Earth goddess in "Das Rheingold" / FRI 10-31-25 / Cookie marketing units / Yosemite Sam's role in "Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol" / Opposite of the Latin "odi" / Point in a film when an iconic song sets the scene / City across the Rio Grande from El Paso / Caroline Kepnes thriller written partly in the second person / Cone ___ (iconic Jean Paul Gaultier undergarment)

Constructor: Juliana Tringali Golden

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ERDA (30A: Earth goddess in "Das Rheingold") —

The United States Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) was a United States government organization formed from the split of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1975. It assumed the functions of the AEC not assumed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The agency was created as part of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, which was passed on October 11, 1974, in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. The act split the Atomic Energy Commission into two new agencies: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would regulate the commercial nuclear power industry, while the ERDA would manage the energy research and development, nuclear weapons, and naval reactors programs.

The Energy Research and Development Administration was established on January 19, 1975. The first administrator was Robert Seamans, followed by Robert W. Fri.

In 1977, ERDA was merged with the Federal Energy Administration to form the United States Department of Energy. (wikipedia) 

Also: 

Erda (/ˈɜːr.də/ UR-də) is a city in Tooele County, Utah, United States. The population was 4,642 at the 2010 census, a significant increase from the 2000 figure of 2,473. Erda was previously a Census-Designated Place (CDP) and a township but officially received its incorporation certificate in January 2022. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Earth goddess in "Das Rheingold"]!? Such a lovely grid, why, why would you drop this bottom-of-the-barrel crosswordese in there? Because it's Halloween and you thought you'd exhume the dead? OK, actually, that's pretty good, I'll allow it. Just think of ERDA as a spooky little haunting, the Ghost of Crosswords Past. How past? Ha ha, check it out:

Man, those 20th-century folks were really hot for Wagner. That's one hell of a heat map—towering columns of ERDA from the '50s through the '80s, and then Will takes over in the mid-90s and you can practically hear the ERDA supply getting choked off. It's been twelve years (!!?) since we last saw ERDA. I would absolutely have tanked ERDA if I hadn't known for sure that Ms. Clooney is an AMAL, not an AMEL—that is, I had ERDE written in there because I'm pretty sure that's German for "earth" and so that seemed the most plausible answer. I hope you all also knew AMAL, and the other ERDA crossings, because it seems at least plausible that many of you will be in my shoes here (those shoes being size "Never Seen a Wagner Opera In My Life And Sure As Hell Don't Know Who ERDA Is"). ERDA? Never ERDA her! This is why you should polish your grids within an inch of their lives, and not an inch and a half—I really enjoyed solving this, but I can't not see ERDA. The puzzle ends up like a fridge full of delicious food and then one small can of half-eaten cat food that you opened a month ago and forgot about (why would it be behind the mayonnaise?! who put it there where I wouldn't see it?). Before I stepped in ERDA, I was having a pretty good time. I had a pretty good time afterward as well. Hard to express how big an outlier that little answer is.

I've never seen a crossword that had its own NEEDLE DROP before (3D: Point in a film when an iconic song sets the scene). No, the puzzle didn't actually start playing music, but my brain did. Specifically, I've been thinking a lot about the NEEDLE DROPs in Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, which was the first movie I saw with my Moviegoing class this year. Which means that as soon as NEEDLE DROP dropped, the first great NEEDLE DROP of that movie (in fact, the whole scene that it's in) started playing in my head. I can't find any clips of that scene (introduction of Willa, doing her karate forms in the dojo), so I'll just play the song

There's also another perfect NEEDLE DROP at the very end of the movie, but it's so good that I actually don't want to tell you the name of the song—in case you plan on seeing the movie but haven't yet, I don't want to deprive you of the fresh experience of that moment. For more information, here's the episode of Wesley Morris's podcast "Cannonball" where he discusses the movie in detail with guest Sean Fennessey:

The second movie I saw with my Moviegoing class was Roofman, starring Channing TATUM (coincidentally, Blink Twice was the first movie I saw with my Moviegoing class the first time I taught it, last year). Yesterday, I kept pronouncing it like ... like it was a last name, like it rhymes with "Goodman," while everyone else was saying the "Man" part like a separate word, like he was a superhero, Superman or Batman, which is probably the correct way to do it. Also, apparently I pronounce "roof" like a crazy person—my students were all team long-U (i.e. rhymes with "goof"), whereas I ... I don't even know the name for the vowel sound I use, but when I pronounce it, it rhymes with the dog bark sound, "woof." Seriously, the entire class looked at me like "why are you saying it that way?" and then I just tripped all over the title every time I said it for the rest of the class. Anyway, this puzzle made me remember recent movies I've seen and enjoyed, including Sinners (starring HAILEE Steinfeld), and I appreciated that. AYO EDEBIRI (28D: Emmy-winning actress for "The Bear") also stars in a recent movie that I nearly put on the ballot for my Moviegoing class (they vote each week on what we'll see), but it just didn't look that good, so I left it off.

This puzzle played pretty easy, but twice I got stuck at the crossroads of two longer answers. OPENED ... / LAUREL ... no idea what was supposed to follow either, particularly the former. I guessed LAUREL TREE easily enough, eventually, but I don't think I knew a "bay" was a tree. Oh, bay leaves. Is that where they're from? A bay tree? That would ... make sense. Are bay leaves laurel leaves? I was thinking of the horse meaning of "bay," but then couldn't understand why a horse would be "green" (is it envious? inexperienced?). OPENED DOORS was much harder (6D: Provided entrees), as "entrees" = food to me (OPENED ... A RESTAURANT!?!?). The other pair that stopped me for a bit was "LET'S ..." / "THAT'S ..." I really liked discovering "THAT'S SO COOL!" which is bright and bouncy and in-the-language. I really did not like "LET'S BOUNCE" (47A: "We should get out of here"). Feels extremely contrived, even though it's intelligible. BOUNCE on its own as a slang term for "leave" is fine. “I gotta bounce,” “he bounced,” etc. It's the "LET'S" part that feels ... meh [apparently it’s a normal thing to say (acc. to the internet)—not sure why the “let’s” part clanks in my ear]. I had the ending letters (-CE) and all I could think of was ...

The "ZZ"s also got me into a little trouble, as I had HURRAH before HUZZAH at 27A: Old-fashioned "w00t!" Without those "Z"s, EBENEZER and JUAREZ are hard to see, as you can imagine (or maybe as you experienced yourself). I don't think I've ever seen "Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol," and if I had, I probably would've thought SCROOGE before EBENEZER (Yosemite Sam is his full name, as far as I know, so nothing indicated to me that I should be looking for Scrooge's first name, specifically) (9D: Yosemite Sam's role in "Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol"). I wrote in SUAREZ at first for 10D: City across the Rio Grande from El Paso and then didn't check the cross and ended up having to hunt down ESECT (?) at the end of the solve (9A: Boot = EJECT). Before that, the only mistakes I had besides HURRAH were CAPRI before CRETE (37D: Island home of what may be the world's oldest living olive tree (2,000+ years)) and of course ... ERDE :(

Bullets:

• 35A: Cookie marketing units (GIRL SCOUT TROOPS) — I guess they are "units," in the military sense. I could tell the answer started GIRL SCOUT, but then hesitated a bit deciding what should come next.
• 39A: Opposite of the Latin "odi" (AMO) — "I hate" v. "I love"
• 41A: Stinky ___ ("Toy Story 2" antagonist) (PETE) — this may as well have been ERDA to me. I don't remember all the Toy Stories. Not sure I've seen them all. It's likely I only saw the one. This puzzle is full of proper nouns, and if that's not your jam, I can see how this puzzle might be less than pleasing.
• 25D: Apt anagram of GAMES minus M (SEGA) — so dumb. Just an awkward-ass clue. It's either an anagram or it's not. Nothing can be "apt" if you have to "minus" something to get there, come on.
• 55D: British monarch between William and George (ANNE) — that's William of Orange (of "William & Mary" fame) (1689-1702) and George I (1714-27). William and George are also the names of the likely next two British monarchs as well, as you probably well know.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. that RUN dupe is very bad (RUN/I GOTTA RUN), but I didn’t see it because I blew right past RUN. Thanks for pointing it out, commenters!

