Crib for a doll / SAT 6-21-25 / "Ritorna vincitor" singer / Port WSW of Algiers / Name in the baking aisle / Old-fashioned club / Gram alternative / Black-and-yellow demarcation / Berkshire institution / Rita of the "Fifty Shades" movies / Donned quickly / QB Dawson who faced Bart Starr / First name of the "Princess of Pop"

Constructor: Christina Iverson and Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Two-Lane Blacktop (27D: Vehicles seen in the films "Dazed and Confused" and "Two-Lane Blacktop" = GTOS) —

["Warren Oates is GTO"]

Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 American road film directed and edited by Monte Hellman, from a screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Corry. It stars musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird in the leading roles. The sparse, existentialist plot follows a group of street racers during a cross-country race through the American Southwest.

Universal Pictures commissioned the film in the wake of Easy Rider's monumental success. Hellman, who had previously worked in low-budget and independent films, developed the screenplay with Wurlitzer, then-known mainly as an underground writer, during an actual cross-country road trip. Filming took place in locations around the Southwest between August and October 1970.

On initial release, the film received generally positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. Over the years, it developed the reputation of a sleeper hit and a cult classic, and has been reevaluated as a major work of the New Hollywood movement. In 2012, the US Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." (wikipedia)

• • •

Despite the avalanche of trivia (eight (8!) names, and that's excluding brands, institutions, geography, etc.), I really enjoyed this one, for a few reasons. First, it was hard enough. That is, it was punching at a Saturday level. It took a good lot of fussing around before I got anything like a grip on this puzzle, which is how it should be. And which brings me to my second reason for liking the puzzle—the exact moment that I got a grip. Nothing quite so thrilling (crosswordly speaking) as finally breaking through on a tough puzzle, and when that breakthrough comes in the form of shooting, sparkling answers like BARBIE DREAM HOUSE followed immediately by SIBLING RIVALRY, well, that feels like fireworks. Magic. Seriously, it was like my grid erupted in light and color. 

Third, I liked the grid's weird, skinny shape (14x16 rather than the traditional 15x15). And then fourth, and more personally, I just liked how Of-My-Generation this puzzle was. It felt like being a kid ... or someone under 30, anyway. That is, it felt RAD. Two of my favorite movies in the same clue! (one made in the '70s, the other set in the '70s) (27D: Vehicles seen in the films "Dazed and Confused" and "Two-Lane Blacktop"). Sports legends I learned about as a kid (PISTOL PETE Maravich, LEN Dawson). Young JODIE Foster! The "Muppet Show"! The puzzle was speaking my language. Not always (LOL Frozen and Fifty Shades—still never seen either). But mostly.

So many false starts today. SUET (!?) before GHEE (23A: Kitchen alternative to tallow). DIVA before AIDA (10D: "Ritorna vincitor" singer); EKG before ORG (37D: ___ chart); "BAH!" before "GAH!" (44A: "Ugh!"); "CAN WE!?" before "CAN'T I!?" (47D: "C'mon, please?"). I almost went with RICE before ROTI, but sensed that that was probably wrong (too easy) (19D: Side order with curry). As usual, the toughest part of the puzzle was getting started. Seemed like Germany was probably good at lots of Olympic sports, so BOBSLED took some time. Parsing "I HAVE TO," yeesh, tough for me (14A: Words before ask, admit or go). I see "Berkshire," I think Massachusetts, so even though I kinda sorta wanted ETON at 6D: Berkshire institution, I didn't trust it ("Berkshire" is a "ceremonial county" in England; the Berkshires are mountains in New England). And DONG ... I must've learned this currency before, but I keep forgetting it, possibly because my brain has already slotted DONG in a different meaning category. At least a couple different categories, actually, but one ("1.") in particular. 

