Whiskey portion of a boilermaker / TUE 4-14-26 / Cincinnati trio? / "Just so you know," online / Chatted via Teams, say / Tail-less cat breed / Locale of a lab rat / Defense grp. since 1949 / Automaker with a six-star logo / Done with boozing / Lederhosen typically end above one / Board game set in a mansion / Count in the cereal aisle

Constructor: Mark Diehl

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: AEIOU (62A: Quintet seen in order in 16-, 26-, 44- and 57-Across) — theme answers contain the letters "A" "E" "I" "O" and "U" (each once and only once) in order:

Theme answers:

• "WHAT'S NEW WITH YOU?" (16A: "Been a while! Any updates?")
• HASHES IT OUT (26A: Talks through a sticking point, say)
• APPLE ICLOUD (44A: Online storage option since 2011)
• WATERING TROUGHS (57A: Ranch fixtures for livestock)

Word of the Day: boilermaker (43A: Whiskey portion of a boilermaker = SHOT) —

A boilermaker is either of two types of beer cocktail. In American terminology, the drink consists of a glass of beer mixed with a shot of whiskey. In England, the term boilermaker traditionally refers to a half pint of draught mild ale mixed with a half pint of bottled brown ale. // The American cocktail originated in Butte, Montana in the 1890s. It was originally called a Sean O'Farrell and was served only when miners ended their shifts. // When the beer is instead served separately as a chaser, that is often called simply a shot and a beer. In Scotland, the serving of a half pint of beer alongside a "wee hauf" glass of whisky (one-quarter gill, 36 ml) is called a half and a half. [...] There are a number of ways to drink an American beer chaser:

Traditionally, the liquor is consumed in a single gulp and is then "chased" by the beer, which is sipped.

The liquor and beer may be mixed by pouring or dropping the shot into the beer. The mixture may be stirred. If the shot glass is dropped into the beer glass, the drink can also be known as a depth charge. (wikipedia)

• • •

I rarely say this, but I don't understand how this puzzle got accepted. The theme is completely uninspired. I mean, you get a couple of nice-ish phrases out of it (the first two), but ... AEIOU?! That's it? That's your revealer?? Just ... the vowels themselves? ABSTEMIOUS has all the vowels appearing exactly once, in order, is that interesting? (A: no). TRADE DISCOUNT? MACRONUTRIENT? AMBIDEXTROUS? GATHERING CLOUDS? HALF-SERIOUS? (these were all actually used in previous NYTXW clues for AIEOU). I just don't get it. Like, I don't get how this "theme" was deemed special enough to run. I feel like I must be missing something, some hook that elevates this above what it appears to be, which is just ... answers with the vowels in order. That's it. End of story. It's baffling. It's not bad, it's just not ... enough. Not sophisticated enough, not clever enough. The fact that these answers have this one feature is, at best, a curiosity, a polite "huh, interesting." As for the fill, it's mostly stale, with little to offer in the way of genuine interest, and the cluing is plain and straightforward. SNATCHED UP and ON THE WAGON are perfectly solid long Downs, but the rest of it is really quite dull, and loaded with overfamiliar repeaters. AAHS AWW NTH IMED INHD and on and on, including the always hateful but somehow undying (if not UNDEAD) IRES (no one says this) (32A: Angers). I can't think of when I've had less to say about a puzzle. It's just not giving me ... anything. Not even truly terrible stuff, or weird stuff, new stuff. It's just bog-standard puzzle stuff that (with the exception of APPLE ICLOUD) feels like it was made decades ago. In fact, I thought, "surely this has been done before, in the olden days." And in fact, yes. At least twice (in '96 and '03) puzzles have had theme answers where every vowel appears just once, but not in order (!?), and then one other time ('07) there was a puzzle (a Sunday-sized puzzle) with this exact theme. Identical. Even uses one of the same examples ("watering trough"). On the one hand, the theme hasn't been done in almost 20 years, so who cares? On the other hand, yes: Who Cares? 

I had almost no trouble at all with this one. My biggest hangup came from an early wrong answer, when I wrote in MAZE instead of CAGE at 21A: Locale of a lab rat. After that, only a few answers gave me even a moment's hesitation: USE ON, which I had originally as RUB ON (30D: Apply to, as an ointment);"OH, DANG," which is one of those arbitrary exclamations you have to piece together from crosses (20A: "Oof, that's rough"); and IONIAN, which I simply didn't remember (45D: ___ Sea, body between Sicily and Greece). 

