Natural wonder in Venezuela / MON 8-24-26 / Clerical vestment / Presentations with an 18-minute limit / Word after Georgia, Virginia or low / Leave the cocoon / Zing ___ (brand of Bloody Mary mix) / "The Magicians" novelist Grossman

Constructor: Steven Jopek

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

[8 days without a Star Wars reference, in case you're wondering]

THEME: HELL OR HIGH WATER (35A: Any foreseeable difficulty ... with a hint to 17-, 25-, 50- and 60-Across) — four theme answers, two of which are (allegedly) examples of "hell," two of which are examples of (literally) "high water":

Theme answers:

• UNDERWORLD (17A: Criminals' sphere)
• TIDAL WAVE (25A: Tsunami)
• PURGATORY (50A: Stop in the afterlife)
• ANGEL FALLS (60A: Natural wonder in Venezuela)

Word of the Day: ANGEL FALLS (60A) —

Angel Falls (Spanish: Salto Ángel; Pemon: Körepakupai Vená) is a waterfall in Venezuela. It is the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, with a height of 979 metres (3,212 ft), and a plunge of 807 m (2,648 ft). The waterfall drops over the edge of the Auyán-tepui mountain in the Canaima National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Canaima), a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State. The height figure, 979 m (3,212 ft), mostly consists of the main plunge but also includes about 400 metres (1,300 ft) of sloped cascade and rapids below the drop and then a 30-metre-high (100 ft) plunge downstream of these talus rapids.

The falls are along a fork of the Río Körepa which flows into the Churún River, a tributary of the Carrao River, itself a tributary of the Orinoco River.

With regard to overall height, a revisited validation of waterfall measurements is not available, and there is still uncertainty whether Angel Falls or South Africa's Tugela Falls is the tallest (both measurements were taken at considerable distance from the two waterfalls). (wikipedia)

• • •

I really wanted to like this. At the halfway point, I did. I got the revealer, looked back at the two themers I'd already gotten, realized one was a word for "hell" and one was an example of "high water," and thought, "oh, that's fun." HELL OR HIGH WATER is a really nice phrase. OK, the full phrase is COME HELL OR HIGH WATER, but it's fine as it is. So, halfway through, feeling alright. And then I hit PURGATORY. Let me tell you something about PURGATORY. First, as any MEDIEVAList (and probably lots of other people) can tell you, it is not "hell." I mean, it is decidedly, definitively, absolutely positively not "hell." The very fact that the clue tells you it is a "stop" in the afterlife tells you that it is not hell. If you know anything about hell, it's that it's not a stop. You go in, and that's it; you don't get out. "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here." Ever heard of it? Kind of famous. Do you know how much PURGATORY is not hell? It's so much not hell that Dante wrote a book about hell (Inferno) and then wrote An Entirely Separate Book about purgatory (Purgatorio), an Entirely Separate Realm of the Afterlife. They are distinct and non-overlapping places. If you are in Purgatory, despite the fact that you might be there for a long time doing unpleasant things over and over, you are Very Very Happy to be there and doing your punishment with great alacrity because (say it with me) you are Not in hell. People in Purgatory get out! They are, in fact, Heaven- (Paradiso-) bound. People in hell, not so much. Not at all. Virgil can leave hell for a bit to show Dante around the first part of purgatory, but eventually he has to hand Dante off to Beatrice because even he, the most important and revered denizen of Inferno (the only one who can get out even temporarily), can only go so far. So ... fatal thematic error. I mean, mind-spinningly fatal. Good theme idea, utterly ruined.

The fill also got a little weak on the back end. CMA ALB ELA (and ELLA?) ... so much overcommon gunk ... and ZANG!?!?!?! (45A: Zing ___ (brand of Bloody Mary mix)). "Brand of Bloody Mary mix" lol what? Seriously, what? LOL. I know you wanted that "Z," but what in the world is happening there? This is the debut of ZANG. You can see why no one ever bothered to use it before. It's awful. A partial Bloody Mary mix name???? Purge your wordlist!!! The great Japanese director Yasujiro OZU is still waiting to make his first appearance in the NYTXW, and meanwhile this frickin' Bloody Mary mix half-name is like "hey, you mind if I cut the line, cool, thanks!" Jeez louise. I do like ZURICH as an answer. Still, not worth the ZANG of it all. Also, so many names in this one. None of them are particularly tough (except maybe LEV, if you're not familiar with modern fantasy lit), but ugh so many: NADIA OLGA POE ESTEE RHEA RIAN LOEW ELBA LEV ELI REGAN ERNIE APU, make it stop (I could've added ARETHA to that list, but you will Never hear me complain about Aretha being in the puzzle).

Bullets:

• 4D: Leave the cocoon (EMERGE) — this was maybe the hardest Down in my Downs-only solve. An odd way to come at EMERGE. Luckily, adjacent Downs allowed me to infer the first few letters of EMERGE, so no great tragedy.
• 65A: Arctic creatures with flippers (SEALS) — "Arctic" ... I mean, sure, but they're just ... creatures with flippers. There are SEALS in plenty of non-Arctic places. Coincidentally, we're in the middle of John Sayles's The Secret of Roan Inish (1994) (I stopped it halfway through to come up and write just now). It's the movie we're watching this week in my Movie Club. It's very seal-centric, and it's set in Ireland, which, last I checked ... not Arctic.

• 25D: Word after Georgia, Virginia or low (TECH) — well you got me. I was like "... REEL?" Seems kinda weak to have two of the three examples be schools, but at least it was unusual. Not "partial Bloody Mary mix name" unusual—just plain old "kinda interesting unusual." You know, the good "unusual."
• 38D: Like many horror flicks (GORY) — speaking of GORY horror flicks, I just saw and really liked Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. The goriness is comically hyperbolic, and I'm not sure I'd actually call it a "horror film"—more a film about horror films, specifically, about the relationship between a young director tasked with rebooting a slasher franchise and the star of the original movie in the franchise (made some forty years earlier), now a reclusive figure living in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. The latter character is played by Gillian Anderson (of X-Files fame), who ends up playing a kind of spiritual/sexual Virgil to Hannah Einbinder's Dante, and let me tell you—you've never seen anything like this relationship on screen. Also, you will never look at Kentucky Fried Chicken, or hear the Counting Crows' "Long December," quite the same way again.

[I was gonna play the Counting Crows song for you here but then I stumbled on this surprising and gorgeous solo version by MJ Lenderman, enjoy]

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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