Lumpsucker eggs / THU 7-30-26 / Developer of a geocentric model of the universe / Where Dante's path to paradise begins / Fripp & ___ (musical duo) / Bob who painted "happy little trees" / Balkan state that's been independent since 2008 / Seller of knickknacks / Like the name of former soccer star Mark De Man

Constructor: Joel Woodford

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (oversized at 16x15)

THEME: NATO ALPHABET (65A: Communication aid that helps make sense of the italicized clues) — clues must be read as [letter] + definition; in the answer, the [letter] is written in its NATO ALPHABET form:

Theme answers:

• CHARLIE SHEEN (18A: Cluster) ("C" = CHARLIE, "luster" = SHEEN)
• ALPHA MALE (27A: Agent) ("A" = ALPHA, "gent" = MALE)
• SIERRA CLUB (40A: Steam) ("S" = SIERRA, "team" = CLUB)
• GOLF RANGE (56A: Gambit) ("G" = GOLF, "ambit" = RANGE)

Word of the Day: DARIÉN National Park (32D: Panama's ___ National Park) —

Darién National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Darién) is a World Heritage Site in Panama. It is about 325 kilometers (202 mi) from Panama City, is the most extensive of all national parks of Panama, and is one of the most important World Heritage Sites in Central America. // The Darién National Park is a natural bridge spanning North and South America. It is located in southernmost Panama in Darién province and its southern boundary extends along 90 percent of the Colombia–Panama border. It lies between the Serranía del Darién range, which parallels the Caribbean Sea 16 kilometers (9.9 mi) to the north-east, and the Pacific Ocean coast. It is adjacent to the Los Katíos National Park in Colombia. // In 1972, an area of 700,000 hectares (1,700,000 acres) became part of the Alto Darién Protection Forest. In 1980, the area was declared a national park. In 1983, an area of 859,333 hectares (2,123,460 acres) became a UNESCO biosphere reserve. The park covers 5,790 km² (2,240 mi²). // The Darien National Park has myriad habitats, ranging from rocky coastlines to sandy beaches to mangroves. The park also has expansive swamps and large areas of tropical forests. It is rich in biodiversity and contains numerous threatened species. It has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International. // The park is one of the few examples remaining in the world of a protected area inhabited by humans. Two native tribes dwell in the park. [...] The park is notable for the Darién Gap, the only break in the Pan-American Highway on its intercontinental path from Argentina to Alaska. (wikipedia)

• • •

Just the other day I was solving a cryptic crossword with my wife, Penelope, and one of the clues contained the phrase "after golf" or something like that and the answer ended up being "hotel." Or maybe the answer was "golf" and the clue had "one in front of hotel" or something like that, I forget. The point is, I dimly remembered that "golf" was "G" in the NATO ALPHABET, but I had totally forgotten that "H" was "hotel." Of course, after I figured it all out, I remember the title of the Wilco album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a title I'd never given much thought, but one which, I now realized, contained three letters of the NATO ALPHABET ("Yankee" and "Foxtrot" were recognizable to me as such—"Hotel" was not). Penelope had no idea that "golf" = "G." Seems like one of the lesser known NATO ALPHABET members. Anyway, as with so many things you "never see," I have now seen "golf = G" not once but twice since then—that's three times total in under a week. Bizarre. If you solve cryptic crosswords, then this theme was probably easy for you to crack (as it was for me). Cryptic clues often make tricky use of words to represent letters. I will admit that I didn't see the theme at first, though. I got CHARLIE SHEEN entirely (easily) from crosses, and then stared at [Cluster] like "... huh?" I was trying to find shared letters or something, I don't know what. Whatever I was doing, it wasn't working. But when I got the second themer, ALPHA MALE (which I inferred from ALPHA alone), I saw it: "gent" = MALE! So that means "A" = ALPHA, and therefore [Agent] = ALPHA MALE. I looked back at CHARLIE SHEEN, said "aha!" to myself (quietly, Penelope's still asleep), and moved on. The remaining themers were a cinch. I enjoyed the little frisson of revelation, that "cracked it!" moment. That was fun. What I didn't like, though, was the revealer. It's so painfully straightforward and descriptive, and in my case, as someone who solved top-to-bottom and figured out the theme on my own before the halfway mark, it was completely unnecessary. Depressingly anticlimactic. I was hoping for either no revealer ("you're on your own, suckers!") or something involving clever wordplay of some kind. To end with a plain old explanation, one that I already knew, was a bit of a letdown.

