Splashy government expenditure? / FRI 2-28-25 / Kaitlin of "Hacks" / W.N.B.A. star Jewell / Achaean strongman of myth / Common ingredient in Scotch pie / Subcompact Nissan offering / Ghostly image / Party-eschewing type: Abbr. / Fruit harvested by the ribeirinhos / Question that might elicit more questions

Constructor: Michael Lieberman

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (depending on how many of the many many names you knew in the N/NW)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Scotch pie (27A: Common ingredient in Scotch pie) —

A Scotch pie is a double-crust meat pie, traditionally filled with minced mutton (whereby also called a mutton pie) but now generally beef, sometimes lamb. It may also be known as a shell pie to differentiate it from other varieties of savoury pie, such as the steak pie, steak and kidney pie, steak-and-tattie (potato) pie, and so forth. The Scotch pie originated in Scotland, but can be found in other parts of the United Kingdom and abroad. // Scotch pies are often sold alongside other types of hot food in football grounds, traditionally accompanied by a drink of Bovril, resulting in the occasional reference to football pies. They are also often served hot by take-away restaurants and bakeries and at outdoor events. The hard crust enables it to be eaten by hand with no wrapping. (wikipedia)  

Bovril is a thick and salty meat extract paste, similar to a yeast extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston. It is sold in a distinctive bulbous jar and as cubes and granules. Its appearance is similar to the British Marmite and its Australian equivalent Vegemite. Bovril is owned and distributed by Unilever UK. // Bovril can be made into a drink by diluting with hot water or, less commonly, with milk. It can be used as a flavouring for soups, broth, stews or porridge, or as a spread, especially on toast. In 2004 Unilever removed beef ingredients from the Bovril formula, rendering it vegetarian, but in 2006, reversed that decision and reintroduced beef ingredients to the formula. (wikipedia)

• • •

[D'Jewelry, LOL; such a good show]

There are four not-universally-famous names in this grid and they are *all* in a relatively small 9x5 segment in the N/NW. The rest of the grid—mercifully free of such names. STREEP, that's what you call "universally famous." But NIA LOYD OLSON and even KORS, not so much. I say "even KORS" because that was the one name (of those four) that I knew outright, but despite his name’s being reasonably famous, and its having been in the puzzle before, I know for sure that lots of solvers still won't know it. KORS is not STREEP, after all. So ... you have to keep your eye on the crosses, and, well, I *watch* Hacks and I still don't know who Kaitlin OLSON is. She's not one of the two main stars, that's for sure. Now I gotta look her up ... Oh, ****, she's D.J.!? Awesome, love her, but, as I say, I had no idea what the actress's real name was. And OLSON is a name with a *notoriously* ambiguous spelling; even if you know someone's name is OLSON, unless you know that person very well, you're going to be haunted by the "E" v. "O" question. So anyway, my condolences to the non-zero number of you who finished with OLSEN / KERS. It's a bad cross. Just because I didn't fail there doesn't mean it’s not bad. See how that works?—whether you, specifically, knew one of the answers is *irrelevant*—the question is: is a sizable contingent of solvers likely to wipe out on a single square? Especially if that square involves two names crossing at an uninferable letter (*especially* a vowel)—that's a Natick. Or at least a potential one. A conscientious puzzlemaker, one who is truly attentive to craft, is going to see that issue and fix it. And then you've got both NIA (22A: "The Marvels" director DaCosta) and LOYD (4D: W.N.B.A. star Jewell) stuck in that same section??? A very unpleasant and overly name-y opening to what is, overall, a pretty decent puzzle. Names are fine, they're part of crosswords, but if they're not universally famous, you have to treat them like hazardous material. You have to be extra-attentive to Every Single Cross. And, ideally, space the damned things out, yeesh.

[Best thing about the grid! Never a bad time for Stevie!]

