Starbuck's higher-up? / WED 1-1-25 / 1990s sitcom featuring a bookstore / What you might call a tipsy friend / Stylish tote for an executive / Chocolate money won or lost in this puzzle's game / In the dark about something nefarious / Like the breeds shetland and merino

Constructor: Seth Bisen-Hersh and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Dreidel — grid features a dreidel at its center, which (when it is filled) is made out of "CLAY" (i.e. the letters in "CLAY") (40D: Material used to make the object "illustrated" here, in a seasonal song). The four sides of a dreidel are represented in circled squares toward the top of the grid ("ALL," "PUT IN," "NONE" and "HALF"), and then a couple more short answers relate to how and why the game is played (players SPIN the dreidel with the goal of winning chocolate money, or GELT). 

Theme answers:

• SPIN (52D: Take a turn with the object illustrated by the central black squares in this puzzle (leading to one of the four circled results))
• GELT (59D: Chocolate money won or lost in this puzzle's game)

Dreidel sides:

• ALL THE RAGE (3D: Super-trendy)
• PUT IN WRITING (5D: Set down on paper)
• NONE THE WISER (9D: In the dark about something nefarious)
• HALF DOLLAR (11D: Place to see J.F.K.)

(I had no idea about how the game was played, so I looked them up, here you go):

Word of the Day: dreidel —

A dreidel, also dreidle or dreidl, (/ˈdreɪdəl/ DRAY-dəl; Yiddish: דרײדל, romanized: dreydl, plural: dreydlech; Hebrew: סביבון, romanized: sevivon) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is a Jewish variant on the teetotum, a gambling toy found in Europe and Latin America.

Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet: נ‎ (nun), ג‎ (gimel), ה‎ (hei), ש‎ (shin).

Each player begins with an equal number of game pieces (usually 10–15). The game pieces can be any object, such as chocolate gelt, pennies, raisins, etc.

• To start the game, every participant puts one game piece into the center "pot". Every player also puts one piece into the pot when the pot is empty or there is only one game piece in the pot.
• Each player spins the dreidel once during their turn. Depending on which side is facing up when it stops spinning, the player whose turn it is gives or takes game pieces from the pot:
  • If נ‎ (nun) is facing up, the player does nothing.
  • If ג‎ (gimel) is facing up, the player gets everything in the pot.
  • If ה‎ (hei) is facing up, the player gets half of the pieces in the pot. If there are an odd number of pieces in the pot, the player takes half the pot rounded up to the nearest whole number. If hei is facing up and only one piece is in the pot, the player can either take the piece or not.
  • If ש‎ (shin) is facing up, the player adds one of their game pieces to the pot (sometimes accompanied by the chant "shin, shin, put one in"). In some game versions, the player adds three game pieces to the pot, one for each stem of the letter shin (ש‎).
• If the player is out of pieces, they are either "out" or may ask another player for a "loan".

These rules are comparable to the rules for a classic four-sided teetotum, where the letters A, D, N and T form a mnemonic for the rules of the game, aufer (take), depone (put), nihil (nothing), and totum (all). Similarly, the Hebrew letters on a dreidel may be taken as a mnemonic for the game rules in Yiddish. Occasionally, in the United States, the Hebrew letters on the dreidel form an English-language mnemonic about the rules: hei or "H" for "half"; gimel or "G" for "get all"; nun or "N" for "nothing"; and shin or "S" for "share".

• • •

Cool, a Chanukah-themed puzzle that actually appears during Chanukah (which ends tomorrow at sundown). If I've seen a Chanukah-themed puzzle before, it's been a while. Probably should've run this one yesterday or even Monday so as not to conflict with Yet Another Holiday (Happy New Year, btw), but whatever, I don't need another "BALL"-dropping theme, this is fine. Ridiculously easy, though. The center, isolated "dreidel" part of the grid is probably the only zone that might cause anyone any trouble, but if you know the dreidel song (at least the one that I learned in high school French), then you know what the dreidel is (traditionally made out of): "O dreidel dreidel dreidel, / que j'ai fait de la boue / O dreidel dreidel dreidel, / O dreidel, moi, je joue." I somehow remembered *this* version before I remembered the English version "O dreidel dreidel dreidel, I made it out of CLAY..." But I remembered it, is the point, and so that (somewhat awkwardly filled) dreidel part was not an issue. I thought maybe the specific letters in that dreidel section had some meaning, or were a visual representation of something, but I think they're just random letters—that the only thematic element there, besides the shape of that section, is CLAY. Oh wait! The whole section is made *exclusively* out of the *letters* in "CLAY." All Cs Ls As and Ys. That's nice. Doesn't make for pleasant fill, but it's a nice touch, for sure.

Was real uncertain about what this puzzle had in store for me early on. I mean, what am I supposed to think about a New Year's puzzle that greets me with the message: "ALL PUTIN!" I was like, "what the hell is this message? 'ALL PUTIN, ALL THE TIME!? That's an ominous way to begin the year."

