Self-effacing personality trait / SAT 9-20-25 / Slower, musically / Verso's counterpart / Drink drunk the morning after, maybe / Hill folk, informally / Demand upon reaching an "enemy border" / Catholic university in Florida or its home town / Strip of wood from which a bow is carved / Rare showbiz collections / Actor Millen of BBC America's "Orphan Black"

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ECHOISM (38D: Self-effacing personality trait) —

[this meaning of ECHOISM is not in dictionaries] [there are other meanings of ECHOISM] [This seems like a pop psychology thing ... I had to go to some article in Psychology Today to get a kind of definition (all my options seem flimsy)]

 1. What is echoism? Echoism is a trait that my colleagues and I have begun measuring, and like all traits, it exists to a greater or lesser degree in everyone. People who score well above average in echoism qualify as echoists, and their defining characteristic is a fear of seeming narcissistic in any way.

Of all the people we measured, echoists were the most “warm-hearted,” but they were also afraid of becoming a burden, felt unsettled by attention, especially praise, and agreed with statements like, “When people ask me my preferences, I’m often at a loss.” Where narcissists are addicted to feeling special, echoists are afraid of it.

In the myth of Narcissus, Echo, the nymph who eventually falls madly in love with Narcissus, has been cursed to repeat back the last few words she hears. Like their namesake, echoists definitely struggle to have a voice of their own. (Psych. Today)

 • • •

Another properly tough puzzle. I haven't applied the word "Easy" to a puzzle since Tuesday. Quite a streak. Why are you drinking STALE BEER the next morning? (13D: Drink drunk the morning after, maybe). I could not get my head around that at all. Are you a truly desperate alcoholic? Did you mistake it for water? Is it some kind of hangover cure that I'm unaware of? There is no context where drinking STALE BEER makes any kind of sense, especially "the morning after" ("the morning after" is also a weird phrase choice here, since "the morning after" pill is emergency contraception). STALE BEER and two names I've never seen in my life (ARI whoever, ALEC whoever) made that NE corner probably the hardest section. Thank god RECTO was a gimme (16A: Verso's counterpart); I was really floundering up there even with its help. Without it ... that would've been yikes. Somehow [Charcoal and wood, for two] didn't end in an "S"! Gah. I forget what I had in there, but it was (also) art-related and felt good. Another "not an 'S'!?!" plural ending at 34D: Sounds from 59-Across ("HO HO"). I watched Kate & Allie and still had trouble parsing MOTHERS (39A: Kate and Allie of 1980s TV, e.g.). I was like ... "roommates ... CO-STARS? ..."  So yeah, from the bottom to the top, that NE quadrant was the one that slowed me down the most. Outside of that corner, things were less brutal, but never easy. 

I basically liked the puzzle, except for the STALE BEER clue, which doesn't compute, and the ECHOISM / MENO MOSSO area. I don't really believe in ECHOISM. Seems like a thing made up in relationship to narcissism. I mean, Echo is Narcissus's counterpart, after all. A pop psychology term that isn't even in the dictionary? Boo. And MENO MOSSO is some deep-cut musical tempo indication (60A: Slower, musically). It's been a big week for "Italian words on scores," and this one ... I just had to piece together from my vague awareness of both Italian and music. That corner was really rescued by "I GOTTA JET!" (55A: "Later!") and SMOKE RING (58A: Blow it!)—I correctly guessed, right away, that it might JET and not the more common RUN, so I didn't get tripped up there, and as for SMOKE RING ... I remember lying in my dorm room smoking during senior year, surrounded by styrofoam coffee cup ashtrays, blowing SMOKE RINGs at the ceiling and thinking "I think if I couldn't blow SMOKE RINGs, I would quit." That's how much fun they were to me. I liked to blow one and then blow a smaller one right through it. I have very few "life skills," but blowing SMOKE RINGs is definitely one of them. (I eventually quit and haven't touched a cigarette since the early '00s, don't worry.)