Once I got out of the N/NW, things smoothed out considerably, and I could (eventually) better appreciate how solid and even sparkly a lot of the grid is, especially those banks of longer answers in the corners. Not a fan of the very contrived "OKAY" (vs. "OK") in "OKAY, I GIVE," and I don't know what PAJAMA DAY ... is? Is that a thing at school? (12D: Event with a casual dress code). The clue should give some context. But SEX SCENES, outstanding, a, and all the other sets of long corner answers have no real weak spots. I particularly loved MISO PASTE (because it adds deliciousness wherever it goes, and also seems like an original answer) and PITCH CLOCK (Opening Day ... I can feel it ... it's coming). There's more gunky short fill than I would like, but I may be unfairly comparing it to yesterday's puzzle, where the gunky short fill was truly at a minimum. Nothing like CIT or LANED or PAI in yesterday's grid. But overall, this grid is probably actually less gunky than most. 

Only two actual mistakes today ("actual mistakes" meaning I literally physically put in the wrong answer and later had to retract it). I had ANA DaCosta instead of NIA (obviously semi-confusing her with ANA de Armas). I stopped going to Marvel movies almost a decade a go, and I stopped paying attention to them at all about the same time, so while I was vaguely aware of the major flop that was The Marvels, and vaguely aware that a woman had directed it … there’s a heavy emphasis on "vaguely.” "The film was a box-office bomb, grossing $206 million worldwide against a gross production budget of $374 million, making it the lowest-grossing film in the MCU and one of the few MCU films not to break-even in its theatrical run" (wikipedia). Just a little context for you. My other mistake was TOGA for SARI (54A: Draped garment). I struggled to get FOLLICLE (37D: Hair-raising thing?), and when I finally did ... I had it written as FOLLACLE (thanks, TOGA). Speaking of the clue on FOLLICLE ... ugh, too many "?" clues in the grid for my taste today. A few judiciously placed and perfectly written "?" clues are fine, welcome even, but eight (8) felt like an annoying barrage. Stop trying so hard to be cute. Stop winking at me. Every "?" you add beyond, say, the fourth, should have a higher and higher level of excellence. That is, if you're going to throw eight (8!) at me, they better kill. These .... are mostly just OK, at best. I don't even really get why "photographs" is involved in the SILO clue (56A: Subject of some grainy photographs). I get that you want your "grainy" pun real bad, but there's no necessary connection between SILOs and photographs. A SILO is just one of infinite things you might take a photograph of. Meh. Of the "?" cues, I think [Splashy government expenditure?] and [Hot takes?] are probably the best. They're worded just right, and the answers (PUBLIC POOL and SEX SCENES, respectively) are strong enough that they make the "?"-iness of it all seem worth it.

Bullet points:

• 15A: Question that might elicit more questions ("ANYONE ELSE?") — oy, I had only the "Y" at first (from the gimme, BY SEA), and so of course I wanted the first three letters here to be "WHY...?"
• 55A: Fruit harvested by the ribeirinhos (AÇAI) — no idea, really, but "ribeirinhos" looked Portuguese (i.e. Brazilian), so I went with the appropriate four-letter fruit. And was not wrong. Ribeirinhos are, per wikipedia, "a traditional rural population in the Amazon rainforest, who live near rivers."
• 61A: Work-from-home attire, perhaps (ATHLEISURE) — maybe it's the proximity / adjacency of the baseball answer (PITCH CLOCK) that did it, but I really thought "work-from-home" was going to be umpire-related.
• 5D: Party-eschewing type: Abbr. (IND) — It me! (as of last year). I like this clue, in that I was thinking of a completely different type of party, and was very tempted to write in INT (for "introvert") (it also me!). 
• 44D: Ghostly image (WRAITH) — the "image" part threw me. Badly. I think of WRAITHs as actual ghostly creatures, not mere "images." Maybe I'm misremembering my Monster Manual.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Congratulations to my daughter Ella on [redacted because I'm not allowed to post about it yet]! (there's a clue to what this redacted thing is in today's grid, actually, but I CAN'T tell you even that—it'd be too obvious. You'll just. have to speculate until she gives me the OK)

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Shook one's defender, in sports lingo / THU 2-27-25 / Apt surname for Scarlett / X-communicates? / Pants in which you may carry a pen / 2000s HBO series about a polygamous family / Bark beetle's target

