Detector of absurdity, in slang / WED 7-16-25 / Chargrilled corn-on-the-cob dish in Mexico / Shout, colloquially / Cat breed with a distinct rear / 2003 period film starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe / One translation of "aloha"

Constructor: Jasin Cekinmez

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: TEA BREAK (52A: Worker's timeout in Westminster ... or something tucked between this puzzle's shaded squares?) — shaded squares contain types of tea, and "tucked" into (or "break"ing up) those teas is the letter "T":

Theme answers:

• FOOTLONG (17A: Sub category) (tea = OOLONG)
• "WHAT'S THE MATTER?" (21A: "Something bothering you?") (tea = MATE)
  BOBTAIL (34A: Cat breed with a distinct rear) (tea = BOBA)
• THE LAST SAMURAI (44A: 2003 period film starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe) (tea = ASSAM)

Word of the Day: Mate (see 21A) —

Mate (/ˈmɑːteɪ/ MAH-tay; Spanish: mate [ˈmate], Portuguese: [ˈmatʃi]) is a traditional South American caffeine-rich infused herbal drink. It is also known as chimarrão in Portuguese, cimarrón in Spanish, and kaʼay in Guarani. It is made by soaking dried yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) leaves in hot water and is traditionally served with a metal straw (bombilla) in a container typically made from a calabash gourd (also called the mate), from water-resistant hardwoods such as Lapacho or Palo Santo, and also made from a cattle horn (guampa) in some areas. A very similar preparation, known as mate cocido, removes some of the plant material and sometimes comes in tea bags. Today, mate is sold commercially in tea bags and as bottled iced tea.

Mate has been originally consumed by the Guaraní and Tupi peoples native to Paraguay, north-east of Argentina and South of Brazil. After European colonization, it was spread across the Southern Cone countries, namely Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile, but it is also consumed in the South of Brazil and the Bolivian Chaco. Mate is the national beverage of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. In Chile, mate is predominantly consumed in the central and southern regions. Mate is also popular in Lebanon and Syria, where it was brought by immigrants from Argentina. (wikipedia)

• • •

 

My feelings about this theme keep going up and down. At first, I didn't notice it. Didn't pay any attention to it. Didn't need it. Solved it almost completely as a themeless—that is, I made it all the way to the revealer without ever having noticed what the shaded squares were doing. You can ignore the theme and solve the puzzle completely, no problem, and that's what I did, to about the 2/3 mark. Then I got the revealer and thought "this is the U.S., we have coffee breaks, but OK, fine, I'll play along," and yet still didn't really look at themers beyond kinda noticing that those shaded squares appeared to have teas in them (when I'm mid-solve, I don't stop to look at the scenery if I don't have to). Finished the puzzle without a hitch, then looked and saw that the "tea" names were broken up by a single square and thought "Who Cares?" Non-consecutive shaded (or circled) squares have never been my thing, and merely "breaking" the tea names seemed like pretty weak tea, as themes go. Breaking up four- and five-letter names seemed particularly weak. Lots and lots of potential answers could contain MA [space] TE, for instance. And why these teas and not others (say, SENCHA CHAI BLACK GREEN ICED TEXAS etc.)? The themers set did not seem tight at all. It was only when I thoroughly read the revealer clue ("something tucked between") that I noticed that the teas didn't just break, they broke across the letter "T"—and at that point I thought "oh, thank god." There was a point to the break! A double meaning on "tea break" (you break apart the tea names, and the break itself is a "T")! My respect for the theme shot up. It then slumped back down a bit when I went through the answers, tea by tea, and realized that only two of them are really teas (OOLONG, ASSAM). BOBA is a "tea-based drink" with black, green, or OOLONG as the base, and MATE isn't tea at all (though it's prepared similarly, and marketed using the word "tea" at times). I guess the idea is that all today's shaded-square words can precede "tea" in common parlance. Good enough, I suppose. The "T"-square part of the gimmick really saved the day today. Theme, ultimately, approved.

The fill ... could use some work. It's heavy on names and quaintness and blah. The highlights for me were "DON'T EVEN!" and ANN ARBOR. "DON'T EVEN!" works very well as a standalone phrase, so I found the clue kind of clunky and awkward, though technically accurate (14A: Lead-in to an implied "go there" or "think about it").  Would've liked some terse imagined equivalent as the clue rather than a detailed explanation of the implied phrases that are missing, though now I'm having trouble imagining what that exact equivalent would be. ["Stop talking right now!"]? Nah, there's gotta be something better. Anyway, good answer, overly wordy clue. As for ANN ARBOR, that was my home for eight years in the '90s. I was Not always happy during that time period (understatement), but those were formative years with important people in them, and so, now and forever, despite my general indifference to college sports, caveat caveat, etc. etc. ... Go Blue! (29A: Home of the Wolverines in college sports)

