Jörmungandr, in Norse mythology / FRI 1-17-25 / First capital of Alaska / Shakespearean counterpart to Logan on "Succession" / Milling byproduct / Borg who co-founded the Institute for Women in Technology / First Pixar film with a female protagonist / 2011 hit by Jay-Z and Kanye West that samples a 1966 soul performance

Constructor: Willa Angel Chen Miller

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: CALL option (18A: ___ option) —

In finance, a call option, often simply labeled a "call", is a contract between the buyer and the seller of the call option to exchange a security at a set price. The buyer of the call option has the right, but not the obligation, to buy an agreed quantity of a particular commodity or financial instrument (the underlying) from the seller of the option at or before a certain time (the expiration date) for a certain price (the strike price). This effectively gives the buyer a long position in the given asset. The seller (or "writer") is obliged to sell the commodity or financial instrument to the buyer if the buyer so decides. This effectively gives the seller a short position in the given asset. The buyer pays a fee (called a premium) for this right. The term "call" comes from the fact that the owner has the right to "call the stock away" from the seller.

• • •

[48D]

When I solve themeless puzzles, I put a premium on the longer answers, the marquee answers. These are the things you seed the grid with, your deliberate choices (in themed puzzles, it's the themers that seed the grid). So most longer answers are there because you really want them to be there. This is why I don't understand a puzzle like today's. With the exception of the SE corner, which had a nice pair of complementary colloquial marquees (NOT A LITTLE, GOOD ENOUGH), and SHAVED HEADS, which I liked for highly personal reasons (I shaved mine just last night!), I don't get actually wanting most of these long answers in your grid. UBER RATING is probably a debut, but as I've said a million times, Not All Debuts Are Good. I've seen a number of UBER answers and this has to be the most boring. (I know UBER's not paying the NYTXW, but sometimes it feels that way). And I practically fell asleep in the middle of writing BOARD SEATS ("seatszzzzz...") and DIRECT DEPOSIT. GRANDCHILD and SEA MONSTER are fine, but not headliner stuff. I like NO GREAT SHAKES as an answer, but today it takes us into triple-negative territory with the marquees, as we already have NOT A LITTLE, and "IT'S NOT A RACE" (which is the real problem, that duped "NOT A" being rather conspicuous today). There just wasn't enough zing here. BOARD SEATS, oof, more like "bored seats." It's a thing, but not a thing that livens up a grid. Not bad, this one, just bland.

The puzzle was very easy, so I didn't have much time to dwell on my disappointment. There were several things I didn't know, but the surrounding fill filled itself in so quickly that I blew right through every roadblock. ONE is a horizontal line in Chinese writing? Crosses say "yes," so yes. ANITA Borg is somebody? (14D: Borg who co-founded the Institute for Women in Technology). Kinda sounds familiar. Sure, why not? Crosses say "yes," so yes. Same with Douglas Carter BEANE (38A: Playwright/screenwriter Douglas Carter ___). He has written (or worked on) the book for big Broadway adaptations of movies like Sister Act and Xanadu. It's true he is a screenwriter, but I only see a single credit on his wikipedia page (To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)). He has had a big successful career, but I feel less bad not knowing him after reading his cv. Not sure how I'd know his name from any of it. Did you know who wrote the book for Sister Act? If so, congrats. Anyway, BEANE was a name, a worthy name I didn't know, and it only held me up for a few seconds, so no biggie. The one answer that really had me going "???? is that right?" was 18A: ___ option (CALL). Is that some kind of Wall St. / stock exchange term? Or poker slang? Well, I looked it up (as you can see—see Word of the Day above), and my eyes glazed over the same way they did with BOARD SEATS and DIRECT DEPOSIT (and IPO, frankly). My first guess was (roughly) correct. Commodities trading. I'm sure these answers are getting someone excited, but it ain't me.

Toughest part of the puzzle today was SUSSing out "IT'S NOT A RACE!" (6D: "Take your time!"). The clue is a totally non-judgmental, reassuring statement, whereas the answer is a highly judgmental substitute for "slow the f*** down!" so the cluing, needless to say, did not really work for me. I (mentally) tried a bunch of "IT'S NO —" answers, then at some point (literally) tried "IT'S NOT A RUSH!" before I finally arrived at the correct answer. On its own, it's a good answer. With that clue, and amid two other "NO/NOT" marquee answers, it loses some of its luster. I also struggled ("struggled") with GRANDCHILD because I weirdly insisted on making her a GRANDNIECE at first (going with NIECE of CHILD in this circumstance is an obvious symptom of Crossword Brain—NIECE beats CHILD 257 to 52 in overall crossword appearances, because of its preponderance of common letters, so the NIECE reflex just kicked in—never mind that GRANDCHILD is a thousand times more common a term than GRANDNIECE. Then there was the Great GRAHAME Spelling Adventure. I think my first pass looked something like GRAEHAM. Again, crosses ultimately made this problem insignificant.

