Top three sights in Fiji? / WED 8-19-26 / Immature high score initials on an arcade game / Old West outlaw who left behind poetic messages after some robberies / Three unnamed things, in shorthand / 2008 film about a solitary trash-compacting robot / The word "salary" derives from the Latin for this / ___ royale (champagne cocktail) / Female friends from Fuenlabrada

Constructor: Kareem Ayas

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BURIES THE LEDE (57A: Hides one's central point, in a way ... with a doubly homophonic hint to 20-, 30, 38- and 48-Across) — the "lead" word in each theme answer is a type of "berry":

Theme answers:

• GOOSE FEATHERS (20A: Natural pillow filling) (gooseberries)
• ELDERCARE (30A: Services for senior citizens) (elderberries)
• STRAW POLL (38A: Unofficial vote) (strawberries)
• BLACK BART (48A: Old West outlaw who left behind poetic messages after some robberies) (blackberries)

Word of the Day: BLACK BART (48A) —

Charles E. Boles (c. 1829 – ? Last seen February 28, 1888), also known as Black Bart, was an English-born American outlaw noted for the poetic messages he left behind after two of his robberies. Often called Charley by his friends, he was also known as Charles (or C. E.) Bolton. Considered a gentleman bandit with a reputation for style and sophistication, he was one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers to operate in and around Northern California and Southern Oregon during the 1870s and 1880s. [...] In 1867, Boles went prospecting for gold in Idaho and Montana. In a surviving letter to his wife from August 1871, he told her of an unpleasant encounter with some Wells, Fargo & Company agents and vowed to exact revenge. // Boles adopted the nickname "Black Bart" and proceeded to rob Wells Fargo stagecoaches at least 28 times across northern California between 1875 and 1883, including a number of times along the historic Siskiyou Trail between California and Oregon. Although Boles became widely known for the poetic messages left behind after his robberies, he wrote only two poems–left at the fourth and fifth robbery sites–but this was enough to ensure his fame. Black Bart was quite successful as a highwayman, often taking in thousands of dollars a year. // Boles was afraid of horses and he fled from all of his robberies on foot. He was invariably polite, never using foul language except in his poems. He dressed in a long linen duster coat and a bowler hat, using a flour sack with holes cut for his eyes as a mask. He brandished a shotgun but reportedly never once fired it during his years as an outlaw. All these became his trademarks and he quickly gained notoriety. (wikipedia)

• • •

Weird. I always thought BLACK BART was fictional. I wonder why ...

Gonna have to be short a write-up today (I swear), as today is my first day back at school for the Fall semester, and I ... still have a little work to do. Not a lot. A little. But because it's not done and I have to stand in front of a class in [checks clock] seven hours, it feels like a lot. So I gotta get a move on. The puzzle was funny today because it felt like it was accusing me, personally, of not getting my second syllabus finished in a timely fashion. It's throwing things at me like STUDENT (47D: Lecture attendee) and UNIT (16A: Section in a textbook) and CURRICULUM (10D: Set of courses offered) and ASS (as in, "why aren't you totally prepared, you ASS?") (54A: Immature high score initials on an arcade game). I laughed it off. What else could I do? One thing I couldn't do: understand the the damned theme once I'd finished the puzzle. The puzzle was easy to finish, and the themers all easy to come up with, but I had no idea how BURIES THE LEDE was supposed to be singly homophonic, let alone doubly so. I kept trying to read the clue cryptically, so I was looking for something "buried" in the answer ... maybe a word that meant "lead"? But the middle of each themer (i.e. the letter "buried" at the heart of each themer), taken in order, spells ERWK, so ... no luck there! No matter how hard I looked, there was nothing "buried" in those damned theaters. Finally I had a look at the "lead" words in the theme phrases and noticed that they were all types of "berries" (!!!!!!). Not a pun I was looking for (clearly)! Is LEDE a pun? Since LEDE basically means the introductory (or "lead") portion of a news story, it indicates primary status (i.e. firstness) just as well as "lead" does. Doesn't seem nearly as "punny" as the bury/berry thing. Anyway, first words "berries," very clever, liked it. I do wonder if the Pronunciation Police are going to come out today. "Bury" and "berry" sound the same in my ear, but I have this suspicion that that may not be the same for everyone. Still, it's close, and it's crosswords, and as with horseshoes and hand grenades, close counts.

