Fondita offerings / THU 7-23-26 / Gospel musician Tribbett / Unleavened South Asian flatbread / Org. with a list of popular baby names / Original N.Y.C. subway line / Pollution portmanteau / Symbol of rebirth in ancient Egypt / Cabinet dept. since 1889

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

[DEATH STAR (1A)]

THEME: DARK ENERGY (62A: Proposed cosmological phenomenon that could make up 70% of the universe — and six squares in this puzzle's grid?) — the letters "E-N-E-R-G-Y" are hidden inside six black ("dark") squares, resulting in twelve answers that appear not to match their clues: 

Theme answers:

• DEATH STARE / ESPOUSE (1A: More than just a disapproving look / 14D: Champion, as a cause)
• NAPE / NASCENT (10A: Scruff of the neck / 15D: Budding)
• EQUIPPED / ESTAB. (21A: Outfitted / 26D: Sign abbr. meaning "founded in")
• ROLE / RAMBLED (36A: Part in a play / 40D: Didn't stay on topic)
• SWAN SONG / THING (49A: Last hurrah / 34D: Unnamed article)
• DENY / UNREADY (63A: Not admit / 39D: Ill-prepared)

Word of the Day: POORI (11D: Unleavened South Asian flatbread) —

Puri (also poori, IPA: [puːɾiː]) is a type of deep-fried flatbread, with an unleavened wheat dough. Puri originated from the northern Indian subcontinent, where it is one of the most common flatbreads; it is a staple food in parts of the subcontinent. It resembles chapati but is deep-fried. Similar deep-fried breads from the region include bhatura, luchi, and kachori.

Puri is made of wheat flour, typically atta, which forms a dough with oil and water. This is rolled into circles that inflate while deep-frying. Due to the cooking method, puri is high in fat and calories. Puris are commonly served as a breakfast or snack, typically paired with other foods. It may be paired with savory foods, such as potato or chickpea curry, or with sweets. Variants of puri may use different types of flour or add puréed vegetables to the dough. Other variants are stuffed. Small, spherical puris are used for panipuri and sev puri, while flat puris are used for papri chaat and bhel puri; these dishes are classified as chaat.

Foods resembling puri may have existed in ancient India, and recipes were recorded by the fifteenth century. Puri is often served on holidays and other events. It is also served as in Hindu prayer as prasadam, offerings to deities. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was more of a two-and-a-half star experience for me, but I bumped it up a half star out of respect for what I think is a clever and decently executed structural gimmick. I saw through the black-square trick pretty early, so the gimmick didn't add much in the way of challenge. My main issue with the puzzle was that once you get the trick, there is no real *theme* per se—just "missing" letters—and there just wasn't enough good fill to make the solve very interesting. And it's not just that there weren't many highlights—there was a decided flatness and lifelessness to the fill, much of which was olden (not MOLTEN). Like OATEN. And AAH DEI ACL CANTI ALS ATAD SSA AAA AROD IPOD USERID IRT AGR TYE (oof, that one-two punch of AGR / TYE at the end, particularly unfortunate). DNALABS has to be the tiredest 7-letter answer in the book (24D: Forensic facilities). I haven't seen that Hebrew month in a while (NISAN). Or that African desert (NAMIB) (which I had as NEGEB for a while—wrong continent). Bygone Toyota models, plural? (SUPRAS) (26A: Former Toyota sports cars named for a Latin prefix). Certain answers, like HIGH PAY or NO SCORE, seemed low on standaloneworthiness. EPIC DEFEAT is in this category as well. EPIC FAIL(URE) is the much more familiar phrase to me, and even EPIC LOSS sounds better to my ear ("loss" and "defeat" google about equally well—"failure" googles more than ten times better than either one, and "fail" four times better than that!). The puzzle is all gimmick. The fill suffers. Languishes. Seems neglected. Anemic. Which is odd in a puzzle about energy. I needed a lot more WACKO energy. One half of TOPSY-turvy just wasn't doing it for me.

