Vodka-and-lime cocktail / SUN 8-17-25 / Latin for "only" / Hindi for "reign" / Emperor who founded the Mughal Empire / Greek goddess of the night / Paramount+ docuseries with real-life crime stories / Two-pound tomahawk steak, for instance? / Just one inning left after this? / What might confirm the worst for an athlete's injury? / Character with a Jamaican accent in Disney's "The Little Mermaid" / French city from which a soup gets its name / Avoid ___ (GPS option) / Island with ferries to Ibiza

Constructor: Amsay Ezersky (so, Sam Ezersky, then)

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Ixnay That!" — familiar phrases made wacky by "translating" the last word into Pig Latin:

Theme answers:

• NOT YOUR AVERAGE O.J. (22A: One of the better morning beverages?) (base phrase: "not your average Joe")
• THE EIGHTH UNDERWAY (37A: Just one inning left after this?) (base phrase: "the 8th Wonder (of the World)")
• EXTRA OLD BAY (60A: Seasoning preference when eating Maryland blue crab?) (base phrase: "extra-bold") (???)
• JUMBO ENTREE (70A: Two-pound tomahawk steak, for instance?) (base phrase: "Jumbotron")
• TO EBAY OR NOT TO EBAY (93A: "Do I *really* wanna start an online bidding war? Hmm..."?) (base phrase: "To be or not to be")
• TOSS IN THE ASHTRAY (110A: Give an extra perk to a cigarette smoker?) (base phrase: "toss in the trash")
• ALL-TIME AU LAIT (15D: One of the best coffee beverages ever?) (base phrase: "all-time low")
• EMOTIONAL XRAY (53D: What might confirm the worst for an athlete's injury?) (why is an "athlete" involved here—confusing?) (base phrase: "emotional wrecks")

Word of the Day: GIMLET (74D: Vodka-and-lime cocktail) —

The gimlet (/ˈɡɪmlət/) is a cocktail made of gin and lime cordial. A 1928 description of the drink was: gin, and a spot of lime. A description in the 1953 Raymond Chandler novel The Long Goodbye stated that "a real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's lime juice and nothing else." This is in line with the proportions suggested by The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), which specifies one half gin and one half lime juice. Some modern tastes are less sweet, and generally provide for up to four parts gin to one part lime cordial. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

Look, we can argue about martinis all day. Some, like me, would say a martini is made with gin, and that if you make a similar drink with vodka, then it's called a vodka martini. You need the qualifier to distinguish it from a real martini. But if you told me you were drinking a "martini" and it contained vodka, not gin, I wouldn't blink (unless you tried to serve me one, in which case I'd blink many times and then say 'no thank you'). The idea of a martini with vodka is commonplace, even if it's not to my taste. Not So The GIMLET. A GIMLET is made with gin. Originally, famously. Yes, there are variations, and one of those is (apparently) the vodka GIMLET, but it is decidedly a variation. It's as much of a lie to say that a GIMLET contains vodka as it is to say it contains lemon juice (a Schumann's gimlet) or bitters (a Bennett) or Pimm's No. 1 (a Pimmlet!). The GIMLET is, famously, a gin drink. That is why vodka is mentioned nowhere in the introductory description on wikipedia. I care more about this than most because the drink gets special attention in The Long Goodbye, which is my favorite novel. It is the only novel I reread regularly (annually, every November, without fail). The GIMLET recipe given in the novel (quoted in the Word of the Day description above: "half gin and half Rose's lime juice and nothing else") is atrocious. Terry Lennox tells Marlowe "They beat martinis hollow," but actually they're fatally cloying. Undrinkable. You gotta shift the proportions radically in the direction of the gin, and use fresh lime juice, plus a little simple syrup. But no matter. The basic ingredients are the basic ingredients and they are gospel. What today's clue describes is a vodka GIMLET, not a GIMLET per se. No no no. Vodka shmodka. Terrible clue. OK, now that that's out of the way...

