Chick checker of a sort / THU 2-5-26 / Bible-inspired tourist attraction in Williamstown, Ky. / Levy that helped fund the Erie Canal / Meat stick brand / Racer's final go-round / Paragraph starter, perhaps / Prince Harry, per his memoir's title / Become acquainted via Gmail, say

Constructor: Dario Salvucci

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: ON THE ROAD (35A: Classic Jack Kerouac novel ... or where you'll find 17-, 24-, 49- and 58-Across) — theme clues are visual depictions (using keyboard characters) of things you might see on the road (i.e. while driving):

Theme answers:

17A: |$|$|$|$| (TOOLBOOTHS)

24A: | : : : | / / (FREEWAY EXIT)

49A: | : : :-| (LANE CLOSURE)

58A: |X:X:X:X| (TRAFFIC JAM)

     |X:X:X:X|
     |X:X:X:X|

Word of the Day: SPARE (10D: Prince Harry, per his memoir's title) —

Spare is a memoir by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, which was released on 10 January 2023. It was ghostwritten by J. R. Moehringer and published by Penguin Random House. It is 416 pages long and available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats and has been translated into fifteen languages. There is also a 15-hour audiobook edition, which Harry narrates.

The book was highly anticipated and was accompanied by several major broadcast interviews. The title refers to the aristocratic adage that an "heir and a spare" were needed to ensure that an inheritance remained in the family. In the book, Harry details his childhood and the profound effect of the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as his teenage years, and subsequent deployment to Afghanistan with the British Army. He writes about his relationship with his older brother, Prince William, and his father, King Charles III, and his father's marriage to Queen Camilla, as well as his courtship and marriage to the American actress Meghan Markle and the couple's subsequent stepping back from their royal roles.

Spare received generally mixed reviews from critics, some who praised Harry's openness but were critical of the inclusion of too many personal details. According to Guinness World Records, Spare became "the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time" on the date of its release. (wikipedia)

• • •

Two big problems today. First, and worst, the fill, which had me getting mad at this puzzle early, and then often. Waded through a rough but passable NW corner only to hit SEXER at the bottom of that corner and then completely mentally check out (31A: Chick checker of a sort). OK, not completely, but ... yeesh. I haven't seen SEXER in 18 years but I haven't forgotten it. Once you learn that there is someone who is specially trained to pick up baby chicks, look quickly at their genital region (is that right?), and determine their sex so they can be sorted (for future consumption or egg-laying or whatever), you don't forget it. Seriously, it's some kind of really specialized skill. Large commercial hatcheries employ sexers to weed out the undesirable male chicks, which are mostly killed because they are "useless" (can't lay eggs). Fun. Anyway, I learned this "job" existed from crosswords a long time ago, and thought "what an awful and awful-looking word, must be some holdover from the pre-Shortz days, sure hope I never see it again." But 18 years later, here we are. And it turns out that SEXER is not, in fact, a holdover from the pre-Shortz days (when short fill tended to be much rougher). In fact, it debuted under Shortz, in 1997. It was debuted by ... my friend Matt Gaffney!?!?! OK, I am going to have to have words with him about that. Although ... it's almost thirty years ago, now, maybe I can let it go. But I can't let go seeing SEXER in a puzzle in 2026, not unless it's absolutely necessary to hold together an incredibly beautiful theme or something. This SEXER holds nothing beautiful together. It's a regular-ass grid, why do I have to go from OCALA (real place, but still total crosswordese) through SALT TAX (dull) and A COUPLE (🙁) only to end up at SEXER. And let me tell you, the puzzle probably still could've gotten me back on its side, still could've righted the ship, if the theme had been great or if the fill had improved, but none of those things happened. By the time I hit E-MEET (sigh) my soul basically left my body and went into the next room to read a book. 

