Verdant privacy features / TUE 12-9-25 / Pigmented rings / Asahi Super Dry or Kirin Lager / Termites, for an aardwolf / Gossip, in slang / "Edie & ___: A Very Long Engagement" (2009 documentary) / Music app named for a figure in Greek myth

Constructor: Kate Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium 

THEME: HEDGEROWS (35A: Verdant privacy features ... or a punny description of the four longest answers in this puzzle) — phrases that "mitigate or weaken the certainty of a statement" (American Heritage Dictionary) (i.e. "HEDGE"s) appear in "ROWS" (i.e. as Across answers ... as opposed to Downs?):

Theme answers:

• "AS FAR AS I CAN TELL..." (17A: "Judging from the information available to me ...")
• "JUST SPITBALLING..." (23A: "These are merely my spur-of-the-moment suggestions ...")
• "FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH..." (50A: "Here's my two cents, which might not amount to much ...")
• "ONLY A THOUGHT, BUT..." (57A: "Feel free to dismiss this idea — however ...")

Word of the Day: Edie & THEA: A Very Long Engagement (2009 documentary) (47D) —

Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement is a 2009 American documentary film directed and produced by Susan Muska and Gréta Ólafsdóttir for their company Bless Bless Productions, in association with Sundance Channel. The film tells the story of the long-term lesbian relationship between Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer, including their respective childhoods, their meeting in 1963, their lives and careers in New York City, Thea's diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and Edie's care for her partner, and their wedding in Toronto, Canada, in May 2007, because gay marriage was not then legal in their home state of New York.

Upon its initial release, the film was screened primarily at LGBTQ film festivals in 2009 and 2010. The Edie in the film's title was Edith Windsor, who after the death of Thea Spyer on February 5, 2009,^[1] was hit with an estate tax bill of $363,053 from the IRS. Had Thea been a man, Edie would have been exempt from this tax due to the marital exception. But the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as limited to a man and a woman, was in effect at the time. Windsor filed suit against the federal government on November 9, 2010, which ultimately made its way to the Supreme Court of the United States as United States v. Windsor. In June 2013, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court rulings in Windsor's favor and declared that DOMA was unconstitutional. (wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually, this is pretty interesting. The execution was a little rough for me in places, primarily because the length requirement (every themer a 15) is a Procrustean Bed that forces the phrases (sometimes painfully) into uniform shape. "AS FAR AS I CAN TELL" and "FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH" are perfect, actually. "JUST SPITBALLING" really wants an "I'm" to start it off and a "here" to follow it (it also kinda wants the final "g" to be elided, but that's a much more cosmetic issue). If you search "just spitballing," the "I'm just spitballing here" option comes up right away in the predictive search box:

So you lop off "here" ... it's still intelligible, it's fine. Doesn't land as smoothly as the first two I mentioned, but it lands. "ONLY A THOUGHT, BUT," on the other hand, feels contorted—ad-libbed, improvised, home-made in the clunkiest way. "Artisanal" hedge. Like "JUST SPITBALLING," it's missing the verb phrase up front, but somehow here, the omission is far more jarring. Which brings me to the next problem, which is "JUST A THOUGHT..." feels way more natural to my ear than "ONLY A THOUGHT”; if you go with "JUST A THOUGHT," you miss the "It’s” less. Also, the attachment of "BUT" starts a separate clause and so the whole answer feels far more awkward and gangly than the others. When you require every themer to be a perfect 15, these are the compromises you have to make.They didn't ruin the puzzle, but I felt their bumpiness for sure.

I like the revealer, though the "ROWS" part doesn't ... add much. I mean, crossword answers are, by definition / design, linear, so any answer in any grid might be considered a "ROW." There's nothing especially "ROW"-y about these answers. I suppose you can say that in a crossword grid (or spreadsheet) situation, "ROW"s go Across, whereas columns go Down, and so the Acrossness of the answers matters. But then most theme answers do run Across, so again the "ROW"-iness isn't exactly an exceptional feature of the theme. But no other revealer will do. HEDGES would be anemic. The grid-spanning nature of the theme answers does give them a certain hedgerow quality, in that they seem to divide the grid into lots. If your hedgerow really is a "privacy feature," then I guess you might run it from one end of your property to the other I don't know. I've got sugar maples. I think the theme works. Not spectacularly, but it works.

