Non, ni, 'a'ole / SUN 10-18-26 / Less than satisfactory, slangily / Novel form of summer escapism? / Tree that can be a source of water for thirsty elephants / Taib? Tbia? / Cupcake, in Ireland / ___ Allen, host of "Chopped" / "Ibis" poet / Pricing game on "The Price Is Right" / Sex symbol of the 1950s-'60s, familiarly / Reason to head for the hills / Bob ___, alter ego of Mr. Incredible

Constructor: Peter Gorman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Tell Me About Yourself!" — The puzzle is talking to you about itself (?)— “I" phrases are clued in some kind of punny or unexpectedly literal way (???):

Theme answers:

• "I NEED SOME SPACE" (23A: Heyhowareyou) [you 'need' to put space in between the clue words]
• "I TELL YOU WHAT" (32A: "What") [literally, just the puzzle telling you 'What']
• "I MISSED YOU" (49A: All--can-eat buffet) ['You' is missing from the clue phrase]
  "I DON'T SAY THIS LIGHTLY" (65A: "This") ['This' is clued in bold, i.e. not lightly]
• "I'M OVER HERE" (86A: See 88-Across) [the clue for 88-Across ([Here]) is literally directly below this clue]
• ON EARTH (88A: Here)
• "I HAVE NO WORDS" (97A: Non, ni, 'a'ole) ['no' words, i.e. words that mean 'no' in other languages]
• "I'M A BIT CONFUSED" (114A: Taib? Tbia?) ["a bit" confused, i.e. with letters mixed up]

Word of the Day: HEIDI Gardner (106A: "S.N.L." alum Gardner) —

[from the Apple TV show Shrinking]

Heidi Lynn Gardner (born July 27, 1983) is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She was a cast member on Saturday Night Live, an NBC sketch comedy series for eight seasons from season 43 in 2017 until season 50 in 2025. She was promoted to repertory status on the show in 2019. [...] Gardner departed the show in 2025, after the conclusion of the show's 50th season. In 2026, Gardner admitted that she was ultimately cut from the show ahead of season 51.

• • •

I can't talk much about this because I feel like I don't really get it. I never caught on to what the puzzle was trying to do ... or else I did, and I just didn't like it. I'm still hung up on how the "I'M OVER HERE" / ON EARTH thing is supposed to work. I get that [Here] is (literally) ON EARTH, but ... is the idea that "I'M OVER HERE" is, like, physically higher in the grid than ON EARTH? Because that answer is not really "over" [Here], i.e. ON EARTH. It's way on the other side of the grid. If it were literally over the answer for [Here], maybe it would make more sense to me. Maybe. I dunno [oh ok, just realized that 86A: See 88-Across is “over [Here]” in the clues! I never look at clue layout, so that was obviously hard to appreciate]. "I TELL YOU WHAT" is funny in its ridiculous literalness, but "I NEED SOME SPACE" doesn't really land. You just ... don't space the words? But ... "you" are speaking, so do you really "need" space(s between your words)? But I guess if “you” are the puzzle, it makes sense, “you” should have spaces. The way the "I MISSED YOU" clue is written is so awkward—the "you" in "All-you-can-eat" is just missing, so you get this double dash ("--") thing, which (for me) was really hard to read / make sense of. Whatever sense of humor is happening here, it's mostly just missing me. The fill also creaks throughout. The SMOLT / OCTAL pairing is a real lowlight, as is IN A MEMO, NO BUENO (?) and ABED, a word no one uses that also gets an "?" clue (3D: Undercover?). Never thought of ABED because I've never used the word ABED. Feels archaic. But like I said, I shouldn't go on because this felt like it simply wasn't for me. Maybe it's over my head, like some kinds of comedy that everyone seems to love and I'm like "I don't get it." It's very possible.

