Main antagonist of HBO's "Euphoria" / SUN 10-19-25 / Pop culture hit about dystopian technology / Immune cell variation / Injection associated with a certain toxin / Features of the names of many Apple products / Artist's feedback session, informally / Oppressive political regime, so to speak, with "the" / Genre for Keith Haring / Interrupter of dreams, maybe

Constructor: Daniel Grinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Same Difference" — clues for the theme answers work whether you include the circled letter or "DROP IT" (which is the phrase spelled out by the circled letters) (circled letters represented below by red letters):

Theme answers:

• COMPANY CARD / SKID (26A: Business traveler's convenience / 9D: Go downhill fast, say)
• COUNTRIES / BURSTS (28A: Divisions on a map / 22D: Ruptures)
• "MR. ROBOTO" / GASOLINE (65A: Pop culture hit about dystopian technology / 49D: Fuel source
• PLAYOFFS / TOP SPEED (69A: Eliminators of some teams / 44D: Competitive athlete's goal, perhaps)
• ANTIVENOM / "NO TIME!" (109A: Injection associated with a certain toxin / 90D: "Sorry, I'm unavailable!")
• TRAIN DELAYS / TRIM (112A: Annoyances for ticket holders / 112D: Decorative auto upgrade)

Word of the Day: MR. ROBOT (65A) —

Mr. Robot is an American drama thriller television series created by Sam Esmail for USA Network. It stars Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson, a cybersecurity engineer and hacker with social anxiety disorder, clinical depression, and dissociative identity disorder. Elliot is recruited by an insurrectionary anarchist known as "Mr. Robot", played by Christian Slater, to join a group of hacktivists called "fsociety". The group aims to destroy all debt records by encrypting the financial data of E Corp, the largest conglomerate in the world. [...] Mr. Robot received critical acclaim, particularly for the performances of Malek and Slater, its story and visual presentation and Mac Quayle's musical score. The series has gained a cult following. Esmail has received praise for his direction of the series, having directed three episodes in the first season before serving as the sole director for the remainder of the show. The show received numerous accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Peabody Award. (wikipedia)

• • •

So ... it's weird. One of the things that is probably impressive from an architectural standpoint—namely that the circled squares are, like the grid as a whole, rotationally symmetrical—is also a thing that I don't care about in the slightest and don't think is necessary in a theme like this. Is it pretty? I guess. It's certainly neat. And it probably added a significant layer of difficulty to the construction process. But yeah, I don't care. I do care about symmetry in general, and in theme answers, as a rule, but special squares? No. Rebus squares, circled squares, special squares of any kind ... you can just go ahead and put them wherever; whatever placement allows you to make the most entertaining puzzle, that's where you should put them. I'm not faulting the puzzle for its circle symmetry. That would be weird. I'm impressed that there were twelve answers you could do this kind of cluing gimmick with at all, let alone that you could also a. get all the pairs to cross at the appropriate letter, and b. get those letters to spell anything, let alone a theme-appropriate message. How many "let alone"s are you allowed in one sentence? Who cares? I like this theme. I'm just saying, for me, the circle symmetry is totally unnecessary. Has nothing to do with my solving pleasure. I'm not even sure I think it makes it more elegant. There's almost something ... oddly boring about the perfect alignment of those circles. I just hate to think of a constructor spending a lot of time on an element that is really unnecessary. But it worked, so woo hoo, good job, everyone.

Some of these with-or-without answers are a little ... inventive, let's say ... but I think they're all at least defensible, and mostly they're uncannily good. The winning pair of the day, for me, by far, is MR. ROBOT / MR. ROBOTO. That was the point where I actually got the theme. Before that, I had COMPANY CAR and SKI and I just left the circle blank. Then I did the same for MR. ROBOT, but that little circled square at the end basically looks like an "O," so I thought "huh, looks like "MR. ROBOTO" and then immediately: "Heyyyyyyyyy wait a minute." The puzzle title is "Same Difference," so ... whether you include or ignore the circled square ... same difference! Clue works for both. Very nice.

