First Eurodance hit in the U.S. / SUN 11-30-25 / Gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, for one / Noodling in a jazz tune / Anti-mob law acronym / John who painted “Backyards, Greenwich Village" / Mantou or bao, in Chinese cuisine / Noodling in a jazz tune / Diamonds can sometimes be found in them / 2022 sequel to "Knives Out" / Former Portuguese colony on the Malabar Coast / Historical Dutch settler / Ancient drinker of the fermented beverage chicha / 1999 Ron Howard film about a reality show

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Hog Wild" — the grid illustrates the biblical idiom PEARLS BEFORE / SWINE (16D: With 87-Down, idiom about wasting one's efforts ... as seen in four columns in this puzzle?); words that can follow "pearl" in familiar phrases / names appear inside little pearl-shaped figures (i.e. circles), and each string of "pearls" is directly above ("before") a famous pig (or "swine"):

Theme answers ("pearls" are in BLUE, "swine" are in PINK):

• "PUMP UP THE JAM" / PORKY (12D: First Eurodance hit in the U.S. (1989) / 83D: "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!" speaker)
• GLASS ONION / HAMM (28D: 2022 sequel to "Knives Out" / 91D: Pink character in the "Toy Story" movies)
• PASS THE BUCK / WILBUR (6D: Skirt responsibility / 77D: Literary runt of the litter)
• SAFE HARBOR / BABE (31D: Refuge / 94D: Farmer Hoggett's entrant in a sheepherding contest)

Word of the Day: Paramore (84A: Grammy-winning Paramore hit of 2014 = "AIN'T IT FUN") —

Paramore is an American rock band formed in Franklin, Tennessee, in 2004. Since 2017, the band's lineup includes lead vocalist Hayley Williams, lead guitarist Taylor York, and drummer Zac Farro. Williams and Farro are founding members of the group, while York, a high school friend of the original lineup, joined in 2007. [...] The band's second album, Riot! (2007) became a mainstream success thanks to the success of the singles "Misery Business", "Crushcrushcrush", and "That's What You Get". The album was certified Platinum in the US and the band received a Best New Artist nomination at the 2008 Grammy Awards. Their 2009 follow-up, Brand New Eyes, reached number two on the Billboard 200 and became the band's second-highest-charting album to date. It produced the top-forty single "The Only Exception" and went platinum in Ireland and the UK. // Following the departure of Zac and Josh Farro in 2010, the band released their self-titled fourth album in 2013. Paramore gave the band their first number one album on the US Billboard 200 and was also the number one album in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. It included the singles "Still Into You" and "Ain't It Fun", with the latter winning the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song for Williams and York as songwriters, making it Paramore's first Grammy win.

• • •

First things first. Today's constructor, Natan Last, has a brand new book out about—you guessed it—the mating habits of the white-breasted cormorant. JK, it's about the history of the crossword puzzle! It's called Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle. I've read it and I love it and you should buy it. But don't just take my word for it ... actually, you should just take my word for it, but if somehow that's not enough, read a review. Like this one in the L.A. Times. It really is a wonderful tour through this world, our world, CrossWorld. Lots of familiar names, lots of charming anecdotes. Nice timing on this puzzle, Natan. Promotional synergy! Sell those books! (if I sound cynical, I'm not—it really is a good book that deserves to be read). Now on to the puzzle!

***

Well this is certainly the most conceptually interesting Sunday puzzle I've seen in a while. The only criticism I have of the theme is that these "pearls" are more "above" than they are "before" swine. Decidedly above. If you had to describe the spatial relationship here, it's over/under, not before/after. But if you call the lawyers in, I think they could get a judge to rule that "above" is a type of "before," especially since it's reasonably conventional to think of a puzzle "starting" at the top and "ending" at the bottom. You're likely to the get the "pearl" answers "before" you get the "swine" answer, so ... OK. Judges say "OK." Beyond that, the theme is beautifully executed, particularly the "pearl" part, with the conventional circled squares magically transformed into images of pearls by virtue of the theme, and with each pearl-strand spelling out a word that can follow the word / name "Pearl": the band Pearl Jam, the cocktail garnish pearl onion, the author Pearl (S.) Buck, and the poorly-reviewed 2001 blockbuster Pearl Harbor ("a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours" — Roger Ebert). The fictional "swine" are all famous, except maybe HAMM, whose name I didn't know. Not sure he's reached the iconic status of pigs like WILBUR, BABE, and PORKY. Poor Piglet, left on the bench. But symmetry is a harsh mistress, and today she called for a four-letter pig (to match BABE). And so in goes HAMM. Toy Story is famous enough for theme answer purposes, and even if I didn't know HAMM, at least I could infer his name, so ... fair. Nice job. And kudos for working "THAT'LL DO" into the grid. I got a big post-solve rush of happiness when I realized that the puzzle was winking at me there.

