Pink Nintendo character from Planet Popstar / MON 6-2-25 / Rule-making grp. for a residential community / Actual shape of the Crab Nebula, disappointingly / Preferring platonic relationships, informally / Greek sorceress who took the phrase "men are pigs" literally / Actor Russell whose surname sounds like a bird / Grandma, in Glasgow

Constructor: Anthony V. Grubb

Relative difficulty: Challenging (when solved Downs-only)

THEME: CLOTHES LINE (64A: Where duds are draped to dry ... or a literal description of 18-, 28- and 49-Across) — colloquial expressions ("lines") that contain articles of clothing:

Theme answers:

• "EAT MY SHORTS!" (18A: "Go fly a kite!")
• "PUT A SOCK IN IT!" (28A: "Pipe down!")
• "SUIT YOURSELF!" (49A: "No skin off my nose!")

Word of the Day: KIRBY (31D: Pink Nintendo character from Planet Popstar) —

Kirby (Japanese: カービィ, Hepburn: Kābī, Japanese pronunciation: [kaːbiː]) is the titular character and protagonist of the Kirby series of video games developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. He first appeared in Kirby's Dream Land (1992), a platform game for the Game Boy. Since then, Kirby has appeared in over 50 games, ranging from action platformers to puzzle, racing, and pinball, and has been featured as a playable character in every installment of the Super Smash Bros. series (1999–present). He has also starred in his own anime and manga series. Since 1999, he has been voiced by Makiko Ohmoto.

Kirby's signature skill is his ability to inhale objects or creatures and spit them out as projectiles, as well as the ability to suck in air to float over obstacles. His Copy Ability grants him the power to adopt the abilities of the creatures he inhales, while also wearing various costumes or transforming his shape. He uses these abilities to rescue various lands, such as his homeworld Planet Popstar, from evil forces and antagonists, such as Dark Matter or Nightmare. On these adventures, he often crosses paths with his rivals, King Dedede and Meta Knight. In virtually all of his appearances, Kirby is depicted as a cheerful, innocent, and food-loving character.

Kirby has been regarded as one of the most iconic video game characters of all time, as well as one of the cutest and most lovable. He has achieved high popularity with gamers in Japan. He has also been praised for being one of the most versatile characters, due to starring in a large catalogue of games that cuts across a variety of video game genres. (wikipedia)

• • •

I like this theme, but the cluing on this one bordered on nauseating at times, and there is one decision that I do not understand and will never understand; namely, why in the world do you go with ANNUM when ANNUL is available? When presented with a choice like this, You Should Take The Regular-Ass English Word Every Time. ANNUM? You *chose* ANNUM when ANNUL would've worked perfectly well in both directions!?!? Who does this? I'm sure none of you who solved this puzzle the regular way (i.e. looking at Across and Downs clues) noticed or cared, but let me tell you, solving Downs-only, you notice. If I've got ANNU-, an "L" is going in that final spot, and it's especially going in that final spot when it works in the Down (45D: Snacks (on) (MUNCHES)). Yes, OK, LUNCHES isn't quite the same as "Snacks" but it is sure as hell ballpark—horseshoes & hand grenades and all that. There was not one second where I questioned ANNUL / LUNCHES. It's not that big a deal to make a mistake (or more than one mistake) when solving Downs-only, but I really resent that the mistake came on a word that shouldn't have been in the grid in the first place. Objectively, ANNUL / LUNCHES is better than ANNUM (!?!?!) / MUNCHES. In any puzzle, in any situation, this is true. I can see liking MUNCHES better than LUNCHES, but ANNUM (Latin!) is not an answer you use unless you *have to*, and you sure as hell don't have to here. Blargh. An awful decision on everyone's part. 