Constructor: David Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium

THEME: POCKETS (35A: What the U's in this puzzle's solution represent) — theme answers are types of pants, all of which contain the letter "U"; that letter "represents" a POCKET, in that it "contains" (via the Down cross) some item one might find in the pockets of one's pants:

Theme answers:

• BLUE JEANS (18A: Pants in which you may carry a glove) 
• BIG LOVE (8D: 2000s HBO series about a polygamous family) 
• TROUSERS (23A: Pants in which you may carry a pen)
• GOT OPEN (4D: Shook one's defender, in sports lingo)
• JODHPURS (48A: Pants in which you may carry a key)
• MICKEY (37D: ___ Mouse)
• CORDUROYS (53A: Pants in which you may carry a phone)
• PERSEPHONE (35D: Greek goddess of spring)

Word of the Day: BIG LOVE (8D) —

Big Love is an American drama television series created by Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer that aired on HBO from 2006 to 2011. It stars Bill Paxton as the patriarch of a fundamentalist Mormon family in contemporary Utah that practices polygamy, with Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny, and Ginnifer Goodwin portraying his wives. The series charts the family's life in and out of the public sphere in their Salt Lake City suburb, as well as their associations with a fundamentalist compound in the area. It features key supporting performances from Amanda Seyfried, Grace Zabriskie, Daveigh Chase, Matt Ross, Mary Kay Place, Bruce Dern, Melora Walters, and Harry Dean Stanton.

The series premiered in the United States on March 11, 2006, following the sixth-season premiere of the HBO series The Sopranos. Big Love was a success for HBO, running for five seasons before concluding its run on March 20, 2011. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ha ha, what a weird little puzzle, I love it. I've seen a lot of rebus puzzles in my day, so any time a puzzle takes a rebus somewhere fresh or new or unexpected, I'm thrilled. Maybe "thrilled" is too strong for today, but "solidly amused," definitely. The only (mild) disappointment was the revealer (and its location). I understand why it is where it is—it's a perfect fit. But I feel like the "aha" moment came too early (since I was working steadily top to bottom). Also, POCKETS is explanatory, sure, but it's not very playful or funny or clever—I was expecting some kind of wordplay in the revealer, some phrase that the whole puzzle was punning on. POCKETS is just like "... it's POCKETS!" But while POCKETS is all business, totally straightforward, the gimmick itself is bizarre enough (and, before I got to the revealer, mysterious enough) that I still let out a little "Oh!" An "Oh" for the "U" gimmick! Before that, I was trying to imagine reasons why the letters inside the pants might get rebused in the cross. I got the PEN rebus very, very easily: the answer was obviously GOT OPEN, and the first letters worked but the whole answer wouldn't fit so I just shoved the PEN part in one square—ta da! But once I worked out TROUSERS, I had no idea why the "U," specifically, was the square that contained the PEN. I thought there was some kind of Ivy League wordplay going on: "so ... U ... PEN ... U. PENN? Strange. How are they going to make this work with Yale and Princeton?" Then I managed to work out BLUE JEANS (thank god I remembered BIG LOVE was a thing) and thought "U. GLOVE ... there's no University of Glove. What is happening?" And then, a wee bit later: POCKETS to the explanatory rescue! After that, it was just a matter of spelling JODHPURS and CORDUROYS correctly (not necessarily a given for me, but I got through).

The theme was super-easy as rebuses go, largely because the theme clues tell you what is going to be in the rebus square. You are told your pants might be carrying a PEN, a GLOVE, etc. So for me, MICKEY and PERSEPHONE, which already pretty easily clued, were total no-brainers, as I fully understood the theme at that point, and the clues on both those answer just handed me huge chunks of those answers (KEY and PHONE, respectively). But even though it was on the simple side, the puzzle was still fun. I was genuinely curious to see how the pocket gimmick was going to play out, and the results were really impressive. Also impressive—the grid is not loaded with gunk. Lots of short answers, but never once did I feel like I was wading through crosswordese sludge.  There's ordinary and common stuff here and there, but SRTA was about as bad as it got, and that's not that bad. The theme is so charming that the short fill hardly seemed to matter. You can get away with a lot when your theme is great. But this grid didn't actually get away with anything—the fill is legit solid. Everywhere. So beautifully and smoothly crafted. I know it probably looks fairly ordinary, the short stuff, but I cannot tell you how hard it is to get your boring-ass fill to come out smooth and not lumpy. Just to get it to inconspicuous is a real feat of craftsmanship, one that most constructors just don't take the time to bother with. But David (despite not even being 30 yet), is an old pro, a longtime editor himself, so solving his puzzles ... I always feel confident that I'm in good hands.

