Brit's jolly cry of approval / SUN 3-16-25 / Florentine artist known for frescoes / Frodo's enchanting friend / 14-line poem with only two rhymes across three stanzas / Subway commuters, informally / Not-so-joltin' joe? / Dug through for digital analysis / Hawkeye's real first name in the "Avengers" movies / German soccer legend Manuel who innovated the "sweeper-keeper" role / Cote quote? / Girl who's "sweet as apple cider," per an old song

Constructor: Paul Coulter

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Have It Both Ways" — two Across answers share a common Down segment—that segment reads one way for one of the Acrosses, and the opposite way for the other:

Theme answers:

• BLUE DENIM / DATAMINED (1A: Jeans material / 29A: Dug through for digital analysis)
• PARTS COMPANY / STRAPHANGERS (10A: Leaves a relationship / 32A: Subway commuters, informally)
• ORANGE PEELS / BEAUTY SLEEP (40A: Old-fashioned garnishes / 64A: Something one might need to look good in the morning)
• DECAF COFFEE / FACED THE DAY (69A: Not-so-joltin' joe? / 89A: Got up and at 'em)
• PASSING NOTES / WAS DEAD SET ON (94A: Secretly communicating in class / 120A: Felt absolutely determined about)
• CAMP FIRES / SANS SERIF (100A: Settings for telling some ghost stories / 122A: Like the typefaces Helvetica and Arial)

Word of the Day: GIOTTO (44D: Florentine artist known for frescoes) —

Giotto di Bondone (Italian: [ˈdʒɔtto di bonˈdoːne]; c. 1267 – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the Gothic and Proto-Renaissance period. Giotto's contemporary, the banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani, wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature" and of his publicly recognized "talent and excellence". Giorgio Vasari described Giotto as making a decisive break from the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years".

Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel, in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel, which was completed around 1305. The fresco cycle depicts the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Some green cars]?! (68D). I would've stopped the puzzle right there if I didn't have to write about it. There is no way to innocently or apolitically put that little freak's automobiles into the grid anymore. I guarantee you I was not alone at muttering (if not shouting) "*&%^ you!" at the puzzle when I got that answer. Nikola Tesla is obviously an important inventor, so "Tesla" per se is not the issue, but those cars, like anything owned by or associated with that anti-empathy creep, are vile symbols of a nascent totalitarian regime. Get them the hell out of my grid. "Green cars"? You know, I don't think I've actually seen a green Tesla before. OK, wait. I know what you're thinking, and no, no, you should definitely not pour green paint all over a Tesla on St. Patrick's Day (unless it's your own). That would be vandalism and that would be wrong—also, according to the new rules, you would be committing domestic terrorism. Yes, I know, the guy who runs Tesla is an unelected Nazi-saluting sociopathic eugenicist who is currently tearing out all the wires of the federal government, as well as gutting USAID, which will result in 1 to 2 million deaths (famine, disease) in just the first year, so he's kiiiind of, indirectly, arguably, a mass murderer, but still, that's no reason to deface TESLAS with green paint, what are you, a monster? (I'm dead serious, don't vandalize, it's bad ... funny to imagine, but bad to do) (Don't do it) (Also, don't put that guy's name or his business names in my grid, ever) (Ever). 

[LOL, people are like "OK, sure, but can we talk about GOOD OH! please!?" (63-D)]

This theme was not that interesting. Answers go up, answers go down, who cares? The theme is entirely structural, which is to say, there's nothing linking any of the answers besides what they physically do in the grid. No connection at the level of meaning. So while the acrobatics involved are mildly diverting, the puzzle overall is kinda boring. The longer non-thematic answers are actually much more interesting than anything going on with the theme. ARSENIO HALL, SPEED SKATER—that's a movie I'd watch. Full-named ARSENIO HALL, full-named ELIOT NESS. TEEN DRAMA. PEACH PITS. These are all better than anything going on with the theme. Though the theme involved some minor shenanigans (answers that change direction, share letters, etc.), it wasn't hard to work out. The hardest part was the first part, both because it's always hardest to get the first themer (you don't know the theme yet!), and because that first one ... well, I know you wrote in DENIM at 1A: Jeans material. It fit, and it was (basically) right, so you were probably like me, and had to take time undoing that initial mistake. But after that, after you figure out how those theme answers work, there's nothing left to trick you, really. The STRAP / PARTS and FACED / DECAF sections are maybe a little trickier than the others because those answers start with, rather than end with, their down-facing / overlapping sections, but still, you should have been able to infer what was happening there pretty easily. 

