Fashion designer Carolina / SUN 2-15-26 / Duchess of ___ (noted Spanish title) / Certain public transit network / ___ Winter, basketball coach who famously innovated the "triangle offense" / Photo-editing technique used to create a smooth transition / Video game character aptly celebrated in Mar. 10 / Made younger-looking in an editing studio, say / Reality TV franchise created by Tyra Banks / Science-and-nature magazine familiarly / Sarcastic response to a show-off / Horn contents at a Viking feast

Constructor: Michael Lieberman and Rebecca Goldstein

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Good to the Last Drop" — theme answers "drop" (merging with separately clued Down answers) just after the letter string "HERE," as hinted at by the revealer, IT'S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE (73A: "Things are only going to get worse" ... or a hint to answering the seven italicized clues in this puzzle):

Theme answers:

• BLOW TO SMITHEREENS (24A: Completely destroy with a blast)
• MOTHER EARTH (27A: Gaia, by another name)
• TEACHER EDITION (40A: Version of a textbook designed for instruction)
• FEATHER EDGE (96A: Photo-editing technique used to create a smooth transition)
• ETHEREAL (93A: Delicate, as beauty)
• AT THE REAR (123A: In back)
• IS THAT ALL THERE IS? (125A: "Wait, are we done?")

Word of the Day: TEX Winter (60A: ___ Winter, basketball coach who famously innovated the "triangle offense") —

Morice Fredrick "Tex" Winter (February 25, 1922 – October 10, 2018) was an American basketball coach and innovator of the triangle offense, an offensive system that became the dominant force in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and resulted in 11 NBA Championships with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s and the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2000s. He was a head coach in college basketball for 30 years before becoming an assistant coach in the NBA. He was an assistant to Phil Jackson on nine NBA championship teams with the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers. Winter was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. In 2016, the NBA created the annually presented Tex Winter Assistant Coach Lifetime Impact Award in his honor. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one rides entirely on the revealer. It's a clever, extremely literal use of the phrase "IT'S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE"—it got a big "aha" out of me, for sure—but the theme itself is very one-note, with nothing particularly interesting or funny or clever to show you. Words contain the letter string "HERE," and after "HERE," they head ... down. Over and over and over (seven times). Kind of a shrug, and an easy one at that (once you know the "HERE"s are out there, you're basically given those four letters for free every time you see an italicized clue). Obviously the execution of this theme involves some intricate architecture. Those themers not only have to drop after the "HERE," but they have to merge seamlessly into Down answers. But from a solving standpoint, filling in those answers just wasn't that interesting. There's just not enough cleverness or humor to carry this one over a huge Sunday-sized grid (slightly oversized at 22 wide). It all works fine, but aside from the revealer, it lacked pop. My main feeling at the end was that it was all kind of dull. And, relatedly, once again, the puzzle was terribly easy. I've got red ink here and there on my grid print-out (signifying various snarl-ups), but it's pretty sparse, and none of the snarl-ups held me up for very long. The puzzle had just one answer that seemed particularly original, but sadly it was one of the answers I liked least: WEED TEA. I am clearly behind on the whole THC beverage craze (my only experience with edibles being sleep gummies). WEED TEA? It's really called that? Yeah, it looks like "cannabis tea" is indeed sometimes called WEED TEA. I wish that answer did something for me. I needed something in this puzzle to do something for me. I have to give that answer credit for trying, at least. The rest of the grid just kind of lies there. RESPELLED? Hmm. I'm making a very grimacey face right now just looking at that word. You will be shocked (shocked, I say!) to discover that both WEED TEA and RESPELLED are debuts. I'll say it for the billionth time: Not All Debuts Are Good™. But if it's WEED TEA vs. RESPELLED, well then, WEED TEA wins by TKO, for sure. 

