Official currency of Ecuador and Guam: Abbr. / WED 7-2-2025 / Tube descender / "The Third Man" and "Kiss Me Deadly," for two

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Easy (11:31, on paper)

THEME: Did you know?! — Phrases about trivia that are re-parsed so that they are about trivia in a different way

Theme answers:

• [Did you know?! The most common bar name in the U.K. is The Red Lion] for PUB TRIVIA
• The answer is trivia that is about pubs
• [Did you know?! The oldest known porno movie is the 1907 short film "El Satario"] for GRAPHIC DETAIL
• The answer is a detail that about content that is graphic
• [Did you know?! Engaging in leisure activities has been shown to reduce stress levels by over 30%] for FUN FACT
• The answer is a fact about fun
• [Did you know?! Before mastering fire, cave men ate uncooked meat for the firs million years of human existence] for RAW DATA
• The answer is data regarding raw food
• [Did you know?! America's first chartered money supplier opened in Philadelphia on January 7, 1782] for BANK STATEMENT
• The answer is a statement about banks
• [Did you know?! Diamonds are 58 times more resistant to pressure than rubies or sapphires] for HARD TRUTHS
• The answer is a truth about mineral hardness

Word of the Day: NAVAHO (Language of W.W. II "code talkers": Var) —

Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles, proposed the use of the Navajo language to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. Johnston, a World War I veteran, was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of missionaries to the Navajo. He was able to converse in what is called "Trader's Navajo," a pidgin language. He was among a few non-Navajo who had enough exposure to it to understand some of its nuances. Many Navajo men enlisted shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and eagerly contributed to the war effort.

Because Navajo has a complex grammar, it is not mutually intelligible with even its closest relatives within the Na-Dene family to provide meaningful information. It was still an unwritten language at the time, and Johnston believed Navajo could satisfy the military requirement for an undecipherable code. Its complex syntax, phonology, and numerous dialects made it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. One estimate indicates that fewer than 30 non-Navajo could understand the language during World War II.

• • •

Hey crew, welcome to another Malaika MWednesday! This puzzle rocked!! It ticked every single one of my boxes. The theme construct was delightful and clever. The theme answers were great stand-alone phrases. The clues for the theme answers were actually cute and interesting. On top of that, we got six theme answers (really going above and beyond here, I'm happy with four and content with three!), and a couple of long non-theme entries in BABY GRAND and SABOTEURS. Honestly, what else is there to say!!!

I suppose we can talk about how I solved this. On paper, I jump around wayyy more than on a computer, just because of the interface. On a computer, the clue is highlighted and so my eye focuses there, and when I fill in the entry, the highlight moves down to the next sequential clue. On paper, everything is black and white and my eyes are free to wander. As a result, I was all over the place. I read all six of the theme answers and didn't really see what they were getting at, until I was able to fill in FUN FACT just from the letter pattern. Then, it all clicked, and the other entries fell right in place.

That and PUB TRIVIA were the entries that really, truly best nailed the theme, in my opinion. The clues were providing us with facts and trivia. I guess they were also truths and details. Data felt least fitting to me, and BANK STATEMENT was the odd one out because "statement" had sort of a double meaning. But that's just nitpicking, and to be clear, I didn't really care.

My final thought is from a technical perspective. When I am advising new constructors on how to arrange the black squares in a grid (which is usually the hardest part, at the beginning) my advice is to make your grid have no sections that are 5x5 white squares. That's not a Crossword Law or anything, it's just something that has made my life easier while constructing. So I'm always impressed to see easy, smooth grids like this one with 5x5 sections-- although maybe LE ROI isn't exactly smooth... but the other entries were!