Sorry, I really truly have nothing big-picture to say about this puzzle. I found it toughish in places, but somehow also finished quickly. The TONE / ABED / NO BUENO part def slowed me down, but other than that, there weren't any obviously thorny places. Occasionally the clues got (for me) very hard, like with GELATO (117A: It's cold in Italy) and BUN (115D: Cupcake, in Ireland) and even OVID, whom I've read a bunch, but "Ibis"? (36D: "Ibis" poet). No idea. Four-letter poet, though—not hard to infer. I don't know who various SNL alums are or who hosts Chopped or who the "alter ego" of Mr. Incredible is (?!?!), so I had to work through those, but that's just normal everyday solving trouble. Seemed like there were a lot of names, but none of them sank me. I think my favorite clue of the whole puzzle was 56D: Reason to head for the hills (SKI TRIP). The puzzle was pretty light on high points for me.

["I'm right over here / Why can't you see me? Oh oh oh..."]

Bullets:

• 24D: Sex symbol of the 1950s-'60s, familiarly (MARILYN) — was expecting a nickname ("familiarly"), but first names are "familiar," and she was commonly referred to by just the one name, so that's fine.
• 85D: "Lay it on me" ("SHOOT") — kept wanting it to be "SAY IT." Which is reminding me that ON EARTH (the "H" cross) was actually pretty hard to put together.

• 117A: It's cold in Italy (GELATO) — does GELATO mean "cold" in Italian? No, that's FREDDO. That makes this clue weird, since GELATO (the frozen dessert) is cold no matter where you are. 
• 7D: Novel form of summer escapism? (POOL READ) — I have definitely heard of BEACH READ. I have definitely not heard of POOL READ. I get it, I just haven't heard anyone use it as a term.
• 48D: Series finale? (ETC.) — Does that even really need the "?" I had ESS here.
• 82D: Something in which you might stand for a spell (BEE) — this one seems like it should have a "?"—does anyone call the act of spelling a word a "spell"?

• 96D: Pricing game on "The Price Is Right" (PLINKO) — I guess it's a classic game from that show, but I haven't thought about that show since the '80s and am surprised we're still supposed to know things about it. It's still on the air, isn't it? Does Drew Carey host it? [checks] Yes. This is his 20th season. I forget that daytime TV still exists. Sometimes I forget that network TV still exists. I don't think I could name more than a handful of shows currently on the air, across all the major networks (ABC NBC CBS FOX). 
• 71A: They can make a pronounced difference (UMLAUTS) — cute, but also very vague, as many diacritical marks (all of them?) do this (i.e. change pronunciation of a letter).
• 115D: Cupcake, in Ireland (BUN) — I thought "Cupcake" was a pet name, so I really wanted "HON," but that didn't seem very Irish.

That'll have to do for today. Sorry I couldn't work up enthusiasm for this thing, even negative enthusiasm. It just missed me. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. maybe I'm just crossworded out—I had a lovely day up in Ithaca at the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition, scoring puzzles and chatting to people and eating Oreos and what not. Turnout was as big as I've seen it, which is great, since all the proceeds go to Tompkins Learning Partners, an adult literacy org. It's fun scoring puzzles because you get to see exactly the place(s) that are most difficult for people. There was a cross in the Toughest puzzle today that wiped out maybe 1/3 of solvers: Beethoven's "MISSA Solemnis" crossing Chocolat director LASSE Hallström at the "A." The Toughest puzzle also had a tricky theme where answers were represented literally in the puzzle, like AGEBEAUTY ("Age before beauty") and DEATHLIFE ("Life after death"). One of the answers was NOONDOGDAY, for Dog Day Afternoon, which some people had apparently never heard of—I saw a couple Dog Day Afterboons and at least one Dog Day Aftersoon. Maybe they thought SOONDOGDAY was Soon Before Dog Day—sounds like something directed by LASSE Hallström (he directed My Life as a Dog, after all). Anyway, a good time for sure. But yes, I'm tired.

