Detector of absurdity, in slang / WED 7-16-25 / Chargrilled corn-on-the-cob dish in Mexico / Shout, colloquially / Cat breed with a distinct rear / 2003 period film starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe / One translation of "aloha"

Constructor: Jasin Cekinmez

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: TEA BREAK (52A: Worker's timeout in Westminster ... or something tucked between this puzzle's shaded squares?) — shaded squares contain types of tea, and "tucked" into (or "break"ing up) those teas is the letter "T":

Theme answers:

• FOOTLONG (17A: Sub category) (tea = OOLONG)
• "WHAT'S THE MATTER?" (21A: "Something bothering you?") (tea = MATE)
  BOBTAIL (34A: Cat breed with a distinct rear) (tea = BOBA)
• THE LAST SAMURAI (44A: 2003 period film starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe) (tea = ASSAM)

Word of the Day: Mate (see 21A) —

Mate (/ˈmɑːteɪ/ MAH-tay; Spanish: mate [ˈmate], Portuguese: [ˈmatʃi]) is a traditional South American caffeine-rich infused herbal drink. It is also known as chimarrão in Portuguese, cimarrón in Spanish, and kaʼay in Guarani. It is made by soaking dried yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) leaves in hot water and is traditionally served with a metal straw (bombilla) in a container typically made from a calabash gourd (also called the mate), from water-resistant hardwoods such as Lapacho or Palo Santo, and also made from a cattle horn (guampa) in some areas. A very similar preparation, known as mate cocido, removes some of the plant material and sometimes comes in tea bags. Today, mate is sold commercially in tea bags and as bottled iced tea.

Mate has been originally consumed by the Guaraní and Tupi peoples native to Paraguay, north-east of Argentina and South of Brazil. After European colonization, it was spread across the Southern Cone countries, namely Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile, but it is also consumed in the South of Brazil and the Bolivian Chaco. Mate is the national beverage of Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. In Chile, mate is predominantly consumed in the central and southern regions. Mate is also popular in Lebanon and Syria, where it was brought by immigrants from Argentina. (wikipedia)

• • •

 

My feelings about this theme keep going up and down. At first, I didn't notice it. Didn't pay any attention to it. Didn't need it. Solved it almost completely as a themeless—that is, I made it all the way to the revealer without ever having noticed what the shaded squares were doing. You can ignore the theme and solve the puzzle completely, no problem, and that's what I did, to about the 2/3 mark. Then I got the revealer and thought "this is the U.S., we have coffee breaks, but OK, fine, I'll play along," and yet still didn't really look at themers beyond kinda noticing that those shaded squares appeared to have teas in them (when I'm mid-solve, I don't stop to look at the scenery if I don't have to). Finished the puzzle without a hitch, then looked and saw that the "tea" names were broken up by a single square and thought "Who Cares?" Non-consecutive shaded (or circled) squares have never been my thing, and merely "breaking" the tea names seemed like pretty weak tea, as themes go. Breaking up four- and five-letter names seemed particularly weak. Lots and lots of potential answers could contain MA [space] TE, for instance. And why these teas and not others (say, SENCHA CHAI BLACK GREEN ICED TEXAS etc.)? The themers set did not seem tight at all. It was only when I thoroughly read the revealer clue ("something tucked between") that I noticed that the teas didn't just break, they broke across the letter "T"—and at that point I thought "oh, thank god." There was a point to the break! A double meaning on "tea break" (you break apart the tea names, and the break itself is a "T")! My respect for the theme shot up. It then slumped back down a bit when I went through the answers, tea by tea, and realized that only two of them are really teas (OOLONG, ASSAM). BOBA is a "tea-based drink" with black, green, or OOLONG as the base, and MATE isn't tea at all (though it's prepared similarly, and marketed using the word "tea" at times). I guess the idea is that all today's shaded-square words can precede "tea" in common parlance. Good enough, I suppose. The "T"-square part of the gimmick really saved the day today. Theme, ultimately, approved.

