Clip-on mic, for short / SAT 2-21-26 / Pink-furred "Garfield" character / Certain slip-on / Overseer of the Erie Canal, in brief / "Star Trek" villain played by Ricardo Montalbán / Film subgenre exemplified by "The Thing" and "The Fly" / European city on the Bay of Angels / The third primary chakra is located just above it

Constructor: Josh Knapp

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Heated Rivalry (41A: Rachel ___, author of "Heated Rivalry" = > REID) —

Heated Rivalry is a 2019 gay sports romance novel by Canadian author Rachel Reid. It follows a secret romantic relationship between rival hockey stars Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. The novel is the second in Reid's Game Changers series of gay-themed ice hockey romance novels. A television series based on the novel was released in November 2025. // Rachel Reid's Game Changer was published by Carina Press, an LGBTQ+ imprint of Harlequin, in 2018. It was followed by Heated Rivalry (2019), Tough Guy (2020), Common Goal (2020), Role Model (2021), The Long Game (2022), and the forthcoming Unrivaled (2026). Reid, a hockey fan, said in 2023, "Game Changer came from a place of me being angry at hockey culture and how clearly homophobic it was and is, and all the other things that made me really ashamed to be a hockey fan. That whole series attacks the NHL and hockey culture quite a bit." Writing the series, Reid questioned what would it mean to be a closeted player in a league with such a homophobic culture. "I thought a lot about what it would feel like to come out. And then I started thinking about the ripple effect—what would happen to the other players?" (wikipedia)

• • •

There's something about a JKQXZ fetish that can start to feel excessive. Like the puzzle is doing a bit, a little show-offy thing, instead of just trying to get the best and most interesting fill into the grid. The puzzle felt at times like it was being driven by unusual letters rather than interesting words and phrases. Despite this semi-annoying tendency, the grid is really very good in places, particularly the NW, which has one of my favorite stacks in a long while—just a strange assortment of strong answers. BLANK STARE and BODY HORROR pair well (1A: Look to give nothing away? / 15A: Film subgenre exemplified by "The Thing" and "The Fly")—you might stare blankly at BODY HORROR, or stare blankly at human beings after experiencing the trauma of BODY HORROR—but then the QUESADILLA drops in as the third member of the trio and makes the whole corner delightfully absurd. Now instead of imagining staring blankly into the void after witnessing horrific gore and bodily mutation, I'm imagining what would happen if Taco Bell did a tie-in with the next Cronenberg movie and offered a BODY HORROR QUESADILLA. What would be in that? Pieces of ARLENE and LOUISA, no doubt. Considering what it might do to your digestive system, perhaps every Taco Bell Quesadilla is already a BODY HORROR QUESADILLA. Anyway, I like the phrase BODY HORROR QUESADILLA, just as I like the opposing energies of ROCK BOTTOM and EXHILARATE down below. MYSTERY BOX, I don't love so well. Where / when would I "purchase" one of these? Sounds made-up. But otherwise, the NW / SE stacks are really strong. The rest of the 8+ answers are holding their own as well. And POP QUIZ manages to make the whole JKQXZ fetish seem almost worth it ... and yet POP QUIZ is also involved in this puzzle's one real crime, which is the absurd doubling up of "POP" (POP QUIZ, POP TAB). You can double little words like UP and ON and IN and NO and the like, but doubling a word like POP feels like a violation. Too conspicuous. Unless it's an article or a preposition, I'm generally against duplications. Feels sloppy / lazy / disrespectful. One of those. But I can't say I didn't enjoy this puzzle, because mostly I did.

Once I got my initial traction in the NW (KHAN to NAVEL to ROLL (OVER) to ERA etc.), the puzzle seemed pretty easy. The one area I struggled with a bit was in the east, where Rachel REID's name was unknown to me (you can't go anywhere without hearing about Heated Rivalry the TV show, esp. with so much (Olympic) hockey in the air right now, but I was unaware of the book series it's based on). I was able to piece her name together from the crosses without too much trouble, but just above that I ran into more serious trouble in the whole PONCHO area. First of all, that clue on PONCHO, yikes (25A: Certain slip-on). You do slip one on but no one in the history of sartorial discourse has ever called a PONCHO a "slip-on." That's obviously a shoe term. So even after getting the "PO-" and the terminal "-O," I was left wondering. "POTATO? Can you slip that on? Maybe you slip on it ... no, that's a banana peel." 