This puzzle is very much not for me, but I know it will have its adherents and proponents. For me, figuring out all the themers was a fussy exercise, one that was not terribly entertaining. It's a one-note theme (you just make the last word Pig Latin??) and it goes on and on. I guess some of the resulting phrases are funny. Most of the clues are kind of tortured. I still don't know what "extra bold" is supposed to be, or mean. What kind of a base phrase is that? As far as theme-answer inventiveness, I think I'm most fond of THE EIGHTH UNDERWAY today. It involves a very surprising change of meaning and context, and is wacky in the extreme (which is the only way to be wacky, imho). TO EBAY OR NOT TO EBAY thinks it's the cleverest, but double a meh change is just 2xmeh. Again, enjoyment here is going to depend largely on how much Pig Latin oat-flays your oat-bay. 

The fill has highs and lows. The symmetrical and alliterative PILSENER PARASITE pairing was a high. SOLUM is kind of a low (first appearance in 30 years, only third appearance all time) (the earlier clues were [Soil layer] (?) and [Land, to a lawyer] (!?!). I had SOLUS here at first, which is also [Latin for "only"] (masculine instead of neuter). Regrettable fill. Also regrettable: MELT ON. Having trouble conceiving of when you'd use that phrase. Like SOLUM, we haven't seen it for 30 years, and the last time it appeared, it had an even more obscure clue: [Overcoat material]. Looks like MELTON was also the name of a famous tenor in the early/mid-20th century (James MELTON), but his fifth and last NYTXW appearance came in 1956. GAYETY, like the vodka GIMLET, is also a variant, and like the vodka GIMLET, ridiculous to me (28D: Merriment, in one spelling). Only one other appearance of the "word" in the NYTXW since 1991. Kind of scraping the barrel with some of the fill today. And then there's the debuts, which are ... well, in the case of BABUR, I'm not mad so much as stunned that someone so apparently important has never (not once) been in the NYTXW before (48D: Emperor who founded the Mughal Empire). A five-letter figure of historical importance with no crossword cred?? That's insane. Anyway, I'd love to complain about the obscurity of BABUR, but his wikipedia page is massive so "obscure" really needs the qualifier "to me!" today.

What else?:

• 18A: They're paving the way (ROAD GANG) — the "GANG" part makes them sound like prison labor (see "chain gang"). I thought the more common term was ROAD CREW, but it looks like that term is more associated with roadies. I would say ROAD CREW for the people working on rebuilding the roads, and I don't think I'm alone, but ROAD GANG is definitely the more prominent dictionary term.
• 47A: Character with a Jamaican accent in Disney's "The Little Mermaid" (SEBASTIAN) — I kept trying to think of his species, not his name, so I kept trying to put SEA at the front of his name ... but he's a crab, and SEA CRAB wouldn't fit.
• 36D: Minnesota county whose seat is St. Paul (RAMSEY) — my daughter lived in this county for a time and yet ... pffft. I had no idea what the answer was here.
• 23D: French city from which a soup gets its name (VICHY) — Vichyssoise, which means "the ssoise that comes from VICHY." Actually "oise" is just an adjectival suffix denoting that something is from a place. Salade niçoise is from Nice, for instance.
• 54A: Threads, e.g. (APP) — Meta's attempt at a social media app to rival Twitter (or "X"). It's basically Facebook Twitter, as I understand it. I don't get it. But I'll probably be on it at some point. God knows I've been on everything else (except Tik-Tok—that would feel too much like hanging out at a high school ... not appropriate behavior for a 55yo man). Anyway, my wife had no idea what the answer to this clue could be. My daughter, on the other hand, has no idea who Michael STIPE is (I have failed as a musical guide to my child). It's fun to watch them solve puzzles and compare their struggles. Fun for me, anyway.
• 104A: What Pomeranians do (YAP) — if you wrote in YIP, you are correct, we are correct. Little dogs yip. Here's proof (warning: this "song" will haunt you)

