Sport similar to pétanque / FRI 8-21-26 / Leader in a robe called a kasaya / Jazz musician Jamal / Coupling rings? / Losing control emotionally, in slang / First filmmaker to receive the Order of Culture in Japan / One-named pop star with Monkey Puzzle Records / ___ Crosley, author of 2008's "I Was Told There'd Be Cake"

Constructor: Adryel W. Robles Ojeda

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: AHMAD Jamal (33D: Jazz musician Jamal) —

Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones; July 2, 1930 – April 16, 2023) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For six decades, he was one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. He was a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master and won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy for his contributions to music history. [...] Trained in both traditional jazz ("American classical music", as he preferred to call it) and European classical style, Jamal was praised as one of the greatest jazz innovators over the course of his exceptionally long career. Following bebop greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Jamal entered the world of jazz at a time when speed and virtuosic improvisation were central to the success of jazz musicians as artists. Jamal, however, took steps in the direction of a new movement, later coined "cool jazz"—an effort to move jazz in the direction of classical music. He emphasized space between notes in his musical compositions and interpretations instead of focusing on the fast-paced bebop style. // Because of this style, Jamal was "often dismissed by jazz writers as no more than a cocktail pianist, a player so given to fluff that his work shouldn't be considered seriously in any artistic sense".^[48] Stanley Crouch, author of Considering Genius, offered a very different reaction to Jamal's music, claiming that, like the highly influential Thelonious Monk, Jamal was a true innovator of the jazz tradition and is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Charlie Parker. (wikipedia)

• • •

There were several delightful parts of this puzzle, but the puzzle really does bury you in names, and that can begin to feel ... wearisome. I am a movie lover and (perhaps excessive) movie watcher—finished two just yesterday: the camp classic Desert Fury (1947) (a rewatch), and a short documentary about Japan's Inland Sea called, fittingly, The Inland Sea (1991). So getting to see both Akira KUROSAWA (artist, titan) and RYAN COOGLER in the same puzzle made me happy. But that's the thing about names. They hit or they miss, and if they miss, you have no way to infer them, no access to them. They feel exclusionary. Doesn't mean there shouldn't be names in puzzles. Just means you should use them somewhat sparingly. Today, we start with three names one on top of the other (EMILE over LAMELO over SIA), which then run into something called OOH AAH POINT (?!). From there, AHMAD Jamal sits right around the corner. RYAN COOGLER comes crashing through the middle, SLOANE and TAO are holding hands over there in the NE, and then KUROSAWA runs down to the bottom of the grid to hang out alongside Julio CESAR Chávez. The SW corner is the only area that manages to stay out of the Name Game. Every other corner's juggling multiple names. I knew ... most of them? But forgot if it was LAMELL or LAMELO, and stalled on AHMAD Jamal—a downstream effect of having (embarrassingly) misspelled ELYSÉES (as ELYSSÉS, which meant that what should've been THEATER GEEK started T-S, and an "H" could not plausibly go between an initial "T" and an "S" and soooooo ... no AHMAD (for a while)). For me, the names became a distraction. I literally said "again?" when I got up into the SLOANE / TAO part. I thought the long answers were pretty solid on this one, with a nice clean stack through the middle and a few other decent longer answers scattered about (WHERE IT'S AT and GETS THE AX were probably my favorite). But the names are an ISSUE. Felt like an overload.

I think I was supposed to find OOH AAH POINT and "SO DARN CUTE" charming, but sadly I didn't. The first seems exceedingly trivial (how would I know about this goofy name?) and the latter ... is fine, I guess, but I liked it better when I had it as SO DAMN CUTE (really gotta check your crosses! HEMS looked very right, until I looked at the actual clue: 52D: Possessive pronoun (HERS). And that wasn't the only mistake I made, by a long shot. We already covered the ELYSÉES misspelling. Then there was the double-wrong disaster to open the puzzle. I wrote in EMIR / REBUS for 1A: Leader in a robe called a kasaya / 4D: Puzzle) (LAMA / ADDLE). Genius! I thought Colo.'s neighbor was NEV (there's a whole damn state between Colo. and NEV! My mom and sister live in Colo., I should know this, but I was operating on instinct). No other mistakes today, though there were a few struggles. Really couldn't make sense of 40D: One might leave you unprotected at night (BED HOG). If you hog the blankets you leave someone "unprotected." A BED HOG just takes over the damn bed, spacewise. Also, the "One" in that clue is ambiguous—it suggests object, not human being, which is what confused me most. 

