Clergyman known for his verbal gaffes / SUN 6-21-26 / Farm play area / Launch points in disc golf / Long, hooded cloak that's also an author's name / Debuted to stockholders, in Wall St. lingo / Hindu god with an elephant head / Physician specializing in reproductive health, informally / Mathematical constant equal to two times pi

Constructor: Hannah Slovut-Einertson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

[122D: "Star Wars" character whose species is never named]

THEME: "Big Draw" — apparently it's WORLD GIRAFFE DAY (???), and you get to celebrate the "big" animal by "drawing" it (76A: Annual June 21 celebration of the animal depicted in this puzzle by connecting the circled letters from A to T and back to A); additionally, there are seven more giraffe-related answers in the grid:

Theme answers:

• NECKING (21A: Fighting technique used by [circled letters] (as explained at 76-Across))
• "THAT'S A TALL ORDER" (67A: "Boy, you're asking too much" ... or what you might say after following the instructions at 76-Across?)
• SAVANNA (124A: Habitat for [circled letters])
• OKAPI (20D: Closing living relative of the [circled letters])
• TOWERS (39D: Term for groups of [circled letters])
• ACACIA (81D: Tree whose leaves are eaten by [circled letters])
• SPOTS (109D: Fur pattern on a [circled letters])

Word of the Day: Yani TSENG (25D: Golfer Yani) —

Yani Tseng (Chinese: 曾雅妮; pinyin: Zēng Yǎní; born 23 January 1989) is a Taiwanese professional golfer playing on the U.S.-based LPGA Tour. She is the youngest player ever, male or female, to win five major championships. She was ranked number 1 in the Women's World Golf Rankings for 109 consecutive weeks from 2011 to 2013. (wikipedia)

• • •

My actual feelings about this puzzle are more in two-star territory, but I want to give the puzzle credit for originality (i.e. weirdness), and for a few of the longer non-theme answers, which were strong and occasionally delightful (BEAR WITNESS, STORE CREDIT, "LEVEL WITH ME," COFFEE RUN). But the theme, yeah, no, what? What is even happening? Did people know this was a "Day"? Are you all "celebrating" this today? Is anyone? God love and preserve the giraffes of the world, but this is such (Such!) a weird puzzle to run on a day that is Notably A Holiday! A non-giraffe holiday. Unless your father is a giraffe, in which case ... wow, I have questions. Anyway, it's Father's Day. I don't need a Father's Day-themed puzzle, but to celebrate a different, and (I think it's safe to say) less popular "holiday" on Father's Day is bizarre. Not all bizarre things are bad, but this ... is child's placemat stuff. Connect the dots, draw a long-necked horsey. Mkay. Done and done, I guess, but why? It's not like there were any surprises here. There's one pun, which gives the theme a very (very) mild playfulness, but otherwise it's just giraffe trivia (mostly short answers you might see on any day), and then ... you draw. I knew I was dealing with a giraffe-related puzzle very early—as soon as I got OKAPI, in fact. At that point, I thought the "circled letters" were going to spell "GIRAFFE" somehow, so I got very confused as A B C D etc. started to show up. Eventually I realized that I was going to be asked to connect the circled squares in alphabetical order, which then made it pretty easy to find and fill in the circled squares. Here's what happened immediately after I grasped the connect-the-dots angle:

After this point, the puzzle was basically a tall and somewhat dull themeless. There are few things I like less than being asked to draw a picture on my puzzle when I'm done. Maybe the app did some cool giraffe-related animation, I dunno. Mine just sat there. Not that a graphic would've improved the solving experience. The puzzle isn't bad, it's just ... it's only interesting as a novelty. It has novelty dimensions. Wacky tallness. Beyond that, there's really not much to it. Oh, and one last thing about the theme, specifically the revealer clue: if you ask me to "connect the circled letters from A to T and back to A" (my emphasis), then I am going to assume that you want me to actually go back, i.e. retrace my steps, T to A (the long way). Just a little thought told me that my interpretation made no sense from a drawing perspective, but I still maintain that that instruction is clumsily worded.

