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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