Son of Hanna-Barbera's Doggie Daddy / SUN 9-7-25 / Andean stimulant / Intoxicating Asian plant whose name sounds like an insect / Sarastro in Mozart's "The Magic Flute," e.g. / White wine named for a region in France / Like a naughty Beetle Bailey, in brief / Intoxicating Asian plant whose name sounds like an insect / Buddy who portrayed TV's Jed Clampett / Charles or Ray who lent their name to a kind of chair / International shoe brand originating in England

Constructor: Derrick Niederman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "The Name Is the Game" — names of famous people are clued as if they are missing words in imaginary sentences (!?):

Theme answers:

• BILL WITHERS (23A: As the British pound rises in value, the dollar ___)
• TONY ORLANDO (34A: After spending the afternoon at Epcot, we had dinner at a ___ bistro)
• ULYSSES GRANT (51A: Did Joyce write courtesy of a ___?)
• MARK CUBAN (68A: An increase in ham prices forced the deli to ___ sandwiches higher)
• IRVING BERLIN (85A: To Washington, ___ Germany, seemed far from Tarrytown, N.Y.)
• BARBARA EDEN (102A: Some Californians consider Santa ___ on Earth)
• ELLE FANNING (116A: The supermodel was holding a copy of ___ herself on the beach)
• TOM WAITS (50D: Peeping ___ for Lady Godiva to appear)
• DON LEMON (45D: Why do none of the Fruit of the Loom characters ___-colored underwear?)

Word of the Day: SAUTERNE (49D: White wine named for a region in France) —

Sauternes (French pronunciation: [sotɛʁn]) is a French sweet wine from the region of the same name in the Graves section in Bordeaux. Sauternes wine is made from Sémillon, sauvignon blanc, and muscadelle grapes that have been affected by Botrytis cinerea, also known as noble rot. This causes the grapes to become partially raisined, resulting in concentrated and distinctively flavored wines. Due to its climate, Sauternes is one of the few wine regions where infection with noble rot is a frequent occurrence. Even so, production is a hit-or-miss proposition, with widely varying harvests from vintage to vintage. Wines from Sauternes, especially the Premier Cru Supérieur estate Château d'Yquem, can be very expensive, largely due to the very high cost of production. Barsac lies within Sauternes and is entitled to use either name. Somewhat similar but less expensive and typically less-distinguished wines are produced in the neighboring regions of Monbazillac, Cérons, Loupiac and Cadillac. In the United States, there is a semi-generic label for sweet white dessert wines known as sauterne without the "s" at the end and uncapitalized. (wikipedia) // In the 1860's, Californians believed that the best white wine from Bordeaux came from the French region called Sauternes, and "Sauterne" or "Haut Sauterne" later became standard generic labels on bottles of dry or sweet wine in California. (Winegrapes of UC Davis)

• • •

[92A: EAMES]

Sundays are often weak—hard to sustain a theme, even a good theme, over that much real estate—but I'm slightly astonished at how weak this one felt. Random names clued as random words in very random sentences??? There's no unifying principle at all, no cohesive factor, no ... just no. Maybe if all the names had been complete sentences (like BILL WITHERS) or been composed of regular words (like BILL WITHERS), you'd have some sense of focus, direction, purpose. But no such luck. Can't you do this with lots of names? If you're willing to write a clue ridiculous enough, I think you can. [A crazed fan was removed from the set of "The Six Million Dollar Man" after she threatened to ___ Majors' drink]. [Poughkeepsie MetalFest is sure gonna ___ Valley!] [Why should a God-fearing ___ cotton when we have machines that can do that now?]. Are these good? No, they're awful. I made them up on the spot. But I don't see how they're much more awful than what we get here. Peeping TOM WAITS for Lady Godiva to appear? Ew. (that is the origin of the phrase "peeping Tom," though—fun fact I just learned). The dollar BILL WITHERS?? You'd say the dollar, but not the dollar bill. How in the world do you get away with leaving the "S" out of ULYSSES GRANT? "EDEN on Earth"!?!? What the hell kind of expression is that? It's "heaven on earth." EDEN was on Earth!! The whole thing is baffling. A contrived mess. It certainly goes very, very wacky, and I have to kind of admire that part of it. But no, the clues aren't actually apt or funny most of the time. Just extremely forced. And the title doesn't help at all. "The Name Is the Game?"" What game? How is this a game? I want there to be some underlying "game" theme, but ... I'm not seeing it. I suppose it's possible I'm missing some element of this theme that makes it masterful. If so, I pre-apologize. But as of now, I'm genuinely surprised this puzzle was accepted.

The fill on this puzzle was also on the poor side. I pretty much noped out on this puzzle right here, at the middle initial-free ULYSSES GRANT:

But if the theme was weak, the fill wasn't helping. ARIANA as an airline, plural ARIS, ERAT, EBSEN ... EST ELS and LAO-TSE all in a clump (and right above TWPS). ENOL, OUTTO, ILED crossing EOLIAN. BASS HORN + BASSO feels like a dupe. AUG so close to AUGIE (!?) doesn't feel much better. COINER!!!? If all this had been in support of a stellar theme, maybe I wouldn't have cared so much, but no such theme exists, so the fill needed to pick up the tremendous slack. But no dice. 

