by teleprinter over telephone lines. The term "telex" may refer to the service, the network, the devices, or a message sent using these.^[1] Telex emerged in the 1930s and became a major method of sending text messages electronically between businesses in the post–World War II period. Its usage declined as the fax machine grew in popularity in the 1980s.

• • •

Had little hope for this one at first. Finished the NW corner without much trouble—ALFA seemed like a perfectly good answer for [First in a series] (it stands for "A" in the NATO alphabet) and so that particular trick square was lost on me (seems like you'd clue that one [___ male] or something, just to make the distinction clear, but ... moving on). After that corner was done, I hit the themer, read the clue, and let out a low, soft, defeated groan: "great ... a quip puzzle." We haven't seen one of these in a while. For a reason. Because they're bad. You used to see them a lot, and they'd just be quips. Often by Steven Wright, actually. Things he said that ... were kinda funny? ... and just happened to fit symmetrically in the grid. And that was it. That was the "theme." So I was like "what are we doing here? is it 1996 all over again?"

[the moment hope left my body]

And of course with quips, who knows what the words are going to be—the quip itself is no help most of the time, since the clue does nothing for you, so the crosses become harder because you're getting less help with them. Quip puzzles are just chores, with very little payoff. Historically, this is the case. Today, however, there's an added element. Thank god. Not that the added element was so entertaining—hunting down a bunch of F/PH squares isn't exactly my idea of a good time—but at least the puzzle is aspiring to do something beyond making me wryly chuckle at an old "quip." There's an actual thematic concept here. The quip deals with the fact that "F" and "PH" are pronounced the same way, and this fonetic fenomenon is represented by eight squares in the grid, where "PH" works in one direction, and "F" works in the other. I appreciate the way the quip actually tied to a concept, but I can't say solving the puzzle was made that much more interesting. Tougher, a little, maybe, but it was just a matter of looking for "F"s–or looking for "PH" answers that were one letter short—and filling the squares accordingly. Since most of the "F/PH" squares were shoved against the edges of the grid (top and bottom), they didn't interfere with the solve as much as they might have, and were relatively easy to find. I got so lazy with the gimmick that I neglected to see that the final "F" square (the one at the end of the quip) did *not* also contain a "PH," so I ended with an error, technically. I have "LOL" written next to that "F" square on my print-out. Guess that's my solving grade today. A wryly chuckleworthy punchline to a so-so solving experience.

Since this puzzle is architecturally fairly demanding, the grid isn't exactly sparkling. It just gets by. Except when it doesn't. MIASMAL is grim. Truly grim. I mean, I thought the answer was grim when I had MIASMIC in there, but MIASMAL ... somehow, grimmer (MIASMIC googles ~20x better). But that was the only moment where I really grimaced at the fill. The rest of it seems OK. I don't love MEN ON as a standalone answer, but yes, when there are people on base, that is a phrase you sometimes hear. "He's hitting .350 with MEN ON." Wasn't a big fan of the NORM clue either (14A: Average Joe's name (that's not Joe)). I see what you're trying to do there—"NORM" *mean* "average," so you're kind of punning on the name—but NORM has never been an "Average Joe's name." Joe has always been way, way more popular. Even at its most popular, NORM was never that popular. My brief perusal of baby name sites yielded this NORM fact:

It was a Top 100 name for more than half a century, hitting a high in 1931 at Number 36, but today it's nowhere near one of the most popular boy names starting with N. (nameberry.com)

Number 36 is ... not that high. Don't say it's an "Average Joe's name" when it's not. And if you want to pun on "NORM," go ahead, but put a "?" on the clue then. It's only fair.


