Gorp tidbit / TUE 5-19-26 / Standard musical progression / Football, informally / Massachusetts local of Manchester-by-the-Sea / Joint thing in the Venn diagram of "instruments" and "fish" / Heads of Hogwarts? / Companion to Fannie and Freddie in the mortgage biz / Classic falling-block game

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: TWO-DRINK MINIMUM (52A: Requirement at some comedy clubs ... or for 17-, 22-, 33- and 47-Across?) — there are two drinks "hidden" inside each theme answer:

Theme answers:

• PENTATONIC SCALE (17A: Standard musical progression)
• CHAIR UMPIRE (22A: High court judge?)
• TEAM SPORT (33A: Basketball or baseball, but not boxing)
• TWIN ENGINES (47A: Matching pair on many jets)

Word of the Day: SUE Bird (19D: Bird of the W.N.B.A.) —

Suzanne Brigit Bird (born October 16, 1980) is an American former professional basketball player who played her entire career with the Seattle Storm of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Bird was drafted first overall pick by the Storm in the 2002 WNBA draft and is considered one of the greatest players in WNBA history. As of 2025, Bird is the only WNBA player to win titles in three different decades. In 2025 she was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame and the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 2026 she was inducted into the NYC Basketball Hall of Fame and the FIBA Hall of Fame. In addition to her WNBA career, Bird played for three teams in the Russian league. [...] Bird has won a joint-record four WNBA championships with the Storm (2004, 2010, 2018, 2020), five Olympic gold medals (2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020), two NCAA Championships with UConn (2000, 2002), and four FIBA World Cups (2002, 2010, 2014, 2018). She is one of only 11 women to attain all four accolades, and is one of only two basketball players—of any gender—to win five Olympic gold medals. She is also a five-time EuroLeague Women champion (2007–2010, 2013) // During Bird's WNBA career, she was selected to thirteen WNBA All-Star teams and eight All-WNBA teams. She was voted by fans as one of the WNBA's Top 15 Players of All Time in 2011, was voted into the WNBA Top 20@20 as one of the league's top 20 players of all time in 2016, and was voted into The W25 as one of the league's top 25 players of all time in 2021. Bird retired from professional basketball after the 2022 WNBA season.

• • •

I kinda like this theme, or want to like it, but the overall fill was so abusively stale today, from almost square one, that I found it hard to enjoy the puzzle. Unless you are a mathematician, I suppose, ENNEADS is one of those words that exists only in crosswords. It always seems like such desperate fill, and to encounter it right away was really deflating. And then to get AER right after that, on top of slightly less annoying but still slightly annoying gnat-like answers like CPA and AWS and SERE ... it just felt like not nearly enough care went into polishing the grid. "I've seen it in crosswords before, must be OK." Even SMORE and IOWAN felt like they were out of Central Crosswords Casting. I don't mind short simple words, but I do mind a barrage of words that scream "crosswords! you know me from crosswords! hey, how ya doin'? nice to see me again?" No. We're still doing Beau GESTE? In 2026? On a Tuesday? We're still doing EGAD? EGAD. As for the theme—TWO-DRINK MINIMUM is a really interesting revealer. It's a snappy phrase in its own right, and it kinda indicates what's going on in the theme. Kinda. I have two picky things to say about TWO-DRINK MINIMUM, though. One is, with these phrases, you don't have a TWO-DRINK MINIMUM. You have two drinks exactly. If one of these phrases had three drinks in it, I think my mind would've been blown, because that would've captured precisely the spirit (!) of the phrase. That is, it would've made the "MINIMUM" part seem something other than extraneous when it came to the execution of the theme. The other thing I found mildly annoying was the highlighting of the "drinks" inside the theme answers. Visually ugly and completely unnecessary. Let Me Discover The Drinks!!! You let me discover the SMALL STARTS yesterday, you can let me discover the "two drinks" today. Having those "drinks" outlined in bold felt condescending. If you want to do something in the app where the "drinks" light up or bubble or explode or whatever once you're finished, I guess I don't care about that. But flagging them ahead of time? Bah. Child's placemat stuff.

