African creature whose name is one letter away from what its horns might do / THU 5-15-25 / Dizzy feeling, with "the" / Certain grain source / Mark Twain tale narrated in the first person by a noted first woman

Constructor: Simeon Seigel

Relative difficulty: Hard (17:03)

THEME: [Statements that can be seen as positive ... or a hint to interpreting the theme entries] for DOUBLE NEGATIVE — In four long across entries, the letter string NO NO becomes YES, with each of the "NO"s squished into one box

Theme answers:

• [Some colorful apparel] for TIE DYE SHIRTS which was written as TIE D NO NO HIRTS
• The down answers crossing were NOD TO and DINO
• [Certain grain source] for RYE SEED which was written as R NO NO EED
• The down answers crossing were NOT IT and SNOOTILY
• [Old-fashioned homemade cleaner] for LYE SOAP which was written as L NO NO OAP
• The down answers crossing were NODULE and NOODLE
• [Des Moines's domain] for HAWKEYE STATE which was written as HAWKE NO NO TATE
• The down answers crossing were NOSE and RHINO

Word of the Day: HART (Eponym of the N.H.L.'s M.V.P. award) —

The Hart Memorial Trophy is named in honour of Canadian Dr. David Hart. Dr. Hart, who donated the original trophy to the NHL, was the father of Cecil Hart, a former coach and general manager of the Montreal Canadiens.

• • •

Hi friends! Welcome to an off-schedule Malaika MWednesday aka Malaika MThursday. I just watched a movie with a friend and then tried to catch a bus home. I missed the bus by literally 30 seconds (I ran after it and waved at the bus driver, the whole deal), and so I hopped on a bike, and while I was biking home I saw the exact bus I had missed in a huge accident!!!!! No one was hurt (because the busses here drive like 4mph lol) but the car was fully totaled and I am still reeling from this experience and feel like I am a character in Final Destination. 

Okay, sorry for rambling, onto the puzzle! I love love loved this theme, but I did not really like the level of difficulty. I am a huge fan of rebus puzzles! I think there should be more of them on other days of the week, with circles and in-app tips about how to enter the answer. I'm also pretty good at clocking a rebus puzzle early. Usually what happens is I run into an entry I've seen a zillion times, but it doesn't fit. In this case, it was with the clue [Acknowledge nonverbally]. I knew this had to be either "nod at" or "nod to," but there weren't enough empty boxes. 🚨Rebus alert!!!🚨 At that point I searched around the grid for the revealer and confirmed NO felt relevant.

I think new solvers struggle with rebuses because they don't trust their gut-- like, let's take a look at the clue [Beast with a horn]. Pretty much anyone would say that this is a RHINO. But a new solver would look at the four available boxes and think "Oh man there must be some esoteric animal I've never heard of...." (in the vein of okapi or oryx or, um, IMPALA) and leave it blank, where a more experienced solver would think "Aha! 🚨Rebus time!!🚨"

Speaking of rhinos, the Solio Rhino Sanctuary has a new baby named..... MALAIKA!!!

It took me about seven minutes to solve the thematic element of the puzzle (aka all the long across answers + the down answers that crossed through the rebus) and then ten minutes to solve the rest. For me, that's a long time to spend on a third of a themed puzzle, and I didn't love it. Once I was done with the theme, I kept thinking "Well what's the point of all this?" In a hard themeless puzzle, your reward is the long, colorful entries. But here, I was struggling with super opaque clues on short fill (LOOT for [Spoils] was one example here), and the cleverness did not feel fun, it felt like a chore. I finished with an error-- I had RUSH (for [Call for delivery?]) and ROKES (for [Slow sorts, in slang], thought it was some old-timey slang I didn't know). That central bottom section was sooo hard for me.

But I'd like to know what your solving progress was like! I'll admit that I absolutely bodied the theme-- as I said, I got the rebus almost immediately, and was able to immediately plunk in the revealer across the center; the rest of the theme content was easy-peasy from there. But if the rebus was more of a slow burn for you, and you didn't get the theme until your grid was already 3/4 full, I can see your experience with the difficulty being different from mine. 

This is not really related to the puzzle but "slow burn" made me think about the announcement that Season 4 of Bridgerton is coming out soon

I almost wish I'd got to experience the theme as a Slow Burn because it was so deliciously good. I feel like it could be in a Crossword Textbook for how to absolutely nail a theme. There's a couple pretty tricky things going on (a rebus, letters getting swapped in, and letters reading differently across vs down), but the revealer so perfectly describes the behavior that it almost feels simple once you get it. Like "Oh, duh! The double negative becomes a positive! Of course!!" So elegant. On top of that, the two longer theme answers were fun and interesting. (And, outside of the thematic entries, we got HAIR SALON and MEAT EATER.)

