Rap pioneers, slangily / SAT 2-28-26 / Animals in an early-2000s virtual fad / South Indian lentil stew / Gay nightlife spot with a dress requirement / Innermost moon of Neptune / Principle of improv comedy / Dialect that is responsible for a large majority of Gen Z slang / Weakens, as an overly strong character, in video game lingo / Tolkien ring bearer / Popular role-playing game since 1974, informally / Acting like a sore loser, informally / Affliction treated with a nit comb / Robert Frost's middle name

Constructor: Adam Levav

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SAMBAR (37D: South Indian lentil stew) —

Sāmbār, or sambhar, is a lentil-based vegetable spiced curry or stew, cooked with pigeon peas and tamarind broth. It originates in South Indian cuisine and is also eaten in other parts of India.

• • •

[48D: Blue-roofed restaurant]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the excitement in this one is coming from the LEATHER BAR (15D: Gay nightlife spot with a dress requirement). That was the one answer that popped for me, the one major "what? oh!" moment in the puzzle. The only other long answer in this one that I actively enjoyed was BEFORE TIMES. I don't normally like answers that remind me of the pandemic, but there's something wistful and melancholy about this term I kind of like. The term has a history extending back to the Middle Ages, but it got popularized during the 2020s as a nostalgic way of referring to the days before COVID and the societal rearrangements that came with it (lockdowns, disinformation, the rise of the anti-vaxx movement, etc.). Nostalgia kills and the BEFORE TIMES (like most earlier times) weren't as great as we imagine, but still, I like this phrase for its currency and its understandable sense of longing for a less ruined world. The other long answers in this puzzle, I only felt neutrally about, except BUTT HURT, which is a phrase I despise. There's something so rancidly online about it—something cruel and sneering and sadistic (taking pleasure in the pain of others). It's rarely used to mean merely "sore loser" and usually used to mock anyone who is upset about anything. It’s a gamer-adjacent phrase that’s big with the “f*** your feelings” MAGA types, but I have friends who use it too. It's just not for me. Extremely not for me. Otherwise, the puzzle seems mostly OK. Solid, occasionally interesting corners. Just a little light on flashiness (and, once again, a little too easy).

["THAT'S ME in the (NW) corner ..."]

Surprised by the total gimme at 1A: Set unambitious goals (AIM LOW). I wrote it in immediately and confirmed it with WOMB and that NW corner was done in pretty short order. Thanks god for the absolute certainty of WOMB, because I would definitely have misspelled SMEAGOL without it (14A: Tolkien ring bearer). Even now, that "O" looks insane. But right is right, and you can't argue with right, and the crosses are all fair, so ... tragedy averted. The one tricky part of the puzzle was getting into the center. I had no luck at first coming out of the NW into the middle, and so hopped over to the NE corner and worked my way into there. AAVE was a gimme (9D: Dialect that is responsible for a large majority of Gen Z slang), and that gave me REVOLTS, and soon that corner was done too. Coming out of that corner was also a little challenging, but ... I forget which happened first, but either I put LEATHER BAR together from LEA- (finally) or LICE / NEMEAN / AVES (which I had as AVIS) got me the BRACES part of CURLY BRACES (36A: Symbols used to group blocks of computer code). Did you know LESBIAN BAR and LEATHER BAR have the same number of letters? I may actually have started to write LESBIAN BAR in before thinking "wait ... 'dress code'? really? what do you have to wear ... lesbian clothes? That sounds ... wrong." Wrote in BAE for 20A: Term of endearment appropriated from [AAVE], which gave me LEA- for the "Gay nightlife spot," but still had a few moments of wondering (brain: "what are those upscale, tony bars called ... fern bars? Fern ... LEA- ... something about leaves? LEAF BAR, is that a thing?"). But then the "T" from TRIS finally got me over the hump: Aha! LEATHER BAR! Like in Cruising! Nice. Original. Surprising. Easily the most exhilarating part of this solve.

[Follow me on Letterboxd!]

