Male influencer archetype / SAT 5-31-25 / Toy doll brand since 2001 / Rod's employer in "Get Out," in brief / Chip maker in a 1961 merger / Participant in a hybrid sport that requires both brains and brawn / Symbol of rebirth in ancient Egypt / Wry response to a this-or-that question / Eponym of Pittsburgh's tallest building / Ride-or-die sort, in brief / Likely spot for a pipe jam

Constructor: Adam Aaronson and Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy-Medium with a very hard (for me) SW corner)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: E-BOY (54A: Male influencer archetype) —

E-kids, as e-girls and e-boys, are a youth subculture of Gen Z that emerged in the late 2010s, notably popularized by the video-sharing application TikTok.^[3] It is an evolution of emo, scene and mall goth fashion combined with Japanese and Korean street fashion.

Videos by e-girls and e-boys tend to be flirtatious and, many times, overtly sexual. Eye-rolling and protruding tongues (a facial expression known as ahegao, imitating climaxing) are common.

According to Business Insider, the terms are not gender-specific, instead referring to two separate styles of fashion, stating that "While the e-boy is a vulnerable 'softboi' and embraces skate culture, the e-girl is cute and seemingly innocent". [...] 

By the late-2010s, e-boys had split from this original all female culture, embracing elements of emo, mallgoth, and scene culture. The popularity and eventual death of emo rapper Lil Peep also influenced the beginnings of the subculture, with the New York Post describing him as "the patron musical saint of e-land". E-boys also make use of "soft-boy aesthetics" through presenting themselves as sensitive and vulnerable. According to the Brown Daily Herald this is due to a transformation of ideal male attractiveness from being traditionally masculine to embracing introvertedness, shyness, emotional vulnerability and androgyny.

• • •

A lovely puzzle except for the SW corner, which had me literally exclaiming, out loud, "I'm too old for this shit." I have definitely looked up the whole "E-kid" / "E-girl" / "E-BOY" phenomenon before, when I've seen it in puzzles, but I guess I keep forgetting it because I barely believe it's real and also I just don't care. Also, when I see the terms "Male" and "influencer" next to each other, all I see is the so-called "manosphere" and the array of idiotic misogynist "influencers" who seem to reign there. I didn't enjoy much about the SW corner, but one thing I did enjoy was discovering that my initial answer for 54A: Male influencer archetype was not, in fact, ELON (I had the "E" and the "O" and I live in the world's most depressing timeline, so ... I dunno, it made a kind of awful sense). The other thing down there that made even less sense to me was CHESS BOXER, which ... I don't even know what to say (47A: Participant in a hybrid sport that requires both brains and brawn). As far as I know, these are two perfectly good words that were put next to each other for the first time only today. As with E-BOY, I barely believe "chess boxing" is real and also I just don't care. Don't play chess, don't care about boxing. Where has this "sport" been hiding? Why would you ever want to watch it? I will say, though, that—as with E-BOY—I was pretty amused by my original wrong answer here: MENSA BOXER. Of course I had nothing but contempt for the term, but the idea of some MENSA guy getting the shit beat out of him somehow gave me a flicker of joy. I am very much a pacifist, but if the MENSA guy *chooses* to get in a ring and get hammered, I refuse to feel bad about finding the idea mildly pleasing. So that whole corner can rot, really. But the rest of this puzzle, I quite liked. This is the only upside of a highly segmented grid (where the corners play like separate, nearly self-contained puzzles)—one ugly corner doesn't necessarily bleed out and bring the rest of the puzzle down with it.

You can add ALT-METAL to the CHESS BOXER / E-BOY mix. Yet another coinage that made me go "?" (14D: Genre for Soundgarden and Linkin Park). I always though of Soundgarden as part of the greater Grunge universe (because it is). I had the METAL part, but was left guessing at what surprise prefix the puzzle would have in store for me today. Not NU-, that wouldn't fit. "NEO?" "NEW?" "EMO?" No, it's ALT, which is weirdly the answer I put in first for 11D: Fake account (LIE), though I guess an ALT is really just an alternate (social media) account not necessarily a "fake" one. Happily (for me), everything else in the puzzle was familiar to me, if still frequently (and appropriately) hard to turn up. Some major gimmes helped me along the way today, the most important of which was right up front at 1A: Where one might have a mic and a Michelob (KARAOKE BAR). I put the answer in tentatively and then was semi-surprised when the crosses immediately started checking out. ELL (i.e. the bend in a pipe) ... BAA (as in "Baa baa black sheep") ... AVATAR ... whoops, not AVATAR, but that didn't take too long to fix (9D: Something found next to a handle = AT SIGN). That toehold gave me the NW corner in reasonable time, and it's a lovely corner (with very nice stack of long answers), and since the clues seemed to be suitably amped up to Saturday-level difficulty, I was enjoying myself early on. That SW corner really was an anomaly, both in terms of difficulty and in terms of overall likability. Everywhere else in the grid was bright and relatively breezy. It's a bit trivia-y, this one, which is gonna alienate some people, for sure. Kinda the opposite vibe from yesterday's puzzle (which felt very light on proper nouns and other potentially exclusionary stuff). But I still mostly enjoyed the challenge.