Are you one of those people who jump down to the bottom of the grid to try to get the revealer when they encounter a mystery theme, or do you typically power through and let nature / fate take its course, hoping to work it out on your own? I've been both people. I'm kind of glad I was the latter kind of person today, though, because working it out on your own is a Great feeling, way better than being told. Part of the reason the non-theme parts of the puzzle are pretty easy today is precisely so solvers can hack their way to the theme answers without understanding the theme, and then try to work out the clue-answer connection for themselves. I thought the clues were pitched just right for that—easyish, but still, for the most part, interesting. You get a couple of nice, longer non-theme answers (TALK RADIO, CURIO SHOP), lots of 7s in the corners, and then short fill that rarely feels tedious or stale. The clues have some moments of real cleverness. I enjoyed most of the "?" clues—[Took one's breath away?] for EXHALED, and [Biblical second coming?] for EVE, and especially [Go for gold?] for TAN, which I had as PAN, because of course I did, you PAN for gold—at least you do if you're an olde-tymey miner during the Gold Rush days. Very little that was unknown to me today except for DARIÉN National Park, which I was really happy to learn about (see "Word of the Day," above). I'm now wondering if my commitment to birding will grow to such proportions that I will have to visit DARIÉN. It's apparently a legendary bird-watching spot, or, as I learned from wikipedia, an "Important Bird Area" (IBA). Put IBA in a puzzle, you wingless cowards! We all know what it means now, let's go, HOP to it!

Bullets:

• 26D: Org. leader (PRES.) — left that "S" blank at first because I thought they might try PREZ on me.
• 17A: Like the name of former soccer star Mark De Man (APT) — in soccer, marking your man basically means guarding him. It's a defensive strategy.
• 30D: Where Dante's path to paradise begins (HELL) — sometimes, it's possible to know too much about a subject. Me, today, in response to this clue: "... dark wood. DARK WOOD! Why won't 'dark wood" fit?! Selva oscura, dark wood, come on!" I would also have accepted "shadowed forest." These are the first lines of Inferno (i.e. HELL) (tr. Mandelbaum):

1 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
2 mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
3 ché la diritta via era smarrita.

[When I had journeyed half of our life’s way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.]

• 47A: Bob who painted "happy little trees" (ROSS) — a crossword staple, a gimme. There were a lot of proper nouns today (AVA, CHAN, ERMA, all three of the 7-letter Downs in the NE corner, etc.), but they were generally familiar, easy to get, and generally inconspicuous. Again, DARIÉN was the only one I'd never heard of (I've probably seen it in a crossword before and just forgot about it ... hmm. Looks like for the past quarter century, DARIEN has appeared only a few times, and only as the Connecticut town. The very first clue for DARIEN, though (in 1943) was [Gulf between coasts of Columbia and Panama]. The Panama, non-Connecticut version of DARIEN also used to be clued via a line from Keats: the last line of "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer," in fact (a poem I haven't read since 1989ish). In his awe at the beauty he beholds, Keats compares himself to the explorer Cortez beholding the Pacific for the first time, "Silent, upon a peak in DARIEN."

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien. (poetryfoundation.org)

• 63A: Fripp & ___ (musical duo) (ENO) — could easily have made Robert Fripp the "Word of the Day" (put FRIPP in a puzzle, you prog rock-phobic cowards!) (he was the founder of the band King Crimson, the paradigmatic prog rock band, although Fripp & ENO's music is ambient). 