I cringed a little at TEEN DAD (40D: Certain young parent)—not sure why, just weird that it's a concept at all (same with TEEN MOM, frankly). It just sounds like a bad / exploitative reality show (which TEEN MOM actually is) (it's a whole ****ing MTV franchise, an empire even: Teen Mom 2, Teen Mom 3 ... Teen Mom: Young Moms' Club!?) (I remember when MTV used to show music videos; good times). Was not sure how I felt about the clue on REDD (62A: Apt surname for Scarlett), but now I think I like it. "Scarlet" is a word meaning "red," so ... double the last letter on one, double the last letter on the other! "Apt!" I don't really love that the clue for REDD contains "Scarlett" when one of REDD's crosses is, in fact, SCAR, but who's going to notice this but me? People are going to be too distracted by the wackiness of the whole REDD clue concept to notice the SCAR cross (I mean, probably). The only answer besides REDD that (kinda) slowed me down was CENA, which I wrote in as CERA, despite having been over the CERA / CENA distinction before. I mean, look at them side by side, there's no mistaking them for one another, but as mere tetragrams ... man they are near-identical twins. CERA is the lanky comedic actor who has been in a ton of movies, and who played George Michael Bluth in Arrested Development. John CENA ... is a pro wrestler. Though like CERA, he is also an actor. So ... yeah, I'm never going to keep these names straight. My cross to bear.

[CERA]

[CENA]

Bullets:

• 10A: Pupil: aperture :: ___ : diaphragm (IRIS) — embarrassing how long (comparatively) it took me to get this, which is to say embarrassing that I didn't get this almost instantly. "Diaphragm" had me thinking some completely different part of the body was involved. I didn't know we were staying in the eye.
• 1D: X-communicates? (DMS) — as in "communicates on the app owned by that Nazi-saluting piece of shit El*n M*sk." The app stupidly and confusingly known as "X" (née Twitter).
• 47A: Matches or watches (SEES) — "Matches" in poker, "watches" with the eyes.
• 64A: Herb with a silent H (THYME) — easy, but might be slightly confusing to Americans, for whom "Herb" itself has a "silent H."
• 25D: Bad comment to hear from your surgeon ("OOPS!") — this should not have made me laugh but it did. Also, if I'm hearing any comments from my surgeon, something has gone drastically wrong.

Happy Thursday! It's cocktail night for me, so I will be enjoying a Manhattan and all its various components (58D: Manhattan component = RYE). See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Inspiration for a seafood chain / WED 2-26-25 / Preppy fabric / Numismatic rating / Stunt performer on "Jackass" / Area of frenetic dancing / "Ammo" for a modern-day cannon / D to F, e.g., in music / Writer's starting point / Frequent filler for a po' boy / Pixar's Remy, for one / Title sitcom character voiced by Paul Fusco

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Long" answers — phrases with "LONG" in them are represented by having the words that "LONG" modifies e"long"ated in the grid, i.e. every letter of those words takes up two spaces (instead of one):

Theme answers:

• JJOOHHNN SILVER (for "Long John Silver") (4D: Inspiration for a seafood chain)
• "TTIIMMEE, NO SEE" (for "Long time, no see") (17D: "It's been ages!")
• DADDY LLEEGGSS (for "daddy longlegs") (9D: Creepy crawler)
• "WHY THE FFAACCEE?" (for "Why the long face?") (15D: What a stereotypical bartender asks after a horse walks into a bar)

