Big name in chicken or boxing / WED 12-17-25 / Centerpiece of "The Hobbit" / Group of grumps sitting around kvetching? / Just about anything on a string / What makes a stud become studious? / 1990s comedy inspired by "Emma" / Gary's ___ Towne Tavern (rival bar on "Cheers")

Constructor: Gary Larson and Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: SPELL IT OUT (60A: Painstakingly explain something ... or a hint to 17-, 26- and 45-Across) — familiar phrases where "IT" has been changed to "OUT," creating wacky phrases:

Theme answers:

• POUTY PARTY (17A: Group of grumps sitting around kvetching?) (from "pity party")
• CHAMPS AT THE BOUT (26A: Ali vs. Frazier, e.g.?) (from "champs [not chomps] at the bit")
• SPOUT IN THE OCEAN (45A: Welcome sight on a whale-watching cruise?) (from "Spit in the Ocean")

Word of the Day: "Spit in the Ocean" (see 45A) —

: poker in which each player is dealt a hand of cards facedown and combines them with cards faceup on the table to make a poker hand

specifically : a game in which each player is dealt four cards, a fifth card is faced on the take, and the faced card and all others of the same rank are wild

• • •

Normally a big fan of Doug's puzzles, but this one didn't quite get over the hump for me. Is that even an expression? "Get over the hump"? It felt right in my head, but it looks wrong in the light of day. But back to the puzzle—the theme here isn't as funny as I'd want a Wacky Puzzle to be. Somehow I'd expect the "IT"-to-"OUT" answers to pack more punch, or to be much, much wackier. The winner today is CHAMPS AT THE BOUT, I think, though champs simply *being* at the bout doesn't make for the liveliest of images. The other two are shrugs. They fit the bill, they follow directions, but the resulting wackiness just isn't Big enough. All of the base phrases today feel a little old-fashioned. Part of this is because I haven't played (and haven't really heard the term) Spit in the Ocean since I was a teenager (in the OLDE days, when Cheers was still on the air). I also can't remember the last time I heard "pity party." "Champs at the bit" is current enough, I guess. Or maybe timeless—though it was probably a more resonant saying when the culture was more horse-oriented (both transportation-wise and sports spectatorship-wise). Horse-racing was the most popular thing in the sports pages besides boxing and baseball in the early part of the 20th century, and while all those sports have fallen in popularity in recent years, horse-racing has arguably fallen the most. This has nothing to do with the quality of CHAMPS AT THE BOUT as a theme answer. I'm just trying to figure out why the themers are giving off a mild yesteryear vibe. References to Cheers and Clueless and Get Smart also fix this puzzle's center of gravity firmly in the last century. It was a perfectly good century, so I'm not mad, but the puzzle just felt like it lacked a certain currency and vibrancy.

The fill wasn't helping brighten things up much. The grid is dominated by what are essentially nine sections of 3-4-5s—three across the top, center, and bottom. Hard to squeeze a lot of excitement out of so much short stuff, and today's short stuff tends to OOZE rather than sparkle, shine, or some other more energetic word. There's nothing really bad about it. It's just deadening in its familiarness. Another day, another UBOAT, another OBOE, another [choke, gag] SESH. Maybe the idea was to make the fill as simple as possible so that people wouldn't have such a hard time working out the wacky themers. On the whole, I wanted this one to try harder. Sometimes I do a themed puzzle and I think "whoa, whoa, easy, you're Trying Too Hard!" (TTH™). But this feels like not trying hard enough. Were these the best IT-to-OUT options available? Could the fill not have been brought closer to a boil? The puzzle is best in the longer non-theme answers, which is often the case. Today's are solid, but there are only four of them (TRUE-TO-LIFE SUBURBAN in the NE, CLUELESS APOLOGIZED in the SW). Six letters is what passes for a "longish" answer in this puzzle, but there are also only four of those. So this puzzle feels like a placeholder. It's puzzle-shaped, it ticks all the essential boxes for crossword puzzleness, but it's not giving me anything special. Again, it doesn't seem to be really trying.