Bullets:

• 19A: Narrow passage: Abbr. (STR.) — short for "strait" (a (relatively) "narrow" waterway)
• 35A: First Pixar film with a female protagonist (BRAVE) — first thought: Finding Nemo! But Nemo is not "female." I'm just remembering Ellen Degeneres's prominent role (as Dory, the blue tang with short-term memory loss)
• 39A: First capital of Alaska (SITKA) — flexed my crosswordese muscle here. I would've said "you used to see this a lot more in the olden days," but I just looked at its frequency chart and honestly, it appears as much now (infrequently, but regularly) as it ever did. Oddly, no significant abatement in the modern era (not so with most answers I'd tag as "crosswordese"). 
• 50A: 2011 hit by Jay-Z and Kanye West that samples a 1966 soul performance ("OTIS") — never heard of this "hit," got it entirely from the helpful "1966 soul performance" part:

• 48D: ___ Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature (OLGA) — absolutely loved Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I've got Empusium sitting here on my (figurative) to-read pile. I'll get to it right after I finish this first book in the Reykjavik Noir trilogy by Lilja Sigurðardóttir (Snare) ... and the next book in the magnificent 10-book Martin Beck series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (I'm up to number 6: Murder at the Savoy) ... and Box Office Poison and Miss May Does Not Exist and and and. But I will get to it. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Last week during my yearly fundraising drive I decided to add Zelle as a payment method on the last day, which worked fine ... until it didn't. Several contributions were mysteriously rejected. It is not a big deal, but if you contributed that way, it's possible it didn't go through (this applies to only like a dozen of you). The problem was on my end ("MY BAD!"). I apologize. The bank and I have spoken. I should have the kinks ironed out for next year. For now, it's still just PayPal, Venmo, and snail mail. Thanks! 

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Cornhole action / THU 1-16-25 / What follows T.S.A., weirdly / Sent a reminder text, in lingo / Gaming ___ (console alternatives, for short) / Part of a makeup routine / Something a meter reader reads? / Word that becomes its own synonym if you add a 'k" to the end / Affirmation not usually spoken at a Jewish wedding / First half of a two-volume encyclopedia on physics, aptly?

Constructor: Rebecca Goldstein and Adam Wagner

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: COMMON CORE (52A: Set of educational standards ... or a hint to 17-, 23-, 34- and 46-Across) — theme answers are double-clued and look like nonsense but make sense once you realize they all have COMMON COREs; that is, they are really two answers that overlap (all letters except the first letter of the first answer and the last letter of the second answer overlap)

Theme answers:

• MOBSCENEST(17A: Brouhahas / Most appalling) [mob scene + obscenest]
• EDNAMODEL (23A: "The Incredibles" costumer / Science class display) [Edna Mode + DNA model]
• CLOSESHOPE (34A: Lock up for the night / Despairs) [close shop + loses hope]
• APRESSKIT (46A: Like some activities at a mountain lodge / Marketing fodder) [après-ski + press kit]

Word of the Day: COMMON CORE (52A) —

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, also known as simply Common Core, was an American, multi-state educational initiative begun in 2010 with the goal of increasing consistency across state standards, or what K–12 students throughout the United States should know in English language arts and mathematics at the conclusion of each school grade. The initiative was sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The initiative also sought to provide states and schools with articulated expectations around the skills students graduating from high school needed in order to be prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two- or four-year college programs or to enter the workforce.

• • •

[37D: Housing bubble?]

I enjoyed this, but on some literal level it doesn't quite work, spatially. Or ... what I mean is the two overlapping theme answers don't actually have a common core. The whole (nonsense) answer has a core (everything but the first and last letters) that belongs to both answer parts, so the CORE of the (nonsense) answer is held in COMMON by both overlapping answers, so ... OK maybe it does work. But the phrase COMMON CORE suggests the two (non-nonsense) answers have their cores in common, and they don't. I think the fact that the revealer, COMMON CORE, requires that I take the nonsense total answer as my frame of reference for the "core" part is what's throwing me. Anyway, the core of What I Write In The Grid is held in common by both answer parts ... yes, when I say it that way, it makes sense. Anyway, I liked this, though it was very easy, as you have two different ways to come at each themer (obviously). Double-clued, double-easy. I was like "well her name is EDNA MODE ... not EDNA MODEL ... although she does work in fashion, so maybe "MODEL" is related to that ... somehow ... no, wait, "Science class display" ... that's DNA MODEL ... OK, so they overlap. Huh. I wonder why." And that was my understanding of the theme until I hit the revealer down below. Sometimes on Thursdays, if the theme isn't apparent to me quickly, I'll hunt down the revealer to see if I can get a grip, but today, I had the concept quickly, so I just waited for the revealer to reveal itself naturally, in the normal course of solving, so that it could do its job, i.e. make me go "oh!" or "aha!" or "good one" or whatever. That mostly worked today. My reaction to COMMON CORE maybe didn't reach "oh!" or "aha!" or "good one" levels, but I think that's a fine way to make sense of what's going on in the themers (despite my real-time convoluted thinking at the beginning of this paragraph).

The fill on this one ran pretty easy. Crossing a gaming term with a makeup term at 1A/1D seemed like a hostile way to greet me, specifically (1A: Gaming ___ (console alternatives, for short) / 1D: Part of a makeup routine), but after that, nothing gave me much trouble at all. I though the soft drink named for a nut was actually the name of the nut (KOLA), and then there was the DANG / DAMN / DRAT / DARN hyperkealoa* at 40D: "Phooey!" crossing the BRUH / BRAH / BRUV hyperkealoa* at 50A: "My man!" And yes, BRUH, BRAH, and BRUV have all made NYTXW appearances in recent years. Did you know that on Friday, Aug. 11, 1972, BRUH was clued as [Macaque of the West Indies]!? And then (understandably) was not heard from again for 51 years, when it reappeared as this "bro" equivalent? You probably did not know that, it would be weird if you did. But it's true. BRUV is British, by the way, and likely to be clued that way in a crossword situation. But back to trouble spots ... just TROOPS, really (29D: North Korea has the fourth-highest number of these, after China, India and the U.S.). "Troop" has always been weird to me, in that I think of it primarily as a group noun (i.e. "troop" = group of soldiers), but then it's also the word for an individual soldier. They coulda made things clearer, honestly. Anyway, TROOPS was not the countable noun I was looking for. Oh, and I had NUDGED instead of PINGED at first (39A: Sent a reminder text, in lingo). The "reminder" bit suggested that somebody needed to be "nudged" into action; PINGED seems more neutral, i.e. it has no particular "reminding" connotations (to me).

