Iconic basketball move of Kobe Bryant / MON 3-3-25 / 1980 disaster comedy film with an exclamation point in its title / Thought of and considered / Nickname for Yale attendees / Enticing one

Constructor: Harrison Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday, solved Downs-only)

THEME: PRNDL — i.e. automatic transmission automobile gears: theme answers begin with PARK, REVERSE, NEUTRAL, DRIVE, and LOW, respectively: 

Theme answers:

• PARK RANGER (17A: Authority figure in Yellowstone or Grand Teton)
• REVERSE DUNK (25A: Iconic basketball move of Kobe Bryant)
• NEUTRAL COLORS (37A: Hues unlikely to cause clashes)
• DRIVE INSANE (52A: Annoy to a maddening extent)
• LOW SPIRITS (61A: Downer feeling)

Word of the Day: DENISE Richards (32A: Actress Richards of "The World Is Not Enough") —

Denise Lee Richards (born February 17, 1971) is an American actress, television personality, and model.^[2] She rose to prominence with roles in the science fiction film Starship Troopers (1997), the erotic thriller film Wild Things (1998), and the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999). Her performance as Bond girl Christmas Jones, though criticized, granted Richards her mainstream breakthrough.

Richards has appeared in films such as the comedies Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), Undercover Brother (2002), Scary Movie 3 (2003), Love Actually (2003), and Madea's Witness Protection (2012), the slasher Valentine (2001), the dramas Edmond (2005) and Jolene (2008), and the musical thriller American Satan (2017). Her television roles include the sitcom Blue Mountain State (2010–2011), the mystery thriller series Twisted (2013–2014), and the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful (2019–2022).

Richards has starred on reality series such as Denise Richards: It's Complicated (2008–2009), The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (2019–2020, 2023–2024), and the upcoming series Denise Richards & Her Wild Things (2025). In 2011, she published a memoir, The Real Girl Next Door, which became a New York Times Best Seller. (wikipedia)

• • •

[3D: 1980 disaster comedy film with an exclamation point in its title]

Hello and welcome to the Oscars™ Edition of Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle. Sadly, that does not mean that this post will feature movie stars and musical numbers, only that, for the first time in a long long time, I stayed up late (well past 10!) watching the Academy Awards broadcast to the very end, and so now am sitting here paying for it at 4:15 in the morning. Thus, the write-up will be abbreviated. I think. Or else I'll go into a delirious underslept rambling and I'll fill up the usual amount of space, but god knows with what? Anyway, congrats to ANORA, which deserved everything it won, and which will now definitely be in crosswords for, well, eons. Prepare yourself. 

As for this puzzle, it's PRNDL. That's it. I think that's it. I've definitely seen PRNDL-themed puzzles before, probably not exactly like this. Slightly weird to see a Monday puzzle with no revealer (I assume there will be at least some small number of people wondering what the theme is), but why crowd the grid with a revealer that's fairly obvious and not that exciting (PRNDL shows up as fill sometimes, to no one's great joy)? It's hard to talk pluses / negatives with this theme. It just is. There they are, five phrases that start with those five words. I think they're reasonably colorful phrases on their own. Solving Downs-only, it took me slightly longer than it usually takes to parse them. All of them. The RANGERS, DUNK, COLORS, and LOW parts all took some hacking away at (I didn't really "see" the theme until I was all done). My worst hold-up / slow-down involved imagining that the middle themer was NEUTRAL CORNER (you know, like in boxing?). Also, it took me a few beats to convince myself that LURER was a thing (still not convinced, frankly) (5D: Enticing one), and a few more beats to get 45D: Dexterous (ADROIT) when I couldn't get ADEPT to fit.

The worst struggle, however, was probably the same for anyone solving Downs-only (certainly true for both my wife and me), and that was: IN MIND (12D: Thought of and considered). So many issues, not least of which is that the clue looks like a verb phrase (whereas "Thought of" and "considered" are being used semi-adjectivally here, i.e something IN MIND has been (or is being) "thought of" and "considered"). Parsing that baby was rough. All kinds of awkwardness there, esp. for a Monday. But this will only be jarring only if you're solving Downs-only. Otherwise, probably just a weirdness blip. No biggie.

A few more things:

• 25A: Iconic basketball move of Kobe Bryant (REVERSE DUNK) — weird. I watched him play a few times over the years, I don't remember the REVERSE DUNK being "iconic" for him. I'm sure it's got some truth to it, it's just ... if it were truly "iconic" (like Kareem's skyhook, or Jordan's dunk where he takes off from about the freethrow line), then I would expect it to leap out at me.
• 28A: "The ___" (Tyler Perry series set in the White House) ("OVAL") — sometimes it's good to solve Downs-only, as you don't get tripped up by pop culture stuff you don't know. I would've been stumped here (though I'm always happy for the opportunity to remind people that TYLER PERRY made his first appearance in the NYTXW in one of my puzzles) (the same puzzle in which I debuted AMYPOEHLER and PORTLANDIA) (Jun. 21, 2013)

• 69A: "___ of the D'Urbervilles" (Thomas Hardy novel) ("TESS") — the parenthetical feels redundant. I mean, if you don't know TESS from the title alone, then saying it's a "Thomas Hardy novel" is not going to help you. Why not [Hardy heroine]? It's so neat and compact. And alliterative, for those of you who like that.
• 26D: Part of a microscope or telescope (EYE LENS) — as with LURER, I balked at this one. Are there lenses for *other* parts of your body. A TOE LENS, maybe? EYE LENS feels ridiculously redundant.
• 59D: Author and lawyer ___ Stanley Gardner (ERLE) — I like that they stuck "lawyer" in there. It's true! And it was very relevant to the creation of all his detective novels, particularly the Perry Mason ones. If you're going to bring back old-school crosswordese, sure, give us a little added trivia. I like that.

See you next time. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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