I think the stack in the NW is probably the nicest part of the puzzle. DEATH STAR(E) is a great themer, and over ENCHILADAS and IDLE GOSSIP, you've really got something there. After that, things kind of descend into blah. I've never heard the term "The Devil's radio" before. I've heard "IDLE hands are the Devil's plaything” [sorry, apparently I’ve misremembered the quote—it’s “workshop” and not “plaything”]. But I didn't know the Devil had a radio as well as a plaything [or “workshop”]. Even after I got IDLE here, GOSSIP didn't leap out at me. I think I'd say "IDLE CHATTER" before "IDLE GOSSIP" ("chatter" googles about twice as well, though "gossip" is completely legit). I needed crosses to remember NISAN and NAMIB, and I totally forgot POORI (despite the fact that it was "Word of the Day" just two years ago). This is just the second appearance of POORI. Weirdly, there has been just one appearance of PURI (which wikipedia has as the primary spelling), fifty years ago, and that wasn't clued as a flatbread, but rather as an [Indian pilgrimage center]). I say "weirdly" because I'd expect the four-letter spelling of a word to take off in the crossword before the five-letter spelling. Maybe POORI is the dominant English-language menu spelling? I don't know. I do know that thinking about POORI is making me hungry, so I'm gonna wrap this up now so I can go make the coffee and then eat.

Bullets:

• 13A: Fondita offerings (ENCHILADAS) — weird: when I typed [define fondita] into my search engine (Duck Duck Go) just now, the third hit was a site with today's NYT crossword answers. The first hit is an Italian-English dictionary. Either "fondita" is not a widely used term or search engines really, truly have become useless. Actually, it seems "fondita" is a diminutive form of "fonda," "a tavern, inn, or small restaurant." For Spanish speakers, "fondita" is undoubtedly a common term. I've never seen it before.
• 43A: Desert for which an African country is named (NAMIB) — that country: Chad. Jk, it's NAMIBia. five-letter desert starting with "N," my brain defaults to NEGEV. Sadly, getting the "B" today did not help, as NEGEB is an acceptable alt spelling of NEGEV, which I know only from doing crossword puzzles for over three decades (12 lifetime NYTXW appearances, though none since '08). Thanks, crosswords! Experience has its drawbacks. I really should've remembered that the NEGEV / NEGEB is in the Middle East, not Africa. The "for which an African country is named" ultimately helped me sort things out. 
• 28D: Coffee or tea specification (ICED) — not for me. Well, rarely for me. Mostly I can't stand ice in my drink, any drink, unless it's in my cocktail in giant cube form. Ice is too cold and it dilutes and takes up space where actual tasty beverage should be. Sometimes I really want an iced coffee, though, but always "light ice" ... and then they show me the cup with the ice in it and I'm like "... lighter." I like cold drinks cold (esp. my cocktails), I just don't like ice to be physically present. 
• 20D: Org. with a list of popular baby names (SSA) — my mom was a lawyer for the SSA, but that did not help me here. I think of "social security" in relation to old people, not babies. I wanted AKC here briefly. Puppies are babies!

[Matilda is the purest chocolate lab you'll ever see (1:59)]

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️Upcoming Crossword Tournaments✏️:

• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago, IL, Sat., Oct. 3, 2026)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Rod-shaped parasite / THU 8-15-24 / Persian's realm? / Kingpin on "The Wire" / Afro-Caribbean religion / Embarrassment from a self-own, perhaps / Straight, informally / Friends, in slang / 18th-century French novelist whose name means "the wise man" / One half of the merger that formed Paramount Global

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: SPEECH-TO-TEXT (39A: Technology used in writing the starred clues?) — clues are written as if SPEECH-TO-TEXT technology misheard the speaker / clue writer (i.e. clues contain errant homophones):

Theme answers:

• EIFFEL TOWER (18A: *Rod-shaped parasite) ("Rod-shaped Paris site" (or "sight," I suppose))
• PARTY SUB (27A: *Soup or sandwich) ("Super sandwich")
• BUTT DIAL (54A: *Embarrassment from a self-own, perhaps) ("Embarrassment from a cell phone, perhaps)
• CLOUDY SKIES (62A: *Grade-A quality) ("Gray day quality")

Word of the Day: Alain-René LESAGE (19D: 18th-century French novelist whose name means "the wise man") —

Alain-René Lesage (French pronunciation: [alɛ̃ ʁəne ləsaʒ]; 6 May 1668 – 17 November 1747; older spelling Le Sage) was a French novelist and playwright. Lesage is best known for his comic novel The Devil upon Two Sticks (1707, Le Diable boiteux), his comedy Turcaret (1709), and his picaresque novel Gil Blas (1715–1735). // Very little is known of Lesage's life and personality. Various anecdotes represent him as a very independent man, declining to accept the literary patronage required to survive. One story tells of the time he had been entreated to read his manuscript (according to the fashion of the day) at the Hôtel de Bouillon by the Duchess. The hour appointed for the reading was noon, but the dramatist was still very interested in legal matters and was detained until 1 o'clock attending the decision of a lawsuit. When he finally appeared at the Hôtel and attempted to apologise, the Duchess of Bouillon was so cold and haughty, observing that he had made her guests lose one hour waiting for his arrival. "It is easy to make up the loss madame", replied Lesage; "I will not read my comedy, and thus you will gain two hours." With that, he left the Hôtel and could never be persuaded to return to the Duchess's house. (wikipedia)

