Rattled, humorously / SAT 9-19-26 / Following the leader too closely, say / Mell Lazarus comic strip that ran for 46 years / One might be cut off by an orchestra / It didn't come with a calculator until 2024 / Players who account for a disproportionate amount of a mobile game's revenue, in lingo / Ocean predator with external teeth

Constructor: Hannah Slovut-Einertson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "MOMMA" (44D: Mell Lazarus comic strip that ran for 46 years) —

Momma is an American comic strip by Mell Lazarus that ran from October 26, 1970, to July 10, 2016. [...] The central character is Sonya Hobbs, an annoying, short, widowed, opinionated senior citizen mother with a controlling, nagging personality. Although Lazarus based the character on his own mother, when he showed it to her, she thought the character was based on his aunt, exclaiming, “You caught Aunt Helen to a tee!” [...] Momma was Lazarus' second strip; he had been publishing the syndicated strip Miss Peach since 1957. Debuting on October 26, 1970, Momma was initially distributed by the Publishers-Hall Syndicate, and later was handled by Creators Syndicate and published in more than 400 newspapers worldwide. // Creators Syndicate announced Momma's (and Mell Lazarus') death July 10, 2016, in a comic strip memorial that included other grieving comic strip characters. (wikipedia)

• • •

[omygod look at its stupid little smiley face! adorable! how is this not a popular cartoon character!?]

This one has some real high points, but also some features I either don't like or don't get. Why take beautiful animals like WHALES, with infinite cluing possibilities, and render them into some mobile gaming slang (??) with a paragraph-long explanatory clue? (15D: Players who account for a disproportionate amount of a mobile game's revenue, in lingo). I know everyone wants to be hip and now and current and with-it and "hello, fellow youths," but I don't get it. Just because you found a new clue for WHALES does not mean you found a good clue for WHALES. Let the WHALES swim free with the SAW SHARKs (34D: Ocean predator with external teeth). I have no idea what SAW SHARKs are, but at least I can both infer and picture it. Also, SAW SHARK reminds me of Watchmen, which I'm currently teaching in my comics class. Specifically, it reminds of this moment, when one of the detectives gets a phone tip on where they can find Rorschach (a wanted vigilante), only "Rorschach" is not what he hears ...

In the next panel, both detectives realize who the tip's about and go running out of the room. They do ultimately catch him and imprison, but that goes bad for pretty much everyone except Rorschach (he maims and kills a lot of his fellow prisoners and psychologically ruins his well-meaning psychiatrist before eventually escaping). Anyway ... SAW SHARK! Vivid. GUITALELE, though, shrug. Why does that obscure instrument need two names? Also, this is not the debut of GUITALELE. Yes, it's been five years, but that's the kind of word you gotta let rest for at least ten. It's not your word, it's a wordlist word, used mainly for that string of ultra-common letters on the end. If you want to put something cool in the puzzle, try UKITAR. That's a much better name, anyway, and it would be original! (UKITAR appearances in NYTXW to date: zero). 

Further, I think you get two "UP"s but you do not get three "UP"s, so this one exceeded the "UP" limit today (LIGHTEN UP, SHAPE UP, "I'LL SHUT UP"). The fact that all the "UP"s were terminal made the piling up of "UP"s much more noticeable (and irksome). Lastly, in the "boo!" department, VENEERED is a particularly ugly word, and I did not enjoy sitting and waiting and guessing what the last three letters of TEEHEE--- were going to be (29D: [Giggle]). TEEHEEING seemed possible. But no, we just get an extra, gratuitous titter part. TEEHEE is never good fill. Adding an extra HEE doesn't improve matters. 