[Middle school cafeteria!—this photo shows the whole room but you can't really see the bulk of the crowd, who are at table in red chairs near the front of the room]

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Poison classification / SAT 10-17-26 / Skin care brand from Japan / Mothers in cotes / Plant parts that develop as a seedling grows / "The Duck Variations" playwright / Urban locale that looks out on Ellis Island / Scot's word meaning "past" / Seafood-based ingredient in Eastern cuisines / One getting ripped off at a venue

Constructor: August Miller

Relative difficulty: Medium (with one murderous square)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TRUE LEAVES (26D: Plant parts that develop as a seedling grows) —

True leaves are the mature leaves that follow the initial embryonic leaves, known as cotyledons, in a plant’s life cycle. Cotyledons, sometimes referred to as seed leaves, are present in the early stages of germination and serve as temporary structures that provide nourishment to the developing plant. As the plant grows, it produces true leaves, which are typically the characteristic leaves of the species. True leaves exhibit the typical shape, size, and structural features of the plant’s foliage, reflecting its genetic makeup and environmental influences. (plantpropagation.org)

• • •

[My TREE LEAVES right now—spectacular]

Yeah, see, the thing about TR-E LEAVES is ... I feel like if you asked 100 people to fill in the missing letter, 97 would put in an "E." Also, since TRUE LEAVES are, in fact, TREE LEAVES (the parts of trees we all identify as "leaves"), then it's not even really wrong. So what about the cross? Well, as for skin care brands, Japanese or otherwise, let's just say that I am not the one to ask (35A: Skin care brand from Japan). And yet, bizarrely, I know *enough* about skin care brands to know that there definitely is one that starts "CER-"—I looked it up afterwards and sure enough:

And so, in short, I was totally satisfied with TREE LEAVES / CEREL. The End. If this had been a tournament, I would have submitted this with one big fat error. I am really curious to see if anyone else did this. I figure if you know your skin care brands well, then no. As soon as I changed that "E" to "U" (after going over every answer in my grid to find the error), I thought "Oh yeah, CUREL, that sounds familiar." But TREE LEAVES just seemed undeniable to me, and, as I say, there is a "CER-" skin care brand out there, so CUREL never even made it to my radar. I thought this was a fairly lovely puzzle overall, but I won't remember much of it now. I will remember TRUE LEAVES, though. So at least I learned something, however small a consolation that seems right now.

Other than the fact that I didn't get the "Congratulations" message when I entered the final square, this played like a fairly standard Saturday for me—bunch of initially inscrutable clues that gradually started to make sense. I managed to get only EWES in the far NW (19A: Mothers in cotes), but then hit on STUB just a little further down (30D: One getting ripped off at a venue), which got me both SHALE and URGE, and from there, I was off—not at a particularly fast clip, but at a consistent one. A few of the longer answers took a lot of crossing before I got them, starting with LIFE CHANGE—the LIFE part was the last thing to go in that corner (3D: Relocating to a different country, e.g.). LIFE was way vaguer a term than I was imagining. And then with the book of family secrets, after a few crosses I had RECORD BOOK, which seemed weak ... because it was (16A: Where some family secrets may be written). Delighted to discover it was RECIPE BOOK all along (unlike with LIFE CHANGE, RECIPE BOOK felt like a struggle rewarded—good answer, well hidden). But the biggest 'aha' moment I got with a longer answer today came at 31D: Poison classification. Talk about hiding your real subject! I had HAIR- at the beginning of the answer and was still thinking of Poison as a lethal substance. "Are there ... HAIR-melting poisons? HAIRINESS? So they classify poisons by HAIRINESS?" It was only after I'd gone underneath and gotten the "-AL" that I realized Poison, in this case, is the band. The HAIR METAL band. Sweet clue, dude.

