Hits the exchange, in Wall Street lingo / THU 3-13-25 / Online shorthand for "offline" / Hit up privately on "the socials" / Sorts with unruly hair / Aired in multiple places at the same time / What un sachet de thé is put into / 1982 George Clinton hit with the refrain "Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay" / Big name in nail polish / Juggling chainsaws on a tightrope, for instance

Constructor: Rich Proulx and Simeon Seigel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy once you get the gimmick)

THEME: DOUBLE DIP (61A: Commit a party foul, in a way ... or what five answers do in this puzzle?) — theme answers appear to be inapt; to make sense of them, you need to "dip" down twice, picking up first the triangled square and then the circled square located just underneath the themer itself:

Theme answers:

• SIMULCASTED (16A: Aired in multiple places at the same time) (picking up the "C" and "S" from CSIS (20A: Collectors of forensic evidence, for short)
• MOPHEADS (21A: Sorts with unruly hair) (picking up the "H" and "A" from HASH (26A: Potpourri))
• FIRELIGHT (37A: Burning glow) (picking up the "I" and "L" from ISLES (41A: Cays, e.g.))
• CAP PISTOL (39A: Toy shooter) (picking up the "P" from "I'M UP" (42A: "That's my cue!") and the "S" from SOFA (44A: Possible sleeping spot for a partner who's in the doghouse))
• CARSEATS (54A: Items for babies on board) (picking up the "S" and "A" from CESAR (60A: Farmworker organizer Chavez))

Word of the Day: "ATOMIC DOG" (34D: 1982 George Clinton hit with the refrain "Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay") —

"Atomic Dog" is a song by George Clinton, released by Capitol Records in December 1982, as the second and final single from his studio album, Computer Games (1982). It became the P-Funk collective's last to reach #1 on the U.S. R&B Chart. The single failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 although it has attained a level of stature since then, partly due to having been sampled in several hip hop songs. // George Clinton's P-Funk reached its commercial and conceptual height during the late 1970s after the release of Mothership Connection in 1975 and a series of spectacular concert tours. Each of these concerts ended with a climactic descent of a giant spaceship from the rafters. However, as the band and their concept of funk grew, the organization became entangled in internal dissension, legal disputes, and creative exhaustion. "Atomic Dog" was the P-Funk collective's last single to reach #1 on the U.S. R&B chart. // According to Clinton, most of the song's lyrics were ad-libbed during the recording process.

• • •

Yet another puzzle where the grim fill really diminished the experience. So much muck to wade through. A good example of gimmick-at-all-costs, where an architecturally complex theme rides roughshod over the grid's overall quality. After enduring UVEA EAU PLO DMED IEDS ESSIE and then encountering a FREIGHT that made no clear sense, I decided that I did not want to spend any more time discovering the theme than I had to, so I jumped down to where I (correctly) assumed the revealer would be, in the SE. The short fill was easy enough to get that the revealer, DOUBLE DIP, soon became clear, which immediately made it clear how FREIGHT would make sense (i.e. by "double-dipping" and picking up the "I" and "L" to make FIRELIGHT). After that, there was nothing left to do but fill the grid. The themers held no more mystery; there was no second level to the theme, no thematic connection among the theme answers. The triangle ended up being essentially meaningless as a shape (a disappointment—why introduce a novel shape when it didn't have a novel meaning?). The "dipped" letters didn't spell anything. You just dip twice. Five times. And suffer through a lot of ugly short fill. That's it. [UPDATE: for the second day in a row, I totally missed a theme element—the triangles are CHIPS and they spell out CHIPS, and the circles spell out SALSA; very impressive ... sadly, my solving experience was still pretty miserable] There are some fun longer Downs along the way, but the essential dullness of the theme and the sheer volume of boring-to-actively-unpleasant 3-4-5s made this one less than enjoyable, on the whole.

["Just let me hold you by the ..."]

It's really the DMED / LCD / CSIS / AAS mash-up that ended any goodwill I might've had toward this puzzle. Oh, and the adjacent GOES IPO (6D: Hits the exchange, in Wall Street lingo), which ... yeah, bizness jargon, however original, is never going to be my thing (see also golf jargon, poker jargon, etc.), and this particular phrase just sounds silly. It's not like I don't know what IPO means (initial public offering)—I solve crosswords every day, as you know—but this phrase seems particularly ridiculous, and looks it, too. I am currently enjoying pronouncing it as one word (GO-suh-PO!). But let's say that that answer isn't inherently bad, just bad in my ears. Fine. But the short fill problem still stands. Also, we have UNCAST *and* SIMULCASTED in the same grid? Also, SIMULCASTED??? I would've thought the past tense of "simulcast" was ... "simulcast." Extremely cut-off NE and SW corners added another somewhat infelicitous feature to the grid (they're like separate puzzles, and because both have theme content, it seems likely that if you have any trouble with this theme, you probably had trouble there, particularly in the NE). But, again, the real problem here (aside from a not terribly interesting concept), is GSU NAS ABE EKE CHI IPAS MSN TAEBO (for god's sake!) and on and on. Just a parade of tedium, headlined by not one not two but three online initialisms: TBH IRL OTOH ("to be honest," "in real life," "on the other hand") (with DMED trying to make it a foursome). There really ought to be an online initialism limit. Say, two. Two is good. 

Bullet points:

• 8A: Delivery people? (MAMAS) — wanted OB/GYNS ... in fact, kinda sorta wanted GYNOS (is that an acceptable abbrev.?). Nothing cuing the slang of MAMAS in the clue. Not a fan.
• 22A: Hit up privately on "the socials" (DMED) — Why are quot. marks around "the socials"? Yes, it's slang, but you. may as well put quotation marks around "Hit up" if that's your logic. (DMED means "direct messaged," in case that's not a thing in your world)
• 63A: Last word of the last multiple-choice option, maybe (ABOVE) — as someone who frequently has multiple-choice sections in the exams he gives, I found it comical how long it took me to get this answer. It just wouldn't compute. "... OTHER?" (the "ABOVE" comes from "all (or none) of the ABOVE," presumably)
• 64A: Month with the newest federal holiday, recognized in 2021 (JUNE) — the holiday in question is Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in America. Look for this particular federal holiday to be rescinded in 3, 2, 1 ...
• 10D: Companion of Jason in the search for the Golden Fleece (MEDEA) — the looooove boat ... such a happy couple, I'm sure they're gonna do great ... 
• 34D: 1982 George Clinton hit with the refrain "Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay" ("ATOMIC DOG") — I was gonna dispute "hit" but #1 on the R&B charts is definitely a hit. It never made the Billboard Hot 100, but that "refrain" became universally recognizable in the early '90s for one particular reason ...

I'm realizing now that it's possible there are solvers who won't understand the "party foul" in question today. If you dip a chip in dip, take a bite, and then dip it *again*—that's a DOUBLE DIP, and that's a "party foul" (for hygiene reasons). That should do it, see you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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