The fill ... could use some work. It's heavy on names and quaintness and blah. The highlights for me were "DON'T EVEN!" and ANN ARBOR. "DON'T EVEN!" works very well as a standalone phrase, so I found the clue kind of clunky and awkward, though technically accurate (14A: Lead-in to an implied "go there" or "think about it").  Would've liked some terse imagined equivalent as the clue rather than a detailed explanation of the implied phrases that are missing, though now I'm having trouble imagining what that exact equivalent would be. ["Stop talking right now!"]? Nah, there's gotta be something better. Anyway, good answer, overly wordy clue. As for ANN ARBOR, that was my home for eight years in the '90s. I was Not always happy during that time period (understatement), but those were formative years with important people in them, and so, now and forever, despite my general indifference to college sports, caveat caveat, etc. etc. ... Go Blue! (29A: Home of the Wolverines in college sports)

As for the rest of the fill ... I'm less enthusiastic. There's nothing horrible, really, but there are too many repeaters, too much overfamiliar stuff. LOO ENO AVOWS TENETS MANI OMANI ("Mani, o Mani, wherefore art thou Mani?!") EDNA ENG NEATO and on and on. Dullsville, much of the time. I might've liked BADASSES had the clue not been such a miss for me (34D: People you do not want to mess with). The term "badass" has come to mean someone who is very good at what they do. The "mess with" part just didn't resonate for me. Whatever "tough-guy" or "troublemaker" sense the term once had has largely disappeared from the term, at least as I generally hear it. Still, it's a good answer in a sea of mediocrity. I mean, 'TISN'T *and* BESTIR **and** NEATO??? Really tapping into "days of yore"-speak today, I see. And then there's that unfortunate ONBASE / ATBAT cross in the NE, which ended up making that section of the puzzle the hardest one to complete. Why would you call attention to your not-good fill that way—by creating a cross-referenced crossing, where both answers are essentially unclued, and can only be understood in relation to each other?? If those terms had been interesting or original or entertaining in some way, OK, but they are just dull baseball terms—the added annoying difficulty was not worth the payoff. Not even close. The name avalanche was also unlovely, though I knew them all. ENO ROWE HASAN EVA BRET ELWAY EDNA and Lil Uzi VERT (the one name I expect might flummox some solvers, particularly the rap-haters among you). Lil Uzi VERT's birth name is Symere Bysil Woods, which has All Kinds of crossword possibilities. SYMERE! BYSIL! Never seen those! Here's my favorite paragraph of the Lil Uzi VERT wikipedia page—better than the part about the Satanism allegations, even:

In February 2021, Woods revealed that they had a 10-carat pink diamond implanted in their forehead, which they had planned to do since 2017. They acquired the diamond, whose value was reported as $24 million, from jeweler Elliot Eliantte. Woods stated that the decision was influenced by the animated series Steven Universe, of which they are openly a fan and by fellow rapper Lil B, who has used decorative jewels similarly. Woods said that they "could die" if their diamond is not removed "the right way". In June of the same year, they had the diamond removed from their forehead. They had it reimplanted for their performance at Rolling Loud the following month and revealed in September that fans ripped it out while Woods was crowd surfing at that event. They did not suffer serious damage and said that they still have the diamond. They have since replaced it with a barbell piercing.

I've heard of a woman who had diamonds on the soles of her shoes, but ... wow.

Bullets:

• 3D: Brian who composed four pioneering albums of ambient music (ENO) — four? Four is a very specific number. I had no idea the ambient output stopped at just four, or that just four were considered "pioneering," in which case, what were the others? Derivative? Of himself? Hand on, gotta go investigate this "four' thing ... OK, looks like he had an Ambient tetralogy, and that Music for Airports (a title I knew) was also called Ambient 1 (did not know that). There are also Ambients 2 through 4, so I guess that's the "four" in question: Ambient 1: Music for Airports, Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, and Ambient 4: On Land.

