Electronic music genre / SUN 7-13-25 / Phrase cooed en español / Two-stringed Chinese instrument / Soft palate appendages / Daughter on "Bob's Burgers" / Looked high and low in / Jersey boys? / Puccini opera set in Rome / Certain religious pacifist

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Easy   



THEME: Tunnel Vision — Okay, there's a lot to unpack here. The entries HOLES IN / THE WALL and BREAK THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE serve as a kind of double revealer to indicate that 8 answers in the puzzle go across the central vertical line of black squares. Each half of these answers is clued normally, but the note (accessible by clicking the "i" icon in the app) has the 8 clues for the full across entries that cross the "wall." Additionally, the letters along the wall spell THE DOORS, which is the band that sings Break Through (To The Other Side).

Word of the Day: ELPHABA (45A: "Wicked" protagonist) —

Elphaba Thropp (/ˈɛlfəbə ˈθrɒp/ ^ⓘ) is the protagonist of Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the novel's musical theatre adaptation, and the musical's two-part film adaptation, Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025). She is a reimagining of the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

• • •

Theme answers:

• 1D / 114D HOLES IN / THE WALL [Some neighborhood bars ... or what connects eight pairs of answers in this puzzle?]
• 68D / 18D BREAK THROUGH / TO THE OTHER SIDE [Classic 1967 song by a group whose name is a hint to solving the eight bonus clues (see note)]
• 5A / 11A DEMONS + T + RATE [Show how it's done]
• 31A / 32A BEET + H + OVEN ["Für Elise" composer]
• 56A / 57A GOB + E + TWEENS [They can help with conflict resolution]
• 69A / 70A DECO + D + ERRING [Spy device in old cereal boxes] 
• 94A / 96A DISHON + O + RING [Bringing shame upon]
• 103A / 104A MENSCH + O + IRS [Bass-heavy musical groups, maybe]
• 133A / 134A AAVE + R + AGES [Valedictorians have them]
• 146A / 147A HONE + S + TWOMAN [New bride, quaintly]

Phew, alright, that was a lot of theme! Hello! It's Rafa covering for Rex today. Last time I was here I accidentally blogged the wrong puzzle and you all got two write-ups (I'm sorry / you're welcome) but today I triple-checked that this is indeed the puzzle I'm meant to be talking about. Let's get into it.

There's a lot going on with this theme, but the whole thing had one (IMO) fatal flaw that held the puzzle back. It's a real shame, because it's all very clever and cool and well-done from a gridding perspective, but it is what it is. The issue for me is that the main conceit of the theme (i.e. that 8 of the answers go through the central wall) was entirely irrelevant to the solve. I uncovered the two revealers and was excited to figure out how and why answers would cross the long line of black squares but ... that aha moment never came! I finished the puzzle, and the app immediately animated the squares along the center (spelling THE DOORS) and I never got a chance to even look at the clues in the note or figure out what was going on. Why was I denied this joy?!

TADPOLE

Plus, it feels like a decently straightforward thing to fix with the cluing. For DEMONSTRATE, for example, I would have kept the clue for the RATE part the same, but, at 5A, instead of cluing DEMONS, why not clue the whole answer DEMONSTRATE? Then, you have to figure out what's going on to make the clue make sense. Maybe I'm too salty about it, but I felt totally robbed of the joy of figuring out the theme, and it felt like solving a high word-count themeless. (Which is fine, but it's the misleading advertising that gets me! If it's themeless then don't give me *two* revealers!)

MORAY EEL

Anyways, maybe other people had different experiences figuring out what was going on here. Perhaps the experience of solving this one in print is better, since you don't get the animation spoiler. Let me know.

Putting this significant issue aside, as I mentioned already, this is a very well-executed puzzle! There's a lot of theme material, and the fill is quite smooth. We even get some nice bonuses in LOADS TIME, WESTEROS, NOW I GET IT, TO-DO LIST, UP ARROW, etc. I tend to live in a post-dupe crossword world (as in, I don't notice or care about dupes) but I did notice LET LIE and LIE ON (though I did not care!) -- is this something people care notice or care about?

COD

Overall it felt on the easy side for a Sunday. Not a PR time for me, but decently close. The only area that posed resistance was the SW corner, where I wanted MOROSE for [Eeyore-esque] (instead of GLOOMY), and nothing else was coming easily. I think I was really speeding through it because I was so excited (in vain, alas!) to get to cracking the theme. Clearly the theme presentation was my biggest takeaway from the puzzle, as I keep coming back to it!

That's all from me today! Hope you all are having a lovely weekend, and wishing you the best for the week ahead.

