Counterpart of a dog lover / MON 6-30-25 / A milk drinker may have one / "I'm done with you!" / Crescent moon, for instance / Exchange of negative commercials / Ancient city fooled by a horse

Constructor: Dena R. Verkuil and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (with one real stumper, for me, solving Downs-only)

THEME: "YOU TALKIN' TO ME?" (36A: Classic Robert De Niro line in "Taxi Driver" ... or a hint for 17-, 25-, 51- and 61-Across) — exclamations that end with a person's name:

Theme answers:

• "GEEZ, LOUISE!" (17A: "My heavens!")
• "WHOA, NELLY!" (25A: "Hold it right there!")
• "NO WAY, JOSE!" (51A: "Absolutely, positively not!")
• "BYE, FELICIA!" (61A: "I'm done with you!")

Word of the Day: "BYE, FELICIA!" (61A) —

In American English, the phrase "Bye, Felicia" or "Bye, Felisha" is an informal phrase and internet meme intended as a dismissive send-off, wherein a person or idea is rendered so unimportant his or her name is reduced to "Felicia." According to Ice Cube, who starred in Friday and co-wrote its script, "'Bye, Felicia' [...] is the phrase to get anyone out [of] your face that's saying something stupid". Nicole Richie said "Felicia is, like, some random that you just do not even care about." // The phrase originally comes from a scene in the 1995 American comedy film Friday in which Ice Cube's character says "Bye, Felisha" to dismiss Angela Means' character, Felisha. Due to the phrase being spread orally, it was incorrectly recorded as "Bye Felicia", now the most popular variation. // In an interview with Vibe magazine to commemorate the film's 20th anniversary, Means said she believes the phrase wasn't in the script and Ice Cube ad-libbed the line "based off what I gave him as an actor." (wikipedia)

• • •

Gonna go out on a limb and predict that a lot of solvers (particularly older solvers) will not be familiar with the dismissive expression, "BYE, FELICIA!" It's very common, but there's gonna be a generational dividing line with that one for sure. I never saw Friday (1995) and never heard the expression "BYE, FELICIA!" until many years (decades?) later. It might even have been in a crossword context that I first heard it. Let me check ... no, I've never written about it on this blog, so it must've been while solving some other crossword. Annnnnyway, by the time I got down to that answer, I understood the basic structure of the theme, so I was looking for a name at the end of that answer, and once I got the "-ICIA" part, I had it. Definitely the newest and least broadly known of today's theme answers, but that doesn't make it invalid. I think it's a nice way to end this themer set ("BYE!"). As for the theme itself, it's very good: tight, clean, and with just the right kind of playfulness for a Monday. The revealer's relationship to the themers is perhaps a little loose—you have to imagine someone named Louise or Nelly or Jose or Felicia saying it—but it's such a good line, such an iconic line, that I don't mind the looseness. At all. In fact, I kinda like imagining the (unlikely) scenario of someone with one of those names wondering out loud if they're being addressed directly. Actually, people with those names probably get self-styled "funny" people using those expressions in their presence all the time. Is this true? Let me know, all you Louises and Nellys and Joses and Felicias out there.

The fill today definitely runs a little toward the stale / olden / crosswordesey. I don't need to list it all out, you can see it for yourself, pretty plainly. Just in case you can't, here's an abbreviated list: SRI ESTE NENE AYE SSN ÊTRE ERIES TKOS etc. etc. But you do get four solid long Downs, at least one of which (CAT PERSON) feels pretty fresh and original (10D: Counterpart of a dog lover). And the clue on MUSTACHE is unexpected and clever (39D: A milk drinker may have one). I got it off the "M," so it wasn't hard, but I did enjoy it. I have to wonder about the clue on ESSAYS, though (13D: Pieces of 1,000 words or so). Out of what orifice did they pull the number "1,000?" That seems ... totally arbitrary. Did A.I. write that clue? Nope, even A.I. (i.e. Google Assist, that annoying top search return that you have to scroll past if you want to find truly reliable information) is telling me that the number of words in an essay varies wildly depending on context.

