Rainy-day game for children / WED 6-18-25 / Bygone initials at JFK / Rely on the hospitality of friends for lodging / Gad about at a banquet / "Sound" of a point sailing over someone's head / The first one was delivered in 1984 / "Star Wars" species on Tatooine / "Decorated" as a house for Halloween / Mind-boggling designs / Fashion's Jimmy whose surname aptly rhymes with "shoe" / Medicinal name in the shampoo aisle / 2019 Brad Pitt sci-fi thriller

Constructor: Eli Cotham

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: THE FLOOR IS LAVA (58A: Rainy-day game for children, whose play is punnily suggested by 16-, 24-, 35- and 50-Across) — answers all suggest movement on furniture, i.e. actions you might take while playing THE FLOOR IS LAVA, a game where touching the ground ("FLOOR") means "death":

Theme answers:

• COUNTERBALANCE (16A: Offset, as something on a scale)
• TABLEHOP (24A: Gad about at a banquet)
• COUCHSURF (35A: Rely on the hospitality of friends for lodging)
• BARCRAWL (50A: Hit the pubs)

Word of the Day: THE FLOOR IS LAVA (58A) —

The floor is lava is a game in which players pretend that the floor or ground is made of lava (or any other lethal substance, such as acid or quicksand), and thus must avoid touching the ground, as touching the ground would "kill" the player who did so. The players stay off the floor by standing on furniture or the room's architecture. The players generally may not remain still, and are required to move from one piece of furniture to the next. This is due to some people saying that the furniture is acidic, sinking, or in some other way time-limited in its use. The game can be played with a group or alone for self amusement. There may even be a goal, to which the players must race. The game may also be played outdoors in playgrounds or similar areas.

This game is similar to the traditional children's game "Puss in the Corner", or "Puss Wants a Corner", where children occupying the corner of a room are "safe", while the Puss, the player who is "It" in the middle of the room, tries to occupy an empty corner as the other players dash from one corner to another. This game was often played in school shelter-sheds in Victoria, with the bench-seats along the walls of the shelter-shed being used as platforms joining the corner, while players crossing the floor could be caught by the Puss. (wikipedia)

• • •

The revealer really rescued this one for me. I had noticed the furniture element as I went along, but didn't see any kind of thematic coherence beyond that until the game showed up near the end and made me notice the second (action) halves of the answers as well. I never played THE FLOOR IS LAVA as a kid (or as an adult). I've never even seen it played. I know of it only from recent pop culture, and even then I don't know how the name of the game got into my brain. Some specific TV show? Apparently there is a Netflix show called THE FLOOR IS LAVA that premiered in 2020—maybe I caught sight of that title while scrolling through thousands of movie titles to find something non-mediocre. More likely that someone on some TV show mentioned it on some episode blah blah who knows how these things get in your brain? The point is, I had enough of a sense of how the game is played to appreciate the theme. I did not, however, appreciate the fill, and this is Really becoming an issue of late—grid negligence, or grid grime, or whatever name you wanna call it. I winced through a whole lot of this grid, which is just inundated with short overcommon or ugly stuff. So many initialisms! Plus tired or archaic stuff; NIGH OGLE NYMET one lone TAPA OPART ENUF USN ISAY CST TPED TSAR UMS TEAMO ERST ATOB SST ELO TGEL. You wouldn't squawk much about a few of these, but the load of them? Yeesh. The longer Downs occasionally make up for the shorter dreck (they're all pretty good, exc. maybe the improbable comparative adj. GLUMMER and the Latin ADASTRA, which are still fine). But there was a stretch there from the NW through the center of the grid (roughly OGLE to ERST) where I thought the crosswordese onslaught would never end. I still think the puzzle ends up in Positive territory in the end, but just barely.

Another unfortunate trend in recent puzzles: easiness. There should be at least a little resistance in a Wednesday puzzle. But today, only the NW and SE gave me any kind of pushback, and it wasn't much. It's always hardest getting started, so a little skidding around before you get traction is normal (I got OGLE and nothing else at first in the NW, so I just moved over to Jimmy CHOO and started there). As for the SE, I wrote in the cookware brand TFAL instead of the dandruff shampoo TGEL (not the first time I've made this mistake—there's also a medicated shampoo called TSAL, which has never been used, but which exists nonetheless, and thus adds to my confusion). Because of that mistake, and because the TED TALK clue was vaguely hard (44D: The first one was delivered in 1984) (me: "... TEST-TUBE BABY?"). I took longer in the SE than elsewhere. Everywhere else, it was just paint by numbers, connect the dots. Nothing particularly thorny.