The puzzle was also very easy. The fill was clued in an extremely straightforward manner, for the most part. There are a handful of "?" clues to try to make things at least a little twisty, but they didn't add much difficulty in the end. After wanting to cram in YOU ARE at 1A: What you eat, I then wrote in FOOD. Also wrong! But that was my only mistake of the day. Oh, and I had CAT POSE before COW POSE and BON AMIE before MON AMIE (39D: Term of friendship for a French woman) (should've known BON AMIE was wrong—for a woman, it would be BONNE AMIE). Other than that, there was exactly one clue that made me stop long enough to think "huh?" And that was 34D: Leaves together? (PILE). I knew right away that "Leaves" was going to be a noun rather than a verb (I've seen enough "leaves" puns in TEA and SALAD clues to last me a lifetime), but SALAD wouldn't fit and I couldn't think of a four-letter TEA starting with "P" so ... I had to work the crosses. Yes, if you rake a bunch of leaves "together," you do get a PILE. I had trouble making the leap from mere "togetherness" to a PILE structure specifically. Perhaps if this puzzle had come out in autumn, the connection would've been clearer. This clue is the only one I'd classify as "difficulty" in the whole puzzle. The rest is (mostly) remedial trivia and straight definitions.

Bullets:

• 42A: Heads of Hogwarts? (LOOS) — gratuitous Potterization. Always a bad choice. Grow up. ("Heads" are toilets, which is where this clue belongs)
• 60A: Breads for Reuben sandwiches (RYES) — I was all set to say "there shouldn't be any drinks in this puzzle outside the theme answers!" and then realized that this was a bread clue, not a whiskey clue. No foul!
• 29A: Joint thing in the Venn diagram of "instruments" and "fish" (BASS) — I see what you're doing here, but no. They're spelled the same, but they are not the same, and so would not be a "joint thing" in a Venn diagram. Unless you can play the fish like an instrument, in which case, I withdraw my objection.

• 30A: "That's so sweet!" reactions / 46A: "Ick!" ("AWS" / "EWW!") — you can have one one of these reactions, but you may not have two. Eww, no. One. One awkwardly-spelled reaction maximum! This applies also to U.S. state demonyms. You used yours up with IOWAN, puzzle! You can't then try to shove ALASKAN down my throat. Violation!
• 45D: Major unknowns (BIG IFS) — probably my favorite thing in the puzzle. Nice and slangy. A lot more lively than your run-of-the-mill shorter fill. Oh, I also liked PIGSKIN (25D: Football, informally). Apparently I just like "-IG" words.
• 8D: Gorp tidbit (RAISIN) — this wasn't my favorite clue, but I am enjoying saying "Gorp Tidbit" over and over. "Hey, who's that new guy over in Accounting?" "Oh, that's Gorp Tidbit." "I'm sorry, who?" "Gorp Tidbit." "Gorp Tidbit? Where's he from?" "Uh ... I don't know. Vermont, maybe?" 

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Zinnia or sunflower / MON 5-18-26 / Governing body in the Harry Potter universe / Outlandishly over the top, in modern slang / Roll of two ones / Pioneering hybrid car / Stereotypically antisocial pets / English town famous for its salts / Cool, slangily

Constructor: Rena Cohen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: START SMALL (63A: Advice for the overambitious ... or a hint to 17-, 25-, 40- and 50-Across) — every theme answer starts with a letter string that can mean "small":

Theme answers:

• BABYLONIAN (17A: Like the Code of Hammurabi)
• TOYOTA PRIUS (25A: Pioneering hybrid car)
• MINISTRY OF MAGIC (40A: Governing body in the Harry Potter universe)
• WEED WHACKER (50A: Gardener's tool)

