Evian, Perrier or Badoit / TUES 7-28-26 / Letter that can take a cedilla / Primer mes del año / Director Johnson of the "Knives Out" movies

Hi, everyone — it’s Clare for the last Tuesday in July! Hope everyone has been having a lovely summer and not getting too hot or having their lungs filled with smoke or drowning in rain or…! I celebrated my 30th (!) birthday this month and also celebrated my dad’s birthday (he’s asked me not to say the number of years😉), and it’s all been quite lovely. I’m extremely sad the men’s World Cup is over, because I haven’t really known what to do with myself or what to watch. But maybe the U.S. Open will save me, or maybe I’ll get back into the swing of things once the WNBA gets back after the All-Star break. Ooh, and I got to see Noah Kahan in concert, and he was incredible; and I see BTS in Baltimore in just 15 days — not that I’m counting the days and hours and minutes or anything! Otherwise, my pup and I have been hiking and staying cool, and she’s as cute and wonderful as ever. 

Anywho, onto the puzzle… 

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Medium (mostly because of one letter)

THEME: IT’S NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT (17A: With 58-Across, dad-joke response to the answers for each of this puzzle’s starred clues) — Each of the theme answers has the sound “achoo” in it, which… sounds like a sneeze

Theme answers:

• PATCHOULI (25A: Essential oil with a musky scent) 
• MASSACHUSETTS (31A: Home of the lowest town-level ZIP code in the continental U.S. (01001)) 
• CATCH YOU LATER (38A: "Until next time!") 
• STATUETTE (49A: Academy Award, e.g.)

Word of the Day: SAM (59D: Rock singer ___ Fender) —

Samuel Thomas Fender (born 25 April 1994) is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. Born and raised in North Shields, Fender released several singles independently beginning in 2017. His sound relies primarily on his traditional American musical upbringing combined with a British rock sensibility. He is known for his high tenor voice and Geordie accent. Recognized for his songwriting style, Fender is the recipient of five Brit Awards, two Ivor Novello Awards and a Mercury Prize, among many others. (Wiki)

• • •

That was a pretty good Tuesday puzzle, mostly in spite of the theme, not because of it. The theme itself just doesn’t feel like a dad joke to me, which I think of more as something related to puns and not just sounds in words? The phrases and words themselves are fine, and it’s impressive that all the achoo sounds are achieved differently, but the theme just didn’t hit me as any sort of dad joke-esque response to each of the theme answers. I didn’t use the theme to help with the solve, as the two parts of the revealer were so split across the puzzle, which might’ve made it slightly more challenging than it otherwise would’ve been for me. 

I almost had a DNF in the puzzle because of EXCLAVE (43D: Part of a country located entirely within another country) and OXO (48A: Palindromic kitchen brand). I know the brand OXO, and, logically, I knew that there wouldn’t be another ONO in the puzzle given that it was at 18D: 1969 “bed-in” participant. But I typed in “enclave” without thinking, then was stuck searching for my error in the end. I asked my dad and sister what they thought, and they both got stuck for minutes searching for their typo right at that spot there at the end. I’ve since googled it and distinguished an EXCLAVE from an “enclave” for future reference — “An enclave is a territory that is entirely surrounded by the territory of only one other state or entity,” such as Vatican City, while “an exclave is a portion of a state or district geographically separated from the main part, by some surrounding alien territory,” such as the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, which also borders Armenia, Iran, and Turkey (Wiki). I’ll try to remember this for the future so I don’t add almost a minute to my time searching for an error! 

I also struggled a bit with O’DELL (5A: Scott ___, author of "Island of the Blue Dolphins"). I belatedly realized that I actually read "Island of the Blue Dolphins" in grade school, but I sadly had no idea who the author was. CHOCO (50A: __ Taco (ice cream treat)) gave me a little pause. I didn’t even look at the clue for NIP (60D: Alcoholic equivalent of a fun-size candy bar), but I don’t think I would’ve gotten that word from that clue. Those of you not into perfume may also have had trouble with PATCHOULI (25A). 

I appreciated the lack of a lot of crosswordese in the puzzle. Sure, we had our ELI (7D: Name that's an anagram of an untruth), ALT (37A: Secondary social media account), YET (40D: Up to this point), CPA (23A: Tax pro), ANT (28A: Myrmecology subject), ASK (10D: Query), etc. But for the most part, even those were clued a bit differently — and more interestingly — than usual. I learned what myrmecology is with ANT (28A), and I remembered that a secondary social media account is more than just a “finsta” and could actually be considered an ALT (though maybe I just need to study up on my own millennial/Gen-Z slang). 

