Screw or nail, to a Brit / SAT 2-14-26 / North African fortress / Beer brand from Trinidad and Tobago / Honorific meaning "elder brother" / Antagonists in 2013's "Captain Phillips" / It's made with two fingers / Like a nepo baby's life, perhaps / Arrive suddenly and from a distance, metaphorically / Losing team in the "Miracle on Ice"

Constructor: David Karp

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: if you squint and wish real hard, maybe (but no, not really—just a vaguely "Valentine"ish arrangement of red squares where normally black squares would be) 

Word of the Day: CASBAH (47A: North African fortress) —

A kasbah (/ˈkæzbɑː/, also US: /ˈkɑːz-/; Arabic: قصبة, romanized: qaṣaba, lit. 'fortress', Arabic pronunciation: [qasˤaba], Maghrebi Arabic: [qasˤba]), also spelled qasbah, qasba, qasaba, or casbah, is a fortress, most commonly the citadel or fortified quarter of a city. It is also equivalent to the term alcazaba in Spanish (Spanish: [alkaˈθaβa]), which is derived from the same Arabic word. By extension, the term can also refer to a medina quarter, particularly in Algeria. In various languages, the Arabic word, or local words borrowed from the Arabic word, can also refer to a settlement, a fort, a watchtower, or a blockhouse. (wikipedia) // Algiers is a 1938 American crime drama film directed by John Cromwell, written by John Howard Lawson and starring Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie and Hedy Lamarr. The plot concerns a French jewel thief hiding in Algiers who meets a beautiful French tourist. The Walter Wanger production (originally distributed by United Artists) was a remake of the successful 1937 French film Pépé le Moko, which derived its plot from the Henri La Barthe novel of the same name. [...] The film was most Americans' introduction to the picturesque alleys and souks of the Casbah. It was also the inspiration for the 1942 film Casablanca, written specifically for Hedy Lamarr in the female lead role. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to release Lamarr, the role went to Ingrid Bergman. // The oft-quoted invitation extended by Charles Boyer to "come with me to the Casbah" does not appear in the film, but still became comedians' standard imitation of Boyer, much like "Play it again, Sam" for Humphrey Bogart, "Judy, Judy, Judy" for Cary Grant and "You dirty rat" for James Cagney, all misquotes. Boyer hated the phrase, believing that it demeaned him as an actor. However, the Looney Tunes cartoon character Pepé Le Pew, a spoof of Boyer as Pépé le Moko, did say "Come with me to the Casbah" as a pickup line.

• • •

[ROBBIE (6) / ELORDI (6)]

That's a pretty poor excuse for a 🩷. Looks more like the outline of a dog's face looking straight at you, with its tongue sticking out. Hmm ... I do love dogs, so ... that's the thing, you can see "love" in a lot of these answers if you want to. I mean, LOVE TRIANGLES has "love" built right in (12A: Features of many romantic dramas). And SEX TAPE ... I mean, you don't need "love" for that, but ... people in love might make one of those, I guess (30A: Intimate footage). After that, the "love" content gets a little thin. Yes, I see "COME" over there, and no I'm not counting it. CARE is a kind of "love" (4D: Attention to detail). Charles Boyer is a paragon of romance—he might ask you to come with him to the CASBAH (even though he never actually said the line "come with me to the CASBAH"—see "Word of the Day," above). Oh, and there's that clue on SHAG, which fooled me but good. Wasn't til after I was done with the whole puzzle and was looking it over that I realized, "Oh, they weren't looking for TOOLS after all. 'Screw' and 'nail'—I get it now. Nice one, puzzle." I went to see the new Wuthering Heights movie yesterday, which is artificially pumped full of "love" content (including ridiculously conventional "romance" tropes and tons of sex), so it's not hard to get me to see love and sex and unintentional sexual innuendo in this grid. TOOLS, GET IN ON, LOAD UP, SWIG, SANTA PHOTOS—these are all filthy answers if you want them to be. But mostly what we've got here is a standard Saturday. Actually, difficulty-wise, it's substandard (way too easy). LOVE TRIANGLES had me thinking there was going to be a "love" theme, but then SOMALI PIRATES pretty much took the wind out of those sails (10D: Antagonists in 2013's "Captain Phillips").