Bullets:

• 21A: First half of a two-volume encyclopedia on physics, aptly? (ATOM) — I legit thought "aw that's cute" as I wrote this in. ATOM ... A-TO-M ... good one.
• 30A: Singer/songwriter Reznor (TRENT) — a gimme for any Gen Xer. I think of these days as primarily a composer. With collaborator Atticus Ross, he has two Academy Awards for Best Score (The Social Network, Soul) and an Emmy for Outstanding Musical Composition (Watchmen). Most recently, he and Ross did the music for Challengers (2024).

• 45A: Cornhole action (TOSS) — will admit my first reaction to this was a very Beavis & Butt-Heady "uh......" But it's just the beanbag TOSS game. Of course it's just the beanbag TOSS game. (If you have strict "breakfast test" rules re: the crossword, then definitely do not look at this definition of "cornhole")
• 49A: Affirmation not usually spoken at a Jewish wedding ("I DO!") — I don't think I knew this. And I've been to a Jewish wedding or two. Huh. Live and learn (and maybe pay closer attention next time)
• 8D: Something a meter reader reads? (POEM) — lol leave it to me to stumble over the one clue that is explicitly about my actual job. The second half of my Brit Lit I class covers meter in depth and yet today I was like "so ... someone who stares at a literal yardstick? No wait ... what's the word for a metric yardstick?"
• 42D: Button clicked to advance to a YouTube video (“SKIP AD”) — yes, I too wondered what a SKI PAD was, for a second…
• 56A: What follows T.S.A., weirdly (PRE) — "weirdly" because "PRE" is a prefix meaning "before," so it shouldn't follow anything. But it does. Here:

• 34D: Something to put stock in (CONSOMMÉ) — sincerely read this as [Something to put a sock in] and my only guess was "... 'IT'?"
• 53D: Word that becomes its own synonym if you add a 'k" to the end (MAR) — my eyes glazed over around "synonym" and I was like "nope" and just got this one from crosses. There's really no other way to come at an answer like this. What, are you gonna sit there all day thinking about every three- and four-letter answer in the language? No. I mean, I hope not.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Last week during my yearly fundraising drive I decided to add Zelle as a payment method on the last day, which worked fine ... until it didn't. Several contributions were mysteriously rejected. It is not a big deal, but if you contributed that way, it's possible it didn't go through (this applies to only like a dozen of you). The problem was on my end ("MY BAD!"). I apologize. The bank and I have spoken. I should have the kinks ironed out for next year. For now, it's still just PayPal, Venmo, and snail mail. Thanks!

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] => ATON or ALOT, ["Git!"] => "SHOO" or "SCAT," etc.  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Show where the term "Debbie Downer" originated, in brief / WED 1-15-2025 / Fashion photographer Richard / Popular wine from Bordeaux / Mess kitchen implement

Constructor: Parker Higgins

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Common "X for Y" phrases are re-parsed so the verbs become nouns

Theme answers:

• [Look for trouble] for STINK EYE
  • "Look" as in "facial expression"
• [Good for nothing] for FREEBIE
  • "Good" as in "item you can buy"
• [Open for business] for DEAR SIR OR MADAM
  • "Open" as in "the opening of a letter"
• [Fit for a king] for REGALIA
  • "Fit" as in "outfit" (this might be a more modern term, see, e.g. "fit check"
• [Run for the hills] for SKI SLOPE
  • "Run" as in "stretch of land"

Word of the Day: PEORIA (Illinois city whose name serves as shorthand for mainstream taste) —

Peoria is a city in and the county seat of Peoria County, Illinois, United States. Located on the Illinois River, the city had a population of 113,150 as of the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in Illinois. 

The city is associated with the phrase "Will it play in Peoria?", which may have originated from the vaudeville era and is often spuriously attributed to Groucho Marx. [wiki]

• • •

Good morning everyone! Malaika here, for a slightly delayed Malaika MWednesday. I solved this puzzle while listening to Waxahatchee's new album-- I recommend for fans of Joni Mitchell, the Indigo Girls, etc.

What a treat to open the crossword app and see Parker's name! From my experience with his puzzles, he is really excellent at wordplay that is a little more clever than the average puzzle, while still being ultimately fun to solve (as opposed to an opportunity for the constructor to show off). Although, outside of the theme, Parker did show off a little bit here, by including pairs of fun, long down answers that had nothing to do with the theme: PREBOARDED, MINIWHEATS, BREAKS EVEN, and SCAVENGERS. This is tricky to do when the down entries have to cross through two theme answers (FREEBIE and OR MADAM on the right, and DEAR SIR and REGALIA on the left), but he pulled it off very cleanly. It's a nice touch in a puzzle where the theme answers themselves are shorter than the standard.

It's impressive to have a set of five symmetrical theme answers that totally nail the re-parsing, and I wonder if Parker had a list of fifty of these from which he plucked the best ones. I don't find any of these stretchy, although I am very used to using "fit" as a noun. I'm not sure if that is new slang or something that's been around for a while, but I have only heard it starting around 2019, so others who do not have a Gen Z younger sister constantly keeping them up-to-date on what the youths are saying might not be familiar. I do think my favorite here is [Good for nothing], because I think it's funny to imagine someone giving me something for free and me screaming "Good for nothing!!" at them.

