Basic drumming pattern / SUN 4-12-26 / Hip-hop artists with unintelligible lyrics / Trading card error / Squishy part of a cat's paw, cutesily / Under, poetically / A.I.-powered video hoaxes / Treaty of ___, official close to the War of 1812 / Council of ___ (Counter-Reformation body) / Socialite Sedgwick, the supposed inspiration for Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"

Constructor: Lance Enfinger and John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Initial Thoughts" — clues contain words (IN ALL CAPS) that are actually the initials of the answer:

Theme answers:

• HELEN OF TROY (22A: HOT woman worth fighting for?)
• GIVE OR TAKE (28A: GOT in the ballpark?)
• BLONDE ON BLONDE (43A: BOB Dylan album?)
• MAIL-ORDER BRIDES (64A: MOB wives?)
• SNAKES ON A PLANE (89A: SOAP film?)
• "KEEP IT DOWN!" (104A: KID napper's demand?)
• TEXAS HOLD 'EM (113A: THE big game?)

Word of the Day: PARADIDDLE (73D: Basic drumming pattern) —

: a quick succession of drumbeats slower than a roll and alternating left- and right-hand strokes in a typical L-R-L-L, R-L-R-R pattern (wikipedia)

• • •

There's a cute idea here, but as is, the theme doesn't really work. Some of the clues seem to work pretty well—BLONDE ON BLONDE is a Bob Dylan album, as well as a B.O.B. album; HELEN OF TROY is a "hot woman," as well as a woman with the initials H.O.T.—but others are just loose plays on words, where the clue has no relationship to the answer beyond the initials. SNAKES ON A PLANE, for instance. Definitely has the initials S.O.A.P., but there's no connection between the literal meaning of "soap film" and the movie title. So we get some clues that are both literal and initialism-based, and some that ... aren't. Then there's the fact that MAIL-ORDER BRIDES has a huge ick factor, and the clues on GIVE OR TAKE and "KEEP IT DOWN!" are really awkward on the surface level. [GOT in the ballpark?]?? I get that "GIVE OR TAKE" is a phrase expressing a rough equality, like when your guess is not exact but "in the ballpark," but the phrase "got in the ballpark" isn't really evocative of anything. The "KEEP IT DOWN!" clue is worse because, first of all, "kid napper," as two words??? And second of all, if that is your premise, that the napper is a kid, well, that makes no sense, as a "kid" would never say "KEEP IT DOWN!" That's definitely an adult phrase. When the clues work, they work, but too many of these are forced or clunky. Also, again, can't stress enough how off-putting MAIL-ORDER BRIDES is (way too "human trafficking"-adjacent). Along with DEEP FAKES (58A: A.I.-powered video hoaxes), it gives this puzzle a very unpleasant vibe. Including the recently decimated USAID in the grid did nothing to improve the vibe (82A: Org. founded to fund foreign projects). 

I did like a few non-theme things about this puzzle. "I'LL ALLOW IT" is a great answer in its own right, and the clue on it today is pretty spectacular (2D: Line of latitude?). Perfect surface meaning, perfect figurative meaning. I like that the puzzle comes out throwing NINJA STARs, and I like that the clue included their Japanese name (which I didn't know) (24A: Throwing weapon known in Japanese as a shuriken). I want to like MUMBLE RAPPERS (54D: Hip-hop artists with unintelligible lyrics), and I guess I do. I've certainly heard it, but I don't know much about it. "Mumble rap" is a term that's frequently derogatory and possibly bygone, or at least fading. It grew out of the SoundCloud rap of the mid-'10s.

Mumble rap is used mostly as a derogatory term, in reference to a perceived incoherence of the artist's lyrics. Oscar Harold of the Cardinal Times stated that "mumble rap" is misleading, arguing that the rappers such as Future rely more upon pop melodies and vocal effects, such as auto tune, than mumbling. Justin Charity, a staff writer at The Ringer, argues that the term is unnecessarily reductive and does not in fact refer to one specific type of rapping. He wrote that many of the artists often scapegoated in conversations about the subgenre do not actually mumble, which "is the red flag that the term isn't a useful subcategorization." (wikipedia)

The only "mumble" art form I know comes from film, specifically the genre "mumblecore" (NYTXW appearances: zero), which wikipedia helpfully tells me is "not to be confused with mumble rap." Mumblecore features naturalistic acting, low budgets, and an emphasis on dialogue over plot. As with mumble rap, many people grouped under the category "mumblecore" reject the concept entirely. It's almost as if "mumble" has negative connotations! Anyway, MUMBLE RAPPERS. That happened.

