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Friend of Nancy Drew / FRI 5-15-26 / Edible algae dubbed "green caviar" / Jarring film transition to a new scene / Language of southern India / Mother of Don Juan / Good name for a yoga instructor / Civil rights activist Williams, an associate of Martin Luther King Jr. / Blind followers, informally / Competitor of the early Chevrolet 490 / Big name in meal prep kits / Use of a popular song to make a scene iconic, in film-speak / Vintage bike feature
Friday, May 15, 2026
Constructor: Maddy Ziegler
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
Word of the Day: TELUGU (41A: Language of southern India) —
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| [red = majority or plurality of native TELUGU speakers] |
Telugu (/ˈtɛlʊɡuː/ ⓘ; తెలుగు, Telugu pronunciation: [ˈt̪eluɡu]) is a Dravidian language native to the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where it is also the official language. Telugu is a classical language with a recorded history of at least 2,000 years. Spoken by about 100 million people, Telugu is the most widely spoken member of the Dravidian language family, and one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of the Republic of India // It is one of the few languages that has primary official status in more than one Indian state, alongside Hindi and Bengali. Telugu is one of the languages designated as a classical language by the Government of India. It is the fourteenth most spoken native language in the world. (wikipedia)
• • •
Yes, I learned about TELUGU at (or while preparing to go to) the movies. I then forgot it, obviously, but now I am remembering it. Speaking of movies, man, this puzzle really brings the cinematic content. None of your run-of-the-mill movie stuff, this puzzle's got FRED MacMurray in Double Indemnity (the quintessential film noir) and SMASH CUTs (37A: Jarring film transition to a new scene) and NEEDLE DROPs (55A: Use of a popular song to make a scene iconic, in film-speak) and an APE COSTUME!? You had me at FRED MacMurray, puzzle. Cinematic STUNNERS, everywhere I looked. And then lots of other wonderful stuff as well. That opening corner—I don't love that the clue for HOME CHEF reads like a paid ad, but it's still a good phrase, and its partners, "I'M ALL EARS" and "LET ME AT 'EM," are even better. Usually, if I'm compelled to take a screenshot early in a puzzle, it's because the fill is so bad and I feel the need to document it. But today, the opposite. I said "nice" out loud and decided, "you know, I should take a snapshot of niceness, for once."
And then there was "IT'S UP TO YOU," ROGUE WAVE, BACKWOODS, VACANT LOT, LIVE WIRES ... the puzzle delivers on all fronts. The only objection I had along the way was to APE COSTUME ... not to the thing itself, but to the phrasing. I feel like APE SUIT is le mot juste (are les mots justes?). I had APE and immediately thought "how am I going to make SUIT stretch to seven letters." I do like that APE is underneath BANANA, though. Very nice touch.
Bullets:
- 16A: Good name for a yoga instructor (MATT) — cute. I had the terminal "-T" and sincerely (if briefly) thought "... BENT? Are guys named BENT now?" (Bengt, yes, BENT, probably not)
[in which Bengt Ekerot plays Death]
- 1A: To the ___ (as much as possible) (HILT) — MAX! NTH! NINES! It took at least (1 2 3) four stabs at this thing before I got it right.
- 20A: Civil rights activist Williams, an associate of Martin Luther King Jr. (HOSEA) — no idea. A simple biblical clue would've made this easier (for me) but the puzzle was already so easy (for me) that I didn't mind getting slowed down by a mystery proper noun here or there ("there" being TELUGU and BESS).
- 6D: Mother of Don Juan (INEZ) — not sure I'll ever learn whether this is INES or INEZ, but luckily today I had the "Z" in place (thanks to ELIZA) (19A: Miss Doolittle of "Pygmalion").
- 24D: Setting for the graphic novel series "Persepolis" (IRAN) — yet another way in which this puzzle seemed custom-made for me. I'm finishing up grading for my Comics class just this week, and I (literally!) gave away my copy of Persepolis to a curious student last week.
- 34D: Break the ice? (THAW) — thawing seems like a completely different phenomenon from breaking, but I guess ice does break up during a spring THAW so ... OK!