The puzzle stands out physically as well, as it has an absolutely bonkers grid layout. Is it supposed to resemble a pig's face? Again, I think if you call the lawyers in, they could argue at least semi-convincingly that I'm supposed to see a pig's face. That highly unusual middle section, with its colonnade of 11s drilling 7 rows down into a black void from which there is no escape, has something vaguely snouty about it. And the upside-down black "L"s at the top are kind of ear-y. I could be convinced, is all I'm saying. 

I didn't always love the fill. AN APPLE A DAY is creative, but a bit sad on its own. Partial adages, are we doing that now? Also, AN APPLE A DAY keeps the doctor away, which seems like a far more MODEST claim than "cure-all." Apples are good for you, they are part of a healthy diet, but they don't, as yet, make you immortal. How have I been a baseball fan for nigh on a half century and never heard the term LOUD OUTS (4D: Baseballs that are hard-hit but then caught, in lingo)? It's possible (probable?) that I have heard it and just didn't process what I was hearing, or that I have not heard it nearly enough for it to register as a familiar baseball phrase. I could've inferred the meaning from the phrase itself, but I needed a bunch of crosses to get it in there today. 

There are two long song titles that are likely to throw older solvers (or, in the case of "PUMP UP THE JAM," possibly younger solvers as well)—one of them threw me. I am very much in the demo for "PUMP UP THE JAM" and very much not in the demo for Paramore, a band whose name I hear way more often than I ever hear their music. If a band blew up between the year I finished my dissertation (1999) and the first Obama administration, there is a good chance I missed the boat entirely. Job / marriage / daughter / dogs / crossword blog / etc. had me far far less focused on pop culture than I had been in my teens and 20s. The '00s is also my biggest blind spot movie-wise. Paramore becomes popular at the tail end of this pop culture blackout period for me, but despite paying reasonably close attention to contemporary music in the intervening years, I still know only their name, not a one of their songs. But they are absolutely massive for a certain section of Millennials in particular, so they're certainly crossworthy. Still, it's weird that one of their song titles made it into the grid before they did. PARAMORE seems like it would be pretty useful as 8-letter answers go—so many common letters. And yet, to date, nothing. Except "AIN'T IT FUN." It did win a Grammy. But it's decidedly less famous than most songs you're apt to see in a puzzle.

If there are rough patches in the grid here and there, I think most of them are probably side effects of a structurally demanding grid. EDTV LORI "PUMP UP THE JAM" BACON (!) HANS is quite a name wad to choke down, esp. since it's conceivable that a solver wouldn't know any of the first three of those names. No one calls stadiums STADIA, so cluing it as if it were part of ordinary baseball usage feels ridiculous (20D: Diamonds can sometimes be found in them). Staying over there for a second (with our crossword friends ARAL and SIA), what is a John SLOAN!? (26D: John who painted 'Backyards, Greenwich Village"). Besides an answer designed to make me feel like an uncultured BOER (I mean "boor" ... possibly "bore")? Aha, the Ashcan school, yes [nods sagely] I've heard of that (I have heard of it, but like many things I've heard of—say, Paramore—know almost nothing about it). Here's the painting in question:

Kitty! John SLOAN is now my favorite p— holy crap is that Ronald McDonald's evil niece in the window? This painting is just full of surprises. Oh wait, there's a second kitty! And clown girl is eying him hungrily. Run kitties, run!

Bullets:

• 81A: Lethargy (SOPOR) — pfffffffft OK I associate SOPOR (when I'm forced to think about it at all, which is only when I'm solving crosswords) with "sleep." If something's "SOPORific," it is sleep-inducing. Every definition of SOPOR I'm seeing has the word "sleep" in it. "Lethargy," on the other hand, I associate with SOPOR's cousin, TORPOR, which literally means "lethargy." 