The fill seems pretty average, though at parts it ran a little tough for me, for a Tuesday. Perhaps the most un-Tuesday moment of the solve was THEA (47D: "Edie & ___: A Very Long Engagement" (2009 documentary)). I'm not sure there's any THEA answer famous enough to qualify as a Tuesday answer, but this one was a real "????" to me. The documentary is about a very important U.S. Supreme Court case, and it sounds fascinating, but yeesh, as a piece of trivia, it's pretty Friday/Saturday. This could easily have been THEO as far as I, the ignorant solver, was concerned (of course if THEA had been THEO then the couple could've legally married in the U.S. and the documentary would never have existed). THEA is one of the few answers where I think I'd prefer the good old-fashioned partial over any one person's name. You can see that the NYTXW relies a lot less heavily on the Billy Strayhorn / Duke Ellington Orchestra song than it used to...

.

..but I say: "Take THE A Train" is way better known than any other THEA option, and any puzzle that reminds me of Ellington can't be all bad. If you must use THEA ... then by all means, take THE A Train:

I stumbled in a few non-THEA places as well. For some reason DIET was not a word that leapt to mind at 14A: Termites, for an aardwolf, so even though I had the "D" in place, I wrote in DISH (?). I was today years old when I learned RICE BEER existed (inferable, but ???) (8D: Asahi Super Dry or Kirin Lager). I hesitated at the final letter of AREOLAS ... then defiantly wrote in the "S," daring the puzzle to do the stupid Latin plural thing to me (which thankfully it didn't) (25D: Pigmented rings). The ZEE / ZED crossing was actually a teeny bit tricky, since there's nothing in either clue to indicate "letter" (33A: 33-Down, across the Atlantic / 33D: 33-Across, across the Atlantic). 

Really loved the GAY / TEA / "Oh, MARY!" nexus. A dishily queer little cluster of words. My daughter did some work on the earliest, off-Broadway production of Oh, MARY! before it even opened (possibly carpentry, possibly something else having to do with production design), then was invited to work on the show once it moved to Broadway but already had other commitments. The show sounds hilarious but I've never seen it. I like that even if you've never heard of Oh, MARY!, you can infer the answer fairly easily because the clue gives you "Mrs. Lincoln."

Bullets:

• 48A: Sound from someone sitting down at the end of a long day ("AAH...") — still not sure how this differs from the sound you make at the dentist. AAH v. AHH is tricky for me. Also, I thought the "sound" here was going to be the sound of someone literally "sitting," like ... PLOP!
• 54A: "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a ___" (old maxim) ("FIRE") — ugh, this is awful. It's a weak maxim to begin with, but also ... I've never, ever heard this so-called "maxim." Why in the world would you use a quotation if you don't know where it comes from? If the "maxim" is universally familiar, great, but this one is not—too long, too fussy, too banal to be truly well known. So the clue is fussy, overly long, not well known, and not interesting. Four strikes.
• 6A: One who might ask "Fair dinkum?" (AUSSIE) — got this easily enough, but still have no idea what that question is supposed to mean. Merriam Webster dot com says it's a general expression of approval. Not sure why it's appearing here in interrogative form.
• 58D: "J to ___ L-O! The Remixes" (2002 Jennifer Lopez album) ("THA") — first remix album to reach #1 on the Billboard 200 chart (I just learned). I had "THE" here for a half second before realizing "oh, no, if they're going to pop music, that's gonna be a THA"—and so it was.

That's all, see you next time. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. two more days to send in your 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 by Thursday of this week. Expecting to see a whole lotta cats in trees, just like Calypso here. Don't disappoint me!

[Thanks, Andrea]

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

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

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Gesture suggesting "I see what you did there" / MON 12-8-25 / Wyoming skiing mecca / Center of a stone fruit / Stuff on an artist's palette

Constructor: Dan Kammann and Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (solved Downs-only)

THEME: DIGIT (40A: Finger or toe ... or, when read as two words, what you can do to the ends of 17- and 62-Across and 10- and 34-Down) — last words of themers are things you can "dig":

Theme answers:

• JACKSON HOLE (17A: Wyoming skiing mecca)
• WORK OUT WELL (62A: End successfully)
• LAST-DITCH (10D: Eleventh-hour)
• CHERRY PIT (34D: Center of a stone fruit)

Word of the Day: Robert Benchley (13A: "___ is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings": Robert Benchley => OPERA) —

Robert Charles Benchley (September 15, 1889 – November 21, 1945) was an American humorist, newspaper columnist and actor. From his beginnings at The Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from his peers at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry.