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Soup stock in Japanese cuisine / THU 10-30-25 / Genre for Aretha Franklin or Usher / Chicago exchange, for short / Flour used in Indian flatbreads / What pulls out all the stops? / Food generally known outside the U.S. as "lady's fingers" / Lake in the homeland of the Washoe people / Fish also known as a batomorph

Constructor: Howard Neuthaler

Relative difficulty: Very easy

[Before you enter the last letter...]

[... and after]

THEME: "DEFYING GRAVITY" (66A: With 68-Across, "Wicked" song suggested by the answers to the seven starred clues (and whose singer is spelled by the circled letters reading from left to right) — seven Down answers must be written in with their last letter appearing first, as if the last letter has unnaturally risen up or ... defied gravity. The levitating (green) letters spell out "ELPHABA," the (green) witch who sings "DEFYING GRAVITY" ... the letters of ELPHABA's name are arranged in triangle formation, a bit like the outline of a witch's cloak in flight (no idea if this is a feature of the puzzle or a mild hallucination on my part):

Theme answers:

• ETHOS --> THOSE (2D: *The ones over there)
• LEASE --> EASEL (29D: *Stand before a meeting)
• PADRE --> AD REP (5D: *One selling commercial time, informally)
• HEART --> EARTH (45D: *Your home)
• ALOOF --> LOOFA (9D: *It's used to scrub the tub)
• BRAND --> R AND B (32D: *Genre for Aretha Franklin or Usher)
• AKRON --> KRONA (12D: *Some Scandinavian money)

Word of the Day: ELPHABA Thropp (see circled letters) —

Elphaba Thropp [...] is the protagonist of Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the novel's musical theatre adaptation, and the musical's two-part film adaptation, Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025). She is a reimagining of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

In the Baum novel, the Witch is unnamed and little is explained about her life; Wicked creates a backstory for her and explores the world of The Wizard of Oz from her perspective. Elphaba is modeled after Margaret Hamilton's portrayal in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz: green-skinned, clad entirely in black and wearing a tall peaked hat. Maguire formulated the name "Elphaba" from the pronunciation of Baum's initials—"L.F.B.". (wikipedia)

• • •

I would criticize this theme for being too show-specific (and for being too much like a paid promotion—"See Wicked: For Good, in theaters November 21!," I half-expected an enthusiastic voice to exclaim upon completion), and I can see how this puzzle might've been irksome for people who don't pay very close attention to popular culture generally (I didn't really know anything about Wicked until last year, frankly), but for those of us who are familiar with the musical (and in my case it's really only half-familiar), the puzzle is pretty impressive. Pretty magnificent, actually, at least thematically (the fill ... eh, we'll get to that). There are so many aspects of the theme that really ... elevate it 😎. First of all, there's the green. It is rare that I think that technological advances in puzzle software have yielded anything really worthwhile (animations etc. often leave me cold), but having the thematic material be green today was a really nice touch. Elphaba's green-ness is iconic—it's the most recognizable visual element of the book and musical, in all its promotion. So hurray for that, and hurray for the fact that all the seemingly "wrong" Downs with the levitating circles in them are actually real terms in their own right. ETHOS, PADRE, ALOOF, etc. The letter doesn't just levitate, but creates a whole other word. And the letters spell out ELPHABA's name, and the letters form a triangle that looks kinda like a witch's cape, and (if you're solving on your computer or phone) that "cape" stops "DEFYING GRAVITY" and returns to earth once you've correctly completed the puzzle (if you think of the green grid-spanning answer "DEFYING GRAVITY" as the ground or "earth" in this puzzle). Thematically, the puzzle is doing a lot of things, and doing them all well. If you know the show, it's hard to imagine your not liking this theme.

For me, this puzzle was way, way too easy. Maybe the idea was that some people might not be familiar with the movie, so the puzzlemakers wanted to make sure those people could still solve it successfully. I dunno. But I got the theme concept almost instantly ...

