Ride-or-dies, in brief / TUE 6-17-25 / Shady, in modern lingo / Wireless standard inits. / Windstorm often accompanied by rain / Tennis's Gibson who won back-to-back Wimbledons and U.S. Opens

Constructor: Tarun Krishnamurthy

Relative difficulty: Very easy 

THEME: REESE'S / PIECES (40A: With 41-Across, popular candy represented by the circled letters in 17-, 26- and 57-Across) — "REESE'S" broken into (3) PIECES—"RE" and "ES" and "ES" are found in paired circled squares inside three theme answers:

Theme answers:

• "HERE COMES THE SUN" (17A: Classic Beatles song written by George Harrison)
• RENÉ DESCARTES (26A: Mathematician/philosopher who wrote "I think, therefore I am")
• PRESSES THE FLESH (57A: Does some door-to-door campaigning)

Word of the Day: ALTHEA Gibson (45D: Tennis's Gibson who won back-to-back Wimbledons and U.S. Opens) —

Althea Neale Gibson (August 25, 1927 – September 28, 2003) was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first African American to win a Grand Slam event (the French Open). The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals (precursor of the US Open), then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam titles: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title. "She is one of the greatest players who ever lived," said Bob Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams. [...] Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971 and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1980. In the early 1960s, she also became the first Black player to compete in the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

• • •

I'm not usually much for non-consecutive circles spelling things, especially the same thing three times, but at least here the non-consecutiveness is meaningful—that is, the whole point of the theme is that "REESE'S" is found in pieces inside each answer. The letter pairs are broken up for a reason. The puzzle has an interesting mirror (as opposed to the typical rotational) symmetry. The only drawback of that kind of symmetry, for me, is that it highlights the fact that the circled letters are almost but not quite symmetrical themselves. The first and last pairs of "pieces" are symmetrical, but those middle pairs can't be—not in a 15-wide grid. In a grid that's an odd number of columns wide, a pair of letters can only sit slightly off-center, at best. More scattered "pieces" would somehow be more visually pleasing (to my eye) than this slight off-centeredness. It's like the themers are a picture that's been hung slightly crooked. It's driving my brain nuts. Whereas if symmetry had not been a consideration, my brain would (for once) be fine. But this isn't a fault with the puzzle, just a glitch in my brain. It's a solid Tuesday concept, executed pretty well. Those themers are all nice standalone answers (even if the phrase PRESSES THE FLESH has always felt a little creepy to me: a little handsy, a little touchy-feely, a little ... meaty. 

The only thing I actively didn't like about the puzzle was that clue on TEEN (65A: Typical high school student ... like this puzzle's constructor!). Stop fetishizing TEENs! There have been literally dozens of TEEN constructors by now. Actually, I don't know the exact number, but it's a lot. This isn't even a debut!! This constructor had a puzzle out last summer. And good for them! Big accomplishment. But if you're a pro, you're a pro. Don't expect medals or applause 'cause you're a TEEN. There's something cringey about adults fawning over precocious kids. I would've hated having that clue in my puzzle if I'd been the TEEN constructor (luckily, I was a disappointing underachiever as a TEEN and so never had this problem). This clue (with its "look-at-me" revealer-type structure (ellipsis, exclamation point!) is an editorial choice; it detracts from the puzzle's manifest worthiness. 

I don't know that I've done an easier Tuesday puzzle than this. I've done hundreds and hundreds of Tuesday puzzles in my time, so I probably have done an easier one, but they're rare. I have absolutely no trouble spots or even mild missteps to speak of. I no-looked PRESSES THE FLESH *and* the revealer (when it became clear that the second half was gonna be PIECES, I just wrote in the REESE'S part without looking at the clue—I'd already noticed what was inside those circled squares). I balked at the spelling of SPIRALLED (47A: Went through the air like a perfectly thrown football)—the two-"L" version looks British. And ... it is.  This makes the clue especially inapt, since British people don't throw footballs, or give a damn about footballs. The only football they care about is the kind PELÉ plays (54D: Sports star who debuted with the New York Cosmos in 1975). I remember being in Edinburgh in '89 and staying up super late on Sunday night with other Americans and a handful of oddball Scots to watch the one British show that recapped American football. I think the announcer was a British guy who'd been a kicker in the NFL for a hot minute or so some time in the '70s or early '80s (!?!?!). Admittedly, this memory is fuzzy. Anyway, my point is, if it's a football, it's a one-"L" SPIRALED.