The fill was wobbly to start. "I'M NOT OK" feels ... unsolid. "I'M OK," all day long, no problem, solid as heck. "THAT'S NOT OK!," same. "I'M NOT OK" gets me some songs (?), and ... I guess it has some currency in mental health contexts. I can imagine someone saying it, but I can imagine someone saying lots of things. Lots of other fill just felt ordinary and tired: ARID SKORT PSATS (plural) UNSEE ERR ERS URSA etc. But the themers were all interesting, and sometimes the short fill picked up (PUFFY next to SNEEZE—successive answers! (Why weren't these tied together the way URSA and ASIA ([___ Minor]), or LOWER and DIP ([Drop]) were? You've got PUFFY tied to allergies—that's a set-up for a SNEEZE tie-in if there ever was one). FAN BASE and LOST CAUSES also liven up the grid. The only real difficulty I had today came with trying to understand the theme. Oh, and remembering which spelling of AVA/EVA to use for AVA Max (39D: ___ Max, singer of the 2018 hit "Sweet but Psycho").

Bullets:

• 10A: Private sleeping accommodations? (COTS) — So ... "Private" in the Army.
• 24A: Three unnamed things, in shorthand (XYZ) — nearly wrote in XXX, but that's a porn movie, or else the letters on a jug of hooch.
• 67A: 2008 film about a solitary trash-compacting robot (WALL-E) — WALL-E stars in commercials for Lavazza. Or his double does. Hulu can't/won't stop showing me ads for this new coffee system they have called TABLI (5!). And if the robot from Short Circuit and WALL-E had a baby ... well ...

[my ads are English, but this'll do]

• 4D: Top three sights in Fiji? (DOTS) — now this is cryptic. The word "Fiji" has three DOTS at the top (the top of the "i" the "j" and the "i")

That's it. Gotta run (to make coffee). See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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High-end private jet, familiarly / TUE 8-18-26 / Academy Award-winning tune from "La La Land" / Singer Kahan with the 2026 #1 album "The Great Divide" / Eponym of a chess rating system / Mario has a red "M" on his / Sarcastic title girl of 1990s-2000s MTV / Utah skiing destination / Dickens villain

Constructor: Jeremy Venook

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium 

THEME: "MUSIC OF THE NIGHT" (58A: Iconic number from "The Phantom of the Opera" ... or an apt title for this puzzle) — theme answers are SONGS (66A: 17-, 29-, 45- and 56-Across) containing words related to "night":

Theme answers:

• "MOONLIGHT SONATA" (17A: Classic Beethoven piano piece)
• "CITY OF STARS" (29A: Academy Award-winning tune from "La La Land")
• "SWEET DREAMS" (45A: 1983 Eurythmics hit whose full title includes "(Are Made of This)")

Word of the Day: NOAH Kahan (64A: Singer Kahan with the 2026 #1 album "The Great Divide") —

