Spongy exfoliator / FRI 5-1-26 / Myosin's partner protein / "Tom ___" (classic folk song that became a #1 hit in 1958)

Constructor: Rena Cohen 

Relative difficulty: Harder than usual (13:54)

THEME: Themeless

Word of the Day: GEMS (Baguettes, e.g.) —

The step cut's rectilinear form was popular in the Art Deco period. Antique jewelry of the period features step-cut stones prominently, and there is a market in producing new step-cut stones to repair antique jewelry or to reproduce it. The slender, rectangular baguette (from the French, resembling a loaf of bread) was and is the most common form of the step cut: today, it is most often used as an accent stone to flank a ring's larger central (and usually brilliant-cut) stone. [Wiki]

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Hey squad! It's Malaika, filling in for Rex who is on a trip. I solved this puzzle on the train home from seeing Maybe Happy Ending, so am generally feeling nostalgic and plagued with a sense of romantic doom. On to the puzzle!

It is my belief that the NYT has decided the Friday puzzle should be an easy themeless puzzle, and the Saturday should be a hard themeless. No more of this "a little hard" and then "very hard." I absolutely breeze through these Fridays like they are Wednesdays. This is not a complaint, but rather to fend off complaints! Don't complain that Fridays are easy, because I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be!

"It's as easy as falling off A LOG!" said the Earl, falling off a log with a loud thump

This is a pretty intense grid shape to fill! When I see three long answers vertically intersecting three long answers horizontally, it is usually in the form of six eleven-letter answers. (Like this one, from KAC.) Here, Ms. Cohen has used a fifteen, a thirteen, two elevens, and two nines. Something a little different! 

The best entry by far in this grid was THE MUNCHIES and it's not even close. Fantastic addition to the puzzle. It does seem totally insane to clue this without referencing weed... I'm pretty sure that if you are just looking for a snack, you don't have the munchies. The term only applies when you're high, right? Chime in, fam. 

A lot of the other long entries fell flat for me.... ERADICATES and SONOROUS and CAPABLE are all just regular words, and ARMADILLOS felt less exciting to me because of the plural. SPOILER ALERTS felt a little ruined by the plural, actually, it didn't feel grammatically valid to add an S there (same with APPLE TVS). LOCK AND LOAD sounded awkward, since I'm used to "locked and loaded" and BANK AUDIT is not what I would call fresh or interesting. I did like COLD TAKES, COUPLES ONLY, and MAKE BELIEVE, though all three got boring (or I suppose I should say, easy) clues.

Bullets:

• ["WandaVision" co-star Elizabeth ___] for OLSEN — I just watched her in "Eternity," which I loved. Exactly the type of cute-but-still-interesting romcom I've been looking for.
• [Company whose name comes from a term in the board game Go] for ATARI — The term describes one of the board's potential states
• [Big name in petrol] for ESSO — I've seen this a thousand times in puzzles and I will simply never remember the final letter. Here I tried every vowel since I wasn't familiar with RKO either.
• [Dough in tamales] for MASA — I went to Mexico City over the weekend and took a class where we learned about nixtamalizing corn and made tamales. I've made tamales before, but this was the first time I used banana leaves as wrappers. (Usually I use corn husks.)
• [Home of Swansea and Wrexham] for WALES — I knew this because of the soccer club that Ryan Reynolds co-owns.

xoxo Malaika

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