Coinage of the early 2000s? / FRI 2-27-26 / Adjoining, in a way / Illuminating point / Car requirement beginning in 1998 / Pantheon feature / Heroine in the "Fifty Shades of Grey" books / Travel safety grp. at school / Jeans material for a worn-out look

Constructor: Caroline Hand

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DEBI Mazar (36D: Actress Mazar) —

Debi Mazar Corcos (/ˈmeɪzɑːr/; born August 13, 1964) is an American actress and television personality. She began her career with supporting roles in Goodfellas (1990), Little Man Tate (1991), Singles (1992), and Batman Forever (1995), followed by lead roles on the legal drama series Civil Wars (1991-1993) and L.A. Law (1993-1994). She portrayed press agent Shauna Roberts on the HBO series Entourage. She starred as Maggie Amato on TV Land's Younger, and alongside her husband Gabriele Corcos in the Cooking Channel series Extra Virgin. [...] 

In the early 1980s, Mazar was part of the downtown club scene in New York City, socializing with artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf. // While working at Danceteria, Mazar met Madonna, who hired Mazar to do her makeup for her first music video "Everybody" (1982). She appeared in five of Madonna's music videos: "Papa Don't Preach" (1986), "True Blue" (1986), "Justify My Love" (1990), "Deeper and Deeper" (1992) and "Music" (2000). Mazar originated the hair and makeup for the 1988 play Speed-the-Plow. // As a teenager, Mazar was a b-girl in New York City. Her first television appearance was on the pilot for the hip-hop television dance show Graffiti Rock, in 1984. Her first major role was playing a character on Civil Wars in the early 1990s. When that series was cancelled her character was brought over as a recurring role between the 1993 and 1994 seasons of the TV drama L.A. Law. // Mazar has played a number of minor supporting roles in a variety of films, including Sandy, a friend of Henry Hill's mistress in Goodfellas (1990); The Doors (1991); a small role in Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992); Bullets Over Broadway (1994); and as Spice (of Sugar and Spice, with Drew Barrymore as Sugar) in Batman Forever (1995). (wikipedia)

• • •

[Point of illumination?]

Really liked this one. Stacked 15s aren't always my favorite late-week grid feature—at least part of the stack tends to be weak, and the crosses can be rough. But I like every element in both stacks, and as for the crosses ... I dunno. They hold up OK. I think what I liked most about the puzzle was that it put up a real fight at first. That's because I attack stacks by coming at all the crosses first and then seeing what I can make out of the letters that I pick up. Today, when I attacked the crosses, I whiffed a lot. Like ... I went coast to coast with those Downs up top and by the end had only four, and only two I was sure of (LANKA, REMY). So I felt like I was in trouble. I had better luck with some of the short Acrosses just below the stack (URSA, KEY, TIC, SWAN). But it turned out that LANKA and REMY alone were enough for me to get the DENIM part of DISTRESSED DENIM, and from there I was able to build the back ends of the long Acrosses, which allowed me then to whooooosh back across the grid—once you've got DOLLAR, PALE ALE, and DENIM, their front ends aren't that hard to imagine. But some of those crosses were legitimately tough. EN SUITE! (8D: Adjoining, in a way). APERÇU! (9D: Illuminating point). Yipes! Adjoining (!) French answer. Never would've gotten those with considerable help from crosses. And I thought I was so clever when I read 9D: Illuminating point and, off just the "C," wrote in SCONCE! I was so proud of that answer. "Good clue!" I thought. But no. APERÇU. Not as fun, but accurate enough, I suppose (Def. 2: "An immediate impression / Insight"). I also had some trouble spelling SACAGAWEA (really thought that "G" was a "J") (1A: Coinage of the early 2000s?). Once I finally had that top part nailed into place, I felt like I'd worked for it, which felt satisfying. Also, the stack seemed worth the work.

