Old-timey oath / FRI 1-9-26 / Small bit, in Bogotá / Monopoly token retired in 2017 / Raccoon, humorously / Footwear that lacks defined heels / Ad or show follower / Stealthy flier

Constructor: Greg Snitkin and Glenn Davis

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: MEET CUTES (35D: Rom-com plot points) —

 

A meet cute is a scene in romantic fiction in which two people meet for the first time, typically under unusual, humorous, or adorable circumstances, and go on to form a future romantic couple.

This type of scene is a staple of romantic comedies, though it can also occur in sitcoms and soap operas. Frequently, the meet cute leads to a humorous clash of personalities or of beliefs, embarrassing situations, or comical misunderstandings that further drive the plot. (wikipedia)

• • •

***ATTENTION: READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** : It's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. 2026 is a big year for me, as Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle will celebrate its 20th birthday in September. Two decades. The big 2-0. A score of years. One score and no years ago, I brought forth on this Internet a new blog, conceived in ... I think I'll stop there, but you get the idea. I've been at this a long time, and while it has been my privilege and joy, it has also been (and continues to be) a lot of work. Very early mornings, no days off—well, no days off for the blog. I do have two very able regular subs (Mali and Clare) who write for me once a month, as well as a handful of other folks who stand in for me when I go on vacation. But otherwise, it's just me, every dang day, up by 4am, solving and writing. I've never been this disciplined about anything in my life. Ask anyone. "Is he disciplined about anything else?" "No, he is not. Just this one thing. It's weird." And it's because I have a responsibility to an audience (that's you). Even after nearly 20 years, I'm still genuinely stunned and exceedingly grateful that so many of you have made the blog a part of your daily routine. Ideally, it adds a little value to the solving experience. Teaches you something you didn't know, or helps you look at crosswords in a new way, or makes you laugh (my highest goal, frankly). Or maybe the blog simply offers a feeling of commiseration—a familiar voice confirming that yes, that clue was terrible, or yes, that themer set should have been tighter, or wow, yes, that answer was indeed beautiful. Whether you find it informative or comforting or entertaining or infuriating—or all of the above—if you're reading me on a fairly regular basis, there's something valuable you're getting out of the blog. And I couldn't be happier about that.

["That's upside-down, sweetheart"]

Hopefully by now you can tell that for better or worse, what you get from me is my honest, unvarnished feelings about a puzzle. There's an explanatory element too, sure, but this blog is basically one person's solving diary. Idiosyncratic. Personal. Human. I'm not interested in trying to guess consensus opinion. I'll leave that to A.I. All I can do, all I want to do, is tell you exactly what it was like for me to solve the puzzle—what I thought, what I felt. Because while solving may seem like mere box-filling to outsiders, crossword enthusiasts know that the puzzle actually makes us feel things—joy, anguish, confusion (confusion's a feeling, right?). Our feelings might not always be rational, but dammit, they're ours, and they're worth having. And sharing. I love that crosswords engage the messy, human side of you, as well as the objective, solution-oriented side. If I just wanted to fill in boxes, without any of the messy human stuff, I'd solve sudoku (no shade, sudoku fans, they're just not for me!).

[conferring w/ my editor]

Over the years, I have received all kinds of advice about "monetizing" the blog, invitations to turn it into a subscription-type deal à la Substack or Patreon. And maybe I'd make more money that way, I don't know, but that sort of thing has never felt right for me. And honestly, does anyone really need yet another subscription to manage? As I've said in years past, I like being out here on this super old-school blogging platform, just giving it away for free and relying on conscientious addicts like yourselves to pay me what you think the blog's worth. It's just nicer that way. How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar on the homepage, as well as at the bottom of every write-up):

Second, a mailing address (checks can be made out to "Michael Sharp" or "Rex Parker") (be sure to date them with the new year, 2026!):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All Venmo contributions will get a little heart emoji, at a minimum :) All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I know snail mail is a hassle for most people, but I love it. I love seeing your (mostly) gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my (completely) awful handwriting. The human touch—it's nice. In recent years, my daughter has designed my annual postcards, but this year, grad school and NYC theater work are keeping her otherwise occupied, so I had to seek design help elsewhere. Enter Katie Kosma, who is not only a professional illustrator/designer, but (crucially!) a crossword enthusiast. She listened patiently to my long and disorganized list of ideas and in very short order was able to arrive at this year's design, inspired by film noir title cards. 

I'm very happy with how it turned out. The teeny boxes inside the letters, the copyright credit ("Natick Pictures, Inc."), and especially that pencil lamppost—mwah! I know most people solve online now, and many paper solvers prefer pen, but the pencil just feels iconic, and appropriate for the card's throwback vibe. That lamppost was entirely Katie's creation. She was a dream to work with. Can't say enough good things about her.

Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." 

Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership. Please know that your support means a lot to me and my family. Now on to today's puzzle... 

• • •

[26D: Kind of fever]

This is fine. I have no strong feelings one way or the other about this puzzle. There are a few marquee answers that made me happy (e.g. "HECK YEAH!," MR. RIGHT NOW), a couple are OK but that I've seen before (MEET CUTES, TRASH PANDA), and then ... the rest. The rest is inoffensive, but not striking. The biggest bummer for me was BENEFITS PACKAGE, which is about the dullest thing you could ever choose to spread across the center of your puzzle. It's a solid phrase, a real thing, so it's in no way bad—you just couldn't call it exciting! I feel like you've gotta really pick your splash answers—a grid-spanning center-sitting answer should sizzle. It should be something that makes your eyes pop or your heart sing, not something you go over with HR. All things from the world of workaday business tend to make my eyes glaze over. This is why the clue on ROLE was so depressing to me. So many possibilities, and the clue opts for ... job listing :( (55D: Listing on a jobs website). Isn't the listing the job? And then the ROLE is described in that listing? Shrug. Lift me out of the mundane, puzzle! I need something better than BLAH! But again, this is a solid puzzle. No major blemishes to speak of. Short fill's a little on the weak side, but short fill's often a little on the weak side. It's not particularly ugly or distracting, so that's fine. That's all I expect from short fill. 

