Pink Nintendo character from Planet Popstar / MON 6-2-25 / Rule-making grp. for a residential community / Actual shape of the Crab Nebula, disappointingly / Preferring platonic relationships, informally / Greek sorceress who took the phrase "men are pigs" literally / Actor Russell whose surname sounds like a bird / Grandma, in Glasgow

Constructor: Anthony V. Grubb

Relative difficulty: Challenging (when solved Downs-only)

THEME: CLOTHES LINE (64A: Where duds are draped to dry ... or a literal description of 18-, 28- and 49-Across) — colloquial expressions ("lines") that contain articles of clothing:

Theme answers:

• "EAT MY SHORTS!" (18A: "Go fly a kite!")
• "PUT A SOCK IN IT!" (28A: "Pipe down!")
• "SUIT YOURSELF!" (49A: "No skin off my nose!")

Word of the Day: KIRBY (31D: Pink Nintendo character from Planet Popstar) —

Kirby (Japanese: カービィ, Hepburn: Kābī, Japanese pronunciation: [kaːbiː]) is the titular character and protagonist of the Kirby series of video games developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. He first appeared in Kirby's Dream Land (1992), a platform game for the Game Boy. Since then, Kirby has appeared in over 50 games, ranging from action platformers to puzzle, racing, and pinball, and has been featured as a playable character in every installment of the Super Smash Bros. series (1999–present). He has also starred in his own anime and manga series. Since 1999, he has been voiced by Makiko Ohmoto.

Kirby's signature skill is his ability to inhale objects or creatures and spit them out as projectiles, as well as the ability to suck in air to float over obstacles. His Copy Ability grants him the power to adopt the abilities of the creatures he inhales, while also wearing various costumes or transforming his shape. He uses these abilities to rescue various lands, such as his homeworld Planet Popstar, from evil forces and antagonists, such as Dark Matter or Nightmare. On these adventures, he often crosses paths with his rivals, King Dedede and Meta Knight. In virtually all of his appearances, Kirby is depicted as a cheerful, innocent, and food-loving character.

Kirby has been regarded as one of the most iconic video game characters of all time, as well as one of the cutest and most lovable. He has achieved high popularity with gamers in Japan. He has also been praised for being one of the most versatile characters, due to starring in a large catalogue of games that cuts across a variety of video game genres. (wikipedia)

• • •

I like this theme, but the cluing on this one bordered on nauseating at times, and there is one decision that I do not understand and will never understand; namely, why in the world do you go with ANNUM when ANNUL is available? When presented with a choice like this, You Should Take The Regular-Ass English Word Every Time. ANNUM? You *chose* ANNUM when ANNUL would've worked perfectly well in both directions!?!? Who does this? I'm sure none of you who solved this puzzle the regular way (i.e. looking at Across and Downs clues) noticed or cared, but let me tell you, solving Downs-only, you notice. If I've got ANNU-, an "L" is going in that final spot, and it's especially going in that final spot when it works in the Down (45D: Snacks (on) (MUNCHES)). Yes, OK, LUNCHES isn't quite the same as "Snacks" but it is sure as hell ballpark—horseshoes & hand grenades and all that. There was not one second where I questioned ANNUL / LUNCHES. It's not that big a deal to make a mistake (or more than one mistake) when solving Downs-only, but I really resent that the mistake came on a word that shouldn't have been in the grid in the first place. Objectively, ANNUL / LUNCHES is better than ANNUM (!?!?!) / MUNCHES. In any puzzle, in any situation, this is true. I can see liking MUNCHES better than LUNCHES, but ANNUM (Latin!) is not an answer you use unless you *have to*, and you sure as hell don't have to here. Blargh. An awful decision on everyone's part. 

Also awful was some of this cluing. So, so try-hard. "Per M.I.T."?? What the hell does that mean? What an incredibly stupid and meaningless and awkwardly worded way to clue OREOS (71A: It's nearly impossible to split their creme equally, per M.I.T.). "Nearly impossible"? Is it impossible or isn't it? I'm gonna say that if you get down to the atomic level, it's absolutely impossible, but What The Hell Are We Even Talking About Here? Who is trying to split the "creme" (ugly word)? You don't split the creme. You twist OREOS apart, OK, but inevitably the creme goes mostly one way, and that's how it is and who cares? M.I.T.? Also, why is it disappointing that the "Crab Nebula" is OVAL and how in the world am I supposed to get from "not Crab-shaped" to OVAL, specifically? (37D: Actual shape of the Crab Nebula, disappointingly). There's nothing At All that says "OVAL" in that clue. Also also, a crab's body is kind of OVAL, isn't it? I guess the cluing is trying to be whimsical, but it just read as awkward and flailing to me. The Greek sorceress CIRCE did not take the phrase "men are pigs" literally (11D: Greek sorceress who took the phrase "men are pigs" literally). She turned some men (Ulysses's / Odysseus's men) into pigs. That is different. That clue really should have a "?" on it to signify its wackiness and the liberty it's taking with phrasing. OK I think I'm through with the super-irritating parts of this puzzle.