Puzzle started out hard, but I was able to grab hold of just enough short answers to get started. There's a Catholic University named ST. LEO? There's a town named ST. LEO? News to me x 2 (1D: Catholic university in Florida or its home town). Also, this is garbage crosswordese, why would you clue it as hard as possible, thereby making it even more annoying? Also, there should be an abbr. indicator in the clue. Just an awful way to start out. But after reading many clues I couldn't get, I managed to put in EDEN, TWA, and ARGOTS (very proud of that last one). The "W" and "R" from those last two helped me see the "THAT" in "SCREW THAT!" (1A: "Hell no!") and the WARS in TRADE WARS (15A: New customs might incite them). God bless those little gimmes—they made a huge difference. I don't have much orange ink in the other sections of my puzzle (my green pen ran out so I've been using this tepid orange—gotta get over to Staples this weekend). My puzzle printouts, which I mark up and annotate before writing, tend to have the most ink where the biggest problems are. The whole western half of the grid only has ink around ST. LEO and OSMIC (lol, like I know anything about [squints] electron microscopy). But that SW section was both the last one I did and the easiest. OSMIC was a ???, but it fell into place from crosses pretty easily. This was a solid puzzle, even if I did have only an OK time solving it.

[9D: Who wrote "Humankind cannot bear very much reality"]

Bullets:

• 20A: Hill folk, informally (POLS) — so, Capitol Hill. Not hillbillies or, you know, ants or something.
• 29A: Sports org. in a 1976 merger (ABA) — basketball! My mind went to football (AFL), but the AFL / NFL merger officially took place several years earlier, in 1970.
• 51A: Strip of wood from which a bow is carved (STAVE) — if it's not barrel-related, then I have no idea what STAVE you're talking about (unless it's in the verb phrase "STAVE off"). Bow carving? Like electron microscopy and (apparently) pop psychological terms, not my purview. 
• 42D: Demand upon reaching an "enemy border" ("KING ME!") — oh yeah, and we can add checkers terminology to the list as well. Do you really call the row closest to your opponent the "enemy border," or are those words in "quotation marks" because you might think of the row that way? The quotation marks would then be acting like the qualifying phrase "so to speak." Haven't played checkers since I was a small child.
• 47D: Sheets might be placed in them (OVEN) — When they come out of the drier less warm than you'd like, then sure, just pop them in the OVEN on 200 for 10 min or so! A great wintertime life hack! (jk the "sheets" here are baking sheets)
• 56D: Result of the '64 Clay/Liston fight (TKO) — had the "T" and wrote in TIE. Then thought, "wait, what? No ..." Then the crosswordese kicked in.

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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Ancient creepy-crawlies / FRI 9-19-25 / Ribbed silk material / Biker role in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" / "Moulin Rouge" co-star, 1952 / Classic lunchbox staple, informally / Lead-in to stratus or cumulus / Bring the receipts for, as they say / Lower than, on a score

Constructor: Erica Hsiung Wojcik

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: FAILLE (40A: Ribbed silk material) —

 

Faille is a type of cloth with flat ribs, often made in silk. It has a softer texture than grosgrain, with heavier and wider cords or ribs. Weft yarns are heavier than warp, and it is manufactured in plain weaving. It was especially popular in the 19th century. // Faille was primarily made with silk, variations with cotton and wool were also there. A French silk variant was called ''Faille Francaise.'' The similar grosgrain has been described as a "firm, stiff, closely woven, corded fabric. The cords are heavier and closer than those in poplin, more round than those in faille." (wikipedia)

• • •

Not really on this puzzle's wavelength today, except with the answer "WEIRD FLEX BUT OK!," which is very familiar to me and obviously the highlight of the day (or the lowlight, I guess, if you've never seen the phrase before) (44A: "I, personally, wouldn't boast about that"). The "BUT OK" part took me a beat to figure out (I had a very brief moment where I entertained "WEIRD FLEX, BUDDY"), but then it popped right to mind. The phrase is a way of deflating someone who appears to be bragging about something that actually seems embarrassing (and possibly irrelevant). Merriam-webster dot com tells me *this* is the phrase's origin story [extreme, mordant LOL]:

Apologies for making you think of that guy, but unlike RFK, Jr., I refuse to ignore the research. Anyway, the phrase became popular and clearly broke free of any Kavanaugh context to become a fairly common way of mocking someone who appears to be inadvertently telling on themselves in some way. It was the one phrase I really enjoyed seeing today—big points for in-the-language freshness. Funny to pair it with BEHIND THE TIMES, since it's the least "BEHIND-THE-TIMES" thing in the puzzle. 

