Portmanteau term for airplane fuel / SAT 1-4-25 / "Holy oleo!" speaker / Shopping meccas of old / Spelling seen in credits / Language spoken in northern New York / Ancient figure called the "huey tlatoani" by his subjects / Cook's offering with chips? / Sauce named after a steward to Louis XIV / Historic founder of the Shakers / Hip-hop group with the 1990 hit "100 Miles and Runnin'"

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (more Medium if you didn't know the names, more Easy if you did)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Simon PEGG (59A: Simon of "Shaun of the Dead") —

Simon John Pegg (né Beckingham; born 14 February 1970) is an English actor, comedian and screenwriter. He came to prominence in the UK as the co-creator of the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced (1999–2001), directed by Edgar Wright. He and Wright co-wrote the films Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World's End (2013), known collectively as the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, all of which saw Wright directing and Pegg starring alongside Nick Frost. Pegg and Frost also wrote and starred in the sci-fi comedy film Paul (2011).

Pegg is one of the few performers to have achieved what Radio Times calls the "Holy Grail of Nerd-dom", having played popular supporting characters in Doctor Who (2005), Star Trek as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (2009–2016), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). He currently stars as Benji Dunn in the Mission: Impossible film series (2006–present). He provided the voice of Buck in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), Ice Age: Collision Course (2016), and The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022). (wikipedia)

• • •

Not THE WORST puzzle I've ever done, not by a longshot, and not the hardest, either, but then I knew all the proper nouns. Well, almost all of them. I needed a couple of crosses to nudge my brain on ADAM SILVER (11D: David Stern's successor as N.B.A. commissioner). And I wouldn't have known EDDIE right away (15A: ___ Huang, whose 'Fresh Off the Boat" memoir was turned into an ABC sitcom)—but then I never saw the clue for EDDIE, so easily did that NE section fill itself in. Everyone else, though—totally familiar to me, including (and most helpfully) CHLOÉ ZHAO. I remember deliberately tucking her name away in my brain after she won the Oscar for 2020's Nomadland, thinking "oh she's a clue now, for sure." And while she hasn't appeared a ton, she has appeared. This is her second full-name appearance; she's also been a ZHAO clue twice (the only ZHAO ever to appear in the grid), and the CHLOÉ clue once. A name worth knowing, in all its parts, for sure. Getting that freebie up top, and especially getting that "Z," really opened things up fast. This wasn't the fastest Saturday I've ever done, but I never actually struggled, and there was only one place where my flow was even significantly impeded—when I tried to take the turn from THE WORST into the SE corner. I got the wordplay on the TORI clue easily enough (49D: Spelling seen in credits), but I just couldn't commit to SLOP, since I couldn't believe we'd get SLOP two days in a row. What kind of cafeteria is this!? So I had to stop there, go back up to the center, and come at the E and SE from there instead. Which wasn't hard. 

["The Loooove Booooat..."]

I enjoyed this one for the light workout that it was. But I can imagine some solvers finding it a bit of a namefest, especially if those names are unfamiliar. That's typically how the name game goes. Whoosh + happiness if you know 'em, GRR + grief if you don't. You'd think that would be true of any answer, but it's truer of proper nouns than other things. Proper nouns often have a very pronounced gimme/stumper fault line, and if you're on the stumper side, it doesn't feel so great. Today's names seem pretty prominent, though. There is a preponderance of names from one cultural area, namely Hollywood (CHLOÉ ZHAO, EDDIE Huang, Simon PEGG, TORI Spelling), so non- (or anti-) pop culturalists might grumble about that. I'd understand. But there actually weren't *that* many names in this thing, and the grid is pretty smooth, wide-ranging, and general-knowledge-y. Is it weird to call a Saturday puzzle "pleasant." That's what this puzzle felt like to me. Not challenging me much, but not annoying me much either. Low-key enjoyment is what I got.