But after the BARBIE DREAM HOUSE / SIBLING RIVALRY explosion, the puzzle got a lot easier—though not so easy that it got boring. STOPPED ON A DIME was also a highlight, as was some of the mid-range fill (THREW ON, BOBSLED, AIR KISS, RANG OUT). And I only had to dip into my Bag Of Old Crosswordese once (for ORAN—the thing about the Bag is that it's full of ugly things that are also very helpful things) (50D: Port WSW of Algiers). Actually, SNERD is probably in the Bag as well, but I knew SNERD before I ever started doing crosswords, so I don't think of him that way (12D: Mortimer who once made a guest appearance on "The Muppet Show"). No one area of the grid really stood out as too tough or too rough, which means that the puzzle played toughish but also smoothish. 

Bullets:

• 29A: Black-and-yellow demarcation (POLICE TAPE) — another good long answer. Kinda grim, but solid.
• 34A: Foster kid in "Taxi Driver"? (JODIE) — this was a gimme, despite the attempted misdirection. Needed a more obscure young-JF vehicle. Maybe Freaky Friday, or better yet, Bugsy Malone.

• 3D: Crib for a doll (BARBIE DREAM HOUSE) — "Crib" here is just slang for "residence," which you probably knew, but just in case ... 
• 12D: Mortimer who once made a guest appearance on "The Muppet Show" (SNERD) — also just in case ... just in case it's not clear, Mortimer SNERD is a ventriloquist's dummy of mid-century renown.

• 33D: Name in the baking aisle (KARO) — I think this is ... what ... like a sweetener of some kind. A corn syrup, I think ... yup, that's it. I sometimes get it confused with KNORR, which is a brand of bouillon:

• 51D: Gram alternative (NANA) — nickname for "grandmother"; I almost wrote in NANO here (thinking "Gram" was a bygone MP3 player, maybe?)

If the puzzle had too many proper nouns for you, here are some more proper nouns you're sure to love: I'm going to see WAXAHATCHEE tonight, with M.J. LENDERMAN and (a recent and, to me, thrilling addition) HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF tonight at an orchard (!) in central NY. This is my Christmas gift from my wife. Then tomorrow we're off for our annual Great Lakes vacation with my best friends. I'll blog a couple of times over the next week, but it'll mostly be my tried-and-true guest writers for a while (starting tomorrow, w/ Rafa). See you (...checks calendar...) oh, Monday. That's not so long. Until then, or whenever next time is ...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Oh no, due to miscommunication, Rafa did *today's* write-up. So now there are two write-ups of this puzzle LOL. So scroll down to enjoy Rafa's work (Or click here if you’re on your phone). And then also look for him tomorrow.  

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First name of the "Princess of Pop" / SAT 6-21-25 / Old-fashioned club / Kitchen alternative to tallow / Donned quickly / Performs a perfect dismount, e.g. / Like "Animal Farm" and "Don Quixote" / Average booster / Literature Nobelist who wrote "Dodsworth" and "Kingsblood Royal"

Constructor: Christina Iverson and Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Hard

THEME: None

Word of the Day: BOBSLED (1A: Olympics event in which Germany is the traditional powerhouse) —

Bobsleigh or bobsled is a winter sport in which teams of 2 to 4 athletes make timed speed runs down narrow, twisting, banked, iced tracks in a gravity-powered sleigh. International bobsleigh competitions are governed by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (formerly the FIBT).

• • •

Hello crossword people! It's Rafa here subbing for Rex. Happy to be back on your screens, and I hope you've all been doing great since I was last here. I've been doing OK, and can't wait for summer to finally start. (Summer in San Francisco starts in late August, and goes through early October. June and July and mostly cold and sad and windy. Boo!)

More excitingly, tomorrow is Westwords -- the West Coast crossword tournament! I cannot wait to hang out with crossword friends new and old, and solve some great puzzles. If you're there, say hi! I'll probably have a sticker that says "Rafa" on my shirt. If you won't be there, pencil it in your schedules for next year! (Remember when I said June is cold and sad and windy? That only applies to San Francisco. Westwords is in Berkeley, which is only 10 miles away but it is beautiful and warm and sunny in June. This is very important to know!)

Anyways, let's talk about this puzzle now. I don't know if it's because it's kind of late at night and my brain is somewhat mush, but this played quite hard for me! One of the slowest Saturday solves in recent memory. There was just resistance everywhere I tried to go, and very few answers came easy. As a seasoned solver, it's somewhat rare that a puzzle feels this hard, and it was fun to crack it slowly. I'm curious to know if this also played hard for others -- let me know!