As for the rest of the fill ... I'm less enthusiastic. There's nothing horrible, really, but there are too many repeaters, too much overfamiliar stuff. LOO ENO AVOWS TENETS MANI OMANI ("Mani, o Mani, wherefore art thou Mani?!") EDNA ENG NEATO and on and on. Dullsville, much of the time. I might've liked BADASSES had the clue not been such a miss for me (34D: People you do not want to mess with). The term "badass" has come to mean someone who is very good at what they do. The "mess with" part just didn't resonate for me. Whatever "tough-guy" or "troublemaker" sense the term once had has largely disappeared from the term, at least as I generally hear it. Still, it's a good answer in a sea of mediocrity. I mean, 'TISN'T *and* BESTIR **and** NEATO??? Really tapping into "days of yore"-speak today, I see. And then there's that unfortunate ONBASE / ATBAT cross in the NE, which ended up making that section of the puzzle the hardest one to complete. Why would you call attention to your not-good fill that way—by creating a cross-referenced crossing, where both answers are essentially unclued, and can only be understood in relation to each other?? If those terms had been interesting or original or entertaining in some way, OK, but they are just dull baseball terms—the added annoying difficulty was not worth the payoff. Not even close. The name avalanche was also unlovely, though I knew them all. ENO ROWE HASAN EVA BRET ELWAY EDNA and Lil Uzi VERT (the one name I expect might flummox some solvers, particularly the rap-haters among you). Lil Uzi VERT's birth name is Symere Bysil Woods, which has All Kinds of crossword possibilities. SYMERE! BYSIL! Never seen those! Here's my favorite paragraph of the Lil Uzi VERT wikipedia page—better than the part about the Satanism allegations, even:

In February 2021, Woods revealed that they had a 10-carat pink diamond implanted in their forehead, which they had planned to do since 2017. They acquired the diamond, whose value was reported as $24 million, from jeweler Elliot Eliantte. Woods stated that the decision was influenced by the animated series Steven Universe, of which they are openly a fan and by fellow rapper Lil B, who has used decorative jewels similarly. Woods said that they "could die" if their diamond is not removed "the right way". In June of the same year, they had the diamond removed from their forehead. They had it reimplanted for their performance at Rolling Loud the following month and revealed in September that fans ripped it out while Woods was crowd surfing at that event. They did not suffer serious damage and said that they still have the diamond. They have since replaced it with a barbell piercing.

I've heard of a woman who had diamonds on the soles of her shoes, but ... wow.

Bullets:

• 3D: Brian who composed four pioneering albums of ambient music (ENO) — four? Four is a very specific number. I had no idea the ambient output stopped at just four, or that just four were considered "pioneering," in which case, what were the others? Derivative? Of himself? Hand on, gotta go investigate this "four' thing ... OK, looks like he had an Ambient tetralogy, and that Music for Airports (a title I knew) was also called Ambient 1 (did not know that). There are also Ambients 2 through 4, so I guess that's the "four" in question: Ambient 1: Music for Airports, Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, and Ambient 4: On Land.

• 26A: One translation of "aloha" (PEACE) — I wonder how many of you wrote HELLO in here. I certainly would have, but I had the -CE in place before I saw the clue.
• 10D: Detector of absurdity, in slang (B.S. METER) — this is a phrase I see way more often in the NYTXW than I ever hear it irl (I never hear it irl). "Absurdity" and "B.S." are not the same thing, but horseshoes/hand grenades, I guess.
• 39D: Cuts of fish (FILLETS) — you mean McDonald's has been lying to me about the spelling all these years!? What else aren't they telling me? Is Mayor McCheese even a real mayor? My trust in fast-food advertising hath been shook.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Heroine of Tennessee Williams's "Summer and Smoke" / TUE 7-15-25 / Gentlemen's club, colloquially / Competitor of Rao's / Player of the middle son on TV's "The Partridge Family" / "Designing Women" co-star of 1980s-'90s TV / Capital city on the Rideau River / Debt to equity, for example

Constructor: Daniel Britt

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: IMDB (i.e. "I'm D.B.") (73A: One place to find 18-, 28-, 49- and 64-Across ... or, parsed differently, how these people might introduce themselves) — people with the initials D.B. who are also in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Theme answers:

• DELTA BURKE (18A: "Designing Women" co-star of 1980s-'90s TV)
• DANNY BONADUCE (28A: Player of the middle son on TV's "The Partridge Family")
• DREW BARRYMORE (49A: "E.T." actress)
• DAVID BOWIE (64A: Singer who starred in "Labyrinth" (1986) and "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1976)

Word of the Day: DANNY BONADUCE (28A) —

Dante Daniel Bonaduce (/ˈbɒnəˈduːtʃiː/; born August 13, 1959) is an American retired radio personality, actor, television personality and professional wrestler. Bonaduce is the son of veteran TV writer and producer Joseph Bonaduce (The Dick Van Dyke Show, That Girl, One Day at a Time and others).

Bonaduce became famous as a child actor of the 1970s on the TV sitcom The Partridge Family. He co-starred as Danny Partridge, the wisecracking, redheaded middle son of the singing family band (headed by Shirley Jones) and he portrayed the fictional pop group's bass guitar player. Since then, Bonaduce has starred in several other TV series, including the VH1 reality show Breaking Bonaduce in 2005, has done radio shows in Los Angeles and Philadelphia and hosted a morning talk/music show at Seattle radio station KZOK-FM from 2011 to 2023.

