Voltaire's penultimate play / SAT 7-11-26 / Bandleader who mentored Louis Armstrong / Statue in East Asian temples / Nookie nook? / G-rated verbal double-take / Julia Child catchphrase / Angsty feeling associated with exclusion / "Splendid" things in a Khaled Hosseini title / Target of a therapeutic tea bag / Boxing ring encouragement

Constructor: Jim Quinlan

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: KING OLIVER (3D: Bandleader who mentored Louis Armstrong) —

Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver (December 19, 1881 – c. April 10, 1938^:) was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style and his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. Also a notable composer, he wrote many tunes still played today, including "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz". He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong. His influence was such that Armstrong claimed, "if it had not been for Joe Oliver, jazz would not be what it is today." (wikipedia)

• • •

So many would-be Words of the Day today, which is to say, so many things I didn't know or barely knew, starting with KING OLIVER (embarrassing, since I own a bunch of Armstrong records and have a picture of Armstrong on my wall downstairs (on a movie poster) (The Beat Generation (1959))). He died in the late '30s, so maybe I shouldn't feel too bad, but still ... gap in knowledge, revealed. Another gap: IRENE. Voltaire's penultimate play? What was his ultimate play? His first play? What were literally any plays he wrote? What else did he write besides Candide? Legit LOL'd when I (finally) got IRENE. Oh, IRENE, of course, how could I forget, penultimate, yes, I thought maybe ultimate, but no, no, silly me. I don't know JOSS as anything but a stick (23A: Statue in East Asian temples). A JOSS stick? That's like incense, right? Well, yes, but it turns out that a JOSS stick is just a "stick" of incense that you burn before a JOSS, which is a Chinese idol: "A joss is an English term used to refer to a Chinese deity or idol. It generally describes a Chinese religious statue, object (such as joss paper), or idol in many Chinese folk religions." (wikipedia). I'm sure I've heard of the SAVANNAH BANANAS, but I forgot about them—certainly forgot about the BANANAS part. Luckily I knew the plot of Sweeney Todd, I'd actually read BOSSYPANTS (Tina Fey's autobiography) and I'd at least heard of A Thousand Splendid SUNS. I still haven't seen the APU TRILOGY (throw that on my Shame Pile with KING OLIVER), but it's very, very famous, so at least that didn't give me any trouble. Mostly I enjoyed how wide-ranging the fill was today, but yeah, it asks or some very specific, often proper noun-related knowledge today, so you gotta be a polymath or else fight a little. I fought a little.

I called Thursday's puzzle "Easy," which it very much was for me, but Apparently Not For Others, as I got yelled at a lot. Well, today, let me make it up to you by highlighting the very funny (to me) initial faceplant I did at the very beginning of this puzzle. First, a run-of-the-mill mistake:

But the first thing I did after AÇAI was check the "I" cross, and it wouldn't do anything with an "I" in the first position (4D: Greek counterpart of 12-Down). I then checked 12-Down ([Roman counterpart of 4-Down]). I thought then that maybe the Greek answer might be IOTA, but ... the Roman IOTA is just "I" so ... that was going nowhere. Out went AÇAI. Now what? Well, if you're thinking about four-letter words that are Greek/Roman equivalents of one another, there's only one answer! 

And LAIR "confirmed" it! Sigh. Turns out, there's not only one answer. There are two answers. At least. It's not like POKE bowl hadn't entered my mind, but I got so excited by the ARES/MARS find that I forgot all about POKE. Weirdly, the terminal "A" now made me think TUNA, which is a common POKE bowl ingredient. At any rate, comically inept start today as the wheels came off while the car was basically still in the garage. And then I ran immediately into KING OLIVER. So yeah, getting started today was something of a challenge. But once I got going, this felt like a pretty typical Saturday puzzle of recent vintage (that is, not as hard as the back-breaking Saturday puzzles of yore, back when the NYTXW absolutely did not care about your feelings, but kind of hard; new-era hard; modern hard; sufficiently hard for a Saturday in 2026).  

The marquee fill was very good today. OAHU, HAWAII is one of those geographical redundancies that always make me roll my eyes (see TEHRAN, IRAN, whenever that was ... recently), but everything else—all 11 of the other 10-letter answers—really pop. I enjoyed the crossing of FOMO and "I'M ALL ALONE"—gave the puzzle a really angsty, modern vibe. I object to the clue on "WHAT THE HEY?" (53A: G-rated verbal double-take). "WHAT THE HEY?" is more like "sure, why not? let's do it." There's a spirit of willingness, of gameness. The G-rated "double-take" (the thing you say when you can't believe what you just saw) is "WHAT THE HECK?" Also, I'm not sure LOVERS' LANE can plausibly be described as a "nook" (56: Nookie nook?). It's a lane. Is it not a literal lane? I think it's just a figurative term for any place you can park and make out. If you don't know what "nookie" is, ask your parents. Grandparents, actually. I think I learned it from '70s movies / TV. Maude? All in the Family? The satire of Marin County satire Serial (1980), which my family owned on laser disc in the '80s and watched a lot? Wherever I learned it, I know I didn't learn it from this alleged children's TV show from 1981:

Bullets:

• 16A: .08 for 49 of the 50 states (LEGAL LIMIT) — this clue is basically begging you to ask the question, "Which state has a different LEGAL LIMIT than all the others!?" I don't know, but I'm going to find out for you now. I thought maybe Wisconsin's would be higher ("Some of the drunkest counties in America are in Wisconsin and the state has 7 of the 10 U.S. cities with the highest alcohol consumption per capita."), but no. The one state that's different actually has a lower limit. It's Utah, at .05.

• 19A: Some docking helpers (TUGS) — I wanted USBS. Later, USBS actually turned up (28D: Some ports, for short). We call that a "malapop." I think Andrea Carla Michaels came up with that name. It's a phenomenon that happens more than you'd think. Or ... no, you probably know, since, if you're solving a Saturday, you probably solve a lot.
• 42A: Get out of Dodge (BOLT) — really thought this clue was doing some kind of wordplay and the answer was going to have something to do with disembarking from a car.
• 44D: Boxing ring encouragement ("GET 'EM!") — since the opponent you are telling the boxer to "get" is just one person, 'EM feels slightly wrong. But then "GET 'IM!" also feels wrong. Do people even say this at boxing matches? Kinda savage.
• 36D: Arkansas : Nebraska :: Argon : ___ (NEON) — one of my favorite clues in a while.  Bizarrely incongruous, and yet simple, elegant, perfect (AR : NE :: AR : NE)

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)