Word of the Day: MOUE (29A: Pouty expression) —

Moue is one of two similar words in English that refer to a pout or grimace; the other is mow, which is pronounced to rhyme either with no or now. Mow and moue share the same origin—the Anglo-French mouwe—and have a distant relationship to a Middle Dutch word for a protruding lip. (They do not, however, share a relationship to the word mouth, which derives from Old English mūth.) While current evidence of moue in use in  English traces back only a little more than 150 years, mow dates all the way back to the 14th century. Moue has also seen occasional use as a verb, as when Nicholson Baker, in a 1988 issue of The New Yorker, described how a woman applying lip gloss would "slide the lip from side to side under it and press her mouth together and then moue it outward…." (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Well, at least there were no remedial, hand-holding circled squares in this one. I got to discover the "small" angle all on my own, without the puzzle unnecessarily pointing it out. I do appreciate that, especially on a Monday, when the puzzle is most apt to be hand-holdy. Solving this one Downs-only, I noticed the "BABY" angle right away, because that's the word that appeared once I had the NW corner sorted, and so I kept trying to imagine what kind of "BABY" phrase that first theme answer could be. BABY LOAFER? BABY LOSERS? BABY LOOFAS? Eventually, of course, I got BABYLONIAN, but the BABY seed had been planted, such that when TOY showed up at the beginning of the next theme answer, I clocked the connection quickly. So the revealer didn't reveal much, but I did appreciate that it involved wordplay—repurposing a familiar idiomatic phrase by taking it literally. I also appreciated that all the "small" words were well and truly hidden inside their respective answers, even if that did mean that I had to endure a Harry Potter reference. I never like seeing references to the work of that bigoted billionaire hatemonger in my puzzle, but I'm giving this one special dispensation because it's thematically ... I don't know if "necessitated" is the right word, but I do know that it's hard to bury "MINI" at the beginning of a phrase that doesn't start MINISTRY or MINISTER. Words like MINIMAL or MINIMUM are etymologically linked to "MINI," so they won't work. And there just aren't great MINISTER or MINISTRY phrases out there. The MINISTRY OF JESUS is a thing, of course, but ... whatever, f*** Harry Potter and his creator, but the answer works, so no penalties have been assessed. 

The Downs-only solve was a piece of cake. No sticking points, few hesitations. Took a few puzzled head-tilts to pick up GIVE IT A GO (11D: Attempt something), but SNAKE EYES (33D: Roll of two ones) was no problem, and none of the other Downs were longer than six letters, and the shorter the answers, the easier they are (typically) to get with no help from Acrosses. I say SNAKE EYES was easy, and it was, but my first thought wasn't dice. It was "A roll of two ones? That's a pretty pathetic roll." I was envisioning a roll of cash. You ever try making two $1 bills into a roll? Me either, but I imagine it would be hard. A "Philadelphia roll" is a thick roll of cash with a big bill on the outside and a lot of small bills on the inside (the idea being that you're fronting like you have a lot of money when you don't) (I just learned that the Philadelphia roll  is also known as a Kansas City roll, a Texas roll, and a Michigan bankroll, so apparently lots of places came to be associated with phony rich guys). How do I know that term? Shrug, I just do. A Philadelphia roll is apparently also sushi. Sushi with cream cheese. Philadelphia cream cheese, I imagine. I did not know this.

Bullets:

• 14A: West Coast sch. that joined the Big Ten in 2024 (UCLA) — When I was growing up, the Big Ten and the Pac Ten (UCLA's onetime division) were not just geographically distinct, but they were pitted against each other every single year in the Rose Bowl, so telling me that UCLA has joined the Big Ten is like telling me cats have joined dogs. If you say so, but ... I hate it.
• 22D: English town famous for its salts (EPSOM) — nailed it, first try (by "it" I mean the spelling of EPSOM; the printer is EPSON; the actor is EBSEN).
• 32D: Puppy school command (SIT) — for a split second I was prepared to write in SIC. Don't teach your puppy to SIC ('EM), teach it to be a loving lover who loves. It's a sweet baby, not a weapon.
• 71A: Stereotypically antisocial pets (CATS) — speaking of sweet babies, this clue is dumb. Just because cats are not needy and will occasionally or frequently spurn your affection does not mean that they are not social. Just tonight, Ida came into the room where we were having cocktails and flopped herself down on the floor between us. She didn't want to play or even interact, really. She just wanted to be where we were. That is typical. And that is social. Also, cats sit on their owners, sleep with their owners, climb on their owner's shoulders ... purr, purr, purr, social, social, social. 