Trains and buses in San Francisco are called MUNI

The first thing I noticed about this grid was that it had an unusual shape. Non-Sunday crosswords are typically 15x15, but this one is 14x16. This makes it easier to include entries of length 16 (impossible in a 15x15 grid) and 14 (annoying to build around in a 15x15 grid), which are more likely to be new to solvers. BARBIE DREAM HOUSE and SIBLING RIVALRY were my favorites here. RAILROAD STATIONS feels a bit more neutral but has a lovely clue in [Training facilities?] (facilities where you get on trains, aka train-ing). STOPPED ON A DIME is a totally legit idiom but didn't feel super zingy to me.

Netflix is headquartered in LOS Gatos, in the Bay Area

Overall, the clue-answer pair in PRIVATE JET and [Flight of fancy?] felt like the pièce de résistance. I said "ooh, that's good" out loud when I figured it out. There lots else to love in the non-spanner fill -- things like LET IT GO, HEART SMART, AIR KISS, THREW ON, etc. I had never heard of PISTOL PETE, but I also have never heard of most sports things, so alas I am unable to comment on whether it is good crossword fill!

There's an iconic hike at Stanford to walk up to this dish, which I guess is an ANTENNA

Hmm, what else? [It has its peaks and valleys] didn't totally land for me for GRAPH. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't think of high and low points on a graph as "peaks" and "valleys" ... it felt like a misdirect that was trying too hard. ORAN was the only piece of fill that felt off. I tend to be a very geography-forward crossword constructor, but ORAN and ADEN have always felt a bit a bit too ... obscure? ... to me. "Obscure" isn't really the right word here, actually. ORAN is a city of >1M people. But there are >100 cities with >1M people in China, and >65 in India. I'm not sure what makes a city "worthy" of inclusion in a crossword by an American publication, genuinely. I personally have never heard of ORAN in the news or in any other context outside of a crossword puzzle. Though of course (see: "I also have never heard of most sports things"), this is not a good metric for worthiness of crossword inclusion. Maybe I need to read more about Algeria? Anyways, this became a whole tangent. I'm just trying to convey that everything has Nuance™. But we can move on now!

Actually, this is pretty much all I wanted to say. A fun Saturday offering today that put up a good challenge for me!

Bullets:

• 51D NANA [Gram alternative] -- This is "gram" as in a nickname for a grandma.
• 34A JODIE [Foster kid in "Taxi Driver"?] -- This is a ? clue because "Foster" is the actress JODIE'S last name, and she was a kid in the movie Taxi Driver. (Yes I had to look this up. Real fans of Rafa's blog subs will recall that I famously know nothing about movies or actors.)
• 10D AIDA ["Ritorna vincitor" singer] / 12D SNERD [Mortimer who once made a guest appearance on "The Muppet Show"] -- big "old time" crossword vibes in this little corner with these answers
• 14A I HAVE TO [Words before ask, admit, or go] -- I can't decide if I like that this was essentially clued as a three-word partial instead of as a standalone phrase

Signed, Rafa

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Nonchalant comeback / FRI 6-20-25 / Reddit rule enforcers / Request by those under 21 / "OMG!," in a modern spelling / Writer with a monument in Florence's Piazza Santa Croce / Dweller near Dubai / Big name in bookstores / Moves slightly closer, as a baseball fielder

Constructor: Adrianne Baik

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ROYAL OPERA HOUSE (16A: Cultural attraction in London's Covent Garden) —

The Royal Opera House (ROH) is a theatre in Covent Garden, central London. The building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. The ROH is the main home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House (now known collectively as the Royal Ballet and Opera).

The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there.

The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s.

