Typeface that sounds like the name of a Disney princess / TUES 3-31-26 / Venue for a boss fight / List in Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next" / Colorado Plateau people

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday of March — and the last day! Spring is here (aka the cherry blossoms are going gangbusters in D.C.), and it feels like I’m coming out of hibernation. I’m writing this from my new apartment, which is about three blocks from my old apartment. So: My pup doesn’t have to get used to a new dog park, and I got to pack haphazardly, meaning a bunch of trips with my things (and I have way more things than I realized!). I’ve been loving watching March Madness (go, UConn women) and rooting on the Penguins to a playoff spot. But, I’ve buried the lede! BTS is back!!! Here’s a link to their new single, “Swim,” which just debuted at No. 1 on Billboard, along with their No. 1 album “Arirang.” And here’s my favorite song from the album. Enjoy! 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Ryan Patrick Smith

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: FANTASY LAND (64A: Utopian expanse ... a map of which might include 17-, 27- and 48-Across?) — Each answer was a fantastical word combined with a geographical feature

Theme answers:

• MYSTIC RIVER (17A: 2003 crime drama adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel) 
• MAGIC MOUNTAIN (27A: Six Flags location that was the first amusement park to offer 20 roller coasters) 
• UNCANNY VALLEY (48A: Concept explaining why certain humanoid robots look so unsettling)

Word of the Day: REMY (36D: Rapper ___ Ma) —

Reminisce Kioni Smith, known professionally as Remy Ma, is an American rapper. Discovered by the late rapper Big Pun, she came to prominence for her work as a member of Fat Joe's group, Terror Squad. Her debut solo album, There's Something About Remy: Based on a True Story (2006), sold 37,000 copies in its first week. Ma's most commercially successful songs include "Lean Back", "Conceited", and "All the Way Up.” She is one of five multi-time winners of the BET Award for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist, which she won in 2005 and 2017. Ma is the recipient of two Vibe Awards, two Source Awards, and has been nominated for four Grammy Awards. (WIki)

• • •

Well, that was a puzzle. A pretty good puzzle? A slightly harder than usual Tuesday puzzle? A somewhat boring puzzle? All of the above? The theme didn’t grab me — I guess I don’t spend much time thinking about fantasy lands — even though one of my favorite phrases was in the puzzle: UNCANNY VALLEY (48A). Such as, “So-and-so actor is looking like they’ve had some sort of work done on their face, and I can’t pinpoint what, but they don’t look like themself. There’s something UNCANNY VALLEY going on.” It’s a phrase that might’ve stumped some people, but I thankfully got it immediately. 

The puzzle did have some other particularly fun words and phrases. I love the word LOLLOP (51D: Bound along clumsily). Do I use that word much in my day-to-day life? No. Should I? Yes. Am I going to? I hope so! GAS GUZZLER (29D:Vehicle with low fuel efficiency, in slang) is a great phrase and incorporates some fun — and possibly tricky — Zs into the puZZle. I like the word TAVERN (8D: Establishment where a D&D party might refuel and pick up new leads). And UPTOWN GIRL (11D: Billy Joel title character who's "been living in her white bread world") is a great song; the movie “UPTOWN GIRLs” is incredibly fun, too, with Brittany Murphy and Dakota Fanning. (If anyone has a spare Blumarine dress from the opening scene, let me know.) My favorite clue was for ARIAL (39A: Typeface that sounds like the name of a Disney princess). I don’t like beer, but my sister and dad do, and HAZY IPA (52A: Cloudy craft beer) is also a fun answer. 

HOLST (1A: "The Planets" composer) felt a bit hard for a Tuesday, especially as the default first clue in the puzzle. I stared at that for a good while before realizing I could get the down, HOME (1D: "E.T. phone ___"), and just move on. HOLST (1A) crossing LASE (3D: Produce coherent light) was a bit challenging. RAN AWAY (25A: Fled the scene) was particularly hard for me to get for some reason — I wanted “getaway” or “got away” or something along those lines. I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to spell NAIAD (22D: Water nymph of Greek myth). One clue/answer I didn’t like at all was TRI (5D: Muscle strengthened by dips, familiarly). Like, are you going to go do a TRI dip on one side and work out a single muscle? No, I’m pretty sure you’ll work out your TRIs (plural). 

The rest of the fill was pretty… fine. I liked SIT SKI (4D: Piece of equipment for a Winter Paralympian), showcasing the Paralympics. DIRE (42A: ___ wolf (extinct canine once prevalent across North America)) wolves is fun — even if the ending of Game of Thrones (showcasing DIRE wolves) wasn’t. Kenan & KEL (63A: Kenan's bestie on a 1990s sitcom) is a show I haven’t thought about in a long while but had fun remembering. But, ORE, ERIE, UNE, MAR, PIN, NAG, RIM, etc. don’t inspire much of anything. 

I might just be tired and grumpy (moving is hard work!). But I just don’t have much of anything else to say about this mostly meh puzzle.

Misc.:

• My sister tells me that TAE Bo (19A: exercise regimen popularized via VHS tapes) is having a huge comeback right now I may have to forgo the VHS tapes and see if I can find some workouts online somewhere! 
• AS IF (7D: "Dream on!") definitely makes me think of “Clueless,” a phenomenal movie. Come on, we can all just picture Cher saying “Ugh! AS IF” in that disgusted and wonderful tone of hers. 
• 2020 might’ve been the year of THE RAT (9D: What 2020 was a year of, in the Chinese zodiac), but this is the year of the horse — specifically, the fire horse. 
• Does anyone actually still say LMAO (59A: "hahaha!")? I like to think of myself as fairly hip and in the know, but while “lol” has made a comeback (which I use basically as punctuation), I truly don’t see LMAO written anywhere. 
• I haven’t read many books this month because I’ve been busy moving, but my favorite was “Star Shipped,” by one of my favorite authors, Cat Sebastian. Highly recommend — 5/5!