[Mick Luckhurst!]

What else?:

• 1A: Ride-or-dies, in brief (BFFS) — I feel like the expression "ride-or-die" will be unfamiliar to a significant chunk of older solvers. I also feel that this will matter very little to the overall difficulty level of the puzzle. I liked this clue. I also liked SUS (short for "suspicious") (50A: Shady, in modern lingo). It's weird how much I like SUS as a three-letter answer, generally. SUS > SIA. SUS > ILE. SUS > a lot of things. 
• 17A: Classic Beatles song written and sung by George Harrison ("HERE COMES THE SUN") — love the song, obviously, but "Classic" feels like a cop-out. You could say that about scores of their songs. "Abbey Road song" would give a little more specificity, a little more color.

• 22A: Auction offer (BID) — this puzzle reminded me a lot of yesterday (not the Beatles song, but my actual day yesterday). I changed wireless companies (and so saw the letters LTE more than a few times) (49D: Wireless standard inits.) and I also won my first ever non-eBay auction. Like, from a real auction house. This was my first time bidding and I only BID what I can afford so I got dramatically outbid on most everything. Except one thing: an Italian movie poster for a film by director Dario Argento called Il Gatto a Nove Code (Cat O' Nine Tails) (1971). Featuring Karl Malden as a blind crossword puzzle maker! And look at this murderous kitty! So handsome.

[Love the yellow in this poster—the movie belongs to the horror subgenre known as "Giallo" (Italian for "yellow")]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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'N Sync bandmate of Justin Timberlake / MON 6-16-25 / Some bygone theaters / Short stiletto shoe / Slanted edges, as on mirrors / Yahoo alternative

Constructor: Jill Rafaloff and Michelle Sontarp

Relative difficulty: Easy (easiest Downs-only I've ever done, possibly)

THEME: BABY (64A: The first word of 18-, 23-, 36-, 49- or 56-Across is one) — first words of theme answers are BABY animals:

Theme answers:

• KITTEN HEEL (18A: Short stiletto shoe)
• JOEY FATONE (23A: 'N Sync bandmate of Justin Timberlake)
• PUPPY LOVE (36A: What a first crush might be dismissed as)
• CALF MUSCLE (49A: Spot that may be affected by a charley horse)
• CHICK FLICK (56A: Movie marketed toward a primarily female audience, informally)

Word of the Day: Make Way For Ducklings (9D: Setting for "Make Way for Ducklings" = POND) —

Make Way for Ducklings is an American children's picture book written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey. First published in 1941 by the Viking Press, the book centers on a pair of mallards who raise their brood of ducklings on an island in the lagoon in the Boston Public Garden. It won the 1942 Caldecott Medal for McCloskey's illustrations, executed in charcoal then lithographed on zinc plates. As of 2003, the book had sold over two million copies. The book's popularity led to the construction of a statue by Nancy Schön in the Public Garden of the mother duck and her eight ducklings, which is a popular destination for children and adults alike. In 1991, Barbara Bush gave a duplicate of this sculpture to Raisa Gorbacheva as part of the START Treaty, and the work is displayed in Moscow's Novodevichy Park.

The book is the official children's book of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Praise for the book is still high over 80 years since its first publication, mainly for the enhancing illustrations and effective pacing. The book is popular worldwide.

• • •

While this puzzle is solid in many ways, it's also way too remedial for the NYTXW. If you could see some of the puzzles that the NYT is rejecting these days, you'd be baffled by how something as straightforward and, frankly, stale this got accepted. I was dead certain that someone *must* have done a theme exactly like this before, possibly many times, probably sometime in the early '00s or earlier, and boy was I not wrong. It took me no time at all to find that it had been done at least twice—once by Liz Gorski in 2000, and another time by Stella Zawistowski and Bruce Venzke in 2007. And yes, it's true, most people will not remember that far back, but I know many constructors out there, pros and aspiring pros, who work so hard to come up with original themes only to have the vast majority of what they submit get rejected ... and if you're them and you see something like this get published, some little part of you has to be thinking "how? why?" Again, it is not a badly made puzzle. It's not terribly imaginative, but it's coherent, and the grid is notably clean and solid. But the revealer is a total letdown—completely unnecessary, in fact—and the only way this puzzle distinguishes itself from its predecessors (beyond the unnecessary revealer) is that it has five themers instead of four. The answers are slightly different—KITTEN HEEL is a new one, and this one lacks the CUB REPORTER that the others had (which was the first alternative theme answer I thought of, along with KIT CARSON and maybe, I dunno, pick a KID any KID: Cudi? Charlemagne? Rock? Ew, not Rock. But you get the idea). But on the whole this is just a barely warmed-over theme that was only so-so to begin with. All you gotta do is search your prospective theme answers in the database to see if they've been used before, and if so, in what capacity. If you find someone has done your theme before, but yours offers something really fresh and new, that's OK. Otherwise, go back to the drawing board.