Overall, it's a pretty easy puzzle. I had real trouble with TSENG / NOUN, and only wrote that "N" in at the very end. I still can't really accept that [Whatchamacallit] is NOUN. How? In the sense that any ... thing (whether you can remember its name or not) is a NOUN, I guess the clue is, at some basic level, accurate, but you'd never (ever) swap either of those words for the other. Absolutely insane cluing choice. My not knowing a golfer: not a surprise. My not knowing NOUN: strange. I had EYE-to-EYE before TOE-to-TOE (47A: Word on either side of "to"). Struggled with GANESHA because I really (really) thought the god was called simply GANESH ... which it is, though apparently GANESHA is the preferred / more common spelling (89A: Hindu god with an elephant head). It's the primary spelling at the wikipedia entry, at any rate. My trouble there was compounded by my uncertainty about neighboring ACES OUT (the "OUT" part, specifically) and by the tough clue on RANSOM, which crosses both of the aforementioned answers (78D: Price for a return, perhaps). I had ANNOY before ANGER (99D: Tick off). I've never heard of a CORN PIT and can barely imagine it. CORN MAZE? Sure. CORN PIT??? Weirdly, not an element of any farm I've ever seen. I assume they're real, or why would this answer be here, but ... yeah, I needed lots of crosses there. "BEATS ME!" I might've said (but didn't).


Bullets:

• 23A: Verify, as an editor (FACTCHECK) — I think of an editor and a factchecker as being separate jobs. I knew a factchecker for National Geographic, and she was not an editor. But I guess some editors do FACTCHECK, so, fine.
• 132A: Debuted to stockholders, in Wall St. lingo (WENT IPO) — awful. Just a horrible, ugly bit of "lingo." A total wordlist answer (i.e. one you use only because your software recommended it). No one wants this. 
• 106D: Small superhero whose catchphrase starts "Up and at 'em" (ATOM ANT) — had the first "A" and tried to make ANT MAN work, to no avail.
• 52D: R&B group Bell Biv ___ (DEVOE) — they were popular for precisely the years that I was in college. I don't remember hearing about them again after 1991. But they were pretty damn big in that '90-'91 window. I see now that they released other albums besides their massive 1990 debut (Poison). Bell Biv DEVOE (also known as "BBD," yes, really) was made up of three former members of the '80s boy band New Edition, whose other members included Ralph Tresvant, Johnny Gill, and (most famously) Bobby Brown. Bell Biv DEVOE are: Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, and Ronnie DeVoe. So, if you didn't know about Bell Biv DEVOE, well ... now you know.

• 53A: Long, hooded cloak that's also an author's name (CAPOTE) — ooh, I forgot this name had a sartorial angle. I think I knew that. But I also think I would've said it was something a bullfighter wore. No idea how my brain ever made that association. 
• 119A: Clergyman known for his verbal gaffes (SPOONER) — if you don't know the Reverend, then you have probably never solved a cryptic crossword in your life. Man, those setters (don't call them "constructors") love their spoonerisms. A "spoonerism"is when you transpose the first sounds of two-word phrases, so ... uh ... a "cakewalk" would be a "wake cock" ... that's not really a good example, but it's the first thing that came to mind, sorry / you're welcome.
• 110A: Common holder of pens (MUG) — yes. In fact there's a MUG holding pens (and pencils) on my desk right now. But I got a bit screwed up by the alphabetical sequencing of the circled letters and thought that there should be a "J" where the "M" should be, which resulted in a JAR holding the pens. And then, however improbably, a JUG.

