1980s cartoon foe of Gargamel / FRI 8-29-25 / Eminem song that samples Dido / What fan fiction is not / Coaster, usually / Home to the torus-shaped Museum of the Future / "Seriously!," in slang / Places where it's OK to push someone at school

Constructor: Jesse Cohn

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: KILLER BEE (17A: Queen's guard?) —

The Africanized bee, also known as the Africanized honey bee (AHB) and colloquially as the "killer bee", is a hybrid of the western honey bee (Apis mellifera), produced originally by crossbreeding of the African honey bee (A. m. scutellata) with various European honey bee subspecies such as the Italian honey bee (A. m. ligustica) and the Iberian honey bee (A. m. iberiensis).

The African honey bee was first introduced to Brazil in 1956 in an effort to increase honey production, but 26 swarms escaped quarantine in 1957. Since then, the hybrid has spread throughout South America and arrived in North America in 1985. Hives were found in south Texas in the United States in 1990.

Africanized honey bees are typically much more defensive, react to disturbances faster, and chase people farther than other varieties of honey bees, up to 400 m (1,300 ft). They have killed some 1,000 humans, with victims receiving 10 times more stings than from European honey bees. They have also killed horses and other animals.

• • •

Welcome back to SMURF Week here at the NYTXW! (see ... yesterday). We hope you are SMURFing a SMURFy SMURF! (26D: 1980s cartoon foe of Gargamel)

It is grim how easy themeless puzzles have become. They are really, conspicuously bringing down the difficulty level of the puzzle in general, but you (I) really feel it on Friday and Saturday, because those are the days that used to have real punch. I've heard people hypothesize "well maybe you're just getting better" and lol no, I'm too old to be getting "better." I got "better" during the first 5-7 years of writing this blog. That's when I was at my fastest, that's when my regional ACPT trophies are from, that's when I placed as high as 31st (or so) overall. And back then, at the peak of my speed-solving abilities, a Friday or Saturday could still bust my lip wide open. The intervening twelve years or so have given me more experience, obviously, but they haven't made me faster, and if anything, with puzzles being made by people younger and younger than I am, with life experiences different from mine, the puzzle *should* be at least as challenging as it ever was, if not more so. And yet I burned through this puzzle today like it wasn't even there. Friday puzzles used to have at least a little fight, but now my only hope is Saturday, which every once in a while (as with Byron Walden's puzzle a couple weeks ago) can be counted on to push me around. But mostly the crossword is being made more accessible, presumably so it can be more salable in the long term. When you specialize in bite-size games, what sense does it make to continue with a product that takes a long time to learn how to do, that ends in failure for most novices for a long time? Who has the patience for that? Lower the bar so that people can get to "success" more quickly! So they don't "waste" so much of their valuable time getting up to proficiency. Time is money! Easiness is business! Have you heard of this new game PIPS!? Meanwhile, I gotta do Fireball or the Saturday Stumper (Newsday) in order to feel anything. Thank you for indulging me in this "old man yells at cloud" moment.

["I'm like young LL, / 'cause I'm hard as hell / Makin' n****s screw-face like Gargamel"]

LUNAR LAMP PIE ABODE DUBAI DISC and off to the races. If this puzzle was too easy (and it was), at least it had me careering (and possibly careening) around the grid in bizarre, seemingly reckless ways. Can't remember when I ever took quite this path through a puzzle before:

I just kept going, termite-like, not taking much time to look side-to-side. A long answer would take me to a new part of the grid and I'd just follow, not even bothering to go back and finish up the part I just came from. Down to the bottom and up past the equator again without having filled in a single answer in the middle third of the grid. So definitely lots of whoosh-whoosh today, though the marquee answers felt a little on the tepid side. The puzzle is trying hard to be FUN-FILLED, and ... well, it's not unfun, but I've done funner. The problem is that CELESTIAL EVENT is just too vague a term for me to like. And I've seen MEETCUTE too many times for it to seem like exciting marquee material any more. The 9s in the NE and SW corner are fine, but "fine" is about as high as the puzzle gets today. CREATION OF ADAM is a cool answer (I thought it was CREATION OF MAN, but when that wouldn't fit ... well, ADAM was the next logical guess). I think FUN-FILLED and (weirdly) AUTODIDACT were my favorite moments in this one. I also kinda liked the clue on SWING SETS (24A: Places where it's OK to push someone at school). Not hard, but playful and clever. 