When 1-Across is a gimme, the puzzle tends to play easy, and this is especially true if 1-Across is a long answer, like PEACE SIGN (1A: It's made with two fingers ... man, every clue is reading dirty to me now). I threw down PEACE SIGN with 80% certainty and then checked the crosses, and yep, they checked out:

The only thing that gave me trouble up there was SANTA PHOTOS, which feels off. People (children, mostly) might get their photos taken with Santa at the mall, say (what has the demise of mall culture done to the photos-with-Santa industry!?). But I don't think I've heard the phrase SANTA PHOTOS before. It's plausible, it's not wrong, exactly, it just didn't come to mind quickly because it's not a very ... alive phrase. Oh, and do people really text GTG ("gotta go")? You know "bye" has the same number of letters, right? Weird. Hell, "tata" has just four, you could use that if you wanted—if you could spare the time to type the extra letter. Some of that short stuff up top is unpretty (ENE ATT GTG), but I like the stack. The one at the bottom is fine, but less interesting. REMOTE WORKERS is a solid answer but not exactly an exciting one. Love SIMONE BILES but she's in the grid all the time. TAKES A BET, though ... that answer definitely EATS A SANDWICH. Plus, it reminds me of how sports gambling has taken over every aspect of American life now—the Draft Kingsification of sports threatening to seep into everything—everything you do, every political event, everything that happens. Gambling culture corrupts everything. Players manipulate outcomes. Players get threatened by loser gamblers who are mad that the player didn't make a play. Degrading stuff, all around. So yeah, TAKES A BET did less than nothing for me. I really like the heart center, though. If you PARACHUTE IN with a SEX TAPE up your SLEEVE(S), you're sure to be the life of the party. The other fill in there actually holds up pretty well, so bravo to all the atria and ventricles there. Well done.

Bullets:

• 38A: Like a nepo baby's life, perhaps (CUSH) — well as you know (maybe, if you were here that one time...) I hate the very term "nepo baby." Just the way it looks and sounds. It's idiotic. A blanket term of derision that people apply very indiscriminately. So I guess it's fitting that it should clue the "word" CUSH, a "word" for which I have nothing but derision. The word (no scare quotes) is CUSHY. Maybe if you're texting and really in a hurry ... 
• 53A: One of the "Golden Girls" of the 2024 Summer Olympics (SIMONE BILES) — me after reading the first five words of this clue: "BLANCHE DEVEREAUX! No, too long. ROSE NYLUND! Too short, ugh! DOROTHY ... what was her name? ... DOROTHY ZBORNAK! Still too long. SOPHIA PETRILLO! Dammit!" (OK, so I didn't get all the way to Dorothy and Sophia, whose last names I had to look up, but that first part definitely happened)
• 12D: Takes badly? (LOOTS) — fun ("fun") to put this right next to the SOMALI PIRATES. This is one of two clues that initially misread quite badly. For some reason I read [Talks badly?] and (off the "L") wrote in LISPS. I also read [Many a private investor?] at 25D: Many a private investigator? (EX-COP). I wanted, I don't know, ANGEL, something like that.
• 17D: Honorific meaning "elder brother" (AGHA) — I've seen AG(H)A countless times over the years, but I did not know this bit of trivia. Interesting. 

["Your name it is known in high places / You know ... the AG(H)A Khan / And he sends you a racehorse for Christmas / And you keep it ... just for fun (for a laugh, ha ha ha)"]

• 34D: Greenland expanse (ICE SHEET) — yeesh, lotta "ICE" the last two days. Yesterday we had ICE ARENA (?) and THAI ICED TEAS (as well as MINNESOTA NICE), and today, a big (but probably shrinking) ICE SHEET. Oh, and the "Miracle on Ice" (19D: Losing team in the "Miracle on Ice" = U.S.S.R.). Was "ice" always everywhere like this, or am I just more inclined to notice it these days, for reasons?

• 40D: Nervous laughs (HEHS) — I had HEES, but yeah, HEHS is nervouser. Equally terrible as an answer (all laugh syllables bad, plural laugh syllables worse), but definitely more "nervous."
• 47D: Beer brand from Trinidad and Tobago (CARIB) — the one answer that totally stumped me today. I could get there pretty easily from the clue (specifically, the beer's place of origin), but still, no, never heard of this beer. Wanna see a picture? OK, here you go.

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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