Hinduism's "king of fruits" / FRI 1-31-25 / Wanders around a terminal, for short? / Alpine crooner / Hairstyle for Violet in "Peanuts" / Short-distance driver / It's followed by an extra point / Request following some failed attempts / One with sound judgment? / "The most engaging cowardice," per Robert Frost / Cat's scan?

Constructor: Adrian Johnson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy everywhere except the middle)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SMART PILLS (18A: Capsules that can track health info) —

A digital pill (also known as a smart pill, or ingestible sensor) is a pharmaceutical dosage form that contains an ingestible sensor inside of a pill. The sensor begins transmitting medical data after it is consumed. The technology that makes up the pill, as well as the data transmitted by the pill's sensor, are considered to be part of digital medicine. The purpose of the sensor is to determine whether the person is taking their medication or not (called "compliance").

There are privacy concerns with respect to who receives the data and what is done with it. Such concerns, along with uncertain economic benefits, have made the broad introduction of digital pills in the healthcare practice challenging, despite accumulating body of clinical evidence indicating their efficacy and safety. (wikipedia)

• • •

"We're going to record data from inside your body to see if you're being 'compliant'!?!" Huh, I wonder why those pills haven't caught on, they sound great and completely non-dystopian! Needless to say, SMART PILLS was one thing I'd never heard of. Sounded awful, seems awful, unless there are uses beyond checking "compliance," which maybe there are, but still, you'll pardon my suspicion of data-tracking devices implanted in my body. Moving on from privacy concerns, Big Data, etc., I thought this puzzle was mostly delightful. That is, there were enough good marquee answers to make the effort seem worthwhile. Whatever I think of SMART PILLS (not much), it's part of a very solid and vivid stack there in the NE. In fact aside from ADAB (which is fairly innocuous), that whole corner is beautifully smooth and clean—not easy when you're stacking four long answers like that. Its counterpart in the SW is also gorgeous. No compromises in the fill, anywhere, MAIER is about the softest thing down there, and, well, it's a real name, so if that's the weakest thing in your wide-open corner, you're doing your job right. Was thrilled to remember AYO today and even more thrilled to think that I helped some reader, somewhere remember AYO as well (I dwelled on my own forgetfulness of her name less than two weeks ago, and I'm hoping that highlighted her name enough for it to stick to the brains of other name-strugglers) (43A: Emmy-winning actress Edebiri of "The Bear"). There were some cluing choices here and there that I wasn't thrilled with ([Cat's scan?] ... oof, that was a groaner ... real stretch from "scan" to MICE, both in terms of sense and in terms of number (single clue, plural answer)). But on the whole, this was pitched at a reasonable Friday level and hit that breezy, whooshy Friday sweet spot more often than not.

Speaking of whooshing, I whooshed all around the outside of this grid, through all the corners with all their long answers, whoosh whoosh whoosh ... but the nucleus, the center hub, that thing locked up on me pretty good there for a bit (at least by comparison). The only place I had to pause, stop, think, hack. All the purple ink (I'm using a purple pen now, I don't know why) on my puzzle print-out is located in the center of my grid. OK not all of it, but most of it, for sure. I've got SMART PILLS squiggly-underlined with the word "dumb" written next to it, and then I've got the "NY" part of STONY circled (to remind me to mention that I had STOIC there at first, which seemed wrong for the clue ... and was). But all other ink on this print-out is in the middle. The real killer, for me, was 37A: Hinduism's "king of fruits" (MANGO). Me: "oh no, Hindu gods, you know how bad you are at remembering those ... let's get some crosses and hope for the best." Me a little later: "What ... Hindu god is this? In five letters, I think I only know SHIVA ... who is -ANG-?? The god of fruits? Man, I am lost." But, as you know, I wasn't supposed to be looking for a god, or an Actual “king,” but for a Metaphorical “king.” Of fruits. The top fruit, I guess. The most high fruit. MANGO! I do love MANGO, so I get it, but yeesh throwing "Hinduism" and "king" in a clue and having the answer not be a Hindu god? Wrecked me. (Is there a "god of fruits"? There should be a "god of fruits." If there is no such thing, I volunteer). Speaking of MANGO, I finished watch Dead Calm yesterday, a late-80s nautical thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, and Billy Zane. There's a hairwashing scene where Kidman fantasizes about the foods she's going to eat when they get back to land, and MANGO is one of them. It's a memorable scene. Oh look, it's on YouTube. Here you go (note: it's a pretty bad movie overall, and since they (the writers of the movie) kill a little dog with a harpoon, it's a disqualified movie in my book (I was so mad), but if you can get past the dead dog, the movie has its (thrilling, campy, ridiculous) moments).

