"Breaking Bad" sister-in-law / WED 10-22-25 / Natural remedy that's used to treat anxiety / David Bowie's astronaut persona / Whirling visual effects in video games / Food spread popular in England / Black prom rentals / Establishes what is, informally / Spots for cozy dates / Young woman, in Australia / Subculture associated with skinny jeans / Idiomatic sticking point

Constructor: Jesse Guzman

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: WORLD SERIES (34A: Climactic baseball event ... or what the starts of 17-, 26-, 44- and 52-Across form?) — starts of theme answers are homographs of numbers from different WORLD languages; those numbers form a SERIES (namely, "2, 4, 8, 16"); I think (??) that the exponential nature of the series is related to FISSION, a kind of nuclear chain reaction, but I'm much less clear on this point:

Theme answers:

• DOS AND DON'TS (17A: Some basic guidelines [2, Spanish])
• FIRE OPAL (26A: Fluorescent gemstone [4, Danish and Norwegian])
• OTTO HAHN (44A: Chemist who co-discovered 26-Down [8, Italian])
• SEIZE THE DAY (52A: Carpe diem [16, French])

Word of the Day: FISSION (26D: Atomic reaction co-discovered by 44-Across) —

Fission is the process by which an atom splits in two. Fission can occur spontaneously, via natural decay, or through controlled chain reactions initiated by people. Either way, the process releases a tremendous amount of energy. Nuclear power plants harness this awesome power, but so do nuclear bombs, and there are myriad environmental, social and political concerns raised by human use of this process. // An atom contains protons and neutrons in its central nucleus. In fission, the nucleus splits, either through radioactive decay or because it has been bombarded by other subatomic particles known as neutrinos. The resulting pieces have less combined mass than the original nucleus, with the missing mass converted into nuclear energy. (Live Science dot com)  

In nuclear physics, a nuclear chain reaction occurs when one single nuclear reaction causes an average of one or more subsequent nuclear reactions, thus leading to the possibility of a self-propagating series or "positive feedback loop" of these reactions. The specific nuclear reaction may be the fission of heavy isotopes (e.g., uranium-235, ²³⁵U). A nuclear chain reaction releases several million times more energy per reaction than any chemical reaction. (wikipedia: "Nuclear chain reaction")  

The dominant contribution of fission neutrons to the bomb's power is the initiation of subsequent fissions. Over half of the neutrons escape the bomb core, but the rest strike ²³⁵U nuclei causing them to fission in an exponentially growing chain reaction (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.). (wikipedia: "Nuclear weapon design") (emph. mine)

 

• • •

The FISSION part of this puzzle is confusing to me, and not ... necessary? I'm just not sure what it has to do with foreign numbers (or baseball). I mean, yes, you have a series that you have to account for, i.e. "why this series of numbers?," but FISSION? Just because your "8" answer is the guy who co-discovered it? This feels so arbitrary to me. I'm no longer asking "why this series?" but I am still asking "why?" There's no clear / natural / automatic connection in my mind between the series 2, 4, 8, 16 and FISSION. At first I thought FISSION was totally unthematic, and that the puzzle had decided to do this mutually cross-referencing thing with OTTO HAHN because he and FISSION just happened to end up in the same grid, so why not? But it seemed a big distraction. Why would you cross-reference one of your themers? Why would that cross-reference sit dead center, which is where thematic material might naturally sit? I would've ignored FISSION completely if the cluing on OTTO HAHN hadn't forced me to wonder what the hell was going on. So the (foreign, for some reason) numbers are (I think) supposed to represent a nuclear chain reaction, a splitting and resplitting (of uranium-235?). But I still don't really get why the puzzle goes nuclear at all. Or what the nuclear bit has to do with specifically foreign numbers? Or baseball? Lots of things happening in this puzzle, but their relationship to each other doesn't make much sense to me. The WORLD SERIES does start this week (Friday), so the baseball part, at least, is timely. The part where we celebrate The Bomb? Or the numbers of the world? That, I understand less. I hope you understood and (thus) appreciated this puzzle better than I did.