Bullets:

• 22A OLAV [Name that becomes a shape if you switch the second and fourth letters] / 144A OVAL [Shape that becomes a name if you switch the second and fourth letters] — This was cute
• 105A IN PAWN [Traded for cash]— I had never heard the expression "in pawn" before. I wanted PAWNED at first, and then was some crosses resolved, I wanted IMPAWN (which I assumed was a verb, though now I realize it would only work if the clue said "trade" instead of "traded") (turns out it is, in fact, a verb per Merriam-Webster, though labeled archaic). I didn't know the RINSO cross (RIMSO seemed plausible enough), so that square gave me a lot of pause ... but we got there eventually.
• 128D DELCO [AC___ (G.M. subsidiary)] — The only DELCO I recognize is Delaware County, PA ... but that's probably too regional to be in a national crossword?
• 112D BLOSSOM [Stop being buds?] — Cute wordplay clue ("bud" as in the flower precursor, not as in pal).
• 47D BOCCI [Italian lawn game] — I have only ever seen this spelled "bocce" but *shrug*

Signed, Rafa

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Minty herb used in Japanese cuisine / SUN 5-4-25 / Toon fighter of Skeletor / Bunless cookout entrees / Boxer Beterbiev / Invasive Japanese vine / Concave umbilicus / Poems also fancily known as quatorzains / Chairman ___ (old NBA nickname) / Sport that takes place in a dohyo

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Force Play" — a "play" on the phrase "May the Force be with you..." (from Star Wars); the theme revealer is the corny/punny phrase "MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU" (because today is May the fourth ... which I guess is Star Wars day now?); so, the fourth square of each theme answer has two letters in it, the second of which is always "U," so the fourth letter of every theme answer is always "with U" (inside a single box)—those fourth letters (the ones paired with "U") spell out STAR WARS:

Theme answers:

• GINSU KNIFE (22A: Product that "can cut a slice of bread so thin you can almost see through it," in old ads) / 23D: "Well, OK" ("SURE")
• LETTUCE WRAPS (34A: Bunless cookout entrees) / 8D: Dew, for example (MOISTURE)
• IRS AUDITS (44A: Book reviews of sorts?) / 45D: The Masters host city (AUGUSTA)
• BEGRUDGING (52A: Given reluctantly) / 53D: Countrylike (RUSTIC)
• BLOW-UP DOLL (87A: Companion who might take your breath away?) / 85D: Big name in organs (WURLITZER)
• AD NAUSEAM (97A: Over and over) / 93D: Routes across low waters (CAUSEWAYS)
• VITRUVIAN MAN (107A: Famous Leonardo da Vinci drawing with four arms and four legs) / 102D: Just what the doctor ordered? (DRUG)
• SENSUALITY (122A: Steaminess) / 123D: Sport that takes place in a dohyo (SUMO)

Word of the Day: SHISO (46D: Minty herb used in Japanese cuisine) —

Perilla frutescens var. crispa, also known by its Japanese name shiso (紫蘇), is a cultigen of Perilla frutescens, a herb in the mint family Lamiaceae. It is native to the mountainous regions of China and India, but is now found worldwide. The plant occurs in several forms, as defined by the characteristics of their leaves, including red, green, bicolor, and ruffled. Shiso is perennial and may be cultivated as an annual in temperate climates. Different parts of the plant are used in East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine. [...] Shiso (紫蘇) is extensively used in Japanese cuisine. Red, green, and bicolor varieties are used for different purposes. (wikipedia)

• • •

[My actual living room]

As someone who finds this "holiday" corny and obnoxious ... yeah, this was not the puzzle for me. The whole MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU pun is like something that kind of makes you smile the first time you hear it, maybe, but ... every damn year now, everyone reproducing this tired pun AD NAUSEAM. Why would you give IP its own holiday? PI DAY is less grating, and that is ... saying something. On a technical level, though, this puzzle is pretty impressive. Neither THE FORCE nor THE FOURTH is literally "with U," but STAR WARS is, and always in the "fourth" position, too. I would say "it must've been challenging to find answers that fit these parameters," but nowadays I figure someone just wrote a piece of code or otherwise let some kind of software do the answer-hunting. Still, nice touch to get the "+U" pairs all into the fourth squares. I actually didn't even notice that bit until after I was done—I just thought it was a STAR WARS tribute, and that the "fourth" only had meaning in relation to the actual calendar date. Nice to discover the "fourth square" angle later on. But from a solving perspective, there was nothing terribly fun about this. It's a rebus puzzle that basically plays like a themeless. It's solidly built, nothing shaky about it. But it did not amuse me nearly as much as I assume it will amuse fans of Star Wars. And puns. What was it John Oliver said about puns? Oh, right: "the lowest form of human behavior" (see yesterday's puzzle): I don't entirely agree ... but I don't entirely disagree, either.