There were also some great words in the puzzle, such as STYMIE (46D: Hinder), HOOPLA (12D: Muss and fuss), and AUTEUR (33D: Artistic visionary). Those are just so fun to say. We got THAT’LL (22D: "___ be the day!") next to OUTTA (27D: "Straight ___ Compton" (1989 N.W.A album)), a clever pairing of slangy contractions. I really liked the clue for CDC (34D: Org. mentioned in many zombie movies); I’ve watched enough zombie and apocalyptic shows to get the answer to that one right away.

Misc.:

• My sister and I hiked the Grand TETONS (20A: Wyoming mountain range) when we were on a cross-country road trip in the summer of 2020. They were absolutely gorgeous. We went on a hike there that took us to maybe the bluest waters I’ve ever seen, and I spent my birthday on a pier overlooking the water before going on a horseback ride. 
• I'm currently trying to soothe an ACHE (10A: Be in need of ibuprofen, say) by targeting a KNOT (19A: Massage gun target) right above my KNEE (14A: Word with cap or socks) after I ran seven miles yesterday, my longest run in quite some time! A friend is trying to get me to run the Richmond Marathon in November, but I’m pretty sure my body might break down before I got to that point. 
• I was part of the SKI TEAM (1D: Sporting group at a cold-weather school) at a ski academy in Lake Tahoe, and it was most definitely cold weather. One of my strongest memories of that time is being driven to school one morning by my mom, and we for some reason took the shortcut — a road that can be very dangerous. I got to school and had to wade through three-plus feet of snow to get to the entrance. For some reason, I was wearing Uggs that weren’t waterproof. Needless to say, my Uggs were never the same. And my Spanish teacher didn’t even make it for first period anyway. 
• As soon as I saw SAM (59D), I knew that he was going to be my word of the day. Some people probably don’t know who he is, but I’ve been absolutely in love with him ever since a cousin introduced me to him a few years ago. My cousin even flew to England to see him in concert, and I tried to get tickets when he came to D.C. a year or so ago, but I wasn’t able to. He has a song now with another favorite of mine, Olivia Dean, that is just crushing the charts in the UK called "Rein Me In." Anyway, my favorite of his is Hypersonic Missiles, if anyone is looking for an incredible and poignant song. 
•  I think I’ve already talked about these books, but I’ll mention them again because I’ve been having so much fun listening to them (and I’ve gotten my dad hooked, too): Everyone should listen to (or read, I suppose, though the voices in the audio book are wildly good) the Dungeon Crawler Carl series! I’m on Book 7 of 8 and am so hooked. I’ve been using Audible credits to listen to the books and just caved and bought all eight of the physical books, too. They look great on my bookshelf.

And that’s all from me! Stay cool, and I’ll see all y’all in August! 

Signed, Clare Carroll, writing about dad jokes now that I’m all groan up

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Pulitzer-winning "Fat Ham" playwright / WED 3-18-26 / Young grasshopper / Indulgently lazy / Numbers on botellas de vino / Restaurant chain named after a Rolling Stones song / Country known for luxury tourism, in brief / Discoverer of the principle behind F=ma / Musical instrument in the Guinness logo / Game to play when the spirit moves you?

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: BINGO! (66A: "You got it!" ... or a possible cry after hearing the calls hidden in the answers to the starred clues?) — theme answers have parts that sound like Bingo squares (specifically "B" followed by a number)

Theme answers:

• RUBY TUESDAY (17A: *Restaurant chain named after a Rolling Stones song) ("B-2")
• BENIGNLY (26A: *Without malice) ("B-9")
• "THAT'D BE WONDERFUL" (34A: *"What a great idea!") ("B-1")
  
• UNBEATEN (48A: *Having a perfect record) ("B-10")
• BABY FORMULA (55A: *Similac or Enfamil) ("B-4")

Word of the Day: James IJAMES (9D: Pulitzer-winning "Fat Ham" playwright) —

 

James Ijames (/aɪmz/) (born 1980) is an American playwright originally from Bessemer City, North Carolina. His play Fat Ham, adapted from Hamlet, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He is a professor at Columbia University and former co-artistic director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. (wikipedia)

