Fruit-resembling mollusk / MON 8-31-26 / Ham on an antipasto platter / Umbrella-shaped sea creature / Redding with two posthumous Grammys / Ski in zigzags / Attire for the Sugar Plum Fairy

Constructor: Christopher Youngs

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: "SPREAD THE WORD!" (51A: "Tell everyone!" ... or what to do with the starts of 20-, 31- and 44-Across) — first parts of theme answers are things that you "spread" (on bread)

Theme answers:

• BUTTERFINGERS (20A: One who regularly drops things)
• JELLYFISH (31A: Umbrella-shaped sea creature)
• HONEYMOON (44A: Newlyweds' getaway)

Word of the Day: MARSHA P. Johnson (28D: ___ P. Johnson (gay rights activist)) —

Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 3, 1992) was an American LGBTQ activist, sex worker and performer. Sometimes known as the "Saint of Christopher Street", she is considered an important figure in the LGBTQ and transgender rights movements due to her involvement in the Stonewall riots, her work with Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), and her advocacy for people with AIDS.

Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Johnson wore women's clothing for the first time when she was five years old. After graduating from high school, she moved to Manhattan, where she regularly spent time on 42nd Street in Times Square, working at the local Childs Restaurants and supplementing her income through begging and sex work. Often going out in partial drag, she became well known for her vibrant accessories. She participated in the Stonewall riots in 1969, though her exact role is debated, and afterward, she was active in the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and Gay Liberation Front (GLF). In 1970, she participated in the Weinstein Hall occupation and helped found STAR, which provided food and shelter for transgender youth through STAR House, a four-bedroom rental home in the East Village.

After STAR's dissolution in 1973, Johnson began performing with various theatrical troupes around Manhattan, including the Angels of Light and the Hot Peaches. After the beginning of the AIDS pandemic in New York in 1980, she cared for her friends who were dying of AIDS and engaged in AIDS-related activism. She disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1992, with her body being found floating in the Hudson River on July 6. While police initially ruled her death a suicide, many speculate that she was either murdered, chased into the water, or fell in accidentally. She was 46. (wikipedia)

• • •

Today (Sunday evening, as I'm writing this) is something called "Porchfest" in Binghamton. Musicians of various kinds play from the front porches of people's homes on the West Side, with music starting some time around midday and going until ... well, I can hear a concert going on right now, just over the back from where I live, so ... still going on. It's a fun end-of-summer community event. Not fun for me, exactly, but people seem to like it, and it's very family-friendly, and the weather is nice for walking around and hearing music outside, so ... that's nice. For them. For me, I'm just grateful I am on the far outskirts of it all, so the music has not been very noticeable most of the day and is not likely to keep me up. Right now, however, it's very very audible, and I have a hard time writing in a noisy environment ... or, I have a hard time enjoying writing in a noisy environment. I just endured somebody's idea of "Johnny B. Good," so maybe you sympathize. Maybe not. Anyway, I'm going to keep this relatively short. I really am happy that my community is (largely) happy. Not everything is for me, personally, and That's OK. 

Luckily, this puzzle was for me. "For me" in the sense that I pretty much crushed my Downs-only solve, and also "for me" in the sense that I liked the revealer (once I finished and read the clue for it—before that, I was like "shouldn't it be SPREADS THE WORD? And then you mentally repunctuate it to SPREAD'S THE WORD ... because the word ... at the front of the answer ... is a spread?" But I like the way the revealer clue does it. What you do to those things, those words, is spread them. SPREAD THE WORD! Works fine. The fill today isn't exactly scintillating, but it isn't rotten either. You get a BANANA SLUG (30D: Fruit-resembling mollusk) to go with your JELLYFISH (which is nice if you are into animals named after foods...), and you get PROSCIUTTO to go on your SAMMIE. The boatload of 3-4-5s keep things from getting too interesting, but considering said boatload, it's impressive that the fill isn't drearier. ALIA is the only thing that seemed to fall in the "Regrettable" category. Everything else: solid. Fine.