Word of the Day: STEVE-O (51A: Stunt performer on "Jackass") —

Stephen Gilchrist Glover (born June 13, 1974), known professionally as Steve-O, is an American stunt performer, comedian, television personality, YouTuber, and podcast host. His career is mostly centered on his shocking and pain-inducing stunts in the reality comedy television series Jackass (2000–2001) and its related films Jackass: The Movie (2002), Jackass Number Two (2006), Jackass 3D (2010), and Jackass Forever (2022), as well as its spin-off series Wildboyz (2003–2006) and Dr. Steve-O (2007). [...] On June 4, 2008, Steve-O pleaded guilty to felony possession of cocaine. He avoided jail with the successful completion of a treatment program. In July, after 115 days of sobriety, Steve-O announced he was "back in the loony bin". He returned to the mental institution, he said, because "I've had horrible mood swings and severe depression. My brain is fucked up from using so much cocaine, ketamine, PCP, nitrous oxide, and all sorts of other drugs." [...] In an episode of his podcast Steve-O’s Wild Ride! released in May 2023, Steve-O revealed that he has struggled with sex addiction. Steve-O is also known to have struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction. He is 16 years sober as of September 2024. (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme is cute—and it's definitely better that the theme answers today are Downs rather than Acrosses, as you get the "long" effect better that way (Across "long" answers would've just looked squat). Still, though, whatever "cuteness" there is here burns out quickly. And I mean quickly. Once I figured out that WTF Elvis song (1A: "___ Ever" (Elvis song in "G.I. Blues") ("DIDJA"), and saw that the first themer started "JJOO," whoosh, off I went:

But then after I saw that the next themer just did the "long" theme again ... well, the others weren't hard to figure out. At all. Now that I knew that those answers contained "long," I just rattled the remaining two themers off with no additional help. No crosses needed at all for that bartender/horse gag:

And in under a minute, the "theme" part of the puzzle is over and then there's just the mostly tedious process of filling in the rest of the grid. It didn't have to be tedious, necessarily, but today it mostly was. Hard to make a seemingly interminable number of 3s and 4s seem interesting. At least it was over quickly, I guess. The fill got particularly ugly in places. that bottom section is literally more than half "E"s. Then there's, oof, SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System, often just Super Nintendo, or Super NES ... a very ugly piece of fill, and dated to boot) and STEVE-O (more original, but still ... dated). Throw in EMINEM and the gravitational pull of this puzzle feels *very* turn-of-the-century. But the main problem was that the theme was just too easy, over too quickly, and there's simply not a lot you can do with 3s and 4s. Very plain, mostly dull. I liked MOSH PIT (26A: Area of frenetic dancing) and especially SEERSUCKER (58A: Preppy fabric). I don't even really know what SEERSUCKER is (except that it precedes the word "suit")—I just like the way it sounds. Where does that word come from? Why would you want to suck a seer? Don't answer. I'll just look it up

Seersucker, hickory stripe or railroad stripe is a thin, puckered, usually cotton fabric, commonly but not necessarily striped or chequered, used to make clothing for hot weather. The word originates from the Persian words شیر shîr and شکر shakar, literally meaning "milk and sugar", from the gritty texture ("sugar") on the otherwise smooth ("milk") cloth. (wikipedia)

OK, wow, that was legitimately interesting. Looking things up! As long as you don't trust the answers that Google's AI Overview gives you, it's a great thing to do!

[Wait ... is *this* true?]

I had MINOR CHORD (?) before MINOR THIRD (16A: D to F, e.g., in music), which cost me a few seconds, and then I had slight trouble getting into the SW corner from the back ends of OUTLINE and STEVE-O. Never watched "Jackass" (though the name STEVE-O def rings a bell) and OUTLINE? "Writer's starting point?" LOL, not this writer. I never understood outlines. I hated when we had to write OUTLINEs in high school or middle school or whenever the last time was that I wrote an OUTLINE. How can you know the structure of the thing before you write it? I guess if you think of it as totally discardable, then OK. Still, I'd rather just start. Even getting that answer to ---LINE didn't help at all. Still, it's not like any real struggle was taking place down here. This was maybe the only non-Monday/Tuesday part of the grid for me, and even then it was just solidly Wednesday ... which is the day that it is.