Noah Berkenkamp Kahan (/kɑːn/ KAHN; born January 1, 1997) is an American singer-songwriter. His breakthrough single, "Hurt Somebody", achieved gold status in the United States and charted in multiple international markets. The single and EP of the same name preceded the release of his debut album, Busyhead (2019). Within five years, two more albums came out: I Was / I Am (2021) and Stick Season (2022), the latter became his mainstream commercial breakthrough. It led to his nomination in 2023 for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. In 2026, his fourth album The Great Divide was released and achieved record-breaking streaming and vinyl sales for a No. 1 rock album debut on the Billboard 200. That preceded The Great Divide Tour, his first stadium tour. // Kahan was born in Strafford, Vermont, where he grew up on a tree farm. His father, Josh Kahan, taught him to play guitar while his mother, Lauri Berkenkamp, who wrote parenting guides for a living, taught him to write. His father is Jewish and his mother is Christian. He says that his Jewish roots play a large part in his identity. [...] In October 2020, Kahan began posting viral TikTok videos showcasing the first verse of what would become the hit single "Stick Season". Over the next two years, he uploaded more snippets of the song and teased other songs from his forthcoming third studio album, leading Stick Season to become viral before it was even released.^[6] On July 8, 2022, he finally released the full version of the song to the public. Kahan says "Stick Season" is the kind of song he wanted to write, moving away from his pop heavy projects in the past to a folk centric project. He released the single "Northern Attitude" prior to the album's release. // On October 14, 2022, Kahan released his third studio album, the 14-track Stick Season, which was produced by Gabe Simon. The album debuted at number 14 on the Billboard 200, his first appearance on the chart^[17] launching him into mainstream success and helping make him a recognizable figure within the music world.

• • •

I kinda like the basic idea here, but the song set seems really arbitrary, and the fill was listless and dull, with almost no truly interesting answers and a barrage of overfamiliar short stuff. So it got an "oh" and a bit of a smile out of me when I realized the theme, but the experience of solving it wasn't very entertaining. I also didn't really care for the redundant revealer: SONGS. It's exceedingly anticlimactic, coming as it does after the proper revealer, and "revealing" absolutely nothing new. If you want a secondary revealer, at least make it clever somehow. This felt like SONGS just happened to be in the finished grid and then the clue writer (constructor? editor?) decided to make it thematic, and I can see why you'd be tempted, but SONGS it's completely unnecessary to our comprehension of the theme, and adds nothing funny, humorous, or clever. Strange choice there. As for the theme answers themselves, "MOONLIGHT SONATA" and "SWEET DREAMS" are iconic to me, but "CITY OF STARS," despite its Academy Award, means nothing to me. Not sure I've heard it, ever (I've never seen La La Land, despite my admiration for and fascination with the screen presence that is Ryan Gosling). I can't say the song doesn't belong here, just that it seems less major than the other songs, which only highlights how arbitrary the whole set is: how many songs out there must have "moon" or "dream" or "star" in them somewhere? So you get a set here that's not exactly tight. But as I say, I liked the revealer and I liked discovering the connection among the themers, and there's very little that is actively off-putting about this puzzle. I just wish the grid were more interesting—that would've helped a lot.

ELO and ALOE before we ever get out of the tiny NW corner—that did not herald goodness. Two initialisms right after that (SEC, UNICEF) didn't make me any more optimistic. URIAH ISH ATTA ESAU NATL OFUSE ISAW AMA EUR ... the puzzle just limps lacklusterly along, with only the themers to perk it up. HYSTERIA gave the grid some juice (9D: Madness), and DEWDROPS has a certain alliterative sweetness (39D: Morning condensation), but otherwise, it's a snooze. I guess "BITE ME!'s got some sass, but I never did take to that expression (which now feels dated, somehow) (33D: "Oh, buzz off"). The clue on G-SIX is ... ??? (52D: High-end private jet, familiarly) ... I assume it used to be a governmental alliance clue but then someone thought "hey, we don't talk about the ultra-rich enough" and decided to make it a private jet clue? That's called taking regrettable fill and making it regrettabler. The G6 was the six largest countries in the EU, but then Britain (famously, extremely smartly, with great foresight) left, and the name changed to the E5. Not sure why they changed from "G" ("Group of") to "E" ("European Group of"), but there you are. I suppose G-SIX could also be a Bingo call. But no, it looks like all former clues for GSIX referred to the (now former) European alliance. I understand wanting to update the clue, but ... a private jet? In this economy? Hard pass.