I do wish the marquee answers were a little more colorful overall, though. With the exception of TRILOBITES (17A: Ancient creepy-crawlies) and maybe GENTLE GIANT, the long stuff felt a little flat to me today. I also found a couple of the answers weirdly elusive because of that flatness, or vagueness. Could not find the handle on the ends of either BRING TO LIFE or BOOK REPORT. Had the BRING and ... nothing. Had the BOOK and ... nothing. For me to arrive at BOOK REPORT, something in the clue would've had to have suggested grammar school, or school in some way, because I've never heard of a "reader" writing a BOOK REPORT in any other context. As for the BRING answer ... BRING ABOUT, BRING TO PASS (?), BRING THE HEAT, BRING IT ON, BRING THE NOISE ... lots of BRING phrases were firing around in my head, but BRING TO LIFE was not one of them. That whole TO LIFE section was an ungentle giant of a mess for me. The clue for JOINED really really wants to be JOINTLY (31A: In tandem). "In tandem" feels like an adverb, JOINED an adjective. So that was weird. I've never started an email "HI, ALL," but then I try to avoid writing emails at all costs, especially "mass" ones. And FAILLE. Yeah, I "failled" to get that answer for sure. It's nearly impossible for me to keep all the crossword fabrics straight without constructors going and throwing another one on the PYRE. FAILLE hasn't made an NYTXW appearance since '07, my second year writing this blog, so clearly I have seen it before, but ... I forgive myself for forgetting it in the intervening 18 years. (Wow, that 2007 puzzle had "RETROCEDE" and "ARSENICAL" in it (alongside each other!), and took me something like a half hour to do!!)

Had pockets of trouble all over, including in the NW corner, where I did not recognize the "double" as baseball-related, and I could not get myself to accept SAND as an "it" (13D: It might be picked up from a trip to the beach), and the R&J quotation just wouldn't come. And then even more trouble around the REPORT part of BOOK REPORT and the adjacent SOTTO (29D: Lower than, on a score). I know the phrase "SOTTO voce," but that has nothing to do with "scores," at least in terms of how I've heard it used colloquially. I was not expecting an Italian word there. On the other side of the grid, something about the way IN ON was clue made it hard for me to get (30A: With (it)) that "biker role" from Rocky Horror seems ... niche (34A: Biker role in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"). I've never seen Rocky Horror, which seems bizarre considering how many damn movies I watch, but ... I dunno. No interest, despite my generally liking Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry. The only character I really know from that movie is JANET.  

[OK, now I also know BRAD]

More:

• 23A: One of four for a bat or a cat (FANG) — I would not have thought of cats as having FANGs ... until I acquired this giant Italian movie poster at auction and then had it framed and hung it above my desk here in my office just last week. As you can clearly see: FANGs!

• 14A: Fly me to the moon! (LUNAR PROBE) — cute clue. ("!" clues are meant to be taken very literally)
• 24A: "Moulin Rouge" co-star, 1952 (GABOR) — another movie puzzler for this movie fan. I know the stars of this century's' Moulin Rouge, but 1952!?!? That is not a famous movie. I'm stunned to find out it's a John Huston movie. I can name a bunch of John Huston movies. This is not one of them. I don't even know which GABOR we're dealing with here. I'm guessing ZSAx2 ... yes!

• 15D: Classic lunchbox staple, informally (PB AND J) — a great-looking answer; a fine addition to any grid. Crazy consonant juxtapositions. Love it.
• 1D: Lead-in to stratus or cumulus (ALTO-) — after CUMULO- I'm out. Not up on my cloud prefixes.
• 63A: According to experiments, they can't "sleep" in space (YO-YOS) — not up on my yo-yo lingo either. I feel like I learned everything I learned about YO-YOS during some brief weird fad in the '70s when I was in elementary school. And then I never thought about YO-YOS again. "Walk the dog" is a trick, I think. Maybe ... "around the world?" I kinda remember "sleep," I guess.

• 8D: Fin (ABE) — that is, a five-dollar bill. "Fin" was very popular, very common 20c. slang for a fiver. ABE ... wasn't. I've never seen a five-dollar bill called an ABE anywhere outside of crosswords.