... and while I loved the whole way the theme unfolded, I did not have to struggle at all to make it unfold. Whoosh and whoosh and done. Lots and lots and lots of short stuff made the grid both easy and a little dull / overfamiliar. And then the long stuff ... look, I was prepared to let one EAT A SANDWICH-type answer go—MAKE A CAMEO is pretty solid, as such answers go—but then the puzzle hits me with a second?! (GOT A TAN). NAW, man, NAW, come on. That and NO ONE ON made me wince a little (I'll give NO ONE ON a pass, though, as it is a somewhat inventive debut, and one that appears during the climactic week of the baseball season—the Blue Jays are now up 3 games to 2 on the Dodgers and could win it all ... on Halloween!) (CANADA BEAMED feels like a premonition!). But overall, the fill is by no means bad, and there's some sparkly stuff in there, like PARAGON. Really hated "OK, GOOGLE," as the puzzle already felt like a paid promotion. Boo. Did an AD REP write this puzzle? Ad copy = bad copy. Especially ad copy for surveillance robots. Stop it.

More:

• 18A: What pulls out all the stops? (DRANO) — does it "pull," though? This answer took several crosses to get.
• 37D: Chicago exchange, for short (MERC) — wrote in MUNI, which ... I think is the transit system in S.F.? Yes.
• 19A: Food generally known outside the U.S. as "lady's fingers" (OKRA) — first, ew, gross, what? Second, isn't "lady's fingers" already taken, as far as foodstuff names are concerned? I thought they were cookies. Don't you soak "lady's fingers" in order to make tiramisu? Yes, ladyfingers (one word) are, in fact, "sponge cake biscuits roughly shaped like large fingers." What is wrong with other countries? Can y'all not just say "OKRA?" Or choose a different body part?

• 1D: Soup stock in Japanese cuisine (DASHI) — needed a cross or two to jog this culinary term loose from my word horde. ATTA, on the other hand, came to me instantly, as it should to all of you now. Neo-crosswordese. No longer is ["___ boy!"] (or "girl!") the only, or even the primary, cluing option for ATTA.
• 7D: The Marlins, on scoreboards (MIA) — I always have to stop and think about whether they're FLA or MIA (they used to be FLA).
• 55D: Left of center? (SOFT C) — a wicked (😎) "letteral" clue. The "c" in "center" is "soft," and it appears on the "left" side of the word (i.e. it's the first letter). Very cryptic.

That's it. Gotta fly....  😎 ... see ya next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Aquarium diagnostic / WED 10-29-25 / Feminist sex educator Shere ___ / Dracula's preferred way to eat wings? / Beer brand on "The Simpsons" / Cold-weather cryptid / Mythical luster? / Fastener with an onomatopoeic name / Lake that's the "thumb" of New York's Finger Lakes

Constructor: John Donegan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Dracula puns — familiar phrases clued as if they were Dracula-related:

Theme answers:

• RIGHT OFF THE BAT (16A: Dracula's preferred way to eat wings?)
• LIGHT ON HIS FEET (26A: What makes Dracula frantically hop around?)
• UPON REFLECTION (47A: When Dracula doesn't feel seen?)
• RAISE THE STAKES (61A: Get ready to attack Dracula and his pals?)

Word of the Day: Shere HITE (43D: Feminist sex educator Shere ___) —

 

Shere Hite (/ʃɛər ˈhaɪt/ shair HYTE; November 2, 1942 – September 9, 2020) was an American-born German sex educator and feminist. Her sexological work focused primarily on female sexuality. Hite built upon biological studies of sex by Masters and Johnson and by Alfred Kinsey and was the author of The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality. She also referenced theoretical, political and psychological works associated with the feminist movement of the 1970s, such as Anne Koedt's essay "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". She renounced her United States citizenship in 1995 to become German. (wikipedia)

• • •

Whoa, does Dracula actually eat bats? I thought he just turned into one, sometimes. Vampire cannibalism? That's rough. I missed that movie. I love that pun, but ... I'm not sure it's canon. Still, I generally thought this was a winning Halloween-week theme. If the NYTXW wanted to do a whole monster week leading up to Halloween, I would not mind. Outside the theme, though, this puzzle felt pretty Mondayish. Wednesdays are the one day of the week that seemed to actually be getting a little harder of late, but not today. There's nothing in here that a regular solver wouldn't know, and there's a lot of overfamiliar faces: ABIT ETA YETI OREO ETS IHOP INES ANTE IWIN ELIS AAA DEA, and then three names out of the Crosswordese Pantheon: ICE-T, GRU, and crossword double-threat Shere HITE—the one name that really did brought-out-of-mothballs—do people under 40 know who she is? She rose to fame in the '70s and became a staple of crosswords almost immediately thereafter, but her grid appearances have waned in this century. Here's my HITE report:

[xwordinfo dot com]

All of those HITEs are Sheres. As you can see, this is her first appearance in five years. It's been even longer for SHERE, which you also used to see a bunch, but while all HITEs are Sheres, not all SHEREs are Hites. There's one other crossword SHERE—SHERE Khan, the tiger in The Jungle Book. Both SHEREs seem equally dated now (The Jungle Book not being the dominant cultural reference point it once was). Here's the SHERE report:

All SHEREs are Khans before 1977. We've seen absolutely no SHEREs since 2019, and no SHERE Hite since 2016. The GRUs, however, just keep coming:

LOL what is that sad, lone red GRU back in 1973??? [Scottish particle: Var.]!?!?!?! I think I found the most self-parodic arcane crossword clue of all time. I wouldn't know what a "Scottish particle" was, let alone what a "Variant" looked like. Is it supposed to be a version of "grew?" No, it literally means "particle": "GRU, also grue. A particle, an atom, used both lit. and fig. Obs. in Eng. since 15th c." (Dictionary of the Scots Language). "Obs[olete]. in Eng. since 15th c."!? Again, LOL. Crosswords used to be wild.

[9D: Neighborhood in Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London"]

Outside the themers, which involved a little piecing together, there were very few hesitations today. The PAGAN part of PAGAN GODS wasn't immediately clear to me (3D: Jupiter and Mars). "Planets" or "Roman gods" were my first thoughts. Parsing PH TEST took a little effort. I have never owned an aquarium and do not aspire to own an aquarium, so all "diagnostics" are unfamiliar to me, though PH TEST certainly makes sense (12D: Aquarium diagnostic). Despite teaching multiple works where Satan is a central figure (he's literally central in Inferno, and he's the dang protagonist of Paradise Lost), the word FALLEN did not exactly leap to mind (though it's accurate enough) (53A: Like Satan, in the Bible). I don't see any serious sticking points in the grid, though that's assuming the names (GRU SHERE SONNY etc.) are familiar to you. But all those names seem fairly crossed, so what you end up with is a lightly punny holiday treat, with nothing much to distract you from the wackiness of the puns. The fill might've been a little stale, but not such that it detracted from the overall solving experience that much. 

["... and Judd Nelson" !?]

[27D: "New Jack City" co-star, 1991]

Further:

• 35A: Food fight projectile (PEA) — in a food fight, everything is a "projectile." If you're taking time to load up individual PEAs on a spoon and flick them at people, one at a time, I guarantee you are losing.
• 66A: Rains hard? (HAILS) — the oldest misdirect clue. Methuselah wrote this clue. When he was like 8, he wrote it. If not this exact clue, then variations on it like [It comes down hard].
• 69A: Mythical luster? (SATYR) — the SATYR is notoriously lustful, so ... he's a luster. I never considered any other meaning of "luster." The "?" pretty much said "not the normal way you'd use that word." There's only one meaning of "Mythical," but "luster" ... that was obviously the pun word.
• 8D: Cold-weather cryptid (YETI) — presumably the YETI is a cryptid no matter the weather. [Cold-climate cryptid] might've been more accurate (and it's got bonus alliteration!)
• 10D: Knock back a few (IMBIBE) — a great word, as well as the title of David Wondrich's indispensable history of the cocktail.

• 29D: Fastener with an onomatopoeic name (SNAP)  — is "SNAP" the sound a snap makes? Is it named after the sound? It is defined by closing or locking with a "click" (merriam-webster dot com), so ... I guess the fastener's name is inherently sound-related. 
• 49D: Lake that's the "thumb" of New York's Finger Lakes (ONEIDA) — I live very near the Finger Lakes and yet couldn't name them all for you. I certainly didn't know ONEIDA was the "thumb." But I did know ONEIDA existed, and with the crosses I had in place, all I really needed from this clue was "Lake." Let's see ... Cayuga, Seneca, ONEIDA (apparently), Keuka ... errrrr ... dang, there's eleven of them!? How is one the "thumb," then? Shouldn't there be two thumbs? Who has 11 fingers? I have geographical as well as anatomical questions... Wait wait wait. ONEIDA isn't a Finger Lake at all!!!! It's just (allegedly) a "thumb" in relation to (???) the Finger Lakes. That clue is very confusing.

