Antidiabetes drug taken by many for weight loss / WED 11-19-25 / Netflix crime drama set in rural Missouri / Fancy spirals in calligraphy / Spanish island with a lively club scene / Food item placed in Egyptian tombs, as its layers symbolized eternity / Holland in Hollywood / Potty, to Potter / The Syracuse Mets vis-à-vis the New York Mets / Flatbread eaten during Passover

Constructor: Jeremy Newton

Relative difficulty: Very easy

THEME: NO-SPIN / TURN ON (36A: Straight-shooting ... or a punny title for this puzzle / 38A: Sexually excite ... or another punny title for this puzzle?)— "ON" "turns" in a series of shaded-pairs that encircle the grid, turning 90 degrees at each iteration, so that those shaded squares read like "ON" "OZ" "NO" and "ZO," in thrice-repeated succession:

Theme answers:

• there's twelve answers with shaded squares in them, I don't think I need to write them all out

  Word of the Day: OZEMPIC (7D: Antidiabetes drug taken by many for weight loss) —

Semaglutide is an anti-diabetic medication used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, and an anti-obesity medication used for long-term weight management and to reduce the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events. It is a peptide similar to the hormone glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), modified with a side chain. It can be administered by subcutaneous injection or taken orally. It is sold by Novo Nordisk under the brand names Ozempic and Rybelsus for diabetes, and under the brand name Wegovy for weight management, weight loss, and the treatment of metabolic-associated steatohepatitis (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis). [...]

It was approved for medical use in the US in 2017. In 2023, it was the nineteenth most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 25 million prescriptions. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. (wikipedia)

• • •

Did Novo-Nordisk write this puzzle? I know that OZEMPIC is an important newish medicine and I know that the appearance of brand names has nothing to do (probably, I'm pretty sure, at this point) with paid sponsorship, and there's not doubt that OZEMPIC is original and, considering its unusual letter combination, colorful, but there's some (biggish) part of me that doesn't wanna see any of the legion of ridiculous Big Pharma brand names in my grid ever. Ever. Maybe because they're never-ending, ubiquitous—forming the bulk of the advertising bombardment I'm likely to be exposed to on any given day. And the names are always risible and the people in the ads are all generically, blandly happy as horrific side effects are read quickly over shots of them gardening or playing frisbee or whatever. Somehow pharmaceutical brand names feel like more of an Ad Speak Encroachment than, say, all the OREO and Apple products whose names I'm forced to write out nearly every day. Next you're going to put WEGOVY in my grid, and then what one of the thousands of psoriasis medications they keep inventing every day. I mean, I get that OTEZLA might tempt you with its Scrabbly charms (it's an anagram of ZEALOT!), but ... there are limits to how many of these made-up names anyone should have to know. I got OZEMPIC easy, so it's not the difficulty level that's the issue. It's ... the creep. The adspeak creep. Into all facets of life. I know there's nothing to be done about it. But something should be done.

So the marquee answer today is also the answer that (slightly) rubbed me the wrong way. But that's not a puzzle quality issue, and in general, I think this puzzle is of reasonably high quality. I love the basic concept, mostly because it's weird—visually striking in a way that ultimately makes sense, and results in some ... fanciful fill. Lots of "Z"s, that's always going to liven up a grid (or overstrain it, but I think the "Z"s are largely well handled today). I laughed at DUNZO because it is such a stupid word that the last time I remember seeing it, a long time ago (I forget in what puzzle), my friend Lena and I mocked it mercilessly and then started using it, in conjunction with the word that it appeared near or above in the grid: THUD. "DUNZO THUD" came to express a kind of extreme finality: not just "finished" but "finished to the point of exhaustion and collapse" (THUD being the sound of your body hitting the ground). Lena even made me a "DUNZO THUD" t-shirt, but the letters eventually started coming off in the wash—a fitting end for a "DUNZO" t-shirt. Anyway, dumb "word," good memories.