But back to the middle of the grid. MANGO was the king of tough answers, but I ALSO struggled with ALSO (26D: It's followed by an extra point) ("extra" = "subsequent") and VALET (31A: Short-distance driver) and the front end of "MAY I TRY?" (37D: Request following some failed attempts). It's possible I also wrote in ROSE at first for 31D: Bougainvillea, for one (VINE), despite thinking, as I was doing it, "yeah, that's not right." I never think of BANGS as a "Hairstyle." It always seems like just the front part of a "hairstyle." Like, Violet has her hair in a bun, typically, right? Yeah, here we go:

That "bun" part is the part I think of as the "hairstyle." The BANGS are just some front-end business. Anyway, this is just to say that it took me a few beats to get BANGS despite knowing Violet's profile well. 

Notes and explainers:

• 1A: Many job fair attendees: Abbr. (SRS.) — a gimme at 1-Across, always welcome
• 16A: One with sound judgment? (AUDIOPHILE) — one of my favorite answer/clue pairs today. I have a 😀 written next to this clue and 54A: Focus group? (CAMERA CREW) 
• 46A: He's taken! (MARRIED MAN) — this clue seemed so obviously to be talking about a MARRIED MAN that I assumed there was no way it could be about a MARRIED MAN. But then it was. 
• 57A: Wanders around a terminal, for short? (TSA) — maybe you've seen this pun before. I have. The TSA sometimes use "wands" to scan your body for weapons or other metal. Thus, they are "wanders" (as in "users of wands"). It's rough, yes—that is not a way that anyone has ever used "wander"; even wizards are like "really? come on"—but extreme corniness of pun has its limited place in Crossworld.
• 5D: "The most engaging cowardice," per Robert Frost (HUMOR) — he sounds fun.
• 30D: Palestinian, e.g. (ARAB) — Adrian (today's constructor) is one of the organizers of Puzzles for Palestine 2, a collection I told you about last time Adrian had a puzzle in the Times. The puzzles are out now (available with any donation to the Palestine Aid Society of America). Adrian has also shared some food distribution photos and extends his thanks to those of you who supported this project. Worth noting: the puzzles in the collection are really inventive and entertaining. 
• 44D: Hermann ___, champion skier known as "The Herminator" (MAIER) — a big name in late '90s / early '00s skiing. "His 54 World Cup race victories – 24 super-G, 15 downhills, 14 giant slaloms, and 1 combined – rank third on the men's all-time list behind Ingemar Stenmark's 86 victories and Marcel Hirscher's 67 victories" (wikipedia). Today, I weirdly got him confused with Eddie the Eagle (a not-so-champion British ski jumper)

• 39D: Passionate, domineering sort, it's said (LEO) — because it is three letters, and two-thirds vowels, LEO makes more appearances in the grid than any other sign of the zodiac, and I therefore know a disproportionate amount about what LEOs are "said" to be (LIBRA gives it a run for its money—fewer overall appearances, but *all* LIBRA clues are zodiacal, whereas only some LEO's are). As a SAGITTARIUS, I'm not likely to see myself in the puzzle very oft- ... wait, never!? SAGITTARIUS has literally never been in the grid? Any grid? Going back to Margaret Farrar? Never? Wow. OK, so, hey, all you constructors who seem so eager to debut half-baked garbage, why not SAGITTARIUS—the only sign of the zodiac never to appear in a crossword. On second thought, don't, it's fine. We like our privacy.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Read more...

Pidgeon, Hawke or Crowe / THU 1-30-25 / Fictional prison guarded by Dementors / Supermodel Carangi / In-the-works software versions / First U.S. prez to be born outside the original 13 Colonies / Focus of a product development test / Region bordering India and China in Risk / This is "plagiarism or revolution," per Gauguin

Constructor: Joe Marquez

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: UPS AND DOWNS (57A: Uncertainties of life ... or a feature of four answers in this puzzle?) — circled squares contain letters that go UP and DOWN inside four longer Across answers:

Theme answers:

• SOLDIER OF / FORTUNE (18A: Mercenary)
• HEART / TRANSPLANT (23A: Groundbreaking medical procedure first accomplished in 1967)
• USER / RESEARCH (38A: Focus of a product development test)
• CAN'T SE / E STRAIGHT (52A: Has a clouded mind)

Word of the Day: Walter Pidgeon (34D: Pidgeon, Hawke or Crowe = ACTOR) —

Walter Davis Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Canadian-American actor. A major leading man during the Golden Age of Hollywood, known for his "portrayals of men who prove both sturdy and wise,"^[2] Pidgeon earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, for his roles in Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Madame Curie (1943).

Pidgeon also starred in many other notable films, such as How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Forbidden Planet (1956), Executive Suite (1954), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), Advise & Consent (1962), Funny Girl (1968), and Harry in Your Pocket (1973).

