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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