• • •

Is the EIFFEL TOWER "rod-shaped"?? Of all the ways I would've described that structure (which I spent a lot of time looking at the last couple weeks, on account of the Olympics), "rod-shaped" is not among them. I think of a "rod" as perfectly straight. Like the "inanimate carbon rod" that wins "Employee of the Month" in that one "Simpsons" episode. That rod is straight. Rods are straight. The EIFFEL TOWER tapers to a point. Seems more like a narrow pyramid than a rod. So much so that I have been sitting here saying "rod-shaped" over and over, hoping to discover some SPEECH-TO-TEXT possibility that I'm missing. It's not like I struggled to get that first themer—I had EIFF- pretty quickly, so I just wrote in the obvious and then tried to figure out how the clue was supposed to make sense. I got the "Paris site" pun pretty quickly, so felt good about leaving EIFFEL TOWER in place, but not that good. Still feels like there's something I'm missing, so weird is "rod-shaped." The word "rod" appears nowhere on the EIFFEL TOWER's wikipedia page. But OK, fine, it's "rod-shaped," moving on... I thought the theme was fine, though it really felt like something I'd seen before. Not much difficulty, but it is kind of fun figuring out the SPEECH-TO-TEXT errors. The hardest speech command to figure out, for me, was the one that might produce "Grade-A quality". Weird, now, as it seems obvious: "Grade A" sounds exactly like "gray day." But I think my brain was trying to make one word out of "Grade A" and was only getting something like "Grady." Grady is the absent-minded friend of Fred Sanford on "Sanford & Son," but it was hard to see how anything about him evoked CLOUDY SKIES, so I just cocked my head and stared dumbly at the screen for a few seconds, like a dog trying to understand television, until "gray day" finally popped into my thick skull.

I know the "technology" here as "VOICE-TO-TEXT," though "SPEECH-TO-TEXT" is not only valid but actually Googles about twice as well. Is there any difference between the two, or are they just two different names for the same thing? I never (well, rarely) use SPEECH-TO-TEXT technology, as I just end up having to make corrections, which often take at least as long as it would've taken to compose the message in the first place. But I also hate adapting to any new technology, and most of my more normal friends and family have been using SPEECH-TO-TEXT for a while now, especially when they're out and about and need to send a quick text. I wouldn't say the revealer was hard to work out—I could already tell there were "mishearings" afoot—but SPEECH was definitely the (non-Paris) site, or locus, or whatever, of the toughest (for me) part of the puzzle. Not SPEECH itself, but the answers all around and through it, starting with LESAGE, which is LOL obscure at this point. In the olden days, you used to see GIL or BLAS clued as LESAGE’s (once) "famous" French novel GIL BLAS, so I must've seen the guy's name before, but if so, it registered not at all (GIL hasn't been clued that way since '08; for BLAS, it’s been since '10; note: while there are myriad ways to clue GIL, there's only one non-LESAGE way to clue BLAS: [Panama's Gulf of San ___]). I got LESAGE like many of you probably got it—by inferring it from "the wise one." 

Also running through SPEECH was REMEDY, which I very confidently wrote in as REPAIR (off the "RE-") (35D: Fix). This meant that though I immediately thought EVILEST for 47A: Most diabolical, it wouldn't work. It also wouldn't work because for 40D: Plant in the mint family with healthful seeds (CHIA), I somehow wrote in DILL (!?) and off of that wrote in ISO- (again, !?) at 44A: Straight, informally (HET). That is some creative f-ing up right there. And was it "AW HECK!" or "AW HELL!"? I wanted the former, which, to my eye/ear, is more "colorful" than the latter (which is more common, and therefore lacking "color"). So everything in the vicinity of SPEECH ended up being a mess (though SPEECH itself was not to blame). My struggles (though minor) extended west and south from there, as PCB seemed like it could be anything. I considered DDT, then really wanted CFC (chlorofluorocarbons), but eventually got PCB entirely from crosses and still don't know exactly what it is. Looks like it stands for "polychlorinated biphenyl." Huh. Alright then. Looks like letter gibberish. TCB. PCP. PBJ. Blah blah blas. I also struggled with TENTS (55D: Rainflies can cover them). I guess I don't go camping enough (i.e. ever ... well, rarely—I'm not averse, just lazy). In truth, though, the puzzle wasn't that hard. My only mistake outside the whole center-to-SW region was when I wrote BENCH in, first thing (1A: City sitting spot = STOOP).

