Typically red-colored toy figurines / SUN 11-2-25 / Mythical creature with scales / Old-time theater item / Lucy ___, African American slave narrator / Become acquainted over Zoom, e.g. / Like some soils high in organic matter / Strategy against fickle weather

Constructor: Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Lucy DELANEY (43D: Lucy ___, African American slave narrator) —

Lucy Delaney (née Lucy Ann Berry; c. 1828–1830 – August 31, 1910) was an African American seamstress, slave narrator, and community leader. She was born into slavery and was primarily held by the Major Taylor Berry and Judge Robert Wash families. As a teenager, she was the subject of a freedom lawsuit, because her mother lived in Illinois, a free state, longer than 90 days. According to Illinois state law, enslaved people that reside in Illinois for more than 90 days should be indentured and freed. The country's rule of partus sequitur ventrem asserts that if the mother was free at the child's birth, the child should be free. After Delaney's mother, Polly Berry (also known as Polly Wash), filed a lawsuit for herself, she filed a lawsuit on her daughter's behalf in 1842. Delaney was held in jail for 17 months while awaiting the trial.

In 1891, Delaney published the narrative, From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom. This is the only known first-person account of a freedom suit and one of the few slave narratives published in the post-Emancipation period. The memoir recounts her mother's legal battles in St. Louis, Missouri, for her own and her daughter's freedom from slavery. For Delaney's case, Berry attracted the support of Edward Bates, a prominent Whig politician and judge, and the future United States Attorney General under President Abraham Lincoln. He argued Delaney's case in court and won her freedom in February 1844. Delaney's and her mother’s cases were two of 301 freedom suits filed in St. Louis from 1814 to 1860. The memoir provides insight into the activities of Delaney's life during and after the freedom suits. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well Sunday themelesses continue to do nothing for me. Rafa is a very good constructor, and there's some fun stuff in this one, but I don't know ... answers that would impress me under the constraints of a 15x15 grid just die here in all this open space. If you like grid art, you get a ... what is this, a demented bunny rabbit? Scary Trix Rabbit? I don't know. Maybe if this had been a Jack-o-lantern and the puzzle had run on Halloween, and had a lot of monstery answers in it, I could get in the mood for something like this. But as it is, I've already largely forgotten this puzzle, and I literally just finished it (minus time to print out a copy for my wife and then go downstairs and get a glass of water). I had a feeling that this grid was probably gonna set some kind of record for Lowest Answer Count on a Sunday, and sure enough, that's what it does—at 117 answers, it beats the old record by one. For the record, the lowest answer count for a *themed* Sunday puzzle (126) is Andrew Chaikin's "21"-themed crossword from May 27, 2018 (LOL, the Word of the Day that day was Curtis SLIWA, who is about to lose the NYC mayoral election (two days to go!). My favorite part of the puzzle was when I got to about the 2/3 mark and because of the position of my cursor in the grid, the "face" in the puzzle looked like it had blood dripping from its fangs.

[Psycho bunny, qu'est-ce que c'est?]

Unlike me, this puzzle seemed really into contemporary writers. SAEED, REEM, ROSAMUND? These are not names I know well (or, in the case of REEM & ROSAMUND, at all)—which is not a problem, though when two of them crossed each other (REEM/ROSAMUND), I will admit I got a little nervous. Speaking of name crossings, the DELANEY/LARTER cross was maybe even a little bit hairier, but I've at least heard of Ali LARTER, so that helped. Actually, as far as crossing DELANEY goes, BEONE was possibly more treacherous than LARTER. Something real awkward about both BEONE and its clue (58A: Have spiritual unity (with)).

While there were a lot of interesting longer answers, the bottom stack I found weirdly off-putting. There's something about SILICON VALLEY and TECHNOCRATS sitting atop "THAT'S RICH" that's rubbing me the wrong way (esp. when you've clued SILICON VALLEY based on how rich everyone who lives there is) (73A: Area with the highest percentage of homes valued at $1 million or more). It's the SILICON VALLEY / TECH / RICH triad that's making me go blargh. And are TECHNOCRATS really "skilled in governance?" (84A: Ones skilled in governance). I mean, sure, compared to the current admin, but compared to the current admin, toddlers are "skilled in governance." There's something kind of ambiguous and ominous and vaguely dystopian about the very term TECHNOCRATS. I think it's the "techno" part. Also the "crats" part. Anyway, that whole stack reminded me of the distribution of wealth and power in this country and where it's gotten us, so yeah, blargh. Sidenote: the sample sentences using "technocrat" at Merriam Webster dot com are wild. They include this gem, which I am actually fine having no context for:

Pull your pubic hair out in clumps from the root and send it in unmarked envelopes to technocrats.
— Longreads, 17 Sep. 2019

Nothing else in this puzzle rankled, but a few things seemed off, including SAKE BOTTLE (92A: Drink order at a sushi restaurant) (I had SAKE and ... that seemed like a complete answer; plus SAKE BOTTLE makes about as much sense as WINE BOTTLE; you're ordering the sake, not the bottle, so you'd order a bottle of sake—just as you'd order a bottle of wine, not a WINE BOTTLE); and STATE-AIDED, a truly clunky adjective. Is STATE-AIDED really more commonly used than STATE-SUPPORTED or STATE-FUNDED? "AIDED" crossing WADES was ... an adventure).

