Malaysian state or island / FRI 5-2-25 / Bams, cracks or dots, in mahjong / Literary bird with a one-word vocabulary, apparently / Much of northern Arkansas / Sides of circles? / Titular female Disney character whose name also appears in a Shakespeare play / Sunfish feature / Lincoln Center's former ___ Fisher Hall

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PENANG (45A: Malaysian state or island) —

Penang is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia along the Strait of Malacca. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay Peninsula. These two halves are physically connected by the Penang Bridge and the Second Penang Bridge. The state shares borders with Kedah to the north and east, and Perak to the south.

Penang is one of Malaysia's most developed economic powerhouses, with the highest GDP per capita and Human Development Index of all states. It also ranks second among the states in terms of average wages. Penang is Malaysia's leading exporter with over RM447 billion (US$108.94 billion) in exports in 2023, primarily through the Penang International Airport which is also the nation's second busiest by aircraft movements. [...] 

With 1.74 million residents and a population density of 1,659/km² (4,300/sq mi) as of 2020, Penang is one of Malaysia's most densely populated and urbanised states. Seberang Perai is Malaysia's third largest city by population. Penang is culturally diverse with a population that includes Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians, Siamese and expatriates. (wikipedia) 

• • •

This puzzle had many of the things I have come to expect from a Robyn Weintraub Friday puzzle, but also a couple things I have come not to expect—namely, obscure (or at least totally unknown-to-me) proper nouns. I am vaguely familiar with the existence of the musical "Hello, Dolly," but where LEVI factors in, I have no idea. Is that her last name? Dolly LEVI? Oh yeah, looks like. Dolly Gallagher LEVI. I've seen LEVI in the puzzle a million different ways, but if I ever saw it this way, I forgot it, for sure (16A: Dolly of "Hello, Dolly!"). So LEVI per se, not obscure, but as clued, yeesh. Needed most of the crosses. Then there's PENANG, which ... well, ya got me. I am familiar with PANANG curry, but I'm pretty sure that's spelled the way I just spelled it (turns out it's spelled many ways in English, but yes, PANANG is one of them, and PENANG ... isn't). I confess I know next to nothing about Malaysia. PENANG is home to the country's second-most populous city (George Town), but off the top of my head I couldn't name Malaysia's *first*-most populous city (it's Kuala Lumpur, which, unlike George Town (and PENANG), I've heard of and should've known, my bad). In the days before I started solving, the NYTXW used to be virtually awash in PENANG. It made 20 of its 24 total appearances before I was ever born, and last appeared in a grid in 1993. In fact, this is the first appearance of PENANG in the Modern (Shortz) Era. The island probably had WWII importance, which gave it some lasting post-war cultural relevance. But by the '70s its appearances waned, and even Maleska (Shortz's notoriously obscure geography-hungry predecessor) only used it twice, late in his career (side note: the last two people to use PENANG in a puzzle were named Patterson Pepple (1991) and Tap Osborn (1993), which are some great names. Annnnyway, huge "what the!?" at PENANG. And now, after a little research, I know why. Back to my initial point, or one of them: I don't normally have to hunt geographical obscurities when I'm finished solving one of Robyn's puzzles. I think the fact that PENANG is throwing me so bad today is testament to how high my expectations are for smoothness and general familiarity when it comes to Robyn's puzzles.

But as I said up top, in addition to the unexpected (namely, the proper noun mysteries), there was the very-much-expected—that is, the delightful longer colloquial phrases zinging across the grid. "THINK IT OVER," "HOW CAN I RESIST?," "YOU GET THE IDEA" ... you get the idea: all the hallmark Weintraub pizzazz and loveliness, AS EXPECTED. The grid had a light touch. It felt airy (complimentary) and breezy and I zoom-zoomed through it with (mostly) great pleasure. Again, PENANG doesn't stand out *nearly* so much if it doesn't represent a fairly bumpy departure from the creamy norm. The grid felt maybe a little heavy on the short crosswordy stuff (ARNO OLIN ERG CHE ATON IDES ILSA etc.), but never in a way that felt abusive or lazy. 

Outside of PENANG, and to a lesser extent, LEVI, I had only minor trouble today. I could not make heads or tails of the HALF clue at first (25D: One of two for one). I am doing so many cryptic crosswords these days that I just looked at the clue and started thinking about it on a very literal basis, i.e. "what does the word 'one' have two of? Uh ... vowels?" No no no. I mean, yes, it has two vowels, but no, that is not relevant here. But yes, any one thing, cut in half, has two ... halves? I guess you can't really argue with that. I also didn't find "Well, THEN ..." intuitive.  Or, I found it too intuitive—so ordinary that I couldn't believe it was being passed off as a standalone phrase. In funnier struggles, I put [Much of northern Arkansas] in the AZORES for a second or two (which is what happens when your internal Pattern Recognition Software fails at speed). I also had a ROBIN (Robyn!) as the one-word bird ("tweedly deedily dee [short birdsong], tweedly deedily dee, tweedly deedily dee, [short birdsong]" etc.) instead of Poe's RAVEN ("Nevermore!") (38A: Literary bird with a one-word vocabulary, apparently). 

Bullets:

• 17A: Sides of circles? (ONION RINGS) — never saw the clue. I solve short stuff first and then look at clues for longer answers ... but I must've had most of ONION RINGS already filled in and didn't even bother? Or maybe I did, and just saw the word "sides" and that was enough? It all happened so fast. 
• 29A: Titular female Disney character whose name also appears in a Shakespeare play (ARIEL) / 30A: Titular male Shakespeare character whose name also appears in a Disney film (TIMON) — so that's The Little Mermaid and The Tempest for ARIEL, and TIMON of Athens and The Lion King for TIMON. You know, I've never seen The Lion King. I stopped seeing that first new wave of Disney films right after Aladdin, I think. TIMON is the meerkat who is best friends with Pumbaa, the warthog.

• 36A: Sunfish feature (SAIL) — oh this was slightly toughish for me too. No idea that a sunfish was a type of sailboat. Even after I got the answer, I assumed that SAIL was just a name for the actual sunfish's rather large fin...

• 12D: Lincoln Center's former ___ Fisher Hall (AVERY) — familiarish, but ... why would you put a "former" hall in the puzzle? What happened to the hall? ... [Looks it up] ... Ah, I see. It's still there. But ... looks like the Yale School of Drama isn't the only thing David Geffen has managed to plaster his name on. 
• 24D: Concrete example of rotational forces and fluid dynamics? (CEMENT MIXER) — the five-year-old in me loves seeing a CEMENT MIXER. He doesn't so much love the clue, but vroom vroom, chug chug, spin spin, CEMENT MIXER, fun. Reminds me of reading Richard Scarry books as a kid. So many great vehicles in there...

• 46D: Super Monkey Ball brand (SEGA) — again, no idea. Way more "no idea"s than I'm used to in a Weintraub Friday, but SEGA is such a familiar game brand that I didn't get held up too much here. 
• 36D: Bams, cracks or dots, in mahjong (SUITS) — did not know this, but guessed it immediately, and thank god, or else I'd still be dealing with the sunfish's TAIL.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]