This was a pleasingly literary puzzle, with playwright David MAMET (43D: "The Duck Variations" playwright) and poet Elizabeth Bishop (34A: "One ___" (Elizabeth Bishop poem that repeats the line "The ___ of losing isn't hard to master") and a full-named GRACE PALEY (short story writer and poet) (53A: Author of the story collections "The Little Disturbances of Man" *(1959) and "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute" (1974))! Good for GRACE PALEY (1922-2007)! I feel like not enough people know her stories (or her poetry). GRACE PALEY reminds me of my best friend Shaun, who once met her and maybe even interviewed her for some reason, I forget the details (sorry, Shaun). If you were stumped or troubled by either of the long names today (not just GRACE PALEY, but ALISON BRIE (18A: Actress who plays Trudy on "Mad Men" and Annie on "Community"), or any of the shorter names (there really weren't that many), hopefully neither of the names murdered you the way CUREL murdered me. OK, maybe not murdered, but knocked out for sure. KO'd by the CUREL Cross!

One Art

By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. (thepoetryfoundation.org)

Bullets:

• 39A: Establishment selling craft products? (BEER BARS) — I got the BEER part easy but then ... I just wouldn't commit to BARS? Seemed the obvious finisher, but it also just sounded ... wrong. Brewpubs sell craft beers. "BEER BARS" is not a term I know or hear often. Wine bars, sure, cocktail bars, yes, but BEER BARS? Establishments that sell beer? I just call them "bars." Cheers sells beer. Cheers is a bar. That is my beer/bar logic.
• 56A: Scot's word meaning "past" (SYNE) — as in "Auld Lang SYNE." I watched a creepy 1945 Val Lewton horror movie yesterday about grave-robbing called The Body Snatcher (starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi), and it's set in Scotland and despite no one's having anything near a Scottish accent, every once in a while a Scots phrase would pop up, including a rueful and morbid "Auld Lang SYNE" (the protagonist does not really want to remember what happened "a long time ago").

• 5D: Birds whose wings might be folded? (CRANES) — these are the birds most closely associated with the folding art of origami. Really nice clue.
• 44D: Lane in Superman movies (DIANE) — I have mostly ignored any Superman movies that don't star Christopher Reeve, so I was wholly unaware that DIANE Lane ever starred in one, let alone more than one. She was in a movie called My New Gun in the '90s that I think no one saw but I remember really liking. 

• 25A: Part of many home improvement projects (PAINT JOB) — Hmm. I had PAINTING here for a while. I feel like cars get PAINT JOBs. Houses just get painted. 
• 11D: Fem. or masc. (ABBR.) — true, but brutal, in that the clue really really seems to be pointing you toward something specific (gender-specific). The clue could just as easily have been [Tsp. or hwy.] but where's the fun in that (actually, that is kind of fun ... I like the idea of people trying to figure out what "teaspoon" and "highway" have in common, only to discover the answer is nothing, they're just abbreviations)
• 27D: Urban locale that looks out on Ellis Island (JERSEY CITY) — home of WFMU! I was just there last month doing a little station benefit crossword meet-up thingie. There will probably be another one next year and it will almost certainly be bigger, so I'm already excited for that.

[JERSEY CITY's own ... Kool & the Gang (I learned this while writing a clue for my WFMU crossword meet-up puzzle)]

I'm off to listen to WFMU right now, in fact (morning post-blog ritual: coffee and the radio). I missed Evan Davies's Tuesday afternoon show this week, so I'll probably just listen to that in the show archives. I hope to see a small handful of you later today at the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (see below). Otherwise, that's all for today. See you next time.

 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. The Fourteenth Annual (!!) Finger Lakes Crossword Competition is TODAY, Saturday, October 17! It's a nice, low-key way to spend an autumn afternoon. Original puzzles by Ithaca resident Adam Perl, who has made many puzzles for the NYT over the years. I'll be there! Judging you! Actually, just scoring the puzzles. Proceeds benefit Tompkins Learning Partners, an adult literacy organization. 1-4pm, Boynton Middle School, Ithaca, NY. If you're local, come on out and say hi and solve some puzzles and meet other people like yourself (they exist!). All the information you need is here.

