Engagement, quaintly / TUE 4-8-25 / Awareness of body position, scientifically / Bluffer's activity / Sánchez who wrote "I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter" / Most popular sport in New Zealand / Corporate doings in which one's boss may change / Caribbean locale with the slogan "One Happy Island" / Modern pastry portmanteau / Mexican dish made with friend masa / Big Ten sch. whose main campus is in Happy Valley

Constructor: Barbara Lin

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Tuesday)

THEME: CHIPS IN (37A: Contributes to a group gift ... or a hint to 17-, 22-, 48- and 54-Across) — there are CHIPS IN all of the theme answers:

Theme answers:

• TOLLHOUSE COOKIE (17A: Treat from a recipe printed on a Nestlé package) (chocolate chips)
• POKER GAME (22A: Bluffer's activity) (poker chips)
• TACO SALAD (48A: Crunchy Tex-Mex bowl) (tortilla chips)
• DESKTOP COMPUTER (54A: Office workstation) (computer chips)

Word of the Day: TROTH (43A: Engagement, quaintly) —

1

: loyal or pledged faithfulness 
: fidelity

pledged my troth

2

: one's pledged word

I don't remember the details or,
by my troth, even the gist—Stanley Elkin

also : betrothal (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

The theme works just fine. All the chips are different (chocolate, poker, etc.), and the revealer takes "chips" in a different direction still (since it's a verb and not a noun), so the core of this puzzle is very solid. "Good bones," I think, is the expression. But the non-bones? That was rougher. Much, much rougher. The whole grid felt thick with the kind of fill that was pretty standard 30+ years ago but now feels like sludge. Most of it was easy for me to get through, since I started solving 30+ years ago, but oof, if you are under 50, I don't know how you know T. Boone Pickens. I barely know him. The only reason I know him is because of crosswords. Pretty sure he was my Word of the Day, way back when. The very term "OILMAN" feels like it's from the time when Dallas was on the air (and earlier). But if that were the only throwback, I wouldn't care. It's all the other stuff, the ordinary but regrettable stuff that you're supposed to minimize, not strew far and wide a la Johnny Appleseed (whoever that is). From EST ROO right up top to "USE ME" (?) down below, wow, it's a lot. And the quaintness—it burns! EKE! ERE! EENSY!? (at least it's not TEENTSY, I guess, but that's cold comfort). And then the quaintest of them all: TROTH. Argh, TROTH. TROTH was somehow worse than TROTH needed to be in that it was clued in a way that even I, an erstwhile medievalist who knows very well what the phrase "to plight one's TROTH" means, could not make sense of it. You can see the definition, above (Word of the Day). I know the term as "one's pledged faithfulness," or "one's word." It's only at the bottom of the definition that you get "see also: BETROTHAL" ... which obviously has "TROTH" right in it, but that didn't help. It didn't help because the word "Engagement" is deeply ambiguous. I was thinking "appointment," and then "interaction" (as in when you engage with other people, or reading material, or an app, or whatever). Was *not* thinking wedding. So it's got the quaintness (which we're already drowning in) plus the "bottom of the definition" aspect, plus the ambiguous clue word—you're not supposed to call attention to your regrettable fill this way. 

OPINES over SENT (as clued) over ERE over DAS—the whole grid was full of this dreariness. ININK, sigh. MII, pfft. TSK! So many TSKs! (well, just the one, but I am TSKing quite a bit, just sitting here at my non-DESKTOP COMPUTER). Bette Midler is very talented and famous, but MISS M will always be olden fill of the not-great variety (also, like T. Boone, not a name that most younger solvers are going to have seen a ton). They even brought the formerly ever-present ELIE back for this one. There seemed to be one sop thrown to the present moment—ERIKA Sánchez (15A: Sánchez who wrote "I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter"). I would not call ERIKA a good answer per se, but at least that clue is trying to be current (not that I knew who ERIKA Sánchez was—she'll probably be the least generally-known answer in the grid, but she's gettable from crosses and she brings at least a touch of younger energy to the puzzle (b. 1984)). That's right, the 40-year-old is bringing the young energy today. I'm looking at you, too, Taylor Swift! (1A: Taylor Swift's ___ Tour, record-breaking series of 2023-24 concerts) (actually Taylor's only in her mid-30s, but you see what I mean).

