Dome-shaped Buddhist shrine / 2-7-26 / Woolen leggings, as worn by W.W. I soldiers / Reptile with a colorful name / Airbnb inclusion, usually / The Hornets, on a scoreboard / Singer with the 2016 Grammy-winning soul ballad "Cranes in the Sky" / "OMG"-evoking deed / Seldom-used PC key / Former e-book devices, until 2014 / Michael who plays Allan in "Barbie" / One of Oberon's subjects

Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: STUPA (34A: Dome-shaped Buddhist shrine) —

In Buddhism, a stupa (Sanskrit: स्तूप, lit. 'heap', IAST: stūpa) is a domed hemispherical structure containing several types of sacred relics, including images, statues, metals, and śarīra—the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns. It is used as a place of pilgrimage and meditation.

Walking around a stupa in a clockwise direction, known as pradakhshina, has been an important ritual and devotional practice in Buddhism since the earliest times, and stupas always have a pradakhshina path around them. The original South Asian form is a large solid dome above a tholobate, or drum, with vertical sides, which usually sits on a square base. There is no access to the inside of the structure. In large stupas, there may be walkways for circumambulation on top of the base as well as on the ground below it. Large stupas have, or had, vedikā railings outside the path around the base, often highly decorated with sculpture, especially at the torana gateways, of which there are usually four. At the top of the dome is a thin, vertical element, with one or more horizontal discs spreading from it. These were chatras, symbolic umbrellas, and have not survived, if not restored. The Great Stupa at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, is the most famous and best-preserved early stupa in India. (wikipedia)

• • •

OK, don't get me wrong, I appreciated the challenge. This one definitely put up a fight, something late-week puzzles don't seem to do that much these days, and I'm grateful. I just wish the grid itself were more ... pleasing, somehow. Some of the answers were, uh, questionable (a few ODDITYs, for sure), and so many of the clues just felt off or inapt—designed for misdirection, but perhaps ... overdesigned. A sharpshooter needs ... some kind of ACUITY, sure, but just ... ACUITY? I dunno. Not all (or even most?) ODDITYs are "treasures" (16A: Curio shop treasure). "GOD NO!" is a flat-out, dead-certain response to a question, not something you say when you see something fishy or unbelievable (14D: "That can't possibly be right!"). "Do you want to see the newest Marvel movie?" "GOD NO!" That's how that works. Like, "are you f***ing kidding me, absolutely not!" Whereas "That can't possibly be right!" is something you'd say if you were astonished by something that might, in fact, be true. I guess you could do a line reading wherein you make your voice more horrified, and put a little pause (audible comma) between "GOD" and "NO," but if you're alarmed like that, you'd probably start with "Oh." There's something tin-eared about this, and many other clues. And some of the answers as well. TOENAIL SCISSORS!? Do you all not use TOENAIL CLIPPERS? Imagining cutting my toenails with actual scissors is freaking me out. I don't doubt such things exist, but ... I don't doubt the ROSY BOA exists either, but what the hell is that? Do PUTTEES exist? Does an END key? I guess I believe you, but I can't really picture them. Stacking the grid with ODDITYs isn't the most entertaining way to achieve difficulty, and doesn't make for a terribly exciting experience overall. 

I think the thing I resent the most today, though, is the clue on A SPOT—a horrible partial that you'd think you'd want to make relatively unambiguous so that the solver could solve it quickly and move on. No need to have the solver dwelling on the garbage. Today, however, this answer—possibly the worst thing in the grid, from a pure "how good is this single piece of fill?" standpoint—was the thing that held me up the longest, the answer I spent most time with, and all because of the deliberately ambiguous clue (8D: "Save me ___!"). Why make me spend so much time with the worst you have to offer? Of course I wrote in "Save me A SEAT!" because that is the more likely answer, so much more likely that that is exactly how "A SEAT" has been clued in the past—three times! Whereas "A SPOT" has never been clued this way. It tends to be clued in much clearer ways, like ["You missed ___!"] or [In ___ (having difficulty)]. It's been fourteen glorious years since "A SPOT" has appeared at all, but that era is now over. Sigh. It's weird how much one wrong (and very right-seeming) answer can hold up solving progress. Add "A SEAT" to "ESC" (instead of the mysterious "END"), and you've got me all gummed up in the top. Specifically, I could not parse GENUS AND SPECIES at all—and again, the answer itself is not pleasing. I know GENUS and SPECIES but GENUS AND SPECIES? GOD NO. I do not know or recognize GENUS AND SPECIES as a standalone phrase. And I was so happy to see Pauline KAEL ... really thought she was gonna blow the puzzle open for me (she got me WAFFLE MAKER!). But alas, no. I was ground down by ... "A SPOT." Bah. 