[53D: Eudora ___, Pulitzer winner for "The Optimist's Daughter"]

Aside from the preponderance of crosswordesey stuff, the only part of the puzzle that bugged me was the spelling of WOOSH (51D: "Sound" of a point sailing over someone's head). I do not believe in it. That looks like a typo. Specifically, it looks like you left out the first "H" (following the initial "W"). I realize that spelling sounds are likely to result in approximations and variations, but the dictionary entry is definitely "Whoosh." If I didn't use the word a lot to describe a certain kind of fast and exhilarating movement through the puzzle, maybe I wouldn't be so particular ... but then, maybe I would. A few online dictionaries grudgingly give "WOOSH" as a variant, but yuck and ick and "no" and "bad." Extremely ugly to look at. When WOOSH appeared in '02 and '04, the puzzle had the decency to mark it as a variant ("Var."). But since then ('18, '22, now), no more. Please go back to "Var." It's more honest. 

Further notes:

• 38A: "Star Wars" species on Tatooine (JAWA) — saw that it was four letters ending in "A," nearly (instinctively) wrote in YODA. Bit weird to have "Tatooine" in the clues and TATTOO in the grid, but I don't think that counts as a foul.
• 2D: "Ha ha ha!," on April Fools' Day ("I GOT YOU") — wanted "GOTCHA!" Still want "GOTCHA!" And unless it comes in puzzle form, man do I hate the whole idea of "getting" people on April 1. The world is full enough of fraud as it is. Please keep your April Fools' gags far away from me, thx. 

• 12D: House with a long-unmowed lawn, e.g. (EYESORE) — did an HOA write this clue? I love the variegated, slightly wild looks of unmown lawns. Yeah, some aren't so pretty, I guess, but immaculate bright green lawns are their own kind of chemically-induced horror show. 

[bunny on my neighbor's unmown lawn yesterday]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Ride-or-dies, in brief / TUE 6-17-25 / Shady, in modern lingo / Wireless standard inits. / Windstorm often accompanied by rain / Tennis's Gibson who won back-to-back Wimbledons and U.S. Opens

Constructor: Tarun Krishnamurthy

Relative difficulty: Very easy 

THEME: REESE'S / PIECES (40A: With 41-Across, popular candy represented by the circled letters in 17-, 26- and 57-Across) — "REESE'S" broken into (3) PIECES—"RE" and "ES" and "ES" are found in paired circled squares inside three theme answers:

Theme answers:

• "HERE COMES THE SUN" (17A: Classic Beatles song written by George Harrison)
• RENÉ DESCARTES (26A: Mathematician/philosopher who wrote "I think, therefore I am")
• PRESSES THE FLESH (57A: Does some door-to-door campaigning)

Word of the Day: ALTHEA Gibson (45D: Tennis's Gibson who won back-to-back Wimbledons and U.S. Opens) —

Althea Neale Gibson (August 25, 1927 – September 28, 2003) was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first African American to win a Grand Slam event (the French Open). The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals (precursor of the US Open), then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam titles: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title. "She is one of the greatest players who ever lived," said Bob Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams. [...] Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971 and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1980. In the early 1960s, she also became the first Black player to compete in the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

• • •

I'm not usually much for non-consecutive circles spelling things, especially the same thing three times, but at least here the non-consecutiveness is meaningful—that is, the whole point of the theme is that "REESE'S" is found in pieces inside each answer. The letter pairs are broken up for a reason. The puzzle has an interesting mirror (as opposed to the typical rotational) symmetry. The only drawback of that kind of symmetry, for me, is that it highlights the fact that the circled letters are almost but not quite symmetrical themselves. The first and last pairs of "pieces" are symmetrical, but those middle pairs can't be—not in a 15-wide grid. In a grid that's an odd number of columns wide, a pair of letters can only sit slightly off-center, at best. More scattered "pieces" would somehow be more visually pleasing (to my eye) than this slight off-centeredness. It's like the themers are a picture that's been hung slightly crooked. It's driving my brain nuts. Whereas if symmetry had not been a consideration, my brain would (for once) be fine. But this isn't a fault with the puzzle, just a glitch in my brain. It's a solid Tuesday concept, executed pretty well. Those themers are all nice standalone answers (even if the phrase PRESSES THE FLESH has always felt a little creepy to me: a little handsy, a little touchy-feely, a little ... meaty. 

