Idly pluck, as a banjo / THU 1-1-26 / "Mob Psycho 100" genre / Charon's domain / Initialism for an online advertiser / Some Bavarian cries / Role for Annie Potts on "Young Sheldon" / One of Us, say? / Test graders' aids / Which 1991 comedy starred Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss? / Preparation for many a surprise party / Denizen of hell / Chill pill, essentially / So-called "fifth taste"

Constructor: Topher Booth

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: ANSWER KEYS (61A: Test graders' aids ... or what is needed to respond to the six italicized clues in this puzzle?) — six italicized clues are phrased as (test) questions, and in order to answer them you need a key, i.e. you need to put a computer keyboard key (TAB, ESC, or ALT) into the squares where the answers to two italicized clues cross:

Theme answers:

• WHAT ABOUT BOB? / PETABYTE (18A: Which 1991 comedy starred Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss? / 8D: Which unit of data storage could hold 200,000 HD movies?)
• THE SCREAM / PESCI (39A: What Edvard Munch painting inspired a poster for "Home Alone"? / 33D: Who won Best Supporting Actor for Martin Scorsese's "GoodFellas?")
• SPINAL TAP / MALTA (40A: What fictional English heavy metal band consists of David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls? / 36D: What Mediterranean nation lies between Italy and Libya?)

Word of the Day: SPINAL TAP (40A) —

Spinal Tap are a parody English heavy metal band created by the American comedians and musicians Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer. McKean plays the singer and guitarist David St. Hubbins, Guest plays the guitarist Nigel Tufnel, and Shearer plays the bassist Derek Smalls. They are characterized as "one of England's loudest bands".

Spinal Tap first appeared on the 1979 ABC television sketch comedy pilot The T.V. Show, starring Rob Reiner. The sketch, actually a mock promotional video for the song "Rock and Roll Nightmare", was written by Reiner and the band, and included the songwriter-performer Loudon Wainwright III on keyboards. The band starred in the 1984 mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap and its 2025 sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. They have released four albums: This Is Spinal Tap (1984), the soundtrack of the original film; Break Like the Wind (1992); Back from the Dead (2009); and The End Continues (2025), the soundtrack of the sequel film. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello and Happy New Year, everyone. How's 2026 treating you? Well, I hope. I've only experienced about an hour of it so far, but it seems nice. Cats ate their breakfast just like always. Water still tastes like water. Computer seems to be working. Good year, I'd say. It's nice to start the new year with a Thursday puzzle that has some Teeth. The rebus wasn't too hard to discover, primarily because of WHAT ABOUT BOB? (an answer I was certain about, but that didn't fit in the allotted squares). But the cluing on the puzzle overall was suitably toughish, I thought, and that little NW corner just about killed me. Toughest corner I've done in a good while. Literally none of the answers in there were obvious to me. Zero. Nine answers, all whiffs at first pass. Oh, except HOST, I got that ... but when literally nothing else worked, even HOST didn't seem certain. I have to believe that many of you, like me, entered CLUE at 1A: You're looking at it! THIS is a bizarre answer there, since it has no referent. In fact, THIS is over in the grid, not in the clue, so I am definitely not looking at THIS. If someone were here to point at the clue while saying "THIS!" then sure. But no one's here but me and the cats. And CLUE!, ugh! It fit the clue, it fit the space. I suspect the clue-writing knew that. Sadism! On Thursday, I approve. I have never heard of someone THRUMming a banjo (strumming, or plucking, sure, but THRUMming, yeesh, no nope there). I guess "the HOUSE always wins" is a phrase? I know the concept (HOUSE = casino), but I could not get to that word from that clue (1D: Idly pluck, as a banjo). I see how STEAM is a [Driver of some engines], but I couldn't see it with almost no help from crosses. I had two different wrong answers for 19A: Quotidian (DAILY, BANAL) before I got to USUAL. The worst answer up there, though, is MEEMAW (23A: Role for Annie Potts on "Young Sheldon"). The idea that I would watch Young Sheldon ... I ... look, if you gave me a menu of 100 things to watch and Young Sheldon was on it, I can guarantee you I'd watch 95 to 99 things on that menu before I opted for Young Sheldon. It's honestly inconceivable. Like, if I tried watching that show, the universe would reject the scenario. The time/space continuum would warp because it just wouldn't compute. So the idea that I would know any character on that show (any character not named Sheldon) is preposterous. This is the worst kind of pop culture answer—MEEMAW is a perfectly good word—it's been in the NYTXW five times before, always as some form of [Granny, in the South]. If you clue it that way, I have a shot. Clue it ... this way, and oof. (I love you, Annie Potts! Gonna watch Pretty in Pink today to atone for this MEEMAW slander, I promise!)