• 7D: Joel follows it (HOSEA) — as constructor's self-references go ... I don't mind this one. You gotta use some biblical crosswordese, may as well have fun with it. Clue is accurate, which is all that matters.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Trendy sneaker brand / WED 7-29-26 / 2025 Ron Howard survival thriller / Fishy Hawaiian dish / Chips with a "Blue Heat" flavor / Drinks that may be prepared with a steam wand / Home of County Donegal

Constructor: Emily Biegas and Sala Wanetick

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "VENI, VIDI, VICI" (58A: Classic quotation that might be said by 20-, 34- and 41-Across?) — people who "came," "saw," and "conquered," respectively (the "classic quotation" is Caesar's, of course, and its English translation can be found in the first two words of each clue, taken collectively and sequentially): 

Theme answers:

• PARTY-CRASHER (20A: I came uninvited)
• NOSTRADAMUS (34A: I saw the future)
• KEN JENNINGS (41A: I conquered "Jeopardy!" for 74 days straight)

Word of the Day: EDEN (65A: 2025 Ron Howard survival thriller) —

Eden is a 2024 American historical survival thriller film directed by Ron Howard and written by Noah Pink, from a story by the pair.^[4] It stars Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney, Daniel Brühl, Felix Kammerer, Toby Wallace, and Richard Roxburgh. The film is based on the true story of several European settlers, including Margret Wittmer, who arrive on the isolated Floreana Island, in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, pre-World War II, hoping to start a life there.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2024, and was released theatrically in Germany on April 2, 2025, by Leonine, and in the United States by Vertical on August 22, 2025. The film received mixed reviews from critics. [...] Following its releases in Germany and Italy, the film grossed a total of $825,041.

In the United States and Canada, the film made $1 million from 664 theaters in its opening weekend.

• • •

The theme gets points for being strange and original, conceptually, but loses points for having the themer set be so completely arbitrary. I think KEN JENNINGS is the strangest. I get that you all love that that show and that guy, but as an avatar of "I conquered," generally??? Of all the people who ever "conquered" anything, that's the choice? For this puzzle's audience, maybe that's the right call. Red meat. For me, that choice seemed bizarre. But it's got an unexpectedness and wackiness that I can appreciate, even if it's not really my VIBE (unlike the vast majority of puzzle people I know, I don't watch the show, but go to any crossword tournament and it seems like half the people there have been on the show, and half of them were champions). There's a kookiness factor that keeps this one from being boring. The fill could've been (much) better. RES ASEA REORG ALFA and on and on with the overfamiliar old stuff, all the way down to OCHRE, EIRE, and SNES (still the ugliest abbreviation I know) (stands for "Super NES" ... the "NES" stands for "Nintendo Entertainment System"). There's also EDEN, which provided a high/low point today with its (to me) hilarious clue (65A: 2025 Ron Howard survival thriller). "Hilarious" in that I was like "Ron Howard directed what now???" If that movie fell in the forest, I'm pretty sure it made no sound. Did it even get released here. Wikipedia says it made $2.8 million, but that's against a budget of $55 million!! What the hell happened? I want to say "it bombed" but as someone who pays reasonably close attention to movies, I think it's more accurate to say "it never showed up." Cluing EDEN via such an extremely, comically unsuccessful movie—a real choice. I once clued FLORENCE PUGH via Don't Worry, Darling (which had recently come out, with a lot of hype and controversy surrounding it) and the editor (whom I adore) changed it to a clue about a f***ing Marvel movie (Black Widow), and I still haven't gotten over it. If the editors changed the EDEN clue to this, that's a crime. Of course, if the clue was the constructors' own ... sometimes it's better not to try to be creative and original and contemporary, is what I'm saying. EDEN is crosswordese. Just ... make the clue innocuous and move on.