Weirdly wanted UPDOS at 1A: Lock combinations? (COIFS), only to have it appear a few seconds later (in singular form) at 24D: Red carpet hairstyle, perhaps (UPDO). I would never have guessed that Yamaha made OBOEs if I hadn't had that "B" in place. With the "B" in place, it was pretty obvious. They make pianos (and probably other instruments), why not OBOEs? I don't think I got held up much anywhere today. I thought the [Centerpiece of "The Hobbit"] (QUEST) was the SHIRE, so that slowed me down a bit. I had HAM IT (bad) before HAM UP (better) (27D: Overplay for the audience). REPEL took me a while because I can't really imagine how [Throw off] works as a clue. I suppose if you literally throw someone off of you, you REPEL them (?), but "Throw off" usually suggests "mislead," or else you could "throw off" the (hopefully metaphorical) chains that bind you, but even then, REPEL isn't really the right synonym. The "Throw off" / REPEL equivalency eluded me today. I also had no idea that HYATT was "H" on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange), so I just waited for crosses there. The only real challenge in the puzzle involved working out the themers, which is pretty typical for a Wednesday, now that I think about it.

Bullets:

• 15A: Turner of old movies (LANA) — not my favorite actress, but a fine one. She's in several movies I really love, namely The Postman Always Rings Twice (with John Garfield) (1946) and The Bad and the Beautiful (with Kirk Douglas) (1952). She's also in one of my favorite poems. From one of my favorite collections (Lunch Poems (1964)), this is Frank O'Hara's "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!)": 

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
lana turner has collapsed!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

(poetryfoundation dot org) 

• 3D: What makes a stud become studious? (IOUS) — it also makes Ted tedious. I don't know why you'd turn a perfectly good (or at least recognizable) word (IOUS) into a mere string of letters. Cluing IOUS this way feels awful, but it is also probably more interesting than anything you were apt to get from the more conventional stock of IOU clues. There's something perverse about this clue that I half-admire. To its credit, unlike much of the puzzle, this clue actually does seem to be trying.
• 42D: Suffix with beat or neat (NIK) — look, you get one suffix per puzzle and this puzzle decided to blow it on IOUS, so NIK is even more unwelcome than usual today.
• 25D: Jost's longtime "Weekend Update" co-anchor (CHE) — I have not been an SNL watcher for a long time, so I'm not that familiar with the Jost/CHE incarnation of "Weekend Update," but I'm more familiar with Michael CHE today than I was yesterday at this time because yesterday I listened to the latest episode of comedian Mike Birbiglia's podcast "Working It Out," and CHE was the featured guest. It's a funny and illuminating interview, esp. if you are at all into comedy. I like Birbiglia's interviews with other comedians because while they're funny (as you'd expect/hope) they can be charmingly earnest and frequently really technical—like, in-the-weeds stuff about composing jokes and working on material etc. Lots of good stuff about the creative process. Anyway, this talk with CHE is cool.

• 26D: Food you might eat wearing a bib (CRABS) — the "food" is CRAB. The countable creatures are CRABS. Something about the plural here felt weird (given the clue). Personally, I'd rather see CRAGS / GULL than CRABS / BULL. CRAGS has the advantage of not being another name for pubic lice. 
• 38D: 1990s comedy inspired by "Emma" (CLUELESS) — happy birthday to Jane Austen, who turned the big 2-5-0 just yesterday!
• 47D: Just about anything on a string (CAT TOY) — loved this clue, mostly because I had no idea what it could possibly be until I got enough crosses, and then I saw it and thought "oh yeah, that's true." But honestly, you don't need to put anything actually on the string. The one object in the house that my cat Alfie is most obsessed with is a simple piece of string (twine, really) that we keep in a kitchen drawer. He knows the sound of the drawer. If you even stand near the drawer for more than a few seconds, he comes trotting over. You can drag the string around and make him chase it, but you can also just put it down and he'll just happily drag it around the house. The whole CAT TOY industry is unnecessary. This goes for CAT BEDs as well. Ida sleeps happily in the cardboard container that her cat litter came in. Often there's a comfy blanket nearby, but nope, box wins.

Speaking of pets, it's time for 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 now. Note: PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE PET PICS, I'M ALL FULL UP FOR THIS YEAR, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

 

This is Nimbus. What did I tell you about cats and boxes?! 

[Thanks, Uday!]

Here are Caroline and Nina. Add a wreath and voilà, instant "holiday" spirit. I am told that Caroline and Nina are "torbies," which is (allegedly) a mash-up of "tortoise shell" and "tabby." One of these cats seems happy with this sleeping arrangement. The other seems ... unsure. She might be leaving soon. Or hatching a plot for blanket dominance, we'll never know.

[Thanks, Mac!]