• 21A: Actress Zosia ___ of "Girls" (MAMET) — briefly but strongly wanted this answer to be RONAN. But that's not Zosia. That Saoirse. Zosia is a different actress entirely. Daughter of the playwright MAMET.
• 52A: College voter? (ELECTOR) — as in "the Electoral College."
• 74A: Mantou or bao, in Chinese cuisine (BUN) — "bao" is very familiar to me. "Mantou," that's new. Steamed BUN, no filling, popular in northern China.

• 100A: Noodling in a jazz tune (VAMPING) — not sure why "noodling" seems far too informal a substitute for VAMPING, but it does. Yes—here we go. From good ol' M-W herself (yeah, the dictionary's a "she," no, I will not be accepting questions): ": to improvise on an instrument in an informal or desultory manner." It's the "in an informal or desultory manner" part that makes it inapt to my ear.
• 28D: 2022 sequel to "Knives Out" (GLASS ONION) — going to see the sequel to this sequel today, up in Ithaca. Very excited. I could wait two weeks for it to come out on Netflix, but screw that. Big screen, baby!

• 54D: Anti-mob law acronym (RICO) — LOL I always thought it was named for some guy named RICO. But no, the RICO of "RICO Act" stands for "Racketeer Influenced (?) and Corrupt Organizations." Is "Racketeer Influenced" a compound adjective? If so, shouldn't it be hyphenated? So awkward, no wonder they just say "RICO."
• 78D: L'___ du Nord" (Minnesota motto) (ÉTOILE) — started rereading Simenon's first Maigret mystery, Pietr-le-Letton (Pietr the Latvian) yesterday (en français), and the whole first part of the story involves tracking the movement of a trans-European train called ... L'ÉTOILE-du-Nord!

OK, that's all. Now go buy Natan's book, or order it as a holiday gift for the aspiring cruciverbalist in your life. It's very good, and not just 'cause I'm (very briefly) in it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P. S. this Tuesday, Dec. 2, Eli Selzer (who fills in for me here on the blog occasionally) will be on Jeopardy! Tune in to see how it goes!

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What sfouf is, in Lebanese cuisine / SAT 11-29-25 / Axolotl lookalikes / Nickelodeon series whose episode titles all start with the same letter as the show itself / One of 32 in the country of Kiribati / Musical production that might include grunts, groans, thwops, snorts and barks / The number 4 and the gift of a clock, in Chinese culture / Biblical figure said to have fathered Kenan at age 90

Constructor: Adrian Johnson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Goblin sharks (23D: Prominent features of goblin sharks = NOSES) —

The goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) is a rare species of deep-sea shark. Sometimes called a "living fossil", it is the only extant representative of the family Mitsukurinidae, a lineage some 125 million years old. This pink-skinned animal has a distinctive profile with an elongated, flat snout, and highly protrusible jaws containing prominent nail-like teeth. It typically reaches a length of 3 to 4 meters (10 to 13 feet) when fully grown, although it can grow significantly larger—such as one specimen captured in 2000, which was believed to measure around 6 meters (20 feet). Goblin sharks are benthopelagic creatures that inhabit upper continental slopes, submarine canyons, and seamounts throughout the world at depths greater than 100 m (330 ft), with adults found deeper than juveniles. Some researchers believed that these sharks could also dive to depths of up to 1,300 m (4,270 ft), for short periods; footage captured in 2024 suggests that their range could be deeper than previously thought, with a confirmed sighting of an adult swimming at 2,000 m (6,560 ft).

[how is this a shark? this looks like a hand puppet prop from some Alien knockoff]

Various anatomical features of the goblin shark, such as its flabby body and small fins, suggest that it is sluggish in nature. This species hunts for teleost fishes, cephalopods, and crustaceans near the sea floor and in the middle of the water column. Its long snout is covered with ampullae of Lorenzini that sense minute electric fields produced by nearby prey, which it can snatch up by rapidly extending its jaws. Small numbers of goblin sharks are unintentionally caught by deepwater fisheries. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed it as Least Concern, despite its rarity, citing its wide distribution and low incidence of capture. (wikipedia)