And with that, I'll see you in April!

Signed, Clare Carroll, currently living in BTS land!

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California city with a humble-sounding name / MON 3-30-26 / Kenya's second-largest city / Endless TikTok scrolling or Tetris playing, e.g. Like the original Broadway cast of "The Wiz" / Longtime record label or Beastie Boy / Major drags on a team's progress, metaphorically / Onetime AT&T competitor / Caustic paint stripper

Constructor: Gary Cee

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: BACKED UP (64A: Went into reverse ... or what the ends of 17-, 20-, 38- and 59-Across might be) — last words of theme answers are things that might be backed up:

Theme answers:

• TIME SINK (17A: Endless TikTok scrolling or Tetris playing, e.g.)
• CIRCULAR FILE (20A: Wastebasket, jokingly)
• DRUG TRAFFIC (38A: Illegal distribution of narcotics)
• BAGGAGE CLAIM (59A: Where to pick up luggage at an airport)

Word of the Day: MOMBASA (42D: Kenya's second-largest city) —

Mombasa (/mɒmˈbæsə/ mom-BASS-ə; also US: /-ˈbɑːsə/ -⁠BAH-sə) is a coastal city in southeastern Kenya along the Indian Ocean. It was the first capital of British East Africa, before Nairobi was elevated to capital status in 1907. It now serves as the capital of Mombasa County. Buildings in the Central Business District are blue and white, representing the Indian Ocean.^] It is the country's oldest (c. 900 A.D.) and second-largest city after Nairobi, with a population of about 1,208,333 people according to the 2019 census.

• • •

Pretty bland outing today. Nothing particularly wrong with it. Just blah. A bog-standard "last words"-type puzzle. Those last words all can get backed up, it's true. Can't argue with that. There's absolutely no sense of playfulness or cleverness about the revealer—just an ordinary phrase that happens to literally describe the theme. Conceptually, this is the opposite of yesterday's ambitious, inventive, daring puzzle. Now I expect Monday puzzles to be easy, and I expect themes to be relatively simple, but that doesn't mean they can't be executed with some flair or humor or ... something. I can't fault the puzzle for much; it's not doing anything particularly wrong or even unappealing. I don't love how choppy the grid is, how chock full o' 3s the grid seems to be because of the black-square arrangement, and (relatedly) I don't love the imbalance between the relatively wide-open NE and SW corners and the short answer-laden rest of the grid. It's aesthetically wonky, imbalanced, odd. But this is mostly a matter of personal taste; my objections don't have much to do with the theme concept or how the grid was filled. It's just blah to me. The four long Downs are pretty decent, though, especially INSIDE SCOOP and DEAD WEIGHTS. Beyond that, there was nothing I was particularly happy to see. But, again, there was nothing I was particularly sad to see, either. A real ho-hummer, this one. But professionally made. Fine. Reasonable. Forgettable, but acceptable [well, mostly ... see the first bullet point, below]

The Downs-only solve today was also pretty average, very doable, but tricky in precisely the places you'd expect a grid like this to be tricky for the Downs-only solver—namely, the NE and SW corners (the aforementioned "wide-open" corners, with lots of longer Downs running through them. Three parallel longer Downs in each corner. That can make it hard to get traction if you're solving Downs-only, as longer answers are simply harder to come up with if you have no letters in place and no crosses to help out (unless you're able to infer them). I managed to get through the NW pretty easily, largely because I grew up in the Central Valley of California and so know MODESTO well (well, I know the name well—I can't remember ever having gone there). The letters in MODESTO helped make the Acrosses up there easy to infer, which then helped me get INSIDE SCOOP (which I definitely needed a bunch of crosses to see). 

I had much more trouble in the SW, where MODESTO's symmetrical counterpart, MOMBASA, proved far (far) more elusive (42D: Kenya's second-largest city). I know precisely one Kenyan city (also seven letters!), but sadly (for me), that city is the first-largest, not today's second-largest. The only way I ended up getting MOMBASA was through testing letters from the crosses and seeing if they sounded like anything. It also took some doing to get ENCASES, which was not an obvious answer to 43D: Boxes up securely. As my wife said Sunday evening after she'd finished the puzzle: "There's nothing particularly 'secure" about ENCASES." I wanted RETAPES at first (!?). The only way I got to ENCASES was by finally guessing ONE SEED (instead of my previous guess, RYE SEED) as the answer to 48A: Top placement in a bracket, for a March Madness team, and then by guessing ASHAME from --HAME (63A: Regrettably unfortunate). Once I floated ENCASES as a possible answer, MEWLS and MCI went in (the one a near certainty, the other an educated guess), it was only the second-to-last letter of MOMBA-A that remained elusive. The whole time I was building MOMBASA, I honestly felt like I was just making up a name. I considered BETTER / MOMBABA at one point, but then MOMBASA occurred to me, and it just sounded right. Perhaps because it sounded like "Mufasa." Or "Mumbai," I don't know. I just know the puzzle gave me a "Congratulations" message and I was done. 