That's all for today. Happy Father's Day to all who celebrate. If that's not you, well then, Happy WORLD GIRAFFE TODAY. Today's got something for everyone!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Dad's pop, perhaps / SAT 6-20-26 / Moment of high spirits? / Turnovers, but not crumpets / Jokey warning before diving into a niche topic / Destination for a day trip from Sorrento / Big name in lights / Website with a "Submit a Rumor" tab / ___ Howard, activist known as te "Mother of Pride" / Helen with the podcast "Go Fact Yourself" / Man's name whose first four letters spell a word describing its last letter / State-sponsored "wealth redistribution" scheme

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BRENDA Howard (21A: ___ Howard, activist known as the "Mother of Pride") —

[glaad.org]

Brenda Howard (December 24, 1946 – June 28, 2005) was an American bisexual rights activist and sex-positive feminist. The Brenda Howard Memorial Award is named for her. [...] A militant activist who helped plan and participated in LGBT rights actions for over three decades, Howard was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front^[2] and for several years chair of the Gay Activists Alliance's Speakers Bureau^[3] in the post-Stonewall era. A fixture in New York City's LGBT Community, Howard was active in the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights which helped guide New York City's Gay rights law through the City Council in 1986 as well as ACT UP and Queer Nation. (wikipedia)

• • •

[14D: One of a noted quintet]

This started out very hard, but that's often the way Saturdays start—with me just picking around for a while trying to find a seam I can grab hold of so that I can tear the lid off. For some reason I'm thinking of the jars of peanut butter we get, which come with a foil top under the regular jar lid and you have to pull it off but it's always an ordeal and then when you do find the little (very little) bit that you're supposed to pull on, you pull it and instead of taking the whole top off it just rips off in your hand and so you have to actually get a knife and run it along the edge of the jar to get the damn thing off. It's like that. I think various toiletries come with similar annoying foil covers—lotions and toothpastes and what not. Anyway, you hunt for the little bit that will give you some leverage and then you pull and hope for the best. Today, I hunted all over the NW and got nothing. Well, I kinda thought CAPRI might be right (1D: Destination for a day trip from Sorrento), but otherwise, nothing. First thing in the grid that I was certain about was SPOT (20A: Be prepared to take a weight off someone's shoulders?), which probably should've given me ONION (7D: Bulb that becomes translucent when heated), but it didn't, so I decamped for the NE, which was much friendlier. Despite knowing neither STAR (??) (10D: Big name in lights) or BRENDA, I got into the NE via TIMER, WIDEST (I knew it was an -EST, at least), and STAT (26A: Turnovers, but not crumpets). And then the big breakthrough, GREAT LAKE (14D: One of a noted quintet)—which is where I will be in exactly five days: Lake Huron, the last lake on our annual summer GREAT LAKE vacation adventure (Michigan 2022, Superior 2023, Erie 2024, Ontario 2025, Huron 2026). Not sure if we're gonna embark on some new collection of places to visit, or if we're just gonna accept that Superior is superior and go there every summer. Either way, we get to see my best friends every summer, which is the point. Actually, the point point is our moving to Minnesota to live in the same city (if not the same neighborhood) as my best friends, but that's another story ... where was I? GREAT LAKE! It helped me get started. Helped me greatly. Pretty soon I was here:

[WHOO? Oh, right, I had SHOO and hadn't yet fixed the whole thing (39D: "Get outta here!" = "WHOA!"—a statement of disbelief, not a command to leave)]

Once the middle was sorted, I had access to all the remaining corners, and while the NW remained the toughest (I had to come in through the back ends of answers, which is always harder than coming in through the front), the whole puzzle got a lot easier. SW went down in Tuesday fashion, and SE wasn't much tougher, although HONG (?) forced me to work a little (56A: Helen with the podcast "Go Fact Yourself"), as did the tough (and clever) clue on TOAST (49D: Moment of high spirits?) ("high" as in "lifted," as in "Raise a glass...!"). I also took a while to commit to SEA DRAGON down there because it sounds fictional (60A: Creature whose appendages allow it to camouflage in masses of kelp). But no, it's real alright.

