Birth day party? / WED 10-23-24 / Website that contributed to the decline of road atlases / Plastic option, for short / Pi's last name in "Life of Pi" / Ph.D. in Computing? / Soccer org. for Chelsea and Manchester / Genre for James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room," familiarly

Constructor: Matthew Stock and Brooke Husic

Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe a little north of that, for me)

THEME: A MATTER OF DEGREE (54A: Not distinguished by large differences ... or an apt title for this puzzle?) — clues look like university degree abbreviations ([[degree letters] in [some field of study]?]); answers are items that have the same initials as the degree in question and have some relationship to the indicated field of study:

Theme answers:

• BRAILLE ALPHABET (16A: B.A. in Communications?)
• MICROSCOPE SLIDE (26A: M.S. in Biology?)
• POCKET HARD DRIVE (42A: Ph.D. in Computing?)

Word of the Day: EPL (57D: Soccer org. for Chelsea and Manchester) —

The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football League (EFL). Seasons usually run from August to May, with each team playing 38 matches: two against each other team, one home and one away. Most games are played on weekend afternoons, with occasional weekday evening fixtures. [...] The Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes, with a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people. For the 2018–19 season, the average Premier League match attendance was 38,181, second to the German Bundesliga's 43,500, while aggregated attendance across all matches was the highest of any association football league at 14,508,981, and most stadium occupancies are near capacity. As of 2023, the Premier League is ranked first in the UEFA coefficient rankings based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons, ahead of Spain's La Liga. The English top-flight has produced the second-highest number of European Cup / UEFA Champions League titles, with a record six English clubs having won fifteen European championships in total. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, if you have an advanced degree in a STEM field, have I got a puzzle for you. Hard drives and MATH TEAMs and website DEVs who all probably went to UNI at YALE (in Crossworld, everyone goes to YALE—it's mandatory). The theme is pretty clever and works pretty well, but it wasn't really MEANT for me. I don't even know what a POCKET HARD DRIVE is. Now, I can guess. I'm guessing it's a hard drive ... that's portable. [looks it up] Yep, that's exactly what it is, though (according to my search returns) they seem to be typically marketed as just that: "portable hard drives." I'm sure it's a common term in some worlds. But not mine. So since the answer couldn't be POCKET PROTECTOR (which would've been right on the money, in '80s computer geek iconography), I had no idea. I even stared at POCKETHARD for a bit, wondering if I was parsing it wrong ("... pocké-thard?"). Eventually I inferred the DRIVE part (shouldn't have taken me that long). The DRIVE area—therefore—ended up being the hardest part of the puzzle for me. DRIVE wasn't there to help out (for a while), and none of the Downs coming off of SLIDE were computing either. I had DEDUCE for DERIVE in there for a bit (30D: Obtain through logic). I basically finished the rest of the puzzle and then backed up into that section via ADDRESS (41D: Speak to). Then the HARD DRIVE part became obvious, *then* I polished off that DEV / DERIVE section. I enjoyed the concept today, though ... a couple things. One, BRAILLE ALPHABET ended up seeming like something of an outlier, since MICROSCOPE SLIDEs and POCKET HARD DRIVEs seem like things directly associated with the fields of study in their clues, whereas the field of "Communications" has nothing to do with Braille. The word "Communications" there is taken much more broadly. It's a minor thing, but a noticeable thing. There was something less-than-snappy about the themers, including the revealer, but I can't argue with the basic logic of the thing. Themewise, I think this holds up reasonably well.

As for the fill, the puzzle opens with a high and tight fastball—a real keep-you-on-your-toes clue at 1A: Birth day party? (DOULA, i.e. a "party" (i.e. one of the people present) at a birth)— so I went in prepared for a fight, but it all played at a fairly normal Wednesday level for me (the hard drive fiasco notwithstanding). Felt a little name-y in places, but probably not any namier than your usual puzzle, and anyway, I mostly knew the names. Naomi OSAKA and DEB Haaland are practically crosswordese by now. I've never read (or seen) Life of Pi but I somehow knew PATEL (and anyway, PATEL is a very common surname—not hard to infer from a few crosses) (I'm wondering now whether DEV / PATEL wasn't originally a cross-referenced pair of clues). The only episode of How I Met Your Mother I ever saw was the one that Will Shortz was on, so TED schmed, but crosses took care of things there. Hey, speaking of Will Shortz, there's a fascinating (and very encouraging) interview with him in the October/November issue of Brain & Life, all about his stroke earlier this year and his current recovery process (thanks to reader Mike S. for sending it to me). 

