Relative difficulty: Easy (6:28, solving on the train and my phone screen is broken)
THEME: HARRY STYLES — English pop singer whose name sounds like a goofy hint to the ends of 17- and 38-Across and 11- and 29-Down (i.e., "hair-y styles")
Theme answers:
[Textile pattern that resembles braided wicker] for BASKET WEAVE
[Sledding event that debuted in the 2022 Winter Olympics] for MONOBOB
[Gourmet bread for a hamburger] for PRETZEL BUN
Is a pretzel bun gourmet?? I was trying to make "brioche bun" work here at first.
[Steinbeck novella set on a horse ranch] for THE RED PONY
Word of the Day: RAZZIE (Film award that has had the categories "Worst Excuse for an Actual Movie" and "Most Flatulent Teen-Targeted Movie") —
Three people have won both a Razzie and an Oscar the same weekend: composer Alan Menken in 1993, screenwriter Brian Helgeland in 1997, and actress Sandra Bullock in 2010, though all three won for different films (e.g., Helgeland won a Razzie for The Postman and an Oscar for L.A. Confidential).
• • •
Hey folks! It's Malaika here for an Actually Alliterative Malaika Monday!! I found the top half of this puzzle to be extremely easy, and the bottom half to be substantially harder. Not hard, but harder. Things like ERSE and BAYER really slowed me down, and I hated the cross reference for "LARS and the REAL Girl," a movie I have never heard of.
The theme was cute! I like when a name is sort of re-parsed to describe the theme answers-- my favorite example I can think of was the revealer "Shonda Rhimes" where the theme answers all rhymed with "Shonda." If you have a favorite, describe it in the comments!! I haven't been solving as long as y'all so I might not have heard it. Name puzzles are generally only fun if you know who the person is, so knowing Harry Styles probably also contributed to me thinking this is cute. I actually just read a romance novel (Big Fan, by Alexandra Romanoff) where the main character was a stand-in for Harry Styles... This happens a lot, btw, and I always wonder if he reads them.
(Btw, if you've never heard Harry Styles, I highly recommend his cover of Sledgehammer which you can listen to below. The song starts at 48 seconds.)
There are a lot of options for the theme answers here. I already mentioned "brioche bun" as a possibility, and there are tons of other buns, like cinnamon buns and potato buns. And "bob" could have been something like "Sideshow Bob" or "Thingumy and Bob." Any other theme answers you can think of?
Bullets:
["Eventually..."] for ONE DAY — I would have loved to see this clued in reference to the book / miniseries, but I always want more pop culture references than other people do
[Like a kid in a "Sister" T-shirt vis-à-vis one in a "Sister" onesie] for OLDER — I like when a clue tells a story like this!
[Alternative to Gramma or Granny] for NAN — What did you guys call your grandmother? I called my mom's mom Grandma and my dad's mom Dadima. I just read a book ("Thank You for Listening," by Julia Whelan) where the protagonist calls her grandmother "Blah Blah" which honestly sounds mildly insulting to me...
xoxo Malaika
P.S. My uncle once commented that "all" of my NYT puzzles have a pop star in one of the long slots which I thought was a hilarious demonstration of our memory perception. (Exactly one of my seven NYT puzzles has had a pop star in one of the long slots.) I wonder if he thought that I wrote this one.
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THEME: Tunnel Vision — Okay, there's a lot to unpack here. The entries HOLES IN / THE WALL and BREAK THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE serve as a kind of double revealer to indicate that 8 answers in the puzzle go across the central vertical line of black squares. Each half of these answers is clued normally, but the note (accessible by clicking the "i" icon in the app) has the 8 clues for the full across entries that cross the "wall." Additionally, the letters along the wall spell THE DOORS, which is the band that sings Break Through (To The Other Side).
Word of the Day: ELPHABA (45A: "Wicked" protagonist) —
Phew, alright, that was a lot of theme! Hello! It's Rafa covering for Rex today. Last time I was here I accidentally blogged the wrong puzzle and you all got two write-ups (I'm sorry / you're welcome) but today I triple-checked that this is indeed the puzzle I'm meant to be talking about. Let's get into it.
