Social media community for avid readers / SAT 3-14-26 / Animal identity in role play / Latvian, old-style / Title role for Paul Newman, 1963 / Behave like an ass / Like Thunderdell, the monster slain by Jack the Giant Killer / Flour used to make paratha / Some deflections for argument's sake / Writer of the 1969 hit "The Boxer"

Constructor: Kameron Austin Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Thunderdell (17A: Like Thunderdell, the monster slain by Jack the Giant Killer) —

Thunderdell (Welsh: Taranau), also recorded as Thunderdel, Thunderel, Thundrel, Thunderdale, or Thunderbore, was a two-headed giant of Cornwall slain by Jack the Giant-Killer in the stories of Tabart and others. [...] In Jack the Giant Killer, Thunderdell first appeared where he crashed a banquet that was prepared for Jack. During this time, he chanted "fee fau fum." Jack defeats and beheads the two-headed giant with a trick involving the house's moat and drawbridge. // According to one version of the story from 1800, Thunderdell (here identified as "Thunderful") hails from the North Pole. He attacks Jack's banquet in order to avenge the deaths of two giants he had earlier slain, but is himself defeated and his heads sent to the court of King Arthur.

• • •

[Title role for Paul Newman, 1963]

I thought this was sensational, but I do have a few questions. First of all BLOTTY? BLOTTY? I would definitely accept BLOTCHY, but I believe this is the first I'm ever seeing the word BLOTTY (19A: Mottled). I was so mad when BLOTCHY wouldn't fit, and then I thought "... well, it can't be BLOTTO? Wait, can it? No. No, it really can't." So I went with BLOTTY, but boy was I unhappy with that. It will surprise no one that BLOTTY is making its NYTXW debut (!) today. Actually, no, I take it back—that does surprise me, in that I figured that something as ugly as BLOTTY could only have come from a database gunked up with olden fill. So, there's BLOTTY, however much I really wish there weren't. Moving on to a different, somewhat less irritating "huh?"—BREAST PIN (27A: Jewelry that may double as a fastener). I simply don't know what this is. I know what a LAPEL PIN is. I know what a brooch is (namely, something pinned to your shirt breast). Whoa, I just looked up "brooch" and one of the definitions was BREAST PIN. Well, alright. I guess that settles that. Sort of. BREAST PIN sounds like a piercing. Why not just say "brooch?" After the BLOTTY BREAST PIN, there's the final "B" mystery: BELTLINES (one word? two? huh, Merriam-Webster Dot Com says it can be either!). I know what WAISTLINES are, but BELTLINES ... well, I could infer that they're basically just waistlines (which they are), but since "hips" are not "waists," I'm slightly confused by the clue (33A: Hip places?). Also, BELT LOOPS are a thing, and man that answer felt so right. Those are definitely "places" (for your belt) and if you wear your belt around your hips, then there you go: Hip places! BELT LOOPS! After I got the LIN- part, my brain wanted LINKS (?) before it finally acceded to LINES. So lots of "B" confusion and aversion today. 

But otherwise, The 3 "B"s aside, I was pretty impressed by this puzzle, which managed to be both smooth and sparkly. With the possible exception of two of those aforementioned "B"s (BELTLINES, BREAST PIN), the long answers that converge in the middle of this grid are strong and vibrant. GOD-FEARING and WHATABOUTISM really shine, and the clues on both POLLIWOGS (37A: They croak as soon as they grow up) and SESAME STREET (21D: Noted series with over 200 Emmys ... and an Oscar) are spectacular. In case you're somehow wondering how SESAME STREET ever got an Oscar, here, I'll show you:

Loved seeing the great PAUL SIMON sitting dead center, and though I cannot call MOONRAKER great, I still loved seeing it here today. That's the thing about seeing a movie on the big screen at a repertory theater with a sizable audience—as I did with MOONRAKER a few years ago—even not-that-great movies can be very enjoyable. I also have a very cool paperback edition of MOONRAKER, so ... I am the target audience for this answer, is what I'm saying. Did you know (I'm pretty sure you didn't): MOONRAKER actually debuted in 1944 (!!!), clued as [Sail above the skysail.]??? It then debuted as the Bond film in 1999, and now here it is again, 27 years later. "Mooooonraker / Wiiiiider than a mile ..."

Speaking of movies, as is typical for a KAC puzzle, this one had a bunch of good cinema content (Kameron is a movie critic for Rolling Stone and a member of the New York Film Critics Circle). You've got HUD and HEDY Lamarr and MOONRAKER. And while three answers doesn't seem like a lot, I'd bet dollars to donuts that LOCAL HERO originally had a movie clue. It should have, anyway, as LOCAL HERO is one of the very best movies of the '80s (of all time, frankly). I love the movie so much that I am choosing to read LOCAL HERO as cinema content today, clue be damned.

Bullets:

• 1A: Behave like an ass (BRAY) — hee haw, a gimme, right off the bat! Definitely helped me get started.
• 4D: Vulgarians (YAHOOS) — if BRAY helped me get started, then this one helped me get stopped: I decided to go with YOKELS for a bit.
• 48A: Where travelers might take the plunge on vacation (HOTEL POOL) — something about "take the plunge" had me thinking not of a pool, but of something spa-related. I had the HOT- and figured it was an adjective (not the first three letters in "HOTEL").
• 15D: Latvian, old-style (LETT) — got this easily. Not sure I knew it was "old-style." 
• 33D: Social media community for avid readers (BOOKTOK) — great answer, although as a phenomenon ... I dunno. I mean, I really don't know, as I have no intention of ever using TikTok. I hate the whole Amazon review phenomenon, I think goodreads is wholly unappealing, so yeah, BookTok is several bridges too far for me. Here's a story about some brilliant BookTok influencer who says: "I HATE third person POV books." So that's ... something. I'm not sure it's pro-reading, but it's something.
• 35D: Animal identity in role play (FURSONA) — OK I don't need to know any details about what the "role play" entails, exactly, but I like this portmanteau a lot.

[FURSONA, d. Bergman, 1966]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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