I think the splashiest answer of the day is one of the tiniest—largest by total volume of answer, but among the smallest by actual real-life size. It's LOWERCASE "I"S (35D: Features of the names of many Apple products). I was lucky enough to have the ending in place before I ever looked at the clue, so I knew something weird was going on with the parsing. What the hell kind of (long) English plural is going to end "-EIS"? Everything I had above "-EIS" was patchy but I pieced it together pretty quickly. Such a long answer to get such a tiny phenomenon ("i"). I enjoyed decoding that answer. I don't see any places where I struggled more than a little. It took every cross for me to accept CRIT as an answer, but that doesn't mean it was "hard," just that I have never heard of that and it somehow looks and sounds bad to me (76D: Artist's feedback session, informally). What artist? Who is giving the "feedback?" Couldn't you just say [Feedback, informally], or is CRIT ([grimace]) really an artist-specific thing. CRIT is one of the few ugly words that has actually become more prevalent in the Shortz Era. Today's is the third of the year (which makes it the second-CRITtiest year ever after 2019 (5)):

[CRIT frequency over time]

Almost every other time it has appeared in the Shortz Era, CRIT has been clued as [Lit ___], short for "literary criticism." This is the just second "artist's feedback session"-related clue. I probably complained about it the first time, let's see ... nope, I didn't even do that write-up, and Clare (who did do that write-up) found it completely unremarkable, which it probably is, nevermind.

I know nothing about Euphoria except that it exists, so LOL at the idea I would know the name of its "Main antagonist" (16D: Main antagonist of HBO's "Euphoria"). NATE filled itself real easy from crosses, though, so I'm not mad. If you're going to indulge in that kind of pop culture deep cut, just make sure the crosses are very gettable, and we're good, no harm done. I also could not have told you what SEROTYPE was, but I have definitely seen (or heard) the word SEROTYPE before, so again, my ignorance didn't exactly make things hard for me (84D: Immune cell variation). Fair crosses, familiar-sounding word, no problem. Not seeing any significant toughness anywhere in this grid. Further, nothing really stands out as off or awful. Not sure how I feel about BOOKII (30A: Second volume). I actually kind of like the way it looks (like a discarded Star Wars race), but something about the Roman numerals is weird to me. PARTII I can somehow accept more easily than BOOKII (probably because I have had to accept it—11 times in the Shortz Era, vs. one solitary appearance for BOOKII (this, its debut)). Because I know you're dying to know, yes, there has been a BOOKI, once, but there has never been a BOOKIII or BOOKIV or BOOKV or BOOKVI ... I'm gonna stop there, but let's assume that it continues that way ad infinitum.

Bullets:

• 29A:  Brian ___, songwriter who popularized the term "generative music" (ENO) — if. you say that someone "popularized" a term, I'm going to (naively?) assume that that term is actually "popular." And yet I've never heard the term "generative music" in my life. I associate ENO most readily with AMBIENT music. Acc. to wikipedia, "Generative music is a term popularized by Brian Eno to describe music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system." Speaking of SYSTEM ...
• 45A: Oppressive political regime, so to speak, with "the" (SYSTEM) — congrats to the millions of people who turned out yesterday in cities all over the country to tell the current "oppressive political regime" exactly what they think of it. So much solidarity and joy in the streets (instead of divisiveness and misery behind phones and keyboards). Everyone seemed to be having a blast. Super-patriotic stuff, tbh. I was sick on the couch, but my wife (Penelope) went to the No Kings rally downtown, where somehow ~4,000 people showed up (huge numbers for this little city). The "Star Spangled Banner" hits different when you're protesting tyranny, and and you're singing with so many other people, and you get to that "land of the free" part. Penelope confessed to tearing up a little. And why not? So the vibes seemed great. Here's some photo evidence of the vibes:

[Binghamton, NY, Sat. 10/18/25]

• 46A: Have an ominous presence (LOOM LARGE) — ooh, forgot about this answer, which is wonderful. Hey, is "ominous" related to OMENS (122A: Warning signs)? Seems like it is, hang on. Yes, etymologically related for sure. "[Ominous] ultimately comes from the Latin word omen, which is both an ancestor and a synonym of our omen." (merriam webster dot com). Probably better to use some word besides "ominous" when you've already got OMENS in the grid.
• 120A: Nickname for Rachel (RAE) — I've heard "Rach" (so, "Rachel" with the "el" removed but the "ch" very much pronounced), and that's the only nickname for Rachel I've heard. But then I'm admittedly deep under the influence of Friends here, so maybe there are Rachels out there who go by RAE, I don't know. If so, I haven't met them. Is this a better way to clue RAE than via Charlotte or Issa or the arctic explorer John? It's not worse, I suppose.

Enjoy the rest of your day. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. a reminder that today's constructor has a crossword construction podcast called Crosstalk and it's good and you should listen to it.  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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