"The Black Unicorn" poet, 1978 / FRI 5-23-25 / Fruit that grows on Jamaican beaches / Secondary residence on a property, for short / Hand-held 2000s Sony console, for short / Punt e ___ (vermouth brand) / What some loggers log / Yellowstone traffic stoppers / Quinquennial campus visitors, maybe

Constructor: Kate Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy, with a few Challenging patches)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: AKEE (24D: Fruit that grows on Jamaican beaches) —

 

The ackee (Blighia sapida), also known as acki, akee, or ackee apple, is a fruit of the Sapindaceae (soapberry) family, as are the lychee and the longan. It is native to tropical West Africa. The scientific name honours Captain William Bligh who took the fruit from Jamaica to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England, in 1793. The English common name is derived from the West African Akan-language name akye fufo.

Although having a long-held reputation as being poisonous with potential fatalities, the fruit arils are renowned as delicious when ripe, prepared properly, and cooked and are a feature of various Caribbean cuisines. Ackee is the national fruit of Jamaica and is considered a delicacy.

• • •

A word (or ... more) about ADU (9D: Secondary residence on a property, for short). You've taken what was already pretty obscure crosswordese ([Soccer player Freddy], maybe? ... yes (3 appearances)) and made it completely inscrutable. I can live with acronyms and initialisms, but when I've got letters in the grid, and they're correct, and I can't even infer what they might stand for with any kind of confidence ... ick. ADU? Alternate Dwelling Unit? Is that it? ... gah, so close! Accessory Dwelling Unit. If there was ever a three-letter abbr. that could go to hell and/or outer space, it's ADU. You got a whole grid here full of fairly interesting answers, and yet all I can think about is ADU. Huge wart on an otherwise OK puzzle. Don't get cute with your short fill like this, it doesn't pay. Bid adieu to ADU! Compare my reaction to ADU with my reaction to AKEE (which I also didn't know)—in the latter's case, I'm just learning a new word. Actually, it's kind of familiar-looking to me ... a bit ... a little bit ... but anyway, at least with AKEE I'm not left going "what the hell do those letters stand for?" and "even if I knew what those letters stood for, that's bad fill," which was my ADU reaction. That whole NW was oddly brutal for me, and ADU was only part of it. I actually thought of FAST CASUAL for 1A: Dining at Chipotle or Panera, e.g., but something about the phrasing (unclear what part of speech "Dining" was supposed to be) kept me from writing it in. And then I had a load of mistakes. FIRM / MAUL (!?) instead of FAIR / ROUT (1D: Upright / 18A: Crush). UCLA before SDSU (that was just a four-letter Calif. U. reflex; I'm from CA and I've vacationed in Laguna, so I should've known better) (3D: Calif. school that runs the Mount Laguna Observatory). The steering committee clue didn't not help with CEO, somehow (5D: Steering committee V.I.P.). Only thing I was really sure of ("sure") up there at first was ALUMS (6D: Quinquennial campus visitors, maybe). Even the Malibu clue (2D: Malibu, e.g.) ... first thing I thought of was the car, but you'll notice I said "car," not AUTO, which I'm realizing people don't actually call cars (much), and so after CAR and CHEVY (and BEACH) wouldn't fit ... bah. "TRY SOME" before "TRY THIS" (4D: "Have a taste"). And did you know LEROI JONES (aka Amiri Baraka) and AUDRE LORDE have the same enumeration!? (14A: "The Black Unicorn" poet, 1978). It's (sadly for me) true. Real, real mess up there. But the only answer I'm really mad at up there is ADU. Boo to ADU.

But once I got out of the NW—pretty smooth sailing. The only places I have marked as trouble spots on my grid are AKEE (which we've been over), ALIAS (which I had as ALIBI, semi-understandably) (44D: Fugitive's cover), and MONTERO, which I know was the name of a Lil Nas X album from a few years back (42D: ___ Lamar Hill a.k.a. Lil Nas X). I just forgot that I knew it, and forgot that the album was actually his given first name. I wonder if anyone is going to end up with MANTERO / MANET today. Seems like if you knew nothing about French painting, you'd default to MONET (more famous, I think). I left the first vowel space blank at first, then remembered "Giverny ... that's gotta be MONET, right? That's MONET." So I committed to the "O" and woo hoo, correct. But I can see being unsure, and I can definitely see not knowing MONTERO at all, so ... not loving that cross. Speaking of forgetting things I once knew (which I was doing, with MONTERO), I seem to have already forgotten what PSP stands for (11A: Hand-held 2000s Sony console, for short). Playstation ... Plus? Is that a thing? [looks it up] Ah, Playstation Portable, yes, that makes more sense. Bygone consoles ... among the lowest of clue categories, down there with "Playground retorts" and "Laugh syllables" (of which we have not one but two today ... actually, technically, three! Two syllables in "HAHA," after all) (15A: "Oh, that's a good one") (see also HAR at 54A: "Very. Funny.").

The longer fill was mostly enjoyable today. The top and bottom spanners in particular were nice. For all my complaining about how bad I floundered in the NW, that stack of long answers is actually pretty sweet. And who doesn't like PADDINGTON? I will say that "KISSED BUTT" was off-putting. Weirdly, I would've been less put off by KISSED ASS, which (like "car" vis-à-vis "AUTO," is what people mostly say). BUTT is awful because it sounds like it's trying to be less profane than ASS but somehow ends up sounding more so. BUTT makes it sound like a kid is saying it. Grown-ups say ASS, is what I'm saying. Not my favorite answer, that one. But "TELL ME MORE ..."—that's aces. So it's a mixed bag, but the mix skews favorable. 

Bullets:

• 19A: Punt e ___ (vermouth brand) (MES) — look, take my crossword critic license from me if I start extolling the virtues of MES as an answer, but as a lover of cocktails, I cannot lie—this clue made me smile. Smile with recognition at an old friend. An old friend who lives in the door of my fridge. So I know some people are gonna be annoyed that they took a perfectly good Spanish word for "month" and steered it into much niche-ier territory, and they are probably right to be annoyed, but Punt e MES, yum, I cannot speak against it.

• 63A: What might get you out of a jam? (SIDE STREETS) — a traffic jam. That's a pretty cute clue. And a tough one.
• 65A: What some loggers log (KEYSTROKES) — I don't really get the context here. So I looked up "keystroke logging" and ... here you go:

Keystroke logging, often referred to as keylogging or keyboard capturing, is the action of recording (logging) the keys struck on a keyboard, typically covertly, so that a person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored. Data can then be retrieved by the person operating the logging program. A keystroke recorder or keylogger can be either software or hardware. (wikipedia)

• 52D: Watch this space! (WRIST) — er ... I mean, I want to like this. But grammatically it doesn't work. Your watch goes in that space, sure. Watch ... in this space, I guess. But using "Watch" as a verb here ... I dunno. I think you need a "?" at least. You're just playing too fast/loose with grammar. When I put my watch on, I don't "watch" my WRIST, any more than I "shirt" my torso (my poor, severely bruised torso—one of those surgical incisions left way way worse damage than the others (don't worry, I'm fine, just mildly hematoma'd) (I'll spare you the visual evidence, if that's OK)).

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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