Bullets:

• The Red Lion — The trivia about The Red Lion reminded me of an awesome piece from a data viz site called The Pudding which mapped all the pubs in the UK
• [Room for growth?] for WOMB — This was almost such a good clue! I read the clue and then glanced at the grid hoping it would be "nursery" but alas, it was not. I don't think a womb is a room and thus I don't think this clue really works.
• [Only acting Oscar winner in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame] for CHER — She won for Moonstruck!
• [Outfit that might have satin lapels, informally] for TUX — My sister and I purchased some nice outfits for a wedding, but we didn't want to wear them just once, so we threw a Fancy Clothing Party and re-wore our outfits. Three people came in tuxedos, which was awesome, and yes, all of them had purchased their tuxes for wedding. In the spirit of "getting more eyes on the outfit," it's pictured below.

xoxo Malaika

P.S. If you are the type of person who listens to podcasts, I recently appeared on one and you can listen here. About half our conversation was about crosswords (starting around 10 minutes) and the other half was just chit-chat. (For what it's worth, I am not a person who listens to podcasts so I will absolutely not be offended if you do not listen.)

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Ascetic breakfast selection / THU 5-8-25 / Muddies, as water / San ___ Bay (estuary near San Francisco) / Halting speakers? / Noted silver-tongued Olympic gold medalist / Writer honored by Oz Park in Chicago / Resides a long time ago? / God honored by gladiatorial fights / Bike and Bike+, e.g.

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium to Medium

THEME: "BUTT OUT!" (39A: "Mind your own business!" ... or a hint to the four sides of this puzzle) — four answers stick out (by one letter) on each side of the puzzle; these letters spell out a synonym for "butt":

Theme answers:

• ROILS (2D: Muddies, as water)
• UPEND (5D: Turn topsy-turvy)
• MOPE (9D: Be down in the dumps)
• PLAID (11D: Crisscross pattern)

• BRASS (15A: Generals and such)
• HALFTONE (30A: Musical pitch interval)
• AREA (49A: Field)
• FACET (67A: Side to take into consideration)

• CHAIR (55D: Something a waiter may pull out)
• SATE (63D: Fill fully)
• MENSA (58D: Sharp set?)
• DECOR (60D: Interior design)

• TAILS (13A: Coin toss call)
• UNIT (26A: Section of a curriculum)
• SENTRIES (46A: Halting speakers?)
• HEATS (65A: Qualifying races)

Word of the Day: My Neighbor TOTORO (37A: "My Neighbor ___," 1988 Hayao Miyazaki film)—

My Neighbor Totoro is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. It stars the voices of Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto and Hitoshi Takagi, and focuses on two young sisters and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan.

The film explores themes such as animism, Shinto symbology, environmentalism and the joys of rural living. My Neighbor Totoro received worldwide critical acclaim, and grossed over $41 million worldwide at the box office; the film also grossed significantly more from home video sales and merchandise.

My Neighbor Totoro received numerous awards, including the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize, the Mainichi Film Award, and Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film in 1988. It also received the Special Award at the Blue Ribbon Awards in the same year. The film is considered as one of the top animation films, ranking 41st in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010 and the number-one animated film on the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of all-time greatest films. The film and its titular character have become cultural icons, and made multiple cameo appearances in other films. Totoro also serves as the mascot for Studio Ghibli and is recognized as one of the most popular characters in Japanese animation. (wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually interesting, but a drag to solve. Having to imagine letters outside the grid ... I dunno, it's not the most fun way to go through a puzzle. I didn't really care what those letters spelled out, I just knew I had to remember (16 times!) that the answers were going to come up one letter short. Is it cute that those letters spelled things? Sure. Is it a nice touch that all the theme answers are real words even with their (apparently) missing letters? It is. But the solving experience itself was not so hot. I'm just looking out for missing letters. A lot. All for a pun designed to amuse a child. Worse, I got the pun very early, and after you get it, there's really nothing left to discover. 

I guess it might have been possible for a solver to get stuck somewhere and then actually use the "butt" information to make sense of an answer, but the puzzle just isn't that hard. At no time did I stop to look at (or imagine) what the "missing" letters were spelling. I never needed to know. I didn't even notice that the missing letters were symmetrical, appearing in the same places on each side of the puzzle. That too might've proved useful if you got stuck. But there was no getting stuck today. Just the somewhat annoying experience of having to navigate a fussy theme in tight corners. The concept itself here is just fine—clever, even. But there's no excitement beyond the revealer. Just a lot of plodding work that makes solving the puzzle slower, but not really harder.