The only thing I actively didn't like about the puzzle was that clue on TEEN (65A: Typical high school student ... like this puzzle's constructor!). Stop fetishizing TEENs! There have been literally dozens of TEEN constructors by now. Actually, I don't know the exact number, but it's a lot. This isn't even a debut!! This constructor had a puzzle out last summer. And good for them! Big accomplishment. But if you're a pro, you're a pro. Don't expect medals or applause 'cause you're a TEEN. There's something cringey about adults fawning over precocious kids. I would've hated having that clue in my puzzle if I'd been the TEEN constructor (luckily, I was a disappointing underachiever as a TEEN and so never had this problem). This clue (with its "look-at-me" revealer-type structure (ellipsis, exclamation point!) is an editorial choice; it detracts from the puzzle's manifest worthiness. 

I don't know that I've done an easier Tuesday puzzle than this. I've done hundreds and hundreds of Tuesday puzzles in my time, so I probably have done an easier one, but they're rare. I have absolutely no trouble spots or even mild missteps to speak of. I no-looked PRESSES THE FLESH *and* the revealer (when it became clear that the second half was gonna be PIECES, I just wrote in the REESE'S part without looking at the clue—I'd already noticed what was inside those circled squares). I balked at the spelling of SPIRALLED (47A: Went through the air like a perfectly thrown football)—the two-"L" version looks British. And ... it is.  This makes the clue especially inapt, since British people don't throw footballs, or give a damn about footballs. The only football they care about is the kind PELÉ plays (54D: Sports star who debuted with the New York Cosmos in 1975). I remember being in Edinburgh in '89 and staying up super late on Sunday night with other Americans and a handful of oddball Scots to watch the one British show that recapped American football. I think the announcer was a British guy who'd been a kicker in the NFL for a hot minute or so some time in the '70s or early '80s (!?!?!). Admittedly, this memory is fuzzy. Anyway, my point is, if it's a football, it's a one-"L" SPIRALED.

[Mick Luckhurst!]

What else?:

• 1A: Ride-or-dies, in brief (BFFS) — I feel like the expression "ride-or-die" will be unfamiliar to a significant chunk of older solvers. I also feel that this will matter very little to the overall difficulty level of the puzzle. I liked this clue. I also liked SUS (short for "suspicious") (50A: Shady, in modern lingo). It's weird how much I like SUS as a three-letter answer, generally. SUS > SIA. SUS > ILE. SUS > a lot of things. 
• 17A: Classic Beatles song written and sung by George Harrison ("HERE COMES THE SUN") — love the song, obviously, but "Classic" feels like a cop-out. You could say that about scores of their songs. "Abbey Road song" would give a little more specificity, a little more color.

• 22A: Auction offer (BID) — this puzzle reminded me a lot of yesterday (not the Beatles song, but my actual day yesterday). I changed wireless companies (and so saw the letters LTE more than a few times) (49D: Wireless standard inits.) and I also won my first ever non-eBay auction. Like, from a real auction house. This was my first time bidding and I only BID what I can afford so I got dramatically outbid on most everything. Except one thing: an Italian movie poster for a film by director Dario Argento called Il Gatto a Nove Code (Cat O' Nine Tails) (1971). Featuring Karl Malden as a blind crossword puzzle maker! And look at this murderous kitty! So handsome.

[Love the yellow in this poster—the movie belongs to the horror subgenre known as "Giallo" (Italian for "yellow")]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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'N Sync bandmate of Justin Timberlake / MON 6-16-25 / Some bygone theaters / Short stiletto shoe / Slanted edges, as on mirrors / Yahoo alternative

Constructor: Jill Rafaloff and Michelle Sontarp

Relative difficulty: Easy (easiest Downs-only I've ever done, possibly)

THEME: BABY (64A: The first word of 18-, 23-, 36-, 49- or 56-Across is one) — first words of theme answers are BABY animals:

Theme answers:

• KITTEN HEEL (18A: Short stiletto shoe)
• JOEY FATONE (23A: 'N Sync bandmate of Justin Timberlake)
• PUPPY LOVE (36A: What a first crush might be dismissed as)
• CALF MUSCLE (49A: Spot that may be affected by a charley horse)
• CHICK FLICK (56A: Movie marketed toward a primarily female audience, informally)

Word of the Day: Make Way For Ducklings (9D: Setting for "Make Way for Ducklings" = POND) —

Make Way for Ducklings is an American children's picture book written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey. First published in 1941 by the Viking Press, the book centers on a pair of mallards who raise their brood of ducklings on an island in the lagoon in the Boston Public Garden. It won the 1942 Caldecott Medal for McCloskey's illustrations, executed in charcoal then lithographed on zinc plates. As of 2003, the book had sold over two million copies. The book's popularity led to the construction of a statue by Nancy Schön in the Public Garden of the mother duck and her eight ducklings, which is a popular destination for children and adults alike. In 1991, Barbara Bush gave a duplicate of this sculpture to Raisa Gorbacheva as part of the START Treaty, and the work is displayed in Moscow's Novodevichy Park.