Bullets:

• 12D: Small sofa (LOVE SEAT) — for better or worse (mostly worse), LOVE SEAT is going to make me think of JD Vance for the foreseeable future

• 6D: Persian's realm? (CATDOM) — Speaking of Vance, here's one for all the "childless cat ladies" out there! I love cats. I have two cats. I guess this (gestures to entire surroundings) is CATDOM? All cats are CATDOM? I dunno. This is not a word I can imagine using, except maybe facetiously, the way you might stick the -DOM suffix on anything to refer to the wider world of that thing (thiefdom! breaddom!). And yet it's a word. In the dictionary. And so is DOGDOM. And HORSEDOM (though the second hit I get on that search is the OED, which assumes I meant to search for "whoredom" (!?)). I would keep googling through all of animaldom, but coffee is calling my name, so before I google "giraffedom," I'll just move on.

• 57D: Identifying words from a familiar voice ("IT'S ME") — I really like this clue. I can't put my finger on why; it's pretty ordinary-looking. But there's something ... perfect about it. Spot on. 
• 21A: Base figure, for short (NCO) — a military base, not a low or evil creature, or a number, or whatever else "base" or "figure" might've made you think (NCO = non-commissioned officer, one of the first pieces of crosswordese I learned back in the day)
• 26D: Friends, in slang (PEEPS) — your people are your PEEPS. Because your friends are neon-colored marshmallow birds. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Classic children's song about a lark / THU 7-25-24 / Slogan in the 2016 Republican presidential primary / Hit the ball well, in baseball slang / English town known for its mineral springs / Singer who coaches on "The Voice," familiarly / First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954) / Willa Cather novel set in 1880s Nebraska / Major fantasy sports platform / Spanish region with a namesake wine

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy (as rebus puzzles go)

THEME: GOES OUT WITH A BANG (37A: Finishes in grand style, like the answers to the starred clues?) — theme answers are brand names and titles and slogans that end (or "go out") with a "!"; that "!" (which, like all punctuation, would normally not be represented in a crossword answer) is represented by the letters "BANG" in all the crosses. So, it's a rebus puzzle where you have "!" in the Across and "BANG" in the Down (“bang” being an informal term for an exclamation point): 

Theme answers:

• CHIPS AHOY! / SHEBANG (21A: *Nabisco cookie brand / 9D: The whole ___)
• YAHOO! / SLAM-BANG (25A: *Major fantasy sports platform / 14D: Exciting in a noisy or violent way)
• O, PIONEERS! / BANGLES (53A: *Willa Cather novel set in 1880s Nebraska / 57D: Rigid bracelets)
• JEB! / HEADBANGS (61A: *Slogan in the 2016 Republican presidential primary / 44D: Rocks out to heavy metal, say)

Word of the Day: "ALOUETTE" (39D: Classic children's song about a lark) —

 

"Alouette" (pronounced [alwɛt]) is a popular Quebecois children's song, commonly thought to be about plucking the feathers from a lark. Although it is in French, it is well known among speakers of other languages; in this respect, it is similar to "Frère Jacques". Many US Marines and other Allied soldiers learnt the song while serving in France during World War I and took it home with them, passing it on to their children and grandchildren. [...] "Alouette" has become a symbol of French Canada for the world, an unofficial national song. Today, the song is used to teach French and English-speaking children in Canada, and others learning French around the world, the names of body parts. Singers will point to or touch the part of their body that corresponds to the word being sung in the song. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one mostly worked for me, though the nature of the theme made it Awfully easy. All the rebus squares come at the ends of their Across answers and all those squares are "BANG!"s. Once you pick up the gimmick (which was not terribly hard), you aren't likely to be tortured by the potentially destructive presence of hidden rebus squares. You know they're out there, and you know they're "BANG!"s, so if a corner isn't coming together as easily as it should, you just have to ask yourself, "could a 'BANG!' go somewhere in here," and voila! Actually, I never really had to ask. The "BANG!"s seemed to announce themselves, loudly, as you might expect (they're "BANG!"s, after all, not whimpers). I had CHIPS AHOY and then extra square—checked the cross on that square and could see clearly that the answer was SHEBANG. And that was that. Well, at that point, I didn't know the theme concept—I didn't know why we were doing "BANG!"s—but like 20 seconds later the revealer showed up, and that cracked it. "BANG!"s ahoy! There's something slightly monotonous about the theme, and the revealer was kind of anticlimactic (it explained, but it didn't surprise) ... and yet whatever slightly tired feelings I was having about the theme were all blown away by one glorious, bygone slogan; a mere syllable that sent my jaded heart soaring. That slogan, that syllable, that short burst of low-key energy that is perhaps the only amusing memory I have of the 2016 presidential race? Why, it's JEB!, of course. JEB! I laughed for real. The guts you gotta have to bring that one back. The confidence that anyone will remember! I am surprised by how much I loved remembering the delightful quaintness and completely ineffectual "enthusiasm" of that slogan. Man ... good times. Dude had no idea what hit him. Then the election happened and we were all JEB! Oof. See, I don't like remembering the whole 2016 SHEBANG. I prefer remembering *just* the plucky, go-get-'em slogan. The three letters least likely to precede an exclamation point. J-E-B! The little engine that couldn't, god bless him.

