Lego piece in the shape of a person or animal / MON 8-11-25 / Small tower on a castle / Recipient of two Golden Globe Best Actress nominations for Netflix's "GLOW" / Independence Day banger / Apt anagram of NOTE / German cry of annoyance / Craftiest animal in the Garden of Eden / Channel with a call to order?

Constructor: Rebecca Goldstein

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Monday, solved Downs-only)

THEME: CHEESE BOARD (64A: Cocktail party staple that may contain the ends of 17-, 25-, 38-, 42- and 55-Across) — just like the clue says: last words of all the themers might are all items you might find on a CHEESE BOARD: 

Theme answers:

• FIRECRACKER (17A: Independence Day banger)
• TRAFFIC JAM (25A: Rush hour snarl)
• MINIFIG (38A: Lego piece in the shape of a person or animal)
• "HI, HONEY" (42A: Warm greeting to a spouse or partner)
• ALISON BRIE (55A: Recipient of two Golden Globe Best Actress nominations for Netflix's "GLOW")

Word of the Day: ALISON BRIE (55A) —

Alison Brie Schermerhorn (born December 29, 1982) is an American actress, writer, and producer.

Brie earned recognition for playing Trudy Campbell in the drama series Mad Men (2007–2015), and had her breakthrough starring as Annie Edison in the sitcom Community (2009–2015). She then voiced Diane Nguyen in the animated comedy series BoJack Horseman (2014–2020) and portrayed Ruth Wilder in the comedy drama series GLOW (2017–2019), receiving nominations at the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards for the latter.

In addition to her television work, Brie has featured in films such as Scream 4 (2011), The Five-Year Engagement (2012), The Lego Movie film series (2014–2019), Get Hard (2015), Sleeping with Other People (2015), How to Be Single (2016), The Post (2017), The Little Hours (2017), Promising Young Woman (2020), and Happiest Season (2020). She also wrote, produced, and starred in the films Horse Girl (2020), Spin Me Round (2022), and Somebody I Used to Know (2023). (wikipedia)

• • •

Whoa, that was a rush! As a Downs-only solving experience, that was about as thrilling as it gets. Things kept seeming impossible (so many longish Downs), and then bam, I'd get a crucial Down and then crack some kind of pattern recognition code and boop boop boop, a section would fill itself in. In the NW, in the SE, in the middle-to-NE section, this sort of "uh oh, I'm sunk" followed by "wait! I got it!" cycle kept occurring. And that's not even counting the total leap of faith I had to take on MINIFIG (which I fig-(!)-ured was an actual miniature fruit until I looked at the clue post-solve). I put in GARB, then took out GARB because what long word ends in '-FIG?', then finally had to leave it because everything else looked good. I also had to navigate (!!) ERIE and its FISH without being able to look at the clue for ERIE and having a complete non-clue for FISH (26D: See 31-Across)—eventually, I figured, sure, ERIE's a lake, it's got FISH in it ... why not? And sure enough, why not! When I carefully clacked in the last few letters in REHEARSE (once I realized the clue was asking for a verb, not a noun) (11D: Practice for opening night), I felt like I was defusing a bomb, only I was hoping for an explosion, not a dud (I wanted the "Congratulations" message to pop up, is what I'm saying). Clack ... clack ... clack ... boom. Success. What a ride. I solve Downs-only to make things more challenging on Mondays, but I rarely get an experience this white-knuckly, this borderline disastrous, with this many AHAS. The theme itself is pretty straightforward, a pretty standard variety, but the originality of at least three of the theme answers (MINIFIG, "HI, HONEY," ALISON BRIE), and the semi-harrowing quality of the Downs-only solve made me a fan. If you crashed and burned on your Downs-only solve, believe me, I understand. If you don't solve Downs-only, well that's cool too. You are normal! I assume that, like me, you mostly enjoyed the puzzle, even if you probably found it easier and slightly less exciting.

The clues were often, let's say, less than straightforward. I could only imagine GONDOLAS being propelled by poles (1D: Vessels that may be propelled with poles). "FOR NOW" implies (to me) that things will or are likely to change in the future, which isn't reflected in the more certain phrasing of 3D: "Unless something changes...". I read 14D: "Shucks!" as an embarrassed kind of "Gee!" (like "aw, shucks"), so the dejected exclamation "DRAT!" took some crosses to pick up. FETID is a reasonably ordinary word, but it still didn't leap to mind at 27D: Stinking to high heaven (I weirdly considered REEKY (!?)). On the other hand, I was able to drop FREE WIFI and NETI POTS with zero help from crosses. Same with "DEAR JOHN" and ITALIANS, so it wasn't all struggle. I think that's what made it more interesting—the whoosh of success followed by the feeling of peril and doom ... followed by more of the same. I only made one outright error during the solve, though—wrote in IMARET (!?!) instead of TURRET at 54D: Small tower on a castle. I feel like that's a mistake only an inveterate solver (who is not quite thinking straight) could make. Really made a muck of my SE for a bit. But when you end up with things like YOAE and BRMT as your Acrosses, it's pretty clear you've gone wrong somewhere, and in the SE, it was clear which of the Downs was mostly like the bad egg. So goodbye IMARET, hello (much more ordinary) TURRET. And, eventually, hello successful solve. [addendum: I actually made two errors during the solve—the other one (besides IMARET) was guessing CHEESE PLATE before CHEESE BOARD]

Helped to know who ALISON BRIE is, for sure. Much better that I never saw the clue for her, because I have never seen a single episode of GLOW and don't know anyone who has. I'm sure it's great, but few shows are less on my radar than that one. I have, however, seen ALISON BRIE in many other things: Mad Men, Bojack Horseman, and (most notably) Community, which is definitely where I first saw her (which means I must've started watching Mad Men late, because Mad Men predates Community by two years) (or else I just didn't notice her in Mad Men—her role there (as Pete's wife, Trudy) is much smaller than it is on Community). I was lucky to be able to slap down her full name as soon as I saw that the first part of that answer was likely gonna be ALISON. I imagine there will be many solvers who don't know her name, and who also have never heard of a MINIFIG, which is why I wouldn't be surprised if this puzzle played a little harder than usual for a Monday (if not all *that* hard in the end).


Bullet points:

• 20A: Apt anagram of NOTE (TONE) — think music (took a few seconds for the "apt"ness to kick in for me)
• 50A: ___ Way, block in Lower Manhattan where a popular cookie originated (OREO) — of all the ways to clue OREO, this ... is one of them. I actually don't mind it. Go nuts, as far as I'm concerned. We've seen OREO so many times that every new instance should be *required* to show us something new in the cluing.
• 72A: This is not working! (REST) — "!" signifies a very literal clue. Note the lack of quotation marks around the clue phrase, which means we're looking not for an equivalent of the phrase itself, but for an equivalent of "This." Not working = REST.
• 37A: Channel with a call to order? (HSN) — Home Shopping Network. The pun here feels a little clunky. Why would any channel, or anything that is not a meeting, have a "call to order"? The misdirect is awkward (obviously you "call" HSN to "order" things ... I'm just saying the surface-level meaning of the clue doesn't sound great to my ears)
• 23D: German cry of annoyance ("ACH!") — German "ACH!" (as in BACH), Scottish "OCH!"  (as in LOCH). OCH! There hasn't been an OCH! in the puzzle since 2015! That's quite an OCH dr-OCH-t! (hey, look, the "drought" pun works in Middle English, so ... there)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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