Also awful was some of this cluing. So, so try-hard. "Per M.I.T."?? What the hell does that mean? What an incredibly stupid and meaningless and awkwardly worded way to clue OREOS (71A: It's nearly impossible to split their creme equally, per M.I.T.). "Nearly impossible"? Is it impossible or isn't it? I'm gonna say that if you get down to the atomic level, it's absolutely impossible, but What The Hell Are We Even Talking About Here? Who is trying to split the "creme" (ugly word)? You don't split the creme. You twist OREOS apart, OK, but inevitably the creme goes mostly one way, and that's how it is and who cares? M.I.T.? Also, why is it disappointing that the "Crab Nebula" is OVAL and how in the world am I supposed to get from "not Crab-shaped" to OVAL, specifically? (37D: Actual shape of the Crab Nebula, disappointingly). There's nothing At All that says "OVAL" in that clue. Also also, a crab's body is kind of OVAL, isn't it? I guess the cluing is trying to be whimsical, but it just read as awkward and flailing to me. The Greek sorceress CIRCE did not take the phrase "men are pigs" literally (11D: Greek sorceress who took the phrase "men are pigs" literally). She turned some men (Ulysses's / Odysseus's men) into pigs. That is different. That clue really should have a "?" on it to signify its wackiness and the liberty it's taking with phrasing. OK I think I'm through with the super-irritating parts of this puzzle.

It was fun to see the theme come into view—even to see individual theme answers come into view. Hard not to be amused by seeing "EAT MY SHORTS!" come into view, and "PUT A SOCK IN IT!" is equally vivid, vibrant, and unexpected. SUIT YOURSELF was the hardest to put together, largely because the whole bottom half of the puzzle was harder to put together than the top half, but eventually the "clothes" thing actually helped me get to SUIT etc. And still the revealer came as a surprise—a neat little pun on "line." As I said, the difficulty shot way up for me once I hit the equator of this puzzle, due almost entirely to not knowing what the **** a KIRBY is (see "Word of the Day," above). Apparently the roster of characters in the Greater Nintendo Universe is inexhaustible and it's my sad fate to continue finding this out, in puzzle after puzzle, ad infinitum, like Sideshow Bob, just stepping on rakes, for the rest of my solving life. 

KIRBY to F-BOMB (insane "word" to parse when you can't see the clue) to SMUG really did me in for a while. Even with F-O-B it took me way too long to think of F-BOMB ... so long that I thought one of those crosses must be wrong. I also really struggled to get SMUG ("That's pretty ironic, Rex, don't you think?!"—oh shut up) (42D: High-and-mighty). The clue is probably fine, but I think of SMUG as way lower-key than "high and mighty," which sounds more ... yeah, overt, ostentatious ... something. No good reason for not getting SMUG sooner. Other things slowed me down as well, though nothing so bad as that middle section. No idea what the Scots call their grandmas ... but it turns out it's exactly what the English call their grandmas, i.e. NAN. Nearly wrote in NAE because of its Scottish specificity, but then why would the word for "grandma" be the same word for "no" or "not"? Makes nae sense. Really loved the CROWE / HAWKE crossing in the SW. It was especially fun because I couldn't see the clue for HAWKE, but as soon as I pieced it together, I saw instantly what the puzzle was doing there, and knew the clue for HAWKE would be the same (but for one word) as that for CROWE (54D: Actor Russell whose surname sounds like a bird). First time I can recall intuiting an identiclue. Usually the puzzle forces those on me in unwanted ways, but today ... well, the identicluing was perfect. 

Last few things:

• 3D: Emotionally charged, as an issue (HOT BUTTON) — great phrase, and one I can't believe I got right on the first guess, no crosses in place. I was not so lucky with the symmetrical long phrase, CAMERA SHY, which involved a struggle that's much more typical for long answers in a Downs-only solving situation (36D: Out of the picture, maybe?)
• 5D: Rule-making grp. for a residential community (HOA) — LOL I was just thinking about Home Owners Associations yesterday (and not in a good way—never in a good way). Sometimes I think about / marvel at the fact that I live in a neighborhood with people who are both very like and Very Unlike me, and yet we all seem to get along just fine. This is likely because there is *no* Home Owners Association, so the ultra-conformists among us (perfect green lawns, no dandelions) can't annoy the rest of us with aesthetic overreach. Just as us ultra-liberal types can't make the others take down their tacky right-wing signage. It's win-win! (seriously, I genuinely like my neighbors, all of them)
• 10D: Preferring platonic relationships, informally (ARO) — I'll bet ARO people never figured they'd be overrepresented, anywhere, but man ARO is Number 1 with a bullet where queer identities are concerned. Look at this ARO timeline!:

ARO was [Nigerian native] and [Orinoco tributary] back in the day, then Shortz came along and he was all "no more three-letter obscurities!" and POOF (39A: [Gone ... like magic!]), ARO disappeared. It tried to come back once in 2015 as [Michael Sheen's character in "Twilight"], but that didn't take. But then, several years later, "Aromantic" (ARO) became an increasingly widely recognized identity and bam, here we are: CrossWorld is suddenly in an ARO boom time!

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Japanese art of flower arranging / MON 6-24-24 / Broody subculture / Lively get-togethers / Figurative setting for a shady deal / Take a leap of faith, quite literally / Eruption from a geyser / Computer replication of real-world events, for short / ___ pot, container for rinsing nasal passages

Constructor: Anthony V. Grubb

Relative difficulty: Medium (as a Downs-only solve)

THEME: BODYBUILDING (52A: Weightlifter's pursuit ... or a hint to both halves of the answers to the starred clues) — familiar compound words where first part of the word is a BODY part and the second part is a type of BUILDING (that one might live in ... or part of such a building ... (?)):

Theme answers:

• HEAD/QUARTERS (20A: *Base of operations)
• SHIN/DIGS (31A: *Lively get-togethers)
• KNEE/PAD (38A: *One of a pair that a skater might wear)
• BACK/ROOM (47A: *Figurative setting for a shady deal)

Word of the Day: "The Italian Job" (49D: The "jobs" in "The Italian Job," e.g.) —

The Italian Job is a 1969 British comedy caper film written by Troy Kennedy Martin, produced by Michael Deeley, directed by Peter Collinson, and starring Michael Caine. The film's plot centres on Cockney criminal Charlie Croker, recently released from prison, who forms a gang for the job of stealing a cache of gold bullion being transported through the city of Turin, Italy, in an armoured security truck. [...] The popularity of The Italian Job led to several parodies and allusions in other films and productions, including the 2005 episode of The Simpsons titled "The Italian Bob", and a re-enactment of the Mini Cooper car-chase in the MacGyver episode "Thief of Budapest". The film itself was later given a video game adaptation in 2001, before receiving a remake in 2003. A charity event titled The Italian Job, founded in 1990 and held annually, was inspired by the film; as of 2020, it had raised nearly £3,000,000. Marking the 50th anniversary of the film in June 2019, stunt drivers in red, white and blue Coopers recreated parts of the film's car-chase around Turin at the grounds of Mini's Oxford factory. (wikipedia)

• • •

Real journey with this one. Went from not liking the theme, to liking it, to liking it somewhat less after I looked at all the themers more closely. See, at first I thought the themers were linked only by their *first* parts. I could see the body parts pretty early on, but was not at all aware that the back ends of the answers had anything in common. And since I don't read the Across clues on Mondays, I never figured that part out until after the puzzle was done. I finished up thinking that there was some kind of Frankenstein's monster thing going on. Like, the puzzle was "building" a "body" (or ... a good portion of one, anyway) with the front ends of the themers. The body parts alone seemed like a pretty weak unifying factor, so I wasn't that happy. Then I read the revealer clue and saw the way the back halves of the answers also formed a thematic unit, and that made things much better. "Oh, nice," I thought. But then I sat with those back halves for a bit and realized "Nah ... they're not really 'buildings' at all." They're words for places you might live, but QUARTERS or DIGS or PAD might just as well describe an apartment as well as a free-standing structure, and ROOM, yeesh, that's not a "building" at all. It's a building part. And (in most buildings) a small part at that. Familiar words reimagined as places that might house body parts—that's the best I can describe the theme (QUARTERS for your HEAD, a ROOM for your BACK, etc.). "BUILDING" still feels like a miss. It's close, but off. So the theme ends up being kind of a wash for me. There's good ambition here, and the second halves of the answers are definitely doing ... something ... but BUILDING doesn't quite get at it. My only other complaint, themewise, is a small one. I didn't like KNEEPAD because in all the other theme answers, the body part is masked. That is, HEADQUARTERS has nothing to do with an actual human head, SHINDIGS do not relate to your tibia, etc. HEAD, SHIN, BACK, all have different meanings in their respective answers. But the "knee" in KNEEPAD is just a knee. No new direction for KNEE, no repurposing, no metaphors. Just ... a KNEE. So it's a sad outlier, that answer. Far less elegant than its counterparts. 

