Classic arcade game with bull's-eye rings / MON 11-17-25 / Sch. with a T station / Boot, good, loom, moon, pool, rook, woof / Tot's three-wheeler

Constructor: Rena Cohen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Count 'em! — familiar two-part phrases where the second part is a number; each answer is clued as a list of things that are examples of the first part; how many things are on that list is determined by the second part, i.e. the number. For example, the clue for FIGURE EIGHT is eight figures (17A: Circle, cone, cube, cylinder, heart, pentagon, star, triangle)

Theme answers:

• FIGURE EIGHT (17A: Circle, cone, cube, cylinder, heart, pentagon, star, triangle) (eight figures)
• SWEET SIXTEEN (27A: Airheads, Dots, Fun Dip, Heath, Kit Kat, Life Savers, M&M's, Milk Duds, Nerds, Oh Henry!, Peeps, Pez, Rolo, Skittles, Twix, Twizzlers) (sixteen sweets)
• DOUBLE-O SEVEN (44A: Boot, good, loom, moon, pool, rook, woof) (seven double-"o" words)
• JACKSON FIVE (60A: Andrew, Ketanji Brown, Mahalia, Reggie, Stonewall) (five Jacksons) (none of them actual members of the Jackson Five, nice)

Word of the Day: Mahalia Jackson (see 60A) —

Mahalia Jackson (/məˈheɪliə/ mə-HAY-lee-ə; born Mahala Jackson; October 26, 1911 – January 27, 1972) was an American gospel singer, widely considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century. With a career spanning 40 years, Jackson was integral to the development and spread of gospel blues in black churches throughout the U.S. During a time when racial segregation was pervasive in American society, she met considerable and unexpected success in a recording career, selling an estimated 22 million records and performing in front of integrated and secular audiences in concert halls around the world, making her one of the best-selling gospel music artists. [...] Nationwide recognition came for Jackson in 1947 with the release of "Move On Up a Little Higher", selling two million copies and hitting the number-two spot on Billboard charts, both firsts for gospel music. Jackson's recordings captured the attention of jazz fans in the U.S. and France, and she became the first gospel recording artist to tour Europe. She regularly appeared on television and radio, and performed for many presidents and heads of state, including singing the national anthem at John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Ball in 1961. Motivated by her experiences living and touring in the South and integrating a Chicago neighborhood, she participated in the civil rights movement, singing for fundraisers and at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. She was a vocal and loyal supporter of Martin Luther King Jr. and a personal friend of his family. (wikipedia)

• • •

Experimenting with a star rating system. Might not last, but I'm gonna see how it goes. Three stars is basically Good Enough—the minimum for a Thumbs Up. I expect most puzzles will come in in the two- to four-star range, with the one- and five-star ratings being reserved for puzzles that are truly exceptional (in either direction).

Today's puzzle was thoroughly delightful. Since I solved it Downs-only, I never saw the cluing conceit, which is the best part of the theme. I thought I was just doing a puzzle where the theme answers ended in numbers ... for some reason. I thought there might be a revealer, but that never materialized. When I finished, I couldn't figure out what these answers had in common besides the numbers, which is to say I couldn't figure out what the numbers were doing. Why these numbers? But even then, even before I finished the puzzle and got a chance to look at the theme clues, I was having a good time. The theme answers are solid answers in their own right, and there were a good number of strong longer answers in the Downs, and the short fill only clanked a few times—EKES, OKING, EIEIO, nothing terribly jarring. it felt very well made, and ended up being very doable. When I finally took a look at the theme clues—I caught sight of the list of candies first—my immediate reaction was "oh, that's cute." Coincidentally, I had just finished an Out of Left Field cryptic crossword (highly recommended!) with a Halloween theme, where the revealer was TRICK OR / TREAT, and the clue was ["Tractor and trike crashed!"—that's what you might say to acquire any of twelve Across entries]. So, you anagram "tractor and trike" ("crashed" is the anagram indicator) and you get TRICK OR / TREAT, which is what you say to get ... candy! Only when I got the revealer did I realize that a full dozen of the answers in the grid were candy brands (they were not clued that way). Heath, Airheads, and Skittles are the only candies that that puzzle and today's puzzle have in common. Sorry for the long, sweet digression. I really like cryptics. And candy. And this puzzle, it turns out.

If I had been editing this puzzle, I would have changed that Jackson clue a touch, replacing the slave-owning / slavery-defending Confederate general and the slave-owning / slave-trading U.S. president with two names from the long list of much-more-pleasant-to-remember Jacksons. Samuel L., maybe, or, Peter, Bo, Phil, Jesse ... hell, I'll take Shoeless Joe over Andrew any day. Also, Peeps is not a candy in the same way that the other fifteen in the SWEET SIXTEEN clue are candies. Peeps are a seasonal abomination. If they aren't on the candy rack near the checkout at a drugstore or grocery store or convenience store, then they don't belong on this list. One other possible criterion: would you hand it out at Halloween? Peeps? Absolutely not. What are you, a monster? A Peeps sales rep? Replace Peeps with Almond Joy, and VOILÀ! Perfect clue.

Bullets:

• 4D: "If you want me to be honest ..." ("I MUST SAY...") — The clue is conditional, but the answer isn't, so this clue/answer pairing feels ... off. "If you want me to be honest" implies that some other person wants your opinion. "I MUST SAY..." is a declaration of your own need to offer that opinion, whether anyone wants it or not.
• 33D: Like most cheeses with rinds (AGED) — cheese, four letters, rind ... crossword reflex caused me to write EDAM before I'd really thought about it. This was quickly fixed.
• 22D: Sch. with a T station (MIT) — the "T" is the nickname of Boston's transit system, the "Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority":

• 39D: Classic arcade game with bull's-eye rings (SKEE-BALL) — "Classic arcade game" makes me think only of the stand-up video games I played so often as a kid. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, that sort of thing. So it took my brain a few seconds to move to a much older, pre-digital format of arcade game ... which I also played as a kid. Showbiz Pizza had an arcade that featured both video games and SKEE-BALL, so I spent a lot of time trying to roll the ball into the center of those "bull's-eye rings"; you can see the SKEE-BALL lanes in the background of this poorly edited home video of a Colorado Showbiz circa 1990.

• 11D: Insect that stings (BUMBLE BEE) — a nice symmetrical animal counterpart to GROUND HOG. You've got Punxsutawney Phil heralding more winter and the BUMBLE BEE declaring the arrival of spring. I had some trouble parsing this answer—the last answer I filled in, because so few of the crosses were easy to infer as a Downs-only solver. The first and third "E"s were the only things I was (pretty) sure of. I thought "OK, what stings" and ran through wasp, ant, and bee ... saw that BUMBLE BEE would fit but honestly thought, "do those even sting?" They always look so harmless, these big puffballs floating around. But yes, they can sting. I feel like there's even a children's song about it. I'll let Ms. Rachel sing it for you.

 ["Female bumblebees can sting repeatedly, but generally ignore humans and other animals" (wikipedia)]

And now here's a different bee-related song to rid your brain of that grating toddler music (I was listening to this album last night during cocktail hour, so it's on my mind). 

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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