[OCALA heat map (peaking in late '80s/early '90s before clearly tapering off starting in the 2010s)] [xwordinfo]

As for the theme, only TOLLBOOTHS made any visual sense to me as I was solving. The others ... there just wasn't enough visual context for me to see that I was supposed to be looking at four parallel lanes. I kept reading the clue as if they represented one lane, headed west to east (i.e. left to right). The colons just weren't registering as dotted-line lane dividers. As for TRAFFIC JAM, in my software, the clue represents those three rows of traffic as one line, so instead of a proper jam (three rows deep), you just get what looks like 12 lanes of traffic. The idea that an "X" was a car was hard enough to grasp. The "jam" part was lost on me completely. I just inferred that answer from crosses. I'm not opposed to the concept here, but it just isn't executed in a fully legible way. I have a suspicion that it's going to drive some solvers (esp. those w/ tired eyes, old eyes, or any kind of vision issues) crazy. My eyes are fine and I found it fussy and confusing. It was pretty easy, though, so maybe people will forgive this puzzle its infelicities. Success on a Thursday tends to give people strong feelings of goodwill.

There was one thing I really liked today, which was the clue on ALL CAPS (38D: Case of emergency?). Nice bending of "case" there. I'm struggling to find other things that elevated the puzzle above average, though, even briefly. The corners are all banks of 7s, and banking 7s rarely yields greatness. Hard to do a bank of 7s even without thematic pressure, but run themers in there and the best you can hope for is that the corner doesn't have to resort to any really ugly or awkward fill. All in all, I think those corners all hold up, at least in the longer answers, so that's something. But the glue of this puzzle is an avalanche of tired short fill. "A" is for Avalanche. "A" as in [deep breath] APSE AERO ALPO AMFM ADUE ADIN ALEE ASTO ABCS ACHE AIDS ALLY. And that's just the four-letter stuff. Twelve four-letter "A" answers. That's not gonna lead anywhere good. In addition to the unpleasantness of the SEXER helping send male chicks to a mass grave, there's the eternal grimness of TASE (15A: Give quite a shock), the absurd Creationist fantasy of an ARK in Kentucky (21A: Bible-inspired tourist attraction in Williamstown, Ky.), and the loneliness of the single SLIM JIM (43D: Meat stick brand). Is CAR FARE really a common thing for a "commuter" to pay (44D: Commuter's charge)? I think of commuters taking their own cars, or riding in car pools, or taking public transportation like subway, rail, bus, etc. Do people use CAR FARE to refer to payment for things like Uber? CAB FARE is a natural phrase to me. CAR FARE I've heard, but for "commuters," I really don't know. Seemed off. 

Bullets:

• 3D: Levy that helped fund the Erie Canal (SALT TAX) — Me: "... Eugene?" I had a weird double-levy moment in the NW corner, as LEVY was the first thing I wrote in for 20A: Charge on imports (DUTY).

[I miss you, Catherine O'Hara]

• 48A: Racer's final go-round (GUN LAP) — no idea. Never heard of this. Had LAP and just ... waited for crosses. Last lap. final lap, closing lap—heard all those. GUN LAP, nope. Turns out it's a debut [gently taps "Not All Debuts Are Good" sign] [update: looks like this is a phenomenon in foot racing (i.e. track), not car racing, as I had assumed]
• 5D: Paragraph starter, perhaps (TAB) — me: "... SIR? No, that's a salutation ..." Really wanted a word you'd use at the start of a paragraph, not a key you'd press. The clue's not wrong, just (for me) tough. Ish.
• 58D: Confucian "way" (TAO) — I got a letter last month during my blog fundraiser from a reader who had just one thing to tell me (besides the usual pleasantries) and that was that TAO is not how you spell it. It shouldn't be TAO, it should be DAO. She was very adamant on this point. When I search DAO, all I get are something called (ominously) "Decentralized Autonomous Organizations" (!?!?!). The Tao v. Dao issue apparently arises from two different modes of transliteration, the Wade-Giles (unvoiced "T") and Pinyin (voiced "D"), the latter being, I think, somewhat closer to "correct" pronunciation. But I'm out of my depth here. I've just seen TAO so often (esp. in crosswords) that I haven't given the spelling a second a thought. But apparently this is an issue that can inspire strong feelings. As someone who has strong feelings about SEXER and E-MEET, I'm in no position to judge.

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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