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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