Shoutout to my Gen Z Sister whose face I will not post without permission

There were a couple of proper nouns I wasn't familiar with here. PEORIA and AVEDON both required every single crossing for me to get, as I've never heard of either before. If someone didn't know RAMI Malek or the phrase TETE-a-TETE, I could see them getting stuck. PADRE / ARCO also could have been a tough cross, although it wasn't a problem for me.

Outside of the theme, the puzzle is bursting with fun clues. [Got on first?] for PRE-BOARDED is a textbook example of how to elevate a pretty boring entry with an excellent clue. [Gig makeup?] makes you think of a setlist, or even stage makeup, but the answer, MEGS, is referring to megabytes which make up a gigabyte. And [Where you might dress up for a court appearance, informally?] for REN FAIRE is talking about royal court, not a modern-day legal courtroom. I'm sure there were others as well! Let me know your favorites in the comments.

Bullets:

• [Parthenon's place] for ATHENS — I had a history teacher who told us that you can remember Parthenon vs Pantheon by remembering that Italy makes pizzas in pans and thus is home to the Pantheon, and today that helped me with this crossword, so thank you Mr. Bell!
• [One who parties hearty] for RAVER — This struck me as kind of old-fashioned and quaint phrasing when compared with the 22 year olds I know who are going to raves!
• [Triangular pastries] for SAMOSAS — I have seen some publications make an effort to stop indicating the country of origin on many food entries. I think this tends to make the entries a little harder. I've never thought of a samosa as a pastry although I suppose it is! Now I really really want a samosa.
• [Vertex of an infamous triangle] for BERMUDA — I am flying to Bermuda soon and would not like to be reminded of the Bermuda Triangle's existence!!!
• [Parker House products] for ROLLS — If this was on purpose, it is very cute of Parker to sneak his name into the puzzle.

I hope you all have a restful long weekend!

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Signature Caitlin Clark shot, informally / TUE 1-14-25 / Emphasized, textwise / Gaelic language / It locks locks into place / Like the yellow polka dot bikini, in a 1960 #1 novelty song / Quadruple award achievement, informally / Friend of Flower and Thumper

Constructor: Lance Enfinger

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: QUIDDITCH (58A: Game that ends when the snitch is caught ... and whose positions end 17-, 24-, 36- and 48-Across) — a Harry Potter theme 

Theme answers:

• BEEKEEPER (17A: One in charge of a sting operation?)
• WORLD BEATER (24A: Absolute champion)
• ATTENTION-SEEKER (36A: Publicity hound)
• STORMCHASER (48A: Person often flirting with disaster)

Word of the Day: Craters of the Moon National Monument (62A: Home of the Craters of the Moon National Monument (IDAHO)) —

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is a U.S. national monument and national preserve in the Snake River Plain in central Idaho. It is along US 20 (concurrent with US 93 and US 26), between the small towns of Arco and Carey, at an average elevation of 5,900 feet (1,800 m) above sea level.

The Monument was established on May 2, 1924. In November 2000, a presidential proclamation by President Clinton greatly expanded the Monument area. The 410,000-acre National Park Service portions of the expanded Monument were designated as Craters of the Moon National Preserve in August 2002. It spreads across Blaine, Butte, Lincoln, Minidoka, and Power counties. The area is managed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The Monument and Preserve encompass three major lava fields and about 400 square miles (1,000 km²) of sagebrush steppe grasslands to cover a total area of 1,117 square miles (2,893 km²). The Monument alone covers 343,000 acres (139,000 ha). All three lava fields lie along the Great Rift of Idaho, with some of the best examples of open rift cracks in the world, including the deepest known on Earth at 800 feet (240 m). There are excellent examples of almost every variety of basaltic lava, as well as tree molds (cavities left by lava-incinerated trees), lava tubes (a type of cave), and many other volcanic features.

• • •

The fill on this one was pretty bad so I was hoping the theme would amount to something, but it didn't. Even if you somehow remain a superfan of HP, I can't see how this anything but dull work. A hot MEH (puzzles literally and figuratively giving me a lot of MEH lately). After slogging through mediocre fill, laden with repeaters and crosswordese (hi, ERSE, not nice to see you again!), I was hoping the theme would amount to something. And then it was just QUIDDITCH. It's 2025, not 2005, why are we still doing this? I had -DITCH and thought there was some "game" I'd never heard of called LAST DITCH. The only other DITCH game I could think of was "doorbell ditch," which wouldn't fit. (Did you know "Doorbell Ditch" is formally (??) known as "Knock Down Ginger" (!?!), and is also known by dozens of other names, all over the world? Rin-Rin-Raja in Chile!? Bel-Twi in South Korea? Knicky-Knocky-Nine-Doors (exclusively in Durham?)? It's "played" all over the world; much more fun reading the Knock-Down-Ginger wikipedia page than writing about this puzzle, but ... back to it). So, what kind of DITCH, what kind of DITCH? ... oh. That kind of DITCH. The author of the HP books has become, in the past decade, a repulsive purveyor of transphobia, yes, so there's that reason to dislike this puzzle, but the biggest reason to dislike this puzzle is that it's just boring—a theme that might've felt fresh decades ago, but now feels bland. 

[>SITSKI]

Do tennis judges really say "IT'S IN"? Like, the announcer might say that, or you (a non-professional) might say that on the court, but that doesn't feel like an official judge's ruling. Too colloquial. I guess it's the interpretation of their little hand movement: "it's on this side of the line, it's on that side of the line, IT'S IN, it's out." Didn't love the clue, but really really didn't love that we get another "IT'S" phrase on the other side of the grid (???): "IT'S HOT." It's ... tiresome how little the NYTXW seems concerned about flagrant dupes like this. It's not just the "IT'S" repetition, it's the specificity of that repetition, i.e. both times the "IT'S" is the first word in a short two-word phrase, which really calls attention to the similarity, like a siren or a flashing red light. It's annoying. But back to that NW corner, which put me off the puzzle early. IN BOLD is kinda ick. Made ickier by the fact that, like a normal person, I assumed a 6-letter "I" answer for 1D: Emphasized, textwise would be ITALIC. If you're going to *surprise* me with an unexpected answer, that answer should be ... good. IN BOLD ... isn't. Also, that is not how I would spell TEENIE, but if the song spells it that way, I guess there's nothing I can do about it.

