Throws spray, in surfer lingo / SAT 3-7-26 / Dry streambed / Makeup of a plot / You might dance on one / Like the crescendo in Ravel's "Boléro" / Controller of floods in the video game Pharaoh / Low notes, but not the lowest /

Constructor: Fritz Juhnke

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: wadi (which was somehow not the answer to 28D: Dry streambed (WASH)) —

the bed or valley of a stream in regions of southwestern Asia and northern Africa that is usually dry except during the rainy season and that often forms an oasis : GULLY, WASH (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

The fact that WADI and WASH (28D: Dry streambed) are essentially synonyms is just about the cruelest joke the English language ever played on this Saturday solver. I mean ... dry riverbed, Saturday puzzle, starts WA- ... I dropped WADI in there without hesitation. Not only has WADI been in the grid before (91 times, 14 in the Modern Era), you wanna know how it was clued the last time it appeared (2024)? That's right: [Dry streambed]. Same damn clue as today's clue for WASH. The fact that it's been in the grid before is the only way I know the meaning of WADI at all. Learned it from crosswords! I was so proud of WADI. Well, not proud, exactly, but I did think "thank god I solve a lot, that's kind of a tough word." WADI has been [Dry streambed] three times, whereas WASH (which, unlike WADI, has infinite other clue possibilities) has only been clued as a [Dry streambed] once before today. So I don't know what you all were struggling with today, but for me, the WADI / WASH thing was the pro-trap to beat all pro-traps. That "D" made "AM I NUTS?" impossible to see, even with several crosses in place. And an already hard (and bizarre) clue on WHIM (43A: You might dance on one) became impossible with the "I" from WADI in the second position. So while other parts of the puzzle were also challenging, that tiny WASH / WHIM / TWOS section seems, in retrospect, like the most treacherous. 

KRONA / LAND / NOPE wasn't great either. Never know which vowel ("E" or "A") is going to end KRON-, and then LAND ... yeesh, that vague clue (24A: Makeup of a plot). A plot of LAND, I get it, now, but I wanted, like ACRES or DIRT or, I don't know, something, anything more specific than just LAND. Even with "L" and "N" in place, I didn't know. Started thinking of other "plot"s (like, conspiracies). I wish the difficulty on this one hadn't come so much in the fussy short bits of the grid (or, as this crossword insists on calling them, the DOTTED bits). I much prefer to struggle with longer stuff and then have a moment of revelation where a (preferably great) answer bursts forth and really opens up the grid. I got that feeling—struggle, struggle, pow!—only once, really: when I hacked my way to ELM ST. (45A: Location of a notorious 33-Down: Abbr.) and then realized that the answer I couldn't get earlier—the long answer starting with "N" (33D: Cause of a cold sweat, perhaps) was NIGHTMARE! That was fun. About as much fun as I've ever had with cross-referenced clues. No other moment of the solve was so thrilling, though I do think the corners are generally very strong. Loved "SPIT IT OUT!" over "HOLY MOSES!" It's like one half of a dramatic conversation. "SPIT IT OUT!" "[unheard but obviously shocking statement]." "HOLY MOSES!" 

OMNIVERSE is a stupid word since "universe" already means "Totality of everything," but whatever, I got it easily from the "M." CARD SHARK (1A: One who makes a living from fish), is always tricky, esp. if you know that the term is actually CARD SHARP. Actually, both terms get used now, but SHARK is the mutation, I'm pretty sure. 

Phrasefinder puts "card sharp" (or "-sharper") as the slightly earlier usage, with an 1859 citation for "card-sharper" and "card-sharp" in both Britain and in the US, while "card-shark" is cited to 1893 in the US. (wikipedia)

As for the "fish" part of the clue, those are the marks. Was the "fish" bit supposed to clue me in to the fact that the answer was going to involve marine life? Perhaps. That never occurred to me while solving (I actually didn't struggle much with this one because I had the "K" from KRON- before I ever knew that 1A had anything to do with cards). 