I had one real sticking point today—a three-letter word that somehow ended up having a lot of deleterious downstream effects. See, if you tell me that a cooking vessel is "Deep-dish," I'm going to assume it's a POT, not a PAN (40D: Deep-dish vessel). A PAN!?!? I use one all the time to sauté vegetables, fry eggs, etc., and it's really quite shallow. I realize PANs can be deep, but if you give me POT and you give me PAN and you ask me which one do I most associate with deepness, it's not really a contest. POT wins. So I wrote in POT. This gave me ROD in the cross, which seemed quite plausible, but that -OOT ending ... that was a problem. I balked at SAMMIE because that gave me a -MOOT ending on that last themer, and I could not think of a plausible phrase ending "MOOT." "POINT MOOT!" I imagined someone saying. Didn't sound right. I then blanked on MARSHA and got a little worried. But I got ALE and TOY easily (38D: Ginger ___ / 39D: Cup-and-ball or yo-yo), and I knew the themers started with foods, so ---EY-OOT suddenly became HONEYMOON. Goodbye POT, hello PAN. Extremely disappointing to find out POT was wrong, since it's so much better and full of inherent deepness than a PAN, but whatever, I got through, then I got MARSHA, and I finished on AVALON, just like King Arthur. [lol I only realized just now, during formatting/editing, that "Deep-dish" was supposed to evoke pizza, not just "vessel" depth ... I guess I could rewrite this paragraph and hide the evidence of my idiocy, but where's the fun in that?]

Bullets:

• 28A: Role for Selena Gomez on "Only Murders in the Building" (MABEL) — MABEL crossing MARSHA would have "Natick" written all over it if that "M" weren't completely inferable. I had heard of MARSHA but forgot, and I probably knew the Selena Gomez character at some point but, again, forgot. Crossing two non-universally-known proper nouns—dicey! But there's no way that square can be anything but an "M," so ... judges say: fair! No Natick!
• 50D: Part of an Instagram post (PHOTO) — I check Instagram nearly every day and so was weirdly baffled that I couldn't immediately come up with an answer here. I think my problem was that every post I see on Insta is a video, not a photo. Well, 95% of them are videos, at any rate. So what should've been obvious ... wasn't. Not immediately, anyway.
• 52D: Skin opening (PORE) — if you wanted this to be FORE, you know, that kinda makes sense. Not a likely way for a FORE- clue to go, but with -ORE firmly in place, I can see how you might be tempted. 
• 37A: Took shots first, then paid for them later (RAN A TAB) — not my favorite answer—big ATE A SANDWICH energy—but I like the clue, and since the answer actually *crosses* a sandwich (or SAMMIE), I'm gonna assume the answer is actually winking at me, which I find endearing. 

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Discount Chinese e-tailer / SUN 8-30-26 / Inuit watercraft / Periods of 730 days / Heat setting, in brief / Chef Hussain of "The Great British Bake Off" fame / Musician/actress Haim / Discontinued Swedish cars / Double-breasted pieces of menswear / Supreme Egyptian god / Bootlegger's concern / Musical comedy that was 1968's highest-grossing film

Constructor: Daniel Grinberg

Relative difficulty: way too easy

THEME: "Written in the Stars" — clues and answers are both "stars" whose names are made up of letters drawn from the same letter bank; because the same letters occur in both names, they might be said to be RECURRING CHARACTERS (69A: Ones making periodic appearances ... or the link between the capitalized clues and their answers):

Theme answers:

• HENRI MATISSE (22A: MARTIN SHEEN) (H, E, N, R, I, M, A, T, S)
• SAL MINEO (24A: LIAM NEESON) (S, A, L, M, I, N, E, O)
• DONNA SUMMER (33A: NORMAN REEDUS) (D, O, N, A, S, U, M, E, R)
• REGINA KING (37A: GREG KINNEAR) (R, E, G, I, N, A, K)
• GEORGE FOREMAN (48A: MORGAN FREEMAN) (G, E, O, R, F, M, A, N)
• ELAINE STRITCH (84A: CHRISTIAN SLATER) (E, L, A, I, N, S, T, R, C, H)
• BRIE LARSON (102A: ISABELLA ROSSELLINI) (B, R, I, E, L, A, S, O, N)
• EVEL KNIEVEL (104A: KEVIN KLINE) (E, V, L, K, N, I)
• BABE RUTH (114A: BEA ARTHUR) (B, A, E, R, U, T, H)
• ORLANDO BLOOM (118A: MARLON BRANDO) (M, A, R, L, O, N, B, D)

Word of the Day: NADIYA Hussain (25A: Chef Hussain of "The Great British Bake Off" fame) —

Nadiya Jamir Hussain (née Begum; born 25 December 1984) is a British television chef, author and television personality. She rose to fame after winning the sixth series of BBC's The Great British Bake Off in 2015. Since winning, she has signed contracts with the BBC to host the documentary The Chronicles of Nadiya and TV cookery series Nadiya's British Food Adventure and Nadiya's Family Favourites; co-presented The Big Family Cooking Showdown; and has become a regular contributor on The One Show.