Finished up in the SW, which seems like it should've been hard but wasn't because ZEITGEISTY (best answer in the puzzle?) came real easy off the "Z" in BRATZ (48D: Toy doll brand since 2001). FRESNO would've been a gimme even if I hadn't grown up there. And while I did not know that the "T" in "captcha" stood for TURING TEST, I know what a TURING TEST is and so got it very easily from a handful of crosses. Seems like a lot of clues might need explaining today, so let's get to it:

Explainers:

• 16A: Member of BTS or Blackpink, e.g. (IDOL) — these are K-Pop bands. Seems weird to clue IDOL with a catchall "I dunno, pick one" kind of clue like this. I'm sure they are all individually IDOLs in their own ways, but if they're actual IDOLs then it seems like they should have individual name recognition. Which I'm sure they do. To some. If you replace "BTS" or "Blackpink" with "The Beatles," you'll see how weird the clue is (despite being technically accurate).
• 24A: Symbol of rebirth in ancient Egypt (DUNG BEETLE) — speaking of "Beatles!" I can't spell the damned word because of the damned band!
• 29A: Subatomic particle named after an Indian physicist (BOSON) — everything after "particle" in this clue is useless to me. Am I supposed to know this physicist? I got this answer easily enough, but only because I know the subatomic particles of Crossworld.
• 32A: Count Vronsky's titular lover in a classic Tolstoy novel (ANNA) — another gimme. I can't believe they put "Tolstoy" in the clue. Take the training wheels off! People can infer the Russianness from "Vronsky" easy enough, even if they know nothing about ANNA Karenina per se (I've only read it once, but still consider it one of my favorite novels)
• 50A: Chip maker in a 1961 merger (LAY) — well I broke through the computer chip misdirection to the potato chip center of this clue, but sadly my first three-letter potato chip brand was UTZ. Pretty sure LAY merged with FRITO ... yup.

• 3D: 500 people? (RACERS) — so, Indy 500, not Fortune 500, as I'd originally thought (RICHES?).
• 12D: Pass words? (ADMIT ONE) — these words might be printed on a "pass" (i.e. ticket to an event). Really wanted something obituary-related here.
• 26D: Eur. land with more than 60,000 miles of coast (NOR.) — man, that's a lot of miles. That's more than twice the circumference of the Earth. I guess fjords after fjord after fjord will really add to the coastal surface area of a country. According to wikipedia "Norway's coastline is estimated to be 29,000 km (18,000 mi) long with its nearly 1,200 fjords" Huh. Hmm. 18,000 is a lot less than 60,000, so ... not sure where that 60,000 number is coming from.
• 29D: Competition with some defining moments? (BEE) — as in "Spelling BEE" (contestants can ask for a definition)
• 42D: Rod's employer in "Get Out," in brief (TSA) — when I had MENSA BOXER in the grid, I also had Rod working for AAA. Towing cars, I guess.
• 35D: Two-person shot (ALLEY OOP) — oy this took me way too long. Thought the "shot" was a photography term. But it's just the flashy basketball shot where one player throws the ball up and a second player grabs it mid-air and slams it home.
• 55D: Wry response to a this-or-that question (YES) — "this-or-that question" is not a question type I know. "Yes-or-no," that's a question type. I can infer what the clue means, but somehow that phrase threw me. Yet another thing about the SW that I had trouble getting a handle on. Speaking of which ...
• 34D: Not likely to leave a mark, say (WASHABLE) — uh ... something else (blood, mud, ink) leaves a mark on your clothes; your clothes (whether WASHABLE or not) don't have agency. They don't do the leaving or not leaving. But I guess this refers specifically to WASHABLE ... ink? I've only heard the word WASHABLE used in reference to clothing, but WASHABLE ink exists so ...  yeah, just one more thing about that SW corner I CAN (not) RELATE to.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Topiarist's "canvas" / FRI 5-30-25 / Typical floor covering in a washitsu / Leavened loaf made sans yeast / Something that's filled with bad words / Stock seller's stipulation / Onetime manufacturer of the Flying Cloud / Shout during a Real Madrid penalty shootout / "The Good Dinosaur" protagonist / Creature with "Underwater eyes, an eel's / Oil of water body," per the poet Ted Hughes / Brazilian genre that's an offshoot of samba