• • •

The revealer came as a total surprise. I solved this as a themeless—no clue what was going on—and was repeatedly surprised at how stuck I kept getting. I don't know if it was the cluing or what, but man this played slow for me today. The only answer I can point to as definitely harder-than-Wednesday material is James IJAMES (a name I'd never seen and had no hope of even partially inferring). Otherwise, nothing in the grid was unknown to me. I simply kept struggling to get answers quickly. Things like AFEW for 53D: Three or four, say, or OARED for 63A: Got in a row? (surface meaning = confusing—am I supposed to hear "row," rhymes with "cow," like a British "row," to-do, dust-up, quarrel, etc.???) (I know that the punny meaning is "row" rhymes with "tow" ... no idea by what possible mental gymnastics "got in a row" can be said to mean simply "rowed," i.e. OARED, but ... here we are). I found BOW OUT hardish (26D: Take one's leave). I found TUTU oddly hard (41A: You might take a spin in this) ("I" might not, actually). Even LANGUOROUSLY didn't come easily to me from its clue (16D: Indulgently lazy). Not sure why "lazy" doesn't compute for me there. So I was like "is this really Wednesday?" for much of the puzzle. I can't say I had a very good time. But (and it's a big but), the revealer did really work some magic. I suppose I could've just looked at the revealer clue at any time and begun trying to piece things together, but I was never *that* desperate, and anyway, I'm not sure knowing the theme would've helped much with getting the themers (which weren't, themselves, that hard to get—didn't struggle with them at all). It's an OK grid with a wonderful (!), surprising theme lying underneath. I think I just had a bad morning. I slept fine. But last night was my first night alone in a very long time (my wife Penelope is in the sky as we speak heading to NZ for a funeral). So ... loneliness. I blame my solving sluggishness on loneliness (the cats are now looking at me all offended, like "hey, we're standing right here!"). 

[Frank and Bing(o)!]

About IJAMES, though ... Must be very cool to see your name in the grid. And I think I would've been happy to learn that name ... on a Saturday. But on a Wednesday, I was like "how in the world do I not know the name of a famous playwright!!!?" Turns out, I don't know the names of literally any of the playwrights who have won the Pulitzer for Drama since the '90s. Oh, sorry, I do know one. I only have to go back to 2008, when Tracy LETTS won for August: Osage County. But even LETTS, who is quite famous as playwrights go (he's also an actor, married to another actor (Carrie Coon), and has Tonys for both writing and acting), even he, at a grid-friendly five letters long and with extremely grid-friendly letters, has appeared in the NYTXW just once (!). 21st-century playwrights don't have quite the cultural penetration that their predecessors did. The list of Pulitzer winners for Drama in this century is loaded with people whose names seem like they would work very well in crosswords. There's EBONI Booth (2024), and KATORI Hall (2021), and SANAZ TOOSSI (2023) (I know neither of those name parts has been in the grid before!). Lynn NOTTAGE has won twice! (2009, 2017). And yet, NYTXW appearances: zero. Does my knowledge of playwrights fall off because I got old and stopped paying attention? As late as the early '90s, the Drama Pulitzer winners seem like titans: KUSHNER! SIMON! WILSON! And of course the king of crossword playwriting, Edward ALBEE (Three Tall Women, 1994—his third win)! I suppose with a daughter currently studying at the Yale Bleeping School of Bleeping Drama,* I should probably brush up on my playwright knowledge. I wonder if she knew IJAMES. I'll ask. I'll bet she did.

Bullets:

• 5D: Meal cooked in simmering broth (HOT POT) — easy enough. My only beef here is with the crossing answer, PANT, which has the word "Hot" in the clue (20A: Make like a hot dog). Weird / bad to pivot from HOT POT to a clue with "hot dog" in it.
• 27A: ^ (CARET) — there are officially too many ways to spell "CARE-utt." I went with CARAT today. I knew it wasn't KARAT, and there weren't enough letters for CARROT. But CARET never occurred to me. I see the mark "^" all the time, or at least not infrequently. But I rarely see it spelled. As I said, slow morning for me.
• 59D: That's the kicker! (LEG) — love this, but this is what I'm talking about with the clues today—they are auditioning to be Fri/Sat clues and you can feel it.

• 62A: Save on wedding invitations, in a way (ELOPE) — again, brain not work right. I read "save" as a noun, like "thing you should save," as in "the date." "Save the date!" Invitations still say that, right? Man I need coffee.
• 18D: Country known for luxury tourism, in brief (UAE) — well, how's that going for you? Luxurious enough?
• 1A: Young grasshopper (NYMPH) — 1-Across really set the tone for me today. Just ... no idea. None. Zero. I never think about young grasshoppers or what they are called. Bizarre to name them after sexy nature deities, but I'm sure entomologists have their reasons.

Gotta run. See you next time.