• • •

"Oh ... that makes it so much worse." That was my response when, eventually, I noticed that the constructor's initials were D.B. I wish I could muster up a "that's adorable," but when a theme isn't really working and then you discover *why* the theme exists *at all*, and the reason is so self-indulgent ... it just adds a layer of ... [exasperated SIGH]. See, the thing is that the "M" in IMDB stands for "Movie," and only two of these DBs had any kind of career in the "movies," and even they are much (much much much) better known for other things now (Barrymore for her TV show and lifestyle empire, Bowie (obviously) for music). Barrymore has the best claim to movie stardom. She's solid, no complaints. The rest ... complaints. Of course it's true that IMDB contains TV actors too, so DELTA BURKE and DANNY BONADUCE will be in there, but they are both famous for precisely one show, and neither of those shows has been on television since 1993. Do people under 40 even know who DELTA BURKE and DANNY BONADUCE are? Yeesh. If TV actors are valid, then anyone in the database is technically valid. The writer DAN BROWN, he's in there. Soccer star DAVID BECKHAM is for sure in there. Football Hall-of-Famer DICK BUTKUS was in Gremlins 2: A New Batch—where is he?? My point is that the themer set is loose and weak. Also, the biggest actual movie star in the world right now with the initials D.B. (DAVE BAUTISTA) is nowhere to be seen. A ragtag group of off-the-mark names, all so we could get a vanity puzzle and a really dated term for "gentlemen's club"? Not for me.

As for NUDIE BAR ... well, it's a debut, so there's that. Congratulations? I guess I should be grateful that the far far more popular term for such an establishment wasn't in the grid (TITTY BAR googles roughly 10x better than NUDIE BAR, a term last heard (probably) in a 1992 episode of Married ... With Children). I wouldn't have minded NUDIE SUIT. Those suits are iconic and (bonus!) have nothing to do with the objectification of women. There's something about the cutesiness and datedness of "NUDIE" that rubs me the wrong way. STRIP CLUB wouldn't have been 1/10th as irksome. The only other interesting answer the grid has to offer is WIRE MESH, which is fine, but not exactly exciting (42D: Laticed metal used in construction and fencing). Otherwise, it's just ABU ALMA OVA TSAR LYRA IAGO NOGO EGAD YULES (plural!) ATAD MSN ILE DDAY KWAI ING ECOL E-I-E-I-O all the way home.

[NUDIE SUITS!]

Had real trouble getting started (unusual for a Tuesday!) because of MASS, which feels very very wrong for its clue (1A: Neighbor of Vt. and N.H.). You're using two-letter state codes in the clue for a four-letter non-code that (unlike the examples in the clue) you commonly say out loud, as its own word. I figured that at four letters, the answer would maybe be a Canadian province (?) and I wrote SASK. in there, even as I was thinking "that's ... farther west, isn't it?") (it is) (VT and NH abut QUÉBEC). Worse was the heroine of the Tennessee Williams play that I have literally never heard of (2D: Heroine of Tennessee Williams's "Summer and Smoke"). Summer and Smoke? What is that? Look, it's Tuesday, and ALMA is never gonna be great fill, no matter how you clue it, so just give me [___ mater] and leave it at that, OK? Once I got out of the NW, though, things leveled off and overall the puzzle played pretty normal (i.e. easyish) for a Tuesday. If you didn't know the actor names, then I imagine it played a little differently.

Bullets:

• 40A: Auto-___, setting for many subscription services (RENEW) — it's convenient ... until you want to unsubscribe. Then it's tyrannical. I have had to go to absurd lengths to cancel actual magazine subscriptions before. My friend Shaun was getting Martha Stewart's magazine until it went digital-only, but instead of stopping the subscription, the company switched her to a different lifestyle mag and she couldn't (easily) figure out how to unsubscribe and so now she just gets Midwest Living or some such photo-heavy sponsored-content-type thing (OK, Midwest Living was actually kinda cool; they had a whole thing on the U.P. (Upper Peninsula, MI) that made us (Great Lakes fans) want to go there immediately). I'm going to spend part of today trying to unsubscribe from at least one magazine that has been auto-RENEWing. Wish me luck!
• 60A: First basic cable show to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series (MAD MEN) — I forget how old this show is now (it started 18 years ago this week). "Basic cable" does not include premium cable like HBO–otherwise the answer to this clue would've been The Sopranos (2004). MAD MEN won in '08, '09, '10 and '11.
• 8D: Capital city on the Rideau River (OTTAWA) — I had no idea. I am woefully under-Canadafied in my geographical education. I know that rideau means "curtain" in French and that's all I know about Rideau (which apparently means "a small ridge of mound of earth" in English).
• 56D: Competitor of Rao's (RAGU) — I had never heard of RAO (apostrophe "s") before it appeared in a puzzle one day and I said "never heard of it" and the comments exploded with "how could you not blah blah blah" and then yeah the next time I went to the grocery store there was a wall of it and we have it in our house now so sometimes your blind spots are actually right in front of your face. Weird.