Looks like I made a small handful of errors, none of them related to the theme (?!). OCEANAUT before AQUANAUT (6D: One doing some deep-sea exploration). Is OCEANAUT a thing, it really sounds like a thing, but my software is red-underlining it like it's not a thing. Hey, it is a thing! It means ... AQUANAUT. Cool. AQUANAUT is too close to the hairspray to be useful, imho.

 
Anyway, screwed that up for a bit, and then had NOT GET before NOT SEE (24A: Fail to understand) and ABOVE before ALOFT (53D: Overhead). Also, because of ABOVE, I went with VIEW before FACE(T) (67A: Side to take into consideration). Absolutely no idea who this ALAIN-René Lesage is, although I feel like maybe I've seen LESAGE in the grid before, and if I look him up, I will have an "oh, that guy!" experience, let's find out ... [looks up Lesage] ... oh, that guy! He wrote Gil Blas, which should mean nothing to you unless you solved crosswords in the olden days, when you absolutely had to be able to answer ["___ Blas" (Lesage novel)], or, (more frequently) ["Gil ___" (Lesage novel)], though most often, esp. in the olden days, you'd just get ["Gil ___"]. Seriously, that's it. No context, just ["Gil ___"]. This was the kind of arcane baloney that pretty much defined the popular conception of crosswords for decades. Like so many four-letter answers (ADIT!), BLAS was just something you just *learned* if you solved crosswords. I'm not convinced that most solvers could ever have told you what Gil or Blas was supposed to be, or who Lesage was, but man, you would see this Lesage guy and his alleged book freakishly often. And there was a ten-year stretch in there (before my time) where the *only* clue for BLAS was [Gil ___]. Eleven times in a row from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s, the puzzle used that exact clue (actually, there was one notable change, which is that the NYTXW stopped putting "." at the end of every clue sometime around 1966, so there were a bunch of [Gil ___.] clues in a row and then all of a sudden they turn to [Gil ___] clues) (I've written about crossword minutiae before, but this may be the minutest observation I've ever made). Perhaps my favorite part of this whole Gil + Blas + Lesage odyssey is I still have no idea what the book is about or who reads it. I understand invoking Lesage if, say, you 've got LESAGE in your grid, or BLAS, but it would seem to perverse to use him for GIL these days, and why oh why would you go to this guy for ALAIN when there are much more famous and handsomer ALAINs available?

A few more notes:

• 46A: Halting speakers? (SENTRIES) — I do love this clue. It reminds me of the Brady Bunch episode where Peter and Jan play SENTRIES in Hamlet, and they have to say "Halt! Who goes there!?" I think that's the entirety of their lines. Although now that I think of it, it's probably "Hark! Who goes there!?" And it might've been Romeo & Juliet, not Hamlet.

• 1A: 2022 Jordan Peele horror/sci-fi film (NOPE) — a great movie. Very movie-heavy today with NOPE and TOTORO and MIA Goth and "I'm Just KEN." I have yet to see a MIA Goth film because horror is generally not my bag. Which should tell you exactly how much of a "horror" film NOPE is (it isn't) (again, great great great, just ... not "horror," despite a gruesome moment or two ... that poor chimpanzee ...)
• 21D: Bike and Bike+, e.g. (PELOTONS) — this is a cult. Some of my friends are in this cult. To join the cult or not to join the cult, that is the question.

• 33D: Who "can get in the way of what I'm feelin'," in an Alicia Keys hit ("NO ONE") — I learned about this song from crosswords. "NO ONE" is best known to me as the answer I try to play in Spelling Bee every chance I get despite the fact that it gets rejected every time because it's two words, not one. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Inspiration for a seafood chain / WED 2-26-25 / Preppy fabric / Numismatic rating / Stunt performer on "Jackass" / Area of frenetic dancing / "Ammo" for a modern-day cannon / D to F, e.g., in music / Writer's starting point / Frequent filler for a po' boy / Pixar's Remy, for one / Title sitcom character voiced by Paul Fusco

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Long" answers — phrases with "LONG" in them are represented by having the words that "LONG" modifies e"long"ated in the grid, i.e. every letter of those words takes up two spaces (instead of one):

Theme answers:

• JJOOHHNN SILVER (for "Long John Silver") (4D: Inspiration for a seafood chain)
• "TTIIMMEE, NO SEE" (for "Long time, no see") (17D: "It's been ages!")
• DADDY LLEEGGSS (for "daddy longlegs") (9D: Creepy crawler)
• "WHY THE FFAACCEE?" (for "Why the long face?") (15D: What a stereotypical bartender asks after a horse walks into a bar)

Word of the Day: STEVE-O (51A: Stunt performer on "Jackass") —

Stephen Gilchrist Glover (born June 13, 1974), known professionally as Steve-O, is an American stunt performer, comedian, television personality, YouTuber, and podcast host. His career is mostly centered on his shocking and pain-inducing stunts in the reality comedy television series Jackass (2000–2001) and its related films Jackass: The Movie (2002), Jackass Number Two (2006), Jackass 3D (2010), and Jackass Forever (2022), as well as its spin-off series Wildboyz (2003–2006) and Dr. Steve-O (2007). [...] On June 4, 2008, Steve-O pleaded guilty to felony possession of cocaine. He avoided jail with the successful completion of a treatment program. In July, after 115 days of sobriety, Steve-O announced he was "back in the loony bin". He returned to the mental institution, he said, because "I've had horrible mood swings and severe depression. My brain is fucked up from using so much cocaine, ketamine, PCP, nitrous oxide, and all sorts of other drugs." [...] In an episode of his podcast Steve-O’s Wild Ride! released in May 2023, Steve-O revealed that he has struggled with sex addiction. Steve-O is also known to have struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction. He is 16 years sober as of September 2024. (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme is cute—and it's definitely better that the theme answers today are Downs rather than Acrosses, as you get the "long" effect better that way (Across "long" answers would've just looked squat). Still, though, whatever "cuteness" there is here burns out quickly. And I mean quickly. Once I figured out that WTF Elvis song (1A: "___ Ever" (Elvis song in "G.I. Blues") ("DIDJA"), and saw that the first themer started "JJOO," whoosh, off I went:

But then after I saw that the next themer just did the "long" theme again ... well, the others weren't hard to figure out. At all. Now that I knew that those answers contained "long," I just rattled the remaining two themers off with no additional help. No crosses needed at all for that bartender/horse gag:

And in under a minute, the "theme" part of the puzzle is over and then there's just the mostly tedious process of filling in the rest of the grid. It didn't have to be tedious, necessarily, but today it mostly was. Hard to make a seemingly interminable number of 3s and 4s seem interesting. At least it was over quickly, I guess. The fill got particularly ugly in places. that bottom section is literally more than half "E"s. Then there's, oof, SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System, often just Super Nintendo, or Super NES ... a very ugly piece of fill, and dated to boot) and STEVE-O (more original, but still ... dated). Throw in EMINEM and the gravitational pull of this puzzle feels *very* turn-of-the-century. But the main problem was that the theme was just too easy, over too quickly, and there's simply not a lot you can do with 3s and 4s. Very plain, mostly dull. I liked MOSH PIT (26A: Area of frenetic dancing) and especially SEERSUCKER (58A: Preppy fabric). I don't even really know what SEERSUCKER is (except that it precedes the word "suit")—I just like the way it sounds. Where does that word come from? Why would you want to suck a seer? Don't answer. I'll just look it up

Seersucker, hickory stripe or railroad stripe is a thin, puckered, usually cotton fabric, commonly but not necessarily striped or chequered, used to make clothing for hot weather. The word originates from the Persian words شیر shîr and شکر shakar, literally meaning "milk and sugar", from the gritty texture ("sugar") on the otherwise smooth ("milk") cloth. (wikipedia)

OK, wow, that was legitimately interesting. Looking things up! As long as you don't trust the answers that Google's AI Overview gives you, it's a great thing to do!

[Wait ... is *this* true?]

I had MINOR CHORD (?) before MINOR THIRD (16A: D to F, e.g., in music), which cost me a few seconds, and then I had slight trouble getting into the SW corner from the back ends of OUTLINE and STEVE-O. Never watched "Jackass" (though the name STEVE-O def rings a bell) and OUTLINE? "Writer's starting point?" LOL, not this writer. I never understood outlines. I hated when we had to write OUTLINEs in high school or middle school or whenever the last time was that I wrote an OUTLINE. How can you know the structure of the thing before you write it? I guess if you think of it as totally discardable, then OK. Still, I'd rather just start. Even getting that answer to ---LINE didn't help at all. Still, it's not like any real struggle was taking place down here. This was maybe the only non-Monday/Tuesday part of the grid for me, and even then it was just solidly Wednesday ... which is the day that it is.

