Literally, "rumbling ghost" / THU 3-26-26 / It's found in a Nook / Mushroom sold in clusters / British actor and broadcaster Stephen / One inside the Trojan horse

Constructor: Alex Murphy

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: FLIP THE BIRD (58A: Make a rude gesture ... or a hint to answering 17-, 23-, 33- and 50-Across) — shaded squares in theme answers contain names of birds; those squares must be "flipped" in order to make sense of the relevant clues:

Theme answers:

• POLEGRETIST  (i.e. poltergeist) (17A: Literally, "rumbling ghost")
• FALLCRANEHES (i.e. fallen arches) (23A: Flat feet)
• GOLDETERNRIEVER (i.e. golden retriever) (33A: Pet renowned for its agreeableness)
• MARHAWKLBERG (i.e. Mark Wahlberg) (50A: "The Departed" actor)

Word of the Day: RENEE Rapp (63A: Actress Rapp of "Mean Girls") —

Reneé Jane Rapp (born January 10, 2000) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She gained recognition for starring as Regina George in the Broadway musical Mean Girls (2019–2020). She reprised the role in the 2024 musical film adaptation and also contributed to its soundtrack. Rapp has also acted in the HBO Max comedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021–2024). She released her debut EP, Everything to Everyone, in 2022, which was followed by her full-length studio album, Snow Angel, in 2023. Rapp's second album, Bite Me, was released on August 1, 2025. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think I dislike this puzzle as much as I do in part because I love birds. "It's a bird puzzle!" If someone had told me that before I'd started, well ... a. I'd be like "spoiler alert!" but also b. I'd think "sounds amazing." Just yesterday I (finally) set up my Merlin (bird identification) account and started an official bird "life list." I use the app all the time to identify birds by their song, but I had resisted going "full birder" and starting a damn life list; and yet ... apparently something kicks in when you are deep into middle age and so yesterday, I fully succumbed. First "life list" bird—the bird that inspired me to finally start the damned list—a common raven (actually uncommon in my neck of the woods this early in spring) (note: I did not see it in a neck or any other part of the woods, but on top of the tallest building on campus, yelling its heart out—I think I saw its friend fly away moments earlier). Anyway, one thing COVID shut-down gave me was birds (the other is cocktails—would also expect to love a cocktail-themed puzzle, tbh). So, yes, birds, more please. Only ... where to start? The birds give me grid gibberish, for starters. I get that the whole point is that if I "flip" them then I won't have gibberish anymore, only in the actual grid as I'm actually solving I do actually have gibberish, which is unpleasant both to solve and to look at. A great puzzle could overcome this aesthetic deficit, but ... such greatness was not forthcoming.

Look, I have been known to swear. I swear. I do. I try to keep it down, esp. outside the home, but ... well, I'm pretty sure I said "f*ck" in class just yesterday (I was talking about John Donne, whaddyagonna do, the guy likes to f*ck, or at least the narrator of "The Flea" does). So I'm not prudish when it comes to bad words. And yet a "rude gesture," esp. this rude gesture, as my revealer!? That was an unpleasant surprise. Imagine you're waiting on the revealer to see how it's going to make sense of the theme, and you finally get there, and the puzzle flips you off? (which is what I would call it, btw; FLIP THE BIRD always sounded cornily euphemistic to me). There was something really off-putting about it. But somewhere between my figuring out the "bird" part of the puzzle and the puzzle flipping me off, that's where things really GET UGLY, because the fill on this ... was probably actually more off-putting than the middle finger awaiting me at the end. Which is to say I was really primed to hate that revealer, because the puzzle had already been giving me garbage. 