• 77A: Prescriptions, for short (RXS) — do you actually say this "word," or just write it out. It's the only crossword answer I can think of where I know what the letters mean but I would never say them and don't believe I've heard them said. "Rexes?" "Irkses?" "Ar Exes?" I'm just gonna say "meds."
• 90D: Paramount+ docuseries with real-life crime stories (FBI TRUE) — ???? LOL "Paramount+ docuseries." I'm all for learning new things but this is the least interesting pop cultural thing to learn that I have encountered in a while. Who wants this in their grid? Who asked for this? CBS already has like 75 "FBI" branded series, did we need this one? I'd rather learn all the characters in the Marioverse than keep CBS/Paramount's cruddy line-up straight.
• 70D: Many-time N.B.A. All-Star Tatum (JAYSON) — I was able to work this out but my wife was not and not having that "J" was really costing her in the center (last I checked ... she's probably done by now).
• 46D: Greek goddess of the night (NYX) — my wife didn't know this one either, which kept the "X" out of reach—yet another hindrance to her working out the center of the puzzle (the only part she had left the last I checked). Sorry I'm outing your struggles here, honey. You're just so ... illustrative.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd (*new*)]
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French kiss kissers / SAT 8-16-25 / Appearance of the marine creature called "by-the-wind" / Swimwear that can be worn as shorts / 1990 novelty dance inspired by a comics superhero / Nintendo title character with a head mirror / Beauty lounge, of a sort / Evariste ___, 19th-century French math prodigy for whom a differential theory is named / Melancholy 1964 #1 hit for Bobby Vinton / Sponge brand originally spelled with two hyphens / Barack Obama's final secretary of defense (2015-17) / Practitioner of black magic / Kind of box for media watchers

Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging 

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "By-the-wind sailor" (1D: Appearance of the marine creature called "by-the-wind-sailor") —

Velella is a monospecific genus of hydrozoa in the family Porpitidae. Its only known species is Velella velella, a cosmopolitan (widely distributed) free-floating hydrozoan that lives on the surface of the open ocean. It is commonly known by the names sea raft, by-the-wind sailor, purple sail, little sail, or simply Velella.

This small cnidarian is part of a specialised ocean surface community that includes the better-known cnidarian siphonophore, the Portuguese man o' war. Specialized predatory gastropod molluscs prey on these cnidarians. Such predators include nudibranchs (sea slugs) in the genus Glaucus and purple snails in the genus Janthina.

Each apparent individual is a hydroid colony, and most are less than about 7 cm long. They are usually deep blue in colour, and have a small stiff sail that catches the wind and propels them over the surface of the sea. Under certain wind conditions, they may be stranded by the thousand on beaches.

Like other cnidarians, Velella velella are carnivorous. They catch their prey, generally plankton, by means of tentacles that hang down in the water and bear cnidocysts (also called nematocysts). The toxins in their nematocysts are effective against their prey. While cnidarians all possess nematocysts, in some species the nematocysts and toxins therein are more powerful than other species. V. velella's nematocysts are relatively benign to humans, although itching may develop on parts of the skin that have been exposed to them. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well I can't complain that that one was too easy. The proper nouns alone kept punching me in my (non-open) mouth over and over. ASH CARTER? (9D: Barack Obama's final secretary of defense (2015-17)). Uh ... vague whispers of echoes of memories of a long ago times, before the Great Fall-Apart. 2015-17, you say? Yes, I believe those years happened, and I must've been alive, but ... [shrug]. ASH CARTER sounds like a pop star or a movie franchise hero, and he may as well be ARNE DUNCAN or all that I could pick him out of an Obama-era politico line-up. LEA SOLANGA? (26D: Tony-winning actress who provided the singing voice for the Disney princesses Jasmine and Mulan). Again, that is a name I've heard, so that helped, but only so much. My brain just kept offering me LEA MICHELE and SOLANGE Knowles (Beyoncé's singing sister). Evariste GALOIS?? (24A: Évariste ___, 19th-century French math prodigy for whom a differential theory is named). Did he invent French cigarettes? Because otherwise, hoo boy, no way (damn, the cigarettes are GAULOISES, not GALOIS, nevermind). There are apparently still more Marioverse characters, seemingly more Marioverse characters than there are Simpsons characters, so ... DR. MARIO, was it? At least that was inferable with some crosses (5D: Nintendo character with a head mirror). The "Head mirror" is so obsolete that it took me a sec to place it (on the head of an imaginary "doctor"). Oh and speaking of the Simpsons, that was one of the proper nouns I did know. THE BARTMAN was a "thing" for like ... a month? A year? I dunno. It was early days for the show, first season, maybe. The show soon became so Homer-centered that Bartmania became a kind of quaint memory, but it was indeed a mania while it lasted. It's ... possible ... that I own a picture disc of "Do THE BARTMAN":