[This may be the only time I've laughed at a YouTube comments section: "Twenty Month Ten!" "Toning my tanner!" "When you accidentally invent one of the biggest sub-genres of Rap by being high"]

EMOTERS aren't really a thing despite crossword puzzles doing heavy PR for them (91D: Hams). I'm not even sure a single EMOTER is a thing, but I know that if an EMOTER is a thing, it definitely doesn't travel in packs. I had the same old same old same old BRIAR/BRIER problem today (46D: Prickly patch). BRIER is a "less common spelling of BRIAR" (thanks, merriam dash webster dot com! That will help me ... not at all!). Luckily I knew how to spell MADEIRA (61A: Portuguese wine). Will this be true of everybody? I do not know. MADAIRA ... looks wrong, but it seems quite possible that someone might drop an "A" in there and never see the error. Oh well. I had CHAZ before CHAS (18D: Nickname that's an alternative to Chuck), but I ZELENA Gomez looks even worse than MADAIRA, so that error wasn't hard to fix. I had TUG AT before TOUCH (79A: Affect emotionally), which is a weird, inventive mistake on my part. My answer kind of requires you to imagine "heartstrings," but that's fine, it still works. Sometimes you make mistakes and you think, "nope, I did nothing wrong. Good answer, me." Mostly you're lying to yourself, but sometimes you're right. 


Bullets:

• 61D: Trading card error (MISCUT) — big collector of baseball cards as a kid, and I've got some other trading cards I picked up on my way through adulthood. Never considered MISCUT. That was my last word in the grid. After MISPRINT wouldn't fit ... flummoxed, even with the MIS- in there. Needed every cross.
• 57D: Council of ___ (Counter-Reformation body) (TRENT) — whoa ... I just dropped in the Treaty of GHENT (28D: Treaty of ___, official close to the War of 1812), and now you want the Council of TRENT?! I know they don't have anything to do with each other, technically, but those words are roommates in my brain. I'm sure the rhyming has something to do with it. Also, there's something World History Quiz about both of them. They even scan the same: Treaty of GHENT / Council of TRENT / Fasting for LENT / Elbow is BENT / Paying the RENT / Not what I MEANT / da da da DA / one two three FOUR ... etc. etc. etc.
• 19A: "The game's ___": Henry V ("AFOOT") — really thought this was Sherlock Holmes. And it is Sherlock Holmes. Famously. But apparently he "cribbed it" from Shakespeare.

• 31A: Under, poetically ('NEATH) — I teach medieval and early modern poetry and I can tell you I've seen 'NEATH in crosswords more than I've ever seen it used "poetically." Only EMOTERS use 'NEATH. And maybe Keats, but ... he was Keats, he's allowed.

Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire
Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;
Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod
With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god.
Now while the earth was drinking it, and while
Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,
And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright
'NEATH smothering parsley, and a hazy light

Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang... 

[from Endymion: A Poetic Romance]

• 50A: "It's ___. Do you know where your children are?" (old P.S.A.) (TEN P.M.) — Ominous. I remember this. Vaguely. But I (mis)remember it as "ten o'clock." Presumably people watching TV at night know it's P.M., not A.M., but whatever. If it's P.M., it's P.M. "Do you know where your children are?" is a question used as a public service announcement (PSA) for parents on American television from the late 1960s through the late 1990s. Accompanied by a time announcement, this phrase is typically used as a direct introduction for the originating station's late-evening newscast, typically at either 10:00 p.m. or 11:00 p.m." (wikipedia)

• 3D: Squishy part of a cat's paw, cutesily (TOE BEAN) — I am pro TOE BEAN. Put TOE BEANs in every grid, I won't mind. Never gonna be unhappy to see a TOE BEAN.