The only answer in the whole puzzle that really made me wince was EPL (57D: Soccer org. for Chelsea and Manchester United). I have watched Premier League soccer a bunch over the years (idly, because it was there ... I can get sucked into sports, even sports I know nothing about, really ridiculously quickly if you put them in front of my face ... ask me about literally every Olympics event I've ever watched; doesn't take long for me to get invested). Anyway, Premier League ... Premier League ... that is the term. That is the only thing I've ever heard it called. I got the "E" today and thought "European ... something something? I thought Chelsea and Man U were Premier League teams." And they are. EPL (apparently) stands for English Premier League. This is news to me. It's apparently also news to whoever wrote the (vast) wikipedia entry on the Premier League, since the abbreviation "EPL" appears not one time in the entire thing. EFL appears in the first paragraph, but EPL, nowhere. So I'm just gonna trust that EPL is common online, in headlines, on ESPN and other sports channels and sports sites, etc. (it is, I just went and looked). But yeesh. I don't understand going out of your way to debut that one. Is Crossworld improved by the addition of Yet Another 3-letter abbrev., one that isn't even in common parlance? You actually say NFL, NHL, NBA ... but do you really say EPL? No, you say "Premier League." One thing that's come out of all this is that I now know that EPL also stands for Employment Practices Liability, a type of insurance you get if you're a business interested in violating your employees' rights. When you get sued for wrongful termination, discrimination, or harassment, EPL is there for you—the business, the real victim.


Bullets:

• 10A: Pick up the tab (BUY) — had the "Y," wrote in PAY. D'oh!
• 47A: "___ Mubarak!" (greeting around Ramadan) (EID) — Like DEB Haaland, this one should be a gimme for you by now. Amazing that EID didn't appear in the puzzle until 2019 (!?). If you think it's a marginal holiday (or, god help you, "obscure"), tell that to the two billion Muslims currently inhabiting the planet. What's truly fascinating is that EID actually did appear in the puzzle a bunch, in the olden days (1957-89) ... just not in Muslim festival form. [Image: Comb. form]? [Oath: Ger.]?? [Canton in Norway]??? [Leif ___, former news commentator]!?! Man, the pre-Shortzian world was wild.
• 7D: Hissing tire's problem (LEAK) — saw that the answer was four letters, wrote in FLAT with no hesitation.
• 44D: Pot (REEFER) — "Man, someone's tokin' some REEFER..."

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Telenovela profession / FRI 12-22-23 / Card-dealing casino device / Big name in vegan cheese / Lewis who played Grizabella on Broadway / Cloverleaf cluster? / Course that might cover Dante and Ferrante, familiarly / Preantepenultimate letter / Local dubbed "the Las Vegas of the East"

Constructor: Brooke Husic and Brendan Emmett Quigley

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DAIYA (20A: Big name in vegan cheese) —

Daiya Foods Inc. is a Canada-based dairy-alternative food company located in Burnaby, British Columbia. The company was established in 2008 by Andre Kroecher and Greg Blake. Daiya's original products are cheese analogues made from coconut oil and tapioca flour that are known for their cheese-like consistency and melting properties. They contain no animal products or soy, lactose, wheat, barley, gluten, or nuts.

Daiya is sold in natural and conventional food stores in many countries including Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, Mexico, and Hong Kong. Its products are featured on restaurant menus and in packaged food products made by Amy's Kitchen and Turtle Island Foods. Daiya has won many awards for its products, including the 2009 Veggie Award for Product of the Year. In 2011, BC Business magazine named Daiya one of the 20 most innovative companies in British Columbia.

In July 2017, Otsuka Pharmaceutical agreed to acquire 100 percent of Daiya Foods for $405 million. (wikipedia)

• • •

Lots of lovely long answers in this one, but very little whoosh today because those long answers were (weirdly, and with an exception or two) the easiest things in the grid. It's all the shorter stuff, clued with extreme and constant effort at misdirection and confusion, that took time to unravel, and kept any consistent momentum from ever really building. I've circled all the misdirection attempts on my printed-out puzzle and it's basically just covered in green. There's the obvious "?"-clue stuff, which is telling you (by way of its "?") that it's misdirecting you. [Acrylic finish?] for CEE (i.e. the letter "C"), that kind of stuff. You see a few of those in every puzzle. But then there's the non-"?" misdirection stuff, which is ... everywhere. Just in the NW corner, both "Numbers" and "count" are exploited for their multiple meanings, and end up meaning not what they look like they mean (based on ordinary syntax). The "Numbers" in 1A: Numbers can be read in this is not a set of mathematical figures but a book of the bible, found in the TORAH (this clue exploits the "first letters of all clues are capitalized" convention as well, so you don't see the proper noun coming). The "count" in 14A: Spanish count here is not an aristocrat, not a pal of an earl or a baron, but a literal counting off of (ironically?) numbers! In Spanish: UNO, DOS, TRES. And there's more. A lot more:

• The "Bed" in 18A: Bed cover is not a thing you sleep in but a flower bed (SOIL)
• The "break" in 23A: Big break is not an opportunity but a figurative rift or SCHISM
• The "Profession" in 28A: Profession in a telenovela is not an occupation but a professing of feeling, namely "I love you" ("TE AMO")
• The "Knock" in 33A: Knock hard does not mean "rap, as on a door," but "criticize," i.e. PAN. 
• The "tables" in 3D: Parts of tables could obviously mean anything "tables" could mean (here, not surfaces you eat on but charts) (ROWS)
• The "Scummy" in 41D: Scummy locales is not a metaphorical "gross" or "dirty" but a literal "possessing an actual, physical scum," namely pond scum (PONDS)
• The "Setting" in 31D: Setting for most Laker home games: Abbr. is not a locale but a time setting, namely Pacific Standard Time (PST)
• The "Stream" in 4D: Stream interrupters actually did seem like it wanted to do with media streaming, but already by that point every clue word seemed like a grenade, so I assumed water might be involved (it's not: the answer is ADS)

This doesn't cover all the tough clues, just the clues that are tough in this one particular way. There's still the proper nouns you might not know—MACAU, LEONA, DAIYA, and Misselthwaite MANOR all seem like things that might cause solvers to faceplant (I wasn't totally sure about those first two, totally forgot DAIYA despite seeing it in grocery aisles a bunch, and had no idea about the MANOR, so just inferred it). This is all to say that I would've liked this better on a Saturday. Still, though, the grid does have wonderful longer marquee answers, all of them perfectly colloquial: "HOW DO YOU DO IT?" "BACK SO SOON?" "THANK ME LATER" "I'M KIDDING!" and "OR SO IT SEEMS..." And the quality of the fill is smooth throughout. It's possible to find the cluing irksome today, but it's very hard to find fault with the grid.

[29A: Rama is one, in Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi novel "Rendezvous With Rama"]

The CYA / CNET cross seems very slightly iffy to me. I knew both, and certainly you see CNET in the NYTXW fairly regularly (this is the fourth time this year, fifteenth time in the 2020s). But in neither case is "C" being used as a regular-ASS letter in a regular-ASS word, and since "C" is an abbr. in both directions (representing "See" and "Computer," respectively), and both answers are digital-age answers, it's possible someone opts for the wrong letter there. Also, a couple of these "?" clues feel very forced. [Make it up?] is RISE? So you (I) make it ... to a standing position? From a seated / fallen position? Huh. OK. [Little bit of make-up?] refers to the "make-up" of ... well, anything? (ATOM). Sigh, alright. But 54A: Cloverleaf cluster? as INNS, oof. I know these establishments actually call themselves "INNS" sometimes (Days Inn, Hampton Inn), but you wouldn't look at a "cluster" of motels off near the freeway exit and go "let's stay at one of those INNS." "INNS" is a quaint word belonging to bed & breakfasts in Vermont, or Mary & Joseph (or ... not Mary & Joseph, technically, I guess. Mary & Joseph Times!). The clusters of buildings near cloverleafs are motels. Maybe hotels. INNS, bah. I saw right through that "Cloverleaf" misdirection and still couldn't make anything work. CARS was my only four-letter guess. (Note, [Cloverleaf cluster?] is a defensible clue, I just hate its guts)

MACAU is "the East" as in "the Far East," not, like, Atlantic City (32A: Locale dubbed the "Las Vegas of the East"). REHASHING is a [Meeting extender] ... somehow? I really hated this clue, and had no idea what the answer was until I had almost all the crosses. Absolutely thwarted my movement out of that upper section and into the middle of the grid. First to make REHASHING into a noun (?) and then to make it so awkward and vague. Boo. Especially for a long answer, boo. Good thing there were so many other good answers to make up for it.

