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 but 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 incredibly off-putting. 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.  

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