Happy to be back home and back on the blog for another 2+ weeks (before I head out for my last vacation of the summer, to see my family in CA). Thanks once again to Christopher and Rafa and Mali for doing such good work while I was gone to MN to visit my daughter at her current place of employment (the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, MN). I got to see an unexpectedly hilarious production of Comedy of Errors (not a play I expected much from, tbh), as well as an innovative production of Romeo & Juliet, at which I had not one but two people come up and introduce themselves and tell me how much they liked the blog (!), so that was a treat (hi Dustin, hi Melissa). More about my trip later. Or not. Who knows? See you next time. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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We are family! / MON 7-14-25 / What streets and avenues often make, collectively / Lois Lane and co-workers at the Daily Planet

Constructor: Christina Iverson

Relative difficulty: Easy (6:28, solving on the train and my phone screen is broken)

THEME: HARRY STYLES — English pop singer whose name sounds like a goofy hint to the ends of 17- and 38-Across and 11- and 29-Down (i.e., "hair-y styles")

Theme answers:

• [Textile pattern that resembles braided wicker] for BASKET WEAVE
• [Sledding event that debuted in the 2022 Winter Olympics] for MONOBOB
• [Gourmet bread for a hamburger] for PRETZEL BUN
• Is a pretzel bun gourmet?? I was trying to make "brioche bun" work here at first.
• [Steinbeck novella set on a horse ranch] for THE RED PONY

Word of the Day: RAZZIE (Film award that has had the categories "Worst Excuse for an Actual Movie" and "Most Flatulent Teen-Targeted Movie") —

Three people have won both a Razzie and an Oscar the same weekend: composer Alan Menken in 1993, screenwriter Brian Helgeland in 1997, and actress Sandra Bullock in 2010, though all three won for different films (e.g., Helgeland won a Razzie for The Postman and an Oscar for L.A. Confidential).

• • •

Hey folks! It's Malaika here for an Actually Alliterative Malaika Monday!! I found the top half of this puzzle to be extremely easy, and the bottom half to be substantially harder. Not hard, but harder. Things like ERSE and BAYER really slowed me down, and I hated the cross reference for "LARS and the REAL Girl," a movie I have never heard of.

The theme was cute! I like when a name is sort of re-parsed to describe the theme answers-- my favorite example I can think of was the revealer "Shonda Rhimes" where the theme answers all rhymed with "Shonda." If you have a favorite, describe it in the comments!! I haven't been solving as long as y'all so I might not have heard it. Name puzzles are generally only fun if you know who the person is, so knowing Harry Styles probably also contributed to me thinking this is cute. I actually just read a romance novel (Big Fan, by Alexandra Romanoff) where the main character was a stand-in for Harry Styles... This happens a lot, btw, and I always wonder if he reads them.

(Btw, if you've never heard Harry Styles, I highly recommend his cover of Sledgehammer which you can listen to below. The song starts at 48 seconds.)

There are a lot of options for the theme answers here. I already mentioned "brioche bun" as a possibility, and there are tons of other buns, like cinnamon buns and potato buns. And "bob" could have been something like "Sideshow Bob" or "Thingumy and Bob." Any other theme answers you can think of?

Bullets:

• ["Eventually..."] for ONE DAY — I would have loved to see this clued in reference to the book / miniseries, but I always want more pop culture references than other people do
• [Like a kid in a "Sister" T-shirt vis-à-vis one in a "Sister" onesie] for OLDER — I like when a clue tells a story like this!
• [Alternative to Gramma or Granny] for NAN — What did you guys call your grandmother? I called my mom's mom Grandma and my dad's mom Dadima. I just read a book ("Thank You for Listening," by Julia Whelan) where the protagonist calls her grandmother "Blah Blah" which honestly sounds mildly insulting to me...

xoxo Malaika

P.S. My uncle once commented that "all" of my NYT puzzles have a pop star in one of the long slots which I thought was a hilarious demonstration of our memory perception. (Exactly one of my seven NYT puzzles has had a pop star in one of the long slots.) I wonder if he thought that I wrote this one. 

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Electronic music genre / SUN 7-13-25 / Phrase cooed en español / Two-stringed Chinese instrument / Soft palate appendages / Daughter on "Bob's Burgers" / Looked high and low in / Jersey boys? / Puccini opera set in Rome / Certain religious pacifist

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Easy   



THEME: Tunnel Vision — Okay, there's a lot to unpack here. The entries HOLES IN / THE WALL and BREAK THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE serve as a kind of double revealer to indicate that 8 answers in the puzzle go across the central vertical line of black squares. Each half of these answers is clued normally, but the note (accessible by clicking the "i" icon in the app) has the 8 clues for the full across entries that cross the "wall." Additionally, the letters along the wall spell THE DOORS, which is the band that sings Break Through (To The Other Side).

Word of the Day: ELPHABA (45A: "Wicked" protagonist) —

Elphaba Thropp (/ˈɛlfəbə ˈθrɒp/ ^ⓘ) is the protagonist of Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the novel's musical theatre adaptation, and the musical's two-part film adaptation, Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025). She is a reimagining of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

• • •

Theme answers:

• 1D / 114D HOLES IN / THE WALL [Some neighborhood bars ... or what connects eight pairs of answers in this puzzle?]
• 68D / 18D BREAK THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE [Classic 1967 song by a group whose name is a hint to solving the eight bonus clues (see note)]
• 5A / 11A DEMONS + T + RATE [Show how it's done]
• 31A / 32A BEET + H + OVEN ["Für Elise" composer]
• 56A / 57A GOB + E + TWEENS [They can help with conflict resolution]
• 69A / 70A DECO + D + ERRING [Spy device in old cereal boxes] 
• 94A / 96A DISHON + O + RING [Bringing shame upon]
• 103A / 104A MENSCH + O + IRS [Bass-heavy musical groups, maybe]
• 133A / 134A AAVE + R + AGES [Valedictorians have them]
• 146A / 147A HONE + S + TWOMAN [New bride, quaintly]

Phew, alright, that was a lot of theme! Hello! It's Rafa covering for Rex today. Last time I was here I accidentally blogged the wrong puzzle and you all got two write-ups (I'm sorry / you're welcome) but today I triple-checked that this is indeed the puzzle I'm meant to be talking about. Let's get into it.