Hussain is a columnist for The Times Magazine and has signed publishing deals with Penguin Random House, Hodder Children's Books and Harlequin. She has appeared as a guest panellist on ITV's Loose Women. She was invited to bake a cake for the 90th birthday celebrations of Elizabeth II.

In 2017, Hussain was named by Debrett's as one of the 500 most influential people in the UK and was on BBC News' 100 Women list. She was also shortlisted for Children's Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards for Bake Me A Story and was nominated for Breakthrough Star at the Royal Television Society Awards for The Chronicles of Nadiya. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Matisse, Icarus (@MoMA)]

I know it's tiresome when I complain about the puzzle's being too easy but boy oh boy this was a new low. I don't time myself any more but at a leisurely pace, I probably finished thing in under 8 minutes, which would be near an all-time record for me—again, without trying, without racing. NADIYA was the only thing in the whole puzzle that stumped me. All the other names were known to me, and none of the clues seemed to be trying too hard today at all. I guess POLO COATS took a few crosses to get, because ... what are those? (44D: Double-breasted pieces of menswear). But after I got POLO, the COATS part seemed obvious, so ... yeah, the easiest Sunday puzzle I've ever done? Ever? Maybe. Really disappointing. As for the theme, I guess there's probably some bit of code you can write that can tell you which "stars" (from whatever bank of "star" names you have) share the same building-block letters. It's hard to get excited about this particular phenomenon. With the themers, I basically just got a few crosses, looked at the clue, and the answer generally seemed obvious. Sometimes, looking at the clue wasn't even necessary. I had DONNA and the only famous DONNA I could think of (that fit) was SUMMER, so I just wrote her in. There was no resistance, nothing to really wrestle with or get. You just fill in pretty standard crossword answers with pretty straightforward clues and then ... watch names appear? The RECURRING CHARACTERS pun might've resonated a little more if all the "stars" had been actors (actors play "characters," after all). But of the twenty "stars" in play here, you've got five non-actors. And one of those you would never call a "star" (in the sense that all the others are "stars"). Yes, HENRI MATISSE is a "star" (as in "luminary") of the art world, but he's not a "star" in the modern "celebrity" sense, as Every Other One of these "stars" is. Just bizarre, his inclusion here. I don't understand the appeal of this one. I truly hoped you enjoyed it more than I did.

The fill also seemed subpar. Plain, common, somewhat stale: EDY'S IBET AMONRA ESL ELI RECTO ERRED ADES NAS EARP ARIA ENT MOUE SOLI SAABS ESSO EIEIO TSK SKORTS EUIE TMC HES EDIE LIRAS EDIE TBAR SOYA ... and that's just the stuff that stands out. FUNNY GIRL alongside ABRASIVE was probably the highlight of the grid for me (not that FUNNY GIRL is ABRASIVE, I just think that's a nice pair of answers) (3D: Musical comedy that was 1968's highest-grossing film / 4D: Caustic). And I definitely loved seeing ELAINE STRITCH, whom I know best from the D.A. Pennebaker documentary Original Cast Album: Company. Everything about her struggle to sing "The Ladies Who Lunch" (and her back-and-forth with Sondheim) is mesmerizing and inspiring.

Bullets:

• 14A: Heat setting, in brief (NBA) — the Miami Heat are an NBA team
• 26A: Discount Chinese e-tailer (TEMU) — famous for their mascot, the TEMU Emu. (srsly, tho, I somehow remembered TEMU today, so congratulations to my memory because I don't even know how I know TEMU) (this is only its second NYTXW appearance; the first was earlier this year)
• 33A: NORMAN REEDUS ...— it occurs to me that of all the names in the theme answers/clues, his is probably the least well known. I know him from the TV show The Walking Dead.