[Alfie as a kitten (he'll be six next month)]

That's all for today. See you next time. And best of luck to all the competitors at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT). Just one more to go! (unless you're in the A B or C finals, in which case, there's two more).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Calls home, as a bird might / SAT 4-11-26 / Adam's first wife, in Jewish myth / Hungarian sheepdogs / Old Syrian political party whose name means "resurrection" / Writer of "Esmé" and "The Open Window" / Arboreal symbol in Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" / Term for an ambiguously worded news headline / Alexandre Dumas's Count de la Fère / Line running roughly parallel to Interstate 95 / Figures in a speed trap? / "True West" playwright Sam

Constructor: Kareem Ayas

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SAKI (44A: Writer of "Esmé" and "The Open Window") —

Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), popularly known by his pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirise Edwardian society and culture. He is considered to be a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, Munro himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.

Besides his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), Munro wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire (the only book published under his own name); a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland); and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion and occupation of Britain. (wikipedia)

• • •

[40D: Hungarian sheepdogs (PULIS)]

The only critical things I have to say about this puzzle are a. it's too easy for a Saturday and b. NESTS IN!!? As for a., it's hard to be mad when you get a great Friday puzzle on a Saturday. Like, just close your eyes and pretend it's Friday and then when you open them, bam, what a great puzzle! This had all the whoosh and long-answer magic that I hope for on a Friday. Most Saturdays don't flooooow like this one, but the grid shape here really helped. None of this heavily segmented drudgery—we get a wide-open grid with long answers spilling into long answers spilling into long answers, and nearly every one of those long answers a winner. Seriously, the density of Good-to-Great Marquee Answers is truly impressive. This puzzle definitely has a right to be wearing its "SO FUN!" t-shirt. As for b. (NESTS IN) ... LOL, the non-greatness of that answer is totally offset by the hilarious way in which I misunderstood it. Obviously birds "nest in" trees of various sorts, so the phrase exists, it's just not the most wonderful standalone phrase. The problem today—for me, and perhaps me exclusively—is that I completely misread the "Calls" in [Calls home, as a bird might]. I was thinking of "bird calls" and I was thinking of human beings "calling home" (to say they're going to be a little late, or whatever), so I thought the bird was calling to its home, like ... tweeting in some way where the nestlings (maybe!?!?!) could hear it. So NESTS IN would mean something like "checks in." Like if the local birds are out drinking somewhere and the robin goes "hang on, fellas, I gotta NEST IN or they're gonna wonder what happened to me." So he goes to the bird phone booth or (more likely?) just calls out with some special call that his family back at the nest can understand. It was only after I'd finished the puzzle that I realized that "calls home" means "makes a home in." Very weird human idiom to apply to birds, since birds (probably!!?!?) don't have a "word" for "home." Really got tangled in my ornithological laces there—the long glitch in an otherwise butter-smooth solve.

Pretty easy to get into this one via the short crosses up top. THY (1D: Your of yore) and HATS (2D: They're tipped out of respect) were gimmes. After I put in STD (20A: Part of E.S.T.: Abbr.), both THEFT (4D: It's a steal!) and SALUD (5D: Spanish blessing) seemed plausible, but I left them for a bit and picked up AVON and YEN ... then looked back at the long Acrosses to see what I could see, and, well, I could see "a lot":

All the long Acrosses opened up from there, and what a stack that is. Incredibly vivid and solid group of colloquial phrases, none of them too old-fashioned or too contemporary, every one of them just Goldilocks right. And with no grating crud in the crosses!? Truly this is NO MEAN FEAT (again, I feel like the puzzle knows how good it is and is kinda showing off, but whatever, go off, puzzle, you earned it). And the long Acrosses just keep coming, including a central stunner and a stack down below that's maybe not as loveable as the one up top, but is every bit as original. And once again, the short crosses simply do not buckle. The only thing in this grid that gave even a whiff of crossword arcana was BA'ATH (Old Syrian political party whose name means "resurrection"), and that answer didn't even debut in the NYTXW until 2017. I'd rather never see anything associated with Bashar al-Assad in the puzzle (not a big fan of murderous dictator content!) but again, the rest of the puzzle is so lovely that I'm willing to just write that one off as the cost of doing (glorious) business. 

