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]