There's a lot going on with this theme, but the whole thing had one (IMO) fatal flaw that held the puzzle back. It's a real shame, because it's all very clever and cool and well-done from a gridding perspective, but it is what it is. The issue for me is that the main conceit of the theme (i.e. that 8 of the answers go through the central wall) was entirely irrelevant to the solve. I uncovered the two revealers and was excited to figure out how and why answers would cross the long line of black squares but ... that aha moment never came! I finished the puzzle, and the app immediately animated the squares along the center (spelling THE DOORS) and I never got a chance to even look at the clues in the note or figure out what was going on. Why was I denied this joy?!

TADPOLE

Plus, it feels like a decently straightforward thing to fix with the cluing. For DEMONSTRATE, for example, I would have kept the clue for the RATE part the same, but, at 5A, instead of cluing DEMONS, why not clue the whole answer DEMONSTRATE? Then, you have to figure out what's going on to make the clue make sense. Maybe I'm too salty about it, but I felt totally robbed of the joy of figuring out the theme, and it felt like solving a high word-count themeless. (Which is fine, but it's the misleading advertising that gets me! If it's themeless then don't give me *two* revealers!)

MORAY EEL

Anyways, maybe other people had different experiences figuring out what was going on here. Perhaps the experience of solving this one in print is better, since you don't get the animation spoiler. Let me know.

Putting this significant issue aside, as I mentioned already, this is a very well-executed puzzle! There's a lot of theme material, and the fill is quite smooth. We even get some nice bonuses in LOADS TIME, WESTEROS, NOW I GET IT, TO-DO LIST, UP ARROW, etc. I tend to live in a post-dupe crossword world (as in, I don't notice or care about dupes) but I did notice LET LIE and LIE ON (though I did not care!) -- is this something people care notice or care about?

COD

Overall it felt on the easy side for a Sunday. Not a PR time for me, but decently close. The only area that posed resistance was the SW corner, where I wanted MOROSE for [Eeyore-esque] (instead of GLOOMY), and nothing else was coming easily. I think I was really speeding through it because I was so excited (in vain, alas!) to get to cracking the theme. Clearly the theme presentation was my biggest takeaway from the puzzle, as I keep coming back to it!

That's all from me today! Hope you all are having a lovely weekend, and wishing you the best for the week ahead.

Bullets:

• 22A OLAV [Name that becomes a shape if you switch the second and fourth letters] / 144A OVAL [Shape that becomes a name if you switch the second and fourth letters] — This was cute
• 105A IN PAWN [Traded for cash]— I had never heard the expression "in pawn" before. I wanted PAWNED at first, and then was some crosses resolved, I wanted IMPAWN (which I assumed was a verb, though now I realize it would only work if the clue said "trade" instead of "traded") (turns out it is, in fact, a verb per Merriam-Webster, though labeled archaic). I didn't know the RINSO cross (RIMSO seemed plausible enough), so that square gave me a lot of pause ... but we got there eventually.
• 128D DELCO [AC___ (G.M. subsidiary)] — The only DELCO I recognize is Delaware County, PA ... but that's probably too regional to be in a national crossword?
• 112D BLOSSOM [Stop being buds?] — Cute wordplay clue ("bud" as in the flower precursor, not as in pal).
• 47D BOCCI [Italian lawn game] — I have only ever seen this spelled "bocce" but *shrug*

Signed, Rafa

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Classic Langston Hughes poem with a comma in its title / SAT 7-12-2025 / First score during extra time in sudden-death soccer / Order that might include mortadella and capicola / Las pinturas de Frida Kahlo, por ejemplo

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: medium-ish, probably??

Word of the Day: INFOBOX (Fixed-format summary of an article, as on Wikipedia) —

An infobox is a digital or physical table used to collect and present a subset of information about its subject, such as a document. It is a structured document containing a set of attribute–value pairs, and in Wikipedia represents a summary of information about the subject of an article. In this way, they are comparable to data tables in some aspects. When presented within the larger document it summarizes, an infobox is often presented in a sidebar format. [kinda have to cite wikipedia if the clue mentions it]

• • •

Hey hi howdy hello, Christopher Adams once again copy-pasting the intro and filling in for Rex today! I think this puzzle is pretty much summed up by 1-Across: WHAT A BLAST! 

I'm a sucker for grids with beautiful, symmetric layouts, and this one certainly fits the bill: four triple stacks of tens, all feeding into a not-terribly constrained center with an eye-pleasing layout of black squares that don't touch but do repeat in a regular pattern. From the looks of it, I expected each stack to sing, since each part of the grid doesn't really put much pressure on other parts of it. And boy howdy, did this one deliver.