- 38D: Blind followers, informally (SHEEPLE) — I thought this was going to be some poker terminology ("blind" is a poker term, right?) (yes). But no, "blind followers" are "those who follow blindly," thus, SHEEPLE. Speaking of people who act like sheep—or vice versa, I guess—looks like I'm going to be seeing The Sheep Detectives this weekend. When I saw the trailer, I was a very hard "no," but friends, and especially this Defector review, have convinced me to push through my extreme reluctance and just go. So I am going to give the talking-sheep movie a try. I do teach a crime fiction course from time to time, so ... maybe it will be relevant. Fingers crossed!
That's all. See you next time.
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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37 comments:
23:09 for me last night—so that’s medium-challenging on a Friday. NEEDLEDROP, SEAGRAPES, and HOMECHEF were all WOEs for me but inferable/getable with crosses. [Posted w/o reading @REX, so if I'm repetitive, pardon that]. Enjoyed ITSUPTOYOU, LIVEWIRE, and especially BANANASEAT…. I never had a true BANANASEAT bike but I had a “Chopper” with the little 16 inch wheel in front and the bigger knobby 20 inch wheel in back. I loved that thing. HILT (as clued) for some reason took me absolutely forever to see. Also, the connection between VACANTLOT and its clue seems a bit tenuous. Had APEmansuit before APECOSTUME but EAMES and STEAL corrected that fairly quickly. Enjoying the story as I review the grid this AM… FRED’s SMASHCUT BEGAT SHAKES and an EWW out of me… during the next eerie scene, you could hear a NEEDLEDROP…. But before it was OVER, the OGRES had made a complete MESS! Anyhoo, thanks for a pretty challenging Friday, Maddy, I loved this puzzle : ) **** from me.
I'm no movie buff so Medium for me. Good amount of crunch for a Friday.
* * * * _
Overwrites:
At 3D, LEmME AT 'EM before LET ME.
My 4D boom was caused by an ssT before TNT.
WOEs:
Didn't remember HOSEA Williams (20A).
The edible algae SEA GRAPES at 32D.
The jarring transition SMASH CUT at 37A.
Nancy Drew's friend BESS at 39D.
The TELUGU language at 41A.
NEEDLE DROPS at 55A.
BACKWater before BACKWOODS, and I don't go to Indian cinema and while I've been doing crosswords for at least 40 years--a lot of my friends had BANANA SEAT bikes--I don't recall ever seeing TELUGU. SEA GRAPES, SMASH CUT and NEEDLE DROPS were all inferable from the crosses. I enjoyed this far more than yesterday's. Agree with @Rex 100%.
Hand up for SST before TNT....
Inez crossing Eliza was a natick for me. Had a DNF since I assumed it was IneS/EliSa. Bleh
Oh, man, there's beauty in the box today: LIVE WIRES, NEEDLE DROP, LET ME AT ‘EM, ROGUE WAVE, SEA GRAPES, SMASH CUT, APE COSTUME. Those last five are NYT debut answers, by the way.
All these answers are longs – eight letters or more, of which today’s puzzle has a sky-high 16 – which have the potential to invigorate a puzzle, and they sure do today.
Then Maddy throws in a contronym – a word with two opposite definitions – with CLEAVES. Language-quirk-loving me adores contronyms, such as sanction, ravel, splice, garnish, oversight.
The solve gave me areas of whoosh, and spots of struggle, both of which happify my brain. And two TILs, both worth knowing: TELUGU and SEA GRAPES. Plus an original clue for MODEL T.
This is Maddy’s second Times puzzle. After her first, also a themeless, I commented that this was a constructor with potential. Today’s entry solidifies that suspicion, and Maddy, I hope they keep coming. Thank you – I loved this!
And another hand up for SST
Ugh. I don't think I've ever disagreed more with Rex's rating.
SMASH CUT and NEEDLE DROP and HOME CHEF I'll be perfectly happy to never see again.
I do agree with his difficulty assessment, though. Whooshed through most of this before hitting the center/east section, which did at least provide some difficulty. Unfortunately, way too much of the puzzle's attempt to add difficulty was either due to names (HOSEA, INEZ, ELIZA, READE, FRED, BESS) or niche movie terms.
Hey All !
Got slowed down in a couple of sections. VACANT LOT one of them. Took a minute for the ole brain to grasp that one. You know, VACAtions fit there ...
SEA GRAPES are new here. Along with spelling ROGUE as ROUGE (every time!) made that section dubious.
