Soup stock in Japanese cuisine / THU 10-30-25 / Genre for Aretha Franklin or Usher / Chicago exchange, for short / Flour used in Indian flatbreads / What pulls out all the stops? / Food generally known outside the U.S. as "lady's fingers" / Lake in the homeland of the Washoe people / Fish also known as a batomorph

Constructor: Howard Neuthaler

Relative difficulty: Very easy

[Before you enter the last letter...]

[... and after]

THEME: "DEFYING GRAVITY" (66A: With 68-Across, "Wicked" song suggested by the answers to the seven starred clues (and whose singer is spelled by the circled letters reading from left to right) — seven Down answers must be written in with their last letter appearing first, as if the last letter has unnaturally risen up or ... defied gravity. The levitating (green) letters spell out "ELPHABA," the (green) witch who sings "DEFYING GRAVITY" ... the letters of ELPHABA's name are arranged in triangle formation, a bit like the outline of a witch's cloak in flight (no idea if this is a feature of the puzzle or a mild hallucination on my part):

Theme answers:

• ETHOS --> THOSE (2D: *The ones over there)
• LEASE --> EASEL (29D: *Stand before a meeting)
• PADRE --> AD REP (5D: *One selling commercial time, informally)
• HEART --> EARTH (45D: *Your home)
• ALOOF --> LOOFA (9D: *It's used to scrub the tub)
• BRAND --> R AND B (32D: *Genre for Aretha Franklin or Usher)
• AKRON --> KRONA (12D: *Some Scandinavian money)

Word of the Day: ELPHABA Thropp (see circled letters) —

Elphaba Thropp [...] is the protagonist of Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the novel's musical theatre adaptation, and the musical's two-part film adaptation, Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025). She is a reimagining of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

In the Baum novel, the Witch is unnamed and little is explained about her life; Wicked creates a backstory for her and explores the world of The Wizard of Oz from her perspective. Elphaba is modeled after Margaret Hamilton's portrayal in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz: green-skinned, clad entirely in black and wearing a tall peaked hat. Maguire formulated the name "Elphaba" from the pronunciation of Baum's initials—"L.F.B.". (wikipedia)

• • •

I would criticize this theme for being too show-specific (and for being too much like a paid promotion—"See Wicked: For Good, in theaters November 21!," I half-expected an enthusiastic voice to exclaim upon completion), and I can see how this puzzle might've been irksome for people who don't pay very close attention to popular culture generally (I didn't really know anything about Wicked until last year, frankly), but for those of us who are familiar with the musical (and in my case it's really only half-familiar), the puzzle is pretty impressive. Pretty magnificent, actually, at least thematically (the fill ... eh, we'll get to that). There are so many aspects of the theme that really ... elevate it 😎. First of all, there's the green. It is rare that I think that technological advances in puzzle software have yielded anything really worthwhile (animations etc. often leave me cold), but having the thematic material be green today was a really nice touch. Elphaba's green-ness is iconic—it's the most recognizable visual element of the book and musical, in all its promotion. So hurray for that, and hurray for the fact that all the seemingly "wrong" Downs with the levitating circles in them are actually real terms in their own right. ETHOS, PADRE, ALOOF, etc. The letter doesn't just levitate, but creates a whole other word. And the letters spell out ELPHABA's name, and the letters form a triangle that looks kinda like a witch's cape, and (if you're solving on your computer or phone) that "cape" stops "DEFYING GRAVITY" and returns to earth once you've correctly completed the puzzle (if you think of the green grid-spanning answer "DEFYING GRAVITY" as the ground or "earth" in this puzzle). Thematically, the puzzle is doing a lot of things, and doing them all well. If you know the show, it's hard to imagine your not liking this theme.

For me, this puzzle was way, way too easy. Maybe the idea was that some people might not be familiar with the movie, so the puzzlemakers wanted to make sure those people could still solve it successfully. I dunno. But I got the theme concept almost instantly ...

... and while I loved the whole way the theme unfolded, I did not have to struggle at all to make it unfold. Whoosh and whoosh and done. Lots and lots and lots of short stuff made the grid both easy and a little dull / overfamiliar. And then the long stuff ... look, I was prepared to let one EAT A SANDWICH-type answer go—MAKE A CAMEO is pretty solid, as such answers go—but then the puzzle hits me with a second?! (GOT A TAN). NAW, man, NAW, come on. That and NO ONE ON made me wince a little (I'll give NO ONE ON a pass, though, as it is a somewhat inventive debut, and one that appears during the climactic week of the baseball season—the Blue Jays are now up 3 games to 2 on the Dodgers and could win it all ... on Halloween!) (CANADA BEAMED feels like a premonition!). But overall, the fill is by no means bad, and there's some sparkly stuff in there, like PARAGON. Really hated "OK, GOOGLE," as the puzzle already felt like a paid promotion. Boo. Did an AD REP write this puzzle? Ad copy = bad copy. Especially ad copy for surveillance robots. Stop it.

More:

• 18A: What pulls out all the stops? (DRANO) — does it "pull," though? This answer took several crosses to get.
• 37D: Chicago exchange, for short (MERC) — wrote in MUNI, which ... I think is the transit system in S.F.? Yes.
• 19A: Food generally known outside the U.S. as "lady's fingers" (OKRA) — first, ew, gross, what? Second, isn't "lady's fingers" already taken, as far as foodstuff names are concerned? I thought they were cookies. Don't you soak "lady's fingers" in order to make tiramisu? Yes, ladyfingers (one word) are, in fact, "sponge cake biscuits roughly shaped like large fingers." What is wrong with other countries? Can y'all not just say "OKRA?" Or choose a different body part?

• 1D: Soup stock in Japanese cuisine (DASHI) — needed a cross or two to jog this culinary term loose from my word horde. ATTA, on the other hand, came to me instantly, as it should to all of you now. Neo-crosswordese. No longer is ["___ boy!"] (or "girl!") the only, or even the primary, cluing option for ATTA.
• 7D: The Marlins, on scoreboards (MIA) — I always have to stop and think about whether they're FLA or MIA (they used to be FLA).
• 55D: Left of center? (SOFT C) — a wicked (😎) "letteral" clue. The "c" in "center" is "soft," and it appears on the "left" side of the word (i.e. it's the first letter). Very cryptic.

That's it. Gotta fly....  😎 ... see ya next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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