Hopefully you got through this one with no CHEATS. Here are some more Holiday Pet Pics! THANK ME LATER! We got five cats and one lone pupper today, sadly sitting under his Christmas tree waiting for Santa to bring him treats. Let's start with pupper, as he needs the most love:

[SOMEBODY PET ARROW RIGHT NOW (I'm looking at you, John :)]

And now, los gatos. Barney is a senior citizen and also a professional model. This photo is from a spread he did for AARP (American Association of Retired Pussycats): 

[Thanks, Stacy]

Here we see the many moods of Bubs, the Hanukkitten: a little daytime friskiness, a little nighttime reflection:

[Thanks, Elizabeth]

Here's Daniel hanging out with his best friend and lookalike, the puffy ottoman:

[Thanks, Myles]

Milo is not coming out, no, your treats will not work, go away, Milo lives with the trees now:

[Thanks, Regis]

And finally Tumtum. RIP Tumtum, you were a pretty big-eyed kitty with a fun-to-say name

[Thanks, Erin]

Happy Preantepenultimate Christmas Eve!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. this is the SHOE that fits (51A: Card-dealing casino device). Wear it:

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Spiky fruits with a noxious odor / WED 7-12-23 / Subject of the 2008 documentary The Black Candle / Scary roller coaster twists / Structure historically found by a river / Deflect as an insult or a sword

Constructor: Brooke Husic and Brian Thomas

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Days of the week — days of the week are represented by their three-letter abbrs., which appear, in order, at the beginning of seven theme answers:

Theme answers:

• SUNNI (1A: About 85%-90% of Muslims, globally [1st of 7])
• MONTALBAN (17A: Hollywood's Ricardo or Paolo [2nd of 7])
• TU ES BELLE (26A: French for "You are beautiful!" [3rd of 7])
• "WE DID IT!" (37A: "Yippee for us!" [4th of 7])
• THUMB WARS (48A: Digital confrontations? [5th of 7])
• FRIAR TUCK (58A: One of Robin Hood's Merry Men [6th of 7])
• SATAN (69A: One with horns [7th of 7])

Word of the Day: Paolo MONTALBAN (17A) —

Paolo Montalban (born May 21, 1973) is a Filipino-American actor and singer best known for his performance in the 1997 Disney television film, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella as Prince Christopher, opposite Brandy as Cinderella. He reprised that role in a stage version of the musical with Deborah Gibson and then Jamie-Lynn Sigler as Cinderella and Eartha Kitt as the Fairy Godmother. [...] Montalban was named one of People's 50 Most Beautiful People of 1998. (wikipedia)

• • •

I feel certain I've seen this theme before, or something like it, but the grid is so sparkling and shimmery that I didn't have a chance to care. By the time I realized what the theme answers were doing, the grid had already sold me. I didn't really care what the "7" stuff was supposed to be about because I was just enjoying the ride. Which brings me to what is perhaps a point I should stress more often—the higher the overall quality of the fill, the less the exact nature of the theme even matters. I was like "okay, cool, a really bouncy mid-week themeless, let's go!" But then of course there was a theme, and the theme was a big part of *why* the grid was so good. That is, it's the themers that gave the grid many of its most interesting answers. SUNNI and SATAN are throwaways (though I like that they're both ... religious ... in their ways ... and that SATAN's just chilling at the very bottom, where he's probably most comfortable). But all the midweek stuff really lights up. TU ES BELLE is probably the biggest reach—you don't usually get foreign phrases of that length in a grid, so it seems like it could really trip up non-French speakers—and yet it's also the most inventive themer of the lot. Also, what the hell else are you gonna use for your TUE- answer? The only other things I can think of are also French phrases. "WE DID IT!" is a great, exultant little way to hide "WED.," and it makes a nice grid centerpiece. THUMB WARS made me laugh (haven't thought of those in years), and the clue on that one was especially nice (48A: Digital confrontations?) (your thumb is the "digit" in question, though you probably know that by now). And I learned a new MONTALBAN! Paolo was totally unfamiliar to me. But Ricardo! A mainstay of my childhood, both for his role as Mr. Roarke on "Fantasy Island," and for his earthy, sensual pitches for Chrysler. The phrase "rich Corinthian leather" is iconic. Look at him stroke that passenger seat! Purr about leather to me again, Ricardo! 

But the themers were only part of what gave the puzzle bounce. HANDHELD CASHBOX HELIXES DURIANS DATA DUMP NOURISH KWANZAA ... so many solid 7+-letter answers. Plus an all-star cast. Nicole KIDMAN! NATASHA Bedingfield! RUPAUL! The theme concept really doesn't seem like much, but the solving experience was overwhelmingly positive. Undesirable fill is rare, and spread out. All that in an easy mid-week package. Safe to say I ADMIRED this one.