There was one bad sticking point today in my Downs-only adventure, as neither BETA nor SKYDIVE would go down easy. BETA I don't quite get. I mean, yes, second letter of Greek alphabet, cool, got it, but I didn't know I was looking at capital and lowercase Greek letters. I thought I was looking at English and Greek letters. Thus, hard for me. Worse, though, was SKYDIVE, since the clue is, frankly, terrible. Or, I should say, literally terrible, in that it misuses "literally" (4D: Take a leap of faith, quite literally). Sorry, now that I think about it, it's not "literally" that's bugging me so much as "faith" ... and then the fact that "literally" appears to be referring to the "faith" part. There's no "faith" involved in a SKYDIVE. There's physics. You jump, you fall, your parachute opens, ta da. I guess you have "faith" that your parachute will open (?) but that's not "faith" any more than it takes "faith" to step onto a balcony or drive your car. Sure, theoretically, the balcony might collapse or the brakes might not work, but ugh, "faith," no. When you put "faith" in the clue and then say "literally," I think "OK, cool, this is related to religion somehow ... like a conversion or something? Some kind of rite where you jump ... for Jesus?" So even when I got DIVE I was like "... GODDIVE?" Also did not like the "sedan" part of the UBER clue (7D: Sedan summoned with a smartphone, say). I know you really really wanted your alliteration. But "sedan" is so specific that I figured the answer had to be a kind of car, a make or type of "sedan." I think I had E-CAR in there at some point (a term I would never have considered if crosswords hadn't taught it to me (stunned to learn that it's been in the puzzle just once, over a decade ago (?!)). 

Oh, I forgot, there was one other Downs-only trouble spot. It's kinda gross so I think my brain suppressed it there for a moment. I did not know the answer for 31D: Eruption from a geyser. I was worried it was maybe SPUME (!?!?), a word I find kind of repellent. I knew that geysers "spew" ... water? ... into the air. So maybe that was causing some aural confusion. Anyway, I wrote in SPUME but then took out the "U" when KNEEPAD became obvious. But this gave me SPE- ... and once BACKROOM became undeniable, that "geyser" answer became SPE-M. And I ... uh ... well ... things got uncomfortable there for a bit (esp. since an "R" would've given me ERRS at 44A, which is about as over-the-plate as crossword answers come). So there was a lot of looking at clue, answer, clue, answer, wondering what was wrong. Then I realized that STEAM would take me from APOP (a valid answer; 96 NYTXW appearances in the Modern Era) to ATOP (another valid answer; 191 appearances in the Modern Era), and would make ER-S into ERAS; most importantly, STEAM had the advantage of making actual sense for the clue. So STEAM it was. Thanks for pulling me out of an unpleasantly sticky situation, STEAM. I appreciate it. Yay, Team STEAM.

Beyond that, I misspelled IKEBANA (as IKI-!) (43D: Japanese art of flower arranging) and didn't trust THUMBS since THUMBS are (absolutely) not [Rating units for Siskel and Ebert]. The thumb is up, or the thumb is down, but the thumb is not a unit. There are always two. His thumb. And the other guy's thumb. They are either up or they are down, but the THUMBS are not countable, and thus are not "units." Stars are ratings "units." THUMBS are not. That is all. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. LOL at CUTIE (51D: ___ patootie). It's like the puzzle is confessing. "Yeah, you all were right yesterday, CUTEY is an absolutely ridiculous spelling, sorry about that."

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