The puzzle was much easier from then on. Swooped down the east coast, got the back ends of all the long Acrosses down below very easily (helped to have heard of DARIUS, 51A: ___ the Great, king of ancient Persia), and from their back ends, those stack answers are all very easy to pick up. Well, two of them were. I could see I was dealing with KANSAS and thought of MANHATTAN before ever looking at the clue, and while I thought that top long answer was going to be some kind of REFERENCE at first, one look at the clue and RUN INTERFERENCE was easy to see (54A: Create a distraction, so to speak). As for ANASTASIA STEELE, lol, no idea (57A: Heroine in the "Fifty Shades of Grey" books). When I say "lol" I mean I literally laughed out loud. That is such a florid name, such a perfect erotic romance novel heroine name. I've never read the books or seen the movies, but I was weirdly just thinking about 50 Shades earlier this week because I watched Mike Nichols's Working Girl (1988) for my Movie Club on Monday. That movie famously features Melanie Griffith in her breakout starring role. Griffith's mother was Tippi Hedren (of Marnie and The Birds fame), and her daughter is Dakota Johnson, of ... 50 Shades fame (of other fames as well, now, but initially, it was 50 Shades). Anyway, I fell down a bit of Melanie Griffith rabbit hole, which means that I was reading about her relatives, which is how I discovered that Dakota Johnson was the star of the 50 Shades movies (not something I knew before this week). Hey, you know who else was in 50 Shades movies (50 Shades: Darker and 50 Shades: Freed)?: Rita ORA! (29A: Rita on "The Masked Singer"). Fun fact! So I laughed at ANASTASIA STEELE 'cause it's kind of a cheesy name and I laughed at the coincidence of having just read about Dakota Johnson and 50 Shades earlier this week. And so a totally unknown-to-me pop culture name, the kind of thing that could've been irksome, didn't bother me at all. Good fortune.

The puzzle runs a little heavy on partials—fill-in-the-blank stuff, stuff that makes no real sense on its own. MAUNA LANKA CARTA! That's a hell of a partial trio. There's also CUL and RUH (not great) and not one but two Chinese menu fragments (PAO, TSO'S). But this uglier shorter stuff largely stays inconspicuous and holds together some good-to-great medium and longer fill. OLD AS DIRT! (wanted OLD AS THE HILLS or—more likely, since it fit in the space allotted—OLD AS TIME) (11D: Antediluvian). DEAR SANTA ... BASSLINES! (32D: Funk music features). Love a puzzle with a good bass line. BRAISES (41A: Prepares, as coq au vin) and KINDEST (35A: "___ regards ..." (letter sign-off)) and ROTUNDA (27A: Pantheon feature), all solid mid-sized answers through the middle. The puzzle is very sturdy. Thumbs up. 

[funky BASSLINE(S)]

Bullets:

• 1D: Travel safety grp. at school (S.A.D.D.) — "Travel safety" absolutely threw me for a loop in the S.A.D.D. clue, even though it shouldn't have (S.A.D.D. stands for "Students Against Drunk Driving," although that second "D" might also stand for "Distracted" these days ... oh, no, now it's "Students Against Destructive Decisions." So it's not even travel-specific any more. Time to change the cluing!). "Travel safety" just sounded like something to do with remaining safe while traveling ... like, on a bus or plane or whatever. The "Drunk Driving" context never entered my head. This clue isn't much different from other S.A.D.D. clues, so I should've seen right through it. Shrug. Sometimes your (my) brain just glitches.
• 23A: Bird that Zeus disguised himself as in a much-told Greek myth (SWAN) — kind of white-washing the whole gods-raping-mortals context here. So many ways to come at SWAN, not sure this would be my top choice.

• 31A: Car requirement beginning in 1998 (AIR BAG) — do they not require more than one? Feels weird to say that only a single bag is required.
• 39D: Neighborhood in New York City where Zohran Mamdani lived before being elected the city's mayor (ASTORIA)—first Mamdani reference (that I can remember) in the NYTXW. Expect many more once post-election puzzles finally make it through the pipeline. Both ZOHRAN and MAMDANI are gonna appear before year's end, for sure. Maybe we'll get the full name. You don't get unimpeachably famous new names every day, and also it's NYC, so Mamdani references in the NYTXW just make sense. This clue is just the beginning.

