Sport similar to pétanque / FRI 8-21-26 / Leader in a robe called a kasaya / Jazz musician Jamal / Coupling rings? / Losing control emotionally, in slang / First filmmaker to receive the Order of Culture in Japan / One-named pop star with Monkey Puzzle Records / ___ Crosley, author of 2008's "I Was Told There'd Be Cake"

Constructor: Adryel W. Robles Ojeda

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: AHMAD Jamal (33D: Jazz musician Jamal) —

Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones; July 2, 1930 – April 16, 2023) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For six decades, he was one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. He was a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master and won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy for his contributions to music history. [...] Trained in both traditional jazz ("American classical music", as he preferred to call it) and European classical style, Jamal was praised as one of the greatest jazz innovators over the course of his exceptionally long career. Following bebop greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Jamal entered the world of jazz at a time when speed and virtuosic improvisation were central to the success of jazz musicians as artists. Jamal, however, took steps in the direction of a new movement, later coined "cool jazz"—an effort to move jazz in the direction of classical music. He emphasized space between notes in his musical compositions and interpretations instead of focusing on the fast-paced bebop style. // Because of this style, Jamal was "often dismissed by jazz writers as no more than a cocktail pianist, a player so given to fluff that his work shouldn't be considered seriously in any artistic sense".^[48] Stanley Crouch, author of Considering Genius, offered a very different reaction to Jamal's music, claiming that, like the highly influential Thelonious Monk, Jamal was a true innovator of the jazz tradition and is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Charlie Parker. (wikipedia)

• • •

There were several delightful parts of this puzzle, but the puzzle really does bury you in names, and that can begin to feel ... wearisome. I am a movie lover and (perhaps excessive) movie watcher—finished two just yesterday: the camp classic Desert Fury (1947) (a rewatch), and a short documentary about Japan's Inland Sea called, fittingly, The Inland Sea (1991). So getting to see both Akira KUROSAWA (artist, titan) and RYAN COOGLER in the same puzzle made me happy. But that's the thing about names. They hit or they miss, and if they miss, you have no way to infer them, no access to them. They feel exclusionary. Doesn't mean there shouldn't be names in puzzles. Just means you should use them somewhat sparingly. Today, we start with three names one on top of the other (EMILE over LAMELO over SIA), which then run into something called OOH AAH POINT (?!). From there, AHMAD Jamal sits right around the corner. RYAN COOGLER comes crashing through the middle, SLOANE and TAO are holding hands over there in the NE, and then KUROSAWA runs down to the bottom of the grid to hang out alongside Julio CESAR Chávez. The SW corner is the only area that manages to stay out of the Name Game. Every other corner's juggling multiple names. I knew ... most of them? But forgot if it was LAMELL or LAMELO, and stalled on AHMAD Jamal—a downstream effect of having (embarrassingly) misspelled ELYSÉES (as ELYSSÉS, which meant that what should've been THEATER GEEK started T-S, and an "H" could not plausibly go between an initial "T" and an "S" and soooooo ... no AHMAD (for a while)). For me, the names became a distraction. I literally said "again?" when I got up into the SLOANE / TAO part. I thought the long answers were pretty solid on this one, with a nice clean stack through the middle and a few other decent longer answers scattered about (WHERE IT'S AT and GETS THE AX were probably my favorite). But the names are an ISSUE. Felt like an overload.

I think I was supposed to find OOH AAH POINT and "SO DARN CUTE" charming, but sadly I didn't. The first seems exceedingly trivial (how would I know about this goofy name?) and the latter ... is fine, I guess, but I liked it better when I had it as SO DAMN CUTE (really gotta check your crosses! HEMS looked very right, until I looked at the actual clue: 52D: Possessive pronoun (HERS). And that wasn't the only mistake I made, by a long shot. We already covered the ELYSÉES misspelling. Then there was the double-wrong disaster to open the puzzle. I wrote in EMIR / REBUS for 1A: Leader in a robe called a kasaya / 4D: Puzzle) (LAMA / ADDLE). Genius! I thought Colo.'s neighbor was NEV (there's a whole damn state between Colo. and NEV! My mom and sister live in Colo., I should know this, but I was operating on instinct). No other mistakes today, though there were a few struggles. Really couldn't make sense of 40D: One might leave you unprotected at night (BED HOG). If you hog the blankets you leave someone "unprotected." A BED HOG just takes over the damn bed, spacewise. Also, the "One" in that clue is ambiguous—it suggests object, not human being, which is what confused me most. 

