Amazon affiliate on TV / SAT 3-21-26 / Not accepting, perhaps / Accepted defeat, in modern parlance / Things that are tough on the outside and doughy on the inside? / Creatures that attack Isengard, in fantasy / Sculptor Jeff known for his steel balloon animals / Cavalry member in Russia, historically / Parts of a story structure? / Titular Dr. Seuss character

Constructor: Boaz Moser

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Nowell Codex / Cotton MS Vitellius A XV (2D: Classic poem whose sole surviving manuscript is kept in the British Library = BEOWULF) —

The Nowell Codex is the second of two manuscripts comprising the bound volume Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, one of the four major Old English poetic manuscripts. It is most famous as the manuscript containing the unique copy of the epic poem Beowulf. In addition to this, it contains first a fragment of The Life of Saint Christopher, then the more complete texts Wonders of the East and Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, and, after Beowulf, a poetic translation of Judith. Due to the fame of Beowulf, the Nowell Codex is also sometimes known simply as the Beowulf manuscript. The manuscript is located within the British Library with the rest of the Cotton collection. // The current codex is a composite of at least two manuscripts. The main division is into two totally distinct books which were apparently not bound together until the 17th century. The first of these, originally owned by Southwick Priory in Hampshire, dates from the 12th century and contains four works of prose. // It is the second, older manuscript that is more famous. This second manuscript is known as the Nowell Codex, after the antiquarian Laurence Nowell, whose name is inscribed on its first page; he was apparently its owner in the mid-16th century. At some point it was combined with the first codex. It was then acquired by Sir Robert Cotton. In his library, it was placed on the first shelf (A) as the 15th manuscript (XV) of the bookcase that had a bust of the Emperor Vitellius, giving the collection its name. The Nowell Codex is generally dated around the turn of the first millennium. Recent editions have specified a probable date in the decade after 1000.

• • •

Another easy one today. No particularly exciting elements, but it's sturdy, ungunky, fine. Strangely, I think the NE corner is my favorite part—I say "strangely" because corners in a puzzle like this can seem like an afterthought, since all the showy stuff is happening in the middle. The answers themselves aren't particularly showy through that middle section, but the large amount of white space is. This is a grid that's built to showcase the stacks of long answers running through the center. The corners take whatever shape they take and you fill them best you can, but those corners aren't (typically) the stars. Today, though, the central answers seemed admirably smooth, but not very grabby. I also don't know what FREE RUNNING is. I guess if you're doing it, it's probably exciting, but as a two-word phrase, seems kind of meh. PARKOUR—a great-looking answer. FREE RUNNING? Meh. The middle is also security-obsessed in a way that I find unappealing (ARMORED CARS, SECURITY LEAK). And INTERNET TROLL, while a perfectly valid phrase, feels redundant (unless you are specifically trying to differentiate it from the kind that lives under a bridge, you'd just say "troll"). Again, everything through that middle seems acceptable, and I do love SWEET AND SOUR ... anything, really ... but there's just something more exciting about the NE corner. The dramatic declaration of "I WANT OUT!" The cliffhanger of "NEXT TIME..." And the detectives (SLEUTHS) lurking in the margins, surveilling their targets from the booth of a diner, drinking coffee and eating STEAKS (they're called "steak-outs" for a reason!). True, that corner does have a certain TOILET REEK, but that's part of the charm. Seriously, though, "I WANT OUT!" over "NEXT TIME..." is particularly nice. 

As for difficulty ... no. There wasn't any. I thought there might be when I couldn't get the Acrosses in the NW corner at first, but then I started in on the short Downs (ASK / MEET / STRAY) and then TASTE was obvious, and then bam, there's my old friend YEETS, and now we got something:

From here I can work those NW Acrosses from the back end. I was already thinking of "story" as a building part, so I-BEAMS didn't take too long (if you've seen a lot of crosswords, you've seen a lot of I-BEAMS). Wanted "Ready" to precede "SET," but "GET SET" was my next guess. I had a brief moment of wondering why "ETC ETC ETC" wouldn't fit at 3D: "And so forth" ... but then realized that the answer was actually the fully written out ET CETERA. From there, the solve took a fairly predictable path, as I followed the path of least resistance and flowed from the NW corner right through the center of the grid to the SE corner and then looped back up again, leaving only the much more cut-off NE and SW corners.

From there, it looked like the SW corner was going to be the harder one (tougher to get into a corner via the back ends of answers than the front ends), so I went there, expecting trouble, but instead I got TOOK THE "L" immediately (55A: Accepted defeat, in modern parlance). Like YEETS, it is slangy, and like YEETS, yes, you have seen it before. Well, not in the past tense—this is actually a debut—but there have been four TAKE THE "L"s since 2020—and I think I've posted this song every time:

Once TOOK THE "L" was in, the corner wasn't much trouble. IN DENIAL was slightly hard to parse (59A: Not accepting, perhaps), and I would've died on HIRONO without the crosses (40D: Hawaii senator Mazie), but the crosses were clear, so ... done. Finished up in the NE corner, which as I've said is my favorite part of the puzzle, so that was nice. Nice to end on a high note. All in all, clean, smooth, decent. Not much to excite or enrage, but ... it'll do.

[53D: Amazon affiliate on TV]
[She is affiliated with the Amazons]

Bullets:

• 27A: It's not nice to walk in this (SLEET) — I think I was thrown by the lack of wordplay in this clue. "Nice"? I was like "why that word? Is there some idiom being played on here?" But no. It's just ... unpleasant to walk in sleet. I would've said difficult, if not (at times) impossible. I remember trying to get home from school once in Ann Arbor and the streets and sidewalks were pure ice and my route was *slightly* uphill and ... things got comical. It was OK, when I could just walk on people's lawns, but crossing streets ... even if I managed to stay upright, I sort of just ... slid ... back from where I came. It's possible I ended up (deliberately) on my hands and knees at some point. You gotta do what you gotta do.
• 31A: Brady bunch? : Abbr. (TDS) — ugh, a Tom Brady football clue. This was my least favorite thing about the NE. As "?" clues go, I liked the ARMORED CARS clue a lot better (35A: Things that are tough on the outside and doughy on the inside?) ('cause ARMORED CARS contain money, i.e. "dough").
• 43A: Sculptor Jeff known for his steel balloon animals (KOONS) — big weird puffy pink things, that's what I think when I think of KOONS. Whimsical. Vivid. Fun.

• 60A: Join arms? (ENLIST) — another "?" clue I didn't love. It just doesn't quite work, wordplay-wise. You join the army ... where you might carry arms ... I dunno. The phrasing just misses the mark. Also, still not really happy to see war-related answers right now (during "Operation: Furious Incompetence"), esp. when the puzzle tries to make it light-hearted.
• 25D: Valuable commodity in "Dune" (SPICE) — there's another Dune movie coming out later this year. Also, a Dune font generator has apparently been released for general use and as a result my social media feed has been overrun with textual ridiculousness. For example:

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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