• 124A: Musician/actress Haim (ALANA) — love her. She and Cooper Hoffman in Licorice Pizza are one of my favorite on-screen couples—problematic, yes, adorable, also yes. I put that movie on when I just want to be happy. She's also great in ... well, everything she's in. One Battle After Another, The Mastermind, whatever. Charming, funny, good. She's also in a band with her sisters. Also good.

• 18D: Inuit watercraft (KAYAKS) — for not the first time, I pulled UMIAKS out of my Bag of Crosswordese, only to find that I was dealing with plain old ordinary KAYAKS. What good is this useless, highly specific Inuit watercraft terminology if I can't use it!!!?
• 71D: Along with "CODA" and "Argo," the only other four-letter Best Picture winner (GIGI) — I like this clue a lot. The movie title itself isn't that exciting, but I had some fun trying to think of candidates. JAWS? Nope. BABE? Nope. COMA? Weird guess, also no.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Neck topper / SAT 8-29-26 / Half-spoken, half-sung passages of an opera / Nonhuman provider of medical advice / Green day star, for short / Skin-care brand known for its pore strips / Main characters for an early reader / Depicting the world bleakly and cynically / Green day star, for short / Humongous, slangily / Inverse of an exponential function

Constructor: Rafael Musa and Kate Chin Park

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ANA Huang (21A: Romance author Huang) —

Ana Huang is a Chinese-American author who primarily writes novels in the romance and new adult fiction genres. She is a #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. [...]  After 2019, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Huang began writing and self-publishing novels, and promoting them on TikTok. Her Twisted series went viral, and was republished by Bloom Books in 2022. [...] In 2023, her novel King of Greed reached #1 on the Paperback Trade Fiction section of The New York Times Best Seller list. King of Sloth was a #1 New York Times Best Seller, and reached #1 on the USA Today Booklist. Twisted Love stayed on the Paperback Trade Fiction section of The New York Times Best Seller list for 61 weeks. // In 2024, Huang, with 1,474,194 print copies sold, is the fourth highest selling BookTok author. (wikipedia)

• • •

Kind of a tough one today, which is to say, just about the right difficulty level for a Saturday. So weird to have Rafa do an emergency fill-in for me yesterday and then open the puzzle and see his name on the byline this morning. While there is much that I loved about this puzzle, most of the good vibes immediately evaporated when I got "A.I. DOCTOR" (1D: Nonhuman provider of medical advice). I realize that my aversion to A.I. creep in the puzzle is largely personal and perhaps idiosyncratic, but I can't help it, I just find the proliferation of everything A.I. completely disheartening. Hate to see the puzzle heedlessly dive into All Things A.I. the way the rest of the world seems to be doing. I know that there are various professional applications for A.I. that are useful and non-dehumanizing, but most of it seems like a way to eliminate jobs, mislead people, and make a few people very rich. Even the idea of calling any A.I. a "doctor" is, or should be, abhorrent. It's not and never can be a "doctor." It's *trained* on work that millions of actual doctors have done, but it is not and cannot be a doctor. Also, various "A.I. DOCTORS" are being offered as substitutes for traditional medical service, in some cases specifically because the user might not have medical insurance, and so ... all this A.I. crap is just papery over structural failures in society. I hate it. Every time we anthropomorphize one of these things by treating it like it's human, giving in a human name (or job title), we're a. pretending it's something it isn't and b. conceding some piece of our humanity to corporate-owned proprietary machinery. This is why "A.I." will give dystopian vibes to me Every Time I see it in a puzzle. I would love if constructors had their own personal "no A.I." policy, but I can see that's not going to happen. I'm not mad (don't say I GOT MAD). Just sad and disappointed. And tired.