Overall a nice FriPuz. Stirred up the ole brain enough, without it begging for mercy. Although TELUGU came close.
©Uniclue:
Blind followers 2x2?
EVEN SHEEPLE
Welp, hope y'all have a great Friday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Pretty smooth sailing till I got to the SE, which I entered with a long answer that was also a wrong answer. Never noticed that SEAGRAPES has the same number of letters as Spirulina. That took a while to rip out.
I was today years old when I learned that there’s a language called TELUGU. Last word in.
Nice work, Maddy Ziegler!
I’m still scratching my head over the clue for VACANT LOT. I’ve heard people say “Here goes nothing!” in a YOLO kind of way before doing something daring, but I’ve never heard anyone shout “VACANT LOT” before kicking back a shot of tequila or something. Rex didn’t even give it a mention, so I’m probably overlooking something obvious. Anyone else stumped by that one?
The section with TELUGU and SEA GRAPES was pretty much a black hole for me as well. I don’t know what a CISTERN or a ROGUE WAVE is either, so I wasn’t so much swimming upstream as I was flying blind there.
I definitely found this one too be tougher than the typical Friday has been recently, mostly due to my ignorance about the answers (although I guess it’s difficult to judge the degree of difficulty in the clues when they are referencing things I don’t recognize, like SEA GRAPES).
Rex was a bigger fan than me; chalked up to the heavy cinematic content (his words). We had more of a mixed bag appraisal.
We blindly filled in INEZ from just the Z of ELIZA. What else could ___Z be? So we got a foothold up top.
Blindly entered HOME CHEF (never heard of it) with a few crosses.
And blindly entered the final G (last entry) for the "no idea" cross of TELUGU and SEA GRAPES. G fit better than D as drapes aren't generally edible.
My "blind" obsession here refers to the thought that SHEEPLE could have been clued "Fox News watchers". Something has to explain how, in light of the serial disasters following everything this administration touches, the criminal narcissist still is favored by 30% of the country. Astonishing.
Easy-Medium for me too. No real whoosh to write home about, just a little like IT'S UP TO YOU and LET ME AT 'EM and BACKWOODS. Just enough pushback to keep it interesting.
I saw the byline and thought "Wait -- isn't that the name of the former child dancer on that dancing reality show who later achieved actual recognition for her dancing?" Indeed, that show was Dance Moms on Lifetime. (I think there was a lot of "karenting" on that show.) But no, the dancer's name is spelled "Maddie".
TELUGU was known to me simply because my mind picks up on words with unusual or exotic spellings. The only question was whether it had one E and two Us or two Es and one U. (Do any of you find that your spelling skills seem to get less and less secure as you get older?) ROGUE WAVE was certainly not immediate (and I barely recognize it as a phrase). SEA GRAPES I know from... god knows where.
BANANA SEAT -- what a throwback.
I was wondering whether we'd hear about SHEEPLE in Rex's review. It seems to me that the vast majority of the time, it comes from the mouths of conspiracy theorists, typically in the MAGA mold, who believe Fauci is at the center of some deep state government plot where they're injecting nanobot spies through vaccinations, or whatever it is they want you to believe.
Someone here will remember the term for a word that has two almost diametrically opposed meanings. Today's word is CLEAVES, which can mean both "splits apart" and "sticks to".
Anyway, it was a good puzzle. Appreciate it, Maddy with a y Ziegler.
I somehow conflated a magic wand with a CANE, which made SEA GRAPES and thus TELUGU tough to infer, as I had never heard of either of them.
Thanks to LIVEWIRE I have the song Psycho Killer in my head.
How a climber becomes limber: CLEAVES
What Tiger's fans do at tournaments and in traffic court: BACKWOODS
Firefighter's first resort: HOSEA
I'M ALL EARS, not to be confused with "I maul ears," as Mike Tyson could say after his infamous Holyfield fight. Amazingly, even after it was discovered that Tyson bit off part of Holyfield's ear, the fight was not stopped! Tyson was merely penalized two points. Only when he went after the other ear was it halted. (I'm not joking.)
Mrs. Truman, as a student at Miss Barstow's Finishing School for Girls in Kansas City, which she attended after high school, and where she was on the women's basketball team: BESS in class.