[it hurts to watch]

Oh, look at that, the puzzle is 16 wide. Didn't even notice. I guess your options were: go with GO OUT... and a narrow 14 or go with GOES OUT... and expand to 16. Wise choice. Give yourself room. 

I was a little disappointed in patches with the short fill, which ran a little olden, especially olden-namey: ALEC ESTEE IVOR LORNA, 20th-century stalwarts all. There was also APERS and ITTY and ATSEA and AGAR and ODED and other hardcore repeaters of various levels of irksomeness. But the theme was strong enough to carry the day, and some of the longer answers had real pizzazz. I do enjoy a MOCHA LATTE and I especially enjoy PETER LORRE (30D: First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954)) whose name I was happy to see in full today (Have you seen M, you should see M ... also The Maltese Falcon ... but I digress). I had no idea (or forgot) that "ALOUETTE" was about a lark. I think it was the name of a cheese when I was growing up, so the whole "plucking" thing didn't quite make sense in French class, at first. Yeah, here we go: a cheese spread, actually:

As for the song: it's an oddly jaunty and sunny tune considering the topic of the lyrics appears to be bird torture. Probably one of those things you're just not supposed to think too hard about. 

Bullets:

• 46A: Get more of the same, maybe (REORDER) — there used to be a kind of rule (a soft rule, but a reasonable rule, I think) that you weren't supposed to repeat letter strings of longer than, say, 4 letters. It's hard to imagine someone even noticing let alone caring about having PARAGON and AGONY in the same grid, for instance, but get over 4 letters and the duplicated letter strings can start to become conspicuous. I mention this because I found "ORDER" crossing "ORDER" (i.e. REORDER crossing BORDERED) kind of jarring. If they hadn't been crossing, I probably wouldn't have noticed. But they were and I did.
• 26A: Feature of "woulda," "coulda" or "shoulda" (SILENT L) — I love this clue. It's such great misdirection. Gets you looking at the slanginess of those "a" endings and then hits you with "Psych! It was the 'L' I was talking about all along! Yeah, I coulda (!) just used 'would,' 'could,' and 'should,' but where's the fun in that!?" Brilliant.

• 22D: Counsel: Abbr. (ATT.) — I was telling myself this was short for "attaché" right up until I started writing this bullet point, when I realized "oh it's just 'attorney,' duh."
• 35D: Oscar-winning Hathaway (ANNE) — as you know if you read the P.S. on Tuesday's blog, I was inspired by the puzzle to watch The Princess Diaries earlier this week and it was indeed enjoyable. Yes there are tiresome Disney qualities to it, and the treatment of high school is, like most movie treatments of high school, eye-rollingly simplistic and caricatured, but ANNE Hathaway and Julie Andrews and especially Heather Matarazzo (as the best friend) are all super charming and funny. Oh, and Hector Elizondo is in it! He makes everything better. And he and Andrews are kinda hot together (Andrews is the widowed queen of Genovia (!) and Elizondo's her bodyguard / driver who becomes a kind of low-key love interest ... they dance ... it's nice). Mandy Moore is also in it. Garry Marshall directs. There's lots and lots and lots of great shots of San Francisco. It's not Vertigo or Bullitt, but you could do worse.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Basic linear expression / THU 1-11-24 / Mohammed's third and youngest wife / Finnish tech giant / Way down in the nether regions / Instrument notably featured in George Michael's 1984 hit "Careless Whisper"