[28A: Arboreal symbol in Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit"]

Bullets:

• 13A: Rued remark? ("WHAT HAVE I DONE?") — because of "remark," I briefly wrote in "WHAT HAVE I SAID!?," figuring that it was the "remark" that was being rued, instead of (in this case) a remark made by one who has rued their behavior.
• 39A: Figures in a speed trap? (NARCS) — me: "state troopers aren't NARCS!" Later me: "Oh ... speed ... I get it now."
• 38D: Adam's first wife, in Jewish myth (LILITH) — a gimme. Why, I don't know. Just one of those factoids that stuck.
• 3D: Alexandre Dumas's Count de la Fère (ATHOS) — ATHOS, Porthos, Aramis—the Three Musketeers.
• 55A: Term for an ambiguously worded news headline (CRASH BLOSSOM) — not my favorite term, and (thus?) one I have not retained in my brain very well. Needed many crosses to remember it (those crosses came quickly)

• 6D: Big publisher of romance novels (AVON) — helps to be a book collector. My collecting period is earlier than most AVON romances, but I have scores of old AVON paperbacks, and I've spent so much time in used bookstores, and talking with other collectors of various sorts, that AVON was the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw that the answer was four letters.

• 21D: Line running roughly parallel to Interstate 95 (ACELA) — crosswordese to the rescue! The ACELA is a train "line" that runs in the Northeast Corridor between D.C. and Boston.

That's all. See you next time. And best of luck to all my friends and fellow solvers competing at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, CT today (and tomorrow). I missed the registration announcement back in January and before I knew it, the tourney sold out, so my wife and I won't get the chance to defend our Pairs title this year. So, whoever wins Pairs this year, enjoy it. We're coming for you next year in Philadelphia (the future home of the ever-expanding ACPT)!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Phrase said indignantly before a citation / FRI 4-10-26 / C-store offering / Helical tools / Chinese gambling game invented during the Northern and Southern dynasties / Like the glass in many a Dale Chihuly sculpture / Anora's husband in "Anora"

Constructor: Erica Hsiung Wojcik

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium 

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: FANTAN (39D: Chinese gambling game invented during the Northern and Southern dynasties) —

 

Fan-Tan, or fantan (simplified Chinese: 番摊; traditional Chinese: 番攤; pinyin: fāntān; Jyutping: faan1 taan1; lit. 'repeated divisions') is a gambling game long played in China. It is a game of pure chance.

The game is played by placing two handfuls of small objects on a board and guessing the remaining count when divided by four. After players have cast bets on values of 1 through 4, the dealer or croupier repeatedly removes four objects from the board until only one, two, three or four beans remain, determining the winner.

• • •

Friday! It's back! The sparkle and the whoosh, especially the whoosh. The puzzle shape here, with its interlocking 15s, sent me shooting across the grid time and again until I'd done a kind of reckless, careening circuit. Shot out in two directions coming out of the NW, but chose to follow DRINKING IT ALL IN down the west side, took a hard turn and rocketed over to the east coast with SILENT TREATMENT, before getting BRINGS UP THE REAR (from just the rear letters), and zooming back up to join up with the tail end of "AM I LOSING MY MIND?," filling in the shorter fill as I went. Each of those 15s erupted like an explosion ... light the fuse with a few crosses and then bam, the whole thing just bursts into view. Gave me the kinetic experience I really crave on a Friday. Unlike some recent puzzles, which have started with real duds at 1-Across, this one was a delight (1A: Phrase said indignantly before a citation). No idea at first what kind of "citation" I was dealing with. I imagined someone angrily talking back to a cop who was issuing a speeding ticket: "I WASN'T SPEEDING!" or "WHAT'D I DO WRONG?," something like that. So it was a surprise to find, after I worked the crosses for a bit, that I wasn't even in the ballpark, "citation"-wise. I don't know if "AND I QUOTE..." is always "indignant," but you do say it before you "cite" (as in "quote") someone else's words, usually ones whose literalness you want to emphasize in a "can you believe it?!" kind of way. "AND I QUOTE... 'TURDUCKEN!' AM I LOSING MY MIND!?" That's a whole monologue right there.

