Biblical spy for Moses / MON 1-19-26 / South American flatbread / Pete who directed "Up," "Inside Out" and "Soul" / 1987 song by Billy Joel and Ray Charles / Caribbean island with a liqueur named for it / Lesser-played part of a 45 / 1972 song by Elton John / Midsection measurement

Constructor: Peter Gorman

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: LITTLE ROCK (66A: Capital ofArkansas ... or a description of 17-, 29- and 50-Across?) — "rock" songs with synonyms for "little" in the titles:

Theme answers:

• "TINY DANCER" (17A: 1972 song by Elton John)
• "SMALL TOWN" (29A: 1985 song by John Cougar Mellencamp)
• "BABY GRAND" (50A: 1987 song by Billy Joel and Ray Charles)

Word of the Day: Pete DOCTER (52D: Pete who directed "Up," "Inside Out" and "Soul") —

Peter Hans Docter (born October 9, 1968) is an American filmmaker, director and animator, who has served as chief creative officer (CCO) of Pixar since 2018.^[2][3] He has directed the company's animated films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020). From his nine Academy Award nominations, he is a record three-time recipient of Best Animated Feature for Up, Inside Out and Soul. Docter has also won six Annie Awards from nine nominations, a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He describes himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons". (wikipedia)

• • •

 

Hmm ... I guess this works. These are "rock" songs, and their titles contain words meaning "little," but somehow LITTLE ROCK doesn't really seem to express that phenomenon very well. Rock songs about little things = LITTLE ROCK? OK, if I think about the answers themselves actually being little (as opposed to just containing words meaning "little"), it makes a little (!) more sense, and therefore I like it a little better. The songs were all very much in my wheelhouse, all things I heard on the radio repeatedly—"SMALL TOWN" the most, probably, since that was a huge hit in my teen years; "BABY GRAND" much less, because it was much less of a hit; and "TINY DANCER" a lot, but mainly on classic rock stations (it came out when I was roughly 2, but it's one of Elton John's most famous songs, and plays an important role in Almost Famous (2000), a movie I loved). Sadly, knowing all the songs didn't help at all, since I solved Downs-only. Well, it helped with "TINY DANCER," for sure, since that is obviously a song title, but as far as I knew, SMALL TOWN and BABY GRAND were just ordinary phrases, not song titles. This may be why when I finished the puzzle and realized LITTLE ROCK was the revealer, I ... didn't really get it. I saw the "little" but not the "rock." I kept looking at the second words in each themer, expecting them to be some kind of rock, or to follow (or precede) the word "rock" in familiar phrases. I wanted those second words to do something ... rocky. But it's the whole song that's rock-y. Fine. Not exciting, but fine. 

The Scrabble-f***ing here is pretty obvious—high-value Scrabble tiles crammed into various remote crannies of the grid. You know the fill is not going to be optimal when you've got a pangram on your hands. When you strive for a pangram, getting every letter of the alphabet into the grid ends up taking precedence over making the grid as lively and clean as possible. No one cares about pangrams, everyone cares about good fill. The pangram is a stunt that I thought had passed out of favor forever, but apparently not. Anyway, this grid has at least one of every letter of the alphabet. Whoopee. It also has AIS. I'd've done anything I could to get the execrable plural AIS out of my grid, even (especially!) if it involved wrecking the pangram. That said, there's nothing particularly horrible about the fill today, and the long (7+) Downs do have a certain spark. A SPARK PLUG, even. The biggest "huh?" moment of the solve, for me, was DOCTER, a name I have somehow never seen or heard of despite the fact that I know all the movies mentioned in the clue (Up, Inside Out, Soul). Weird that directors of animated films don't tend to have the same name recognition as live-action directors. Aside from Miyazaki, I think Brad Bird (Ratatouille, The Incredibles) is the only animated film director I can name off the top of my head. Anyway, Pete DOCTER is obviously extremely successful, but wow I did not know his name, which meant that I had to infer every single letter from the crosses. Thankfully, in the end, there was no real ambiguity, but UNSEE definitely took a while to come together. I really wanted that to be ENSUE. 

There were other tricky parts of the Downs-only solve. I had B-SIDE instead of SIDE B for 28D: Lesser-played part of a 45. Super-annoying that either one is technically "correct." You'd think we'd have settled on one or the other by now, but no. In NYTXW history, there have been 32 BSIDEs, 30 SIDEBs. Bizarrely, neither one ever appeared in the puzzle before the Shortz Era, despite the fact that the term "B-SIDE" dates back to the '40s. I assume SIDE B goes at least as far back. I tried to look up "SIDE B" just now, to figure out its origins, but all that came up was a kind of Christianity I have *never* heard of:

Side B Christians are Christians who identify as LGBT or have LGBTQ+ experiences, but take a traditional view of human sexuality and thus commit to celibacy or a mixed-orientation marriage. The term Side B derives from an Internet forum where Side A Christians, with an affirming view of LGBT sexuality, were contrasted with Side B Christians. Prominent Side B Christians include Eve Tushnet, a lesbian Catholic based in Washington, DC, and Bekah Mason, executive director of Revoice. In particular, Side B Christians reject conversion therapy. Side B is also distinct from Side Y, which does not affirm LGBT identification. (wikipedia)

What a weird thing to learn, and what a weird way to learn it. Anyway, that SIDEB section also had AREPA (27D: South American flatbread) and CALEB, both of which I got, but CALEB (26D: Biblical spy for Moses) ... I don't know how I knew CALEB. It's not like I know Exodus all that well. It's an answer that just came to me. I was not at all sure of it, but it *felt* right. So I got lucky there. Other Down answers that gave me issues included a bunch of stuff in the SE: DAZZLES before DISARMS (49D: Wins over with charm), COLD before COOL (62D: Chilly), AREA before ACRE (63D: Surveyor's measure).

Bullets:

• 53A: Midsection measurement (GIRTH) — this is true enough, but why does GIRTH signify heftiness to me? Like, the word seems to have the idea of largeness built in, even though it's just "a measure around a body" (2a, merriam-webster dot com). Would you ever talk about a skinny person's GIRTH? Aw man, I just looked up [skinny person's girth] and all I got was page after page of penis info. I really gotta stop looking things up. It's not going well for me today.
• 61A: Caribbean island with a liqueur named for it (CURAÇAO) — I (now, as of 2026) keep a running list of the cocktail-related clues and answers. I expect I'll be seeing a lot of GIN and RYE, maybe some AGAVE spirits. But CURAÇAO—that's more unusual. A nice surprise. CURAÇAO is probably most famous in its blue form—I think of it as very tiki bar-oriented. The Blue Hawaii—that's got blue CURAÇAO in it. If you want your drink to be blue, blue CURAÇAO is the liqueur you GO TO. In this house, however, we drink Pierre-Ferrand Dry CURAÇAO. It is orange. Because it's an orange liqueur. Makes sense! 

[Bing sang it (in Waikiki Wedding (1937)) twenty-four years before Elvis]

• 35D: Device for starting an engine (SPARK PLUG) — tough for me. I wanted something like a KEY. Something that *I* start the engine with. Something I hold. So I needed many crosses before this answer dawned on me.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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