The book is the official children's book of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Praise for the book is still high over 80 years since its first publication, mainly for the enhancing illustrations and effective pacing. The book is popular worldwide.

• • •

While this puzzle is solid in many ways, it's also way too remedial for the NYTXW. If you could see some of the puzzles that the NYT is rejecting these days, you'd be baffled by how something as straightforward and, frankly, stale this got accepted. I was dead certain that someone *must* have done a theme exactly like this before, possibly many times, probably sometime in the early '00s or earlier, and boy was I not wrong. It took me no time at all to find that it had been done at least twice—once by Liz Gorski in 2000, and another time by Stella Zawistowski and Bruce Venzke in 2007. And yes, it's true, most people will not remember that far back, but I know many constructors out there, pros and aspiring pros, who work so hard to come up with original themes only to have the vast majority of what they submit get rejected ... and if you're them and you see something like this get published, some little part of you has to be thinking "how? why?" Again, it is not a badly made puzzle. It's not terribly imaginative, but it's coherent, and the grid is notably clean and solid. But the revealer is a total letdown—completely unnecessary, in fact—and the only way this puzzle distinguishes itself from its predecessors (beyond the unnecessary revealer) is that it has five themers instead of four. The answers are slightly different—KITTEN HEEL is a new one, and this one lacks the CUB REPORTER that the others had (which was the first alternative theme answer I thought of, along with KIT CARSON and maybe, I dunno, pick a KID any KID: Cudi? Charlemagne? Rock? Ew, not Rock. But you get the idea). But on the whole this is just a barely warmed-over theme that was only so-so to begin with. All you gotta do is search your prospective theme answers in the database to see if they've been used before, and if so, in what capacity. If you find someone has done your theme before, but yours offers something really fresh and new, that's OK. Otherwise, go back to the drawing board.

[R.I.P., Brian Wilson]

What was interesting about looking back at earlier puzzles with this theme was the JOEY evolution. Solving Downs-only, I got the JOEY part pretty quickly, and I really thought the answer was going to be JOEY RAMONE (used once before, in a Tim Croce themeless, 2013). He's an iconic figure of '70s punk. But then OFF-DUTY (21D: Not working, as a police officer) gave me the "F" and made me remember JOEY FATONE, as well as this JOEY FATONE-themed die-cast metal hotrod I bought at Toys 'R' Us around the turn of the century for $1.18, Why!? 

Annnnnyway, after I was done, I searched JOEY FATONE to see if I could find out if this theme had been done before that way, but no: this is in fact a debut for Mr. Fatone's full name! Next I searched CHICK FLICK, and that's how I found the first version of this theme (2000). That puzzle also used Joey, but a different Joey: JOEY BISHOP. So this puzzle gets some credit for finding a more modern JOEY, and yet ... JOEY FATONE is about as "modern" now as JOEY BISHOP was in 2000, i.e. not terribly modern. The 2007 incarnation of this puzzle went with JOEY LAWRENCE, which, for its time period, is probably the most "modern" Joey of the bunch. Weird to me that none of these puzzles went with JOEY RAMONE, which, for me, is the best Joey option. The point is, there is no cultural consensus on who is the go-to Joey at this point in time. Not an issue you ever thought you'd find yourself considering, is it?

Another weird thing I discovered is that CHICK FLICK had a twenty-four (24!)-year hiatus before today's appearance. That seems very long. Actually, it got used in the plural in that 2007 version of this puzzle, but still, that's eighteen years. I would've expected an answer that colloquial and rhyming and bouncy to have snuck its way into some puzzle somewhere—a themeless, if nowhere else. Maybe people shy away from it because it sounds a bit derogatory, and certainly has been used by men that way for decades. I wouldn't normally use the term, for that reason, but I kinda like it as a phrase. It's got some life, some pizzazz. The other theme answers are fine as standalone phrases, and the grid overall, as I say, is very smooth, with a bunch of nice mid-range (6-7-letter) fill. There are real grid skills on display here. I just wish the theme were more ... something. Anything.

