Pioneers, in hip-hop slang / THU 11-5-26 / Nickname of the protagonist in 2024's "Anora" / Sea urchin, on a sushi menu / ___ Batlló, Antoni Gaudí masterpiece whose roof arch mimics a dragon's back / Big Apple menagerie / Refueling spot / Call made with outstretched arms

Constructor: David P. Williams

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

or

THEME: "IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME" (39A: Admission of confusion ... or a hint for interpreting four answers in this puzzle) — circled squares contain Greek letters (spelled out) in the Acrosses and LATIN letters (i.e. regular letters) in the Downs (59A: Like the alphabet of the circled letters in the Down answers, but not in the Across answers):

Theme answers:

• WALKIE-TALKIES / ACHY (17A: Hand-held communication devices / 5D: Feeling tender)
• CLASSIC HITS / BRONX ZOO (26A: Songs played on an oldies station / 11D: Big Apple menagerie)
• POWERHOUSES / PISAN (55A: Juggernauts / 56: Galileo, for one)
• SILENT AUCTION / ITEM (64A: Popular fund-raising event / 61D: Couple)

Word of the Day: CASA Batlló (1A: ___ Batlló, Antoni Gaudí masterpiece whose roof arch mimics a dragon's back) —

Casa Batlló (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈkazə βəˈʎːo]) is a building in the center of Barcelona, Spain. It was designed by Antoni Gaudí, and is considered one of his masterpieces. A remodel of a previously built house, it was redesigned in 1904 by Gaudí (although the actual construction had not begun at this point) and has been refurbished several times since. Gaudí's assistants Domènec Sugrañes i Gras, Josep Canaleta and Joan Rubió also contributed to the renovation project.

Casa Batlló is located on the Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district and forms part of a row of houses known as the Illa de la Discòrdia (or Mansana de la Discòrdia, the "Block of Discord"), so named because it features four striking, and strikingly different, buildings by noted Modernista architects of Barcelona.

Like everything Gaudí designed, Casa Batlló is only identifiable as Modernisme in the broadest sense. The ground floor, in particular, has unusual tracery, irregular oval windows and sculpted stonework with sinuous, squiggly forms. There are few straight lines, and much of the façade is decorated with a colorful mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles (trencadís).

In 2005, Casa Batlló became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• • •

This theme is missing something. Latin letters one way, Greek the other, fine. The revealer ... well, it happens to be a perfectly grid-spanning 15 letters long, which was probably the discovery that led to the theme. It's semi-apt, in that you might be confused by the theme answers, and "IT'S ALL GREEK TO ME" is an [Admission of confusion], but the "ALL" part seems like an overstatement and anyway, "it" is both Greek and LATIN, so I wouldn't say the revealer exactly sticks the landing, but it's close enough. The main issue for me was an overall feeling of "that's it?" Four letters? And they don't ... do anything? Add up to anything? Spell anything?” There are so few theme elements that it really seemed like those letters should make sense as a group, somehow. But no, the letters are arbitrary. Four Greek letters, for no coherent reason besides the fact that they are Greek. They aren't even particularly ambitious letters—let's see you do OMICRON, you COWARDs! But seriously, in a great puzzle, the puzzle would've found a way to make the set of letters make sense—the series would've built to something. But here, it's just ... four letters. Shrug. The grid is pretty clean, so it wasn't unpleasant to solve, but ultimately it was a little disappointing, thematically.

The Greek/LATIN trick was easy to uncover—I couldn't make heads or tails of anything in the NW, so I trotted over to the N, got started there and then fell down to CLASSI---. I wanted something like CLASSIC ROCK (a somewhat more solid phrase than CLASSIC HITS), but nothing I could think of fit. Then the crosses went in (easily), which left me with CLASSIXTS, and I inferred the LATIN-to-Greek trick pretty quickly. From there, it was back to the first themer, which got me into the NW that I had whiffed on the first time around, and from there, no more real hangups. 

Tough parts: 

• Having no idea about the CASA at 1A (see "Word of the Day") really kneecapped my start. Without the first letters for all the Downs up there, I was hopeless. Struck out. Zero for four.
• I had NIT for IRK (7D: Peeve). Did not comprehend that [Peeve] was a verb. Mostly used to seeing it as a noun (following "pet").
• I know FLO & Eddie, but I totally blanked on FLO. It's been a while. FLO & Eddie were founding members of the Turtles who were not allowed to use the name "Turtles" *or* their own actual names in a musical context, for contractual reasons, so they started as The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie and eventually ... well, FLO just sounds nicer than Phlorescent Leech. Unlike the Turtles ("Happy Together," "She'd Rather Be With Me," "Elenore"), FLO & Eddie didn't really have any CLASSIC HITS. They worked with Zappa, and did a ton of backing vocal work for different artists, but I know only one actual FLO & Eddie song (it's a weird one, and a good one)

Bullets:

• 5A: Cheese that comes from northern Italy and not another continent! (ASIAGO) — first of all, "northern Italy" is not a "continent," so the phrasing here is, let's say, bad. I guess the "joke" of this clue is that the cheese name ASIAGO contains "ASIA" but that's not how you pronounce the name—it's not ASIA-GO, like "I want to GO to ASIA." If you really want a corny name-related joke, you'd be better off with a Shakespeare angle: [... and not how you'd go to an Othello-themed Halloween party!]. Something like that.
• 28D: British bottom (ARSE) — had the "R" and immediately and confidently wrote in PRAT. That's British slang for an incompetent or stupid person, but the word does also mean "buttocks."
• 46A: Political leader? (GEO) — in that GEO- can be a prefix for "Political." Yeah I don't love it either. Nor do I love the clue on ESS (66D: Letter indicating ownership?). I assume this is the possessive apostrophe-"S" that they're referring to (as in the phrase "dealer's choice").
• 10D: Refueling spot (OASIS) — so "refueling" is metaphorical, then? A place of refuge, where you can get water (in the desert), rest for a bit, eat something? 

• 2D: A gamer may use one (AVATAR) — Do you "use" them? Don't you just have them? An AVATAR is an image that represents the player. Not sure why, but "use" feels strange. Don't all players have AVATARs by default?
• 47A: Gray matter? (ODES) — yeesh, deep cut. Thomas Gray (1716-71) was a poet. Some of his poems were ODES. He's most famous for "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."
• 8D: Nickname of the protagonist in 2024's "Anora" (ANI) — first thing in the grid for me. Nice late-week way to dodge a Star Wars reference (I've seen enough of young Anakin's nickname)
• 72A: Governor Gavin (NEWSOM) — Ugh. I'm thrilled with Tuesday's election results, obviously, but now that that's over, I gotta watch this blowdried billionaire-loving blowhard run for president for the next two years and I am Not looking forward to it. 

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. credit where credit is due:

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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