I was also a little put off by the name blitz up top (ANA CHENG EWING BAIN BIORE etc.) but the names dissipated in the lower half of the grid, so the overall experience of hacking through said names (the ones I didn't know) wasn't So bad. I knew some of the names (The PITT, August WILSON, Patrick EWING, BAIN Capital (another depresso-answer to go with the A.I. DOCTOR) (27A: ___ Capital, investment firm co-founded by Mitt Romney). But those pore strips, ugh. I had like six different letter combinations before I finally got to BIORE (14A: Skin-care brand known for its pore strips). BIERO? I think that was one of them. No way I am going to know a Chinese character's meaning, so CHENG could've been "any Chinese name." ANA Huang writes about as far away from where I read as possible (see "Word of the Day," above). I've read and enjoyed a romance novel or two in my time, but "New Adult Fiction" and "BookTok" are alien territory to me (perhaps brought down to earth on some kind of ALIEN SHIP, which is also kind of an alien term to me—isn't it just SPACE SHIP?). The fact that they have subdivided younger readers even further in order to create new markets. "New Adult"? "The genre originally faced criticism as a marketing scheme." Yeah, I bet it did. I guess "new adult fiction" is like YA fiction but the protagonist is 18-29?? So it's still written at an 8th-grade reading level but with a grown-up-ish character? Look, as I told my daughter when she was in her "dystopian scifi/fantasy teen trilogy" phase, if you're reading, you're reading, and I'm happy. But ... maybe some day think about leaving the algorithmically-created rut you've been channeled into by your corporate overlords? Some day? Just think about it. Meanwhile, for all I know ANA Huang is a fantastic writer and I'm missing out by being a grumpy old man. Very, very possible.

The marquee stuff was a little on the tepid side today. It's a lovely center stack, but it's not exactly crackling. More just ... pleasant. SOCIAL LADDER, TENNIS LESSON, PATIO HEATERS (whatever those are ...) they're solid, doing their job, but not exactly wowing anyone. Are PATIO HEATERS those things at restaurants that allow you to eat outside even when the weather is a bit crisp? Maybe rich people have them at their "parties" too. I weirdly liked ERSTWHILE more than almost anything in the grid. Its quaintness and oldenness look especially fetching hanging out right next to the much more modern "SO RANDOM" (36D: "Wow ... what are the chances?!"). But I do think that the longest answer in the grid is probably also the best. It's the one thing that feels unimpeachably marquee-worthy. It also gave me a delightful moment of coincidence, where the first thing I wrote in fit ... but was incorrect. I had BULLI and thought "what in the world starts 'BULLI-???" Then after muttering things like "bullying" and "bullion" to myself for a bit, I thought "Oh, BULL IN ... something ... what's that expression? Oh right! BULL IN THE HEATHER!"

This is what happens when you were a Gen X kid who listened to too much '90s alt rock. I mean, BULL IN THE HEATHER slid right in. When it fit (!) I was like "woo hoo! nailed it!" But then a few seconds later, I was like "wait, isn't the expression BULL IN A CHINA SHOP?" And then *that* fit. So I tested a cross and when NOIR worked at 41A: Depicting the world bleakly and cynically, I knew which BULL phrase was the right one. So thanks to Sonic Youth for nearly derailing my solving experience today, it was thrilling.

[15A: Large restaurant vessel shaped like another vessel]

Bullets:

• 1A: Main characters for an early reader (ABCS) — "characters" as in "letters"
• 16A: Conference handout (ID TAG) — no abbr. indicator in the clue made this extra hard for me
• 43A: "Sweet dreams are made of cheese / Who am I to dis a ___?" (parody lyrics) ("BRIE") — so incredibly dumb. I kind of love it.
• 47A: "It is not easy for a ___ to balance himself on a ladder": "Animal Farm" ("PIG") — first of all, true. Second of all, timely—the first American edition of Animal Farm was published 80 years ago this month (it was published a year earlier in England).

• 39D: Half-spoken, half-sung passages of an opera (ARIOSI) — a little old-school crosswordese for you. Vowel city! Terminal "I"! Useful! (though you don't see it around much any more—this is its first appearance in seven years).
• 48A: A word in closing (THUS) — I thought maybe "PLUS ..." Kinda like a "P.S."? Kinda?
• 14D: Humongous, slangily (BIG-ASS) — the NYTXW remains firmly in its ASS era. Expect ASS-suffixing to continue indefinitely. Conditions may worsen. Who knows?
• 2D: Neck topper (BOTTLE CAP) — I stared at this clue wondering what in the world it could mean. On top of a neck is a ... head. "Topper?" I get that bottles have "necks" and that bottle caps are "tops," but I can't quite imagine someone saying "top that neck, will ya?" and then someone else putting a bottle cap back on a bottle. But literally, the clue checks out.
• 13D: Green day star, for short (ST. PAT) — again, I don't think you'd actually call St. Patrick's Day "Green day" but literally, sure, people wear green, whatever. I just hope you didn't think the clue was asking for a member of the band Green Day—the lowercase "d" on "day" should've disabused you of that notion.