I like this grid's shape, mostly because it includes some serious white space—prominent long-answer banks through the vertical middle of the grid. Six 7s just drilling right through the puzzle's center with a pair of 7/9-stacks crossing them. And despite my gripes about the commercialism of OZEMPIC, all of that fill holds up remarkably well. I mean, YELPERS can walk into the ocean if it wants (more silly brand name-iness) (23A: Some loud dogs ... or food critics), but the rest, great. Wish you didn't need an UZI to hold it all together, but "Z" density is baked into the theme, I'll keep my gun objections muted. The double revealer is a nice idea, although frankly I've never seen the phrase "NO-SPIN" outside of the context of a certain right-wing dickhead's Fox News show from days of yore—that show had a segment (I believe) with the hilariously inapt title, the "NO-SPIN Zone." If I type [no spin] into the search bar, that guy's name comes up as a suggestion almost immediately. So—remembering awful old white guys, less fun than enduring a pharmaceutical-name onslaught. Still, NO-SPIN does work perfectly, both in terms of what this puzzle does and in terms of perfect symmetrical balance with the other revealer, TURN ON (which is equally apt). I like aptness.

One thing I don't like, though—the one truly, distractingly awful about this puzzle—is MINOR TEAM. (61A: The Syracuse Mets vis-à-vis the New York Mets). What in the world? I've been a baseball fan for ... [checks calendar, notices 56th birthday is exactly one week away] ... a long time. I cannot remember ever hearing a MINOR-league TEAM called simply a "MINOR TEAM." A MINOR TEAM is a team that never does anything noteworthy. Just as a MAJOR TEAM would be a powerhouse (The Mets were not a MAJOR TEAM this year, sadly). But if you are talking about levels of professional baseball, then there are the Majors and the Minors, there are Major League Teams and Minor League Teams, but there are not MINOR TEAMs? FARM TEAMS, sure. But MINOR TEAMs ... this phrase is unrecognizable to me. I tried to search ["minor teams"] and my search engine was like "wtf are you doing?"

It's "minor league teams." That's the phrase

Bullets:

• 29D: Potty, to Potter (LOO) — maybe the worst clue ever written, in terms of sheer density of "nope." The cringy toddler-speak of "Potty," the completely gratuitous reference to the work of the hideous J.K. Rowling. Just a Top Ten Trash Clue.
• 21A: Spanish island with a lively club scene (IBIZA) — for some reason, every time I see IBIZA I think of this song and this song only. I have no idea how my brain ever made the connection. I must've heard it on some collection that had IBIZA in the title. It appeared on a UK compilation called "Now That's What I Call IBIZA"; I certainly never owned that, but it does indicate that the song has some connection to the "lively club scene" on that island. 

• 22A: Holland in Hollywood (TOM) — I always forget which TOM he is. I might get him confused with TOM Ford (is that somebody?) and TOM Hiddleston. LOL looks like TOM Holland played Spider-Man in MCU films six times. That tells you how much I've paid attention to the MCU in the last decade (not at all). For clarification's sake, TOM Hiddleston ... good lord, he's somehow also a fixture of the MCU (Loki). I recognize his face.  TOM Ford, on the other hand, is a designer/filmmaker (I enjoyed A Single Man). TOM Cruise and TOM Hanks presumably don't need introductions.
• 60A: "That makes two of us" ("SO DO I") — dreadful fill (SODOI / SOAMI is the lowest kealoa*). I would rewrite this clue to get rid of the "us" (which appears in the grid in the answer, NOT US (15A: "We're innocent of wrongdoing")). Maybe ["You and me both!"] would do.
• 63A: Food item placed in Egyptian tombs, as its layers symbolized eternity (ONION) — in a very easy puzzle, this was probably the hardest answer for me. The word "layers" had me thinking only of cakes and lasagnas.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] => ATON or ALOT, ["Git!"] => "SHOO" or "SCAT," etc.   

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