There's a lot going on with this theme, but the whole thing had one (IMO) fatal flaw that held the puzzle back. It's a real shame, because it's all very clever and cool and well-done from a gridding perspective, but it is what it is. The issue for me is that the main conceit of the theme (i.e. that 8 of the answers go through the central wall) was entirely irrelevant to the solve. I uncovered the two revealers and was excited to figure out how and why answers would cross the long line of black squares but ... that aha moment never came! I finished the puzzle, and the app immediately animated the squares along the center (spelling THE DOORS) and I never got a chance to even look at the clues in the note or figure out what was going on. Why was I denied this joy?!
TADPOLE
Plus, it feels like a decently straightforward thing to fix with the cluing. For DEMONSTRATE, for example, I would have kept the clue for the RATE part the same, but, at 5A, instead of cluing DEMONS, why not clue the whole answer DEMONSTRATE? Then, you have to figure out what's going on to make the clue make sense. Maybe I'm too salty about it, but I felt totally robbed of the joy of figuring out the theme, and it felt like solving a high word-count themeless. (Which is fine, but it's the misleading advertising that gets me! If it's themeless then don't give me *two* revealers!)
MORAY EEL
Anyways, maybe other people had different experiences figuring out what was going on here. Perhaps the experience of solving this one in print is better, since you don't get the animation spoiler. Let me know.
Putting this significant issue aside, as I mentioned already, this is a very well-executed puzzle! There's a lot of theme material, and the fill is quite smooth. We even get some nice bonuses in LOADS TIME, WESTEROS, NOW I GET IT, TO-DO LIST, UP ARROW, etc. I tend to live in a post-dupe crossword world (as in, I don't notice or care about dupes) but I did notice LET LIE and LIE ON (though I did not care!) -- is this something people care notice or care about?
COD
Overall it felt on the easy side for a Sunday. Not a PR time for me, but decently close. The only area that posed resistance was the SW corner, where I wanted MOROSE for [Eeyore-esque] (instead of GLOOMY), and nothing else was coming easily. I think I was really speeding through it because I was so excited (in vain, alas!) to get to cracking the theme. Clearly the theme presentation was my biggest takeaway from the puzzle, as I keep coming back to it!
That's all from me today! Hope you all are having a lovely weekend, and wishing you the best for the week ahead.
Bullets:
22A OLAV [Name that becomes a shape if you switch the second and fourth letters] / 144A OVAL [Shape that becomes a name if you switch the second and fourth letters] — This was cute
105A IN PAWN[Traded for cash]— I had never heard the expression "in pawn" before. I wanted PAWNED at first, and then was some crosses resolved, I wanted IMPAWN (which I assumed was a verb, though now I realize it would only work if the clue said "trade" instead of "traded") (turns out it is, in fact, a verb per Merriam-Webster, though labeled archaic). I didn't know the RINSO cross (RIMSO seemed plausible enough), so that square gave me a lot of pause ... but we got there eventually.
128D DELCO [AC___ (G.M. subsidiary)] — The only DELCO I recognize is Delaware County, PA ... but that's probably too regional to be in a national crossword?
112D BLOSSOM [Stop being buds?] — Cute wordplay clue ("bud" as in the flower precursor, not as in pal).
47D BOCCI [Italian lawn game] — I have only ever seen this spelled "bocce" but *shrug*
Signed, Rafa
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Relative difficulty: medium-ish, probably?? Word of the Day: INFOBOX (Fixed-format summary of an article, as on Wikipedia) —
An infobox is a digital or physical table used to collect and present a subset of information about its subject, such as a document. It is a structured document containing a set of attribute–value pairs, and in Wikipedia represents a summary of information about the subject of an article. In this way, they are comparable to data tables in some aspects. When presented within the larger document it summarizes, an infobox is often presented in a sidebar format. [kinda have to cite wikipedia if the clue mentions it]
• • •
Hey hi howdy hello, Christopher Adams once again copy-pasting the intro and filling in for Rex today! I think this puzzle is pretty much summed up by 1-Across: WHAT A BLAST!
I'm a sucker for grids with beautiful, symmetric layouts, and this one certainly fits the bill: four triple stacks of tens, all feeding into a not-terribly constrained center with an eye-pleasing layout of black squares that don't touch but do repeat in a regular pattern. From the looks of it, I expected each stack to sing, since each part of the grid doesn't really put much pressure on other parts of it. And boy howdy, did this one deliver.