[Caravaggio, The Cardsharps, c. 1594]

I had to think for a bit to understand how STAR POWER fit the clue (15A: Screen grab?). I guess the people on the "screen" who "grab" an audience are said to have STAR POWER. Yeah, that must be it. Saw a couple of movies with a lot of STAR POWER over the last two days: On Thursday, there was Crime 101 (Halle Berry, Mark Ruffalo, one of the Hemsworth brothers (please do not ask me to keep them straight), Nick Nolte, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and the great Barry Keoghan (best thing about the movie by far)), and then yesterday there was The Bride! (Bening! Bale! Buckley!—the three B's!—plus Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, and Jake Gyllenhaal). Neither film has been particularly well reviewed but I enjoyed both and really liked The Bride! STAR POWER is actually an important component of that movie, as Frankie, the monster (Bale), has an obsession with a 1930s movie musical star (J. Gyllenhaal), whose movies he goes to see obsessively, living vicariously through the star as a way of combating his own profound loneliness. That's STAR POWER.

POCO A POCO is pretty tough, as musical terms go (17A: Like the crescendo in Ravel's "Boléro"). I can hear Boléro in my head very clearly right now, but I had to infer POCO A POCO from crosses. The phrase is at least vaguely familiar to me. "Little by little"—which is how Boléro builds, at least in volume. The term POCO A POCO does not appear at all on the wikipedia page for Boléro. Someone more musical than I will tell you whether the term is apt. "NO, I INSIST" as an intriguing "OII" string (don't see those too often). Weird lot of first-person business today ("NO, I INSIST," and then "AM I NUTS?" crossing "I'M AN IDIOT"), but I don't have a problem with it. The pun on "smoking" in the RIB JOINTS clue, though (13D: Establishments where smoking is allowed)—that seems kind of forced. Smoking is not "allowed" in RIB JOINTS, it's one of the primary activities of RIB JOINTS. It's essential to RIB JOINTS. Permission is not a relevant issue. Boo to that attempted misdirection, for sure. 

Bullets:

• 19A: What travellers typically have in America? (ONE "L") — a "letteral" clue! Did not see that one coming. I guess if you have to use ugly crosswordese like ONEL, you may as well go ahead and try to make it interesting. As long as "interesting" doesn't mean "awkward and unnecessarily difficult," I don't mind.
• 29A: Controller of floods in the video game Pharaoh (OSIRIS) — had the "O," saw "Pharaoh" in the clue, wrote in OSIRIS. No video game knowledge required.
• 37D: R&B's Braxton (TONI) — I really enjoyed her music in the '90s and early '00s. Listened to this one a lot. Real Anita Baker vibes (extremely complimentary):

• 40A: Sémillon rouge and Médoc noir (MERLOTS) — had the "M" and those seemed ... red ... so guessed MERLOTS. No sweat.
• 62A: Woman central to electioneering? (IONE) — never saw this clue! Weird how you can struggle in some places and absolutely blow through others. Anyway, this is a hidden-name clue: "electioneering."
• 10D: Throws spray, in surfer lingo (SHREDS) — I know this as guitar-playing slang, but I was able to infer it easily enough today (thanks, RABBI and EMOJI!).
• 63A: "Big Little Lies" author Moriarty (LIANE) — a five-letter version of Veronica ROTH, in that she's a popular author whose name I cannot for the life of me remember, ever. I had to leave the final vowel blank here and wait for the cross, as LIANA is also a name one might have.
• 39D: Low notes, but not the lowest (TWOS) — definitely had TENS in here at some point. Completely forgot TWOS existed. I have a bunch of them stashed in the house somewhere, courtesy of someone who decided to make their annual $$$ contribution to this blog in ... unusual fashion. I should just deposit them, but they’re such weird, crisp little curiosities that I feel strangely compelled to hold on to them.

That's all for today. See you next time (and a "Happy" Daylight Saving Time to all of you) (I hate "springing forward" so much, esp. when it happens in winter and not in *&$%ing spring like it's supposed to)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Montenegrin, e.g. / FRI 3-6-26 / Grain that once fed the Roman army / Satellite transmission path / Longtime soccer manager ___-Göran Eriksson / Shelters some look to when duty calls? / Hyperbolic amount of work / Emits a stream of hot air / Exiled character in "King Lear" / The good life, in Spanish vernacular / First impression of a new video game? / Feature of Alfalfa's hair in "The Little Rascals" / Fictional subjects of 13 movies between 2000 and 2020 / Device such as a qamutiik, an Inuk means of Arctic transportation

Constructor: Adrian Johnson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Montenegro (34A: Montenegrin, e.g. = BALKAN) —