Theme aside, I found the cluing hard on this one. My first pass at the NW yielded hardly anything. I'm in CAFES all the time and almost none of them are "cozy" and no one is on a date there, so no luck there. CBD OIL was also a total mystery until I had many crosses. Wanted ETHNIC before FUSION (3D: Kind of cuisine). Well, not wanted wanted, but suspected. Hey, is FUSION in here because it pairs with FISSION? Is that some kind of nuclear physicist in-joke? I feel like this puzzle is speaking a language I don't understand, or, like it's a dog whistle, and some of us are dogs but it ain't me. The colloquialisms GET CUTE (22A: Act smart) and especially "SING IT!" (8D: "You got that right!") were hard to parse. I've never called anyone named Cameron "RON" before, nor did I know that was a thing people did. I only know one Cameron personally, and he goes by "Cam," so even that little answer was giving trouble today. The clue on SUITS was baffling to me. After LIMOS and TUXES I had no idea what prom-related thing could be happening there (38A: Black prom rentals). There's no tight relationship between SUITS and prom in my mind. Of course one can wear a suit to prom. But looks like much (if not most) prom attire is not black at all. So the clue seems defensible but also kind of arbitrary and bad. 

I watched all of Breaking Bad but it's been a decade or so, so I couldn't remember MARIE's name without multiple crosses. [Establishes what is, informally] just left me staring. What a weird way to clue IDS. I would've thought MEN were [A little under half of humanity], but instead we've got the awkward plural MALES. I would never pluralize MALE unless I was talking about animals. Livestock, maybe. I like IRISHISM as an answer, but boy I did not get IRISHISM as an answer without help (32D: Expression such as "Top o' the mornin'"). The IRISH part ended up being not too hard, but that -ISM needed help. I thought a second word was coming, not a suffix. The puzzle felt not hard but harder than usual for a Wednesday. That doesn't mean it was bad. I think the longer answers were pretty nice; any time you can get ten (10!) answers of 7 letters or longer into an already heavily thematic grid, and those longer answers are overwhelmingly solid-to-very solid, that's impressive. PROP BET ASTEROIDS COALESCE GROUPIES MAJOR TOM ... I love all those. And I especially love MARMITE, not because I actually love MARMITE (we are a committed Vegemite household), but because I love remembering that MARMITE exists and some (mainly British?) people love it. One person who enjoys MARMITE is the actor Bill Nighy, who has a great new podcast called "Ill-Advised" ("a podcast for people who don't get out much...") where he gives people advice on ... well, anything. Men's fashion. Partygoing (or non-going). Etc. It's short and it's funny and it's British and MARMITE comes up. Oh, and he gives you a little music playlist at the end. Give it a listen. You'll like it, I'm pretty sure.

What else?:

• 39D: Young woman, in Australia (SHEILA) — I've been to NZ many times because that's where my wife was born and where her family lives, but in the half dozen or so times I've been Down there, I've somehow never been to Australia. I'm hoping maybe next time we get over there. Don't think I'll be calling anyone SHEILA, though. Seems like a neutral enough word. Brief online inquiry suggests that the term is maybe less commonly used today, and perhaps seen by some (in some contexts) as derogatory or condescending (the discussion on this Reddit thread is interesting), but again, not having any direct familiarity with the place, I can't say.
• 55A: Picasso's "___ Demoiselles d'Avignon" ("LES") — I knew this, and yet some part of my brain was like "are you sure it's not 'DES'?" So I left the first letter blank and eventually SOMALI confirmed the "L."
• 54D: Subculture associated with skinny jeans (EMO) — is this still true? Feels like a 2004 stereotype, but maybe the aesthetic persists. Wikipedia agrees with me about the '00s-ness of it all. "Emo fashion in the mid-to late 2000s included skinny jeans, tight T-shirts (usually short-sleeved, and often with the names of emo bands), studded belts, Converse sneakers, Vans and black wristbands. Thick, horn-rimmed glasses remained in style to an extent, and eye liner and black fingernails became common during the mid-2000s." (wikipedia)

If nothing else, this puzzle taught we the Norwegian word for "four," which I'm sure to forget by tomorrow, but for now, I've learned something. 

That's all. See you next time. 

And hey, Daniel. Yes, you, Daniel Studenmund. Congrats on your 1000-puzzle streak. I've written about thousands of puzzles, but I've definitely never had a 1000-puzzle streak (when I take days off I take them off). So, good job. Please say hi to your wife and your puzzle-loving Chicago-area family :)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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