Rap pioneers, slangily / SAT 2-28-26 / Animals in an early-2000s virtual fad / South Indian lentil stew / Gay nightlife spot with a dress requirement / Innermost moon of Neptune / Principle of improv comedy / Dialect that is responsible for a large majority of Gen Z slang / Weakens, as an overly strong character, in video game lingo / Tolkien ring bearer / Popular role-playing game since 1974, informally / Acting like a sore loser, informally / Affliction treated with a nit comb / Robert Frost's middle name

Constructor: Adam Levav

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SAMBAR (37D: South Indian lentil stew) —

Sāmbār, or sambhar, is a lentil-based vegetable spiced curry or stew, cooked with pigeon peas and tamarind broth. It originates in South Indian cuisine and is also eaten in other parts of India.

• • •

[48D: Blue-roofed restaurant]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the excitement in this one is coming from the LEATHER BAR (15D: Gay nightlife spot with a dress requirement). That was the one answer that popped for me, the one major "what? oh!" moment in the puzzle. The only other long answer in this one that I actively enjoyed was BEFORE TIMES. I don't normally like answers that remind me of the pandemic, but there's something wistful and melancholy about this term I kind of like. The term has a history extending back to the Middle Ages, but it got popularized during the 2020s as a nostalgic way of referring to the days before COVID and the societal rearrangements that came with it (lockdowns, disinformation, the rise of the anti-vaxx movement, etc.). Nostalgia kills and the BEFORE TIMES (like most earlier times) weren't as great as we imagine, but still, I like this phrase for its currency and its understandable sense of longing for a less ruined world. The other long answers in this puzzle, I only felt neutrally about, except BUTT HURT, which is a phrase I despise. There's something so rancidly online about it—something cruel and sneering and sadistic (taking pleasure in the pain of others). It's rarely used to mean merely "sore loser" and usually used to mock anyone who is upset about anything. It's real big in right-wing circles, but I have friends who use it too. It's just not for me. Extremely not for me. Otherwise, the puzzle seems mostly OK. Solid, occasionally interesting corners. Just a little light on flashiness (and, once again, a little too easy).

["THAT'S ME in the (NW) corner ..."]

Surprised by the total gimme at 1A: Set unambitious goals (AIM LOW). I wrote it in immediately and confirmed it with WOMB and that NW corner was done in pretty short order. Thanks god for the absolute certainty of WOMB, because I would definitely have misspelled SMEAGOL without it (14A: Tolkien ring bearer). Even now, that "O" looks insane. But right is right, and you can't argue with right, and the crosses are all fair, so ... tragedy averted. The one tricky part of the puzzle was getting into the center. I had no luck at first coming out of the NW into the middle, and so hopped over to the NE corner and worked my way into there. AAVE was a gimme (9D: Dialect that is responsible for a large majority of Gen Z slang), and that gave me REVOLTS, and soon that corner was done too. Coming out of that corner was also a little challenging, but ... I forget which happened first, but either I put LEATHER BAR together from LEA- (finally) or LICE / NEMEAN / AVES (which I had as AVIS) got me the BRACES part of CURLY BRACES (36A: Symbols used to group blocks of computer code). Did you know LESBIAN BAR and LEATHER BAR have the same number of letters? I may actually have started to write LESBIAN BAR in before thinking "wait ... 'dress code'? really? what do you have to wear ... lesbian clothes? That sounds ... wrong." Wrote in BAE for 20A: Term of endearment appropriated from [AAVE], which gave me LEA- for the "Gay nightlife spot," but still had a few moments of wondering (brain: "what are those upscale, tony bars called ... fern bars? Fern ... LEA- ... something about leaves? LEAF BAR, is that a thing?"). But then the "T" from TRIS finally got me over the hump: Aha! LEATHER BAR! Like in Cruising! Nice. Original. Surprising. Easily the most exhilarating part of this solve.

[Follow me on Letterboxd!]

Stuff like NERFS (44A: Weakens, as an overly strong character, in video game lingo) and YES, AND (13D: Principle of improv comedy) might've felt fresh even a year or two ago, but now have appeared enough times that the sheen has worn off. Not bad, just not as original-seeming as they once were. I was mad at ERASER PEN for a bit because I was thinking of an ERASABLE PEN, which I would not describe as an [Error correction tool]—it's a writing tool that has an "error correction tool" attached. But then I realized ERASER PEN must be another thing entirely: something pen-shaped that is just ... an eraser. A pen-shaped eraser, is that it? Yes. It has a pen-like shape for precision erasing. There seems to be some conflation of "erasable pen" and "ERASER PEN" online. Some of you pen-heads (or ... eraserheads?) will be able to speak to this better than I. As for INSTANT TAN, I think the term I know is "self-tanner" or "spray-on tan" (26D: Body bronzer). I believe this puzzle that INSTANT TAN is a thing, but those other things feel more like things than INSTANT TAN feels like a thing, hence my lack of excitement. Also, my "body" has never been "bronze" a day in its life—not even close, it just ... doesn't do that—and I've never had any desire or need to fake it, so everything I know about tanning I pick up from ads. I am not a reliable source of info on tanning products, is what I'm saying. The clue on AIRHORN didn't quite resonate with me either (56A: Musical sample added for excitement). I do not think of an AIRHORN as something that "adds excitement" to any occasion. A truly awful sound, but yeah, you can hear it in some dance music, so it must be "exciting" to someone. Yesterday had funky BASS LINES—a much more "exciting" musical phenomenon to my ear. 

[Enjoy the "excitement"!]

Bullets:

• 57A: Animals in an early-2000s virtual fad (NEOPETS) — helps to have had a daughter who was a small child in the early 2000s, though she was more into WEBKINZ than NEOPETS.

• 22A: Part of a Blues Brothers outfit (FEDORA) — dark suit ... sunglasses ... needed crosses for FEDORA.

• 31A: Innermost moon of Neptune (NAIAD) — no idea. Needed virtually every cross. That NAIAD / NEMEAN / AVES bit is maybe the roughest patch in the puzzle.
• 5D: Rap pioneers, slangily (OGS) — "Original Gangsters." From merriam-webster dot com:

Original Gangster

Note: According to an essay by Steve Champion and Anthony Ross, former members of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles, the initialism O.G. was first used by the Crips in the early 1970's; see Champion and Ross, "The Making of an O.G.: Transcending Gang Mentality," written in 2006 and available on the website indybay.org as of 7/12/21. The release of the album O.G. Original Gangster by the rapper Ice-T (Tracy Lauren Morrow) in 1991 likely contributed to the migration of the word from gang culture to more general use.

• 51A: ___ Tung, star of cable TV's "The Summer I Turned Pretty" (LOLA) — again, no idea. Also, LOL at the phrase "cable TV's." What are you talking about? What channel? Where is this alleged program found besides in the vast universe of "cable TV"? Looks like Amazon Prime, which is ... not cable TV. Is it? It's streaming. What is happening here?
• 30D: ___ Story (punny nickname for the "Iliad") (TROY) — first I'm hearing of this, but I like it. Cute. A Toy Story pun. I won't be using it, but I like it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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