Average Tuesday difficulty today, after I put that NW corner together. I couldn't figure out what a TMNT costume would look like. Had the "SHE-" and thought "oh, do the Ninja Turtles wear capes?" So I wrote in SHEET (assuming that that's what you'd use for a cape if you were making your costume at home). SHELL is just ... part of a turtle. Any turtle. No ninjaing required. Did not see SHELL coming. Too obvious, I guess. Elsewhere, you've got your classic BAA/MAA kealoa* there (42A: Barnyard sound), but that shouldn't cause real difficulty. You just gotta wait for the cross. Btw, sheep BAA, goats MAA, that is NYTXW standard. You can be mad about it all you want, but that's just the way it is. No outright mistakes in this one besides ITALIC ... except at 59D: Fossil hunters' project (DIG), where I had the "I" and wrote in RIB. I admit it would be weird to make a single RIB your entire project, but ... I dunno, they made a whole movie about a dinosaur RIB once, so why not? (OK, the bone was technically an "intercostal clavicle," just play along, for once!)

Bullets:

• 16A: Signature Caitlin Clark shot, informally (THREE) — seems weird to call a simple three-pointer a "signature shot." She takes a lot of them, OK. But lots of players take (and make) THREEs. Every day, in every basketball game, you can see people taking (and making) threes. Just 'cause you are good at it doesn't (to me) really make it a "signature" shot. Kareem's skyhook, *that* was a signature shot.

• 21A: It locks locks into place (GEL) — "lock" is way too strong a word to describe what GEL does. I know the wordplay seems fun, "locks locks," I get it, but "locks" conveys something much more secure. In fact, it implies a mechanical device, like a hair clip (or something like it), far more than it does GEL.
• 43A: Challenge for a person drawing lots? (ART TEST) — If you are drawing lots (i.e. a lot), then is the "test" really going to be challenging? Presumably you've practiced. Also, do ART TESTs ... exist? Outside of those weird old ads where you were supposed to draw, like, a turtle, and then send it in to be judged to see if you have "talent" so you could then pay to take some correspondence course? Do you know what I'm talking about? This thing—this is what I think of when I see ART TEST:

[Did a turtle write this puzzle?]

• 3D: Popular Thanksgiving item (SWEET POTATO) — just one? Do you all just have ... a whole-ass SWEET POTATO? I've only ever had them (at Thanksgiving) in mashed form. Not a discrete, singular SWEET POTATO in sight.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Absolutely exhaustive breakdown of the Harry Potter author's descent into anti-trans derangement can be found in this Glamour article. Her earliest comments on the subject of trans people come out sounding almost reasonable, but as time passes, yeesh. It gets ugly. Still, this is the best quote I've read about the situation (esp. the last bit)—from Natalie Wynn (quoted in the Glamour article):

[...] Rowling is still “not the final boss of transphobia.” Wynn explains, “A movement can’t get along without a devil. And across the whole political spectrum, there’s a misogynistic tendency to choose a female devil. Whether it’s Anita Bryant, Hillary Clinton, Marie Antoinette, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or J.K. Rowling.” The real threat to trans people, Wynn says, is the Republican party. Rowling and other TERFs are “useful idiots who put a concerned female face on the patriarchal violence against trans people that will ultimately be enacted by right-wing men.”

• • •

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] => ATON or ALOT, ["Git!"] => "SHOO" or "SCAT," etc.  

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Hangout events for two guy friends / MON 1-13-25 / Digitally make to look younger / Minuscule picture used in spycraft / Disinfectant brand with the tagline "Healthing" / Quality of a statement that feels plausible / Sweetheart, slangily / Restaurant that offers a Mexican Tres Leches stack

Constructor: Adam Levav

Relative difficulty: on the Challenging side for a Monday

THEME: MIDDLE ENGLISH (36A: Tongue of Chaucer ... or what's literally shown in the shaded squares?) — 2nd person pronouns (with their origins in MIDDLE ENGLISH) are embedded in the "middle" of four answers:

Theme answers:

• TRUTHINESS (17A: Quality of a statement that feels plausible)
• FOURTH-YEARS (24A: High school or college seniors, usually)
• BREATHE EASY (47A: Feel relief from anxiety)
• LIGHTHOUSE (57A: Aid in preventing a shipwreck)

Word of the Day: MIDDLE ENGLISH (36A: Tongue of Chaucer ... or what's literally shown in the shaded squares?) —

Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500.^[2] This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with the High and Late Middle Ages.

Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography. Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for the most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, a standard based on the London dialects (Chancery Standard) had become established. This largely formed the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by Early Modern English, which lasted until about 1650. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well my entire Ph.D. dissertation was about MIDDLE ENGLISH literature so you'd think this one would be right up my alley, but no, this didn't work for me. Something about all these pronouns being ... not particularly "Middle." I mean, they have their origins there, but all of these pronouns are going to be most familiar to people from either Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible, both of which are written in what we now refer to as Early Modern English (EMnE). "Thou shalt not...," that's KJV. And as for "thine," I'm guessing that if most people had to quote one line of text that contained "thine," it would be Polonius's line to Laertes in Hamlet: "To thine own self be true" (you use the possessive "thine" instead of "thy" when the subsequent word starts with a vowel, typically). This is a MIDDLE ENGLISH puzzle without anything particularly MIDDLE ENGLISH about it. And why 2nd person pronouns? As opposed to literally any other MIDDLE ENGLISH words? What is the logic there? I just don't get it. I get the visual pun—that the words appear in the "middle" of the longer answers. OK, fine. But THINE THY THEE THOU ... they just don't seem very MIDDLE ENGLISHy. Also, for the record, you need "ye" to complete the 2nd person pronoun set: "ye" is the collective form of "thou"—when you're addressing more than one person: ye. "Ye" does not mean "the," no matter how many "Ye OLDE Shoppe" signs you see. The "y" there is a stand-in for the long lost letter thorn ("Þ, þ"), which was replaced by the digraph "th" during the Early Modern period. But I (seriously) digress.

As a Downs-only solve (which is how I solve Mondays), this had a couple challenging parts, the worst of which was BRO DATES (11D: Hangout events for two guy friends). "Hangout events"? I don't even know what that means. You mean that you, a guy, are meeting other guys ... to hang out ... and do stuff? And you had to give this basic activity a weird and vaguely homophobic name? "We're not gay or anything! We're just bros! Straight bros! Doing straight stuff!" Uh, OK. Whatever you say. Also, I thought the term was MAN DATE (yes, that is a term). What is the difference between "man dates" and BRO DATES??? All my friends are women (or gay men), so I just don't understand this all-male bro world at all. I had BROMANCE in there at first. The other long Down I struggled with (sorta) was MICRODOT, which seems like not a very Monday word at all (36D: Minuscule picture used in spycraft). It was in the puzzle fairly recently—just a couple months ago—and I stumbled on it then, so I remembered it today ... but since I had LAB RATS instead of LAB MICE ("rats" is better!), I didn't commit to the DOT part at first because it just didn't agree with the adjacent letters in RATS (39D: Cheese-loving test subjects). Most of the rest of this was very doable Downs-only. Took me a second to get DE-AGE, which I can't ever remember seeing in a puzzle before (33D: Digitally make to look younger). Oh, I see it has been in the grid before, just once. Debuted last year. De-aging tech has been used in a bunch of high-profile movies in recent years, so I'd expect to see DE-AGE a fair amount in the future, in that it's a short answer with common letters (majority vowels), and crosswords love those.

Bullets:

• 17A: Quality of a statement that feels plausible (TRUTHINESS) — I've never seen this term used anywhere outside the context of mid-'00s The Colbert Report. Pretty sure he coined it. The wikipedia entry about the term is almost entirely about Colbert. Does not seem like the term has had much of an afterlife. Weird to leave Colbert out of the clue.
• 27A: Disinfectant brand with the tagline "Healthing" (LYSOL) — wow. Wow that is bad. "Healthing"??? Really? Who is responsible for that ridiculousness? The only thing I like about it is that it sounds like "Hell Thing."
• 52A: Do a whoopsie (ERR) — ick, banish baby talk, or archaic talk, or archaic baby talk, please. Please. Nails + chalkboard. This clue is not healthing (though it is hell thing).

Ahhh, that's it! See you tomorrow, I hope.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Treasure-seeking woodcutter of folklore / SUN 1-12-25 / House, slangily / Ecological portmanteau since 1905 / Oxford institution, familiarly / Blue tang fish of Pixar fame / Walker with the 2015 triple-platinum hit "Faded" / Devices worn by informants / How an animal's length may be measured / Opera character whose name might be heard in an opera singer's warm-up / Tool used in many a sci-fi film / The stuff of Persian myths? / Big letters in the pharmaceutical industry / Mythological owner of an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir

Constructor: Jeffrey Martinovic

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "I Think Knot" — words for things that come in strands, or that can be "knot"ted, can be found in three sets of circled squares; each set features two "strands" that are "knot"ted together—that is, they run into one another and then bend 90 degrees (the "strands" share one letter, which represents the "knot," I guess). Then there are three different "revealers":

The "Knots" (from top to bottom):

• STRING / THREAD

              T

              H

            STREAD

              I

              N

              G

• YARN / CABLE

              C

             YABLE

              R

              N

• ROPE / CORD

              C

             RORD

              P

              E

              

The Revealers:

• HIDDEN WIRES (3D: Devices worn by informants ... and what can be found inside three pairs of answers in this puzzle)
• ALL TIED UP (94A: Even ... or like three pairs of answers in this puzzle)
• CROSS STITCH (15D: Bit of embroidery ... or what's depicted literally three times in this puzzle)

Word of the Day: TAIPEI 101 (111A: ___ 101, 508-meter skyscraper that was once the world's tallest) —

Taipei 101 (Chinese: 台北101; pinyin: Táiběi 101; stylized in all caps), formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, is a 508.0 m (1,667 ft), 101-story skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan. It is owned by Taipei Financial Center Corporation. The building was officially classified as the world's tallest from its opening on 31 December 2004 (in time to celebrate New Year's Eve). However, the Burj Khalifa surpassed Taipei 101 in 2010. The construction of Taipei 101 was a joint venture led by Kumagai Gumi, a Japanese construction company, in cooperation with Samsung C&T of South Korea. Upon completion, it became the world's first skyscraper to exceed a height of half a kilometer (about 0.3 miles). As of 2023, Taipei 101 is the tallest building in Taiwan and the eleventh tallest building in the world. The skyscraper celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024. [...] In 2011, Taipei 101 was awarded a Platinum certificate rating under the LEED certification system for energy efficiency and environmental design, becoming the tallest and largest green building in the world. The structure regularly appears as an icon of Taipei in international media, and the Taipei 101 fireworks displays are a regular feature of New Year's Eve broadcasts and celebrations.