[Social Ida]

[Social Alfie]

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Roxane's beloved, in classic literature / SUN 5-17-26 / Guido ___, Baroque painter from Bologna / Crazylegs Hirsch, from 1949 to 1957, informally / Lotto commission? / Upscale shirtmaker / Showy kind of push-up / Surname for a family of fictional Kansans / 1957 #1 hit for Debbie Reynolds / Pollster Lou or singer Emmylou / John ___, personification of Objectivism, for Ayn Rand / Purple dish eaten with a spoon

Constructor: Derrick Niederman

Relative difficulty: Easy

[6D: Iconic role for Harrison Ford = HAN]

THEME: "Double Meanings" — theme clues are familiar two-word phrases (or compound words) where each word (or word part) must be interpreted as a separate definition; the first word in the clue corresponds to the first word in the answer, and the second word in the clue corresponds to the second word in the answer. The resulting two-word (or compound word) answer is itself a familiar phrase:

Theme answers:

• DRAWING BOARD (22A: Lotto commission?) ("Lotto" = DRAWING, "commission" = BOARD)
• PEN NAMES (24A: Prison terms?) ("Prison" = PEN, "terms" = NAMES)
• RAIN DELAY (29A: Shower stall?) ("Shower" = RAIN, "stall" = DELAY)
• CARPALS (38A: Automates?) ("Auto" = CAR, "mates" = PALS)
• WARRANT (48A: Battle cry?) ("Battle" = WAR, "cry" = RANT)
• CHICKEN SANDWICH (65A: Yellow submarine?) ("Yellow" = CHICKEN, "submarine" = SANDWICH)
• HOT FOOT (87A: Stolen base?) ("Stolen" = HOT, "base" = FOOT)
• KINSHIP (94A: Blood vessel?) ("Blood" = KIN, "vessel" = SHIP)
• CAN OPENER (102A: Fire starter?) ("Fire" = CAN, "starter" = OPENER)
• MATTRESS (102A: Padlock?) ("Pad" = MAT, "lock" = TRESS)
• TRUST BUSTERS (116A: Confidence men?) ("Confidence" = TRUST, "men" = BUSTERS)

Word of the Day: GWEN Verdon (16D: Verdon of "Damn Yankees") —

Gwyneth Evelyn "Gwen" Verdon (January 13, 1925 – October 18, 2000) was an American actress and dancer. She won four Tony Awards for her musical comedy performances, and she served as an uncredited choreographer's assistant and specialty dance coach for theater and film. Verdon was a critically acclaimed performer on Broadway in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, having originated many roles in musicals, including Lola in Damn Yankees, the title character in Sweet Charity, and Roxie Hart in Chicago.

Her second husband was director-choreographer Bob Fosse, with whom she worked on a number of theater and film projects. After Fosse's death, she worked to preserve his legacy. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was rough. It was hard to find very much to be positive about. I don't understand the appeal of this theme. I see that a certain thoughtfulness and cleverness must have been involved to make the clues and answers work out so (well, relatively) neatly, but from a solving standpoint ... pffft. There was nothing. Or, rather, instead of eleven elaborate or playful theme clues there were essentially twenty-two one-word clues. Lotto = DRAWING. Commission = BOARD. Prison = PEN. Terms = NAMES. And on and on and on. And I mean, on. "I see what you did there." That was my reaction. Eleven times. None of the answers ever got anything more out of me than a shrug. A couple of them got a "huh?" though. CARPALS? Is that ... like, the bones in your wrist? OK. I guess that's OK. And TRUSTBUSTERS? Is that something to do with antitrust laws, or Teddy Roosevelt breaking up the monopolies?? Yes, a "federal official who prosecutes trusts under the antitrust laws." Yeah, that answer checks out too. Not exactly a term you hear every day ... or ever, really ... but it's a thing. I kinda sorta almost like the theme clues/answers when the answer is a compound word where I really have to pull the two terms apart in order to see what is going on, e.g. MATTRESS ("Mat" = "tress") and CARPALS ("Car" + "pals"). But the others are just two one-word clues => two one-word answers. Again, the actual experience of solving those answers was completely without joy, and almost without struggle. A real baffling swing/miss on the theme today. 