*It's actually the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University but I just can't

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Pirates' support group? / WED 4-30-25 / Stitchers' gathering / Alternative to a blur or pixelation / Wonderland interloper / ___ Ghani, former Afghan president / A reason to act this very instant ... / Spun some records, informally / Caveman's covering / Apt anagram for "brush"

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: CLEAN / ONE'S CLOCK (6D: With 32-Down, beat an opponent soundly) — ordinary phrases are turned into clock + cleaning-related puns:

Theme answers:

• THE TIME IS RIPE (15A: A reason to act this very instant ... or why you might 6-Down 32-Down) ("ripe" here means "stinky" (def. 5b, here)—that's why you need to "clean" the clock)
• HAND SOAP (34D: Bottleful that might 6-/32-Down) (a clock has "hands")
• FACE WASH (39D: Bottleful that might 6-/32-Down) (a clock has a "face")

Word of the Day: ASHRAF Ghani (2D: ___ Ghani, former Afghan president) —

Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai (born 19 May 1949) is an Afghan former politician, academic, and economist who served as the president of Afghanistan from September 2014 until August 2021, when his government was overthrown by the Taliban.

Ghani was born in Logar, Afghanistan. After his grade-school education in Afghanistan, he spent much of his time abroad, studying in Lebanon and the United States. After receiving his PhD in cultural anthropology from Columbia University in 1983, he taught at various institutions and was an associate professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. For much of the 1990s, he worked at the World Bank. In December 2001, he returned to Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban government. [...] 

In 2014, Ghani became president after winning the controversial 2014 Afghan presidential election. The election was so disputed that negotiations between Ghani and rival Abdullah Abdullah were mediated by the United States. Ghani became president and Abdullah chief executive, with power split 50-50. On 18 February 2020, Ghani was re-elected after a delayed result from the 2019 presidential elections. He was sworn in on 9 March 2020. // On 15 August 2021, his term ended abruptly, as the Taliban took over Kabul. Ghani and staff fled Afghanistan and took refuge in the United Arab Emirates. He later stated he left in order to avoid further violence, and that staying and dying would have accomplished nothing but adding another tragedy to Afghanistan's history. However, he was also condemned across various spectrums for abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban and has been accused of corruption during his administration. (wikipedia)

• • •

[30A: Alternative to a blur or pixelation]

I liked the grid way more than I liked the theme (which I didn't really grasp as I was solving). The main (huge) problem, to my ears, is the ONE'S in the main phrase: CLEAN / ONE'S CLOCK. I can't see "ONE'S" without thinking of it as self-reflexive. DO ONE'S BEST, A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE, ATE ONE'S WORDS ... in all these cases, "one" does these things. One has a lot on one's plate. One does one's best. One eats one's words. But one does not (not not not not) CLEAN / ONE'S CLOCK. That you would mean you clean your own clock. But that's not how it works. You clean HIS clock, or THEIR clock—you do it To Someone Else. The idea that I'm supposed to read "one" as "an opponent"—as the "the other guy," not the "cleaner" themselves— ... it just doesn't work. Too awkward. That kind of kills the theme for me. But it's definitely an original idea, this clock-cleaning pun thing, so I admire that, just as I admire the overall grid shape here—a mirror-symmetry grid with really deep answer-banks on the bottom, where the bulk of the theme material is. Impressive that crammed in there with that theme material are other answers that are equally long, and at least as interesting: OLD FLAME, SEWING BEE, RESCUE DOG, FLAT FEES. These all gave the puzzle some character. And the shape of the grid—with that oddly difficult-to-access lower-center block—was fun to navigate. So I'm really just mad at the ONE'S today. And "mad" is perhaps an exaggeration. But sincerely, I don't think ONE'S works, on a fundamental, basic-sense level.

Flew through this with few hesitations. Absolutely no idea re: ASHRAF. The whole Afghanistan political situation was always way too chaotic for me to even begin to keep track of. I remember Hamid Karzai, but after him, my memory of Afghan leaders is faint. Not surprisingly, ASHRAF is a debut (a Modern debut—it appeared in the grid once, in 1972, clued as [Moslem elite] (??)). I can picture a CENSOR BAR (30A: Alternative to a blur or pixelation), but I didn't really know that that is what it was called, which is what made ACCESSing the lower-center part of the grid a bit of a challenge. Could not enter from the top—even with ONE'S CLOCK in place—so I had to get in from below, via PEGLEGS, which I got easily enough (52A: Pirates' support group?). So when I say that section was "a bit challenging," all I really mean is that my attempt to get into it in a kind of natural flow, from above, was thwarted, and I had to wait and come at it a different way. So not "difficult" to solve so much as "temporarily delayed." Kind of screwed up the SE corner briefly when I opted for "ALAS..." instead of [SIGH] at 53D: [Ah, woe is me!]. And I absolutely blanked on the Marvel supervillain (even with the "U" in place!) and had to wait for several crosses before I remembered it. I really do not care about the MCU at all now. I'm barely aware of the new movies that come out. There's one coming out Friday, apparently. Who cares? Why would you see that when you can see Sinners (again)? 