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Y = X (69A: Basic linear expression with a hint to answering the five starred clues in this puzzle) — change "y" to "x" in each of the starred clues; only then do their answers make sense:

Theme answers:

• BAD BREAK-UP (17A: *Cause of irritated eyes) [Cause of irritated exes]
• CAT PEOPLE (26A: *Many lovers, e.g.) [Manx lovers, e.g.]
• "THE SHOW MUST GO ON" (38A: *Mayim of entertainment) [Maxim of entertainment]
• BRAZILIAN (49A: *Way down in the nether regions) [Wax down in the nether regions]
• DAS KAPITAL (59A: *Book of Mary) [Book of Marx]

Word of the Day: Chris REDD (18D: Former "S.N.L." comic Chris) —

 

Christopher Jerell Redd (born March 25, 1985) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, rapper, and singer. After several years performing stand-up comedy, Redd was hired to join the cast of the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live ahead of the show's 43rd season in 2017, making his debut alongside Heidi Gardner and Luke Null, and serving as a cast member for five seasons until 2022. For his work on the show, he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics in 2018 for co-writing the SNL song "Come Back Barack". He is also known for his roles in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), Disjointed (2017–2018), and Kenan (2021–2022). (wikipedia)

• • •

***ATTENTION: READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** : Hello from Central New York and the first properly wintry week of the season! It's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. So ... 17 years ... not bad. At this time last year, I was recovering from COVID and still dealing with the very fresh grief brought on by the untimely death of my cat, Olive. I was very grateful for the blog at that point, since it grounded me in routine and gave me a place where I could lose myself in a pastime I love, and share that love with others. OK, yes, true, I don't always *love* crosswords. Sometimes it's more hate-love or love-hate or "Why are you being like this, you stupid puzzle!?" It ain't all positive vibes, as you know. But I realized last year that part of what makes this blog so fun for me, and what makes it a solace to many readers, is the sense of commiseration it provides. Sometimes the puzzle thrills you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't; and sometimes it infuriates you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't. But either way, the blog is here; it's *always* here. You get to have your feelings validated, or you get to shake your head at my errant judgment and often breathtaking ignorance, but either way, you get to share an experience that's an important part of your daily life, and maybe you learn something new. Above all, I hope you feel that there is a real person with a real life and real emotions and (very) real human flaws who's telling you what it was *really* like for him to solve the puzzle. I never wanted to be an expert, offering some kind of bloodless know-it-all advice and analysis. I wanted blood. Blood on the page. There will be blood! ... But also, music videos. And Words of the Day. And, if you hang around long enough, cat pictures. Like this one:

This is Ida (she put herself in the bin, I swear). Ida is the happy sequel to last year's grief. At the beginning of January, I was mourning. By the end of January, I was still mourning, but now I had a new companion (as did my other cat, Alfie, who *really* needed one). Why am I talking about my cats? Because they are constant, they give shape and rhythm to my day, and I love them even if they sometimes drive me crazy. Just like crossword puzzles! (See that! Segue! This is why you should pay me the big bucks!) 

However much I love writing this blog (and I do, a lot), it is, in fact, a job. This blog has covered the NYTXW every day, without fail, for 17 years, and except for two days a month (when my regular stand-ins Mali and Clare write for me), and an occasional vacation or sick day (when I hire substitutes to write for me), it's me who's doing the writing. Every day. At very ... let's say, inconvenient hours (my alarm goes off most mornings at 3:45am). Over the years, I have received all kinds of advice about "monetizing" the blog, invitations to turn it into a subscription-type deal à la Substack or Patreon. But that sort of thing has never felt right for me. I like being out here on Main, on this super old-school blogging platform, just giving it away for free and relying on conscientious addicts like yourselves to pay me what you think the blog's worth. It's just nicer that way. 

How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar on the homepage):

Second, a mailing address (checks can be made out to "Michael Sharp" or "Rex Parker"):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All Venmo contributions will get a little heart emoji, at a minimum :) All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. My daughter (Ella Egan) has once again designed my annual thank-you cards, and once again those cards feature (wait for it) cats! My cats: Alfie & Ida. This year, an elegant set of five!

These really capture the combination of beauty and goofiness that I love in cats (and puzzles, frankly). I'd say "Collect All Five!" but every snail-mail contributor will get just one and (hopefully) like it! Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Please know that your support means a lot to me and my family. Now on to today's puzzle... 