The one notable bit of fill today, from where I'm sitting, is HOKA, a brand I've been waiting to show up in the NYTXW for years now (21D: Trendy sneaker brand). From where I was literally sitting, yesterday, in the cafe I got to most mornings, I was noticing a guy's HOKA shoes and thinking about this very thing: how trendy they are, and how I still hadn't seen HOKA in the grid. I mean, with that "K," HOKA is never gonna reach EDEN or EIRE or ASEA levels of crossword prominence, but it could do some damage. Might have legs. Any new four-letter answer is likely to have some kind of life ... and afterlife. Just ask ASTA. Gone but not forgotten (by crossword solvers).

I can imagine some of the proper nouns giving some solvers trouble here and there (HOKA, TAKIS ... EDEN, lol), but otherwise this seemed very easy. Four-letter repeater after four-letter repeater. Some three-letter repeaters. Some five-letter repeaters. A lot of repeaters. I like the AVOCADO / RIPENED pairing, for obvious reasons, and KEGELS gave the grid a little unexpected squeeze. I wrote in PUPU before POKE (40A: Fishy Hawaiian dish). I don't think I knew TAKIS were considered "chips" (31D: Chips with a "Blue Heat" flavor). I thought they were more like ... sticks. Wait, am I getting them confused with that Japanese snack ... lol yes, POCKY! (rhymes with TAKI?)

But, in my defense, actual TAKIS really are stick-shaped:

But since the sticks are made out of rolled tortilla chips, I guess "chips" is an accurate descriptor after all.

Bullets:

• 32D: Name inside of a libretto? (BRETT) — literally, inside the word "li-BRETT-o"
• 58D: Get on (with) (VIBE) — I was thinking of the phrase "get on with it!" and so the verb meaning of "VIBE (with)" didn't occur to me until I got a couple crosses.
• 55D: "Soup's on!" ("DIG IN!") — these seem like completely different statements: one you say to call everyone to the table, and the other you say after everyone's seated. For this reason, I think, my brain kept shouting "DIN-DIN!" — which is what you might say in order to call someone (or, say, a cat) to dinner. "DIN-DIN!" wouldn't fit, of course, but I still think it's a nearer equivalent to "Soup's on!" than "DIG IN!" is.

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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Evian, Perrier or Badoit / TUES 7-28-26 / Letter that can take a cedilla / Primer mes del año / Director Johnson of the "Knives Out" movies

Hi, everyone — it’s Clare for the last Tuesday in July! Hope everyone has been having a lovely summer and not getting too hot or having their lungs filled with smoke or drowning in rain or…! I celebrated my 30th (!) birthday this month and also celebrated my dad’s birthday (he’s asked me not to say the number of years😉), and it’s all been quite lovely. I’m extremely sad the men’s World Cup is over, because I haven’t really known what to do with myself or what to watch. But maybe the U.S. Open will save me, or maybe I’ll get back into the swing of things once the WNBA gets back after the All-Star break. Ooh, and I got to see Noah Kahan in concert, and he was incredible; and I see BTS in Baltimore in just 15 days — not that I’m counting the days and hours and minutes or anything! Otherwise, my pup and I have been hiking and staying cool, and she’s as cute and wonderful as ever. 

Anywho, onto the puzzle… 

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Medium (mostly because of one letter)

THEME: IT’S NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT (17A: With 58-Across, dad-joke response to the answers for each of this puzzle’s starred clues) — Each of the theme answers has the sound “achoo” in it, which… sounds like a sneeze

Theme answers:

• PATCHOULI (25A: Essential oil with a musky scent) 
• MASSACHUSETTS (31A: Home of the lowest town-level ZIP code in the continental U.S. (01001)) 
• CATCH YOU LATER (38A: "Until next time!") 
• STATUETTE (49A: Academy Award, e.g.)