Aside from his acting career, Pidgeon served as the 10th President of the Screen Actors Guild, between 1952 and 1957. He received the Guild's Life Achievement Award in 1975, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, for his contributions to the motion picture industry. (wikipedia)

• • •

A very easy "trick" puzzle. Kind of a Wednesday Thursday. And the grid as a whole ... it's really remedial. I'd say "smooth," but "bland" gets at it better. Lots of boring short stuff, and longer stuff that doesn't do much to liven up the joint. So once again, *everything* rests on the theme today ... which I think is clever, for sure. I'm very aware now that "finding" these kinds of answers (in this case, ones that have a palindromic set of three-up / three-back letters inside them) is more than likely the work of computers than any human "finding," but the effect on the page is still nice. I like that the three-up / three-back segments all involve every word in the theme answers. No tacked-on extra bits. Parts (or all) of every word get caught up in the up/down swing. I especially like the two answers that get three words involved, where the middle word appears entirely in the up/down. And thankfully, these were the last two themers I got. The first got an "oh, OK, I see what you're doing" from me (HEART TRANSPLANT). The next got an "oof, what a boring answer" from me (USER RESEARCH). But the next two really shined (had to look up "shone" v. "shined" there, and since I'm American ... "shined" it is!). CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT got a genuine "Nice!" out of me (not sure if I literally said it, but I definitely thought it), and then later I went up and got the last themer, the one in the NE corner (SOLDIER OF FORTUNE) and that one also impressed with its three-worder-ness. So the theme (as I solved it) finished strong, at least. So I really enjoyed half the themers. Don't have much more good to say about this one, I'm afraid. But while I was in the theme material, I was more than sufficiently entertained.

[ARETHA! (1D: Singer with the 1972 album "Young, Gifted and Black," informally)]

The fill was on the (very) weak side. But as I said up front, it was mostly just dull. Looking the grid over to try to find a Word of the Day, I was struck by how nothing seemed worthy. Nothing seemed interesting or extraordinary or weird enough to merit such a designation. It's mostly very plain language or very familiar crosswordese. It tries a couple longer proper nouns, but ... honestly, I'd rather it hadn't. Horrible to see HP content (AZKABAN) (26D: Fictional prison  guarded by Dementors) centered in the grid the day after Rowling's anti-trans bigotry finally got its political expression in the form of an Executive Order hunting trans kids and the people who support them. Congrats on that, all you "protect women's spaces" / "save women's sports" people. Nice job. Pat selves on back. ("No one comes here for your political opinions" — cool cool please go enjoy one of those highly entertaining apolitical crossword blogs then, no one's stopping you!). The other attempt at adding some proper-noun color to this grid (TED LASSO) ends up creating a less-than-ideal TV character / TV character crossing (TED LASSO / HOLT). No one's likely to get stuck there (all the crosses on HOLT are easy), but ... that is not how I would've clued HOLT in this specific situation. I mean, it's not how I would've clued HOLT ever, but as editor, in this instance, I probably would've nudged that clue toward HOLT's regular meaning (a wood, grove, or copse; or the lair of an otter!) ... non-proper-noun HOLT is not exactly a common word, but hey, it's Thursday, some part of this puzzle should actually be a little challenging. 

["Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth / Inspired hath in every HOLT and heeth / The tendre croppes..."]

My errors today were, like much of this grid, super-boring. Wanted SKOSH before SPECK (32A: Tiny bit). Wanted -ANE before -ENE (12D: Suffix with methyl). Oof, suffix confusion ... fun! Were those my only missteps? It looks like it. I had trouble with FARCE, but only because it crossed ENE-not-ANE. HOLT is really the only thing I can see holding people up today, and as I said, there's no reason it should hold anyone up for long. 

Notes:

• 1A: First U.S. prez to be born outside the original 13 Colonies (ABE) — I started to actually think about this one, but then some (wise, experienced) part of my brain was like "just write ABE, it's probably ABE." And so it was. 
• 51A: Supermodel Carangi (GIA) — I know one other GIA. Actress GIA Scala. There's apparently some social media "influencer" named GIA, but I don't want to give constructors / editors any ideas. 

• 31D: Division of the Dept. of Labor (OSHA) — Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Do we still have one of these? I can't keep up with the deregulatory news this week.
• 64A: This is "plagiarism or revolution," per Gauguin (ART) — ideally you would not have a standalone answer that essentially dupes one of your up/down three-letter strings (the "ART" in HEART / TRANSPLANT). See also EST (17A: "Sic vita ___" ("Such is life")) / CAN'T SEE STRAIGHT.
• 49D: Possible answer to "Whose?" (THE I.R.S.) — As in, "Whose (money is this)?" It's a question you ask around April.* 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*please, no corrections today, thank you!  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Read more...

Minnesotan trio? / WED 1-29-25 / Goes a-courting? / Gemma's role in "Crazy Rich Asians" / Snack whose name translates as "breaded" / Home of Spaceship Earth / Appropriate for all gamers / Merchandise with logos for "Baienglaca" or "Guddi," e.g. / Characteristic of a fork in the road / One of a wide pair for snow sports / Tegan's pop music bandmate / Kernel locale

Constructor: Sophia Maymudes

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (easy for me, but lots of names means "not easy" for some)

[16 rows! Super-sized, like your mimosa consumption...]