Bullets:

• 38A: Force of habit, for some, in brief (OCD) — Kind of a weird clue. I guess the idea is that you take the generic phrase "force of habit" (which is not in any way OCD) and imagine it literally? Like, OCD is a "force" behind certain (often debilitatingly) habitual behaviors? Don't love it.
• 47D: Cincinnati trio? (ENS) — a "letteral" clue—the clue refers to the "N"s (ENS) in the name "Cincinnati." 
• 51D: "Just so you know," online (FWIW) — "for what it's worth."

That's all for today. Sorry. I told you I didn't have anything to say about this puzzle. It's just not giving me anything to work with, or even be curious about. I do think it's kinda funny (in a wry, ironic sort of way) that SHOT (43A: Whiskey portion of a boilermaker) and BREW (49A: Batch of ale) both cross ON THE WAGON. I'm also now amusing myself by imagining Count CHOCULA's Tinder bio: "UNDEAD, UNWED." But I think I'm done entertaining myself, though. Gonna try to go back to sleep. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Afghan language / MON 4-13-26 / Big banking inits. in the U.K. / City NE of Manchester / "The Thin Man" terrier / Places to stick wallets / Risky time for beach property owners / Pleasingly round

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Medium (actually kind of tough when solved Downs-only)

THEME: THREE CHEERS (62A: "Woo-hoo!" ... as suggested by the starts of 17-, 24-, 39- and 49-Across) — the theme answers start with HIP, HIP, HUR- and RAY, respectively:

Theme answers:

• HIP-HOP MUSIC (17A: Rap songs and such)
• HIP POCKETS (24A: Places to stick wallets)
• HURRICANE SEASON (39A: Risky time for beach property owners)
• RAY CHARLES (49A: Singer with the 1961 #1 hit "Hit the Road Jack")

Word of the Day: PASHTO (46D: Afghan language) —

Pashto (/ˈpʌʃtoʊ/,/ˈpæʃtoʊ/ PASH-toh; پښتو, Pəx̌tó, [pəʂˈto, pʊxˈto, pəʃˈto, pəçˈto]) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan. It was also known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (افغانی, Afghāni).

Spoken as a native language mainly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan alongside Dari, and the second-largest language in Pakistan, spoken mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the northern districts of Balochistan. Likewise, it is the primary language of the Pashtun diaspora around the world. The total number of Pashto speakers is estimated at around 35 million to 55 million. Pashto is "one of the primary markers of ethnic identity" amongst Pashtuns. (wikipedia)

• • •

[the preferred spelling, I'd say]

Well, this was very nearly a fail. PASHTO got me. I'm sure I've seen it before—in fact, this appears to be the fourth appearance of the word since I started blogging—but this is the first appearance in over a decade, and those other appearances were on Saturday, Saturday, and Sunday, respectively. That is, historically, PASHTO is both a rare and a decidedly late-week word. I had to infer virtually every letter, and the "SHT" part just felt ... wrong. Would've started it KASH- (like "Kashmir???) if TAK had been at all intelligible. But my next guess after that was PASH- (like "pasha"???), which just left the -TO part, but yikes. ATAD seemed the most likely A-AD word, but ACAD. is real thing, and I can imagine all kinds of partials there (A BAD idea, it's just A FAD, when I was but A LAD...). And then there was T-NS, and I really wanted the answer to end with "A" ... but PASHTA sounded like a drunk person ordering "pasta," so PASHTO was the "winner" and it was right but honestly I don't think I should be rewarded for pure guesswork and luck. I flat-out didn't know PASHTO and so despite my nominal success, I'm taking an L on this one. A moral L. I think I'm punishing myself for taking waaaaaay too long to see "AS WE SPEAK" (36D: Right now). This is largely due to a terrible assumption I made at BAS-ET. The only thing that came to mind was BASSET. This is possibly because we saw a BASSET hound in the park today. At any rate, if I'd had the "K" in there, I think "AS WE SPEAK" would've been much easier to see. As it was ... yipes. So many letters to guess at. -ED. ELL-. A-TA. TY-OS (again, my brain glitched and could only see TYROS–a real crossword-brain f***-up) (60A: Tehre are two in tihs clue = TYPOS). PASHTO and "AS WE SPEAK" ground me down today, but it was PASHTO that dealt the real near-lethal blow.