• 38D: Publisher of the front-page headline "This sport is stupid anyway" after a U.S. loss at the World Cup, in brief (N.Y. POST) — ... speaking of "American Idiot"—the New York Post! I miss the World Cup. Though I was reminded yesterday (in a New Yorker article about lethal European heatwaves) that Spain won and thought "oh ... right, I guess they did." Somehow the totality of the experience looms larger in my mind than the actual winner of the whole thing. 

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Worrier's words / FRI 8-28-26 / Houdini specialty / They might raise your kids / Step in the shower / Asteroids system / Natural exfoliant / Brazilian soccer star known for his dribbling flair / Lightning conductor? / Star turns at a concert / Word with live or chicken

Constructor: Jack Hatchett

Relative difficulty: Medium



THEME: None

Word of the Day: SCREAMO (41D: Rock genre portmanteau) —

Screamo (also referred to as skramz^[4]) is a subgenre of emo that emerged in the early 1990s and emphasizes "willfully experimental dissonance and dynamics".^[5] San Diego–based bands Heroin and Antioch Arrow pioneered the genre in the early 1990s, and it was developed in the late 1990s mainly by bands from the East Coast of the United States such as Pg. 99, Orchid, Saetia, and I Hate Myself. Screamo is strongly influenced by hardcore punk and characterized by the use of screamed vocals.^[6] Lyrical themes usually include emotional pain, death, romance, and human rights.^[7] The term "screamo" has frequently been mistaken as referring to any music with screaming.^[6][8]

• • •

Hi all! Rafa here covering for Rex, who doesn't have power because of a big thunderstorm. We don't really get thunderstorms in the Bay Area. Sometimes I miss them, but then I remember that they cause so much damage and disrupt travel and make the power go out and then I don't miss them anymore. Here's another weather rant ... we get no rain at all from May to November. Like, zero inches of rain for 6 months. And around late-August (aka now) I start to miss the rain because sometimes rain is nice and peaceful. But then in the winter it'll rain every day for 2 weeks straight and I'm sad because it's harder to be outside and do anything because it's just so cold and wet. So why can't we just have a few rainy days here and there instead of no rain and then daily downpours? Ok, sorry, I'm getting carried away. Let's talk about the puzzle!

I am feeling my love for cats very intensely today so we are getting three cat photos

I really enjoyed this one! The last stretch of puzzles that I subbed on here for didn't really do it for me, so I was glad that I get to blog a puzzle that I liked! There was so much zing with in-the-language phrases like SCREW IT and IT'S A BREEZE and WELL, WELL, WELL, and WE ARE SO BACK. But it was balanced with other highlights like BOOSTER SEATS, the devious [Beamed over] clue for TELEPORTED, and stuff like HONSHU (I love geography facts and plopped this down with no crossings) and RONALDINHO (I'm Brazilian), and another great clue on MEZCAL (and ATARI, and RINSE), etc.

Another good boy

I have to say I have absolutely no idea who HAROLD RAMIS is. Maybe he is super famous and I've been living under a rock. Maybe he's not. I don't know! But it didn't really bother me because his name was fairly-crossed everywhere. TICHA was new to me, too. I had ESCAPE ART / TIRHA for a really long time, and that seemed pretty plausible. Only after really going through every single cross on RAMIS and TIRHA did I figure out what was up. I imagine that the RONALDINHO / TICHA athlete name situation is why they went with PELE as the Hawaiian goddess instead of the soccer star.

One more cat

What else? I'm not sure I buy "the DEEPS" as the bottom of the ocean, and AMALGAMATE felt like a pretty bland / boring word for such a prominent long slot in the puzzle, but overall this was really fun. I won't be back tomorrow (assuming Rex gets his power back...), but it's my (collab) puzzle so I hope you all enjoy it!!

