What R-rated photos may do / SAT 7-19-25 / Crispy Crinkles brand / Stygian blue or reddish-green / Barbecued Mongolia dish whose name sounds like a disapproving canine / Large-eyed primate / Trans activist who founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project / Actions that, despite being legal, resulted in hundreds of arrests in 1961 / Vince Carter quote-turned-meme regarding his return for a 22nd N.B.A. season / Canine breed named after an English river valley

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BOODOG (21D: Barbecued Mongolia dish whose name sounds like a disapproving canine) —

Boodog (Mongolian: боодог; Mongolian pronunciation: [pɔːtɔk]) is a Mongolian cuisine dish of barbecued goat, mutton or Tarbagan marmot cooked with heated stones inserted into the carcass. It is prepared on special occasions. The meat, often accompanied by vegetables, is cooked with heated stones in the de-boned body of the animals, or in the case of khorkhog, a sealed milk can. Marmot hunting usually takes place in the fall when the animals are larger and have been preparing for hibernation.

Boodog is considered a more egalitarian dish, with meat separated from the bones. Prepared in a perishable container, it is socially less prestigious and generally reserved for household members or fellow camp dwellers. // The practice is performed outdoors and requires two or more people. The animal is stunned and then killed by severing the aorta at the neck. Blood is drained into a container, as it must not touch the ground. The skin is kept intact except for a slit at the neck. The bones and viscera are removed through this opening, except for the bones in the feet. Heated stones, along with onion, salt, and some meat, are inserted into the body cavity. The neck is repeatedly squeezed and the body pressed to ensure the contents make contact with the hot stones. The neck is then closed with a wire, and the carcass is singed to remove hair, traditionally over embers, now more commonly with a gas burner.

The meat is cooked entirely through contact with the heated stones. Once done, the body is washed and the skin slit open to access the cooked meat. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this looked a lot more daunting than it was. Erik's puzzles can skew tough (for me) to begin with, and then you've got that 4-stack of gridspanners just staring you down. So much white space. I thought it would be difficult to get, like maybe I'd do OK on the top part and then just stall out trying to access the middle. But then the opposite happened. Well, almost the opposite. I *did* do OK on the top part, and then when it came time to ... descend ... I got one answer in there.And then another. And another and another. Eventually I had the entire right side of the middle completed just from the Down. The lack of resistance was actually a little stunning. Look how much of that center I got before I ever looked at a single long Across clue:

The key to my success here was the absolute gift of ATTA and ORO—two bits of innocuous, easy crosswordese situated in *just* the right position to help me buzzsaw through the middle of this grid. Those two little answers gave me the first letters of six (6!) stack-crossing Downs, and I rattled them off in quick succession, no hesitation. ATLETA was a guess, but an educated one (25D: Sportsperson, in Italian), and then whoosh, right down the line I went, L to R. Not sure why I hadn't written 34D: "___ chic!" in yet; that was easy too. Very accommodating Downs ensured that my experience with those long answers in the middle was nowhere near the nightmare I semi-feared. Three of the four were instantly gettable to me once I got around to reading their clues. I had some trouble on the exact phrasing of the Vince Carter meme-quote, as I've literally (and weirdly) never seen it. But ultimately it wasn't hard to infer. In the end, today's spanner stack is very impressive: smooth and original, with "DON'T GET ANY IDEAS!" batting clean-up for good reason (he's got the most power). 

Over the years, I have come to expect "proper nouns you've never heard of, buddy" from Erik puzzles, and sure enough! Erik's good at being inclusive, indeed, expansive, with his proper noun choices, giving visibility to people he thinks are important and deserve to be widely known, but who might not be true household names (yet). The name that played this way for me today was DEAN SPADE (57A: Trans activist who founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project). There aren't that many activist names that I have stored away for future use. They do important work, but for whatever reason, their names don't tend to stick the way pop culture names do. As for DEAN SPADE: "In 2002, he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective in New York City that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color." (wikipedia). He seems like a very big deal in law circles, but this is the first I'm hearing his name (that I know of). There was a brief moment right toward the end where I could see the finish line in sight but then pulled up short, to a dead stop, when none of the last three Acrosses were obvious to me. IMPOSSIBLE ... what? DEAN ... who? ST. .... which one? I'm completely unfamiliar with the concept of an IMPOSSIBLE COLOR (53A: Stygian blue or reddish-green). I just wrote in COLOR because the things in the clue were COLORs, so why not? Looks like IMPOSSIBLE COLOR is a specific category of color: 