• • •

It's so much easier to appreciate a puzzle's finer points when I'm not drowning in gunk. The SW corner gets a little namey there, which might cause some consternation, but otherwise this thing felt smooth as hell and polished within an inch of its life. The eastern half of this grid in particular felt beautifully built, from the TIME MACHINE at the bottom to the BAD OMENS at the top—no cringe, and only a tiny handful of answers I'd even blink at for a second—ESTEE, IDES, ROCHE, none of it apt to make me holler. When your less-than-ideal entries are a. rare and b. holding together good-to-great marquee fill, well then you're doing your job as a constructor. My experience with this puzzle fell into two distinct part—the properly hard part, where I had to work for every inch of progress (NW, SW), where the grid seemed clean and solid, but not particularly inspired; and then the much easier but also much more colorful second half (SE, NE), where the fill really started to pop. I'd put the transition moment right about ... here:

WHALE SONG and SPIDEY SENSE were like "let's go!" and off I went. Big noise ("WHAT A RACKET!"), big adventure (TIME MACHINE! Take it back (in time)!). I vaulted up from there via FAIR GAME and FADERS to the final quadrant, where I hit a little snag—briefly forgot DOLMA (24A: Dish of stuffed grape leaves) and considered DOSHA (a concept from ayurveda), and then also thought the [Know-it-all who might have a ball?] (SEER) was a SAGE, which put the "G" in exactly the right place to make 13D: The number 4 and the gift of a clock, in Chinese culture look like BAD SIGNS (as opposed to the correct BAD OMENS). But luckily I knew enough to pull DOSHA and hold off on SAGE. I must've then remembered DOLMA and then all the long Downs up there fell into place, 1, 2, 3, and that was that. Didn't even see the short Acrosses up there.

All the real difficulty today came early. Looked like I was going to start with a whoosh buuuuuuut despite the fact that I had TRAVEL and RETINA and APOLOG(Y?) all lined up, the following words weren't entirely clear to me. I must've committed to GUIDE, which seemed most likely to work in that space, and then, miracle of miracles, I was able to get a gosh darn Nickelodeon show answer on my first guess (9D: Nickelodeon series whose episode titles all start with the same letter as the show itself). "What shows star with "I"!?!? Well, there was iCARLY, but that can't ... wait, ha ha ha yes it can!" My daughter must've been the right age for her (and thus me?) to know about this show, though I don't think she watched the show herself. Stunned at my good fortune, I went forth ... and immediately fell in a mistake pit. 

Off the "Y" from iCARLY I wrote in PUNNY for 25A: Groan-worthy, say, as a joke, because of course I did, puns are groaners, so groan-worthy jokes are PUNNY, gah and bah! I mean, CORNY is not wrong, but still, bah. And working my way out of PUNNY was no cakewalk because I absolutely could not see CAKE (25D: What sfouf is, in Lebanese cuisine). I had that answer starting with a "P" from PUNNY, and yes I wrote in PITA of course I wrote in PITA. Four letters, Lebanese, starts with "P," cuisine-related, you're damned right I wrote in PITA. I think the only thing that busted me out of that horrible knot of mistakes was the goblin shark, who kept persistently nudging me with his nose, like "come on, you know it's NOSES, write in NOSES and see what happens!" I should add that I wasn''t sure GLYCERIN wasn't something like GLYCEROL (which, it turns out, is also a thing), so I was holding back that "-IN" ... oh, and I had NEIL as NEAL (23A: Drummer Peart). Annnnnyway, PUNNY out, NOSES and GLYCERIN in, then STASIS and TONGUE (eventually corrected to TONSIL) (28D: Neighbor of the uvula), and I finally got through. Still took me forever to see CAKE, though. Went through CALF and CAFE before ever hitting on CAKE.

Bullets:

• 20A: Preferred piece of commercial real estate (CORNER LOT) — my initial reaction was "who'd want to live on a CORNER LOT? Too much exposure, too much traffic" but then I belatedly noticed the word "commercial" in the clue and the answer suddenly made a lot more sense.
• 37A: 1988 Best Country Song Grammy winner for "Hold Me" (OSLIN) — as in K.T. OSLIN, '80s country's gift to crosswords. Her name's particular five-letter combination has proven ... durable.