Other things:

• 1A: Leafy vegetable with a lot of vitamin K (KALE) — they should've worked "aptly" into the clue somehow. Vitamin "K" sounds like something I'd make up if I was trying to market KALE as a health food. Sounds like a marketing gimmick. But apparently it's a real vitamin. My vitamin alphabet runs out at "E." 
• 17D: Apt anagram for "brush" (SHRUB) — "brush" can be shortened form of "brushwood," which is "a thicket of SHRUBs or small trees."

• 47A: Obama-era policy whose last three letters spell a different Obama-era law (DACA) — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (immigration policy). ACA is, of course, Obamacare (i.e., the Affordable Care Act).
• 7D: Wonderland interloper (ALICE) — because Wonderland is filled with strange creatures, I did a double-take on "interloper," like it was some kind of beast I couldn't quite remember... a tove or a Jabberwock or a Bandersnatch or some nonsense. Like a jackalope, maybe. But it's just ALICE. And "interloper" is just someone who intrudes.

One last, tiny thing—I don't understand why the cross-references are written out differently every time for the theme answers: the clue for THE TIME IS RIPE has "6-Down 32-Down"; for the FACE WASH clue, a slash is added ("6-Down/32-Down"), and then for the HAND SOAP clue, the cross-reference gets condensed down to "6-/32-Down." Tiny differences in each iteration, whyyyyyyy? It's bizarre. Seems intentional, and yet the differences are meaningless, so actually it just seems sloppy. If they are inconsistent for a reason,  I can't see it, and if they aren't inconsistent for a reason, why did no proofreader say "hey, uh ... why are these all different? Shouldn't we standardize them?"

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Like the architecture of the Alhambra / THU 7-4-2024 / Belgian town known for its restorative mineral springs / Mediterranean appetizer

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Easy (9:12)

THEME: "Oh say can you see..." — Entries that end with the sounds oh, say, can, you, see

Theme answers:

• ["Get ready!" ... or what to do upon hearing the ends of the answers to the starred clues?] for HOLD ONTO YOUR HAT
• [One of 32 in London] for BOROUGH ("ough" --> "oh")
• [Teacher in a dojo] for SENSEI ("sei" --> "say")
• [Home to Gonzaga University] for SPOKANE ("kane" --> "can")
• [Environs] for MILIEU ("ieu" --> "you")
• [Drawn-out story of travel woes?] for ODYSSEY ("ssey" --> "see")

Word of the Day: MEZE (Mediterranean appetizer) —

Meze (also spelled mezze or mezé) is a selection of small dishes served as appetizers in Levantine, Turkish, Balkan, Armenian, Kurdish, and Greek cuisines. It is similar to Spanish tapas and Italian antipasti. A meze may be served as a part of a multi-course meal or form a meal in itself. [wiki]

• • •

Hi folks! I'm here for an off-schedule Malaika MWednesday, although you should know that I'm writing this on a Wednesday and scheduling it to post on a Thursday. So in a way, things feel correct. Happy July 4th to everyone! I love a holiday that revolves around hanging out with friends and cooking, so this is one of my faves. I'm at the Jersey Shore right now, feasting on watermelon and hotdogs and ice-cold seltzies and all that good stuff.

PSA: Put Tajín on your watermelon

I really enjoyed this theme! There were a couple things that elevated it from good to great, in my mind. I liked how the revealer had a double meaning. It would have been totally valid to have a revealer as simple as "Star Spangled Banner" or "National Anthem," but here we got a little extra layer of wordplay. (As someone who does not wear hats, it took me a second to realize what it was referencing, but literally just one second.)

In fact, this puzzle kind of managed to combine two themes into one-- the double meaning + the "put all the ends of the words together." Putting on my Constructor Hat here (crossword constructor, not actual building constructor, although man, I wish I were better at carpentry!!), I think it was able to do this successfully because many of the theme answers were quite short. We often see theme entries that are 9-15 letters long, and these were 6-7.

This image is completely unrelated to the write-up, but I was desperate to show y'all that I harvested some of my tomatoes for the first time this season! These are Sungolds and Super Sweet 100s.

Another thing I liked is how cleverly the themed entries hid the sounds. After "ough" and "sei" (and given the date), I knew immediately what was going on, but I wasn't able to jump around and fill in the shaded boxes like you sometimes can. Instead, I still had to puzzle out how the sounds would appear. I like when a puzzle makes me puzzle! And it also made me reflect on how complicated spelling can be in the English language. Linguists in the comments can correct me if I'm wrong, but this is something that actually works in our favor when it comes to making crosswords. For example, in a language like Italian, nearly every word ends in a vowel. So they couldn't put together a symmetrical crossword unless they also had words like AEEAIIA to intersect... and they don't! Since we have a lot more letter combos, our intersections are able to work out.

