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]

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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

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