One of a trio encountered by Ricitos de Oro/ WED 12-3-25 / Drug featured in "How to Change Your Mind" / Award with a "Best Record-Breaking Performance" category

Constructor: Victor Barocas

Relative difficulty: Hard (14:40, but felt like longer)

THEME: YODA — Wise counselor of sci-fi who might not be great at karaoke?

Songs are re-parsed as though Yoda is saying them

Theme answers:

• [1967 hit by the Who, per 68-Across] for FOR MILES I CAN SEE
• Supposed to be "I Can See for Miles"
• [1978 song by Gloria Gaynor, per 68-Across] for SURVIVE I WILL
• Supposed to be "I Will Survive"
• [2008 hit by Katy Perry, per 68-Across] for A GIRL I KISSED
• Supposed to be "I Kissed a Girl"
• [1973 Bob Marley song covered by Eric Clapton, per 68-Across] for THE SHERIFF I SHOT
• Supposed to be "I Shot the Sheriff"

Word of the Day: Tamiami Trail (Home to the Tamiami Trail, for FLA) —

The Tamiami Trail is the southernmost 284 miles (457 km) of U.S. Highway 41 (US 41) from State Road 60 (SR 60) in Tampa to US 1 in Miami. A portion of the road is officially State Road 90 (SR 90), but not signposted as such.

• • •

Hey friends! Welcome to another Malaika MWednesday! This theme feels so classic that I'm surprised it's not been done before. (Maybe you will all be in the comments letting me know that it has bene done before, but I don't remember it.) YODA has been around for almost fifty years, and his style of speaking is incredibly well-known. The most recent theme answer in this puzzle is from seventeen years ago, which means this puzzle could have run a decade ago as-is. Kind of wild! 

This is a type of theme that not all outlets will run because it has what constructors call "nonsense in the grid." That is, A GIRL I KISSED doesn't mean anything. So you're not trying to figure out what links a couple of known phrases together, you're trying to figure out why something you should recognize is spelled in a weird way. 

The puzzle worked for me because 1) I knew most of the songs (all but the first), and 2) I know how Yoda speaks. But if either of those things are not true, I think the puzzle becomes way less enjoyable. For example, at a certain point I had _ URV _ V etc for the Gloria Gaynor clue. I knew "I Will Survive" was going to come into play, I just couldn't quite figure out how. If you didn't know the song at all, there's no "Ohhhh" moment, just prolonged confusion.

I jumped down to the revealer (68-Across) a couple of times, but it took me a while to clock what was happening because I am so removed from sci-fi that I just assumed I wouldn't know what the puzzle was talking about. (Plus, I had "arose" instead of STOOD for a bit, leaving me to think that the character was spelled _ _ E _.)

The other thing that made this puzzle tough for me was the trivia. Sheesh!! SO much! Once I realize there's a lot of trivia in the grid, I start doubting myself throughout. For example, I read [Jean-Paul Sartre's "___ Chemins de la Liberté"]-- French, don't know it. Then I read [Yours, in French]-- once again, French, so I don't know it. Then I filled in "dab" for [Bit of ink]. This left me with EX _ D for [Kind of strategy] and I just figured it was some Latin term that I also didn't know! (In fact, I eventually realized I needed TAT and EXIT. So simple!)

OLEO, PEDS, PRELL, OSO, ATEN, ASA as clued (give me Asa Butterfield please!), ATRA, and BENJI were all also super tough for me. I wonder if some of you readers would consider these to be unfortunate fill that is nevertheless easy to you because you have memorized it after years of solving-- I'm not quite there yet, though, and was dancing around blank squares for ages and ages.

Respectfully, I have never seen or heard of this dog in my whole life

Bullets:

• [Echo speaker] for ALEXA — This took me ages, I wanted something with Greek mythology
• [Cause for a miner celebration?] for LODE — This wordplay had me spiraling as I considered capitalism. Is the LODE exciting for the workers in the mine or the owners of the mine? The owner is probably not working as a miner, right? And do the workers get any type of bonus or profit sharing if they discover something good?? Hmm...
• [One of a trio encountered by Ricitos de Oro] for OSO — The answer is "bear" in Spanish, and "Ricitos de Oro" is a translation of Goldilocks. (We can break it down further-- "rizos" means "curls" and when you add a diminutive "-ito" it becomes cutesy; "oro" means "gold," which you probably know from other puzzles.) Spanish clues are usually a breeze for me, but this was totally new trivia! Gendered stuff throws me off; I'd expect Goldilocks' Spanish name to end with a feminine A, but since the word "rizo" is masculine, it ends up ending with an O.
• [Greeting among the lei community?] for ALOHA — I don't understand why this has a question mark. Is "lei community" a known phrase that is meant to misdirect?
• ["Slavonic Dances" composer] for DVORAK — I do not know this composer. I am a software engineer, and people who are concerned about how their fingers will fare after typing all day every day have proposed a different (more efficient) arrangement of letters on the keyboard. The one we all use is named for the top row, QWERTY. The proposed one is named for its inventor, who is not the composer, but has the same name: DVORAK.

xoxo Malaika

P.S. I wrote a book of puzzles! It's fifty-six all-new (aka, not reprints of my Vulture puzzles) themeless 10x10 puzzles, and they're supposed to be pretty easy. It just came out yesterday, but I've been working on it since 2024. I'm so excited and proud, and if you're looking for an activity, maybe you could buy one? You can order online here, but it's also available in most Barnes&Nobles.

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