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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Total on a chiliagon / THU 2-26-26 / Questionable, in slang / Animal in some traditional Tibetan races / Amount measured in calories / Shots, informally / System in which XL is smaller than L / Collectively, the reigns of all English monarchs named George / 8' 4" / 250,000 sheets / Accessory for SpongeBob SquarePants / Queen of the Pride Lands / Side dish eaten with curry / Mercury's mythological counterpart

Constructor: Yitzi Snow

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: ROMAN NUMERALS (35A: System in which XL is smaller than L ... or a hint to interpreting the answers to the italicized clues) — answers involve numbers; those numbers must be written as ROMAN NUMERALS, which results in answers that look like completely unrelated words:

Theme answers:

• CINCHES (1A: 8' 4" = 100 inches)
• DREAMS (8A: 250,000 sheets = 500 reams)
• VIKING SHIPS (21A: Collectively, the reigns of all English monarchs named George = six kingships)
• LIABILITIES (51A: Superhuman strength, mind-reading, invisibility and four dozen other powers = fifty-one abilities)
• XBOXES (65A: ▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢▢ = ten boxes)
• MANGLES (66A: Total on a chiliagon = 1,000 angles)

Word of the Day: chiliagon (66A) —

In geometry, a chiliagon (/ˈkɪliəɡɒn/) or 1,000-gon is a polygon with 1,000 sides. Philosophers commonly refer to chiliagons to illustrate ideas about the nature and workings of thought, meaning, and mental representation. [...] René Descartes uses the chiliagon as an example in his Sixth Meditation to demonstrate the difference between pure intellection and imagination. He says that, when one thinks of a chiliagon, he "does not imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present" before him – as he does when one imagines a triangle, for example. The imagination constructs a "confused representation," which is no different from that which it constructs of a myriagon (a polygon with ten thousand sides). However, he does clearly understand what a chiliagon is, just as he understands what a triangle is, and he is able to distinguish it from a myriagon. Therefore, the intellect is not dependent on imagination, Descartes claims, as it is able to entertain clear and distinct ideas when imagination is unable to. Philosopher Pierre Gassendi, a contemporary of Descartes, was critical of this interpretation, believing that while Descartes could imagine a chiliagon, he could not understand it: one could "perceive that the word 'chiliagon' signifies a figure with a thousand angles [but] that is just the meaning of the term, and it does not follow that you understand the thousand angles of the figure any better than you imagine them."

The example of a chiliagon is also referenced by other philosophers. David Hume points out that it is "impossible for the eye to determine the angles of a chiliagon to be equal to 1.996 right angles, or make any conjecture, that approaches this proportion." Gottfried Leibniz comments on a use of the chiliagon by John Locke, noting that one can have an idea of the polygon without having an image of it, and thus distinguishing ideas from images. Immanuel Kant refers instead to the enneacontahexagon (96-gon), but responds to the same question raised by Descartes.

Henri Poincaré uses the chiliagon as evidence that "intuition is not necessarily founded on the evidence of the senses" because "we can not represent to ourselves a chiliagon, and yet we reason by intuition on polygons in general, which include the chiliagon as a particular case."

Inspired by Descartes's chiliagon example, Roderick Chisholm and other 20th-century philosophers have used similar examples to make similar points. Chisholm's "speckled hen", which need not have a determinate number of speckles to be successfully imagined, is perhaps the most famous of these.

