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 :)

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