Weird that the one "bonus" theme answer in this grid, on a day celebrating the Force / Fourth, is LORD VADER (81D: Term of address aboard the Death Star). I Iove it as a standalone answer, but ... "May the Force be with you," that's the phrase of the good guys, where are the good guys? Foregrounding the Death Star and not the Rebellion—interesting move. Did you know that (Luke) SKYWALKER and LORD VADER are the same number of letters? There's no way SKYWALKER would've fit in this grid with this set of themers, but maybe if you used the Force you could make it work (and yes, nerds, I know that Darth Vader is also a SKYWALKER (Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father (spoiler alert)), so SKYWALKER does not necessarily balance out the Dark Side—but the clue could be Luke-specific). I'm just saying that a real Jedi would've found a way to overcome, or at least balance out, the Dark Side, instead of allowing LORD VADER to march right through the middle of the grid, unopposed. Semihilarious (if not SEMISONIC) that OBI-WAN and KENOBI and LEIA and HAN and even WOOKIEE have appeared in the grid many times before ... but not today. Today, we debut LORD VADER. I guess ANI (young Vader's nickname) always was the most annoyingly persistent Star Wars-related answer of the bunch. Oh well, maybe HE-MAN's here to represent the Rebels (25A: Toon fighter of Skeletor). Use the Force, HE-MAN! (now there's a crossover for you!)

The solve was very easy today, though for some insane reason the puzzle decided to put its two most obscure (to me) answers right next to each other, making for one small but slightly scary patch, just off-center: SHISO alongside ARTUR. LOL that I would know anything about modern boxing. ARTUR Beterbiev was recently, and briefly, light heavyweight champion ('24-'25)—he got beat by some other Russian dude, in Riyadh, earlier this year. This may as well all have been happening on Mars, as far as I'm concerned. A hundred years ago, boxing was massively popular and everyone would've known champion boxers' names. Today, uh, no (51D: Boxer Beterbiev). As for SHISO, even looking it up didn't help much. A lot of its use in Japanese cuisine appears to be as a garnish, or a coloring agent. But it is common, so I have no complaints about its crossworthiness. Happy to learn a new culinary term (even if I'm doomed to forget it fairly quickly, probably). Anyway, that SHISO/ARTUR patch GOES HARD (seriously, goes right through GOES HARD)—hope the expression GOES HARD was familiar to you; you might've been in quite a fix. 

Bullets:

• 26A: French name that's an anagram of a mostly German river (HENRI) — I had HENRÔ (jk ... though I do confuse those rivers still, embarrassingly, a lot)
• 32A: Brand with a line of "Calm + Restore" products (AVEENO) — after a nearly 3-year hiatus, AVEENO makes its second appearance of May (and as we know from this puzzle, May is only four days old)
• 79A: Bad spot for a tear, in brief (ACL) — was reading this as "tear" (rhymes with "beer"), and thinking, "... your EYE?"
• 87A: Companion who might take your breath away? (BLO[W-U]P DOLL) — are we gonna talk about this? "Companion"? "Take your breath away?" So you're out of breath ... because of your BLOW-UP DOLL? I have ... questions. I'm not going to ask them, because I don't necessarily want answers. But I still have questions.

• 118A: Invasive Japanese vine (KUDZU) — no-looked this baby because the "D" and "Z" were already in place, what else was it gonna be. KUDZU is a very handy metaphor for anything that proliferates undesirably. "In Europe, kudzu has been included since 2016 on the list of Invasive Alien Species of Union concern (the Union list). This means that this species cannot be imported, cultivated, transported, commercialized, planted, or intentionally released into the environment anywhere in the European Union." (wikipedia)
• 9D: A nemesisssssss to Indiana Jones? (ASP) — we're in the middle of a two-part Love Boat episode set in Egypt where one of the characters is the lowest-rent Indy knock-off you've ever seen. Like, a porn-movie Indiana Jones. They spent maybe 10 bucks on his wardrobe, and made him go unshaven for a few days, and voila—anthropologist-adventurer. You see, Doc has come by this golden ankh, which an out-of-breath man gave to him at a bazaar, and it turns out it probably was part of some mummy's tomb, and now porn-Indy and Dynasty's Catherine Oxenberg are both after the ankh, and both of them are keeping their intentions hidden, and one or both of them might be bad guys, and all of this is happening on a Nile river cruise that is such an obvious knock-off of Death on the Nile that there's actually a Death on the Nile joke in the episode. All in the Family's Jean Stapleton co-stars as Captain Stubing's old college friend and new potential love interest. Oh, and Rhoda's Valerie Harper also co-stars as a high-school history teacher who gets the hots for her former student (now 25) who just happens to be on this small Nile river cruise. She'll almost certainly end up back with her loser husband (the Love Boat is, in the end, for all its ambient bikini-clad bottoms, a very conservative show**), but for the moment ... things are looking exciting for Rhoda.