Some more:

• 13A: Eggplant is a commonly used one (EMOJI) — this is the closest the NYTXW will come to putting "dick" in the puzzle.
• 39A: Numismatic rating (FINE) — "numismatic" means "related to coins." In coin-collecting, the coins are graded or rated. This clue could easily have been [Bibliophilic rating], as books are graded similarly. But "Numismatic" is probably a slightly tougher word than "Bibliophilic," so sure, toughen things up, why not? It needs it.

• 46A: Exotic pet store offerings (IGUANAS) — boo, pet stores! Boo especially "exotic" pets. Cats and dogs, those are "pets," and you don't get them at "pet stores." We've been over this.
• 59D: Org. with the Acid Rain Program (EPA) — "A 2021 study found that the "Acid Rain Program caused lasting improvements in ambient air quality," reducing mortality risk by 5% over 10 years" (wikipedia). Gonna be fun when the EPA is completely dismantled, along with other useful parts of the Federal Government. Hope you like "mortality risk!" And measles!
• 57A: Field of Jean-Luc Godard (CINE) — read this as [Friend of Jean-Luc Godard] and wrote in AMIE, true story

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Gesture with razzle-dazzle / TUES 2-25-25 / Native of the Dutch Caribbean / Call after last call? / Mario Kart item providing temporary invincibility

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday in this short month of February! My write-up last month was delayed because I had to prep for a client’s asylum hearing. It ended up being postponed but only until last week, AND HE GOT ASYLUM! In other, not-at-all-related good news, my Liverpool Reds are looking mighty good right now (yes, I just knocked on wood). There are 11 games left in the Premier League season, and we have a large lead over Arsenal (my sister’s team; sorry, Shannon!) My other Red (my puppy) is also doing well. She’s getting so big (already 23 pounds at four months) and is still very cute, if a little insane and energetic and bitey sometimes (all the time?).

Anywho, on to the puzzle...

Constructor: Greg Snitkin

Relative difficulty: Easy-medium

THEME: NOT ON MY WATCH (56A: "I forbid this" … or what a smart device wearer might claim regarding the ends of 20-, 30-, 40- and 48-Across?) — the end of each of the theme answers contains a typical feature of an analog watch that would presumably not be found on a smartwatch

Theme answers:

• BILLY CRYSTAL (20A: Meg Ryan's co-star in "When Harry Met Sally …") 
• DRUNK DIAL (30A: Call after last call?) 
• NUT CASE (40A: Kook) 
• JAZZ HANDS (48A: Gesture with razzle-dazzle)

Word of the Day: NENA (59D: Band with the 1984 hit "99 Luftballons") —

Nena was a West German Neue Deutsche Welle band formed in West Berlin in 1981. In 1983 and 1984, their German-language song "99 Luftballons" (and its English version, "99 Red Balloons") reached number one in the singles charts of countries around the world. By the time the band released its second album ? (Fragezeichen) in Germany in January 1984, "99 Luftballons" was starting to climb the US charts, where it reached number 2 and became one of the most successful non-English-language tracks in US Billboard chart history. With the English version of the song ("99 Red Balloons") achieving the number 1 position in the UK, the band became internationally famous. (Wiki)

• • •

That was a decently cute puzzle. It was also somehow on my wavelength, so this was one of the faster Tuesdays I’ve had in a while. I liked the theme answers, especially JAZZ HANDS (48A) and DRUNK DIAL (30A), and the phrase for the theme revealer, NOT ON MY WATCH (56A), but the more I think about it, the less I’m convinced the revealer really fits. My sister’s Apple smartwatch has a DIAL and a CASE, and the displays on some smartwatches can be made up of LED CRYSTALs. 