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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Constellation whose name is Latin for "lizard" / THU 9-18-25 / Something you might change on a bed / Equine hybrid / Victorious military underdog in the Bible / Quality to which a unique six-character code is assigned, in graphic design / One might say "Big savings all week!" / Customizable, all-in-one internet digest / Holdings of winnings / Muscle car whose name evoked a U.S. road trip / Sister of Helios in Greek myth / Game played on an 8x8 board

Constructor: Adam Wagner

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: this "in" that — italicized clues all end with qualifiers ("in a sense," "in a way," etc.) where the "in" must be taken literally—that is, there are two clues (one before the "in" and one after) and the answer to the first clue is located inside the answer to the second clue, which then forms an unclued word or phrase:

Theme answers:

• TOO MUCH (17A: Meditation chant, in a sense) (the meditation chant "OM" appears "in" a sense, namely,  the sense of TOUCH)
• ROULETTE (25A: Tennis do-over, in a way) (the tennis do-over "LET" appears "in" a way, (like a path, or road), i.e. a ROUTE)
• RARE EVENT (34A: Superman portrayer Christopher, in so many words) (Christopher REEVE appears "in" so many words, i.e. a lot of possibly shouted words, i.e. a RANT)
• ACCIDENT (49A: Passport or driver's license, in a manner of speaking) (your ID appears "in" a manner of speaking, i.e. an ACCENT)
• PELICAN (58A: Action star Jet, in a nutshell) (Action star Jet LI has a nut—PECAN—for a shell)

Word of the Day: HINNY (28A: Equine hybrid) —

 

A hinny is a domestic equine hybrid, the offspring of a male horse (a stallion) and a female donkey (a jenny). It is the reciprocal cross to the more common mule, which is the product of a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare). The hinny is distinct from the mule both in physiology and temperament as a consequence of genomic imprinting and is also less common.

Many supposed examples of the jumart, a supposed hybrid between a horse and a cow in European folklore, were found to be hinnies. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow, that was unexpected. Haven't struggled with a theme like that in what feels like months. I almost forgot what it was like. I've complained a lot about the way the difficulty level has slowly been decreased over time, to the point where nearly every puzzle plays "easy" compared to how it would've played even a decade ago. "Why do you rate every puzzle 'Easy' or 'Easy-Medium'!?!?" Because I refuse to adjust to the new standards. In fact, this puzzle might not even be "Challenging" by the old standards. Maybe it's just as hard as a regular Thursday should be. But certainly by comparison to puzzles I've been doing of late, this one punched me in the teeth. Repeatedly. The first issue was the shape of the grid—those corners, with 7s running into 7s, are So Hard to get a grip on (compared to the corners of most themed puzzles). And when you come out of the corners, you hardly have anything to work with. Normally, you finish a corner and you've got momentum that can take you into the next section, but here, you've got this:

DIAPER (20A: Something you might change on a bed) and SLURS (24D: Curved lines on sheet music) give me virtually nothing to grab hold of. They're just these tiny little arms reaching out into the void. The SE corner (when I finally got there) actually fell very easily, but every other corner was a struggle. The cluing was difficult in general and it was hard for me to parse multiple answers today, multi-word stuff like "I VOTE NO" and CRANE GAME (?) and PRIZE POTS (!?!?!) and especially STORE AD, dear lord, that one almost broke me (2D: One might say "Big savings all week!"). I'm looking at -READ at the end and thinking "what word could that possibly be?" Words, plural, it turns out. So there was a general difficulty to the puzzle: tough clues, hard-to-parse answers, slippery grid. And then there was the theme.

I did not understand the theme at all until I was like 60% in. I had four themers in place and no idea why they worked. I could see what seemed like relevant words inside those answers ( the "LET" in ROULETTE, for instance, or the "OM" in TOO MUCH, etc.), but I did not stop to figure out how it all worked. Worse, I kept reading the first themer, TOO MUCH, as "To OM much," which I figured was what you did while meditating (i.e. "om" a lot), and so I thought there was some kind of weird mashing up of words, not one word literally inside another word. It was only when wrestling with RARE EVENT that I finally saw what was going on. That answer starts with "R" and I tried to put REEVE there, at the front of the answer, but obviously that wouldn't work. But then REEVE was there, of course, inside the answer ... but inside what? What were those letters on the outside of REEVE doing? "RA ... NT ... where is the 'RANT' coming from? [looks back at clue, stares at 'in so many words'] ... oh my god, 'so many words,' 'RANT,' REEVE inside RANT, gah!" Kind of an 'aha' moment, kind of an exasperated 'finally, you idiot!' moment.  Knowing the theme definitely helped me with the last themer (ACCIDENT), which I was grateful for, because LACERTA, what the actual @*&$#? That corner would've been brutal if I'd had to wrestle with ACCIDENT too. 