As for that pesky NW, even after I got going in there, I still had trouble with ___ CANNON (I wanted TEE, since I've only ever heard them called "T-shirt cannons") and ___ POINT (17A: That's not the whole story!) (I thought maybe "story" was being used punnily to refer to a level of a building ... which actually did happen elsewhere in the puzzle: 23D: Stories of college students? (DORM). I like that Katie wrote NOT MY FINEST WORK right across the middle of this puzzle—funny bit of self-deprecation. It's probably not her finest work, but it's very good. Colorful and varied answers, no real moments of wincing, and enough bite to make things interesting.

Mistakes? Besides the ones I've already covered, not many. SHOO before WHOA (39D: "Get outta here!"). AIR before ACT (4D: What one might put on to impress others). HELM before DESK (55D: Anchor position). I thought maybe Helen HUNT had a podcast I hadn't heard about (56A: Helen with the podcast "Go Fact Yourself" = HONG). We have to know podcasters now? But there are Sooooooo Many, ugh. If I needed a HONG (that wasn't just [___ Kong]), I think I'd've gone with HONG Chau, whose presence in a movie is one of the most reliable indicators that I will see said movie. I would not have thought that was true until just now, but when I looked at her filmography, I realized I'd seen five of her last eight movies (The Menu, Showing Up, Asteroid City, Wuthering Heights, The Sheep Detectives). She got an Academy Award nomination for The Whale, which I never saw. She's never been in the puzzle, neither as HONG nor as CHAU. She should be a name double threat! Like ISAO AOKI, but for the 21st century.

["We gel!"]

Bullets:

• 34A: Soprano Fleming (RENÉE) — a very helpful gimme. She gave me the "R" for the other name in the middle of the grid, which had a much more elaborate (and funnier) clue (34D: Man's name whose first four letters spell a word describing its last letter = RINGO). I don't normally like these non-specific clues that ask you to drop or add or move letters around to figure them out, but this one was different. Sufficiently clever, such that I wasn't annoyed. My first thought for a man's name in five letters starting with "R" was ROGER, but then I was like "'how does 'ROGE' describe 'R'?" (Later, ROGER actually showed up (51D: "Got it")). Cryptic crosswords have primed me to think "O" when I see "ring," so this clue felt very comfy.
• 62A: N.B.A. analyst Burke (DORIS) — I don't follow pro sports too closely any more but I still know who DORIS Burke is. Big name in basketball commentary. She's got a lot of "First woman to ..." credits and is just a well respected analyst generally.

• 43A: ___ Ewbank, Hall-of-Fame football coach (WEEB) — the puzzle does get a little name-y (seven people, plus ROGER and RINGO), and this is probably the crosswordesiest of them all. I wrote in WEEB thinking "it's WEEB, right? Really, WEEB? But yeah ... I think so." It's a name I know solely from doing crosswords lo these many years. He coached the Jets to their one and only Super Bowl ... the year I was born. Reading about him just now led me to discover that there was a game he coached in that's famous enough to have a name: The Heidi Game. How in the world does a professional football game end up named after a 19th-century children's novel about a five-year-old girl? Well ... funny story:

The Heidi Game was a 1968 American Football League (AFL) game between the Oakland Raiders and the visiting New York Jets. The contest, held on November 17, 1968, was notable for its exciting finish, in which Oakland scored two touchdowns in the final minute to win the game 43–32. However, NBC, the game's television broadcaster, decided to break away from its coverage on the East Coast to broadcast the television film Heidi, which caused many viewers to miss the Raiders' comeback. (wikipedia)

• 6D: Website with a "Submit a Rumor" tab (SNOPES) — TMZ wouldn't fit, and so I was out of ideas until I got a few crosses.
• 31D: Fair weather followers (SNOWBIRDS) — we get a lot of these in the NE—retirees (mostly) who leave for warmer climes during the colder months but come back to the NE for the summers and the notably gorgeous falls. And here I am planning to retire to Minnesota. Is there a cute avian name for those of us who want to spend our later years in the freezing cold of Minnesota? LOONS?