First stack I filled in was the right one: suspected [Actress Diana of "All Creatures Great and Small" (2020)] might be RIGG, even if I've never heard of it, and the gimme clue for I, TOO pretty much confirmed it (in that stacking those two answers gives great letter patters to start all the downs). GOLDEN GOAL and GO EASY ON ME were the standouts there, and soon I skittered over to the left side, where SPEED CHESS went in without crosses and TRAVELOGUE somehow dredged itself up from browsing through airport bookstores, etc.
Then down to the bottom, with possibly my favorite clue in the entire puzzle, [Adjunct faculty?] for SIXTH SENSE. Question mark fully earned here, delightfully stretchy, and for a good entry on top of that. I wouldn't be surprised if this stack was seeded with that entry just so they could use the clue. From there, moved back up to the top, which was slightly harder than the rest, but gave me the satisfaction of finishing on the onomatopoeic, so absurd it's actually good WHOP. Like I said at the top, WHAT A BLAST!
not exactly SPEED CHESS [Rush to find a mate?] but i love these videos
Also among the first impressions: how much more there was in the clues compared to yesterday! I printed both off (all the better to mark up and annotate thoughts as I solve) and the difference in font size is very noticeable. And the puzzle is so much the better for it! There's fun facts galore: HOBO, HYENA, GUAM, CLAIRE, and more mentioned below.
There's clues for familiar fill that are anything but familiar, and that have personality and genuinely feel like there's a real person behind this puzzle: ALDA, AMOS, and especially DOH, which actually made me laugh out loud and, as the last clue in the list, felt like a mic drop and made the puzzle go out with a bang (actually three bangs, I marked that up with !!!, and had about ten others with !! as well).
And even in the shorter clues, there's some misdirects that actually feel natural and don't give off the impression of obviously being up to something. [Terms of a trade] got me at first, I was thinking an actual business deal, but no, it's "words used by people in a certain industry" and not "parameters for an agreement". Ditto for [Skipping music, say], which I was sure would be something about playground chants for jumping rope, and was pleased to find was absolutely not that. Even the ones that signaled their tricks with the ? still came across as clever; [Went from 0 to 60?] for AGED was my second favorite, after SIXTH SENSE.
the most recent car seat headrest album was EAGERLY AWAITED by yours truly; i just wish i liked the album as much as i wanted to, but at least it still has a few good songs
Olio:
EAGERLY / AWAITED [Like the upcoming release from one's favorite band] — Only four halfway longish answers crossing the stacks, and they all hit: the aforementioned INFOBOX, the wonderful Quinta BRUNSON, and the somewhat audacious, definitely hilarious (in a good way) cross-referenced pair here. Like, the puzzle didn't have to do that, but it did, and it made the entries better, and in general it feels like Katie dared to shoot their shot with cluing and tried to see how much good stuff they could get away with. (And props to the editors here, too, for having all this fun stuff and allowing a voice to shine through.)
GO EASY ON ME ["I'm ready, but be nice"] — To quote Sufjan Stevens' review of Adele's "30", which contained "Easy on Me": "Girl, please. We know you're 33. It's on your Wikipedia page. B+."
ANY ["No preference"] — As with the previous entry, love the conversational vibe; this one does it a little better because "no preference" actually sounds like something someone would say
AMOS [Biblical book with the line "I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me"] — What a banger of a quote, absolutely love it. [ETA: actual clue is [Biblical prophet whom Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as "an extremist for justice" in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail"], which is no less of a banger of a clue; the Times blogger regrets the error.]
EYRE [Jane who says "Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation"] — What a banger of a quote, absolutely love it.
YALE [Law school for Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor] — Every other justice on the Supreme Court went to Harvard Law School, with the exception of Amy Coney Barrett, who went to Notre Dame Law School.
ETHICS [Important subject in law school] — Would that most of the justices mentioned above actually have some (to say nothing of actually upholding the Constitution, etc.).
FIST [Symbol of defiance and solidarity] — Love it when the gestalt of the clues makes you feel like the author really has something to say here.
VALE [Latin for "goodbye"] — lol, lmao even. anyway, goodbye!
