Afghan language / MON 4-13-26 / Big banking inits. in the U.K. / City NE of Manchester / "The Thin Man" terrier / Places to stick wallets / Risky time for beach property owners / Pleasingly round

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Medium (actually kind of tough when solved Downs-only)

THEME: THREE CHEERS (62A: "Woo-hoo!" ... as suggested by the starts of 17-, 24-, 39- and 49-Across) — the theme answers start with HIP, HIP, HUR- and RAY, respectively:

Theme answers:

• HIP-HOP MUSIC (17A: Rap songs and such)
• HIP POCKETS (24A: Places to stick wallets)
• HURRICANE SEASON (39A: Risky time for beach property owners)
• RAY CHARLES (49A: Singer with the 1961 #1 hit "Hit the Road Jack")

Word of the Day: PASHTO (46D: Afghan language) —

Pashto (/ˈpʌʃtoʊ/,/ˈpæʃtoʊ/ PASH-toh; پښتو, Pəx̌tó, [pəʂˈto, pʊxˈto, pəʃˈto, pəçˈto]) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan. It was also known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (افغانی, Afghāni).

Spoken as a native language mainly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan alongside Dari, and the second-largest language in Pakistan, spoken mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the northern districts of Balochistan. Likewise, it is the primary language of the Pashtun diaspora around the world. The total number of Pashto speakers is estimated at around 35 million to 55 million. Pashto is "one of the primary markers of ethnic identity" amongst Pashtuns. (wikipedia)

• • •

[the preferred spelling, I'd say]

Well, this was very nearly a fail. PASHTO got me. I'm sure I've seen it before—in fact, this appears to be the fourth appearance of the word since I started blogging—but this is the first appearance in over a decade, and those other appearances were on Saturday, Saturday, and Sunday, respectively. That is, historically, PASHTO is both a rare and a decidedly late-week word. I had to infer virtually every letter, and the "SHT" part just felt ... wrong. Would've started it KASH- (like "Kashmir???) if TAK had been at all intelligible. But my next guess after that was PASH- (like "pasha"???), which just left the -TO part, but yikes. ATAD seemed the most likely A-AD word, but ACAD. is real thing, and I can imagine all kinds of partials there (A BAD idea, it's just A FAD, when I was but A LAD...). And then there was T-NS, and I really wanted the answer to end with "A" ... but PASHTA sounded like a drunk person ordering "pasta," so PASHTO was the "winner" and it was right but honestly I don't think I should be rewarded for pure guesswork and luck. I flat-out didn't know PASHTO and so despite my nominal success, I'm taking an L on this one. A moral L. I think I'm punishing myself for taking waaaaaay too long to see "AS WE SPEAK" (36D: Right now). This is largely due to a terrible assumption I made at BAS-ET. The only thing that came to mind was BASSET. This is possibly because we saw a BASSET hound in the park today. At any rate, if I'd had the "K" in there, I think "AS WE SPEAK" would've been much easier to see. As it was ... yipes. So many letters to guess at. -ED. ELL-. A-TA. TY-OS (again, my brain glitched and could only see TYROS–a real crossword-brain f***-up) (60A: Tehre are two in tihs clue = TYPOS). PASHTO and "AS WE SPEAK" ground me down today, but it was PASHTO that dealt the real near-lethal blow.

As for the theme: kind of bland. Not my thing. Not that exciting. Do the three cheers in THREE CHEERS represent the single phrase HIP HIP HURRAY (which is made up of three words) or is the idea that you say "HIP HIP HURRAY" three times. I thought the latter, in which case THREE CHEERS isn't a great revealer, since what you've got here with the fronts of the four theme answers is precisely one cheer. But even if I accept that the revealer was a bullseye, the whole concept just feels weak and rudimentary to me. Not enough good wordplay to constitute a good Monday theme. I think my brain is slightly bothered also by the extra "R" in HURRICANE. I assume I'm supposed to pay attention only to the first three letters of each answer, but with the other three answers, those are standalone words (or, in the case of HIP-HOP, word parts). With HURRICANE, I have to mentally break the answer myself, and breaking it between the two "R"s feels odd / arbitrary, especially since "HURRAY" has two "R"s in it. Or maybe the whole theme works on sound, not spelling (?). But this is a minor detail, a petty objection. The real issue is blandness.

Lots of little stumbles on my Downs-only solve. Wanted only APPLE PIE, and so was reluctant to put in any other "pastry" for a bit (3D: Fruit pastry that pairs well with vanilla ice cream). Absolutely and completely blanked on 30D: Baking quantity (CUP), even with the "U" in place. Once TSP. wouldn't work, I was out of ideas. Had ADHERE before COHERE (4D: Stick together). And as for "GET ME?" ... bah. Sure, I guess people say that, somewhere, but it was not immediately clear to me, at all. Oh, and I had some trouble inferring HIP POCKETS because I kept wanting it to have something to do with HIPPOs. And then HIPPOCRAT(E)S. There's not much to like in this puzzle, besides RAY CHARLES, and "AS WE SPEAK," which, despite its bedeviling me, I have to admit is a pretty colorful longer answer.

Bullets:

• 19A: Certain endurance race, in brief (TRI) — as in "triathlon" 
• 28A: "There's ___ in 'team,' but there is one in 'win'" ("NO 'I'") — it's not bad enough we have to endure the terrible partial NOI, we have to get in the form of this corny bumper sticker aphorism. The cliché "there's NO 'I' in team" was bad enough on its own. Trying to make it funny isn't helping. It's just taking up more space.

• 55A: "The Thin Man" terrier (ASTA) — one piece of crosswordese that will not die, which is also a piece of crosswordese that I don't mind (assuming the rest of the grid isn't drowning in it). Dogs and cats get a pass. ASTA, fine. TOTO, welcome. LASSIE ... sure, whatever. Are there any crosswordese cats? Oh, right, ELSA. You used to see ELSA (the lion from Born Free) all the time. Now you usually find ELSA in the Frozen section of the crosswordese supermarket. ELSA the lion is not to be confused with ILSA, Ingrid Bergman's character in Casablanca, even though I do, in fact, confuse them, all the time. to this day.

[FYI this is the first thing that comes up when I search ASTA now 🙁]

• 24D: Big banking inits. in the U.K. (HSBC) — one of those initialisms that just kills a puzzle's vibe. Initials? Banking? U.K.? It's just a letter string to me, every time I see it (which always feels like too often and yet not often enough for the letters to stick). I think I went with HMBC this time, so I was at least close. Thankfully, the cross (TESS) was indisputably an "S".
• 53D: City NE of Manchester (LEEDS) — again, this puzzle is asking me to know way too much about the U.K., esp. on a Monday. I actually got this fairly quickly ... after I determined that Manchester was the one in England and not the one in New Hampshire.

That's all. See you next time. And congratulations to Erik Agard, crossword editor and constructor extraordinaire, for winning the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament yesterday for (I believe) the second time. Beat the fastest solvers in the world on the final puzzle by over a minute. Crazy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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