She played Sandy Lester in "Tootsie" / SAT 8-22-26 / Greenish plum variety / Dish such as Germany's hasenpfeffer / Beset by impossible circumstances / Analytical graphic that divides data into quartiles / Mideast shrub with leaves that are chewed as a stimulant / Iconic hairstyle of Jane Fonda and Stevie Nicks / Benjamin Franklin invention of the 1780s

Constructor: Adrian Johnson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TERI GARR (6D: She played Sandy Lester in "Tootsie") —

Terry Ann "Teri" Garr (December 11, 1944 – October 29, 2024) was an American actress, comedienne and dancer. Known for her comedic roles in film and television in the 1970s and 1980s, she often played women struggling to cope with the life-changing experiences of their husbands, children or boyfriends. She received nominations for an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for her performance in Tootsie (1982), playing a struggling actress who loses the soap opera role of a female hospital administrator to her male friend and acting coach.

Garr was raised primarily in North Hollywood, California. She was the third child of a comedic-actor father and a studio costumier mother. In her youth, Garr trained in ballet and other forms of dance. She began her career as a teenager with small roles in television and film in the early 1960s, including appearances as a dancer in nine Elvis Presley musicals. After spending two years attending college, Garr left Los Angeles and studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York City. She had her breakthrough appearing in the episode "Assignment: Earth" of Star Trek in 1968.

After gaining attention for her 1974 roles in Francis Ford Coppola's thriller The Conversation and Mel Brooks's comedy horror Young Frankenstein, Garr became increasingly successful with major roles in Carl Reiner's comedy Oh, God! and Steven Spielberg's science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (both 1977) and The Black Stallion (1979). In the 1980s, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her comedic role as an acting student in Sydney Pollack's romantic comedy Tootsie, and enjoyed leading roles in Coppola's musical drama One from the Heart (1982), Mr. Mom (1983), and Firstborn (1984). She later acted in films such as Martin Scorsese's black comedy After Hours (1985), Let It Ride (1989), Dumb and Dumber (1994), Prêt-à-Porter (1994), Michael (1996), and Ghost World (2001).

Garr's quick wit and charming banter made her a sought-after guest on late-night shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman. On television, she took a guest role as Phoebe Abbott in the sitcom Friends (1997–98). (wikipedia)

• • •

First of all, half-star bonus for anyone who puts TERI GARR (full name) in the puzzle. Instant, irrepressible smile. She made everything she was in better and she should've had more starring roles (despite being *perfect* in her supporting ones). One of my all-time screen faves (and screen crushes). Despite TERI being crosswordese, you will never once hear me complain about TERI in a puzzle if the TERI is GARR. In the early '90s, TERI GARR did ads for Jockey underwear and clearly I have never forgotten. I'm sure this is supposed to be pragmatic, non-sexy underwear, but you could've fooled me! 

As for the non-TERI GARR parts of this puzzle, yes, yeah, hell yeah, I'll take all of this. Those 4-stacks absolutely rule. Gonna KEEP IT PG and just say this was friggin' great. I wish it had been harder—this was easier than yesterday's puzzle, for me. More playful. Fewer names. Light, bright. A real work of art. I am SOLD ON this puzzle, completely. Here's the list of crud I came up with just so you'll see I'm not blind: ESTA EMIRS ANNO OPED EKES. Maybe DESI. Maybe SHEL. I mean ... that's nothing. And I honestly didn't notice it or care because everything else was so delightful. 

Another reason I enjoyed this puzzle was pure accident. I read the clue on 1A: Dish such as Germany's hasenpfeffer and thought "well ... that's something to do with potatoes, right? So ... I dunno, maybe POTATO STEW?" So I decided to just test the STEW part and ... bam (bam bam bam)

So I'm all excited and I think, "awesome, POTATO STEW it is!" Then I get to the quote at 1D: "Into each life some ___ must fall": Longfellow, and I think "OK, so ... I really thought it was RAIN that must fall into each life, but I guess that's a misquote, so ... PAIN it is." Then, at 2D: Common word in Latin dating: first: "how should I know what Latin people say to each other on dates?" Then: "O ... O... OMNI? That's a Latin word ... but dating?" When I got to 3D: Tournament passes? and tried to come up with something starting with "T," that's when it first dawned on me "mayyyyyybe it's not POTATO stew." Pulled potatoes, put in RAIN, and then ANNO (which suddenly seemed obvious) and BYES, and huzzah, watch me pull a RABBIT out of my puzzle! I love it when my struggles are self-inflicted and ultimately comical. Didn't have a lick of trouble with this puzzle after that. Well ... I thought "UHH..." might be "HMM" and then maybe "HUH," and I wrote in QUT at 34A: Mideast shrub with leaves that are chewed as a stimulant, conflating the mideast (IRANian) city (QUM, also QOM) with the mideast stimulant (QAT). The one longer phrase that I didn't get easily, and that feels a little wonky, is "YES, NO DOUBT." I can hear someone saying it, I suppose, but it mostly seems like two synonymous phrases randomly mashed together. "NO DOUBT" already means "YES." Redundancy! If you feel the need to speak in redundancies, maybe ...

Bullets:

• 11A: Set of 24 for a box jellyfish (EYES) — interesting fact, but kind of an unforced error, duping BOX like that (see 4D: Analytical graphic that divides data into quartiles = BOX PLOT)
• 15A: "Hello?" follower ("ANYONE HOME?") — because "IS IT ME YOU'RE LOOKING FOR?" would not fit.

• 11D: Volume control device? (E-READER) — I do not like E-READERs (as fill, or irl), but I love this clue. Answer redeemed!
• 28D: Dipped (out) (SNUCK) — recentish expression for leaving (abruptly, and maybe inconspicuously). I knew "dip" meant "leave," I didn't know it carried a connotation of sneakiness.
• 37D: I, O, U and Y, but not A or E (ELEMENTS) — I like this clue because it reminds me of this insane '80s song:

[How have EBN OZN never been in the puzzle!? Oh, right, they're not that famous. I mean, the puzzle hasn't even used OZU yet, and he's a legendary film director, why would they bother with EBN OZN ... except for their cool name]

• 55D: Greenish plum variety (GAGE) — whoa, never saw this clue. I would not have known this answer. 
• 33D: Iconic hairstyle of Jane Fonda and Stevie Nicks (SHAG) — I just wanted to play some Stevie to close things out.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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