It's been a while since I endured anything as awful as the triple-"E" combination of ECIG, EINK, and EBATES. When I (finally) got EBATES, it's possible that I actually said "f*ck you*, so maybe the puzzle was within its rights to flip me off, I don't know. I just know that ECIG is a wince (37D: Vape pen), but a regular wince, a normal wince; EINK is an abomination (36D: It's found in a Nook), and EBATES is smushed and rotting somewhere underneath EINK (47D: Some online discounts). If any two of those had appeared in the grid together, I'd've been furious. EINK alone is nearly unbearable. EINK plus ECIG plus EBATES? A plate full of vomit. I do not understand caring that little about the basic surface-level appearance of your grid. Throw in a bunch of short gunk and the awful ASEASY, as well as a weird fascination with social outcasts (LEPER, PARIAH) and a bizarre cluster of proper nouns, including the unnecessary proper nounification of FRY, and I'm left just shaking my head. And as I was shaking my head, as I finally got to the end, the puzzle decided to flip me the bird. At that point, the "rude gesture" felt on-brand. Disappointing, but in keeping w/ the grid's personality. (You're probably thinking, "you know, there are actually four E-words in this puzzle—you forgot about ‘EMAIL ME,’” to which I say "why are you like this? Just let me move on!")

There were a few sticking points today, but not many. I was saved by ENOKI (crosswordese can be your friend!) in the north after I gummed things up with MANIA instead of ANTIC (7D: Zany behavior). That answer goes through the shaded squares in the first themer, and at that point I had no idea why the letters in there were rearranged the way they were, so things got stickier than they might have otherwise. Beyond that, all my trouble was in the FRY / RENEE / EBATES part of the puzzle (i.e. the south). No idea who RENEE Rapp is (perhaps because I never saw any of the newer incarnations of Mean Girls and also because RENEE Rapp hasn't been on the planet that long—she's my daughter's age). Also, instinctively wrote in Stephen REA at 58D: British actor and broadcaster Stephen (FRY). Live by the crosswordese, die by the crosswordese, I guess. I also weirdly struggled with YEARS. The clue doesn't exactly put you in regular-old earth time (66A: Solar revolutions). I was looking for something more ... space-y. More technical. Similar struggle with ARTERY. Normal enough word, just wasn't coming to me quickly from the clue (49D: Important route). Probably the worst moment of the puzzle, which ended up being a false alarm, was when I wrote in "MOI?" for 54A: Cry from Miss Piggy while simultaneously (soft-) shouting "Noooooooo!" because "MOI" had already been used earlier in a clue (26D: "Moi! Never!"). Turns out it's not "MOI?," it's "OUI," a "cry" I do not associate with Miss Piggy at all. 


Bullets:

• 43A: One inside the Trojan horse (SPARTAN) — I teach the Aeneid every semester. The entirety of Book II is about the Trojan horse and the fall of Troy. And yet I had No Idea what this answer was supposed to be until the crosses made it undeniable. If Virgil mentions Sparta by name even once, I don't remember it. No one would ever say there are SPARTANs in the horse. "Beware Spartans bearing gifts"? No. Menelaus is in there, I think, and he's a SPARTAN king, so the clue isn't technically wrong, but it is wildly misleading. I'm not sure about the full cast of Greeks in the horse. I don't know that they are ever all named. But I know that they are not defined by their SPARTAN-ness, but by their general Greek-ness (the Trojan War involved the whole of Greece, not just Sparta). Hell, Odysseus is in that damned horse, and he's famously from Ithaka, not Sparta. You could've just said [Menelaus, for one]. That would've been accurate, and it would've made sense in context. 
• 56D: Billy who had a #1 hit with "Mony Mony" (IDOL) — I know this guy and this song well, but for some reason initially called him Billy IDLE. Surely there's the germ of a puzzle theme idea here. ["White Wedding" singer between gigs?]?

• 8D: Dish that's often fermented before eating (POI) — three letters so I just took a guess and got it right. Crosswordese, back to the rescue!!! And it crosses ENOKI! (15A: Mushroom sold in clusters). A real crosswordese feast up there. 
• 42A: Bottle Caps flavor (COLA) — the one big smiley face moment, for me. I have loved Bottle Caps since I was little. They used to come in these little green paper pouches with this freaky looking bottle cap creature on the cover, and I would rip the pouch open and pour out the Bottle Caps and then organize them by flavor and eat them in reverse hierarchy; that is, I'd eat the fruity ones first, as they were just OK (cherry, then orange, then grape) and then I'd get to the good stuff, the top-tier caps: COLA and root beer. If I were a dragon I would sleep atop not a pile of treasure, but a pile of COLA and root beer Bottle Caps. And good luck to any Hobbit who tried to get close.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. thanks to everyone who wished my wife safe travels back from NZ. Despite mayhem in NYC (TSA shortages, I.C.E. presence, airport-closing crash at LGA), she made it through JFK and back here to central NY without a hitch.  