No real trouble spots today. I can read French and I knew Ricardo MONTALBÁN, so I had a bit of an advantage with the themers, and all the puzzle's proper noun answers were well known to me, including Jacqueline du Pré, whose performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto comes up in a memorable scene in last year's Tár. Strangely, the part of the puzzle that gave me the most trouble was -ING (40A: English suffix equivalent to Spanish's -ando and -iendo). I had the IN- (!?!) and thought "well it's an 'O' or an 'A'"—clearly I was humming long so well that I wasn't thinking clearly. I was also having trouble coming up with the "G" cross (from SAGAS (31D: Major ordeals)—I think of SAGAS as stories, but they're stories full of challenges and troubles, which is how we get to the "ordeals" sense of the word, I guess). The other weird one-letter sticking point came when I had BO- for 27D: Stick for a 15-Across player and I hadn't solved 15-Across yet (CELLO)—I could not get BO- to be a "stick," largely because I assumed the "player" in question would be a sports player of some kind. I wanted BAT and ... well, nothing else. But getting that "W" for BOW didn't take long. This puzzle was closer to "Easy" than "Easy-Medium" for me, but I wanted to allow for the possibility that some of this fill might prove flummoxing to some solvers—the French and the DURIANS and the MONTALBANs, etc. Today I learned that Ricardo MONTALBÁN spells his name with the accent on the final "A," while Paolo ... doesn't. I also just discovered Madeline Montalban, and, well, I'm intrigued:

Madeline Montalban (born Madeline Sylvia Royals; 8 January 1910 – 11 January 1982) was an English astrologer and ceremonial magician. She co-founded the esoteric organisation known as the Order of the Morning Star (OMS), through which she propagated her own form of Luciferianism. (wikipedia)

Before I fall down a mid-century English occultist rabbit hole, I'm going to sign off. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Wetsuit vis-a-vis a team triathlon / WED 4-12-23 / 1971 documentary about Ravi Shankar / Fourth-most-common family name in China / Old Roman word of greeting or parting / Palindromic flour / Wetland waders / Snoopy's imaginary antagonist

Constructor: Olivia Mitra Framke and Brooke Husic

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: PLUS and ALSO? — wacky 15-letter phrases composed of a first word PLUS an anagram of that word and ALSO another anagram of that word:

Theme answers:

• AIDES IDEAS ASIDE (17A: "Ignoring what my assistant said ..."?)
• STRAY ARTSY TRAYS (27A: What might be found outside a hipster cafeteria?)
• EARLY RELAY LAYER (47A: Wetsuit vis-à-vis a team triathlon?)
• NOTES SET ON STONE (63A: Engravings, e.g.?)

Word of the Day: NEIL Gaiman (11D: Author Gaiman) —

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman /ˈɡeɪmən/ (born Neil Richard Gaiman 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, audio theatre, and films. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, Anansi Boys, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. It was later adapted into a critically acclaimed stage play at the Royal National Theatre in London, England that The Independent called "...theatre at its best". (wikipedia)

• • •

Second day in a row where I finished the puzzle and had no idea if I properly understood the theme. Yesterday, I hadn't. There was a whole secondary element that I'd missed, one that I eventually saw, but only well after finishing. Today ... my main feeling was "Is that it? That can't be it? Wacky phrases made out of three 5-letter anagrams? That's something I'm sure I've seen, maybe a number of times, over the course of decades ... so that can't be it." I noticed that the first and last Across answers were both clued ["Furthermore ..."] and reasoned that those answers must hold the clue to some as-yet undiscovered level of themery. But that got me nowhere. Or, rather, it got me to the (admittedly shaky) idea that the PLUS and ALSO were supposed to refer to the two anagrams that follow the initial word in each theme phrase. If I've missed something, mea culpa, as they say in crosswords. But this concept feels very old-fashioned—which doesn't mean it can't yield results, but I think the results here are too forced for my taste. AIDES IDEAS ASIDE is at least clean, if not terribly exciting. But I don't know why the TRAYS would be ARTSY at a "hipster cafe" (whatever that is). And even after looking at EARLY RELAY LAYER a bunch of times, I'm still not exactly sure what is going on there. I guess the idea is that in a triathlon you swim first (yes?) so, as for your wetsuit, it's ... EARLY in the RELAY ... that you would wear ... it? So the LAYER is EARLY, not the RELAY, which probably started right on time, so I guess RELAY is also adjectival (modifying LAYER) ... wait, is EARLY-RELAY a compound adjective? That's probably your best bet for understanding this one. Sigh. It's grammatically confusing (esp. compared to that first themer). And SET ON STONE feels like a typo—a violation of the phrase everyone uses when talking setting + stone, that is, "set in stone." So these 3x5-letter anagram phrases were of varying degrees of solidity and clarity, though the basic concept was never likely to yield anything terribly exciting. But also, as I say, I may be missing something important. The one unexpected thing about this theme is that after grasping the concept, I thought getting all the themers would be way too easy, but they were somehow bizarre enough to make me work. There is something to be said for working. And bizarreness. Not a total loss.