• • •

This didn't work for me. The answers are random—you can make potential theme answers for a puzzle like this all day long: CHARMS, DAPPLES, etc. etc. etc. Why "VI" but no "V"? Why "LI" but no "L"? Why is there an extra, non-Roman-numeral word (SHIPS) in VIKING SHIPS, when there are none in any of the other themers? Why does "X" get to stand on its own as a letter in X BOXES, but in none of the other themers? The numbers don't go in order or have any sense of purpose. The whole thing feels chaotic, not to mention absurd —that is, the literal answers themselves are ridiculous non-things. 100 inches? Fifty-one abilities? (also, if "LI" is "fifty-one," how is LIABILITIES not "fifty-one ABI fifty-one TIES?). I get that the absurdity there is part of the alleged fun of the thing, but even the absurdity is faulty—Fifty-one abilities is well and truly ridiculous, conceptually, whereas 500 reams and 100 inches are just 500 reams and 100 inches: arbitrary amounts of things, but not exactly ridiculous. Not ridiculous enough to be funny or otherwise enjoyable. This puzzle also has what is possibly the least necessary revealer of all time. Before I even got to the midway point, I knew I was dealing with ROMAN NUMERALS. That much was self-evident. There's absolutely no need to have a revealer in this puzzle. Part of the Thursdayness of it all is that you have to figure out what's going on. If the revealer had something new or funny or punny to show me, fine let me have it. But ROMAN NUMERALS??? I already see that. That does nothing for me. Big obvious unnecessary answer just taking up valuable real estate in the middle of the puzzle. Bizarre. Remedial. Disappointing.

[41A: "Stompin' at the ___" (Benny Goodman standard)]

But it's the fill in this puzzle that really put me off. Right away. NW corner, danger signs everywhere. I wrote in CON AIR thinking "I remember that movie, vaguely, but will others?" (Actually, my first thought was AIR FORCE ONE, but obviously that wouldn't fit). That answer is 30yo pop culture, but it's not inherently bad. What followed, however, was a barrage of bad:

LAA to NAE to CTA to me doubled over, sighing, wondering when it's going to stop. And while it got better, it didn't get much better. NALA ELIAS ATA TWOD MANI. Even ORE CART (LOL, 7-letter crosswordese, for sure). What the hell is UNNAILED?! One unscrupulous constructor puts that damned answer in a puzzle 8 years ago and now it's in the constructor wordlist ecosystem forever. Use discretion! Just because one constructor thought a "word" was a word does not mean that you have to follow suit. Moving on: I CAN SAY?? I had I CAN SEE in there for a bit. Does "I CAN SAY" even fit the clue? (42A: "Based on my research..."). I can't really swap the clue phrase out for the answer very easily / plausibly. You might follow the phrase "Based on my research" with "I CAN SAY," but that they don't feel synonymous. If I "stall," I BUY TIME, I don't gain it. If I take a shortcut, maybe I GAIN TIME, but if I'm stalling, I'm buying it. And ASSED? Just ... ASSED, hanging out there in the breeze? An ASSED partial? I dunno. The fill just was Not landing for me today. Also, I don't get as bothered as some other solvers do by pop culture answers, but there were a lot of them today. Namey namey namey. NALA SARAH CON AIR ICEMEN, all movie-related, all before we even leave the NW. Disney, Spongebob, Black Widow, ANA de Armas. It's a lot.

I didn't struggle too much with this one. That first themer took a while to get, I guess. There was the "I CAN SEE" hold-up. I wrote in VAX before PIX, so that was weird (55D: Shots, informally). The slowest, or sloggiest part was probably the SE, where the GAIN of GAIN TIME and the entirety of UNNAILED (!??) were not just tough for me to pick up—they crossed the GUM of "BY GUM!," which I thought might be "BY GOD!" (52D: "Dagnabbit!"). So it was a little slippery through there, but not excessively so. Best mistake of the day: back when I had "I CAN SEE" instead of "I CAN SAY," I imagined that Tibetans engaged in ELK racing, so that was fun (Yes, ELK racing is ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as EMU racing, which was the actual first thing that popped into my head) (45D: Animal in some traditional Tibetan races).