[John Astin is there too, somehow]

• 111D: Piece of improv (SKIT) — I wonder if you all can find a way to fight about what this word means today, as so many of you did yesterday, and have done in the past ("SNL segments are 'sketches,' not SKITs! Somebody tell the editor!")
• 3D: Poems also fancily known as quatorzains (SONNETS) — no one calls them this, fancily (!?) or otherwise. I love "fancy" literary terminology, but unless you're French, no one but no one is saying this. In fact, ahem: "When [quatorzain] is used, it is to distinguish fourteen-line poems that do not follow the various rules which describe the sonnet" (my emph.) (wikipedia) ("quatorze" is Fr. for "fourteen," btw).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

**UPDATE: At the very end of the Love Boat Egyptian cruise, Valerie Harper ditches her awful husband and runs off with her 25-year-old former student! Good for her. Did not see that coming. Even in its 9th (and final) season, Love Boat can still surprise you.

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Head, slangily / WED 4-23-25 / Establishment in Chicago's Boystown / Grammy-winning Soundgarden hit of 1994 / Emitted squiggly lines, in a cartoon / Trounces in Mario Kart, say / Actress Noomi of "Prometheus" / Kinks song spoofed in Weird Al's "Yoda"

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: GALAXY-BRAIN (61A: Having ideas far too profound for anyone else to comprehend ... and what might help you solve this puzzle?) — first words of themers are parts of a "galaxy" (all star-related):

Theme answers:

• NEBULA AWARD (18A: Honor for "Dune" and "American Gods")
• STARSTRUCK (25A: Like Swifties vis-à-vis Taylor Swift)
• "BLACK HOLE SUN" (37A: Grammy-winning Soundgarden hit of 1994)
• NOVA SCOTIA (52A: Canadian province on the Gulf of Maine)

Word of the Day: GALAXY-BRAIN (61A) —

1. (Internet slang, often sarcastic) Enigmatic, perplexing, unfathomable; difficult to understand or comprehend.

From a popular meme in which an increasingly absurd or surreal series of thoughts with a common theme is paired with a series of images showing a human brain expanding and emitting progressively brighter beams of light, thus ironically presenting the ideas as too profound for an average mind to comprehend rather than nonsensical. (wordsense)

Galaxy Brain, also known as Expanding Brain, is a multi-panel exploitable image series comparing the brain size of a person relative to other variables. Though the expanding brain is usually implied to showcase intellectual superiority over various objects, it is more often used in an ironic sense to imply the opposite, where objects of derision are implied to be of higher standard than objects that are usually highly regarded. For example, when used with Whomst, a person who uses "who" will be shown with the smallest brain, while a person who uses the most ridiculous variation, i.e. "whomst'd've", will be shown with the largest brain. // This meme originated as part of the "Whomst" meme where the left column was derivations of the word "Who" were paired with increasingly elaborate pictures of brains depending on how intense the "who" variation was. One of the most popular early examples was posted to /r/dankmemes on Reddit on January 31st, 2017 by janskishimanski in a post that gained nearly 1,200 upvotes. (Know Your Meme) 

• • •

Not sure I've seen a clue change part-of-speech on me mid-clue like that before (from adj. to n.), but there's a first time for everything, I guess. Going out on a limb here and guessing that  "GALAXY-BRAIN" (adj.) is going to be unfamiliar to many not-extremely-online people, particularly older people. It has its origins in a meme, and (historically speaking) a fairly recent one. I was semi-stunned to find that the term (as contemporary slang, anyway) dates back only to 2017. I know that's 8 years ago now, but for me, that's like yesterday. Just happened. Sigh. I'm often really belated on picking up new slang, but I'm online enough to know what "GALAXY-BRAIN" means ... not that you really needed to have heard the term before to solve the puzzle, which is one of the things I don't really like about the revealer: the clue jokes that having a GALAXY BRAIN (n.) might "help" you solve the puzzle, but knowing something about actual galaxies or stars is useless—the "star" angle is something you discover only accidentally. So while the GALAXY part of the revealer makes sense, the BRAIN part I didn't buy. If I'd actually *needed* to think "stars!" in order to solve the puzzle, I might feel differently. I do like the revealer as a standalone phrase, and I give the puzzle credit for Really Trying to be current in its fill and cluing (although I'm not the best judge of "current"; my middle-aged brain still thinks "BLACK HOLE SUN" is current). 