The puzzle still probably skewed a little too easy for my tastes, but the cluing got so niche and odd in a few places that I actually had to stop and work things out, so the general easiness didn't feel like insulting easiness. I don't remember a damn thing about Bridget Jones's Diary beyond the fact that RENÉe Zellweger was in it (and I never read the book), so I sure as hell don't know what this "blue soup" thing is supposed to be about. So weird to toss that clue in there. A real ... what do you call those things cops throw in the road to puncture the tires of fleeing fugitives? That's what LEEK was to me. Well, I"m not a fugitive, and LEEK didn't stop me completely, so the metaphor's not great, but LEEK definitely brought me to a very jarring halt for a bit. There were two other similar moments of grinding (if brief) halt in the puzzle. The "L" in LOYD / LAB and the "F" in FANTAN / FISH. Obviously LOYD and FANTAN are the main culprits there, but in both cases, the crosses on their first letters eluded me for a bit. I wanted FANTAN to be FANTAN without really knowing why, so I left that "F" blank and then ... it stayed blank, because whatever elaborate scenario the clue on FISH was imagining, I was not getting (39A: Remove, as from a cluttered container, with "out"). In retrospect, the clue seems fine, reasonably accurate, but mid-solve I was like "what is this what kind of container what is happening?" As you can see (from grid print-out, above), that "F" was the very last letter I wrote in. I abandoned it mid-solve and came back for it at the end. 

As for LOYD / LAB ... I don't follow the WNBA, or any other pro sports leagues besides the MLB (at least not closely), so when I was staring at -OYD, the only "last name" possibility I saw there was BOYD. Thankfully, BAB was not a viable answer at 10A: Place with flasks and alcohol, but I couldn't figure out what was, at least not immediately. I had PUB in that place at first, although I did think, "why would you bring your flask to the PUB?" I also wasn't entirely sure about that "A," since I've never (ever ever ever) heard anyone refer to a "convenience store" as a "C-store" (11D: C-store offering). What a horrible bit of shortening. Who says that? I figured something businessy (like "C suite") or computery (C++?) was going on. The "-TM" made ATM kind of undeniable, though, so I just stared at -OYD / -AB until I had my aha moment with LAB. Nothing else in the puzzle slowed me down much.

Bullets:

• 14A: "___ Atardecer," Bad Bunny song whose name means "Another Sunset" ("OTRO") — kind of a long-winded way of saying [Another (Sp.], but maybe this is more fun. It's certainly more colorful, if a bit long-winded. AGRA (like OTRO, a crosswordese staple) got a similarly ornate clue (24A: Site with a monument that gets around 7 million ticketed visitors a year).
• 29A: Like the glass in many a Dale Chihuly sculpture (FUSED) — no idea. Zero. I think I looked up Dale Chihuly once before for crossword purposes, but clearly I forgot him. Completely. Had --SED and thought "... LASED?" OK, yeah, here we go: Dale Chihuly was my "Word of the Day" back in Nov. '24 (when DALE was actually in the puzzle).
• 35A: Beatles song with the lyric "I tried to telephone / They said you were not home / That's a lie" ("NO REPLY") — not on any of the Beatles albums I've listened to regularly over the years (although now that I'm listening to it, it's Very familiar). It's an early song, from the album Beatles for Sale (1964). It does not appear to have charted anywhere on the globe except the Netherlands, where it hit No. 1 (!?!?!?). "The song was not officially released as a single in the UK" (wikipedia). "NO REPLY" makes me think of a different song entirely—one that actually was released as a single in the U.S.

• 43A: Anora's husband in "Anora" (IVAN) — never saw this clue, which is too bad, as I know (and love) this movie. This is at least the second time Anora has been used in a clue, but still no ANORA in the grid, which is bizarre, as no movie title in movie history was ever more grid-ready. ANORA is one of those answers I expect to see in the grid annnnnny moment now, along with ZOHRAN, MAMDANI, and, of course, OZU (I can dream!). 
• 1D: Pop-punk band named after a video game company, with "The" (ATARIS) — sigh. I have heard of them, but it's hard to like this answer, since it's basically just awkwardly pluralized crosswordese. I guess they covered Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" at some point (??). I thought I knew one of their songs, but it turns out I was confusing them with the Androids:

• 24D: Helical tools (AUGERS) — couldn't get a handle on this, and then when I did, of course I (initially) misspelled it (AUGURS)

[Helical!]