The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, making it the third largest in London, and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Writer with a monument in
Florence's Piazza Santa Croce]

I've seen a lot of triple-stack puzzles in my time and this triple-stack is ... one of them. It's fine. The stacks are the highlight, and they hold up. It's not gonna be terribly memorable, but it's solid. Considering how many short answers there are in this puzzle, the grid feels pretty smooth and reasonably well polished. No real wincing today. I have some quibbles with the cluing here and there, but all in all, this was a pleasant, relatively easy solving experience. All triple-stack (or if you're (un)lucky, quad-stack) puzzles look daunting when you first open them, but they're actually among the easier kinds of themelesses to solve precisely because of their stackiness (so much easier to solve than, say, a highly segmented, four-quadrant-type puzzle with very little flow in / out of the quadrants). Anywhere there are long stacks, there are going to be an abundance of short crosses, and that's where I go first. Don't even bother looking at those Across clues at first, just attack the Downs, rat-a-tat, all the way across the top of the grid, without second-guessing or looking back until I've reached the 15th column. Then I look back and see what I have, and I try to work out the stack parts from there. After my first pass at the Downs up top, this is what I was staring at:

Only three errors. Not too bad. And the errors were easy to find using basic pattern recognition skills, i.e. "OUO" looks superwrong there at the end of 16-Across, and "THM" doesn't look that promising either. See also "SOER" in the middle of 1-Across. Before pulling anything or changing anything, I look at the Across clues. 1A: "Looks like it's settled!" doesn't immediately move the needle, so I move to 16A: Cultural attraction in London's Covent Garden and there it is—through the haze of wrong letters, I can see it: ROYAL OPERA HOUSE. That changed MOET to ASTI and OILS to ... I didn't know what, but once I made the requisite changes in my Downs, everything fell into place (including the "Y"—not "I"—in ALY). Always nice when the stacks come together and they don't feel forced or awkward. Good colloquial energy up there. Auspicious start. I guess the bottom stack has a similar colloquial energy to it, but for whatever reason, HATERS GONNA HATE just doesn't impress me the way it might have ten years ago. It feels slightly stale. It's not a bad answer. Weird how modern slang can feel played out pretty fast, whereas something like WORD ON THE STREET, which has been around a long time, still feels solid. I am not a hater of HATERS GONNA HATE. Just kinda bored by it. 

["... there's talk on the street ..." RIP J.D. Souther]

As I say, there were a few irksome clues. Let's start with the clue on NOVELS (6D: They're long stories), which ... no. They're longer than short stories, generally, or novellas (whatever those are), but NOVELS are frequently short. There is nothing inherently "long" about them. SAGAS, EPICS, these imply length / breadth / expansiveness. NOVELS are only "long" or "short" relative to themselves, i.e. there are long and short novels. I've been reading a lot of sub-200pp. novels this summer. Those are short. I regularly teach one of the first novels in English: Oroonoko by Aphra Behn. It's like 80 pages. Not Long. I also didn't love the clue on LION'S SHARE (27D: This is the greatest part!), since it forces "greatest" into a phrase that would normally have "best" in it (needing "greatest" to make the misdirection work—it's referring to amount, not quality). And then there's 45D: Request by those under 21 (“HIT ME!”). Again, no. Misleading, even when you know the clue refers to blackjack. Some of those “under 21” will hit, sure, sometimes. But the "those" in the clue implies a universality, and no one is hitting on 20, come on. The smallest qualifier here ("at times" "possibly" "maybe" etc.) would've made the clue accurate.  

Bullets:

• 37A: Retro means of communication (FLIP PHONE) — increasingly nostalgic for these, with every passing day. I know they still exist, I just ... do too much stuff on my smartphone to give it up. I have to start putting it in a box for huge chunks of the day, just so I don't have the temptation to grab it and scroll mindlessly through all the things I scroll through. Any time my phone is well out of arm's reach, I'm happier, calmer, and time feels different. The dumbphone world was slower and less convenient, but it wasn't less happy.
• 49D: "OMG!," in a modern spelling ("WOAH!") — The smartphone world gave us "WOAH!" Yet another mark against it.