Bullets:

• 15A: Accessory for SpongeBob SquarePants (RED TIE) — oof. Green Paint if I ever saw it ("Green Paint" is a pairing of words that one might say in real life, but that does not have enough coherence or specificity to be a standalone answer) (GREEN LANTERN, yes; GREEN BEANS, yes; GREEN PAINT, no). Honestly, RED TIE is as close to the actual (non) answer GREEN PAINT as you're likely to get. If the concept of GREEN PAINT weren't already taken, we'd have to name it RED TIE. Been 21 years since anyone tried to make RED TIE happen. Here's to another 21. At least.
• 2D: Amount measured in calories (INTAKE) — completely confusing to me. Calories are measured in calories. INTAKE is a generic word. It has no dietary specificity. Your calorie INTAKE is measured in calories. The clue feels underwritten.
• 5D: Alternative to a walk (HIT) — baseball. A walk and a HIT are both ways to get on base.

• 23D: Queen of the Pride Lands (NALA) — a potentially tricky clue. I've still never seen The Lion King, but I've seen NALA in crosswords enough to recognize the signs here ("Queen" / "Pride" (of lions)). 
• 33D: Questionable, in slang (SUS) — I can't say I love SUS, but as far as modern slang goes, it's very tolerable to my ears. It's a real thing that people say, and it makes sense (just an abbr. of "suspicious"), so as a newish addition to the three-letter landscape, I don't mind this little palindrome at all. I still say "sketchy" (or just "sketch"), because SUS feels generationally wrong in my mouth, but for others, I like it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Combatant in an octagon-shaped cage / WED 2-25-26 / So-called "melting pot," in brief / Tribal home, maybe, informally / Tick doc / ___ hair (edgy 2000s trend)

Constructor: Brad Lively

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BREAKDANCES (60A: Emulates the three figures in this puzzle ... or what the figures do within the answers to 17-, 27- and 46-Across?) — each theme answer features a little breakdancer in the shape of a letter; these human-shaped "letters" appear inside (i.e. "break") the names of "dances" (found in shaded squares inside the theme answers). Thus the the little breakdancers "BREAK DANCES":

Theme answers (blue letters represent the little breakdancing figures, red letters spell out the dances):

• CREDI[T] SCORE (17A: Failing to pay bills on time may affect this)
• VINCENT [V]AN GOGH (27A: "Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear" painter, 1889)
• HANNIBAL LE[C]TER (46A: Villain ranked #1 on A.F.I.'s "100 Years ... 100 Heroes & Villains" list)

Word of the Day: Steven YEUN (57D: Actor Steven of "Beef" and "Nope") —

Sang-yeop Yeun (Korean: 연상엽; born December 21, 1983), known professionally as Steven Yeun (/jʌn/ YUHN), is an American actor. He rose to prominence for playing Glenn Rhee in the television series The Walking Dead (2010–2016). He earned critical acclaim for the films Burning (2018) and Minari (2020). For the latter, he became the first East Asian-American nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021. For the Netflix dark comedy series Beef (2023), which he produced and starred in, Yeun received Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Limited Series and Outstanding Lead Actor.

Yeun has also appeared in the films Okja (2017), Sorry to Bother You (2018), The Humans (2021), and Nope (2022). He has also voiced main characters in animated television series such as Voltron: Legendary Defender (2016–2018), Tales of Arcadia (2016–2021), Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters (2017–2018), Final Space (2018–2021), Tuca & Bertie (2019–2022), and Invincible (2021–present). (wikipedia)