• 44A: Musical production that might include grunts, groans, thwops, snorts and barks (WHALESONG) — a fantastic clue. I had WHALE in place and had the briefest moment of "what kind of 'musical production' starts WH-" and then I got it. Not a human musical production at all. Side note: THWOPs in the puzzle when!? If it's a real word / sound, why has it never been in the grid (in singular or plural form)? I am ready for a puzzle that groans snorts and THWOPs (although don't go too far down the THWOP rabbit hole or you'll end up at "pornographic manga" and no I'm not kidding)
• 43D: The "E" of the New York Stock Exchange's "EL" (ESTEE) — the "L" is for "Lobster." Yes, she's best known for cosmetics, but people always forget about her lobstering empire. 
• 3D: One of 32 in the country of Kiribati (ATOLL) — because ISLE wouldn't fit.
• 8D: About half of all these are made in Philadelphia, for short (U.S. COINS) — the one answer today that made me wonder "is that a real phrase?" But it is. Or various numismatic websites seem to think so anyway.
• 21D: Play list? (ROSTER) — the "list" of those who will "play" in the game.
• 27D: High-level intelligence assets? (SPY PLANES) — "High-level" because, well, they're planes. Me, a genius: "Aha, 'high-level'! I get it! It must be ... SKY PLANES!" (yes, I actually did this, no, I will not be taking any questions)
• 38D: Axolotl lookalikes (NEWTS) — I love when the clue writer thinks about how the clue sounds. Say this clue fast three times and try not to be delighted.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Drive around the office? / FRI 11-28-25 / Bishop for whom a neighborhood in Paris is named / Junk food that, ironically, has an exercise in its name / Foundational skateboard trick / One-named rock idol who was born Paul David Hewson / Colorful capsule that splatters

Constructor: Jacob McDermott

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ST. DENIS (5D: Bishop for whom a neighborhood in Paris is named) —

Denis of Paris (Latin: Dionysius) was a 3rd-century Christian martyr and saint. According to his hagiographies, he was bishop of Paris (then Lutetia) in the third century and, together with his companions Rusticus and Eleutherius, was martyred for his faith by decapitation. Some accounts placed this during Domitian's persecution and incorrectly identified St Denis of Paris with the Areopagite who was converted by Paul the Apostle and who served as the first bishop of Athens. Assuming Denis's historicity, it is now considered more likely that he suffered under the persecution of the emperor Decius shortly after AD 250.

Denis is the most famous cephalophore in Christian history, with a popular story claiming that the decapitated bishop picked up his head and walked several miles while preaching a sermon on repentance. He is venerated in the Catholic Church as a patron saint of both France and Paris and is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. A chapel was raised at the site of his burial by a local Christian woman; it was later expanded into an abbey and basilica, around which grew up the French city of Saint-Denis, now a suburb of Paris. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not enough good marquee fill and too many names. I don't mind names in my puzzle, but, as the puzzle says, YEESH. A name you know might bring a thrill of recognition, but a name you don't know is always kind of awful, so I think you gotta be kind of sparing with names, esp. ones that are not universally known. Like, BONO and ALICE seem fine, and something like ST. DENIS is historical, so even though you might not know it (or, like me, struggled for a bit to get it), it doesn't feel irritatingly insubstantial, or exclusionary in some way. It's not that the names were so marginal today [looks sideways at FAYE and ROSIE], it's that there were so many. Buckets. So many that the puzzle occasionally seemed as if it was trying desperately to reduce the name count by cluing names as if they weren't people's names. DOTTY, UTA, LEE, OLLIE—the puzzle mercifully gives all of these answers non-name clues. But in addition to all the names I've already mentioned there were NAOMI Watts and RORY McIlroy and RENÉ, and then OLE turned into a name (via a "Mexican food brand" I've never heard of) (48D: José ___ (Mexican food brand)), and finally a pair of crossing longer names, neither of which I disliked seeing and both of which I knew, but after all the names I'd already endured, it just felt like a lot. Plus, I'm not sure crossing them at the "A" is the greatest idea; I admit it's slightly hard to imagine anyone being Naticked by ART TATUM / ARMISEN, but it's at least plausible. I know this is a matter of taste and some (usually younger (than me)) constructors really love names and think they're no different from other kinds of fill. It's just that I notice when the puzzle can't seem to lay off the names. And it's distracting. Also, I have to say, names have this annoying way of skewing either very easy (very familiar) or very hard (never heard of it). It's no accident that nearly every answer that slowed me down  today (FAYE, ROSIE, RICK) was a name.