Proper nouns are only a part of what made this one properly Saturday tough. That BLOB clue may be the most inscrutable clue I've ever encountered in crosswords. First of all, "Appearance of..." You don't want the creature, you want the appearance of the creature? And you're not going to tell me what the creature is except by its completely unhelpful nickname? "By-the-wind sailor"? In retrospect, the name makes sense, if you know the actual (Latin) name of the "marine creature" in question: Velella. Velella means "little sail" (one of the other nicknames for this creature). Velella "have a small stiff sail that catches the wind and propels them over the surface of the sea" (wikipedia). But their appearance (allegedly!) is apparently not SAIL. It's BLOB. Which is the "appearance of" ... lots of things. The Blob, for instance. Or that thing at the bottom of your water glass you can't identify. That BLOB clue is peak Saturday clue. An absolutely pure headshake. 

Further, I needed 80%+ of the crosses to get BLOW-DRY BAR, which, like a doctor's head mirror, feels .. of the past. But I see that I'm confusing it with the hair salons in old movies and TV shows where ladies sit underneath hairdrying machines and read magazines and gossip. I assume that at a BLOW-DRY BAR they ... blow ... your hair ... dry? Look, I have no hair, and my wife and daughter are not exactly beauty-parlor people, so while I love the phrase as a phrase, it is not in my personal phrasebook. So the NW was hard going to start. After that, I was able to move consistently, if slowly. Lucked out getting ACTION HERO off just the "CT" (25D: Bond classification) ("Bond, James Bond"), which helped open up the SW. And I really lucked out with AUSTENITES, a word I basically made up as a right-sounding word that ended up actually being right. We've been listening to Mansfield Park in the car (yesterday on the way to Ithaca and back, for instance), and my wife and I have been discussing her particular greatness a lot lately, so she's been much on my mind (though we're not the biggest fans of Mansfield Park, so far—entertaining, in a way, but without any appealing characters whatsoever; the leading female protagonist is weak and easily led, and her seeming-maybe-possible love interest is a humorless prig. Seriously, the most boring guy to ever open his mouth. I hope this play they're trying to put on (so many bored rich people...) turns out a hilarious disaster. But yeah, I think maybe we're AUSTENITES in this household, though slap me if I ever use that term again.

[what plays in my head when I see BLOW-DRY BAR, accuracy be damned]

[from Golden Eighties, d. Chantal Akerman (1986)]

Middle of the puzzle was the stickiest place for me outside the NW. BOARDIES!?!?! (37A: Swimwear that can be worn as shorts). I know "board shorts." I had the BOARD part and then ... waited. BOARD PJS? I don't know! Yeesh. And the flight from New York to London wasn't OVERNIGHT!?!?! The only letter I had was "N" and OVERNIGHT fit and I was so happy, ah well. SEVEN-HOUR? I mean, I believe you. I ballpark believe you. Not sure SEVEN-HOUR is my favorite answer of all time. But it's ... inventive. Surprising. I did really enjoy solving this, it just bruised me a bit, is all.

[27A: Melancholy 1964 #1 hit for Bobby Vinton]

Bullets:

• 28A: Sponge brand originally spelled with two-hyphens (OCELO) — I know one of the hyphens came after the first "O" but I'm not sure where that other hyphen would've gone. Aha, it went before the last "O," which ... yes, seems logical, now. This is the official sponge of Crossworld. I know it solely because of crosswords. Oh, wait, SOS is a sponge brand too, isn't it. Well, there are other clues for SOS, but only one for OCELO, so OCELO wins "official" status for that reason alone. (Actually, this is only the fourth appearance for OCELO all time, which seems impossible, but I'm afraid four appearances is not enough to qualify you for any kind of "official" status, so the title of "Official Sponge of Crossworld" reverts to SOS. Damn it! SOS is a scouring pad (steel wool), not a sponge at all!!! Sigh, OK, the position of 'Official Sponge of Crossworld" remains officially open for now. OCELO can occupy the position on a provisional basis.
• 33A: Kind of box for media watchers (TIVO) — "box" and "media watchers" both had me thrown. "Media watchers" sound like people who keep their eyes on the news business. "Media consumers" would've been clearer here, but who needs "clearer" on a Saturday?
• 35D: Smack in the middle of a crowd, in brief? (PDA) — great clue. "Smack" = "kiss" here. Surface meaning of the clue is tight, clean, and appropriately misdirective. 
• 14D: Call to whomever ("HEY, ANYBODY!") — or is it more like two calls, like, "HEY! ... ANYBODY!?" That sounds more natural. Not a natural-sounding "call" to me, but I had all three "Y"s in this answer before seeing the clue, which helped (a lot). 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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English translation of the Dutch "klompen" / FRI 8-15-25 / Younger Simpson sister / Miso soup base / X, as in Mexico / Glazier's replacement / Figure on the $10,000 bill / Like the culture depicted in Safiya Sinclair's best-selling memoir "How to Say Babylon" / Fragrant flower whose name means "gift from "God" / Ticket exchange site since 2000

Constructor: Dena R. Verkuil

Relative difficulty: Medium, maybe a tick easier

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Salmon P. CHASE (52A: Figure on the $10,000 bill, the largest U.S. note ever in public circulation) —

Salmon Portland Chase (January 13, 1808 – May 7, 1873) was an American politician and jurist who served as the sixth chief justice of the United States from 1864 to his death in 1873. He earlier served as the 25th United States secretary of the treasury from 1861 to 1864, funding the American Civil War during the administration of Abraham Lincoln. Chase also served as the 23rd governor of Ohio from 1856 to 1860, and represented Ohio in the United States Senate from 1849 to 1855 and again in 1861. Chase is therefore one of the few American politicians who have held constitutional office in all three branches of the federal government, in addition to serving in the highest state-level office. Prior to his Supreme Court appointment, Chase was widely seen as a potential president. // Chase sought the Republican nomination for president in the 1860 presidential election, but the party chose Abraham Lincoln at its National Convention. After Lincoln won the election, he asked Chase to serve as Secretary of the Treasury. Chase served in that position from 1861 to 1864, working hard to ensure the Union was well-financed during the Civil War. Chase resigned from the Cabinet in June 1864, but retained support among the Radical Republicans. Partly to appease the Radical Republicans, Lincoln nominated Chase to fill the Supreme Court vacancy that arose following Chief Justice Roger Taney's death. // Chase served as Chief Justice from 1864 to his death in 1873. He presided over the Senate trial of President Andrew Johnson during the impeachment proceedings of 1868. // To honor Chase for introducing the modern system of banknotes, he was depicted on the $10,000 bill printed from 1928 to 1946. Chase was instrumental in placing the phrase "In God We Trust" on United States coins in 1864.(wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

Some good marquee answers here. Not a lot of 'em (just six that are 8+), but the ones that we do get form a worthy lattice for the rest of the grid to hang upon. "DOES NOT COMPUTE" is a funny one because I got it easily, and yet that particular "robotic error message" feels (science) fictional. Calls to mind a bleep blop blork hulking metal kind of robot from midcentury B movies. Yes, here we go—wikipedia says the phrase was popularized by The Robot in the TV show Lost in Space ('65-'68). It was also a catchphrase on the science fiction sitcom (!?!?!) My Living Doll ('64-'65), which appears to be about the world's first sexbot, wow, I can't believe it lasted only one season:

The series starred Bob Cummings as Dr. Bob McDonald, a psychiatrist. His friend Dr. Carl Miller (Henry Beckman), a scientist with the U.S. Air Force being transferred to Pakistan, shows Bob his latest invention: a lifelike android in the form of a sexy, Amazonian female, AF 709. Miller gives the prototype robot, also called Rhoda (Julie Newmar), to Bob. Bob is initially reluctant, but soon becomes intrigued by the experiment of educating this sophisticated but naive robot. The series' episodes center around Rhoda's attempts to learn how human society works, and Bob's attempts to teach Rhoda how to be "the perfect woman", which he defines as one who "does what she's told" and "doesn't talk back." He also strives to keep her identity secret by saying that she is Carl's niece.

