Treasure-seeking woodcutter of folklore / SUN 1-12-25 / House, slangily / Ecological portmanteau since 1905 / Oxford institution, familiarly / Blue tang fish of Pixar fame / Walker with the 2015 triple-platinum hit "Faded" / Devices worn by informants / How an animal's length may be measured / Opera character whose name might be heard in an opera singer's warm-up / Tool used in many a sci-fi film / The stuff of Persian myths? / Big letters in the pharmaceutical industry / Mythological owner of an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir

Constructor: Jeffrey Martinovic

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "I Think Knot" — words for things that come in strands, or that can be "knot"ted, can be found in three sets of circled squares; each set features two "strands" that are "knot"ted together—that is, they run into one another and then bend 90 degrees (the "strands" share one letter, which represents the "knot," I guess). Then there are three different "revealers":

The "Knots" (from top to bottom):

• STRING / THREAD

              T

              H

            STREAD

              I

              N

              G

• YARN / CABLE

              C

             YABLE

              R

              N

• ROPE / CORD

              C

             RORD

              P

              E

              

The Revealers:

• HIDDEN WIRES (3D: Devices worn by informants ... and what can be found inside three pairs of answers in this puzzle)
• ALL TIED UP (94A: Even ... or like three pairs of answers in this puzzle)
• CROSS STITCH (15D: Bit of embroidery ... or what's depicted literally three times in this puzzle)

Word of the Day: TAIPEI 101 (111A: ___ 101, 508-meter skyscraper that was once the world's tallest) —

Taipei 101 (Chinese: 台北101; pinyin: Táiběi 101; stylized in all caps), formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, is a 508.0 m (1,667 ft), 101-story skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan. It is owned by Taipei Financial Center Corporation. The building was officially classified as the world's tallest from its opening on 31 December 2004 (in time to celebrate New Year's Eve). However, the Burj Khalifa surpassed Taipei 101 in 2010. The construction of Taipei 101 was a joint venture led by Kumagai Gumi, a Japanese construction company, in cooperation with Samsung C&T of South Korea. Upon completion, it became the world's first skyscraper to exceed a height of half a kilometer (about 0.3 miles). As of 2023, Taipei 101 is the tallest building in Taiwan and the eleventh tallest building in the world. The skyscraper celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024. [...] In 2011, Taipei 101 was awarded a Platinum certificate rating under the LEED certification system for energy efficiency and environmental design, becoming the tallest and largest green building in the world. The structure regularly appears as an icon of Taipei in international media, and the Taipei 101 fireworks displays are a regular feature of New Year's Eve broadcasts and celebrations.

• • •

***THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU*** Today is the last day of my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. This week is always a bit overwhelming for me, as I usually only have a very vague idea of who my audience is, where they live, etc. And then all of a sudden, in a gush, I get a bunch of messages from actual people with actual names from actual places on the map (Florida! Ireland! ... Antarctica!? Really? (really)). I'm usually very content to live my life just writing (and teaching) and not otherwise interacting with humans too much. Wife. Cats. That's about it most days. This is the one week of the year when I feel the most ... visible, and it's not necessarily the most comfortable feeling in the world for me, if I'm being honest, but you all have been So Nice—so generous, so encouraging, that any social anxiety I might've felt has (once again) been eclipsed by feelings of gratitude and good fortune. I have said every possible permutation of "Thank you" this week, and it still doesn't feel like enough. I can't tell you what your readership and support means to me. Your cards and letters began arriving this week, and I'm excited to dig into those (I'm expecting many cat cards, cat pictures, and cat stories, and I couldn't be happier about that prospect). This year's thank-you cards arrived earlier this week, and they look great. The first batch is already in the mail (look at me! on top of things! for once!)

If you were able to contribute this year, that is thrilling to me, but if you weren't able, that's also OK. Money is tight for many and you can only manage what you can manage. This blog is free to anyone who wants it or needs it, whether you are a financial backer or not. I just want you to keep solving and keep reading. Thanks for taking the time to pay attention to any of this. One last time, here are the various ways you can contribute (now, or at any time during the year). 

There's Paypal:

There's Venmo: @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which it apparently does sometimes)

And if you want a cat postcard, there's the actual mail (you can make checks payable to either "Michael Sharp” or “Rex Parker"): 

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp

54 Matthews St.

Binghamton, NY 13905 

All this contact information lives full-time in the sidebar of my website, in case you feel inclined to contribute months from now :) 

OK. That's it. To all my readers (and my hate-readers)—What a bunch of wonderful weirdos you are. As Debbie Boone once sang to God, you light up my life. A million thanks for your time and attention. Now here's your Sunday puzzle...