First stack I filled in was the right one: suspected [Actress Diana of "All Creatures Great and Small" (2020)] might be RIGG, even if I've never heard of it, and the gimme clue for I, TOO pretty much confirmed it (in that stacking those two answers gives great letter patters to start all the downs). GOLDEN GOAL and GO EASY ON ME were the standouts there, and soon I skittered over to the left side, where SPEED CHESS went in without crosses and TRAVELOGUE somehow dredged itself up from browsing through airport bookstores, etc.

Then down to the bottom, with possibly my favorite clue in the entire puzzle, [Adjunct faculty?] for SIXTH SENSE. Question mark fully earned here, delightfully stretchy, and for a good entry on top of that. I wouldn't be surprised if this stack was seeded with that entry just so they could use the clue. From there, moved back up to the top, which was slightly harder than the rest, but gave me the satisfaction of finishing on the onomatopoeic, so absurd it's actually good WHOP. Like I said at the top, WHAT A BLAST!

not exactly SPEED CHESS [Rush to find a mate?] but i love these videos

Also among the first impressions: how much more there was in the clues compared to yesterday! I printed both off (all the better to mark up and annotate thoughts as I solve) and the difference in font size is very noticeable. And the puzzle is so much the better for it! There's fun facts galore: HOBO, HYENA, GUAM, CLAIRE, and more mentioned below.

There's clues for familiar fill that are anything but familiar, and that have personality and genuinely feel like there's a real person behind this puzzle: ALDA, AMOS, and especially DOH, which actually made me laugh out loud and, as the last clue in the list, felt like a mic drop and made the puzzle go out with a bang (actually three bangs, I marked that up with !!!, and had about ten others with !! as well).

And even in the shorter clues, there's some misdirects that actually feel natural and don't give off the impression of obviously being up to something. [Terms of a trade] got me at first, I was thinking an actual business deal, but no, it's "words used by people in a certain industry" and not "parameters for an agreement". Ditto for [Skipping music, say], which I was sure would be something about playground chants for jumping rope, and was pleased to find was absolutely not that. Even the ones that signaled their tricks with the ? still came across as clever; [Went from 0 to 60?] for AGED was my second favorite, after SIXTH SENSE.

the most recent car seat headrest album was EAGERLY AWAITED by yours truly; i just wish i liked the album as much as i wanted to, but at least it still has a few good songs

Olio:

• EAGERLY / AWAITED [Like the upcoming release from one's favorite band] — Only four halfway longish answers crossing the stacks, and they all hit: the aforementioned INFOBOX, the wonderful Quinta BRUNSON, and the somewhat audacious, definitely hilarious (in a good way) cross-referenced pair here. Like, the puzzle didn't have to do that, but it did, and it made the entries better, and in general it feels like Katie dared to shoot their shot with cluing and tried to see how much good stuff they could get away with. (And props to the editors here, too, for having all this fun stuff and allowing a voice to shine through.)
• GO EASY ON ME ["I'm ready, but be nice"] — To quote Sufjan Stevens' review of Adele's "30", which contained "Easy on Me": "Girl, please. We know you're 33. It's on your Wikipedia page. B+."
• ANY ["No preference"] — As with the previous entry, love the conversational vibe; this one does it a little better because "no preference" actually sounds like something someone would say
• AMOS [Biblical book with the line "I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me"] — What a banger of a quote, absolutely love it. [ETA: actual clue is [Biblical prophet whom Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as "an extremist for justice" in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail"], which is no less of a banger of a clue; the Times blogger regrets the error.]
• EYRE [Jane who says "Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation"] — What a banger of a quote, absolutely love it.
• YALE [Law school for Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor]  — Every other justice on the Supreme Court went to Harvard Law School, with the exception of Amy Coney Barrett, who went to Notre Dame Law School.
• ETHICS [Important subject in law school] — Would that most of the justices mentioned above actually have some (to say nothing of actually upholding the Constitution, etc.).
• FIST [Symbol of defiance and solidarity] — Love it when the gestalt of the clues makes you feel like the author really has something to say here.
• VALE [Latin for "goodbye"] — lol, lmao even. anyway, goodbye!

Yours truly, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Tales are related about them / FRI 7-11-2025 / Org. with the pioneering Artemis program / "Don't Worry Kyoko" singer / Acquirer of GeoCities and Broadcast.com during the dot-com bubble

Constructor: James McCarron

Relative difficulty: pretty straightforward, not terribly challenging


Word of the Day: BENIHANA (Restaurant chain where chefs make onion volcanoes) —

Benihana (Japanese: 紅花; "Safflower") is a chain of Japanese restaurants. Originally founded by Yunosuke Aoki as a cafe in Tokyo in 1945, Benihana spread to the United States in 1964 when his son Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki opened its first restaurant in New York City. 

...

Benihana introduced the teppanyaki restaurant concept which originated in Japan in the late 1940s to the United States, and later to other countries. [wikipedia, and in case you're wondering, the two people mentioned here are the grandfather and father of DJ Steve Aoki]

• • •

Hey hi howdy hello, Christopher Adams here filling in for Rex today! As noted above, not too difficult. There's a lot of good longer entries in this puzzle: the entire center stack, plus the four long downs intersecting that, plus three of the four long entries crossing those! I've never heard of DRILLS DOWN, and imo the DOWN part of that feels redundant, but ymmv, and still, that's a lot of good long entries!