Stuff like NERFS (44A: Weakens, as an overly strong character, in video game lingo) and YES, AND (13D: Principle of improv comedy) might've felt fresh even a year or two ago, but now have appeared enough times that the sheen has worn off. Not bad, just not as original-seeming as they once were. I was mad at ERASER PEN for a bit because I was thinking of an ERASABLE PEN, which I would not describe as an [Error correction tool]—it's a writing tool that has an "error correction tool" attached. But then I realized ERASER PEN must be another thing entirely: something pen-shaped that is just ... an eraser. A pen-shaped eraser, is that it? Yes. It has a pen-like shape for precision erasing. There seems to be some conflation of "erasable pen" and "ERASER PEN" online. Some of you pen-heads (or ... eraserheads?) will be able to speak to this better than I. As for INSTANT TAN, I think the term I know is "self-tanner" or "spray-on tan" (26D: Body bronzer). I believe this puzzle that INSTANT TAN is a thing, but those other things feel more like things than INSTANT TAN feels like a thing, hence my lack of excitement. Also, my "body" has never been "bronze" a day in its life—not even close, it just ... doesn't do that—and I've never had any desire or need to fake it, so everything I know about tanning I pick up from ads. I am not a reliable source of info on tanning products, is what I'm saying. The clue on AIRHORN didn't quite resonate with me either (56A: Musical sample added for excitement). I do not think of an AIRHORN as something that "adds excitement" to any occasion. A truly awful sound, but yeah, you can hear it in some dance music, so it must be "exciting" to someone. Yesterday had funky BASS LINES—a much more "exciting" musical phenomenon to my ear. 

[Enjoy the "excitement"!]

Bullets:

• 57A: Animals in an early-2000s virtual fad (NEOPETS) — helps to have had a daughter who was a small child in the early 2000s, though she was more into WEBKINZ than NEOPETS.

• 22A: Part of a Blues Brothers outfit (FEDORA) — dark suit ... sunglasses ... needed crosses for FEDORA.

• 31A: Innermost moon of Neptune (NAIAD) — no idea. Needed virtually every cross. That NAIAD / NEMEAN / AVES bit is maybe the roughest patch in the puzzle.
• 5D: Rap pioneers, slangily (OGS) — "Original Gangsters." From merriam-webster dot com:

Original Gangster

Note: According to an essay by Steve Champion and Anthony Ross, former members of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles, the initialism O.G. was first used by the Crips in the early 1970's; see Champion and Ross, "The Making of an O.G.: Transcending Gang Mentality," written in 2006 and available on the website indybay.org as of 7/12/21. The release of the album O.G. Original Gangster by the rapper Ice-T (Tracy Lauren Morrow) in 1991 likely contributed to the migration of the word from gang culture to more general use.

• 51A: ___ Tung, star of cable TV's "The Summer I Turned Pretty" (LOLA) — again, no idea. Also, LOL at the phrase "cable TV's." What are you talking about? What channel? Where is this alleged program found besides in the vast universe of "cable TV"? Looks like Amazon Prime, which is ... not cable TV. Is it? It's streaming. What is happening here?
• 30D: ___ Story (punny nickname for the "Iliad") (TROY) — first I'm hearing of this, but I like it. Cute. A Toy Story pun. I won't be using it, but I like it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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___ Türeci, physician/scientist who co-founded BioNTech / SAT 7-26-25 / Casual hangout / Denizens of the Great Victoria Desert / Poisonous plant rumored to have killed the emperor Augustus / Sites of mutations on chromosomes / Sautéing option with a high smoke point / Plays dice with God, so to speak / Possible topic for a couples therapist

Constructor: Adam Levav

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ÖZLEM Türeci (34D: ___ Türeci, physician/scientist who co-founded BioNTech) —

Özlem Türeci (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈœzlem ˈtyredʒi]; born 6 March 1967) is a German physician, scientist and entrepreneur. In 2008, she co-founded the biotechnology company BioNTech, which in 2020 developed the first messenger RNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19. Türeci has served as BioNTech's chief medical officer since 2018. Since 2021, she has been Professor of Personalized Immunotherapy at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology (HI-TRON) and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Türeci and her spouse, Uğur Şahin, have won a number of awards. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was more Friday than Saturday. More Wednesday, even. I should not be able to floor a Saturday with almost no resistance. I got STUMPed exactly once—predictably, at ÖZLEM—and then half-stumped at ASIAN TIGER (had the TIGER, wanted the ASIAN, but wouldn't commit to it because it sounded ... vaguely racist or stereotypical or Orientalist or something?) (it's not; see below). Didn't fully understand LOCI (27D: Sites of mutations on chromosomes), which are just "places" to me, but still, that is the answer I wanted, so I can't say the answer held me back. I'm looking around the grid now and honestly not seeing anything that wasn't easy to handle. They have really Really dumbed down Saturdays since I started doing these things, particularly in the last decade or so, maybe even more so in the past year or so. Maybe there's some fear that if a "game" is hard to play, takes up too much time, requires patience and practice, that people just won't "play" it and will stick to bite-size, easy-entry games like ... well, all the other games at NYT Games. I love those games (well, some of them), but I also love the original 15x15 crossword, the elder statesman, the original newspaper "game." So it makes me a little sad to see it defanged like this. 