That's all for today. See you next time. Happy last day of spring!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Wait, CREAM SODA is "Dad's pop"!? Man, I have really entered old man territory, I guess. I love the stuff. You're missing out, kids.

P.P.S. I’m being told that “Dad’s” refers to the brand of soda, and not the fact that only old men drink it. Ok. CREAM SODA *does* seem old-fashioned, as soda types go. Also, I was not aware that Dad’s made any soda besides root beer. 

[Got this one at a bagel shop in NYC at the end of a hot day. Delicious]

   

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Sudden reversal of fortune, in literature / FRI 6-19-26 / Twin city? / Companion of Ash and Misty in Pokémon anime / Willie ___, first Black player in the N.H.L. / Cut of beef used in Santa Maria-style barbecue / Chinese revolutionary Sun ___ / Cold one enjoyed during a hot wash / Guitarist who played the first-ever rock concert at the Sistine Chapel / Terrorizer of Amity Island, in a 1975 blockbuster film / Mushroom named for its resemblance to a body part

Constructor: Jack Hatchett

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PERIPETEIA (10D: Sudden reversal of fortune, in literature) —

Peripeteia (/ˌpɛrəpɪˈteɪ.ə/, peripety, alternative Latin form: Peripetīa, ultimately from Greek: περιπέτεια) is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point, within a work of literature. // Aristotle, in his Poetics, defines peripeteia as "a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, subject always to our rule of probability or necessity." According to Aristotle, peripeteia, along with discovery, is the most effective when it comes to drama, particularly in a tragedy. He wrote that "The finest form of Discovery is one attended by Peripeteia, like that which goes with the Discovery in Oedipus...". (wikipedia)

• • •

Yeesh, what day is it? I thought it was Friday [checks date on computer screen] Ah, I see it is Friday. Huh. Well, this one was harder than most recent Saturdays for me, so I don't know what the heck was going on. Maybe just a wavelength thing. And yet ... I don't know. So many things in this puzzle seem legitimately tough, or toughly clued. We can start with PERIPETEIA, a word that I, a teacher of "literature," have never used in my decades-long career. A word I never hear. A word that really, really, really could've used "Aristotle" somewhere in its clue (the term comes explicitly from Aristotle's Poetics and relates specifically to Aristotle's ideas about tragedy). If you'd just said "per Aristotle," then at least I might've known we were looking for a Greek word. But I was looking for a much more ordinary word, certainly one I might have come across many times in my life, whether it relates to my own teaching or not. But no. This feels like a wordlist word. Something your software suggests, and that works and so you go with it. Unless I have gone completely through the looking glass, it's not an everyday word, or even an every other day word for most people. PERIPETEIA created all kinds of problems, because it made it harder to see that damned mushroom, whose name I've heard of but totally forgot, and harder to get THE, which I had as "AHA!" (?) (32A: Off-grid connection?). I knew the French director was RENÉ Clair, but -HE seemed impossible for the clue. It wasn't til very late in the game, when THE seemed undeniable, that I understood its clue. "Off THE grid." THE is the "connection" between "off" and "grid." Sigh. Good one. You got me. You got me, PERIPETEIA, you got me, WOOD EAR, you got me THE. THE! Upended by a definite article. Not my finest hour.

But that wasn't my only trouble spot. I dropped THAW and "I'M UP" and IRE in right away in the NW and still couldn't see TRITIP (I kept wanting some kind of STRIP) (1A: Cut of beef used in Santa Maria-style barbecue), and W-P- looked impossible (despite WEPT being very very possible), and as for parsing HOME-RUN TROT, forget it, not with that clue (13A: Field trip?). Eventually had the TROT part and still was like "how many TROTs are there? There's TURKEY TROT, and ... ???" The worst thing up there, though, in terms of difficulty, was ROME. I was done with the puzzle and still had no idea how ROME was a [Twin city?]. I actually googled [Rome twin] and the results gave me my one real "D'oh!" moment of the day: ROME was (legendarily) founded by twins, specifically Romulus and Remus. At least I assume that's what that clue is after. If it's not, well then I'm still in the dark. 