Bullets:

• 39D: Take advantage of (USE) / 12D: Of no help (USELESS) — You can't do this. You cannot. This is a DQ (that's "disqualification," not Dairy Queen). You can argue up and down that USE is presented as a verb, not a noun, and so USELESS isn't just the same word plus a suffix, but come on, man, even you don't believe the words that are coming out of your mouth. USE is USE is USE. You cannot put a word in your grid and then put the same damn word in your grid again with a suffix attached to it like some kind of fake mustache and pretend it's not a dupe. It's a dupe. Boo! 

• 13D: California city with a humble-sounding name (MODESTO) — this is incorrect. It *looks* humble (because it's got "modest" in there), but it doesn't *sound* humble. It's mo-DEST-o, not MOD-est-o. Maybe "MODESTO" is Spanish for "modest," and so the city really is "humble-sounding" in Spanish, but for the regular-ass American pronunciation, the "sounding" part does not apply. 

[Few small cities get a song this good written about them.]

• 40D: Like the original Broadway cast of "The Wiz" (ALL-BLACK) — interesting answer. Missed opportunity for some good NZ content, but The Wiz is good too, I like The Wiz.

• 48A: Top placement in a bracket, for a March Madness team (ONE SEED) — timely! Looks like UConn beat Duke on a buzzer-beater last night, which kept the Final Four from being 75% ONE SEEDs. But still, two remain: Arizona and Michigan. Those two play each other next week for a place in the Championship (vs. the winner of UConn/Illinois). Needless to say: Go Blue* 

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*This applies to the Michigan women's team too, who are playing ONE SEED Texas today for a spot in the Women's Final Four—pretty good year for Wolverines basketball

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Stickler for military discipline / SUN 3-29-26 / Turn into logs / Internet-influenced writing genre / Gertrude who swam the English Channel / Common vessel for a cosmopolitan / Tired old advertising mascot? / Pertaining to genetic copies / Leader ousted in 1955 / "The Office" accountant who kept a cat in her desk drawer / Religious title that translates to "ocean monk" / In Norse myth, world held up by the branches of Yggdrasil

Constructor: Michael and Oliver Schlossberg

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

[51D: "Star Wars" title (DARTH)]

THEME: Roundabouts — the grid has five "roundabouts"; one answer enters the roundabout from the west and stops right there; three other answers are extensions of that first answer, and they "exit" the roundabout at the south, east, and north, respectively, and you have to follow the the letters in the roundabout to make the answers make sense:

First roundabout:

• MART (37A: Convenience store)
• MARTIALART (48D: Kendo or aikido)
• MARTINET (40A: Stickler for military discipline)
• MARTINIGLASS (5D: Common vessel for a cosmopolitan)

Second roundabout:

• BUT (42A: Nevertheless)
• BUTTIGIEG (52D: "Mayor Pete")
• BUTTOCKS (43A: Rear end)
• BUTTONFLIES (14D: Alternatives to zippers on blue jeans)

Third roundabout:

• BAL (68A: The Orioles, on a scoreboard)
• BALLGOWN (73D: Fancy dress)
• BALLOTS (69A: They're cast in November)
• BALLOONANIMAL (25D: Entertainer's creation at a child's birthday party)

Fourth roundabout:

• MICH (101A: Wisc. neighbor)
• MICHELLE (107D: One of the Obamas)
• MICHELOB (102A: Brand from Anheuser-Busch)
• MICHELINMAN (72D: Tired old advertising mascot?)

Fifth roundabout:

• ARM (103A: Branch)
• ARMANIS (110D: Some expensive suits)
• ARMAGNAC (104A: French brandy)
• ARMAGEDDON (75D: It's the end of the world)

Word of the Day: MARTINET (40A) —

 

[merriam-webster.com]

• • •

I completed this puzzle without fully understanding the gimmick. I could see that answers were entering and emerging, but I tried to make that little arrow-circle square at the middle of each "roundabout" mean something—I thought it represented letters, somehow, and I couldn't understand why it seemed to be representing different sets of letters for each answer. Over time, I could see that the answer going south had no letters added, the one going east seemed to have just one, and the one headed south had two, but I was solving at a reasonable clip and never really stopped to try to figure it all out. I kept waiting for a revealer to explain it all to me, but ... it never arrived. Perhaps if the roundabouts were circles (like actual roundabouts) and not squares (wtf????), the whole "roundabout" concept would've been clearer to me earlier, I don't know. No "roundabout" I have ever been in has ever had ninety-degree angles like that. I go through traffic circles like that nearly every day, all of them circular. So I'm not a fan of the visual representation of the roundabouts, but I am a fan of the concept in general. It is elaborate and kinda wild and really well executed. Also, that giant open section in the north features some of the most inventive grid-building I've seen. You've got the back end of BALLOON ANIMAL shooting up into the center of that section, and then a bunch of stellar long non-theme answers filling the spaces around it, including TRIVIA APP, PRICELINE, DALAI LAMA, ON VACAY (!) and always adorable RED PANDAS. OK, you also have the decidedly ugly CLONAL (8D: Pertaining to genetic copies), but hey, it's a small price to pay for the rest of it. This theme is so architecturally complex and so dense that it must've been an adventure filling the grid At All, let alone filling it so creatively. Maybe the one (high difficulty level) begat the other (extreme inventiveness). Whatever. This is the rare Sunday puzzle that seems worthy of the real estate it takes up. And one of the rare "architectural feats" that was actually interesting to solve (even if my aha moment came very, very late).