More things:

• 4D: Prefix with sexual (AMBI-) — gonna confess right here that I do not know the difference between AMBIsexual and mere (?) BIsexual. To the search engines! Aha, I don't know the difference because [drumroll] there isn't one. Wow. OK then. Moving on.
• 27A: Adjust on the timeline (REDATE) — left this one out when cataloguing grimaces. Definitely grimaced here. Not a MIASMAL-style grimace, but a grimace nonetheless. I wrote in REDRAW at first (that would work for [Adjust the timeline] but not [Adjust on the timeline])
• 32A: ___ Robinson, mother of Michelle Obama (MARIAN) — not a fact I tucked away. How deep does my knowledge of presidents and first ladies have to be? I guess she *did* live in the White House, helping raise the grandkids, and she *did* pass away very recently (just last year), so I probably should've known her name. 
• 5D: Possible response to "Where are you?" ("I'M IN HERE!") — easily my favorite answer in the grid. It's got some life!
• 29D: Head liners? (HAIRS) — easily the most baffling clue in the puzzle, for me. You have HAIR on your head, not HAIRS. Not in common parlance anyway. Also, you would never say that HAIRS "line" your head, but technically, I guess it's accurate enough.

• 57A: Youngest golfer to score below his age in a P.G.A. Tour event (SNEAD) — one of those clues where all I see is "blah blah golfer blah blah blah." So ... some golfer. What golfers do I know in five letters? Sam SNEAD. Does he fit? He does? Great, next! (The crossword golfer Hall of Fame includes Michelle WIE, Ernie ELS, Mark O'MEARA, ARNIE Palmer, and Sam SNEAD ... oh, and ISAO AOKI, of course, can't forget him—he's Lifetime Chairman). New Zealand golfer LYDIA Ko is not only the reigning Olympic gold medalist, she is also the reigning LYDIA crossword clue (the only one used for LYDIA since 2013). So tuck that info away ... somewhere.
• 34D: Urban addr. specification (BLDG) — hard for me. Was not getting what was "urban" about the abbr. (this abbr. for "building" hasn't appeared in the NYTXW for over seven years)

Trying to get through all the leftover Holiday Pet Pics by Saturday, so ... here are some more.

 

Pepper patiently awaits presents...

[Thanks, Lee]

Annabelle destroys a Christmas penguin—a story in three parts:

[Thanks, Patrick]

Benny dreams of all the kittens of the world, particularly the kittens of Paris, who form a little thought cloud above his head:

[Thanks, Kathleen]

Mia says "what? nothing. I wasn't doing nothing. The presents were just *near* my face, total coincidence, not guilty."

[Thanks, Kathleen]

And finally, what you've all been waiting for: a bird bench-pressing a candy cane (this is Scoop):

[Thanks, Susan]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. registration for the 2025 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, CT (Apr. 4-6) is now open, if that kind of thing interests you :)  

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Starbuck's higher-up? / WED 1-1-25 / 1990s sitcom featuring a bookstore / What you might call a tipsy friend / Stylish tote for an executive / Chocolate money won or lost in this puzzle's game / In the dark about something nefarious / Like the breeds shetland and merino

Constructor: Seth Bisen-Hersh and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Dreidel — grid features a dreidel at its center, which (when it is filled) is made out of "CLAY" (i.e. the letters in "CLAY") (40D: Material used to make the object "illustrated" here, in a seasonal song). The four sides of a dreidel are represented in circled squares toward the top of the grid ("ALL," "PUT IN," "NONE" and "HALF"), and then a couple more short answers relate to how and why the game is played (players SPIN the dreidel with the goal of winning chocolate money, or GELT). 

Theme answers:

• SPIN (52D: Take a turn with the object illustrated by the central black squares in this puzzle (leading to one of the four circled results))
• GELT (59D: Chocolate money won or lost in this puzzle's game)

Dreidel sides:

• ALL THE RAGE (3D: Super-trendy)
• PUT IN WRITING (5D: Set down on paper)
• NONE THE WISER (9D: In the dark about something nefarious)
• HALF DOLLAR (11D: Place to see J.F.K.)

(I had no idea about how the game was played, so I looked them up, here you go):

Word of the Day: dreidel —

A dreidel, also dreidle or dreidl, (/ˈdreɪdəl/ DRAY-dəl; Yiddish: דרײדל, romanized: dreydl, plural: dreydlech; Hebrew: סביבון, romanized: sevivon) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is a Jewish variant on the teetotum, a gambling toy found in Europe and Latin America.

Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet: נ‎ (nun), ג‎ (gimel), ה‎ (hei), ש‎ (shin).

Each player begins with an equal number of game pieces (usually 10–15). The game pieces can be any object, such as chocolate gelt, pennies, raisins, etc.

• To start the game, every participant puts one game piece into the center "pot". Every player also puts one piece into the pot when the pot is empty or there is only one game piece in the pot.
• Each player spins the dreidel once during their turn. Depending on which side is facing up when it stops spinning, the player whose turn it is gives or takes game pieces from the pot:
  • If נ‎ (nun) is facing up, the player does nothing.
  • If ג‎ (gimel) is facing up, the player gets everything in the pot.
  • If ה‎ (hei) is facing up, the player gets half of the pieces in the pot. If there are an odd number of pieces in the pot, the player takes half the pot rounded up to the nearest whole number. If hei is facing up and only one piece is in the pot, the player can either take the piece or not.
  • If ש‎ (shin) is facing up, the player adds one of their game pieces to the pot (sometimes accompanied by the chant "shin, shin, put one in"). In some game versions, the player adds three game pieces to the pot, one for each stem of the letter shin (ש‎).
• If the player is out of pieces, they are either "out" or may ask another player for a "loan".

These rules are comparable to the rules for a classic four-sided teetotum, where the letters A, D, N and T form a mnemonic for the rules of the game, aufer (take), depone (put), nihil (nothing), and totum (all). Similarly, the Hebrew letters on a dreidel may be taken as a mnemonic for the game rules in Yiddish. Occasionally, in the United States, the Hebrew letters on the dreidel form an English-language mnemonic about the rules: hei or "H" for "half"; gimel or "G" for "get all"; nun or "N" for "nothing"; and shin or "S" for "share".

• • •

Cool, a Chanukah-themed puzzle that actually appears during Chanukah (which ends tomorrow at sundown). If I've seen a Chanukah-themed puzzle before, it's been a while. Probably should've run this one yesterday or even Monday so as not to conflict with Yet Another Holiday (Happy New Year, btw), but whatever, I don't need another "BALL"-dropping theme, this is fine. Ridiculously easy, though. The center, isolated "dreidel" part of the grid is probably the only zone that might cause anyone any trouble, but if you know the dreidel song (at least the one that I learned in high school French), then you know what the dreidel is (traditionally made out of): "O dreidel dreidel dreidel, / que j'ai fait de la boue / O dreidel dreidel dreidel, / O dreidel, moi, je joue." I somehow remembered *this* version before I remembered the English version "O dreidel dreidel dreidel, I made it out of CLAY..." But I remembered it, is the point, and so that (somewhat awkwardly filled) dreidel part was not an issue. I thought maybe the specific letters in that dreidel section had some meaning, or were a visual representation of something, but I think they're just random letters—that the only thematic element there, besides the shape of that section, is CLAY. Oh wait! The whole section is made *exclusively* out of the *letters* in "CLAY." All Cs Ls As and Ys. That's nice. Doesn't make for pleasant fill, but it's a nice touch, for sure.

Was real uncertain about what this puzzle had in store for me early on. I mean, what am I supposed to think about a New Year's puzzle that greets me with the message: "ALL PUTIN!" I was like, "what the hell is this message? 'ALL PUTIN, ALL THE TIME!? That's an ominous way to begin the year."

It wasn't til I went all the way down to the bottom of the west side of the grid and hit the clue for SPIN that I had any concept of the theme. The answers were going in as fast as I could type, so there wasn't really time to digest much before then. The SPIN clue made me (finally) see the "dreidel" at the center of the grid, and helped me understand why the circled squares made no sense to me (I've never played dreidel in my life, or bothered to learn what the rules were). The theme is well-executed, but what made it actually enjoyable to solve was the fill, which was actually interesting in its own right. Sometimes when a theme is architecturally demanding, the quality of the fill suffers, but not today. Every one of those circled-square answers is at least solid, and NONE THE WISER is genuinely original. ALICIA KEYS shows up looking nice in full-name attire. I like "I'LL BITE," both as a slang phrase, and as a kind of bonus themer: "I'LL BITE that chocolate candy!"