The difficulty continued down below, with SHOWER BEER, a thing I've never heard of and could not parse, even after I had SHOWER B- (47A: Cold one enjoyed during a hot wash). Then there was the laughable clue on BROCK (45A: Companion of Ash and Misty in Pokémon anime). This could've been any five letters of the alphabet. The idea that my knowledge of the Pokéverse has to go this deep is absurd. Human beings have the name BROCK. Lou BROCK was a Hall-of-Fame baseball player, for instance (6x All Star, 8x stolen bases leader, 3,000+ career hits). But no, we get some random Pokémon character. OK. That SE corner also had the very toughly clued BANK SHOT (35D: What might go off the rails?) (the "rails" are the edges of a pool table). Then there was the end. The very end. The last square. O'REE, LOL, no hope. I know that that name has been in the puzzle before, and I've said "no hope" before, but what can I say, here we are again.* I was staring down ORE- and had already left that last vowel in Sun YAT-S-N blank because I wasn't 100% sure (60A: Chinese revolutionary Sun ___). And so after all that struggle, I found myself hurtling toward Natick—a gaping vowel hole at the intersection of two proper nouns of limited fame. Now before you squawk about Sun YAT-SEN being legitimately famous, I know, I agree, I kinda sorta remember his name from some bygone World History class. He's a major historical figure. But that second vowel, yeesh. Dicey. I said his name in my head and it really felt like "SEN," and O'REE rang a faint bell, so I went with it (51D: Willie ___, first Black player in the N.H.L.). And was rewarded with the "Congratulations" message. A hard-earned victory. A Saturday victory. Or else I'm just off my game and everything in this puzzle is normal Friday fare, which is absolutely possible. Sometimes you just hit a wavelength snag and down you go ...

I enjoyed the challenge more than anything today, despite the fact that it was completely unexpected and maybe excessive for a Friday. HOME RUN TROT over AMUSE-BOUCHE is a nice combo, and FISH 'N' CHIPS crossing PUB FARE worked nicely as well. I like baseball, I like eating, this is good. This almost makes up for the Pokémon. I was lucky that the names today were familiar (well, besides O'REE and BROCK, that is). Not just THOMAS PAINE, but the pop culture names as well: JOHN WOO is famous for his '90s Hong Kong "gun ballet" movies (Gun fu—put that in your puzzle and smoke it!) (8D: Director of "Face/Off" and "Mission: Impossible II"). THE EDGE is the lead guitarist for U2 (37D: Guitarist who played the first-ever rock concert at the Sistine Chapel). Condolences to everyone wondering who this Mr. THEEDGE was (The THEEDGE! Sounds Seussian!). THE EDGE is featured in the recent ENO documentary, which I watched just two days ago. That is, he was in the version I saw—"The film uses a computer program to select footage and edit the film so that a different version is shown each time it is screened" (wikipedia). ENO co-produced U2's The Unforgettable Fire, and there's footage of all of them writing / recording "Pride (In The Name of Love)," which is pretty remarkable. I guess the big news here for crossword lovers is ... there's an ENO documentary. One iteration is currently playing on The Criterion Channel. Here's your chance to learn all about that guy who's been dancing around your crossword puzzles all these years. He's a fascinating figure. 

Bullets:

• 54A: "That sounds brave ... but very stupid!" ("DON'T BE A HERO") — really resent the "but very stupid!" part of this clue. It's one thing for a venture to be too risky, and quite another for it to be downright "stupid." Was this clue written after a SHOWER BEER? It sounds like it.