Two parts of the puzzle seemed particularly treacherous. The first was MARTINET. I know the word ... but it's not exactly an everyday word, and because it was involved in the first "roundabout" I came to, and I didn't really understand who the "roundabout" worked, I wasn't entirely sure MARTINET was even right. What if it was something like, uh, MARINE VET, and I just wasn't seeing how the theme was working? I think of MARTINETs as being stern, but I don't associate the word with specifically "military" discipline, so I hesitated there. And I knew EDERLE! (crosswordese to the rescue!) (31D: Gertrude who swam the English Channel). Seems like MARTINET might've been even harder to pick up without EDERLE to help you confirm it. Aside from MARTINET, the other yikes part of the grid was CRONUS (71A: Father of Zeus). This is because my brain hiccuped and I wrote in URANUS (so many shared letters ...) without blinking, without hesitating, instantly. But URANUS was not Zeus's father, but his grandfather. Close, no cigar! Anyway, URANUS gave me "OH, LARDY" at 56D: "Good heavens!," and I was totally prepared to accept "OH, LARDY" as some horrid phonetically-spelled regionalism (actually thought to myself, "'OH, LAWDY' would be better”). The only way I caught the URANUS error was by (luckily) noticing that I had INUA as the answer for 62D: Early empire builder (INCA). No such thing as INUA (I'm pretty sure). So in went INCA and LARDY (!) became LORDY (better!) and that was the very last thing I wrote in the grid.

I kept wanting the letters inside the roundabouts to spell something or mean something ... and of course they did "mean" something, ultimately—you have to follow them around in order to make sense of all three answers that exit from the roundabout. Which brings me to the only part of the theme that doesn't quite work: that first answer, the one that enters but does not leave the roundabout. If you enter a roundabout you have to leave the roundabout. You do not stop on a roundabout. Have you ever been behind someone who stopped on a roundabout?! Chaos. Nightmare scenario. You have to keep moving and you have to (eventually) leave. So in order for three of the theme answers to work beautifully, one of them has to kick things off by awkwardly driving into the roundabout and ... stopping. I'm trying not to cling too hard to roundabout realism today. You can't have three answers exit if you don't first have one answer enter. A little unrealism is just the price you pay for the overall effect. I'm OK with that. I'm much more bothered by the square roundabouts than I am by the non-exiting answers.

Outside the theme answers, things look pretty good. I'm not too bothered by the doubling up of UP—I just wish one of those UP answers wasn't SAW UP, what in the world!? (93A: Turn into logs). What are we doing here? Who's supposed to be saying this, a cartoon pioneer? "After I SAW UP some wood I'm gonna scare up some grub!" SAW UP appears to be on a cycle, reappearing in the grid every thirty years like some kind of strange crossword comet (1965, 1996, 2026). I hope I live to see its next appearance, and yet I also hope I never see it again. The other "up" phrase is LACES UP, a perfectly fine phrase. If there's another "up" phrase I've missed, clearly it's not bothering me.

Bullets:

• 50D: Tots' pops (DADAS) — this is a ridiculous plural. I know it seems like an acceptable plural, but no tot would ever say DADAS. Just the one. There are mamas and there are papas but there are not DADAS. I suppose if a child had two dads, then DADAS is theoretically possible, but even then, I just don't see her describing them collectively. By the time she got the whole plural-with-an-S thing down, I think she'd be past the "dada" stage. Strange that I've seen DADAS so many times (fourteen since I started this blog), and this is the first time it struck me as absurd. 
• 90A: Classic Andy Warhol subject (MARILYN) — hey, did you know that SOUP CAN and MARILYN have the same number of letters?! It's true! Ask me how I know!

• 94D: Leader ousted in 1955 (PERON) — I had to keep shouting at my brain, "No, not PEROT! The other guy ... the Evita guy ... come on!"
• 27A: "The Office" accountant who kept a cat in her desk drawer (ANGELA) — I laughed just remembering ANGELA. The clue-writing today was really colorful and entertaining, on the whole. The groaner clue on U.C.L.A. (122A: What you do when you tour a certain SoCal campus, phonetically?). The bizarro trivia clue on UFO (125A: Purported sighting recorded by Puritan governor John Winthrop in 1639). I mean, 54A: Heart on one's sleeve, perhaps, in brief (TAT)!?! What a great literalization of a common idiom (in case you were unaware, a "sleeve" is a large tattoo covering most or all of a person's arm). And [Tired old advertising mascot?] for MICHELIN MAN!? That's primo stuff right there.

["Tired!"]

• 89A: Predator that might hunt by electrolocation (EEL) — I love that "electrolocation" is a real thing (I did not know that) and that I could use the word to infer EEL (via "electric EEL")
• 79D: Purple smoothie add-in (AÇAI BERRY) — there's something decadent about getting the whole BERRY when normally (quite normally—regularly, constantly) we just get AÇAI. Amplified crosswordese. I like it.
• 29A: Internet-influenced writing genre (ALT-LIT) — I have never heard of this genre. I don't really believe it's a genre. "Alternative literature brings together people with a common interest in the online publishing world" (wikipedia). Wait, is this ALT-LIT? Am I ALT-LIT? Are we ALT-LIT?

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I'm going to see John Mulaney today! His stand-up tour ("Mister Whatever") is, improbably, coming through Ithaca, so we're going. No idea why I'm telling you; I'm just excited is all. Big names (that I want to see) rarely come to my neck of the NY woods. Fun fact: MULANEY (7) has never appeared in the NYTXW. So, if you're playing at home, that's three SAWUPs, zero MULANEYs. Also zero OZUs, btw. But you knew that. I've said that many (many) times before. 

