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Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (once you get the gimmick, very easy)
Theme answers:
- D(O) WELL / LATE
X(1A: *Succeed (DWELL + "O" = "do well") / 5D: *Behind in payment (LATEX minus "X" = "late") - SH(O)UT-OUTS / E
XTERNALLY (18A: *Public messages of appreciation (SHUTOUTS + "O" = "shout-outs") / 11D: *Forevermore (EXTERNALLY minus "X" = "eternally") - CLAM S(O)UP / A
XMEN (37A: *New England-style chowder, for one (CLAMS UP + "O" = "clam soup") / 29D: *Word appearing 51 times in the New Testament (AXMEN minus "X" = "Amen") - FLAMING(O) / MA
XIM (54A: *Long-legged wader (FLAMING + "O" = "flamingo") / 52D: *Severely harm (MAXIM minus "X" = "maim")
 |
| [the only BATISTE I know] |
A finecloth made fromcotton orlinen ;cambric . // From French batiste, a form of Baptiste, of disputed origin (“according to LittrΓ© and Scheler from the alleged original maker, Baptiste of Cambray; according to others, from its use in wiping the heads of children after baptism” – OED) (Wiktionary via Wordnik)
• • •
I started out by getting DWELL but not getting DWELL, and then seeing LATE but not understanding why there was an extra square at the end. When EXIT gave me LATEX I thought "OK, we're adding Xs ... what's going on with DWELL?" If you stare at DWELL hard enough, knowing the clue is [*Succeed], DO WELL just pops out. At least it did for me. I feel like my constant diet of cryptic crosswords probably helped, as I'm now very accustomed to mentally cutting up words and rearranging their parts. Lots of training in seeing what's not there and dropping what is. Anyway, the initial struggle to figure out the theme concept was the only real difficulty for me today. That and BATISTE, which ... ?????? My first and only thought there was "the original clue here must have been Jon BATISTE." BATISTE was bandleader and musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for seven years (2015-22 and was a regular on-screen (and conversational) presence. He has won eight Grammys, including Album of the Year for 2021's We Are. This is all to say that he is more than crossworthy and I would've loved to see him as the clue here instead of this fabric I've never heard of (which is somehow the same as cambric but also not (?!) ... I fell down a bit of a BATISTE rabbit hole and it didn't leave me any fabric-smarter).
[BATISTE being Stephen Colbert's bandleader *and* crossing "EVEN STEVEN" ... would've been good, I'm just saying...]
While I liked the puzzle overall, there were some moments that were less than pleasant. LISTEE hurt my ears and made my shoulders tense up (4D: Directory name). A "directory name" is a LISTING. Yes it is. You know it is. I'm sure LISTEE's lawyers have prepared a good case but overruled, contempt of court, this whole courtroom is out of order, case dismissed. Actually, looking over the grid, the only other part that made me holler "no!" (silently, in my head) was GRAS because they decided to go the force-fed geese route instead of the simple (and *timely*) Mardi GRAS route. Always choose the festive parade over the animal torture. I also will always hate TE-HEE, spelled thusly. I just can't accept the "TE"—the two parts rhyme, so the two parts should look the same. It's TEE + HEE. See also TEPEE. But otherwise, nothing UNHOLY about this grid at all. Again, given the theme density, it's remarkably solid.
Bullets:
- 20A: Heavy metal band whose name is a big cat in Spanish (PANTERA) — maybe the thinking behind the BATISTE clue was "well, we've already used one long musical name that's' not exactly universally famous, maybe we shouldn't do it twice." Both PANTERA and BATISTE have multiple Grammy nominations. But BATISTE can (apparently!) be clued in a non-musical way, whereas PANTERA cannot*, so PANTERA stays a musical act and BATISTE gets changed. Boo. Side note: PANTERA would be a great answer for anyone working on some kind of "add-a-T" theme. PANERA + "T" = PANTERA. [*update: there is an automotive PANTERA, it turns out]
- 2D: 7-Eleven competitor on the East Coast (WAWA) — I live in the NE but not on the "East Coast," so there are actually no WAWAs in my vicinity. But I am aware of their existence, and I'm very aware that WAWA was very recently in the puzzle (Jan. 20, 2026), so I dropped WAWA next to DROP no problem.
- 3D: Tree of knowledge locale (EDEN) — I always think of it as the "Tree of the knowledge of good and evil," because that's what it's called, but this is good enough I guess. Sh(o)ut-outs to all the Paradise Lost fans out there.
- 29A: *Word appearing 51 times in the New Testament (AXMEN) — this is my favorite theme answer. Not the base answer ("Amen") but the actual "X"-added answer. I just love the idea of the New Testament being really into guitar players. "And Jesus shreddeth for the masses, and it was good."
