Texter's "just a sec" / WED 5-6-26 / First word from a wedding officiant / Flower found at the end of a rainbow?

Constructor: James Mattina

Relative difficulty: Hard (11:40)

THEME: CROSS POLLINATION — Hybridized, botanically … or like four pairs of answers in this puzzle (and the circled letters they intersect on)?

Theme answers:

• BLUEBELL and HIBISCUS intersect at the B
• ASTER and PEONY intersect at the E
• VIOLET and AZALEA intersect at the E
• PRIMROSE and DAISY intersect at the S
• The "crosses" create a "pollinator" (bees)

Word of the Day: HAMM (Soccer great Mia) —

Mariel Margaret "Mia" Hamm (born March 17, 1972) is an American former professional soccer player who played as a forward and midfielder for the United States national team from 1987 to 2004. She competed in four editions of the FIFA Women's World Cup, winning in 1991 and 1999. She won gold at the Olympic Games in 1996 and 2004, and won silver in 2000. She was a founding player of the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA)—the first U.S. professional women's soccer league—where she played for the Washington Freedom from 2001 to 2003. She played college soccer for the North Carolina Tar Heels, helping the team win four NCAA Division I Championship titles. [wiki]

• • •

Hey squad! Welcome to another Malaika MWednesday. I solved this puzzle while taking the train home from seeing Mother Mary with Anne Hathaway. That girlie is in so many movies this year! 

I respected this theme a lot as a constructor. Puzzles where the theme answers cross are deceptively tricky to make. And some people may complain that there are no long theme answers (well, there's the revealer), but six medium-length answers that intersect are way harder to deal with than four long entries all going horizontally. You can see that James cordoned off each of the pairs in the corners as best he could, although HIBISCUS does have to intersect with the revealer as well. 

I love when foods are known by different terms. When I buy dried hibiscus from my grocery store in Crown Heights (I use it to make cocktails) I ask for sorrel, but when I get an agua fresca at a taqueria, I order jamaica. 

The fill didn't suffer too much, although OTS, ELAN, and MOOLA weren't great. I have always seen it spelled "moolah" and there was no "Var" tag on the clue so I really hesitated to fill that one in. I loved ODD NUMBERS and HOLY TOLEDO-- that central section almost felt like a themeless puzzle!

I appreciated the extra layer that the circled letters added. I was actually expecting some sort of turning theme or rebus, but seeing what they spelled out was a cute second reveal. I think it would have been enough to have flowers intersect, so it's nice to see the theme elevated one step more. Ultimately, I finished this with a smile on my face because it's warm today and I love flowers and I got to drink a margarita in the sun for Cinco de Mayo and this puzzle felt like spring spring spring spring spring and I have a tattoo of beautiful roses on my leg that I finally get to release from its Jeans Prison. What did you guys think? What's your favorite flower? Any flower tattoos from any of you guys?

Bullets:

• [Airdrops?] for MIST — Nothing much to say except that this is a great clue
• [Bloom whose toxic nectar is one source of "mad honey"] for AZALEA — I read a Jodi Picoult book called Mad Honey which was a collaboration with Jennifer Finney Boylan. I loved it but I love all of Picoult's books, as long as I read them spaced out.
• [Besties] for PALS — This one gave me pause because those two words are not the same thing to me! My bestie is a very very close friend, and my pal is a casual aquaintance. 
• [Company man?] for ACTOR — Is this referring to the show Company?

xoxo Malaika

P.S. I gave an interview about crosswords! You can read it on page 25 here. There's a themed puzzle there as well, which you can either print out or solve online here.

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