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Add to a columbarium, say / SAT 3-28-26 / Pokémon that wakes only to eat / Program for those trying to reduce screen time, familiarly? / Short addition above or below a musical staff / Dominican poet Pedro / Bit of shorthand in some age cohorts / Former M.L.B. team with the mascot Youppi! / Vessel often stored upside down / Hindu counterpart of Eros / Short-lived particle / Start of a Christmas carol in Latin / Provider of virtual trips to Mars since 2003

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LEDGER LINE (8D: Short addition above or below a musical staff) —

A ledger line or leger line is used in Western musical notation to notate pitches above or below the lines and spaces of the regular musical staff. A line slightly longer than the note head is drawn parallel to the staff, above or below, spaced at the same distance as the lines within the staff.

The origin of the word is uncertain, but may have been borrowed attributively from the term for a horizontal timber in a scaffolding, lying parallel to the face of the building and supporting the putlogs. There is no basis to support the often-found claim that the word originates from the French léger, meaning "light" or "slight". The Oxford online dictionary describes the origin of the "leger" spelling as a "variant of ledger" that first appeared in the 19th century. (wikipedia)

• • •

80% recovered from my shingles vaccine side effects this morning, and thank god, because I needed all my solving power to finish this one, which fought me like a Saturday should. Not the most exciting grid I've ever seen, and some of the cluing was fussy / irksome, but for once I can't say "too easy" about a Saturday puzzle, so that was nice. Those giant NE and SW corners are well handled—lots of long answers running into other long answers, all of them coming out pretty clean—but there were only a few answers that made me think "nice!": TOO FAR GONE, "IT'LL BE FINE," and "ARE WE COOL?" (even though I probably hear it more commonly as simply "we cool?"). I also kinda like the rhyming POOL NOODLE / TOY POODLE crossing. Felt like the puzzle knew what it was doing there, like it did a little pirouette, a little flourish. I like that. I didn't like how the puzzle took some of its ugliest fill and gave it hard clues. Nothing worse than struggling with a clue only to have the answer be something like INURN (3D: Add to a columbarium, say) (if I ever knew what a "columbarium" was, I forgot) or TSA PRE (a very ugly answer, but I will give credit to that clue, which gets its difficulty from cleverness and not from obscure vocabulary) (20D: Program for those trying to reduce screen time, familiarly?) (TSA PRE is for "pre-checked" fliers ... their TSA line is typically shorter, hence "reduced screen(ing) time").

For me, the hardest answer was also kinda dull—I simply had no idea about LEDGER LINE. Once I got it, at the very end, I thought "sounds kinda familiar," but while solving, oof, trouble. I got the LINE part OK, eventually, but the LEDGER part ... that turned out to be the heart of the hardest part of the grid for me: the LEDGER part of LEDGER LINE, the MEDIA part of MEDIA HYPE (18A: Amped-up coverage), GEN (21A: Bit of shorthand in some age cohorts), and OWIES (esp. OWIES) (9D: Targets of some kisses) combined to make my final few squares of the solve a real adventure. Before that, the one real trouble spot was TSA PRE across GRATER (26A: It has holes and cuts) and CRONIES (35A: Members of a kitchen cabinet). I simply didn't know what a "kitchen cabinet" was (or ... I had some vague idea, but not one that was going to get me to CRONIES any time soon). Outside those two sections, the puzzle wasn't too tough, but those two sections really gummed things up.

SNORLAX was seven random letters to me (51A: Pokémon that wakes only to eat). The Internet tells me there are over 1,000 Pokémon to date. Since I am an adult and have been an adult during the entire time Pokémon have existed and since my kid was never into Pokémon, that whole universe is terra incognita to me (and will remain so). Asking me to know SNORLAX seems about as absurd as asking me to know George Jetson's computer "friend" R.U.D.I. (see yesterday's puzzle). But, you know, the crosses are fair, so you just shrug and move on. I am grateful to the puzzle that it didn't make me spend a lot of time time struggling to get SNORLAX. Got a little dicey there when I couldn't remember the [Actor who played priests in "The Mission" (1986) and "Silence" (2016)], but I eventually got enough crosses to see Liam NEESON, and that final "N" was the last thing I needed for SNORLAX. I feel bad for the solver who knows nothing about Pokémon and knows nothing about Major League Baseball. That "X" (in EXPOS) is probably inferable, but still, that cross could be dicey for some subset of solvers. But in general I think the SNORLAX crosses are common knowledge. (That EXPOS clue was a gimme for me) (48D: Former M.L.B. team with the mascot Youppi!).

[SNORLAX]

Bullets:

• 14A: Vessel often stored upside down (CANOE) — "Vessel" is what makes this a real Saturday clue. I was picturing some kind of pot or pan or ewer or cruet or ... something kitchen-y.
• 19A: Young in old Hollywood (LORETTA) — her fame has not endured the way some other old Hollywood actors' fame has. She was a major star, but sitting here right now, without looking her up, I don't think I could name one of her movies. I think she was in a western with Robert Mitchum that I liked ... something about "stars?" ... nope, no "stars"—it's called Rachel and the Stranger (RKO's most successful film of 1948). "Stranger" starts with the letters in "star" ... I wonder if that's what I was thinking. Anyway, LORETTA Young won an Academy Award for Best Actress (The Farmer's Daughter, 1947). She had a couple of TV shows, too, in the '50s and '60s, and worked well into the late 20th century, winning a Golden Globe for Best Actress—Miniseries or Television Movie for Lady in a Corner (1989).