Benchley is remembered best for his contributions to the magazine The New Yorker; his essays for that publication, whether topical or absurdist, influenced many modern humorists. He also made a name for himself in Hollywood, when his short movie How to Sleep was a popular success and won Best Short Subject at the 1935 Academy Awards. He also made many memorable appearances acting in movies such as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Nice Girl? (1941). Also, Benchley appeared as himself in Walt Disney's behind the scenes movie, The Reluctant Dragon (1941). His legacy includes written work and numerous short movie appearances. (wikipedia)

• • •

Felt lucky that I was able to get this to WORK OUT WELL in the end, because the Downs-only solve was definitely a struggle for me today. It started out very smoothly, as I ran the table on the first five Downs I looked at, but after that, my progress became halting and awkward. Got OAKS and could see that the first word of 17A had to be (probably) JACKSON, but I crossed that "N" with FINS (6D: Scuba gear = TANK), and screech, no more progress in that direction. I managed to get down the west side of the grid, all the way down through CHERRY PIT, but once down there, yeesh, that SW corner. Couldn't decide on SCAB v. SCAR (56D: Covering over a wound), had no idea about LULL, but the real problem was that I could not figure out how to make any kind of answer out of S-YN--. Even after I got it down to S-YNOD, I just stared at it. I know the word "synod," but there was an extra space in there. SKY NOD, is that a thing? I figured I had something wrong, but all the crosses were very right, and so eventually I just had to run the alphabet to come up with SLY NOD. Not a happy discovery. SLY NOD must've come from someone's overcrowded wordlist. I can imagine sly looks and sly grins, but SLY NOD ... man, it just doesn't look good. I'm not sure how a nod can be "sly." Metaphorically, maybe, in the sense of a subtle reference ("... De Palma's SLY NOD to Hitchcock..."), but as clued, it's harder to see (56A: Gesture suggesting "I see what you did there"). I just searched ["sly nod"], in quotation marks, and most of the first hits that come up are crossword-answer sites referencing this clue. I didn't actually work out SLY NOD until the very, very end of the solve. 

["... and giving a [SLY?] NOD, up the chimney he rose!"]

I also had some trouble remembering pets with food in cheek pouches (44D: Pet that stores food in cheek pouches). Chipmunks aren't really pets. Weirdly wanted ECHIDNA. Are those pets? Maybe I'm thinking of chinchilla? Echidnas are spiny anteaters of Australia and Papua New Guinea, so no, probably not pets. Anyway, not sure why HAMSTER wouldn't come to me, but it wouldn't. For a while. Until I got the "H" from HO-HUM. As for the WEI dynasty—no way, no how (64D: Early Chinese dynasty). I worked out WELL from the theme (which I could see at that point), and just inferred the other two letters. Eventually had to get back up to the top and fix the whole FINS debacle. After that, I bounced to the SW corner where I finished up with (ugh) SLY NOD. While I didn't like SLY NOD, I did like the theme. Or, rather, I thought it was just OK ... when I thought it was just a bunch of holes in the ground. Because I solved Downs-only, I didn't notice that DIGIT was a revealer. I thought that maybe the puzzle didn't have a revealer at all. But the reinterpretation of DIGIT is clever, and, combined with mostly solid fill, lifts this one into somewhat above-average territory. 

Bullets:

• 52A: "Let me clarify ..." ("I MEANT...") — somehow "I MEANT" is 10x worse than "I MEAN" as fill, and the clue today compounds the problem. The clue and answer aren't grammatically parallel. "Let me clarify" is a complete sentence. "I MEANT" is not. After "Let me clarify...," despite the ellipsis, you would start a new sentence, whereas "I MEANT" would be followed immediately by a dependent clause ("... [that] I can't..." "... [that] you don't ..."). There's probably some way to swap them out one for the other, but my brain can't hear it.
• 12D: From ___ to dusk (DAWN) — easy enough, but I know the phrase the other way around: "from dusk to (or til) DAWN." Maybe I've been listening to too much music about partying all the time. Or else the Tarantino movie title is wielding undue influence. Oh, no ... I remember now who's responsible:

• 30A: "Enola Holmes" actress ___ Bobby Brown (MILLIE) — I feel like crosswords are single-handedly keeping Enola Holmes in our collective memories, usually as the non-ENOLA Gay clue for ENOLA. For that reason, I think it's important to steer away from Enola Holmes whenever possible. The first half of the final season of Stranger Things just dropped last month. That's the show that made her famous. I would've used that show here, for reasons of timeliness, and also to prevent ENOLA Fatigue.