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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Live the single man's life, slangily / THU 4-9-26 / Start issuing stock, in Wall Street lingo / Joey of kid-lit / Customizable Asian-fusion dish / Dessert with rings on top, literally / Dessert in a boat, literally / Triangular dessert, literally / Pose for which you must plant your body on the mat? / Tone used to create an antique vibe / Early Ron Howard TV role

Constructor: Barbara Lin

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: dessert arrangements — desserts are represented in the grid in wacky ways ("literally"), according to words they contain:

Theme answers:

• PINEAPPLE EKAC (i.e. "pineapple upside-down cake," where "cake" is upside-down] (4D: Dessert with rings on top, literally)
• BANANA SPLIT [where "split" is split in a "Y" formation) (6D: Dessert in a boat, literally)
• APPLE NRUT [i.e. "apple turnover," where "turn" is turned over] (38D: Triangular dessert, literally)
• BLUEBERRY CRUMBLE [where "crumble" is crumbled into a kind of pile at the bottom of the answer] (20D: Dessert with a streusel-like topping, literally)

P  B

I  A

N  N     B

E  A     L

A  N     U

P  A     E 

P  S  A  B

L  P  P  E

E  L  P  R

E I I L  R 

KT   TE  Y

A     N  C

C     R  RU  

      U  MB  

      T  LE

Word of the Day: BACH IT (6A: Live the single man's life, slangily) —

To live by oneself, as an unwed man (or "bachelor") does. The phrase can be "bach it" or simply "bach." (thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

It's not that this was completely unenjoyable. Individually, the theme answers are kinda cute. But as a set, they don't work at all. It's not just that two of them have circled squares and the others don't. In fact, it's not that at all. It's that the fundamental theme concept keeps shifting from answer to answer. So in the first answer, PINEAPPLE (upside-down) CAKE, one of the words in the dessert is omitted from the answer itself and used rather as an indication of how another word ("CAKE") is supposed to be represented visually. No "upside-down" in the grid—instead "upside-down" modifies CAKE, literally (CAKE is presented in reverse, i.e. "upside-down"). But then in the next answer, the modifying word stays in the grid, and is itself modified (i.e. "split" is "split"). What? No. No. That's not what you did before. The modifying word is supposed to be gone. Absent. Not there. With PINEAPPLE EKAC, the modifying word indicates the new (wacky) shape, but it does not actually appear; so "SPLIT" should absolutely positively 100% not not not be in the grid itself. By the logic of the first theme answer, BANANA should be the thing that is "splitting." And then this whole disparity is replicated in the next two theme answers, where APPLE NRUT leaves out the modifying word and uses it instead to indicate the shape of another word ("turn" is turned over), but then with BLUEBERRY CRUMBLE, the modifying word is itself modified, appearing in the grid (like "split") in modified shape. The "banana" should be "split" and the "blueberry" should be "crumbled" if the theme wants to make any kind of sense. I'm not even bothered by the fact that the reshaping concept is exactly the same in two of these answers (PINEAPPLE EKAC and APPLE NRUT). At least they have the same presentation logic. The conceptual failure here is fatal. Yes, wacky answers are wacky and fun, but these four answers simply don't go together because they don't follow the same basic conceptual logic. Case closed.

Also, I'm not sure I've seen a worse opening to a puzzle than GOIPO into BACHIT. Never say either of these phrases anywhere near me, please. And unless you want to fight, definitely don't say them back to back. I know you're supposed to read it as GO I.P.O. (1A: Start issuing stock, in Wall Street lingo), but all I see is "GOY-po," which is how it deserves to be pronounced—like a nonsense sound made by some obnoxious child's toy or space alien. As for BACHIT, it sounds, well, bat sh*t. If I hadn't seen it in a puzzle before (and hadn't yelled at it before), I would have struggled with it, which would've made things worse. Actually, BACH IT hasn't appeared in the puzzle in 32 years, but I know I've seen it more recently than that. Must've been some other puzzle. GO I.P.O. is actually a debut, though I know some puzzle tried to force that answer on me before as well. Xwordinfo.com is helpfully telling me that one of the anagrams (maybe the only anagram) of BACHIT is "biatch." Wonder how long we'll have to wait until we see BIATCH in the puzzle (the OED says it's "derogatory and offensive," but other dictionaries have it as "affectionate" or "comedic" as well). If it shows up before OZU I'm gonna be so mad...

[BACH IT!]

No difficulty today. None. It's Thursday, and there was no challenge. So the puzzle was disappointing on that level as well. Again, it's not as if there were no pleasures to be had today. As I said, taken individually, the themers were kinda cute at times. NOODLE BOWL and ART CURATOR aren't exactly barn-burners, but they're good. Are they LOVEABLE? Not sure I'd go that far, but one might. You might. None of the clues really sparkled today, though the LOTUS clue is certainly trying (59D: Pose for which you must plant your body on the mat?) (get it? "plant" ... 'cause the LOTUS is a ... "plant"). I did appreciate the effort. 

