British novelist Jones / MON 2-9-26 / Sanskrit word for "teacher" / Portable writing surface / Explosive-sounding TV channel / Hockey player who typically plays the entire game

Constructor: Matthew Stock

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: "ARE YOU CHICKEN?" (55A: Question to a scaredy-cat ... to which the final parts of 20-, 32- and 42-Across would answer "Yes!") — chicken formats:

Theme answers:

• LAS VEGAS STRIP (20A: Main drag through Sin City)
• GOLD NUGGET (32A: Valuable bit in a prospector's pan)
• GOALTENDER (42A: Hockey player who typically plays the entire game)

Word of the Day: SADIE Jones (9D: British novelist Jones) —

Sadie Jones (born 1967) is an English writer and novelist best known for her award-winning debut novel, The Outcast (2008). [...] The Outcast was short-listed for the 2008 Orange Prize. It was a Sunday Times Number 1 Bestseller and won the Best First Novel in the Costa Book Awards of 2008. It has been translated into twelve languages and sold more than 500,000 copies. [...] The Outcast is the debut novel by British author Sadie Jones, published in 2007 by Chatto & Windus. In 2008, it won the Costa Book Award for First Novel and was shortlisted for the 2008 Women's Prize for Fiction. In 2015, it was adapted for television.

• • •

Something about the question "ARE YOU CHICKEN?" just doesn't land right in my ears. I can hear someone accusing another person of being a chicken, complete with chicken sounds on the back end ("bwok bwok bwok bwok bwok!")? Maybe I can hear someone saying, "What's the matter? You chicken" That sounds rightish. But just "ARE YOU CHICKEN?" doesn't quite sound like a thing someone would ask. Not precisely. But what I love about the question is how perfect a thing it is to ask the crazy pressed-form food shapes in question. "ARE YOU CHICKEN? Because you do not look like chicken." Nugget, tender, strip, these are all processed abominations that make the chicken almost unrecognizable as such (tasty, but severely deformed). The "strip" is closest to chickenness, I think. I don't really know what the difference between a tender and a strip is, actually. A nugget, that I know. I used to eat them by the dozen (the 20-pack, actually) when I was in high school. Whatever happens between bird and nugget is completely disfiguring. Delicious, perhaps, but disfiguring. So much so that if you came from a part of the world with no strip / tender / nugget technology, you might in fact ask the fried bit of brownness in your hand, "ARE YOU CHICKEN?" So I like the revealer question, as a revealer phrase, even if it seems A TAD contrived as an actual human question.

Otherwise the grid is AWASH in short stuff (as often happens with 78-worders—the maximum allowable word count). Most of it is, like many molded and fried chicken products, merely bland, not particularly offensive. The one thing the grid has going for it is a sizable assortment of longer Down answers. They really give the grid some much-needed color today. You get six really solid 7+-letter answers. There's not a one I don't actively like. Solving Downs-only, I had a little "ooh, nice" moment when I figured out my first long Down, DIVVIED UP. There's something about the double-"V" of DIVVIED that is inherently appealing. 

You can see how, from here, I was able to infer LAS VEGAS at the front end of the first themer. From that "G" I got GURU (21D: Sanskrit word for "teacher") and from the "A" I got SAGAS (5D: Long stories) and from the "S" I got ERASE (6D: Wipe clean), and while I didn't get STRIP immediately (though I probably should have), I only needed the "S" from the end of ACTS and the "R" from the gimme RUM (22D: "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of ___") to get STRIP eventually. Sadly, getting STRIP didn't help me with that NE corner, which remained incomplete until the very end. Despite using a CLIPBOARD on a regular basis (mostly for the puzzles I print out, esp. the cryptics I solve with my wife every cocktail hour (5pm)), I couldn't get it from the clue alone (10D: Portable writing surface). As for SADIE Jones, I've never heard of her. Really odd choice of clue for a Monday. From what I can tell, she is primarily known for one popular novel eighteen years ago. The Beatle's "Sexy SADIE" or SADIE Sink from Stranger Things are far more Mondayish SADIEs than this British novelist. But the puzzle's so easy overall that throwing in a less widely known SADIE like this doesn't really affect the overall solve much. I wish the clue had done more to tell us anything about her. Even her most famous title would've been helpful. Then I could at least say I learned something. But no matter. SADIE Jones is my Word of the Day, so technically I have learned something.

Bullets:

• 42D: Period before starting more school (GAP YEAR) — a solid 7. SHOTPUT too (8D: Track-and-field event with a 16-pound ball). It's always nice when there's a lot of longer non-thematic stuff and it's strong.
• 53D: Outdoor John? (DEERE) — because John DEERE makes farming equipment, which you use ... outdoors. Yeah, that must be it. My first thought for [Outdoor John?], which I still like best despite its making no sense: ELTON. He did do a few famous "outdoor" concerts.

[Central Park, 1980]

• 56D: Oceanic predator (ORCA) — the one bit of "crosswordese" that I never get tired of. Love ORCAs. More ORCAs. Any time I hear about ORCAs "attacking" yachts or other watercraft (as has happened many times off the coast of France and the Iberian Peninsula in recent years), I think "good for them." I mean, I hope no humans are hurt, but any time animals show utter disrespect for human property, I feel a certain respect. It's their world. And it's not like we've respected that world, exactly. So ... if they want to toss our luxury vessels around like a hackysack, so be it. I like this cetologist's measured, existential perspective on the boat destruction—the ORCAs aren't "attacking," they're merely "interacting" with the vessels as part of their educational "enrichment." Because the sea is "a very boring place":

[from USA Today, 9/17/25]

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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