Bullets:

• 39A: Sarcastic title girl of 1990s-2000s MTV (DARIA) — I watched every episode of this, I think, and still hesitated a bit trying to process the phrase "Sarcastic title girl"; I wonder what kind of cultural legs DARIA has. What's the age break? Seems like an extremely Gen-X / Millennial show. Not sure how familiar it is to older / younger people.
• 50A: It has its x's and y's (ALGEBRA) — I don't understand what this clue is doing with its phrasing, what expression it's playing on. Are x's and y's supposed be like "ups and downs?" I get the x and y part, I can see why ALGEBRA is the answer, but the whimsical phrasing here is lost on me.
• 27D: What gossipers and tall buildings are full of (STORIES) — I don't really like "riddles," but this clue at least slowed me down and made me think for a little today—probably the toughest answer for me besides the La La Land song and the private jet, which I just didn't know. Oh, and NOAH Kahan, whose name has been floating around the periphery of my entertainment world all year, I just couldn't retrieve it, which made that SE corner tough, as 67A: Person regularly sought out for advice was somehow not GURU ... but GO-TO (not loving it as a noun, but OK)
• 2D: Eponym of a chess rating system (ELO) — really gotta hate music and fun and life not to go with the band every time here. If you must use ELO (again), please just remind me of the great music. Chess, shmess, zzzzz:

[gotta love a song that just randomly breaks into French]

• 60D: Mario has a red "M" on his (HAT) — what are we doing here? Do we not get enough Marioverse clues without having to torture the clues for perfectly ordinary things into Mario form? If you want to take the HAT somewhere pop cultury, at least branch out, be creative. Yet Another Mario Clue is not the way.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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1963 Kingsmen hit with a repetitive title / MON 8-17-26 / "Pink" animal of film / Boozy brunch drink / Well-dressed guy / ___ tofu (Sichuan dish) / Hot pepper named for Cuba's capital / It catches ballpark smooches

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

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

THEME: "YES AND YES!" (62A: "Totally agree!" ... or what the circled letters are, in different languages) — each theme answer contains two sets of circled squares, each of which contains a word meaning "yes" in a foreign language:

Theme answers:

• DAPPER DAN (16A: Well-dressed guy)
• JAM JARS (38A: Containers for fruit preserves)
• "LOUIE LOUIE" (10D: 1963 Kingsmen hit with a repetitive title)
• SITE VISITS (27D: On-location inspections)

Word of the Day: "LOUIE, LOUIE" (10D) —

"Louie Louie" is a rhythm and blues song written, composed, and recorded by American musician Richard Berry in 1956 and released in 1957. In 1963, a version by the Kingsmen attracted controversy over allegedly profane lyrics. The song is based on the tune "El Loco Cha Cha" popularized by bandleader René Touzet and is an example of Afro-Cuban influence on American popular music. // The song's historical impact and ongoing popularity, attested by books, articles, rankings, and hundreds of cover versions, have earned it a reputation as "a cornerstone of rock". 

"Louie Louie" tells, in simple verse–chorus form, the first-person story of a "lovesick sailor's lament to a bartender about wanting to get back home to his girl". [...] On April 6, 1963, the Kingsmen, a rock and roll group from Portland, Oregon, chose "Louie Louie" for their second recording. The session took place at Northwestern Inc. Motion Pictures & Recording Studios at 411 SW 13th Avenue in Portland. The one hour session, originally intended to produce an audition tape for a summer cruise ship gig, cost either $36, $50, or somewhere in between, and the band split the cost. [...] First released in May 1963, the single was initially issued by the small Jerden label, before being picked up by the larger Wand Records in October 1963. Wand president Florence Greenberg said, "it was forced down my throat by friends. I was ashamed to put it out." Herb Alpert and A&M Records passed on the distribution opportunity, deeming it "too long" and "out of tune". [...]