Bullets:

• E-GIRLS (9D: Members of a Gen Z subculture with online origin) — To be honest, I couldn't really describe what a e-girl is, but I know it's A Thing.
• YAK (35A: ___ Polo (sport played in Pakistan)) — I didn't know people could ride yaks! Cool!
• PAW (55D: Print maker) — My cat has never left a paw print because she is clean and perfect and never leaves the house and is therefore never muddy and stinky. (I love dogs, too. But sometimes they are muddy and stinky in a way cats just are not, and we need to acknowledge this!)
• AMIGAS (29A: Compañeras) — Thank you for a clue that allows me to fill in the last vowel instead of leaving it blank because I don't know the gender.

Signed, Rafa

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Indian P.M., 1991-96 / THU 8-27-26 / 2007 horror sequel / Check-in from a texter / Gesture also known as "spirit fingers" / Apt synonym for "wake-up call" / Totino's frozen food offering / Pre-Inca civilization known for its underground aqueducts and geoglyphs / Insects responsible for virtually all fig pollination / "Sesame Street" character with a pet rock named Rocco

Constructor: Zachary David Levy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: ZZ TOP (28D: 2004 inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ... and a hint to 3-, 10-, 29- and 33-Down) — four Down answers have their "ZZ"s float to the "TOP" (i.e. front) of the answer:

Theme answers:

• ZZBU ALDRIN (3D: Astronaut for whom a Pixar character [Buzz Lightyear] is named) ("Buzz Aldrin")
• ZZJA HANDS (33D: Gesture also known as "spirit fingers") ("jazz hands")
• ZZPIA ROLL (10D: Totino's frozen food offering) ("pizza roll")
• ZZZZFUY-WUY (29D: Bear of children's rhyme) ("Fuzzy-Wuzzy")

Word of the Day: NAZCA (14A: Pre-Inca civilization known for its underground aqueducts and geoglyphs) —

The Nazca culture (also Nasca) was the archaeological culture that flourished from c. 100 BC to 800 AD beside the arid, southern coast of Peru in the river valleys of the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage and the Ica Valley. Strongly influenced by the preceding Paracas culture, who are known for their extremely complex textiles, the Nazca produced an array of crafts and technologies such as ceramics, textiles, and geoglyphs.

They are known for two extensive construction projects that would have required the coordination of large groups of laborers: the Nazca lines, immense designs in the desert whose purpose is unknown, and puquios, underground aqueducts for providing water for irrigation and domestic purposes in the arid environment, several dozen of which still function today. The Nazca Province in the Ica Region was named for this people. (wikipedia)

• • •

Took me far too long to cotton on to the theme, largely because I blew right through ZZ TOP without realizing it was a revealer. My eyes must've just picked up the first, definitional part of the clue, and not noticed that the clue went on to that whole later "... and a hint ..." part. Had a "Z" in place, saw "inductees" and "Rock & Roll Hall of Fame" and knew instantly what the answer was. But yeah, missed that it was trying to tell me anything about how the theme worked. Honestly didn't notice that that's what it was doing until I had finished the whole thing. Two things about this theme: one, we get gibberish. The thing about ZZ TOP is that its "Z"s are already, naturally at the top, so that answer is non-gibberish. But with the others, you just end up with a pile of nonsense at the top of your answer. Also, I know that ZZZZFUY-WUY (man that is hard to type / look at) is supposed to be the show-stopper, what with its double double-"Z" but ... the theme is ZZ TOP, not ZZZZ TOP. That answer feels anomalous in another way as well, since the "ZZ"s in the other themers float to the top of their first word, i.e. they remain attached to the word that they were originally a part of (e.g. BUZZ -> ZZBU) but the "ZZ"s in WUZZY have to jump all the way to the top of the answer, leaving poor "WUY" down there, both stupid-looking and "ZZ"-less. It was semi-satisfying to figure out this theme (esp. w/o the help of the revealer), but the result looks ugly, and the overall solve felt sloggish. Lots of names, lots of 3-letter answers, lots of 3-letter names. Kinda fussy (wussy) and unpleasant. HOW R U? SOG? AT BAR? SAW IV? These answers are not exactly sending me.