It was fun to see the theme come into view—even to see individual theme answers come into view. Hard not to be amused by seeing "EAT MY SHORTS!" come into view, and "PUT A SOCK IN IT!" is equally vivid, vibrant, and unexpected. SUIT YOURSELF was the hardest to put together, largely because the whole bottom half of the puzzle was harder to put together than the top half, but eventually the "clothes" thing actually helped me get to SUIT etc. And still the revealer came as a surprise—a neat little pun on "line." As I said, the difficulty shot way up for me once I hit the equator of this puzzle, due almost entirely to not knowing what the **** a KIRBY is (see "Word of the Day," above). Apparently the roster of characters in the Greater Nintendo Universe is inexhaustible and it's my sad fate to continue finding this out, in puzzle after puzzle, ad infinitum, like Sideshow Bob, just stepping on rakes, for the rest of my solving life. 

KIRBY to F-BOMB (insane "word" to parse when you can't see the clue) to SMUG really did me in for a while. Even with F-O-B it took me way too long to think of F-BOMB ... so long that I thought one of those crosses must be wrong. I also really struggled to get SMUG ("That's pretty ironic, Rex, don't you think?!"—oh shut up) (42D: High-and-mighty). The clue is probably fine, but I think of SMUG as way lower-key than "high and mighty," which sounds more ... yeah, overt, ostentatious ... something. No good reason for not getting SMUG sooner. Other things slowed me down as well, though nothing so bad as that middle section. No idea what the Scots call their grandmas ... but it turns out it's exactly what the English call their grandmas, i.e. NAN. Nearly wrote in NAE because of its Scottish specificity, but then why would the word for "grandma" be the same word for "no" or "not"? Makes nae sense. Really loved the CROWE / HAWKE crossing in the SW. It was especially fun because I couldn't see the clue for HAWKE, but as soon as I pieced it together, I saw instantly what the puzzle was doing there, and knew the clue for HAWKE would be the same (but for one word) as that for CROWE (54D: Actor Russell whose surname sounds like a bird). First time I can recall intuiting an identiclue. Usually the puzzle forces those on me in unwanted ways, but today ... well, the identicluing was perfect. 

Last few things:

• 3D: Emotionally charged, as an issue (HOT BUTTON) — great phrase, and one I can't believe I got right on the first guess, no crosses in place. I was not so lucky with the symmetrical long phrase, CAMERA SHY, which involved a struggle that's much more typical for long answers in a Downs-only solving situation (36D: Out of the picture, maybe?)
• 5D: Rule-making grp. for a residential community (HOA) — LOL I was just thinking about Home Owners Associations yesterday (and not in a good way—never in a good way). Sometimes I think about / marvel at the fact that I live in a neighborhood with people who are both very like and Very Unlike me, and yet we all seem to get along just fine. This is likely because there is *no* Home Owners Association, so the ultra-conformists among us (perfect green lawns, no dandelions) can't annoy the rest of us with aesthetic overreach. Just as us ultra-liberal types can't make the others take down their tacky right-wing signage. It's win-win! (seriously, I genuinely like my neighbors, all of them)
• 10D: Preferring platonic relationships, informally (ARO) — I'll bet ARO people never figured they'd be overrepresented, anywhere, but man ARO is Number 1 with a bullet where queer identities are concerned. Look at this ARO timeline!:

ARO was [Nigerian native] and [Orinoco tributary] back in the day, then Shortz came along and he was all "no more three-letter obscurities!" and POOF (39A: [Gone ... like magic!]), ARO disappeared. It tried to come back once in 2015 as [Michael Sheen's character in "Twilight"], but that didn't take. But then, several years later, "Aromantic" (ARO) became an increasingly widely recognized identity and bam, here we are: CrossWorld is suddenly in an ARO boom time!

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]