It wasn't til I went all the way down to the bottom of the west side of the grid and hit the clue for SPIN that I had any concept of the theme. The answers were going in as fast as I could type, so there wasn't really time to digest much before then. The SPIN clue made me (finally) see the "dreidel" at the center of the grid, and helped me understand why the circled squares made no sense to me (I've never played dreidel in my life, or bothered to learn what the rules were). The theme is well-executed, but what made it actually enjoyable to solve was the fill, which was actually interesting in its own right. Sometimes when a theme is architecturally demanding, the quality of the fill suffers, but not today. Every one of those circled-square answers is at least solid, and NONE THE WISER is genuinely original. ALICIA KEYS shows up looking nice in full-name attire. I like "I'LL BITE," both as a slang phrase, and as a kind of bonus themer: "I'LL BITE that chocolate candy!"

As I say, the puzzle was remarkably easy for a Wednesday. Outside the central "dreidel" part, there were two answers total that gave me pause. First, ELMS. Sigh. This is yet another one of those occasions where the "doubled clue" gimmick (today, [Symbols of wisdom]), just doesn't work as well for one of the two answers. I plunked OWLS down off the "O," but ELMS? Wisdom? Er ... shrug. I guess? They're certainly "stately," and they line streets, but ... wisdom, you say? News to me. The other "???" moment for me today was WORK BAG (56A: Stylish tote for an executive). I have no doubt that there are "stylish" WORK BAGs out there, but lemme tell you, "WORK BAG" is not a phrase that screams "stylish!" WORK BAG sounds like something someone in a hard hat might carry. Practical. Sturdy. I'm not even sure what a WORK BAG is, frankly. Is that like a briefcase ... but for ladies? Hang on... LOL, the first hit when I search [what is a "work bag"] is a site promising "Gorgeously Stylish WORK BAGs!" So either the clue writers did the same search I did or "stylish"-ness is really built in. Interesting. And yes, WORK BAGs are fashionable briefcase equivalents for women. (I just looked at a site promising a "Man's WORK BAG Collection," but everything on offer there was actually called a "briefcase." Weird.)

Bullets:

• 14A: Micronesian island that was the setting for a season of "Survivor" (PALAU) — it's fun to look at crossword history. Shortz had pretty much written PALAU off as crosswordese in the early '00s. It had only ever appeared irregularly, even in the olden days, after 2001, more than seven years or so go by with no PALAU. Then "Survivor: PALAU" aired in 2005. Then, in 2008, Patrick Berry puts it in a puzzle, cluing it as "Micronesian nation that hosted the 10th season of "Survivor"" and since then it's appeared twenty times, including three last year and four (?) in 2021. Looks like only five clues have ever mentioned "Survivor" directly, but there's no question that "Survivor" absolutely elevated the profile of PALAU, and is the reason we see it so often, even in "easy" early-week puzzles (lots of M and T appearances).
• 50D: "Yikes!" ("OH GOD!") — the Lord's name? In vain? In a Chanukah puzzle? I do not care, at all, but I did notice.
• 35A: 1990s sitcom featuring a bookstore (ELLEN) — weird how this entire sitcom (which I watched reasonably frequently) has been reduced in my memory to "that time she came out to Laura Dern!" A major moment in TV history, but one that has (for me) blocked out the rest of the show, including the fact that a bookstore was involved. (The "coming out" episode was titled "THE PUPPY EPISODE" in order to keep it under wraps, and, well, "THE PUPPY EPISODE" is 15 letters long ... come on, constructors, you know you want to)
• 7D: Starbuck's higher-up? (AHAB) — a Moby-Dick clue, obviously. Starbuck is the Chief Mate, whereas AHAB is the captain (his superior, a "higher-up").
• 33D: What you might call a tipsy friend (CAB) — hey, a New Year's Eve clue! Little late, but it's the thought that counts. I thought this answer was going to be some kind of slur, like SOT. CAB is nicer.

Got a bunch of Holiday Pet Pics still to burn, so let's burn 'em.

First up, appropriately, Chanukah Kitty! This is Mixtli. He enjoys sleeping and using random objects for pillows—highly unusual behavior for a cat...

[Thanks, Caitlin]

[For comparison, here's my cat, Ida, using an old pizza stone for a pillow:]

Here are two dog babies, Nanook and Buster, taking turns under the Christmas tree. 

[Thanks, Jim Thompson ... I love your crime fiction!]

Here's Figaro playing with a catnip toy, in a picture taken from his audition reel, I'm guessing.

[Thanks, Stephen]

Here are Baxter and Chinoag being such perfect little gentlepups that I can only imagine treats await them jjuussst out of frame...

[Thanks, Bea & Craig]

And finally, here's Miro, who sees you when you're sleeping and *definitely* knows when you're awake:

[Thanks, Jay]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]