Hangout events for two guy friends / MON 1-13-25 / Digitally make to look younger / Minuscule picture used in spycraft / Disinfectant brand with the tagline "Healthing" / Quality of a statement that feels plausible / Sweetheart, slangily / Restaurant that offers a Mexican Tres Leches stack

Constructor: Adam Levav

Relative difficulty: on the Challenging side for a Monday

THEME: MIDDLE ENGLISH (36A: Tongue of Chaucer ... or what's literally shown in the shaded squares?) — 2nd person pronouns (with their origins in MIDDLE ENGLISH) are embedded in the "middle" of four answers:

Theme answers:

• TRUTHINESS (17A: Quality of a statement that feels plausible)
• FOURTH-YEARS (24A: High school or college seniors, usually)
• BREATHE EASY (47A: Feel relief from anxiety)
• LIGHTHOUSE (57A: Aid in preventing a shipwreck)

Word of the Day: MIDDLE ENGLISH (36A: Tongue of Chaucer ... or what's literally shown in the shaded squares?) —

Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500.^[2] This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with the High and Late Middle Ages.

Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography. Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for the most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, a standard based on the London dialects (Chancery Standard) had become established. This largely formed the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by Early Modern English, which lasted until about 1650. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well my entire Ph.D. dissertation was about MIDDLE ENGLISH literature so you'd think this one would be right up my alley, but no, this didn't work for me. Something about all these pronouns being ... not particularly "Middle." I mean, they have their origins there, but all of these pronouns are going to be most familiar to people from either Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible, both of which are written in what we now refer to as Early Modern English (EMnE). "Thou shalt not...," that's KJV. And as for "thine," I'm guessing that if most people had to quote one line of text that contained "thine," it would be Polonius's line to Laertes in Hamlet: "To thine own self be true" (you use the possessive "thine" instead of "thy" when the subsequent word starts with a vowel, typically). This is a MIDDLE ENGLISH puzzle without anything particularly MIDDLE ENGLISH about it. And why 2nd person pronouns? As opposed to literally any other MIDDLE ENGLISH words? What is the logic there? I just don't get it. I get the visual pun—that the words appear in the "middle" of the longer answers. OK, fine. But THINE THY THEE THOU ... they just don't seem very MIDDLE ENGLISHy. Also, for the record, you need "ye" to complete the 2nd person pronoun set: "ye" is the collective form of "thou"—when you're addressing more than one person: ye. "Ye" does not mean "the," no matter how many "Ye OLDE Shoppe" signs you see. The "y" there is a stand-in for the long lost letter thorn ("Þ, þ"), which was replaced by the digraph "th" during the Early Modern period. But I (seriously) digress.

As a Downs-only solve (which is how I solve Mondays), this had a couple challenging parts, the worst of which was BRO DATES (11D: Hangout events for two guy friends). "Hangout events"? I don't even know what that means. You mean that you, a guy, are meeting other guys ... to hang out ... and do stuff? And you had to give this basic activity a weird and vaguely homophobic name? "We're not gay or anything! We're just bros! Straight bros! Doing straight stuff!" Uh, OK. Whatever you say. Also, I thought the term was MAN DATE (yes, that is a term). What is the difference between "man dates" and BRO DATES??? All my friends are women (or gay men), so I just don't understand this all-male bro world at all. I had BROMANCE in there at first. The other long Down I struggled with (sorta) was MICRODOT, which seems like not a very Monday word at all (36D: Minuscule picture used in spycraft). It was in the puzzle fairly recently—just a couple months ago—and I stumbled on it then, so I remembered it today ... but since I had LAB RATS instead of LAB MICE ("rats" is better!), I didn't commit to the DOT part at first because it just didn't agree with the adjacent letters in RATS (39D: Cheese-loving test subjects). Most of the rest of this was very doable Downs-only. Took me a second to get DE-AGE, which I can't ever remember seeing in a puzzle before (33D: Digitally make to look younger). Oh, I see it has been in the grid before, just once. Debuted last year. De-aging tech has been used in a bunch of high-profile movies in recent years, so I'd expect to see DE-AGE a fair amount in the future, in that it's a short answer with common letters (majority vowels), and crosswords love those.

Bullets:

• 17A: Quality of a statement that feels plausible (TRUTHINESS) — I've never seen this term used anywhere outside the context of mid-'00s The Colbert Report. Pretty sure he coined it. The wikipedia entry about the term is almost entirely about Colbert. Does not seem like the term has had much of an afterlife. Weird to leave Colbert out of the clue.
• 27A: Disinfectant brand with the tagline "Healthing" (LYSOL) — wow. Wow that is bad. "Healthing"??? Really? Who is responsible for that ridiculousness? The only thing I like about it is that it sounds like "Hell Thing."
• 52A: Do a whoopsie (ERR) — ick, banish baby talk, or archaic talk, or archaic baby talk, please. Please. Nails + chalkboard. This clue is not healthing (though it is hell thing).

Ahhh, that's it! See you tomorrow, I hope.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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