As for the theme: kind of bland. Not my thing. Not that exciting. Do the three cheers in THREE CHEERS represent the single phrase HIP HIP HURRAY (which is made up of three words) or is the idea that you say "HIP HIP HURRAY" three times. I thought the latter, in which case THREE CHEERS isn't a great revealer, since what you've got here with the fronts of the four theme answers is precisely one cheer. But even if I accept that the revealer was a bullseye, the whole concept just feels weak and rudimentary to me. Not enough good wordplay to constitute a good Monday theme. I think my brain is slightly bothered also by the extra "R" in HURRICANE. I assume I'm supposed to pay attention only to the first three letters of each answer, but with the other three answers, those are standalone words (or, in the case of HIP-HOP, word parts). With HURRICANE, I have to mentally break the answer myself, and breaking it between the two "R"s feels odd / arbitrary, especially since "HURRAY" has two "R"s in it. Or maybe the whole theme works on sound, not spelling (?). But this is a minor detail, a petty objection. The real issue is blandness.

Lots of little stumbles on my Downs-only solve. Wanted only APPLE PIE, and so was reluctant to put in any other "pastry" for a bit (3D: Fruit pastry that pairs well with vanilla ice cream). Absolutely and completely blanked on 30D: Baking quantity (CUP), even with the "U" in place. Once TSP. wouldn't work, I was out of ideas. Had ADHERE before COHERE (4D: Stick together). And as for "GET ME?" ... bah. Sure, I guess people say that, somewhere, but it was not immediately clear to me, at all. Oh, and I had some trouble inferring HIP POCKETS because I kept wanting it to have something to do with HIPPOs. And then HIPPOCRAT(E)S. There's not much to like in this puzzle, besides RAY CHARLES, and "AS WE SPEAK," which, despite its bedeviling me, I have to admit is a pretty colorful longer answer.

Bullets:

• 19A: Certain endurance race, in brief (TRI) — as in "triathlon" 
• 28A: "There's ___ in 'team,' but there is one in 'win'" ("NO 'I'") — it's not bad enough we have to endure the terrible partial NOI, we have to get in the form of this corny bumper sticker aphorism. The cliché "there's NO 'I' in team" was bad enough on its own. Trying to make it funny isn't helping. It's just taking up more space.

• 55A: "The Thin Man" terrier (ASTA) — one piece of crosswordese that will not die, which is also a piece of crosswordese that I don't mind (assuming the rest of the grid isn't drowning in it). Dogs and cats get a pass. ASTA, fine. TOTO, welcome. LASSIE ... sure, whatever. Are there any crosswordese cats? Oh, right, ELSA. You used to see ELSA (the lion from Born Free) all the time. Now you usually find ELSA in the Frozen section of the crosswordese supermarket. ELSA the lion is not to be confused with ILSA, Ingrid Bergman's character in Casablanca, even though I do, in fact, confuse them, all the time. to this day.

[FYI this is the first thing that comes up when I search ASTA now 🙁]

• 24D: Big banking inits. in the U.K. (HSBC) — one of those initialisms that just kills a puzzle's vibe. Initials? Banking? U.K.? It's just a letter string to me, every time I see it (which always feels like too often and yet not often enough for the letters to stick). I think I went with HMBC this time, so I was at least close. Thankfully, the cross (TESS) was indisputably an "S".
• 53D: City NE of Manchester (LEEDS) — again, this puzzle is asking me to know way too much about the U.K., esp. on a Monday. I actually got this fairly quickly ... after I determined that Manchester was the one in England and not the one in New Hampshire.