The most harrowing moment of the solve was the HINNY / HUE crossing. That HUE clue was meaningless to me (28D: Quality to which a unique six-character code is assigned, in graphic design). Less than meaningless. Gibberish. I am not a graphic designer, so you could've kept adding words to that clue and they likely would have continued to add nothing to my comprehension. I guessed the "H" in HUE because color (i.e. HUE) seemed like something a graphic designer might care about. As for HINNY, pfffft, yeah, I've seen the word before (28A: Equine hybrid). Probably only in crosswords. See also LIGER, another "hybrid" I've never seen anywhere but the grid. So the "H" wasn't a total guess—I felt pretty confident about it, but since that cross appears right on top of a themer I was struggling with, the whole section was a bit yikes. But I think in the end I actually liked this puzzle. The theme is certainly brilliant, conceptually. The fill wasn't always pleasant, and the cluing was definitely harder than usual, but I was grateful to have a puzzle that really put up a fight, just like the good old days.

Bullet points:

• 1A: Customizable, all-in-one internet digest (RSS FEED) — another brutal parsing. No idea. I was expecting something more specific. I wrote in E-READER at one point. Just floundering.
• 4D: Like some nouns: Abbr. (FEM.) — not in English!!! The fact that I couldn't get this instantly really hurt.
• 5D: Gets away from (ELUDES) — sigh, look, 5-Down, now is really not the time or place for the whole EVADES / AVOIDS / ELUDES conundrum! Like, I'm already dealing with significant new problems, I don't need this old one.
• 8A: Shoots for the stars (GOES BIG) — so not ASPIRES then, great, great ... 
• 21D: Holdings of winnings (PRIZE POTS) — this phrase is magnificently ugly. I can't imagine seeing it or saying it. I understand what it means now that it's in front of me, but getting it in front of me was work.
• 22A: ___ Ulrich, Metallica drummer (LARS) — one of the puzzle's few outright gimmes, though as I was filling it in, I sincerely thought "yeesh, that's a gimme for me, but that is Not going to be a gimme for a lot of others." If you are among those others, just know that I was thinking of you.

• 38D: Constellation whose name is Latin for "lizard" (LACERTA) — this is the kind of arcane *&$% that the puzzle used to throw at you on a regular basis, particularly late in the week. I slightly resent it ... but then I also kinda miss it. I miss getting walloped by stuff like OCHLOCRACY and ZYZZYVA etc. Nostalgic vibes.
• 8D: Victorious military underdog in the Bible (GIDEON) — oof. My biblical ignorance, exposed. I have heard of GIDEONs Bibles, but I did not know there was a GIDEON actually in the Bible. He was leader of the Israelites and led a victory over the much larger Midonite army (Judges 6-8).
• 15A: Game played on an 8x8 board (OTHELLO) — I suspected this, but then I also got the game confused with the Verdi opera, which is to say I thought it was spelled OTELLO, so I balked at writing it in here.
• 3D: Rosh Hashana horns (SHOFARS) — another blessed gimme. And a timely one (Rosh Hashana is next week).
• 56A: Muscle car whose name evoked a U.S. road trip (TRANS AM) — the car name is so familiar to me that I never stopped to think about what it might "mean" (or "evoke"). Seems so obvious, but the car itself really doesn't seem like something you'd take on a road trip. Seems more like something you'd show off in the parking lot of a burger joint.

