Jazz composer Garner / SUN 9-21-25 / Breaded, fried Japanese pork cutlet / Regular at a park with half-pipes, informally / Miniaturized Amazon smart speaker / Classic drinking "sport" / 2012 Disney film set inside an arcade / 1995 Sandra Bullock cyberthriller / Grand duke of Luxembourg beginning in 2020 / Holiest locales in synagogues, traditionally

Constructor: Adrianne Balk

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Gimme a Break!" — a KIT KAT MINIS rebus (112A: Bite-size chocolate-covered wafers ... or a hint to what's found in five squares in this puzzle); the puzzle has five "KIT KAT" squares where KIT works in the Across and KAT works in the Down:

Theme answers:

• KABUKI THEATER / SKATE RAT (23A: Traditional form of Japanese drama / 18D: Regular at a park with half-pipes, informally)
• WRECK-IT RALPH / TONKATSU (34A: 2012 Disney film set inside an arcade / 21D: Breaded, fried Japanese pork cutlet)
• TIKI TORCHES / "LOOK AT ME NOW!" (59A: Festive outdoor lighting options / 40D: "I made it big time!")
• TEST KITCHEN / MEERKATS (72A: Place to perfect a recipe / 52D: Members of the mongoose family)
• FOSTER KITTEN / SNEAK ATTACK (98A: Certain rescue pet / 78D: Ambush)

Word of the Day: Ariana DEBOSE (33D: Oscar-winning Ariana of "West Side Story") —

Ariana DeBose (/ˌɑːriˈɑːnə dəˈboʊz/; born January 25, 1991) is an American actress and singer. She has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2022, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

DeBose was a contestant on the sixth season of So You Think You Can Dance in 2009, where she finished in the top 20. She made her Broadway debut in Bring It On: The Musical in 2011 and continued her work on Broadway with roles in Motown: The Musical (2013) and Pippin (2014). From 2015 to 2016, she was one of the original ensemble members in Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton, and appeared as Jane in A Bronx Tale (2016–2017). In 2018, she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Donna Summer in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. She has also hosted the Tony Awards in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

DeBose has also appeared in the Netflix musical comedy film The Prom(2020) and the Apple TV+ musical comedy series Schmigadoon! (2021–2023). She gained wider recognition for her role as Anita in Steven Spielberg's musical film West Side Story (2021), winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She provided the voice of Asha in the animated film Wish (2023). (wikipedia)

• • •

I've never heard of KIT KAT MINIS until ... just now. I just looked them up and I think maybe I've seen them in the candy aisle at CVS, but ... let's just say KIT KAT MINIS does not hit as hard as KIT KAT BAR—esp. when the puzzle sets you up with a title like "Gimme a Break!" You know how that jingle ends, right? I guarantee you it does end with "break me off a piece of that KIT KAT MINI." I mean, can you even "break" a mini? It's already mini. The whole point of "Gimme a break!" in the jingle is that traditional, regular-sized KIT KAT bars come as multiple *attached* wafers, and you can "break" one off to eat yourself or maybe share, or whatever; the point is, everyone knows the phrase "KIT KAT BAR"—it rolls off the tongue, unlike KIT KAT MINIS, which has no staccato beauty to it; it just dies. The title (strongly) suggests KIT KAT BAR, but we get KIT KAT MINIS. Boo. I get the idea here—that you've shrunken the KIT KAT down to a "mini" size in order to fit all those letters in one box, but still, there is no musicality in KIT KAT MINIS, no iconic quality to KIT KAT MINIS. It's a disappointing revealer, is what I'm saying. Also disappointing—how one-note the theme is. Once you've got it, you've got it. The KIT KAT thing just keeps happening. I got the first KIT KAT and thought "huh, interesting, a candy rebus ... wonder what the revealer will be." And then the next rebus was also KIT KAT, which was deflating, because at that point, I knew the theme had no more to offer. That's not entirely fair, because I did still need to see how the puzzle would negotiate those KIT KAT squares (by far the most interesting thing about the puzzle). But the one-notedness of the puzzle was a bit of a drag. 

On a non-theme note, the grid itself was kind of a problem, as it's insanely choppy, just riddled with black squares, which makes for a megaton of very short answers (which is never pretty stuff, esp. in volume). PSST TSKS ITO EBON ETRE ECCE ICEES etc. It's actually not nearly as bad as it could've been, but still, I really felt the choppiness. The theme is very dense—deceptively so. Five rebus squares doesn't seem like a lot, but those squares make for ten theme answers, running in both directions, all of them fairly elaborate (marquee-worthy), which puts a lot of pressure on a grid. So I can cut the choppy grid some slack for that reason. I just wish there'd been more interesting fill outside the theme answers themselves. My favorite non-theme answer was probably "SO LISTEN ...," though FIRE PITS and GIDDINESS also acquit themselves admirably. IN A COMA, however ... for so many reasons, I would retire that answer right this minute.