Bullets:

• 15A: Coupling rings? (BOOTY CALLS) — cute clue, but this expression hasn't been fresh in a good while. So weird (i.e. typical) that the NYTXW only started including BOOTYCALL(S) in the 2020s. The expression was coined in 1993 and became popular enough to be the subject (and title) of a whole-ass movie by 1997. Then, time passed. A lot of time. 24 years! And then it debuted in the NYTXW (2021). And we've had four more appearances since. That's ... quite a time lag. Maybe the term is still current, I have no idea. People mostly text now, though, right? BOOTY CALLS are not to be confused with BUTT DIALS (NYTXW debut: 2013 (as BUTTDIALED)).

[yikes—the '90s were ... something]

• 27A: One-named pop star with Monkey Puzzle Records (SIA) — is "Monkey Puzzle Records" supposed to help? That adds no pertinent information. If you don't know SIA, you damn sure don't know Monkey Puzzle Records. Maybe the idea is that we like puzzles so we'll like knowing this trivia? :/ Also, adding "protocol" to 45A: Focus of a concussion protocol was just confusing. I wanted something more technical, more specifically sportsy, but I just ended up back at the focus of every concussion: the HEAD. Overwritten clue for a basic answer.
• 7D: Sport similar to pétanque (BOCCE) — "Pétanque" sounds like a card game. It is not. You throw balls. At other balls. It's very French.

• 31D: Metal tube in a nuclear reactor (FUEL ROD) — good answer, made better for reminding me of the time Homer didn't win Employee of the Week at the nuclear power plant. 

Also (speaking of The Simpsons), a FUEL ROD implies the existence of a Fuel Todd.  

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Brief in pants / THU 8-20-26 / Nags about noise? / Game of observation for travel / Checks with style / Out with ate, ate, ate / Try to place connoisseurs? / Land of Spot

Constructor: Hoang-Kim Vu

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: reading backwards — Across clues must be read backwards in order for them to make sense. That's it. There are three related themers that describe this phenomenon in punny ways:

Theme answers:

• PUT IN REVERSE (4D: Shift the gears of, in a way ... or a hint to this puzzle's Across clues)
• FORWARD-THINKING (7D: Visionary ... or what you'll need to return to when solving this puzzle's Down clues)
• TURN OF PHRASE (23D: Distinctive expression ... or a hint to this puzzle's Across clues)

Word of the Day: National Prison Project (10D: One advocated for by the National Prison Project = INMATE) —

The ACLU National Prison Project is dedicated to ensuring that our nation’s prisons, jails, and other places of detention comply with the Constitution, domestic law, and international human rights principles, and to ending the policies that have given the United States the highest incarceration rate in the world. We promote a fair and effective criminal justice system in which incarceration is used only as a last resort, and its purpose is to prepare prisoners for release and a productive, law-abiding life at the earliest possible time. Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, we work to ensure that conditions of confinement are consistent with health, safety, and human dignity, and that prisoners retain all rights of free persons that are not inconsistent with incarceration. Achieving these goals will result in a criminal justice system that respects individual rights and increases public safety for everyone, at greatly reduced fiscal cost. (ACLU)