I didn't get the clue on KILLER BEE, and still mostly don't. I put WORKER BEE in there at first, since it seemed to be asking for a subset of bees, one part of the bee org chart, not an entire subspecies of bee. If you are distinguishing the answer from the "queen," then the answer should be a different type of bee, and there are only two other types: WORKER BEES (which do, in fact, protect the hive) and DRONE BEES: "His only role is to mate with a maiden queen in nuptial flight" (wikipedia). The KILLER BEE doesn't really work as "the queen's guard" since she herself is (presumably) a KILLER BEE (even if she herself is not doing the "killing"). 

[CREATION OF ADAM]

Bullets:

• 1A: Coaster, usually (DISC) — thought this might be a roller coaster, so ... RIDE? I didn't chance it. Best to move on to something you're sure of when you're trying to get your first bit of traction, which is what I did. Tested LUNAR at 13A: Kind of rover, which gave me LAMP, then PIE, and that was that.
• 31A: Plot device in many a rom-com (MEET-CUTE) — they meet and it's cute. I recently watched While You Were Sleeping, a classic 1996 rom-com, for my Movie Club. That movie has three meets, none of them particularly cute (Peter Gallagher gives Sandra Bullock his "L" train token every day but doesn't really notice her; she pulls him off the tracks out of the way of an oncoming train; he wakes up from a coma weeks later and finally "meets" her—she's been pretending to be his fiancée ... while he was sleeping). And then a totally different guy (Bill Pullman) ends up being the love interest ... and that meet isn't particularly cute either. In fact, I don't remember it. They really don't have much chemistry. But there are lots of great actors in the movie, including Peter Boyle and Glynis Johns, and lots of Dunkin' Donuts (emphasis on the Donuts; RIP "Donuts"), so if you're nostalgic for the '90s and want something that goes down easy (some might say "blandly"), you could do worse.

• 38A: What fan fiction is not (CANON) — a nice, modern clue for CANON, which has extended its meaning from "an authorized set of books" (see, uh, the Bible?) to "an authorized fictional storyline."
• 55A: "Seriously!," in slang ("NO CAP!") — yes, you have seen this before. Yes, you have. I swear. First in 2023, and now three times this year. NO CAP!
• 1D: Home to the torus-shaped Museum of the Future (DUBAI) — mmm, torus.

• 10D: Kathryn of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" (ERBE) — her name threatened to become established crosswordese in the late aughts, but then disappeared. This is her first NYTXW appearance since 2011! (ERBE appeared once in the intervening years as Italian for "herbs") (!).
• 32D: Dog's post-op wear (CONE) — my first and only outright mistake, and it was a glorious one. I had the "O," saw "post-op," and wrote in GOWN.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Resident of a hidden mushroom village / THU 8-28-25 / Fair Deal prez / Follower of Joel / Bit of camp entertainment / Mythological beast able to regenerate its heads / Battle carriers / Hebrew name for God / ___ D'Arcy, co-star of HBO's "House of the Dragon" / "Table" for one's TV dinner, perhaps / Like Frodo at the end of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy / One of three in the Domino's logo

Constructor: Joel Woodford

Relative difficulty: Easy, maybe Easy-Medium 

THEME: SPOONERISM (66A: Feature of the clues for 17-, 25-, 41- and 52-Across) — that's it—read the clues as spoonerisms (i.e. reverse engineer the two words in each clue by swapping their opening consonant sounds)

Theme answers:

• GOOD ENOUGH (17A: Recently dates) (i.e. "Decently rated)
• FREAK OUT (25A: No guts) (i.e. "Go nuts")
• CHAINLINK FENCES (41A: Battle carriers) (i.e. "Cattle barriers")
• FELL FLAT (52A: Packed lunch) (i.e. "Lacked punch")