[skip to 3:30 if you want to see God's Own Axman at work]
- 33D: Lunch item usually eaten with two hands, in brief (BLT) — [citation needed]
- 41D: Michael nominated for Oscars in five decades (CAINE) — had the "C" and thought "ooh, it's Michael CERA + an 'X' ... somehow. So, what would that make? CERAX? CEXAR? Why can't I make a word? Wait a minute ... Michael CERA hasn't even been alive for five decades, what the hell? Oh, crap, this isn't even a themer. So ... right, Michael CAINE. Yes, that's much better."
- 58D: Unpleasant discovery under a desk (GUM) — first of all, if I left the GUM there for later, then my "discovery" is not "unpleasant" at all, thank you very much. Second, I had G-M here and for a split second definitely thought GAM. "Why would that be unpleasant? Who doesn't like GAMs!?" In my defense, you can definitely find GAMs "under a desk"—you might get hauled into HR for inappropriate workplace behavior if you actively go hunting for them, but trust me, they're there. Sometimes.
 |
| [gams, seen here not under a desk] |
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Had MANI instead of MASKS at first, other wise easy breezy.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI wrote out my thoughts after completing the puzzle and before reading @Rex, but it turns out I echoed much of what OFL said (only without the LOL Biblical reference to Jesus shredding)
Easy-Medium at first and then Easy once I caught on to the gimmick, as is common for a Thursday. Cute idea, and nice that all the theme answers are actual words.
* * * * _
My only overwrites were while I was figuring out what was going on. Most notably a rebus [Do] WELL at 1A.
One WOE, at 47A because the only BATISTE I know is Jon. And half a WOE at 20A since I knew the Spanish word but not the band.
@Conrad 6:25 AM
DeleteI checked and amenaxmen.com is available to holy rawkers and rollers. @π¦ was slaying with that joke. I still love heavy metal in small doses so Pantera was a welcome old friend up against axmen. There's a mega church here in Albuquerque that advertises heavily and they're desperate to prove how cool they are and it appears it's mostly a weekly concert with pithy Jesus-lite theology. I hope the Amen Axmen play there someday.
Fantastic puzzle - loved the theme and the overall fill was smooth and splashy. The letter swap trick took me some time to grok which is fine late week. Both revealers are top notch and I loved how they intersect and the vertical revealer associates with the vertical themers and the horizontal with the horizontals.
ReplyDeleteThe Accident (Things Could Be Worse
RADIAN, PANTERA, CLAMS UP, FLAMING, OR ELSE - the grid is elegantly filled. Needed crosses for some - BATISTE, DEE etc but it all evened out in the end.
A SALTY Dog
Highly enjoyable Thursday morning solve.
Ben Harper
Thank you for going there with BATISTE; I know about fabric, but an opportunity to lift up the remarkable Jon BATISTE should never be passed up!
ReplyDeleteI thought about the letter swap the opposite way--the answer has to GIVE A HUG (lose an O) or STEAL A KISS (add an x) to fit the grid. It still worked. BATISTE was a WOE but I got it. I enjoyed SH(O)UT OUT but was a little thrown by the second O. Enjoyable theme and an enjoyable puzzle.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed having OXO in there as an answer for the full hugs and kisses experience.
ReplyDeleteLoved the puzzle! Skilled construction! I had 58D/64A as GUN for unpleasant discovery under a desk, and NSN as the acronym for a sports network. I guess finding a gun or finding gum are both unpleasant under a desk.
ReplyDeleteAt first pass I hated the cluing and found this really tough, but came to appreciate it a lot once I got the theme and things came together. My big problem, and I had to cheat for this, was the second e in LISTEE, a ridiculous made-up word if there ever was one. SEE as clued should have been obvious, but somehow it wasn’t, so I was ATSEA.
ReplyDeleteI loved finding GUM under the desk, an eew, ick! moment always!
Over all an ecellent Thursday puzzle.
One of those thursdays where I solved without figuring out the gimmick. I knew the O's were missing. But didn't figure out the X's. The fill was pretty easy.
ReplyDeleteThere would absolutely be another way to clue Pantera. It is a Italian sports car with a Ford V-8 engine. The De Tomaso Pantera.
ReplyDeleteClever puzzle, but not at all on the easy spectrum. I grokked the gimmick early and still struggled - lots of obscure cluing, and isolated quadrants. Medium challenging
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, this was a constructing feat. Are you kidding me? Ten theme answers totaling a sky-high 72 squares, with each theme answer working two ways due to the gimmick, crossing revealers, and still the grid has hardly a whiff of junk?