BTW, the NYTXW is not the only place where you cannot escape STAR WARS. My wife and I went to the Mets-Tigers game yesterday at Citi Field and it was Star Wars Day. The force was clearly with the home team as they hit five dingers in a 9-4 win.
Ditto all the comments/woes from @Rex and @Conrad, except I did go straight to TNT. And had a hard time getting the last two letters of SHEEPLE. First response on car was the second MODELa, the car in which I first learned to drive, because I didn’t think Chevvy’s were around before that. Some ancient history there…
Those terms aren’t “niche” esp needle drop
A vacant lot is an area where nothing was built, so nothing went there
A vacant lot is an area where nothing is built so nothing goes or went there
My mother learned to drive in a Model A!
Top notch today - perfectly crafted late week grid. I’m down with the big guy - that SE quadrant tested me - ROGUE WAVE was fine but SEA GRAPES x TELUGU and even the musty BEGAT was rough.
The Menzingers
CLEAVES, BANANA SEAT, APE COSTUME, NEEDLE DROP - it’s loaded with fantastic fill. BACKWOODS x SMASH CUT is all time great.
IT’S UP TO YOU
SHEEPLE is highly unfortunate. Other than that the overall fill is trivia light and smooth.
Howard Devoto
Outstanding Friday morning solve.
Three Girl Rhumba
Pretty tough for me. The only things I was really sure of were ELIZA and CISTERN. Everything else I had to work from crosses; I didn't know the movie jargon, and couldn't remember TELUGU until I had the TEL. And we spend a few weeks every March in SW Florida, where SEA GRAPES are small trees that grow along the beach; never heard of the algae.
I did like seeing 'EM, after yesterday's DEM's.
Once I was finally finished, I admired the puzzle, it was just hard to get there.
Not me. I had the N from omen filled in first so it was easy to deduce TNT
I did the same. To the point that I had to come here to see why the chimes wouldn't ring. Clearly shouldnt have let SEAGRAnES pass, but there I was.
Is Maddy Ziegler the same person who was on Dance Moms and did Sia videos?
Don Juan the Italian led me to the “S” also. I assumed my dnf was TELUGU
A shorebird whose species identity is the same as that assigned at hatching would be a CISTERN.
Chef: Where ya goin' after work?
Sous Chef: HOMECHEF.
Do sun-dried SEAGRAPES become ocean currants?
Between 30A and 39A, I figured one had to BELABORS and one had to BEGAT.
Trying to fake like I speak French, I'll saunter into a wine bar and say "I NEEDLEDROP de vin rouge." This is not to be confused with @ Southside Johnny's vin ROGUE.
This was no GRIND for me. A whoosh or two, a bit of head scratching and a lot of fun. Thanks, Maddy Ziegler.
Contronym is the word you’re looking for.
And the left has as many shepherds as the right. The term is politically neutral. It refers strictly to an unthinking, mob mentality where people follow a an idea, fad, or idea without examining its veracity or worth.
Had to guess at BESS/TELUGU but got the happy music so I guess that’s okay
Same Maddie @tht…😉
When the clue has an exclamation and no quotes, it’s one of those self-referential cryptic deals. In this case, “nothing” is what goes in a vacant lot.
SEGUE crossing SMASHCUT was a nice touch.
A bit tougher than normal for me (about 110% of my Friday average).
I agree that APESUIT is the better phrase, but am I the only one that thinks LEMMEATEM is more appropriate than LETMEATEM?
Even with the VACANT part fully in, it took me forever to get 7D. The clue really threw me. The 'goes' in the clue made me think the answer would be something moving (e.g., a 'Beat it' clue refers to a DRUM, which is something you beat, so I assumed 'Here goes...' referred to something moving). I guess the 'goes' in the clue is referring to the clue itself?
Same for me. A frustrating end to an otherwise great puzzle.
Wow. This was a puzzle that, when I finished, searched the constructor before I came to blog because…I thought…how old is this person with FRED MacMurray, and Nancy Drew clues? (Or has the Nancy Drew series been severely updated?). A 23 year old talented dancer, actress, AND crossword constructor.
That info also explains the film terminology I was unfamiliar with, but was ultimately inferable.
Agree with everything Rex had to say, other than that.
Great puzzle Maddy Ziegler!
Anon @9:40 - thanks. Your explanation helps. I’ll take note of that cluing convention for future reference.
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