Here are Juno (lab), Stella (sweater), and Laila (crazy eyes) doing their best Three Magi imitation. "O Come Let Us Adore Him*" (*dog treats)

[Thanks, Theresa!]

Giulia and Piper hear reindeer on the roof! (this is how I've chosen to make sense of this as a "Holiday" picture):

[Thanks, Marilee!]

Lastly, a pair of opposing pet personalities from Monica. First, there's the diffident GIULIA, who would prefer not to be part of whatever "Holiday" photo scheme you've got cooked up. You may take her picture from there, but do not come closer.

And then there's dopey Duke, who will do whatever you want, sure, antlers, whatever, just tell him he's a good boy!

[Thanks, Monica!]

That's it. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Groundbreaking 1988 Japanese animated action film / TUE 12-16-25 / Genre for Genesis or Yes, informally / One in a box at the theater? / The IBM Simon Personal Communicator is considered the world's first one / Person in hot pants? / Show extreme fandom for, in slang

Constructor: Jason Reich

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: BOOK / ENDS (71A: After 1-Across, shelf accessories ... or what can be placed "around" the halves of 18-, 36-, 45- and 62-Across) — if you put "BOOK" on either side of the theme answers, you get two new phrases ...

Theme answers:

• COVER STORY (book cover, storybook) (18A: Reason to buy a magazine, perhaps)
• BAG CHECK (book bag, checkbook) (36A: Last stop before security, often)
• FAIR PLAY (book fair, playbook) (45A: Turnabout, they say)
• SMARTPHONE (book smart, phone book) (62A: The IBM Simon Personal Communicator is considered the world's first one)

Word of the Day: AKIRA (40A: Groundbreaking 1988 Japanese animated action film) —

Akira (Japanese: アキラ, pronounced [aꜜkiɾa]) is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk action film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, produced by Ryōhei Suzuki and Shunzō Katō, and written by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on Otomo's 1982 manga Akira. Set in a dystopian 2019, it tells the story of Shōtarō Kaneda, the leader of a biker gang whose childhood friend, Tetsuo Shima, acquires powerful telekinetic abilities after colliding with a child esper in a motorcycle accident, eventually threatening an entire military complex in the sprawling futuristic metropolis of Neo-Tokyo. [...] Akira was released in Japan on July 16, 1988, by Toho; it was released the following year in the United States by Streamline Pictures. It garnered an international cult following after various theatrical and VHS releases, eventually earning over $80 million worldwide in home video sales. A landmark in Japanese animation, the film is widely cited as an influential work in the development of anime and Japanese cyberpunk. it is also considered a major film in the cyberpunk genre, particularly the Japanese cyberpunk subgenre, as well as adult animation. The film had a significant effect on popular culture worldwide, paving the way for the growth of anime and Japanese popular culture in the Western world, as well as influencing numerous works in animation, comics, film, music, television, and video games. (wikipedia)

• • •

There was a moment really early on where I was quite happy with this one—specifically, the moment when Genesis and Yes (from the BAND clue) did an encore in the clue for a much more substantial answer (PROG ROCK) (6D: Genre for Genesis or Yes, informally). That was a very quick callback that made me smile. "Nice," I thought. Sadly, I did not think "nice" many more times during the course of the solve. The problem with these "both halves"-type themes is that the answers themselves either aren't that interesting or feel a little forced. Today's puzzle does a good job of avoiding forcedness—the themers are all solid phrases. Not terribly interesting, but solid. The revealer, however, felt awkward—the clue is exceedingly long and not exactly crystal clear in its instructions. It seems like it's in some no-man's-land between punny phrasing and extremely literal instructions. The phrase "'around' the halves" is at best ambiguous. "Around the halves"?? You mean ... around the whole thing? "'Around the halves" sounds like you want BOOKs around each half. But you don't. You want BOOKs around the whole answer. On one side of one half, and on the other side of the other half, to create two separate phrases. Why does the revealer clue have a question mark? There's no real wordplay here, except the "around" bit, but there's no need for the "?" if you've already got scare quotes working for you. That clue is fairly literal, if confusingly worded. Why not [... or what can be placed "around" 18-, 36-, 45- and 62-Across to create two new phrases]? That wording makes the work I as a solver have to do much clearer. The theme seems very restrictive and reasonably well executed, but the revealer clue really flubs the landing. I do like how BOOK and ENDS "bookend" the puzzle. That bit is cute.