ReplyDeleteBut a constructing feat is shallow, not to mention show-offish, if it doesn’t deliver satisfaction to the solver.
I can only speak for myself, but this theme was a first-order, multi-level capital-R Riddle, and cracking it brought great fulfillment, the sweet feeling that I earned this. That, plus being wowed by the feat, well, it also brought a huge inner standing O.
Sticky areas gave my brain pleasure as well.
Truly, a lovely puzzle could have been based on the STEAL A KISS element alone, but Kareem pulled off the double-play, all in a single 15x15 box.
Hats off on this one. Bravo, Kareem. Perfecto! An apex Valentine's Day puzzle. Can’t wait for your next, and thank you for a scintillating solve!
Very enjoyable puzzle with an interesting theme. It does seem odd to have OXO hanging out in the NE, but I'll call that a bonus rather than a flaw. CLAMS(O)UP is my favorite themer.
ReplyDeleteHand up for MAniS before MASKS, know of PANTERA but could not name a song, never heard of BATISTE as clued. Took me a while to figure out how OLDER worked.
Hey All !
ReplyDeleteYes, Rex, a PANTERA is a highly sought after sports car in the automotive collector world. And they ain't cheap. Priced (and resemblance to) the Lamborghini's of the same era.
Remarkable puz construction. I've said before about tearing ones hair out trying to fill a puz cleanly, and that's with only one directional Theme. Holy moly, Kareem has to be totally bald after this one. Across AND Down Themers? Crossing?? With Two Crossing Revealers? Mamma mia!
And, somehow, the fill is great! This comes off as almost a deal-with-the-devil kind of good constructing. And basically symmetrical. The only outlier is DWELL, but just pointing it out, no points off for that! And look at the stacked Downs of 10! With the two symmetrical Themers!
To sum up: Wow. A+.
On top of all that, puz was fun to solve. As soon as I got GIVE A HUG, I knew what was happening, but still neat getting the -O's and +X's.
SALTY puz, Kareem. Here's hoping your hair grows back ...
Have a great Thursday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Agree with OFL. Hung onto LESSEE far too long until LISTEE became inevitable.
ReplyDeleteHoy.
ReplyDeleteToday...
no howling heard in our hallowed halls
the sniveling squall slinks silently away
lamentations lurk alone and alee
crying and caterwauling are quietly content
the sobs surreptitiously subside
the blubbering bursts and the bawling abates
whimpering whining wailing wind down awhile
the lugubrious lamentations lessen
plaintive pleas pass passively
the groans, the moans, the shrieking all sigh
O Ye yearning to yammer, yelp, and yowl
today becomes yesterday
and a too easy tragedy
prepares to pounce anon
and blight your blustery brilliance
Tomorrow....
A lamentation for our lacrymose on a day there's joy in Hooville ... take heart me Kleenex-free hearties, tomorrow is Friday and a sure day for waterworks to return like the lawn sprinklers in summer.
Pretty tough puzzle for me. Mostly because it was brilliant. I did have rebus squares all filled out, but the app wasn't having it, so I deleted and poof I win.
My pathway took me down the west coast early and I found the revealers and wow did those help with the solve. So wild the double theme density and still knocked this out of the park. Best puzzle of the year so far.
I know I spent five minutes working every cross on CORRAL as [Pen] seemed like it had to be a writing implement. Sigh.
Finding gum under the desk is unpleasant if your standards are too high about chewing it. You might find it's a cause for bubble-blowing celebration.
❤️ SHOUT OUTS. PANTERA. STEAL A KISS. EVEN STEVEN.
People: 4
Places: 4
Products: 5
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 3
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 22 of 76 (29%)
Funny Factor: 4 π
Tee-Hee: MATED. Behind in payment = LATEX. And, c'mon, it's TEEHEE, not TEHEE. We've been over this. Once I post my random notion on the blog here I would think the NYTXW team would instantly SNAP TO and follow my words of wisdom as if I were the Moses of crosswords.
Uniclues:
1 We will we will rock you or stone you, dammit, so be rocked.
2 How to get out of the holes you've dug with your smart mouth.
3 When the gay dogs are fierce.
4 What I am to my dominatrix.
5 Hot dogs on the Sabbath.
6 Commits PDA.
1 PANTERA OR ELSE
2 EXIT LADDERS
3 KENNEL FLAMING
4 LATEX ICE SNACK
5 UNHOLY SNARF
6 EXTERNALLY NECKS
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: One delicious bit of cereal in a box of Insurance Bit-o-Charms coming to a breakfast table near you. GEICO GECKO FLAKE.