That's all. See you next time. And congratulations to Erik Agard, crossword editor and constructor extraordinaire, for winning the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament yesterday for (I believe) the second time. Beat the fastest solvers in the world on the final puzzle by over a minute. Crazy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Basic drumming pattern / SUN 4-12-26 / Hip-hop artists with unintelligible lyrics / Trading card error / Squishy part of a cat's paw, cutesily / Under, poetically / A.I.-powered video hoaxes / Treaty of ___, official close to the War of 1812 / Council of ___ (Counter-Reformation body) / Socialite Sedgwick, the supposed inspiration for Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"

Constructor: Lance Enfinger and John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Initial Thoughts" — clues contain words (IN ALL CAPS) that are actually the initials of the answer:

Theme answers:

• HELEN OF TROY (22A: HOT woman worth fighting for?)
• GIVE OR TAKE (28A: GOT in the ballpark?)
• BLONDE ON BLONDE (43A: BOB Dylan album?)
• MAIL-ORDER BRIDES (64A: MOB wives?)
• SNAKES ON A PLANE (89A: SOAP film?)
• "KEEP IT DOWN!" (104A: KID napper's demand?)
• TEXAS HOLD 'EM (113A: THE big game?)

Word of the Day: PARADIDDLE (73D: Basic drumming pattern) —

: a quick succession of drumbeats slower than a roll and alternating left- and right-hand strokes in a typical L-R-L-L, R-L-R-R pattern (wikipedia)

• • •

There's a cute idea here, but as is, the theme doesn't really work. Some of the clues seem to work pretty well—BLONDE ON BLONDE is a Bob Dylan album, as well as a B.O.B. album; HELEN OF TROY is a "hot woman," as well as a woman with the initials H.O.T.—but others are just loose plays on words, where the clue has no relationship to the answer beyond the initials. SNAKES ON A PLANE, for instance. Definitely has the initials S.O.A.P., but there's no connection between the literal meaning of "soap film" and the movie title. So we get some clues that are both literal and initialism-based, and some that ... aren't. Then there's the fact that MAIL-ORDER BRIDES has a huge ick factor, and the clues on GIVE OR TAKE and "KEEP IT DOWN!" are really awkward on the surface level. [GOT in the ballpark?]?? I get that "GIVE OR TAKE" is a phrase expressing a rough equality, like when your guess is not exact but "in the ballpark," but the phrase "got in the ballpark" isn't really evocative of anything. The "KEEP IT DOWN!" clue is worse because, first of all, "kid napper," as two words??? And second of all, if that is your premise, that the napper is a kid, well, that makes no sense, as a "kid" would never say "KEEP IT DOWN!" That's definitely an adult phrase. When the clues work, they work, but too many of these are forced or clunky. Also, again, can't stress enough how off-putting MAIL-ORDER BRIDES is (way too "human trafficking"-adjacent). Along with DEEP FAKES (58A: A.I.-powered video hoaxes), it gives this puzzle a very unpleasant vibe. Including the recently decimated USAID in the grid did nothing to improve the vibe (82A: Org. founded to fund foreign projects). 

I did like a few non-theme things about this puzzle. "I'LL ALLOW IT" is a great answer in its own right, and the clue on it today is pretty spectacular (2D: Line of latitude?). Perfect surface meaning, perfect figurative meaning. I like that the puzzle comes out throwing NINJA STARs, and I like that the clue included their Japanese name (which I didn't know) (24A: Throwing weapon known in Japanese as a shuriken). I want to like MUMBLE RAPPERS (54D: Hip-hop artists with unintelligible lyrics), and I guess I do. I've certainly heard it, but I don't know much about it. "Mumble rap" is a term that's frequently derogatory and possibly bygone, or at least fading. It grew out of the SoundCloud rap of the mid-'10s.

Mumble rap is used mostly as a derogatory term, in reference to a perceived incoherence of the artist's lyrics. Oscar Harold of the Cardinal Times stated that "mumble rap" is misleading, arguing that the rappers such as Future rely more upon pop melodies and vocal effects, such as auto tune, than mumbling. Justin Charity, a staff writer at The Ringer, argues that the term is unnecessarily reductive and does not in fact refer to one specific type of rapping. He wrote that many of the artists often scapegoated in conversations about the subgenre do not actually mumble, which "is the red flag that the term isn't a useful subcategorization." (wikipedia)

The only "mumble" art form I know comes from film, specifically the genre "mumblecore" (NYTXW appearances: zero), which wikipedia helpfully tells me is "not to be confused with mumble rap." Mumblecore features naturalistic acting, low budgets, and an emphasis on dialogue over plot. As with mumble rap, many people grouped under the category "mumblecore" reject the concept entirely. It's almost as if "mumble" has negative connotations! Anyway, MUMBLE RAPPERS. That happened.

