Trendy sneaker brand / WED 7-29-26 / 2025 Ron Howard survival thriller / Fishy Hawaiian dish / Chips with a "Blue Heat" flavor / Drinks that may be prepared with a steam wand / Home of County Donegal

Constructor: Emily Biegas and Sala Wanetick

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "VENI, VIDI, VICI" (58A: Classic quotation that might be said by 20-, 34- and 41-Across?) — people who "came," "saw," and "conquered," respectively (the "classic quotation" is Caesar's, of course, and its English translation can be found in the first two words of each clue, taken collectively and sequentially): 

Theme answers:

• PARTY-CRASHER (20A: I came uninvited)
• NOSTRADAMUS (34A: I saw the future)
• KEN JENNINGS (41A: I conquered "Jeopardy!" for 74 days straight)

Word of the Day: EDEN (65A: 2025 Ron Howard survival thriller) —

Eden is a 2024 American historical survival thriller film directed by Ron Howard and written by Noah Pink, from a story by the pair.^[4] It stars Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney, Daniel Brühl, Felix Kammerer, Toby Wallace, and Richard Roxburgh. The film is based on the true story of several European settlers, including Margret Wittmer, who arrive on the isolated Floreana Island, in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, pre-World War II, hoping to start a life there.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2024, and was released theatrically in Germany on April 2, 2025, by Leonine, and in the United States by Vertical on August 22, 2025. The film received mixed reviews from critics. [...] Following its releases in Germany and Italy, the film grossed a total of $825,041.

In the United States and Canada, the film made $1 million from 664 theaters in its opening weekend.

• • •

The theme gets points for being strange and original, conceptually, but loses points for having the themer set be so completely arbitrary. I think KEN JENNINGS is the strangest. I get that you all love that that show and that guy, but as an avatar of "I conquered," generally??? Of all the people who ever "conquered" anything, that's the choice? For this puzzle's audience, maybe that's the right call. Red meat. For me, that choice seemed bizarre. But it's got an unexpectedness and wackiness that I can appreciate, even if it's not really my VIBE (unlike the vast majority of puzzle people I know, I don't watch the show, but go to any crossword tournament and it seems like half the people there have been on the show, and half of them were champions). There's a kookiness factor that keeps this one from being boring. The fill could've been (much) better. RES ASEA REORG ALFA and on and on with the overfamiliar old stuff, all the way down to OCHRE, EIRE, and SNES (still the ugliest abbreviation I know) (stands for "Super NES" ... the "NES" stands for "Nintendo Entertainment System"). There's also EDEN, which provided a high/low point today with its (to me) hilarious clue (65A: 2025 Ron Howard survival thriller). "Hilarious" in that I was like "Ron Howard directed what now???" If that movie fell in the forest, I'm pretty sure it made no sound. Did it even get released here. Wikipedia says it made $2.8 million, but that's against a budget of $55 million!! What the hell happened? I want to say "it bombed" but as someone who pays reasonably close attention to movies, I think it's more accurate to say "it never showed up." Cluing EDEN via such an extremely, comically unsuccessful movie—a real choice. I once clued FLORENCE PUGH via Don't Worry, Darling (which had recently come out, with a lot of hype and controversy surrounding it) and the editor (whom I adore) changed it to a clue about a f***ing Marvel movie (Black Widow), and I still haven't gotten over it. If the editors changed the EDEN clue to this, that's a crime. Of course, if the clue was the constructors' own ... sometimes it's better not to try to be creative and original and contemporary, is what I'm saying. EDEN is crosswordese. Just ... make the clue innocuous and move on.

The one notable bit of fill today, from where I'm sitting, is HOKA, a brand I've been waiting to show up in the NYTXW for years now (21D: Trendy sneaker brand). From where I was literally sitting, yesterday, in the cafe I got to most mornings, I was noticing a guy's HOKA shoes and thinking about this very thing: how trendy they are, and how I still hadn't seen HOKA in the grid. I mean, with that "K," HOKA is never gonna reach EDEN or EIRE or ASEA levels of crossword prominence, but it could do some damage. Might have legs. Any new four-letter answer is likely to have some kind of life ... and afterlife. Just ask ASTA. Gone but not forgotten (by crossword solvers).

I can imagine some of the proper nouns giving some solvers trouble here and there (HOKA, TAKIS ... EDEN, lol), but otherwise this seemed very easy. Four-letter repeater after four-letter repeater. Some three-letter repeaters. Some five-letter repeaters. A lot of repeaters. I like the AVOCADO / RIPENED pairing, for obvious reasons, and KEGELS gave the grid a little unexpected squeeze. I wrote in PUPU before POKE (40A: Fishy Hawaiian dish). I don't think I knew TAKIS were considered "chips" (31D: Chips with a "Blue Heat" flavor). I thought they were more like ... sticks. Wait, am I getting them confused with that Japanese snack ... lol yes, POCKY! (rhymes with TAKI?)

But, in my defense, actual TAKIS really are stick-shaped:

But since the sticks are made out of rolled tortilla chips, I guess "chips" is an accurate descriptor after all.

Bullets:

• 32D: Name inside of a libretto? (BRETT) — literally, inside the word "li-BRETT-o"
• 58D: Get on (with) (VIBE) — I was thinking of the phrase "get on with it!" and so the verb meaning of "VIBE (with)" didn't occur to me until I got a couple crosses.
• 55D: "Soup's on!" ("DIG IN!") — these seem like completely different statements: one you say to call everyone to the table, and the other you say after everyone's seated. For this reason, I think, my brain kept shouting "DIN-DIN!" — which is what you might say in order to call someone (or, say, a cat) to dinner. "DIN-DIN!" wouldn't fit, of course, but I still think it's a nearer equivalent to "Soup's on!" than "DIG IN!" is.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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