Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Hawaiian word for "family" / SAT 11-7-26 / Atari release of 1972 / Texting tech, for short / Forest Service employee responsible for winter rescues / Fizzy cocktail flavor / Nostalgia-inducing illustrations and typography / Women's soccer coach Sundhage

Constructor: Adrian Johnson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: PIA Sundhage (36D: Women's soccer coach Sundhage) —

Pia Mariane Sundhage (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈpîːa ˈsɵ̂nːdˌhɑːɡɛ], born 13 February 1960) is a Swedish football manager and former player who currently manages the Haiti national team. As a player, Sundhage played most of her career as a forward and retired as the top scorer for the Sweden national team.
Sundhage was the head coach of the United States national team from 2008 to 2012 and led the team to two Olympic gold medals and a silver medal at the World Cup. Her success led to her winning the 2012 FIFA World Coach of the Year. Sundhage later became the head coach of her native Sweden from 2012 to 2017, winning an Olympic silver medal in 2016. She coached the Brazil national team from 2019 to 2023. She later managed Switzerland, the hosts of the UEFA Women's Euro 2025. (wikipedia)

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[MINI COOPERs]

Very well made. Polished. Smooth. Impressive craftsmanship. The highs aren't very high, but there really are no lows, so my overall solving experience was a good one. Once again I decided to time myself, and once again I came in with what feels like a fast time, but as I said yesterday, I've lost all sense of historical norms since I turned the clock off on my solving software (Black Ink) many years ago. I finished this one in 5:37, just a half minute or so slower than yesterday.

[GIF from beta version of Black Ink software]

This one actually felt faster, probably because there were fewer memorable sticking points. The overall cluing must've been a shade harder, as it should be on Saturday. OHANA was the first thing to trip me up (7D: Hawaiian word for "family"). I tried SHAKA in there, for some reason, and being 60% correct, SHAKA held up. Until it didn't. I also wrote in E-TYPE (?!) for 28A: Sporty car type (COUPE) (wow, "type" is right there in the clue so E-TYPE was truly ill-advised—some might say "stupid"). I needed to get to MAN- before I understood what 43A: Job for which you might offer a hand, informally (MANI) was getting at. But each of these mistakes was more hiccup than hangup. The only thing that really stopped me dead, if only for a bit, was the TREE POSE / PIA crossing. I simply didn't know PIA at all, so every letter of that name felt treacherous. As for TREE POSE (34A: It features one leg perpendicular to the other), I've done a thousand of them in my life, so I'm embarrassed I didn't get that one sooner, but in my defense, the clue is ... odd.

In TREE POSE, the lower part of one (raised) leg is indeed (roughly) perpendicular to the other (standing), but since the raised leg as a whole ends up forming a kind of triangle, and so the alleged perpendicularity of leg to leg just wasn't computing, visually, for me. And since there was nothing in the clue that said (or even whispered) "yoga," I was at a loss. If you look at TREE POSEs online, you will see that no two look exactly alike and the perpendicularity of even the lower part of the raised leg is often aspirational. Anyway, I appreciate the clue's attempted trickery, even if it was, like me in TREE POSE sometimes, a little wobbly.

I love that TREE POSE is symmetrical with GOAT FARM, largely because as soon as I read the clue at 25A: Kid-friendly business?, my immediate and only thought was ... GOAT YOGA. Which is a thing. Or was. I guess you do yoga with goats. Kids, probably. Around you. On you? I'm not sure, novelty yogas have never been my thing, but it does look cute.

None of the longer answers gave me a thrill today. They were mostly solid but unsurprising. Didn't go "ooh, nice" once. I've seen SERENA SLAM a bunch, and things like MASTER KEYS, ATM RECEIPT, and ROAD WORKER are more, well, workmanlike. But again, the overall cleanness of the fill meant I was never unhappy or bored. I do think SOUR GRAPES and PURE GENIUS is a lovely pairing, and the thing in the grid today, to my ears, is "DO WE HAVE TO!?" Not really big on whiny kids, but as colloquial phrases go, I could really hear that one. Amusing. I was less amused by "ONE CAN HOPE," which seems a lot less certain, a lot more dubious about the outcome than "Lord willing!" (14A: "Lord willing!"). "ONE CAN HOPE" sounds like it's said with a resigned sigh, whereas "Lord willing!" sounds like there's some oomph and some hope in there. The puzzle finishes with "IT'S NOT EASY," but that was not at all my experience today. It was, in fact, pretty easy. I finished things up in the SE without having to look at the clues for any of those last three Downs (IKEA, PETS, TROY).

Bullets:

49D: City east of Ithaca (TROY) — speaking of TROY, this clue is so weird. I think it refers to ancient Ithaca and TROY—you know, the eastern Mediterranean / Aegean versions featured in The Odyssey. But I live in central NY and I can tell you that TROY, NY (just outside Albany) is also a [City east of Ithaca]. The "c" (as opposed to "k") spelling of "Ithaca" had me thinking "maybe they do mean Ithaca, NY...." But the "c" spelling is how the Greek place is commonly spelled as well, so I don't know. TROY, NY may seem like a small, obscurish city to feature in the NYTXW, but the Times is a NY paper, after all, and TROY, NY has in fact been in the puzzle, more than once, both in clues and as an answer (it's the home of RPI). Strangely, the NY cities stand in almost exactly the same directional relationship to one another. More ENE than "east," but ... well, here, you can see:

1A: Beetle alternative beginning in 1961 (MINI COOPER) — this is a fine answer in its own right, but what I really like is the "Beetle" echo at 20A: Beatles song subject who is "filling in a ticket in her little white book" (RITA), and that both clues deal, in their own ways, with cars:

31A: "12 Angry Men" director, 1957 (LUMET) — you are not allowed to not know Sidney LUMET any more. At this point, he is crosswordese. This is his fifth appearance this year (!?), making 2026 the Lummetiest year in NYTXW history, by far (no previous year featured more than two appearances). I read his book Making Movies once and loved it. 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon are two of the greatest films ever made. So I don't want to hear "boo hoo, names" or "I didn't know him." You've seen him a million times. Five times this year! That's four times more than Elizabeth ARDEN, and I think of her as crosswordese, so ... yeah, LUMET. Still waiting on OZU and VARDA, but .... LUMET, we got plenty of.
11A: Texting tech, for short (SMS) — why did I want RSS??? Ah, RSS is blogging tech, that's why.
3D: Titular Pixar character who's mistakenly called names like Bingo, Chico and Fabio (NEMO) — me: "... COCO?" No (no).

50A: Beowulfian, say (EPIC) — I'm making a face at "Beowulfian." It's nominally an epic, but if something were described to me as "Beowulfian," I'd think of something much more poem-specific. Maybe it's about a hero's journey, or hubris, or the Anglo-Saxon world, or it's got monsters in it, etc. Using "Beowulfian" merely to indicate that something is EPIC feels improbable.
13D: Fizzy cocktail flavor (SLOE) — SLOE! The crosswordesiest of drupes. I learned the term from crosswords, where it used to appear allllll the damn time. I made one once with my friend Lena on an episode of the crossword podcast we did briefly in the '10s, and I just remember that the only SLOE gin we could get in Binghamton was terrible and the drink ended up looking insane and we couldn't stop laughing. Bubbly carnage. "It looks like someone killed a pixie!" I assume that, properly made, they are delicious.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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