[the only good "WOAH"]

• 46A: Part of many a car's dashboard (CD SLOT) — I said there was no wincing today, but I kinda winced at this. And my car actually has one of these. But I would call that "part" of my "car's dashboard" the CD PLAYER. But you can't argue with the fact that there is a SLOT there for the CD to go into. So ... accurate enough. Just odd / awkward. (Completely unsurprisingly, CDSLOT is a debut—and once again I am tapping the "Not All Debuts Are Good" sign).
• 35D: Moves slightly closer, as a baseball fielder (CHEATS IN) — this is also a debut. It will appear like odd terminology to non-baseball fans, but it's real enough. To "cheat in" is to move out of your regular playing position, toward home plate, in anticipation of an expected bunt or, if you're an outfielder, to try to prevent grounders hit past the infield or other short-hit balls from generating a run (closer to the plate = better position to throw a runner out ... but if a ball is hit hard or deep, god help you).
• 43D: Coffee roaster's creation (BLEND) — my roaster makes great holiday blends around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and a "Black & Tan" (a special dark + light)  he does all year round. Gotta go pick up a couple bags of coffee today for my lake vacation, which starts this weekend. So it'll be a mix of me and my guest writers next week. Mostly guest writers. Starting Sunday. But I'm here again tomorrow. See you then.

Happy summer solstice, everyone. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Silent marching band position / THU 6-19-25 / "Fulcrum" sculptor Richard / Precursor to a license / Part of a beer name / Simple exercise often done while standing / Water wheel?

Constructor: Hannah Slovut-Einertson

Relative difficulty: Easy (if mildly confusing)

THEME: a "TO" b — four answers are "instructions for answering" four other answers in the puzzle; in order to make sense of four answers in the puzzle, the four answers that precede each of those answers, all of which have "TO" in the middle, must be read as if the "TO" were a separate word and the letters preceding and following it just letters; so, for example, RAT OUT must be read as "RA" TO "UT"—as in, change the letters "RA" TO "UT" in order to make the next answer (GUTTER) look right in the grid (because the crosses only work if the answer is GRATER)

Theme answers:

• RAT OUT (20A Tattle on .... or an instruction for answering 22-Across) 
• 22A: Proverbial bad thing to have your mind in (GRATER) (change "RA" to "UT" and you get GUTTER)
• OCTOPI (28A: Some aquarium attractions .... or an instruction for answering 30-Across) / 
• 30A: Like the tail of the stegosaurus (SOCKED) (change "OC" to "PI" and you get SPIKED)
• T-STORM (44A: Informal name for a weather event ... or an instruction for answering 45-Across) 
• 45A: Precursor to a license (PETSIT) (change "TS" to "RM" and you get PERMIT)
• ARTOIS (51A: Part of a beer name .... or an instruction for answering 53-Across) 
• 53A: Certain clergy member (BARHOP) (change "AR" to "IS" and you get BISHOP)

Word of the Day: Richard SERRA (33D: "Fulcrum" sculptor Richard) —

Richard Serra (November 2, 1938 – March 26, 2024) was an American artist known for his large-scale abstract sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings, and whose work has been primarily associated with Postminimalism. Described as "one of his era's greatest sculptors", Serra became notable for emphasizing the material qualities of his works and exploration of the relationship between the viewer, the work, and the site. [...] From the mid-1960s onward, particularly after his move to New York City in 1966, Serra worked to radicalize and extend the definition of sculpture beginning with his early experiments with rubber, neon, and lead, to his large-scale steel works. His early works in New York, such as To Lift from 1967 and Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up from 1968, reflected his fascination with industrial materials and the physical properties of his chosen mediums. His large-scale works, both in urban and natural landscapes, have reshaped public interactions with art and, at times, were also a source of controversy, such as that caused by his Tilted Arc in Manhattan in 1981. Serra was married to artist Nancy Graves between 1965 and 1970, and Clara Weyergraf between 1981 and his death in 2024. (wikipedia) 

Fulcrum is a large sculpture by American artist Richard Serra installed in 1987 near the western entrance to Liverpool Street station, London, as part of the Broadgate development. The sculpture consists of five pieces of Cor-Ten steel, and is approximately 55 feet (17 m) tall.^[1] Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum, has called it one of London's "design icons". (wikipedia)