Bullets:

• 15A: Coupling rings? (BOOTY CALLS) — cute clue, but this expression hasn't been fresh in a good while. So weird (i.e. typical) that the NYTXW only started including BOOTYCALL(S) in the 2020s. The expression was coined in 1993 and became popular enough to be the subject (and title) of a whole-ass movie by 1997. Then, time passed. A lot of time. 24 years! And then it debuted in the NYTXW (2021). And we've had four more appearances since. That's ... quite a time lag. Maybe the term is still current, I have no idea. People mostly text now, though, right? BOOTY CALLS are not to be confused with BUTT DIALS (NYTXW debut: 2013 (as BUTTDIALED)).

[yikes—the '90s were ... something]

• 27A: One-named pop star with Monkey Puzzle Records (SIA) — is "Monkey Puzzle Records" supposed to help? That adds no pertinent information. If you don't know SIA, you damn sure don't know Monkey Puzzle Records. Maybe the idea is that we like puzzles so we'll like knowing this trivia? :/ Also, adding "protocol" to 45A: Focus of a concussion protocol was just confusing. I wanted something more technical, more specifically sportsy, but I just ended up back at the focus of every concussion: the HEAD. Overwritten clue for a basic answer.
• 7D: Sport similar to pétanque (BOCCE) — "Pétanque" sounds like a card game. It is not. You throw balls. At other balls. It's very French.

• 31D: Metal tube in a nuclear reactor (FUEL ROD) — good answer, made better for reminding me of the time Homer didn't win Employee of the Week at the nuclear power plant. 

Also (speaking of The Simpsons), a FUEL ROD implies the existence of a Fuel Todd.  

That's all for today. See you next time. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Initials often seen next to THC / TUE 4-7-26 / Martial art whose name means "way of the sword" / Toy cipher ring / Famous figure known for off-the-cuff performances? / So-called "Land of a Million Elephants" / Resort with a signature piña colada, perhaps / Feints, in hockey

Constructor: Adryel W. Robles Ojeda

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BALL AND CHAIN (58A: Old-time restraint for a prisoner ... or what can go after the respective halves of 18-, 26-, 35- and 49-Across) — two-word answers where the first word can precede "ball" in a familiar phrase and the second word can precede "chain":

Theme answers:

• EXERCISE BIKE (18A: It has wheels but doesn't go anywhere)
• FAST FOOD (26A: Combo meal, usually)
• BEACH HOTEL (35A: Resort with a signature piña colada, perhaps)
• BLACK KEY (49A: Sharp or flat location on a piano, usually)

Word of the Day: Marie CLAIRE (62A: Marie___, women's magazine) —

Marie Claire (French: [maʁi klɛːʁ]; stylised in all lowercase), is a French monthly women's fashion magazine. It has been published in France since 1937 and targets upper-income, educated women aged 25 to 49. Sister editions are published for children's fashion, DIY, food, interior design, runway collections, and wellness, alongside many foreign editions of the magazine. // Marie Claire is a French women's fashion magazine founded in 1937 by Jean Prouvost. [...] The U.S. edition of the magazine was started by the Hearst Corporation, based in New York City, in 1994. Hearst has branch offices in France, Italy (where the company also published Marie Claire Italia), and several locations in the United States including Detroit, the West Coast, New England, the Midwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast. The Esquire Network reality television series Running In Heels follows three interns working in the NYC office of the magazine. [...] Through its digital edition, Marie Claire reported a reach of up to 15 million visitors per month [in 2022]. (wikipedia)