"NOVA" is the only theme word that's doing what theme words oughta do, i.e. hide (the "NOVA" in NOVA SCOTIA is not the star-related version, whereas all the other theme words, as they appear in the grid, are, or are based on, their star-related meaning). Can't really fault the puzzle too much for the inconsistency, as NEBULA doesn't really offer you non-star-related cluing routes. I liked the fill at least as much as I didn't like the fill, and however I felt about the fill, it never felt sloppy or unpolished, so I appreciate that. Not sure I loved it, but I definitely found it interesting and was never bored.

The puzzle keeps things interesting by varying the fill, a lot, and not over-relying on tired short stuff. You're not gonna get through a grid without an IMAC here and and APED there, but most of the short stuff is inconspicuous, and the middle to longer stuff is pretty bouncy. I struggled most, as often happens, in the beginning, in the NW, where I wanted DIMWIT instead of DINGUS and things kind of fell apart from there (1D: Nincompoop). I also wanted OWNS (or PWNS?) for LAPS (19D: Trounces in Mario Kart, say). Between those two errors, and not having any idea what "Boystown" was (21A: Establishment in Chicago's Boystown = GAY BAR), yeah, lots of slipping and sliding around up front. Not loving the highly redundant BABY CRIB—makes about as much sense as "Baby bassinet"; [Bassinet alternative] should be CRIB. But otherwise, that corner came out pretty good. As I said, good fill at the middle and longer ranges: ASPARAGUS, "I MEAN IT!," PLAN AHEAD, "NOT AGAIN!," SASHIMI, DOLL UP, all welcome. Once I got out of the NW, the difficulty level seemed to even out. No further problems ... beyond having NEW TO instead of NEW AT (7D: Unfamiliar with), and having absolutely no idea who the RAP ACE was ... oh, sorry, that's not a RAP ACE, that's one name, RAPACE (13D: Actress Noomi of "Prometheus"). She has been in a ton of stuff, but damned if I've seen most of it, or managed to retain her name. I don't even remember the movie Prometheus. I sincerely thought Prometheus was that recent TV show where Jeff Goldblum played Zeus??? But that was called Kaos (RIP Kaos).

Notes:

• 18A: Honor for "Dune" and "American Gods" (NEBULA AWARD) — not sure I would've steered into Neil Gaiman, at this point, if I were a clue writer. Lotsa works have won NEBULA AWARDs, seems like, instead of American Gods, you could've gone with a work by someone who is not facing a host of sexual assault allegations.
• 1D: Nincompoop (DINGUS) — The only person I've heard say "DINGUS" as an insult is Nelson on The Simpsons. I know this word primarily as a substitute for "thingie." At least I think that's how it's being used here (from early in Chandler's The Long Goodbye, when Terry comes over to Marlowe's early in the morning asking for a ride to Tijuana):

I left him with that bright chatter and went out to the kitchen at the back. I turned the hot water on and got the coffee maker down off the shelf. I wet the rod and measured the stuff into the top and by that time the water was steaming. I filled the lower half of the dingus and set it on the flame. I set the upper part on top and gave it a twist so it would bind.

• 14D: Emitted squiggly lines, in a cartoon (STANK) — these lines are technically (very, very technically) known as "waftaroms." At least according to cartoonist Mort Walker, they are.

• 12D: In myth, one who flew too close to the sun (ICARUS) — would've liked this as a kind of wink at the puzzle's theme, except the clue dupes "sun" (from "BLACK HOLE SUN") so I don't like it so much.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Happy birthday, Shakespeare  

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Classic pickup lines, familiarly / FRI 3-14-25 / Truffula forest logger in "The Lorax" / Where hips do lie / Knight shtick? / Hurdles before some touchdowns / Bench press? / Snack made with celery sticks, peanut butter and raisins / Completing a video game as fast as possible, say / Subjected to a waiting game, militarily / Beehive state flower / French wine designation

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Rose hips (25A: Where hips do lie = ROSE BED) —