• 26A: One translation of "aloha" (PEACE) — I wonder how many of you wrote HELLO in here. I certainly would have, but I had the -CE in place before I saw the clue.
• 10D: Detector of absurdity, in slang (B.S. METER) — this is a phrase I see way more often in the NYTXW than I ever hear it irl (I never hear it irl). "Absurdity" and "B.S." are not the same thing, but horseshoes/hand grenades, I guess.
• 39D: Cuts of fish (FILLETS) — you mean McDonald's has been lying to me about the spelling all these years!? What else aren't they telling me? Is Mayor McCheese even a real mayor? My trust in fast-food advertising hath been shook.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Heroine of Tennessee Williams's "Summer and Smoke" / TUE 7-15-25 / Gentlemen's club, colloquially / Competitor of Rao's / Player of the middle son on TV's "The Partridge Family" / "Designing Women" co-star of 1980s-'90s TV / Capital city on the Rideau River / Debt to equity, for example

Constructor: Daniel Britt

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: IMDB (i.e. "I'm D.B.") (73A: One place to find 18-, 28-, 49- and 64-Across ... or, parsed differently, how these people might introduce themselves) — people with the initials D.B. who are also in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Theme answers:

• DELTA BURKE (18A: "Designing Women" co-star of 1980s-'90s TV)
• DANNY BONADUCE (28A: Player of the middle son on TV's "The Partridge Family")
• DREW BARRYMORE (49A: "E.T." actress)
• DAVID BOWIE (64A: Singer who starred in "Labyrinth" (1986) and "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1976)

Word of the Day: DANNY BONADUCE (28A) —

Dante Daniel Bonaduce (/ˈbɒnəˈduːtʃiː/; born August 13, 1959) is an American retired radio personality, actor, television personality and professional wrestler. Bonaduce is the son of veteran TV writer and producer Joseph Bonaduce (The Dick Van Dyke Show, That Girl, One Day at a Time and others).

Bonaduce became famous as a child actor of the 1970s on the TV sitcom The Partridge Family. He co-starred as Danny Partridge, the wisecracking, redheaded middle son of the singing family band (headed by Shirley Jones) and he portrayed the fictional pop group's bass guitar player. Since then, Bonaduce has starred in several other TV series, including the VH1 reality show Breaking Bonaduce in 2005, has done radio shows in Los Angeles and Philadelphia and hosted a morning talk/music show at Seattle radio station KZOK-FM from 2011 to 2023.

• • •

"Oh ... that makes it so much worse." That was my response when, eventually, I noticed that the constructor's initials were D.B. I wish I could muster up a "that's adorable," but when a theme isn't really working and then you discover *why* the theme exists *at all*, and the reason is so self-indulgent ... it just adds a layer of ... [exasperated SIGH]. See, the thing is that the "M" in IMDB stands for "Movie," and only two of these DBs had any kind of career in the "movies," and even they are much (much much much) better known for other things now (Barrymore for her TV show and lifestyle empire, Bowie (obviously) for music). Barrymore has the best claim to movie stardom. She's solid, no complaints. The rest ... complaints. Of course it's true that IMDB contains TV actors too, so DELTA BURKE and DANNY BONADUCE will be in there, but they are both famous for precisely one show, and neither of those shows has been on television since 1993. Do people under 40 even know who DELTA BURKE and DANNY BONADUCE are? Yeesh. If TV actors are valid, then anyone in the database is technically valid. The writer DAN BROWN, he's in there. Soccer star DAVID BECKHAM is for sure in there. Football Hall-of-Famer DICK BUTKUS was in Gremlins 2: A New Batch—where is he?? My point is that the themer set is loose and weak. Also, the biggest actual movie star in the world right now with the initials D.B. (DAVE BAUTISTA) is nowhere to be seen. A ragtag group of off-the-mark names, all so we could get a vanity puzzle and a really dated term for "gentlemen's club"? Not for me.