The fill is also a little limp today—lots of overfamiliar 3-4-5 stuff (LOO ANO ITT ITOO TIARA HERR NYT IAMB SOS UNDO and REDO etc.). As usual, the long Downs add some color. I really like the clue on BOLSTERS—an unexpected yogic twist. If you've ever been to a yoga class, then you know, BOLSTERS are real (and useful). I always like remembering "Peanuts," even though the RED BARON stuff was never my favorite (6D: Snoopy's imaginary antagonist). I prefer the ordinary existentialist drama of Snoopy's everyday life, like his conversations with Woodstock. "Conversations" (Woodstock speaks only in little vertical slashes, though Snoopy seems to understand him). Weird that I wanted "IT'S A TRAP" on Monday when the answer was "IT'S A TEST," only to have "IT'S A TRAP" appear here, two days later. Is a LOIN a "body part"??? Like ... I have a reasonable understanding of where one's "loins" (plural???) are, but I don't think I know *exactly* what "part" is in question here. Is it a pig body part, like a pork LOIN? Google is telling me that the LOIN is "the part of the body on both sides of the spine between the lowest (false) ribs and the hipbones," but no one says "ow, my LOIN!" when they hurt their lower back, do they? I know this word only as a cut of meat, so "body part" really threw me. There wasn't much else here to throw me, though. The two pop culture names of less-than-universal fame were very familiar to me, though I actually never saw the clue for Michaela COEL. As for PRUE, I had this moment of "ugh not a celebrity chef, I do not know any celebr-" followed by "Oh, PRUE! From 'Great British BAKE Off'! Oh sure, I know her. She's fun." 

The cluing felt thoughtful today. Liked the clues on little things like GALA (24D: Fancy-sounding apple cultivar) ("fancy-sounding" made me smile and "cultivar" is just a cool word), and STEER (33D: Use a wheelchair's push rims, for instance) (makes me think PUSH RIMS would make good fill), and SOFT (70A: Like forgiving lighting in photography). Regular words, but the clues give me vivid, specific contexts to think about. Just because the words are ordinary doesn't mean the clues have to be dull. See you all tomorrow, I hope. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Hockey goalie's domain / THU 3-30-23 / Two-stringed Chinese instrument / Spaces where people pay to destroy household objects with sledgehammers / Sudden temporary loss of athletic ability / Lax lax option / Word rhymed with Intelligent in TS Eliot's The Waste Land / Shell propellers

Constructor: Adam Wagner and Brooke Husic

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Double duty — familiar compound words & two-word phrases are clued "___ / ___," with the blank being a potential synonym for both parts of the words / phrases:

Theme answers:

• RIB ROAST (16A: Tease / Tease)
• CRAPSHOOT (10A: "Drat!" / "Drat!")
• POTHEAD (34A: Toilet / Toilet)
• GOT CAUGHT (30D: Heard / Heard)
• DROPKICK (54A: Quit / Quit)

Word of the Day: ERHU (28D: Two-stringed Chinese instrument) —

The erhu (Chinese: 二胡; pinyin: èrhú; [aɻ˥˩xu˧˥]) is a Chinese two-stringed bowed musical instrument, more specifically a spike fiddle, which may also be called a Southern Fiddle, and is sometimes known in the Western world as the Chinese violin or a Chinese two-stringed fiddle.