When crosses eventually got me PONCHO, I was left with just one (big) issue: the CAR SHARE / LAV crossing. CAR SHARE had a clue I didn't really understand at first (13D: Many key changes take place in it) (I might've considered CAR STORE at some point...), and LAV ... what the hell is this clip-on microphone business? (31A: Clip-on mic, for short). Not familiar to me. No idea, right now, what LAV is short for, or what it stands for (is it an acronym??). I know about lapel mikes and so definitely considered LAP at one point, but the "OVER" (from ROLL / OVER) was never gonna budge. Not knowing LAV—or, rather, knowing LAV only as a toilet—had me second-guessing CAR SHARE, but once you've plugged in all the other vowels there (CAR SHORE? CAR SHIRE? LOL, "Where do the Hobbits park their cars....?"), it has to be CAR SHARE. So in went the "A" and "Congratulations" went the solving software and [extreme shrug] went me on finding out LAV was the correct answer. Strange ... as soon as I went to search [lav mic] just now, I thought, "I think it's short for 'lavalier,' how do I know that?" And sure enough:

lavalier microphone or lavalier (also known as a lav, lapel mic, clip mic, body mic, collar mic, neck mic or personal mic) is a small microphone used for television, interview and other studio applications to allow hands-free operation. They are most commonly provided with small clips for attaching to collars, ties, or other clothing. The cord may be hidden by clothes and either run to a radio frequency transmitter kept in a pocket or clipped to a belt, or routed directly to the mixer or a recording device. [...] The term lavalier originally referred to jewelry in the form of a pendant worn around the neck. Its use as the name of a type of microphone originates from the 1930s, when various practical solutions to microphone use involved hanging the microphone from the neck.(wikipedia)

I have enjoyed learning about the history of hands-free microphones. I did not enjoy LAV while solving, as I didn't know it and it was impossible to infer. 64 total NYTXW appearances for LAV, but this is the first microphone clue. As I said, every other time: toilet (e.g. [Loo], [W.C.], [Head], [John], [Facilities, informally], etc.).

Bullets:

• 4D: Overseer of the Erie Canal, in brief (NYS) — I live in NYS and still couldn't get this. Wrote in EPA at first, I think.
• 5D: "Star Trek" villain played by Ricardo Montalbán (KHAN) — I still struggle with the KHAN v. KAHN thing. KHAN is a central / south Asian honorific. KAHN ... isn't. It's Madeleine KAHN, Wrath of KHAN.

• 59A: How low can you go? (ROCK BOTTOM) — read this as "How long can you go?" and really wondered what the clue was trying to ask me.
• 13D: Many key changes take place in it (CAR SHARE) — still not sure I get this. Car shares involve multiple drivers, obviously, but are "keys" really "changed?" Do most carshare cars even use keys? Don't you unlock the car with your app or something? I'm out of my depth here, but it seems like the desire for the "key change" pun has led to a certain iffiness in the clue.
• 8D: Pink-furred "Garfield" character (ARLENE) — tertiary "Garfield" characters are really bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. ROCK BOTTOM, you might say. You gotta know ODIE, obviously, and JON, I suppose, and I guess I can give you JON's girlfriend LIZ (how do I know this stuff!?), but once you get down to ARLENE and IRMA and NERMAL, I think you've gone too far (actually, no one has ever attempted NERMAL, but who knows what horrors the future holds...). ARLENE is Garfield's love interest, I'm told. I'm also told that Garfield has a great-grandfather named OSLO Feline. I doubt that will ever be part of an OSLO clue, but if it is, now you're prepared.

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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Crispy flaps of crust on sourdough loaves / FRI 2-20-26 / Seller's shorthand for "I'm willing to haggle" / Product code used in inventory management / Pleasant chill in the air, say / Actress Seehorn of "Pluribus" / Disney character who sings "In Summer" / Miracle on the ___ (surprise French/English victory of W.W. I) / N.Y.C.-based dance group / ___ Bunny, toon who debuted in "Space Jam"

Constructor: Kate Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: RHEA Seehorn (29A: Actress Seehorn of "Pluribus") —

Deborah Rhea Seehorn (born May 12, 1972) is an American actress and director. She is best known for playing Kim Wexler in the AMC legal crime drama series Better Call Saul (2015–2022) and Carol Sturka in the Apple TV science fiction thriller series Pluribus (2025–present).