• • •

Hoo boy. As I have indicated at the end of every write-up this week, my lowest-rated puzzle day of the week last year, by far, was Sunday, and today's puzzle helps ensure that that trend will continue into 2025. I guess the idea is that if you don't have one perfect revealer, you go instead with ... three imperfect ones. Throw in the title of the puzzle, and you have a lot of soft-groan punning and not a lot of excitement. Plus, a lot of imprecision. None of the "knot" formations look anything like HIDDEN WIRES. That is, none of the "strands" that interlock in this puzzle comes close to resembling a wire. Maybe "cable" comes close, but "yarn"?? And nothing in the answer HIDDEN WIRES gets at the central premise of the theme, which is that the strands cross and form "knots." Also, the very phrase HIDDEN WIRES struck me as contrived. Informants wear wires. Just ... wires. Of course they're "hidden"—would be pretty hard to get incriminating info if you were wearing the wire on the outside of your clothes. That was the worst revealer of the bunch, for sure. CROSS STITCH isn't great either. You don't stitch "rope," do you? And make up your mind about what the answers are doing. Are they merely "crossing," or are they "tied up?" Anyway, sharing a single letter hardly seems to qualify as a "knot." The whole premise felt limp, the execution awkward. Some of the longer answers involved are pretty colorful on their own: QUEEN OF CARNIVAL, SPACE TELESCOPE, GROWTH RINGS, all very nice. But overall, as a puzzle theme goes, this was definitely knot for me.

Bad taste in my mouth right from the start today. You open with MEH? And then cross it with one of the most unlikeable, repulsive, out-and-out racist dipshits on the planet (2D: Big first name in American business)?? Say what you will about Joel Fagliano's editing last year (I thought he did a good job under tough circumstances, actually), but under his leadership, ELON disappeared *completely*. Did he have anything to do with it? Was it coincidence? I don't know, man—three (3) ELON appearances in January 2024 alone and then none ... until January 2025, where it's already appeared twice? That's a hell of a coincidence. No one really wants to see ELON in their puzzle, whatever the clue (it's crosswordese—the only way most people know ELON University exists at all), and really, truly, no one wants to see That Guy in their puzzle, please stop. 

Once I got out of the NW, the fill wasn't quite as dire. I don't remember struggling too much. HIDDEN MIKES instead of HIDDEN WIRES, I remember that. HEAD-TO-TAIL before NOSE-TO-TAIL (8D: How an animal's length may be measured). I nailed the spelling on DENIECE Williams's name on the first try, but I definitely wrote those letters (esp. the "IE") in tentatively (63A: R&B singer Williams). As of this second, I have no idea who this ALAN Walker person is who had a "triple-platinum" hit with "Faded" ten years ago (122A: Walker with the 2015 triple-platinum hit "Faded"). Not even sure of the genre. Country? ALAN sounds country. [... consults The Web ...] LOL, no, not even close:

Alan Olav Walker (born 24 August 1997) is a Norwegian DJ and record producer. His songs "Faded", "Sing Me to Sleep", "Alone", "All Falls Down" (with Noah Cyrus and Digital Farm Animals) and "Darkside" (with Au/Ra and Tomine Harket) have each been multi-platinum-certified and reached number 1 on the VG-lista chart in Norway. Walker's music style is reminiscent of slightly slower-paced progressive house, 1990s trance music, or dubstep with a smoother rhythmic edge. 

But outside the awkwardness of one of the theme phrases and a few names, this one didn't present much difficulty. I realized today that I actually know nothing about ALI BABA except his name, and the fact that he's associated with forty thieves. The whole "treasure-seeking woodcutter" was a surprise to me (18A: Treasure-seeking woodcutter of folklore). Something about the way PLAYABLE was clued made it very hard for me to get (92A: Like many video game characters). The "many" is completely arbitrary, and anyway, without context, if you refer to a video game character, I'm just going to assume it's PLAYABLE. I would not call subway ADS "quick reads" any more than I'd call a stop sign a "quick read" (12A: Quick reads on the subway, perhaps). "Unintentional reads," maybe. "Visual pollution," sure. The clue is trying to be cute but it misses, imho. And is "double-JOINTED" a "medical" term (57A: Double-___ (hypermobile, medically))? "Hypermobility" *is* the clinical term, so "(hypermobile, colloquially)" would be more fitting here. Further, ASANA is a general term for *all* yoga poses. Completely bizarre to refer to it as a [Sitting meditation pose] without having an "e.g." after it. Yes, that is *an* ASANA. Down dog is another. Corpse pose another. Anyway, most people, given five letters and a [Sitting meditation pose] clue would probably be inclined to write in LOTUS, which is actually a more accurate answer. Maybe the misdirection was intended. But you can't sacrifice accuracy for misdirection. Or you shouldn't.