Constructor: Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: washitsu (47D: Typical floor covering in a washitsu) —

A washitsu (和室), meaning "Japanese-style room(s)", and frequently called a "tatami room" in English, is a Japanese room with traditional tatami flooring. Washitsu also usually have sliding doors (fusuma), rather than hinged doors between rooms. They may have shōji and, if the particular room is meant to serve as a reception room for guests, it may have a tokonoma (alcove for decorative items). // Traditionally, most rooms in a Japanese dwelling were in washitsu style. However, many modern Japanese houses have only one washitsu, which is sometimes used for entertaining guests, and most other rooms are Western-style. Many new construction Japanese apartments have no washitsu at all, instead using linoleum or hardwood floors.

The size of a washitsu is measured by the number of tatami mats, using the counter word jō (畳), which, depending on the area, are between 1.5 m² and 1.8 m². (See tatami.) Typical room sizes are six or eight tatami mats in a private home. There are also half-sized mats, as in a 4.5-tatami room.

People sit directly on the tatami, on zabuton (a kind of cushion), or on special low chairs set on the tatami. For sleeping, a futon is laid out in the evening and folded away in the morning. Other furniture in a washitsu may include a low table at which a family may eat dinner or entertain guests, and a kotatsu, a particular type of low table that contains a heating element used in the wintertime, may also be provided. The kotatsu may be particularly important in winter as most Japanese homes do not have central heating.

The antonym is yōshitsu (洋室), meaning "Western-style room(s)". (wikipedia)

• • •

Smooth, easy, delightful. I don't know if DRIVERS LICENSES is the most scintillating central marquee answers I've ever seen, but so much of this puzzle just hums and flows so beautifully. From GAYBAR to BOSSANOVA to "ALL ABOARD!" up to SWEAR JAR over HOT SAUCE, down to INSIDE JOB, EL DORADO, and SLAM DUNK, this puzzle was more than lively enough for a Friday, with very few hiccups or weak spots. And while paired clues (identiclues?) often annoy me (because they can feel forced) I was actually entertained by both of today's pairings, mainly because it was like the puzzle was reading my mind a little. First thought for 29D: South Asian wraps was SARIS but ... nope, DOSAS. But then bam, the puzzle's all "Were you looking for this [South Asian wrap]?" and hands me SARI after all (42A: South Asian wrap). Something similar happened with the nail polishes, both of which I "know" because of crosswords. I say "know" because I seem to conflate their names—why are there two crossword nail polishes with sassy shade names, O Lord?! So for my first nail polish (28A: Nail polish brand with a Raisin Your Voice shade) I wrote in EPI, which I realize now is because of name conflation: OPI + ESSIE = EPI! It quickly became clear that EPI was actually OPI ("DUH! I must've been thinking of Essie..."), and then the puzzle's all "Were you looking for this nail polish brand, also?" and hands me ESSIE after all (31D: Nail polish brand with a Gossip N' Spill shade). All this felt like the puzzle playing low-key tricks on me, and I didn't mind. It's fun to actually enjoy the short fill, for once. Speaking of nail polish, and making mistakes, I screwed up an (apparently) very easy Connections yesterday because while everyone else on the planet apparently understood that one of the groupings involved donuts, I fell deep, deep down a fingernail treatment hole and couldn't get out. "Frost" "Polish" "Glaze" "Powder" ... even "Sprinkle," these are all things one might do to one's nails. No one should ever have told me the variety of things that can be done to nails. I don't even care! The extra knowledge is a burden! Ignorance is bliss!

The only answer that really clanked for me today was ASK PRICE, which ... what genius decided "hey you know we can say this faster if we drop the -ING"? (10D: Stock seller's stipulation). Is there a fundamental difference between an "asking price" and an ASK PRICE. I'm not doubting the term's validity, I'm just saying it's stupid. I'm also lukewarm at best on ARTISTE (46A: Cabaret performer, e.g.), which I know only as a mildly derisive term for someone with pretenses to artistry (of any kind). Like, I can't imagine someone using it unironically / unmockingly. But that's my problem, not the word's, I guess. It has its definitions and "a skilled public performer or entertainer" is one of them. No real trouble with any of the answers today. Went with "OLE!" before "GOL!" but quickly realized that was wrong (1D: Shout during a Real Madrid penalty shootout). I wanted PAS before DAD (44A: Pops), but again, crosses took care of that problem. I have never seen The Good Dinosaur, so ARLO was just a guess cobbled out of crosses and a lifetime of seeing ARLO in the puzzle under various guises ([Folk singer Guthrie], [English indie pop singer Parks], [Janis's cartoon partner]). The Pixar dino has been used before, I just forgot (32A: "The Good Dinosaur" protagonist). 