["May contain inaccuracies" LOL I'm sure that will hold up well in court]

ESSAYS can be virtually any length. 1,000 words is ridiculous. "Or so" doing a lot of work in that clue. Can't believe someone, somewhere in the puzzle-making process couldn't have written a better clue for that one. 

Solving Downs-only, there were two answers that were very tough for me. The first was ALKALI (11D: Base that dissolves in water). I wasn't exactly sure how "Base" was being used in the clue, but even if I had known it was "Base" as in "counterpart of acid on the pH scale," I probably still would've needed to run the alphabet of possibilities at T-OS (as I did) to get the "K," which got me to ALKALI. But the real toughie for me today was an innocuous-seeming four-letter answer near the heart of the grid: FLAK (29D: Carping). I had the "A" and that's it. I couldn't make anything out of [Carping], esp. considering the answer couldn't end in "-ING" (as it wouldn't fit). I was thinking of adjectives meaning "complaining," such as you might use to describe a complaining person. Maybe ... something like "SORE" or "CRABBY" or "WHINY" or I don't know what. It was very tough to infer any of the missing letters from their crosses. Lots of possibilities for S-O, -OS, and AR-. I ran the alphabet for S-O and still got nowhere. It was only when I reran the alphabet that I realized I'd missed SFO as a possibility. Thought about potential F-A- words for many seconds before FLAK finally dawned on me. You catch FLAK or you give FLAK, and while "carping" is a plausible synonym, it's not one that trades places easily with FLAK (not in the ways that I would use FLAK). I'm not impugning the clue, just trying to explain couldn't easily make the connection. Downs-only solves can get perilous quickly, and in the strangest ways...

Bullets:

• 24D: "___ camoly!" ("HOLY") — what ... is this? I've heard of "holy moly!" and possibly the jokey "holy cannoli!" (?), but "camoly?" What the hell is "camoly" even supposed to be doing? What sound is that? Is there a pun? Why would anyone add a "ca-" to the perfectly good "holy moly!"? "HOLY CAMOLY!" would've made a good theme answer if anyone on god's green earth had ever been named Camoly. Any Camolys out there? Calling all Camolys! Help me, Obi-Wan Camoly, you're my only hope!
• 58A: Murmur during a massage ("AHH") — Is "AHH" a "murmur"? Especially in this context? I know we all love alliterative clues, but ... how to say this ... I've been seeing my massage therapist for the better part of a decade now so she's heard me make any number of sounds, but never "AHH" (that's more a "slipping into a warm bath" sound). Maybe some of my noises qualify as "murmurs," but most of them are guttural sounds indicating "&#^$% that part of me is apparently really *#&$^ing tense, thank you for figuring that out." Most of these sounds are unspellable. 
• 32D: Buyer's protection (GUARANTEE) — I tried to make WARRANTY fit here. It would not.

Glad to be back on blogging duty full time now. I had a great week on Lake Ontario with my best friends. Much needed catching up / hanging out / eating / drinking / movie-watching time. We did jigsaws:

[Puzzles of 1,000 pieces, exactly]

And went birding:

[weird red-faced chicken/duck called a "gallinule" (this is not the actual gallinule we saw)]

[at Montezuma National Wildlife Preserve]

[didn't see one of these, but now want this exact drawing tattooed on my body somewhere. If I were a bird, this is what I would look like. This is the energy I would bring. All park illustrations should be done by schoolchildren]

And on the last day we went to the Eastman House mansion and museum in Rochester, NY, where I took a selfie with a very unexpected statue of Philip Seymour Hoffman (!?)

Thanks to Eli and Mali and Clare and Rafa for filling in. You'll be seeing more from them later in the summer (I go away to MN for a weekend in mid-July to see my daughter—currently Production Manager at the Great River Shakespeare Festival—and in August I've got a full week in Santa Barbara with my extended family, followed immediately by the Lollapuzzoola xword tourney in NYC). I enjoyed sleeping in, even if my body did keep waking up very early like "Time to Blog!" I've trained it well. Luckily, it let me fall back asleep, at least a little. I'm writing this on Sunday evening, but it's back to 4am wake-up calls for me starting Tuesday. Can't wait (no, srsly). I'll leave you with two last pictures of Lake Ontario, taken from the back yard of the place where we were staying ... 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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