THEME: BOTTOMLESS BRUNCH (7D: Event that might feature unlimited mimosas ... or a literal description of the answers to the starred clues) — six Down answers end in words that are food items one might have at "BRUNCH," but in every case the last letter of that word is missing, making those answers "BOTTOMLESS":

Theme answers:

• BAD EG ("egg") (53D: *No-goodnik)
• COUGH SYRU ("syrup") (3D: *Remedy for a cold)
• PROPOSE A TOAS ("toast") (25D: *Raise one's glass)
• SAVE ONE'S BACO ("bacon") (9D: *Help avoid disaster)
• RAGAMUFFI ("muffin") (39D: *Little scamp)
• REHAS ("hash") (13D: *Go over again)

Word of the Day: NAOMI Novik (14A: Author Novik of the "Scholomance" trilogy) —

Naomi Novik (born 1973) is an American author of speculative fiction. She is known for the Temeraire series (2006–2016), an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars involving dragons, and her Scholomance fantasy series (2020–2022). Her standalone fantasy novels Uprooted (2015) and Spinning Silver (2018) were inspired by Polish folklore and the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale respectively. Novik has won many awards for her work, including the Alex, Audie, British Fantasy, Locus, Mythopoeic and Nebula Awards. (wikipedia)

• • •

I loved seeing GENTS at the very bottom of this puzzle. Why? Because it feels ironic. Or ... like a little wink. Could've been clued [What this puzzle is missing entirely]. Even the clue on GENTS highlights the "Ladies"! (69A: "Ladies and ___ ..."). I had this feeling mid-solve that the puzzle was very heavy on names, and women's names in particular, and then, when I was done, I went hunting for men's names (zero), and *then* I went hunting in the clues to see if I could find any men there (zero) (actually, I don't know the gender of Flotsam or Jetsam in The Little Mermaid ... but what they aren't is either human or real, so I think I'm still safe saying "there are no men in this puzzle") (the Little Mermaid wiki is telling me they're male, btw). No men in the grid, that might just be chance (unlikely but possible). No men in the grid *or* clues ... that's a deliberate act. Someone making a point. I don't know that there are any stats about the visibility of men v. women in grids (and clues), but I know I've done plenty (Plenty!) of puzzles that seem to come from a world where women may as well not exist, so I love a little sorority puzzle like this. I don't know if most people are going to notice, but I sure as hell did. The puzzle skewed female and young, which I'm pretty sure describes the constructor herself—but I am neither female nor young, and the puzzle didn't feel exclusionary in the least. I do not mind if the puzzle leans into a certain identity or demographic or whatever as long as it doesn't feel like it's giving the finger to outsiders. I appreciated this puzzle's commitment to the bit. I imagined that the BOTTOMLESS BRUNCH in question was a girlfriend get-together type thing. Seems fun (I cannot remember the last time I had "brunch," or how it's significantly different from "breakfast" aside from the fact that drinking is, apparently, encouraged). BOTTOMLESS BRUNCH sounds like a Brunch where no one is wearing pants. Drink enough mimosas, I guess anything is possible.

One thing I like about this puzzle is that none of the "brunch" items are clued as food. The "egg" is metaphorical and the "syrup" is for coughs and the "toast" is something you make with a glass (possibly a mimosa), etc. To find not only plausible brunch items, but also ones that can be clued in non-brunch ways, that's a nice extra level of elegance. I will see that "syrup" is a bit of a stretch (it's more a condiment than a food), but there's no denying that you put syrup on French toast, and French toast is a brunch food, so ... OK. But when you get into condiments, you're kind of stretching the theme limit. If TRAFFIC JA had been a theme answer, I'd be squawking in this same way, possibly louder. On the whole, this is a really original theme concept, and the execution is nicely done. The theme's got a Thursday feel (the missing letter bit feels sufficiently tricky to be a Thursday) but it's all clued back at Wednesday or even Tuesday level. I love a tricky Wednesday. Think of it as Thursday gimmickry at Wednesday prices. Like a bargain Thursday. One everyone can do. Would've been nice if the missing letters in the theme answers spelled something (like BRUNCH! or MIMOSA!) but that would be a Lot to ask.

I wish EMPANADA weren't in the grid (29A: Snack whose name translates as "breaded"). This is the only time I can remember ever wishing that an EMPANADA would go away. I apologize to the EMPANADA and all of turnoverkind. But with a heavily food-based theme, I don't think there should be stray foods in the grid. Don't distract me from the brunch! I will take an EMPANADA over any of these brunch items, any day of the week, any time of day. It would be a more elegant construction if food were confined to the theme alone. I'm having a very hard time staying mad at EMPANADA, though. And now I'm hungry. So let's move along...