[This may be the only time I've laughed at a YouTube comments section: "Twenty Month Ten!" "Toning my tanner!" "When you accidentally invent one of the biggest sub-genres of Rap by being high"]

EMOTERS aren't really a thing despite crossword puzzles doing heavy PR for them (91D: Hams). I'm not even sure a single EMOTER is a thing, but I know that if an EMOTER is a thing, it definitely doesn't travel in packs. I had the same old same old same old BRIAR/BRIER problem today (46D: Prickly patch). BRIER is a "less common spelling of BRIAR" (thanks, merriam dash webster dot com! That will help me ... not at all!). Luckily I knew how to spell MADEIRA (61A: Portuguese wine). Will this be true of everybody? I do not know. MADAIRA ... looks wrong, but it seems quite possible that someone might drop an "A" in there and never see the error. Oh well. I had CHAZ before CHAS (18D: Nickname that's an alternative to Chuck), but I ZELENA Gomez looks even worse than MADAIRA, so that error wasn't hard to fix. I had TUG AT before TOUCH (79A: Affect emotionally), which is a weird, inventive mistake on my part. My answer kind of requires you to imagine "heartstrings," but that's fine, it still works. Sometimes you make mistakes and you think, "nope, I did nothing wrong. Good answer, me." Mostly you're lying to yourself, but sometimes you're right. 


Bullets:

• 61D: Trading card error (MISCUT) — big collector of baseball cards as a kid, and I've got some other trading cards I picked up on my way through adulthood. Never considered MISCUT. That was my last word in the grid. After MISPRINT wouldn't fit ... flummoxed, even with the MIS- in there. Needed every cross.
• 57D: Council of ___ (Counter-Reformation body) (TRENT) — whoa ... I just dropped in the Treaty of GHENT (28D: Treaty of ___, official close to the War of 1812), and now you want the Council of TRENT?! I know they don't have anything to do with each other, technically, but those words are roommates in my brain. I'm sure the rhyming has something to do with it. Also, there's something World History Quiz about both of them. They even scan the same: Treaty of GHENT / Council of TRENT / Fasting for LENT / Elbow is BENT / Paying the RENT / Not what I MEANT / da da da DA / one two three FOUR ... etc. etc. etc.
• 19A: "The game's ___": Henry V ("AFOOT") — really thought this was Sherlock Holmes. And it is Sherlock Holmes. Famously. But apparently he "cribbed it" from Shakespeare.

• 31A: Under, poetically ('NEATH) — I teach medieval and early modern poetry and I can tell you I've seen 'NEATH in crosswords more than I've ever seen it used "poetically." Only EMOTERS use 'NEATH. And maybe Keats, but ... he was Keats, he's allowed.

Thus ending, on the shrine he heap'd a spire
Of teeming sweets, enkindling sacred fire;
Anon he stain'd the thick and spongy sod
With wine, in honour of the shepherd-god.
Now while the earth was drinking it, and while
Bay leaves were crackling in the fragrant pile,
And gummy frankincense was sparkling bright
'NEATH smothering parsley, and a hazy light

Spread greyly eastward, thus a chorus sang... 

[from Endymion: A Poetic Romance]

• 50A: "It's ___. Do you know where your children are?" (old P.S.A.) (TEN P.M.) — Ominous. I remember this. Vaguely. But I (mis)remember it as "ten o'clock." Presumably people watching TV at night know it's P.M., not A.M., but whatever. If it's P.M., it's P.M. "Do you know where your children are?" is a question used as a public service announcement (PSA) for parents on American television from the late 1960s through the late 1990s. Accompanied by a time announcement, this phrase is typically used as a direct introduction for the originating station's late-evening newscast, typically at either 10:00 p.m. or 11:00 p.m." (wikipedia)

• 3D: Squishy part of a cat's paw, cutesily (TOE BEAN) — I am pro TOE BEAN. Put TOE BEANs in every grid, I won't mind. Never gonna be unhappy to see a TOE BEAN.