• 41D: Beer brand on "The Simpsons" (DUFF) — I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda ... I mean, I am familiar with this beer:

[my friend Andrew and me, many years ago]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Magician of Arthurian legend / TUES 10-28-25 / Little guys in striped coats / Vessel with a spout / Melodramatic crying

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday of October! Hope everyone is having a good spooky season, which is coinciding with much nicer, cooler weather (at least here in D.C.). It’s meant having to spend a little longer deciding what to wear when riding my bike (my hands and feet always freeze), but I’ll take this any day over the horrible heat and humidity of the summer. We’re also going to “fall back” soon, which I’m very much not looking forward to because it gets so dark so early. But I think that means it’s time to get cozy: lots of soups and chilis and fall-scented candles. Liverpool and the Steelers aren’t doing so hot right now, so we don’t need to talk about them. But here’s hoping the Blue Jays can somehow win the series against the hated Dodgers. 

And in the most important news of all: My puppy is now one year old! I made her a little cake and got her in a party hat (for 0.2 second before she ripped it off) and sang and watched as she licked all the yogurt frosting off the cake. 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Adrianne Baik

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: JEWELRY BOX (62A: Personal treasure chest ... or what each of the five groups of shaded letters illustrates?) — The shaded letters form items of jewelry you might find in a jewelry box

Theme answers:

• None really

Word of the Day: GO HAM (51D: Give extreme effort, in slang) —

Uncertain; the earliest use of the term in the idiomatic sense appears to be in the 2007 song "Go Ham on 'Em" by Soulja Boy, although isolated usage goes back earlier. "Ham" is often thought to be an acronym of "hard as a motherf***er" (with go ham then parsing as go hard as a motherf***er), although this may be a backronym. Alternatively, “ham” could be a phonetic clipping of mayhem. The term was popularized by the 2011 song "H.A.M." by Jay-Z and Kanye West. (Wiktionary)

• • •

I quite enjoyed that puzzle! That’s possibly (very likely) because almost all of it skewed a bit younger and was on my wavelength. But the construction overall also seemed very impressive without getting bogged down with too much crosswordese. I liked it enough that I’m even struggling to find much to say about it, when I find I can usually rant for a little while when I don’t totally love a puzzle. 

The theme is especially impressive because the constructor managed to get five pieces of jewelry in the puzzle, in varying shapes spread out across the puzzle. And we covered most of the major pieces of jewelry (I imagine “necklace” would’ve been pretty hard to work in there). I didn’t use the theme really at all for the solve, but it was something I appreciated after the fact. 

I found it amusing that a puzzle with the clue RETRO (7D: Fashionably old-fashioned) would skew sort of the opposite of RETRO. You’ve got AVA (29A: ___ Max, singer with the 2018 hit "Sweet but Psycho"), RAPS (24D: Performs like Playboi Carti, say), ARI (44A: Singer Grande, to fans), GO HAM (51D), ESME (66A: "Twilight" vampire Cullen), and BRODY (55A: Adam of "The O.C.")... I imagine some people Naticked (or came close to it) at GO HAM crossing ESME, given that both are very current pop culture terms. How many of you knew that ESME Cullen is the pseudo mom of Edward, who was dating Bella? I think it might’ve been better to cross GO HAM with some more typical crosswordese such as ESME of “For ESME — with Love and Squalor” from J.D. Salinger to help others get the “m” in GO HAM. 

There were a lot of other words in the puzzle that felt fresh and interesting. RATIONALE (56A: Reason why) and REMNANT (24A: Leftover piece) aren’t words you see too often. Neither are TO GO CUPS (49A: Beverage containers for people on the move) and OPEN FACE (9D: Like some sandwiches) and OCTANE (14D: It may be in the low 90s). I liked how there was both MERLIN (4D: Magician of Arthurian legend) and IAN (20D: McKellen who played Gandalf). My favorite clue was definitely for CAPT (33A: Hook or Cook: Abbr.), which got me chuckling. 