The hardest answer for me to get by a long shot today was OTTER (50A: Creature with "Underwater eyes, an eel's / Oil of water body," per the poet Ted Hughes). Was thinking "fish." Because "eel" is a fish. Also was thinking maybe mythological creature (NAIAD?), who the hell knows. I do like the poetic language here—it's a fresh clue for a common answer. But why in the world is it necessary to qualify Ted Hughes with "the poet"?? Like, you just quoted what is manifestly poetry to me (it's got a line break in it and everything), I assume that it came from a poet—also Ted Hughes is a pretty famous poet. I guess the quote could've been a song lyric and maybe people might've thought he was a pop singer or whatever, but something about adding "the poet" felt ... condescending (to me)? Insulting (to him)? It's Ted Hughes! He was Poet Laureate for fourteen years (in the '80s/'90s). People know who he is, even if it's only for having been married to Sylvia Plath.

Continued observations:

• 54A: XXX (TENS) — because "X" is a Roman numeral meaning "ten," and ... there are three of them here ... so, TENS.
• 6D: Onetime manufacturer of the Flying Cloud (REO) — come on, that's a cool name. They should bring it back. Every car today is named some dumb one-word cooked-up-in-a-marketing-lab name like SOUL or VOLT or ALTIMA or ELEMENT or AZERA or IMPREZA or IBIZA or whatever. Give me a Flying Cloud, dammit! The future was supposed to be fun and interesting! Not every car looking the same and sounding the same! There weren't even supposed to be cars, at this point. What a disappointment the future has turned out to be.
• 58D: She's a believer (NUN) — I mean, sure, but lots (and lots and lots) of people are "believers." This doesn't really get at ... NUNness very well.

• 47D: Typical floor covering in a washitsu (TATAMI) — see "Word of the Day" above. I was not familiar with the term "washitsu," but TATAMI I've seen before. Turns out I've seen many a "washitsu" in Japanese films. Legendary Japanese film director Yasujiro OZU is famous for his use of these rooms in many of his gorgeous interior shots. These compositions even have a name—the "tatami shot." "Ozu invented the "tatami shot", in which the camera is placed at a low height, supposedly at the eye level of a person kneeling on a tatami mat. Actually, Ozu's camera is often even lower than that, only one or two feet off the ground, which necessitated the use of special tripods and raised sets" (wikipedia). Famous enough to have had a type of shot named for him ... and yet still somehow not famous enough to have ever appeared in the NYTXW. If you can do UZI, you can do OZU. You've literally done his name backward nine times (shout-out to UZO Aduba!)—come on, constructors. LET'S GO! OZU me!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Anarchist Sacco / THU 5-29-25 / Female in Mexican-style wrestling / Insect named for the Virgin Mary / Over-the-top dramatic / Second star ever photographed, after the sun / 2013 film that presaged ChatGPT / Mensa, for one / One with a minority opinion about the shape of the world / Source of the line "The female of the species is more deadly than the male"

Constructor: John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: TEASE UP (60A: Give height, as a hairdo ... or a hint for entering the answers to the starred clues) — you have to insert "T"s into the black squares following the apparent answers to the starred clues in order to see the real answers to the starred clues [sorry, my bad—the “T”s are “up” above those aforementioned black squares]:

Theme answers:

• 19A: *Mensa, for one (CONS[T]ELLA[T]ION)
• 36A: *One with a minority opinion about the shape of the world (FLA[T]-EAR[T]HER)
• 54A: *Two sure things (DEA[T]H AND [T]AXES)

Word of the Day: SAVILE Row (9D: London's ___ Row) —

Savile Row (pronounced /ˌsævɪl ˈroʊ/) is a street in Mayfair, central London. Known principally for its traditional bespoke tailoring for men, the street has had a varied history that has included accommodating the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society at 1 Savile Row, where significant British explorations to Africa and the South Pole were planned; and more recently, the Apple office of the Beatles at 3 Savile Row, where the band's final live performance was held on the roof of the building. [...] Tailors started doing business in the area in the late 18th century; first in Cork Street, about 1790, then by 1803 in Savile Row itself. In 1846, Henry Poole, later credited as the creator of the dinner jacket, opened an entrance to Savile Row from his tailoring premises in Old Burlington Street. Founded in 1849 by Henry Huntsman, H. Huntsman & Sons moved to No. 11 Savile Row with the ending of the war in 1919. During the First World War, Huntsman's was a tailor to the military, producing dress uniforms for British officers. In 1969, Nutters of Savile Row modernised the style and approach of traditional Savile Row tailoring; a modernisation that continued into the 1990s with the "New Bespoke Movement", involving the designers Richard James, Ozwald Boateng, and Timothy Everest. The term "bespoke" as applied to fine tailoring is understood to have originated in Savile Row, and came to mean a suit cut and made by hand. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Love to read the classics]