¯\_(γ)_/¯
The KISSARMY is disappointed their song UNHOLY isn't highlighted in today's write-up.
ReplyDeleteIn Connecticut all Wawa stores were purchased and rebranded as Krauszer. No more Wawa stores here.
ReplyDeleteThis happened in 1996. https://www.courant.com/1996/11/20/new-jersey-firm-buys-wawa-stores-in-state/
DeleteI never heard chowder called “CLAM SOUP” before, which just doesn’t sound right, although I have to concede that it probably is technically accurate.
ReplyDeleteBATISTE is one of those rare occasions when cluing a word as a proper name might actually be preferable to the somewhat obscure definition.
I don’t get excited by theme gimmicks that result in nonsensical clue/answer combinations. I may have had a better experience if I had caught on to the gimmick with DWELL - but unfortunately I went into a “here we go again” funk and solved it as a themeless. I do try, but I just can’t seem to warm up to the Thursday puzzles.
Im on again and off again with Thursday puzzles and they're usually not worth commenting on but today's was one of the exceptions. It's a charming theme and best of all the fill was mostly Saturday level. The NW was the last section to go in. Being a Chicagoan I'm unfamiliar with WAWA. Is it run by MAMA and PAPA?
ReplyDeleteIf it weren't for the S LISTEE would be as much of an SB classic as LIBELEE, MENTEE and TUTEE.
Best Thursday in a while. Theme was creative and fun - and the solve had just the right amount of crunch for a Thursday.
ReplyDeleteI could use less of the hand-holding in the digital versions thought (i.e,, shaded squares; highlighting of related answer, circles, etc ). It would be nice if NYTimes gave you an option to shut off those things. With all the money it spent on its app to add those silly animation features and the like, it should be a simple matter to give us a toggle on/off switch for these hand-holding features. Really simple, actually. Ridiculously simple. A crime that there is not that option already.
It was more Medium for me. I think I needed to get to the revealer STEAL A KISS, make that the second revealer in my case because I had already understood what was going on with the Os, before I knew we had two themes going on. Very impressive. Probably the best Thursday in a while. And yes, as already noted, OXO was a nice little flourish.
ReplyDeleteDid the childhood game MOUSETRAP, the sort of Rube Goldberg thing, include LADDERS? That sort of popped into my brain, looking over the grid just now. The long downs MOUSETRAPS and EVEN STEVEN were pretty luscious in my opinion.
I knew something looked funny about BATIShE (crossing hEHEE). Side notes: I would consider "he-hee" and "TE-HEE" equally annoying. "Tepee" doesn't bother me so much because it's just one of three renderings from a Native American language, and I don't see much linguistic ground to favor one over another. (Not that I'm a linguist.) My personal preference these days is "tipi", simply for the way it looks.
There are a few things from today's review that I found strange. First up: "I started out by getting DWELL but not getting DWELL". Now wait: how does that work? You somehow knew that DWELL was the answer but not knowing why? (And this was the first thing you put in?) That word does not fit the clue, so how on earth could be that be your first entry before even getting the theme? Makes no sense to me. But perhaps I've misunderstood.
Second: GUM under the desk is fricking gross. Just as gum on the sidewalk is fricking gross. The clue is absolutely fine. Rex's cavil makes no sense to me because if you put it there (is that something you did as a kid, thinking to return to the gum later and pop it in your mouth, or what? jesus kids are savages), then of course you don't discover it later. Which means that if someone does discover it, then that someone is someone else, and that someone will find it unpleasant (even if only a little). I practically bet my house on it. So c'mon.
And finally: if a citation is needed, then I grant you permission to use this: if I eat a BLT, then I'm pretty sure I use both hands so that the loose bacon pieces/strips won't fall out. You can eat a pbj with one hand no problem because the ingredients stick together. For a BLT, smart people, or anyway people who don't want to spill ingredients down their shirtfronts, are likely going to use two hands. Little tip for ya there.
That'll do it for now.
Erle Stanley Gardner pseudonym!!!!
ReplyDeleteGod’s own Axman, indeed.
ReplyDeleteHaha! My wife used to teach at Catholic school. One time a typo got sent home and it said “Xavier SHRED the gospel” so naturally I (poorly) photoshopped an album cover with St Francis Xavier “shredding” a Flying V guitar and wearing shades and the album was called “do unto others” because that had a gothic sounding metal album ring to it. Like Metallica probably.
ReplyDeleteAlso on the puzzle, I really hoped Rex would have imagined a scenario where a movie villain gave the hero an ultimatum like “BRING ME THE MONEY - ALTERNATIVELY…!!!”
