Gloomy, as an atmosphere / THU 11-27-25 / Essential biochemical process that releases energy in cells / "Anno Domini" period / Feature of a mountain or fingerprint / Lucky scientist, perhaps / Skin-care product thinner than a moisturizer / Football offense arrangement that resembles an inverted Y shape / Person who's off-base

Constructor: Alexander Liebeskind

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: SQUARE THE CIRCLE (57A: Complete an impossible task ... or a hint to reading three Down answers in this puzzle) — a rebus where the rebus squares are indicated by circles: a number works in each Across "circle," and you have to "square" that number in order for the Down answer to work:

Theme answers:

• WISHBONE FORMATION / ON EDGE (17A: Football offense arrangement that resembles an inverted Y shape / 18D: Anxious)
• FAST WORKER / YEAR OF OUR LORD (29A: Good person to give a time-consuming project, maybe / 9D: "Anno Domini" period)
• EARTH REENTRY / SATURNINE (43A: Process for a descending spacecraft / 24D: Gloomy, as an atmosphere)

Word of the Day: ANN Petry (13D: ___ Petry, first African American woman to write a million-selling novel ("The Street," 1946)) —

Ann Petry (October 12, 1908 – April 28, 1997) was an American writer of novels, short stories, children's books and journalism. Her 1946 debut novel The Street became the first novel by an African-American woman to sell more than a million copies.

In 2019, the Library of America published a volume of her work containing The Street as well as her 1953 masterpiece The Narrows and a few shorter pieces of nonfiction. [...] Petry's desire to become a professional writer was raised first in high school when her English teacher read her essay to the class and commented on it with the words: "I honestly believe that you could be a writer if you wanted to." The decision to become a pharmacist was her family's. After graduating in 1929 from Old Saybrook High School, she went to college and graduated with a Ph.G. degree from the University of Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven in 1931 and worked in the family business for several years, while also writing short stories. On February 22, 1938, she married George D. Petry of New Iberia, Louisiana, and moved to New York. She worked as a journalist writing articles for newspapers including The Amsterdam News (between 1938 and 1941) and The People's Voice (1941–44), and published short stories in The Crisis, where her first story appeared in 1943, Phylon, and other outlets.

Between 1944 and 1946, Petry studied creative writing at Columbia University and worked at an after-school program at P.S. 10 in Harlem. It was during this period that she experienced and understood what the majority of the black population of the United States had to go through in their everyday life. [...] Her daughter Liz explained to The Washington Post that "her way of dealing with the problem was to write this book (The Street), which maybe was something that people who had grown up in Harlem couldn’t do."

The Street, Petry's first and most popular novel, was published in 1946 and won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship with book sales exceeding one million copies. (wikipedia) 

• • •

Good morning and Happy Thanksgiving! Also, thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday yesterday. I managed to say thank you to a few people in the comments section, but then I got caught up in events of the day (mainly lying around watching Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire (1941) and eating the chocolate cake my wife made for me). I had a wonderful day, capped off by my daughter's coming home for Thanksgiving (although I wasn't awake to see that part, frankly ... I just know she's in her room right now, asleep, and that when she gets up she'll make orange rolls). It's nice to print out two puzzles this morning (one for my wife, as always, and one for the girl, who can but doesn't (regularly) solve ... yet). 

My software wouldn't accept the grid I have posted above, even though it's technically correct (at least for the Downs). I just discovered I was supposed to enter the circled-square part as letters, not numbers. Ah well. While the relationship between Across and Down circles was easy to figure out, the revealer seemed at least a little off in terms of describing what I, the solver, did to solve the puzzle. The puzzle seems to believe that you have a circle (the Across number) and then you (mentally) square it in order to get the Down answer to work. But for me, the Across and Down have equal weight and one does not precede (in any temporal way) the other. So SQUARE THE CIRCLE doesn't make much sense if "the circle" is both, say, "TWO" and "FOUR." I figured out the Across/Down relationship at EARTH REENTRY / SATURNINE, but I wouldn't say I got "THREE" first and then I squared it—in fact, I'm pretty sure I figured out "NINE" first. So the "circle" was "NINE" as much as it was "THREE." Thus it made as much sense to say that the Across was the square root of the Down as to say that the Down was the square of the Across. I think the thing is ... like, the revealer clue implies that you have one thing and you need to do something to it in order to figure out the next thing, but it's equally hard to get the first thing as the second thing. The revealer simply doesn't match the solving experience. This may seem like a technicality, but technicalities matter.