• • •

The punny theme answers are By Far the best part here. The actual experience of solving all those Across clues was dreary—not tough, but also not entertaining at all, or rarely so. And beyond a couple of longer answers, the whole grid is extremely ordinary. USENET ISLET NDAS SSN ROO ATON RNA AFAR ARAL DOI ATEAM ESPY OLEG PSI ALT  ESS ... real MEH stuff for sure (side note: in real life, a "C-" is much worse than merely MEH) (41A: Say "minus C"). The one real execution failure here is that for this puzzle to really work, those Across clues have to make some kind of surface sense every time. Take [Sound like heaven]. That one works, because it looks like a real clue, and you can (maybe) imagine a real answer. But [Brief in pants]?? I mean, I laughed, a little ("you've got what in your pants?"). But it's obviously not a real clue. The phrasing makes no sense. Same with [Lines some over draw], unless "over draw" is supposed to be "overdraw," one word, and maybe you're overdrawing your a credit "line" or a checking account or something? Merely running clues backwards is extremely non-interesting. And furthermore, the "trick" tricked me for about ten seconds. All the short Downs in the NW were gimmes, so I had HAR- and TRO- very quickly at 1A and 14A, respectively. The bizarreness and infeasibility of [Brief in pants] got me to TROU because ... well, it's short for "pants," so ... brief in pants ... pants, in brief ... got it! OK, so then [Sound like heaven] is [Heaven-like sound]. Alright, cool. Wait, is that it? Essentially,  yes. There are three long theme answers doing some cute wordplay stuff, but basically this is a Tuesday-level puzzle once you simply read the Across clues backwards. Aside from those three long Downs, all Thursday trickiness was over right ... here:

I wouldn't call solving this a slog, since it was so easy, and since I guess there is at least a novelty in having to read backwards so many times, but reading backwards on its own is not a sufficiently pleasurable activity. The backwards clues should've been funnier, more outrageous, more clever, more ... something. Otherwise, this ends up as a kind of paint-by-numbers puzzle where the magic fizzles out early and you're left to just dutifully complete your box-filling task. Again, thumbs up for those themers, they're the only thing keeping this thing alive. But not alive enough.

A few of the Across clues work, in that they were amusing all on their own, or else yielded a surprising answer. For some reason, I think 65A: Out with ate, ate, ate is my favorite of the clues—I know I said the Across clues should have plausible surface meaning, but if you're not gonna have plausible surface meaning, then yes, sure, go absolutely nuts. [Out with ate, ate, ate] makes no sense on any level ... until you reverse the words (and mentally repunctuate), and then you get a completely plausible clue for PIGGED. I think 49A: Nags about noise? may be the most perfectly executed clue of the bunch. It's got alliteration, it looks like a real clue, it's got the "?" in there. And then you get the very incongruous (-seeming) NEIGH! (a noise "about" nags). The "about" part makes the phrasing a stretch, but ... that is, historically, what the "?" is for. The sad thing is that none of these clues ever get the chance to really trick you or trip you because the entire game is given away so early. This means that "aha"s and "nice!"s are few and far between.

Bullets:

• 51A: Land of Spot (ISLET) — I'm just imagining the dog from Dick & Jane has gone off to found his own island country. "Come, Jane, tonight we sail for the Land of Spot. It will be good to see our old friend again after so many years at sea!" (from The Odyssey of Dick & Jane)
• 17A: Try to place connoisseurs? (TASTING ROOM) — I guess this is for wine connoisseurs. I had TASTING MENU at first ... but I see now that a "menu" is not a "place"
• 25D: Feature of San Francisco's Lombard Street (ESS) — famously curvy, but ESS? That's just like ... one segment of street that winds back and forth repeatedly. I wouldn't call one "ESS" segment a "feature." As you can see ... lots of "S"s. Which one is the "feature"? You don't count off the turns by "ESS"s. Not a real unit:

• 57A: For repentance some feel (RUE) — this is the Across clues at their most Yoda-esque. His voice I hear. Speaking of the Star Wars universe—it's been four days since the last Star Wars clue. I think the record for consecutive Star Wars-free days this year is something close to two weeks, so ... long way to go. 