• 1D: Magic charms (MOJOS) — got this right away, which feels like a very Crossword reflex. Like, I don't think I ever thought of "mojo" this way before crosswords, but now ... it's right there. Top of the brain.
• 34D: Center of a stone fruit (CHERRY PIT) — At the center of *a* stone fruit is a "pit." At the center of one specific type of stone fruit is a CHERRY PIT. This distinction caused me several seconds of hesitation, but once I got the "C" in there (from LYCRA, where it was easy to infer—not much else can go in that empty place ... nothing, in fact), I was able to imagine CHERRY and that was that.

That's all. See you next time. 

And remember: 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 can be sent to me through this Thursday (rexparker at icloud dot com), at which point I'll start posting them in waves, after every post through the end of the year. I'l be waiting patiently by my Inbox ... just as Sunny here waits patiently by the tree for Santa ... or for you to leave the room so she can destroy your tree:

[thank you, "crayonbeam"]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

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

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Future birthplace of Captain Kirk / SUN 12-7-25 / Sister to Lex Luthor / Arabic greeting and farewell / One chain x one furlong / A urinal, according to Duchamp / Solos at a party / Crazy Horse and fellow tribespeople / Russian crepes / Personification of England, Scotland and Wales / Trees commonly confused with birches / Bit of letter-shaped hardware / Farm-share program, for short / Alter, as a T-shirt for a Phish concert, say / It's often rapped but never spoken

Constructor: Kate Jensen

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Original Thinkers" — puns describing inventors or discoverers of various kinds (but also mountain climbers? I don't really understand the parameters, tbh)

Theme answers:

• POWER COUPLE (23A: Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison?)
• BIRDBRAIN (25A: John James Audubon?)
• CABLE GUY (38A: Samuel Morse?)
• MOUNTAIN GOAT (43A: Sir Edmund Hillary?)
• MOTION DETECTOR (59A: Sir Isaac Newton?)
• SEEDY CHARACTER (80A: Gregor Mendel?)
• DRIVING FORCE (93A: Henry Ford?)
• AIRHEADS (98A: Orville and Wilbur Wright?)
• DREAM TEAM (115A: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung?)
• STAR WITNESS (118A: Galileo Galilei?)

Word of the Day: LENA Luthor (87A: Sister to Lex Luthor) —

Lena Luthor is the name of two fictional comic book characters in DC Comics. The first one, introduced in 1961, is the sister of Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor, while the second one, introduced in the year 2000, is Luthor's daughter, named after her aunt.

On live-action television, the original Lena Luthor was portrayed by Denise Gossett in a 1991 episode of Superboy, Cassidy Freeman in three seasons (2008–2011) of Smallville, and by Katie McGrath in five seasons (2016–2021) of Supergirl. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Sir Edmund Hillary]

People who love puns will probably like this. I think. I don't know. Some of the puns are decent, but the whole concept doesn't seem very coherent to me. I think the problem starts with the title: "Original Thinkers." What did Sir Edmund Hillary "think" of, besides climbing Everest? Most of these guys (all guys) are scientists of one kind or another, people who invented or discovered ... things. But then there's Hillary, who was just the first to do something. Same with the Wrights, maybe? And Ford ... he didn't invent the automobile, but he pioneered ... well, Fordism. The assembly line. Ford's Model T was the "first mass-affordable automobile," so like the others, he's associated with being "first" (or "Original??") at something. Ford is a big name, obviously, but he doesn't seem quite as in-keeping with the apparent theme of the puzzle is concerned. Is Hillary the GOAT in the sense of "Greatest of All Time?" I think that's what's meant. I just found myself shrugging a lot. Like, the puns are fine, but the theme set seems very loose, and the puzzle seems to be trying to make up for its lack of coherence with sheer volume (ten themers is a lot of themers). Figuring out the pun phrases did involve a bit of a challenge (for a change), so that was nice. And like I say, they mostly work, as puns. They didn't seem particularly funny to me, but I'm kind of immune to puns unless they are incredibly ambitious and ridiculous. POWER COUPLE is very apt, but aptness isn't exactly hilarity. As for the fill, it's a bit below average, but only just a bit, and I'm not that surprised if it buckles a little under the weight of all these themers. Still, CERSEI GRIS EERIE IDEST INRE TSAR SSNS is a lot of unpleasantness ... and that's just the SE corner. Other parts of the grid do fare better, but not much better. ANOD, OTIC, ENROOTS ... ****ing REMEND!?!? YIPES. All in all, this wasn't terrible, but it just fell a little flat. 

