Side effect after a BBQ meal, informally / SAT 12-6-25 / Having a good aura, in slang / Classic arcade game with a pyramid / Ratty is one in "The Wind in the Willows" / Portrayer of Glinda in 2024's "Wicked," to fans / Singer with the top 10 albums "Crash" and "Brat" / Warning preceding some "madness" during March Madness / Source of rhythm in electronic music / Title film character with a "lucky fin" / Chinese surname transliterating "Zuo"

Constructor: Marshal Herrmann

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: RENÉ Coty (20D: Former French president ___ Coty) —

Gustave Jules René Coty (French: [ʁəne kɔti]; 20 March 1882 – 22 November 1962) was President of France from 1954 to 1959. He was the second and last president of the Fourth French Republic. [...] As President of the Republic, Coty was even less active than his predecessor in trying to influence policy. His presidency was troubled by the political instability of the Fourth Republic and the Algerian question. With the deepening of the crisis in 1958, on 29 May of that year, President Coty appealed to Charles de Gaulle, the "most illustrious of Frenchmen" to become the last Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic. Coty had threatened to resign if de Gaulle's appointment was not approved by the National Assembly. // De Gaulle drafted a new constitution, and on 28 September, a referendum took place in which 79.2% of those who voted supported the proposals, which led to the Fifth Republic. De Gaulle was elected as president of the new republic by parliament in December, and succeeded Coty on 9 January 1959. Coty was a member of the Constitutional Council from 1959 until his death in 1962. (wikipedia)

• • •

As a RATER (😒), I nearly took this thing down to 3-and-a-half stars just for that "Q" line. There's something about showy tricks that really takes me out of the puzzle. Makes me roll my eyes and kind of groan disappointedly. A great puzzle doesn't need such cheap frippery, and this puzzle was indeed a great puzzle to that point. There's no harm done by the "Q"s—they're handled very cleanly. If the grid were peppered with Qs and Js and other Scrabbly letters and still came out clean, that would be fine. But something lining up all those ducks in a row (all those Q-uacks) felt disappointing—the kind of superficial "razzle-dazzle" that a great puzzle simply doesn't need. Other people might fault this puzzle for having "too much pop culture" or being "too slangy"—we all have our peeves. But I really enjoyed the vibes of this one. The VIBEY vibes. The marquee fill was crushing it, every corner, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 ... really impressive. And the short stuff, the glue, was relatively inoffensive. ELO OLEO TSO ARI ICEE BE-IN etc. are all doing what they're supposed to do—holding good stuff together and staying spread out. The craftsmanship here is really incredible ... which is why that "Q" flourish seems so garish. You have something elegant on your hands, don't ruin it with unnecessary and gaudy decoration. Not in a themeless puzzle. Doesn't need it. Doesn't want it.

This didn't start out terribly promising, as I struggled to get toeholds, which were all scattered and short and ineffective. The puzzle didn't feel like much of anything at this point ...

... but then those toeholds started to pay off as I got real traction and the longer answers really opened up. Exploded, really, in popcorny bursts of goodness ...

"THAT'S A WRAP," "I AM SO THERE!," "RUMOR HAS IT..."—That is a lovely colonnade of colloquialness [see ... alliteration ... there's another cheap, superficial gimmick ... distracting ... I have to decide "is it worth it?" And I don't think it is ... but I'm gonna leave it here as an object lesson, a warning against gestures and flourishes that call excessive attention to themselves]. And the stacks and colonnades keep coming, all the way around the grid, in every corner. No let up. No throwaways, no filler—no scrubs!