Word of the Day: William Archibald Spooner (See 66A: SPOONERISM) —

William Archibald Spooner (22 July 1844 – 29 August 1930) was a British clergyman and long-serving Oxford don. He was most notable for his absent-mindedness, and for supposedly mixing up the syllables in a spoken phrase, with unintentionally comic effect. Such phrases became known as spoonerisms, and are often used humorously. Many spoonerisms have been invented and attributed to Spooner. [...] Spooner became famous for his manner of speaking, real or alleged "spoonerisms", plays on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched. Few, if any, of his own spoonerisms were deliberate, and many of those attributed to him are apocryphal; in 1928, The New York Times described them as a "myth principally invented by" one of his former students, Robert Seton, who subsequently collaborated with Arthur Sharp on the first book of spoonerisms.// Spooner is said to have disliked the reputation gained for getting his words muddled. Maurice Bowra, who had been another of his students, commented that Spooner "was sensitive to any reference to the subject." He described being part of a group that gathered outside Spooner's window one evening, calling for a speech; Spooner replied "You don't want a speech. You only want me to say one of those things," and refused to comment further. // The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (3rd edition, 1979) lists only one substantiated spoonerism: "The weight of rages will press hard upon the employer." (rate of wages) In a 1928 interview, Spooner himself admitted to uttering "Kinkering Congs Their Titles Take" (Conquering Kings). Spooner called this hymn out from the pulpit in 1879.

• • •

This seemed pretty ANEMIC (which is the mistake I had to hunt down at the end (14A: Weakness (ANEMIA)—should've been suspicious of YCHWEH as the [Hebrew name for God]). Correct me if I'm wrong, but these are just four random Spoonerisms. You "unlock" (or reverse engineer) four Spoonerisms and then it's the most regular-ass puzzle imaginable, is that it? Why these Spoonerisms? What's the point? This doesn't feel like a NYTXW-worthy theme at all. Spoonerisms ... with no twist, no angle, no exciting revealer (SPOONERISM is the opposite of an "exciting revealer"—it's flatly explanatory, no thrills). It wasn't that hard to find a Spoonerism theme that did have some (much-needed) extra juice: check out this one from Erik Agard and Andy Kravis back in 2018: the Spoonerisms themselves are in the grid, and they're entertainingly wacky, and they're all tied to one another in a clever thematic way (all the theme answers are Spoonerisms for things that can be eaten with ... spoons!). No wackiness here. No revealer to elevate the whole project and make you go "whoa." This one definitely FELL FLAT for me. No punch. No guts. 

I didn't see that the clues were Spoonerisms until I got to the revealer. I could see the clues didn't seem to match the answers, and I *knew* that if I just skipped to the bottom of the grid and worked out the revealer, things would go somewhat faster, but I decided to be stubborn and just work my way from top to bottom without any "reveal." So my experience was "fairly boring themeless with four long mystery answers." Shrug. When I got to the end and didn't get the "Congratulations" message. I figured I'd filled my final square incorrectly—the "A" in EMMA / STA (64D: ___ D'Arcy, co-star of HBO's "House of the Dragon" / 73A: "Come ___?" (Italian for "How are you?")). Don't watch dragon shows, don't know that actress, and don't know much Italian, so though "A" seemed right, I was willing to entertain other vowels once "A" seemed to fail. Eventually I just left "A" in place and went over the puzzle answer by answer: all the Acrosses and then into the Downs before I finally saw YCHWEH. Bah. But there's no actual difficulty to this puzzle that I can see, beyond the theme answers themselves. The clue on SKIT threw me, for sure (36D: Bit of camp entertainment). I only just realized the clue is probably referring to summer camp? My first thought was "are SKITs campy? what is 'camp' about a SKIT." But I guess maybe campers put on SKITs? For fun? I'm over 40 years removed from my last experience of summer camp, so any memories I have of such a thing are hazy at best, false at worst.