If the marquee fill had been stellar, it's possible that the name parade would've faded into inconsequentiality, but only a handful of long answers today really shined. The first of these was a mercy—I had gotten bogged down in the NW in a way that rarely happens on a Friday, and after giving up on working all the shorter crosses of things I already had in the grid, I decided to try one of the longer answers, for which all I had was the first letter: "S" (23D: "Mind your own beeswax!"). And bam:

Clean across the grid and immediately locked into the SW corner. I don't usually tend to look at clues for longer answers until I've got a bunch of crosses in place (too often a waste of time), but desperate times call for etc. and I caught a nice cross-grid express train. I wish more of the long fill had had the energy of "STAY OUT OF IT!" For me, VENUS FLYTRAP and BAD ATTITUDE are the only other answers to hum and sizzle in the same way. There's a bunch of solid, earnest, eager-beaver stuff—TRIED AND TRUE, WORK ETHIC, "I'M READY"—and there's a DANCE TROUPE, which should be entertaining, but ... then it's actually a flash mob, so the "troupe" is more annoying and dated than entertaining (do people still flash mob? Seems like a very 10+-years-ago activity ... ooh, look, you can flash rob too, that sounds ... illegal, actually). I guess if you like CHEESE CURLS then there are CHEESE CURLS here for you (6D: Junk food that, ironically, has an exercise in its name). As a "food," pass, but as an answer, it seems fine. The puzzle just needed more than "fine." BOOK A ROOM wins the "EAT A SANDWICH" award for this month [superfast pharmaceutical ad voiceover voice: "not an actual award"].

Aside from my unusual struggle in the NW, there were only a few other real sticking points. Beating myself up about struggling to get RICK (21A: James in the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame). I thought "James" was a first name, and BROWN wouldn't fit, so ... pfft. I can see now how people might've been tempted to try ETTA there, but I already had the "R." Of course it's not James RICK, but RICK James, whose music—and luxurious hair—was very familiar to me as a child (even if his music was not exactly suitable for children).

The other thing that tripped me up was an out-and-out mistake: I wrote in PASSWORD instead of PASSCODE (29A: Alternative to a fingerprint, maybe). What kind of junk food are CHEESE WU--S, I wondered. Bah. Once I got solidly beneath the FAYE line (i.e. the equator), the puzzle got a lot easier. Not a lot of green ink on the bottom half of my printed grid today, except for an angry green scribble through SESH (up there with TROU in my Personal Pantheon of Horrible 4s) (55A: Informal get-together).

Bullets:

• 5A: Hustle (SCAM) — realizing now that part of my problem in the NW, besides ROSIE, was the depth of ambiguity in so many clues up there. "Hustle" can mean so many things. And as for 7D: Runs, once again I say YEESH. So many possible meanings. I needed every cross to get AIRS and it still took me a few seconds to understand it (a TV station runs, or AIRS, programs). You've also got the tricky (for me) "?" clue on WORK ETHIC (14A: Drive around the office?).
• 4D: Genre for Toots and the Maytals (SKA) — one thing this puzzle does have is good music:

• 47A: Vegges out (LOAFS) — whoa, is that how you spell "vegges"??? That looks cursed. I don't think that's a word that ever wants to be spelled. Let's agree to never spell it again.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Gloomy, as an atmosphere / THU 11-27-25 / Essential biochemical process that releases energy in cells / "Anno Domini" period / Feature of a mountain or fingerprint / Lucky scientist, perhaps / Skin-care product thinner than a moisturizer / Football offense arrangement that resembles an inverted Y shape / Person who's off-base

Constructor: Alexander Liebeskind

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: SQUARE THE CIRCLE (57A: Complete an impossible task ... or a hint to reading three Down answers in this puzzle) — a rebus where the rebus squares are indicated by circles: a number works in each Across "circle," and you have to "square" that number in order for the Down answer to work:

Theme answers:

• WISHBONE FORMATION / ON EDGE (17A: Football offense arrangement that resembles an inverted Y shape / 18D: Anxious)
• FAST WORKER / YEAR OF OUR LORD (29A: Good person to give a time-consuming project, maybe / 9D: "Anno Domini" period)
• EARTH REENTRY / SATURNINE (43A: Process for a descending spacecraft / 24D: Gloomy, as an atmosphere)

Word of the Day: ANN Petry (13D: ___ Petry, first African American woman to write a million-selling novel ("The Street," 1946)) —

Ann Petry (October 12, 1908 – April 28, 1997) was an American writer of novels, short stories, children's books and journalism. Her 1946 debut novel The Street became the first novel by an African-American woman to sell more than a million copies.

