Food writer Molly / THU 1-15-26 / Idiomatic partner of "lose" / Brief letters? / Oft-quoted advice in Matthew 7:7 / Sol, but not Luna / Shiny little platters / Subject of astrobiology, in brief

Constructor: Wendy L. Brandes and Barbara Lin

Relative difficulty: The Easiest Thursday I've Ever Done (or close to it)

THEME: CONFIRMATION BIAS (62A: Tendency to reinforce one's established beliefs ... or a hint to answering the his puzzle's starred clues) — letters spelling out an affirmative response (or "CONFIRMATION") jut out (inside circled squares) at an angle (or "BIAS") from three theme answers:

Theme answers:

• SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND (18A: *Oft-quoted advice in Matthew 7:7)
• ALL DAY EVERY DAY (28A: *24/7/365)
• FAMILY GAME NIGHT (47A: *Evening spent playing with the kids, say)

Word of the Day: Molly O'NEILL (3D: Food writer Molly) —

Molly O'Neill (9 Oct 1952, Columbus, Ohio - 16 Jun 2019) was an American food writer, cookbook author, and journalist, perhaps best known for her food column in The New York Times Sunday Magazine and Style section throughout the 1990s.

O'Neill was born and grew up in Columbus, Ohio, the only girl in a family with five brothers born to Charles and Virginia O'Neill. In her 2006 memoir, she describes the family's strong interest in baseball. Her father had been a minor league pitcher before working for North American Aviation and later running an excavation business. Her younger brother Paul O'Neill became an outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Yankees. (wikipedia)

• • •

[The Upturned Microscope]

Big week for non-standard puzzle dimensions. Fat one on Monday, skinny one on Tuesday ... I forget yesterday's (all I remember is a hat) ... but today: another fat one (16 wide). The wider grid was of course necessitated by the revealer phrase—an answer that would look great in any puzzle but works particularly well here as a revealer. That phrase provided my one moment of solving joy today. Actually got an "ah, good one!" out of me. Simple idea, perfect execution, no notes. The theme does give you *apparent* gibberish in the grid, but only if you mulishly insist on reading the answers left to right with no diversions. It's kind of fun reading them that way. "SEEK ANDY HALL FIND!" actually sounds like two phrases. The first a command ("SEEK ANDY!") and the second a response from a caveman named Hall ("HALL FIND! HALL FIND ANDY! HALL GOOD SEEKER!"). If someone tries to give you credit for something Dave Ryday did, you'd say "Wasn't me. That was ALL DAVE RYDAY." And finally, if the Garveys are trying to pick a family nickname and finally decide it should be FAMILY G, the father (let's call him Bob) might ask the rest of the family (slangily), "FAMILY G ... AIGHT?" But why would you indulge in such silliness? Grow up. Play along. Read on a bias, and everything's fine.

[Hall find you!]

It's a four-star theme idea with points deducted for the sea of boring short fill and more points deducted for truly obscene easiness. I didn't know Molly O'NEILL and I kinda sorta stumbled at the very end with the unit of measurement (ROD) and "astrobiology" (?!?) (ETS) and trying to differentiate from Sol from Luna (43A: Sol, but not Luna)—I was like "... NAME? No, Luna's a name ..." But honestly that part only *felt* slightly hard because it came at the very end of the puzzle, and I had encountered absolutely no resistance at all since Molly greeted me at the *beginning* of the puzzle. Read clue, write in answer, bam bam bam. The theme answers were simple, and once those circled squares began to fill themselves in, the trick became clear. I know I am a broken record on this point, but this elimination of difficulty from the days of the week that are, historically, supposed to be difficult is truly dismaying. Everything is being simplified because apparently *all* of the NYT Games have to be easily accessible and digestible. Yeah, you fail Connections from time to time, but that's not gonna be as time-consuming as failing a full-sized crossword, so it's not likely to put you off Connections. Whereas you might get put off crosswords if you routinely failed them. But that's the *&#^%ing point. Some things, you should have to Work For. It makes them Satisfying. Bring back difficulty. Make Failure Normal Again! Thursday should not be as easy as Tuesday. Those of you who have been solving for decades know exactly what I'm talking about. Shortz's legacy will be that he made the puzzle more playful and entertaining and inclusive, but it will also be that he presided over the great Dumbing Down. I happily accept my role as the annoying old man who can't stop telling you that the Old Ways were better. Because they were. Not all of the Old Ways, for sure, but the part where the puzzle difficulty really ramped up as the week went on—that was better. 