Impossible colors are colors that do not appear in ordinary visual functioning. Different color theories suggest different hypothetical colors that humans are incapable of perceiving for one reason or another, and fictional colors are routinely created in popular culture. While some such colors have no basis in reality, phenomena such as cone cell fatigue enable colors to be perceived in certain circumstances that would not be otherwise. (wikipedia)

The explanations are all too technical for me to understand. You can read about them here. Luckily, the short Downs in the SE were all easy enough that the back ends of those longer answers down there were easy to pick up. In the end, there were no real tough spots in this whole thing. It took some work, but it had good flow and there were no stumpers. Very doable. 

[R.I.P. Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025)]

I had heard of FREEDOM RIDERS but for some reason not the phrase FREEDOM RIDES (10D: Actions that, despite being legal, resulted in hundreds of arrests in 1961). Or ... I probably had heard the term (what else would the FREEDOM RIDERS be doing?) but it didn't pop to mind the way the phrase FREEDOM RIDERS. Perhaps because "FREEDOM RIDER" is a phrase I've heard many times, if only in the theme song from Maude.

["Lady Godiva was a Freedom Rider / She didn't care if the whole world looked"]

Never heard of BOODOG. Probably won't be alone there. I just got it all from crossees. I didn't need that whole explanation ("sounds like a disapproving canine"), but I admire its cuteness. I'm not sure I fully understand the clue on CORETTA SCOTT. I know that those names precede "King" in her name, but I don't quite know what concept or phrase [Leader before the King?] is supposed to be evoking. Why the "the"? She was a leader, and CORETTA SCOTT does come "before" "King," namewise. Obviously she was married to Martin Luther King, Jr., but ... the clue just feels awkward to me, unless there's some specific reference that I'm missing.  No bid deal. I got her name(s) easily. In general, the puzzle is remarkably clean and remarkably free of genuine obscurities (BOODOG notwithstanding).

More comments and explanations:

• 6D: Large-eyed primate (LORIS) — extreme LOL for all the Wordle players out there. Coulda used this answer in the puzzle *yesterday*! I've only ever seen this creature in the NYTXW and I totally forgot it existed while playing Wordle yesterday. I was not alone. People ended up getting it despite having no idea what it ... was.

• 38A: Case study org.? (TSA) — as in, they might "study" (i.e. inspect) your carry-on "case"; I got a very intimate pat-down last time I went through TSA screening. Screener: "Do you want to go in a private room for this?" Me: "LOL no, whatever you're gonna do you can do right here in front of everyone, thx." Luckily, I got to keep all my clothes on, but he sure did make ... contact ... in places I'm not used to strangers making contact. It was fine. Do what you gotta do, man, just get me through this line.
• 40A: Surname shared by a Hollywood father and daughter (DERN) — first thought: "Hey, why not Hollywood mother and daughter!?" Followed by second thought: "Oh, right, her mother doesn't share her surname"

• 29D: Surname shared by a Hollywood father and son (REINER) — got this one quickly, largely because I just saw This is ... Spinal Tap in the theater a few weeks ago, as part of its 41st anniversary rerelease. Rob REINER directed.

• 32D: Unauthorized cuts of existing movies (FAN EDITS) — I can't imagine being interested in these at all, but I am aware they exist. A good, modern answer.
• 33D: Crispy Crinkles brand (OREIDA) — I assume these are french fries ... yep.

• 48D: Assist, as a lifter? (ABET) — the "lifter" here is "lifting" merchandise from a store without paying for it. You might know such a person better as a "shoplifter."

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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