The final thing to discuss is the puzzle's layout. I don't know if there's an official name for it, but I call it up-down symmetry, and it's pretty rare in puzzles. I find it very aesthetic though. I would love to see a themeless puzzle with up-down symmetry. Do you think it was done on purpose to emulate the American flag, with stripes going across and a "flagpole" going down? Or do you think it was a coincidence?

Bullets:

• [One of 32 in London] for BOROUGH — That's so many! NYC is the same size but only has five!
• [Ladies who lunch, maybe] for GAL PALS — I don't really understand this clue. I know the term "ladies who lunch" to be a pretty specific thing (wealthy female friends who platonically have expensive meals together), and I also know GAL PALS to be a pretty specific thing (a term the media uses to describe lesbians, because they are unwilling to write about same-sex relationships). It doesn't seem like the clue is relating the entry properly.
• [___ Tam ("Australia's favorite cookie")] for TIM —  (Pictured above) I went to school with an Australian girl and whenever she visited home, she'd bring these back. They're soooo tasty-- similar vibe to Oreos but a different texture. There's a whole thing where you bite off a corner on each end and then use it as a straw to slurp up some milk.
• [Like Red Delicious apples] for MEALY — This cracked me up. I am not a big participant in the apple community (I prefer tropical fruits), and I have known Red Delicious apples to be gross, but never really brought it up. I didn't realize this was like... a known thing we all agree on?? It was just so funny to see a negative adjective used to describe a varietal so objectively. I recently read the (YA) book Tangerine which is absolutely not non-fiction but still discusses (among a zillion other things) different varietals of citrus. If you have an 8 - 14 year old in your life, buy them this amazing book!

xoxo Malaika

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Essie competitor / TUE 4-16-24 / Pigment used in the Lascaux cave / Certain immature adult / Japan's national fish / "Gesundheit" prompter / Vodka brand in a blue bottle

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Easy (very)

THEME: MANBABY (39A: Certain immature adult ... with a hint to both halves of the answers to each starred clue) — men whose last names are baby animals:

Theme answers:

• STEPHEN FRY (16A: *Actor who played Oscar Wilde in "Wilde" [fish])
• RYAN GOSLING (10D: *Mouseketeer peer of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake [gander])
• SAMUEL COLT (62A: *Inventor who patented the first revolver [stallion])
• CHARLES LAMB (24D: *English essayist who wrote "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once" [ram])

Word of the Day: BARBACOA (8D: Beef option at Chipotle) —

Barbacoa (Spanish: [baɾβaˈkoa] [...] is a form of cooking meat that originated in the Caribbean with the Taíno people, who called it by the Arawak word barbaca, from which the term "barbacoa" derives, and ultimately, the word 'barbecue". In contemporary Mexico, it generally refers to meats or whole sheep or whole goats slow-cooked over an open fire or, more traditionally, in a hole dug in the ground covered with agave (maguey) leaves, although the interpretation is loose, and in the present day (and in some cases) may refer to meat steamed until tender. This meat is known for its high fat content and strong flavor, often accompanied with onions and cilantro(coriander leaf). (wikipedia)

• • •

It's a weirdly gendered insult that I don't generally hear and certainly wouldn't use, but I guess it has enough currency to be a crossword theme, why not? It's the gender part that ends up being the one weak link in the theme, since all the animals are identified by specifically male terms ... except "fish." Fish is just "fish." No gendered term for baby fish, which makes this answer stick out more than it already did—FRY being a word I almost never hear except metaphorically, with the word "small" in front of it. If you'd asked me the word for a young [any of the non-fish animals in this grid], I would've known immediately, but FRY, uh, yes, that is a stage in fish development (between larva and fingerling, i.e. once the fish becomes capable of feeding itself, but before it's developed scales and working fins, per wikipedia) ... but, perhaps because they aren't generally visible unless you have a fish tank, and aren't particularly adorable, I would not have put them in the "baby" category. But fish are animals and FRY are young ones and STEPHEN FRY gets you an answer symmetrical to SAMUEL COLT, so there you go. Still, nothing "male" about it, so the MAN BABY theme you've taken pains to establish in all the other theme clues kind of falls apart there.