Sometimes solvers will say (in the comments section of this blog), "I never noticed the theme," and I always think "how is that possible?" Today, however, I can see very much how that is possible, as I barely noticed the theme and certainly didn't know what the revealer (TEASE UP) was supposed to mean until well after I'd finished solving. The theme appears to involve all of 11 squares (?), across three very short answers. I actually had to HUNT for the starred clues because there are so few and they are not attached to what appeared to be the grid's longest answers (which are most typically the themers). After I found them all, I tried for a bit to make something, anything T(ea)(se)-related, go "UP" in relation to those apparently short theme answers. CONS? Well, there is a TEA right above CONS (in ICED TEA), maybe that was something? But that yielded nothing. I tried to find the answer by reading "UP" after the end of the answer, but CONSDLO was nonsense. I honestly don't know what caused me to see the "T"-in-the-black-squares gimmick [again—this is not the actual gimmick; the “T”s are “UP” above the black squares]. I certainly had no idea Mensa was a CONSTELLATION, and yet I think I saw CONSTELLATION first. Lots and lots and lots of practice solving crosswords—particularly cryptic crossword clues, somehow triggered my letter pattern recognition impulse when looking at the grid, and those black squares in the themer rows somehow became simply missing letters in a longer answer ... and the "T"s slid right in. I still don't get how "UP" is working in the revealer [see all the red comments, above]. Those "T"s aren't going up. I guess you have to put them up (???) on the grid in order to make sense of the starred clues? My overall impression of the theme is that it is virtually non-existent and totally irrelevant. I have to believe that some chunk of solvers will not see it at all—and not really care, since "successful" completion of the puzzle doesn't necessitate understanding the theme. As long as you get the happy music at the end, you win, so ... yeah, a big "who cares?" from me, with a mild frowny face for the unclear "UP" part of the revealer.

The puzzle's theme is completely upstaged by its fill today. It's like this puzzle wanted to be a themeless puzzle, as its longer non-theme fill was often marquee-worthy, whereas the theme itself seemed meager, like the puzzle was only grudgingly indulging in thematic convention. LUCHADORA (21D: Female in Mexican-style wrestling) and FULL DIVA (36D: Over-the-top dramatic) would be highlights in any grid, particularly a Friday or Saturday. They give the puzzle a lot of character and color, as do "AMSCRAY?" "SO ARE WE" "ET VOILA" (nice corner) and CRINGEY (57A: "Yikes"-worthy). So despite the fact that the theme was a literal afterthought for me, the solving experience was not bad. This was a debut for ONE-USE (47D: Disposable). Maybe "single-use" is more common (it certainly seems to be, based on some quick searching), but ONE-USE went right in for me. There's a decent amount of short fill today, but somehow the puzzle never felt gunky. It did feel a little choppy, perhaps, and I definitely missed the long Acrosses (which are a typical feature of most themed crosswords). Obviously the long Acrosses were *there*, technically. Just invisible. To me. Hence my general "so what? / who cares?" response to the theme. But taken as a themeless grid, it wasn't bad.

Buncha mistakes today, none of them long-lasting, let alone fatal. SEVILE before SAVILE, LUCHADONA (?) before LUCHADORA (which, I realized as soon as I got it, was obviously the word I was aiming for), GETS MAD before GETS HOT (33A: Sees red), ACER before ASUS (56D: Laptop brand), RIGA (!?!?) before VEGA (35D: Second star ever photographed, after the sun). Is RIGA a star? No, that's the capital of Latvia. Maybe I'm thinking of Rigel? Yes, that's it (Rigel = "a blue supergiant star in the CONSTELLATION of Orion" (wikipedia)). My astronomical knowledge is really getting taxed today. I think that's it for mistakes. Oh, I definitely considered KATYDID (!!?!!) for 41A: Insect named for the Virgin Mary (LADYBUG). I was like "people called her Katy? how did they get from Mary to Katy? also, seems pretty ... familiar." Seemed pretty funny to call the Virgin Mary KATYDID, since Mary famously ... you know ... didn't. They don't call her Virgin Mary for nothing! Anyway, had no idea LADYBUGs were named for her, so that's ... an interesting bit of trivia I'll probably forget.