Maybe we should look at the dudes in the themers systematically. What were the "original thoughts" that made them worthy of being in this grid? 

• Edison invented the electric light bulb (among many other "power"-related things), and Tesla helped designed the modern AC electricity supply system
• Audubon, of course, invented birds
• Morse invented a code used for telegraphs (sent by wires or "cables")
• Hillary climbed a big mountain
• Newton developed laws of motion
• Mendel was the founder of modern genetics (due to his experiments with pea "seeds")
• Ford, we covered
• Wright Brothers were "First in Flight" (according to a license plate I read once)
• Freud and Jung, like Freddy Krueger (Freudy Krueger?), are big names in "dreaming"
• Galileo looked at stars ("the father of observational astronomy")

The nature of the theme is what gave this puzzle most of its difficulty (which, as I say, was about average). I got BIRD but then had to piece together the second part, I got MOUNTAIN but had to piece together the second part from crosses, lather rinse repeat. Not all the themers were like that, but most were. The toughest part of the puzzle for me was the deep south, where I absolutely could not remember CERSEI's name (never made it past ep. 1 of that show), and I definitely could've used her for O-RING, which I absolutely needed in order to get GRIS (????). Is that Spanish for "gray?" And "gray" is a "drab color?" How is any drabber than most house colors. White, off-white, brownish ... those all seem pretty "drab" to me. Nothing about "house color" says "gray" to me, at all. Also, foreign colors, meh. Anyway, CERSEI / O-RING / GRIS had me knotted up a little bit. Other problems were relatively small, sometimes just one square. Is it YIKES (me) or YIPES (the puzzle)? Is it GAITER or GAITOR? (it's the former) (65A: Shoe covering). CHAMP or CHOMP? (38D: Bite down hard) (if you "champ at the bit" you "bite down hard" on it, don't you?) (that last question is for horses only) (see: chomping v. champing (at the bit)). I could've sworn Buffalo was NNW from Pittsburgh, but ... no, it's NNE (I always think Buffalo's much closer to Erie than it really is). 

There were also two "S" plurals that I don't think of as conventionally being "S" plurals. That is, BLINI and OGLALA both seem inherent plural to me, so putting an "S" on the end of either is ... odd (26D: Russian crepes + 37D: Crazy Horse and fellow tribespeople). In fact, the crossword has definitely taught me that BLINI is the plural and that BLIN is the singular, so BLINIS is like say horseses (I blame "champ/CHOMP" for this example). 

[see? BLIN! No foolin']

Bullets:

• 40D: Personification of England, Scotland and Wales (BRITANNIA) — forgot that BRITANNIA was a ... person? Just sounds like an olde-tyme name for "Britain." But now that I think about it, I can picture her. Really wanted JOHN BULL here. 

[BRITANNIA]

[JOHN BULL]

• 1D: Solos at a party (CUPS) — I know what Solo Cups are (they litter the streets in student neighborhoods on Sunday mornings), but this was still tough for me. "Solos" is disguised very neatly as a verb here. Han Solo at his family reunion, that would also involve [Solos at a party].
• 89D: Like many couples at theaters (ON DATES) — oof. Double oof. First oof is for the non-answer of it all (ON A DATE would be bad enough, but ON DATES, yeesh). Second oof is for the fact that "COUPLE" is already in the grid and therefore should not not not be in a clue. You can dupe short words, but COUPLE is too long to dupe, too conspicuous. This answer into REMEND was probably the most face-making part of the puzzle for me.
• 19A: Bit of letter-shaped hardware (U-BOLT) — bad enough to have one letter-shaped answer in the grid, we get to suffer through two (see O-RING—108A: Bit of letter-shaped hardware). Giving them the same clue does not provide nearly enough whimsy to overcome the gag factor).
• 51A: Trees commonly confused with birches (ASPENS) — me: "... all of them?" (I cannot identify trees to save my life—sugar maples, those are in my front yard, so I know those; and I know pines ... and palms ... and fig trees, weirdly (these were in my back yard as a child). But otherwise, I'm extremely tree illiterate. I know the names, but not the actual trees those names go with. I probably know more trees than I think I do, but I wouldn't steer toward the "Trees" category on Jeopardy!, is what I'm saying.
• 76A: Rain on your wedding day, perhaps (OMEN) — it rained on my wedding day. Is that bad? It's been 22 years and my marriage seems fine. Is that ironic? What does "ironic" even mean? Who can say? Let's ask this lady:

• 4D: Pest whose name is a homophone for what you might do when you see it (FLEA) — kept reading the first word as "Pet" and thinking "What do I do when I see a pet? Smile? GRIN? Say 'Who's a good boy!?'?" No idea. But it's a "pest." You flee from a FLEA. I guess you might. But if they're on your own pet, I don't think "fleeing" is gonna help you much.

Speaking of pets (and hopefully not fleas), it's 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 time once again, so get those pictures of your animals in holiday settings in to me (rexparker at icloud dot com) before this Thursday, and then I'll start the animal parade, which (given how many pet pics I've received already) should continue through the New Year. Here's a preview—look how easy it is to turn your photo of Cinnamon and chewed-up tissues ...  

... into a lovely holiday greeting card!

Just add a frame and a caption and voila! The tissues are now, uh, snow! Yeah, snow. [Thanks, Janine!]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

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

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

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 (rexparker 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]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

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

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

1944 Pacific battle site / FRI 12-5-25 / Home to Kotoka International Airport / Age at which you just learned something you should have realized before, facetiously / Mohamed ___, Egyptian soccer star / Subject of the Bouguereau painting "The Abduction of Pscyhe" / Image that's just over a foot, informally / Where much of "Brokeback Mountain" was filmed /

Constructor: James McCarron

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LEYTE (53A: 1944 Pacific battle site) —

Leyte (/ˈleɪti, ˈleɪteɪ/ LAY-tee, LAY-tay, Tagalog: [ˈleite]) is an island in the Visayas group of islands in the Philippines. It is eighth-largest and sixth-most populous island in the Philippines, with a total population of 2,626,970 as of the 2020 census. // The Battle of Leyte (Filipino: Labanan sa Leyte; Waray: Gubat ha Leyte; Japanese: レイテの戦い) in the Pacific campaign of World War II was the amphibious invasion of the island of Leyte in the Philippines by American forces and Filipino guerrillas under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur, who fought against the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita. The operation, codenamed King Two, launched the Philippines campaign of 1944–45 for the recapture and liberation of the entire Philippine Archipelago and to end almost three years of Japanese occupation. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's "ending on a sour note," and then there's "ending on LEYTE," which makes you yearn for a note that's merely sour. It clearly has some historical / military importance, but its familiarity to a North American audience ... I'm fairly confident that whatever that was, it has dwindled over the years. I'm old(ish) and I've never heard of this place. It smacks of the kind of geographical obscurity that used to be common currency in the crossword puzzle, before construction software came along and made filling the grid somewhat easier, and before the puzzle had an editor who explicitly sought to reduce the appearance of such things (i.e. before Shortz). And sure enough, the heat map on this one is, let's say, telling:

See that teeny tiny little blue segment waaaay over on the right there? That's today. The distance between that little blue segment and the next nearest little blue segment? Nearly twenty-three years. Twenty-Three Years. That is some real delayed back-from-the-dead action. I felt so much better after seeing how long it had been since LEYTE appeared in the grid. "How did I miss this answer?" Answer: I didn't. It hasn't appeared once in the soon-to-be two decades that I've been writing about the puzzle. The thing about LEYTE, the very bad thing, is that it isn't just the most obscure thing in the grid, it's the most obscure thing by light years. Look at the other geographical answers in this puzzle. ALBERTA. GHANA. CALI. Yeah, I've Heard Of Those. The eighth-largest island of the Philippines? Not so much. I don't know how LEYTE doesn't make you want to, need to, tear that part of your grid out and try again. If the grid were sizzling hot, loaded with bright and shiny fill, and needed a single LEYTE to hold it together, it would still be jarring, but it might seem worth it. But despite the fact that the long fill is quite good down there, overall, there just wasn't enough of it to justify LEYTE. I like parts of this grid, but all I see when I look at this grid is LEYTE. There's literally nothing else in this grid that I would insist has to go. Just LEYTE. Twenty-three years! Those were good years.