Montenegro is a country in Southeast Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Its 25 municipalities have a total population of 633,158 people in an area of 13,883 km² (5,360 sq mi). It is bordered by Serbia to the northeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Kosovo to the east, Albania to the southeast, and Croatia to the west, and has a coastline along the Adriatic Sea to the southwest. The capital and largest city is Podgorica, while Cetinje is the Old Royal Capital and cultural centre. [...] he name Montenegro was first used to refer to the country in the late 15th century. After falling under Ottoman Empire rule, Montenegro gained semi-autonomy in 1696 under the rule of the House of Petrović-Njegoš, first as a theocracy and later as a secular principality. Montenegro's independence was recognised by the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. In 1910, the country became a kingdom. After World War I, the kingdom became part of Yugoslavia. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the republics of Serbia and Montenegro together proclaimed a federation. In June 2006 Montenegro declared its independence following a referendum. (wikipedia)

• • •

[the only Montenegro I have any personal experience with]

Solid stacks, minimal gunk, pretty good. The most annoying thing about the puzzle to me, personally, is its physical shape, its particular black-square arrangement, which cuts this puzzle almost in two and really chokes off the whoosh. Here, I'll show you. This is me, almost exactly halfway through:

As you can see (I hope), there are multiple entryways into the empty half of the grid, obviously (four of them), but they are all teeny tiny, particularly at the top and bottom, and even if you manage to poke an answer through one of them (as I did with OPENS), you don't really get any good traction because you end up in the middle of a bed of long answers. The way I keep up flow and maintain traction is by access to somewhat shorter fill (easier to get at first glance than longer fill, on average), so having passages narrow and having very little to grab hold of via crosses meant an annoying kind of halt and reboot. Like there were two puzzles. I basically had to start over. Heavy segmentation is not my favorite thing on any puzzle, but esp. not on a Friday puzzle, when I crave whoosh (not necessarily speed, but that feeling of one thing flowing into the next into the next etc.). Getting into that second half of the grid was not, ultimately, that difficult. But still, did not like having my flow interrupted so drastically. I did, however, like the NW and SE corners—no clunkers in those longer answers—and the puzzle ended up putting up a halfway decent fight, which I appreciated.

The hardest part of the puzzle for me was ... well, you can see, if you look at my screenshot of the finished grid (above) that the last thing I wrote into the puzzle was BALKAN (34A: Montenegrin, e.g.). Everything in and around BALKAN I have circled in green ink on my printout and shaded in, so there's this giant greenish blob from the -DED in WOODED up through ROTH, whose name (LOL) I once again forgot. I know a Tim ROTH and I know ROTH IRAs and if I'm lisping I know Betsy ROTH but that's it. I think my brain is incapable of retaining any more ROTHs. [update: as several readers have reminded me, I do know other ROTHs: David Lee and Philip, to name two]. I have never and will never read those "Divergent" novels and I have never and apparently will never remember Veronica ROTH's name. It's a curse. I'll just have to live with it. As far as everything else inside the green blog—I came at it from below so first had trouble with TAX DODGES. I had the -ODGES part and wanted to be dealing with some kind of LODGES (31D: Shelters some look to when duty calls?). "Shelters" are structures and LODGES are structures and DODGES really aren't, so I was baffled. I wanted WOODSY for 39A: Sylvan, which forced DODGES but then also was wrong (it's WOODED), so my confidence in anything through there grew faint. That clue on X-MEN did nothing for me (37A: Fictional subjects of 13 movies between 2000 and 2020). 13 movies!?!? Yeesh. Why? I was fully prepared to write in ENTS at one point (how many LOTR/Hobbit movies have there been?). I was thinking of TV / the movies / drama as the context for 28D: Made a scene, say (FILMED). I just wasn't thinking of FILMED (for a while). And FARRO, forget it, no way I'm getting that grain without help from crosses (28A: Grain that once fed the Roman army). I was never fully stuck in this area—it just got real gummy. Nowhere else did toughish clues come in a clump like this.

Lots of little errors today. WOODSY was one. The most consequential error was probably up to where I wrote in "Just a FAD" (5D: Just a ___ = TAD). Actually, I think I wanted DAB before that, but LET'S DO LUNCH eliminated that, and I was left with -AD. Just a FAD. Makes sense to me. But then I had STAR F- at 1A: First impression of a new video game? and the only 11-letter word or phrase I know that starts STAR F- is not something you'll ever see in the NYTXW, so ... that was a no-go. Eventually noticed that TAD would give me START at the beginning of 1A, and that's how I got START BUTTON (a good answer and a great clue, it turns out). I really like the strange finger-based "?"-clue symmetry of 1A: First impression of a new video game? (START BUTTON) and 57A: Digital deals for young people (PINKY SWEARS). Unless you're hitting the START BUTTON with your elbow or forehead or something. Then I supposed that particular symmetry would be lost on you. Any other outright errors? Nope. I had no idea who the SVEN guy was (48D: Longtime soccer manager ___-Göran Eriksson), but otherwise, outside of the green blob, this was a fairly easy puzzle.