Bullets:

• [Small, clingy bristles on a gecko's foot] for SETAE crossing [Longtime deodorant brand] for ARRID — I had to totally guess on the A here. The gecko vocab was last used in the Times puzzle in 2013.
• [Letter before cue] for PEE — The clue is referencing the letter Q, which is preceded by the letter P. I think it's so dumb when they do this, btw. We all pee! Let the clue reference pee!!
• [Cool cat's "Roger that"] for IM HIP — I'm sorry but this felt like it was written twenty years ago...
• [Close one, for short] for BFF — Fantastic clue, and I would have loved to see this in a hard themeless puzzle with no abbreviation indicator. I think when abbreviations are used aloud just as commonly as the full term (like MIT or ATM) then hard puzzles don't need the indicator.

xoxo Malaika

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Canine that bites / WED 5-14-25 / Spin instructor? / "I Dreamed a Dream" musical, familiarly / "Come on, help me out" / Some Mexican Americans / Assembly of experts / Cherubic archer / Stay there! / Reduplicative nickname in pop music

Constructor: Rebecca Goldstein and Adam Wagner

Relative difficulty: Medium



THEME: Two-word phrases where the second word describes the shape of some highlighted letters in the first word

Theme answers:

• 17A: MOOD RINGS [Color-changing fad jewelry ... or a description of this answer's shaded letters?]
• 24A: CHARACTER ARCS [Heroes' journeys, say ... or a description of this answers shaded letters?]
• 39A: REGRESSION CURVES [Visual aids on scatter plots ... or a description of this answers shaded letters?]
• 51A: DIVIDING LINES [Some painting in a parking lot ... or a description of this answers shaded letters?]
• 63A: ALL ELBOWS [Awkwardly lanky ... or a description of this answers shaded letters?]

Word of the Day: 41D: CORN BELT [Midwestern agricultural swath]—

The Corn Belt is a region of the Midwestern United States and part of the Southern United States that, since the 1850s, has dominated corn production in the United States. In North America, corn is the common word for maize. More generally, the concept of the Corn Belt connotes the area of the Midwest dominated by farming and agriculture, though it stretches down into the South as well reaching into Kentucky.^[1][2]

• • •

Hello, friends! It's Rafa here subbing for Rex. Hope you all have been doing great since I've last been here in spite of *gestures vaguely at the state of the world*! Several exciting things have happened since I last wrote here ... most importantly ... I met Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld, in person (!) at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (ACPT) in Stamford, CT. So I can confirm that he is in fact a real person who is lovely and kind, in spite of the occasional curmudgeon accusations. (So is his wife Penelope, though I don't think I've seen any curmudgeon accusations levied against her.)

I'm excited to be blogging this puzzle by fellow Bay Areans (is this a thing? it should be a thing!) and crossword besties Rebecca and Adam. I don't think I've ever blogged a puzzle by a constructor I knew well. I confess I can't really claim impartiality, but luckily this puzzle was very clever and enjoyable so I don't need to do any gymnastics trying to be critical without hurting their feelings. (Phew!)

TIL they originated in Peru, but these are my favorite potatoes ever, from a brunch place in SF called Plow (run, don't walk!)

Let's start with the theme! Every theme entry is a two-word phrase, and the second word describes the shape of some highlighted letters in the first word. So, in MOOD RINGS, the two Os are "rings" and they are in the word "mood" so they are ... mood rings. Notice how the second word is always plural and there are always at least 2 of the relevant letter in the first word, and how each phrase is totally real and in-the-language. Good stuff! My only nit: is an L an "elbow"? I leave that as an exercise to the reader.

The biggest IKEA store in the world is in the Philippines

Onto the fill! Funny how CORN BELT showed up two days in a row. Nothing much to nitpick ... we've got our classic GNU, as well as ARG (the country abbreviations always kinda bother me), but the rest of the short fill is super solid. I've never seen SOMM in a crossword before, and I would have instinctively spelled it "som" ... but the internet says "somm" and I believe the internet. I am only partially convinced that PR GURU and TSA BIN and LIGHT VERSE are Real Expressions™, but there was loads of fun (to me!) stuff like BODICE, AT RISK, AMEN SISTER, X-RAY CAMERA, SUPERNOVAE, CHICANOS. I really struggled to parse PR GURU at first. I muttered "WTF is a PRGU??" but eventually it all fell into place. But that area could be tricky if you are unfamiliar with AREPAS (something I recommend you rectify as soon as possible).

The clues were fun too, as I expect from these constructors. My favorite was 43A: UNHIP [Not hot or cool] ("hot" and "cool" here meaning "popular" and not anything temperature-related). Honorable mention for 1A: SWAB [Do a spit take?] (as in collecting saliva using a cotton swab) and 59D: LSAT [Exam whose score can't be argued, ironically] (though not to be an annoying pedant, it seems like you can request an audit / regrade?)

The iconic meme with corkboard and STRING connecting evidence

Overall, a very solid and classic Wednesday puzzle. A clever theme that is not obvious from the outset, and a some tricky clues sprinkled around.

Bullets:

• 5A: CRAB [Sea creature whose name doesn't rhyme with a1-Across (SWAB), weirdly] — I got to this clue and thought ... ok, here's a fun animals / rhyme clue
• 9D: GRR [Sound from an annoyed samoyed]— Oh look ... it's another rhyming animal clue! Or rather, it doesn't rhyme and that's why it's fun.
• 53D: EEL [Prey for an orprey] — Ok why does this puzzle have so many clues about animals where the animal is spelled the same as another word and sometimes rhymes with it but sometimes does not rhyme with it?? What does it mean???
• 48D: GNU [Creature that stampeded in "The Lion King"] — Kinda sad they didn't commit to the bit with this other clue for an animal!

Signed, Rafa

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