Some more:

• 13A: Eggplant is a commonly used one (EMOJI) — this is the closest the NYTXW will come to putting "dick" in the puzzle.
• 39A: Numismatic rating (FINE) — "numismatic" means "related to coins." In coin-collecting, the coins are graded or rated. This clue could easily have been [Bibliophilic rating], as books are graded similarly. But "Numismatic" is probably a slightly tougher word than "Bibliophilic," so sure, toughen things up, why not? It needs it.

• 46A: Exotic pet store offerings (IGUANAS) — boo, pet stores! Boo especially "exotic" pets. Cats and dogs, those are "pets," and you don't get them at "pet stores." We've been over this.
• 59D: Org. with the Acid Rain Program (EPA) — "A 2021 study found that the "Acid Rain Program caused lasting improvements in ambient air quality," reducing mortality risk by 5% over 10 years" (wikipedia). Gonna be fun when the EPA is completely dismantled, along with other useful parts of the Federal Government. Hope you like "mortality risk!" And measles!
• 57A: Field of Jean-Luc Godard (CINE) — read this as [Friend of Jean-Luc Godard] and wrote in AMIE, true story

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Hang with the boys, slangily / TUE 1-21-25 / Playground pathogen / Body personified by the Greek Titan Selene / Sit non-ergonomically / Marine photographer's aid

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Medium, maybe a little north of Medium

THEME: SCAVENGER HUNT (37A: Popular camp activity ... or, literally, what the circles are creating four times in this puzzle) — the circled squares in each theme answer spell out a type of "scavenger"

Theme answers:

• CORNER DRUGSTORE (17A: Convenient source of tinctures and tonics)
• LUIS FONSI (29A: Singer of "Despacito," which has more than eight billion views on YouTube)
• CARD TABLE (49A: Item with hinged legs)
• "OH, YOU HAVE NO IDEA..." (61A: "That's not even the half of it...")

Word of the Day: Selene (66A: Body personified by the Greek Titan Selene = MOON) —

In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Selene (/sɪˈliːniː/; Ancient Greek: Σελήνη pronounced [selɛ̌ːnɛː] seh-LEH-neh, meaning "Moon") is the goddess and personification of the Moon. Also known as Mene, she is traditionally the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, and sister of the sun god Helios and the dawn goddess Eos. She drives her moon chariot across the heavens. Several lovers are attributed to her in various myths, including Zeus, Pan, and the mortal Endymion. In post-classical times, Selene was often identified with Artemis, much as her brother, Helios, was identified with Apollo. Selene and Artemis were also associated with Hecate and all three were regarded as moon and lunar goddesses, but only Selene was regarded as the personification of the Moon itself.

Her equivalent in Roman religion and mythology is the goddess Luna. (wikipedia)

• • •

Non-consecutive circled squares, spelling things. There are probably less appealing theme types, but not many. There are a few problems here. First, the revealer is SCAVENGER HUNT, but ... there's no "HUNT." I don't have to "hunt" for anything. The circled squares tell me where the scavenger is. It's the opposite of a hunt. It's a found. "Found it, it's right here, in these circled squares." Second, only two of these "scavengers" really scream "scavenger!" CONDOR and HYENA, sure. CRAB, I guess. I mean, yes, OK, but that's not my first crab thought, or even my third or twelfth (please don't demand to see eleven other crab thoughts). The least "scavenger" of these, though, in my mind, is the LION. I've watched "Wild Kingdom," I know that LIONs hunt. And then the HYENAs come along and try to get a piece. The fact that LIONs *will* scavenge doesn't really put them in the same category as animals like the HYENA and CONDOR who are primarily scavengers. So, it's called SCAVENGER HUNT, but only half the animals seem like full-fledged scavengers ... and there's no hunt. Non-consecutive circled squares always seem like a low thematic bar. The letters "L" "I" "O" "N" must appear (in order) in tons of answers. LUIS FONSI? Sure. Also LITTLE ONES and FLIP PHONE and VIDALIA ONION and so on ad infinitum. Does not feel special at all to have found "L" "I" "O" "N" in any answer. The only themer here that feels like "ooh, nice find," is "OH, YOU HAVE NO IDEA." The "OH" feels a little tacked on, but it gets you the "H," and thus gets you a five-word answer, with one "HYENA" letter in each word. There's something special about that. There's nothing special about any of the rest of it.