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"It was news to me," in online shorthand / FRI 10-25-24 / Another name for C## / Dog's post-surgery wear, familiarly / Timesaver for a breakfast chef / Nickname for an early 2000s governor of California / Flawless display of technique / Mount Rushmore's makeup / Closest confidant, informally / Misleading cognate, like the German "Gift" which actually means "poison" / Male protocol popularized by "How I Met Your Mother"

Constructor: Alex Murphy

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: piragua (46A: Main ingredient of the Puerto Rican dessert piragua) —

A piragua Spanish pronunciation: [piˈɾa.ɣwa] is a Puerto Rican shaved ice dessert, shaped like a cone, consisting of shaved ice and covered with fruit-flavored syrup. Piraguas are sold by vendors, known as piragüeros, from small, traditionally brightly-colored pushcarts offering a variety of flavors. Besides Puerto Rico, piraguas can be found in mainland areas of the United States with large Puerto Rican communities, such as New York and Central Florida.

• • •

Probably the biggest reaction this puzzle got out of me was when I literally laughed out loud at the clue on TIL (37A: "It was news to me," in online shorthand), not because the clue is particularly funny, but because I thought "wow, that is going to be news to a sizable segment of the solving population." It's a slightly cruel way to clue what is normally an ordinary (if quaint) and forgettable contraction. Well, "cruel" if you are not extremely online. Luckily, I'm at least moderately online, and so I've known TIL ("Today I Learned...") for years. And maybe I've completely misjudged the breadth of its familiarity, but it *feels* like an abbr. that will resonate with younger (and here I mean, under 60*) people far more than older people. I don't mind online initialisms in my puzzle, but it's always frustrating to encounter an initialism you've never heard of, and then, even after you've worked it out from crosses, have no idea what the initials stand for. I remember the first time I saw TIL in a tweet or whatever, and having no clue what I was looking at. IDK ("I don't know") and IRL ("In real life") are reasonably intuitive (if you've got some amount of context from the clue). But TIL, yeesh. IDK and IRL have the virtue of being truly original answers (i.e. you can't clue them any other way), whereas TIL isn't new at all—the clue just dresses it up in new clothes. To some, those "clothes" will be totally inscrutable, and if you were one of those "some," well, just know I was thinking about you while I was solving. And if you didn't know TIL, just think: you can go on social media and post this perfect post: "TIL what TIL means." Or just send it in an email to your BESTIE, if that's easier.

Speaking of BESTIE, that was my first answer today. Got it off the "T" in INT, which was wrong, but just right enough (i.e. 1/3 right) to get me going (ATT = attempt, as in "attempted pass"; a QB's completion rate is "completed passes / ATTs"). BESTIE to LOIS to DREAM, and then I saw RIBALD, which changed INT to ATT, and off I went. The middle of this puzzle is nice, but it came together awfully easily. The front ends of those long Downs are not hard to pick up, and with the first few letters in place, both TEN OUT OF TEN and OVERSELLING were cinches. I had ... not trouble, but hesitation on FALSE FRIEND (17D: Misleading cognate, like the German "Gift" which actually means "poison"), as I know the term as FALSE COGNATE ... but then I learned just now (TIL!) that these are distinct terms:

False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For example, the English word dog and the Mbabaram word dog have exactly the same meaning and very similar pronunciations, but by complete coincidence. [...] The term "false cognate" is sometimes misused to refer to false friends, but the two phenomena are distinct. False friends occur when two words in different languages or dialects look similar, but have different meanings. While some false friends are also false cognates, many are genuine cognates (see False friends § Causes). For example, English pretend and French prétendre are false friends, but not false cognates, as they have the same origin. (wikipedia)

So there you go. I thought it was FRIEND, but I wasn't sure, but then crosses confirmed it, ta da. The triple stack across the middle of the grid today is really lovely. It's weird that SHAME is attached to the cone (34A: Dog's post-surgery wear, familiarly). I guess the idea is that it must be humiliating for the dog to have to suffer the distinctly uncanine indignity of wearing such a thing. It's even worse on a cat, tbh. Our cats have so far avoided cone-dom, though the dogs both had injuries of one kind or another that necessitated preventing them from gnawing, licking, etc. So sad, so adorable. You can make up all kinds of "cone" nicknames for your poor animal. Like "CONE-an, the Barbarian" or "Mrs Conington" etc. May as well have fun with it (note: your animal will not see the humor).