Fun puzzle. Enjoyed the theme.
Not only is it funny that Bastiste (Stephen Colbert’s bandleader) crosses EVEN STEVEN, but Colbert actually used to do a bit with Steve Carell on the Daily Show called “Even Step(v)hens”.
ReplyDeleteYeah there’s a clip of even Steven in the writeup did you not see that?
DeleteI'm an idiot -- I was reading in a train tunnel, and none of the videos loaded up. Never mind!
DeleteI found this to be a nicely crunchy treat after a string of way too easy puzzles. It got easier when I figured out the theme, but getting there was fun. Impressive architectural feats don’t always make for a pleasant solve, but this one worked just fine.
ReplyDeleteJust one problem: as.a New Englander with a severe addiction to clams (planning to have some tonight, in fact), I have never ever ever ever heard (and would never use) the phrase CLAM SOUP. Sounds pretty awful (unlike Zuppa di clams, mmmm), but I can let it go.
Well, neither UNGRANGATO or UNGATOGRANDE would fit in the NW so I went elsewhere, could see something was up at SHUTOUTS, but it took some more X's and O's and finally two revealers to actually appreciate what was going on. Not often you get a double aha! on a Thursday which doubled the pleasure on this one, which was already considerable.
ReplyDeleteMost fun--getting MOUSTRAPS off the M. Didn't know BATISTE as clued. I guess EXETER is famous enough for inclusion, have driven by there many times but never stopped to visit. Usually we are on our way to Maine to enjoy some CLAMSOUP. Uh, no.
Hello and welcome back to IBEX. Nice to see you again and thanks for inspiring, in part, the OFL take on AXMEN, which is a classic.
Great stuff, KA. A Killer Achievement, and thanks for all the fun.
I can’t be the only one who learned about BATISTE from Mad Magazine’s parody “Casey at the Dice”: “The cufflinks on his sheer batiste were rubies from afar; / Between his teeth he coolly smoked a ninety-cent cigar!”
ReplyDeleteI love living in the PANTERA. It's chilling to hear the old folks talk about the days before pants.
ReplyDeleteIt got me excited to see my late ex in LATEX. Eventually, though, I'd have to EXETER.
I grew up in Eugene, Oregon, which prided itself as being the "Lumber Capital of the World". It was also home of the South Eugene High School AXMEN. I wonder if their mascot has evolved into a lumberjack shredding his guitar.
OXOxox to this puzzle. Thanks, Kareem Ayas.
Beautiful puzzle (I will pretend I didn’t see listee). Batiste is not obscure to anyone who sews. Personally I don’t know from Wawa so I consider that way weirder. The X and O thing was evident early but that didn’t meaning finding them wasn’t fun.
ReplyDeleteLast week we had a better-than-usual Thursday, and now today’s excellent puzzle. Either Thursdays are improving or I’m (gasp!) losing my anti-Thursday bias. Whichever it is, I’m glad to see it happening.
ReplyDeleteYikes, this was a hard one for me but I enjoyed it. Actually caught the gimmick fairly early on, but that didn’t help all that much. Was too focused on getting answers to see the real theme. One big problem was that I had Oahu before GUAM. From 30,000 feet GUAM looks so tiny in the sea you can’t believe an airplane can really land there. Makes one even more amazed at how pilots can land on a mere aircraft carrier, big as they look when you get up close. I don’t remember a national park being on the island when I visited, but it was definitely full of SALTY naval guys.
ReplyDeleteVery cute and timely theme. At first, the trick seemed backwards, like wait just a second here. We’re doing the opposite - taking away the hug and adding the kiss. Then I realized that in order for the answers to read correctly, we have to STEAL/remove the X/KISS and GIVE/put back the O/HUG … exactly like the clues for the two revealers say. And pretty darn impressive to have the down revealer and the cross revealer intersecting. What a challenge it must have been to put together but in this case, the constructor’s fun translated into solving fun as well, which doesn’t always happen. I also appreciated the dearth of proper nouns. Really a solid grid, a fun theme and very pleasant solve overall. Best Thursday in a long time. If I had a POY list, this one would go on it.
ReplyDeleteSide note, I happened to have the TV tuned to the movie Miss Congeniality while I was solving, and who was on the screen but the marvelous Michael CAINE. Such a talented and versatile actor, who won two of those Academy Awards and is one of only three who have been nominated in five different decades … the others being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep.
remove the asterisks and counts from the revealers and this would have been a mighty fine thursday. that said, it's the closest to an actual thursday puzzle in months.
ReplyDeleteGreat write up, Rex. Excellent puzzle today. Any nit picks are vastly outweighed by the positives.
ReplyDelete