[I'm aware that Melba Toast is not a TRANS AM ... I just like this scene]

Hope you had an easier time than I did. Unless you enjoy hard times, in which case, I hope you enjoyed the struggle. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Beatles sobriquet / WED 9-17-25 / Ditto, in footnotes / Like some short tennis matches / Sorcerous elder of folklore / Anime style involving giant robots / Rocksteady precursor / Vodka cocktails with orange liqueur and lime juice / State trees of North Dakota / Brand whose name is derived from the French phrase "sans caféine" / "Shreds," in winter sports lingo

Constructor: Jackson Matz

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "24-KARAT MAGIC" (43A: Grammy-winning Bruno Mars album of 2016 ... or a hint to an unusual feature of this puzzle's answer grid) — there are 24 "K"s in the grid (not sure why that's "magic")  

Theme answers:

• 43D: Like some short tennis matches (2-SET)
• 26D: Beatles sobriquet (FAB 4)
• anything with a "K"?

Word of the Day: MECHA (8D: Anime style involving giant robots) —

In science fiction, mecha (Japanese: メカ, Hepburn: meka) or mechs are giant robots or machines, typically depicted as piloted, humanoid walking vehicles. The term was first used in Japanese after shortening the English loanword 'mechanism' (メカニズム, mekanizumu) or 'mechanical' (メカニカル, mekanikaru), but the meaning in Japanese is more inclusive, and 'robot' (ロボット, robotto) or 'giant robot' is the narrower term.

Real mechs vary greatly in size and shape, but are distinguished from vehicles by their biomorphic appearance, and are often much larger than human beings. Different subgenres exist, with varying connotations of realism. The concept of Super Robot and Real Robot are two such examples found in Japanese anime and manga.

Real-world piloted robots or non-robots robotic platforms, existing or planned, may also be called "mechs". In Japanese, "mechs" may refer to mobile machinery or vehicles (not including aircraft, cars, motorcycles and HGV) in general, piloted or otherwise. (wikipedia)

• • •

LOL I undervalued Bruno Mars's "magic" by a full 10K. I took one look at the first cross, 43D: Like some short tennis matches and wrote in "1-SET." Two-set matches are so common in women's tennis that it never occurred to me to think of them as "short." I figured the puzzle was using "short" to mean "shorter than professional matches," like maybe you just decided to play a quick "match" at the club or something. You can see here that ONESET has appeared in the NYTXW a bunch in the past, and that the cluing is roughly equivalent to today's clue:

"14-KARAT" is a common enough purity measurement, and since I definitely was not paying attention to Bruno Mars albums 9 years ago ... ta da!? Failure! When I tell you I did not enjoy this puzzle much at all, please understand it has nothing to do with my error. I was wincing at the bad fill *way* before that—pretty much from the jump. I was like ten answers in when I first thought "oof, why is the fill so bad?" Actually, I was probably only three answers in: No regular-old mid-week puzzle should have LEOI as an answer unless the constructor is really desperate *and* the rest of the grid is pretty much spotless. It's the worst kind of crosswordese, and I would call it "lazy" in most cases, but today, after finishing the puzzle, at least I know why it was here, and why all the subpar / odd / unpleasant fill is here: so that we can get the full complement of 24 "K"s into the grid. Was it worth it? Not for me. KNOCK KNOCK and KNICK KNACK just aren't that interesting, and LEOI ATAD ACK IDEM HAH AGER EBOOK KERRI ARG DASANIS (plural!), ACTI EIEIO ECIG ... none of that was enjoyable. I love the kookiness of the letter "K" but ... not this much. 

[Bizarrely, LEOI seems to have gotten more popular in the Shortz Era; would not have guessed that]

Lotta names today, though only a small handful gave me trouble. I know the name KEKE Palmer because I saw and loved Nope, but I definitely needed to get the first two letters from crosses in order to remember the name. As for Jo KOY, nope (!), nothing. I checked and rechecked those crosses to make sure it couldn't be anything else. He seems to be most famous for bombing spectacularly as the host of the Golden Globe awards in 2024. I can't believe the Golden Globes are even still a thing. If you go to that awards show, I say you get what you deserve. Anyway, KOY is a debut, no surprise. All the other names in the puzzle are pretty big (RIHANNA, KARATE KID, LENA Dunham, Brooks & DUNN, etc.), although KERRI Strug is increasingly bygone. Did you know that the only other KERRI to appear in the NYTXW is also an Olympic gold medalist??! KERRI Walsh Jennings is an Olympic beach volleyball player (three golds and a bronze).