[Couldn't find a cone pic, so here's a cast pic (Gabby, 2008-2020)]

The SW corner was the hardest part of the grid for me, and also the least pleasant. Nothing like BROCODE to put me off my lunch (luckily, it's 5am and therefore not lunch time). Feels like the puzzle is overly fond of How I Met Your Mother, possibly as some kind of payback for having Will Shortz on the show once. Anyway, the very idea of a BROCODE is a hard pass for me (however hilarious it was on the show itself—I wouldn't know). The other off-putting thing down here was CREPE MIX (34D: Timesaver for a breakfast chef). I want to say "is that a thing?" but I suppose it is. I've just never seen or heard of it or seen anyone use it etc. so the only thing I'm thinking when I see CREPE is PAN. A CREPE PAN is very much a thing. A familiar thing that I have seen. I've never made crêpes, and when my mom made them she didn't use a mix (I don't think), so ... shrug. No idea about the Mozart opera (47D: "La Clemenza di ___" (Mozart opera) (TITO)), and no idea what was supposed to follow SEX at 56A: What might be included in an act of congress (SEX TOY). Ah, the old "congress" pun; an oldie but ... well, an oldie, for sure. Luckily, Lily TOMLIN was a gimme (god bless her), and she gave me the leverage I needed to pry that corner open.

D NATURAL is a funny one if you know nothing about music because you could easily find yourself wondering what the hell the clue has to do with DNA (that was certainly where I thought the answer was going before I looked at the clue, and even for a second or two afterwards, frankly) (52A: Another name for C##). C sharp sharp = D.  Sharp the sharp and you're back at the natural. That SE corner was generally easy, though I definitely misspelled KRONER at my first pass (KRONOR!) (57A: Scandinavian capital) ("capital" as in money, another clue misdirection oldie). Hey wait, I didn't misspell it! KRONOR is the plural of "krona," the basic monetary unit of Sweden (and Iceland). What is KRONER, then? ... [looks it up] ... Aw jeez, what are you doing, Scandinavia? Why do Denmark and Norway spell it "krone / kroner"? That seems perverse. You all should get on the same page, because AS IT IS, it's unnecessarily confusing.

Bullets:

• 22A: Broadway's Salonga (LEA) — misspelled it LIA, the only trouble I had in that NE corner. Somehow, though, I couldn't drop down easily from that corner, as neither DRAMEDY (26D: It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry) nor PLAZA (30D: Square) computed at first. Brutally vague clue on PLAZA. This is my preferred PLAZA clue at the moment:

• 7D: Suck up (ABSORB) — boo. You mean "Soak up." This is an awkward attempt at misdirection. Again I say, boo.
• 26A: Where the lions sleep tonight, presumably (DENS) — boo. Save this clue for singular DEN, so you can at least get the song phrasing right. It's "the lion sleeps tonight," not the "lions sleep tonight." Again I say, boo.

• 36A: Play place (ARENA) — I wanted not to like this, as I've never seen a play in an ARENA, but then I realized "play" is just a general term, not a theatrical performance. For instance, people "play" football in an ARENA. So it's fine.
• 7D: Nickname for an early 2000s governor of California (ARNIE) — as in Arnold, as in Schwarzenegger. Slightly hilarious at the time, but the dude looks positively presidential now.
• 41D: Like firstborn children vis-à-vis second-born children, statistically (TALLER) — I'm 6'3" and my sister is a mere 5'7", so this one checks out.

Thanks for reading. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*I'll be 55 in November—just trying to extend my "youth" a few more years, please indulge  

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