• • •

Well this was fun, but really, really, dismayingly easy. The theme answers are, of course, going to give you some trouble for a while, but even before I knew what the gimmick was, I was able to put together BAD BREAK-UP from crosses without much trouble. I didn't *get* it—thought maybe there was some kind of sound change going on, the "real" answer was supposed to be BAD MAKE-UP (!?!?) (17A: *Cause of irritated eyes), but my point is that I could plow ahead without my theme incomprehension impeding my solve much at all. The fill was so easy that I just floated down the grid without even bothering with the themers at first. My solve ran like water down a staircase ... I don't like that simile, but that's how it felt. Down IBSEN and then across ASUNDER and then down EMO and across MEGA, down AUDEN and SAX and across EXACTED and down ATOP CHOIR until I hit the bottom of the staircase, which (magically!) was the location of the revealer. And this, for me, was the only part of the puzzle that was even remotely tough—figuring out what "Basic linear expression" meant in 69A: Basic linear expression with a hint to answering the five starred clues in this puzzle. I got the "Y" and "X" easily enough, but that box in between??? Somehow "expression" did not have me looking for an equation, so I had to rely on the cross to get that mystery box between "X" and "Y" and that cross ... was also not clear to me (62D: How peers should be treated). "Peers should be treated ... AS I ... am treated??? But then what the hell is YIX!? Is that come damn chess thing or coding thing or math thing I know zero about?" (this is always my first guess when I don't understand something—puzzle-makers lean heavy into chess/tech/math in a way that I ... do not; I did, as a child and teen, but then I ... drifted). I could tell that "Y" became "X" in the clues, but I still didn't understand the mystery box until I started thinking of words suggesting equivalency (Y IS X? Y TO X?) and then bam, there it was: EQUALS ("="). 

After getting the [EQUALS] trick, the puzzle had no more resistance to offer. I barely remember solving it. Except ... well, speaking of "barely" ... most of the themers didn't do much for me, in the way of amusement, but I will admit I laughed hard at BRAZILIAN, mainly because I thought "ah, ok, so *this* is the reason this puzzle exists! This answer right here! Well ... bravo, well played. Pubic grooming joke, noted!" The other "Y"-to-"X" changes were solid and well hidden —that is, the surface level meaning of the clue remained totally plausible—but none of them have the "wow, bold!" feeling that the BRAZILIAN clue did. Also, that [*Mayim of entertainment] clue was not gonna fool anyone. There's only one "Mayim of entertainment" that anyone knows, and her last name is not fifteen letters long. So if you didn't know something was wrong before that point, you should have then. Maybe this is where you figured out that "Y"-to-"X" gimmick. I don't know what it would've been like to figure it out on the fly because I didn't get the chance—hit the revealer too early. Might've been fun to suss it out without the revealer's help. But I enjoyed and appreciated the theme nonetheless.

The fill felt a little bit on the over-common (i.e. stale) side much of the time. HELI ORA ACAI HIREE IBIS NEATO ANODE EMO, that kind of thing. But nothing made me wince, and I never felt like my patience was being tried (perhaps because it was all so easy to move through). ASAHI, the official beer of Crossworld! (24D: Japanese beer). Did you know it's an anagram of AISHA? (53D: Mohammed's third and youngest wife). I did not, until this puzzle made me think about it, and there it was. There's some other doubling in this puzzle: the Steinbeck doubling ("EAST of EDEN") (27D: Steinbeck title starter / 67A: Steinbeck title ender) and then ... well, there's a bit of wedding doubling, I think (from WOO to BRIDE). And more doubleness at 21A: Inits. of (not one but) two schools in the Missouri Valley Conference] (ISU) (that's Illinois State and Indiana State). Beyond all this doubling, I don't know if there are any other remarkable features to point out today. REDD was the only answer that was not immediately familiar to me (there've been too many SNL cast members to count and I stopped paying attention to that show a better part of a decade ago, when political satire started seeing not only redundant and useless, but ... complicit, somehow). I just realized that this puzzle must've been strange to write, since you basically have to start with a list of "words that become other words when you swap 'Y' for 'X'" and work from there, trying to fashion "X" clues that lead to some set of theme answers (arranged symmetrically), while also maintaining a plausible "Y"-level surface meaning. The elegant simplicity of the gimmick masks (I think) a fairly complicated construction process. 

Just realized that yesterday really did mark the end of the Holiday Pet Pics! I'm kinda sad. Here are two last ones of reader Laura's late cat Ziggy. They weren't submitted as part of the Pet Pics extravaganza, just attached to regular old correspondence, but I think they capture the cozy, wintry vibe of the whole endeavor.

[Why would you make your cat shovel the walkway!? Seems both cruel and inefficient.]