So the theme itself seems fine. A bit on the dull side, a little clunky in the finish, but fine. The rest of the puzzle, however .... [heaves a very deep SIGH] ... I dunno. Or, rather, I do know: this is some of the weakest fill I've seen in a while, and that's saying something, since gunkiness is an ongoing concern. The NE and SW corners are abysmal. I have green ink angrily scribbled all over those portions of the grid. OK maybe not "angrily." "Frustratedly." That's better. USONE crossing EST INRE and NE-YO. That is a gunk density that only OOXTEPLERNON (the god of short bad fill) could love. And across the grid, things are somehow equally bad, with AUS ASOF UMHI (!?) and OHGEE making a big ugly dogpile. Why isn't the REF throwing a flag? He's right there! Between the extreme lows of the NE and SW lie other, lesser lows, a string of less densely packed but no more lovely answers like DEKES OTOH EFILE SSNS EWER ERS WECARE SEEYA ETA ASCII ASP. The puzzle really did peak with PROG ROCK. I guess GOOGLEABLE is supposed to be giving a star supporting performance, and it is original and showy, I'll give it that, but do I actually like seeing that "word"? No, not really (11D: Easily found on the internet, say). RAISINET would be great in the plural, but it's a little sad in the singular (41D: One in a box at the theater?). EGO MASSAGE is fine, but overall this one really, really punching up in the fill department. I'm looking at the "WE CARE" sign right now and thinking "Lies!"

OTOH ... I loved seeing AKIRA. Kurosawa is a great director (Ran was released in the U.S. 40 years ago this month), but it's nice to see this other important AKIRA get some attention. Both the film and the manga it's based on are genuinely groundbreaking and rightly legendary. And today, since the puzzle wasn't already drowning in pop culture trivia, I was happy to see the AKIRA clue go in that direction. I also loved the clue for LIAR because it has layers. It doesn't tell you the popular saying it's referring to directly (e.g. [One whose pants are on fire, proverbially]), but lets you suss it out yourself. "L ... I ... LIAR? How are a LIAR's pants hot? ... oh!" Always nice when the clue for short, ordinary fill shines like that. And I liked SKIFF (32D: Shallow boat with a square stern). Can't explain. Just really enjoy the way that word looks and sounds. I never really enjoy seeing NE-YO, but at least today I learned something about why he is called that (13D: Grammy-winning R&B artist whose stage name is said to have been inspired by "The Matrix").

Bullets:

• 19D: Golden Age studio known for many Astaire/Rogers films (RKO) — love the Astaire/Rogers films, not just for the dancing, but also for the frequent guest appearances by my favorite character actor of '30s/'40s cinema: Eric BLORE (I write his name all-caps because I wish he were famous enough to be a crossword answer). He co-starred with Fred Astaire in six movies. I think about him saying "Susquehanna" in Shall We Dance (1937) literally every time I see the word "Susquehanna" (and since I live on the Susquehanna River, it happens a lot). 

[the video quality here is terrible, but that's not keeping me from literally laughing out loud as I watch this bit for the umpteenth time]

• 46D: Penalty in Monopoly (RENT) — never really thought about how Monopoly codes RENT negatively. As a "penalty." An onerous burden. A form of oppression. Is Monopoly sneakily anti-capitalist? 
• 27D: Mike in "Breaking Bad," for example (EX-COP) — since he does ... let's say bad ... things, I misremembered him today as an EX-CON. But no, he's very much an EX-COP. That actor, Jonathan Banks (who received five Emmy nominations for playing Mike in both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul), can currently be seen in the Clare Danes/Matthew Rhys psychological crime thriller miniseries The Beast In Me as possible wife-murderer Matthew Rhys's awful father.

Time once again for 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲!

This is Woody, who has been featured in Holiday Pet Pics before (returning pets always welcome). Woody's five-year-old human likes to dress him in pink. Woody seems like the perfect dog to handle that kind of attention. Look at that sweet patient face. He seems to have destroyed part of the tree and strewn ornaments and wrapping paper around the floor, but good luck staying mad at that face.

[Thanks, Matthew!]

Next up are Kala, Lux, and Knox. Nothing really holiday-ish about this picture, but let's just say they're celebrating the Festival of Lights (in that they're aggressively snuggling each trying to compete for the biggest patch of sunlight)

[Thanks, Iolande!]

It's Emma's first Christmas, so don't be mad that she doesn't understand how to string the lights yet. She'll learn!

[Thanks, Beth!]