There is some pretty horrible fill in this one, with AAHS AT near the top ("top") of the class (6D: Verbally reacts to in awe). Just abysmal. I wrote in OOHS AT, which felt bad as it was, but then to have to tear it out and replace it with the somehow even worse AAHS AT? Ugh. Also ugh: GOOD OH? (63D: Brit's jolly cry of approval). LOL, what? "Jolly cry of approval"? Uh, ok. Are you sure the "OH" has an "H" on it? Hmm, looks like either is acceptable. I guess it's not so bad. Certainly better than AAHS AT. GOOD OH is more like NEUER (16D: German soccer legend Manuel who innovated the "sweeper-keeper" role) and CLINT (70D: Hawkeye's real first name in the "Avengers" movies), in that I just have to take the puzzle's word for it that those things are what the puzzle says they are. ADENOIDAL, on the other hand, is not bad so much as ugly and horrible to say and look at and think about. Noidal. Noidal. Just keep saying it, over and over. Eventually you'll pass out or throw up. I assume. I'm not gonna test it. Also unpleasant: UNHANDS (fine) and UNSET (uh, OK, that's enough UN-s) followed by UNTAPED (!!?! bzzzzt, excessive UN- violation!). UNTAPED, what even is that? (besides the most made-up UN- word of all time). I tried to search [untaped] and mostly what I got back was Untappd, a beer app. Did I miss any other UN- words in this grid? At this point, I'm unwilling to find out.

Bullets:

• 80D: Cote quote? (BAA) — I thought it was a dove cote, so I wrote in COO. That whole ADENOIDAL CLINT section was a slog (and the part of the puzzle I finished last). ADENOIDAL CLINT—is he one of the Avengers? He should be.
• 92D: Girl who's "sweet as apple cider," per an old song (IDA) — I see (now) that "cider" was supposed to be a (rhyming) hint. I do not know this song, despite having a cat named IDA whom I have called every IDA-related thing in the book (or so I thought). Thanks to A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, I learned about the song "IDA Red," which was the only IDA song I knew about ... until now.

["I'm plum fool about IDA Red!"]

[My IDA, guarding the reader mail]

• 18A: 14-line poem with only two rhymes across three stanzas (RONDEL) — LOL I'm an English professor and I whiffed on this one. When "rondeau" wouldn't fit ... crickets. Did you know that between 1998 and 2018, the only constructor to use RONDEL in their NYTXW puzzles was David Steinberg—twice?! It's true.  (ok technically he co-constructed one of those, but still ... true!)
• 57A: Longtime children's clothing store with a portmanteau name (GYMBOREE) — no idea where I pulled this from. Not one of the RETAILERS I frequent, or have ever frequented. My first thought here, because of the "G" and "portmanteau," was GARANIMALS.

• 72A: Source of the "blood" in a meatless burger, maybe (BEETS) — I don't eat a lot of meatless burgers, but I do eat BEETS, and BEETS are red as hell, so this makes sense.
• 105A: Superb, in slang (ACE) — apparently this term has generationally dropped an "S"; I say "ACES" not infrequently, but then I am Methuselah.
• 36D: Frodo's enchanting friend (GANDALF) — yes, he's quite charming, very good at parties ... (actually GANDALF is a wizard, but you knew that)
• 25A: Low-fat dairy desserts (ICE MILKS) — I'm not convinced any actual human has ever eaten a single ICE MILK, let alone multiples of them. Do they even exist? I've never seen ICE MILKS in the wild, only heard about them in parodies, specifically this parody:

["Unflavored for me!"]

• 111D: Compound found in marijuana, for short (CBD) — yes I too wrote THC here, so you're in good company. Or at least my company,
• 40A: Old-fashioned garnishes (ORANGE PEELS) — in case it's not clear, the "Old fashioned" is a cocktail, which you (sometimes) garnish with an orange peel. The cocktail is not usually hyphenated, though, so this clue is at least a little misleading (i.e. leading you to believe "old-fashioned" is being used in the conventional adjectival sense of "retro" or "associated with the old ways").

Cheers! See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]