Bullets:

• 40A: Disco fan on "The Simpsons" (STU) — there's a famous Disco STU moment ... here, let me find it ... 

The phrase "if these trends continue..." lives in my head permanently, like many Simpsons phrases. Which is why I laughed out loud listening to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 Countdown Year-End Wrap-Up show from 1978 last week (SiriusXM, 70s on 7 has a new (old) Countdown every weekend!). The Bee Gees and other Saturday Night Fever soundtrack albums were still dominating the charts in 1978, well over a year after the movie had come out, as were other disco hits that followed in the wake of that album's success. Anyway, at some point Casey, making predictions about the upcoming year of 1979, literally (or very nearly literally) said "if these trends continue..." and then predicted a lot more disco. I pointed at the car radio and shouted "Disco STU!" My wife just looked at me quizzically (not unusual). And Casey was right about 1979, by the way. But the crash was looming.

• 68A: It's connected to the eustachian tube (EAR) — look, I don't *have* to tell you this, but I'm just gonna come clean and admit that I briefly but tragically confused the eustachian tube with the fallopian tube here and tried to write in EGG (!?), which doesn't even "connect" to the fallopian tube (optimally), but if you're thinking "three-letter word associated with fallopian tubes," EGG's just what comes up first (or OVA, I guess, but I already had the "E"!!!).
• 79A: Oxford institution, familiarly (OLE MISS) — Oxford, Mississippi, that is. University of Mississippi is better known (esp. among sports fans) as OLE MISS.
• 22D: House, slangily (CRIB) — do people still say this? I figured that once MTV used the term for the title of a show (about celebrity homes), the term would lose street cred.

• 80D: Opera character whose name might be heard in an opera singer's warm-up (MIMI) — an elaborate but very clever clue. MIMI is the female lead in Puccini's La Bohème, which is the opera that Guy and Geneviève go to see at the beginning of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I saw on the big screen for the first time just a couple days ago (60th Anniversary 4K restoration). That movie feels silly at first, but it turns into something moving and magical. Also, it just looks Amazing. Every frame. [whoops, my wife reminds me they saw Carmen in Umbrellas, not La Bohème, my bad]

• 113D: Tool used in many a sci-fi film (CGI) — so tool used *in the making of* many a sci-fi film. Tricky.

This week I'm highlighting the best puzzles of 2024 by focusing on one day at a time. I kept a spreadsheet of every puzzle I solved last year, complete with ratings from 0-100 (with 50 being my idea of an "average" NYTXW) (They really did average out to around 50, with Saturday being my fav day (avg 57.7), and Sunday (obviously) being my least fav (avg 42.9). 

Here are my Top Three Sunday Puzzles of 2024. (I'm not ranking them; it's nicer that way)

• David Kwong, "Art Heist" (Sunday, 12/15/24) — an extremely divisive puzzle that I thought was genius, both conceptually and architecturally. Paintings (represented by artists' names) disappear from the grid, replaced by single letters (from the crosses), which, taken together, form a final message: "I WAS FRAMED." So many layers, so much art. Loved it.
• Harry Zheng, "Multi-Hyphenate" (Sunday, 12/29/24) —my first reaction to this one wasn't very positive, but that's largely because I didn't fully grasp or appreciate the technical achievement: "LINE"s replaced by a series of dashes, where each dash works perfectly as a hyphen in the (Down) crosses. This puzzle grew on me in the days followed, which puzzles rarely do (in that I usually forget them immediately).
• Paolo Pasco, "The Big Five-O" (Sunday, 7/28/24) — the big Olympics puzzle depicting the famous Olympics insignia, the five colored rings. Every answer that forms part of a ring has, as its first word, the color of that ring, so the color itself stands in for the first part of each answer, with BLUEPRINT being represented by a (literally) blue PRINT, e.g. A technical marvel with a fun (and timely) visual gimmick. 

My Constructor of the Year for 2024 is ... well, two people: Paolo Pasco and Sarah Sinclair. They not only made two of my three favorite Thursday puzzles of the year together (MONSTER MASH, STUFFED CRUST), but separately they each made another puzzle that ranked among the three best of the year for its day (Sarah's Christmas Eve Nutcracker puzzle, Paolo's Olympics puzzle (see above). A really amazing output. Looking forward to seeing more from both of them, for many years to come.

That's all, folks. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]