By far the hardest part of the puzzle for me was this little knot in the upper middle, where (off of "-IT-") I had written in BITE for 47A: Sharpness (WITS). This left me with TRAM BAY in the cross (26D: Certain public transit network), which I was on the point of rationalizing: "You gotta keep the trams somewhere, I guess." Since "bay" has various architectural / structural meanings ("bomb bay," "cargo bay," etc.), I was ready to accept TRAM BAY ... but the clue says [Certain public transit network] and TRAM BAY (if such a thing existed) seemed like it would be *part* of a network, not the network itself. Annnnnyway, I left the mistake in place and would have kept it there til the end if it weren't for the unlikely help of U.S. STEEL (37D: World's first billion-dollar corporation). I thought, "that's gotta be U.S. STEEL," and a couple of crosses confirmed it, but I had "USE-" at the beginning (because I still had "BITE" for 47A: Sharpness). Eventually U.S. STEEL became undeniable, and after a second or so of trying to make BITS work for 47A: Sharpness, I took out the "B" from TRAM BAY and TRAM-AY / -ITS became TRAMWAY / WITS. Maybe I've heard the term TRAMWAY before but I don't know that I've ever been anywhere with a TRAMWAY. Disneyland, maybe? No, wait, trams are like streetcars or trolley cars? Public transport that runs on a network of rails integrated right into the urban environment. Well, I've been to San Francisco, and I've been on cable cars (which are a type of "tram"), so I guess I have seen a TRAMWAY. I don't remember anyone's calling it that. Thanks to wikipedia, I now know that San Francisco (where I was born) was the first city to operate cable trams, and Dunedin, NZ (where my wife grew up) was the second. Clearly we were fated to be married! Brought together by public transportation history! Ah, destiny! Happy belated Valentine's Day, everybody!

The other toughish part for me was FEATHER EDGE, a term I don't really know as I don't spend a lot of time editing photos. I put the "HERE" into that answer and it did virtually nothing for me, even after I got the "EDGE" bit (from WEDGE) (91D: Shoe with a thick sole). The impossible (for me) clue on ALBA (104A: Duchess of ___ (noted Spanish title)) and the very weird colloquial clue on "ABOUT TO" (98D: "Next on my list"), kept the FEATHER EDGE corner (SW) dicey there for a bit. But then (for the first time in my life) MARIO came to the rescue! Usually I'm tripping over myself trying to answer clues about the vast Mario Universe (about which I know nothing except what the puzzle tells me), but today, I got that MARIO clue easily (110D: Video game character aptly celebrated in Mar. 10). I don't think I've ever been so happy (or happy at all) to see a MARIO-related clue. MARIO ... MAR10 (i.e. Mar. 10, i.e. 3/10) ... you see the resemblance. Very cute. 

Bullets:

• ___ Winter, basketball coach who famously innovated the "triangle offense" (TEX) — I'm gonna dispute "famously" here. When you say "triangle offense," I say Phil Jackson. Phil Jackson ran the triangle offense "famously." This TEX guy may have "innovated" it, but I'm not sure "famously" applies, since this is the first I'm hearing of him. He was Jackson's assistant coach on nine championship teams (all six Bulls championships plus the Lakers' threepeat of 2000-02).
• 105A: Made younger-looking in an editing studio, say (DE-AGED) — a very real and (to me) very creepy thing. I associate the process with Scorsese's The Irishman, for which DeNiro and Pacino and Pesci were all digitally DE-AGED in order to play their younger selves.

• 107A: Reality TV franchise created by Tyra Banks (TOP MODEL) — as an enthusiastic non-watcher of so-called "Reality TV," I only know the names of shows from hearing them discussed ... wherever. I really thought this show was called America's Next TOP MODEL. Where am I getting that from? Oh ... well, that is its name. TOP MODEL is just how it's known familiarly (also ANTM, put that in your grid and smoke it!). Really could've used a "familiarly" here. But knowing the full name of the show made getting the partial name of the show pretty easy, actually.
• 62D: N.Y.C. neighborhood that's home to the Grey Art Museum (NOHO) — should've made "Grey Art Museum" my Word of the Day because that name meant absolutely nothing to me. You tell me "N.Y.C. neighborhood" and it's four letters, I'm going SOHO, maybe NOHO. So I waited for the cross. No problem. I've been to a lot of N.Y.C. museums, but I've never even heard of the Grey. Ah, I see, it's NYU's art museum. It's called the Grey Art Museum because of a 1973 gift of one thousand works from someone named Abby Weed Grey. So there's some more WEED for you, if you're into that.

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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