• 57A: Letter after Sierra (TANGO) — had the "T" and wrote in TAHOE—still obviously under the influence of yesterday's Mac Operating System clue for TAHOE (Sierra was also a Mac O/S).
• 1D: Where locks are set (SCALP) — this one is trying maybe too hard. Yes, your hair ("locks") is "set" in your SCALP. Hard to deny, yet awkward on the page. Very awkward. I think I had CANAL here at first.
• 29A: Short-lived particle (PION) — I had MUON at first. I know particle names solely from crosswords. I don't really know anything about them.
• 24D: Producers of an annual light show (LEONIDS) — annual meteor shower
• 54D: Dominican poet Pedro (MIR) — this is the puzzle trying desperately to pretend that MIR isn't still crosswordese. It's still crosswordese. Once a space station, always a space station.
• 41A: Start of a Christmas carol in Latin (ADESTE) — speaking of crosswordese! Once again ... to the rescue! (“ADESTE Fideles” = “O Come, All Ye Faithful”). This was a gimme and was instrumental in my getting into the SE corner (via TROUTS ... a plural about which the less said the better)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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E-card site with a reduplicative name / FRI 3-27-26 / Reductive neologism for a strong female lead / Epithet for Bill Clinton / George's computer friend on "The Jetsons" / PB&J, e.g., informally / Dish whose name means "barley" in Italian / Direction in many a spaghetti western / Figure in Greek mythology who was brought up by a bear / Like 97% of the United States, per the Census Bureau / Dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter / Affliction known as "cold neuralgia" / Tahoe runner

Constructor: Zachary David Levy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: R.U.D.I. (53D: George's computer friend on "The Jetsons") —

R.U.D.I. (voiced by Don Messick) is George's work computer as well as his best friend in the workplace. R.U.D.I. is sentient, free thinking and openly fond of George, recognizing his value as an employee and friend. His name is an acronym for Referential Universal Digital Indexer. He has a human personality and is a member of the Society Preventing Cruelty to Humans. Though capable and loyal, R.U.D.I. is implied to be antiquated technology, as George mentions his model is no longer made.

In the episode "Family Fallout", the Jetsons are up against the Spacelys on a game show. The last question to come up was "what does R.U.D.I. stand for?" George's response was Referential Universal Differential Indexer – this was accepted by the game show host as the correct answer, even though earlier episodes had it as Digital instead of Differential. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think it's best if I just rate this three stars and call its difficulty "Medium" because I am in no condition to make clear-headed judgments. I'm about 18 hours out from my second shingles shot and I feel pretty terrible. Low-level flu-ish. I did not enjoy solving this puzzle very much, but it seems more than possible that my mild feverishness, poor sleep, and resulting brain fog had something to do with that. So I'll try to keep it mostly just descriptive today ... though there is some stuff I'm pretty sure I'd've disliked even if I were feeling 100%. Things I'd rather never think about like BUBBA and TSA and anthropomorphized computer "friends"—and obscure ones, at that—the idea that anyone in the year 2026 should be familiar with the Jetsons universe to that extent is an absurdity. I thought the clue at 53D: George's computer friend on "The Jetsons" (R.U.D.I.) was talking about their robot maid, ROSIE, and the fact that I know ROSIE is itself a minor miracle considering that show aired before I was born—well, the first season, anyway; there were later seasons (2) when I was a teenager (1985-87), but I was not aware of them. R.U.D.I. was the worst of the proper nouns, for me, but I definitely resented having to know JIB-JAB (I have never visited an "E-card site" in my life and am never going to—people still "send" these impersonal things??) (1D: E-card site with a reduplicative name). NFL coaches, esp. their first names, there's just no way. I do not care. [Some guy's first name] may as well have been the clue for DAN (56D: N.F.L. coach Quinn). The clue doesn't even tell you the team he coaches. It's a really underwritten clue; we don't even learn any potentially interesting trivia. Meh. 

I had trouble getting started with this one, and then some trouble down below (where so many of the proper nouns are), and otherwise not much trouble at all. Worked my way into the NW corner via FEN / OFFS / SANYO / STENO (crosswordese to the rescue!), but I doubted FEN because it gave me what seemed like awkward letter sequences ("EF" "NF"). And so I put BOG in that position for a bit (resulting in "OF" instead of "EF" in 15-Across ... "OF" is of course a standalone word, so I was like "that's probably it, it's probably BOG / ...OF..." No). The clue on RURAL took me every single cross (7D: Like 97% of the United States, per the Census Bureau)—like, I was looking at -URAL going "... AURAL?" The clue is talking about the U.S. as a geographical entity; when you put "Census Bureau" in the clue, I assume you are talking about people. Yeesh. Saying the U.S. is 97% rural sounds like some right-wing propaganda, like when they show you how much of the country voted "red" using a physical map instead of numbers of people (when land, of course, doesn't vote; people do). So bah to that clue for sure. I wrote in FARO (!?) before ORZO at 10D: Dish whose name means "barley" in Italian, which was dumb—I think it's FARRO with two "R"s, anyway. But after a lot of flailing, I got that corner sorted and ... moved on.

Why am I still writing? I need to go be on the couch with a mug of hot water watching old movies until I pass out. I'll end by saying I think the stack in the NW corner is great, and THATAWAY made me smile (maybe I'll watch an old western today...) (33D: Direction in many a spaghetti western). I do not believe in the phrase "ALL OK?" (22A: "Do we have a problem here?"). Like, at all. Cannot hear it. "YOU OK?" I can def hear. "ALL GOOD?" I can kinda hear. "EVERYTHING OK?," sure. "ALL OK?," no. No. The one other answer that made me shake my head impatiently was ARGUED A CASE, which is as paradigmatic an EAT A SANDWICH answer as you're ever going to see ... but then I laughed out loud when that answer actually crossed SAMMICH (!), so maybe the puzzle is doing some kind of meta performance art there. Points for making it weird, puzzle.