The one consolation for me, as someone who did not care for this puzzle much at all, is that it was over quickly. I knew every name in the grid (including the damn Afghani airline and SAUTERNE), and so there really wasn't any resistance to be found, anywhere. I didn't use the convoluted theme clues to get the theme answers. I just let crosses do their magic, and as soon as something looked like a name, I would write it in. Maybe I checked it quickly against the clue from time to time, just to make sure, but mostly I didn't have to. I made a couple typos today because I was going too fast, but no missteps, no errors. No, wait. I did write in DEICE before DEFOG, so there was that (106D: Clear, in a way, as a windshield). And I had this moment of doubt about which nasalized consonant went in the middle of BA-FF (111A: Canada's first national park, founded in 1885). All I know about BANFF is that my dad went on a ski vacation there once. Only reason I know the name. But somehow BAMFF seemed plausible. And while I guess someone might call [Immaturity] a GREEN MESS, I was pretty sure GREENNESS was what they were going for. I can't see any real trouble spots, or even many things that require explaining. But let's do a lightning round anyway...

Lightning Round:

• 39A: Like a naughty Beetle Bailey, in brief (AWOL) — "naughty" felt tonally wrong here. Is it just "naughty" to AWOL. Like, aw shucks, I've been a bad widdle boy? Kind of an infantilizing adjective.
• 105D: Intoxicating Asian plant whose name sounds like an insect (BETEL) — it's pronounced "beetle"??? I've been pronouncing it "bettle," like "kettle." I wonder if Beetle Bailey ever experimented with BETEL. Would definitely read "BETEL Bailey." Sounds "naughty." 
• 124A: Set of pull-ups? (ARMS) — uh ... not sure I get it. Is it because ARMS are the "set" (of limbs?) that you use to do pull-ups??? 
• 11D: Buddy who portrayed TV's Jed Clampett (EBSEN) — keeping things current, I see. Jed Clampett was the patriarch on The Beverly Hillbillies, which was big around the same time that "Beetle Bailey" was big. Seriously, after "Blondie," "Beetle Bailey" was the biggest comic strip in America in 1968, which was right in the middle of The Beverly Hillbillies' 1962-71 run. I think BARBARA EDEN was probably at peak fame right about then as well. Yep, I Dream of Jeannie ran 1965-70. What a time to be alive. (I was not alive in 1968). Oh, and what about Doggie Daddy and AUGIE? They feel real 1968 to me ... damn, off by a decade (1958-61). P.S. the son's full name is AUGIE Doggie. AUGIE got top billing. AUGIE Doggie and Doggie Daddy originally aired on the Quick Draw McGraw Show. I'm much happier remembering cartoons than I am thinking about this puzzle any longer. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. reader Jason Tulp sent me a link to a word game he created, which you might enjoy. It's called Infixion. Here's his explanation:

I recently launched a bite-sized daily word game that delivers a fresh take on the Wordle formula. Each day, players are given a specific "infix" like -on- and challenged to find the four highest-scoring words that include it, for example on-ly or b-on-us. The twist is that points are based on Scrabble values, and repeated letters lose value with each use, encouraging variety and strategy.  

You can try it out here. 

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Unseen wife on "Cheers" / SAT 9-6-25 / Ancient home to many pre-Socratic philosophers / Free kick, e.g., in soccer lingo / Sea creature also known as a redfin ocean pan / Bread whose dough is rolled on a chakla / 19th century naturalist buried in Westminster Abbey / Down Under colleges

Constructor: Kunal Nabar

Relative difficulty: Easy (a little harder, maybe, if some of the many proper nouns were mysteries)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SET PIECE (16D: Free kick, e.g., in soccer lingo) —

  

The term set piece or set play is used in association football and rugby football to refer to a situation when the ball is returned to open play, for example following a stoppage, particularly in a forward area of the pitch. In association football, the term usually refers to free kicks and corners, but sometimes penalties, throw-ins and kick-offs. Many goals result from such positions, whether scored directly or indirectly. Thus defending set pieces is an important skill for defenders, and attacking players spend much time practicing them; set pieces are one area where tactics and routines can be worked out in training in advance of matches. Some players specialize in set pieces. (wikipedia)