Yours truly, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld
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Relative difficulty: pretty straightforward, not terribly challenging
Word of the Day: BENIHANA (Restaurant chain where chefs make onion volcanoes) —
Benihana (Japanese: 紅花; "Safflower") is a chain of Japanese restaurants. Originally founded by Yunosuke Aoki as a cafe in Tokyo in 1945, Benihana spread to the United States in 1964 when his son Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki opened its first restaurant in New York City.
...
Benihana introduced the teppanyaki restaurant concept which originated in Japan in the late 1940s to the United States, and later to other countries. [wikipedia, and in case you're wondering, the two people mentioned here are the grandfather and father of DJ Steve Aoki]
• • •
Hey hi howdy hello, Christopher Adams here filling in for Rex today! As noted above, not too difficult. There's a lot of good longer entries in this puzzle: the entire center stack, plus the four long downs intersecting that, plus three of the four long entries crossing those! I've never heard of DRILLS DOWN, and imo the DOWN part of that feels redundant, but ymmv, and still, that's a lot of good long entries!
That said, where this puzzle missed the mark for me was that there was very little attempt to add spice to the puzzle beyond that. Not many difficult, tricky, misdirecting, etc. clues, which is not necessarily a problem per se (it's fun to have a nice and breezy themeless every so often), but you can still be easy while also fun, and while the entries themselves were fun, their clues very much did not feel like that. A lot of just plonking in answers one after the other, with the bulk of the appreciation coming from "gee, that's a great entry" after it's filled in, rather than in the act of actually figuring it out and filling it in myself, or in learning something neat and interesting along the way.
This is probably on me and my expectations; most of the puzzles I solve these days are not the New York Times, and can (and should, and do!) get more interesting cluewise than the Gray Lady does. So perhaps it's a bit unfair for me to want the puzzle to be something it isn't, but at the same time there's certainly room for clues that go beyond the house style and inject some personality and such into the clues.
Also, the long entries were great, but at the same time there were a few too many short answers holding things together that bothered me while solving: WEK, I MET, OWLY, PISH, NOR (only because it's clued as an abbreviation), IVER (only because there's really only one way to clue that).
we would've also accepted a reference to "Half as Interesting" for HAI
A few attempts for slightly trickier clues, but none really convincing; it almost felt as if they were pretending to be harder than they were to make you feel better about seeing past their flimsy disguise. No need to have the question mark on HAI or COGS or RACE CAR DRIVER. The phrasing for SOLAR ECLIPSE, [Event requiring special specs], isn't fully convincing as a misdirect for "specifications" rather than "spectacles". I enjoyed SENTINEL and CAMPFIRES more for their reparsing of "watch" and "about" that wasn't immediately obvious from the clues. (Even then, in the first case, [One with a watch] is stilted enough to set off the "probably a misdirect" spidey sense on first pass.)
[Actress Rapp of "Mean Girls"]
Olio:
ABA [Isaac Asimov novel "Murder at the ___"] — Possibly an attempt at finding a new angle for this entry (I hadn't seen it before), but it resulted in massive headscratching because it's not at all clear what the answer means after you fill it in. Like, if it was MANOR or something, you'd just shrug and think "haven't heard of that, but "Murder at the Manor" absolutely sounds like it could be a real title, and "manor" is an actual place..." and move on with the solve, but for me it was "what ABA are we talking about here? is this even an acronym or is there some place I've never heard of called Aba, or...". For the record, it stands for "American Booksellers Association", and the book is a metafictional tale about a murder at a convention held by the ABA, and Asimov himself appears as a character in his own book, and doesn't knowing this make it sound more interesting and make you want read the book more? That's the sort of info that should've been included with this cluing angle, not just to make the clue more fun but also help prevent the puzzled feeling of filling in the answer without knowing what it means.
YEN [Kind of coin that features a Buddhist temple on one side] — Yes! More of this! Fun things to learn while still being easy to infer and fill in!
ALMODOVAR [Pedro ___, Oscar-winning screenwriter for "Talk to Her"] — I've always found this format (fill in the blank for last names) to be one of the weirder parts of the NYT style guide, and wish they would do away it, especially since it's easy to rewrite to remove the blank, even if you wanted to keep the first name as an additional hint.