• • •

A very old-fashioned theme type. With this type of puzzle, I always think "it must have been difficult to come up with a themer set that worked conceptually *and* fit symmetrically." But my reaction to the revealer is usually "oh ... ok." Like, it's an after-the-fact revelation that is kinda architecturally interesting, but the theme does nothing to make the solve itself very interesting, and the theme phrases, while appropriate for the theme, are usually not, themselves, very interesting. So what you get, at best, is something pretty workmanlike and bland. Since I've seen this theme type a bunch over the years, there's very little that feels fresh or original about the theme, beyond the specific revealer. For Its Type, I think this is a fine puzzle. This is just not a type of puzzle that I enjoy. There's just not enough playfulness or cleverness involved. And today's grid, while fine, had very little to offer in the way of high points outside (or even inside) the theme. In fact, BALL AND CHAIN seems like the most interesting answer in the grid by far. 

I also like UMBRAGE—it's just a great word, really sounds like what it is—and the KEVLAR / KENDO crossing is pretty nice as well. It's a real "K" huddle there, with KOALA and KEY (from BLACK KEY) also getting in on the akt. I also enjoyed the clue on HOUDINI (43D: Famous figure known for off-the-cuff performances?) (the "cuff' here = handcuff(s)). There were a few longer answers that I didn't really care for. Prepositional phrases always seem kind of awkward and lost in the grid, and the longer they get, the more they stand out, so BY A NOSE wasn't my favorite. As for RAN A TAB ... now that I think of it, it's much more standalone-worthy than EAT A SANDWICH, but it def gives off EAT A SANDWICH vibes. I think that answer is forgiven, but TAKE AN "L" really ... isn't. We see TAKE THE "L" with reasonable frequency (since 2020) because it's a real phrase that people use, whereas TAKE AN "L" ... sigh, I see that it's out there. Wiktionary's got it as a "variant" of TAKE THE "L." The phrase has appeared in the NYTXW exactly once before (Sep. 21, 2022) and I said all the same things about it then, so I must really mean them. The "AN" version just grates in my ear. Feels weak, lesser. But like I said, it's out there. Valid. Technically. But not pretty. [for the record TAKE (or TOOK, or TAKES) THE L has six NYTXW appearances to date] [TAKE THE "L" was debuted by Brendan Emmett Quigley, who made the puzzle the puzzle that prompted me to coin the term NATICK] [He's a talented, prolific, veteran constructor who releases crossword puzzles regularly at his website, always fun] 

Bullets:

• 1A: Red, white and blue land: Abbr. (AMER.) — odd clue and ugly abbr. Not a great way to kick off your puzzle.
• 11A: Initials often seen next to THC (CBD) — I can never remember what CBD stands for because it stand for "cannabidiol"—one word, not three, and a word I'm never ever going to use unless I'm writing about how I don't know what CBD stands for.
• 37D: 3 to 1 are good ones (ODDS) — this really seems context-dependent. "What are the ODDS this expired mayonnaise is OK to eat?" "3 to 1!" "Umm ... pass."
• 18A: It has wheels but doesn't go anywhere (EXERCISE BIKE) — this makes me think of Maus, a comic I teach regularly. In that book, Art's father Vladek recounts the events of his life in Poland in the run-up to WWII, hiding from and eventually being captured by the Nazis. Vlad tells much of the story while riding an EXERCISE BIKE. It becomes this kind of recurring visual metaphor—a stationary bike: lots of effort, getting nowhere. No escape. Sorry to be a downer, but it's a beautiful, important book, and I think about it a lot.

[Richieu is the the older brother Art never knew]

• 46A: Martial art whose name means "way of the sword" (KENDO) — KENDO will always remind me of Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono, which features a long and dramatic KENDO match between the protagonists, who are partners on the L.A. police force. I'm quite sure I've shown this clip before, but since it's relevant again, I'll play it again.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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