Round-up:

• 38A: 2013 film that presaged ChatGPT (HER) — if you could kindly never put "ChatGPT" anywhere in my puzzle ever again, that would be greatly appreciated. I can see that A.I. is going to be a ubiquitous feature of human life for the rest of my life, much to the detriment of everyone and everything*, but you know, you're not required to embrace / celebrate / namecheck the companies that purvey it. (Not yet, anyway—who knows what the government will require of us in the future; at this point, any indignity seems possible)
• 55A: Stage props? (HAND) — tough clue, as it's metaphorical on both ends. "Props" here is "approbation" and HAND is "applause." You give someone a "stage" performer "props" by giving them a HAND.
• 2D: Anarchist Sacco (NICOLA) — this refers to the notorious Sacco & Vanzetti case. They were anarchists convicted of murder and eventually executed despite worldwide uproar at the apparent unfairness of their conviction (which involved anti-Italian / anti-immigrant bias, conflicting ballistics evidence, recanted testimony, etc.). I know very well who Sacco & Vanzetti are. And yet, in typical-me fashion, I misread the clue as "Artist Sacco" and was like "how the hell should I know?"

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*blah blah exceptions for specialized uses blah blah  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Troopers, on a CB radio / WED 5-28-25 / New Jersey city with a bridge to Staten Island / Sholem ___, author of "Children of Abraham" / Question while pointing / Like many a Swiftie / Philosopher known for paradoxes / Pixar character who has trouble saying "anemone" / Rare blood type, in brief

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: FIDDLER (58A: Musical featuring the song depicted by this puzzle's circled letters, familiarly) — "SUNRISE, SUNSET" appears in circled letters that ascend in the west and set in the east, just like the ... uh ... hey, wait a minute ... (there are also two vaguely related long themers): 

Theme answers:

• "GOOD MORNING" (13D: First words of the day, perhaps)
• "NIGHTY-NIGHT" (15D: Last words of the day, perhaps)

Word of the Day: BAYONNE (34A: New Jersey city with a bridge to Staten Island) —

Bayonne (/beɪˈ(j)oʊn/ bay-(Y)OHN) is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey, in the Gateway Region on Bergen Neck, a peninsula between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill Van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east. At the 2020 United States census, it was the state's 15th-most-populous municipality, surpassing Passaic, with a population of 71,686, an increase of 8,662 (+13.7%) from the 2010 census count of 63,024, which in turn reflected an increase of 1,182 (+1.9%) from the 61,842 counted in the 2000 census. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated a population of 74,532 for 2024, making it the 517th-most populous municipality in the nation.

Bayonne was formed as a township in 1861, from portions of Bergen Township, and reincorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature in 1869. At the time it was formed, Bayonne included the communities of Bergen Point, Constable Hook, Centreville, Pamrapo and Saltersville.

While somewhat diminished, traditional manufacturing, distribution, and maritime activities remain a driving force of the economy of the city. A portion of the Port of New York and New Jersey is located there, as is the Cape Liberty Cruise Port.

• • •

I think I liked this puzzle better when I thought it was depicting the bridge from BAYONNE to Staten Island, but even then I wasn't having that good a time. That NW corner is a real off-putter (putter-offer?). So much Scrabble-f***ing (not one not two not three but four high-value Scrabble tiles). All so we can endure three proper nouns *and* the ugliness of ANEG, all crammed into one tiny little section, before we've really gotten anywhere. Then there's BAYONNE, which is some real provincial "you gotta live in the greater NYC area" crud. We're coming up on the 70th anniversary (!) of the last time BAYONNE appeared in the puzzle ... for a reason! It's not a puzzle-worthy place. By any stretch. Unless that stretch is a stretch of bridge that you are depicting in the puzzle (this is why I was willing to give BAYONNE a pass for a little bit). But then no, the "bridge" ended up "spanning" the distance between BAYONNE and ... ARMY VET? Is that a place on Staten Island? That doesn't sound like a place on Staten Island. So weird to find out that the theme had nothing to do with BAYONNE or bridges at all. The circled letters are, instead, an oddly high-arcing sun moving the wrong way across the sky? The theme is ... a song from FIDDLER? Plus two tacked-on / musically unrelated expressions? One of which is in kiddiespeak (NIGHTY-NIGHT)? This felt showy but also messy. Plus it was laden with crosswordese (SRA SST ABA ANEG DAK RONI VENI EDY ... plural IRENES!?). There's a Fred & Ginger crossreferenced pair, for some reason (ASTAIRE / ROGERS, "Top Hat" costars). I mean, I love them, but so weird to have such an elaborate crossreference and have it be completely unrelated to the theme. This is what I mean by "messy." It wasn't boring, but it also wasn't really enjoyable for me, either.