Had a great first day of school yesterday, but also somehow my neck/shoulder has gone painfully stiff (can't tilt my head to the right very far at all). Residual stress? A chalkboard injury? Who knows. Gonna try to just keep moving and hope it works itself out. That's all for today. Time next you see.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Top three sights in Fiji? / WED 8-19-26 / Immature high score initials on an arcade game / Old West outlaw who left behind poetic messages after some robberies / Three unnamed things, in shorthand / 2008 film about a solitary trash-compacting robot / The word "salary" derives from the Latin for this / ___ royale (champagne cocktail) / Female friends from Fuenlabrada

Constructor: Kareem Ayas

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BURIES THE LEDE (57A: Hides one's central point, in a way ... with a doubly homophonic hint to 20-, 30, 38- and 48-Across) — the "lead" word in each theme answer is a type of "berry":

Theme answers:

• GOOSE FEATHERS (20A: Natural pillow filling) (gooseberries)
• ELDERCARE (30A: Services for senior citizens) (elderberries)
• STRAW POLL (38A: Unofficial vote) (strawberries)
• BLACK BART (48A: Old West outlaw who left behind poetic messages after some robberies) (blackberries)

Word of the Day: BLACK BART (48A) —

Charles E. Boles (c. 1829 – ? Last seen February 28, 1888), also known as Black Bart, was an English-born American outlaw noted for the poetic messages he left behind after two of his robberies. Often called Charley by his friends, he was also known as Charles (or C. E.) Bolton. Considered a gentleman bandit with a reputation for style and sophistication, he was one of the most notorious stagecoach robbers to operate in and around Northern California and Southern Oregon during the 1870s and 1880s. [...] In 1867, Boles went prospecting for gold in Idaho and Montana. In a surviving letter to his wife from August 1871, he told her of an unpleasant encounter with some Wells, Fargo & Company agents and vowed to exact revenge. // Boles adopted the nickname "Black Bart" and proceeded to rob Wells Fargo stagecoaches at least 28 times across northern California between 1875 and 1883, including a number of times along the historic Siskiyou Trail between California and Oregon. Although Boles became widely known for the poetic messages left behind after his robberies, he wrote only two poems–left at the fourth and fifth robbery sites–but this was enough to ensure his fame. Black Bart was quite successful as a highwayman, often taking in thousands of dollars a year. // Boles was afraid of horses and he fled from all of his robberies on foot. He was invariably polite, never using foul language except in his poems. He dressed in a long linen duster coat and a bowler hat, using a flour sack with holes cut for his eyes as a mask. He brandished a shotgun but reportedly never once fired it during his years as an outlaw. All these became his trademarks and he quickly gained notoriety. (wikipedia)

• • •

Weird. I always thought BLACK BART was fictional. I wonder why ...

Gonna have to be short a write-up today (I swear), as today is my first day back at school for the Fall semester, and I ... still have a little work to do. Not a lot. A little. But because it's not done and I have to stand in front of a class in [checks clock] seven hours, it feels like a lot. So I gotta get a move on. The puzzle was funny today because it felt like it was accusing me, personally, of not getting my second syllabus finished in a timely fashion. It's throwing things at me like STUDENT (47D: Lecture attendee) and UNIT (16A: Section in a textbook) and CURRICULUM (10D: Set of courses offered) and ASS (as in, "why aren't you totally prepared, you ASS?") (54A: Immature high score initials on an arcade game). I laughed it off. What else could I do? One thing I couldn't do: understand the the damned theme once I'd finished the puzzle. The puzzle was easy to finish, and the themers all easy to come up with, but I had no idea how BURIES THE LEDE was supposed to be singly homophonic, let alone doubly so. I kept trying to read the clue cryptically, so I was looking for something "buried" in the answer ... maybe a word that meant "lead"? But the middle of each themer (i.e. the letter "buried" at the heart of each themer), taken in order, spells ERWK, so ... no luck there! No matter how hard I looked, there was nothing "buried" in those damned theaters. Finally I had a look at the "lead" words in the theme phrases and noticed that they were all types of "berries" (!!!!!!). Not a pun I was looking for (clearly)! Is LEDE a pun? Since LEDE basically means the introductory (or "lead") portion of a news story, it indicates primary status (i.e. firstness) just as well as "lead" does. Doesn't seem nearly as "punny" as the bury/berry thing. Anyway, first words "berries," very clever, liked it. I do wonder if the Pronunciation Police are going to come out today. "Bury" and "berry" sound the same in my ear, but I have this suspicion that that may not be the same for everyone. Still, it's close, and it's crosswords, and as with horseshoes and hand grenades, close counts.