OARED [Four-___ (like some shells)] — "Shell" as in a racing boat here; the clue's difficulty definitely sticks out compared to the rest of the puzzle. (And, while I'm thinking of FITB clue styles that bother me, using a FITB for half of a hyphenated word is one of them, especially since this could be something like [Rowed, rowed, rowed your boat] to avoid the FITB altogether.)
ANTS [Colonial group] — Currently in a war against the ants who are living under the backyard patio where I'm trying to put a fire pit; such is life when you're committed to leaving 99% of your yard natural (for the birds, the bees, and especially the deers) but still want to have a small section for yourself.
Yours truly, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld
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Apologies for the short write-up today. I've got a plane to catch later this morning, *plus* I was out late last night ("late" for me, i.e. past 10pm), and so I slept in ("in" for me, i.e. 4:30am), and just don't have as much time (or mental clarity, probably) as I normally do. This was an odd one, as the theme was actually very easy to decipher (for a Thursday, especially), but that meant that they put a lot of "difficulty" into the clues to compensate, or at least that's what it felt like. Never that fun to have the short stuff (and, once again, there's a lot of it) be the source of puzzle difficulty. This is another way of saying that the fill just wasn't that exciting. Solid, but not head-turning. And the themers themselves were ... fine, but kind of arbitrary (except for MASTER GARDENER—not sure who else you'd call an "ace of spades"). There's one thing I don't understand about the theme, though, and that's the last theme answer (JACKIE ROBINSON). Is "jack" being used to mean "expert" (as "ace" "king" and "queen" are in the other theme clues)? I've only heard of "jack" used that way in the phrase "jack of all trades." I've seen "crackerjack" used this way, but not "jack." But then I thought, maybe it's a joke, and that the clue is really just a reference to "JACK"IE ROBINSON's name. Then I thought, wait, is it both? Anyway, to the extent that "jack" is supposed to mean "expert," I don't like it. Doesn't land like the other three face card terms do. But I sort of like the absurdity of cluing Jackie as a "Jack"—so ridiculous it's clever.
Top half of this puzzle was easy, bottom half was a mess. Wanted ON END (?) before ON ICE (30D: Not straight up, in a way), which was a minor issue, but it signaled that things were about to go off the rails a bit. I know "Vape" only as a verb, so did *not* see E-CIG coming (48A: Vape, informally). The skirt could've been MINIS or MIDIS (46D: Certain skirts) ("Certain" not really helping me at all). I could not come up with the second part of STAGE NAME to save my life (37D: Nicki Minaj or Iggy Pop, e.g.). "40-40" could be a lot of things (a tie ... an equation whose result is zero ...). So I had passed on that SE corner and went back to the SW corner, which was somehow worse, largely because I thought 45D: Submit (ACCEDE) was ALLEGE (as in, "I submit that you, yes you, stole my cookie, sir"). I have no idea what the clue on ESSENCE thinks it's doing (49A: Sparkling water additive). ESSENCE of ... what? "I'd like some sparkling water, please." "With or without ESSENCE?" No. I mean, I'm sure there are flavorings in some sparkling waters called "ESSENCE of ___" but no, that clue was not to my liking at all. Oh, and the reason ALLEGE stuck in place as long as it did for me was because the first "L" confirmed ("confirmed") PAL at 47A: Bud (MAC). To be honest, this whole mess probably didn't hold me up for that long, but compared to the top half of the grid, the bottom half def played slower.
OK, I got like 15 minutes left to write, so let's go straight to the round-up:
Round-up:
1A: Major-league team known as the "North Siders," locally (CUBS) — first instinct: NATS. Why? Because if I'm half asleep, some primal crossword part of my brain just takes over, and NATS is the most common four-letter baseball team (right? I mean, historically, it would be METS, but since the NATS came into existence, it's gotta be them). CUBS are North Siders, WHITE SOX are South Siders (I can't remember ever seeing WHITE SOX in the grid, though SOX is common enough). Looks like WHITE SOX has been the puzzle precisely once, 30 years ago, clued as [World Series losers, 1919]. They won the World Series in '05, but that has apparently done nothing to enhance their crossword status.