[After a hard day of shoveling (and who knows what other household tasks his owners make him do!), Ziggy has truly earned his snack and crossword]

See you next time.  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. I don't think I would've used "Supervillain" in my LEX Luthor clue (63D: Supervillain Luthor), what with SUPERLATIVE already in the grid. Seems ... I dunno, superfluous?

P.P.S. ROSE is [Flower girl?] simply because it's a "girl's" name that is also a "flower."

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Unfounded rumor / WED 4-6-22 / Longtime news anchor Jim / Pedagogic org. / Pioneer in color TV

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Hard!! (15:09)

THEME: COMMA — Punctuation mark missing in "Let's eat people!" (at least one would hope!) ... as well as from the starred clues

Theme answers:

• Leave(,) briefly-- VACAY
• Final(,) say-- COURSE EXAM
• All(,) for one-- LAUNDRY DETERGENT
• Flies(,) frequently-- ANNOYANCES
  

Word of the Day: ADELE (64A: She released "30" in '21) —

Richard Russell, the founder of record label XL Recordings, complimented Adele that she had the potential to change the way women were seen in the music industry by focusing on music rather than sexuality. The New Yorker called her "the most popular living soul singer in the world" at 27-years-old. Writing for Vulture, Jillian Mapes opined that Adele is "among the first plus-size female cultural icons to reach the highest echelons of commercial success without having to make herself the butt of fat jokes along the way".

• • •

Hey beautiful solvers, welcome to another episode of Malaika Mwednesday. If you'd like to get into The Malaika Headspace, I was listening to Bridgerton's beautiful instrumental covers while I solved this puzzle. I am particularly fond of "You Oughtta Know."

I have lots to say about this puzzle and I do not know how best to order my thoughts! Let's start with easy stuff-- I loved this theme. The finds were delightful. I genuinely don't know which was my favorite one... probably the spanner? I could envision that (with the comma) being a clue in a Saturday puzzle. 

I did have a few thoughts about the execution of the theme. I think a huge job for editors is to identify whether the crux of a theme rocks or not (in this case, it rocks) and then work with the constructor to make it into as excellent of a solving experience as possible. One thing I didn't like was that, when you select 1A in the Times app, it highlights the revealer. Out of curiosity, I jumped down there-- I didn't think it would be a revealer, I thought maybe this would be some sort of opposites puzzle. But it was, and it had (in my opinion) a stupidly easy clue. Within seconds, the theme was over for me. I didn't get to uncover it like a wordplay-filled treasure hunt. Is that my fault for skipping to the end, or the app's fault for highlighting entries, or the editor's fault for making the revealer clue so easy? I don't know!! What do y'all think?

I wonder if this puzzle could have been executed like this one, where there are entries scattered throughout with no symmetry. This would have been tough, because no other clues could have used commas, but I do feel like it would be possible! (And would have resulted in a Thursday puzzle, probably.) That would help with the fact that some of the long answers were a bit boring-- LAUNDRY DETERGENT could become "detergent" and COURSE EXAM could become "exam."

The last thing to note is that I didn't finish this puzzle and, like, it wasn't even close. I have never heard of Jim LEHRER or RCA-- that letter could have been anything. Similarly, I had SeHL and NEeP. And then a patch in the SW caused me to "check puzzle" about four times. CANARD and NEA are both totally brand new terms for me, as were the names REID and MCGEE, combined with the weird-ish AGRO and RE-AIR and the unexpected letter pattern in B-TEAM. Phew. It was hopeless for me.

These types of things really stick out to me because I am someone who submits puzzles to the Times and gets rejections. For example, I recently submitted a puzzle and was told that it was very close, but ANIKA (name) crossing EKG (abbreviation) was unfair. I read and that and thought, "Good point! I agree!" But then I look at this puzzle and see LEHRER (name) crossing RCA (abbreviation). I don't know why the editors thought this was fair. It confuses me! Sometimes my conclusion is that I should stop submitting puzzles at all so that I no longer get caught up in these tiny comparisons and can just go back to Doing A Fun Little Game. And sometimes my conclusion is just that I should make better puzzles. *shrug*

Bullets:

• It's VACAY not "vaycay" right? 
• Have any of you tried aromatherapy? It seems pretty relaxing.
• ARIA has appeared 1,207 times in a NYT puzzle, but never clued in reference to "Pretty Little Liars"
• TWEEDLEDUM was such a nice bonus entry
  
• I always associate the shiny fabric LAME with Rocky's shorts in "Rocky Horror Picture Show"

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...