There are a lot of names today (eight, by my count), which can often spell trouble, especially if those names aren't universally known, but most of these are pretty straightforward. REY and ELENA are in the puzzle all the time. Diana RIGG is a legend. KAY Thompson might be less well known (I couldn't have named her off the top of my head, but I got her after seeing the 3-letter slot and getting maybe one cross). SOFIA Coppola is prolific and successful. Tegan & SARA have been used in clues for one or the other of their names a bunch (it seems) in the past five years or so. Hmm, actually this is just the fourth time, and TEGAN has actually never appeared in the NYTXW. That will surely change someday. Anyway, SARA was a gimme for me. That leaves NAOMI Novik, whose name I know well because wife and especially daughter are big fans. So.... the one name I didn't know, the one name that feels like it's the most obscure (because it's a recent non-titular character name) is ASTRID (38A: Gemma's role in "Crazy Rich Asians"). Tbh, I don't even know who Gemma is (it's Gemma Chan). But ... ASTRID is a name that I've heard of, and one that I could infer from just a few crosses, so no problem, no complaint. 

Bullets:

• 1A: Home of Spaceship Earth (EPCOT) — dropped this answer in immediately. No idea why. I've never been to EPCOT. I really don't know much about it. And yet I seem to know that Spaceship Earth is there. Weird.
• 21A: Appropriate for all gamers (RATED E) — "E" for "Everyone." Def had this as RATED G at first.
• 23A: West Coast team, on scoreboards (LAA) — Los Angeles Angels, best known for once having the two best players in baseball and still sucking.
• 24A: Characteristic of a fork in the road (Y-SHAPE) — this might've been tricky if I hadn't had the "YS-" in place before I ever read the clue. "Nothing starts YS-! ... oh!"
• 27A: Minnesotan trio? (ENS) — a "letteral" clue. "Minnesotan" has three "N"s (ENS) in it.
• 43A: One of a wide pair for snow sports (SKIBOARDS) — the "pair" thing threw me because I think of boards being different from skis in that there are just *one* of them, but I was thinking snowboards. SKIBOARDS are just ... fatter / shorter skis. They come in pairs.

• 51A: Farm share inits. (CSA) — "Community-Sponsored Agriculture"
• 64A: Merchandise with logos for "Baienglaca" or "Guddi," e.g. (KNOCKOFFS) — a very fun clue, and a great debut answer (though KNOCKOFF has appeared one time before, in the singular) (Balenciaga and Gucci are famous fashion brands, in case you didn't know what was going on with those insane "brand" names in the clue)
• 29D: Kernel locale (EAR) — think corn
• 31D: World of Warcraft or Rune, in brief (RPG) — Role-Playing Game
• 50D: Popular logic puzzle (KENKEN) — I believe that these are logic puzzles. I do not believe that they are "popular" in any meaningful sense of that word. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Read more...

Skewered Indonesian dish / TUE 1-28-25 / Wagner heroine / Old-fashioned prelude to a duel / Mononymous Irish singer / Old TV series featuring the creepy main character Barnabas Collins / Virus first discovered in 1976 / "Honor Thy Father" author

Constructor: Dan Margolis

Relative difficulty: Easy

 

THEME: Types of rye bread, with a twist

Theme answers:

• 17-A: The 68 participants in the N.C.A.A. March Madness tournament, e.g. = SEEDED TEAMS
• 28-A: Michelangelo's David and the Venus de Milo, for two = MARBLE STATUES
• 47-A: Purim or Rosh Hashanah = JEWISH HOLIDAY
• 61-A: Old TV series featuring the creepy main character Barnabas Collins = DARK SHADOWS

Word of the Day: DARK SHADOWS (61A)

Dark Shadows is an American gothic soap opera that aired weekdays on the ABC television network from June 27, 1966, to April 2, 1971. The show depicted the lives, loves, trials, and tribulations of the wealthy Collins family of Collinsport, Maine, where a number of supernatural occurrences take place.

The series became popular when vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) was introduced ten months into its run. It would also feature ghosts, werewolves, zombies, man-made monsters, witches, warlocks, time travel, and a parallel universe. A small company of actors each played many roles; as actors came and went, some characters were played by more than one actor. The show was distinguished by its melodramatic performances, atmospheric interiors, numerous dramatic plot twists, broad cosmos of characters, and heroic adventures. Unusual among the soap operas of its time, which were aimed primarily at adults, Dark Shadows developed a large teenage audience and a dedicated cult following. By 1969, it had become ABC's highest-rated daytime series.

