Surrealist painter Carrington / SAT 3-22-25 / Car seen in the opening scene of "Dazed and Confused" / Ornate water heater / Style of Duchamp's so-called "readymades" / English actress Bamber / Snicker bit / The "magic" in some mushrooms / Company that owns Words with Friends / Long-lived being in Buddhist cosmology / Annual Atlanta gathering of sci-fi/gaming fans / Elevated, as a ballet movement / Massive hockey arena in St. Petersburg, Russia

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DEVA (21A: Long-lived being in Buddhist cosmology) —

A Deva (Sanskrit and Pali: देव; Mongolian: тэнгэр, tenger) in Buddhism is a type of celestial being or god who shares the god-like characteristics of being more powerful, longer-lived, and, in general, much happier than humans, although the same level of veneration is not paid to them as to Buddhas.

Other words used in Buddhist texts to refer to similar supernatural beings are devatā ("deities") and devaputta ("son of god"). While the former is a synonym for deva ("celestials"), the latter refers specifically to one of these beings who is young and has newly arisen in its heavenly world.

In East Asian Buddhism, the word deva is translated as 天 (literally "heaven") or 天人 (literally "heavenly person") (see the Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese versions of this article for more). The feminine equivalent of deva, devi, is sometimes translated as 天女 (literally "heavenly female"), in names such as 吉祥天女 or 辯才天女, although 天 alone can be used instead. (wikipedia)

• • •

[14A: ___ blue (original team color of the Chelsea Football Club)]

Friday grid with Saturday clues. Not usually the biggest fan of puzzles that get most of their difficulty through names, which is how this puzzle played for me. I prefer hard clues that make me have to think, not trivia-test clues that I either get or don't. But there were plenty of the former and, truth be told, only a few of the latter, and even those proper nouns (LEONORA? ELLIE?) were fairly easy to work around. Always nice when the name in the grid is a name-like name and not some configuration of letters you've never seen before. LEONORA and ELLIE loom larger than other answers because they were big blanks until I got at them with crosses. Same with the non-Marie ANTOINETTE. May as well throw ESSIE in there too, though somehow my brain found her slightly familiar. Not sure how. Maybe she was in the puzzle before. I point out the name-fest because it's the only thing about the puzzle that I found to be kind of a drag—it's the bummer that contrasts *hard* with the bulk of the puzzle, which I found lovely. Fantastic. Thrilling, even, occasionally. This thing is built on a chassis that is absolutely aces—a latticework of sparkling answers that gave the solve the kind of exhilarating whoosh-whoosh feeling I always hope for from a Friday. Saturdays I expect to be more of a grind. Less flow, more siege. But today, man, look out. I just got in that GTO and rode...

[5D: Car seen in the opening scene of "Dazed and Confused"]

I've seen Dazed & Confused more times than any other movie except maybe Psycho, and while I am not a car aficionado, I plunked GTO down right away (second answer I got after DADA). The opening of Dazed is iconic, so that GTO put a big SMILE on my face. Put me in the right mood. After struggling to get anything much in the NW, that stupid [Snicker bit] (HEH) finally got me some traction—even though I had it as HEE (for TEE-HEE ... never suspected HEH-HEH). The "H" is what did it—CHOSE STOOD POI ODE. That's when I looked at my first long Down and [screeeeeeeching tires] off I went, all the way to the bottom of the grid ... then back up and [more screeching] a hard turn all the way across the grid again. Me and my GTO and a lot of CONTROLLED CHAOS. Genuine fun.

[so much CHAOS that I typo'd CHAOS!]

Those 15s really made the puzzle for me. They meant that no matter how much you had to struggle with shorter stuff, there were these escape routes, these throughlines, that meant you were never really truly stuck. They opened up huge portions of the grid once you got them (and they weren't that hard to get with a few crosses). So while the cluing was set pretty much at Saturday-level hard, the 15s gave you access to all corners of the grid, which made the puzzle very doable.

[37A: "Colors" rapper (1988)]

There's one square, one cross, that seemed potentially unfair to me. Potentially catastrophic. Not a problem for me, in either direction, so I could be very wrong. But crossing PSILOCYBIN with ZYNGA at the "Y" seemed potentially cruel. It's quite possible you know what PSILOCYBIN is and still can't spell it (I've seen it written out, I don't know why, so I got it on one try, but I was Not confident) (30D: The "magic" in some mushrooms). And ZYNGA, yeesh , I wouldn't even know what that was if that Farm game on Facebook hadn't been a big deal in the '00s. FarmVille, looks like it's called. Do people still play that? Do people still play Words with Friends?? I know ZYNGA solely because it was in the puzzle back in the day and so I had to know it. This is only its fifth appearance all time, and its first appearance in six years. That "Y" just seems like a square that could have a decent number of people reduced to guessing. We'll see, I guess.

[this song is how I first heard about PSILOCYBIN]

Loved the four 15s today, obviously (CONTROLLED CHAOS, ON A POSITIVE NOTE, "DON'T MOVE A MUSCLE, TICKING TIME BOMB). Winners all the way around. Nothing else gets up to that level of excitement, but nothing else really has to. "THAT DOES IT!" is great, as is PSILOCYBIN, imo (note: I just misspelled PSILOCYBIN while trying to type it out—that first "I" really wants to be a "Y"!!!! à la "psychedelic"). Other longer answers are solid, and the short stuff is fine. It is what it is. Largely inconspicuous, which is what short stuff should be. 

Some more:

• 27A: Surrealist painter Carrington (LEONORA) — she was a sculptor as well (that's what's featured primarily on her wikipedia page). This piece is called "How Doth the Little Crocodile" (Mexico City):

• 1A: Style of Duchamp's so-called "readymades" (DADA) — saw the name "Duchamp" and instantly wrote in DADA. His famous sculpture "Fountain," which is just a urinal signed "R Mutt, 1917," is one of his readymades. Found objects recontextualized as art. This one's called "In Advance of the Broken Arm." It's ... a snow shovel. Floating in midair.

• 7D: "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" poet (WILDE) — "poet" really kept me from thinking of WILDE. The name of the poem rang a loud bell, but even after I got "WI-" I was like "what poet starts 'WI-'!?!?" I think of WILDE primarily as a playwright. All because of Earnest.

• 44A: Ornate water heater (SAMOVAR) — on The Love Boat they serve a big buffet breakfast on deck and in a recent episode (we're half way through the penultimate season), there were these giant vessels that I kept calling SAMOVARs. I'm not sure that's what they were. But I just like the word so I kept saying it. I think of a SAMOVAR as a tea dispenser. But it's essentially a metal container used to heat and boil water.
• 57D: You might sit for one (KID) — think babysit (this one had me scratching my head for a halfsecond)
• 15A: Royal adversary (TWIN) — in Major League Baseball, the A.L. Central has five teams. One of them is the Tigers (Go Tigers). The Guardians (née Indians) are another such team, and the White Sox another. The remaining two teams? The ROYALs and the TWINs. Speaking of the Tigers (sort of), last year's A.L. Cy Young Award winner was a Tiger, one whose name I hope to see in crosswords one day: TARIK (5) SKUBAL (6). He also won the A.L. pitching Triple Crown (most wins, most strikeouts, lowest ERA). Completely crossworthy, is what I'm saying. Keep an eye out...

• 65A: Bird whose diet includes berries that grow on lava (NENE) — official bird of crosswords. Hawaiian. They have volcanoes there. Which means they have lava there. They also have POI there (22A: Dish sometimes served with lomi-lomi salmon). No idea if NENEs eat that. Probably will if you give them the chance.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]