60A: 2025 Pixar film (ELIO) — I resent this movie (well, its xword-friendly title) for ensuring that yet another damn animated movie (and its lore) will be in my grid forever and ever and ever. COCO WALL-E SHREK MOANA ... Finding NEMO ... how many FROZEN characters have I had to learn!? It's wearying.
67A: It can follow anyone (ELSE) — The phrase "anyone ELSE" exists, so ... you can't say the clue isn't accurate. Dumb, maybe, but not inaccurate.
7D: For real, to Gen Z (NO CAP) — please don't say you've never heard of this phrase unless you just started doing puzzles and/or reading me today. We've talked about this phrase before. Multiple times. Earlier this month, in fact. "CAP" (in this sense) was a Word of the Day last year.
52D: Cynthia of "Wicked" (ERIVO) — another former Word of the Day (2022). This is the third appearance for the Wicked star. A few pop culture hurdles today, which might've spelled trouble for the pop culture-averse. ERIVO. ILANA. SALMA. There's also MANU (N.B.A. star Ginóbli), which is sports, but sports are "pop culture"-adjacent, so I think he belongs on this list.
59D: Freelancer's lack (BOSS) — because "secure employment" wouldn't fit. Did not see this particular answer coming. For a second, I thought it might be POST (as in, a regular position, a steady job).
Done! Could've been shorter, but still, pretty short. Proud of myself. Gotta run. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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The film includes a famous, and often misquoted, line with Cagney speaking to his brother's killer through a locked closet door: "Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!" This line has often been misquoted as "You dirty rat, you killed my brother".
To play his competitor in aballroom dancecontest, Cagney recommended his pal, fellow tough-guy-dancerGeorge Raft, who was uncredited in the film.In a lengthy and memorable sequence, the scene culminates with Raft and his partner winning the dance contest against Cagney and Young, after which Cagney slugs Raft and knocks him down.As inThe Public Enemy(1931), several scenes inTaxi!involved the use of livemachine gunbullets. After a few of the bullets narrowly missed Cagney's head, he outlawed the practice in his future films.
• • •
Hard for a puzzle with short themers to be very interesting. Once you grasp the gimmick, then you're just going around the grid picking up fairly obvious synonyms or rough equivalents, all of them 3-4-5s. Then, because of the theme (that is, because of a preponderance of 3-4-5s), you end up with a very choppy grid without a hell of a lot of interesting things happening inside it. The NYTXW is supposed to max out at 78 words, but this one goes to 80. What that means, for practical purposes, is there's a whole lot of short stuff going on. The marquee answer here is "YOU DIRTY RAT!," which I enjoyed seeing, and learning about—I've seen imitations of Cagney that quote the line, but I didn't know where the line was from, or that it was a misquote. But for lots (and lots) of younger (than me) solvers, that answer is going to mean absolutely nothing. You're asking people to know an iconic misquoted line that hasn't really been iconic since Cagney himself was iconic (when I was a kid, yes, still, but now ... only to TCM fans like me) (note: I don't actually have TCM anymore since I cut cable and (eventually) its streaming replacements, but I still feel loyalty—it was my old-movie University for a long while). If I had to name five Cagney movies, Taxi! would not be among them. In fact, I have never seen the movie and if I've heard of it, I forgot it. This is all to say—"YOU DIRTY RAT!" is a very deep cut for a Wednesday, and a highly anomalous answer in this puzzle for that reason. Generationally divisive for sure. I think it's the most interesting thing in the grid. Others ... are (maybe) not apt to feel that way.
All the plays-on-words in the theme clues are actual things, which is nice. Sometimes when you have to use repeated phrasing like this (top top top, side side side, etc.), you end up with at least a few clues that feel forced, but to me, only "side job" feels a little off, but it's not; not really. I think it's largely been replaced by "side hustle," and that's why it doesn't feel as solid (to my ears) as the others. But it's perfectly legitimate. It's possible "side plank" won't be well known to some people, but it's a pretty common core strengthening exercise (and, as vasisthasana, a staple of many yoga classes), so there's no reason to object to it. I didn't like how the relationship between clue word and answer word was not consistent. That is, the answer is an example of the word in the clue (e.g. PISTOL is a kind of "gun") ... but then, with LIMB / "arm," the category / example relationship gets reversed (e.g. "arm" is a kind of LIMB) ... and then a few other times, the answer is just a synonym of the clue (e.g. BUCK and "dollar," PLANK and "board"). The concept still works, but it keeps changing how it works, slightly, from answer to answer.