The real nadir of this puzzle, and maybe all puzzles, is BRODOWN (36D: Hang with the boys, slangily). Just garbage. The bro- (bruh brah bruv) -ification of the puzzle is slightly out of hand, as are all these goofy slang terms that (some?) guys seem to need to describe merely hanging out together. I had to endure BRODATES just last Monday, and now you're trying to tell me there are actual human beings who use the term "BRODOWN." Make it stop. It's idiotic. Not All Debuts Are Good—once again I am tapping the sign. Sadly, BRODOWN is by far the most "interesting" (i.e. attention-getting) thing in the grid, outside the themers. What else is there? Two (2?!) Spice Girls clues? ADZ OVA MAO NCO CERA RVER ENE EWE ASP and other sundry bits of crosswordese?  A single COOTIE? (11D: Playground pathogen). Hard to find stuff to like today. OMELETTEs. I like OMELETTEs. Wish there were a lot more going on this grid than there is.

I had more than a few hiccups today. EAT UP and SCARF before SNARF at 1A: Gobble. Failure to know my MELs at 15A: Name of Sporty Spice in the Spice Girls (MEL C) as well as failure to remember the Spice Girls song "2 BECOME 1" (46D: "2 ___ 1" (Spice Girls song)). ANYWAY before ANYHOO. SONAR before SCUBA (33D: Marine photographer's aid). Obviously no idea about the post-BRO part of BRODOWN (which I have been reading as a noun this whole time (like a "hoedown") but is actually a verb phrase, which is somehow worse). Add to that the fact that while I know "Despacito," I could not remember who sang it. He's been in the grid before, but just twice—once in LUIS form and once as FONSI. If LUIS FONSI had been in the clue and the answer had been "Despacito," I'd've been in great shape. But that's not what happened.

Bullets:

• 55A: Word after phone or, modernly, Zoom (SEX) — Zoom became so depressing as a facsimile of human interaction during peak COVID that I can't imagine wanting to use it for that purpose, but no judgment. If "webinar" is your kink, that's none of my business.
• 66A: Body personified by the Greek Titan Selene (MOON) — "Body" really threw me. Wanted something like "ocean." Definitely some body of water.
• 19D: Sit non-ergonomically (SLOUCH) — this clue feels like an accusation (I have to remind myself roughly 500 times per write-up to sit *up*).

Have a non-SLOUCHy day. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Suddenly go silent, in modern dating lingo / THU 4-11-24 / Verb akin to "Zoom" / Slicing and dicing, say / Whales and alligators might be seen on them / French translation of the Spanish "calle"

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: SECRET / PASSAGES (44A: With 46-Across, some areas in Clue ... or a hint to the first, fourth, twelfth and fifteenth rows of this puzzle) — the letters in "PASSAGES" appear (secretly!) in black squares, in the indicated rows:

Theme answers:

• FOOD PREPARATION (1A: Slicing and dicing, say)
• COURTSIDE SEATS (20A: Pricey basketball tickets)
• MAN-EATING SHARK (57A: "Jaws" menace)
• PRIME REAL ESTATE (70A: Valuable property)

Word of the Day: TARA VanDerveer (10D: ___ VanDerveer, coach who holds the record for the most wins in college basketball history (1,200+)) —