That opening NW corner was brutal for me. Nothing. I had nothing. Nothing but PARDO! (5D: Longtime "Saturday Night Live" announcer Don). I had zero idea who the NAZCA were, despite seeing the name (I now remember) once before in the crossword, in the answer NAZCA LINES ("Word of the Day," April 20, 2024). Looks like NAZCA also appears on its own last year (though again as part of the phrase NAZCA Lines). Weird that this ancient civilization only started showing up in crossword puzzles in the 2020s. I guess xword archaeologists discovered them and then discovered that that letter pattern was useful. Anyway, a whiff from me. I also whiffed on UNZIP because of that "?" clue (1A: Open with one's teeth?). I wanted SMILE (!?!?!). I thought [Currently being tried] meant [Currently being sampled or tested], not [Currently being on trial], so AT BAR (aside from being simply an ugly phrase) was a no-hoper. That NATO clue wasn't specific enough for me to see it (2D: Allied grp.). Not really sure about UNAS until I (eventually) got a letter or two (1D: Some, in León). The other real sticking point came in and around and directly on top of SOG, a non-word that people non-use. SOP is so much the better answer there, but since I'd never heard of a -IPABYTE, I didn't write that "P" in, though I was fully prepared for it to somehow be correct. SOG. People say "moist" is a disgusting-sounding word, but have they met SOG? Things can be SOGgy. But to SOG something? Just say "soak," if only so that people will know what the hell you're talking about. 

Had no idea what was going on with this theme for a while, as I say. I knew that the Totino's offering should be a PIZZA ROLL, but IMAGE would've had to become ZMAGE, so ... I was really shrugging up there. Plus the clue on EYE-OPENER was really inscrutable to me, so I just couldn't get into that top section (18A: Apt synonym for "wake-up call"—I was thinking of actual wake-up calls (like the kind you (used to?) ask for at hotels and going ".... they have synonyms for that?"). It was ZZZZFUYWUY (oof) that finally got me the theme. "I know it's FUZZY-WUZZY so ... wuzzup with these "Z"s?" Somehow it became clear. After that, other themers zipped into place. 

[... not to be confused with this guy, ZZFOIE BEAR]

Bullets:

• 42A: Daughter of Saturn, in Roman myth (JUNO) — I spent much of yesterday's class on the Aeneid talking about her (she's the divine antagonist of that story) and still her name didn't come to me immediately here. I guess I don't think about her lineage enough (?). So I thought of her but really worked the crosses to make sure she was, in fact, the correct four-letter goddess in question. 
• 60D: Clumsy vessel (ARK) — ??? "Clumsy" Tell that to NOAH (btw how were those answers not cross-referenced!?)
• 61D: Bygone cousin of a kiwi (MOA) — both MOA and kiwi belong to an infraclass of birds called "paleognaths"—basically all your flightless birds are part of this group (kiwi, cassowary, ostrich, emu, rhea—the ratites) as well as one flying bird, the tinamou, a Central and South American bird that has appeared in the NYTXW eight times (!?) but not a single time since 1982. Bring back the TINAMOU! There are 46 species! Although, wikipedia is telling me they are "shy and secretive" birds, so maybe they don't want the limelight.
• 59A: Be a rat (NAME NAMES) — this puzzle names a lot of them. JLO APU ENO ALI RAO ZOE ZSA(-Zsa) ... and those are just the three-letter ones. 
• 33D: Gestures also known as "spirit fingers" (ZZJA HANDS) — wow, RIP "spirit fingers," who says this now? This is the first I'm hearing the term at all. Whereas "jazz hands" ... was immortalized ... 

• 46A: Colombian offerings that may be served with hogao (AREPAS) — love AREPAS, but have absolutely no idea what "hogao" is. Probably should've made it my word of the Day, so we'll just call it a bonus "Word of the Day": 

Hogao is a variant of Spanish sofrito and is typically used in Colombian cuisine. It is traditionally made with only long green onions and tomatoes, differing from guiso, which can also be made with round onions, garlic, cumin, salt, and pepper that are sauteed over low heat during the cooking process. It is used for meats, arepas, rice, and other dishes, and can complement the famous bandeja paisa. The ingredients and naming tradition varies from region to region, though it is originally from Antioquia and the region whose people are known as paisa. Its name comes from the old use of the verbs ahogar and rehogar that reference a slow cooking technique." (wikipedia)

R.I.P. to ZZ TOP drummer Frank Beard, who died last week at the age of 77

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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