And the fill, yeah, that got real bad in lots of places. So much so that I stopped early to take a screenshot (always a bad omen):

 

That NNE / TBONES / ASTI / THEUN / AHOLD run made me (quiet) shout "make it stop" ("it" = crosswordese barrage) and then RENI came hot on the heels of all that (37A: Guido ___, Baroque painter from Bologna). It was a lot to take. A lot of middling to bad, with no allaying good. The worst section, to my ear, was in the west, everything between WADE and ETON ... Let's see, there's TAY DERMO AVANT ... IN MAY!?!?! (superyeesh) ... and I'm pretty sure it's avocado ON TOAST, not OVER TOAST. It's really just called "avocado toast," but if you absolutely had to describe the relationship of the avocado to the toast, you would say "on." Horribly fitting that ERRANCY runs right through OVER TOAST. The thing is, though, that if the theme had been even halfway decent, or there had been sparkly longer fill, it's possible the bad short stuff would not have rankled as much. But when the theme gives you nothing and the long answers are ho-hum at best, now the rest of the fill is exposed. You can hear every creak and clank. I will not SPIT AT this puzzle (as spitting at anything is disgusting) and I won't even say "IT STINKS." My main reaction was a big "OK ... SO?" 

Bullets:

• 81A: "___ a stinker?" (Bugs Bunny line) ("AIN'T I") — one of the worst partials you're ever going to see. I suppose remembering Bugs Bunny takes some of the sting away, but yeesh. To make matters worse, this clue contains "stinker" when "stink" is already in the grid ("IT STINKS"). Your cluing options are pretty limited for "AIN'T I," so maybe ... maybe tear down that whole little section and rebuild it. What would you be losing ATF? AIN'T I? KITED? IN OIL!?!? The one good thing about this section is that "AIN'T I IN OIL?" is making me laugh. "AIN'T I IN OIL"? (Bugs Bunny line from "It's Sardine to Look a Lot Like Christmas")*. 
• 59A: Upscale shirtmaker (ETON) — I knew ETON was a kind of collar, but I did not know they were a shirtmaker. I wanted POLO and IZOD before ETON.
• 53A: A good Wordle starting word, by the looks of it (STARE) — I think this is punning (?) on the idea that "STARE" means "look (intently)." But it really is a good starting word. Way better than ADIEU, what are you ADIEU people doing, why is that starter so popular!? It's not great.
• 78A: Surname for a family of fictional Kansans (GALE) — these are the Kansans from The Wizard of Oz. The most memorable member of said family is Dorothy Gale.
• 105A: Showy kind of push-up (ONE-ARM) — me: "some ... kind of bra."
• 119A: 1957 #1 hit for Debbie Reynolds ("TAMMY") — I love Debbie Reynolds the actress / dancer, but Debbie Reynolds the pop star, uh, no, I am not familiar with her work ... though "TAMMY" rings a faint bell, let's hear what it sounds like ... nope, no bells. False alarm. The song is from a movie called Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) (also not ringing a bell). Reynolds had already done Singin' in the Rain (1952) and (one of my favorites) The Tender Trap (1955) by this point. Hey, her co-star in Tammy and the Bachelor was Leslie Nielsen!?!? And it co-stars the ubiquitous Academy Award-winning character actor Walter Brennan? I might have to check it out soon.

• 5D: Colonial news source (CRIER) — always want this to be CRYER. Town CRIER, Jon CRYER. Is that a helpful mnemonic? It is not. But I'm gonna see if I can make it work.

• 75D: It's a wrap (STOLE) — dropped SARAN in there so fast. Whoops.
• 95D: Pollster Lou or singer Emmylou (HARRIS) — Why is "pollster Lou" even here? Just let Emmylou have her own clue. She's famous enough that she shouldn't have to share her clue with anyone. I know you're doing a rhyming "lou" thing here, but still. I'll take my Emmylou straight, thanks.

• 79D: Brian in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (ENO) — it was Brian ENO's 78th birthday on Friday. I'm sorry I failed to acknowledge it. His birthday really should be some kind of Crossword Holiday. 343 lifetime NYTXW appearances. OK, not all of those ENOs were Brian (before 1985 ENO was always [Wine: prefix] or [Wine: comb. form]), but most of them were. Happy birthday, big guy (with a little name)!

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*poetic license!

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Capote or chesterfield / SAT 5-16-26 / Trigger hair / Modern "go-to's" / Up to snuff, facetiously / Matches with forensics / Roman goddess who drives a two-horse chariot / Marriott property with the slogan "Whatever Whenever" / Victor over Washington on 11/12/1955 in "Back to the Future, Pt. II"—and in real life / Curtain for silhouetting on stage / Once-popular terra-cotta figurine / Spelling combinations? / Folks who enjoy a well-aged beef?

Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ZARFS (36A: Cup holders) —

A zarf (plural: zarfs, zarves; Turkish: zarflar; Arabic: zuruuf) is a cup holder, usually of ornamented metal, for a coffee cup without a handle // Although coffee was probably discovered in Ethiopia, it was in Turkey around the 13th century that it became popular as a beverage. As with the serving of tea in China and Japan, the serving of coffee in Turkey was a complex, ritualized process. It was served in small cups without handles (known as fincan, pronounced /finˈd͡ʒan/), which were placed in holders known as zarf (from the Arabic: ظرف, romanized: ẓarf; plural ظُرُوف ẓurūf, meaning "container" or "envelope") to protect the cup and also the fingers of the drinker from the hot liquid. // Cups were typically made of porcelain, but also of glass and wood. However, because the holder was more visible, it was typically more heavily ornamented. [...] The zarf was often made from metal, with silver, gold, copper, and brass being the most common materials used. Others were also made of woods such as coconut, ebony or other hardwoods, or of ivory, bone, horn, or tortoiseshell. Today, zarf can be the name of a cardboard coffee cup sleeve. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

It was only after I found myself struggling mightily in the NW corner that I bothered to look at the byline on today's puzzle. "Oh ... OK, that tracks." Byron's puzzles usually come in at above-average, and frequently well above-average, difficulty. Once I accepted that my opponent was going to be a worthy one today, I actually started to do better. Sometimes you just gotta get your head in the right space. I can't say this is among my favorite Byron Walden puzzles—the marquee fill was not terribly exciting, and there were an awful lot of absolute WTFs, which makes it harder to love a puzzle—but I appreciated the good old-fashioned challenge this one provided. There were some mildly contrived phrases—stuff that veered toward Green Paint territory (i.e. a phrase someone might say but that doesn't stand alone particularly well). I'm thinking of LANDED OUT and IN TWO ACTS and the bizarrely poetic RIVER SEINE in particular. But I'm not too mad at those. I'll give a late-week puzzle some leeway to get weird with it. As long as the puzzle puts up a fight and the grid doesn't feel loaded with junk, I'm gonna be reasonably happy on a Saturday. 

The main problem for me today was that I just found myself shrugging at clues and answers that meant nothing to me. That elaborate ANDY KIM clue, LOL, yikes (19A: Name shared by the singer of the #1 hit "Rock Me Gently" (1974) and the first Korean American elected to the U.S. Senate (2024)). None of that information helped me. I actually know the song "Rock Me Gently" from decades of intermittently listening to Oldies stations (and from listening to Casey Kasem's '70s-era American Top 40 countdowns every weekend when we drive to the bakery in Owego). But I had no idea who the singer was, and I continue to not know more than a handful of congresspeople. Been a long time since Congress has been anything more than useless, and I don't soak my brain in 24hr news networks of any political stripe, so ... ANDY KIM? If you say so! Junior senator from New Jersey! Sorry, New Jersey, for only knowing your other senator. Also, that UCLA clue?!?!?! (1D: Victor over Washington on 11/12/1955 in "Back to the Future, Pt. II"—and in real life). I don't remember a damn thing about Back to the Future, Pt. II. Maybe saw it once. Haven't seen it since it came out. I guess it features a football game? Again, if you say so. "Operculum"!? (28A: Operculum, e.g.). No idea. No hope. Is that a fancy name for your eyeLID? No, not exactly. 

[merriam-webster.com]

And ZARFS!? I have apparently been using them for years and didn't know it. It's been sixteen years since ZARF was in the puzzle. I don't think I've heard the term in the wild once since then. That was the last answer I wrote in. Not a nice way to finish—entering the last letter and just hoping it's right. Also, FEUDISTS? (32D: Folks who enjoy a well-aged beef?). Those who feud are FEUDISTS? There's something incongruously formal-sounding about a phenomenon I associate with the Hatfields and McCoys. I'd've thought FEUDERS But my software is red-underlining FEUDERS and leaving FEUDISTS alone, so I guess the puzzle is correct. Are there really people who practice the art of feuding? Is there such an art? The -IST ending really implies "this is a formal art or practice." Are there people who are just feud enthusiasts? I think they should be called FEUDIES. Like foodies, but for feuds.