Word of the Day: SAM (59D: Rock singer ___ Fender) —

Samuel Thomas Fender (born 25 April 1994) is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. Born and raised in North Shields, Fender released several singles independently beginning in 2017. His sound relies primarily on his traditional American musical upbringing combined with a British rock sensibility. He is known for his high tenor voice and Geordie accent. Recognized for his songwriting style, Fender is the recipient of five Brit Awards, two Ivor Novello Awards and a Mercury Prize, among many others. (Wiki)

• • •

That was a pretty good Tuesday puzzle, mostly in spite of the theme, not because of it. The theme itself just doesn’t feel like a dad joke to me, which I think of more as something related to puns and not just sounds in words? The phrases and words themselves are fine, and it’s impressive that all the achoo sounds are achieved differently, but the theme just didn’t hit me as any sort of dad joke-esque response to each of the theme answers. I didn’t use the theme to help with the solve, as the two parts of the revealer were so split across the puzzle, which might’ve made it slightly more challenging than it otherwise would’ve been for me. 

I almost had a DNF in the puzzle because of EXCLAVE (43D: Part of a country located entirely within another country) and OXO (48A: Palindromic kitchen brand). I know the brand OXO, and, logically, I knew that there wouldn’t be another ONO in the puzzle given that it was at 18D: 1969 “bed-in” participant. But I typed in “enclave” without thinking, then was stuck searching for my error in the end. I asked my dad and sister what they thought, and they both got stuck for minutes searching for their typo right at that spot there at the end. I’ve since googled it and distinguished an EXCLAVE from an “enclave” for future reference — “An enclave is a territory that is entirely surrounded by the territory of only one other state or entity,” such as Vatican City, while “an exclave is a portion of a state or district geographically separated from the main part, by some surrounding alien territory,” such as the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, which also borders Armenia, Iran, and Turkey (Wiki). I’ll try to remember this for the future so I don’t add almost a minute to my time searching for an error! 

I also struggled a bit with O’DELL (5A: Scott ___, author of "Island of the Blue Dolphins"). I belatedly realized that I actually read "Island of the Blue Dolphins" in grade school, but I sadly had no idea who the author was. CHOCO (50A: __ Taco (ice cream treat)) gave me a little pause. I didn’t even look at the clue for NIP (60D: Alcoholic equivalent of a fun-size candy bar), but I don’t think I would’ve gotten that word from that clue. Those of you not into perfume may also have had trouble with PATCHOULI (25A). 

I appreciated the lack of a lot of crosswordese in the puzzle. Sure, we had our ELI (7D: Name that's an anagram of an untruth), ALT (37A: Secondary social media account), YET (40D: Up to this point), CPA (23A: Tax pro), ANT (28A: Myrmecology subject), ASK (10D: Query), etc. But for the most part, even those were clued a bit differently — and more interestingly — than usual. I learned what myrmecology is with ANT (28A), and I remembered that a secondary social media account is more than just a “finsta” and could actually be considered an ALT (though maybe I just need to study up on my own millennial/Gen-Z slang). 

There were also some great words in the puzzle, such as STYMIE (46D: Hinder), HOOPLA (12D: Muss and fuss), and AUTEUR (33D: Artistic visionary). Those are just so fun to say. We got THAT’LL (22D: "___ be the day!") next to OUTTA (27D: "Straight ___ Compton" (1989 N.W.A album)), a clever pairing of slangy contractions. I really liked the clue for CDC (34D: Org. mentioned in many zombie movies); I’ve watched enough zombie and apocalyptic shows to get the answer to that one right away.

Misc.:

• My sister and I hiked the Grand TETONS (20A: Wyoming mountain range) when we were on a cross-country road trip in the summer of 2020. They were absolutely gorgeous. We went on a hike there that took us to maybe the bluest waters I’ve ever seen, and I spent my birthday on a pier overlooking the water before going on a horseback ride. 
• I'm currently trying to soothe an ACHE (10A: Be in need of ibuprofen, say) by targeting a KNOT (19A: Massage gun target) right above my KNEE (14A: Word with cap or socks) after I ran seven miles yesterday, my longest run in quite some time! A friend is trying to get me to run the Richmond Marathon in November, but I’m pretty sure my body might break down before I got to that point. 
• I was part of the SKI TEAM (1D: Sporting group at a cold-weather school) at a ski academy in Lake Tahoe, and it was most definitely cold weather. One of my strongest memories of that time is being driven to school one morning by my mom, and we for some reason took the shortcut — a road that can be very dangerous. I got to school and had to wade through three-plus feet of snow to get to the entrance. For some reason, I was wearing Uggs that weren’t waterproof. Needless to say, my Uggs were never the same. And my Spanish teacher didn’t even make it for first period anyway. 
• As soon as I saw SAM (59D), I knew that he was going to be my word of the day. Some people probably don’t know who he is, but I’ve been absolutely in love with him ever since a cousin introduced me to him a few years ago. My cousin even flew to England to see him in concert, and I tried to get tickets when he came to D.C. a year or so ago, but I wasn’t able to. He has a song now with another favorite of mine, Olivia Dean, that is just crushing the charts in the UK called "Rein Me In." Anyway, my favorite of his is Hypersonic Missiles, if anyone is looking for an incredible and poignant song. 
•  I think I’ve already talked about these books, but I’ll mention them again because I’ve been having so much fun listening to them (and I’ve gotten my dad hooked, too): Everyone should listen to (or read, I suppose, though the voices in the audio book are wildly good) the Dungeon Crawler Carl series! I’m on Book 7 of 8 and am so hooked. I’ve been using Audible credits to listen to the books and just caved and bought all eight of the physical books, too. They look great on my bookshelf.

And that’s all from me! Stay cool, and I’ll see all y’all in August! 

Signed, Clare Carroll, writing about dad jokes now that I’m all groan up

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Citrusy Japanese sauce / MON 7-27-26 / Branded fluffy slippers / Country in Oceania named for a biblical king / Violate the Tenth Commandment / Name that can be parsed as "the the" in Spanish / Portland college attended by Steve Jobs / Manipulate into doubting one's memory or experience / Eel, at a Japanese restaurant

Constructor: Aidan Deshong

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only) (undersized at 14x15)

[40A: "Star Wars" character ___ Ren]

THEME: GRAYSCALE (59A: Smartphone setting that removes all color from the screen ... or a feature of this puzzle) — notes of the musical scale are found, in order, in gray boxes, two per answer, inside four theme answers:

Theme answers:

• "I DON'T CARE" (16A: "Either way is fine with me")
• SMILEY FACE (22A: Friendly emoticon)
• SOLOMON ISLANDS (36A: Country in Oceania named for a biblical king)
• SCOTTIE DOG (47A: Pet for Franklin Roosevelt or George W. Bush, informally)

Word of the Day: PONZU (19A: Citrusy Japanese sauce) —

Ponzu (ポン酢) (Japanese pronunciation: [pondzɯ]) is a citrus-based sauce commonly used in Japanese cuisine. It is tart, with a thin, watery consistency. Ponzu shōyu or ponzu jōyu (ポン酢醤油) is ponzu with soy sauce (shōyu) added, and the mixed dark brown product is widely referred to as simply ponzu.

The term originally came into the Japanese language as ponsu as a borrowing of the now obsolete Dutch word pons, meaning punch as in a beverage made from fruit juices. The sour nature of this sauce led to the final -su being interpreted as the word su (酢), meaning "vinegar".

Ponzu is made by simmering mirin, rice vinegar, katsuobushi flakes (from tuna), and seaweed (kombu) over medium heat. The liquid is then cooled, strained to remove the katsuobushi flakes, and finally the juice of one or more of the following citrus fruits is added: yuzu, sudachi, daidai, kabosu, or lemon (or even grapefruit, lime, bergamot, etc).

