Political commentator Piker / FRI 3-20-26 / Kachina-carving people / Dramatic outerwear for the theater / Participant in the Jacobite rebellion of the 1740s / Athlete nickname "O Rei" / Some scenery in "The Road Runner Show" / Viral 2010s dance that Hillary Clinton performed on TV / It has more than 4,000 islands off its coast

Constructor: Rafael Musa and Rebecca Goldstein

Relative difficulty: Very easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: HASAN Piker (5A: Political commentator Piker) —

Hasan Doğan Piker (born July 25, 1991), known online by the name HasanAbi, is an American Twitch streamer, influencer, and left-wing political commentator. His content primarily consists of political and social commentary and media consumption. As of 2026, Piker's Twitch channel ranks among the platform's most-subscribed. Piker has been described as one of the biggest voices on the U.S. left. Piker started streaming on Twitch in March 2018, while working at The Young Turks (TYT). [...] 

His uncle, Cenk Uygur, is a political commentator and co-founder of The Young Turks, a left-leaning news network.

In January 2020, he left TYT to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer. Piker has regularly spoken about the Gaza war by advocating for Palestinians and criticizing the Israeli government. [...] 

Piker has been most commonly identified as a leftist, socialist, and Marxist. He has advocated in favor of workplace democracy, universal health care, LGBTQ+ rights, anti-Zionism, and gun control. Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker described Piker as anti-Trump but "hardly a loyal Democrat". Instead, Marantz classified Piker as an "old-school leftist," critical of the "American empire". In an interview with GQ magazine, Piker stated that his goal was to push the Democratic Party to be more progressive. Intelligencer called Piker "the AOC of Twitch".

 (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle has some lovely long answers, particularly the crossing grid-spanners (SURPRISE PARTIES, "JUST SO WE'RE CLEAR...") and the plea "GO EASY ON ME." But that plea felt deeply ironic, as this puzzle went easy on me from the first clue and never stopped going easy on me, and so with no real challenge and no other really sparkly answers, I ended up feeling a little disappointed. The grid is perfectly solid and smooth, it just came in a tad dull from me. Several of the longer answers, while completely unobjectionable, felt disappointingly listless. E-SCOOTERS feels like 9-letter crosswordese to me by now. I see AMINO in the grid So Much that AMINO ACIDS was not a particularly welcome sight. Hard to think of a longer answer plainer and ho-hummier than HOME SALES. All the other longer answers hold up, but the great stuff is basically offset by the duller stuff, and so I was left feeling just so-so about the whole thing. It's possible that I'm being unfair, that I expect so much from these constructors (two of my favorites) that anything short of stellar ends up seeming mildly disappointing. At any rate, I definitely enjoyed parts of this, and I think it's well made. I just wanted more sizzle. And a lot more challenge.

There is easy and there is Easy, and then apparently there is also Easy, a new, italicized level of "easy" I had to invent just for this puzzle. Do you know how fast I got to here?:

Ten seconds, tops. As fast as I could type: ASAP went in (1A: Rush order), and then I went backward from "P" to "A" doing all the crosses, 1-2-3-4, no hesitation. That is a Monday-level corner, no exaggeration. Coming across those longer answers was a *little* bit harder, but only because I couldn't think of a word to follow GAME besides PRESERVE (or RESERVE). It's "wildlife refuge," "game (p)reserve," at least in my brain, so I had to work crosses there, but that didn't take long. 

The one part of the puzzle I did have some trouble with was immediately adjacent to the GAME REFUGE—despite his being "one of the biggest voices on the U.S. Left" (wikipedia), I—an extremely tiny voice on the U.S. left—have never heard of HASAN Piker (5A: Political commentator Piker). This may have something to do with the fact that I try as hard as possible to listen to zero political commentators—go out of my way not to hear any of them—and also something to do with the fact that except for the few times I've live-streamed cryptic-crossword solves with my friends Rachel and Neville, I have spent almost zero time on Twitch (which is apparently where HASAN Piker reigns). This is because I am old, and I have no interest in gaming (which is mostly what gets streamed on Twitch). I cannot imagine watching political commentary on Twitch or YouTube. But then, as I've said, I can't really imagine watching it At All at this point. The rise of the "political commentator" has been concomitant with the death of journalism and the rise of fascism and I don't think these phenomena are unrelated. So I will read political commentary, sometimes, but all the camera-facing, look-at-me, for-the-Likes performance ... it's not for me. I would prefer not. The pivot-to-video moment in our culture has not had any discernible positive impact that I'm aware of. What we get is fragmentation and polarization. And profit, presumably, for some few people. It would be great if all the video "engagement" resulted in a better world. I mean this world, actual world [reaches out and touches desk and lamp and other objects in three-dimensional space]. So far ... Well, you tell me how it's going. Sorry, where was I? Oh, right, didn't know HASAN, and the "N" cross was wild. Wildly vague, anyway: 9D: Basic ___. I had the "EE" and thought FEES and even TEES before the "D" from DINERO made "NEED" clear. After the HASAN/NEED moment—whoosh, puzzle went up in flames so fast that I barely remember the experience.

[SCOT]

Bullets:

• 44A: Danish money (KRONE) — managed to avoid all the "which spelling is it?!" drama by getting that terminal "E" first (from 41D: "Get it?").
• 47A: Word repeated in "With a ___ ___ here and a ___ ___ there ..." (MOO) — this is maybe the greatest clue in the history of crosswords. Certainly the greatest fill-in-the-blank clue. Maximalist bovine lunacy. Love it.
• 12D: Dramatic outerwear for the theater (OPERA COAT) — cannot believe I got tangled up in competing operawear terms, but isn't OPERA CAPE a thing? I feel sure that it is. When I think olde-tymey operagoing, I think top hats, lorgnettes, and capes! Coats? You can wear a coat any old time. But a cape!? Well, unless you are COSPLAYing a superhero (36D: Be a hero, say), there are very few options. Looks like OPERA COAT outgoogles OPERA CAPE by about 5-to-1, so I reluctantly withdraw my objection, which was never really an objection in the first place, just an enthusiasm for capes. 
• 42D: Viral 2010s dance that Hillary Clinton performed on TV (NAE NAE) — first of all, dated crosswordese, boo. Second of all, I would've been perfectly content if this clue had stopped at "dance." More than content. Happy. In retrospect, thrilled. You wanna know what piece of video I won't be looking up today? ... Sigh, now I feel like I have to look it up, as a public disservice. Let's see ... hang on ... alright, I got it, and ... oh, OK, I saw three seconds of it, and I wish I'd stuck to my initial instincts. (I wonder why the clue didn't say she performed it on Ellen — "on TV" is weak—unless she performed it on multiple shows, in which case, no wonder she lost (I kid! I voted for her, relax...))

• 47D: It has more than 4,000 islands off its coast (MAINE) — damn that is a lot of islands. Who counted? Give that person a raise. Unless a computer counted. Please do not give the computer a raise.

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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