The rose hip or rosehip, also called rose haw and rose hep, is the accessory fruit of the various species of rose plant. It is typically red to orange, but ranges from dark purple to black in some species. Rose hips begin to form after pollination of flowers in spring or early summer, and ripen in late summer through autumn. [...] Rose hips are used in bread and pies, jam, jelly, marmalade, syrup, soup, tea, wine, and other beverages. [...] Wild rose hip fruits are particularly rich in vitamin C, containing 426 mg per 100 g or 0.4% by weight (w/w). RP-HPLC assays of fresh rose hips and several commercially available products revealed a wide range of L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) content, ranging from 0.03 to 1.3%. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle made me remember SUGAR RAY, which is something close to unforgivable (31A: Rock band with the 1990s hits "Fly" and "Every Morning"). Making me remember Shakira, fine, making me remember John Fogerty, great, but SUGAR RAY ... that is way too hot a dose of late-90s memories for me. It's possible that I'm (slightly) conflating SUGAR RAY with Smashmouth (one word? two?)—I've done my very best to memory-hole the entire turn of the century, one of the very worst times of my life (and, I would argue, a not *great* period for popular music). Actually, now that I look at the big songs by SUGAR RAY, they are, at worst, innocuous. They're songs you shouldn't like but find yourself humming and tapping along to anyway. 

Do people born after 1995 know SUGAR RAY? Shakira? John Fogerty? I don't know what people know. Half of what I know, I crossword-know, you know? Anyway, I'm more a DINAH Washington guy than a SUGAR RAY guy.

I continue to be disappointed with how poor the fill is in the puzzles of late—the non-marquee stuff, I mean. The stuff that isn't flashy but that you nonetheless have to spend your time thinking about, at least a little. This one's cleaner than some puzzles have been of late, but then a themeless should be cleaner—it has no theme to put pressure on the grid and compromise the fill. Clusters of ANE SOO ENDAT SAO just make me sad. I sagged a little at "EAT ME," which is an oldie, crossing THECW and CCS. Another day, another CRU, another ATT, another OSA. When the marquee stuff is sizzling, the shorter stuff seems less remarkable, but the marquee stuff was just so-so today, so ... yeah, I notice the bumps more. I really enjoyed "I GET THAT A LOT" and SPITTAKE and MIND-BOGGLING, and SCORCHER is great colloquial fare. But "YES, M'LADY" was a huge, recoiling wince. This evoked a certain "m'lady" kind of guy, a modern guy who thinks he's a gentleman but who's actually a creep. It's possible he wears a fedora ... cringe city. 

And speaking of (faux) chivalry, that clue on HONOR is godawful (13A: Knight shtick?). First of all, you're punning on ... nightstick? The thing cops beat people with, do I have that right? And HONOR is ... shtick? Really? So the clue is evoking police brutality while also being sneeringly cynical. Wow, OK. Bizarre, tin-eared, bad. I would've loved "WHO'S A GOOD BOY!?" but I hated the clue (21A: Question to one's best friend, maybe). I get that dogs are "man's best friend," in a familiar saying, but much as I love dogs (and I love them more than you, trust me), my best friend is actually human. Also, if you have more than one dog (as I did, once—RIP Dutchess and Gabby), then which one is "best"? The clue makes no sense in that situation. I wish the clue here had just leaned into dogness instead of trying to hide it, if only because that answer runs through the Very Worst part of the grid. SEGO? Again? And SIEGED!?!? REOS!?!? As clued, REOS is terrible (16D: Classic pickup lines, familiarly). REO is a "line" (of motor vehicle), but REOS are not "lines," just as FORD is a line of car but FORDS are not "lines" (they're part of the same, single line: FORD).  Again, I ask, why would you take your worst fill and give it a (botched) tricky clue? Why call attention to your own garbage like that? In case the clue makes no sense to you: the REO Speedwagon was a truck of yore (also a band of yore).

[Dutchy, Gabby, the goodest dogs]

Bullets:

• 16A: Hurdles before some touchdowns (REENTRIES) — "Hurdles" seems an odd word choice here. I guess reentry is a ... dangerous? ... transition period for the spacecraft, but "hurdle?" Is this clue trying to evoke American football somehow? It's not doing a very good job of it. 
• 18A: Subjected to a waiting game, militarily (SIEGED) — "Waiting game?" Starving people to death is a "waiting game"? This wins the Euphemism Olympics. (Also, again, SIEGED is just a terrible word, no matter how you clue it)
• 44A: Bench press? ("PUT ME IN, COACH!") — tortured use of "press." The idea is that the player sitting on the bench "presses" (i.e. "urges" "exhorts") their coach to put them in. I mentioned John Fogerty above. Twice. This is why. 

[Opening Day in 4 days!! (for Dodgers/Cubs, who are playing in Japan)]

[Opening Day in 13 days! (for everyone else)]

• 52A: ___ Locks, connection between Lake Superior and Lake Huron (SOO) — might make a crossword journey here next summer, when my wife and best friends and I complete our 5-summer 5-lake Great Lakes vacation odyssey. This summer is Lake Ontario, and then we'll finish things up on Huron in 2026. Then we're all getting Great Lakes tattoos. Hell yes, I'm serious.