Because the fill is so frequently short, it ends up on the weak side. LOL at LALA *and* NANANA being in the same grid. NANANA has me saying "nah ... nah, nah" (70A: Repeated sounds in "Hey Jude").That's not an answer, that's a typo of "BANANA." If you replaced that first "NA" with SHA, you'd have a band. But otherwise, just say no no no to NANANA. There's scads of other short repeaters (ANODE ATO ETA EPEE ÉTÉ etc.) and a few words I only ever see in xwords (looking at you, GNAR ... also MISAIM). But there's nothing here to get particularly mad at. Oh, except ... I expect the OCTOPI-haters to be out in force once again (16A: Squids' kin). "That's not how you pluralize ... [sputter] ... Greek! ... [wheeze] ... not Latin! ... No!" Blah blah blah, I know, I know, I don't like it either, but it's in the dictionary, so please read this fantastic discussion of the Octopus Plural Dilemma at Merriam-Webster (dot com), and then get over it. Thank you. Actually, here—a little consolation for the OCTOPI-weary: if you're persnickety about these things, you'll love this 19th-century swipe at "modern" spellings:
But as the Octopus grew and multiplied, it became necessary to speak of him in the plural; and here a whole host of difficulties arose. Some daring spirits with little Latin and less Greek, rushed upon octopi; as for octopuses, a man would as soon think of swallowing one of the animals thus described as pronounce such a word at a respectable tea-table. In this condition of affairs, we are glad to know that a few resolute people have begun to talk about Octopods, which is, of course, the nearest English approach to the proper plural. (The Bradford Observer, 1873) (via merriam-webster.com)
Round-up:
20A: Number with 12 zeros in the U.S. but 18 zeros in other parts of the world (ONE TRILLION) — I need to know what these "other parts of the world" are and what (in the world) they call the number with 12 zeros, then. I know that ONE BILLION, until fairly recently, had a different meaning in Britain (the "long scale" million million, or 10 to the 12th power, as opposed to the "short scale" 1,000 million, or 10 to the 9th, which is now the standard in all varieties of English). So a "long scale" billion is actually more than our standard trillion. It's absurd to me that these values weren't standardized across Englishes from the jump.
31A: Popular digital wallet service (CASH APP) — according to Pew Research in 2022, 26% of U.S. adults have used this app at least once. I am not one of those adults. But I somehow "knew" this answer. It sounds like a category of app and not an actual app ("hey, what CASH APP do you use?"), but nope, that's the name; CASH APP (formerly "Square Cash").
8D: California college where the writer David Foster Wallace taught English (POMONA) — hey, it's the alma mater of ... me! And NYT Mini Crossword editor Joel Fagliano! I was too old (c/o '91) to have had Wallace (d. 2008) as my professor, and Joel (c/o '14) was too young.
See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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THEME: A-PLUS WORK (54A: Outstanding effort ... or a feature of 16-, 21-, 34- and 46-Across) — circled squares in four answers contain "A" + some occupation (or "work"):
After years working as a stand-up comedian and appearing in minor film roles including Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Rock gained prominence as a cast member on the NBCsketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1993. While at SNL, he appeared in the films New Jack City (1991) and Boomerang (1992). In 1993, he appeared in CB4, which he also wrote and produced. He reached mainstream stardom with Bring the Pain in 1996. Rock continued making specials which include Bigger & Blacker (1999), Never Scared (2004), Kill the Messenger (2008), Tamborine (2018), and Selective Outrage (2023). He developed, wrote, produced and narrated the sitcom Everybody Hates Chris (2005–2009), which was based on his early life. From 1997 to 2000 HBO aired his talk show The Chris Rock Show.
