Hall-of-Fame hoopster Thomas / MON 7-6-26 / Modern lead-in to coin or stock / Temporary suspensions / Cybertruck maker / European capital that's home to the Little Mermaid statue / Muppet with a noted feud with a pet rock / Instrument played by a Muse / Event that might include juggling, singing and magic tricks / 2009 comedy about a bachelor party and its aftermath / Steve ___, 2003 N.F.L. M.V.P.-winning quarterback / 1960s Pontiac muscle car / Serpent seen on a sarcophagus

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: VOICE PARTS (56A: Sections of a choir ... as hinted at by this puzzle's circled letters) — the circled letters contain the voice parts ALTO, BASS, SOPRANO, and TENOR, respectively. I think (maybe???) the fact that the circled letters are non-consecutive is supposed to indicate "parting" in some way—like, the voices have been chopped into "parts" or been "parted" from one another (!?); otherwise, I'm not sure what the revealer is doing besides telling me something I can already clearly see for myself, i.e. that the circled letters contain voice parts:

Theme answers:

• TALENT SHOW (17A: Event that might include juggling, singing and magic tricks)
• BLANK STARES (24A: Looks of total confusion)
• STOP, DROP AND ROLL (36A: Three-part fire safety technique)
• THE HANGOVER (46A: 2009 comedy about a bachelor party and its aftermath)

Word of the Day: Chappell ROAN (37D: Singer Chappell with the double-platinum album "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess") —

Kayleigh Rose Amstutz (born February 19, 1998), known professionally as Chappell Roan ([...]CHAP-əl ROHN), is an American singer and songwriter. She is known for her camp and drag queen–influenced style.

After signing to Amusement Records—in partnership with Island Records—in 2023, Roan released her debut studio album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. The next year, Roan achieved global recognition with the single "Good Luck, Babe!", which reached number four on the US Billboard Hot 100 and became an international top-five single. The song's popularity led to a resurgence of her debut album, which became a sleeper hit and peaked at number two on the US Billboard 200. It yielded the multi-platinum single "Hot to Go!", while her 2020 single, "Pink Pony Club", reached number one on the UK singles chart. In 2025, Roan won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist and earned her second UK number-one single with "The Subway". (wikipedia)

• • •

I was kind of high on the puzzle coming out of the NW, before I knew what the theme was. The fill felt fresh—I ran GALAPAGOS, SONGBIRD, and COPENHAGEN in pretty short order: a strong triad. But then I saw the theme, which is to say, I saw the ALTO in TALENT SHOW, and that ... was that? I had the first few circled squares of the next two themers and proceeded to just write in every voice part I could think of (without looking at the Across clues, of course):

The puzzle gave the game away too quickly. But I figured at least I might get a good revealer out of it, something to make all the non-consecutive circles make sense (non-consecutive circles that spell out things not being much of a feat on their own). What I got, by way of revealer, was VOICE PARTS, which, if it doesn't involve wordplay, is painfully literal and obvious and unnecessary (yes, those are VOICE PARTS, please tell me something I don't know), and if it does involve wordplay ... I'm not totally sure I understand it. The clue for VOICE PARTS says that it's "hinted at" by the circled letters, and "hinted" implies something more than simple literal description. But the wordplay ... what is "PARTS" supposed to suggest? That the voice parts have been broken into ... parts? That the letters that make up the voice parts have been ... parted from one another? A very unstuck landing, this revealer. So what might've been a 3-star puzzle gets dropped to 2.5 stars for the wobbly revealer. I considered raising it back to three because the fill was actually above average, on the whole, but then I was forced to take the half star back because of TEHRAN, IRAN, an incredibly dumb redundancy (10D: Capital city between Baghdad, Iraq, and Ashgabat, Turkmenistan). TEHRAN, IRAN? What else is it gonna be, TEHRAN, SWEDEN? The totally unnecessary attachment of the country at the end of that answer earned a red card from me. And sorry, that decision is final, no appeals. Also, seeing plural APRS yet again (twice in two days??) didn't help. Also, don't park your stupid Cybertruck in my puzzle and expect anything more than a middling to negative review (6D: Cybertruck maker). That's two days in a row of including that white supremacist buffoon in the puzzle. Enough already. I ignored it yesterday, but yeesh. Neither TESLA nor ELON requires you to point to that guy. Please stop. 

The Downs-only solve was pretty dang smooth, aided as it was by all those free (circled) squares that the theme just handed to me. I had some trouble with TEHRAN, IRAN because wtf (see above), but not much trouble. My only real holdup was a dumb mistake: I wrote in TELE- instead of MEME at 45D: Modern lead-in to coin or stock. "Lead-in" had me thinking prefix and ... I dunno, maybe "telecoin" is a thing now. So many other dumb things are "coins," why shouldn't there be a telecoin? But the "T" and "L" from TELE really made the Acrosses lock up. Ended up with POLEL- and TCN-IR and it doesn't take a genius to see that those weren't going to work, so I looked to see which of my Down answers might be wrong and while at first I thought it might be DECREPIT (38D: Dilapidated), a second look made it clear it was TELE-. So, TELE- to MEME to victory, as MORATORIA finally fell into place (34D: Temporary suspensions).

Bullets:

• 15A: Muppet with a noted feud with a pet rock (ELMO) — "noted"? I see that yes, indeed, it has been noted. ELMO did not exist when I was a kid, so I still think of him the same way I think of the Jacksonville Jaguars—basically, he's an expansion Muppet. And since my daughter never watched Sesame Street (that I can remember) I've been blissfully unaware of whatever that annoyingly-voiced baby-talking puppet gets up to. But the pet rock thing has apparently been going on for over a quarter century, and there's even a book about this so-called "feud," so ... the clue is valid. Also, hats off to the EMO / ELMO cross. If you're having a "feud" with a pet rock ... yeah, you might be EMO. Ask your doctor. 

• 19A: ___ wave (summer phenomenon) (HEAT) — topical. Maybe too topical. NYC had a record-setting HEAT wave just this past week. The added presence of HUMID today (47D: Like sticky summer weather) made it feel like the puzzle was just rubbing it in.
• 39D: Instrument played by a Muse (LYRE) — had my typical LUTE/LYRE confusion here, which made the SE section (already gummed up by my TELE-for-MEME error) even dicier. 
• 35D: Basic skateboarding trick (OLLIE) — this was a gimme; it's in the crossword all the time. But today, perhaps because the puzzle was so name-y, I noticed how OLLIE was clued as a trick and not a name, and then I thought about how, before it was a skateboarding trick (first clued that way in 2011), OLLIE used to be clued as either one half of the comedy duo Laurel & Hardy (Stan Laurel and Oliver aka OLLIE Hardy) or as one part of the comedy trio Kukla, Fran & OLLIE (OLLIE was a dragon—also, a puppet, as was Kukla; Fran was just a regular human lady). OLLIE Hardy appears now only sporadically (as Stan's partner) and we haven't seen OLLIE the puppet dragon since 2015. Both old comedy OLLIEs were before my time, but ... I dunno, I kind of miss them. Skateboarding shmateboarding, I want my puppet dragon and/or bowler-wearing big guy!

[Did Tootsie Roll MINTEES ever catch on???]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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