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

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