The clue doesn't indicate that the "error message" in question is largely pop cultural, so I was surprised (but not unpleased) to have to reach back to an age of much quainter robots than the ones currently, and largely invisibly, destroying enriching our lives. I like that the scifi-ish "DOES NOT COMPUTE" sits atop IN THE NEAR FUTURE, thus giving a sense of both the impending robot takeover and how much it will suck rule.

Pretty hard 1-Across right out of the gate, unless you are an adherent of something called Read With Jenna (Jenna Bush Hager's book club on the Today show), which seems to have helped make the memoir in question (How to Say Babylon) into a legit bestseller (1A: Like the culture depicted in Safiya Sinclair's best-selling memoir "How to Say Babylon"). The only way I got to RASTA was by getting the -STA part—at that point, what else could it be. I knew of the connection between "Babylon" and RASTA culture from several mentions of the term in Reggae and Reggae-adjacent songs. It's also the title of a great movie about the Jamaican music scene in London in the late '70s. In Rastafarianism, "Babylon" represents "the forces of oppression and exploitation that Africans faced under colonialism and its legacies"

That NW corner was the hardest part, but as you know, this is often true—the hardest part is the place you start, and then once you get momentum, things get easier. I figured out that the [Younger Simpson sister] couldn't be any of the animated Simpson sisters, and so had to be the younger of the singing Simpsons sisters. Jessica, I remembered (I once flew on a flight she was on, out of Cincinnati or Kentucky somewhere, I forget—a random fact of my life), but her younger sister, even with the "A," took me a while to remember, and even then I spelled it ASHLEY, leaving me wondering how an EPEY involved "touching" (23A: Touching event?) (frankly, I wanted ORGY there at first). REKEYED before RETYPED. No idea what the context for [Rock alternative] could be until the answer (PAPER) was practically all the way filled in (context: rock-PAPER-scissors). So, struggle struggle ... but then the long answers came flying out of that section with no effort at all, and I was off.

The rest of the puzzle proved pretty easy, the hardest answer being the guy on the $10,000 bill. If you'd given me [Salmon P. ___] as part of the clue, I *might* have been able to churn up CHASE, but as it was, nope. In fact, once I got CHASE, I just figured it was the guy who founded CHASE Manhattan bank (now just CHASE). Was that a guy? ... holy &^$% it's the same guy! I mean, no, he didn't found CHASE National Bank (he'd been dead four years by that point), but the bank was named after him. I feel like I learned Salmon P. CHASE's name from a fish-themed puzzle of some sort, years back. He was def in a "guys on the money" puzzle back in '09. And here he is in some kind of fish-pun theme in 1974 (which five-year-old me might have enjoyed if someone had explained it to him)

[Check out the fill in this one! some real head-scratchers! The pre-software days of constructing were Wild]

Good grid, no cringe, a little light on the good stuff, but that good stuff was in fact good, so I can't complain. This one had a nice flow—no places to really get stuck stuck, except maybe those cul-de-sacs in the NW and SE, which were certainly the hardest for me—I blanked on DASHI (43A: Miso soup base) and needed way too many crosses to see JASMINE in the SE (35D: Fragrant flower whose name means "gift from "God").

Notes and explanations:

• 7D: "u r freaking hilarious" (LMFAO) — "Laughing my fabulous/fearsome/feathery ass off." Seems weird that you would abbr. "u" and "r" like that but then write out "freaking hilarious" completely. Not a plausible text. I tried to make OMFG happen here (thanks to that (sexy) "MF"), but as you can probably guess, it wouldn't fit. 