It is used as a solo instrument as well as in small ensembles and large orchestras. It is the most popular of the huqin family of traditional bowed string instruments used by various ethnic groups of China. As a very versatile instrument, the erhu is used in both traditional and contemporary music arrangements, such as pop, rock and jazz. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well the theme is really clever and I admire it a whole bunch. I discovered the gimmick early (not hard) and ... well, there it was. Weirdly, ended up being mostly overshadowed by other, tougher parts of the puzzle—by toughness in general, and a toughness that was achieved ... not always in ways I love. Let me talk about toughness I loved, first: that clue on ARM HAIR (22D: Tricep curls?). Completely baffling to me at first. And at second. Maddening. I had the ARM part and still no bleeping idea. But then I worked some crosses and finally got it, and after being so mad at that clue ... I had to admit it was brilliant. Scratch that; "had to admit" sounds like I was grudging, and I wasn't. I sincerely thought "damn, that's good," in the moment, as I was solving. Just a great repurposing of a familiar phrase. When difficulty ends with a revelation like *that*, I'm thrilled. Difficulty that comes from a two-string instrument I don't know and have no hope in hell of spelling ... that kind of difficulty is less thrilling. This is not a knock on the validity of ERHU. It's a real thing alright, and not a bygone one either. But it's never been in the NYTXW before, and my knowledge of Chinese stringed instruments begins and ends with the zither and the KOTO (the first and only thing I wanted, despite its having many more than two strings) [and despite—as one of today's commenters has noted—the KOTO's being *Japanese*]. And ERHU had a cascading ... or at least an amplifying effect, helping to make the SW corner the hardest section By A Longshot, such that it is almost all I remember. Unfortunately, it's also the corner with the most unpleasantness / unlikeable things. So even though I think this theme rules, my experience was more slog than joyride. 

So, the SW corner. There's ERHU, sure, but it crosses HITS AT (37A: Tries to swat). This is one of those ___SAT phrases where I have no idea what's supposed to happen in the blank. I thought maybe PAWSAT? BATSAT? Shrug. See also GAH, which I had as UGH and BAH before getting anywhere near GAH (44A: "Blast!"). It's really hard to get excited when the you are struggling *and* so much of your struggle is coming around answers that are ambiguous in this way—a CRAPSHOOT kind of way. SAW TO before SET TO down there as well (58A: Got busy on). You see how this gets dreary. Also, PC HELP is ... what is that? I mean, I can infer. But as a standalone answer it seems odd. "Tech support" is the service. Maybe IT HELP. PC HELP felt roll-your-own. But this is its third appearance in the NYTXW, so I guess it's a thing. Oh well. It's too bad that the long Downs are tangled in a bunch of ambiguous sludge, because they're fine, particularly GOING ONCE (29D: Presale alert?), which is maybe not the greatest standalone answer, but the "?" clue (again, hard as hell) works really well, and gave me that same "oh nice" feeling I had after getting ARM HAIR. I was subjected to SUH-WEET again (twice this month?!), but fool me once etc. No issues there. 

I resent being stumped by a "?" clue and then having the answer be a damned corporation, so the clue on MICRO, though clever, can go jump in a lake (8A: Soft opening?). Struggled with LUM, even though every part of her damn name(s) has been in the puzzle before (most often cluing NORA, I think) (31A: Nora ___ a.k.a. Awkwafina). Weird to me that SOAP PAD is a thing since I don't think I've ever called it that (20A: Brillo offering). It's definitely the name for those things you wash dishes with, but I think I just call them "dishwashing pads" or I don't call them anything. I wanted SOSPADS there, for sure. I have trouble believing RAGE ROOMS are real because they seem so stupid—seems like a fictional idea from a bad TV show that people started pretending was real—but reality is so often stupid these days, so, sure, RAGE ROOMS, whatever (32D: Spaces where people pay to destroy household objects with sledgehammers). If you say so.  Had EDIE before EVIE (57A: Nickname that sounds like its first two letters), though I did not have EDS before EVS (35D: Chevy Bolts and Nissan Leafs, for short). I wish I hadn't found the final part of this (the SW) so unpleasantly frustrating, because I really do believe the bones of this puzzle are solid, and there are definitely some brilliant cluing moments in here. I wonder how the rest of you FARED ... see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. The TSA would probably quibble with the idea that TSAPRE is "lax" (24A: Lax LAX option?)—I definitely see what you're doing there with the lax/LAX thing, very clever, but TSAPRE is faster because you have been pre-screened, right? "Lax" strongly implies "not up to snuff" or otherwise "insufficient" and seems inaccurate here. The "?" gives you some creative license, sure, but only some. Expedited screening is not "lax" screening.

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Mononymous artist who designed dresses at age 6 / FRI 12-9-22 / Monster called Miche in Tibetan / Part of a flower's gynoecium / Bird that can recognize itself in a mirror / Lawyer/voting rights activist Sherrilyn

Constructor: Brooke Husic and Hoang-Kim Vu

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none? I think? 

