Traditional Vietnamese garment whose name means "long shirt" / THU 5-21-26 / timiL / Fish more formally known as a batomorph / Philanthropic group with a clock face in its logo / The so-called "pineapple isle" / Large-eyed African antelope with a duplicative name / Changed my mind in editing notation / 2000 Eminem single with lines from his "biggest fan" / Something tickled on a piano

Constructor: Zhou Zhang and Mallory Montgomery

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Change clothes — articles of clothing are clued using visually cryptic clues:

Theme answers:

• BACKWARDS CAP (20A: timiL) (word meaning "cap" is spelled backwards)
• CUT-OFF TEE (35A: Golfer's suppor-) (definition of "tee" gets cut off)
• MINISKIRT (42A: Evade) (word meaning "skirt" is miniaturized)
• STRIPED SOCKS (55A: P | u | n | c | h | e | s) ("stripes" inserted into a word meaning "socks")

Word of the Day: ÁO DÀI (16A: Traditional Vietnamese garment whose name means "long shirt") —

Áo dài (English: /ˈaʊˈzaɪ/; Vietnamese: [ʔaːw˧˦ zaːj˨˩] (North), [ʔaːw˦˥ jaːj˨˩] (South), lit. “long tunic”) is a traditional Vietnamese outfit consisting of a long split tunic worn over silk trousers. It can serve as formalwear for both men and women.

There are inconsistencies in the term áo dài. The currently most common usage is for a Francized design by Nguyễn Cát Tường (whose shop was named "Le Mur"), which is expressly a women's close-fitting design whose shirt is two pieces of cloth sewn together and fastened with buttons. A more specific term for this design would be "áo dài Le Mur". Other writers, especially those who claim its "traditionality", use áo dài as a general category of garments for both men and women, and include older designs such as áo ngũ thân (five-piece shirt), áo tứ thân (four-piece shirt), áo tấc (loose shirt), áo đối khâm (parallel-flap robe), áo viên lĩnh (round-collar robe), áo giao lĩnh (cross-collar robe), áo trực lĩnh (straight-collar robe). (wikipedia)

• • •

[3D: "Bingo!"]

Startled by this puzzle initially because I couldn't believe how easy it was. I should not be able to move through a Thursday grid with this little resistance. It took so long today before I hit a clue that made me hesitate even a bit. In fact, I was literally this far into the grid before I hit a clue I didn't know instantly:

I was thinking of the wrong kind of "interest" and couldn't figure out why ACCRUE wouldn't fit. "IMBUE ... that's not a word for interest." So I switched to crosses, got PIQUE, and off I went again. The puzzle was 90% Monday-easy, on what should be the trickiest day of the week. Now, the theme did make you have to think a little, that's for sure, but when you can work every cross of every theme answer so so easily, you don't really have to sit there thinking—you can just quickly hack your way to a nearly complete answer and then reason it out from there. So my main take away from the puzzle, sadly, was that the editor should've tightened this thing up—a lot. It's insultingly easy for a Thursday. You have to give regular, longtime solvers something to chew on late in the week, come on.

The overall easiness of the puzzle made the one truly original and unfamiliar answer in the puzzle very jarring. Like, you're just feeding me MAA and LLAMA and ORE etc. and then you throw an ÁO DÀI at me!  Yikes. I was like "what are you doing here? you've stumbled into 'Intro To Crosswords'—you want the Advanced Class, down the hall." I was thrilled to have a bit of a struggle and learn a new term, if briefly terrified that the crosses would suddenly fail me and I'd be left with a DNF on what had been, to that point, the easiest Thursday puzzle in the history of the universe. Actually, getting the "correct" answers was particularly reassuring, as AODAI is not a letter string that inspires confidence in an English speaker who is completely ignorant about Vietnamese fashion. "Am I spelling Maggie MAE right? Dear god I hope so." The coolness of ÁO DÀI is, sadly, completely offset by the horrificness of AIS, which crosses it. AIS is never going to fly as a plural. Delete it from your wordlists now, constructors, I'm begging you. First of all, no one wants AI in their crossword. It's being shoved down our throats in every other aspect of our lives, so it would be great if you could not aid and abet the sickening ubiquity, thanks. Also, AIS ... just look at it. On its face, a truly ugly three-letter answer. Detonate it now, you won't regret it.