As I say, the long fill on this one is very nice, particularly below, where TODAY YEARS OLD made me smile (51A: Age at which you just learned something you should have realized before, facetiously), and "HERE GOES NOTHING!" wasn't too shabby either (48A: "Might as well give it a shot..."). Up top, DON'T POKE THE BEAR also gave the grid some much-needed playfulness and color (14A: Words of caution). But between the long answers above and the long answers below was a whole lot of ... fine. OK. Not bad. But nothing memorable, nothing marquee. I like how clean the grid is (mostly!), but there's just not a whole hell of a lot going on between the poles. In fact, some of the other longer fill, I kinda balked at. ANKLE TAT made me grimace. Yes, you can get a tat there, as you can get a tat most anywhere. I've seen FACE TAT and ANKLE TAT now. You can keep changing the body parts, but ___ TAT isn't going to get more interesting. GENE SET didn't excite me much either. Solid enough, but ... I needed more ATTACK AD energy (good answer, good clue) (26A: Spot likely to smear). I needed the puzzle to slap me with more fun stuff: "TAKE THAT!" the puzzle should have been able to say to me, many more times than it did. Instead, it just sort of handed me answers: more "TAKE THAT," without the exclamation point, without the spirit of vengeance. It's a solid grid, but it's not much more than solid.

The puzzle did set me up for some great mistakes today, though. These started early, with my assumption that what "might be on a rack" was a RIB (2D: It might be on a rack = HAT) (I eventually got my RIB meat with RIBEYE!). Later, I figured that shows were being stopped by RAIDS, not RAINS (15D: Show stoppers, sometimes). I like RAIDS way better, both because it creates a more vivid image and because plural RAINS here is ... awkward. "The shows were stopped by RAINS." Meh. Not great. Just clue it as a verb. My favorite mistake, though, was probably the one where I learned ("learned") that Ang Lee had filmed Brokeback Mountain in ALBANIA (45A: Where much of "Brokeback Mountain" was filmed). "Must've been more affordable," I briefly and sincerely thought. I eventually TORE that out when TORE forced the issue (46D: Raced). But I liked "knowing" that bit of movie trivia for a few seconds. ALBERTA is so much more plausible, and thus so much less interesting.  

Bullets:

• 11A: Can't-miss purchases? (SEASON TICKETS) — good answer, but I'm pretty sure you can miss. I'm pretty sure season ticket holders do, in fact, miss games (or concerts, or other performances sometimes).
• 21A: Subject of the Bouguereau painting "The Abduction of Psyche" (EROS) — I like how this clue assumes I know who Bouguereau is. "Oh, the Bouguereau painting, yes, of course, what a master... [sips cocktail, nibbles on canapé] ..." Literally first I'm seeing his name today. But EROS was easy. Psyche was the tip-off. Cupid (EROS) & Psyche pair naturally in my brain, not because of my knowledge of classical mythology or art or operas ... but because of the title of a mid-'80s Scritti Politti album. Anyone else? No. That's fine. Just gonna press "Play" now and briefly relive my junior year of high school... 

• 31D: Mohamed ___, Egyptian soccer star (SALAH) — could not retrieve his name. Sort of kind of vaguely knew the first four letters, but was in no way sure about that "H." SALAH is the only answer that approaches LEYTE in terms of obscurity today, and by "approaches" I mean "is not really anywhere near." The key word in the SALAH clue is "star."

Mohamed "Mo" Salah Hamed Mahrous Ghaly (born 15 June 1992) is an Egyptian professional footballer who plays as a right winger or forward for Premier League club Liverpool and captains the Egypt national team. He is widely regarded as one of the best players of his generation and one of the greatest wingers of all time. He is the all-time top foreign goalscorer in the Premier League and the all-time top African goalscorer in the UEFA Champions League. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

That's all for today. Keep those 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 coming. I'll be accepting reader pictures of their pets in holiday settings through Wednesday (rexparker at icloud dot com), and then I'll need to stop taking submissions and start posting. My Inbox is already pretty inundated with cuteness, which is exciting. Here's a little taste. 

[meet French bulldogs Audrey, Louise, and Hugo, seen here wearing the skins of their enemies]
[Thanks, Claudia!]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

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

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...