As for NUDIE BAR ... well, it's a debut, so there's that. Congratulations? I guess I should be grateful that the far far more popular term for such an establishment wasn't in the grid (TITTY BAR googles roughly 10x better than NUDIE BAR, a term last heard (probably) in a 1992 episode of Married ... With Children). I wouldn't have minded NUDIE SUIT. Those suits are iconic and (bonus!) have nothing to do with the objectification of women. There's something about the cutesiness and datedness of "NUDIE" that rubs me the wrong way. STRIP CLUB wouldn't have been 1/10th as irksome. The only other interesting answer the grid has to offer is WIRE MESH, which is fine, but not exactly exciting (42D: Laticed metal used in construction and fencing). Otherwise, it's just ABU ALMA OVA TSAR LYRA IAGO NOGO EGAD YULES (plural!) ATAD MSN ILE DDAY KWAI ING ECOL E-I-E-I-O all the way home.

[NUDIE SUITS!]

Had real trouble getting started (unusual for a Tuesday!) because of MASS, which feels very very wrong for its clue (1A: Neighbor of Vt. and N.H.). You're using two-letter state codes in the clue for a four-letter non-code that (unlike the examples in the clue) you commonly say out loud, as its own word. I figured that at four letters, the answer would maybe be a Canadian province (?) and I wrote SASK. in there, even as I was thinking "that's ... farther west, isn't it?") (it is) (VT and NH abut QUÉBEC). Worse was the heroine of the Tennessee Williams play that I have literally never heard of (2D: Heroine of Tennessee Williams's "Summer and Smoke"). Summer and Smoke? What is that? Look, it's Tuesday, and ALMA is never gonna be great fill, no matter how you clue it, so just give me [___ mater] and leave it at that, OK? Once I got out of the NW, though, things leveled off and overall the puzzle played pretty normal (i.e. easyish) for a Tuesday. If you didn't know the actor names, then I imagine it played a little differently.

Bullets:

• 40A: Auto-___, setting for many subscription services (RENEW) — it's convenient ... until you want to unsubscribe. Then it's tyrannical. I have had to go to absurd lengths to cancel actual magazine subscriptions before. My friend Shaun was getting Martha Stewart's magazine until it went digital-only, but instead of stopping the subscription, the company switched her to a different lifestyle mag and she couldn't (easily) figure out how to unsubscribe and so now she just gets Midwest Living or some such photo-heavy sponsored-content-type thing (OK, Midwest Living was actually kinda cool; they had a whole thing on the U.P. (Upper Peninsula, MI) that made us (Great Lakes fans) want to go there immediately). I'm going to spend part of today trying to unsubscribe from at least one magazine that has been auto-RENEWing. Wish me luck!
• 60A: First basic cable show to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series (MAD MEN) — I forget how old this show is now (it started 18 years ago this week). "Basic cable" does not include premium cable like HBO–otherwise the answer to this clue would've been The Sopranos (2004). MAD MEN won in '08, '09, '10 and '11.
• 8D: Capital city on the Rideau River (OTTAWA) — I had no idea. I am woefully under-Canadafied in my geographical education. I know that rideau means "curtain" in French and that's all I know about Rideau (which apparently means "a small ridge of mound of earth" in English).
• 56D: Competitor of Rao's (RAGU) — I had never heard of RAO (apostrophe "s") before it appeared in a puzzle one day and I said "never heard of it" and the comments exploded with "how could you not blah blah blah" and then yeah the next time I went to the grocery store there was a wall of it and we have it in our house now so sometimes your blind spots are actually right in front of your face. Weird.

Happy to be back home and back on the blog for another 2+ weeks (before I head out for my last vacation of the summer, to see my family in CA). Thanks once again to Christopher and Rafa and Mali for doing such good work while I was gone to MN to visit my daughter at her current place of employment (the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, MN). I got to see an unexpectedly hilarious production of Comedy of Errors (not a play I expected much from, tbh), as well as an innovative production of Romeo & Juliet, at which I had not one but two people come up and introduce themselves and tell me how much they liked the blog (!), so that was a treat (hi Dustin, hi Melissa). More about my trip later. Or not. Who knows? See you next time. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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