As for the theme ... I like that the grouping is tight (i.e. the answers to the visual-madness clues are all articles of clothing). I don't think all themes require revealers, but this one probably could've used one simply because ... why? The articles of clothing are arbitrary. They seem to make a nearly-complete outfit, but ... whose? Why not do [Jerks] for HIGH HEELS, for instance?* There's no real logic to the items in clothing, and a clever revealer might've given a greater sense of coherence to the whole endeavor. Also, I'd probably keep all other clothing answers out of my clothing puzzle (sorry, TUXEDO, I know you're a cat, but you're obtrusive. Yeah, and take DIADEM with you). The actual visual trickery in the clues is pretty clever. But I'm having trouble believing in BACKWARDS CAP. I mean, you might wear your baseball cap backwards, sure, but a BACKWARDS CAP is not an article of clothing. It's just a cap ... that you have chosen (why, dudes, why?) to wear backwards. "Yes, excuse me, miss, does this store sell BACKWARDS CAPs?" You see what I mean. The backwardness is not intrinsic. You could, however, buy a CUT-OFF TEE or a MINISKIRT or STRIPED SOCKS, though you probably made your CUT-OFF TEE at home, and if you did, is that really what you call it? I think of "cut-off" as being for jeans and "crop(ped)" as being for shortened tees. A CUT-OFF TEE is a kind of "crop-top," isn't it? Is it? Anyway, those first two themers felt slightly less on-the-money than the second two, but I have to admit that I kinda liked working all the clothing answers out, so ... despite the disheartening easiness and the mild imperfections of the theme, I had a good time.

Bullets:

• 24A: Fish more formally known as a batomorph (RAY) — had the "R" and thought "ROE! ... wait, that's not a kind of fish, that's fish eggs. So ... R- ... R- ... Ruh-roh." And then it came to me. I grew up never thinking of RAY as a standalone word. It was always preceded by stuff like "manta" or "sting" and so RAY never leaps to mind when I see "fish." Just some dude's name.

[There was a brief time in the late '70s when this guy was a cultural phenomenon. No one remembers why. Future archaeologists and/or aliens are going to be like "what the f—?"]

• 46A: Legal boundaries? (ELS) — a "letteral" clue (referring to a letter (or letters) in the clue itself)—the ELS ("L"s) are the first and last letters (i.e. "boundaries") of the word "Legal." To someone who does cryptic crosswords literally every day (i.e. me), this clue is transparent.
• 8D: Philanthropic group with a clock face in its logo (ELKS) — I had no idea. I figured it just had an elk in its logo. Big building with BPOE (Benevolent and Protective Order of ELKS) written on it downtown, never noticed any logo or clock face. Let's have a look:

[Holy cow that is most definitely a clock face. "Elks: We Know What Time It Is!" "Elks: Closed from 5 to 7" "Elks: The Real Plural Is 'Elk,' We Know, We Know"]

• 9D: The so-called "pineapple isle" (LANAI) — thought maybe KAUAI. I was on Maui once and they definitely had pineapples there, too.
• 48D: Large-eyed African antelope with a duplicative name (DIK-DIK) — if this answer was as mysterious to you as ÁO DÀI, I understand. But as a longtime solver, my antelope lexicon is oddly vast (NYALA, ELAND, ORYX, ORIBI, etc.), and so DIK-DIK came to me quickly. Did you know that an auto rickshaw is called a TUK TUK (onomatopoetic for the sound of its two-stroke engine)? Well if not, now you know (TUK TUK = two previous NYTXW appearances) (DIK-DIK: five ... though this is the first in almost 50 years! I must've seen it in other puzzles...).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"heel" is another word for "jerk" in the sense of "bastard," "asshole," "rat," etc.  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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