Bullets:

• 17A: Joey of kid-lit (ROO) — presumably you knew that the clue was looking for a baby kangaroo and not some guy named "Joey." ROO is hanging out today with a whole bunch of his crosswordese friends. It's a real crosswordese who's who: OPIE, Lisa LOEB, Brian ENO ...
• 19A: Customizable Asian-fusion dish (NOODLE BOWL) — as I said, I liked this answer, and it was also the only answer that I struggled (slightly) to get. The clue was too vague for me to just PLOP it down. I needed to build out NOODLE before I had any sense of what I was dealing with.
• 22A: Ex-Yankee with appearances on "Shark Tank," familiarly (A-ROD) — in that it refers to both the Yankees and "Shark Tank," this might be the least appealing clue I've ever read.
• 42A: Amundsen who went to the South Pole 15 years before he flew over the North Pole (ROALD) — Dahl has been canceled for anti-semitism, so now we just have to live with "B"-list ROALDs. (Don't worry, anti-"woke" folk, he hasn't been canceled—he appeared four times just last year ... he was anti-semitic, though)
• 53A: Zebras in the field? (REFS) — "zebras" is slang for American football referees because of their black-and-white striped uniforms.

• 72A: Community traversed by the Pacific Coast Highway (MALIBU) — I like MALIBU because Rockford lived there. And because of this song.

• 58A: On which to watch the Beeb (TELLY) — Brits! They watch the BBC! On the television! Only they have adorable slang for both these things!
• 9D: "___ Gabler" (Ibsen play) ("HEDDA") — I have been meaning to see last year's film adaptation by Nia DaCosta, about which I've heard good things. It appears to be only on Prime, which I ditched a couple years back, so it may be a while. I just got a bunch of new movies from the most recent Criterion sale, so it's not like I'm hurting for movie-viewing options.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Savory South Asian rice cake / WED 4-8-26 / Perry of pop / Traditional samurai hairstyles / Chant heard at the end of "Hot Hot Hot" / Enhancing accessories / Underground scurrier / "I'm afraid not," quaintly / Popular flavor of bubble tea / Half of a darting motion

Constructor: Philippe Monfiston

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: musical puns — familiar phrases where the first part of the phrase has been replaced by a musical term that sounds roughly like it:

Theme answers:

• CODA SILENCE ("code of silence") (18A: Audience's reverent response to a symphony finale?)
• SONATA THING ("so not a thing") (22A: That certain je ne sais quoi in Beethoven's "Moonlight"?)
• STANZA CHANCE ("stands a chance") (36A: Opportunity for a choral understudy?)
• FORZA MOMENT ("for the moment") (53A: When to play a note with sudden strong emphasis?)
• ARIA KIDDING ("Are you kidding?") (58A: "What's Opera, Doc?"," e.g.?)

Word of the Day: forza (see 53A) —

forza

FORT-sah

[Italian, force]

Often seen as con forza, "with force"; a directive to perform the indicated passage of a composition forcefully, emphatically, or vigorously. (OnMusic Dictionary)

• • •

There's a wacky creative energy here that I like, but the theme is a little rough around the edges. First of all, this is one theme that kind of (kinda!) needs a revealer. I thought the theme was just "repronouncing 'a' endings" ... but the "a" ending of SONATA isn't repronounced at all. I didn't get that there was a musical throughline at all til I was done (mostly because I think of STANZA as a poetic term, not a musical one—I taught stanzaic poetry just yesterday). When I finally realized that the puns were all musical, I was on the one hand happier, since that makes the theme tighter than I'd imagined, but on the other hand more disappointed, because I really needed the punch of a revealer to tie it all together, to give it a particular sense of purpose. You could do first word puns from any area of knowledge, but why? Why do all the puns end in "a" but not all of them actually pun on the "a"? Still, despite these nagging questions, I was mostly on board with this theme—with one major exception. My only absolute "nope!" moment of the solve. These puns all work very, very well, if you just read them straight. CODA SILENCE: if I say that out loud, as written, you are definitely going to hear "code of silence." STANZA CHANCE also hits its mark ("stands a chance"). ARIA KIDDING? and SONATA THING require slight shifts in emphasis (hitting the "SO" and not the "NAT" in the first case, the changing of the interrogative into the indicative mood in the second case), but close enough for crosswords, for sure. 