And MEEMAW was a gateway answer—one of only two ways into that NW corner from the outside! Having one of those two ways blocked was a semi-disaster today. Thank god I knew LAURENCE Fishburne (more movies!) (20D: Actor Fishburne of "The Matrix"). That little "L" that he gave me ... well, it didn't get me USUAL (it got me BANAL), but it did give me the tiniest bit of traction so that when I did, finally, see ISSUE (3D: One of Us, say?) (Us is a magazine, one unit of which is an ISSUE), I could get to USUAL and from there finally take down that damn corner. RUSE? [Preparation for many a surprise party] is a RUSE? I guess that's ... right ... but something about the phrasing of the clue ("Hey everybody, let's prepare a RUSE!"???) made it completely inscrutable. What a corner. 

["The year's most unUSUAL picture!"]

I don't remember the rest of the puzzle very well, but I'll give it a shot. . . nope, I got nothing. Looks like I had no real trouble and no serious gripes. I liked the execution of the theme very much. The revealer worked nicely. What do you need to respond to the italicized clue? ANSWER KEYS, i.e. you need to put keyboard "keys" in your "answers." My keyboard doesn't have an ALT key, but that's because I use a Mac. Is it "option" or "command" that stands in for ALT, I forget. Whatever, ALT is still familiar to me as a "key" if only from the well-known PC command "CTRL-ALT-DEL." Loved remembering THE SCREAM, loved remembering Rob Reiner (the director of This is ... SPINAL TAP!, RIP). It's a lovely little theme, simply and elegantly articulated. The rebus squares were actually easier than usual to discover because they all occurred at the crosses of the italicized clues. I actually kinda like it when the puzzle doesn't give you any hint where the rebus squares are, but there was a logic to the square placement today that I appreciated.

I balked at the STYX answer since I know Charon as the guy who ferries souls across the Acheron, not the Styx, but that's just because I teach Dante's Inferno so often. In that work, [Charon's domain] is most definitely the Acheron, but in the Roman poets, it seems, Charon is associated with both the Acheron and the STYX. So STYX was easy, but felt wrong. But it isn't. Technically. Just wrong for Dante. Speaking of the underworld, I had the DEVIL down there instead of a mere DEMON (60A: Denizen of hell). That SE corner briefly threatened to be as much trouble as its NW counterpart, as I know nothing about Mob Psycho 100 (truly the Young Sheldon of the SE), and I misread the clue at 53-Down as [So-called "fifth estate"]. I was like, "well, the fourth estate is the press ... what the hell is the fifth estate!?" Turns out, nothing. The clue actually says "fifth taste." And that's easy, that's UMAMI. So despite Mob Psycho 100's best efforts, the SE corner wasn't too difficult after all.

Bullets:

• 43A: Chill pill, essentially (RELAXANT) — this clue is odd, in that it seems to imagine that chill pills are real. I would clue CHILL PILL as [Relaxant, metaphorically], but somehow clueing RELAXANT as [Chill pill, essentially] feels odd, as I've only ever heard the term used figuratively ("Take a chill pill" = "calm down"), whereas RELAXANTs are very real things.
• 6D: Some Bavarian cries (ACHS) — The existence of [Some Bavarian cries] implies the existence of [Other Bavarian cries]. What are those? "Lederhosen!"? "Bier!"? "My goats!"? Anyway, ACHS is horrible fill. Luckily, there's not much in the way of other terrible fill today (ÊTES notwithstanding).
• 30D: Cat breed from an island in the Irish Sea (MANX) — all cats that come from islands are named by taking the name of the island and adding an X. This is how we get the CUBAX, the BERMUDAX, and the fearsome BORAX BORAX! 

• 40D: Initialism for an online advertiser (SEO) — I know I said there wasn't much garbage fill, but oof, this one. Again, the phrasing of the clue is so odd. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) might be an important concept for an "online advertiser," but saying it's an "Initialism for" them is ... I don't know. Vague, let's say. SEO is a terrible concept (it's why search engines are basically broken now) and it's ugly and if I were constructing, I'd go out of my way to ensure that the thing had no place in my grid.

Ringing in the new year with the last of the 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲! Note: PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE PET PICS, I'M ALL FULL UP FOR THIS YEAR, thank you.

Mia here sits proudly next to the best gift any dog could get for Christmas: a tennis ball. Mia loves Christmas. Mia also apparently hates ICE. Good dog. 

[Thanks, Kathie!]

Minnie apparently enjoys drinking the Christmas tree water. I enjoy drinking Manhattans, we all have our things, don't judge.

[Thanks, Mari!]

IT'S SOPHIE'S SHOW! (held over for a final week! get your tickets now!)

[Thanks, John!]

Jackson enjoys burrowing into his toys. I'm gonna assume those are Christmas toys. Also, Jackson is apparently an antelope. 

[Thanks, Bruce (and Bruce's daughter)!]

And finally today, a couple of classic holiday shots—cats in the trees! I'm told Pip "loves a Christmas tree almost as much as she loves tuna." Damn. That's real love.

[Thanks, Carol!]

Then there's Otto, who wants to be an outdoor kitty, and seems to have found the next best thing. Sorry, humans, all ornaments must face inward, toward Otto. This is law. Otto's law.

[Thanks, Amy!]

See you next time!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)