No real struggle points today. Always unsure about the exact spelling of "kamikaze" so I left the second and third vowels blank and let the crosses do the work (27A: Vodka cocktails with orange liqueur and lime juice). Also never sure of the last letter on KRONA (71A: Swedish coin), because the Norwegian coin is, in fact, a KRONE, so I waited for the cross there as well. Went looking for a sobriquet (i.e. nickname) for *individual* Beatles before I realized it was going to be a "sobriquet" for the whole band (FAB 4). Pretty sure I had AGAR before AGER. Both answers are regrettable crosswordese, but AGAR is a thickener, not a ripening agent. Really enjoyed seeing AKIRA Kurosawa, as he's among the greatest directors of all time, up there with Hitchcock and Varda and Kurosawa's own countryman, OZU, who (as I apparently do not tire of pointing out) has somehow still never appeared in the NYTXW. It's weird to me that the puzzle has used UZO (Aduba) nine times, but has never once used the legendary Japanese director whose name is just the same letters in reverse.

What else?:

• 1A: State trees of North Dakota (ELMS) — no idea. I thought "probably ELMS" because, well, four letters, trees ... why not? But then I thought of OAKS, and YEWS, and the fact that I know nothing about the flora of North Dakota, so I waited for crosses to help me out. Sadly, the first cross was no help, as I wanted the Club to be SAMS Club (1D: ___ Club).
• 21A: Brand whose name is derived from the French phrase "sans caféine" (SANKA) — most facts that are billed as "fun facts" are not in fact "fun," but this one is. Do people under 45 even know what SANKA is? Is it still around? I feel like it was a staple of 1970s-80s cupboards, but that's probably just because that's when I was watching a lot of TV and saw the ad campaigns.

[alternate clue for 2-Down: [Former 21-Down pitchwoman Horne]]

• 12D: Sorcerous elder of folklore (CRONE) — wow, "sorcerous," You don't see that word very often. This is its first use in a NYTXW clue. (Never appeared as an answer, unsurprisingly)
• 44D: Contrite answer to "Who put the empty ice cream carton back in the freezer?" ("I DID") — I'll have you know that I was not contrite.
• 58D: Outie's counterpart (INNIE) — Severance clue when!?!

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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A shopper, not a buyer, informally / TUE 9-16-25 / Fashion house named for its founder, Signor Garavani / Miss Havisham's ward in "Great Expectations" / Licorice-flavored spice / Cable inits. for cinephiles / High-status American Express offering / Motion of receding waves

Constructor: Jonathan Daly

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: ALL ABOARD (63A: Train conductor's cry ... or a hint to each word in the answers to the starred clues) — each part of the two-part theme answers is a type of "board" (and can precede "board" in a familiar phrase):

Theme answers:

• BLACK CARD (17A: *High-status American Express offering)
• KEY-CUTTING (25A: *Task for a locksmith)
• BACKWASH (31A: *Motion of receding waves)
• SEA FLOOR (45A: *Bottom of the ocean)
• HEADCHEESE (52A: *Product of meat scraps that, despite its name, is dairy-free)

Word of the Day: TMC (27D: Cable inits. for cinephiles) —

The Movie Channel (often abbreviated as TMC) is an American premium television network owned by Showtime Networks, a division of Paramount Skydance Corporation operated through its Paramount Media Networks division. Not including CBS, it is the oldest network owned by Paramount. The Movie Channel's programming mainly features first-run theatrically released and independently produced motion pictures, and during promotional breaks between films, special behind-the-scenes features and movie trivia. Originally operated and sold as a standalone service (launching as Star Channel in April 1973), at present, The Movie Channel is receivable to pay television subscribers primarily as part of the multiplex tier of parent network Showtime. The channel, along with its parent network Showtime and sister network Flix, is headquartered at Paramount Plaza on the northern end of New York City's Broadway district. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow, I guess we're really bringing this theme type back. It's been just one week since the last time we've seen a "both-words"-type puzzle. Last week I said that it was a type of theme you used to see from time to time, but that it seemed to have fallen out of fashion, or wasn't being used as much. I was surprised to see the theme type last week. I'm even more surprised to see it again this week. I figured it would drift back to the bottom of the theme-type box, but I guess it's endlessly renewable, in theory, so why not. I'm not usually a huge fan of these puzzle types unless the resulting themers are actually cool phrases *and* there's a decent revealer. Today's revealer does alright—a repurposed train phrase? That's pretty clever. On a literal level, grammatically, it's a teeny bit wonky (all the answer parts are boards, plural; each is A BOARD), but it's close enough for crosswords (i.e. you gotta give a revealer some wackiness slack, or wackyslack, as I'm now, as of this second, calling it). And the themers themselves are all solid phrases. Nothing iffy foisted upon us solely because it fits the theme. But then, on the other other hand, two of those answers are BACKWASH and HEADCHEESE, which are about as unappetizing a pair of themers as you're going to find. If I may paraphrase completely rewrite the old Folgers commercial: "The worst part of waking up / Is HEADCHEESE (and/or BACKWASH) in your puzz!" 