The fill was wobbly to start. "I'M NOT OK" feels ... unsolid. "I'M OK," all day long, no problem, solid as heck. "THAT'S NOT OK!," same. "I'M NOT OK" gets me some songs (?), and ... I guess it has some currency in mental health contexts. I can imagine someone saying it, but I can imagine someone saying lots of things. Lots of other fill just felt ordinary and tired: ARID SKORT PSATS (plural) UNSEE ERR ERS URSA etc. But the themers were all interesting, and sometimes the short fill picked up (PUFFY next to SNEEZE—successive answers! (Why weren't these tied together the way URSA and ASIA ([___ Minor]), or LOWER and DIP ([Drop]) were? You've got PUFFY tied to allergies—that's a set-up for a SNEEZE tie-in if there ever was one). FAN BASE and LOST CAUSES also liven up the grid. The only real difficulty I had today came with trying to understand the theme. Oh, and remembering which spelling of AVA/EVA to use for AVA Max (39D: ___ Max, singer of the 2018 hit "Sweet but Psycho").

Bullets:

• 10A: Private sleeping accommodations? (COTS) — So ... "Private" in the Army.
• 24A: Three unnamed things, in shorthand (XYZ) — nearly wrote in XXX, but that's a porn movie, or else the letters on a jug of hooch.
• 67A: 2008 film about a solitary trash-compacting robot (WALL-E) — WALL-E stars in commercials for Lavazza. Or his double does. Hulu can't/won't stop showing me ads for this new coffee system they have called TABLI (5!). And if the robot from Short Circuit and WALL-E had a baby ... well ...

[my ads are English, but this'll do]

• 4D: Top three sights in Fiji? (DOTS) — now this is cryptic. The word "Fiji" has three DOTS at the top (the top of the "i" the "j" and the "i")

That's it. Gotta run (to make coffee). See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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High-end private jet, familiarly / TUE 8-18-26 / Academy Award-winning tune from "La La Land" / Singer Kahan with the 2026 #1 album "The Great Divide" / Eponym of a chess rating system / Mario has a red "M" on his / Sarcastic title girl of 1990s-2000s MTV / Utah skiing destination / Dickens villain

Constructor: Jeremy Venook

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium 

THEME: "MUSIC OF THE NIGHT" (58A: Iconic number from "The Phantom of the Opera" ... or an apt title for this puzzle) — theme answers are SONGS (66A: 17-, 29-, 45- and 56-Across) containing words related to "night":

Theme answers:

• "MOONLIGHT SONATA" (17A: Classic Beethoven piano piece)
• "CITY OF STARS" (29A: Academy Award-winning tune from "La La Land")
• "SWEET DREAMS" (45A: 1983 Eurythmics hit whose full title includes "(Are Made of This)")

Word of the Day: NOAH Kahan (64A: Singer Kahan with the 2026 #1 album "The Great Divide") —

Noah Berkenkamp Kahan (/kɑːn/ KAHN; born January 1, 1997) is an American singer-songwriter. His breakthrough single, "Hurt Somebody", achieved gold status in the United States and charted in multiple international markets. The single and EP of the same name preceded the release of his debut album, Busyhead (2019). Within five years, two more albums came out: I Was / I Am (2021) and Stick Season (2022), the latter became his mainstream commercial breakthrough. It led to his nomination in 2023 for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. In 2026, his fourth album The Great Divide was released and achieved record-breaking streaming and vinyl sales for a No. 1 rock album debut on the Billboard 200. That preceded The Great Divide Tour, his first stadium tour. // Kahan was born in Strafford, Vermont, where he grew up on a tree farm. His father, Josh Kahan, taught him to play guitar while his mother, Lauri Berkenkamp, who wrote parenting guides for a living, taught him to write. His father is Jewish and his mother is Christian. He says that his Jewish roots play a large part in his identity. [...] In October 2020, Kahan began posting viral TikTok videos showcasing the first verse of what would become the hit single "Stick Season". Over the next two years, he uploaded more snippets of the song and teased other songs from his forthcoming third studio album, leading Stick Season to become viral before it was even released.^[6] On July 8, 2022, he finally released the full version of the song to the public. Kahan says "Stick Season" is the kind of song he wanted to write, moving away from his pop heavy projects in the past to a folk centric project. He released the single "Northern Attitude" prior to the album's release. // On October 14, 2022, Kahan released his third studio album, the 14-track Stick Season, which was produced by Gabe Simon. The album debuted at number 14 on the Billboard 200, his first appearance on the chart^[17] launching him into mainstream success and helping make him a recognizable figure within the music world.