The original network run of the show amassed 1,225 episodes. The success of the series spawned a media franchise that has included two feature films (House of Dark Shadows in 1970 and Night of Dark Shadows in 1971), a 1991 TV remake, an unsprouted 2004 remake pilot, a 2012 film reboot directed by Tim Burton, and numerous spin-off novels and comics. Since 2006, the series has continued as a range of audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions, featuring members of the original cast including David Selby, Lara Parker, and Kathryn Leigh Scott.

****

Matt Gaffney here filling in for Rex, who's cloud-surfing behind a hot-air balloon over Nova Scotia as I write these very words (I'm guessing). 

SEEDED, MARBLE, JEWISH, and DARK are all descriptors of well-known types of rye bread. And then we get an unusually-placed revealer at 68-/69-A: [With 69-Across, courtroom directive ... or, homophonically, what the starts of 17-, 28-, 47-and 61-Across are] = ALL RISE (i.e. "ryes")

So that's a decent theme -- tight set and as far as Google knows it hasn't been done before, plus the revealer ties it up nicely in a bow.  

Signed, Matt Gaffney, Regent of CrossWorld for a 24-hour period which will end all too quickly

**** 

P.S. hey, Rex here. Just wanted to add a few notes while I've got time this morning.

I actually liked the reveal, as I had no idea what was going on and was not having a particularly good time before I got there. The answers themselves were meh (SEEDED TEAMS in particular), but the punny revealer brought it all together and made the experience seem something close to worthwhile.

The fill on this one is not great. Old-fashioned, crosswordese-laden, very below average. No way you convince me you *had* to have stuff like ALII (ugh) (crossing ALI, double-ugh) (crossing DAR!?! Triple-ugh) in this grid. STE SYST EIN AAH ENYA ANOTE NCO DAR EBOLA TALESE ... none of this is helping pick the puzzle off the ground. At best, the rest of it is solid but dullish. Even the clues seem like they're not really trying. The puzzle's entertainment value rests entirely on the theme, which means it rests entirely on that revealer, which, as I just said, is better than SO-SO, lucky us.

It was easy, it was bland, the bread pun was good. There you go. See you tomorrow.

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Read more...

Purple-flecked root vegetable / MON 1-27-25 / Study abroad program on a ship / Bird named for its beak's shape / Stance for a yoga beginner / Musical based on a comic strip / Cotton variety

Constructor: Alexander Liebeskind

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: LOOK THE OTHER WAY (40A: Ignore suspicious behavior ... or a hint to the circled letters in 17-, 24-, 51- and 62-Across) — words that are rough synonyms of "LOOK" appear backwards (i.e. "the other way") inside circled squares in their respective theme answers:

Theme answers:

• HOMEPAGE (17A: Commonly visited part of a website)
• SEMESTER AT SEA (24A: Study abroad program on a ship)
• FEDERAL GRANTS (51A: Funding sources for many labs)
• TREE POSE (62A: Stance for a yoga beginner)

Word of the Day: SHOEBILL (26D: Bird named for its beak's shape) —

The shoebill (Balaeniceps rex), also known as the whale-headed stork, and shoe-billed stork, is a large long-legged wading bird. It derives its name from its enormous shoe-shaped bill. It has a somewhat stork-like overall form and has previously been classified with the storks in the order Ciconiiformes based on this morphology. However, genetic evidence places it with pelicans and herons in the Pelecaniformes. The adult is mainly grey while the juveniles are more brown. It lives in tropical East Africa in large swamps from South Sudan to Zambia.

• • •

I'm not sure how good this puzzle is in absolute terms—it seems fine; let me think about it—but my Downs-only experience of it was pretty close to ideal. First pass at the grid was rough. All the longer Downs and several of the short ones just weren't clear. Either they could've been one of two things (HARM or HURT, say, at 38D: Damage), or else I simply had no idea (ADMISSION and COURTYARD were both ??? at first). Luckily, HOME PAGE was pretty easy to parse from the letters I had in place, and I could see GAPE spelled backward in those circled squares—very, very useful when it came time to parse the next, much harder-to-parse theme answer: SEMESTER AT SEA. I absolutely used the theme (such as I understood it) to get those circled squares, which (finally) gave me enough letters to see the whole of SEMESTER AT SEA. In fact, I think I used the "backward word meaning 'look'" knowledge with every single themer, and had them all in place before I actually got the revealer itself. So even though the revealer appears in the middle of the grid, I didn't see it til the very end, which is the ideal place for a revealer. But every single 8+-letter Down except SKI RESORT was a mystery to me for a while. Not just ADMISSION and COURTYARD (which I had as COURTROOM at one point) (?!), but FEISTIER, SWISS ROLL, and SHOEBILL. I wanted SPOONBILL so bad and was so mad when it wouldn't fit. Anyway, I loved how this felt impossible at first (from a Downs-only perspective), but then boop boop boop, little by little, pieces fell into place and I got it done, with SWISS ROLL being the last answer to fall. Now that I look the theme over, I think it's pretty solid. Maybe more Tuesday than Monday (if that's a meaningful distinction). Definitely sassier than most Monday fare. The revealer is rock solid, and admirably literal. The short fill is lackluster, but it always is, and the longer Downs more than make up for that. Overall, good stuff.