• • •

Got the gist of the theme very, very quickly. I've seen variations on this theme before, where a revealer like "STOP" would indicate that an "S" had been changed "to" a "P" (perhaps to create wacky answers), so when the theme clues told me to look at the answers as "instructions," the meaning of that was obvious to me. Or ... mostly obvious. Here's the big problem with this theme, as far as my brain's own information-processing capabilities are concerned: if you tell me something is an "instruction for answering" something else, I assume that following the "instruction" will get me to the correct answer ("correct" being The Answer That Actually Works In The Grid). These instructions will get you to the correct answer for the individual clues in question ... but You Do Not Need Those Instructions because the original clues for those answers are accurate. That is, I can "get" (and in fact got) GUTTER just by reading the clue for GUTTER. No instructions needed. GUTTER fits its clue. Ta ... da!? What I need "instructions" for is how to enter the answer in the damn grid!!! So there was no changing "RA" to "UT," as the "instructions" say—there was only the reverse: changing "UT" to "RA" (so that the crosses would work). Yes, when I am done with my puzzle, and all the Downs work and the four answers in question appear to make no sense, then if I follow the instructions, I get the correct answers for the clues, but ... that's all after the fact. "Instruction for answering" should get you to the answer that ends up in the grid, the one that makes sense for all the crosses, the one that keeps your streak going, whatever. But here, "instruction" for answering gets you only a. the answer you had in the first place if you just went by the literal clue, and b. the answer that will not, in fact, work in the grid (with the Downs). In short (or in long, by now, I guess), the logic of the "instructions" seemed backwards to me. Broken.

The fill was very rough, once again: ELBA SHORTTON ACTI OPI APSES THEUS and I haven't even left the NW yet, or even mentioned every overcommon repeater you meet up there. Not nearly polished enough, and not lively enough. TAIO ITTY? Not a great looking pair. Not sure I've ever seen the crosswordese ETTU given the full-phrase treatment before ("ET TU, BRUTE!?"). I kinda like it, even if I don't really like the fact that the longest Across answers are somehow *not* thematic (another thing my brain just doesn't like). I also didn't like that one of those longer Acrosses (NOT ONE BIT) actually had a "TO" in it, making it a kind of a false themer. See also ATOP. Seems like the least you could do in a theme like this is keep the most important "instruction" word confined solely to the theme answers. Stray "TO"s, boo. The core concept in today's puzzle is potentially interesting, but the execution just missed today, for me. And again I'm begging the NYTXW to demand better than "eh, good enough" where overall grid quality is concerned. 

Once again the puzzle came out well on the easy side. I just fell down the left side of the grid without much effort until I hit TSTORM—the first clue I looked at with the "instruction" in it. I then bounced right back up and picked up OCTOPI and RATOUT and thus had the first three "instruction" answers set in place within the first minute of solving:

Are NASCAR MOMS a thing? Clearly I thought they were a thing for a bit. But I guess they're "Soccer MOMS" and NASCAR DADS (47A: NASCAR ___ (demographic group)). This is just a way of talking about (a certain class of) white people without calling them "white," right? I haven't heard these demographic names since the '10s. They're best left in the past, I think. Anyway, that error was easily cleared up, as were all the little errors I made—like thinking Lady Gaga's full name was Stefani Germanotta ANA Lady Gaga, or imagining that the home of Lake Placid was North ERIE, or misremembering the once-briefly-popular pop singer as TAYO Cruz (TAIO Cruz hasn't released an album or had a chart hit since 2011). The hardest answer for me to get today was probably HELM (15A: Water wheel?)—even with "HEL-" I had no idea. But yes, if you are on "water" and steering a ship, the HELM might be a steering "wheel." It's a good clue, just didn't compute. But everything else computed today, rather too easily. Oh, wait, I forgot PARADE REST ... what in the world is a PARADE REST!? I think that, and not HELM, was the toughest answer for me, only because I've never heard of such a thing, and even now can't imagine what it is. Had PARADE and then ... no idea. According to Merriam-Webster dot com, PARADE REST is:

: a formal position assumed by a soldier in ranks in which he remains silent and motionless with the left foot 12 inches to the left of the right foot and with the weight resting equally on both feet and when without arms clasps the hands behind the back with the palms to the rear and when with a rifle holds the rifle in the right hand with butt touching the ground and muzzle inclined forward and holds the left hand behind the back 

—used as a command to assume this position

But the clue says "marching band." Maybe the same position exists in marching bands? Or else "band" here just means "group of people?" Confusing to me, for sure (but I was never in the military or in a marching band, so my confusion is no big surprise, to me).