• • •

***THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU*** Today is the last day of my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. This week is always a bit overwhelming for me, as I usually only have a very vague idea of who my audience is, where they live, etc. And then all of a sudden, in a gush, I get a bunch of messages from actual people with actual names from actual places on the map (Florida! Ireland! ... Antarctica!? Really? (really)). I'm usually very content to live my life just writing (and teaching) and not otherwise interacting with humans too much. Wife. Cats. That's about it most days. This is the one week of the year when I feel the most ... visible, and it's not necessarily the most comfortable feeling in the world for me, if I'm being honest, but you all have been So Nice—so generous, so encouraging, that any social anxiety I might've felt has (once again) been eclipsed by feelings of gratitude and good fortune. I have said every possible permutation of "Thank you" this week, and it still doesn't feel like enough. I can't tell you what your readership and support means to me. Your cards and letters began arriving this week, and I'm excited to dig into those (I'm expecting many cat cards, cat pictures, and cat stories, and I couldn't be happier about that prospect). This year's thank-you cards arrived earlier this week, and they look great. The first batch is already in the mail (look at me! on top of things! for once!)

If you were able to contribute this year, that is thrilling to me, but if you weren't able, that's also OK. Money is tight for many and you can only manage what you can manage. This blog is free to anyone who wants it or needs it, whether you are a financial backer or not. I just want you to keep solving and keep reading. Thanks for taking the time to pay attention to any of this. One last time, here are the various ways you can contribute (now, or at any time during the year). 

There's Paypal:

There's Venmo: @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which it apparently does sometimes)

And if you want a cat postcard, there's the actual mail (you can make checks payable to either "Michael Sharp” or “Rex Parker"): 

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp

54 Matthews St.

Binghamton, NY 13905 

All this contact information lives full-time in the sidebar of my website, in case you feel inclined to contribute months from now :) 

OK. That's it. To all my readers (and my hate-readers)—What a bunch of wonderful weirdos you are. As Debbie Boone once sang to God, you light up my life. A million thanks for your time and attention. Now here's your Sunday puzzle...

• • •

Hoo boy. As I have indicated at the end of every write-up this week, my lowest-rated puzzle day of the week last year, by far, was Sunday, and today's puzzle helps ensure that that trend will continue into 2025. I guess the idea is that if you don't have one perfect revealer, you go instead with ... three imperfect ones. Throw in the title of the puzzle, and you have a lot of soft-groan punning and not a lot of excitement. Plus, a lot of imprecision. None of the "knot" formations look anything like HIDDEN WIRES. That is, none of the "strands" that interlock in this puzzle comes close to resembling a wire. Maybe "cable" comes close, but "yarn"?? And nothing in the answer HIDDEN WIRES gets at the central premise of the theme, which is that the strands cross and form "knots." Also, the very phrase HIDDEN WIRES struck me as contrived. Informants wear wires. Just ... wires. Of course they're "hidden"—would be pretty hard to get incriminating info if you were wearing the wire on the outside of your clothes. That was the worst revealer of the bunch, for sure. CROSS STITCH isn't great either. You don't stitch "rope," do you? And make up your mind about what the answers are doing. Are they merely "crossing," or are they "tied up?" Anyway, sharing a single letter hardly seems to qualify as a "knot." The whole premise felt limp, the execution awkward. Some of the longer answers involved are pretty colorful on their own: QUEEN OF CARNIVAL, SPACE TELESCOPE, GROWTH RINGS, all very nice. But overall, as a puzzle theme goes, this was definitely knot for me.

Bad taste in my mouth right from the start today. You open with MEH? And then cross it with one of the most unlikeable, repulsive, out-and-out racist dipshits on the planet (2D: Big first name in American business)?? Say what you will about Joel Fagliano's editing last year (I thought he did a good job under tough circumstances, actually), but under his leadership, ELON disappeared *completely*. Did he have anything to do with it? Was it coincidence? I don't know, man—three (3) ELON appearances in January 2024 alone and then none ... until January 2025, where it's already appeared twice? That's a hell of a coincidence. No one really wants to see ELON in their puzzle, whatever the clue (it's crosswordese—the only way most people know ELON University exists at all), and really, truly, no one wants to see That Guy in their puzzle, please stop. 

Once I got out of the NW, the fill wasn't quite as dire. I don't remember struggling too much. HIDDEN MIKES instead of HIDDEN WIRES, I remember that. HEAD-TO-TAIL before NOSE-TO-TAIL (8D: How an animal's length may be measured). I nailed the spelling on DENIECE Williams's name on the first try, but I definitely wrote those letters (esp. the "IE") in tentatively (63A: R&B singer Williams). As of this second, I have no idea who this ALAN Walker person is who had a "triple-platinum" hit with "Faded" ten years ago (122A: Walker with the 2015 triple-platinum hit "Faded"). Not even sure of the genre. Country? ALAN sounds country. [... consults The Web ...] LOL, no, not even close:

Alan Olav Walker (born 24 August 1997) is a Norwegian DJ and record producer. His songs "Faded", "Sing Me to Sleep", "Alone", "All Falls Down" (with Noah Cyrus and Digital Farm Animals) and "Darkside" (with Au/Ra and Tomine Harket) have each been multi-platinum-certified and reached number 1 on the VG-lista chart in Norway. Walker's music style is reminiscent of slightly slower-paced progressive house, 1990s trance music, or dubstep with a smoother rhythmic edge. 