Some of the clues may have been trying a bit too hard to be clever, but there were several clue/answer combos that I chuckled at and enjoyed. My favorite was 25D: Big name in brewing as LIPTON. And then the puzzle had SAMUEL (51D: Adams in a bar) in it, too, which was clever. I liked 63A: Call it an early night? as DUSK and 33D: Launch party? as NASA. Less clever was 69A: Most of 1999 as NINES (though I liked that the clue number had a nine in it.) I think the clue for 62D: Leave a small tip to get HINT (62D) was trying too hard to misdirect us toward thinking about a restaurant; you don’t “leave” a tip if you are HINTing about something; you “give” a tip. I could take or leave 39A: Sister as NUN, which has been done before, but it also reminded me of the movie “Conclave” and how it feels like this awards season is a reenactment of the movie’s plot. We may even get a real conclave soon, if the pope’s health sadly continues to deteriorate. 

The construction of the puzzle was fairly basic. There weren’t any answers longer than seven letters, other than the themes and revealer, and there were only two of them. The bulk of the puzzle was instead four- and five-letter words, which weren’t terribly exciting and which made the puzzle feel a bit dry. (Though I did like METE and DEFT.) The puzzle was actually a pangram, which I don’t think necessarily added much but which also didn’t feel like a stretch, as pangram puzzles sometimes can. 

I didn’t like having both TONI (57D: Woman's name that's an anagram of 58-Down) and TORI (2D: Spelling or Amos) in the puzzle, along with IS IT (19A: "You sure about that?") and ON IT (58D: "I'll get to work right now!") and then TIS (43A: "___ the season") to round it off. Having DONEZO (29D: Finished, in slang), ZONKED (49D: Totally beat), and NOOB (53A: One most likely to get pwned) all in that western section together was a bit too much slang. I was prepared to dislike REAL MAN (4D: One who wears pink, in a breast cancer awareness campaign) because it sounded very strange to me, until I remembered that “Real Men Wear Pink” was a campaign for breast cancer awareness. I do think, then, a better answer would’ve been “real men.” 

But overall, this was a cute enough puzzle with good theme answers, a few interesting words, and fun phrases (see: YOGA MAT, JAZZ HANDS). And it's always satisfying to be fast.

Misc.:

• I’m confused why, when you click on 58D on the puzzle on a computer, it highlights 1A. That didn’t happen on my phone, though, so it seems like it was a bug of some sort. 
• USA (32D: Women's soccer powerhouse) is indeed very, very dominant. For those interested, the USWNT is playing in the SheBelieves Cup right now, and the final game is Wednesday night. If the USA beats Japan, they win the tournament. Yes, it’s a mostly meaningless tournament and is about getting young players more minutes and trying different formations, but it’s still the USWNT and is therefore incredible. 
• My sister and I plan to go see GYPSY (55D: Hit 1959 musical with the song “Let Me Entertain You”) in New York with the insanely talented Audra McDonald. I just need to figure out what to do with my puppy while we’re gone. 
• With STAR (1A: Mario Kart item providing temporary invincibility) and ONE UP (66A: Extra life, in video games) both in the puzzle, I might need to play more video games! 
• Why wait until Black Friday to SHOP (10A)? Novices. I shop year-round. 
• No matter what he’s in or where I see him, BILLY CRYSTAL (20A) will always be Miracle Max from “The Princess Bride” to me

And that’s all from me! Have a great March. 

Signed, Clare Carroll, a smartWATCH-er of Liverpool

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Tiny, juicy bit to eat / MON 2-24-25 / Bosom buddies, in modern lingo / Disabuses of false notions / Adventurer from Neverland / Some out-of-office training / Prepared students specifically for material on standardized exams / Parent's conversation-ending reply / Classical source of inspiration

Constructor: Rena Cohen

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: SETS STRAIGHT (54A: Disabuses of false notions ... or a hint to the circled letters) — circled letters, read top to bottom, spell "SET" (four times)

Theme answers:

   WASHESDISHES (20A: Helps with dinner cleanup)
FIELDEXPERIENCE (29A: Some out-of-office training)
TAUGHTTOTHETEST (46A: Prepared students specifically for material on standardized exams)