OK, now I'LL SHUT UP (16A: End of a rant, perhaps) ... actually, no I'll continue, but in a much more positive vein. Because much of this puzzle is very fresh and fun and (importantly) far from dull. Those NE and SW corners (GUITARLELE excepted) are lovely, with the SW probably being the puzzle's best part. Real talky and voicey and sassy, and clean clean clean from top to bottom. I also loved the clues on OSCAR SPEECH (37A: One might be cut off by an orchestra) and EMPTY SUIT (31D: No-talent boss), and SHOOKETH, lol, that already feels dated, but it did make me laugh (the lag time on themeless publication, as I understand it from recent discussions with constructors, can be pretty long, so who knows when this puzzle was actually made—probably at least a year ago) (42A: Rattled, humorously). The slanginess continues with RETCON (a shortening of "retroactive continuity"), a common concept in various ongoing fictional universes (26D: Storytelling device that revises previously established facts, informally). There's a lot to like here, even if the ride gets a little bumpy in places.

Weird solve for me, as I came roaring out of the NW and then came to an awkward, abrupt stop. Wrench in the gears at the crossing of WHALES, BAD LOT, and VENEERED. Forward progress, completely thwarted. But then, also weird, instead of starting over with the short fill in some other section, I somehow looked at the clue for a long answer, 28A: Youngest congressional appointees ... and that was a gimme. Wrote in SENATE PAGES and couldn't believe it was right. So easy. From there, I was off and running again, down into the SE, then back up through the middle, eventually joining the SE and NW by settling all the WHALES / BAD LOT / VENEERED nonsense. That left the NE and SW corners, which were the best part, so I inadvertently saved the best for last—always nice to finish on a high note. Not much in the puzzle that I outright didn't know today. WHALES, obviously ... SAW SHARK, but that wasn't hard to guess ... OLUO is a name I've seen on bookshelves and thought "oh, so you want to be in crosswords, do you?" But I didn't remember it today. Otherwise, there's nothing particularly obscure about any of the grid content. Then again, I grew up with Rod CAREW on my baseball cards and "MOMMA" in my local newspaper, and Sidney LUMET's Dog Day Afternoon is one of my favorite movies, so it's possible the proper nouns were more me-friendly than they were you-friendly today.

Bullets:

• 12D: Following the leader too closely, say (CULTY) — a debut, and a good one! The context is ambiguous so when you finally stumble on the answer, it's a (to me, funny) surprise. 
• 20A: Runner's goal (HOME PLATE) — more ambiguity. First thought track & field "runner," then went way off-book and thought maybe we were dealing with a TV showrunner ... or a computer program, which runs, obviously ... in the end, it was just baseball—a baserunner.
• 19A: Siva ___ (traditional dance named for its country of origin) (SAMOA) — so, basically, [Five-letter country], got it? I was like "Siva SPAIN ... sounds wrong." Good instinct, me!
• 21A: Good-for-nothings (BAD LOT) — had the BAD and was so mad that I could not make a plural answer! BADDYS!? The two-word, non-"S"-ending group noun never occurred to me. Until it did.

That's all for today. I had a wonderful time at the WFMU crossword meet-up on Thursday night. I'll talk about it in greater detail in tomorrow's write-up, but for now, I'll just say that solving original puzzles with a roomful of your fellow nerds in a very relaxed, non-tournament setting, while eating OREOs and other less crosswordy snacks and listening to a carefully curated playlist of ONO, ENO, SADE, SIA, etc.—it was more fun that I could've imagined. The people who came out to solve and say hi were So Nice. There were even a couple of constructors there that I knew. We solved three puzzles (including one of my own) and after each one we'd put the solution up on a screen and (briefly) talk about it and take questions about it. All the puzzles were WFMU-themed (it was a WFMU benefit, after all). Anyway, people were disarmingly lovely to me. It was a fun night out. I hope we do it again next year. Thanks to Evan Davies, the WFMU DJ who arranged it all (and contributed a puzzle of his own—his first!) as well as Gary Cee, a longtime NYTXW constructor who contributed a puzzle as well. And thanks especially to the blog-readers who came out to solve and say hi. It meant a lot to me. (Also, if you were there and have pictures you’d be willing to email me, I’d really appreciate it)

[Gary, Evan, me]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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