• 40D: Truffula forest logger in "The Lorax" (ONCELER) — this book was not in my Seuss rotation as a child. I just happen to know the name of this "logger," somehow, no idea how. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Futile batting statlines, in baseball lingo / THU 12-19-24 / Parenthetical on four #1 albums since 2021 / Laser-focused mindset / Sticky treats, in more ways than one? / Hedgehog lookalikes / Nantz's longtime N.F.L. commentating partner / Coding catchall

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: SCREEN / SHARES (45A: With 45-Down, displays during an online presentation ... or a hint to three pairs of answers in this puzzle) — answers with the initials "T.V." cross at their first letter, resulting in three "TV" squares—so the first letters of the two words in each theme answer are a kind of "screen" (TV), and those letters "share" one box:

Theme answers:

• TUNNEL / VISION (11A: Laser-focused mindset)
• TAYLOR'S / VERSION (22A: Parenthetical on four #1 albums since 2021)
• TERMINAL / VELOCITY (31A: Speed limit, of a sort)

Word of the Day: OH-FERS (36D: Futile batting statlines, in baseball lingo) —

O-fer

Definition

Descriptive of a batter who fails to get a hit in any number of at-bats in a game or series of games. "Bob Buhl owns the worst O-fer in major league history-0 for 88 over two seasons." (Sports Illustrated, June 7, 2004). Davey Johnson, commenting on Rafael Palmeiro (quoted in The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 28, 1997): "If he goes O-fer, he's going to get down on himself." Sometimes spelled "ofer". Syn. O-for; oh-for; oh-fer, 1; 0-fer.

Etymology

The term is created from "0 [zero] for," as one would say when speaking of an "0 for 3" game. (Dickson Baseball Dictionary)

• • •

Well you had me ... and then you lost me. Right at the end. Goal line fumble (to use a sports term, which this puzzle *really* seems to like). I guess *I* was the one who fumbled, but it feels like the puzzle fumbled. In short, I thought the revealer execution was garbage, in that it was built exactly like the rest of the theme answers (with Across + Down answers crossing at their first letter), except the "T/V" gimmick was abandoned in favor of ... just an ordinary single letter ("S")? To set up the "T/V" pattern and then arbitrarily break it ifor the revealer (even though You Have Built Your Revealer With Exactly The Same Structure) felt cheap. Like a cheap trick. That "T/V" non-appearance befuddled me way more than the theme itself actually did—I wrote that (erroneous) "T/V" square in pretty quickly when I saw the revealer had the same first-letter-shared structure as the other themers. So the revealer wouldn't come, and then, well, that corner was not exactly the friendliest, with the weird word COYEST (when do you rank coyness?) and the absolutely bonkers clue on GESTATE (60A: Baby bear?)—so if you "bear" ("carry") a "baby," you GESTATE it ... in your womb? Torture. Syntactically, anyway—torture. So I basically irised in on that non-"T/V" square, the shared "S" in SCREEN SHARES, and finally I absolutely had to ditch the "T/V" and then I could see the actual revealer. I know that the revealer clue clearly says "a hint to three pairs of answers," and a "T/V" in the revealer's first square would've made it four, but who goes back and counts? Or even thinks about that number? Bah. That non-"T/V" shared square felt like a let-down and a betrayal, a breach of contract. Also, profoundly anticlimactic, which is sad, because I think the revealer itself is great, and the theme is really well done overall. I mostly enjoyed myself ... until I entered that SE corner, and then—meh and bah and boo.

Leaving the particular structure of the revealer out of it, I thought the theme was clever and well-executed. I particularly like the grid structure—mirror symmetry along the NW-to-SE axis—and the fact that all the "TV"s line up along that axis. Uncovering the gimmick wasn't too tough today. Some bumbling at first in the NW corner (pretty normal), and then—after imagining that [Some mustangs] were T-TOPS (?) and that a [Commoner] was a PEON—I hit 22A: Parenthetical on four #1 albums since 2021 with -AY- in place, and I thought "TAYLOR'S Version! ... but where's the 'version'? ... huh, must not be right." I went back up in the NW corner, got TUNNEL, wondered where "vision" had got to, and then *finally* looked Down, saw the cross-reference, and realized the VISION (and the VERSION) were right there all along, crossing the TUNNEL (and the TAYLOR'S) at the first letter. 