[One of the great MEET CUTES of recent years—emergency dentistry!]

This is our third TRASH PANDA, and our second with this exact clue (31D: Raccoon, humorously). It's a wonderfully whimsical term, but once you've seen it in a grid, it's wow power is somewhat diminished. As for MEET CUTES—six times in the singular, three times in the plural now. They can't all be original, it's true, but somehow modern slang seems like it's really trying to be original, so when it gets repeated, I have this feeling of "oh, that again," whereas if you repeated something ordinary—say, COFFEEMAKERS—I wouldn't care (actually, COFFEEMAKERS has appeared in the NYTXW only once, and that was back in 1966, so go nuts with COFFEEMAKERS, by all means) (OK, now I'm thinking about my morning coffee, which I don't have until after I've finished this write-up, so ... moving on!).

In addition to BIZ-speak (i.e. business terminology), I'm particularly unfond of poker-speak (or gambling-speak in general), and it seemed like we got a lot today, including CRAP, which is never going to look like anything but CRAP in the grid. With a word like TELL, there are so many ways for that clue to go. I wish it had gone one of those. But then, if it had, I wouldn't have had my favorite wrong answer of the day. Well, not an answer I wrote in, but one that I definitely thought. I had the TE-, looked at the clue (22A: Bad thing to have in a poker game), and thought "TENS!? How are TENS bad? Even if you've just got two, I think that's pretty good. It's not 'bad,' anyway." A TELL is something you do unconsciously that indicates to other players how good your hand is, whether you're bluffing or not, etc. Gestures you make with your hands or face or body language. I think ON A HEATER is also poker talk? I have some vague recollection of sportscasters saying it about hot streaks, back when I still had TV and watched sports news religiously. ON A HEATER may be a real phrase, but it's a stupid one. It's longer than the already well-established and completely legible ON A TEAR. Or ON A ROLL. How many of these "ON A" phrases do we need? The only thing I'd ever describe as ON A HEATER is my cat. Both of them. Heater fiends. (technically they're on the radiator cover, but close enough)

No real difficulty today (yet again). I screwed up by writing in POCA instead of POCO (1D: Small bit, in Bogotá) and then not checking the crosses (AXES looked fine—better than OXES, that's for sure—it just didn't fit the clue). Had to wait for the crosses to make the LOLL v. LOAF call, of course (23D: Be just chillin'). The clue there, which is repeated for IDLE (64A: Be just chillin'), is inapt both times. Way too slangy for those answers. Clues should match, tonally, imho. The other clue/answer mismatch that jarred me was 65A: "Beats me!" ("I'VE NO IDEA!"). It's true that if I say it really fast, it sounds like I'm saying "I'VE NO IDEA," but I promise you I am always saying "I HAVE NO IDEA!" This is one instance where the contraction sounds oddly formal. 

Bullets:

• 1A: Crush (PUPPY LOVE) — I dunno. PUPPY LOVE is specifically for kids. If there's nothing indicating youth in the clue, it feels ... misleading. I've had crushes as an adult. None of them would I describe as PUPPY LOVE.
• 16A: Places many Cubans are found (CIGAR BOXES) — first thought: DELIS. Florida delis, anyway.

[Cuban sandwich]

• 44A: Old-timey oath (NERTS!) — as I literally said on Tuesday (re: the inevitable eventual fate of NO CAP), "old slang never dies, it just haunts crosswords for eternity."  If any old slang should've died by now, it's NERTS!, but ... here we are, 2026, just NERTSing around like there's no tomorrow.
• 48A: Was rude on the road or the dance floor (CUT IN) — I've learned everything I know about couples dancing from The Love Boat, and my impression was that cutting in was not uncommon and always done very politely. "May I CUT IN?" Who is just yoinking partners away from people without their consent? Anyway, cutting in, in that context, does not seem definitively "rude." Also, on the road, the phrase is "cut off." I guess if we're talking about slow-moving lines, a car could "cut in," but usually the polite thing is to just let the car into the line. People get way too worked up behind the wheel.
• 34A: Stealthy flier (AIR MARSHAL) — good clue. Has you looking for an aircraft, not someone on the aircraft.
• 60A: Monopoly token retired in 2017 (BOOT) — haven't played Monopoly since college. Struggled to remember all the tokens. It was like trying to remember all the rooms in Clue—I know they're in my brain somewhere, but ... it's somewhere way in the back, covered in cobwebs.
• 10D: Footwear that lacks defined heels (TUBE SOCKS) — my footwear of choice until I was, like, a teenager, I think. Very popular in the '70s. The more brightly striped, the better.

• 37D: There are more than 2.3 million in N.Y.C.: Abbr. (APTS) — had the "A" and "S" and started to write in ANTS, then thought "... wait, how did they count the ants? WAIT, there have got to be more than 2.3 million!" Indeed. Wish I'd noticed the "Abbr." part of the clue.
• 41D: Oscar winner Blanchett (CATE) — coincidentally, I'm going up to Ithaca to see her latest movie today!

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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