But outside the awkwardness of one of the theme phrases and a few names, this one didn't present much difficulty. I realized today that I actually know nothing about ALI BABA except his name, and the fact that he's associated with forty thieves. The whole "treasure-seeking woodcutter" was a surprise to me (18A: Treasure-seeking woodcutter of folklore). Something about the way PLAYABLE was clued made it very hard for me to get (92A: Like many video game characters). The "many" is completely arbitrary, and anyway, without context, if you refer to a video game character, I'm just going to assume it's PLAYABLE. I would not call subway ADS "quick reads" any more than I'd call a stop sign a "quick read" (12A: Quick reads on the subway, perhaps). "Unintentional reads," maybe. "Visual pollution," sure. The clue is trying to be cute but it misses, imho. And is "double-JOINTED" a "medical" term (57A: Double-___ (hypermobile, medically))? "Hypermobility" *is* the clinical term, so "(hypermobile, colloquially)" would be more fitting here. Further, ASANA is a general term for *all* yoga poses. Completely bizarre to refer to it as a [Sitting meditation pose] without having an "e.g." after it. Yes, that is *an* ASANA. Down dog is another. Corpse pose another. Anyway, most people, given five letters and a [Sitting meditation pose] clue would probably be inclined to write in LOTUS, which is actually a more accurate answer. Maybe the misdirection was intended. But you can't sacrifice accuracy for misdirection. Or you shouldn't.

Bullets:

• 40A: Disco fan on "The Simpsons" (STU) — there's a famous Disco STU moment ... here, let me find it ... 

The phrase "if these trends continue..." lives in my head permanently, like many Simpsons phrases. Which is why I laughed out loud listening to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 Countdown Year-End Wrap-Up show from 1978 last week (SiriusXM, 70s on 7 has a new (old) Countdown every weekend!). The Bee Gees and other Saturday Night Fever soundtrack albums were still dominating the charts in 1978, well over a year after the movie had come out, as were other disco hits that followed in the wake of that album's success. Anyway, at some point Casey, making predictions about the upcoming year of 1979, literally (or very nearly literally) said "if these trends continue..." and then predicted a lot more disco. I pointed at the car radio and shouted "Disco STU!" My wife just looked at me quizzically (not unusual). And Casey was right about 1979, by the way. But the crash was looming.

• 68A: It's connected to the eustachian tube (EAR) — look, I don't *have* to tell you this, but I'm just gonna come clean and admit that I briefly but tragically confused the eustachian tube with the fallopian tube here and tried to write in EGG (!?), which doesn't even "connect" to the fallopian tube (optimally), but if you're thinking "three-letter word associated with fallopian tubes," EGG's just what comes up first (or OVA, I guess, but I already had the "E"!!!).
• 79A: Oxford institution, familiarly (OLE MISS) — Oxford, Mississippi, that is. University of Mississippi is better known (esp. among sports fans) as OLE MISS.
• 22D: House, slangily (CRIB) — do people still say this? I figured that once MTV used the term for the title of a show (about celebrity homes), the term would lose street cred.

• 80D: Opera character whose name might be heard in an opera singer's warm-up (MIMI) — an elaborate but very clever clue. MIMI is the female lead in Puccini's La Bohème, which is the opera that Guy and Geneviève go to see at the beginning of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I saw on the big screen for the first time just a couple days ago (60th Anniversary 4K restoration). That movie feels silly at first, but it turns into something moving and magical. Also, it just looks Amazing. Every frame. [whoops, my wife reminds me they saw Carmen in Umbrellas, not La Bohème, my bad]

• 113D: Tool used in many a sci-fi film (CGI) — so tool used *in the making of* many a sci-fi film. Tricky.

This week I'm highlighting the best puzzles of 2024 by focusing on one day at a time. I kept a spreadsheet of every puzzle I solved last year, complete with ratings from 0-100 (with 50 being my idea of an "average" NYTXW) (They really did average out to around 50, with Saturday being my fav day (avg 57.7), and Sunday (obviously) being my least fav (avg 42.9). 

Here are my Top Three Sunday Puzzles of 2024. (I'm not ranking them; it's nicer that way)

• David Kwong, "Art Heist" (Sunday, 12/15/24) — an extremely divisive puzzle that I thought was genius, both conceptually and architecturally. Paintings (represented by artists' names) disappear from the grid, replaced by single letters (from the crosses), which, taken together, form a final message: "I WAS FRAMED." So many layers, so much art. Loved it.
• Harry Zheng, "Multi-Hyphenate" (Sunday, 12/29/24) —my first reaction to this one wasn't very positive, but that's largely because I didn't fully grasp or appreciate the technical achievement: "LINE"s replaced by a series of dashes, where each dash works perfectly as a hyphen in the (Down) crosses. This puzzle grew on me in the days followed, which puzzles rarely do (in that I usually forget them immediately).
• Paolo Pasco, "The Big Five-O" (Sunday, 7/28/24) — the big Olympics puzzle depicting the famous Olympics insignia, the five colored rings. Every answer that forms part of a ring has, as its first word, the color of that ring, so the color itself stands in for the first part of each answer, with BLUEPRINT being represented by a (literally) blue PRINT, e.g. A technical marvel with a fun (and timely) visual gimmick. 

My Constructor of the Year for 2024 is ... well, two people: Paolo Pasco and Sarah Sinclair. They not only made two of my three favorite Thursday puzzles of the year together (MONSTER MASH, STUFFED CRUST), but separately they each made another puzzle that ranked among the three best of the year for its day (Sarah's Christmas Eve Nutcracker puzzle, Paolo's Olympics puzzle (see above). A really amazing output. Looking forward to seeing more from both of them, for many years to come.

That's all, folks. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]