Bullet points:

• 30A: Vaccine-approving org. (FDA) — kind of dark, ironic humor here, having "Vaccine-approving" and RFK in the same grid (5D: ___ Stadium, former D.C. sports venue)
• 35A: Slanted edges, as on mirrors (BEVELS) — good word. Solving this Downs-only, I needed every cross but the "V" before I could guess it, which reminded me of that time (a long long time ago) when I faced a similar letter pattern in a crossword (BE-EL) and the clue was something like [Chisel face] or [Gem holder] and I thought "huh, must be BEVEL and the answer ended up being BEZEL, a word I'd never seen before in my life. Seems like kind of a cruel joke that one of the definitions of BEZEL is "A groove or flange designed to hold a beveled edge, as of a gem" (wordnik). Anyway, that "V" was crucial in my being able to get ADHESIVE (10D: Sticky stuff), the only Down that required multiple passes. Well, the only one besides ...
• 7D: Outset (GET-GO) — I had INTRO
• 23D: Bird whose name sounds like a letter of the alphabet (JAY) — first instinct here was the most common of three-letter birds: EMU. But that ... sounds like two letters of the alphabet (Roman, Greek), not one.  

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Here are the grids from those 2000 and 2007 puzzles that have this same theme, for comparison (both images taken from xwordinfo)

[Gorski, 2000]

[Zawistowski / Venzke, 2007]

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Portmanteau drinking hangouts / SUN 6-15-25 / Hit 1981 German language film / Thawb-wearing leaders / Grasslike marsh plant / Nail polish brand with a "Wicked"-inspired collection / Comparatively upper-crust, in a way / Figure with an eponymous fire / Five-time world chess champion Viswanathan "Vishy" / University whose name sounds like a kind of highway / Scenario for a software developer

Constructor: Adam Wagner and Rebecca Goldstein

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Tossing and Turning" — themers have two clues; the first one is literal (enter the answer normally) and the second can only be understood if you read the answer INSIDE OUT AND BACKWARDS (9D: How a shirt might be put on in a rush ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)—that is, backwards, with one of the letters in the word "INSIDE" (found in a circled square in each themer) taken "out" ... the circled squares spell out "INSIDE" if you read top to bottom along the left side of the grid and bottom to top along the right:

Theme answers:

• NETI POT (23A: Device used to clear out nasal passages / Final part of a radio countdown (i.e. Top Ten))
• DNA BANKS (36A: Genetic repositories / Reel Big Fish or Sublime (i.e. ska band))
• DAS BOOT (54A: Hit 1981 German language film / "What a shame!" (i.e. "too bad!"))
• DIET TIPS (80A: Offering from Healthline / Roasting on an open fire, maybe (i.e. spitted))
• BARCADES (98A: Portmanteau drinking hangouts / Marine crustacean (i.e. sea crab))
• WASPIER (115A: Comparatively upper-crust, in a way / Wood cutter (i.e. rip saw))

• ROMAINE (118A: Component of a Caesar salad / Captivate (i.e. enamor))
• TENSPEED (101A: Like some bikes / Sunken, as the eyes (i.e. deep-set))
• T.S. ELIOT (84A: Pioneer in Modernist poetry / Throne (i.e. toilet))
• SIGNORAS (58A: Women abroad / Wrapped garments (i.e. sarongs))
• TRADES ON (40A: Takes advantage of / Decoration painted on many a W.W. II aircraft (i.e. nose art)
• OMELETS (25A: Brunch entrees / Figure with an eponymous fire (i.e. St. Elmo))

Word of the Day: TODAY (81D: Program that debuted a little before "The Tonight Show," appropriately) —

Today (also called The Today Show) is an American morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It was the first of its genre on American television and in the world, and after 73 years of broadcasting it is fifth on the list of longest-running American television series.

Originally a two-hour program airing weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., it expanded to Sundays in 1987 and Saturdays in 1992. The weekday broadcast expanded to three hours in 2000, and to four hours in 2007 (though over time, the third and fourth hours became distinct entities). Today's dominance was virtually unchallenged by the other networks until the late 1980s, when it was overtaken by ABC's Good Morning America.

Today retook the Nielsen ratings lead the week of December 11, 1995, and held onto that position for 852 consecutive weeks until the week of April 9, 2012, when Good Morning America topped it again. Today maintained its No. 2 status behind GMA from the summer of 2012 until it regained the lead in the aftermath of anchor Matt Lauer's departure in November 2017. (wikipedia)

• • •

Architecturally impressive, but not terribly fun to solve. The secondary clues just made everything too easy. I often didn't even look at the forward-facing clue, finding it weirdly easier to get some crosses and then solve the backward, circle-less version of the clue. As for the gimmick itself, it really didn't take long to pick up at all. I got NETIPOT without really noticing what was going on with the clues. I got the theme with the next themer I encountered, but only because the band name Reel Big Fish really caught my attention. Not exactly a household name, but I'd heard of them. I wanted that answer to end with BANDS, but then, for some reason, I actually looked *back* at the full clue for NETIPOT, noticed that the second clue ([Final part of a radio countdown]) was NETIPOT backwards minus the circled "I"—i.e., TOP TEN—and then applied the same logic to the Reel Big Fish clue; *that's* when I saw that "BAND" was heading backward—DNA BANKS in one direction, SKA BAND in the other. After that, I didn't need the actual revealer. I had the gimmick concept, and all themers were twice as easy to get thereafter as they would've been in a simple single-clue situation. 