This puzzle went from "Easy" to "Medium" due to one smallish section of the grid: the part where the bottom half of KINESTHESIA (!?!?!) meets ... whatever it meets (24D: Awareness of body position, scientifically). TROTH, for instance. Yes, where KINESTHESIA meets TROTH is pretty much the epicenter of all my "struggles" today. The only "Kines-" words I know are KINESTHETIC and then the word I actually had here for a time: KINESIOLOGY. That's the college major that I had to look up when I was a college student because I had no idea what it could be about. To be clear, my college did not offer this major, I think I just saw that college athletes had this major (they used to announce their majors—they don't still do this, do they?). So I knew it was the study of bodies in motion, something like that. This is why the KINES- was easyish but the rest, hoo boy no. KINESIOLOGY made me retract ONE CUP, and then the whole corner seized up. Mistakenly thought "KHAN" was the non-Star Trek, Wrath of spelling, so wrote it in KAHN. Could not get a handle on RACKET as clued (44D: Hullabaloo). All this on top of not getting the DESKTOP part of DESKTOP COMPUTER right away. Rest of the puzzle was no trouble at all, but I definitely slipped and fell and got up and slipped again in this corner. 

One thing in this grid that did make me smile was [New York's Mario CUOMO Bridge] (née Tappan Zee). Do you know how improbable it is that the word CUOMO would make me smile!? Extremely improbable. The only reason that answer brought a smile to my face was that I just drove across it (twice) on my way to (and from) Stamford, Connecticut for this past weekend's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which, as you know (or are now finding out), I won. Well, we won. Me and my wife, Penelope Harper, us. We won. Yes, I am being serious. Pairs Division Champions. A trophy, a check, the whole nine. Here's proof:

[The Sharpers!]

And here's proof:

[yeah, I posted this yesterday, gonna keep posting it, obnoxiously, forever]

But winning, great as it was, was not even the best part of the weekend. It was the people. It's always the people. I am a not-so-secret introvert, but this tournament is the one place where social interaction actually feels energizing and inspiring, because there are so many people just happy to see each other and hang out and talk shop and meet new people, put names with faces, etc. It's so easy to interact with people here and (you'll get tired of hearing about it if you ask people about the tournament, but it's true), everyone is So Nice. It's like people weirdly become the best versions of themselves at this tournament. I know I did. I had more conversations this past weekend than I have had (save my wife, cats and students) in probably the past year. Full-on. Non-stop. But always fun. I cannot recommend the experience enough, no matter what level you're at. If you're committed enough (and dorky enough) to be reading this blog post, you're ready. And don't say "I won't know anyone." That will change instantly. You've never met a warmer, more welcoming group of people, I promise. The Pairs Division solvers were not in the main ballroom, but were divided among several different basement rooms, and I cannot tell you how much fun our room was (I keep saying "fun," sorry). We hit it off right away with the teams sitting both behind and directly in front of us (hi Shannon, Brad, Pam, Casey). Kristian House and Narayan Venkatasubramanyan ran our room (distributing / collecting puzzles etc.) and the vibe was so loose and low-key and friendly. I already miss my Pairs room. A lot! Then I met other teams from other rooms, like Zhou and Mallory, who had matching Hawaiian shirts so you could not miss them:

[nicely posed]

[less composed]

So happy to see so many people. We met this couple in the bar (Melinda, Rob) and liked them so much that we just stayed and ate dinner in the bar with them and then later I practically begged them to be our friends irl. We'll see how that goes over, LOL. But the whole weekend was like this. Met (or re-met) so many constructors: Adrian Johnson, Alina Abidi, Kareem Ayas, Adam Wagner, John Lieb, Claire Rimkus, Sid Sivakumar, Tracy Gray, Sarah Sinclair, Paolo Pasco (who repeated as Champion!), and on and on. Oh, and the great Wyna Liu (if you play Connections, you know ...). I'd met her before, but I hadn't seen her in many years and it was beyond lovely to see her again (and see her getting attention from adoring fans). Sorry to gush, but it was the greatest weekend I've had in some time. Maybe the best social experience since before COVID, no joke. Apologies to everyone I didn't mention (so many people I didn't mention, including all of my *actual* longtime friends, lol, hi guys). Doug Peterson! Angela Olson! Rachel Fabi! Aimee Lucido! Robyn Weintraub! Dan Feyer! Tony Orbach! Lauren Muse Smith!!!! Now I'm just shouting names! But seriously, you should go. If you like xwords enough to read a damned blog about them, you should go. Or go to a different tournament closer to you. There are at least three more major tournaments in other parts of the country between now and next year's ACPT. I'll be sure to promote them. OK bye!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]