No real tricky spots today. I needed most every cross to get BAYONNE, and some more crosses to get the ARMY part of ARMY VET (nothing in the clue that is Army-specific). I had TOKE before VAPE (6D: Puff on an e-cig). I wrote in "NO LIE" but then remembered the phrase "NO CAP" exists, so pulled the "LIE" part and waited for crosses ("LIE" was correct, as you know). I thought the [Eur. alliance] was the G-TEN. Isn't there also a G-TWELVE? And a G-SEVEN? And a G-TWENTY?! Is this the same group and it just keeps changing numbers? (Answer: No—all different groups ... really hard to remember what any of them mean when the naming system is so unimaginative). 

[G-SIX = six largest E.U. members, but since Brexit, it's back to just being the G5 (which is what it was originally, before Poland joined), so today's answer is ... dated]

I don't think of SIT-UPS as something one does at the "gym" (45D: Some gym reps). I mean, of course one might, but there's nothing gym-specific about SIT-UPS, so that answer didn't come to me immediately. But overall, no serious sticking points. If you are familiar with FIDDLER, then maybe you liked this. If you're not familiar with FIDDLER, then I have no idea what you made of this. I maybe saw the movie version of FIDDLER once. I know the song only because it's ... just ... in the air, somehow. Not sure if the song is still similarly "in the air," esp. for younger solvers.

Lightning round:

• 19A: "Sharp Dressed Man" band (ZZTOP) — speaking of "in the air," the NYTXW is single-handedly keeping ZZTOP in the air. They're the go-to band in clues for TRIO (very recently, in fact), and now here they are, an answer in their own right—for the 20th time (though the first time in almost seven years).

• 38A: Like many a Swiftie (TEENAGE) — because MIDDLE-AGED wouldn't fit (Swift is 35 and a huge chunk of her fandom is 40+ so ... [Like many a Swiftie] could've been anything, honestly. It's not that she doesn't have teen fans, obviously, just that this clue feels like a caricature of fandom. Her actual fandom is mmaassiivvee.)
• 9D: Question while pointing ("HERE?") — cluing this as a question is semi-perverse. I mean, any one word can be a question if you want it to be. "HIM?" "ME?" "BUTTER?"
• 32D: Hosp. diagnostic (EEG) — seems to be a thing today, leaving off any specificity in the clue. Nothing Army-specific in ARMY VET clue, and nothing brain-specific in this EEG clue (which means you had to leave that middle letter blank and wait for the cross ... or you didn't leave it blank and got lucky ... or you didn't leave it blank and made the EKG mistake. Or you just went nuts and recklessly wrote in MRI. One of those things happened, for sure.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Colorful Hindu celebration / TUES 5-27-25 / Last monarch of the House of Stuart / Like some desks and divorces / Part of a foot or a viaduct

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday in May! Hope you all had a wonderful three-day weekend. Liverpool lifted the trophy in the men’s Premier League, so I sure did! (My sister’s team, Arsenal, won the women’s Champions League, so she had a great weekend; and my dad’s team, Tottenham, won the men’s Europa League last week, so we’re all happy!). I’m getting ready for a trip to Cancún in a few days for a friend’s 30th birthday and decided I didn’t need to buy much, but I lost that battle with myself — oops. This might be a quick write-up because I have to be up at 6 a.m. for a client’s green card interview in Baltimore, but we shall see!

Anywho, on to the puzzle...

Constructor: Ginny Too

Relative difficulty: Challenging (for a Tuesday)

THEME: HOLY TRINITY (60A: Central Christian belief … or a phonetic hint to 17-, 27- and 44-Across) — Three homonyms for holy form a trinity of answers

Theme answers:

• WHOLLY OWNED (17A: Like a subsidiary with only one parent) 
• HOLEY CHEESES (27A: Swiss and Jarlsberg) 
• HOLI FESTIVAL (44A: Colorful Hindu celebration)

Word of the Day: M.C. Escher (9D: "Hand With Reflecting Sphere" artist) —

Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were inspired by mathematics. Despite wide popular interest, for most of his life Escher was neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions around the world… Hand with Reflecting Sphere, also known as Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror, is a lithograph, first printed in January 1935. The piece depicts a hand holding a reflective sphere. In the reflection, most of the room around Escher can be seen, and the hand holding the sphere is revealed to be Escher's. (Wiki)

• • •

I found this puzzle to be on the challenging side for a Tuesday. It had a good theme, but the puzzle was bogged down by some weird clues and tough fill. 

Overall, I thought the theme was quite clever with all the different homonyms of HOLY. I particularly loved how there were three answers, making a TRINITY (60A). I do, however, wonder about HOLI FESTIVAL (44A) — there’s a FESTIVAL called HOLI, but I’ve never seen it called HOLI FESTIVAL, and Google doesn’t seem to have heard that term, either. Overall, I wouldn’t say the theme helped me with the solve, but it provided a nice “aha” moment toward the end. 