Seehorn's performance in Better Call Saul won her a Television Critics Association Award for Individual Achievement in Drama, in addition to nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and three Critics' Choice Television Awards. For Cooper's Bar (2022–2023), which she also co-created and directed, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series. For Pluribus, she earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama and a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Drama Series. (wikipedia)

• • •

Somehow SWEATER WEATHER doesn't play as comfy-cozy in the dead of winter as it might in, say, early fall (19A: Pleasant chill in the air, say). OLAF singing "In Summer" fits the current weather vibe very well. I've never seen Frozen and I don't know what "In Summer" is about—for a snowman like OLAF (he's a snowman, right?), summer probably means death of some sort—but I prefer to read it as a hopeful song, looking forward to warmer days. SWEATER WEATHER—a wonderful answer—would've landed better with me if I hadn't already been wearing all my sweaters every day for weeks just to stay warm (in the past week, there's been a thaw of sorts, but otherwise it's been below-average brutal since Thanksgiving). SNOW DAYS, that fits the time of year a little better. I want to like FRIEND MATERIAL (48A: Someone you might like to get to know better) ... I do, mostly ... but I think of ___ MATERIAL is a general framework you might fill with many words. Paradigmatically, it's HUSBAND MATERIAL. Oof, yeah, search that baby in quotation marks and you get ladies' magazines aplenty, site after site offering 11 signs, 15 signs, 20 signs, 25 signs that your man is HUSBAND MATERIAL (in case you think those are numbers I made up, they are not, just read them off the search results page).  HUSBAND outgoogles FRIEND roughly 815K to 150K. That doesn't mean FRIEND MATERIAL isn't a thing. It's just less a thing. Even less a thing because many of those search hit results for FRIEND MATERIAL are actually hits for BEST FRIEND MATERIAL. [note: looks like BOYFRIEND MATERIAL gets a lot of traction too: 3.7 million hits (!!!), though most of those are for a very popular queer romance novel of the same name]. I still sort of like the answer as is, it just didn't pop like a perfect phrase snaps. REVERSE ENGINEER is a fine phrase, but with all those common letters, it's actually boring as hell to my eye (34A: Break down while studying?). The other long answers don't have the snap and sizzle I'm generally hoping for on a Friday. "ARE WE LIVE?" has a nice energy. CON ARTISTS (27D: Shady dealers) and SWAGGER (15D: Arrogant self-assurance) give the grid a bit of an outlaw feel, which is nice. But overall, this was more acceptable than exceptional.

I forgot SKU existed and so tried CPU and even PCU first (5A: Product code used in inventory management). Is PCU even a thing? I think I was thinking UPC when I wrote in PCU. Oh wow, I just remembered that PCU is a thing—a Jeremy Piven movie from the '90s satirizing "woke campus culture" back before that became nearly the entire identity of a major American political party. 

It's actually been in the NYTXW twice, but not since 2012. I doubt you're going to be seeing it again, but I've thought that about lots of answers that sprang back from the dead, so who knows? But back to the puzzle. SKU! It's 3/4 of a bird!

[seen here shouting about how he's been in the puzzle 69 times]

So SKU was a very minor hiccup, but otherwise, the top half was a cinch. Things got a little trickier down below, but only a little. I know there was a famous Battle of the MARNE (two, actually), and I know about the "Miracle on Ice," but I did not know there was a "Miracle on the MARNE," so my first stabs there were of the RHINE and RHONE variety (helpful to have letters in place when you're looking at a clue for the first time, not so helpful if you're looking at a European river and the letters you have in place are the final -NE). Below that, I never saw Space Jam and do not consider LOLA Bunny canonical—could not dig up her name, nor could I understand what the hell was going on with the clue on PLY (54D: Carry on). I guess if you "PLY your trade," you are "carrying on" your business. Was not computing for me. I mostly only think of PLY in toilet paper contexts. In that same general area, I had SHEEN instead of STAIN (47D: Wood finish). A little bit further over, I needed a little help coming up with the DAYS part of SNOW DAYS and the FRIEND part of FRIEND MATERIAL. Oh, and as someone who loves his sourdough loaves so much he drives a half hour out of town every week just to get his bread from his favorite bakery, I was more than a little surprised to find out that the [Crispy flaps of crust on sourdough loaves] had a name (EARS). I had the "E" and wrote in ENDS. They do look more like EARS, though, it's true.