Star Wars is back in the puzzle again today (20D: Created Yoda, he did = LUCAS), but it's worth noting that this is, unbelievably, just the second Star Wars clue of the new year! Once a week, I can definitely handle. That's a very tolerable SW rate. Funny to see not one but two callbacks to Monday's "rhyming advice" puzzle today: we get  (non-rhyming) "advice" in the first themer (18A: *Oft-quoted advice in Matthew 7:7), and then we get an echo of one of Monday's bits of "advice": "You SNOOZE, you lose!" (55A: Idiomatic partner of "lose"). On the whole, the non-theme fill was Dullsville—with so much of it in the 3-4-5 range and absolutely none of it 7+, this is not surprising. TSA SNL ETS IRENE ETTA CENA YALIES EATME SSN IDNO UMNO on and on and on. If you imagine a KRAKEN with a WEDGIE, you can squeeze some extra enjoyment out of this one, and the "Z" definitely livens things up (SNOOZE x/w FAZING) but otherwise, all the pleasure is in the theme. If there were "hard" parts today, I can't see them. Good theme, but real flat outside the theme, and criminally easy overall. 

Bullets:

• 1A: Cattle calls (MOOS) — watched Howard Hawks's Red River (1948) earlier this week. Lots of cattle in that one. Lots. Like, oceans of cattle. The whole premise of the movie appears to be "people will like watching the spectacle of cattle ... moving ... over land." I'm sure this played well on the big screen in the late '40s, but on the small screen in the mid '20s ... meh. It was obviously an impressive and elaborate feat of film-making—cattle choreography—but it just wasn't that exciting to me. I did like watching John Wayne and Montgomery Clift clash—this is the movie where John Wayne first leaned into darkness. He's pretty much the "bad guy" of the film. Clift keeps trying to save him from himself, but Wayne ultimately feels so betrayed that he decides to hunt Clift down and kill him. These are two incredibly beautiful men, so it's fun to watch. The human drama is great; the grand cattle drive adventure of it all was far, far less interesting to me. Why am I telling you all this? Oh, right: MOOS. The movie had a lotta MOOS.

• 12D: Title for any male in the House of Saud (EMIR) — easy ... once I read the clue correctly. On first pass, what my brain registered was: "Tiny house for any male Saudi." I was like, "whoa ... obscure. Wait ... why do they have tiny houses? For prayer? Weekend getaways? I want a tiny house!"
• 26D: Brief letters? (BVD) — a very old brand of underwear. Do they still make them? They used to be really common / well-known, but I honestly haven't thought about this brand in years. Decades? "BVDs" were just standard language for jockey shorts. Tighty-whiteys (whities?). Now, I dunno. I did an image search and got like one pair of underwear (from Japan??) and then a bunch of infographics related to something called "Binocular Vision Dysfunction."

• 38D: Fortune competitor (INC.) — they're both business-oriented magazines.
• 67A: "Sorry ... hard pass" ("UM, NO!") — absolutely impossible to differentiate "UM, NO" from "UH, NO" without the cross. "OH, NO" could've worked here as well, though that's usually an expression of dismay or concern.
• 45D: Sixth word of the Gettysburg Address ("AGO") — anybody else literally count it out on their fingers? All of you? I thought so.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. really enjoying the mail I've been getting this week (from my fundraiser drive last week). First batch of thank-you cards are already in the mail. E-thank-yous are forthcoming. You people are the best.

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