I was lucky enough to know all the names I needed to know today. I learned both Phillipa SOO and TESSA Thompson from crosswords, though the latter's name only began to stick recently, so I was happy to be able to throw her name down no problem. I also knew that HERA was the [Greek marriage goddess], so that helped. I stupidly wrote in PICA for the [Cotton variety] (PICA is a typographic unit of measure, or a disorder where you eat inedible material like clay, or ... wow, virtually anything, apparently. The subtype list is lengthy—burnt matches?? (Cautopyreiophagia!?!?!)). Eventually, I remembered the real meaning of PICA and changed that answer to PIMA—big help with the visibility of SEMESTER AT SEA. Had ARETE at first for 12D: Mountain crest (RIDGE). Because Crossword Brain. Who's going to go to ARETE before RIDGE? Someone who solved a ton of NYTXW puzzles in the '90s, that's who. The only part of the puzzle that made me mad was LAH (15A: "Well, ___-di-dah!"). If you need LAH, then OK, use it, but ... you absolutely do not need LAH here. That little section is very, very easy to fill without garbage non-things like LAH. Here's just one example (try your own!):

[this version gets rid of LAH *and* ALA (2 birds / 1 stone)]

Notes:

• 51A: Funding sources for many labs (FEDERAL GRANTS) — are you sure? I mean, maybe that was true last month, but the malevolent dipshit in the White House has made this clue at least somewhat less true.
• 62A: Stance for a yoga beginner (TREE POSE) — this clue is bad in at least two ways. First of all, TREE POSE is a stance for *anyone* practicing yoga. Just like corpse pose, down dog, etc. It's just a pose. The fact that a beginner *might* do it does not mean it's *for* a beginner specifically. Which brings me to my next objection, which is that LOL TREE POSE is not that easy for many people. People fall out of that pose in class all the time. You gotta balance on one leg with the sole of your other foot pressed up against the inner thigh of your standing leg. Basically I think the word "beginner" is screwing up this clue.

• 1D: "Tsk, tsk," in textspeak (SMH) — Shaking My Head (in frustration and/or disbelief)

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Read more...

War room briefings, in military shorthand / SUN 1-26-25 / Pioneers of freeze-drying food / Ridge in metalworking / Annual observance for breast cancer awareness / ___ Urquhart, co-host of the podcast "Morbid" / Aid for using Bluetooth / Riveting persona of W.W. II / White House dog of the 1980s / Storage devices made obsolete by MP3 players / Water feature created by rising sea levels / Place for a white picket fence and a mom-and-pop shop / What "fitz-" or "-ovic mean, in names

Constructor: Rich Proulx

Relative difficulty: Medium except NW corner, where I was stalled for (seemingly) ever...

THEME: "Letter Openers" — seven Down answers have clues that are REBUSES (a term spelled out by the circled letters when the grid is completed); that is, the clues for those Downs are given in rebus (i.e. picture puzzle) form: "CIRCLED LETTER + [some picture]," in every case; the answers to those Down clues end up being the clues for the Across answers that run through the circled squares:

Theme answers:

["R" + CANE = ARCANE => CLEAR AS MUD (22A)]

["E" + ROAD = ERODE => EAT AWAY (29A)]

["B" + TRAY = BETRAY => BACKSTAB (42A)]

["U" + KNIT = UNIT => WORK GROUP (64A)]

["S" + CAPE = ESCAPE => SIDESTEP (87A)]

["E" + MITT = EMIT => GIVE OFF (98A)]

["S" + PIE = ESPY => HAVE EYES ON (111A)]

Word of the Day: SITREPS (80A: War room briefings, in military shorthand) —

: a periodic report of the current military situation (merriam-webster.com) (emph. mine)

• • •

Painful. Child's placemat puzzles incorporated into a very complicated theme. Not "complicated" in a good way, but ... fussy. I'm sure this was hard to make, architecturally, but there was virtually no "aha" payoff to any of this. That one point where I (finally) figured out that the REBUS answers were in fact the clues for the Across crosses—that was an "aha" of sorts, but it leaned more toward exasperated "oh." The pictures in the rebus clues were embarrassingly crude. And the rebus answers only kinda sorta worked as clues for their respective Acrosses much of the time. All that, just so we could spell out ... REBUSES at the end? "Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine" was a more exciting reveal.