Clue round-up:

• 1A: "Table" for one's TV dinner, perhaps (LAP) — do people still eat TV dinners? Like, Swanson's or whatever? These feel like a mid-late 20c phenomenon (i.e. a phenomenon associated with the rise of television). I don't think I've had a proper "TV dinner" since the mid-'80s maybe. My parents never served them, but they were like a fun novelty treat when we were on our own for dinner sometimes. Rarely, but sometimes. Mostly we just harassed them until they let us get Burger King.
• 15A: ___ Highway (Maui tourist attraction) (HANA) — didn't know it, but also never saw the clue. The answer just sorta filled itself in, and then later I noticed HANA and thought "oh, the tennis player?" Then I read the clue—nope, different HANA.
• 32A: Like Frodo at the end of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy (ASEA) — I watched all those LOTR movies and don't remember a thing about them, so boring were they to me. I tried reading the LOTR and couldn't even make it through the first book. I did enjoy The Hobbit as a standalone book. But the LOTR was just never my thing. Anyway, you say he was ASEA at the end, and I believe you.
• 44A: Mythological beast able to regenerate its heads (HYDRA) — it's weird, demographically, that I didn't like LOTR because I was the right age and the right amount of dorkiness. I even played D&D as a tween, which seems very LOTR-adjacent. Had all the different-sided dice (which I ended up repurposing for my homemade version of Strat-O-Matic baseball...), collected the little lead figures, and read the Monster Manual, which is how I learned about ... the HYDRA (as well as something called a Gelatinous Cube, but that's a monster for another day).

[the original Monster Manual was just fun, the illustrations charming and pleasingly non-digital]

• 47A: One of three in the Domino's logo (PIP) — feels like it's been a pippy month. Pips on dice, and now pips on dominoes. I haven't eaten Domino's since early grad school, maybe?? (i.e. the '90s). They were big anti-abortion funders (well, the founder, Tom Monaghan was), so we did not f*** with them. Monaghan was an Ann Arbor native, so his politics were maybe better known in Ann Arbor (where I was in grad school) than other places. Anyway, I have great pizza in my neighborhood now, so I'm never desperate enough to order mediocre delivery. If you've got no other options, I guess I get it.  
• 60A: Follower of Joel (AMOS) — in the Bible
• 7D: Resident of a hidden mushroom village (SMURF) — Can SMURFs and MARIO & LUIGI coexist in the same grid? I feel like they'd be natural enemies. Where's that crossover? I don't care about Marvel's Infinity War or Secret Wars (coming 2027), but I would absolutely check out a SMURF/MARIO WARS. Way more entertainment potential than yet another Star Wars installment, for instance.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Wildlife that may nest on Hawaiian golf courses / WED 8-27-25 / The Prancing Pony and the Admiral Benbow are fictional ones / Basic couturier offering / Genre for Blackpink or BTS / Sister goddesses who personify destiny

Constructor: Zhou Zhang

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: UPS and DOWNS (27A: Highs ... that could appear four more times in this puzzle / 51D: Lows ... that could appear four more times in this puzzle) — grid has four circles where either "UP" or "DOWN" works:

Theme answers:

• I'M [UP/DOWN] FOR WHATEVER (18A: "Anything sounds good to me")
• 3D: One end of the day (SUN-[UP/DOWN])
• BUTTON-[UP/DOWN] (23A: Basic couturier offering)
• 26D: One aspect to consider in making a decision ([UP/DOWN]-SIDE)
• GOBBLE [UP/DOWN] (48A: Devour)
• 33D: One orientation of a playing card during a magic trick (FACE [UP/DOWN])
• GOING [UP/DOWN] IN FLAMES (54A: Failing epically)
• 55D: One tool for scrolling on a computer ([UP/DOWN] KEY]