The jewelry answer that didn’t totally work for me was “bracelet” (formed by the shaded squares of OMELET BAR (19A: Build-your-own breakfast spot) and ZEBRA COLTS (16A: Little guys in striped coats)). ZEBRA COLTS was fairly obscure (to me and at least to my Google searching, as well)... And then SOFA FORTS (22A: Child's living room hideaway) felt like a stretch. It certainly wasn’t the term I used when I was a kid building forts out of pillows or blankets. 

But overall, I really enjoyed this puzzle, and it’s got me in a good mood!

Misc.:

• I just finished watching season 3 of “The Diplomat,” which is a fun (albeit a bit soapy and unrealistic) show. The main character in the show (the titular diplomat) does not really have TACT (27D: Diplomat's skill). She is, however, played by Keri Russell, so who cares? 
• One of the saddest parts of being gluten-free (not by choice) is not being able to eat NAAN (63A: Tandoori-baked bread). A lot of things can be replicated, but I’m yet to find a gluten-free NAAN (or focaccia, for that matter) that comes close to the version with regular flour. 
• Not sure why, but I never had to take TRIG (36D: Calc prerequisite) before calculus. I took Algebra 2 and pre-calc, but TRIG was actually never offered as its own class for my sister or me. (My dad was very surprised by this.) 
• Because it’s spooky season, please enjoy this picture of my puppy in her Halloween costume (she’s a spooky spider). And then, because I have you here as my semi-captive audience, please allow me to also regale you with a picture of Banjo, Red’s brother and my mom’s puppy, when he went to the beach to celebrate his birthday, and another picture of Red enjoying a hike on her birthday. I’m sure they’ll remember these days for years to come.

Signed, Clare Carroll, a true gem :)

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Maori dance with rhythmic chanting / MON 10-27-25 / Computer-controlled players, in gaming lingo / Longtime Supreme Court justice Frankfurter / Words set in stone? / Olympic gymnast Sunisa

Constructor: Tarun Krishnamurthy

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: SIDE EFFECTS (60A: Secondary medication results ... or a phonetic hint to 18-, 24-, 40- and 51-Across) — theme answers begin with "F" and end with "X"; so, the letters "F" and "X" are on the "sides" of the answers (hence SIDE EFFECTS (i.e. "side 'f' 'x'")).

Theme answers:

• FALL EQUINOX (18A: Celestial event on September 22 or 23, typically)
• FLOOR WAX  (24A: Application that might be put on with a spray mop)
• FIREFOX  (40A: Browser that competes with Chrome)
• FORT KNOX  (51A: Location of many gold reserves)

Word of the Day: FELIX Frankfurter (7D: Longtime Supreme Court justice Frankfurter) —

Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, advocating judicial restraint.

Born in Vienna, Frankfurter immigrated with his family to New York City at age 12. He graduated from Harvard Law School and worked for Henry L. Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War. Frankfurter served as Judge Advocate General during World War I. Afterward, he returned to Harvard and helped found the American Civil Liberties Union. He later became a friend and adviser of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After Benjamin N. Cardozo died in 1938, Roosevelt nominated Frankfurter to the Supreme Court. Given his affiliations and alleged radicalism, the Senate confirmed Frankfurter's appointment only after its Judiciary Committee required him to testify in 1939, a practice that became routine in the 1950s.

His relations with colleagues were strained by ideological and personal differences, likely exacerbated by some antisemitism. (wikipedia)

• • •

The "X"s really take this puzzle to interesting places, more colorful places than a Monday puzzle typically goes. Solving Downs-only, I was impressed by the quality of the fill, both for the answers whose clues I was reading and for those whose clues I wasn't. So before I even knew what the gist of the theme was, I was pretty impressed with the grid. EPITAPH, WINE STORE, ROOFTOP, MARXIST, BEST OF ALL, these all add character to the grid, as do some of the shorter answers like FLUFF (one of the harder answers for me to get Downs-only) and HAKA (46D: Maori dance with rhythmic chanting). I thought I saw my first HAKA in Scotland in the late '80s during a rugby match between Scotland and the team from Fiji, but the Fijian war dance is not called the HAKA. It's called the CIBI (put that in your grid and smoke it!). The HAKA has been popularized (made famous worldwide) by the NZ rugby team, which performs one before each match. Conan O'Brien even participated in one in the episode of his HBO TV show (Conan O'Brien Must Go) where he visits NZ. I enjoyed seeing HAKA in the grid today. Is it a debut? I don't remember seeing it before. Looks like it debuted last November, and this is just its second appearance—and it's already a Monday answer. That suggests the word has pretty broad familiarity, although apparently FELIX Frankfurter is also Monday material and I've never heard of that guy (possibly because he hasn't been a clue for FELIX since 1999). 