This puzzle took me about five minutes to solve, without rushing. At first, I thought there might be a theme. Maybe you did too. I mean, when a puzzle opens like this, it's understandable if some part of your theme-alarm system gets tripped:

BEBE BABA! Oh boy, here we go (I thought). There's gonna be some B-B- ring around the edge of the grid (those answers are all 4, so it seemed possible), and then there'll be some "BEES" revealer like KILLER BEES or SWARM OF BEES or BEE'S KNEES or BEEHIVE or god knows what. TWO BEES OR NOT TWO BEES? So many tragic theme ideas flashed through my head. But then just like that, the "B-B-" pattern disappeared and I found myself solving a regular-old themeless grid. And every answer seemed to go in as soon as I read its clue. I misspelled AARGH at first (ARRGH?), so there was that ... honestly, there's really not much to talk about in terms of difficulty. So easy to navigate through this one. I went from MEDIA (in MEDIA DIET) to ASAMI, which put the "I" at the end of a long answer, which thus made that long answer Very easy to get (terminal-"I"s are rare, long terminal "I"s especially). So, suddenly ... whoosh whoosh:

Lots of high-value Scrabble letters, right across the middle. One of the "Z"s was of course useless to me (see ÖZLEM, above), but otherwise, "J" got me JARTS and "A" got me SEDAN and on and on. I think my flow got a little interrupted trying to get into the SW from the middle, so I just dove into the SW and found SETI, PREK, and ERIK just waiting to be found and built upon. I actually made a mistake on my very last entry, or was about to when I realized it wasn't going to work with the crosses—I wanted MINE instead of MILK (48D: Exploit over time). But that's it. A somewhat dull walk in the park. The grid itself seems very solid. No real complaints there. But the cluing is both too easy and too dull. It's not even trying to be tough or spicy or sassy or anything. Only two "?" clues in the whole thing, and only one of those (45D: Pop flies?) was at all misleading. I guess there are some faint misdirections or ambiguities here and there that keep it from being too too easy, but looking over the clues, I'm not seeing much effort to be clever or tricky (which Saturdays really need to be). My favorite part of the solve was actually looking at the answer to 26D for the first time, before I looked at the clue but after I'd filled most of it in, and wondering who the hell this non-Thurman UMA was. UMA C. TUALLY? What movie was she in? I've heard of Margaret Qualley, but UMA C. TUALLY ... she's new to me. Possibly because she's imaginary.

Bullet points:

• 17A: Poisonous plant rumored to have killed the emperor Augustus (BELLADONNA) — I teach the literature of Augustan Rome (specifically Virgil) all the time, so I think about Augustus, but I weirdly never think about how he died. I think about the fact that Virgil died before fully completing the Aeneid. I think about the fact that Augustus exiled Ovid (for "carmen et error" (a mysterious phrase meaning "a song and a mistake") to a little place on the Black Sea called Tomis (modern day Constanța, Romania)). But Augustus's death by (allegedly!) BELLADONNA, this is somehow news to me. BELLADONNA is mentioned nowhere on Augustus's wikipedia page, although there is mention of rumors that Augustus's wife Livia might've poisoned him.

• 22A: Dictionaries have many of these: Abbr. (PGS) — any book has "many" of these ("many" being a completely meaningless word without context). If you wanted WDS here, you're forgiven. PGS = "pages."
• 56A: Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan, to an economist (ASIAN TIGER) — Since there are, in fact, tigers in Asia (and only in Asia), I thought that was a factor in the naming ("what symbolic animal of 'the Orient' can we call this phenomenon?"), but it turns out "tiger" is a standalone term: "A tiger economy is the economy of a country which undergoes rapid economic growth, usually accompanied by an increase in the standard of living" (wikipedia). So there aren't just ASIAN TIGERs, there are also Gulf Tigers, Baltic Tigers, and even Celtic Tigers, despite the fact that there haven't been actual tigers in Ireland for ... I'm no tigerologist, but I'm gonna say, ever. 
• 48A: Has only the best intentions (MEANS WELL) — a phrase I cannot hear without thinking of Anthony Perkins' best scene in Psycho (entertaining Marion in his parlor, surrounded by animals he has stuffed) ("People always mean well...":