Jed is thrilled with his dreidel menorah. Absolutely, completely thrilled. Can't eat it, can't play with it, but sure ... this is great. This is Jed's thrilled face. 

[Thanks, Lisa!]

And lastly, there's Riley, who'd just like to say "Guh....... Hi! Hey! What's up? Like my hat?" Actually, I'm told this photo was taken during the two seconds Riley allowed it to stay on his head. He just shook it right off. And can you blame him? "Santa wouldn't be caught dead in leopard print!" You tell 'em, Riley.

[Thanks, Sally]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Ernest in the Country Music Hall of Fame / MON 12-15-25 / On ___ (looking great, in slang) / Colonial-era pirate captain / Sluglike "Star Wars" crime boss

Constructor: Jeff Jerome and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Medium, maybe a little tougher (solved Downs-only)

THEME: BUNK BEDS (59A: Camp sleeping spots ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled letters) — BED appears over BED in three pairs of sequential circled letters:

Theme answers:

• DISROBED
•   SUBBED (18A: Prepared to bathe + 23A: Filled in (for), for short)

• HOBNOBBED
•   STUBBED TOE (24A: Schmoozed (with) + 28A: Slight injury from tripping)

• DUBBED FILM 
•    BEDAZZLED (46A: Foreign-language movie that you don't have to read subtitles for / 52A: Enchanted)

Word of the Day: NTSB (25D: Crash-investigating org.) —

 

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incidents, certain types of highway crashes, ship and marine accidents, pipeline incidents, bridge failures, and railroad accidents. The NTSB is also in charge of investigating cases of hazardous materials releases that occur during transportation. The agency is based in Washington, D.C. It has three regional offices, located in Anchorage, Alaska; Aurora, Colorado; and Federal Way, Washington. The agency also operated a national training center at its Ashburn facility. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Henri de TOULOUSE-Lautrec]

The revealer is completely anticlimactic. If you solve top-down, you can see that there is BED over BED, three times, so BUNK BEDS comes as no real surprise. There's no wordplay, no cute turn of phrase. The revealer just tells me what is pretty obvious. I was thinking "double bed," but BUNK BEDS, yes, that's better, but not exactly a surprise. The concept seems solid but not particularly clever or exciting. 5/6ths of the "BED"s are past tense verbs (even if two are being used adjectivally), which gives the themer set a kind of monotony. BEDAZZLED is the best themer by far, and it's the only one that bucks the "-BED"-as-past-tense trend. The adjacent double letters necessitated by the theme results in some of the grid's less pleasing fill. Mostly, the results are boring (DDE, DDAY), but you also get into murky proper noun territory (esp. with TUBB—not a name I'd expect to see on a Monday ... I'm not 100% sure who he is, though the name is familiar), and then there's FLEEK, which ... has anyone said "on FLEEK" since 2017? (11D: On ___ (looking great, in slang)). "Eyebrows on FLEEK" was a social media phenomenon for a hot second in the mid '10s, and then poof, gone—like so many hyper-brief faddish expressions. Remember "6-7." It's already dead. No adult had even heard of it before this past summer, but by October it was getting all kinds of press—some short-sighted dictionary even made "6-7" its Word of the Year. But now ... pfft. The entire life cycle of that non-expression was less than six months. Anyway, I guess maybe "on FLEEK" is still around somewhere, being used unironically by someone, but it feels real dated. Like, prehistoric, as social media-inspired slang goes. Constructors would be well-advised to yeet FLEEK (YEET has a strange staying power, don't ask me why). To give you an idea of how old FLEEK is ... it started with a Vine. Remember Vine? LOL. Wow.

 

Note: The phrase on fleek originated in a posting to the video-sharing platform Vine on June 21, 2014, by Kayla Lewis, a sixteen-year-old girl with the user name Peaches Monroee. In later interviews Ms. Lewis said that she had made up the word fleek on the spot when the video was shot. However, it has been reported that fleek appeared prior to 2014 on the Urban Dictionary website: in 2003 a contributor defined fleek as "smooth, nice, sweet," with the example sentence "That was a fleek move you pulled on that chic[k]." Another contributor entered the word in 2009, defining fleek as "awesome," as in "That was a fleek game." For background see "How 'on fleek' went from a 16-year-old's Vine to the Denny's Twitter account," by Constance Grady, posted on the website Vox on March 28, 2017; and "Geeking Out On 'Fleek,'" by Neal Whitman, posted on visualthesaurus.com on February 23, 2015. (merriam-webster.com)

Apparently Ariana Grande also did a Vine (is that what you do? Do a Vine? Is that the lingo?), where she basically sang the text of Monroee's original Vine, and that sent the phrase into pop culture stratosphere ... for a while. I can pretty much pinpoint the moment that "on FLEEK" started to die. It's right ... here:

If there's currently a FLEEK Renaissance afoot, I am unaware. 