WORK GROUP is a UNIT?? Isn't ... anything ... a UNIT? One of anything? I don't even know what WORK GROUP is. Is that a group that works ... together? And ARCANE and CLEAR AS MUD are totally different things. The former denotes something esoteric, known solely or primarily by an initiated group, whereas the latter denotes something hopelessly confusing. Parsing CLEAR AS MUD was so hard ... but ultimately it was the *only* reason I was able to complete the NW corner *at all*. Everything (I mean Everything) east of ARCANE and north of AIL in that section was a big old blank for me. Just empty space. I had STD written in at 9D: P.S.T. part: Abbr., but I didn't trust it (PAC?). And then at 18A: Lifted one's spirits? ... MADEA...?!?!!??! I was thinking of all the "spirits," including liquor, and still couldn't parse that (MADE A TOAST). The INCAS pioneered freeze-drying!? (5A: Pioneers of freeze-drying food). LOL I definitely wanted a brand name there (FOLGERS? MAXWELL HOUSE?). No idea that ASU (Arizona State) had the biggest enrollment. No idea what a [Temporary residence] could be at 7D. Thought 6D: Without regard to privacy (NOSILY) was OPENLY. And EAR CLIP, oof. Is that what that stupid thing is called? (25A: Aid for using Bluetooth). EARPIECE was what I wanted? EAR BUD? Kinda wanted CLIP, but EAR CLIP sounded like jewelry. And then there was the clue on ITALIC (5D: Just like that!). Brutal. Even with the "-IC." Wanted MAGIC. Or PRESTO or VOILA! I've never had so much white space for so long in any section of a Sunday. I rarely get that stuck even on Saturdays. But finally CLEAR AS MUD (fitting!) got me traction and I crawled out of there. Everything seemed (relatively) easy after that.

Tapping the "Not All Debuts Are Good" sign again, strenuously, at SITREPS, which sounds like something you do at the gym. Needed every single cross to get that one, never heard it in my life. And then there’s NO-BRA DAY (74A: Annual observance for breast cancer awareness), which I've also never heard of, but which at least seems like a real thing that people *might* know about, or say, or participate in, unlike SITREPS, which seems like nonsense, like an unholy fusion of at least six words. Laughed out loud at KNURL, which is possibly the stupidest-sounding word in the English language (66D: Ridge in metalworking). Just say it out loud—you feel silly, right? Sounds like you made it up. Or, like, it's part of some imaginary creature, a cryptozoological body part, perhaps at the base of the antennae. "VENUSians are able to read human thoughts due to an organ located at the base of their well-developed KNURLs." As for SOFT A, I think of "soft" as related to consonants (SOFT G was in the puzzle very recently—that's the "G" in "gem" vs. the "G" in "guts," which is a HARD G). I think of vowels as either "short" or "long." So "SOFT A" is odd to me, though I'm sure I've seen it before. Bizarrely, when I look up [define "soft a"], the top hits are all about differentiating a certain racial slur ("hard R") from a more familiar / less derogatory term in African-American Vernacular English. In fact, this is the primary (sole) example used in the wiktionary definition of "SOFT A." It's hard to remember a part of this solve that seemed genuinely enjoyable—probably seeing Isabella ROSSELLINI, clued for her brief and nearly-silent but still stunning role in Conclave (109A: "Conclave" actress Isabella). I hope she wins that Oscar.

[Her little bow at the end of her speech to the Cardinals—dagger! I laughed out loud]

Notes:

• 90A: Gordon ___ engineer with a "law" predicting a doubling of transistors on microchips every two years (MOORE) — and human beings lived happily ever after, The End
• 20A: Riveting persona of W.W. II (ROSIE) — Rosie the Riveter, icon of women in the (wartime) workforce.

• 34D: White House dog of the 1980s (REX) — I have no memory of this. I remember Millie, the Bushes' dog. That is the only presidential pet of the '80s that I remember. Why not just name the president??? I assume it's Reagan. Yeah, here we go. A Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that Reagan gave to Nancy in 1984. I was too busy going through puberty to notice, apparently.
• 45D: ___ Urquhart, co-host of the podcast "Morbid" (ALAINA) — wow, this clue couldn't have been more gibberish to me if it tried. Names I've never heard of, podcasts I've never heard of. Truly a perfect storm of my particular pop culture ignorance. Ah, no wonder I don't know it. Ask me how I feel about the "true crime" genre in general. I find most of it exploitative and creepy. But I admit I'm an outlier here. You all seem to love it. It's a very popular podcast.
• 14D: Storage devices made obsolete by MP3 players (MINIDISCS) — were these ever ... "solete?" I mean, for something to become "obsolete," doesn't it first have to be popular? 
• 1D: Network owned by Showtime (TMC) — The Movie Channel. This was another reason I struggled in the NW. In retrospect, TMC is sorta obvious, but I definitely had other "T" networks in there at times (TNT, TBS, TCM ... TNN, is that something?)
• 93D: Theseus' need in the Labyrinth (THREAD) — because "HELP FROM ARIADNE, WHOM HE WOULD LATER ABANDON" wouldn't fit.

Enjoy the rest of your day. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Read more...