Bullets:

• 54A: Home security inits. since 1874 (ADT) — The "since 1874" bit sounds suspiciously ad-like. Next it'll be [Home security inits. you can trust]. ADT is about the worst thing this grid has to offer in terms of fill quality. Unless you're a French-hater, in which case you're probably more mad at ICI (52D: Pas ___ (somewhere else: Fr.)). "Pas ICI" means literally "not here."
• 6D: Emits a stream of hot air (BLOVIATES) — I love this answer. "It figures!" Alright, alright, settle down.
• 7D: Satellite transmission path (UPLINK) — "path" had me thinking of orbits. Had the "P" and briefly considered APOGEE ... but that's a point in an orbit. 

APOGEE: the point in the orbit of an object (such as a satellite) orbiting the earth that is at the greatest distance from the center of the earth (merriam-webster.com)

• 8D: Hit the ground loudly (THUDDED) — disguised past tense ("Hit"). Tricky.
• 9D: Hyperbolic amount of work (TONS) — I wanted this to be more work-specific. TONS is a hyperbolic amount of anything. A hyperbolic amount of spaghetti, for instance.
• 14D: Pleasurable place to do business? (SEX SHOP) — I follow a sex shop on Instagram. Bet you didn't expect to see that sentence today. Smitten Kitten is very close to where my best friends live in Minneapolis and they have been an important voice in the resistance to I.C.E., as well as an important source of support for their neighbors who are being hunted and living in fear. Their social media posts are funny and fearless. I don't think I've ever actually been in Smitten Kitten, but next time I'm in town, I'm going, if only to say "love your work." I'm pretty sure following Smitten Kitten on Insta helped me see SEX SHOP today quicker than I would have otherwise.

• 43D: ___ Buena (island in San Francisco Bay) (YERBA) — didn't know this and yet somehow also it's the first thing I thought of. If you'd asked me what I thought "YERBA Buena" was before today, I'd've said something like "uh... a town near San Diego?" The only island I know in the Bay is Alcatraz.
• 44D: Exiled character in "King Lear" (EDGAR) — deep cut. Pretty tough, as Shak. clues go. Without crosses, I'm not sure I'd've remembered it off the top of my head.
• 32D: The good life, in Spanish vernacular (PURA VIDA) —this phrase is specifically Costa Rican. I saw it all the time when I was down there on vacation (a long time ago, now).

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Law enforcer in Leicester / THU 3-5-26 / CVS Health subsidiary / Replay technique, informally / Winning hit at Wimbledon / Gomez's cousin on 1960s TV / Leif, to Eric the Red / One-named artist who sang the U.S. national anthem at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony / Performs at a Thunderbirds show

Constructor: Hanh Huynh

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (this will vary widely depending on when you pick up the gimmick)

[17A: User of the Force]

THEME: DARK / HORSES (66A: With 68-Across, long-shot candidates ... or a hint to six squares in this puzzle) — six black ("dark") squares actually contain letters (H, O, R, S, E, S, respectively), which you must supply in order to make sense of twelve answers that run through them:

Theme answers:

• ORCHESTRATE / OVERTHROW (5D: Choreograph / 19A: Remove from power)
• DISHONOR / RAMONES (35A: Bring shame upon / 22D: "Blitzkrieg Bop" band)
• EVERPRESENT / ORCHESTRATE (38A: Always there / 5D: Choreograph)
• EVERPRESENT / PASSING SHOT (38A: Always there / 26D: Winning hit at Wimbledon)
• ALIENATE / LIVES ON (42A: Estrange / 28D: Endures)
• CONSTABLE / PASSING SHOT (61A: Law enforcer in Leicester / 26D: Winning hit at Wimbledon)

Word of the Day: NATE Archibald (44A: N.B.A. great ___ Archibald) —

Nathaniel "Tiny" Archibald (born September 2, 1948) is an American former professional basketball player. He spent 14 years playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA), most notably with the Cincinnati Royals/Kansas City–Omaha Kings and Boston Celtics. In 1991, he was enshrined into both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame.