Bullets:

• 24A: L.A. subdivision? (LOS) — self-referential. The clue is referring to "L.A." One "subdivision" is LOS, the other is ANGELES. 
• 13D: Reductive neologism for a strong female lead (GIRL BOSS) — oof. This concept. The clue seems to know that it's "reductive" so why is it in the grid at all? GIRL BOSS feminism reinforces gender stereotypes and perpetuates a toxic hustle culture, ugh. The very idea that it's remarkable for a "girl" to be a "boss" is also ... I dunno. A problem, I'd say. Many feminists have written articles critiquing the #GirlBoss phenomenon in the 15 or so years since it first blew up. But the critique isn't only coming from feminists: "In our pursuit of progress and equality, it's vital to understand that the core of our conversations should transcend gendered limitations. The goal isn’t to shift from one catchy hashtag to another, but to reframe our collective mindset, ensuring that aspirations and trends truly represent and resonate with all" (that's Forbes for god's sake). 
• 40D: PB&J, e.g., informally (SAMMICH) — me: "so PB&J ... is formal now?" Also me: "... SAMMIES?" (I hear sandwiches called "sammies" way more often than I hear them called "SAMMICHes").
• 23D: "Squid Game" and "The Red Sleeve" for two (K-DRAMAS) — these are just Korean dramas. Pretty straightforward.
• 29A: One whose work is barely seen? (EROTIC ARTIST)—not really sure what this is. Is it a stripper? A painter? Cartoonist? I got the EROTIC part easily enough, but the ARTIST was less intuitive.

• 14D: Figure in Greek mythology who was brought up by a bear (ATALANTA) — I know her name because it appears in a Donne poem ("Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed"), but otherwise, I honestly know very little about her. She was a "swift-footed huntress" who as a child had been left to die by her father but was "suckled by a she-bear," as was the style of the time. She offered to marry whoever could beat her in a foot race and so Hippomenes got some golden apples from Aphrodite and threw them on the ground, and ATALANTA stopped mid-race to pick them up, and so Hippomenes won the race. "Atalanta and her husband, overcome with passion, made love in a shrine of the goddess Cybele (or of Zeus), for which they were turned into lions" (Britannica). So she had a colorful life.

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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Literally, "rumbling ghost" / THU 3-26-26 / It's found in a Nook / Mushroom sold in clusters / British actor and broadcaster Stephen / One inside the Trojan horse

Constructor: Alex Murphy

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: FLIP THE BIRD (58A: Make a rude gesture ... or a hint to answering 17-, 23-, 33- and 50-Across) — shaded squares in theme answers contain names of birds; those squares must be "flipped" in order to make sense of the relevant clues:

Theme answers:

• POLEGRETIST  (i.e. poltergeist) (17A: Literally, "rumbling ghost")
• FALLCRANEHES (i.e. fallen arches) (23A: Flat feet)
• GOLDETERNRIEVER (i.e. golden retriever) (33A: Pet renowned for its agreeableness)
• MARHAWKLBERG (i.e. Mark Wahlberg) (50A: "The Departed" actor)

Word of the Day: RENEE Rapp (63A: Actress Rapp of "Mean Girls") —

Reneé Jane Rapp (born January 10, 2000) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She gained recognition for starring as Regina George in the Broadway musical Mean Girls (2019–2020). She reprised the role in the 2024 musical film adaptation and also contributed to its soundtrack. Rapp has also acted in the HBO Max comedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021–2024). She released her debut EP, Everything to Everyone, in 2022, which was followed by her full-length studio album, Snow Angel, in 2023. Rapp's second album, Bite Me, was released on August 1, 2025. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think I dislike this puzzle as much as I do in part because I love birds. "It's a bird puzzle!" If someone had told me that before I'd started, well ... a. I'd be like "spoiler alert!" but also b. I'd think "sounds amazing." Just yesterday I (finally) set up my Merlin (bird identification) account and started an official bird "life list." I use the app all the time to identify birds by their song, but I had resisted going "full birder" and starting a damn life list; and yet ... apparently something kicks in when you are deep into middle age and so yesterday, I fully succumbed. First "life list" bird—the bird that inspired me to finally start the damned list—a common raven (actually uncommon in my neck of the woods this early in spring) (note: I did not see it in a neck or any other part of the woods, but on top of the tallest building on campus, yelling its heart out—I think I saw its friend fly away moments earlier). Anyway, one thing COVID shut-down gave me was birds (the other is cocktails—would also expect to love a cocktail-themed puzzle, tbh). So, yes, birds, more please. Only ... where to start? The birds give me grid gibberish, for starters. I get that the whole point is that if I "flip" them then I won't have gibberish anymore, only in the actual grid as I'm actually solving I do actually have gibberish, which is unpleasant both to solve and to look at. A great puzzle could overcome this aesthetic deficit, but ... such greatness was not forthcoming.