• 21A: X, as in Mexico (BESO) — the "as" part here is not great (i.e. totally unnecessary). I guess it's trying to misdirect you and make you think the "X" has something to do with the letter in "Mexico," as opposed to what "X" actually is here (a symbol for a "kiss," which is Mexico (i.e. in Spanish) is BESO)
• 40A: Glazier's replacement (PANE) — a glazier cuts and fits the glass for windows
• 13D: Order in the court? (CASE DISMISSED) — kind of a lifeless "?" clue, since nothing about it is specific to the answer; that is, any "order" might've worked ("ALL RISE," "OVERRULED"). Nothing dismissy about the clue.
• 21D: My word! (BOND) — as I've said before, the lack of quotation marks around this clue, coupled with the "!," means that the answer will not be an equivalent of the clue phrase itself (the apparent exclamation "My Word!") but something that "my word" literally is ...which is "my BOND" (in a common expression)
• 25D: First name in late-night (SETH) — as in Meyers. I go to bed too early for late-night shows, and I gave up "political comedy" shows completely in 2016, but I will admit to watching snippets of his monologues on Insta sometimes (I watched one once and then My Algorithm, being a rather simplistic robot, decided I need to see them at the top of my feed every day) (there are worse thing to be at the top of your feed, I suppose, so thanks, Algy (that's what I call him))
• 45D: Place to brood (COOP) — "brood" here refers to hens managing their chicks, not you fretting about the CO-OP board won't let you keep chickens in your apartment.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Horatian work of ca. 18 B.C. / THU 8-14-25 / Molecule that stores energy in the body, in brief / Larrup / Result of a scandal going viral, in brief / ["Let's go with 'Nickname's the Same' for $400"] Bruce Springsteen, Lance Armstrong and Melissa McCarthy in a 2016 comedy / A winning scenario in a best-of-three game / Hasbro word game that comes with a 60-second hourglass / Pre-med track precursor, in brief

Constructor: Gene Louise De Vera

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: IN JEOPARDY (62A: At risk ... or where one. might hear the clue-and-answer pairs at 17-, 23-, 39-, 41- and 53-Across?) — well-known interrogative phrases are clued as if they were the answers to Jeopardy! questions (or, questions to Jeopardy! answers, if you like):

Theme answers:

• "WHAT IS LOVE?" (17A: ["I'll take 'Tennis' for $200, Ken"] It means nothing) ("WHAT IS LOVE" is a song by Haddaway, LOVE is of course "nothing" (zero) in tennis)
• "WHO'S THE BOSS?" (23A: ["Let's go with 'Nickname's the Same' for $400"] Bruce Springsteen, Lance Armstrong and Melissa McCarthy in a 2016 comedy) ("WHO'S THE BOSS" was a sitcom, THE BOSS is the nickname of everyone listed there)
• "WHAT'S UP?" (39A: ["Give me 'The Academy' for $600"] This was only the second animated film to be nominated for Best Picture, after "Beauty and the Beast") ("WHAT'S UP?" is just a common question, UP is a movie with a dog and a balloon and Ed Asner)
• WHO'S WHO (41A: ["How about 'Sports and Comedy' for $800]) He was on first base, per Abbott and Costello) (a WHO'S WHO is a list of important people, WHO ... is on first, per a famous Abbott and Costello routine)
• "WHAT'S THE TEA?" (53A: ["I'll try 'Painted Ladies' for $1000"] This piece by Impressionist Mary Cassatt shows two women enjoying a drink) (“WHAT’S THE TEA?” means “what news/gossip do you have to share?” and THE TEA is a painting by Cassatt (see below))

Word of the Day: THE TEA (see 53A) —

The Tea, also referred to as Five O'Clock Tea, is an oil-on-canvas painting of two women having tea by the American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. The role of gender in the painting has been the subject of differing interpretations among art historians. Griselda Pollock describes the confined interior as an evocation of the spatial and social constraints placed on women at the time. Norma Broude asks whether the work might contain "possibilities for empowerment," showing the agency that women exercised through sociability. And John Loughery argues that the intention behind Cassatt's work might always remain a mystery. // Art historians and feminist scholars such as Broude emphasize that Cassatt's work must be viewed within the context of her time. Cassatt's work reflects the fact that she did not have the same access to the public sphere as her male counterparts. While male artists were able to explore busy streets, music halls, cafes, and travel, Cassatt's experiences were limited to the domestic sphere, therefore, also limiting her choice of subjects. (wikipedia)

• • •

ATP at 1-Across? Why? It's terrible fill, and not just because I can never remember this "molecule" initialism, even though I've seen it at least once before. Adenosine Triphosphate. Give me the American Tennis Professionals meaning of this answer every time, or, even better, never give me this answer again, it's bad. That "P," crossing the somewhat-hard-to-parse PRDISASTER (more initials there at the front) (3D: Result of a scandal going viral, in brief), made the opening part of this solve kind of awkward. But not nearly as awkward as the clue on WHO'S THE BOSS?, which I still don't understand. Obviously, Bruce Springsteen is "The Boss," but why does the clue keep going? Lance Armstrong? Melissa McCarthy? 2016 comedy?? It's really Lance Armstrong that's throwing me here. I assume Melissa McCarthy was in some comedy I've never heard of called The Boss ... [searches] ... yep, there we go. 