Word of the Day: Blackpink (5A: Genre for Blackpink or BTS (K-POP)) —

Blackpink (Korean: 블랙핑크, stylized in all caps or as BLɅϽKPIИK) is a South Korean girl group formed by YG Entertainment. The group is composed of four members: Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa. Regarded by various publications as the "biggest girl group in the world", they are recognized as a leading force in the Korean Wave and an ambassador of the "girl crush" concept in K-pop, which explores themes of self-confidence and female empowerment. [...] Blackpink's debut studio album, The Album (2020), was the first album by a female act in South Korea to sell one million copies. Their 2022 follow-up, Born Pink, was the first to sell two million copies, the first by a girl group to reach number one on the US Billboard 200 since Danity Kane in 2008, and the first by a Korean girl group to top the Billboard 200 and the UK Albums Chart. The album's lead single, "Pink Venom" (2022), was the first song by a Korean group to reach number one on Australia's ARIA Singles Chart and the first by a girl group to reach number one on the Billboard Global 200. Blackpink has overall achieved three number-ones on the Billboard Global 200 and four number-ones on the Billboard Global Excl. US, the most for a female act, as well as ten entries on the US Billboard Hot 100. Their Born Pink World Tour (2022–23) became the highest-grossing concert tour by a female group and Asian act in history, while they became the first Asian act to headline Coachella in 2023. // With 40 billion streams and 20 million records sold worldwide, Blackpink is one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. They have the most-subscribed and most-viewed music artist channel on YouTube, and are the most-followed and most-streamed girl group on Spotify. Blackpink's accolades include several Golden Disc Awards, MAMA Awards, People's Choice Awards, and MTV Video Music Awards; they were the first girl group to win Group of the Year at the latter awards in the 21st century. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle was really rescued by the theme—specifically the revelation that there was a second element to the theme. I had the circled squares as "UP"s and was wondering what was so special about an "UP" rebus, particularly one where you've gone to the trouble of marking all the relevant squares. Pretty thing and remedial-seeming rebus puzzle ... or so I thought. Also, the "could" in the UPS clue was bugging me (27A: Highs ... that could appear four more times in this puzzle). What do you mean "could"?, I thought. They do appear. Are we not supposed to write them in? Everything seemed thin, off, weird. And then I hit the DOWNS clue, which did its damn job, I'll give it that. The (second) revealer definitely revealed the gimmick to me. "DOWN" never occurred to me for those circled squares as I was solving, so the fact that I could, in fact, go back and plug DOWN into all those circled squares and they'd still work for their clues—that was, in fact, a revelation. Solid AHA from me (I doubt I said it aloud, but I definitely felt it). Kinda wish the revealer had been handled a little more (visually) elegantly, instead of broken into two parts (UPS, DOWNS) placed in seemingly random locations. But as you can probably see, the grid is a narrow 14 squares wide today (to accommodate the top and bottom grid-spanners) and you can't get an odd-numbered phrase like UPANDDOWN (9) or UPSANDDOWNS (11) to sit dead center in a 14-wide grid (or any grid with an even-numbered-square width). It would need a 9 or 11-letter counterpart in the themers to balance it out, and no such answer exists (and if it did exist, would certainly make the grid way too crowded with theme material), so we get this semi-ugly but still effective compromise—a broken two-part themer. I actually think the two-parted-ness is OK; it allowed me to have that delayed "Ohhhhhh!" reaction. But I still think the location of UPS and DOWNS is unpleasantly arbitrary.

All of the difficulty today, for me, came immediately, with the first clues I encountered. I thought you "rigged" the SAIL (1A: It might be rigged), and when I confirmed SAIL with AHEM (2D: "I'm standing right here, you know!"), I thought I was golden. But then I knew ("knew") the transit option of 1D: S.F. transit option had to be BART, and that wouldn't work with SAIL, so I tore out SAIL/AHEM and wrote in BART, which I "confirmed" with "AS IF!" (12A: No way!"). SAIL/AHEM v. BART/"AS IF!" ... there could be only one victor. Who would it be? Turns out, neither. A third fighter appeared as if out of nowhere and knocked them both out. MAST/MUNI ... oof. OK. I accept that those are the correct answers, but only because the Hawaiian goose said so (as a veteran solver, there's something very sad about needing to be bailed out by a crossword goose, but that's what happened) (15A: Wildlife that may nest on Hawaiian golf courses = NENE). After that ... nope, I'm looking at the grid and I don't see any struggle points. The fill felt iffy and weak in places (that NW corner is so-so, ASAMI is always unwelcom, ECCE and EKED are not much better, and  that "OH" in "OH, BE A PAL" is completely made-up / tacked-on / absurd (I can maybe hear an "aw...." but not an "OH")). But mostly the fill seems solid enough. Having theme material in two directions puts a lot of strain on the grid, so we should probably be grateful the fill is as clean as it is. I hope you got the "aha" (or "OHO") moment I did, with the second revealer. It was the one real pleasure the puzzle had to offer today.