[Alfie as a kitten (he'll be six next month)]

That's all for today. See you next time. And best of luck to all the competitors at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT). Just one more to go! (unless you're in the A B or C finals, in which case, there's two more).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Calls home, as a bird might / SAT 4-11-26 / Adam's first wife, in Jewish myth / Hungarian sheepdogs / Old Syrian political party whose name means "resurrection" / Writer of "Esmé" and "The Open Window" / Arboreal symbol in Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" / Term for an ambiguously worded news headline / Alexandre Dumas's Count de la Fère / Line running roughly parallel to Interstate 95 / Figures in a speed trap? / "True West" playwright Sam

Constructor: Kareem Ayas

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SAKI (44A: Writer of "Esmé" and "The Open Window") —

Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), popularly known by his pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirise Edwardian society and culture. He is considered to be a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, Munro himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.

Besides his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), Munro wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire (the only book published under his own name); a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland); and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion and occupation of Britain. (wikipedia)

• • •

[40D: Hungarian sheepdogs (PULIS)]

The only critical things I have to say about this puzzle are a. it's too easy for a Saturday and b. NESTS IN!!? As for a., it's hard to be mad when you get a great Friday puzzle on a Saturday. Like, just close your eyes and pretend it's Friday and then when you open them, bam, what a great puzzle! This had all the whoosh and long-answer magic that I hope for on a Friday. Most Saturdays don't flooooow like this one, but the grid shape here really helped. None of this heavily segmented drudgery—we get a wide-open grid with long answers spilling into long answers spilling into long answers, and nearly every one of those long answers a winner. Seriously, the density of Good-to-Great Marquee Answers is truly impressive. This puzzle definitely has a right to be wearing its "SO FUN!" t-shirt. As for b. (NESTS IN) ... LOL, the non-greatness of that answer is totally offset by the hilarious way in which I misunderstood it. Obviously birds "nest in" trees of various sorts, so the phrase exists, it's just not the most wonderful standalone phrase. The problem today—for me, and perhaps me exclusively—is that I completely misread the "Calls" in [Calls home, as a bird might]. I was thinking of "bird calls" and I was thinking of human beings "calling home" (to say they're going to be a little late, or whatever), so I thought the bird was calling to its home, like ... tweeting in some way where the nestlings (maybe!?!?!) could hear it. So NESTS IN would mean something like "checks in." Like if the local birds are out drinking somewhere and the robin goes "hang on, fellas, I gotta NEST IN or they're gonna wonder what happened to me." So he goes to the bird phone booth or (more likely?) just calls out with some special call that his family back at the nest can understand. It was only after I'd finished the puzzle that I realized that "calls home" means "makes a home in." Very weird human idiom to apply to birds, since birds (probably!!?!?) don't have a "word" for "home." Really got tangled in my ornithological laces there—the long glitch in an otherwise butter-smooth solve.

Pretty easy to get into this one via the short crosses up top. THY (1D: Your of yore) and HATS (2D: They're tipped out of respect) were gimmes. After I put in STD (20A: Part of E.S.T.: Abbr.), both THEFT (4D: It's a steal!) and SALUD (5D: Spanish blessing) seemed plausible, but I left them for a bit and picked up AVON and YEN ... then looked back at the long Acrosses to see what I could see, and, well, I could see "a lot":

All the long Acrosses opened up from there, and what a stack that is. Incredibly vivid and solid group of colloquial phrases, none of them too old-fashioned or too contemporary, every one of them just Goldilocks right. And with no grating crud in the crosses!? Truly this is NO MEAN FEAT (again, I feel like the puzzle knows how good it is and is kinda showing off, but whatever, go off, puzzle, you earned it). And the long Acrosses just keep coming, including a central stunner and a stack down below that's maybe not as loveable as the one up top, but is every bit as original. And once again, the short crosses simply do not buckle. The only thing in this grid that gave even a whiff of crossword arcana was BA'ATH (Old Syrian political party whose name means "resurrection"), and that answer didn't even debut in the NYTXW until 2017. I'd rather never see anything associated with Bashar al-Assad in the puzzle (not a big fan of murderous dictator content!) but again, the rest of the puzzle is so lovely that I'm willing to just write that one off as the cost of doing (glorious) business. 