As for the theme, it's simple and elegant, and makes for some colorful answers. Not much else I can ask for from a Monday. The revealer makes perfect, punny sense of the initial "F"s and terminal "X"s. Nothing more to say about the theme than "good job." Solving Downs-only didn't present much difficulty today. As I said, FLUFF (the answer to the very first clue I looked at) was about the hardest thing I had to handle. Even after I had the final "F" in place, and all adjacent answers in place, I just stared at it for a bit. The clue was too vague for me to grasp, and none of the crosses were particularly helpful. Usually with Downs-only solving, you get some help on the Downs you can't crack immediately by inferring some of the crosses, but I could only confidently infer that last "F." The remaining four letters were all first letters in very short answers, and they all could've been multiple things. Which means FLUFF just had to ... come to me. Which it did, eventually. The only other clue to throw me like that was the one for BOTS (33D: Computer-controlled players, in gaming lingo). BOTS are just ... BOTS. I had no idea about the "gaming lingo." I wrote in NPCS ("non-player characters"). Luckily, -RAIT only had two possibilities and one of them was "K" (which seemed unlikely), so I got the answer down to B-TS and still didn't consider BOTS because that word seemed too ordinary for the specialized-looking clue. I thought maybe "gaming lingo" meant the answer was an initialism or abbreviation. But no. Just BOTS. Shrug.

Wanted WINE BAR and then ... well, nothing, before WINE STORE (11D: Establishment with red, white and rosé options). Wine is sold in liquor stores here (NY)—I don't even think you can get it in supermarkets, the way you can in California (my main point of reference, since that's where I grew up). So the phrase WINE STORE is one that never passes my lips, though I'm in no way doubting its validity. Just trying to explain why STORE didn't leap to mind. One other hiccup in today's solve—wrote in NAMED (?) before NOTED (53D: Famous).

A few more things:

• 14A: Olympic gymnast Sunisa (LEE) — I probably would've gotten this if I'd been looking at Across clues, but I thought (correctly, it turns out) that she was best known as "Suni." Weirdly, SUNI has never been in the grid. Not as the gymnast, that is. SUNI has appeared four times, between '67 and '91. How was it clued? ... Well, you're probably never going to need this information, but you can go ahead and add SUNI to your mental store of antelopes now if you like. If you think you don't have one of those, think again: ELAND? RHEBOK? IMPALA? GAZELLE? GNU? And if you wanna get real crosswordy, there's ORYX, ORIBI, NYALA, and KUDU. There's also something called a STEENBOK (four appearances, once just last year) and a DIKDIK (multiple appearances, all of them old). And now SUNI, theoretically (": either of two very small delicately built antelopes (Nesotragus moschatusand N. livingstonei) of southeastern Africa" (merriam-webster dot com))

[suni]

• 3D: Like 20 Questions questions (YES/NO) — do people still play this? Feels like a permanently pre-digital experience. Or maybe there are digital versions of the game, that seems likely. FRY crossing YES/NO reminded me of my home town (FR-ESNO), and the fact that my friend Malcolm would always call it "Fres-yes!" (always in the voice of some kind of promotional slogan).
• 10D: Words set in stone? (EPITAPH) — maybe my favorite Downs answer. Certainly my favorite Downs clue. Me: "They probably mean the stuff ... you know, they write it on your tombstone ... epi-something ... epigram? No, that's not it ..." My brain did this for a few more seconds and then the answer clicked. And it was right! No help from crosses! And since it's Halloween week, and tombstone decorations still adorn the landscape, it's timely. Speaking of timely, or, rather, extremely untimely—they started putting up Christmas decorations at my local park yesterday (that is, October 26!!!!). I thought surely Halloween was a firewall, a barrier beyond which the Christmas Creep could not travel. I was wrong.

[evidence (Otsiningo Park, Sun. 10/26/25)]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...