• • •

The only thing keeping this puzzle from four-and-a-half stars is the fact that the breakdancing letters themselves are meaningless. That is, they're random letters. They don't spell anything or have any significance beyond their shape. That said, these are probably the three letters of the alphabet that most closely resemble breakdancer positions (try making yourself into an "H," for example—actually, esp. if you're over 50, definitely do not try this). The first two breakdancer-letters (the "T" and "V") make a nice sequence—handstand into a backspin. I can definitely see that happening, breakdancing-wise. That "C" is iffier, though. Whatever that little dude is doing to make himself a "C" seems the least "breakdancey" of these figures. So the breakdancer-letters have no larger significance and one of them seems more contrived (from a visual standpoint) than the others. Beyond that, though, this theme is kinda brilliant. Little dancers inside dances inside longer answers! Extreme nesting! And the dances are all solid, familiar, recognizable, and they touch every element in the overall theme answers. That is, every word in every themer is part of a dance—no words left hanging. That is how you do "hidden word" themes. The rest of the puzzle had its strengths and weaknesses. It's a very choppy grid with maybe more than its share of repeaters (NENE IKEA SSNS INRE ADE ORA EKED etc etc), but the clues were far more interesting than normal, and the theme was so strong that I didn't care so much about the weaknesses in the fill. I'm not normally a big fan of picture gimmicks in my puzzle, but this one is truly inventive, and from a craftsmanship standpoint, it's very solid. Ambitious and well executed. I had a good time.

I was entertained from the very first clue. 1A: [Taps casino table] is a fantastic (visual! audio!) clue for "HIT ME." There just seemed to be more color and pizzazz than usual in the clues today. More "?" clues. More details. The theme answers themselves were inherently interesting—well, not CREDIT SCORE, no one likes thinking about CREDIT SCOREs, but the others, for sure. I never saw the clue for either Van Gogh or Lecter—I really do work the short stuff first, since that tends to be higher-percentage (easier to get at first glance than longer stuff), and sometimes, by the time I even consider looking at the clue for a longer answer, I've already got enough letters in place to infer it. With HANNIBAL LECTER, I had the end worked out and the letter combo was so unusual that HANNIBAL LECTER was the only answer that made sense. Coincidentally, after the death of actor Tom Noonan last week, I watched the fantastic Michael Mann movie Manhunter (1986), in which Brian Cox (of Succession fame) plays ... HANNIBAL LECTER! A good five years before Hopkins! It's a bit part, but he's very good. Tom Noonan plays the main serial killer in the film, and he is extraordinary. 

[Cox]

[Noonan]

The puzzle was very easy, but that didn't bother me so much today, since the easiness allowed the theme to unfold and pop in a fast, energetic way, which seemed appropriate. Who wants a breakdancing puzzle to be a slog? There were only two answers that gave me any trouble. One is embarrassing: I have seen and enjoyed many Steven YEUN movies, but when I read his clue (57D: Actor Steven of "Beef" and "Nope"), I had the "YE-" in place and reflexively wrote in YEOH—a different actor altogether. Wrong ethnicity, wrong gender, wrong wrong wrong. Bah. My (extreme) bad. The other hold-up I don't feel nearly so bad about. CMD!? Is that short for "Command?" Yeesh, that is ... not pretty. Astonishingly, this abbr. was used only twice in the pre-Shortz era, but has (comparatively) flourished under Shortz, almost always with the same boring clue: today's clue: [Mil. authority] (16 appearances under Shortz, 10 of them with this clue, zzzz). This is the first appearance of CMD in ten years! It can go back into retirement now, I won't mind. Anyway, I spun out a bit on DOD today. I had the "D" in place and wrote in DOD (Dept. of Defense). That's a "Mil. authority," isn't it? 

Bullets:

• 11A: ___ hair (edgy 2000s trend) (EMO) — got EMO easy even though I can't really tell you what this hair looks like. I'm picturing Bill Hader as Stefan on SNL, but Stefan wasn't exactly EMO:

• 33A: Tribal home, maybe, informally (REZ) — a perfectly good answer (short for "Reservation"), but "maybe, informally" felt like one qualifier too many.
• 35A: So-called "melting pot," in brief (U.S.A.) — enjoying the shade this puzzle is throwing around today with "So-called." See also the clue on MADONNA (4D: So-called "Queen of Pop"). I've heard Michael Jackson called the "King of Pop," but this "Queen of Pop" moniker is less familiar to me, which is strange, as I grew up in peak Madonna Times, and even saw her in concert in Minneapolis a couple years ago.