Archibald was a willing passer and an adequate shooter from midrange. However, it was his quickness, speed and shiftiness that made him difficult to guard in the open court, as he would regularly drive past defenders on his way to the basket. This versatility helped Archibald lead the NBA in scoring and assists in the same season (1972–73), making him the first of only two players in league history to achieve such a feat.

• • •

[Dark Horse Comics presents... TALES OF THE [17-Down]]

This is architecturally spectacular, but only on review. The solve itself, while not very difficult, was chaotic, and yet underneath all that chaos the puzzle itself, at the basic clue/answer level, was actually kind of lifeless. So I was very impressed, ultimately, by the structure of it all, and somewhat bored by the act of moving in and around that structure. If you look at the clues, there's nothing very interesting happening at all. There's nothing you would consider entertaining or eye-grabbing answers, no particularly tricky or clever clues. Everything here is in the service of the theme, which (revealer aside), is an entirely structural theme. The clues, the meanings of words, none of these have any relation to the theme. Letters are building blocks. There's no engagement with solvers at the level of word meaning, really. Words are broken up, but breaking them up is purely an act of the physical manipulation of letters. I don't have to figure anything out at the level of word meaning or wordplay. At the ends of puzzles like these I always feel like I'm supposed to clap (and I am clapping) but more because the constructor made a really intricate contraption than because I particularly enjoyed myself while solving it. So it's a very well made puzzle ... just not one that thrilled me as a solver. 

It's possible that the thrill was gone quickly for me today because I picked up the basics of the theme very, very early, at ORCHESTRATE, when I had an undeniable ORC that made no sense for the clue (). I had already been thinking "Orchestrate" was a synonym for [Choreograph], so I just experimented: if I were a "-HESTRA," where would I go??? Tried the most obvious place first: directly through the black square at the end of ORC. And that turned out to be right. Let out a little "ooh" when I realized that ORCHESTRATE would have to go through two different black squares. And that was that. Well not that that. I had no idea what the black "H" and "R" were doing, but ... hidden-letter gimmick, unlocked. I went through the following black square and it was just a regular black square, with regular answers on the other side. Very quickly, I ended up all the way at the bottom of the grid:

I realize now that part of what made the solve feel chaotic was that I had no way to mark those squares as I was solving. On paper, you could write on those squares or indicate their specialness in some way, but online, you just have to keep imagining the letter there, and since there are so many black squares in a puzzle, those special squares were really hard to keep straight. Lots of bumbling around not because I didn't understand, but because I kept losing track of squares I'd already sussed out. So ... fussy, not hard. BAH. Anyway, the revealer phrase came shortly after ORCHESTRATE, and while that let me know what letters would be in play, I still had to go find them. A kind of Easter egg hunt. There was some fun in that, some challenge. But actually solving the clues themselves wasn't too hard (or too interesting). But you do have to admire the structural elegance of this thing. "H-O-R-S-E-S" all appear in order, when reading top to bottom, and all the regularly-filled elements of the puzzle are plausible crossword answers even when they are unclued (i.e. ORC is a real thing and ALI is a real thing and CON is a real thing, etc.). That is, no gibberish. Having three different answers that traverse two "dark" letters also struck me as impressive. It's quite a machine, this puzzle. Wish I'd enjoyed driving it more. The only real challenge this one presented for me involved holding those hidden-letter black squares in my mind. Everything else felt Tuesday. Tepid Tuesday.

Bullets:

• 1A: Replay technique, informally (SLO-MO) — a gimme. SLO-MO to OPER, MEETS, and ... ORC? Oh, ORCHESTRA. While I didn't fly through the puzzle (because of all the black-square business), I cannot find another place in this puzzle where I struggled in any way with the actual clues. Oh, except ...
• 36D: One-named artist who sang the U.S. national anthem at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony (H.E.R.) — I keep forgetting H.E.R. exists. I know H.E.R. won a Grammy, because the puzzle tells me so every once in a while, but for whatever reason H.E.R.'s name keeps falling out of my bag of one-named artists. In three letters, I think SIA, SZA ... ??? You gotta go to four and five letters to get to the real one-named titans: CHER, ENYA, ADELE. Part of the issue is that I know actual songs by all the other one-named artists. I can't hum a thing by H.E.R.. Let's see if I can begin to change that today:

[255M views on YouTube]