As for that revealer, it's cute. Take the letters spelled out by the circled letters, i.e. "INSIDE," out of the puzzle, then read the resulting answers backwards, and you get the correct answer to the second half of all the themer clues. I don't really understand why INSIDE is running up the right half of the grid "backwards." That's an extra flourish that doesn't really have anything to do with solving the themers. The "backwards" part obviously applies to how you read each individual theme answer, so the "backwards" INSIDE ... is an add-on. A doubling up of the significance of "backwards" I guess. I also don't fully understand the title, which doesn't really evoke what's going on with the theme at all. The "Turning" I get, but not the "Tossing" so much. Nothing's being scrambled or anagrammed, so I'm not sure what the "Tossing" part is supposed to signify [update: as I was making the coffee just now, I suddenly realized that “Tossing” meant “getting rid of,”which is of course what you have to do to the circled letters to understand the backwards answers—so the title is good, I apologize]. I don't think I've ever put a shirt on INSIDE OUT AND BACKWARDS in my life—doing either one of those things would be highly unusual; doing both, nearly impossible. But sure, it could happen. [Full disclosure: my first stab at the revealer was INSIDE OUT AND OUTSIDE IN (it fit!?)].  I admire the complexity of the theme, but as I say, the whole thing just lacked a certain sense of mystery and fun once I grasped the concept. Too easy too easy too easy. But, admittedly, a genuine marvel, architecturally.

Almost no black ink on my puzzle print-out, which means hardly any trouble spots. I had trouble with HEAVIES because (as you can see) I had ARNOLD before AHNOLD, so didn't have the "H" for HEAVIES. Also, I don't know that meaning of HEAVIES. To me, "HEAVIES" are the villains in a story or movie, whereas "heavy-hitters" are [Big, important people, informally]. Weird. I somehow managed to remember NIECY, which was my big pop culture victory for the day. Definitely learned her from crosswords (11D: Actress Nash of "Never Have I Ever"). Never heard of Viswanathan "Vishy" ANAND (34A: Five-time world chess champion Viswanathan "Vishy" ___)). Again with the chess, ugh. Bah. PAH. Totally overrepresented in the puzzle, relative to general interest. A lot of you complain about "rappers" in the puzzle, but those "rappers" are usually exceedingly famous, whereas even the most famous chess player (besides maybe Bobby Jones [sorry, Fischer], or Magnus Carlsen) is not even NIECY Nash levels of famous. Oh, wait, Kasparov! And Spassky! OK, maybe I know more chess players than I thought. To be very fair to this "Vishy" person, he's clearly a huge deal ... in chess. But ... shrug. To me, that's like being a huge deal in luge. I just have no idea. 

Also never heard of BARCADES, which sounds terrible, in that the last thing I want to hear when I'm drinking is the sound of an arcade ... or any sound, frankly, beyond the murmur of background conversations and occasional tinkling of ice in glasses (98A: Portmanteau drinking hangouts). Maybe some jazz, not too loud. Arcade!? Hell no. Not drinking there.

[The perfect bar. Whiskey, cheap sandwiches, and not an arcade in sight]

USECASE is a super boring and ugly answer (16D: Scenario for a software developer). Most of the rest of the grid is pretty clean and well constructed, though. No real highlights for me (except maybe TEA SNOB ... a type of person I've never met) (I know some TEA aficionados, but none of them strike me as "snobs"). If you want very deeply informed, well-written essays on tea, with no snobbery whatsoever, I recommend Max Falkowitz's newsletter, Leafhopper. I subscribe, and I don't even drink that much tea (though I drink more than before I started reading). Coffee is a love affair I can't seem to break off. I've tried. No luck. I'm a more controlled drinker now. No coffee past 9am. I just can't give up the ritual. It's too important to my sense of the day, to my sense of the day's beginning. It's a thing I do, carefully, slowly, deliberately, with my cats. It's honestly the closest I'll ever come to being Philip Marlowe (OK, I'm conflating book-Marlowe and movie-Marlowe here; the former is fastidious about coffee, the latter has a cat ... basically, I'm Every Marlowe (it's all in me)).