• 30D: Tick doc (VET) — I was not aware that VETs treated arachnids. (Seriously, what is happening here? You take your dog to the vet when he gets ticks? Is that it?) (wait, is this a "Tik Tok" pun???) 😦
• 12D: Combatant in an octagon-shaped cage (MMA FIGHTER) — not a fan of MMA, but am a fan of this answer, which is bright and original and (most importantly) helped me figure out CMD.
• 11D: Sound-track? (ECHOLOCATE) — good answer, great clue. That NE corner really hums. I will say that even though CMD sucks, it is holding together the best part of the puzzle—which is the only reason cruddy fill should ever show its face.
• 29D: Cyber punk? (TROLL) — nice wordplay—reimagining the literary genre (cyberpunk) as an actual punk (i.e. asshole) online. Good stuff. I also like 37D: Bear's heirs? for CUBS. No real wordplay at work there, just a funny little rhyming clue. It's nice for easy clues to have a little personality sometimes.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Yellowish color for old computer graphics / TUE 2-24-26 / Tiny swine / Brew that's a little cloudy and fruity / Utter rubbish / President of China beginning in 2013 / Supermodel Hadid

Constructor: Adam Aaronson

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (**for a Tuesday**)

THEME: e.g. — every theme clue ends with "e.g.," and every theme answer has the initials "E.G.":

Theme answers:

• ETHNIC GROUP (17A: Nuyoricans, e.g.)
• ELECTRIC GUITAR (24A: Fender Strato caster, e.g.)
• EL GRECO (36A: "The Disrobing of Christ," e.g.)
• ENDOCRINE GLAND (50A: Thyroid, e.g.)
• EVENING GOWN (59A: Dress for a soirée, e.g.)

Word of the Day: Nuyoricans (see 17A) — 

Nuyorican is a portmanteau word blending "New York" (or "Nueva York" in Spanish) and "Puerto Rican," referring to Puerto Ricans located in or around New York City, their culture, or their descendants (especially those raised or currently living in the New York metropolitan area). This term is sometimes used for Puerto Ricans living in other areas in the Northeastern US Mainland outside New York State as well. The term is also used by Islander Puerto Ricans (Puerto Ricans from Puerto Rico) to differentiate those of Puerto Rican descent from the Puerto Rico-born. (wikipedia)

• • •

Feels like it's been a while since I thought the editors misjudged the level of difficulty in this direction—that is, since a puzzle felt harder than average for its day of the week. But this one, yeah, this one felt like a Wednesday, for sure. Spelling XI JINPING alone was a total adventure (31D: President of China beginning in 2013), then there was the toughish (for me) clues on EL GRECO and AMBER (I had OCHER (?)) (6A: Yellowish color for old computer graphics) and BOO (8D: Honeybun) (so many three-letter "Honeybun"s out there), and then the supermodel I don't know (GIGI), the ARM/AIM thing (43A / 33D: Asset for a thrower), the WHEAT part of WHEAT BEER. All of this was gettable, it just took more time than most Tuesdays take. More "what?," more hacking around until the letters fell into place. And it didn't just take more time to solve—it also took more time for me to understand the theme. Not a ton of time, just ... some. At the end, I could see that all the themers had "E.G." as their initials, but ... why? I kept looking for a revealer, but ... nothing. "E.g., e.g., where would you put the 'e.g.' in a puzzle like this?" Well, duh. The clues. I had not noticed that every clue ended in e.g. because crossword clues end in e.g. all the time—it's not a distinctive feature. So that little twist—turning a perfectly ordinary clue element into a theme element—was surprising. Clever. Again, more characteristic of later week puzzles. But I appreciated the "oh!" moment. 

