Celestial phenomena observed at perigees / WED 6-11-25 / Grammy-nominated poet Nikki ___ / Solomonic figures / Chang or Eng Bunker, notably / Sounds heard during a cuteness overload / One of four featured on the Yale Nature Walk / The World Map is the largest one to date, with 11,695 pieces

Constructor: Sam Koperwas and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: MISSISSIPPI River (18D: Natural dividing line on a U.S. map, as suggested by this puzzle's circled letters) — almost all the states that the MISSISSIPPI runs through can be found on either side of MISSISSIPPI in the grid (in the form of state codes, located inside the pairs of circled squares)

Theme answers:

• SIAMESE TWIN (17A: Chang or Eng Bunker, notably)
• MOTOR SKILLS (27A: Throwing a ball and grasping a pencil, e.g.)
• STAR WITNESS (45A: Provider of crucial testimony)
• PLAGIARISMS (59A: Copyright wrongs)

Word of the Day: Nikki GIOVANNI (32A: Grammy-nominated poet Nikki ___) —

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (June 7, 1943 – December 9, 2024) was an American poet, writer, commentator, activist and educator. One of the world's best-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She was nominated for a 2004 Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she was named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends". Giovanni was a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.

Giovanni gained initial fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her the "Poet of the Black Revolution". During the 1970s, she began writing children's literature, and co-founded a publishing company, NikTom Ltd, to provide an outlet for other African-American women writers. [...]

Giovanni received numerous awards and held 27 honorary degrees from various colleges and universities. She was also given the key to more than two dozen cities. Giovanni was honored with the NAACP Image Award seven times. She had a South American bat species, Micronycteris giovanniae, named after her in 2007.

• • •

Uh, you missed a state. Which is just one of several things that makes this theme not work well at all. Pairs of circled letters just don't seem that exciting to start with, and these pairs force some fairly awkward answers, like a singular SIAMESE TWIN and (much stranger) a plural PLAGIARISMS. "Be right back, gonna go do some PLAGIARISMS." That is not a word that wants to be in the plural at all. But the themers have to match in length, so SIAMESE TWIN comes in short and PLAGIARISMS comes in long, all so the theme can "work." So thematic constraints lead to geographic absurdities (the complete elimination of MN because it doesn't have another state to "pair" with it) as well as theme answer absurdities (one twin, two PLAGIARISMS). But then again, the theme isn't constrained enough, in that the states are So Far Apart from each other. Famously, notably, visibly (see map above), the MISSISSIPPI runs through (or alongside) all the states in question, but in the grid, only two of the ten states are actually found alongside the MISSISSIPPI. Most of them have somehow drifted away from the river, and some of them ... I mean, my god, Wisconsin 's up around where Maine should be, and Louisiana is over in southern California somewhere. Just ridiculous physical placement. Come on. Do the thing or don't do the thing. Get MN in there, get those states closer to the damn river, or scrap the whole enterprise.

And for the second day in a row, the fill in the puzzle was startlingly weak. After encountering STU and EKED in quick succession, before I'd even really gotten started, I stopped and let out a sigh, took a deep breath, and braced myself for what was (likely) to come, which is to say, an avalanche of subpar fill. And sure enough, it came. SES ... is there anything worse than SES? (7D: French possessive). Yes, sure, sometimes you're desperate and you need a French possessive, but that's an answer I'd just eliminate from my wordlist so I never had to see it again. Don't even let the software suggest it. And that's just the beginning today. IDS crossing IMS, ELIE alongside SSNS, ILE and ALVA and AER and ASPS and AWS IPAS EPSOM DEL TTOP TERRE ... and a few more repeaters I don't care to list right now. If you had maybe half this much gunk, OK, every puzzle makes compromises here and there. But this grid was primarily compromises. This is what happens when you build a grid with so many 3s 4s and 5s, and then don't take the time to really polish your grid. Again, the thematic constraints are probably partially to blame, but that just takes me back to my first point, which is why do this theme at all if you can't nail it? The mid-range fill could've livened things up a bit, but it's hard to get excited by stuff like LAB SITE and TRESTLE and SEEPED. I guess SUPERMOONS is gonna be exciting to some (I don't really know what those are and wrote in SUPERNOVAE) (3D: Celestial phenomena observed at perigees). I enjoyed seeing Nikki GIOVANNI (as clued). The clue for LEGO SET has me intrigued (30D: The World Map is the largest one to date, with 11,695 pieces). I actually think ON FIRE is pretty nice, as 6-letter answers go. But overall, the fill on this one was really disappointing. Objectively below average, overwhelmingly stale. 

It was easy, though, so I doubt many solvers are going to be terribly bothered by its shortcomings. I don't remember struggling anywhere with this one. Oh, except for the SUPERNOVAE error, which wasn't too hard to dig my way out of. That [I, for one] clue (49D) has been used a ton of times, for a variety of answers ranging from ROMAN NUMERAL to PRONOUN to HALOGEN (where the "I" stands for Iodine). The clue first appeared in 1999, where, like today, it was used for VOWEL. Anyway, I hesitated there a little and let crosses help me out. But otherwise, I'm struggling to see struggle points. 


Bullets:

• 41A: National park that's home to the Pretty Rocks Landslide (DENALI) — I did not know this. Apparently the landslide is ongoing and has (since 2021) made the sole road through DENALI National Park impassable. I was startled to find that the National Park Service still has language up on its website for Pretty Rock Landslide that acknowledges the role of climate change in accelerated erosion. There's even a big subheading on the site that reads: "Climate Change as Causal Agent." I'd've expected this administration to have scrubbed such language the way they scrubbed pictures of Black people, including war heroes, from Pentagon websites. Frankly, I'm semi-surprised they haven't literally taken the letters "DEI" out of DENALI ("NAL!") but looks like the president has already simply changed the name of the mountain back to Mount White Guy Who Never Set Foot in Alaska. At any rate, there's one change to DENALI that only this grid can achieve, which is to relocate it to the northern border of ARkansas.
• 62A: Sounds heard during a cuteness overload (AWS) — What is a "cuteness overload?" I assume it involves multiple people, because it's hard to imagine one person saying "AW" repeatedly, no matter how cute the child / kitten / puppy in question.
• 58A: One of four featured on the Yale Nature Walk (ELM) — no crossword would be complete without a Yale reference being shoehorned in somewhere.
• 2D: Sticking point for a gardener? (STAKE) — you stick a STAKE in the ground primarily for plant support, I think (my wife is the gardener, not me). I wanted STAVE here, but that's for barrel-making (cooping? coopering? yes, coopering) not gardening.

[ON FIRE]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]