[from Sourdough Brandon]

But none of these problems at the bottom of the grid were really Problem problems. Just minor obstacles I was able to easily work around. So the puzzle still definitely came in on the easy side.

[53A: Has to keep going (CAN'T STOP)]

Bullets:

• 40A: Like many working horses, but not many working dogs (SHOED) — I know you shoe horses, but once you shoe them aren't they SHOD? So many of the SHOD clues have referred to horses that SHOED now looks weird to me. Also, I know there aren't many, but ... exactly how many working dogs are SHOED, and can I see them?

[Air Bud: Unshoed!]

• 20D: Becomes aged, in a way (WIZENS) — as someone who is becoming aged, I assumed the answer was WISENS (you know, becomes more wise). The actual answer was a rude awakening.
• 43A: N.Y.C.-based dance group (ABT) — American Ballet Theatre
• 1D: Seller's shorthand for "I'm willing to haggle" (OBO) — "Or Best Offer." Not to be confused with BOGO ("Buy one, get one"), YOLO ("You only live once!") or LOBO (a TV sheriff with many misadventures):

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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Courting disaster, slangily / THU 2-19-26 / Spot to play baccarat / Medieval cure-all / Metaphor for a challenging puzzle / Japanese word that's sometimes translated as "planted in a pot" / Australian actor Eric / One-half of a golf partnership

Constructor: John Ewbank

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: LESSER OF TWO EVILS (60A: Better choice, given the options ... or the circled squares vis-à-vis the shaded ones?) — theme answers have two "SIN"s (i.e. "evils"): one regular-sized (in the shaded squares), the other shrunken ("lesser") inside a single (circled) square:

Theme answers:

• CRUISIN' FOR A BRUI[SIN'] (18A: Courting disaster, slangily) / CA[SIN]O (13D: Spot to play baccarat)
• SING[S IN] THE SHOWER (29A: Uses a shampoo bottle as a microphone, perhaps) / SAS[SIN]G (19D: Talking back to)
• BUSINES[S IN]SIDERS (48A: They may have knowledge of corporate secrets) / RE[SIN] (39D: Varnish ingredient)

Word of the Day: OLGA Kurylenko (58D: Actress Kurylenko) —

Olga Kostyantynivna Kurylenko (born 14 November 1979) is a Ukrainian and French actress and former model. She rose to prominence by playing the Bond girl Camille Montes in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace (2008).

Kurylenko began her career modelling in Paris before making a transition to acting. She had her breakthrough role in the action thriller Hitman (2007) after making her film debut in the drama The Ring Finger (2005). Following Quantum of Solace, she went on to star in the romantic drama To the Wonder (2012), the crime comedy Seven Psychopaths (2012), the science fiction film Oblivion (2013), the political satire The Death of Stalin (2017), the comedy The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018), the superhero films Black Widow (2021) and Thunderbolts* (2025), the Netflix spy thriller miniseries Treason (2022) and the action thriller Extraction 2 (2023). (wikipedia)