I know that they've got BACKWASH clued as some kind of wave phenomenon here, but come on, BACKWASH is the return of drink+saliva into a cup or can. BACKWASH is why you don't want to drink someone else's drink when the drink's almost gone. Mostly BACKWASH by then. I've never heard BACKWASH used in reference to wave motion. Nice try, puzzle, but this answer remains inherently gross. But vivid. All the themers were vivid, and that's probably what counts most in an easy early-week puzzle. I do wish the rest of the grid had been at least a little bit interesting. Felt like I was running into repeaters way too often. ENYA LEIA KIEAS EWE OUI UNA ONO POR ETTA SERTA ... and EKING! The whole EKE family is very prominent in CrossWorld, but EKING is the patriarch. The king, really. If you thought you never saw "EKE" anywhere but crosswords, true, but especially true of EKING, who will roam the halls of crosswords for eternity despite not having seen or heard in regular conversation, outside a crossword grid, since 1931. After the inevitable A.I. takeover, all countries will be run by E-KINGs. Can't wait.

ANISESEED has to be the weakest 9 there is (32D: Licorice-flavored spice). All 1-pt Scrabble tiles. Just blah. Waste of a nice big answer. I want to like LOOKIE-LOO, but I am not sure about the spelling there (11D: A shopper, not a buyer, informally). I would've spelled it LOOKY-LOO. To be clear, I wouldn't use it at all unless I was being ironically whimsical, but if forced to spell it, I'd've gone "Y." Looks like different dictionaries make different choices. I think OED has it as "looky" but merriam-webster.com has it "lookie." Both seem reasonable. So that was the one longer non-theme answer I enjoyed. After the unsavoriness of BACKWASH and HEADCHEESE, you'd think the puzzle would steer clear of any other answers with a high ick factor, but then—emanating straight out of HEADCHEESE—comes the SEWAGE. Yeah, that tracks with the E-COLI I saw earlier in the grid. 

More more more:

• 15A: ___ Dictionary (crowdsourced online reference) (URBAN) — not very useful because so often illiterate, but it can be entertaining if you're trying to find out about slang terms and what the majority of people think they mean. Someone once sent me an URBAN Dictionary mug with the term "Natick" on it. The definition could probably be better written, but I still love it.

• 38A: Miss Havisham's ward in "Great Expectations" (ESTELLA) — like ANISESEED, another long name filled with all boring letters. ESTELLA ANISESEED is what you would call a fictional character who was really into crosswords. 
• 44D: Chicago airport code (ORD) / 55D: Chicago airport (O'HARE) — what are we doing here? Besides clogging the grid with even more crosswordese. Unless you do some kind of clever crossreference, this is just a sad dupe.
• 27D: Cable inits. for cinephiles (TMC) — As I will apparently never tire of saying, "cinephiles" watch TCM (not TMC). I got so tired of seeing TMC clued as a station for "cinephiles" that I finally just looked it up to see exactly what it was (see "Word of the Day," above). Far as I can tell, it's one of countless movie options in your premium cable package. No idea what makes it distinct from any other. It's not a station "for cinephiles." It's a station for people who are scanning the infinite list of channels and finally just get bored and settle for that just-OK movie that was really popular once. You know ... that one. Actually, The Firm is on TMC right now. Yes, that seems right. (Actually, Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View (a '70s paranoia thriller starring Warren Beatty) is on at 9:35am EDT, Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief at 1pm, and Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides at 2:50—those are great movies. TCM-worthy, for sure)

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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❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

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• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)
• Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (Ithaca) (Sat., Oct. 18, 2025)

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📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

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