 

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Battery-powered string instrument player / FRI 10-16-26 / Flow down the neck / Foe of Dr. Eggman, in video games / Cuban poet/philosopher José / 2011 platinum single by Tyler, the Creator / "___ Share of the Night" (acclaimed 2019 Mariana Enríquez book) / Mideast salad, in one spelling / Art movement proclaimed in a 1916 manifesto

Constructor: Adam Shapiro

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: José MARTÍ (9A: Cuban poet/philosopher José) —

[statue of MARTÍ in Havana]

José Julián Martí Pérez (Spanish: [xoˈse maɾˈti]; 28 January 1853 – 19 May 1895) was a Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country from Spain. He was also an important figure in Latin American literature. He was a political activist and is considered an important philosopher and political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol of Cuba's bid for independence from the Spanish Empire in the 19th century and is referred to as the "Apostle of Cuban Independence". From adolescence on, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt. [...] Martí was killed in battle against Spanish troops at the Battle of Dos Ríos, near the confluence of the rivers Contramaestre and Cauto, on 19 May 1895. [...] The death of Martí was a blow to the "aspirations of the Cuban rebels, inside and outside of the island, but the fighting continued with alternating successes and failures until the entry of the United States into the war in 1898". (wikipedia)

• • •

An absolutely killer Friday, best I can remember in a long while. From the opening salvo, I was like "Dang ... this puzzle's not ****ing around. Alright alright alright, let's go!" Putting Britney Spears over an EPISTOLARY NOVEL (in my mind, it's Clarissa, but insert whatever relevant title you like) has to be one of my favorite marquee answer juxtapositions of all time. Talk about your unlikely friendships, your improbable pairings, your cheese and apple pie (I hear it's good, though I haven't tried it). Dizzying literary highs, delicious pop culture lows! (no offense, Britney, I secretly love that song). The great thing about "OOPS! ... I DID IT AGAIN" is that it's a useful refrain to have on hand when, say, you can't put in the wrong letter the end of YENT- (25A: Spiller of tea), or confidently write in TIE GAME only to find out that the real answer is TIE VOTE (12D: 20-20, e.g.). "[Sigh]. That is just so typically me."

I realized as I was solving this how much I had missed *fun*. There was almost no point of this puzzle when I wasn't having *fun*. Not only were there many entertaining marquee answers, but the cluing was playful too—not terribly difficult, most of the time, but slyly misdirective or cheekily vague or otherwise humming. Two days ago we got a puzzle where all the clues seemed out of a box (a musty box) and here, most of them feel like care was put into them. You gotta have some straightforward stuff so people can get their toe- and/or footholds, but otherwise, yeah, liven things up a bit, it's nice! The second bank of marquee answers was almost as good as the first. A FEEL-GOOD MOVIE followed by TAROT READINGS does sound like a nice date night. Might even put you on CLOUD NINE. The marquees at the bottom were my least favorite of the bunch, and they were still like an 8/10. And the great thing about the puzzle is that it didn't short-change us on the shorter fill. First of all, you never feel like you're drowning in 3-4-5s. Second, what 3-4-5s there are are mercifully clean. FIT FILTH IDAHO TIRED DOOR ASS KITS ... I can live with these! I balked at the fill precisely once—EBOW over YOS. I guessed the former off the "W" but I can only kinda sorta picture what that is (besides one of your uglier E-words) ("oh now, they decapitated Tim TEBOW!"). As for YOS, plural exclamations, never welcome, but the clue actually made me laugh, and thus softened the experience (49A: Rocky openings?). "Yo, Adrian! ... I said 'Yo!' How many 'YOS' I gotta say, baby!?"

I should've made the Word of the Day EPICENE (3D: Not gendered). It's a word I've seen but could not define for you right now. Not gendered how? Grammatically? Let's see ... yes, grammatically. But also:

adjective

1. Having characteristics of both sexes.
2. Having characteristics traditionally ascribed to the other sex, especially as a male who is considered to be effeminate.
3. Having no characteristics of either sex. (American Heritage Dictionary, 5th ed.)