Sales of the Kingsmen record were initially so low (reportedly 600) that the group considered disbanding. Things changed when Boston's biggest DJ, Arnie Ginsburg, was given the record by a pitchman. Amused by its slapdash sound, he played it on his program as "The Worst Record of the Week". Despite the slam, listener response was swift and positive.Another factor in the success of the record may have been the rumour that the vocals were intentionally slurred by the Kingsmen to cover up lyrics that were allegedly laced with profanity, graphically depicting sex between the sailor and his lady. Crumpled pieces of paper professing to be "the real lyrics" to "Louie Louie" circulated among teens. The song was banned on many radio stations and in many places in the United States, including Indiana, where a ban was requested by Governor Matthew Welsh. These actions were taken despite the fact that practically no one could distinguish the actual lyrics. Denials of chicanery by Kingsmen and Ely did not stop the controversy. The FBI started a 31-month investigation into the matter and concluded they were "unable to interpret any of the wording in the record." However, drummer Lynn Easton later admitted that he yelled "fuck" after fumbling a drum fill at 0:54 on the record. (wikipedia)

• • •

I confess I don't really know this expression, "YES AND YES!" I'm sure I've heard it, and it would be totally recognizable as a kind of emphatic affirmative, but it's not something I hear people say, or can hear in my head very clearly. I frequently use the phrase "Done and done!" to mean roughly the same thing ("I will do that thing," "consider it done," "yes I will do it"), but "YES AND YES!" ... not sure why it's not really ringing a bell. But it's not really a problem for me today—I recognize it as a thing one might say, and it leads to a pretty nifty, simple Monday theme. Kinda cheating to get your two "oui"s by using "LOUIE" twice, but then again, I enjoy remembering that song, which is one of the day's most colorful answers so cheating objection ... overruled! My only real complaint involves SITE VISITS, which is a singularly unattractive phrase. I'm stunned that there wasn't some better, more colorful, less blandly businesslike phrase that has two "SI"s in it. I realize you've got symmetry considerations, and the answer (assuming you keep all the other themers where they are) had to come in at ten letters long, but still ... I think you gotta hunt harder. That answer was also the hardest for me to get, from a Downs-only standpoint, despite my being fairly certain of the "SI"s (it was the only commonly known foreign "yes" that was left). But again, overall, the puzzle was cute. Entertaining. Interesting to solve Downs-only. Reverse KOA!

Even with the cheater squares (black squares above PIC and below ESO, which are there only to make the grid easier to fill), there's still a bit of dull crosswordese around the edges here. ESO, for instance, and PAOLO OBIES ISEE EIN ANTE IMAM IMAC INUIT UAE OSSO EYRE ASTI ATTN EASEL AHA ... would've been nice if the puzzle hadn't been so reliant on allllllll the old stuff. But then of course the themers are strong, and the longer non-themers are decent as well. HABANERO is spicy and SCREEDS are ranty and MEANDER is wandery and SCORPION is sting-y and KISS CAM, well, those are kinda gross, actually, but who doesn't like the Pink PANTHER? SO THERE! If the crosswordese is bugging you, just have a MIMOSA and listen to your favorite ROCK BAND and relax. Or you could have some MAPO tofu and listen to Chappell ROAN, that's what I'd do if I hadn't already had dinner—a delicious dinner Penelope and I made together. Here, I have the pics to prove it.

[that NYT Cooking page-a-day calendar is a godsend—app, shmapp, just give me paper!]

Bullets:

• 16A: Well-dressed guy (DAPPER DAN) — I know DAPPER DAN exclusively as a doll that I (or my sister, or both of us) had when I was very little. I can still see his dumb felted face and rosy cheeks. Oh yeah, here we go:

[Well-dressed, smash-faced]

The phrase I know for "well-dressed man" is "handsome Dan," though that's probably just because of "Tougher Than the Rest," a Bruce Springsteen song that I first heard in an acoustic version by Everything But The Girl:

["Some girls they want a handsome Dan / Or some good-looking Joe..."]