A "TV" rebus, cool. And again, SCREEN SHARES is a nice revealer ... just not the way it's executed in the grid, which feels like the COYEST trick I've ever seen (hey, maybe COYEST is a word?). I probably should've made "TAYLOR'S / VERSION" the Word of the Day. Famously, Taylor Swift rerecorded a bunch of her early albums in order to gain ownership of the material. So those rerecorded albums have "(TAYLOR'S VERSION)" appended to their titles.

I pay far less attention to professional sports than I used to when I was a kid (obsessed! with all the majors except hockey, which we did not have in California, then, and which I couldn't be bothered to care about when it finally did come). So sports terminology and slang is generally familiar to me, but I'm very aware that that is not the case for many solvers, so when I see it in droves, in spades, in avalanches, I start to feel for those non-sports folks. Today, I really felt for them when OH-FERS (36D: Futile batting statlines, in baseball lingo) ended up right next to POSTS UP (37D: Hangs out for a while), a bizarrely-spelled (and awkwardly clued) baseball term right alongside what I assume is a basketball term. I mean, there's nothing in the clue about basketball, but the only place I know the phrase POSTS UP from is basketball. To "post up" means "to take up a position against a defender in the post in basketball while standing with one's back to the basket" (merriam-webster.com). Centers or other big men often are said to be "hanging out in the (low) post." If there is some non-basketball meaning of POSTS UP that equates the term with "hanging out," I don't know of it, and neither do the online dictionaries I'm looking at. Insane clue for POSTS UP. [update: Urban Dictionary seems to know this “hang out” definition, and wiktionary has “occupy a position” as its fourth def]. And as for OH-FERS, yikes. I would ... not spell "O" like that. The "O" (said as the letter "O") stands for zero, so putting an "H" on it makes it look *ridiculous*. Apparently someone somewhere decided you could spell it that way if you wanted, but that is not the common way to spell it, and I feel sorry for the undoubtedly many solvers for whom that entire clue and answer was inscrutable. And then to have AND ONE (42D: Free throw after a basket) and the WTA (58D: Org. for Coco Gauff) and Phil SIMMS (14D: Nantz's longtime N.F.L. commentating partner) also in the grid? Even I, a sports non-hater, thought the puzzle was going overboard.

More:

• 6A: Comedian Ken of "The Masked Singer" (JEONG) — me: "how the **** would I know, who even watches that **** show, come on!" Also me, seconds later: "Oh, it's just Ken JEONG. He's on that show? Huh."
• 35A: Sticky treats, in more ways than one? (POPSICLES) — a great clue, and frankly, I'm not sure it even needs the "?"—they do have sticks, so they are stick-y. I know we don't use the term "sticky" that way, but it's Thursday, trust me to figure it out.

• 9D: Burning man? (NERO) — ugh, this one made about as much intuitive sense as [Baby bear?]. NERO (famously, probably apocryphally) fiddled while Rome burned. According to History dot com, "the fiddle didn't exist in ancient Rome." So there's that. But back to the clue—I guess NERO is a man *associated* with "burning"? [Grimace] [resigned headshake] [moving on]
• 33D: Hedgehog lookalikes (ECHIDNAS) — my first instinct is always to spell this "ECHINDAS" (rhymes with "Lindas"?). I don't know why. Also, I just found out that Sonic the Hedgehog 3 opens tomorrow. No idea if any ECHIDNAS are involved, as I can't imagine caring about this franchise at all, for any reason. Like, if you made a movie in a lab specifically designed to keep me away, this would be that movie. If there were an interest level below zero, that would be my interest level. In related news, I'm driving over an hour today to see All We Imagine As Light, a truly awful / forgettable / confusable title, but apparently one of the best movies of the year (the very best, according to Sight + Sound). If there are ECHIDNAS in it, I'll let you know.

Time for Holiday Pet Pics now 

(again, this year's submissions are closed, thank you!)

Ruby has had enough of the photo sessions and would like you to just throw the damned ball already

[Thanks, Mark]

Sadie has also had enough of the photo shoot. She seems calm here, but you can tell that she's about to bust out of there and take Santa with her. 

[Thanks, Juliann]

I know this is the gaze of a dog (Fenway) who just wants you to hurry up and finish your puzzle already so you all can go for a run, but when I look at this sweet face, all I feel is calm. My jaw unclenches, my shoulders relax. All is calm, all is Fenway. 

[Thanks, Sarah]

From Fenway to a couple of more bat-sport pets—the brothers Baseball and Cricket. They spend their days lounging, purring, sleeping, and failing to understand the rules of each other's respective sports

[Thanks, Mike]

And finally today we have Simon & Scout, seen here taking a much-deserved break from their busy touring schedule for "Simon & Scout's Tap-Dancing Holiday Revue!"

[Thanks, Pamela]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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