Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Woman's name invented by Jonathan Swift / THUR 11-6-25 / "A braggart, a ___, a villain ...": "Romeo and Juliet" / Maker of the i4 and i5

Constructor: Sam Brody

Relative difficulty: Hard (Around 20 minutes, although I was solving on paper)

THEME: TONGUE TWISTER clued as [Certain stumbling block ... or a hint to three pairs of symmetrically positioned answers in this puzzle]— Languages anagram to other words, which are clued in relation to the language. The language ("tongue") is "twisted," i.e. scrambled up.

My nitpick is I didn't like the word "stumbling block." I suppose it works in the context of "Wow, that was accidentally very difficult for me to read aloud, what a tongue twister!" but I know it more as a cute game. I really wanted something with "language barrier," which of course did not fit.

Theme answers:

FLEMISH is clued as [Language in which "zichzelf" is 49-Across]

The corresponding answer is HIMSELF, which is an anagram of FLEMISH

LATVIAN is clued as [Language in which "drosmigs" is 57-Across]

The corresponding answer is VALIANT, which is an anagram of LATVIAN

CROATIAN is clued as [Language in which "kabanica" is 10-Down]

The corresponding answer is RAINCOAT which is an anagram of CROATIAN

Word of the Day: LOGOS (Prancing horse and golden bull, in the auto industry) —

The logo of the luxury carmaker Ferrari is the Prancing Horse (Italian: Cavallino Rampante, lit. 'little prancing horse'), a prancing black horse on a yellow background. The design was created by Francesco Baracca, an Italian flying ace during World War I, as a symbol to be displayed on his aeroplane; the Baracca family later permitted Enzo Ferrari to use the design.

The world of bullfighting is a key part of Lamborghini's identity. In 1962, Ferruccio Lamborghini visited the Seville ranch of Don Eduardo Miura, a renowned breeder of Spanish fighting bulls. Lamborghini was so impressed by the majestic Miura animals that he decided to adopt a raging bull as the emblem for the automaker he would open shortly.

• • •

Good morning, friends! We have a One Day Late Malaika MWednesday today, or as you may call it, a Malaika MThursday.

I found this puzzle very hard. Actually, I was a huge hater throughout 90% of the solving process. Then, I understood the theme and become less of a hater. (Many such cases.) I've solved a couple puzzles with language-y themes and it is tough because so much of the information is missing. In this case, three of the long answers were clued functionally as [Language] and another three of the long answered were clued as [Please translate this non-English term]. That makes it super hard to break into the puzzle. I kept checking my entries by looking at a crossing answer, seeing that the crossing answer was a theme clue and going "UGHHHHH!"

Of course-- that's the puzzle!! That's the point of a puzzle... you "puzzle out" what's going on. I often chastise new solvers who think of a crossword as a series of 78 trivia questions that they can either directly fill in, or must skip and give up on. And yet here I am, complaining for sort of the same reason. This was not a high school language test where the puzzle is seeing if I know how to translate the Croatian word "kabanica." This is a game with wordplay where I have to figure out the anagram trick by doing a lot of cross-referencing with entries that have easier clues. And boy oh boy when I figured it out, I audibly breathed a sigh of relief. I find it very exhausting to write scathing reviews of puzzles on here (though I have done it before!!) and I am glad that this was challenging in a way that fell into place and became satisfying. Sort of the perfect Thursday theme.

Speaking of RAINCOAT, do you guys know where I can buy a beautiful yellow raincoat so that I look like Coraline

I wish the grid had a little more flow, or connectivity, to it. In this case, I clocked the theme, filled out all the theme answers, and then still had that top-right corner nearly blank. It felt like solving a mini puzzle that was independent from the rest of the experience. All three sections along the top felt quite segmented from the rest of the puzzle. But I understand that grids with mirror symmetry are a little constrained to lay out.

I'm curious what other language anagrams didn't make the cut for this puzzle! It seems like something that could have worked great as a Sunday-sized puzzle.

Bullets:

[The 1987 film "Spaceballs," e.g.] for FARCE — Oof, I did not like this clue. I had "spoof" for soooo long.
[Like many mustaches in film] for FALSE — Is this true? I figured actors just.... grew mustaches. Would have made more sense for plays, not films. Although it says "many" not "most" so that could mean anything.
[Museum's entrance and exit?] for EMS — This is referring to how the letter M begins and ends the word "museum." I hate clues like this, but alas, I myself sometimes write them.

xoxo Malaika

Now that I'm done reviewing the puzzle, I'm going to talk a little bit about the clue [Woman's name invented by Jonathan Swift] for VANESSA. You can skip this part if you like.

I have heard ~two people comment that the NYT puzzle will rarely clue an entry that is a woman's name by simply mentioning a real, famous woman. (Alternatives would include using a noun (like "dawn" as a noun rather than a person), using wordplay ("Name that anagrams to xyz"), or describing the woman via her relationship to a man.) This is not a trend that has stood out to me while broadly solving (which is not to say it does or doesn't exist, just that I haven't noticed!), but I did notice it with this clue, and it's feedback that I think about when I write my own puzzles.

I typically write easy clues. For proper nouns (like Vanessa), I usually to pick the most famous person that I know with that name, and then reference their most famous work. (Lots of subjectivity here, of course! And a big flaw here is that it can lead to repetitive clues.) If I want to make the clue even easier, I'll mention other people in the work as well. For Vanessa, my immediate thought would be:

Easy clue: [Actress Hudgens of High School Musical]
Even easier clue: [Actress Hudgens who starred alongside Zac Efron in High School Musical]

After hearing the feedback I mentioned above, I wondered if I should make an effort to clue women's names independently of the men that they have worked with. Ultimately, it is not something that I decided to prioritize, but it is something that I like to have in my brain while I am writing clues. I like to think about people's feedback while I am working, even if I don't take that feedback as a hard-and-fast rule. I think it makes me a more detail-oriented constructor.

What clue would you have written for VANESSA? What feedback would you like for me to keep in my brain while I am constructing?

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