• • •

The big challenge of the day for me was trying to remember what Octavia Butler's middle initial was. Unlike Ursula K. LeGuin, another titan of science fiction, Octavia Butler's middle initial isn't as commonly used when referring to her. The "K" in Ursula K. LeGuin is iconic, whereas the "E." in OCTAVIA E. BUTLER is ... less so. Still, she is in fact billed as OCTAVIA E. BUTLER on her books (and her wikipedia page), so there's nothing wrong with including the middle initial here. I just whiffed it. I know Butler's name well and have read at least a couple of books by her and just could not retrieve her middle initial. When OCTAVIA BUTLER wouldn't fit, I briefly doubted whether she was the author in question or not, despite the fact that I had the "OC-" locked down, and what other author's name starts that way? OK, Ocean Vuong, but what other author? It's not like the "E" was hard to get—I could see the cross was likely -ERN (56D: Directional suffix)—but when I could hardly get any crosses off of OCTAVIA_BUTLER, that made me doubt myself all over again. ARTS and BEG and TIT seemed solid, as far as crosses went, but I came up empty everywhere else and had to go back to the NE and come down the east and middle of the grid in order to get the bottom of this puzzle to fall. Once I did, the bottom actually fell pretty easily. But yeah, trying to round that corner from the west into the south by way of "OC-" was the one moment where the wheels came off for a bit. I wouldn't classify it as a true struggle. More like a momentary delay, the significance of which was amplified by the fact that I hadn't had any delays at all with the first half of the solve (north and west sections). The upshot of all this is "E!" OCTAVIA E. BUTLER. "E" as in "Everybody knows that, dummy" (actually, it stands for "Estelle"). 

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER is the standout marquee answer today, imho. OPEN MARRIAGES, also interesting! I don't think all OPEN MARRIAGES involve "swinging," but "swinging" is mentioned as a "variant form" of open marriage on the "Open marriage" wikipedia page. I really don't want to get too far into the sex weeds on this one. I'll leave the sex weeds to you all. The clue seems accurate enough, and, as misdirections go, pretty clever. For the second day in a row, though, I wish the marquee stuff were ... more marqueeish. Actually, the more I look at the bottom stack, the better it looks. SILENT RETREAT has a lot of boring letters, but as an answer, it's cool and original. And TALKING HEADS is excellent; it just has a boring clue. Why would you go with "TV panelists" (zzz) when you could go with...

The proper nouns come thick and heavy early on, with VERA EMEKA KINTE and STEF all teaming up to cover enough cultural ground to thwart the \ forward progress of as many solvers as possible, at least a little. My familiarity with that group went from VERA (a gimme) to STEF (total unknown), with KINTE and EMEKA in between. KINTE was known to me, though I was not 100% confident of the spelling (KENTE?). And EMEKA Okafor is a name I've heard just by watching ESPN a lot 10 to 20 years ago, but even more than with KINTE (much more than KINTE, in fact), the spelling eluded me. Luckily, none of these names really held me up, as I went SHARK OPAH VERA, then changed JAMS (wrong) to MOBS (right) (1D: Packs), and those long Acrosses up top went down pretty easily. Wanted BARE NECESSITIES, but it wouldn't fit. But the ESSENTIALS went right in as my second guess, and the wine-dark SEA confirmed it, and so whoosh whoosh, down and left I went. Blocked at OCT- (as I've said) so back up top, down via SLEEPWEAR, and all the way home without much fuss. So many short answers and so many access points for every section made this one easy to bring down.

[DISCS]

Bullets:

• 45A: Jazz fest? (NBA GAME) — the "?" made it a gimme. "So ... it's not musical jazz ... what other 'jazz' is there?" A: Utah Jazz. Clue, solved.
• 2D: Sea creature also known as a redfin ocean pan (OPAH) — first of all, SEA is in the grid, so probably shouldn't be in this clue. Second, crossword fish to rescue! Sometimes crosswordese really helps you out, and that that telltale "H" in OPAH (which came from yet another sea creature, the SHARK) gave me a huge initial boost. OPAH is in prime position—with all its letters near the beginnings of all the long answers up top—so getting that answer was way more valuable than getting, say, TGIF (also a four-letter cross of all those upper answers, but in a far less useful position). OPAH WINFREY, is that something? Where's that theme? Where's the celebrity fish theme!? (actually, it's probably been done, or at least attempted ... somewhere)
• 24D: Subject of trade that gave rise to St. Louis and Detroit (FUR) — "Subject" really threw me for some reason. If the clue had just started [Trade...] I probably would've gotten it easier. Or not. At some point I was thinking of a sports trade (which makes no real sense) and then I was thinking about ... I dunno, the Louisiana Purchase, which wasn't really a "trade" at all, but more of a ... purchase (also, while the Louisiana Purchase included what is now St. Louis, it did not include Detroit). Anyway, the FUR trade, yes, that was a very big deal, economically, in early America.

• 39D: Bread whose dough is rolled on a chakla (CHAPATI) — me: "I don't know any Indian breads with a name that long!" Me, a little bit later: "Oh, CHAPATI! Hey, sorry I forgot about you, pal." I thought I was tapped out at NAAN and ROTI, but no, CHAPATI (also PARATHA and PAPADAM, if I'd been thinking clearly) (and those are just the ones *I* know—obviously there are lots (lots) more)
• 50A: "People are wrong when they say ___ is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it": Noël Coward ("OPERA") — I had the terminal "A," and since Noël Coward is a dramatist, I figured ... DRAMA. But no. But then, unexpectedly, elsewhere in the grid: yes! (32D: Much "Real Housewives" doings). Love when that happens. Such an eerie feeling.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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