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

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