'Mainly I was just relieved that there was a revealer (of a sort). Because before that, I was thinking "uh ... just having E.G. initials is not enough. Not themeworthy." The cluing conceit gives the E.G. stuff purpose. It's a neat little trick. During the solve, my ideas about what the theme might be were all over the map. At first, I noticed that both ETHNIC GROUP and ELECTRIC GUITAR feature an "ICG" letter string broken across their two words. But then EL GRECO broke up that pattern. By the time I got ENDOCRINE GLAND, I was like "is there 'CRINGE' in every answer? Anagrammed? For some reason?" But no, that didn't check out either. I don't necessarily enjoy fumbling around like that, but I did think it was kinda cute the way the "e.g." in the theme clues was eventually like "hey, hey there ... you missed me. I'm right in front of your damned face."

The fill today wasn't really on my wavelength or in my pleasure zone (... sorry, that sounds erotic, I won't ever say it again ...), but at least it's not dull. I don't really know what a MINIPIG is (46A: Tiny swine). I assume it's a small pig. Maybe a pet? I also hate / never hear the term AUTOBIO (30A: Self-written life story, informally). Just say the word, yeesh. Maybe it's a written and not a spoken thing? Neither of these "words" is really my thing, but I see them trying, and I appreciate the effort, esp. on a Tuesday. The fill was not promising right out of the gate—any time I stop to take a picture of the NW corner, that is a bad sign. A sign that the fill annoyed me so much I needed to document it:

I'd recommend that if you have a particularly rough corner in your grid, you not call attention to the problem by literally labeling it DRECK (1A: Utter rubbish). Looking at it now, it doesn't seem so bad, but DMED and RETIE back-to-back set my "no, make it stop" alarm off early. Once I got momentum going, the uglier stuff (your ENTs and your laugh syllables and your PCHELP, etc.) didn't bug me as much because I blew right through it. There's something kind of ugly about the mash-up of EVEVEVEVE material in the south. EVE crossing EVENING crossing VEE crossing LEVEE (crossing LEVIES!!!?). Need some air down there. Way too same same (same same same). But the rest of the grid is lively and varied. This is one of those puzzles that wasn't really for me, but seemed well made overall. My gut said three stars, but my head was like "it's probably a little better than that, you should bump it? If only for being a little weird and kinda hard, you should bump it." So I bumped it.

Bullets:

• 36A: "The Disrobing of Christ," e.g. (EL GRECO) — using the artist's name as a descriptor of their work is completely conventional ("Is that a PICASSO!?"), but I was still expecting a general category here (like, I dunno, OIL PAINTING).

• 11D: Brew that's a little cloudy and fruity (WHEAT BEER) — I think the "fruity" part threw me. I didn't know that about WHEAT BEER. Of all the things that are "fruity" in this world, I'm not sure I would've placed WHEAT in that category. The "fruity" had me thinking "sour," but SOUR BEER wouldn't fit.
• 6A: Yellowish color for old computer graphics (AMBER) — as I said earlier, my first guess here was OCHER. What I did not say earlier: after MARDI gras forced OCHER out, my next move was not AMBER. It was UMBER. I don't even really remember what color UMBER is. I just remember the name from the "Burnt UMBER" crayon color among my Crayola crayons when I was a kid. Burnt umber is reddish. Straight up UMBER is pretty brown. If you squint and wish real hard, you can kinda see "yellowish" in there, but nah, it's pretty brown.

• 15A: Actress Watts of "The Friend" (NAOMI) — Easy (what other "Actress Watts" is there?) but my first response was "That's a strange way to clue her. What the hell movie is that?" Then I remembered: it's the NAOMI Watts / Bill Murray / Great Dane movie from a couple of years back that I really meant to see and never did. Read a whole (fascinating) article about that dog, and what it took to cast the dog and care for the dog during filming, etc. It was in the New Yorker, I think. (Yep, here it is). Really made me want to see the movie. And then I didn't. I hate when that happens. Guess I'll watch it now. On to the Letterboxd Watchlist it goes!

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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