[28A: Arboreal symbol in Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit"]

Bullets:

• 13A: Rued remark? ("WHAT HAVE I DONE?") — because of "remark," I briefly wrote in "WHAT HAVE I SAID!?," figuring that it was the "remark" that was being rued, instead of (in this case) a remark made by one who has rued their behavior.
• 39A: Figures in a speed trap? (NARCS) — me: "state troopers aren't NARCS!" Later me: "Oh ... speed ... I get it now."
• 38D: Adam's first wife, in Jewish myth (LILITH) — a gimme. Why, I don't know. Just one of those factoids that stuck.
• 3D: Alexandre Dumas's Count de la Fère (ATHOS) — ATHOS, Porthos, Aramis—the Three Musketeers.
• 55A: Term for an ambiguously worded news headline (CRASH BLOSSOM) — not my favorite term, and (thus?) one I have not retained in my brain very well. Needed many crosses to remember it (those crosses came quickly)

• 6D: Big publisher of romance novels (AVON) — helps to be a book collector. My collecting period is earlier than most AVON romances, but I have scores of old AVON paperbacks, and I've spent so much time in used bookstores, and talking with other collectors of various sorts, that AVON was the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw that the answer was four letters.

• 21D: Line running roughly parallel to Interstate 95 (ACELA) — crosswordese to the rescue! The ACELA is a train "line" that runs in the Northeast Corridor between D.C. and Boston.

That's all. See you next time. And best of luck to all my friends and fellow solvers competing at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, CT today (and tomorrow). I missed the registration announcement back in January and before I knew it, the tourney sold out, so my wife and I won't get the chance to defend our Pairs title this year. So, whoever wins Pairs this year, enjoy it. We're coming for you next year in Philadelphia (the future home of the ever-expanding ACPT)!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Phrase said indignantly before a citation / FRI 4-10-26 / C-store offering / Helical tools / Chinese gambling game invented during the Northern and Southern dynasties / Like the glass in many a Dale Chihuly sculpture / Anora's husband in "Anora"

Constructor: Erica Hsiung Wojcik

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium 

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: FANTAN (39D: Chinese gambling game invented during the Northern and Southern dynasties) —

 

Fan-Tan, or fantan (simplified Chinese: 番摊; traditional Chinese: 番攤; pinyin: fāntān; Jyutping: faan1 taan1; lit. 'repeated divisions') is a gambling game long played in China. It is a game of pure chance.

The game is played by placing two handfuls of small objects on a board and guessing the remaining count when divided by four. After players have cast bets on values of 1 through 4, the dealer or croupier repeatedly removes four objects from the board until only one, two, three or four beans remain, determining the winner.

• • •

Friday! It's back! The sparkle and the whoosh, especially the whoosh. The puzzle shape here, with its interlocking 15s, sent me shooting across the grid time and again until I'd done a kind of reckless, careening circuit. Shot out in two directions coming out of the NW, but chose to follow DRINKING IT ALL IN down the west side, took a hard turn and rocketed over to the east coast with SILENT TREATMENT, before getting BRINGS UP THE REAR (from just the rear letters), and zooming back up to join up with the tail end of "AM I LOSING MY MIND?," filling in the shorter fill as I went. Each of those 15s erupted like an explosion ... light the fuse with a few crosses and then bam, the whole thing just bursts into view. Gave me the kinetic experience I really crave on a Friday. Unlike some recent puzzles, which have started with real duds at 1-Across, this one was a delight (1A: Phrase said indignantly before a citation). No idea at first what kind of "citation" I was dealing with. I imagined someone angrily talking back to a cop who was issuing a speeding ticket: "I WASN'T SPEEDING!" or "WHAT'D I DO WRONG?," something like that. So it was a surprise to find, after I worked the crosses for a bit, that I wasn't even in the ballpark, "citation"-wise. I don't know if "AND I QUOTE..." is always "indignant," but you do say it before you "cite" (as in "quote") someone else's words, usually ones whose literalness you want to emphasize in a "can you believe it?!" kind of way. "AND I QUOTE... 'TURDUCKEN!' AM I LOSING MY MIND!?" That's a whole monologue right there.