• • •

Father forgive me, for I have sinned. Twice! One of them was pretty small, though, so ... We good? Awesome, thanks. I liked this puzzle for a few reasons. First of all, I like a good rebus puzzle, and this was a really original rebus variant. Shaded squares + rebus! Two puzzle types that (apparently) taste great together. I liked how the theme unfolded for me, with the "SIN" in the shaded squares going right in no problem, but then the circled square remaining more mysterious for a bit. At first I thought there was some kind of loop or wormhole in effect. Since the first themer ends with the circled square, I thought maybe I was supposed to loop back to the first (shaded-square) "SIN" to complete the answer. The next one didn't work that way, though: if I loop back to the first "SIN" when I hit the circle, I get SING-SINGS THE SHOWER, which obviously makes no sense (unless you are turning your shower into a notorious New York prison). The way I figured out what the circled square was doing was by trying to solve the crosses, specifically CASO. "What's a CASO!? Shouldn't it be CASIN... Oh!" Since I had SASSY for 19D: Talking back to, I had missed the "SIN" square on my first attempt to cross it. So ultimately it was CASINO that gave me the full picture of the theme. First time I've ever been grateful to a CASINO for anything—thanks, CASINO! All that was left after that was to understand why I was getting this Mutt & Jeff pair of "SIN"s in every theme answer. And today, the revealer really delivered. I was calling this puzzle "Two Sins, Fat and Thin" in my head, but LESSER OF TWO EVILS is definitely better. I love when a revealer is a perfect expression of the theme gimmick—or the theme gimmick is a perfect expression of the revealer, whichever. The theme answers get weaker as they go along, opening very strong and closing somewhat feebly (hard to get excited about BUSINESS INSIDERS), but they all work just fine. So, good job today, themewise. 

The rest of the grid is harder to assess. Or rather, I'm a little ambivalent about it. On the one hand, it is admirably clean. It's got its share of tired repeaters (PSST ETRE SSN TKO BANA ALI NSA ITO etc.) but in that 6-7-8 range it's got mostly solid, real words—nothing to gripe about at all. But also not a lot to cheer. Not a lot to sit up and clap for. TOUGH NUT is indeed a metaphor ("a tough nut to crack"), but not one I would use, and it's kinda weird on its own, divorced from the metaphor. ACES HIGH is good—maybe the best non-theme thing in the grid. I don't care for CASINOs, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate ACES HIGH! After that, though, there's SEA BEDS, IGNEOUS, BONSAI, GALLONS, WRITERS, PAUPER, "NO GOOD!" ... these are all perfectly fine words / phrases, and they make for a really smooth solving experience (hurray), but there's nothing that really stands out, and the clues simply aren't helping. This is true for the whole puzzle: the cluing was quite bland and straightforward. Perhaps the thought was that the theme was (somewhat) tricky, and so the clues on the regular fill shouldn't be? I dunno. I could've used more tricky, or at least clever, or at least interesting like the SSN clue (29D: You can request a new one on religious grounds if it contains "666": Abbr.). If you look the clues over, you'll see that it's mostly phoned-in, boilerplate stuff. I've been known to complain about an overabundance of "?" clues in puzzles, but this one doesn't attempt even one!? No wait, sorry, there is 54A: Big beginning? (MEGA), but that was transparent—not exactly original or twisty. Not a TOUGH NUT! I needed tougher (or at least cleverer) nuts in the fill clues. But again, the fill itself is largely solid. Maybe workmanlike, but it's doing its job—helping showcase the theme by not being a hellish distraction.

Bullets:

• 51D: Medieval cure-all (LEECH) — this one was a little tough. It was the "cure-all" that got me. I knew LEECHes were used medicinally (as they are today), but the "cure-all" part I was not aware of. Is anything used to treat a wide range of illnesses a "cure-all"? It's the "all" that's throwing me. But LEECHes did have a lot of (supposed) applications in the Middle Ages:

In medieval and early modern European medicine, the medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis and its congeners H. verbana, H. troctina, and H. orientalis) was used to remove blood from a patient as part of a process to balance the humors that, according to Galen, must be kept in balance for the human body to function properly. (The four humors of ancient medical philosophy were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.) Any sickness that caused the subject's skin to become red (e.g. fever and inflammation), so the theory went, must have arisen from too much blood in the body. Similarly, any person whose behavior was strident and sanguine was thought to be suffering from an excess of blood. Leeches, by removing blood, were thought to help with these kinds of conditions — a wide range which included illnesses like polio and laryngitis. (wikipedia)

• 24A: One-half of a golf partnership, perhaps (PRO) — if there's one thing I don't care for, besides CASINOs, it's golf. What the hell is a "golf partnership," I wondered for a second or two, Then I remembered that PRO-Am tournaments existed. Professional + amateur. There's your partnership. 
• 66A: Some colorful plastic items in the seasonal aisle in the spring (EGGS) — this is almost timely. Semi-timely. The Lenten season began yesterday (Ash Wednesday) and it will end on Easter, the day of colorful plastic eggs! (you fill these with candy, and put them in Easter Egg Baskets for kids, or whomever—such a bizarre ritual for the holiest day on the Christian calendar). 

