Derisive term for unattractive public sculptures / FRI 2-6-26 / Classic mixed drink developed in Singapore / "Hearts are ___ for the breakin'" (Taylor Swift lyric) / Dwelling that epitomizes simple living / Phenomenon through which luxuries become necessities / Home improvement site, after a 2021 rebranding / Simone Biles or Tom Brady, acronymically / Stage name of South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang / Finishes a season, say

Constructor: Geoffrey Schorkopf and Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TINY HOME (35D: Dwelling that epitomizes simple living) —

The tiny-house movement (also known as the small house movement) is an architectural and social movement promoting the reduction and simplification of living spaces. Tiny homes have been promoted as offering lower-cost and sometimes eco-friendly features within the housing market, and they have also been promoted a housing option for homeless individuals.However, the lack of clearly defined features and legality in many cases can cause issues for ownership, including being more expensive for the amount of area, vulnerability to natural disaster, lack of storage, difficulty hosting, smaller or lacking traditional home appliances, and legal and or zoning issues.

There is some variation in defining a tiny home, but there are examples and they are usually based on floorspace. However, tiny homes do not have clearly defined features and may be mobile and may or may not have traditional home features. One definition, according to the International Residential Code, a tiny house's floorspace is no larger than 400 square feet (37 m²). In common language a tiny house and related movement can be larger than 400 ft² and Merriam-Webster says they can be up to 500 ft² . One architectural firm used a threshold of 600 ft² to define a tiny home. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's lots to like in this, but there is a largeish rectangular patch in the NW that ended up being both ugly and alien to me. And hard. Harder than the rest, anyway. The rectangle is bordered on the south by HARD HAT (32A: Mason, e.g.) and on the east by GIN SLING (8D: Classic mixed drink developed in Singapore). Actually, it's half that rectangle. It's more of a triangle, with the three points being the "H" in HARD HAT and the "G"s at the front and back of GIN SLING. Everything inside that triangle (roughly) was a (tiny) nightmare for me. The epicenter of the nightmare was the completely off-putting (and completely unknown to me) PLOP ART (7D: Derisive term for unattractive public sculptures). It's like a bird shit all over the puzzle. At least, I'm assuming that's what the "plop" part of PLOP ART refers to, right? Bird shit? Don't birds shit on all public art, not just the sculptures you think are "unattractive?" I get that it's playing on the term "pop art," but the shittiness of "plop" is ICK on every level. [wikipedia says that the "plop" part refers to sculpture that seems to have been "plopped" thoughtlessly where it lies, but wikipedia also says the term PLOP ART "holds connotations to excrement"]. I was left wondering what horrid, rotting wordlist that answer crawled out from under. 

That second "P" in PLOP ART took forever, because ...  well, primarily because of WRAPS (20A: Finishes a season). I had no idea what sense of "finishes" (or "season") the clue wanted, and was getting no help from 1, 2, 3 of the crosses. PLOP ART, obvs, no help. Then there's the "Taylor Swift lyric." God knows I have been more than accommodating to the general enSwiftification of the puzzle over the past decade or so, but you're not even giving me the song titles now? Just ... "Taylor Swift lyric?" Are hearts HERE for the breakin'? HELD for the breakin'? I don't know. In retrospect, HERS seems obvious, but while solving, no, that was not the case. The last answer keeping WRAPS from going in was GPS WATCH. I had the GPS, but ... I didn't even know GPS WATCH was a thing, so I was stuck. I also don't really get what "word play" is supposed to be happening in the clue (5D: What gives you the time and place?). Is that just a straightforward question? I've heard people say "name the time and place" or something like that, but the phrasing here evokes nothing very clear. So, yeah, now that I've written this out, the real killer for me in the NW was WRAPS—an answer I'm not actually mad at at all. But its vagueness made GPS WATCH, HERS, and PLOP ART (none of them appealing to me) tough for me to come up with.