But then there's FORZA. And that word does not sound like "for the." It sounds like ... well, see "Word of the Day," above. "FORT-sah." It's an Italian word that retains its Italian pronunciation in common usage by English speakers. I don't speak Italian and I'm not a musician and still I think of that term as being pronounced "FORT-sah." Pronunciation-based themes are always dicey—people love to argue about slight regional differences. And I'm aware, from a bit of looking around online, that some English speakers say "FOR-za," which, if you imagine that the line is spoken by someone with a German accent, you can imagine sounds like "for the," but for me the reality of that voiced "t" sound in "forza" really messes things up. If pronouncing "forza" the correct Italian way is not in fact standard practice or is considered "pretentious" or whatever, I'm sure you'll let me know. Anyway, I still admire the theme. I just think the execution is a bit ragged.

I really thought the SONATA thing was a pun on "it's not a thing," as in (?) "it's no big deal," or maybe as in "it does not actually exist," so I was happy (ish) to realize (later) that the pun was on the (fairly contemporary) colloquial phrase "that is SO not a thing" (a version of "that does not actually exist," but in this version, the "SO" is a word that is there for emphasis, and the "O" doesn't have to be elided into "s'not a thing," which is what I was doing at first). 

I had real trouble getting started, as I had ADO for DIN (24A: Commotion), and even after I fixed that, I couldn't come up with either ARCADE or ADD-ONS, even after I had several crosses. I forgive myself for ADD-ONS—that clue is super-ambiguous (3D: Enhancing accessories); I thought the "accessories" were fashion accessories—but I do not forgive myself for ARCADE. Should've remembered that non-video-game meaning of ARCADE (1D: Covered passageway). There's an ARCADE in Ann Arbor that I used to go through all the time, right there near the far NW corner of the Diag, you know, runs parallel to Liberty, from State to ... whatever the next street over is ... there used to be a travel agent in there when I was in grad school, though I can't remember what's in there now. Annnnnnnyway, Go Blue.

Other slow spots were annoyingly slow because of ambiguity. Never fun to have to just sit and wait for a [NOTE] + [MAJOR or MINOR] answer to fill itself in from crosses (65A: Key of Brahms's Symphony No. 4). And [Half of a darting motion]? Which half? I don't know! (Funny that IDK ("I don't know") was the cross there). I misread the TARO clue (57A: Popular flavor of bubble tea)—thought it was asking for a brand, not a flavor (why? the word "flavor" is right in the clue!) so I took one look at TA-O and wrote in TAZO (an actual tea brand, though not a bubble tea brand, if such a thing exists). 

[TAZO]

[TARO]

Bullets:

• 1A: "I'm afraid not," quaintly ("ALAS, NO") — ugh, quaintness. This answer was another reason that NW corner played slightly slow for me. For more off-putting quaintness, see "I DIG" (56A: "Groovy, man") ("I DIG" and "Groovy, man" are from completely different decades and cultural universes, btw)
• 26A: Knuckled rub to the scalp (NOOGIE) — such a weird way to phrase it? "Knuckled," with a "d"?? You can drop that "d" entirely and the clue still makes sense. More sense, maybe. "How would you like your rub?" "Hmmm, let's see ... do you offer knuckled rubs?" "No, I'm sorry, just pickled rubs, smoked rubs, or pan-seared rubs." "Hmmm ... I think I'll just have the crème brûlée." 
• 62A: Respond, as a pupil might (DILATE) — I think this was supposed to trick you into thinking the student kind of "pupil," but that only occurred to me after the fact. I had enough letters in place to see DILATE pretty quickly.
• 36D: Underground scurrier (SEWER RAT) — an original answer, but ... it's hard to say I'm "happy" to find a SEWER RAT scurrying around my puzzle (or anywhere). You get a revulsion twofer here: sewers and rats! 
• 56D: Savory South Asian rice cake (IDLI) — bah! My Indian food lexicon failed me today. I've def seen IDLI before, but it just wasn't there for me today. Maybe the SEWER RAT got to it, IDK.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

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