In 2019, the Library of America published a volume of her work containing The Street as well as her 1953 masterpiece The Narrows and a few shorter pieces of nonfiction. [...] Petry's desire to become a professional writer was raised first in high school when her English teacher read her essay to the class and commented on it with the words: "I honestly believe that you could be a writer if you wanted to." The decision to become a pharmacist was her family's. After graduating in 1929 from Old Saybrook High School, she went to college and graduated with a Ph.G. degree from the University of Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven in 1931 and worked in the family business for several years, while also writing short stories. On February 22, 1938, she married George D. Petry of New Iberia, Louisiana, and moved to New York. She worked as a journalist writing articles for newspapers including The Amsterdam News (between 1938 and 1941) and The People's Voice (1941–44), and published short stories in The Crisis, where her first story appeared in 1943, Phylon, and other outlets.

Between 1944 and 1946, Petry studied creative writing at Columbia University and worked at an after-school program at P.S. 10 in Harlem. It was during this period that she experienced and understood what the majority of the black population of the United States had to go through in their everyday life. [...] Her daughter Liz explained to The Washington Post that "her way of dealing with the problem was to write this book (The Street), which maybe was something that people who had grown up in Harlem couldn’t do."

The Street, Petry's first and most popular novel, was published in 1946 and won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship with book sales exceeding one million copies. (wikipedia) 

• • •

Good morning and Happy Thanksgiving! Also, thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday yesterday. I managed to say thank you to a few people in the comments section, but then I got caught up in events of the day (mainly lying around watching Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire (1941) and eating the chocolate cake my wife made for me). I had a wonderful day, capped off by my daughter's coming home for Thanksgiving (although I wasn't awake to see that part, frankly ... I just know she's in her room right now, asleep, and that when she gets up she'll make orange rolls). It's nice to print out two puzzles this morning (one for my wife, as always, and one for the girl, who can but doesn't (regularly) solve ... yet). 

My software wouldn't accept the grid I have posted above, even though it's technically correct (at least for the Downs). I just discovered I was supposed to enter the circled-square part as letters, not numbers. Ah well. While the relationship between Across and Down circles was easy to figure out, the revealer seemed at least a little off in terms of describing what I, the solver, did to solve the puzzle. The puzzle seems to believe that you have a circle (the Across number) and then you (mentally) square it in order to get the Down answer to work. But for me, the Across and Down have equal weight and one does not precede (in any temporal way) the other. So SQUARE THE CIRCLE doesn't make much sense if "the circle" is both, say, "TWO" and "FOUR." I figured out the Across/Down relationship at EARTH REENTRY / SATURNINE, but I wouldn't say I got "THREE" first and then I squared it—in fact, I'm pretty sure I figured out "NINE" first. So the "circle" was "NINE" as much as it was "THREE." Thus it made as much sense to say that the Across was the square root of the Down as to say that the Down was the square of the Across. I think the thing is ... like, the revealer clue implies that you have one thing and you need to do something to it in order to figure out the next thing, but it's equally hard to get the first thing as the second thing. The revealer simply doesn't match the solving experience. This may seem like a technicality, but technicalities matter.