STEPHEN FRY made me laugh because I have no idea what "Wilde" is so, this being crosswords, I wrote in STEPHEN REA. This made me remember that Stephen REA appeared in a grid recently and a bunch of solvers got So Mad because the answer wasn't FRY. Let's see if I can find the puzzle where this happened ... here we go, April 4, 2024—the MARTINI puzzle. The clue was [Stephen of "V for Vendetta"], which both three-letter Stephens were in! So you can see why a solver might be mad. Me, I've been solving crosswords for over three decades (since the early '90s, when Stephen REA gained some fame because of his role in The Crying Game), so REA is just a reflex at this point. Unless you are *certain* about Stephen Fry, the three-letter acting Stephen is *always* REA—the name with the more crossword-friendly letters wins, that's the rule, thanks for playing! It's been that way since 1993—though you might occasionally see the term [Mens REA] (legal Latin for "intention of wrongdoing”) and if you're lucky, you might get a musical appearance from Chris REA. But today, OOXTEPLERNON, the God of Short Bad Fill (I mean, Crosswordese), betrayed me and failed to give me the REA I instinctively expected. He is a capricious god. A MAN BABY, some might say (some, but not me—I really don't want to make him angry) (solvers should make a point to honor him every October 30, for that was the one and only day upon which he showed his fearsome aspect to solverkind, way back in 2009) (the traditional offering is OREOs; you could try NILLA Wafers, but ... I wouldn't risk it).

I had BIG BABY before MANBABY, and thought that the BIGBABY / BIGBIRD crossing was some kind of ... thematic thing. But then BIG didn't work for the BABY answer so I changed it to MAN. I don't know if GOO over BABY is intentional (mens REA?), but it's a nice touch (GOO being half a baby sound). The only tough parts of this puzzle were the first names of COLT and, to a lesser extent, LAMB (having a Ph.D. in English means the 18th-century essay guy is a lot more familiar to me than the gun guy). Oh, and I had no idea about the N.F.L. coach, but crosses just blew right through him, no (real) problem.

[When you "finish" the puzzle but don't get the "Congratulations" message...] 

Bullets:

• 10A: ___ czar, N.Y.C. government position whose job listing called for "a virulent vehemence for vermin" (RAT) — tl;dr for sure. Scanned the clue, saw "vermin," wrote in RAT, the end.
• 65D: Deserving of a fire emoji, as a party (LIT) — I had HOT
• 64D: Essie competitor (OPI) — nail polish

• 25A: Starting point for a record-setting swim in 2023's "Nyad" (CUBA) — so presumably ... the starting point for a record-setting swim ... in real life? The movie was non-fiction, right? Weird clue.
• 56A: Pepper and O'Leary of classic rock: Abbr. (SGTS.) — [literal record scratch sound in my brain] Wait, hold up. I nearly blew right past this because SGT. Pepper is a gimme but ... O'Leary!? Did you ... did you really just gratuitously throw a Billy Joel reference in there!? SGT. O'Leary? The one who's walking the beat? At night he becomes a bartender? Trading in his Chevy for a Cadillac (-ac -ac -ac -ac -ac)? Wow. He's in one verse of the song, not even the title or anything. That is some deep Billy Joel commitment. Not sure who to blame for this one but I'm gonna guess ... Joel.

• 53D: Word in the title of Broadway's longest-running show (OPERA) — ladies and gentlemen, my sincere reaction to this answer was "Wow, Three-Penny OPERA ran that long? Longer than Cats or Les Miz or Phant- ... oh."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Big name in dry-erase markers / MON 3-20-23 / Peeper that makes no sound / What the fish said when it swam into a concrete wall, per an old joke / Quintessential Route 66 lodging / Vegan version of a classic brunch dish / Euphemism for an expletive with the / Citrusy cocktail garnish

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: DINE AND DASH (55A: Not pay for a meal at a restaurant ... or a hint to each half of 16-, 19-, 34- and 50-Across) — familiar foodstuffs (i.e. things you might DINE on) where the last word can also be a synonym for DASH:

Theme answers:

• BANANA SPLIT (16A: Ice cream dessert served in a boat)
• TOFU SCRAMBLE (19A: Vegan version of a classic brunch dish)
• LEMON PEEL (34A: Citrusy cocktail garnish)
• CINNAMON ROLL (50A: Sweet spiral pastry topped with icing)

Word of the Day: ESPO (27D: Bruins legend Phil, to fans) —

Philip Anthony Esposito OC (/ˌɛspəˈziːtoʊ/ ESP-ə-ZEE-toh, Italian: [eˈspɔːzito]; born February 20, 1942) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player, coach and executive, and current broadcaster for the Tampa Bay Lightning. A member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, he played 18 seasons in the National Hockey League for the Chicago Black Hawks, Boston Bruins, and New York Rangers, winning two Stanley Cups with Boston. // He is considered one of the greatest players of all time, and is the older brother of fellow Hall-of-Famer Tony Esposito, a goaltender. He became the first player to score more than 100 points in a season, with 126 in 1968-69, a feat he would later achieve a further 5 times, also becoming the first player to score 50 goals in a season 5 times in a row, including the then record of 76 goals in 1970-71 to go with the then record 152 points the same year. Altogether, he won the Art Ross Trophy as the leading point scorer five times, lead the league in goals six times, was voted the MVP by winning the Hart Trophy twice, and was named as a first team All-Star centre six times. (wikipedia)