Tara Ann VanDerveer (born June 26, 1953) is a former American basketball coach who was the head women's basketball coach at Stanford University from 1985 until her retirement in 2024. Designated the Setsuko Ishiyama Director of Women's Basketball, VanDerveer led the Stanford Cardinal to three NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championships: in 1990, 1992 and 2021. She stepped away from the Stanford program for a year to serve as the U.S. national team head coach at the 1996 Olympic Games. VanDerveer is the 1990 Naismith National Coach of the Year and a ten-time Pac-12 Coach of the Year. She is also one of only nine NCAA Women's Basketball coaches to win over 900 games, and one of ten NCAA Division I coaches – women's or men’s – to win 1,000 games. VanDerveer was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. On December 15, 2020, she passed Pat Summitt for most wins in women's college basketball history. On January 21, 2024, she won her 1,203rd game as a head coach, becoming the head coach with the most wins in college basketball history, women’s or men’s. (wikipedia)

• • •

Escape room puzzles. Potato Head puzzles. Lots of game-based puzzles lately. The assumption is "we all like games, right?" and I mean yes, but also no. Not necessarily. There is this assumption that solvers are going to be familiar with the rules (and shapes, and equipment) of every damn game, and the gamey insideriness of it sometimes feels like a bit of a drag. Very clubby, somehow. Also very male. Guys make these puzzles, primarily, if not exclusively—especially lately; women have made precisely 1.5 Thursday puzzles this year. But guys tend to be more fond of the "look at what I did with my grid" architectural-wonder-type puzzles in general. It would be nice to have a larger sample size for women (gender equity on the crossword byline this year continues to be pretty ... elusive?). This puzzle didn't really evoke Clue with any visual or structural specificity—the grid isn't shaped like the board, there aren't real SECRET PASSAGES taking you from one part of the grid to another (though I'm pretty sure I've seen that conceit in puzzles before). Instead, you get a very straightforward but nonetheless clever visual representation of the term SECRET PASSAGES, with the word "PASSAGES" hidden in black squares. Very nice that the grid looks like a normal grid with the black squares in place (i.e. no gibberish); the only way you know something is up is that the initial clue on each of the four relevant rows does not appear to match its answer. "How is [Slicing and dicing, say] merely FOOD?" "How is [Pricey basketball tickets] merely COURT?" I was very much helped by having those first two theme rows start with complete words that were actually part of the longer answer (i.e. "food" = "food" in the larger answer, "court" = "court" in the larger answer, while "mane" does not equal "mane" in its longer answer (MAN-EATING SHARK)). I "got" the theme by realizing that -SIDE SEATS was obviously missing from COURT. Tried to make some kind of rebus happen, and failed. Then I started in on the north, got REP, noticed FOOD*REP*... and put the whole concept together: [Slicing and dicing, say] is not FOOD but FOOD (P)REP(A)RATION. And so on. Well, the "and so on" wasn't clear immediately, but I got the revealer reasonably quickly, and then the spelling gambit became clear, and all the missing letters in all the indicated rows could be (mentally) filled right in.

All that theme drama came early. Once SECRET PASSAGES went in, I didn't really notice or even need the theme much any more. The only answers you're gonna get stuck on in this puzzle, if you don't know the theme, are those four initial Acrosses on the first, fourth, twelfth, and fifteenth rows. I didn't even see the clue on MANE, so easily did the SW corner fill itself in, though the theme did end up helping me with that last row. A good deal of excitement / interest goes out of the puzzle once you get the theme. This is not uncommon, or terribly surprising, but the grid didn't have much to offer, non-thematically, in the way of fill—just OLIVE TREES and POLO SHIRTS, really. Overall fill is about average. We get a lot more 6+-letter fill than we did yesterday, but it's all pretty plain. Hard to get excited about ENLISTED or PARENTAL or FORSAKEN. I think my favorite part of the grid, spice-wise, is the SE, with its GHOST SHARK ORGY—you do not wanna get mixed up in one of those, I tell you what.

I did not know Van Gogh painted OLIVE TREES. I know he painted CYPRESS TREES because I went to that exhibit at the Met last summer with my daughter, when my wife and I were in NYC for the Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament that we never made it to because we got called home on a bat emergency and then proceeded to have Bat Week at our house—if you think a GHOST SHARK ORGY is scary, try waking up to a bat in your house multiple nights in a row, even after you've let it fly out of the house each night; finding it flying around your bedroom even though you shut the door, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum ad astra ad nauseam. We got a bat guy who came to put these little one-way bat tunnels somewhere in our house that let the bats get out but not get back in. It was probably just the one bat. We never saw more than one. One was enough. Plenty. No more bats after the bat guy did his thing. Still, didn't sleep right for weeks. Serious short-term PTSD. Anyway, that's my Van Gogh story. 