Word of the Day: Gwen VERDON (45D: Tony-winning actress Gwen) —

Gwyneth Evelyn "Gwen" Verdon (January 13, 1925 – October 18, 2000) was an American actress and dancer. She won four Tony Awards for her musical comedy performances, and served as an uncredited choreographer's assistant and specialty dance coach for theater and film. Verdon was a critically acclaimed performer on Broadway in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, having originated many roles in musicals, including Lola in Damn Yankees, the title character in Sweet Charity and Roxie Hart in Chicago. She is also strongly identified with her second husband, director-choreographer Bob Fosse, remembered as the dancer-collaborator-muse for whom he choreographed much of his work and as the guardian of his legacy after his death. (wikipedia)

• • •

This feels like one of those Friday puzzles with a stealth theme that I just don't see because I am not looking for it (it's Themeless Friday, after all) and because I am still IN A STUPOR from having only recently woken up. Speaking of "UP," what the hell? "UP" is probably the primary reason I feel like I'm missing something. I mean, four (4) "UP"s!?!?! I GOTTA SAY, under normal circumstances, that's about two "UP"s too many, at least. And it's hard *not* to notice the pile-"UP" when they appear in three crossing answers, two of which intersect *at the "UP"* (UPON x BUYING UP x POP-UP SHOP). By the time I hit "DON'T GET UP," I was definitely thinking "OK, what's the gag?" But I don't see a gag. Oof, you wanna know what feels awful? Staring at a grid that you *think* is hiding a theme from you. It's bad enough when you *know* it's hiding a theme from you (as in a meta-crossword, like Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest). But when you aren't even sure if the theme is actually there ... you can convince yourself that lots of things *look* thematic ("... well there's this odd mirror symmetry on the diagonal, is that something? Is the grid an arrow pointing "UP" ... and to the right? RED STATE *is* clued [It's right on a map], so maybe ... that means something?" etc.). But the answer to the question "Is there a theme here?" is a (tentative) NOPE (42A: Hit 2022 film ... or a possible response to whether you've seen it) (great clue there, and great film—read a great (great!) review of it yesterday in the new Cinéaste ... also a great review of the great film The Banshees of Inisherin, but that's probably beside the point). 

This played far more Saturday than Friday for me, either because it's hard, or because I've gotten so used to the NYTXW throwing me softballs on the weekends that I'm out of practice or because, well, see my IN A STUPOR comment, above. Managed to get YETI ERTE DNA (wrong) and TAY-TAY (hyphenated??) at first pass, but I wasn't sure about any of it, and that "R" for "D" error at DNA meant parsing PRAYER MAT was tough (after WELCOME MAT, I was out of ideas). PSI clue was brutal (1D: Abbr. at a pump) (not a gas pump but a tire pump), as was the ambiguous clue on RUG (2D: Runner, e.g.). No idea re: MOSSY (7D: Lime some stream banks—actually thought "stream banks" was some kind of internet thing. Even when I finally got going, I never got that whoosh-whoosh momentum, though eventually "APOLOGY ACCEPTED" dropped and that flowed easily into "LET'S DO THAT AGAIN," and that was sorta fun. The grid is solid but didn't have as many high points as I was expecting. Again, this makes me wonder if I missed a theme. Lots of crosswordese in that SW corner (incl. ELENA ENERO SRO), but mostly the grid stays clean and the cluing stays properly tough. Would've liked this better tomorrow, since I expect a slower, thornier experience on Saturday. But the puzzle doesn't decide when it runs, and it's not that much harder than an average Friday. Just harder than most Fridays have been lately. 

After the NW, there were no specific trouble spots, just an overall feel of toughness. Every clue seemed tricky or vague (and thus tricky), except the proper nouns, which (by the grace of god) I happened to actually know today. All of them: TAY-TAY, NOPE, IFILL, ERTE, ELENA, and VERDON (though I misspelled her VERDUN at first). If I left a proper noun out of that list, oh well, I knew that too. I absolutely botched LOGOS because when reading the clue (30D: Greek for "word") my brain rendered "Greek" as "Latin" what the f*&$!? Seriously, just looked at the clue now and was startled to see that "Latin" wasn't in there at all, LOL. That's not IN A STUPOR, that's ... I don't know what that is. A ridiculous misreading. I kept trying LEX... something. So SWAB / BOTTOM / LOGOS was a choke point that really stopped my flow cold. SWAB and NUDES were both effectively hidden from me by make-up clues that I mostly (SWAB) or completely (NUDES) failed to understand. I had NEONS before NUDES (46A: options in some eye shadow palettes). Ooh, I just noticed that PEELER is a nice nod to NOPE, which is directed by Jordan PEELE and rated "R", which makes it ... a PEELE "R" ... and now I'm back to wondering if there's a theme again. Ah well, probably better just to leave it here and let one of you tell me what I missed (if anything).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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