What's more, the fill was subpar yet again. Plural Greek letters and plural Russian negatives and at least two partial exclamations (HEE, YABBA), and some more shrieking (GAH, YOW) and then a host of hoary repeaters (ENRON (still?), ESC, ADT, UTERO, ODEON, AOLER (ouch), etc.). Also unlovely are SED and REN, the latter of which has a clue designed to make someone like me (a medievalist) nuts (33D: ___ Faire (medieval-themed festival)). Hey, do you know what REN stands for? Do you know what it's short for? I think you do. And if you do, then maybe you too had a little twinge of "huh?" when you wrote in this answer. See, the "RENaissance" (so-called) is, explicitly, specifically, self-importantly, not "medieval." Not not not. The Middle Ages (whence the word "medieval"—from L. medium aevum, "middle age") are the allegedly benighted period that the Renaissance was supposedly leaving behind. Thus the Renaissance is, by definition, subsequent to the "medieval" period. To say that a REN(naissance) Faire is "medieval-themed" ... the nails-on-chalkboard effect was real and jarring. But then ... it looks like the people who put on and go to these "faires" don't give a **** about such niceties as terminological accuracy. "Many Renaissance fairs are set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Some are set earlier, during the reign of Henry VIII, or in other countries, such as France. Others are set outside the era of the Renaissance; these may include earlier medieval periods such as the Viking Age or later periods such as the Golden Age of Piracy" (wikipedia) (my emph.). I get that everyone collapses the olden days into one giant Time of Yore and that actual historical periodicity is entirely an invention of historians writing (generally) well after the times in question, and that shifts from one time to another are actually gradual and involve continuity as well as rupture blah blah blah. But where labels are concerned, "REN" is not not not not "medieval." Not. No. Stop. 

This puzzle was difficult only in terms of getting the gimmick. Once you get it, it's smooth sailing (fairly typical for a Thursday). The gimmick today wasn't too hard to get, though the NW was a bit of a disaster to start, in that I had WHORL (???) for 1A: Feature of a mountain or fingerprint (RIDGE). Somehow WHORL seemed like ... maybe a snowcap formation, or maybe something happening in a mountain stream, I don't know. But five letters, fingerprint feature ... WHORL is what comes to mind. RAWER was thus hard to get (1D: More cold and wet). But eventually Idris ELBA came along to save the day (as he so often does) (5D: Actor Idris). WHORL became RIDGE and things began to fall into place. ON EDGE may have been the toughest of the theme answers to get because EDGY fit so neatly there (18D: Anxious). I wanted 27A: Low-lying area to be VALE, but couldn't make it work with the "Y" from EDGY in there. Finally I worked out the theme at EARTH REENTRY / SATURNINE, which helped me get ON EDGE, and that was that. Difficulty over. 

Bullets:

• 20A: High key? (ESC) — because it's at the top of your keyboard (I assume)
• 37A: Skin-care product thinner than a moisturizer (SERUM) — if you wanna get me really truly out of my depth, give me "skin-care product" clues. I think I've heard the word "SERUM" used in skin-care ads I've been forced to sit through, but had no idea what, exactly, it was.
• 63A: Tosses out (CASTS) — Hmm. "Tosses" and CASTS seem equivalent. The "out" is weird to me here. Unnecessary-seeming. Confusing. I can imagine scenarios where you swap out "Tosses out" as CASTS, but I can imagine more where "Tosses" and CASTS are the same.
• 3D: Lucky scientist, perhaps (DISCOVERER) — this seems true enough, but presumably most scientists "discover" things through hard work, because they're actually looking for something, even if, yes, some discoveries are happy accidents. The word "lucky" feels slightly too flippant, somehow. I mean, if she "discovered" a four-leaf clover, sure, lucky. But if she "discovers" the cure for cancer ... 

• 26D: "That's relatable" ("I FEEL YA") — showing my age here (56, as of yesterday), I wrote in "I HEAR YA." "Feel" in this sense has been around for decades, but is not part of my own personal vocabulary.
• 35D: Person who's off-base? (SHORTSTOP) — this was almost as jarring as the REN Faire clue for me, but for a different reason, namely: We Just Had This Clue For SHORTSTOP!!!! A merely nineteen days ago: [One who's off-base?]. Bizarre for any nine-letter word to repeat in that short a span of time, but particularly bizarre that the same "?" clue would be used in both instances. No, not bizarre. Negligent. It's a good clue but you Just Used It. If the clue were straightforward, probably no one would notice, but "?" clues are showy, ostentatious, look-at-me, so people are gonna notice. Like, the funkier your outfit, the more people are likely to notice when you wear it again. Maybe give it a few years. Nineteen days ... not long enough. 
• 50D: #'s place (TWEET) — ugh, The Place Formerly Known as Twitter. What a hell hole. Anyway, "#" in this case is a hashtag, which you use to tag relevant subject matter in your posts (on Twitter, these were known as "TWEETs"). You know, like #CatsOfTwitter #ElonSucks #NoGoodBillionaires etc.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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