Bullets:

• 27A: ___ of Solomon (ODES) — if it's not "SONG," I have no idea. Never heard of these ODES (or, I had heard, and then forgot).
• 21D: Nail polish brand with the shade I Just Can't Cope-acabana (OPI) — starting to feel like the NYTXW is doing paid promotional work for OPI. This exact type of OPI clue has been used several times now (the one where the clue showcases a wacky shade name). OPI, like ARO, is quickly ascending the ranks of New Crosswordese. It was novel. Now it is not novel. Now it is everywhere. It's a real (popular) brand, and the shade names are amusing, and all puzzles have short filler words, so there are worse ways to go. OPI should have an eight-color shade set called the OCTOPI.

• 7D: Like Hawaii, among the 50 states (WETTEST) — I keep looking at this answer and seeing WET TEST, which makes it seem like a "TEST" dupe (see TEST PREP) (38D: Activity for many H.S. juniors)
• 5D: Simple exercise often done while standing (TOE TAP) — oh, are we calling our compulsive behaviors "exercise" now? How fun. I've been "exercising" for much of the time I've been sitting here writing, apparently. Good to know. I feel so fit!
• 35D: Begins to feel real (SETS IN) — really wanted SINKS IN here. Still really want it. Rigor mortis SETS IN. A new reality SINKS IN

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Rainy-day game for children / WED 6-18-25 / Bygone initials at JFK / Rely on the hospitality of friends for lodging / Gad about at a banquet / "Sound" of a point sailing over someone's head / The first one was delivered in 1984 / "Star Wars" species on Tatooine / "Decorated" as a house for Halloween / Mind-boggling designs / Fashion's Jimmy whose surname aptly rhymes with "shoe" / Medicinal name in the shampoo aisle / 2019 Brad Pitt sci-fi thriller

Constructor: Eli Cotham

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: THE FLOOR IS LAVA (58A: Rainy-day game for children, whose play is punnily suggested by 16-, 24-, 35- and 50-Across) — answers all suggest movement on furniture, i.e. actions you might take while playing THE FLOOR IS LAVA, a game where touching the ground ("FLOOR") means "death":

Theme answers:

• COUNTERBALANCE (16A: Offset, as something on a scale)
• TABLEHOP (24A: Gad about at a banquet)
• COUCHSURF (35A: Rely on the hospitality of friends for lodging)
• BARCRAWL (50A: Hit the pubs)

Word of the Day: THE FLOOR IS LAVA (58A) —

The floor is lava is a game in which players pretend that the floor or ground is made of lava (or any other lethal substance, such as acid or quicksand), and thus must avoid touching the ground, as touching the ground would "kill" the player who did so. The players stay off the floor by standing on furniture or the room's architecture. The players generally may not remain still, and are required to move from one piece of furniture to the next. This is due to some people saying that the furniture is acidic, sinking, or in some other way time-limited in its use. The game can be played with a group or alone for self amusement. There may even be a goal, to which the players must race. The game may also be played outdoors in playgrounds or similar areas.

This game is similar to the traditional children's game "Puss in the Corner", or "Puss Wants a Corner", where children occupying the corner of a room are "safe", while the Puss, the player who is "It" in the middle of the room, tries to occupy an empty corner as the other players dash from one corner to another. This game was often played in school shelter-sheds in Victoria, with the bench-seats along the walls of the shelter-shed being used as platforms joining the corner, while players crossing the floor could be caught by the Puss. (wikipedia)