That said, where this puzzle missed the mark for me was that there was very little attempt to add spice to the puzzle beyond that. Not many difficult, tricky, misdirecting, etc. clues, which is not necessarily a problem per se (it's fun to have a nice and breezy themeless every so often), but you can still be easy while also fun, and while the entries themselves were fun, their clues very much did not feel like that. A lot of just plonking in answers one after the other, with the bulk of the appreciation coming from "gee, that's a great entry" after it's filled in, rather than in the act of actually figuring it out and filling it in myself, or in learning something neat and interesting along the way.

This is probably on me and my expectations; most of the puzzles I solve these days are not the New York Times, and can (and should, and do!) get more interesting cluewise than the Gray Lady does. So perhaps it's a bit unfair for me to want the puzzle to be something it isn't, but at the same time there's certainly room for clues that go beyond the house style and inject some personality and such into the clues.

Also, the long entries were great, but at the same time there were a few too many short answers holding things together that bothered me while solving: WEK, I MET, OWLY, PISH, NOR (only because it's clued as an abbreviation), IVER (only because there's really only one way to clue that). 

we would've also accepted a reference to "Half as Interesting" for HAI

A few attempts for slightly trickier clues, but none really convincing; it almost felt as if they were pretending to be harder than they were to make you feel better about seeing past their flimsy disguise. No need to have the question mark on HAI or COGS or RACE CAR DRIVER. The phrasing for SOLAR ECLIPSE, [Event requiring special specs], isn't fully convincing as a misdirect for "specifications" rather than "spectacles". I enjoyed SENTINEL and CAMPFIRES more for their reparsing of "watch" and "about" that wasn't immediately obvious from the clues. (Even then, in the first case, [One with a watch] is stilted enough to set off the "probably a misdirect" spidey sense on first pass.)

[Actress Rapp of "Mean Girls"]

Olio:

• ABA [Isaac Asimov novel "Murder at the ___"] — Possibly an attempt at finding a new angle for this entry (I hadn't seen it before), but it resulted in massive headscratching because it's not at all clear what the answer means after you fill it in. Like, if it was MANOR or something, you'd just shrug and think "haven't heard of that, but "Murder at the Manor" absolutely sounds like it could be a real title, and "manor" is an actual place..." and move on with the solve, but for me it was "what ABA are we talking about here? is this even an acronym or is there some place I've never heard of called Aba, or...". For the record, it stands for "American Booksellers Association", and the book is a metafictional tale about a murder at a convention held by the ABA, and Asimov himself appears as a character in his own book, and doesn't knowing this make it sound more interesting and make you want read the book more? That's the sort of info that should've been included with this cluing angle, not just to make the clue more fun but also help prevent the puzzled feeling of filling in the answer without knowing what it means.
• YEN [Kind of coin that features a Buddhist temple on one side] — Yes! More of this! Fun things to learn while still being easy to infer and fill in!
• ALMODOVAR [Pedro ___, Oscar-winning screenwriter for "Talk to Her"] — I've always found this format (fill in the blank for last names) to be one of the weirder parts of the NYT style guide, and wish they would do away it, especially since it's easy to rewrite to remove the blank, even if you wanted to keep the first name as an additional hint.
• OARED [Four-___ (like some shells)] — "Shell" as in a racing boat here; the clue's difficulty definitely sticks out compared to the rest of the puzzle. (And, while I'm thinking of FITB clue styles that bother me, using a FITB for half of a hyphenated word is one of them, especially since this could be something like [Rowed, rowed, rowed your boat] to avoid the FITB altogether.)
• ANTS [Colonial group] — Currently in a war against the ants who are living under the backyard patio where I'm trying to put a fire pit; such is life when you're committed to leaving 99% of your yard natural (for the birds, the bees, and especially the deers) but still want to have a small section for yourself.

Yours truly, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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For real, to Gen Z / THU 7-10-25 / River through six Asian countries / Sparkling water additive / Freelancer's lack / Major-league team known as the "North Siders," locally / It can follow anyone / Vape, informally / Glazer of "Broad City" / 1970 Van Morrison title track / Heckelphone relative / Ending with lemon or cannon

Constructor: Emily Biegas and Sala Wanetick

Relative difficulty: Medium (easy theme, but the fill slowed me down a bunch)

[skinny puzzle! 14x16 grid]

THEME: face cards — face cards (the letter + the suit symbol) are used as punny clues for people who are experts in their fields:

Theme answers:

• MASTER GARDENER (19A: A♠️) (an "ace" of garden "spades")
• TIGER WOODS (K♣️) (a "king" of golf "clubs")
• MATCHMAKER (Q❤️) (a "queen" of uniting people's "hearts")
• JACKIE ROBINSON (57A: J♦️) (a "jack" (???) of the baseball "diamond")

Word of the Day: MEKONG (47D: River through six Asian countries) —

The Mekong or Mekong River (UK: /miːˈkɒŋ/ mee-KONG, US: /ˌmeɪˈkɔːŋ/ may-KAWNG) is a transboundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth-longest river and the third-longest in Asia with an estimated length of 4,909 km (3,050 mi) and a drainage area of 795,000 km² (307,000 sq mi), discharging 475 km³ (114 cu mi) of water annually. From its headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau, the river runs through Southwest China (where it is officially called the Lancang River), Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and southern Vietnam. The extreme seasonal variations in flow and the presence of rapids and waterfalls in the Mekong make navigation difficult, though the river remains a major trade route between Tibet and Southeast Asia. The construction of hydroelectric dams along the Mekong in the 2000s through the 2020s has caused serious problems for the river's ecosystem, including the exacerbation of drought.