[R.I.P., Brian Wilson]

What was interesting about looking back at earlier puzzles with this theme was the JOEY evolution. Solving Downs-only, I got the JOEY part pretty quickly, and I really thought the answer was going to be JOEY RAMONE (used once before, in a Tim Croce themeless, 2013). He's an iconic figure of '70s punk. But then OFF-DUTY (21D: Not working, as a police officer) gave me the "F" and made me remember JOEY FATONE, as well as this JOEY FATONE-themed die-cast metal hotrod I bought at Toys 'R' Us around the turn of the century for $1.18, Why!? 

Annnnnyway, after I was done, I searched JOEY FATONE to see if I could find out if this theme had been done before that way, but no: this is in fact a debut for Mr. Fatone's full name! Next I searched CHICK FLICK, and that's how I found the first version of this theme (2000). That puzzle also used Joey, but a different Joey: JOEY BISHOP. So this puzzle gets some credit for finding a more modern JOEY, and yet ... JOEY FATONE is about as "modern" now as JOEY BISHOP was in 2000, i.e. not terribly modern. The 2007 incarnation of this puzzle went with JOEY LAWRENCE, which, for its time period, is probably the most "modern" Joey of the bunch. Weird to me that none of these puzzles went with JOEY RAMONE, which, for me, is the best Joey option. The point is, there is no cultural consensus on who is the go-to Joey at this point in time. Not an issue you ever thought you'd find yourself considering, is it?

Another weird thing I discovered is that CHICK FLICK had a twenty-four (24!)-year hiatus before today's appearance. That seems very long. Actually, it got used in the plural in that 2007 version of this puzzle, but still, that's eighteen years. I would've expected an answer that colloquial and rhyming and bouncy to have snuck its way into some puzzle somewhere—a themeless, if nowhere else. Maybe people shy away from it because it sounds a bit derogatory, and certainly has been used by men that way for decades. I wouldn't normally use the term, for that reason, but I kinda like it as a phrase. It's got some life, some pizzazz. The other theme answers are fine as standalone phrases, and the grid overall, as I say, is very smooth, with a bunch of nice mid-range (6-7-letter) fill. There are real grid skills on display here. I just wish the theme were more ... something. Anything.

Bullet points:

• 30A: Vaccine-approving org. (FDA) — kind of dark, ironic humor here, having "Vaccine-approving" and RFK in the same grid (5D: ___ Stadium, former D.C. sports venue)
• 35A: Slanted edges, as on mirrors (BEVELS) — good word. Solving this Downs-only, I needed every cross but the "V" before I could guess it, which reminded me of that time (a long long time ago) when I faced a similar letter pattern in a crossword (BE-EL) and the clue was something like [Chisel face] or [Gem holder] and I thought "huh, must be BEVEL and the answer ended up being BEZEL, a word I'd never seen before in my life. Seems like kind of a cruel joke that one of the definitions of BEZEL is "A groove or flange designed to hold a beveled edge, as of a gem" (wordnik). Anyway, that "V" was crucial in my being able to get ADHESIVE (10D: Sticky stuff), the only Down that required multiple passes. Well, the only one besides ...
• 7D: Outset (GET-GO) — I had INTRO
• 23D: Bird whose name sounds like a letter of the alphabet (JAY) — first instinct here was the most common of three-letter birds: EMU. But that ... sounds like two letters of the alphabet (Roman, Greek), not one.  

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Here are the grids from those 2000 and 2007 puzzles that have this same theme, for comparison (both images taken from xwordinfo)

[Gorski, 2000]

[Zawistowski / Venzke, 2007]

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