• • •

I kinda like the basic idea here, but the song set seems really arbitrary, and the fill was listless and dull, with almost no truly interesting answers and a barrage of overfamiliar short stuff. So it got an "oh" and a bit of a smile out of me when I realized the theme, but the experience of solving it wasn't very entertaining. I also didn't really care for the redundant revealer: SONGS. It's exceedingly anticlimactic, coming as it does after the proper revealer, and "revealing" absolutely nothing new. If you want a secondary revealer, at least make it clever somehow. This felt like SONGS just happened to be in the finished grid and then the clue writer (constructor? editor?) decided to make it thematic, and I can see why you'd be tempted, but SONGS it's completely unnecessary to our comprehension of the theme, and adds nothing funny, humorous, or clever. Strange choice there. As for the theme answers themselves, "MOONLIGHT SONATA" and "SWEET DREAMS" are iconic to me, but "CITY OF STARS," despite its Academy Award, means nothing to me. Not sure I've heard it, ever (I've never seen La La Land, despite my admiration for and fascination with the screen presence that is Ryan Gosling). I can't say the song doesn't belong here, just that it seems less major than the other songs, which only highlights how arbitrary the whole set is: how many songs out there must have "moon" or "dream" or "star" in them somewhere? So you get a set here that's not exactly tight. But as I say, I liked the revealer and I liked discovering the connection among the themers, and there's very little that is actively off-putting about this puzzle. I just wish the grid were more interesting—that would've helped a lot.

ELO and ALOE before we ever get out of the tiny NW corner—that did not herald goodness. Two initialisms right after that (SEC, UNICEF) didn't make me any more optimistic. URIAH ISH ATTA ESAU NATL OFUSE ISAW AMA EUR ... the puzzle just limps lacklusterly along, with only the themers to perk it up. HYSTERIA gave the grid some juice (9D: Madness), and DEWDROPS has a certain alliterative sweetness (39D: Morning condensation), but otherwise, it's a snooze. I guess "BITE ME!'s got some sass, but I never did take to that expression (which now feels dated, somehow) (33D: "Oh, buzz off"). The clue on G-SIX is ... ??? (52D: High-end private jet, familiarly) ... I assume it used to be a governmental alliance clue but then someone thought "hey, we don't talk about the ultra-rich enough" and decided to make it a private jet clue? That's called taking regrettable fill and making it regrettabler. The G6 was the six largest countries in the EU, but then Britain (famously, extremely smartly, with great foresight) left, and the name changed to the E5. Not sure why they changed from "G" ("Group of") to "E" ("European Group of"), but there you are. I suppose G-SIX could also be a Bingo call. But no, it looks like all former clues for GSIX referred to the (now former) European alliance. I understand wanting to update the clue, but ... a private jet? In this economy? Hard pass.

