Cold bathhouse amenity / SAT 12-27-25 / Extreme music subgenre with heavily distorted guitars / 2021 science fiction novel by Nnedi Okorafor / Fantasy author Bardugo / City west of Knoxville / Best performances by an actor in a short film? / Halves of Hamiltons / Knights of ___, ancient cult in the "Star Wars" universe / Interloper whom no one seems to know, informally / South American monkey with a reduplicative name / John with some groundbreaking inventions

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: O'SHEA Jackson Jr. (49D: Actor ___ Jackson Jr.) —

O'Shea Jackson Jr. (born February 24, 1991), also known by the stage name OMG, is an American actor, rapper and songwriter. He is the oldest son of Ice Cube and, in his feature film debut, he portrayed his father in the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton.

• • •

[CRINKLE-CUT]

Well this is more like it. This is the kind of late-week grid I live for. Just stacked with sparkling long answers—triple stacks of 10 (well, 10-10-9) in every dang corner, plus a couple of gridspanners that cut the grid in half, top-to-bottom as well as lengthwise. It was the central long Down that really cracked things open, sending me whooshing from the top of the grid all the way to the bottom with just a little push from the first few letters:

From there, I had access to the SW corner, and it only remained for me to throw JACK DIDDLY SQUAT across the grid to get a toehold in the SE as well. The long answers really lit up the grid at every turn. Not a dull patch to be found. I particularly loved sinking into the DEATH METAL PLUNGE POOL of AQUITAINE.  Now there's a historical fantasy novel title for you. I would read The DEATH METAL PLUNGE POOL of AQUITAINE. Maybe Bardugo and Okorafor could team up on that one. Got bestseller written all over it. I don't normally care for DEATH METAL, or any metal (29D: Extreme music subgenre with heavily distorted guitars), but man that answer looks good, particularly when paired so incongruously with PLUNGE POOL. Are DEATH METAL PLUNGE POOLs kept at ROOM TEMP? That doesn't seem very ... deathy. 

Once again, there was way, way too little resistance for a Saturday puzzle, and the way the puzzle went about generating what little resistance it offered was the cheap way, i.e. via trivia. NOOR is crosswordese of old, but today the puzzle tried to hide it behind a new clue (11D: 2021 science fiction novel by Nnedi Okorafor)—which, good for them, but also, a recentish scifi novel that didn't win any major awards ... that's gonna be a big ??? for a lot of solvers. NOOR sounds like a cool book, actually, but as book titles go, I don't know how familiar it is. That clue is here to be a speed bump. It's the kind of trivia you either know or don't, and that you can't even infer from the clue. I'd love for this puzzle to be harder, but via clever cluing, not pop culture quizzes. See also LEIGH Bardugo—a bestselling author, for sure, but why are we going to the fantasy/scifi well twice in one puzzle? And going to Superman lore (LARA) and Star Wars yet again (REN). I feel like I should put up a "___ Days Without a Star Wars Clue" sign around here. I doubt we'd ever get out of single digits, and mostly the sign would read "0." Weirdly, I think I'd mind these pop culturefied short answers less if the puzzle was harder generally. Like, you wanna come at me, come at me. Throwing up these little proper noun roadblocks isn't going to do it. They probably aren't tough enough to hold anyone up for very long. You can just blow right through and around them. (Note: I actually knew LEIGH Bardugo, but only vaguely, and I remembered her today mainly because she blurbed the back of R.F. Kuang's new book Katabasis, which I started reading yesterday—when will KUANG hit the grid? Or RFKUANG—now that's got grid potential!)

The hardest thing in the grid for me, by far, was DEMO REEL (37D: Best performances by an actor in a short film?). Could not parse that baby to save my life. Needed every cross. Was it the very last answer I got? Yup, you can see on my finished grid (above) that only after I got that final "L" from SPIEL was the answer complete, and only a few seconds after that did I parse it correctly. Actually, I probably sat there with the last square unfilled until I realized how "L" was supposed to work—I hate putting in the last letter if I'm not extremely sure that I'm going to get the "Congratulations" message. Obviously, it's the "?" clue on DEMO REEL that's causing the problem. First of all, it looks like a plural ("Best performances..."). At first, I thought the clue was kind of forced and convoluted, but now I see it's actually extremely literal. A DEMO REEL will showcase an actor's best performances. Nice. More of this, please! It's Saturday! Whack me with a DEMO REEL or two (or four or nine).

Aside from a tendency to lean into crosswordese in the margins, the one thing that I didn't really care for today was JACK DIDDLY SQUAT. Feels like a conjoined twins-type answer. Which is to say, I know that term "jack squat" very well. Hear it all the time. And I know the term "diddly squat." I don't hear it all the time, but I definitely hear it. JACK DIDDLY SQUAT, though, I do not hear. I'm sure someone has said it, but it seems infinitely more likely that you'd opt for either JACK or DIDDLY rather than try to grab hold of both of them at once. The phrase just didn't ring true to my ear.

Not that it matters much, but this grid has 90º rotational symmetry. That is, usually if you rotate a crossword grid 180º, the black squares end up in the same place (ordinary rotational symmetry), but today, the black squares end up in the same place with every 90º turn. That's, like, twice the symmetry. Double your symmetry, double your fun! Or ... fail to notice or appreciate it at all. Your call!

Bullets:

• 5A: ___ Seton, author of "Foxfire" and "Katherine" (ANYA) — more of that crosswordese I was talking about. I have seen ANYA's name a lot, but only in crosswords. See also ALOP, yikes. Oh, and ABES—still not a thing.
• 22A: City west of Knoxville (OAK RIDGE) — What? Where? "Oak Ridge's population was 31,402 at the 2020 census" (wikipedia). The only thing I know about OAK RIDGE is boys. They are famous for their boys.

• 47D: Hollywood icon Davis (BETTE) — you've heard of the Three-Body Problem? Well, this is the Four-Davis Problem—VIOLA? OSSIE? GEENA? BETTE? The only way you're gonna know for sure is if you get some crosses.
• 28A: Bussing on the street, e.g., in brief (PDA) — that's "bussing" as in "kissing," not "bussing" as in "sending kids to school on the bus" (which is also spelled "bussing," but also, maybe more commonly, spelled "busing"). PDA = public display of affection.

Continuing with 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 now. Note: PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE PET PICS, I'M ALL FULL UP FOR THIS YEAR, thank you.

First up is Bugle the one-eyed pirate! Look at his sweet tabby face, his cute asymmetrical white markings. If you look only at the left side of his face, he looks like he's sleeping. But no! It's a trick! He is vigilant! A vigilant tree guardian! 

[Thanks, Meredith!]

Lucy, on the other hand, is not really known for her vigilance. Not really a guard dog. More of a lie-around-and-accept-scritches dog. It takes all kinds, Lucy. They also serve who only stand and wait (for scritches)!

[Thanks, Anne and Jacob!]

Remi's like "who is this weird beardo and can I tear him up?" Go for it, Remi!

[Thanks, Tom and Ann]

And now a live shot of me! ... nope, I'm sorry, this is actually Baloo. We apparently have the same interests, the same energy level, the same impeccable typing posture. Also, we enjoy the same holiday-season activities. (R.I.P., you sweet cruciverbalist baby)

[Thanks, Jennifer!]

Mindy the Morkie is ready for her close-up...

[Thanks, Karen!]

And finally there's Anni, who is going back to bed, what time is it even? (R.I.P., sweetheart)

[Thanks, Kat!]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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