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"Kinda ... clever? Yeah, I think that's kinda clever." That was my first reaction upon going back over the puzzle and discovering what the hell was going on with the theme. I don't know that alllll of those second words are really truly synonymous with DASH, but, you know, ballpark. And the fact that you can get so many (interesting) answers to follow this "food + 'dash' synonym" pattern ... I dunno, I think that's a pretty good hook. Monday puzzles have been on fire lately, relative to other days of the week. Simple, clever, clean. It's not easy to do, actually, but the Mondays have definitely been delivering the goods in March so far. By the way, happy first day of spring. Or is that tomorrow? I know new seasons always start on the 20th or 21st of whatever month seasons start in. Anyway, it's close, so ... happy spring, whether it's officially begun or not. Back to the question of DASH. If you DINE AND DASH, you definitely SPLIT (w/o paying the check, don't do this unless you are somehow also tipping generously, which would make the whole endeavor weirdly purposeless). I can see how "mad SCRAMBLE" and "mad DASH" are kinda the same, though "SCRAMBLE" really implies a level of disorganization that "DASH" does not (necessarily). You "PEEL out" more than you (simply) "PEEL," but yes, that means to depart quickly, okay. "ROLL" is maybe the weakest synonym of the bunch. It just means "go" or "leave," and has none of the urgency or implied speed that "DASH" does. But again, I can accept this as a loose grouping because the theme brings with it an entirely different grouping (the foods). If the entire theme were just "synonyms for DASH" I'd be lukewarm or worse on this thing. But the added element of the foods makes it special. You wouldn't really "DINE" on a LEMON PEEL, but again, the doubleness of the theme makes a certain amount of looseness tolerable. Good good.

GAS UP, READ UP, man the puzzle loves its UP answers. I noticed the UPs today more than I normally might have because, as usual, I solved the Monday puzzle Downs-only, and so saw both UP answers but only half of all answers, making the UP answers seem, uh, more dense than they really were. The grid is nice and clean, with no "yeesh, what?" moments whatsoever. Predictably, the NE and SW corners were the hardest from a Downs-only perspective, but I didn't get truly hung up with either. I had to abandon the NE corner at first, when DARLING (11D: "Honey" or "sugar" alternative) and APLENTY (12D: Galore) wouldn't come (I had only the "L" and the "E" in place, respectively); but once I worked out the center of the grid, I put MESS TENT in, and that gave me the letters I needed to see DARLING and APLENTY, no problem. The SW was easier, as TRACHEA came immediately (36D: Windpipe), and then REPARTEE was undeniable, and with the obvious RE- from what would eventually turn out to be REDIALS, I got TREE and EPONYMS, and once CINNAMON ROLL went in, REDIALS shortly followed. I had ENGULF before ENFOLD (35D: Surround completely), which was my one and only wrong answer and hangup, but with DINEAN- in place, it had to be DINE AND DASH, so out with ENGULF, in with ENFOLD, and then a short dash to the end. OBOISTS was easy to get from just the front end, F-WORD same, and that was that. 

Solving Downs-only spared me from being confused by some of the Acrosses, like EXPO (61A: Big name in dry-erase markers). That's probably the brand that is in my backpack *right now* and yet I can't say I've ever noticed the brand name ... [checks backpack] ... yup, here they are:

Weird how you can have something in front of your nose all the time and never actually *notice* it. I am grateful to have missed the corny fish joke ("DAM!") (40A: What the fish said when it swam into a concrete wall, per an old joke). When I looked just now to see what the answer to that clue was, I thought that answer was "I'M DOWN" and thought "... where's the joke? Somebody help the fish! He's down!" I kinda love that "DAM!" is right above "F-WORD," which is probably what the fish would actually say. But again, no joke there. Oh, forgot, I wrote in TERRE before MONDE (26D: World, in French). So, along with ENGULF, that's one more Downs-only mistake I made. TERRE is earth (and Earth), so ... close, but wrong. If I could change one thing about this grid, it would be to make it so ESPO and EXPO were not both in attendance. Which is to say, I would shoot ESPO into the sun (27D: Bruins legend Phil, to fans). It's the crosswordesiest thing in the grid (I know, I know, he's a legend, but I grow weary). And yet, with a tight, smart theme and an overwhelmingly polished grid, I can't be sincerely mad. Hope you also had a good (if brief time). See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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