How much do I love Marlowe (all the Marlowes)? And cats? I just bought this limited edition print (by Brianna Ashby) which I will have framed and then prominently display in my office, or possibly my kitchen:

["I Got a Cat" (Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973))]]

Bullets:

• 1A: "Oh, fiddlesticks!" ("AW, DARN!") — not a huge fan of these ambiguous and contrived exclamations: some combo of "oh" or "aw" and then "rats" or "dang" or "darn" (and maybe others I'm forgetting). This is only the second "AW, DARN!" Looks like we've had four "OH, DARN!"s, three "OH, RATS!," five "AW, RATS!," etc. Mix and match
• 72A: Actress Sink of "Stranger Things" (SADIE) — it's a hard name to forget. Born in 2002, she's been acting since she was ten (lead in Annie) and just this year got a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a play for her lead role in John Proctor Is the Villain.

• 52A: Thawb-wearing leaders (EMIRS) — got this from "leaders." Never heard of a "thawb," which is the "long-sleeved, ankle-length robe." Perhaps unshockingly, THAWB (5) has never appeared in the NYTXW. But now we all know it, so ... why not? Sure. Go ahead.
• 100A: Film studio with a tower that beeped out "V for Victory" during W.W. II (RKO) — it's not a big deal, but something about the way this clue dupes the idea of "V"-as-symbol irritated me (see 7A: Peace symbol = V-SIGN) 
• 125A: How the U.S. has existed since its inception (IN DEBT) — a real awkward clue. I guess it's true. I mean, here we are, it's in the puzzle, so I assume it's true. But the phrasing is still unnatural. [What the U.S. has been since its inception] reads more naturally. You are (or you aren't) IN DEBT. You don't "exist in debt."
• 76A: No man's land? (ISLET) — is the idea that tiny islands are frequently uninhabited? Looks like yes, they most commonly are not big enough or don't have enough vegetation to support human habitation. I wasn't aware that ISLET had a precise definition. I thought it was just vaguely "small." But the World Landforms website (!!) says very clearly: "An islet landform is generally considered to be a rock or small island that has little vegetation and cannot sustain human habitation." So the clue is definitionally accurate. And I learned something, hurray.

The Westwords Crossword Tournament, which debuted to great acclaim last year, is coming up again next week: Sunday, Jun. 22, 2025. Solvers can compete in person or online. Here's the blurb! 

Registration is open for the Westwords Crossword Tournament, which will be held on Sunday, June 22. This event will be both In-Person (in Berkeley, CA) and Online. Online solvers can compete individually or in pairs. To register, to see the constructor roster, and for more details, go to www.westwordsbestwords.com.

See you next time...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Hedgehog-like mammal of Madagascar / SAT 6-14-25 / Grocery store surname / Film lover's haven, in brief / Relative of a skeleton / Singer with the 1991 autobiography "I Put a Spell on You" / Glass holding about three pints of ale

Constructor: Barbara Lin

Relative difficulty: Easy + TENREC (!?)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TENREC (15A: Hedgehog-like mammal of Madagascar) —

A tenrec (/ˈtɛnrɛk/) is a mammal belonging to any species within the afrotherian family Tenrecidae, which is endemic to Madagascar. Tenrecs are a very diverse group, as a result of adaptive radiation, and exhibit convergent evolution, some resemble hedgehogs, shrews, opossums, rats, and mice. They occupy aquatic, arboreal, terrestrial, and fossorial environments. Some of these species, including the greater hedgehog tenrec, can be found in the Madagascar dry deciduous forests. However, the speciation rate in this group has been higher in humid forests.

All tenrecs are believed to descend from a common ancestor that lived 29–37 million years ago after rafting over from Africa. The split from their closest relatives, African otter shrews, is estimated to have occurred about 47–53 million years ago. (wikipedia)