• 36D: "Sounds like a plan!" ("LET'S") — one of the tougher answers, from a Downs-only perspective. I wanted "I'M IN!"
• 11D: Martini garnish (OLIVE) — ONION also works (and fits, and starts with "O") (though w/ an ONION, it’s called a Gibson Martini, or simply a Gibson)
• 59D: Enjoy a fantasy, say (READ) — I kinda like the mild misdirection here. They hide "novel" or "story" and just let "fantasy" be a substantive adjective. So your (my) first thought for "Enjoy a fantasy" is something like "dream," but ... no.
• 33D: Breakfast beverages, for short (OJS) — kind of an OJ overload situation here, as OJ both sits alongside MIMOSA and is a key ingredient of a MIMOSA (the other being champagne or other sparkling wine). 

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Work parodied by Umberto Eco's "Granita" / SUN 8-16-26 / Member of the N.F.L.'s "Big Blue," in brief / Astonished, informally / Place for a sailor's anchor, informally / Fiber also knowns as viscose / Title that becomes loftier when an E is added / "Diminutive" Greek letter / Dizzying gallery works / Invention originally developed as a yellow dye / Infraction at an arcade

Constructor: Sam Brody

Relative difficulty: Easy

[33D: Ewoks' home moon]

THEME: "Take the Edge Off" — theme clues are words that are missing their "edges" (i.e. their first, or last, or first and last, letters); answers are familiar phrases that act as punny representations of those "edgeless" words:

Theme answers:

• DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS (23A: _ATSO_ and _EKYL_) ("Watson" and "Jekyll," both famous fictional "doctors," lack "borders" (i.e. first and last letters))
• NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION (36A: _RAVES) (the word "craves," which (kinda) means "needs," has "no introduction," i.e. no first letter)
• NEVERENDING STORY (56A: SAG_) (the word "saga," which is a kind of "story," never ends—because it lacks its last letter)
• HEADLESS HORSEMAN (79A: _NIGHT) (the word "knight," which is a kind of "horseman," is lacking its first letters, or "head")
• NOT COMPLETELY HONEST (99A: FRAN_) (the word "frank," which means "honest," is not complete)
• UNLIMITED TALK AND TEXTS (116A: _IALO_) (the word "dialog," a term which indicates either "talking" or "texting," has no "limits" (i.e first and last letters))

Word of the Day: Granita (1A: Work parodied by Umberto Eco's "Granita" = LOLITA) —

[man, I have no idea—when you search [Eco granita], mostly what you get is automated crossword answer sites, giving you the answer to this clue. There's hardly anything online about this ... looks like a short story, or a sketch of some time, written in the '50s in Italian but published in English in the '90s ... all the references to it (and there are hardly any) are from, like, somebody's private Tumblr accounts. There are a couple of very brief references to it in the NYT and Guardian—it appears to be a story about one "Umberto Umberto" (playing on the name of LOLITA's protagonist, Humbert Humbert) who develops a thing for geriatric women, whom he calls "Nornettes" (playing on Humbert's term for the young girls he's sexually attracted to, "nymphets"). Anyway, I think it's fair to say that this "work" of Eco's is very obscure—here's the summary from one of those aforementioned Tumblr accounts (it squares with what google's A.I. is trying to tell me): "Umberto Eco wrote a hilarious parody of Lolita that he called Granita. In his version of the story, a young man falls in love with an old lady. It would seem that the sight of her marbled flesh, glimpsed through a window as she removed her stockings, drove him wild with uncontrollable lust. When he runs away with her, he has to travel by bicycle (he doesn’t have a driver’s license yet) and pedals away with “Granita” holding on for dear life. The story appears in Eco’s anthology Misreadings." ]

• • •

I've seen this kind of thing before. A bunch. Basically a reverse cryptic, where the answer is the clue and the clue is the answer. It's a giant shrug from me. Not very clever. Pretty rudimentary stuff, as cryptic clues go. Ugly gibberish for theme clues. OK but unremarkable theme answers. UNLIMITED TALK AND TEXTS is just wrong, though. The pluralized TEXTS, specifically. There are "unlimited talk & text" plans, for sure, but they are most definitely "talk & text" plans, not "talk & texts." It's not just that the theme was dull—it's that it was almost beside the point. I got the first themer without even looking at the clue:

After getting it, I looked up, saw the clue, knew instantly what the conceit was, and decided the only way this solve was going to be anything close to interesting was if I challenged myself not to look at any of the theme clues ever again. And I didn't. And it didn't make a bit of difference. Maybe it added a minute or so to my solve, I don't know, but I did not miss those clues. You can write them yourself once you get the answer. Nothing special about them. The whole thing was fantastically dull. And the fill didn't do much to liven things up. This was just one big 21x21 SLAB of a puzzle; there was some cleverness in the cluing, it turns out (the doctors clue, for instance), but for the most part the puzzle doesn't really have much to recommend it. I'm kind of surprised it was accepted. I PLODded through, but it never once gave me a reason to smile or wonder or struggle or ... anything. It's just there. Taking up space.

["Maybe another drink will take the edge off!"]

Does anything even need explaining, beyond the theme? The clues and answers all felt so straightforward. "Granita" was the only thing in the whole dang puzzle that made me go "huh?," that made me curious, that seemed to be trying to stretch the boundaries of the Totally Ordinary. I did laugh once, but that's only because I tried to give that wrestler guy ONE ARM instead of ONE LEG (100D: Feature of Anthony Robles, a 2011 N.C.A.A. national champion wrestler). Guy's only got one leg and now here I am trying to take his arm away as well? Not cool. Are there one-armed wrestlers? There was a one-handed Major League pitcher once, and a good one (Jim Abbott), so why not? I guess it would be especially hard to grapple with one arm, but wrestling with just the ONE LEG, that also seems impressive. I'm looking around this grid and trying to find anything, literally anything worth remarking on, and fran-ly I'm not having much success. It's all so, so plain. I think two stars might be too generous, but I'm just gonna leave it; perhaps it has virtues I just can't appreciate, for some reason.

Bullets:

• 27A: Astonished, informally (SHOOK) — this was the one moment where the puzzle seemed to be alive and living in the 21st century. This slangy use of SHOOK already seems to be on the wane, but it's at least familiar as a recentish expression. Anything with some life in it was welcome today.
• 53D: London park (HYDE) — this seems like a little NOD AT Dr. Jekyll (or Dr. -EKYL-, I guess).
• 64A: Place for a sailor's anchor, informally (BICEP) — hey, a bit of misdirection! Not a lot of misdirection, but some. Sometimes I think puzzles are trying too hard with the cluing, but hoo boy today is not one of those days. Speaking of sailors, I finally saw The Odyssey today. There was a SCYLLA, as I predicted (see yesterday's puzzle). But no anchor tattoos for Odysseus (that I could see). I think that's strictly a Popeye thing ... although no ... Popeye's anchor tattoo is on his forearm, not his BICEP:

• 118D: Park place? (LOT) — because you park ... your car ... there.
• 49D: Female rapper with a longtime feud with Foxy Brown (LIL KIM) — OK, this probably should've been my "Word of the Day." I know LIL KIM from ... the '90s? Can't say I've seen her name or thought about her for decades. Here is a long and embarrassing description of said feud., which started sometime in ... yep, the '90s. The last relevant incident in this recap happened in 2013, so I don't know what the state of their relationship is now. Nor do I care. There has to be a better, more dignified way to clue LIL KIM. How about this team-up? This was fun:

Sorry I don't have more to say about this puzzle. It's not giving me much to work with. I really hope you enjoyed it more than I did. For those of you who struggle on Sundays, this one should've been pretty doable, at least. Maybe you broke your Sunday speed record? If it made you happy, then as they say (or Sheryl Crow says), it can't be that bad. All it did for me, though, was make me wish I were reading a book, so I'm gonna go do that now. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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