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]