Famous misquote of a James Cagney line from the 1932 film "Taxi!" / WED 7-9-25 / Squids' kin / Popular digital wallet service / California college where the writer David Foster Wallace taught English / Repeated sounds in "Hey Jude" / Redheaded boy of 1960s TV / 1970s space station

Constructor: Desirée Penner and Jeff Sinnock

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Positional wordplay — answers around the edges of the grid have clues that playfully ("?"-style) indicate that position:

Theme answers:

• MUTT (1A: Top dog?) (a kind of "dog" located on the "top" of the grid)
• LID (5A: Top hat?) (a word for "hat" located on the "top" of the grid)
• PISTOL (8A: Top gun?) (a kind of "gun" located on the "top" of the grid)
• MEMO (1D: Side note?) (a kind of "note" located on the "side" of the grid)
• BOARD (27D: Side plank?) (a kind of "plank" located on the "side" of the grid)
• PUNT (58D: Side kick?) (a kind of "kick" located on the "side" of the grid)
• LIMB (13D: Side arm?) (a category that includes "arm" located on the "side" of the grid)
• PLATE (34D: Side dish?) (a kind of "dish" located on the "side" of the grid)
• TASK (65D: Side job?) (a word "job" located on the "side" of the grid)
• TROUGH (73A: Bottom feeder?) (a kind of "feeder" located on the "bottom" of the grid)
• RAY (74A: Bottom line?) (a type of "line" located on the "bottom" of the grid)
• BUCK (75A: Bottom dollar?) (a slang word for "dollar" located on the "bottom" of the grid)

Word of the Day: Taxi! (61A: Famous misquote of a James Cagney line from the 1932 film "Taxi!" = "YOU DIRTY RAT!") —

Taxi! is a 1932 American pre-Code film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring James Cagney and Loretta Young.

The film includes a famous, and often misquoted, line with Cagney speaking to his brother's killer through a locked closet door: "Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!" This line has often been misquoted as "You dirty rat, you killed my brother".

To play his competitor in a ballroom dance contest, Cagney recommended his pal, fellow tough-guy-dancer George Raft, who was uncredited in the film. In a lengthy and memorable sequence, the scene culminates with Raft and his partner winning the dance contest against Cagney and Young, after which Cagney slugs Raft and knocks him down. As in The Public Enemy (1931), several scenes in Taxi! involved the use of live machine gun bullets. After a few of the bullets narrowly missed Cagney's head, he outlawed the practice in his future films.

• • •

Hard for a puzzle with short themers to be very interesting. Once you grasp the gimmick, then you're just going around the grid picking up fairly obvious synonyms or rough equivalents, all of them 3-4-5s. Then, because of the theme (that is, because of a preponderance of 3-4-5s), you end up with a very choppy grid without a hell of a lot of interesting things happening inside it. The NYTXW is supposed to max out at 78 words, but this one goes to 80. What that means, for practical purposes, is there's a whole lot of short stuff going on. The marquee answer here is "YOU DIRTY RAT!," which I enjoyed seeing, and learning about—I've seen imitations of Cagney that quote the line, but I didn't know where the line was from, or that it was a misquote. But for lots (and lots) of younger (than me) solvers, that answer is going to mean absolutely nothing. You're asking people to know an iconic misquoted line that hasn't really been iconic since Cagney himself was iconic (when I was a kid, yes, still, but now ... only to TCM fans like me) (note: I don't actually have TCM anymore since I cut cable and (eventually) its streaming replacements, but I still feel loyalty—it was my old-movie University for a long while). If I had to name five Cagney movies, Taxi! would not be among them. In fact, I have never seen the movie and if I've heard of it, I forgot it. This is all to say—"YOU DIRTY RAT!" a very deep cut for a Wednesday, and a highly anomalous answer in this puzzle for that reason. Generationally divisive for sure. I think it's the most interesting thing in the grid. Others ... are (maybe) not apt to feel that way.

All the plays-on-words in the theme clues are actual things, which is nice. Sometimes when you have to use repeated phrasing like this (top top top, side side side, etc.), you end up with at least a few clues that feel forced, but to me, only "side job" feels a little off, but it's not; not really. I think it's largely been replaced by "side hustle," and that's why it doesn't feel as solid (to my ears) as the others. But it's perfectly legitimate. It's possible "side plank" won't be well known to some people, but it's a pretty common core strengthening exercise (and, as vasisthasana, a staple of many yoga classes), so there's no reason to object to it. I didn't like how the relationship between clue word and answer word was not consistent. That is, the answer is an example of the word in the clue (e.g. PISTOL is a kind of "gun") ... but then, with LIMB / "arm," the category / example relationship gets reversed (e.g. "arm" is a kind of LIMB) ... and then a few other times, the answer is just a synonym of the clue (e.g. BUCK and "dollar," PLANK and "board"). The concept still works, but it keeps changing how it works, slightly, from answer to answer.

Because the fill is so frequently short, it ends up on the weak side. LOL at LALA *and* NANANA being in the same grid. NANANA has me saying "nah ... nah, nah" (70A: Repeated sounds in "Hey Jude").That's not an answer, that's a typo of "BANANA." If you replaced that first "NA" with SHA, you'd have a band. But otherwise, just say no no no to NANANA. There's scads of other short repeaters (ANODE ATO ETA EPEE ÉTÉ etc.) and a few words I only ever see in xwords (looking at you, GNAR ... also MISAIM). But there's nothing here to get particularly mad at. Oh, except ... I expect the OCTOPI-haters to be out in force once again (16A: Squids' kin). "That's not how you pluralize ... [sputter] ... Greek! ... [wheeze] ... not Latin! ... No!" Blah blah blah, I know, I know, I don't like it either, but it's in the dictionary, so please read this fantastic discussion of the Octopus Plural Dilemma at Merriam-Webster (dot com), and then get over it. Thank you. Actually, here—a little consolation for the OCTOPI-weary: if you're persnickety about these things, you'll love this 19th-century swipe at "modern" spellings:

But as the Octopus grew and multiplied, it became necessary to speak of him in the plural; and here a whole host of difficulties arose. Some daring spirits with little Latin and less Greek, rushed upon octopi; as for octopuses, a man would as soon think of swallowing one of the animals thus described as pronounce such a word at a respectable tea-table. In this condition of affairs, we are glad to know that a few resolute people have begun to talk about Octopods, which is, of course, the nearest English approach to the proper plural. (The Bradford Observer, 1873) (via merriam-webster.com)

Round-up:

• 20A: Number with 12 zeros in the U.S. but 18 zeros in other parts of the world (ONE TRILLION) — I need to know what these "other parts of the world" are and what (in the world) they call the number with 12 zeros, then. I know that ONE BILLION, until fairly recently, had a different meaning in Britain (the "long scale" million million, or 10 to the 12th power, as opposed to the "short scale" 1,000 million, or 10 to the 9th, which is now the standard in all varieties of English). So a "long scale" billion is actually more than our standard trillion. It's absurd to me that these values weren't standardized across Englishes from the jump.  
• 31A: Popular digital wallet service (CASH APP) — according to Pew Research in 2022, 26% of U.S. adults have used this app at least once. I am not one of those adults. But I somehow "knew" this answer. It sounds like a category of app and not an actual app ("hey, what CASH APP do you use?"), but nope, that's the name; CASH APP (formerly "Square Cash").
• 8D: California college where the writer David Foster Wallace taught English (POMONA) — hey, it's the alma mater of ... me! And NYT Mini Crossword editor Joel Fagliano! I was too old (c/o '91) to have had Wallace (d. 2008) as my professor, and Joel (c/o '14) was too young.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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