• 51A: Feature of many a handbag (CLASP) — not STRAP! This is about as tricky as clues got today.
• 30D: Denizens of the Great Victoria Desert (EMUS) — had the "E" and I swear to god went through ELKS, EWOK and EELS before EMUS ever occurred to me. I don't think of Australia as having a desert, I think of the whole thing as just being a desert. So it took some effort to get my mind onto the right continent.
• 61A: Casual hangout (SESH) — is it me, or is this "word" becoming a real *&%&ing nuisance? I can't believe this is only the third SESH of the year (perhaps because they've all come in the past two months). But we're certainly on track for the SESHiest year ever, and if it seems like the "word" came out of nowhere, well, it kinda did. This is a visual representation of SESH in the Shortz Era

[The Great SESH Explosion of the 2020s ... I blame COVID, somehow]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Tswana for "fly" / THU 5-1-25 / Trailblazing astronaut Jemison / Modern prefix with normativity / Gorgeous ones, informally / Video game character speaking a gibberish language / It's "read" as a stern warning / Cat breed named after an Indonesian island from which it didn't originate / Film based on the 1983 children's novel "The Sheep-Pig" / Big thing in fast food? / Turn into stars, say? / Title friend of Marlin in an animated film

Constructor: Aidan Deshong and Adam Levav

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: CIRCLES BACK (37A: Brings up a prior topic ... or a hint to making sense of the answers to this puzzle's starred clues) — in six Across answers, letters in "circles" must be moved to the "back" of the word in order for the clue to make sense:

Theme answers:

• BASELINE (18A: *Cat breed named after an Indonesian island from which it didn't originate) (i.e. BALINESE)
• RICOTTA (24A: *It's "read" as a stern warning) (i.e. RIOT ACT)
• KIMONOS (26A: *Relative of a snowboard) (i.e. MONOSKI)
• AVENGER (52A: *Carve out, in a way) (i.e. ENGRAVE)
• DUSTPAN (55A: *Comedy club fare) (i.e. STAND-UP)
• REVILING (61A: *Villain's expression) (i.e. EVIL GRIN)

Word of the Day: INÉS Mendoza (65A: ___ Mendoza, former first lady of Puerto Rico) —

 

Inés María Mendoza Rivera de Muñoz Marín (January 10, 1908 in Naguabo, Puerto Rico – August 13, 1990 in San Juan), was a former First Lady of Puerto Rico, teacher, writer and socialite. She was the second wife of Governor Luis Muñoz Marín. Inés Mendoza stood by the Spanish language, defying the new colonial authorities that wanted to replace it with English.

• • •

Pretty remedial for a Thursday. This opened effortlessly for me ...

... and then before I knew it, I had the first themer almost completely filled in, without ever having looked at its clue. I could see that RIC-TT- had to be RICOTTA, the only question was why:

And the "why" didn't take me long to figure out. Easy to see "RIOT ACT" in that jumble of letters. How to get to "RIOT ACT"? Move the circles to the end. Theme, solved. After that, it's a regular-old crossword that just requires you to do some mental contortions every so often. Nothing tricky beyond the one trick. The revealer was the only thing left to discover, and ... yeah, it's a good one. Says what it does. But the nature of this puzzle, particularly the structure of this grid, meant that there wasn't going to be that much in the way of interesting fill today (outside the theme answers, that is; some of those are alright). Actually, TRÈS CHIC and LIP RINGS and BLANKIES and KEEPSAKE are pretty good. Normally not a big fan of baby-talk in my puzzles, but BLANKIES didn't bug me at all. The theme is clever, but it didn't play very exciting for me. It's one of those themes that are more architecturally interesting than they are game-play interesting. And the whole thing ended up far too easy for a Thursday. Probably confusing before you get the gimmick, but the non-theme stuff wasn't putting up much of a fight, so it was easy to flood the themers with crosses and then piece together the gimmick from there.