The stack across the middle is solid enough. I could do without a MISSILE TEST in my grid, but GOOD SPELLER is OK. Despite the presence of the mysterious, made-up-sounding ROSY BOA (a debut, no surprise there), I think the center is the strongest part of the grid. The top is OK (GENUS AND SPECIES aside). The bottom, oof, no. Hard to think of a long answer more singularly unappealing than SONY READERS. A long bygone e-reader that I've never heard of ... in the plural ... why? And we've been over TOENAIL SCISSORS (CLIPPERS fits perfectly, by the way, if you didn't discover that fact for yourself). As a baseball fan for whom baseball season will start (mentally) as soon as the Super Bowl concludes on Sunday, I enjoyed RETIRE THE SIDE (46A: What a pitcher tries to do), though I imagine it won't be as pleasing to non-sports fans (just as I enjoyed SOLANGE (17A: Singer with the 2016 Grammy-winning soul ballad "Cranes in the Sky") but imagine many solvers will greet her appearance here with a "huh?"—this is her sixth NYTXW appearance, though, you should probably have her name committed to memory by now).

Bullets:

• 24A: Airbnb inclusion, usually (LINEN) — I mean, sure, but is that word actually used in the Airbnb listing? LINEN? I had the "L" but still struggled with this clue. 
• 21A: Cause for getting stuck (MIRE) — Had the "M," wanted MIRE, held back because MUCK seemed possible. 
• 30D: Woolen leggings, as worn by W.W. I soldiers (PUTTEES) — gonna go out on a limb and say the STUPA / PUTTEES crossing is gonna trip some solvers up. Those are both very specialized, foreign, non-everyday terms, crossing at a vowel. Seems dicey. I completely forgot that STUPA was a thing, and was so happy that some part of me dimly but confidently remembered that PUTTEES were a thing (though if you'd asked me to explain what kind of thing before I solved this puzzle, I would not have been able to help you). I associate PUTTEES with British soldiers in India. Turns out they were worn by all kinds of people and date from antiquity, but I think of British India. Why? Hang on ... Yeah, here we go: the word derives from the Hindi word for "bandage." 

Worn since antiquity, the puttee was adopted as part of the service uniform of foot and mounted soldiers serving in British India during the second half of the nineteenth century. In its original form the puttee comprised long strips of cloth worn as a tribal legging in the Himalayas. The British Indian Army found this garment to be both comfortable and inexpensive, although it was considered to lack the smartness of the gaiter previously worn." (wikipedia)

• 37A: Instrument depicted in paintings by Hals and Caravaggio (LUTE) — picture me just sitting on "L--E" waiting for a letter to come along and make the LUTE v. LYRE decision. Because that's what happened. Thank god STUPOR came along to help me (though ... I could've used a less depressing clue on STUPOR (29D: A heavy drinker may be found in one))

• 39A: Use for a yew (HEDGE) — first read "use" as a verb, not a noun, which was very confusing. 
• 27D: "Divergent" author Veronica (ROTH) — a real live-by-the-name / die-by-the-name kind of day. Never going to remember this author's name. I've tried. It just won't take. Whereas SOLANGE and Hermann HESSE and good ol' Pauline KAEL and LON Chaney and Michael CERA were real helpers today. So I guess I came out on the right side of the proper noun divide today. Mostly. But you don't tend to feel the ones you know, only the ones you don't. Only takes one mystery name to grind you to a halt.
• 45D: The Hornets, on a scoreboard (CHA) — not a great answer (CHA = Charlotte, btw—they're an NBA team), but I do have to thank the Hornets for helping me see quickly that TOENAIL CLIPPERS was wrong. You might say the Hornets beat the Clippers. You might. If you enjoy very mild NBA word play, you might. You don't have to. It's probably not the greatest idea. But you might, is my only point, really. You might say it. 

[Couldn't find any clips of Hornets beating Clippers, so here's Clippers beating Hornets, back in January]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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