• 38A: Makes noise like an electric fan (WHIRRS) — turns out I have no idea what the difference is between one-R WHIR and two-R WHIRR. Turns out there isn't one—WHIRR(S) is just a variant (less common, acc. to merriam-webster dot com)
• 38D: Dickens and Dickinson (WRITERS) — we're well past the middle of February and I'm still reading Dombey & Son! I started on Jan. 1 but then my blog fundraiser started and then my semester started (lots of other reading to do) and then I visited my daughter and now I have a cold ... and while having a cold might seem like the perfect time to plow through Dickens, I, sadly, have a pile of papers to grade. The goal is to be done by month's end. I'm over 700 pages in now, so ... let's see, that leaves just ... hmm, looks like well over 200 pages to go still. I really love it! It's just ... long. And my copy is falling apart. I had to duct tape it together, but it's still on the verge of disintegration at every moment. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Biblical name for Syria / WED 2-18-26 / Offensively odorous / ___ Aran, heroine of Nintendo's Metroid / Demon of Japanese folklore / Reduced to crumbs, say / Leader of the Sharks in "West Side Story" / Like some buns and bedrooms / One of the "six enemies of the mind," in Hinduism / Bluish-purple bloom

Constructor: Victor Schmitt

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: emoji puns — theme clues are emojis; theme answers are familiar expressions that are also figurative ways of describing those emojis:

Theme answers:

• SIGNS OF THE TIMES (21A: 🕰️⏳⏰)
• SYMBOLIC GESTURES (39A: 🤙👏👋)
• FIGURES OF SPEECH (57A: 💬🗣️🗯️) 

Word of the Day: COMMODORES (12D: Best-selling home computers of the 1980s) —

The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 12.5 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595 (equivalent to $1,940 in 2024). Preceded by the VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kibibytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM. [...] The C64 dominated the low-end computer market (except in the UK, France and Japan, lasting only about six months in Japan) for most of the later years of the 1980s.^[8] For a substantial period (1983–1986), the C64 had between 30% and 40% share of the US market and two million units sold per year, outselling IBM PC compatibles, the Apple II, and Atari 8-bit computers. [...] Part of the Commodore 64's success was its sale in regular retail stores instead of only electronics or computer hobbyist specialty stores. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control costs, including custom integrated circuit chips from MOS Technology. In the United States, it has been compared to the Ford Model T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative and affordable mass-production. (wikipedia) 

• • •

I was recoiling from this one right from the start. Ugliness in the NW corner is a real tone-setter, and though I'm not sure I'd call that corner "ugly," exactly, it's real wobbly. AMES and RANDB are hoary repeaters, and when I had to change NOPE to (ugh) "NOT I" (3D: Terse denial), I was fairly confident that this puzzle was NOT going to be for I. Moved over one section and was subjected to ALDO ARAM LOCO (and ACUTE, which, as clued, I really only know (from years of French) as AIGU). And then one over again and I've got AAS, plural PASTAS, something called SAMUS (20A: ___ Aran, heroine of Nintendo's Metroid), the gosh dang AGORA (hoariest of repeaters). By the time I got to ESPIAL (lol come on) I was ready to throw in the towel. I got the first themer fairly easy, and I guess the concept is OK (those are all "signs" related to telling "time"), but it didn't strike me as particularly funny. Also, of all the themers, SIGNS OF THE TIMES is the worst in the plural. The others seem very comfortable in the plural, but I'm fairly certain I've mostly only heard "Sign of the Times" in the singular (I may be under the heavy influence of the Prince album Sign O' the Times here, but ... that's OK, I can't think of very many albums I'd rather be under the influence of). The theme was pretty straightforward. Meanwhile, the unpleasant fill just kept coming. In the end, not enough highs in the theme material, and quite a lot of lows in the fill. FICA USDA EHOW ... an ERR and ERE that are actually holding hands and screaming for attention rather than hiding in the corners and trying to stay inconspicuous, as they should (40D: Old-fashioned word that's a homophone of 49-Across). The theme itself is solid enough. Kind of dull, but at least average for the NYTXW. But the fill really weighed it down. NOISOME fill. Not quite the DREGS, but dreggish. 