• • •

The revealer really rescued this one for me. I had noticed the furniture element as I went along, but didn't see any kind of thematic coherence beyond that until the game showed up near the end and made me notice the second (action) halves of the answers as well. I never played THE FLOOR IS LAVA as a kid (or as an adult). I've never even seen it played. I know of it only from recent pop culture, and even then I don't know how the name of the game got into my brain. Some specific TV show? Apparently there is a Netflix show called THE FLOOR IS LAVA that premiered in 2020—maybe I caught sight of that title while scrolling through thousands of movie titles to find something non-mediocre. More likely that someone on some TV show mentioned it on some episode blah blah who knows how these things get in your brain? The point is, I had enough of a sense of how the game is played to appreciate the theme. I did not, however, appreciate the fill, and this is Really becoming an issue of late—grid negligence, or grid grime, or whatever name you wanna call it. I winced through a whole lot of this grid, which is just inundated with short overcommon or ugly stuff. So many initialisms! Plus tired or archaic stuff; NIGH OGLE NYMET one lone TAPA OPART ENUF USN ISAY CST TPED TSAR UMS TEAMO ERST ATOB SST ELO TGEL. You wouldn't squawk much about a few of these, but the load of them? Yeesh. The longer Downs occasionally make up for the shorter dreck (they're all pretty good, exc. maybe the improbable comparative adj. GLUMMER and the Latin ADASTRA, which are still fine). But there was a stretch there from the NW through the center of the grid (roughly OGLE to ERST) where I thought the crosswordese onslaught would never end. I still think the puzzle ends up in Positive territory in the end, but just barely.

Another unfortunate trend in recent puzzles: easiness. There should be at least a little resistance in a Wednesday puzzle. But today, only the NW and SE gave me any kind of pushback, and it wasn't much. It's always hardest getting started, so a little skidding around before you get traction is normal (I got OGLE and nothing else at first in the NW, so I just moved over to Jimmy CHOO and started there). As for the SE, I wrote in the cookware brand TFAL instead of the dandruff shampoo TGEL (not the first time I've made this mistake—there's also a medicated shampoo called TSAL, which has never been used, but which exists nonetheless, and thus adds to my confusion). Because of that mistake, and because the TED TALK clue was vaguely hard (44D: The first one was delivered in 1984) (me: "... TEST-TUBE BABY?"). I took longer in the SE than elsewhere. Everywhere else, it was just paint by numbers, connect the dots. Nothing particularly thorny.

[53D: Eudora ___, Pulitzer winner for "The Optimist's Daughter"]

Aside from the preponderance of crosswordesey stuff, the only part of the puzzle that bugged me was the spelling of WOOSH (51D: "Sound" of a point sailing over someone's head). I do not believe in it. That looks like a typo. Specifically, it looks like you left out the first "H" (following the initial "W"). I realize that spelling sounds are likely to result in approximations and variations, but the dictionary entry is definitely "Whoosh." If I didn't use the word a lot to describe a certain kind of fast and exhilarating movement through the puzzle, maybe I wouldn't be so particular ... but then, maybe I would. A few online dictionaries grudgingly give "WOOSH" as a variant, but yuck and ick and "no" and "bad." Extremely ugly to look at. When WOOSH appeared in '02 and '04, the puzzle had the decency to mark it as a variant ("Var."). But since then ('18, '22, now), no more. Please go back to "Var." It's more honest. 

Further notes:

• 38A: "Star Wars" species on Tatooine (JAWA) — saw that it was four letters ending in "A," nearly (instinctively) wrote in YODA. Bit weird to have "Tatooine" in the clues and TATTOO in the grid, but I don't think that counts as a foul.
• 2D: "Ha ha ha!," on April Fools' Day ("I GOT YOU") — wanted "GOTCHA!" Still want "GOTCHA!" And unless it comes in puzzle form, man do I hate the whole idea of "getting" people on April 1. The world is full enough of fraud as it is. Please keep your April Fools' gags far away from me, thx. 

• 12D: House with a long-unmowed lawn, e.g. (EYESORE) — did an HOA write this clue? I love the variegated, slightly wild looks of unmown lawns. Yeah, some aren't so pretty, I guess, but immaculate bright green lawns are their own kind of chemically-induced horror show. 

[bunny on my neighbor's unmown lawn yesterday]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Paypal 
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✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

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• Lollapuzzoola 18 (NYC) (Sat., Aug. 9, 2025) 
• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)

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📘 My other blog (reactivated!) 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

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