There weren't many really hard parts today, although the difficulty level overall felt fine—not too easy. The worst part, for me, from a "how did I not know that?" perspective, was Ariana DEBOSE. I'm reading that clue like "wait, this person won an Oscar? Recently? And I have never ever heard of her? How!?" I mean, West Side Story ... that was one of the early COVID years, right? (Yes, 2021). Right after I saw Parasite in early 2020, theaters shut down, and I didn't start seeing first-run movies in the theater again until maybe late '22. I know there was streaming, and I was streaming a lot of movies, but most of them were from the '30s-'70s (the TCM (not TMC) sweet spot). I know my Movie Club watched West Side Story at one point, but I didn't go that week. I didn't really have any interest at all in that remake, though people I know who saw it loved it, so, my loss. But back to Ariana DEBOSE—clearly very accomplished, somehow completely off my radar. The most bizarre thing about that is that ... it turns out that I was staring at her (stylized) face just yesterday, as I flipped through the new (Style) issue of the New Yorker. They reimagined a bunch of old covers with real (photographed) people in them, and one of those covers featured Ariana DEBOSE, and I actually remember thinking "I have no idea who that is." And so I had the "I have no idea how Ariana DEBOSE is" reaction twice inside of 24 hours. Maybe I'll remember now.

[Ariana DeBose, actor. Original cover by Lorenzo Mattotti, January 11, 1999.Photograph by Camila Falquez for The New Yorker]

I had trouble with a few other names. Like, no idea who the Grand duke of Luxembourg is, in 2020 or in any year, so if you tell me HENRI (?) I'll believe you because that is a real French name, but that answer could not have meant less to me if it tried (19A: Grand duke of Luxembourg beginning in 2020). Some aristocratic European billionaire? Shrug. I forgot the ECHO DOT existed, but at least I've (vaguely) heard of that (104A: Miniaturized Amazon smart speaker). I'll be putting an Amazon surveillance robot in my house precisely never. All smart speakers are double agents. Pass. What the hell is Love, ROSIE? If it's not ACTUALLY, or ... SIMON? Is that a thing? Yes, it is! Hurray for my memory, anyway, those are my Love fill-in-the-blank movies. I do not have room for another, ROSIE, sorry.

["Love, ___" (2014 rom-com starring Lily Collins)]

Bullets:

• 62A: Classic drinking "sport" (PONG) — the game is "beer PONG," right? You can't leave the "beer" off. There's no WINE PONG. (Is there?). BEER PONG would be a great answer. PONG, clued beerlessly, isn't.
• 3D: Tik-Tok in the Oz books, for one (ROBOT) — I have an old copy of Tik-Tok of Oz lying around here somewhere. My grandpa gave it to me in the '90s. I've never read it because my copy is so fragile, but I'm very familiar with the front cover.

[Now that's what a ROBOT should look like. If the ECHO DOT looked like that, I might change my mind about it. Don't just play my favorite songs, take this blunderbuss and go walk my mule!]

• 5D: 1995 Sandra Bullock cyberthriller (THE NET) — Gen X and old Elder Millennials dropped this answer in so fast. I don't know how the rest of y'all handled it. Hang on for some antique internet action:

• 71D: It incited a famous 18th-century "party" (TEA ACT) — oh, right, that "Tea Party." I was thinking of the other, more recent "Tea Party" that sprang up in the wake of Obama's election, so I wanted to write in RACISM here. And it fit! But no, wrong century.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. it's autumn again and you know what that means! Yes, obscenely early Halloween decorations, there's that. Pumpkin spice invasion, sure. But also ... the Boswords Fall Themeless League. Join the friendly, at-home competition. Get a taste of crossword tournaments without all the flop sweat of in-person tournaments (just kidding, everyone looks and smells nice at tournaments). These are going to be fresh, high-quality puzzles. Test yourself! Treat yourself! Here's the info, from organizer John Lieb:

Registration for the Boswords 2025 Fall Themeless League is open! This 10-week event starts with a Preseason puzzle on Monday, September 29 and features weekly themeless puzzles -- clued at three levels of difficulty -- from an all-star roster of constructors and are edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to solve a practice puzzle, to view the constructor line-up, and to learn more, go to www.boswords.org.   

P.P.S. Happy birthday to my best friend, Shaun. I've been celebrating this day for 34 years now. It comes with its own soundtrack!

[in Michigan, on the dunes, 2022]

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

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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• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

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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• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

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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