Bullets:

• 39A: Sarcastic title girl of 1990s-2000s MTV (DARIA) — I watched every episode of this, I think, and still hesitated a bit trying to process the phrase "Sarcastic title girl"; I wonder what kind of cultural legs DARIA has. What's the age break? Seems like an extremely Gen-X / Millennial show. Not sure how familiar it is to older / younger people.
• 50A: It has its x's and y's (ALGEBRA) — I don't understand what this clue is doing with its phrasing, what expression it's playing on. Are x's and y's supposed be like "ups and downs?" I get the x and y part, I can see why ALGEBRA is the answer, but the whimsical phrasing here is lost on me.
• 27D: What gossipers and tall buildings are full of (STORIES) — I don't really like "riddles," but this clue at least slowed me down and made me think for a little today—probably the toughest answer for me besides the La La Land song and the private jet, which I just didn't know. Oh, and NOAH Kahan, whose name has been floating around the periphery of my entertainment world all year, I just couldn't retrieve it, which made that SE corner tough, as 67A: Person regularly sought out for advice was somehow not GURU ... but GO-TO (not loving it as a noun, but OK)
• 2D: Eponym of a chess rating system (ELO) — really gotta hate music and fun and life not to go with the band every time here. If you must use ELO (again), please just remind me of the great music. Chess, shmess, zzzzz:

[gotta love a song that just randomly breaks into French]

• 60D: Mario has a red "M" on his (HAT) — what are we doing here? Do we not get enough Marioverse clues without having to torture the clues for perfectly ordinary things into Mario form? If you want to take the HAT somewhere pop cultury, at least branch out, be creative. Yet Another Mario Clue is not the way.

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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1963 Kingsmen hit with a repetitive title / MON 8-17-26 / "Pink" animal of film / Boozy brunch drink / Well-dressed guy / ___ tofu (Sichuan dish) / Hot pepper named for Cuba's capital / It catches ballpark smooches

Constructor: Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (solved Downs-only) 

THEME: "YES AND YES!" (62A: "Totally agree!" ... or what the circled letters are, in different languages) — each theme answer contains two sets of circled squares, each of which contains a word meaning "yes" in a foreign language:

Theme answers:

• DAPPER DAN (16A: Well-dressed guy)
• JAM JARS (38A: Containers for fruit preserves)
• "LOUIE LOUIE" (10D: 1963 Kingsmen hit with a repetitive title)
• SITE VISITS (27D: On-location inspections)

Word of the Day: "LOUIE, LOUIE" (10D) —

"Louie Louie" is a rhythm and blues song written, composed, and recorded by American musician Richard Berry in 1956 and released in 1957. In 1963, a version by the Kingsmen attracted controversy over allegedly profane lyrics. The song is based on the tune "El Loco Cha Cha" popularized by bandleader René Touzet and is an example of Afro-Cuban influence on American popular music. // The song's historical impact and ongoing popularity, attested by books, articles, rankings, and hundreds of cover versions, have earned it a reputation as "a cornerstone of rock". 

"Louie Louie" tells, in simple verse–chorus form, the first-person story of a "lovesick sailor's lament to a bartender about wanting to get back home to his girl". [...] On April 6, 1963, the Kingsmen, a rock and roll group from Portland, Oregon, chose "Louie Louie" for their second recording. The session took place at Northwestern Inc. Motion Pictures & Recording Studios at 411 SW 13th Avenue in Portland. The one hour session, originally intended to produce an audition tape for a summer cruise ship gig, cost either $36, $50, or somewhere in between, and the band split the cost. [...] First released in May 1963, the single was initially issued by the small Jerden label, before being picked up by the larger Wand Records in October 1963. Wand president Florence Greenberg said, "it was forced down my throat by friends. I was ashamed to put it out." Herb Alpert and A&M Records passed on the distribution opportunity, deeming it "too long" and "out of tune". [...]

Sales of the Kingsmen record were initially so low (reportedly 600) that the group considered disbanding. Things changed when Boston's biggest DJ, Arnie Ginsburg, was given the record by a pitchman. Amused by its slapdash sound, he played it on his program as "The Worst Record of the Week". Despite the slam, listener response was swift and positive.Another factor in the success of the record may have been the rumour that the vocals were intentionally slurred by the Kingsmen to cover up lyrics that were allegedly laced with profanity, graphically depicting sex between the sailor and his lady. Crumpled pieces of paper professing to be "the real lyrics" to "Louie Louie" circulated among teens. The song was banned on many radio stations and in many places in the United States, including Indiana, where a ban was requested by Governor Matthew Welsh. These actions were taken despite the fact that practically no one could distinguish the actual lyrics. Denials of chicanery by Kingsmen and Ely did not stop the controversy. The FBI started a 31-month investigation into the matter and concluded they were "unable to interpret any of the wording in the record." However, drummer Lynn Easton later admitted that he yelled "fuck" after fumbling a drum fill at 0:54 on the record. (wikipedia)

