Tobiko or masago / FRI 7-31-26 / Palm-sized pastry / Just OK, in modern lingo / Formal pause in a line of poetry / British counterpart to "Shark Tank" / Certain shot, colloquially / Chain that can symbolize friendship / Energy for distance runners

Constructor: Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DRAGON'S DEN (6D: British counterpart to "Shark Tank") —

Dragons' Den, also known as Shark Tank, is a reality television program format in which entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to a panel of venture capitalists in the hope of securing investment finance from them. The program originated in 2001 in Japan, where it is known as The Tigers of Money (Japanese: マネーの虎, romanized: manē no tora), a pun on "The Tiger of Malaya" (マレーの虎, marē no tora), which was the nickname of WWII general Tomoyuki Yamashita. The format was created and is owned by Nippon TV and is distributed by Sony Pictures Television.

Local versions of the show have been produced in over 40 countries, as well as one for the Arab world; in some countries, more than one version has been aired. The first version to air outside of Japan was the British programme Dragons' Den, which launched in 2005; in the several years afterward, most versions named themselves Dragons' Den or variations thereof, though some also used other animals in the title, such as lions. The Israeli version of the show, HaKrishim ("The Sharks"), was the first to use the "shark" moniker, during its launch in 2006. Since the launch of the American version of the show, Shark Tank, in 2009, many versions have been named Shark Tank or variations thereof. In versions where the name of the show contains a creature's name, the investors are referred to by that name. (wikipedia)

• • •

["above all the drama"]

I don't know if I'M IN AWE, but I really liked this one. Might even have rated it a tick higher if not for  the clue on SAM (huge bummer) (12D: Tech mogul Altman), and DRAGON'S DEN (6D: British counterpart to "Shark Tank"). My antipathy to A.I. apostles, as well as to the lionization of venture capitalists, is well documented, so I'll spare you my "GTFO" rant. On Friday, vibes matter and those answers really brought the room down. And we were having so much fun! Actually, I got the cruddy rich-guy answers out of the way early, so the vibes had a chance to recover. After I got out of the NW, things got much, much more fun. SLEEPOVERS! PARTY BOATs! ALL SMILES, for sure. The cascading and intersecting long answers in this one, running roughly NW to SE, were really something. Smooth and bright. And fun! Some of the cluing was really clever today, including two clues with altitude-based wordplay. First, my favorite clue, the one on OPERA BOX (44A: Where to be above all the drama?). Simple, elegant—perfect surface-level idiom, perfect literal description (OPERA BOXes are indeed, literally, above the drama (taking place on stage)). And then there's the clue on AERIAL YOGA (53A: Highly flexible discipline?). You couldn't get me into an AERIAL YOGA class (my local yoga studio tried!), but even though I have no interest in it, I know what it is, and I liked the clue's sneaky use of "High-ly" (to mean "in a literally elevated position"). That's what. the "?" is for—to allow you to bennnnnd the meaning of words in funny ways. The "?" clue worked less well on PARTY BOAT (26D: Venue for events that guests are always on board to attend?). I think the "on board" was supposed to be an idiomatic misdirect ("on board" in the sense of "game, willing, down"), but it didn't land—the "on board" simply said "well it's a boat or a plane or maybe a train." But overall, this was a nice mix of breeziness and challenge, with a broad range of interest and an endearingly playful tone. Never dull. Good stuff.

[29D: "Yellow Submarine" lead vocalist]

As for the difficulty, it was never extreme, but it was enough to make things interesting. From the opening clue (1A: Withholding something?), the puzzle has you knitting your brow. I probably should've gotten TAX immediately ([Withholding something?] = something withheld), but all I could think of was PAY, which I did not write in due to lack of confidence. First thing I actually wrote in: YESES! (2D: Assenting chorus). YAY ME! These early screw-ups were relatively quickly fixed, but I appreciated that the puzzle was at least trying to trip me up. It's Friday, make me (lightly) work! I flat-out didn't know DRAGON'S DEN and totally forgot that GEL was a thing runner's ate. What is the GEL made of? Weird to say that your source of energy is just GEL, which seems to refer to form, not content, but I guess colloquially it's accurate. Because of the DRAGON'S DEN / GEL issues, I could not make the turn into the middle and NE corner, so I ended up going the other direction, which is where things really picked up:

"SO WHAT?!" "I CAN'T EVEN!" Good colloquial energy through here. Plus—bonus Anglo-Saxon poetry content! (CAESURA) (35D: Formal pause in a line of poetry). You can find CAESURAs (CAESURAe?) in later English poetry, but it's definitive of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The entire corpus, I think. I know it all alliterates and I think the CAESURA is a more-or-less constant feature as well. Certainly in the poetry I teach. My students will definitely have to know CAESURA for the first exam. 

I managed to work my way back up into the NE despite forgetting the Pride & Prejudice sister and writing in HALOS for TOLLS (23D: Rings), and then MIRE for DIRT (16A: Grime). The toughest remaining part, though, came in the SE, where I thought the ASL clue was GEE???  (43A: What a closed fist with an extended index finger represents, in A.S.L.) (ONE)

I guess that's not really a "closed fist," but it's all I could think of. I assumed the clue wanted a letter. But that screw-up didn't screw me up as much as the way I chose to spell PYOTR, which was PIETR (45A: Pierre : French :: ___ : Russian). I blame Georges Simenon, specifically his first Maigret novel, Pietr-le-Letton (Pietr the Latvian). Well ... it's called Pietr the Latvian, not Pietr the Russian, so ... my bad.

PIETR gave me an erroneous "I," which I used to (ironically!) write in "I RULE!" for 46D: Self-congratulation ("YAY ME!"). Bit of a mess down there. But like the bit-of-a-mess up top (PAY? YESES?), it was relatively easy to clean up. This is what I want from a Friday, as far as difficulty goes—not torture, but ... I don't know, some light impishness and trickery. 

Bullets:

• 55A: Brazilian state whose name is a unit of measurement (ACRE) — I had no idea such a state existed. Interesting way to teach me (adding the more familiar bit about measurement). With ACRE in the puzzle, I'm not sure [Wiseacre] was the best choice for the SMARTYPANTS clue, but then again, I doubt anyone but me and a few other hypersensitive weirdos noticed. 
• 11A: Sex work? (KAMA SUTRA) — another beautiful "?" clue were the surface level is so smooth and familiar and ordinary that you wouldn't see the wordplay coming without the "?" (so, not sex for pay ("sex work") but a book ("work") about sex).
• 7D: Just OK, in modern lingo (MID) — of all the modern lingo (i.e. "lingo" invented in this century), this is maybe my favorite. There's something so withering about "MID." Very useful.
• 36D: Certain shot, colloquially (VAX) — had the "X" and wanted PIX. "But ... PIX? That's plural," I thought. Indeed. It's also wrong.
• 52D: Chain that can symbolize friendship (LEI) — it's a sad commentary on how capitalism-fried my brain is that my first thought for "Chain" here was "retailer." "REI ... do they have a new handshake logo or something?"

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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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

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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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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