This grid is fine, if not particularly on FLEEK. Lots of cheater squares* today—two of them in each of those Utah-shaped blocks of black squares (the two black squares above PIBB and below FALA), and then the black squares above TBAR and below KIDD. With that many cheaters, I'd expect a cleaner grid—not so much ARTOO ARESO ARI NTSB ENYA TBAR ASA RES INE (!?) IMO DAS THO action. TERM LIMIT feels strange in the singular. There are TERM LIMITS, and a governor / president / etc. might be TERM-LIMITED, but TERM LIMIT isn't as common. "IT'S ABSURD" is colorful but also a bit absurd, in that the clue (3D: "Ridiculous!") is really just a clue for "ABSURD!" The "IT'S" part feels completely tacked on. Plus, "THAT'S ABSURD!" feels like the better, more familiar phrase. 

Solving Downs-only, my biggest fail today was forgetting (and I mean forgetting—spectacularly, catastrophically forgetting) how to spell the name of TOULOUSE-Lautrec. When I look at it now, I can't imagine why I wanted to spell it any other way than the correct way. And Yet. TOLOUSSE. TALOUSSE. TALLOUSE, TOLLOUSE. Between that, not being certain of ARESO (2D: "You ___ right!"), and the difficulty parsing "IT'S ABSURD," the NW was certainly the most challenging part today. Elsewhere, I thought FALA was LALA (as in, "FA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA"), and utterly blanked on Tim WALZ, LOL. That was fast. VP candidate one moment, gone from my brain the next. I actually wrote in KANE, thereby misspelling Tim KAINE's name, forgetting that KAINE was a senator (although he had also been governor), and putting KAINE on a presidential ticket eight years after the fact. Triple fail! I also wrongly imagined that a SEDAN and not a COUPE had two doors (50D: Two-door auto). And I thought TUBB was WEBB (38D: Ernest in the Country Music Hall of Fame). Surely there's a WEBB in the Country Music Hall of Fame ... yep, here we go, looks like WEBB Pierce (1921-91) was inducted posthumously in 2001. And then there's Jimmy WEBB, who, despite winning a Grammy in 1986 for Best Country Song ("Highwaymen"), and despite being in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, does not appear to be in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Dude wrote "Wichita Lineman" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Galveston"!? And "MacArthur Park"!? That's range.

As for Ernest TUBB—well, among his many accomplishments, he was the first singer to record a hit version of "Blue Christmas."

That's all for today. Let's move on to 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲! First up is Koko, seen here rooting for my "local" team (nevermind that Buffalo is ~4 hours away—you still see Bills gear everywhere). You can tell this is a "Holiday" photo because Koko is staring down the word "Christmas" like it's a sausage.

[Thanks, Anne!]

Then there's Riley, seen here chewing on a toy, which was the price of getting Riley to pose for this photo in the first place. At least I think it's a toy. Could be a mouse, I guess. Or a meatball, though I doubt a dog would hold a meatball in its mouth that gingerly.

[Thanks, Laura!]

Here's Willow, enjoying the Ithaca snow. She's wearing a GPS collar because she apparently likes to go on little "side adventures." Rescuing avalanche victims, no doubt.

[Thanks, Adam!]

We've got kind of a "Where's Waldo?" situation going on here with Lulu. It's like she wandered into a Home Goods photo shoot and got lost among the Holiday cheer. Where's Lulu? Oh, there she is, on the bed, where you'd expect.

[Thanks, Bonnie!]

Astro does not appreciate your holiday sense of humor one bit.

["Is this a joke? Is this supposed to be funny?"]
[Thanks, Amanda!]

And lastly, there's Moose. Moose knows how Astro feels. Actually, I think Moose just wants to go out and play with the other very handsome dog who would surely be his friend. Poor Moose. 

[Thanks, Pamela!]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Cheater squares are black squares that do not add to the overall word count, usually added to the grid solely to make filling the grid easier for the constructor(s).   

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✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

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📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

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