My only trouble came when my "aha" moment at 18A: *Cat breed named after an Indonesian island from which it didn't originate led me to the correct answer ... but then I wrote it in as the (incorrect) homophone of the correct answer: BASSLINE. This meant that, bizarrely, the hardest answer for me to get today was the three-letter ELM (19D: West ___ (furniture retailer)). Instead of E-- I had S-- and thought "West ... SKY?" I think I was thinking of SKY West—that's, like, an airline or something, isn't it? Yes! Ugh. Then I thought "isn't the furniture retailer West NINE?" But no, that's Nine West, and that's a fashion retailer. Clearly having retail trouble today. With two themers also in the NE, it seemed like that corner might be trouble, but gimmes like ARIANA and PALEO meant I was able to work it out. The corresponding SW corner also seemed like it might give me trouble—your only way in is from the back ends of two themers, but "GAL pal" and GENOA really helped me out there. That corner is pretty awful, in that it's jam-packed with proper nouns—three proper nouns crossing three other proper nouns in a tiny error that also has two themers?! Potential nightmare. I spent part of yesterday evening watching a bunch of relatively inexperienced college-age students solve crosswords, which immediately made apparent the perils of proper nouns. They were crashing out on stuff like Senator Mike CRAPO and the island of PALAU, and had trouble spelling Andre AGASSI. And I've seen my daughter (b. 2000) struggle at proper noun pile-ups that longtime solvers wouldn't struggle with because longtime solvers forget how many common crossword answers aren't necessarily all that common irl. Even with popular brands (AVEENO, say)—that answer came to me almost instantly. Why? Because I know my lotion brands so well? Hell no. Because my brain knows the brands That Are Likely To Appear in a Crossword? Yes. Anyway, all the proper nouns in the SW (except INÈS) seem reasonably familiar to me, but the density felt dangerous down there. (Shout-out to the Binghamton Crossword Club—y'all were fun to hang out with)

[My favorite two words on this announcement are 1. "exciting" and 2. "professional"]

[sincerely, my apologies to every ACPT judge who had to deal with this handwriting]

The fill on this one ran a little toward the FEEBLER side (FEEBLER being the wrong word I wrote in at first for 43D: More delicate and weak (FRAILER)). How are the BAHA Men still appearing in puzzles in the year 2025? And ECLAT and IAMB and ATILT and TSETSE gave the grid a little bit of a musty feel at times. But there's no real eye-roll or "ugh" moments in the grid. It's sufficiently solid. "I LEFT" is not a great partial, but I figure you get one free partial per puzzle, and when it's easy like that one was, well, no harm done

Other things:

• 20A: Places to carry out some takeout orders, for short? (ORS) — jocular clues about surgery, awesome! (actually, as someone who is having ... something ... "taken out" in a couple weeks, this one made me smile, however grimly) (I'm just fine, btw—routine stuff)
• 62D: President posthumously inducted in the Word Golf Hall of Fame (IKE) — so ... not ABE, then? OK. 
• 44A: Past-tense verb that's potentially confusing (but grammatically correct!) when written twice in a row (HAD) — "potentially confusing"? Not as confusing as this clue, I assure you. A novel-length clue, complete with parenthetical comment, for ... HAD? Interesting choice.
• 60A: Video game character speaking a gibberish language (SIM) — is this just any SIM or specifically the SIMs in "The SIMS?" I feel like people were playing "The SIMs" back when the BAHA Men were big. 

• 68A: Title friend of Marlin in an animated film (DORY) — I always forget Finding DORY was a thing.
• 69A: Times Square ball drop setting, in brief (EST) — "setting" here refers to time zone, i.e. Eastern Standard Time (the time "setting" in NYC on NYE).
• 31A: Is for the people? (ARE) — a person is. People ARE. Verb tense humor!
• 7D: Film based on the 1983 children's novel "The Sheep-Pig" (BABE) — really leaning into kids movies today. Although BABE kind of transcends kidness. I remember it as being great, but I haven't seen it in 30 years. 
• 12D: Turn into stars, say? (CENSOR) — sometimes you use asterisks (i.e. stars, "****") to stand in for swear words. In comics, these stars (and other symbols) are known as "grawlix"

• 35D: Big thing in fast food? (MAC) — this is so dumb it amused me. I just like the implications that there are other not-so-big macs out there, or that a "MAC" is a thing at all.
• 51A: Popping pills, say (ON MEDS) — pretty sure that if you are taking prescribed drugs, "popping" is not the right word. "Popping" implies recreational use or abuse. ON DRUGS, sure. ON MEDS doesn't ring true.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Hangout events for two guy friends / MON 1-13-25 / Digitally make to look younger / Minuscule picture used in spycraft / Disinfectant brand with the tagline "Healthing" / Quality of a statement that feels plausible / Sweetheart, slangily / Restaurant that offers a Mexican Tres Leches stack

Constructor: Adam Levav

Relative difficulty: on the Challenging side for a Monday

THEME: MIDDLE ENGLISH (36A: Tongue of Chaucer ... or what's literally shown in the shaded squares?) — 2nd person pronouns (with their origins in MIDDLE ENGLISH) are embedded in the "middle" of four answers:

Theme answers:

• TRUTHINESS (17A: Quality of a statement that feels plausible)
• FOURTH-YEARS (24A: High school or college seniors, usually)
• BREATHE EASY (47A: Feel relief from anxiety)
• LIGHTHOUSE (57A: Aid in preventing a shipwreck)

Word of the Day: MIDDLE ENGLISH (36A: Tongue of Chaucer ... or what's literally shown in the shaded squares?) —

Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500.^[2] This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with the High and Late Middle Ages.

Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography. Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for the most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, a standard based on the London dialects (Chancery Standard) had become established. This largely formed the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by Early Modern English, which lasted until about 1650. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well my entire Ph.D. dissertation was about MIDDLE ENGLISH literature so you'd think this one would be right up my alley, but no, this didn't work for me. Something about all these pronouns being ... not particularly "Middle." I mean, they have their origins there, but all of these pronouns are going to be most familiar to people from either Shakespeare or the King James Version of the Bible, both of which are written in what we now refer to as Early Modern English (EMnE). "Thou shalt not...," that's KJV. And as for "thine," I'm guessing that if most people had to quote one line of text that contained "thine," it would be Polonius's line to Laertes in Hamlet: "To thine own self be true" (you use the possessive "thine" instead of "thy" when the subsequent word starts with a vowel, typically). This is a MIDDLE ENGLISH puzzle without anything particularly MIDDLE ENGLISH about it. And why 2nd person pronouns? As opposed to literally any other MIDDLE ENGLISH words? What is the logic there? I just don't get it. I get the visual pun—that the words appear in the "middle" of the longer answers. OK, fine. But THINE THY THEE THOU ... they just don't seem very MIDDLE ENGLISHy. Also, for the record, you need "ye" to complete the 2nd person pronoun set: "ye" is the collective form of "thou"—when you're addressing more than one person: ye. "Ye" does not mean "the," no matter how many "Ye OLDE Shoppe" signs you see. The "y" there is a stand-in for the long lost letter thorn ("Þ, þ"), which was replaced by the digraph "th" during the Early Modern period. But I (seriously) digress.

As a Downs-only solve (which is how I solve Mondays), this had a couple challenging parts, the worst of which was BRO DATES (11D: Hangout events for two guy friends). "Hangout events"? I don't even know what that means. You mean that you, a guy, are meeting other guys ... to hang out ... and do stuff? And you had to give this basic activity a weird and vaguely homophobic name? "We're not gay or anything! We're just bros! Straight bros! Doing straight stuff!" Uh, OK. Whatever you say. Also, I thought the term was MAN DATE (yes, that is a term). What is the difference between "man dates" and BRO DATES??? All my friends are women (or gay men), so I just don't understand this all-male bro world at all. I had BROMANCE in there at first. The other long Down I struggled with (sorta) was MICRODOT, which seems like not a very Monday word at all (36D: Minuscule picture used in spycraft). It was in the puzzle fairly recently—just a couple months ago—and I stumbled on it then, so I remembered it today ... but since I had LAB RATS instead of LAB MICE ("rats" is better!), I didn't commit to the DOT part at first because it just didn't agree with the adjacent letters in RATS (39D: Cheese-loving test subjects). Most of the rest of this was very doable Downs-only. Took me a second to get DE-AGE, which I can't ever remember seeing in a puzzle before (33D: Digitally make to look younger). Oh, I see it has been in the grid before, just once. Debuted last year. De-aging tech has been used in a bunch of high-profile movies in recent years, so I'd expect to see DE-AGE a fair amount in the future, in that it's a short answer with common letters (majority vowels), and crosswords love those.

Bullets:

• 17A: Quality of a statement that feels plausible (TRUTHINESS) — I've never seen this term used anywhere outside the context of mid-'00s The Colbert Report. Pretty sure he coined it. The wikipedia entry about the term is almost entirely about Colbert. Does not seem like the term has had much of an afterlife. Weird to leave Colbert out of the clue.
• 27A: Disinfectant brand with the tagline "Healthing" (LYSOL) — wow. Wow that is bad. "Healthing"??? Really? Who is responsible for that ridiculousness? The only thing I like about it is that it sounds like "Hell Thing."
• 52A: Do a whoopsie (ERR) — ick, banish baby talk, or archaic talk, or archaic baby talk, please. Please. Nails + chalkboard. This clue is not healthing (though it is hell thing).

Ahhh, that's it! See you tomorrow, I hope.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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