• 38A: Always there (EVERPRESENT) — the first three letters here were probably the toughest part for me today, or the part I stumbled over the most. I couldn't figure out the Down cross (LIVES ON) and because I was focused on that trick square, I did not expect another trick square to be so close by, which means I kept assuming the answer to 38A: Always there was just three letters long. E'ER? E'ER seemed very close to [Always there]. But no. .... ERE? No. Colder. 
• 46D: Big Dutch bank (ING) — bank names made solely out of random letters. Not my idea of a good time. I think I wrote GNC here at first, but that's a vitamin and supplement store chain.
• 52D: Typewriter feature (TAB SET) — more unappealing fill. Do the keys actually say "TAB SET"? I have a typewriter here and it's just got a right-facing arrow on its "tab" key. This formal name for a bygone thing wasn't hard, but it wasn't pleasant either.
• 2D: San Diego suburb (LA MESA) — if you're in the San Diego suburbs, I'd say you're in the weeds, fill-wise. If you're in the city, great, everyone knows cities. If you're in the suburbs, yikes. Only locals know suburbs. You should probably avoid suburbs. Remember: NATICK* is a suburb. 

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*NATICK is the term for an unfair / uninferable crossing, esp. of proper nouns

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Cousins of grommets / WED 3-4-26 / Spicy chip brand / "Star Wars" droid, informally / Saucer crew, in brief / Delicacy that's often slurped / "Slow down there, big guy" / Cassette successors

Constructor: Wayne Bergman

Relative difficulty: Medium

[9A: "Star Wars" droid, informally]

THEME: List, interrupted — idiomatic phrases where the first word can mean "remove" or "omit," clued via lists wherein one element has been removed / omitted:

Theme answers:

• MISS THE MARK (3D: Twain, ___, Hamill, Wahlberg)
• SKIP A BEAT (7D: Metro, ___, Sports, Lifestyle)
• CUT A RUG (25A: Persian, ___, Oriental, Navajo)
• TAKE THE CAKE (11D: Red velvet, ___, Black Forest, angel food)
• PULL SOME STRINGS (55A: Violin, ___, cello, ___)

Word of the Day: CUT A RUG (25A) —

To dance, especially in a vigorous manner and in one of the dance styles of the first half of the twentieth century. (wiktionary)

• • •

This one had me at MISS THE MARK, and then PULL SOME STRINGS came along and upped the ante, making me admire the theme even more. The whole cluing concept here struck me as very original and genuinely entertaining, as well as interesting from a solving standpoint—you have to find the connections among the list elements and then also find an idiomatic phrase that might describe the list's omission. This made solving the theme answers a lot of fun. It also made things slightly treacherous in that fat, isolated upper-middle section, where two themers cross each other. That bit was like a self-contained puzzle—accessible only via narrow points of entry on the sides and at the bottom—and so it was hard to work my way in. Basically had to start with the 3s at the top of that section (ESP, AKA) and work down from there. Easy enough to see that RUGs were what the 25A clue was going for, but BEATs!? That was a little harder to get from the clue (7D: Metro, ___, Sports, Lifestyle). Those are sections of a newspaper to me ... which, yes, are technically "beats" that a news reporter might be on. Remember newspapers? Remember news? Good times. Anyway, not complaining about SKIP A BEAT at all, just saying it took some thought. Biggest screwup in that section for me came from writing in LPS for 25D: Cassette successors (CDS). Maybe I was thinking "predecessors"? I don't know. I think of CDS as [LP successors], but maybe there's some idea that the two formats in question are small and portable? Whatever. I just screwed up, which definitely affected my ability to get into that fat upper-middle part. It's a testament to the theme's quality that my frustration in that section didn't lead to any sour feelings toward the puzzle. CUT A RUG! Of course. Always aha, never ugh today.

Well, never ugh with the theme material. There was some ugh with the fill, but not enough to spoil the solve. You do have a lot of 3s today, and there's never anything good to say about 3s. They're just ... there, at best. RAH UAE ESP AKA TEL ORE HUR. But there was nothing unusual or particularly ugly about today's 3s, and in the slightly longer stuff, only ESAI and ARTOO gave me that "ugh, you again?" And when the fill gets a little longer, things get genuinely interesting. You can take "OK, I SEE" and throw it in the ocean (same with all jury-rigged "OH-" and "OK-" and "UH-" phrases) but PAPERLESS and RECOMMITS and SAKE BAR and even TOILET LID (32D: Head covering?), I like, and "EASY TIGER" really wins the day. The fact that the constructor managed to squeeze such a great phrase into that already thematically dense upper-middle section is really impressive. 