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I confess I don't really know this expression, "YES AND YES!" I'm sure I've heard it, and it would be totally recognizable as a kind of emphatic affirmative, but it's not something I hear people say, or can hear in my head very clearly. I frequently use the phrase "Done and done!" to mean roughly the same thing ("I will do that thing," "consider it done," "yes I will do it"), but "YES AND YES!" ... not sure why it's not really ringing a bell. But it's not really a problem for me today—I recognize it as a thing one might say, and it leads to a pretty nifty, simple Monday theme. Kinda cheating to get your two "oui"s by using "LOUIE" twice, but then again, I enjoy remembering that song, which is one of the day's most colorful answers so cheating objection ... overruled! My only real complaint involves SITE VISITS, which is a singularly unattractive phrase. I'm stunned that there wasn't some better, more colorful, less blandly businesslike phrase that has two "SI"s in it. I realize you've got symmetry considerations, and the answer (assuming you keep all the other themers where they are) had to come in at ten letters long, but still ... I think you gotta hunt harder. That answer was also the hardest for me to get, from a Downs-only standpoint, despite my being fairly certain of the "SI"s (it was the only commonly known foreign "yes" that was left). But again, overall, the puzzle was cute. Entertaining. Interesting to solve Downs-only. Reverse KOA!

Even with the cheater squares (black squares above PIC and below ESO, which are there only to make the grid easier to fill), there's still a bit of dull crosswordese around the edges here. ESO, for instance, and PAOLO OBIES ISEE EIN ANTE IMAM IMAC INUIT UAE OSSO EYRE ASTI ATTN EASEL AHA ... would've been nice if the puzzle hadn't been so reliant on allllllll the old stuff. But then of course the themers are strong, and the longer non-themers are decent as well. HABANERO is spicy and SCREEDS are ranty and MEANDER is wandery and SCORPION is sting-y and KISS CAM, well, those are kinda gross, actually, but who doesn't like the Pink PANTHER? SO THERE! If the crosswordese is bugging you, just have a MIMOSA and listen to your favorite ROCK BAND and relax. Or you could have some MAPO tofu and listen to Chappell ROAN, that's what I'd do if I hadn't already had dinner—a delicious dinner Penelope and I made together. Here, I have the pics to prove it.

[that NYT Cooking page-a-day calendar is a godsend—app, shmapp, just give me paper!]

Bullets:

• 16A: Well-dressed guy (DAPPER DAN) — I know DAPPER DAN exclusively as a doll that I (or my sister, or both of us) had when I was very little. I can still see his dumb felted face and rosy cheeks. Oh yeah, here we go:

[Well-dressed, smash-faced]

The phrase I know for "well-dressed man" is "handsome Dan," though that's probably just because of "Tougher Than the Rest," a Bruce Springsteen song that I first heard in an acoustic version by Everything But The Girl:

["Some girls they want a handsome Dan / Or some good-looking Joe..."]

• 36D: "Sounds like a plan!" ("LET'S") — one of the tougher answers, from a Downs-only perspective. I wanted "I'M IN!"
• 11D: Martini garnish (OLIVE) — ONION also works (and fits, and starts with "O") (though w/ an ONION, it’s called a Gibson Martini, or simply a Gibson)
• 59D: Enjoy a fantasy, say (READ) — I kinda like the mild misdirection here. They hide "novel" or "story" and just let "fantasy" be a substantive adjective. So your (my) first thought for "Enjoy a fantasy" is something like "dream," but ... no.
• 33D: Breakfast beverages, for short (OJS) — kind of an OJ overload situation here, as OJ both sits alongside MIMOSA and is a key ingredient of a MIMOSA (the other being champagne or other sparkling wine). 

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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