The puzzle still probably skewed a little too easy for my tastes, but the cluing got so niche and odd in a few places that I actually had to stop and work things out, so the general easiness didn't feel like insulting easiness. I don't remember a damn thing about Bridget Jones's Diary beyond the fact that RENÉe Zellweger was in it (and I never read the book), so I sure as hell don't know what this "blue soup" thing is supposed to be about. So weird to toss that clue in there. A real ... what do you call those things cops throw in the road to puncture the tires of fleeing fugitives? That's what LEEK was to me. Well, I"m not a fugitive, and LEEK didn't stop me completely, so the metaphor's not great, but LEEK definitely brought me to a very jarring halt for a bit. There were two other similar moments of grinding (if brief) halt in the puzzle. The "L" in LOYD / LAB and the "F" in FANTAN / FISH. Obviously LOYD and FANTAN are the main culprits there, but in both cases, the crosses on their first letters eluded me for a bit. I wanted FANTAN to be FANTAN without really knowing why, so I left that "F" blank and then ... it stayed blank, because whatever elaborate scenario the clue on FISH was imagining, I was not getting (39A: Remove, as from a cluttered container, with "out"). In retrospect, the clue seems fine, reasonably accurate, but mid-solve I was like "what is this what kind of container what is happening?" As you can see (from grid print-out, above), that "F" was the very last letter I wrote in. I abandoned it mid-solve and came back for it at the end. 

As for LOYD / LAB ... I don't follow the WNBA, or any other pro sports leagues besides the MLB (at least not closely), so when I was staring at -OYD, the only "last name" possibility I saw there was BOYD. Thankfully, BAB was not a viable answer at 10A: Place with flasks and alcohol, but I couldn't figure out what was, at least not immediately. I had PUB in that place at first, although I did think, "why would you bring your flask to the PUB?" I also wasn't entirely sure about that "A," since I've never (ever ever ever) heard anyone refer to a "convenience store" as a "C-store" (11D: C-store offering). What a horrible bit of shortening. Who says that? I figured something businessy (like "C suite") or computery (C++?) was going on. The "-TM" made ATM kind of undeniable, though, so I just stared at -OYD / -AB until I had my aha moment with LAB. Nothing else in the puzzle slowed me down much.

Bullets:

• 14A: "___ Atardecer," Bad Bunny song whose name means "Another Sunset" ("OTRO") — kind of a long-winded way of saying [Another (Sp.], but maybe this is more fun. It's certainly more colorful, if a bit long-winded. AGRA (like OTRO, a crosswordese staple) got a similarly ornate clue (24A: Site with a monument that gets around 7 million ticketed visitors a year).
• 29A: Like the glass in many a Dale Chihuly sculpture (FUSED) — no idea. Zero. I think I looked up Dale Chihuly once before for crossword purposes, but clearly I forgot him. Completely. Had --SED and thought "... LASED?" OK, yeah, here we go: Dale Chihuly was my "Word of the Day" back in Nov. '24 (when DALE was actually in the puzzle).
• 35A: Beatles song with the lyric "I tried to telephone / They said you were not home / That's a lie" ("NO REPLY") — not on any of the Beatles albums I've listened to regularly over the years (although now that I'm listening to it, it's Very familiar). It's an early song, from the album Beatles for Sale (1964). It does not appear to have charted anywhere on the globe except the Netherlands, where it hit No. 1 (!?!?!?). "The song was not officially released as a single in the UK" (wikipedia). "NO REPLY" makes me think of a different song entirely—one that actually was released as a single in the U.S.

• 43A: Anora's husband in "Anora" (IVAN) — never saw this clue, which is too bad, as I know (and love) this movie. This is at least the second time Anora has been used in a clue, but still no ANORA in the grid, which is bizarre, as no movie title in movie history was ever more grid-ready. ANORA is one of those answers I expect to see in the grid annnnnny moment now, along with ZOHRAN, MAMDANI, and, of course, OZU (I can dream!). 
• 1D: Pop-punk band named after a video game company, with "The" (ATARIS) — sigh. I have heard of them, but it's hard to like this answer, since it's basically just awkwardly pluralized crosswordese. I guess they covered Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" at some point (??). I thought I knew one of their songs, but it turns out I was confusing them with the Androids:

• 24D: Helical tools (AUGERS) — couldn't get a handle on this, and then when I did, of course I (initially) misspelled it (AUGURS)

[Helical!]

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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❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

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✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration closed!)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)