Outside of the upper-middle, things were pretty straightforward and deal-with-able. Hardest answer for me to come up with was CAR LOT, which has a clever but (for me) absolutely brutal clue (46A: Mini mart?). Mini is a make of car, which I always forget ... or fail to see when crossword clues decide to use it in a punny fashion. I had almost all the letters in place and still had no idea what the clue was going for "CARLO-, CARLO- ... CARLOS? Who is this CARLOS and why is he a "Mini mart?"). 

Bullets:

• 9A: "Star Wars" droid, informally (ARTOO) — hate when the name is written out phonetically like this. Always stupid-looking. Ah well. We made it well over a week without a Star Wars reference. Ten days, to be precise. That nearly equaled the longest such streak of the year (which is currently eleven—Jan. 4-Jan. 15)
• 19A: Spicy chip brand (TAKIS) — this snack (flavored rolled tortilla chips, shaped like little taquitos) has really come on strong in recent years. The first ever appearance came only in February of last year (!), despite the fact that TAKIS have been around since 2001. Today's was the fifth appearance (three in the singular, two in the plural).

• 31A: Saucer crew, in brief (ETS) — ok ETS and flying saucers aren't real, and the clue should probably indicate fictionality somehow, but I love the phrase "saucer crew" so much that I don't care. Two words that belong nowhere near each other ... near each other. Nice.
• 50A: Where you might drink from a junmai glass (SAKE BAR) — lotsa Japanese material today. SUMO wrestlers at the SAKE BAR wearing OBIS. Actually, SUMOs don't wear OBIS. Instead, the wrestlers, known as RIKISHI, wear loincloths called MAWASHI (total number of NYTXW appearances for RIKISHI and MAWASHI: zero).
• 64A: Pay for play, perhaps (TYPO) — another clever clue. Surface meaning is very convincing / misleading. But no, the answer is not (say) ANTE. You have to imagine "pay" and "play" in scare quotes, indicating you are dealing with them as words alone—their particular meaning doesn't matter, grammatically. 
• 13D: Delicacy that's often slurped (OYSTER) — the only food I can think of that I want absolutely nothing to do with. "Slurping" is unpleasant generally, but somehow slurping ramen, say, seems fine, while slurping an OYSTER ... gag.
• 39D: Cousins of grommets (EYELETS) — sincere first thought: "... Wallaces?"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Intentionally cause drama / TUES 3-3-26 / Genre for wannabe sleuths / Garam ___ (South Asian spice blend) / "Come to our rescue!" / Leaves shocked

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare here for the first Tuesday of March — surprise! Hope everyone is staying warm and hasn’t been too affected by the crazy winter. DC didn’t get hit too badly in the recent storm, and the snow thankfully melted pretty quickly (so I was able to bike again). Then it got warm enough last Saturday for a picnic — and now it’s supposed to be almost 80 this weekend. Wild. I’ve been missing having the Olympics to watch, but I’ve been rooting on my Liverpool (which is doing a bit better lately), watching the Unrivaled playoffs and cheering on the Penguins (minus Sidney Crosby because of the evil Czech player who hurt him). 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Drew Schmenner

Relative difficulty: On the easy side for a Tuesday

THEME: FIRST THINGS FIRST — In order, things you supposedly do first thing in the morning after waking up

Theme answers:

• STIR THE POT (18A: Intentionally cause drama) 
• GET UP TO SPEED (26A: Learn all the latest info) 
• STRETCH LIMOS (47A: Promgoers' luxurious rides) 
• SHOWER GIFT (60A: Present for an expectant mom or bride-to-be)

Word of the Day: SHERA (17A: He-Man's superheroine twin sister) —

Adora, known by her alter ego She-Ra, is a superheroine in the Masters of the Universe franchise. She is introduced as the protagonist of the 1985 Filmation series She-Ra: Princess of Power, which reveals her to be the long lost twin sister of He-Man. She-Ra again appears in the 2018 reboot She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.A series of toys under her name was produced by Mattel in 1984. She has also appeared in a number of Masters of the Universe comic books, most notably in DC Comics' 2012–2018 MOTU comic series, a roughly 1,000 page single story arc, collected in the 2019 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Omnibus hardcover release… She-Ra is known for her incredible feats and charisma. She has been shown multiple times to be able to lift not only full-grown men and robots, but also mountain-like rocks and buildings. She is depicted as being extremely fast and acrobatic. Her speed allows her to easily deflect multiple incoming energy blasts with her sword. (Wiki)