• • •

Apologies for the short write-up today. I've got a plane to catch later this morning, *plus* I was out late last night ("late" for me, i.e. past 10pm), and so I slept in ("in" for me, i.e. 4:30am), and just don't have as much time (or mental clarity, probably) as I normally do. This was an odd one, as the theme was actually very easy to decipher (for a Thursday, especially), but that meant that they put a lot of "difficulty" into the clues to compensate, or at least that's what it felt like. Never that fun to have the short stuff (and, once again, there's a lot of it) be the source of puzzle difficulty. This is another way of saying that the fill just wasn't that exciting. Solid, but not head-turning. And the themers themselves were ... fine, but kind of arbitrary (except for MASTER GARDENER—not sure who else you'd call an "ace of spades"). There's one thing I don't understand about the theme, though, and that's the last theme answer (JACKIE ROBINSON). Is "jack" being used to mean "expert" (as "ace" "king" and "queen" are in the other theme clues)? I've only heard of "jack" used that way in the phrase "jack of all trades." I've seen "crackerjack" used this way, but not "jack." But then I thought, maybe it's a joke, and that the clue is really just a reference to "JACK"IE ROBINSON's name. Then I thought, wait, is it both? Anyway, to the extent that "jack" is supposed to mean "expert," I don't like it. Doesn't land like the other three face card terms do. But I sort of like the absurdity of cluing Jackie as a "Jack"—so ridiculous it's clever.

Top half of this puzzle was easy, bottom half was a mess. Wanted ON END (?) before ON ICE (30D: Not straight up, in a way), which was a minor issue, but it signaled that things were about to go off the rails a bit. I know "Vape" only as a verb, so did *not* see E-CIG coming (48A: Vape, informally). The skirt could've been MINIS or MIDIS (46D: Certain skirts) ("Certain" not really helping me at all). I could not come up with the second part of STAGE NAME to save my life (37D: Nicki Minaj or Iggy Pop, e.g.). "40-40" could be a lot of things (a tie ... an equation whose result is zero ...). So I had passed on that SE corner and went back to the SW corner, which was somehow worse, largely because I thought 45D: Submit (ACCEDE) was ALLEGE (as in, "I submit that you, yes you, stole my cookie, sir"). I have no idea what the clue on ESSENCE thinks it's doing (49A: Sparkling water additive). ESSENCE of ... what? "I'd like some sparkling water, please." "With or without ESSENCE?" No. I mean, I'm sure there are flavorings in some sparkling waters called "ESSENCE of ___" but no, that clue was not to my liking at all. Oh, and the reason ALLEGE stuck in place as long as it did for me was because the first "L" confirmed ("confirmed") PAL at 47A: Bud (MAC). To be honest, this whole mess probably didn't hold me up for that long, but compared to the top half of the grid, the bottom half def played slower. 

OK, I got like 15 minutes left to write, so let's go straight to the round-up:

Round-up:

• 1A: Major-league team known as the "North Siders," locally (CUBS) — first instinct: NATS. Why? Because if I'm half asleep, some primal crossword part of my brain just takes over, and NATS is the most common four-letter baseball team (right? I mean, historically, it would be METS, but since the NATS came into existence, it's gotta be them). CUBS are North Siders, WHITE SOX are South Siders (I can't remember ever seeing WHITE SOX in the grid, though SOX is common enough). Looks like WHITE SOX has been the puzzle precisely once, 30 years ago, clued as [World Series losers, 1919]. They won the World Series in '05, but that has apparently done nothing to enhance their crossword status. 
• 60A: 2025 Pixar film (ELIO) — I resent this movie (well, its xword-friendly title) for ensuring that yet another damn animated movie (and its lore) will be in my grid forever and ever and ever. COCO WALL-E SHREK MOANA ... Finding NEMO ... how many FROZEN characters have I had to learn!? It's wearying.
• 67A: It can follow anyone (ELSE) — The phrase "anyone ELSE" exists, so ... you can't say the clue isn't accurate. Dumb, maybe, but not inaccurate.

• 7D: For real, to Gen Z (NO CAP) — please don't say you've never heard of this phrase unless you just started doing puzzles and/or reading me today. We've talked about this phrase before. Multiple times. Earlier this month, in fact. "CAP" (in this sense) was a Word of the Day last year.
• 52D: Cynthia of "Wicked" (ERIVO) — another former Word of the Day (2022). This is the third appearance for the Wicked star. A few pop culture hurdles today, which might've spelled trouble for the pop culture-averse. ERIVO. ILANA. SALMA. There's also MANU (N.B.A. star Ginóbli), which is sports, but sports are "pop culture"-adjacent, so I think he belongs on this list.
• 59D: Freelancer's lack (BOSS) — because "secure employment" wouldn't fit. Did not see this particular answer coming. For a second, I thought it might be POST (as in, a regular position, a steady job).

Done! Could've been shorter, but still, pretty short. Proud of myself. Gotta run. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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