Look, I have been known to swear. I swear. I do. I try to keep it down, esp. outside the home, but ... well, I'm pretty sure I said "f*ck" in class just yesterday (I was talking about John Donne, whaddyagonna do, the guy likes to f*ck, or at least the narrator of "The Flea" does). So I'm not prudish when it comes to bad words. And yet a "rude gesture," esp. this rude gesture, as my revealer!? That was an unpleasant surprise. Imagine you're waiting on the revealer to see how it's going to make sense of the theme, and you finally get there, and the puzzle flips you off? (which is what I would call it, btw; FLIP THE BIRD always sounded cornily euphemistic to me). There was something really off-putting about it. But somewhere between my figuring out the "bird" part of the puzzle and the puzzle flipping me off, that's where things really GET UGLY, because the fill on this ... was probably actually more off-putting than the middle finger awaiting me at the end. Which is to say I was really primed to hate that revealer, because the puzzle had already been giving me garbage. 

It's been a while since I endured anything as awful as the triple-"E" combination of ECIG, EINK, and EBATES. When I (finally) got EBATES, it's possible that I actually said "f*ck you*, so maybe the puzzle was within its rights to flip me off, I don't know. I just know that ECIG is a wince (37D: Vape pen), but a regular wince, a normal wince; EINK is an abomination (36D: It's found in a Nook), and EBATES is smushed and rotting somewhere underneath EINK (47D: Some online discounts). If any two of those had appeared in the grid together, I'd've been furious. EINK alone is nearly unbearable. EINK plus ECIG plus EBATES? A plate full of vomit. I do not understand caring that little about the basic surface-level appearance of your grid. Throw in a bunch of short gunk and the awful ASEASY, as well as a weird fascination with social outcasts (LEPER, PARIAH) and a bizarre cluster of proper nouns, including the unnecessary proper nounification of FRY, and I'm left just shaking my head. And as I was shaking my head, as I finally got to the end, the puzzle decided to flip me the bird. At that point, the "rude gesture" felt on-brand. Disappointing, but in keeping w/ the grid's personality. (You're probably thinking, "you know, there are actually four E-words in this puzzle—you forgot about ‘EMAIL ME,’” to which I say "why are you like this? Just let me move on!")

There were a few sticking points today, but not many. I was saved by ENOKI (crosswordese can be your friend!) in the north after I gummed things up with MANIA instead of ANTIC (7D: Zany behavior). That answer goes through the shaded squares in the first themer, and at that point I had no idea why the letters in there were rearranged the way they were, so things got stickier than they might have otherwise. Beyond that, all my trouble was in the FRY / RENEE / EBATES part of the puzzle (i.e. the south). No idea who RENEE Rapp is (perhaps because I never saw any of the newer incarnations of Mean Girls and also because RENEE Rapp hasn't been on the planet that long—she's my daughter's age). Also, instinctively wrote in Stephen REA at 58D: British actor and broadcaster Stephen (FRY). Live by the crosswordese, die by the crosswordese, I guess. I also weirdly struggled with YEARS. The clue doesn't exactly put you in regular-old earth time (66A: Solar revolutions). I was looking for something more ... space-y. More technical. Similar struggle with ARTERY. Normal enough word, just wasn't coming to me quickly from the clue (49D: Important route). Probably the worst moment of the puzzle, which ended up being a false alarm, was when I wrote in "MOI?" for 54A: Cry from Miss Piggy while simultaneously (soft-) shouting "Noooooooo!" because "MOI" had already been used earlier in a clue (26D: "Moi! Never!"). Turns out it's not "MOI?," it's "OUI," a "cry" I do not associate with Miss Piggy at all. 


Bullets:

• 43A: One inside the Trojan horse (SPARTAN) — I teach the Aeneid every semester. The entirety of Book II is about the Trojan horse and the fall of Troy. And yet I had No Idea what this answer was supposed to be until the crosses made it undeniable. If Virgil mentions Sparta by name even once, I don't remember it. No one would ever say there are SPARTANs in the horse. "Beware Spartans bearing gifts"? No. Menelaus is in there, I think, and he's a SPARTAN king, so the clue isn't technically wrong, but it is wildly misleading. I'm not sure about the full cast of Greeks in the horse. I don't know that they are ever all named. But I know that they are not defined by their SPARTAN-ness, but by their general Greek-ness (the Trojan War involved the whole of Greece, not just Sparta). Hell, Odysseus is in that damned horse, and he's famously from Ithaka, not Sparta. You could've just said [Menelaus, for one]. That would've been accurate, and it would've made sense in context. 
• 56D: Billy who had a #1 hit with "Mony Mony" (IDOL) — I know this guy and this song well, but for some reason initially called him Billy IDLE. Surely there's the germ of a puzzle theme idea here. ["White Wedding" singer between gigs?]?

• 8D: Dish that's often fermented before eating (POI) — three letters so I just took a guess and got it right. Crosswordese, back to the rescue!!! And it crosses ENOKI! (15A: Mushroom sold in clusters). A real crosswordese feast up there. 
• 42A: Bottle Caps flavor (COLA) — the one big smiley face moment, for me. I have loved Bottle Caps since I was little. They used to come in these little green paper pouches with this freaky looking bottle cap creature on the cover, and I would rip the pouch open and pour out the Bottle Caps and then organize them by flavor and eat them in reverse hierarchy; that is, I'd eat the fruity ones first, as they were just OK (cherry, then orange, then grape) and then I'd get to the good stuff, the top-tier caps: COLA and root beer. If I were a dragon I would sleep atop not a pile of treasure, but a pile of COLA and root beer Bottle Caps. And good luck to any Hobbit who tried to get close.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. thanks to everyone who wished my wife safe travels back from NZ. Despite mayhem in NYC (TSA shortages, I.C.E. presence, airport-closing crash at LGA), she made it through JFK and back here to central NY without a hitch.  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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