As I say, the puzzle was remarkably easy for a Wednesday. Outside the central "dreidel" part, there were two answers total that gave me pause. First, ELMS. Sigh. This is yet another one of those occasions where the "doubled clue" gimmick (today, [Symbols of wisdom]), just doesn't work as well for one of the two answers. I plunked OWLS down off the "O," but ELMS? Wisdom? Er ... shrug. I guess? They're certainly "stately," and they line streets, but ... wisdom, you say? News to me. The other "???" moment for me today was WORK BAG (56A: Stylish tote for an executive). I have no doubt that there are "stylish" WORK BAGs out there, but lemme tell you, "WORK BAG" is not a phrase that screams "stylish!" WORK BAG sounds like something someone in a hard hat might carry. Practical. Sturdy. I'm not even sure what a WORK BAG is, frankly. Is that like a briefcase ... but for ladies? Hang on... LOL, the first hit when I search [what is a "work bag"] is a site promising "Gorgeously Stylish WORK BAGs!" So either the clue writers did the same search I did or "stylish"-ness is really built in. Interesting. And yes, WORK BAGs are fashionable briefcase equivalents for women. (I just looked at a site promising a "Man's WORK BAG Collection," but everything on offer there was actually called a "briefcase." Weird.)

Bullets:

• 14A: Micronesian island that was the setting for a season of "Survivor" (PALAU) — it's fun to look at crossword history. Shortz had pretty much written PALAU off as crosswordese in the early '00s. It had only ever appeared irregularly, even in the olden days, after 2001, more than seven years or so go by with no PALAU. Then "Survivor: PALAU" aired in 2005. Then, in 2008, Patrick Berry puts it in a puzzle, cluing it as "Micronesian nation that hosted the 10th season of "Survivor"" and since then it's appeared twenty times, including three last year and four (?) in 2021. Looks like only five clues have ever mentioned "Survivor" directly, but there's no question that "Survivor" absolutely elevated the profile of PALAU, and is the reason we see it so often, even in "easy" early-week puzzles (lots of M and T appearances).
• 50D: "Yikes!" ("OH GOD!") — the Lord's name? In vain? In a Chanukah puzzle? I do not care, at all, but I did notice.
• 35A: 1990s sitcom featuring a bookstore (ELLEN) — weird how this entire sitcom (which I watched reasonably frequently) has been reduced in my memory to "that time she came out to Laura Dern!" A major moment in TV history, but one that has (for me) blocked out the rest of the show, including the fact that a bookstore was involved. (The "coming out" episode was titled "THE PUPPY EPISODE" in order to keep it under wraps, and, well, "THE PUPPY EPISODE" is 15 letters long ... come on, constructors, you know you want to)
• 7D: Starbuck's higher-up? (AHAB) — a Moby-Dick clue, obviously. Starbuck is the Chief Mate, whereas AHAB is the captain (his superior, a "higher-up").
• 33D: What you might call a tipsy friend (CAB) — hey, a New Year's Eve clue! Little late, but it's the thought that counts. I thought this answer was going to be some kind of slur, like SOT. CAB is nicer.

Got a bunch of Holiday Pet Pics still to burn, so let's burn 'em.

First up, appropriately, Chanukah Kitty! This is Mixtli. He enjoys sleeping and using random objects for pillows—highly unusual behavior for a cat...

[Thanks, Caitlin]

[For comparison, here's my cat, Ida, using an old pizza stone for a pillow:]

Here are two dog babies, Nanook and Buster, taking turns under the Christmas tree. 

[Thanks, Jim Thompson ... I love your crime fiction!]

Here's Figaro playing with a catnip toy, in a picture taken from his audition reel, I'm guessing.

[Thanks, Stephen]

Here are Baxter and Chinoag being such perfect little gentlepups that I can only imagine treats await them jjuussst out of frame...

[Thanks, Bea & Craig]

And finally, here's Miro, who sees you when you're sleeping and *definitely* knows when you're awake:

[Thanks, Jay]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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