The pleasure for me today was mainly in wrestling with the strange and often heavily misdirective cluing. The "Matches" in 22A: Matches with forensics is a noun, not a verb. [Don't start with me!] is someone you literally don't start (if you're a coach). (If the clue phrase had had quotation marks around it, then the answer would've been an equivalent phrase, but without the quotation marks, plus the "!," the clue is meant to be taken hyper-literally.) "Spelling" and "beef" both get used in unexpected ways. The [Wind pipe?] is a pipe that you hang in the wind (CHIME). The things that are "hard to pull off" are not tight articles of clothing, as I suspected, but FEATS (I'm not sure all FEATS are "hard to pull off," but some, sure, OK). ROUND 'EM UP and IN FOREVER are winning phrases, but primarily it was the (tricky, clever) cluing, and not the fill, that made this one (mostly) enjoyable. 


Bullets:

• 1A: Modern "go-to's" (URLS) — did not love this clue. I see what it's doing, but the quotation marks imply that someone might use that specific phrase in reference to a URL, and no. You do "go to" websites, it's true, but you wouldn't call them "go-to's." Take the quotation marks out and I like the clue better. 
• 14A: Capote or chesterfield (COAT) — I was so proud of myself when I remembered that a "Capote" was a type of ... CAPE. Sigh. So proud! Confirmed UCLA with that answer!! STAY BACK forced the change from CAPE to COAT. I know "chesterfield" primarily as a SOFA. Or a cigarette. [Side note: it is so grim, every time I search for information about a thing, to be presented with an absolute wall of commercial sites—URLS (!) trying to sell me home furnishings, for instance, instead of a site that will simply explain what a chesterfield is. No, I don't want to get my definition from "chairsactually" or "furniturecloud," thank u very much. I can get dictionary definitions easily enough, but to find anything more explanatory, I have to wade through all the sites trying to sell me stuff. It's a drag. A hyper-commercialized hellscape.]

• 15A: Emulates E.T., in a way (PHONES HOME) — too easy. Jarringly easy, in this puzzle. So easy that I actually doubted it for a half second. I guess a very tricky puzzle can sometimes throw you precisely by not being tricky—the cleverest trick of all. The non-trick! No one sees it coming! Diabolical.
• 24D: Trigger hair (MANE) —Trigger was Roy Rogers's horse. Kind of a deep cut, esp. if you're under, say, 50.

• 17A: Roman goddess who drives a two-horse chariot (LUNA) — it's weird how I "knew" this without knowing it. Maybe it's just that my brain has a storehouse full of gods and goddesses of various word lengths and LUNA sits near the top of the Roman four-letter bin. JUNO is probably at the top, but that "J" didn't seem likely in that position. 
• 34A: Up to snuff, facetiously (EPT) — aargh. I count on the short stuff being easy, or at least reasonably gettable, but this!? I needed every cross, I think. It's a back-formation from "inept," and its first recorded use was by E.B. White, in a letter from 1938. (“I am much obliged … to you for your warm, courteous, and ept treatment of a rather weak, skinny subject.”) (grammarphobia dot com)
• 10D: Marriott property with the slogan "Whatever Whenever" (W HOTEL) — that's the letter "W" and then HOTEL, not WHOTEL. It's not the main lodge in Whoville ... although I do think "Whatever, Whenever, WHOTEL!" is a great slogan.

• 23D: Once-popular terra-cotta figurine (CHIA PET) — wait, wait ... you're telling me they're no longer popular!? My Chia Obama is ... out of style!?!?

["Yes You Can!" LOL wow]

• 27D: State in which Gulliver is discovered by the Lilliputians (DEEP SLEEP) — so not TENNESSEE, then. Gotcha. (DEEP SLEEP helped me change RICER to DICER (27A: Aid in making salsa). I'm still not real clear on the distinction)
• 18A: Precious self-reference (LITTLE OL' ME) — OK now do you see why I balked and squawked at LI'L' OL' ME on Sunday!? Arbitrary elisions and non-elisions everywhere! It's madness! Next we're gonna get LITTLE OLD ME and LIL OLD ME and maybe LIL OLE ME (like Grand Ole Opry?!), where will it end!? 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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