Seems to be a somewhat antique word for describing gender ambiguity. Here's a colorful example of recent usage—from a 2011 WSJ review of the movie Puss in Boots (2011):

Puss teams up with Humpty Dumpty, a creepily epicene ovoid voiced with eerie plaintiveness by Zach Galifianakis, to repay an old debt by stealing some magic beans from Jack and Jill.

Not sure if Humpty Dumpty has characteristics of both sexes or neither sex. Gonna guess the latter. Anyway, didn't know that one and didn't know EBOW (not really), and definitely didn't know "OUR" (as clued) (30D: "___ Share of the Night" (acclaimed 2019 Mariana Enríquez book)) or "SHE" (as clued) (55D: 2011 platinum single by Tyler, the Creator), but otherwise, I zoom-zoomed and whoosh-whooshed my way through this one, smiling all the way. [just noticed the grid is actually smiling at *me*—up top, with a smile reflection down below 😀]

Bullets:

• 11D: Hot pockets? (RAVIOLI) — this is such a weird fake-out clue. "Hot pockets" makes me think of the frozen food product, which is just ... hot goop in a doughy pouch. But the clue has the "?" on it so I'm trying to think of something hot that comes in "pockets," something in nature, maybe? I get the "-AV-" and consider LAVA PIT, but it's not plural. Then I get a few more crosses and up ... right back at hot goop in a doughy pouch! I mean, I'll take RAVIOLI over Hot Pockets any day, but they basically belong to the same very general category of food. That clue took me on a journey. I liked it.

• 35D: Mideast salad, in one spelling (TABOULI) — spelled it "right" the first time. I'm guessing the other (more common?) spelling is TABOULEH. Checking wikipedia, and ... Whoa, lotsa spellings coming through. "Tabbouleh (Arabic: تبولة, romanized: tabbūla), also transcribed tabouleh, tabbouli, tabouli, or taboulah ..." Upload them all to your wordlists, mad constructors!
• 47D: Art movement proclaimed in a 1916 manifesto (DADA) — it was the "manifesto" part that made me opt for DADA over DECO.
• 9D: Flow down the neck (MANE) — this was the one part of the puzzle that got a little thorny for me. After considering and discarding LAVA (a real LAVA-on-the-brain morning), I had no idea what to do with this clue. Is "Flow" a verb or noun? Down the neck of what? I had -ANE and still no idea until I started to run the alphabet. That "M" was crucial in my remembering MARTÍ's name (I've seen it, but as with so many things I've seen, I forgot it). The MARTÍ/MANE stuff is in the same NE section as the RAVIOLI / TIE VOTE stuff I was also struggling with. Weirdly, it was HOOT that bailed me out. Got it off the "T"! (24A: Riot). That second "O" took out my (wrong) TIE GAME and gave me another much-needed letter in RAVIOLI, and I had things all sewn up in that corner shortly thereafter.
• 27D: Foe of Dr. Eggman, in video games (SONIC) — blah blah blah video games. That's what my brain heard. I had the "SO-" part and wrote in SONIC easily. I have never played that game or seen any of the movies (despite owning a Sega system in the '90s). I just know that SONIC is a hedgehog in a popular video game franchise of the same name, so ... in he went!

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. The Fourteenth Annual (!!) Finger Lakes Crossword Competition is tomorrow, Saturday, October 17! It's a nice, low-key way to spend an autumn afternoon. Original puzzles by Ithaca resident Adam Perl, who has made many puzzles for the NYT over the years. I'll be there! Judging you! Actually, judging (scoring) all the puzzles. Proceeds benefit Tompkins Learning Partners, an adult literacy organization. 1-4pm, Boynton Middle School, Ithaca, NY. If you're local, come on out and say hi and solve some puzzles and meet other people like yourself (they exist!). All the information you need is here.

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