• • •

One of those puzzles where all I really remember is one word. That word is TENREC. Six random letters, as far as I can tell. Never heard of it, no way to infer any of it. This would've been ... maybe not fine, but tolerable, if all the crosses had been clear, and maybe they were to you, but that last one, that "C" cross, was not (at all) clear to me. I assume the referent for CROCKER is Betty ("Don't Call Me BETTE") CROCKER. It would never have occurred to me to think of (Betty) CROCKER as a [Grocery store surname]. That's like cluing KING as a [Bookstore surname]. CROCKER is a name you might find *in* a grocery store, just as (Stephen) KING is a name you might find *in* a bookstore, but [Grocery store surname] really does imply that the name of the grocery store will feature someone's surname. Like ALBERTSON, say (founded by Joe Albertson in Boise, ID in 1939). Here's the funny thing. Well, not haha funny, but "funny" in the sense of "nearly wrecked my puzzle"—I spent most of the '90s in Michigan, where the primary grocery store chain was KROGER, which, today, I inconveniently misremembered as KROEGER, which, like KROGER, is a German surname (variant of "Kruger"). So my TENREC was a TENREK for a little bit (funny (again, not haha) story: TENREK is the German spelling of TENREC, though I sure didn't know that, having never heard of the damn thing in the first place). TENREK / KROEGER would've been a proper German crossing. Problem: the "E" and "G" from KROEGER wouldn't work, and that's what eventually saved me, though I still left the TENRE- / -ROCKER square blank until the very end, then ran the alphabet to make sure nothing else made any real sense except CROCKER. You'd think I'd be mad at TENREC for being the obscure mystery word, but I'm not. I'm mad at that absurd clue on CROCKER. And at the fact that this one crossing pretty obscured anything else that might have been happening in the rest of this puzzle (which was, unlike TENREC/CROCKER, overwhelmingly easy).

[Please enjoy this footage of men being extremely horny for cakes]

There were a few other moments that stood out enough for me to find them comment-worthy. I completely no-looked FRIENDLY REMINDER. Still haven't looked at the clue, as I type this sentence. I drove so many crosses through the answer that by the time I went to look at it, it was already about a third filled in, and those letters (which included the "NDL" and most of the back end) were enough to make FRIENDLY REMINDER obvious. Gonna look at the clue now: 36A: Gentle nudge. Sure, that seems accurate. There were two EYEs in this puzzle (RED EYE / SNAKE EYES), and while two eyes might be standard for humans and many other of God's creatures, in a grid it's un...sightly. A conspicuous dupe. Boo. Also boo to exhumed crosswordese like ELIA and ERST. Unlike yesterday's puzzle, this one didn't seem so polished around the edges. I mean, "PAH!"? I say "Bah" to that answer (I actually had "HAH" in there at first) (5D: "As if!"). Never heard of GOTCHA DAY. Do people really celebrate that anniversary? I loved my dogs Something Awful, but I have only a vague sense of when they were adopted. Time of the year, I could tell you that. Actually, my chocolate lab came from a breeder so there were probably papers, but shrug. Gabby was a total last-minute decision when my friend went to pick up her chocolate lab puppy and said "you know, there are still a couple unclaimed..." And yoink, just like that, I had a second dog. What a sweetie. Crap, where was I? Oh right, never heard of GOTCHA DAY. Not mad at it, just took a while to parse. I LOL'd at GALUMPHED, what an ungainly, ugly, but also kind of magnificent word (32A: Moved clumsily). Might be the highlight of the puzzle for me. That, and NINA SIMONE.

[Singer with the 1991 autobiography "I Put a Spell on You"]

More:

• 1A: Go over lines, say (READ PALMS) — good clue. Fooled me, though my wrong assumption (that the word started with the prefix "RE-") ended up yielding quick dividends ("ROGER" and ENOLA, specifically) (1D: "I got you" / 2D: Sleuth Holmes).
• 26A: Film lover's haven, in brief (TMC) — there's only one "film lover's haven" on television and it's TCM (Turner Classic Movies). Still don't know what The Movie Channel is or who (in the world) makes it their "haven." Whereas TCM fans ... have you met them? They're ... avid.
• 40A: Relative of a skeleton (LUGE) — "skeleton" would've been my Word of the Day were it not for the pesky TENREC. It's just another kind of racing sled.
• 12D: Sticky-footed amphibians (TREE TOADS) — another answer that gummed things up a bit in the TENREC / CROCKER area. I wrote in TREE FROGS, which are also "Sticky-footed amphibians."
• 45D: Warmly welcome at the door (SEE IN) — reminded me of this WSJ article I read yesterday on the new prevalence of the greeting "welcome in" (used, apparently, with increasing frequency at various retail establishments, to the annoyance of people who (like me?) hate the "off-putting faux-warmth" of retailspeak) (h/t to Jesse Sheidlower for the link).
• 36D: Oldest sports franchise that has never won a championship in the "Big Four" leagues (N.F.L., N.B.A., M.L.B., N.H.L.) — used to love their helmets, back when I really cared about football (i.e. in elementary school). Got a whole set of football helmet magnets from IHOP when I was like 9 and I cannot overstate how much those magnets solidified my understanding of the league and its iconography. I can still feel those damn things. In the olden days, we didn't have "devices," so we had to play with refrigerator magnets for fun. It was that or hoop rolling. And we were happy.

Have fun and stay safe at your various "No Kings Day" demonstrations today. Here's some more NINA SIMONE, for inspiration. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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