Not much SLOP today. "Agora" in the singular is classic crosswordese, but in the plural it's somehow ... crosswordesier. I know that Latin plurals are "-A" to "-AE," but I don't think I knew that was the case with Greek. I'm sure I wrote in AGORAS at first (I always default to the standard English "S" plural and correct it later as needed). That was the only thing that really felt tired/old to me today (18A: Shopping meccas of old). I do not like AVGAS (AViation + GASoline) as an answer (mostly because I have no idea what that is and it seems like an awful abbr. contrivance), but whatever it is, it isn't old hat (it's made only two other NYTXW appearances—once in 2018 ... and once in 1986!?) (23D: Portmanteau term for airplane fuel). If you enjoy buying your AVGAS from AGORAE, then this puzzle must've seemed perfect to you. To me, those two answers suck, but as I have no other significant answer complaints, I can tolerate them just fine. Would've been nice to be able to leverage the negative-sounding answers in this grid for my write-up (THE WORST! SLOP! SO OVER IT! GRR! INANE!), but there's no real cause today. It's a fine puzzle.

There were some parsing challenges today, most notable with USEMBASSY (1A: Home in the country?) and NPRTOTEBAG (25D: Iconic bit of media merch). The latter ended up being easy after I got over my initial  "wait, nothing starts 'NP-'" reaction. USEMBASSY was a bit harder, as the clue was much harder. I guess the idea is that at U.S. EMBASSY is our (i.e. the U.S.'s) "home" in another "country"?? I dunno. "?" clues are great when they land, but I feel like this one has been tied to a chair and tortured. I have to mentally add too many qualifiers to make the clue make any kind of sense. Whereas with something like 48D: Refuse to eat? (SLOP), there's a nice, clean "aha" when you see the wordplay. It tracks. Instantly. Then there's 39D: Babe in the woods? (BEAR CUB), which doesn't seem like it needs a "?" at all.  Cubs are babes, they live in the woods ... Babe in the woods. Very literal. I see the play on words, we all see it, but still, if the clue works on a very literal basis, I think you leave the "?" off, if only to confuse Saturday solvers (which is what you're supposed to do to solvers on a Saturday). 

Bullets:

• 1D: Holder of the longest winning streak in N.C.A.A. men's basketball history (88 games) (UCLA) — nice fat gimme at 1-Down. This gave me AGORASE SHAG ELMO in no time.
• 31A: Language spoken in northern New York (MOHAWK) — living somewhat near northern New York helped. Got this off the "M." My only rationale was "Native American names that start with 'M'" and if you live in New York (and probably even if you don't), MOHAWK comes to mind pretty quickly.
• 8D: Maker of the 900 in '94 and the 9-3 in '99 (SAAB) — first guess: AUDI. Only rationale: four-letter car make. They should've just called the "9-3" the 6.
• 4D: Ochlocracy, by another name (MOB RULE) — got run over by OCHLOCRACY in a puzzle from days of yore and never forgot it.
• 6D: Ancient figure called the "huey tlatoani" by his subjects (AZTEC EMPEROR) — again, thank god for the "Z" in ZHAO, which made this answer much easier than it might've been. I wrote in AZTEC quickly, then reasoned my way to EMPEROR (which is to say, EMPEROR fit in the spaces provided and seemed legit).
• 54A: "Holy oleo!" speaker (ROBIN) — every time ROBIN Yount made a spectacular play at shortstop, he'd cry out "Holy oleo!" Man, baseball really was better back in the day. Where are the colorful catchphrases of old! ... Unless this clue is about ROBIN Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam, which also seems possible.

[I'm including this pic in the hopes of staving off correction emails; we'll see if it works]

• 52D: Cook's offering with chips? (IMAC) — The "Cook" here is Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc. The "chips" here are potato chips. Every IMAC comes with a bag of potato chips. This is why Apple is so successful.

How many Holiday Pet Pics could I possibly have left!?!? Let's find out.

Say hello to Grover Cleveland, seen here with fresh kill. In addition to Christmas treats, Grover enjoys lying across his owner's neck in the morning, which adds an extra layer of challenge to the crossword puzzle.

[Thanks, Michael]

The SuperMega belongs to Squid and Squid alone. Get your own copy.

[Thanks, Sophie]

Now that the holidays are over, it's time to undecorate the tree. Enter: Katlin.

[Thanks, Donna]

And for our final Holiday Pet Pic of the year, we've got Bugle, the "one-eyed pirate cat." He is the perfect morning coffee / crossword / blog-checking companion for his owner, Meredith. Bugle wants to give a shout-out to "grandpa Bill" (Meredith's father), who introduced Meredith to this blog. Family, traditions, one-eyed snuggle-cats ... that's what the Holidays are all about.

[Thanks, Meredith]

Thanks to everyone who submitted pet pics. I think I got to all of them. We'll do it again next year. 

See you tomorrow, I hope :)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]