Not familiar to me at all, but that's OK. Still ... what is Lance Armstrong doing in this clue??? Did people really call him The Boss???? LOL did he not know that nickname was taken. On his wikipedia page, among his listed nicknames is "Le Boss," which is funnier than "The Boss," and kind of invalidates the clue. Also, why would you want a disgraced fraud of an athlete in your puzzle? He's not TULSI Gabbard-bad (see yesterday), but still, his is not a name that's enjoyable to remember. The way that clue had to stretch into obscurity, reaching beyond Bruce into nonsense, really made things confusing for me. I do like the basic premise, even though I am not the Jeopardy! fan that so many crossword solvers are and certainly haven't watched it at all since Trebek died. 

There are three little problems with the theme execution though

• All the themers are, in their surface meanings, legit questions ... except WHO'S WHO, which is not a question at all. A WHO'S WHO is a list of famous people or standouts in a particular field. It's a noun.
• The revealer is anticlimactic; you read one theme clue and you know what TV show you're dealing with
• The second part of the revealer clue reads "where one might hear the clue-and-answer pairs," and the answer to that is ON JEOPARDY!, not IN it. When talking about TV shows, you say "I saw it on..." "I heard it on..." 

["I Lost On Jeopardy!"]

Further, I've never heard the question "WHAT'S THE TEA?" I know that TEA is slang for gossip, and I've heard of the related expression "spill the tea," but just ... "WHAT'S THE TEA?" I'm sure someone says it somewhere, but to my ear, it clanks. I did enjoy learning about the Mary Cassatt painting, though. It's fun that there are two dimensions to every themer: the answer as a whole (which, as a well-known thing unto itself, is unclued), and then the Jeopardy! part of the answer (LOVE, THE BOSS, UP, etc.), which is clued. Does everyone know what "WHAT IS LOVE?" is?? That seems niche to me, although if you watched SNL at a certain point in its run, you definitely heard it a lot.

[Haddaway]

The long Downs were solid today, though that clue on TWO FOR TWO was unnecessarily confusing. Why bring "three" into it? You would not use the phrase TWO FOR TWO if you were in a best-two-out-of-three situation. TWO FOR TWO is a just a regular phrase for taking two attempts (at whatever) and being successful. In baseball, a batter might be TWO FOR TWO with two RBIs, a walk, and a stolen base, say. A basketball player might go 2-for-2 from the free throw line. The answer phrase and the clue phrase just don't go together. The fill gets ugly in places: HHS next to OOH through ORTHO (which I had as OSTEO???) under THAR under ONS crossing E!NEWS—not  a very pretty stretch. ATP SHOO WHAP (!?) ODO USH ASEA AERO INST ... really rough around the edges. I liked seeing ARS POETICA in its full splendor (and not just as a sad partial clue for ARS). PR DISASTER is actually a very strong entry. And BANG-UP JOB is ... doing one (33D: Incredible work).

Bullet points:

• 48D: Larrup (WHAP) — I'll take "Words No One Uses for $6, Alex." I've seen "Larrup" before, but only (only) in crossword clues. And WHAP? That's not a word, that's a sound effect.

• 31A: Bubbles, e.g. (ORBS) — this took me an embarrassingly long time (i.e. more than one pass). Thought it might be a verb for a bit.
• 45D: Terrifying device for a field mouse (RAT TRAP) — me: "why is mouse in the clue for RAT TRAP?" Me later: "Oh, they were trying to do one of those rhyming-consecutive-clues things that so rarely work out [see 42D: Terrifying sound for a field mouse], no wonder this clue is awkward."

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld]

P.S. I told you yesterday (ELWES!) that I was gonna watch THE CAT’S MEOW (2001) and just so you know I’m a man of my word …

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd (🍿NEW🍿)]
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