R-V guy? / SAT 11-8-25 / Overseer of Artemis / Accessory with a grid of numbers / Lucas's younger sister on "Stranger Things" / Phrase spoken by a dog in a burning room, in a 2010s meme / John Coltrane album whose title suggests making major progress / Mali Empire ruler who single-handedly made the value of gold almost worthless by giving away so much of it / Largest Bengali-speaking city in the world

Constructor: Ryan Judge

Relative difficulty: Extremely easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: A.E. Housman (32A: "Then it was well with me, in days ___ I was born": Housman) —

Alfred Edward Housman (/ˈhaʊsmən/; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. He showed early promise as a student at the University of Oxford, but he failed the final examination in literae humaniores and took employment as a patent examiner in London in 1882. In his spare time he engaged in textual criticism of classical Greek and Latin texts and his publications as an independent researcher earned him a high academic reputation and appointment as professor of Latin at University College London in 1892. In 1911 he was appointed Kennedy Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge. He is regarded as one of the foremost classicists of his age and one of the greatest classical scholars. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius, and Lucan are still considered authoritative.

In 1896, Housman published A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of poems marked by the author's pessimism and preoccupation with early death, which gradually acquired a wide readership and appealed particularly to a younger audience during World War I. Another collection, entitled Last Poems, appeared in 1922. Housman's poetry became popular for musical settings. Following his death, further poems from his notebooks were published by his brother Laurence.[...] 

In 1942, Laurence Housman also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitia'" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Moses Jackson. Despite the conservative nature of the times and his own caution in public life, Housman was quite open in his poetry, and especially in A Shropshire Lad, about his deeper sympathies.

• • •

This didn't look like a Saturday from the beginning, from before I started. The grid did not have anything about it that looked daunting. No fat corners or other wide open spaces. Black squares everywhere. Chopped up to look like a midweek puzzle rather than a themeless. Turns out it's a 72-worder, the putative maximum for themeless puzzles, and high word-count puzzles tend to be easier than low word-count puzzles, all other things being equal (which they never are, but you get the basic idea). I figured the puzzle was just tricking me, trying to lull me into complacency before crushing me with smashing Saturday blows. But no. Not even close. This puzzle could not throw a punch to save its life. 1-Across IOWA, 1-Down ISBN, and away we go. 

I've got maybe half a dozen things marked on my grid that gave me some hesitation, but nothing at all that I really struggled with, beyond that one proper noun that, familiarity-wise is from outer space—the outlieriest of outliers: MANSA MUSA (59A: Mali Empire ruler who single-handedly made the value of gold almost worthless by giving away so much of it). I confess that I have never heard or seen that name before, and that that answer may as well have been a string of random letters; and yet somehow it didn't matter. Everything else was so easy that I just washed right over that answer and finally brought it down with ERICA (44D: Lucas's younger sister on "Stranger Things"): the closest thing that the puzzle has to a genuinely tough crossing. While parts of this were fun and made me smile (remembering old music, remembering old memes), the lack of difficulty was dispiriting. If any day is gonna try to tear my face off, it's supposed to be Saturday. No threat of face-tearing today. This puzzle merely pawed at it. Like my cat trying to wake me up in the morning. Equal parts cute and annoying. I think the puzzle itself is decent, but it should've run on a Friday (even if it felt, difficulty-wise, more like a Wednesday). Running this on Saturday? NOT OK (not NOT OKAY, which, as an answer, is NOT OK).

The highlights for me today were GIANT STEPS (26A: John Coltrane album whose title suggests making major progress) and "THIS IS FINE" (11D: Phrase spoken by a dog in a burning room, in a 2010s meme). I particularly liked the fact that "THIS IS FINE" runs right through NEIL (not NEAL) Gorsuch, a member of that feckless branch of government that is not interested in the concept of checks and balances and is happy to watch the world burn (that is, to watch the other two branches burn the world). Normally wouldn't be happy to see Gorsuch in the puzzle or anywhere, but today: good job, puzzle. You got me to enjoy seeing his name. There was some pleasing cluing in this puzzle too. I ultimately liked the clue for SHORTSTOP (13A: One who's off base?); my first thought was "none of the infielders actually stand on the damn bases!" [caveat caveat] but then I thought "OK, the only infield position that doesn't have 'base' actually in its title is SHORTSTOP ... yeah, that works." Speaking of baseball, I also liked the OHIO clue (2D: Red state?), mainly because it took me a bit to realize it was dealing with baseball (the Cincinnati Reds play in the state of OHIO) (yes, OHIO is, these days, typically a "Red State" on the U.S. electoral map, but that "?" means there's wordplay afoot). I like that the puzzle took a mythological clue into cephalopod territory. That was unexpected, and even though I've never heard of the cephalopods in question, the clue made it easy to infer once I had ARGO-. The puzzle's other mythological clue had me slightly off balance for a bit as well. I had -A-A and briefly assumed that 53D: Overseer of Artemis (NASA) was GAIA (!?) (personification of Earth, "Mother of the Gods"). 

I got the Housman clue easily (32A: "Then it was well with me, in days ERE I was born": Housman), but only because the missing word was easy to infer, not because I knew the poem in question. Here's the poem in question. It's a grim take on the idea of this world as a vale of tears (or a waking nightmare—the opposite of "THIS IS FINE," really):

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, 
   Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong. 
Think rather,—call to thought, if now you grieve a little, 
   The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long. 

Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry 
   I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn; 
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry: 
   Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born. 

Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason, 
   I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun. 
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season: 
   Let us endure an hour and see injustice done. 

Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation; 
   All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain: 
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation—
   Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again? [A Shropshire Lad, XLVIII (1896)]

Bullet points:

• 5A: R-V guy? (STU) — groan and eye roll ("S" "T" and "U" are the letters between "R" and "V" in the alphabet). This is one of the oldest "?" clues in the book (And I'm pretty sure I've seen that SPARE TIRES clue before, too (10D: Fifth wheels?)). My friend Lena and I will have to agree to disagree on this one :)

• 17A: Accessory with a grid of numbers (BINGO CARD) — "Accessory"? LOL, what? I don't wear it around my neck or wrist or around my waist, so ... come on. I honestly thought the answer was going to be some BINDI variation that I was unaware of.
• 37A: "You're not just imagining that tone" ("I HEAR IT") — I thought the tone was the speaker's own, so I put in "I MEAN IT" at first.
• 60A: Largest Bengali-speaking city in the world (DHAKA) — capital of Bangladesh, population over 10 million (closer to 24 million in the greater metro area).

• 6D: Shortening for a city that omits "onto" (TOR) — so dopey that I like it.
• 7D: John who won a National Book Award for this novel "The Centaur" (UPDIKE) — I know the author's name well, but I've somehow never heard of this novel. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Jonathan Miller described The Centaur (1964) as "a poor novel irritatingly marred by good features" (wikipedia).

• 28D: Sellout letters (SRO) — stands (!) for "Standing Room Only" (one of those Broadway-related terms I learned from crosswords very early on). SRO can also stand for "Single-Room Occupancy," describing a kind of cheap extended-stay hotel, but you don't see that clue much any more.
• 36D: Fella (BUB) — this answer went through the most incarnations. Started as GUY (I had the "U"), and then went to BUD before finally ending up as BUB.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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