Bullet points:

• 
  5A: Genre for Blackpink or BTS (K-POP) — I need to make sure you are all familiar with the movie-musical phenomenon KPOP DEMON HUNTERS, which was a streaming juggernaut this summer (on Netflix). The songs from that movie have absolutely torn up the Billboard charts, becoming so popular (with a wide variety of age groups) that Netflix decided to release the movie theatrically earlier this month, with showings specifically designated as sing-alongs! Why do I need you all to know this? Because it's only a matter of time before it makes its way into your puzzle ... somehow. The rival bands in the film are HUNTR/X and SAJA BOYS—no idea how you'd handle that slash in "HUNTR/X" in a crossword grid, but it's not that hard to see how SAJA (4) might find its way into the xword mix. The lead characters (lead singers from the rival bands) are RUMI (4) and JINU (4). There's an adorable large animated cat called DERPY (5). Anyway, this is a pop cultural artifact that is too big for the puzzle to ignore for very long. It will certainly at least be a KPOP clue in the near future. Not only is Kpop Demon Hunters the most popular Netflix film of all time, its two-day special theatrical sing-along release seems to have actually won the box office for last week. From Yahoo! Entertainment:

According to CNBC, “Rival studios on Sunday estimated “KPop Demon Hunters” led all films over the weekend with $16-18 million in ticket sales. Distribution executives from three studios shared their estimates for the Netflix phenomenon on condition of anonymity because the streaming company has a policy of not reporting ticket sales.” Some have even estimated the movie made about $20 million in its weekend stint at the theater. Apparently, Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters even made it to the top of the box office without appearing at the popular AMC Theaters chain. AMC declined to show the movie. But those KPOP gals didn’t need ’em to send Netflix to #1. That’s two total wins for KPOP Demon Hunters.

• 64A: The Prancing Pony and the Admiral Benbow are fictional ones (INNS) — The Lord of the Rings and Treasure Island, in case you were wondering—I definitely was. Not a Tolkien fan and I don't know if I ever read (or even saw) Treasure Island. The only fictional INN I know is the Tabard, from Canterbury Tales. Oh, and the Stratford Inn from the sitcom Newhart. 

• 24D: Apt letters missing from "c--tom---" (USERS) — me: "US ... ARY? What's USARY!?"

That's it. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Combatants in the Titanomachy / TUES 8-26-25 / They spike during the holidays / What you'd expect when you're expecting? / Mother's daughter's daughter, perhaps

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare back for our regularly programmed last Tuesday of August! Hope everyone is staying cool and enjoying these last days of summer. I’ve certainly enjoyed watching my Liverpool win their first two games of the season (we won’t go into detail on how they won and how nail-biting and not fun they were at times — a win is a win!). I discovered some good trails that aren’t too far away from my apartment, so my puppy and I have been on a few hikes lately, and she seems to love the trails. And now I’ve got the U.S. Open tennis to watch (Go, Carlitos and Coco!), with the NFL not far behind (Go, Steelers! But not Aaron Rodgers). 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Kevin Curry

Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe on the harder side of medium)

THEME: ASYMMETRY (66A: Unusual feature of this puzzle … or, when parsed as two words (1,8), another unusual feature of this puzzle — The only A's present in the puzzle form a large letter “A” in a grid that isn’t symmetrical

Theme answers:

• N/A

Word of the Day: V-DAY (48A: Global movement to end violence against women) —

V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls started by author, playwright and activist Eve Ensler. V-Day began on February 14, 1998, when the very first V-Day benefit performance of Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues took place in NYC, raising over $250k for local anti-violence groups. V-Day was formed and became a 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to raise funds and awareness to end violence against all women and girls (cisgender, transgender, and those who hold fluid identities that are subject to gender-based violence). Through V-Day, activists stage royalty-free benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues "to fund local programs, support safe houses, rape crisis centers, and domestic violence shelters, change laws to protect women and girls, and educate local communities to raise awareness and change social attitudes toward violence against women" during the month of February. The 'V' in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina. (WIki)

• • •

Gimme an A! Gimme another A! And another — well, a bunch more. The reveal of the “A” across the puzzle was clever, and the construction is really quite impressive, even if I ultimately didn’t love the puzzle. The constructor gets points (maybe even an “A”) for there not being any A's other than the ones used to form the A across the puzzle. But this really was a themeless puzzle that the software drew a big A on at the end. (What happened for those who solved on paper, I wonder?) 

I found this to be a slightly harder Tuesday than usual. Maybe it’s that there wasn’t a theme to maybe help you out if you were stuck in a place or two. I may have just had a hard time getting going because I didn’t know LIANE (6D: Former NPR host Hansen) or TATI (14D: Comic actor Jacques) at the top. And then the several long acrosses added a layer of difficulty. Thankfully, I took a COG SCI (24A: Study of the mind, for short) class in college, but that one might’ve tripped some people up. 

Of the long acrosses, the most interesting was SALMONBERRY (60A: Fruit traditionally eaten with the fish it's named for). It’s apparently common in the Pacific Northwest and looks like a quite tasty berry. I will say most recipes that I found for this show the berries used in some sort of dessert, but I’m not from the Pacific Northwest, so who knows. The rest of the long acrosses were just kind of there. ECONOMIST (12A: British weekly on business, politics and culture, with "The") was fine. PROUD PAPAS (16A: Ones taking baby pictures in the delivery room, maybe) was cute. I hated NET EFFECT (20A: Overall impact) with a passion for some reason — it's just so ugly. And PREORDERED (64A: Like goods bought before they hit the shelves) feels somewhat blah. But those sorts of words seem to be the price you pay if you want to work out there being a giant A for your theme of ASYMMETRY in the puzzle. 

There was some crosswordese and a couple answers that I didn’t care for — such as LIE (51A: That's unbelievable!) and WHOA (53A: "That's unbelievable!") clued essentially identically and I’D BET (52D: "My gut says …"). AS PER (7D: In line with) just looks bad. And RELEASE ME (34D: Cry to a captor) feels like a rather tame thing for someone to say who's been tied up. But the fill was fine, if a bit boring. 

I will say I loved the clue for NORM (56D: What you'd expect when you're expecting?). SELF (8D: Beginning of consciousness?) was also funny. I had fun seeing TUFTS (19A: University just north of Harvard) in the puzzle because my cousin went there, and it seems like a great school. BLEAT (39A: What the shepherd heard, perhaps) was cute.

Misc.:

• Where the sidewalk ends is with Shel Silverstein (not the CURB (24D)) 

• Seeing ONE L (25: First-year legal student, informally) in the puzzle takes me back. And it’s to not-very-fond memories of law school! Man alive, I’m glad that’s over with. 
• I like the slight connection that this puzzle constructor’s last name is Curry, and we’ve got TREY (Shot that made its N.B.A. debut in 1979, slangily) in the puzzle, which is the shot that Steph Curry is known for! 
• I would’ve said BLONDEs (44D: Marilyn Monroe or Britney Spears) have more fun. But I dyed my hair red a few years ago and haven’t looked back since. 
• In the Majors (a level up from AAA (40A)) at the Dodgers game last night, V (no, not A) from BTS threw out the first pitch and did quite a good job! You can see the video here. My dad (who actually knows probably very little about this) guesses the pitch was probably around 75 mph. 
• It was nice to have both MOM (61D: Certain parent) and PROUD PAPAS (16A) represented in the puzzle.

And that's all from me! See you in September.

Signed, Clare Carroll, screaming AAAAAAA!!! as Liverpool’s 16-year-old scores a goal in the 11th minute of stoppage time to win the game

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