A schooner has at least two of them / WED 10-1-25 / Splinter in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," e.g. / Power to remove a nomination for eviction on "Big Brothe

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Easy (not putting my time bc I solved on paper)

THEME: Country-themed letter banks with cute clues — A letter bank is similar to an anagram, but less constrained, because you can repeat letters. 

Theme answers:

• [Elite soldier from GERMANY] for ARMY RANGER
• While an army ranger is not in fact from Germany, every letter in the answer (A, R, M, Y, N, G, and E) is found in (thus comes "from") the word GERMANY
• [Vessel for cooking rice from NEPAL] for PAELLA PAN
• [Sci-fi attack from SLOVENIA] for ALIEN INVASION
• [Fighting style from OMAN] for MANO A MANO
• [Seasonal precipitation from SURINAME] for SUMMER RAIN

Word of the Day: "Big Brother" (Power to remove a nomination for eviction on "Big Brother" for VETO) —

The show broadly follows the premise of other versions, in which a group of contestants, known as "houseguests", live together in a specially constructed house that is isolated from the outside world and compete for a cash prize of $750,000. The houseguests are continuously monitored during their stay by live television cameras as well as personal audio microphones. Throughout the course of the competition, houseguests are evicted by being voted out of the competition.

• • •

Hi squad, and welcome to a Malaika MWednesday! I found this to be an incredibly classic puzzle-- there's no Gotcha! or zany gimmick, it's just a well-executed take on a known form of wordplay. There have been plenty of letter bank puzzles before (I learned about the concept of a letter bank from crosswords!), and this one adds another layer by using countries specifically. One thing about a letter bank is that the bank (so in this case, GERMANY, NEPAL, etc.) cannot have any repeat letters. Immediately I feel the need to know how many countries have repeat letters (and thus would not have worked for this theme) but I am too tired to figure it out right now.

The clue [Shower affection (on)] made me think of this

Forcing the banks to be countries wasn't just a random constraint. It also means you get a cute double meaning when you read the clues. I think the styling they used gave too much away, but I suppose the bank would have to be capitalized.... I acknowledge that [Elite soldier from Germany] feels wrong. I preferred the clues that were completely factually wrong (like for PAELLA PAN, which is absolutely not from Nepal) because they made you do a little double take. More..... puzzling, if you will.

I like when I know things about the constructor, and then see threads of that in the puzzle. For example, I'm pretty sure Neville is a big Competition Reality TV Guy (Neville, chime in if I'm wrong here), so I guess the reference to "Big Brother" came from there. Of course, it doesn't always work like that! I had a puzzle where many solvers thanked me for a clue that used some particularly girly twenty-something slang and I had to reveal that the editors had contributed that particular clue.

Bullets:

• [Chinese monastery known for its style of kung fu] for SHAOLIN — I did not know this at all, and only know the name "Shaolin Fantastic" from a character on the short-lived but awesome TV show "The Get Down"
  
• [Candy brand with a Big Cup variety] for REESES — I love candy and I love the specific niche candies. Big Cup isn't that niche but it's more niche than a regular Reese's. My favorite weird candy is probably the giant chewy SweeTarts. I also adore Nerds Gummy Clusters which I think have gained a bit of a cult following in recent years.
• [Online subscription service since 2016] for ONLYFANS — lol I cannot believe he got this into an NYT puzzle. And referring to it as an "online subscription service" is simply diabolical. Legend.

xoxo Malaika

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