I had a hard time getting a foothold in the puzzle because there wasn’t much I was confident about at the top. I usually start in the NW, and if I don’t see something obvious, I’ll move to the top middle section. Early in the week, something almost always drops. But I wasn’t positive about HENCE (15A: thus) and was thinking more like “since.” WHOLLY OWNED (17A) and GEODES (21A: Glam rocks?) took some finagling. For me, opera titles pretty much blur together, so I needed crosses to get TOSCA (1A: Puccini heroine who "lived for art, lived for love"). And once I had the M.C. for 9D: "Hand With Reflecting Sphere" artist, I wasn’t thinking of those letters as initials; so while I’ve heard of M.C. ESCHER, his name didn’t jump to my mind. 

I hopped around a bit from there and struggled in other sections. I couldn’t think of STOAT (3D: Animal with chestnut-and-white fur); those fur coats have long gone by the wayside. I can’t really explain it, but I disliked BADASSERY (11D: Acts that are tough, rebellious and cool, in slang). I don’t think BOLT (40D: Eat quickly, with "down") is obvious, especially for a Tuesday. STAGE (67A: Old West transport) might’ve been my least favorite clue/answer because it’s a “stagecoach.” I know it miiight be slang to just call it a STAGE, but it wasn’t clued as slang. 

Some of the clues just seemed to be trying too hard. Why did we need to go all that way for LIPO (33D: Poet written about in the Books of Tang)? Or LIMO (37A: Caaaaaaar, you might say)? (I disliked that clue, especially.) And for the crosswordese ERIE (30D: Lake ___, body of water about 120 miles south of London), did we really need all the trickery with the clue for London, Ontario? 

In general, I just never seemed to be on the same wavelength as the constructor. There’d be a few different options for an answer, and I consistently first wanted to put in the wrong one. I tried “oh my” instead of OH NO (24D: "Heavens!") or “shyer” instead of COYER (43A: Showing more false bashfulness) — or anything other than BLEH (32D: "Ick!"). 

But there was more than just the theme that I liked! EDEN (53A: Couple's first home?) was clever. GEODES (21A) was a reach for a Tuesday, but I kind of enjoyed the clue/answer combo. I’M ALL EARS (34D: "Tell me") is a fun expression. DEBT (13D: Red state?) is clever. I really like the book “The Elements of STYLE” (52D), so that getting recognized made me happy to see (can you tell I come from a family of editors?). BRIE (40A: Gooey spread) is my favorite kind of cheese! Hmm… I may be reaching now. It might be time to wrap up?

Misc.:

• The clue for 37A: Caaaaaaar, you might say reminded me of when I was a kid and, for some reason, shouted “Car, car, c-a-r, stick your head in a jelly jar” when one went past. I’ll blame my dad for that one. 
• With 10D: Xing user as PED, I was reminded of all of the soccer carpools where my four teammates and I would pass the 30-minute drive by often playing the “alphabet game” (in two teams, because of course we had to compete), and the PED Xing signs really came in handy for an X. We got in many a fight over, “No, I saw the sign first!!” 
• My dad told me he got launched as an editor at The Wall Street Journal based on what he learned from 52D: Strunk & White's "The Elements of STYLE." White’s intro talked about how Strunk lectured on the need to “Omit needless words,” which Strunk did so relentlessly that he had to repeat things to fill the hour. So the dictum became “Omit needless words. Omit needless words. Omit needless words.” 
• While I thought very little of FAE (22D: Winged species of folklore) when I saw it in the 5/19/25 puzzle because of all of the romantic fantasy books I've read, I read Rex’s write-up, and he talked about how infrequently that word has been in the puzzle and how odd the clue may be. This is only the fourth time it’s appeared in the puzzle apparently but is the second time in eight days! Rex is not a fan. In the write-up, he said: 
• "37A: Race of mythical beings, in fantasy fiction (FAE) — the last time this term appeared was three years ago, when Erik Agard clued it as [Neopronoun with a nod to folklore] (in a Friday puzzle). Before that, the last time it appeared was ... when I was two months old. That's right, January, 1970—when FAE was clued as [From: Scot.]. And before that ... there was no before that. You now know the clues for all three lifetime FAE appearances. For perspective, GAE has appeared thirty-three times, and ... 'What the hell is GAE?' you rightly ask (allegedly, Scots for 'go'). If we're bringing FAE back, then I think 'Neopronoun' is the only reasonable way to go, 'cause if FAE were viable as 'fairyworld,' believe me, people would've used it, and clued it that way, more than Zero Times."

Apparently I had more to say than I thought! And so with that, I’ll say, “So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, good BYE [until June]!” 

Signed, Clare Carroll, WHOLLY sold on my Liverpool Reds (and my puppy, Red)

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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