Butter up? / SAT 10-24-26 / N.F.L. tight end Stowers / Subjects of Pixar's second movie / Noted surname in punk rock / Tip of Baja? / Ubiquitous head coverings / Sourdough starter component / Singer who had us at "Hello"? / Descriptor of a sleek kitchen material / Ball game in which you call your shots

Constructor: Robert Logan

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ELI Stowers (34A: N.F.L. tight end Stowers) —

Elijah Stowers (born April 15, 2003) is an American professional football tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Texas A&M Aggies, New Mexico State Aggies, and Vanderbilt Commodores, winning the 2025 John Mackey Award with Vanderbilt before being selected by the Eagles in the second round of the 2026 NFL draft. (wikipedia) // “Unfortunately, throughout camp Stowers hasn’t shown much to get excited about as a receiver or as a blocker. He has not exhibited the explosive traits that are in his body, he has sometimes looked tentative as a blocker, and he simply hasn’t made catches further than, like, 10 yards down the field. The guess here is that Stowers is swimming mentally, trying to learn an offense while acclimating to the speed of the NFL. He’s thinking, and not just playing. The hope is that in time he will catch up mentally and begin playing fast. // But for now, Stowers is unplayable, and likely to be a gameday inactive. He is also currently on the shelf with a hamstring injury." (Jimmy Kempski, Philly Voice, via heavy.com)

• • •

I had things to say, but am now completely distracted by ELI Stowers. This has to be the flimsiest, most obscure clue in sports history. The young man has played precisely zero games of regular-season N.F.L. football. None. He was drafted by the Eagles, and is currently on the team, so calling him an "N.F.L. tight end" is technically correct, but ... yeesh. If you can put ELI Stowers in a puzzle, you can literally put any member of any sports franchise in the history of the four major American sports in a puzzle. I demand to see Mike TIMLIN in a grid! An absolute workhorse of a relief pitcher—18 seasons in the bigs, four World Series championships. Getting dudes out in big games well into his forties. But so far, zero TIMLINs in the NYTXW. Also, zero MIKEs clued as Timlin. But one ELI Stowers, who, I repeat, has not played a game. Correction: ELI Stowers played in precisely one preseason game before getting injured. That's it. The end. I mean, hopefully not the end of his career. I wish him well, hope he goes on to do great things, but when I say he has done absolutely nothing to earn crossworthiness as an "N.F.L. tight end," please understand that this is a literal description of the truth and not a judgment call. He has played literally no regulation minutes. He was a second-round pick. Maybe the constructor is from Philly or went to Vanderbilt (where Stowers played college ball)??? I have no idea otherwise how you explain this ELI. Lucky for me (and probably lots of solvers), ELI was very easy to come up with, because almost every other answer in this grid was a cinch. 

I haven't done a Saturday this easy in a long time. Took me about half the time of Friday's puzzle. Crazy remedial. The grid is very smooth, so hurray for that, and I got a great feeling of whoosh-whoosh zoom-zoom on this one, for sure, but unlike with yesterday, the clues didn't really seem to be trying. ELI's obscurity makes it a massive outlier—almost all the answers in the grid were familiar to me today, and the clues did almost nothing to hide them from me. I took one look at 1A: Doves, mentally filled in PEACENIKS, started in on the crosses, and the dam just broke:

Look at all that solid coverage I had, all inside of twenty seconds or so. From there I was able to PILE ON the answers, starting with PILE ON, then INEPT, EPT. Both the other longer Acrosses were obvious from there, and very shortly I had finished the top and broken into the center via an obvious S---T at 18A: Speak recklessly, with "off" (SPOUT). From there, everything in the center went up in flames. I don't think more than 90 seconds or so had gone by before I was here:

From there, all the middle Acrosses are Monday-easy. And on the sides of the grid, I'm really well set up to crush those long answers, with all the initial letters in place. First thing to go: SLEEP-DEPRIVED (11D: Like many new parents). From there, work the short crosses and boom, east side done. I think that maybe it will be hard to round the corner into the bottom of the grid, since I'll be coming at those long Acrosses from the back end. But no...

It's true I botched one of the crosses here (YEN for SEN) (53D: Cent : U.S. :: ___ : Japan), and I weirdly couldn't think of a three-letter univ. ending in "L" at first (CAL), but AWARE MENSA MANTA went in one two three, and so those little three-letter hiccups didn't stand a chance against the momentum of my onslaught. Rounded the last corner and, aided by YEAST (23A: Sourdough starter component) and ADELE (38A: Singer who had us at "Hello"?) (again, just child's-placemat-level clues), I handled the west coast easily. Again, my biggest problems there were with the short stuff, specifically IFSO (which I had as ALSO and then ERGO before finally straightening things out) (43A: "Following that .."). I wasn't timing myself, but this would've been a sub-4-minute Saturday, which, for me, is record territory. I do love the feeling of speed and power that comes with slaying a Saturday so easily, but I think I like wrestling with clever cluing more. Great grid, but weak cluing, and not an ounce of Saturday fight in it.

Bullets:

• 10A: The practice of growing plants without soil (HYDROPONICS) — never even saw the clue. Had the thing almost filled in before I ever considered it, and then the missing letters were obvious. Thing is, if I had looked at the clue with zero letters in place, I still would've gotten it. Easy. The clues, as I say, just seemed like they weren't in the game (kinda like ELI Stowers so far this season) 
• 17A: What might get filled up around dinnertime (OVEN) — weird attempt at double-cluing led to two of the less transparent answers in the grid: PITA and OVEN. In a doubled clue scenario, there's always one answer that feels like a stretch. Today, it's PITA. I mean, yes, you can "fill" a PITA with ... whatever, but it's a bizarrely specific food item, as opposed to OVEN, which is a general thing that might be used at "dinnertime" worldwide. But at least the clues showed a tiny amount of life here. 
• 41A: Ball game in which you call your shots (H-O-R-S-E) — in case you're unfamiliar:

• 3D: Butter up? (ARIES) — the puzzle's finest hour, at least as far as cluing goes. I had no idea, even with the "A." Once I got the "ARI-" I had a nice aha moment. "Butter" = "one who butts" = ram, and the ram that is "up" (in the sky, as a constellation) is ARIES. A great, clean, concise "?" clue.

• 22A: Tip of Baja? (PESO) — wanted "B" or "A" here (the tips of the word "Baja"), but no, it's money you might leave as a tip. One PESO. I'm not aware of the current conversion rates, but I don't think that's much of a tip.
• 9D: Ubiquitous head coverings (SCALPS) — I kinda like this clue. After scanning my mental inventory of hat types, I thought "wait, if they're truly 'ubiquitous,' then they're Everywhere ... but hats are culturally specific, so ... must be anatomical?" Bingo.
• 13D: Becomes less interesting over time (LOSES LUSTER) — a fine answer, and maybe the only longer answer that made me hesitate—I needed a few crosses to get LUSTER to come to me.
• 29D: Norma who gave Sally Field her first Oscar (RAE) — crosswordese of yore. The clue is really oddly phrased. "For which Sally Field won her first Oscar" makes more sense. I'm imagining her character (or the real-life woman she was based on, Crystal Lee Sutton), standing on stage literally handing Field the statue. 
• 30D: Photographer Goldin (NAN) — more crosswordese of yore. Both RAE and NAN were autofills. The other major NAN is editor/publisher NAN Talese. NAN is also one of the Bobbsey Twins (again, of yore). It can also be the Indian flatbread, though that typically gets a double-A spelling (it's been five years since we've seen the single-A spelling of the bread—we've seen 29 double-A NAANs since then)

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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