• • •

So, that puzzle is… fine? I’m really tired so I liked that it was a bit easier than Tuesdays often are, but it felt bland to the point that I don’t really know how to describe it. FIRST THINGS FIRST, I didn’t love the theme. The revealer says to look at the starts of the theme answers, so after finishing the puzzle I looked at STIR (18A), then tried to make it mesh with GET (26A). Hmm… STIR and GET, related to FIRST THINGS FIRST? It took me a bit to recognize GET UP as the “start” of the second theme answer. To be fair, the revealer only says it’s hinting to the “starts” of the answers. But to have three of them be one word and the fourth be two feels wrong. 

Besides, the actions in the theme answers aren’t what I would guess the average person does once they first wake up (or maybe people are better than me and actually do stretch or do yoga or something like I’ve been saying I’ll try to do for years). I realize that any such list of actions wouldn’t fit everybody, but this list didn’t quite sit right with me. I did, though, like the phrases for the first two answers — STIR THE POT (18A) and GET UP TO SPEED (26A). 

Other than that, the puzzle just felt full of short-ish, common words. I thought the most interesting and fun answers were MUTATING (9D: Changing genetically) and CHIRP (11D: Cricket's call) and TWEETS (68A: Sounds from baby robins). HUSHES UP (39D: Keeps from being publicly known) was also decent. LIESL (33D: Eldest von Trapp daughter in "The Sound of Music") is a great and uncommon name for a puzzle. And the clue for LOO (8D: Where to go in the U.K.?) is decently cute. But, EST (35D: Winter setting in D.C.) next to ETS (36D: Sci-fi space travelers)? AIRS (4D: Broadcasts)? RETIE (12D: Knot again)? OREO (58A: Black bits in cookies and cream)? MOW (52D: Cut the grass)? ELECT (50D: Vote into office)? Where were the interesting, long downs? The clever clues even if the answers were routine? 

It also felt like the constructor was trying a bit to be ~hip~ and ~with the times~ with words and phrases like SLAPS (31A: Is awesome, in slang), NORMIE (65A: Person with mainstream likes, pejoratively), AMIRITE (23A: "Don't you agree with me?," informally), and SPITS BARS (3D: Raps freestyle, in slang). Those are fine, and I personally like when the puzzle sometimes skews younger. But it mostly feels like this meme to me:

The puzzle may have been on the easy side because there were only around eight proper nouns, which feels like less than normal, and they certainly weren’t hard, with the possible exception of SHE-RA (17A).  

And that's about all I can think to say…

Misc.:

• The puzzle was clearly wrong about morning routines, because doesn’t everyone wake up to their puppy stealing their pillow at 6 AM, then almost falling off the bed and hitting their head on the bedside table? Or is that just me? But she’s so cute and just wants to cuddle, so I can’t stay mad for long. Until tomorrow, when she maybe successfully shoves me off the bed. 
• D.C. got a callout in 35D with EST. But I can’t wait until we’re in EDT in just a week! Losing an hour of sleep is so, so worth its being lighter later. That means more time for another picnic this weekend! 
• You’re really going to clue IAN (22A) McKellen as Magneto and not Gandalf?! That feels sacrilegious. I mean, I enjoyed some of the X-Men movies, but Lord of the Rings is the best of all time. 
• I remembered the name LIESL (33D) because of the iconic “Sixteen Going On Seventeen” song in “The Sound of Music.” I watched that movie a lot growing up. Just earlier today I was thinking of “snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes” from the song “My Favorite Things,” as the pretty snowflakes were coming down. 
• This may be a reach, but OGRE (​​58D: Shrek, e.g.) obviously makes me think of one line from this promo sketch that SNL did for Connor Storrie hosting this past Saturday. Everyone must watch. I’ve been rather obsessed with “Heated Rivalry” (and the stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams) ever since it aired, so I watched SNL all the way through for the first time in many years. 
• February was another good reading month for me. I’ve moved on a bit from my literary fiction horror phase and have now entered my romance phase. Though I’m currently in the middle of the audiobook for “Carl's Doomsday Scenario,” the second in a series. The narrator is absolutely fantastic and does so many incredible voices. It makes biking in the snow and being cold a little less miserable (yes, I did that today; and, yes, I still feel cold hours later).

And with that, I hope everyone has a great month of March!

Signed, Clare Carroll, last thing last

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