GIN SLING was easy but clanked a bit in my ears. I know the SINGAPORE SLING. In fact, that's the only way I got SLING—by inferring it from the "Singapore" in the clue. SINGAPORE SLING would be a great answer. GIN SLING ... fine, but less great. As for HARD HAT, somehow in my head a "Mason" is either really old-timey (laying bricks and mortar with a trowel in, like, Dickensian times) or else belongs to a secret society. I don't picture him (or her, but in my mind's eye, def him) with a HARD HAT at all, and then there's the fact that I haven't heard a person referred to as a HARD HAT in I don't know how long. But yeah, def. 1b. at merriam-webster dot com = "construction worker." Anyway, getting from the clue to the answer there, rough for me. Once I exit that HARD HAT / GIN SLING Bermuda Triangle, though, things get a lot cleaner and more entertaining. IT'S A SMALL WORLD is solid, as is the bank of 8s it runs into (CONTRACT / TOTAL LIE  / STOP DEAD) (those last two aren't just solid, they're strong). I love the highs and lows of modern living represented by the crossing answers TINY HOME (35D: Dwelling that epitomizes simple living) and LIFESTYLE CREEP (49A: Phenomenon through which luxuries become necessities). Real yin/yang action there. "I don't need much" vs. "I need I need I need." Good stuff. BOSS BATTLE is boring and by now old (used four times already in the 2020s, including once just six weeks ago, by one of these same constructors (?!)), but "I'M SO SCARED" made me laugh (it could use and "ooh" on the front in order to be fully sarcastic, but I still like it). The SW corner is as solid as its NE counterpart. A real joy to move through about 3/4 of this puzzle. It's only the stuff ... emanating ... from PLOP ART that made me at all unhappy. 

Bullets:

• 59A: Home improvement site, after a 2021 rebranding (ANGI) — seen this before and am never gonna like it. Feels like the puzzle's doing PR work on this "rebranding." The site used to be "Angie's List." Now it's this awful adspeak / app-ified four-letter nightmare that evokes angina and angioplasty more than home improvement, imho. It's neo-crosswordese to me and I hate it.
• 56A: Simone Biles or Tom Brady, acronymically (G.O.A.T.) — Greatest Of All Time. I think it's weird to just state it as fact that the acronym applies. A "to some," is probably in order. This is esp. true with Tom Brady (I think Biles is pretty objectively the greatest to ever do it).

• 21D: Parliament constituent (OWL) — the collective term for OWLs is a "parliament." Because I studied Middle English literature in grad school, I knew Chaucer's poem Parlement of Foules (i.e. "Parliament of Fowls") before I ever knew the term "parliament" applied specifically to OWLs. Fun (and semi-timely) fact: Parlement of Foules is the likely origin of the association of St. Valentine's Day (Feb. 14) with lovers. 

The Parlement of Foules (modernized: Parliament of Fowls), also called the Parlement of Briddes (Parliament of Birds) or the Assemble of Foules (Assembly of Fowls), is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s–1400) made up of approximately 700 lines. The poem, which is in the form of a dream vision in rhyme royal stanza, contains one of the earliest references to the idea that St. Valentine's Day is a special day for lovers.

Oruch's survey of the literature finds no association between Valentine and romance prior to Chaucer. He concludes that Chaucer is likely to be "the original mythmaker in this instance." (wikipedia) 

• 23D: Entered a bear market (SLID) — first thought: "Ew, why are you going to a bear market, why are they selling bears, what do you need a bear for, bears should be free!" Then I thought of the stock market. And wrote in SOLD.
• 44D: Stage name of South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang (PSY) — as far as I know, PSY is known in this country for precisely one song ("Gangnam Style"), which was indeed mmmmmaaaaaasssssssiiiiiiivvvvve ... in 2012. Since 2012, I have thought about PSY and that song only when crosswords have forced me to.

• 51D: Modern name of the first National League champions (1876) (CUBS) — in 1876 they were the White Stockings. When they became the CUBS (around the turn of the (20th) century), the name "White Stockings" was adopted by the new American League team on the South Side of Chicago—this team became the modern Chicago White Sox.

[37D: Bring three suitcases to a weekend trip, say]

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. my bird-of-the-day calendar has entered the crossword chat

[OWLs … and they’re URAL (4)!]

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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