[90A: Instrument for which Beethoven and Mozart composed]

Lightning round:

• 46A: Old-time theater item (MOVIE REEL) — one of clues trying to remind me of how old I am today—the other being, of course, the clue on VCRS (77D: Bygone devices whose tapes had to be rewound). Movies used to be projected from film and spooled on reels. Nowadays, most movies are projected using digital projectors, not film projectors. No more film, no more reels. According to the New Beverly Cinema ("Always On Film!"), reel-to-reel projection = "When a feature film is projected by running its individual reels on two or more projectors, changing from one reel to another in sequence. This is in contrast to “platter” projection, when a feature film is spliced together in its entirety and run through one projector as a continuous loop." I'm old enough to remember movies being shown in my elementary school classrooms using reel-to-reel projection. Also, I miss my VCR(S).

• 61A: ___ syndrome (allergic reaction to some bug bites) (SKEETER) — this sounded so made-up to me—no actual "syndrome" is going to use the slangy term "SKEETER," I thought—but nope, it looks real enough. It's a severe localized allergic reaction to a bug bite. Wikipedia appears to have anticipated my dubiousness about the name of the syndrome: "Although the term seems informal, it has appeared in scientific literature."
• 65A: Annual awards whose name is an acronym (ESPYS) — wavered back and forth here between ESPYS and EMMYS, apparently forgetting what "acronym" means, yeesh. My brain was like "they both sound like two letters said consecutively, so ..." So what, brain? You know the definition of "acronym," what are you even doing? I could never have guessed what ESPY stood for "Excellence in Sports Playing! Yippee!"? Nope, it's "Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly." Oh well, I was half right. I definitely like my version better. 
• 1D: Talking ___ (early dating period, in modern lingo) (STAGE) — Cute, and definitely "modern" (i.e. not around when I was "dating"). I'm not gonna ask what the other STAGEs are (these days). If you want to divide your dating life up into segments using a word normally reserved for grief or disease, go right ahead, kids.

[34A: ___ Jones, author of "How We Fight for Our Lives"]

• 6D: Typically red-colored toy figurines (TIN SOLDIERS) — hey, it's an answer that's actually before my time. I've heard of TIN SOLDIERS, but I don't think I've owned them or even seen them. These were the first toy soldiers to be mass-produced, starting in the 18th century. Tin seems to have been largely replaced by lead in the soldier figurine world. The word "red' doesn't appear at all on the wikipedia page for "TIN SOLDIERS." And none of the pictured soldiers are red either. I definitely had green plastic army men at some point in my boyhood, but that's as far as my knowledge of toy soldiers goes.
• 8A: Try to produce better offspring from (REMATE) — one of the few outright regrettable "words" in this grid, along with E-MEET (15D: Become acquainted over Zoom, e.g.). You should definitely E-MEET before you REMATE, if meeting in person is not an option. You don't want to REMATE blind, that's for sure. Not if you want everything to REFIT correctly (60D: Update the equipment in).
• 21D: Mythical creature with scales (MERMAN) — she was real! I am a MERMAN truther! Not sure about the scales, though. She did play Gopher's mom on Love Boat, though, so maybe when the last of those episodes wrapped, she just jumped into the sea to go be with her people.

• 33D: Olympic gymnast Nadia who was the first to receive a perfect 10 score (COMANECI) — I have heard her name pronounced a bunch of ways, so the spelling today, particularly the last letter, was a challenge.
• 50D: Like some soils high in organic matter (PEATY) — I would like to thank Scotch for helping me come up with this adjective. The PEATY Scotch in our house at the moment is Laphroaig.

• 62D: Musical instruments that become other musical instruments when an F is added to the front (LUTES) — don't normally like the clues that require me to add / subtract / multiply letters, but this one made me smile. Keeps everything in the musical family. I mean, they could've gone [Musical instruments that become butt muscles when a G is added to the front], but they didn't, and that is to their credit.
• 81D: Strategy against fickle weather (LAYERS) — this is a great clue. Sometimes clues aren't particularly tricky or fancy and yet still impress me, and this is one of them. Plural noun masked by a singular-seeming clue that is nonetheless perfectly apt. Nice.

OK, I'll stop there. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, including the "extra" hour you've been granted by the (blessed) return of Standard Time (which should be year-round time). See you tomorrow, or next week, or whenever.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Thanks to Cody Pajic for sending me pictures of his crossword-related Halloween costume. Cody went as "Common Crossword Answers." 

Cody writes: "From left to right / top to bottom, the decorations are: ELM/ASH/TREE, EEL, EWE, OGRE, OREO, EAR, ALE/IPA, TEA, ALOE, APE, TEE, AXE, ANT, EYE/ISEE, EMU, and LEO (represented by a depiction of my friend's dog, Leo, whose picture is also attached.) I had plans for more words, but procrastinated. Still happy with the result! The grids are NYT crosswords from previous Halloweens." Thanks, Cody. Needless to say, if any of you ever pull some kind of crossword-costume stunt for future Halloweens (or any occasion), let me know!

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