Word of the Day: PETER PAN (36D: Adventurer from Neverland) —

Peter Pan is a 1950 musical adaptation of J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up with music and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein; it opened on Broadway on April 24, 1950. This version starred Jean Arthur as Peter Pan, Boris Karloff in the dual roles of George Darling and Captain Hook, and Marcia Henderson as Wendy. The show was orchestrated by Trude Rittmann and Hershy Kay and conducted by Benjamin Steinberg. The show ran for 321 performances, closing on January 27, 1951. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's just nothing interesting about "SET"s being "straight." I don't know how hard it was to find themers that worked, but I do know that just seeing "S"s over "E"s over "T"s in circled letters ... that was not the kind of thematic payoff I was looking for. The themers themselves are either dull or awkward, with WASHES being in the third person and TAUGHT being past tense ... just 'cause. Because that's what fit. And FIELD EXPERIENCE, while solid, is not exactly scintillating. The only answer I really enjoyed today was "ME THREE!" That was clever. Not sure I've seen that before. (Oh, looks like I have seen it, though it's been five years ... oof, Mar. 5, 2020, that was ... not good times). 

I actually kinda liked two other answers, both of which I struggled with a bit today, as I was trying to solve Downs-only. CHUGGED took me a bit because the "C" came from "C MINUS," and let me tell you, if you're solving Downs-only, that letter before MINUS? Could be lots of things. Well, four things, technically, but that's a lot. And then the clue for CHUGGED wasn't really giving me "drinking"—I was thinking eating, like "gulping" down your food. So the first letter was a mystery and the specifically drinking context was a mystery, so ... it just took some hacking and patience, that's all. Much worse, much harder, was GETS REAL (8D: Sinks in). That clue was little help. The answer is so figurative ... or the clue is ... whatever, you really gotta think metaphorically for that answer to, uh, sink in, and I was staring at ---S-EA- with absolutely no idea how to complete the answer, for what felt like a long time. I abandoned the area, got almost everything else, came back to it, tried GETS REAL, but sincerely did not think it was right. So I was stunned (said "omigod" out loud), when I completed the grid in the SW and got the "Congratulations" message. GETS REAL. Wow. Nailed it, I guess. Guess that was a good guess. Better than any other ideas I had, that's for sure (CAPS HEAT? EATS BEAR?)

The fill on this one feels less than great. That SW in particular (ETRE TAT, SSNS ENO), but also the NW (UTAHANS and all its spelling variants, always ugly, ETC. ETC., never satisfying) ... REN BTS RASTA OHMS ESTE INIT (alongside EATIT?). It's probably just average, but the fact that I'm noticing short fill at all on a Monday is disappointing. As for "SAYS ME" (13D: Parent's conversation-ending reply), it's a fine answer, but the clue does not strike me as accurate on two counts. First, it doesn't sound very parental. Sounds more like schoolyard bully. The grammar and the childishness just makes the "parent" part ... dubious. Also, LOL at the idea that saying "SAYS ME!" to a child is going to "end" the "conversation." Does anyone involved in the making of this puzzle have kids? My kid would've laughed in my face if I'd said "SAYS ME!" and she would've been right to do so.

Bullet Points:

• 36D: Adventurer from Neverland (PETER PAN) — I assume everyone knows who PETER PAN is but I made the answer my "Word of the Day" anyway in honor of Jean Arthur, whom I adore, and whose performance as PETER PAN I was reminded of today while watching some of the extras on my Blu-ray of the 1935 John Ford film The Whole Town's Talking (starring Edward G. Robinson in dual roles, as a milquetoast accountant and a vicious gangster). Any chance I have to add Jean Arthur content to the blog, I'm gonna take it.

• 48D: Business reversal (UPTURN) — took a beat or two for the term "business reversal" to mean anything to me. Then I wrote in UPTICK.
• 23D: Bosom buddies, in modern lingo (BFFS) — you mean "bosom buddies" isn't considered "modern" anymore? That's so sad.

• 39D: Classical source of inspiration (MUSE) — first thought was much more specific (CLIO, the MUSE of History), but that didn't look good in the grid so I backed it up, one level of generality, and voila!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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