I know SAMUS was in the puzzle last year some time (Mar. 1, it turns out). I remember not knowing SAMUS. Well, I re-didn't know it today. Also forgot which variety of "O"-ending crosswordese Gucci was. ERNO? ENZO? Had to wait for crosses, one of which was ARAM (??), which ... it's been a while (6A: Biblical name for Syria). The only way I know ARAM is from the William Saroyan novel My Name Is ARAM, and the only reason I know that is that I grew up in Fresno, CA (where Saroyan is from ... there is (or was) a theater named after him and everything). The Biblical ARAM I know only from crosswords, but I clearly don't "know" it since I needed crosses coming up with it today. If it seems unfamiliar to you, here, let me give you a quick visual explanation of why:

[xwordinfo]

This chart shows ARAM appearances over time. The blue is where Shortz took over. Look at that ARAM supply just get (rightly) choked off right around the turn of the century. From eleven appearances a year in the mid-'90s to just once in the last decade in 2026 (before today). This is what I mean about the grid feeling like it's weighed down by olden gunk. It all feels very familiar to me, but that's because I started solving in the '90s, when ARAMs were (sadly) plentiful. There's no cause for ARAM now. There's especially no cause in a little section of a not-terribly-demanding grid. Anyway, after I got out of the ALDO / ARAM / SAMUS triangle, nothing held me up much, except (briefly) those awful four-letter government initialisms (plural!) (USDA, FICA). I really thought things were picking up slightly in the south when I got NOXIOUS (a cool word!) (51A: Offensively odorous) ... only it wasn't NOXIOUS, it was NOISOME (a much less cool word). I think HUMDINGERS is my favorite thing in the grid—ironic, given that it's as olde-timey as a lot of this fill, but at least it has style and personality. I don't know in what world you choose a computer clue for COMMODORES over a musical clue, but I guess it's this world. Unfathomable. I actually didn't mind learning a little bit about the history of the Commodore 64 (see "Word of the Day," above), but if you bring out the COMMODORES for the first time in 42 years, it oughta be Lionel Richie & Co. and they better be playing something (seriously, three COMMODORES clues all time and none of them use the band? Just the name of Vanderbilt athletes and computers? Filing a discrimination suit right now).

[man, early music videos were wild (by which I mean tame, low-budget, adorable)]

Bullets:

• 70A: Reduced to crumbs, say (EATEN) — if you're eating a cookie, I guess, but "say" I'm eating steak? 
• 5D: Leader of the Sharks in "West Side Story" (BERNARDO) — the puzzle continues to overestimate how well I'll remember roles in old movies / musicals. I know Spielberg remade this very recently, but still, no hope for me here without crosses. Those crosses weren't hard to come by, and so eventually I ESPIALed BERNARDO. [Note: this is the 23rd ESPIAL of all time, and the thirteenth time it's been clued [Observation]—interestingly, ESPIAL has not been favored more in one time period than another. No time period seems to want it—it appears more than once in a calendar year just twice (1942, 1969)]
• 29D: Demon of Japanese folklore (ONI) — I don't love ONI as fill, but this Japanese-demon way of cluing ONI is by far the best way I've seen. Before the 2020s, most ONI clues referred to the Office of Naval Intelligence (e.g. [Clandestine maritime org.] or [The Navy's C.I.A.]). Occasionally, you'd get a partial. For a very brief period in 1994, Shortz experimented with cluing "ONI" as if it were "ON-ONE" ([1-___ (way to guard)], [2 ___ (doubled teamed)]. He gave that up pretty quickly, which was probably the right move. Nowadays, since 2020, Japanese demon is the standard reference.

[this ONI is preparing to squeegee your windshield. Terrifying!]

• 42D: ___ Howard, Oscar-nominated actor for 2005's "Hustle & Flow" (TERRENCE) — I knew this, but for some reason TERRENCE + "Oscar-nominated" made me think I was dealing with a different cinematic TERRENCE altogether. Turns out I was thinking of TERENCE (one-"R") Blanchard (Academy Award-nominated composer of the scores for BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods) 

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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