What's more, the fill was subpar yet again. Plural Greek letters and plural Russian negatives and at least two partial exclamations (HEE, YABBA), and some more shrieking (GAH, YOW) and then a host of hoary repeaters (ENRON (still?), ESC, ADT, UTERO, ODEON, AOLER (ouch), etc.). Also unlovely are SED and REN, the latter of which has a clue designed to make someone like me (a medievalist) nuts (33D: ___ Faire (medieval-themed festival)). Hey, do you know what REN stands for? Do you know what it's short for? I think you do. And if you do, then maybe you too had a little twinge of "huh?" when you wrote in this answer. See, the "RENaissance" (so-called) is, explicitly, specifically, self-importantly, not "medieval." Not not not. The Middle Ages (whence the word "medieval"—from L. medium aevum, "middle age") are the allegedly benighted period that the Renaissance was supposedly leaving behind. Thus the Renaissance is, by definition, subsequent to the "medieval" period. To say that a REN(naissance) Faire is "medieval-themed" ... the nails-on-chalkboard effect was real and jarring. But then ... it looks like the people who put on and go to these "faires" don't give a **** about such niceties as terminological accuracy. "Many Renaissance fairs are set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Some are set earlier, during the reign of Henry VIII, or in other countries, such as France. Others are set outside the era of the Renaissance; these may include earlier medieval periods such as the Viking Age or later periods such as the Golden Age of Piracy" (wikipedia) (my emph.). I get that everyone collapses the olden days into one giant Time of Yore and that actual historical periodicity is entirely an invention of historians writing (generally) well after the times in question, and that shifts from one time to another are actually gradual and involve continuity as well as rupture blah blah blah. But where labels are concerned, "REN" is not not not not "medieval." Not. No. Stop. 

This puzzle was difficult only in terms of getting the gimmick. Once you get it, it's smooth sailing (fairly typical for a Thursday). The gimmick today wasn't too hard to get, though the NW was a bit of a disaster to start, in that I had WHORL (???) for 1A: Feature of a mountain or fingerprint (RIDGE). Somehow WHORL seemed like ... maybe a snowcap formation, or maybe something happening in a mountain stream, I don't know. But five letters, fingerprint feature ... WHORL is what comes to mind. RAWER was thus hard to get (1D: More cold and wet). But eventually Idris ELBA came along to save the day (as he so often does) (5D: Actor Idris). WHORL became RIDGE and things began to fall into place. ON EDGE may have been the toughest of the theme answers to get because EDGY fit so neatly there (18D: Anxious). I wanted 27A: Low-lying area to be VALE, but couldn't make it work with the "Y" from EDGY in there. Finally I worked out the theme at EARTH REENTRY / SATURNINE, which helped me get ON EDGE, and that was that. Difficulty over. 

Bullets:

• 20A: High key? (ESC) — because it's at the top of your keyboard (I assume)
• 37A: Skin-care product thinner than a moisturizer (SERUM) — if you wanna get me really truly out of my depth, give me "skin-care product" clues. I think I've heard the word "SERUM" used in skin-care ads I've been forced to sit through, but had no idea what, exactly, it was.
• 63A: Tosses out (CASTS) — Hmm. "Tosses" and CASTS seem equivalent. The "out" is weird to me here. Unnecessary-seeming. Confusing. I can imagine scenarios where you swap out "Tosses out" as CASTS, but I can imagine more where "Tosses" and CASTS are the same.
• 3D: Lucky scientist, perhaps (DISCOVERER) — this seems true enough, but presumably most scientists "discover" things through hard work, because they're actually looking for something, even if, yes, some discoveries are happy accidents. The word "lucky" feels slightly too flippant, somehow. I mean, if she "discovered" a four-leaf clover, sure, lucky. But if she "discovers" the cure for cancer ... 

• 26D: "That's relatable" ("I FEEL YA") — showing my age here (56, as of yesterday), I wrote in "I HEAR YA." "Feel" in this sense has been around for decades, but is not part of my own personal vocabulary.
• 35D: Person who's off-base? (SHORTSTOP) — this was almost as jarring as the REN Faire clue for me, but for a different reason, namely: We Just Had This Clue For SHORTSTOP!!!! A merely nineteen days ago: [One who's off-base?]. Bizarre for any nine-letter word to repeat in that short a span of time, but particularly bizarre that the same "?" clue would be used in both instances. No, not bizarre. Negligent. It's a good clue but you Just Used It. If the clue were straightforward, probably no one would notice, but "?" clues are showy, ostentatious, look-at-me, so people are gonna notice. Like, the funkier your outfit, the more people are likely to notice when you wear it again. Maybe give it a few years. Nineteen days ... not long enough. 
• 50D: #'s place (TWEET) — ugh, The Place Formerly Known as Twitter. What a hell hole. Anyway, "#" in this case is a hashtag, which you use to tag relevant subject matter in your posts (on Twitter, these were known as "TWEETs"). You know, like #CatsOfTwitter #ElonSucks #NoGoodBillionaires etc.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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