• 57A: One concerned with transparency in the workplace? (GLASS BLOWER) — this wasn't hard, but it felt ... only minimally accurate. So much blown glass is not, in fact, transparent.

• 36A: Skater who lit the Olympic cauldron in 1998 (ITO) — Midori ITO, Japanese figure skater who lit the Olympic cauldron at the 1998 winter games in Nagano, Japan. I saw "skater," had the terminal "O," and wrote in ... ONO. I corrected this mistake quickly, but it was still a stupid mistake. First of all, his name is Apolo OHNO (like the exclamation!). Second, OHNO did not win his first Olympic medals until 2002. 
• 33A: Former attorney general Bill (BARR) — between this guy and the idea of a military parade going through an ARCH (such as the one the current president is hoping to build, in honor of himself, I presume), I think this puzzle could've made better cluing choices. Less repulsive cluing choices.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*I was wrong: I've never seen O'REE in the NYTXW before. Today is the first time O'REE has appeared in sixty years! Weird. I know I've seen his name in at least one puzzle before ... just not the NYTXW, I guess.  

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Mind-reading scan, in a way / THU 6-18-26 / Bona fide numbskull / Employee after working hours, on "Severance" / Chemical agent used to make frosted glass / Follower of "4" on a love note / Adrenaline surge providers / Big name in archery equipment / Chemical agent used to make frosted glass

Constructor: Scott Hogan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: remedial cryptic clues — theme clues are words referred to (cryptically) by the answers themselves:

Theme answers:

• BROADWAY OPENING (17A: Bro?) ("Bro" is the "opening" part of the word BROADWAY)
• VISITOR CENTER (35A: Sit?) ("Sit" is the "center" part of the word VISITOR)
• FAIRYTALE ENDING (54A: Ale?) ("Ale" is the "ending" part of the word FAIRYTALE)

Word of the Day: FMRI (52A: Mind-reading scan, in a way) —

Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled: When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region increases. (wikipedia)

• • •

A very easy puzzle where you never really had to figure out the theme if you didn't want to because the crosses were easy enough that it didn't matter. I'm not sure I ever saw the clue for the last two themers. In a puzzle like this, with completely inscrutable theme clues. I just hack at the short stuff and wait for something to happen. Today, the short stuff, and most of the longer (non-theme) stuff came very easily, like it was Tuesday, and so despite having no idea what was going on with the theme for a long while, I was able to move through the grid really easily. Here's a snapshot of my initial travels:

It's possible that I got a turbo boost there at the beginning because I just happened to remember that line from Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" about the SEDGE (5D: "The ___ is wither'd from the lake": Keats). The poem opens like this:

[poetryfoundation.org]

SEDGE is a weird enough word that, as you can see, the poetryfoundation website has helpfully highlighted it (if you click on it, you get a definition; in this case: "Grasslike or rushlike plant that grows in wet areas"). I used the SEDGE as a catapult ... although looking at it now, it didn't give me that much. I think OUTIE probably did more to propel me into the puzzle (14A: Employee after working hours, on "Severance"). At any rate, starting was easy, and once I got going, as you can see, I just drifted right across the grid, top to bottom, no problem. I was probably half done or more before I finally inferred the OPENING part of BROADWAY OPENING, and then ... that was pretty much it. I do cryptic crosswords every day, so this kind of self-referential way of referring to letter strings (today, "bro" "sit" "ale") is really familiar to me. What we get today is basically a clue/answer reversal—the clue is the indicated letter string ("Bro," etc.), and the answer acts as the cryptic clue for that letter string. It's a cute idea, but would not be very theme-worthy were it not for the progression that the puzzle sets up: OPENING, CENTER, ENDING. That gimmick gives the theme some much-needed coherence. The execution of the theme is neat and elegant. Not dazzling, but ... tidy. Would've been nicer if the puzzle had had teeth, if it had made getting those themers more of a battle by making the fill more challenging. But maybe this was the kind of thing where people really Really needed to be given ample opportunity to get those themers from crosses. Maybe the theme remained indecipherable to some people even after they'd completed it. Seems possible. If you had to come here to understand the theme, that doesn't make you a CLASS-A MORON, a term which I don't believe exists in the first place (surely if you really felt you needed to insult someone like this, you'd say GRADE-A, not CLASS-A). Apparently 30 Rock popularized the CLASS-A version, since it's all I'm seeing when I google it (there's an episode where the Post calls Jack a CLASS-A MORON). I never really watched 30 Rock, but I did watch the Simpsons, a lot, which (maybe) explains my ears' preference for GRADE A:

Though the puzzle was very easy today, there were several things I didn't know. [Big name in archery equipment]?? I don't even know a small name in archery equipment. Why would I or any non-archer have any idea about brands of archery equipment? The only HOYT I know is HOYT Wilhelm (although wow, if you google "Hoyt" it's archery as far as the eye can see). Now that I think of it, bowhunting is a reasonably popular pastime, so maybe the name is more familiar than I think; just not to me. Also unfamiliar to me: the answer directly next door to HOYT: ONO (8D: Fuyumi ___, author of the "Twelve Kingdoms" fantasy novels). Fantasy novels, like archery, not part of my daily existence, though I do read a reasonable amount and am in bookstores not infrequently, so I'm slightly surprised the name doesn't ring a bell. You'd think adjacent proper-noun unknowns might derail me, but nope, inferring both was easy. I also have no idea what the depressing-sounding Beautiful Boy is, so METH took some work (43A: Downfall of the boy in 2018's "Beautiful Boy," in brief) (spoiler alert!). METH, like fantasy novels and archery, also not part of my daily existence, though movies definitely are, so ... Beautiful Boy? (starring Steve Carell? Timmy C?!). Not sure how, but it missed me. 2018? What even was 2018? Feels like a fictional year. FMRI was the last of my mystery answers. Thankfully, the "F" cross was fair, otherwise, yikes, not sure how I would have come up with that "F"—had to look up what it stood for (see "Word of the Day," above).

Bullets:

• 36D: Chill way to take things (IN STRIDE) — big frowny face next to this one. Without "take (it)," this looks ridiculous.
• 3D: Absolut alternatives (STOLIS) — look, I'll give you one plural brand name like this per puzzle, but I will not give you two. Sorry, PEPSIS (9D: Colas in the "cola wars").
• 19D: Chemical agent used to make frosted glass (ETCHANT) — what are we doing here? ETCHANT should make you strongly reconsider tearing the grid down and starting over. Longer answers should not be wasted on obscurities. The "frosted glass" part of the glue had me briefly considering ETCH ART, but that didn't sound very "chemical agent"-y.
• 27A: Word rhymed with "flash" in "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (SASH) — one of the first poems I ever knew by heart, or close to it. I certainly don't know it by heart now, but I remember that my mom read it to me many times when I was very young. It's almost certainly the first place I ever heard "SASH" used in this way (in reference to windows). The lines in question are: "Away to the window I flew like a flash, / Tore open the shutters and threw up the SASH." The poem also famously contains the complete list of non-Rudolph reindeer:

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

• 38A: Alfred ___, co-creator of the original I.Q. test (BINET) — ah, the eugenicists' favorite test. Did you know that "moron" used to refer to those with an I.Q. score between 51 and 70 (one step up from "imbecile"!). I'm not sure if a CLASS A MORON is a higher or lower scoring moron. Might be one of those golf-type situations where lower is better (i.e. more moronic). If I never saw another I.Q. or MENSA clue again, I would not mind at all.
• 58A: Follower of "4" on a love note ("EVER") — the "4" (for "For") had me thinking the latter part would also be funnily "spelled," so I was like "4 EVAH?"

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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