I think the SW corner was the pinnacle of the puzzle for me. I was having a decent time to that point, but was not yet feeling impressed. Usually, while I'm solving, I'm just thinking about solving—that is, I'm not really in "appreciation" mode, I'm in "get through it" mode. Power mode. Speedsolver mode. So if I actually feel impressed mid-solve, that means the puzzle has really broken through and penetrated my game-mode brain, and that is quite something. That's the high I'm chasing all the time. I love that moment when I say (often aloud) to myself, "oh, that's good." Sometimes happily, sometimes grudgingly (if it took me a while to get, for instance), but however I get there, it's always good to get there, and that SW corner really got me there. MEAT SWEATS in particular—that was the first of the long answers to fall down there, and I built the stack from there, ending with a very appropriate "HOLY SMOKES!" I like that "HOLY SMOKES!" conveys my feelings about the wonders of that corner, and also contains the word "smokes," which plays off of "MEAT" really nicely. The rest of the puzzle was solid—above average, for sure. But that SW corner ... I'll be feeling that SW corner all day. Not very often that one recollects MEAT SWEATS with any degree of fondness, but HOLY SMOKES, I gotta tell ya, CHUM, that was a good corner.

The puzzle could've stood to be harder. Quite a bit harder, actually. After I got going on this one, I didn't encounter any significant hold-ups on my way to the finish. I haven't read (or had read to me) The Wind in the Willows since I was a child, so Ratty ... (33D: Ratty is one in "The Wind in the Willows") ...  I assumed (correctly) that he was rat-like, rattish, rodenticious, but that still didn't help me figure out exactly what word was supposed to follow WATER. When "mouse" and "rat" didn't fit, I was plum out of ideas. Actually, no—I remember now: I had WATERMOLE in there for a bit! Man, thank god MIBEY looked so terribly, awfully wrong at 49A: Having a good aura, in slang (VIBEY). Since the answer was "slang," it would've been easy enough to convince myself that I just didn't know the slang in question. "Oh, yeah, MIBEY, that's what middle-schoolers are saying now. 6-7 is out, MIBEY is in. Oxford's making it their Word of the Year, didn't you know?" [Oxford's actual Word of the Year this year: rage bait]. But thankfully my "check your damned crosses" instinct is pretty strong when something smells fishy, so the MOLE became a VOLE. I know what VOLEs are. When we had dogs, I would set them loose to chase the "VOLEs and stoats and weasels" (much more storybook-sounding than the banal reality of squirrels and chipmunks). But WATERVOLE, that's a new one to me. Or newish. Again, pretty sure I read The Wind in the Willows at some point. Just not recently.

Bullets:

• 8D: Singer with the top 10 albums "Crash" and "Brat" (CHARLI XCX) — you are not allowed to say you've never heard of CHARLI XCX because if you have been solving regularly for more than a month or so, you definitely have heard of her. Here we go: October 17, 2025. She's a big pop star. If you go to the movies at all and have seen the trailers for next year's Wuthering Heights, you've seen her name—she's doing the music for that movie and boy do they want people to know it. Rare that you see a songwriter / composer / musician credited in the trailer. ("Original songs by CHARLI XCX")

• 34A: Director Jon M. ___ (CHU) — I'm not much for cross-referenced clues, but it's a little weird that he wasn't tied to the ARI clue (38A: Portrayer of Glinda in 2024's "Wicked," to fans), since he directed the dang movie in question. Also, weird that they didn't give CHU an identifying movie at all, or update the movie in the ARI clue to Wicked: For Good, which CHU also directed, and which is in theaters now, breaking all kinds of box office records.
• 56A: Warning preceding some "madness" during March Madness (UPSET ALERT) — this is very niche, but I still love it. And even if you don't pay attention to college basketball, the answer is ultimately inferable. 
• 9D: Tennis duo? (ENS) — a very basic "letteral" clue. The "duo" are the pair of letters in the word "Tennis," i.e. the "n"s (ENS). 
• 29D: Yoga pants and such (ACTIVEWEAR) — anyone write in ATHLEISURE there? It fits. I mean, it really fits. I had some crosses and so didn't make this particular mistake, but I sympathize with anyone who did.

That's all. See you next time. And keep those 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 coming (rex parker at icloud dot com). I'll start the pet picture parade next Thursday. Here's a preview—a picture that seems particularly appropriate for today's puzzle:

[Eevee and Biscuit—looking nice, thinking naughty]
[thanks, Linda!]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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