Calendar month between Sha'ban and Shawwal / SAT 10-25-25 / Especially gratifying, so to speak / Suffix meaning "rule" / Mocap suit components / Geometry term from the Greek for "uneven" / Busby Berkeley musical film that introduced "I Only Have Eyes for You" / British slang for a police car / Slender hospital tools / Oldest four-letter papal name / Printing mark whose name is from the Latin for "is lacking" / 1992 U2 hit inspired by German reunification

Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium, maybe a bit harder

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PHILO Farnsworth (9A: ___ Farnsworth, inventor dubbed "The Father of Television") —

Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971), "The father of television", was the American inventor and pioneer who was granted the first patent for the television by the United States Government.

He also invented a video camera tube and the image dissector. He commercially produced and sold a fully functioning television system—complete with receiver and camera—which he produced commercially through the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation from 1938 to 1951, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

In later life, Farnsworth invented a small nuclear fusion device, the Farnsworth Fusor, employing inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC). Like many fusion devices, it was not a practical device for generating nuclear power, although it provides a viable source of neutrons. The design of this device has been the inspiration for other fusion approaches, including the Polywell reactor concept. Farnsworth held 300 patents, mostly in radio and television.

• • •

[43A: Brand for which General 
Foods distributed orange-handled
coffeepots to restaurants]

Harrowing. Thrilling. One of those amazing solving experiences where it feels at every moment like the wheels are gonna come off, but somehow I keep moving forward, repeatedly getting stuck and then repeatedly finding the slenderest paths through, bouncing and careering around the grid—more like running for my life than solving a puzzle. Like Indy being chased by that boulder. And somehow I survived, without any marks or broken bones. Pretty much an ideal Saturday puzzle. Hard clues yielded familiar answers, so I just kept trying to get enough crosses so that I could hallucinate some kind of word out of the often meager evidence of the letter patterns. This is how I got RAMADAN (1A: Calendar month between Sha'ban and Shawwal), for instance, as well as B PLUSES (8A: Some solid marks) and SCALENE and many others. And despite being hard, the puzzle didn't contain much that I'd call obscure, or even ... off. RIB SHOT seems a little off (I wanted GUT SHOT, which has the virtue of being a phrase I've heard of before, but the non-virtue of involving the "gut" and not the "chest," as the clue indicates) (1D: Sharp blow to the chest). If I'd ever heard of PHILO Farnsworth, I sure as hell forgot about it—that was the one answer in the puzzle where I was like "... if you say so!" Otherwise, behind the big bad clues were a lot of old friends. SUN RA and MEL Ferrer and Brian ENO. My guys. But the names largely stayed out of the way and let the longer answers shine. The best part was the big-answer collision smack in the middle of the grid. BETTER THAN SEX / "I CAN'T TALK"–if something is better than sex, so much better than sex that it leaves you speechless ... well, that sounds pretty great. I'm happy for whoever got to experience that. In short, the puzzle was hard without being crushing, and it made me work—it made me slip and slide and flail, but not fail. BETTER THAN SEX? Probably not, but still, pretty great. 

[43D: Leader of the Afrofuturistic jazz collective Arkestra for almost four decades]

This puzzle was harder than it should've been for me, in retrospect, because of tiny errors that had big consequences. Challengers is about tennis, so I went for the tennis org., but there are (at least) two tennis orgs. (USTA and ATP) and I stupidly conflated them, ending up with ATA (American Tennis Association? It seemed right!). And that second "A" in ATA made me think that 17A: 46 years? was the BIDEN A... -DMINISTRATION? But that wouldn't fit. But what else was it going to be? “Administration" is what you call the "years" of a president's term. That, or ERA, which was obviously too short. Making matters worse was the fact that I'd written in LOOT for 10D: Treasure hunter's find (LODE) and that wasn't just "confirmed," it was double-"confirmed" (by B PLUSES and "I HAVE TO BE HONEST"), so why in the world would I suspect it was wrong? This is all to say that the PRESIDENCY part of BIDEN PRESIDENCY managed to stay hidden for too long, even as answers filled in around it. (In case it's not clear, the clue is [46 years?] because Biden was the 46th U.S. president). I never got so bogged down again after that, but there was still plenty of challenge to be had. 

[24A: 1992 U2 hit inspired by German reunification]

DAMES is gonna be pretty obscure to most people, but I've seen that damn movie and I still couldn't grab hold of it, grrr (25A: Busby Berkeley musical film that introduced "I Only Have Eyes for You"). I had -CRACY instead of -ARCHY (39A: Suffix meaning "rule") and absolutely no idea what to do with FISHY, despite having the "F"! ("Suspect" means soooooo many things, it turns out!) (28D: Suspect). FISHY -ARCHY ended up being a real hold-out—the very last thing I got. But the only thing besides PHILO in the grid that made me go "????" was PANDA (29D: British slang for a police car). After wanting and then rejecting PADDY (wagon?), I inched my way toward PANDA, which I at first thought was some kind of ampersandwich (P & A?), but then quickly realized was just PANDA, the black & white bear that (I guess) has similar coloring to British (and American) police cars. Although ... when I look up [British police car], literally every example looks like this, so unless there is a kind of PANDA that is blue and yellow, I'm a little confused:

Bullets:

• 18A: Sudden movement (START) — I had SPASM—like LOOT, double-"confirmed," this time by RIB SHOT and MADAME X (3D: Titular figure in a scandalous John Singer Sargent portrait)

[MADAME X]

• 20A: ___ Maroni, Gotham city mobster in the DC Comics universe (SAL) — no idea, but SAL does seem a plausible "mobster" name, and the crosses were ultimately easy enough
• 48A: Where gold "beaver coins" were used as currency (OREGON TERRITORY) — the "beaver" bit was too much of a giveaway. Oregon is the Beaver State, after all. I got the "TERRITORY" part first and OREGON just went right in.
• 11D: La ___ (leading Belgian French-language TV channel) (UNE) — Didn't know you could do that. Usually if you have a definite article preceding a word that starts with a vowel in French, you get a contraction, i.e. L'UNE. But then if you wrote it that way, it might be confused with LUNE, Fr. for "moon," so ... there we are. La UNE. Asking me to know a Belgian TV channel seems like a big ask, but it's a small enough word, it's a common word, it's ultimately inferable. 
• 12D: Mocap suit components (SENSORS) — easy if you know what a mocap suit is. "Mocap" = short for "motion capture"
• 14D: Slender hospital tools (STYLETS) — wanted LANCETS, possibly because that's the name of a famous medical journal.

• 26D: They might go faster with zinc (COLDS) — so ... "go (away) faster." Is this true? I remember taking Cold-Eeze or some other zinc things years ago when I would get colds, but I think I eventually decided they didn't really do much and that rest and fluids really was the only way through. I'm just getting over a cold and my wife is just getting under one. I love October, but it is definitely the Month Most Likely when it comes to my getting sick.
• 37D: Even, or nearly so, at Wimbledon (ON SERVE) — had "ON-" and wanted ONE ONE? ONE ALL? Not very apt, and didn't fit. Also, ONE ONE and ONE ALL are exact ties, and the clue says "or nearly so." You can be ON SERVE (where no player is up a break) and have an uneven score (e.g. if it's 4-3 and the "3" is serving, the players are ON SERVE)
• 47D: Oldest four-letter papal name (PIUS) — PIUS is also the most common epithet for Aeneas in the Aeneid. Just a little classical literature trivia to round out the blog today.

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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