Indian tourist city on the Taj Express route / MON AUG 8-4-25 / Accra's country / "___, amas, amat..." (Latin 101 conjugation) / When Hamlet duels with Laertes in "Hamlet"

Constructor: PATTI VAROL

Relative difficulty: EASY (Appropriately?)

THEME: A+Vowel Progression — Each theme answer is a phrase where the first word starts with an A followed by another vowel, progressively in alphabetical order (AA, AE, AI, AO, AU).

Word of the Day: ANGI (65A: Home services app that lists local vendors) —

Not to be confused with Annie's List.

This article is about the website. For the Davey Graham instrumental, see Anji (instrumental). For the parent company, see Angi Inc.

Angi (formerly Angie's List) is an American home services website owned by Angi Inc., a publicly traded subsidiary of IAC. Founded in 1995 by Angie Hicks and William S. Oesterle, it allows users to search for contractors to provide paid home improvement work.

• • •

Hey everyone, it's Eli filling in while Rex is about 90 minutes up the road from me (if traffic cooperates). I know I'm not alone in feeling like the Times puzzles have been getting too easy recently, so I was interested to see what today would feel like. It turns out to be a very straightforward theme, to the point that it doesn't even need a revealer. However, I felt like the difficulty level was appropriately Monday-level. Let's take a look!

Theme answers:

• AARON JUDGE (18A: Yankees slugger who hit a record-setting 62 home runs in 2022)
• AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY (23A: Image from a drone)
• AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN (39A: "Keep dreaming!")
• AORTIC VALVE (53A: Outlet from the heart's left ventricle)
• AUDRE LORDE (62A: Poet with the essay collection "Sister Outsider")

Like I said, it doesn't get much simpler conceptually than that. Thankfully, the execution is pretty solid. I feel like I see both AARON JUDGE and AUDRE LORDE in puzzles a lot, but usually as a standalone first or last name. Having both full names in the grid feels refreshing. None of the themers feel like a stretch and the fact that they are in alphabetical order makes for a trickier construction than you might imagine if you've never tried it. I suppose I could ding AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN for being the only three word answer when the rest are twos, but the fact that it spans the grid helps it a lot. I thought for a minute that there was an "A" paired with every letter of the alphabet in the grid, but I don't see a Q or K in the puzzle at all. Still, the amount of words starting with A feels at least theme-adjacent. Seriously clean theme, which I suppose I should expect from Patti.

Speaking of which, I checked and I did in fact blog Patti's last NYT puzzle in March! Sorry I'm apparently your personal blogger, Patti. In things that are only interesting to me, that puzzle contained LITTLE LULU, and this one includes LULU (35A: Doozy).

This puzzle felt SO clean to me. It's well-balanced, not including too much pop culture or proper names or trivia - just the right amount of each. If I'm nitpicking, the 31D/32D pairing feels pretty old fashioned. I don't know that anyone uses GAY to mean "Merry" much these days, and sticking it next to HIE (32D: Go quickly, quaintly) just highlights the anachronism. My only other negative note on my notepad is ANAG (24D: Scrambled word: Abbr.). Abbreviating a wordplay felt a little egregious, especially when the end result is ANAG. And I guess some constructors have been having more fun with OREO than "40D: Black-and-white cookie", but whatever.

Everything else I wrote down is a positive. I loved the clue for UPC (36D: Short lines at the register?). I don't think I've seen the trivia in the clue for ENO before, either (8D: Musician Brian who has an asteroid named after him). I also like that ROGER (12D: Slugger Maris) crosses AARON JUDGE. The fact that Judge's clue mentions he hit 62 home runs makes this feel especially intentional, given that Maris is famous for hitting 61(*?)

Yes, I work for HBO. No, this is not an ad.

Great start to the week! All things considered (not intended to be a reference to NPR, but support NPR), this puzzle gets an enthusiastic rating of GOOD (16A: Like a grade of B+, say).

Stray Thoughts:

• 30D: Wool-producing ranch (ALPACA) — When I was going to high school in Snellville, Georgia, there was a farm near my house that had some alpacas. Very cute, very soft, highly recommended.
• 17A: Seed covering (ARIL)— I can never keep ARIL and ANIL straight. One is a seed cover and the other is (looks it up)... plant that is the source of indigo dye! My brain doesn't want either to be a word, so it just combines them in one.
• 13A: "Skyfall" singer (ADELE) — Because PAUL F. TOMPKINS wouldn't fit:

• 46A: Home of the New York Mets until 2008 (SHEA)— There's a joke in The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (Eric Idle and Neil Innes' Beatle's parody if you don't know) where The Rutles play their final concert at Chez Stadium, named for Cuban guerrilla leader Chez Stadium. I think of that every time I think about the Mets' former home.
• 51D: "Harold and ____" (1971 black comedy) — I love Harold and Maude, and I'd love to spend some time talking about it, but I have promises to keep:

Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld

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