[42D: Spiky hairdos] [image by the great Lynda Barry]
This one didn't really work for me because the revealer just didn't land, or landed awkwardly. I guess I can hear someone saying "hey, that's A+ WORK you're doing there, Bob," or something like that, but the phrase just doesn't roll off my tongue or feel as coherent as I'd like a revealer phrase to me. "A+ EFFORT" seems as much of a phrase as "A+ WORK." The execution of the concept is sort of cute, but the concept itself, the phrase on which the concept is based, feels weak to me. I had A PLUS- and had to think for a bit about what might come next—not a great sign. The same thing happened to me with DOPAMINE RUSH; I could see the first part would be DOPAMINE but the first word that came to mind that might follow it was HIGH. This "what's supposed to come next?" problem happened yet again with MAKES- at 26D: Lets bygones be bygones (MAKES PEACE), although I can't really impeach the correct answer there. Seems fine. But MAKES NICE and MAKES AMENDS both tried to get in there before MAKES PEACE. And so over and over I kept having to think about what these latter parts of answers were going to be, and every time, after getting the right answer, my feeling was varying degrees of "huh, OK, sure, I guess." And I don't particularly love the clue on DOPAMINE RUSH. Pleasure-seekers seek pleasure from whatever activity they're doing. They might experience a DOPAMINE RUSH, but that's a side-effect of whatever they're doing. It's like saying thrill-seekers are seeking an increased heart rate. Not exactly. Not directly. Anyway, it all works fine, but just felt kind of lackluster. But I can't dispute the fact that there are "A"s and jobs (i.e. WORK) in those circled squares. The puzzle executes what it sets out to execute, and, if nothing else, DOPAMINE RUSH is an exciting, original answer.
As for difficulty, it was pretty much the kind of easy Tuesday experience you'd expect, but the SW corner was disproportionately tough for me, for a number of reasons. First, that's where the PEACE of MAKES PEACE is, so my failure to come up with that second word meant that I didn't have the stake in that corner that I would have otherwise. Then there's the touch clue on STARDOM (39D: Fame and fortune), which seems like it's going to be plural, but isn't. I would associate STARDOM much more with "fame" than "fortune," btw, so ... not in love with that clue. Then there's the supremely MACOS, which I did not know despite using Macs my whole life. I just never think of the OS written out like that. Ever. All the MAC OS incarnations have names like Lion, Ventura, and Sequoia. As I've said before, every time I see MACOS ... which isn't often, it looks like a cereal name to me (MAC O's!). No one even thought to put it in a puzzle at all until 2023, which tells me it's a pretty poor answer. If MACOS was used in common parlance, we would've seen it all over the grid, for years and years. Don't believe me? Ask MS/DOS (fifty-four (54!) NYTXW appearances). Although I will admit, I can find MACOS written just like that if I click on "About this Mac"—it's just not a term I ever hear:
But back to the rest of the SW corner. The elaborate (and admittedly kind of colorful) clue on AHEM held me up in that corner as well—not immediately clear (60A: [Um, I can hear everything you're saying, you know]). I thought [Set of tenets] was a CREED for a bit. And then there was the hardest (or at least most misleading) clue in the puzzle (for me), which was kind of blocking one entryway to the SW corner: that answer was CHRIS (35D: Rock out on stage?). The big problem there was that I had the "HR" part before anything else, and so I promptly wrote in SHRED, as in "to play an electric guitar with great skill and speed" (merriam-webster dot com). "Out on stage" is accurate enough for what Rock does, as a stand-up, but without a specific comedy angle in the clue, I missed the wordplay completely. And so the SW was trouble. I don't remember much of anything else about the puzzle.
Bullets:
16A: Airport that Captain Sully departed from (LAGUARDIA) — wow, haven't thought about Captain Sully in a long time. I got this answer solely from [Airport...], and didn't even notice the latter part of the clue until just now. That famous emergency landing feels like recentish history, but it's been over 16 years now.
58A: Place for a coin collection? (SOFA) — see, kids, in the olden days we used to have this thing called "hard currency," and it came in metal disc form, and these discs would sometimes fall out of your pants pockets and into the cushions of your SOFA, and over time you could AMASS quite a fortune down there. (seriously, when does the "coins in the SOFA" bit become obsolete?)
12D: Beach, in Spanish (PLAYA) — this was a gimme for me, despite my not speaking Spanish. PLAYA is in many place names, so I just know it, as do most of you, I'm guessing. But I can see not knowing it, and I can also see not knowing Gordon RAMSAY, which means that I can imagine someone having trouble in the NE corner. But that someone wasn't me.
See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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