Commercial ponzu is generally sold in glass bottles, which may have some sediment. Ponzu shōyu is traditionally used as a dressing for tataki (lightly grilled, then chopped meat or fish) and also as a dip for nabemono (one-pot dishes) such as shabu-shabu. It is used as a dip for sashimi. In the Kansai region, it is offered as a topping for takoyaki. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well that is a scale and it is gray so mission accomplished, I suppose. I once accidentally set my phone to GRAYSCALE, in front of my students (before class) and was like "WTF?" until one of the students took pity on me, took my phone, triple-clicked on the side button, and turned it back to color. My future is basically handing devices to younger people and going "make it better." I'm fine with that. And GRAYSCALE is actually easy on the eyes. Apparently it also de-gamifies your phone—makes it (somewhat) less likely that you'll spend a lot of time on it. I forget where I read that. Here's a NYT article about it, but you can find the same idea all over the place. Annnnyway ... I like the revealer fine, as a word, but I just don't see how turning two-letter strings inside of long answers gray is a thing, a thing worthy of being called a theme. Maybe this is why SOLOMON ISLANDS seems like the strongest theme answer—it's the only one with a three-letter string. Higher level of difficulty. Seriously, how hard is it to find phrases with, say, a "DO" and a "RE" in them, in order. ODOR-FREE? DOG TREATS? ODOMETER READING? DONNA REED? DONOVAN'S REEF? 

 

The theme answers would all be fine in a themeless, but they're totally arbitrary as a set. The thematic restrictions just aren't narrow enough, so there's nothing special-seeming about any of it. So there's a "MI" and a "FA" in your 10-letter answer, so what? COMING OF AGE, there, done. See? There's just way too much leeway for the construction to seem like much of an accomplishment. The visual gag is somewhat clever, but the overall execution lacks a certain ... I dunno, heft, or sparkle, or something. It's just not tight enough. 

It was also exceedingly easy, even for a Monday, even solved Downs-only. After a very short amount of time, you can see the pattern developing in the gray squares, and so all the rest of gray squares immediately become obvious:

Just ignore the fact that I wrote in "SO" in stead of "SOL"—I got sloppy in my haste. With all those squares just handed to you, let me tell you, the Downs-only solve gets a Lot easier. The only area that gave me any pause at all was the SW corner, where STEPS (47D: Things taken on a walk?) and COVET (48D: Violate the Tenth Commandment) did not come right away. I wasn't completely sure about the "NOW" part of "TOO LATE NOW," either (27D: "You missed your chance"). But because the "TI" and "DO" were already locked in, I was eventually able to infer SCOTTIE DOG, and the SCO- gave me all the help I needed with those Downs in that corner. Elsewhere, I had "UH, OK" before "OH, OK" (a hazard of solving these awful [hesitation + "OK"] answers that are so unfortunately popular nowadays) (25D: "Um, sure"). I also wrote in DNA at 31D: Single-stranded molecule (RNA) before I remembered no, dummy, DNA is double-stranded. MDS looked perfectly acceptable in the grid, but luckily I knew enough to change the "D" to "R," resulting in MRS., the correct Across answer (30A: Title for a married woman). I had PONZ- and assumed the last letter was an "I" before the Down clue told me otherwise (17D: Heinie = TUSH). Lastly, I briefly entertained ELLE as the answer for 56D: Name that can be parsed as "the the" in Spanish (ELLA). But "LE" is not "the" in Spanish. French, yes, Spanish, no. So: ELLA. And ... done!

Bullets:

• 52A: As a precaution (TO BE SAFE) — kind of an adventure parsing this without having any reference to the clue. I had the -BE SAFE part and tentatively wrote in the "TO" while thinking "how is that a standalone phrase?" But then I heard it. As an introductory phrase, it's perfectly in the language. It's probably usually preceded by "JUST," but the JUST-less version seems fine too.
• 57D: Portland college attended by Steve Jobs (REED) — if Pomona hadn't accepted me, there's a reasonable chance that I'd've gone to REED. Either there, or Carleton, which had the temerity to waitlist me! Unforgiven, Carleton!
• 20A: Manipulate into doubting one's memory or experience (GASLIGHT) — enjoyed watching this answer come into view. Was hoping the clue would end up referring to the 1944 movie of the same name (Ingrid Bergman and Angela Lansbury, queens!), but the clue decided just to go straight to the concept, bypassing the film that inspired it.

• 48D: Violate the Tenth Commandment (COVET) — I had the "C" and wrote in CHEAT. Close!

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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