Explainers:

• 63A: Whales and alligators might be seen on them (POLO SHIRTS) — this was easy (I had most of SHIRTS in place before I looked at the clue), but we didn't have whales when I was growing up. There was the polo guy for Ralph Lauren and then the alligator for Izod and maybe a tiger for Le Tigré (did I dream that brand up?), but whales, not a thing in '80s California. Some brand called Vineyard Vines? I notice that dudes of all ages wear polos when they want to semi-dress up (i.e. ditch the hoodie), but I haven't touched one since I was a wannabe preppy teenager. They're weirdly expensive for being so boring. Ah, look, Le Tigré! It's real!

• 6D: Draft status (ENLISTED) — I see that this is a military thing but I thought your "draft status" was like "1-A" or "4-F" or something like that. Once you are drafted, then you're ... ENLISTED? There has not been a draft in my adult lifetime. Conscription for Vietnam ended when I was three.
• 47D: Author Joe Hill, vis-à-vis Stephen King (SON) — the pen name of Joseph Hillström King, who is a successful author of horror and fantasy in his own right.
• 53D: Suddenly go silent, in modern dating lingo (GHOST) — this seems slightly weird as an intransitive verb. You GHOST ... someone. That's how I've heard it used, for the most part. Although now that I think of it, "he ghosted" could just mean "he suddenly went silent," so ... OK. Here's merriam-webster.com on this relatively recent coinage.
• 56D: Verb akin to "Zoom" (SKYPE) — the capital "Z" was the tipoff here. Do people still SKYPE? Seems so ... 2006, or something.
• 61D: Name found in "affirmation" (IRMA) — just an awful cluing trend. Give us an actual human with this name or get out. I don't *so* much mind the [Apt name for a ___] type of cluing ([Apt name for a cook?] STU! etc.), but here, there's zero connection between the name and the word it's found in. [Name found in "time"] => TIM! Is that what you want!? (Actually, that's so bad I kinda like it). Anyway, IRMA Thomas is real, so use her.   

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. forgot to mention that the west was a little thorny because I wrote in VALID / SLAY instead of ALOUD / ROCK 🙃 (40A: Not in one’s head, say / 36D: Be awesome, informally). Also, my first [Terse denial] was the truly terse NOPE rather than the comparatively verbose (not to mention quaint) “NOT I!”

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Infamous presidential denial / THU 9-21-23 / Withered, climate-wise / D-F-A is one in music / Third-most common Chinese surname in America / Competitive poker? / Classic N.Y.C. cinema name

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: WINTER MIGRATION (40A: Seasonal phenomenon depicted six times in this puzzle) — the tail (!) ends of six answers are birds: that part of the answer turns down ... or "flies south," which is what many birds do for the "winter":

Theme answers:

• WES CRAVEN (1A: Director who said "Horror films don't create fear. They release it")
• "I AM NOT A CROOK" (37A: Infamous presidential denial)
• DICK CLARK (49A: "The $10,000 Pyramid" host)
• MOHAWK (6A: Center cut?)
• HALF INCH (9A: Length just over one centimeter)
• IN ESCROW (58A: How some money is held)

Word of the Day: ROOK (39D: Corner piece) —

The rook (Corvus frugilegus) is a member of the family Corvidae in the passerine order of birds. It is found in the Palearctic, its range extending from Scandinavia and western Europe to eastern Siberia. It is a large, gregarious, black-feathered bird, distinguished from similar species by the whitish featherless area on the face. Rooks nest collectively in the tops of tall trees, often close to farms or villages, the groups of nests being known as rookeries.

Rooks are mainly resident birds, but the northernmost populations may migrate southwards to avoid the harshest winter conditions. The birds form flocks in winter, often in the company of other Corvus species or jackdaws. They return to their rookeries and breeding takes place in spring. They forage on arable land and pasture, probing the ground with their strong bills and feeding largely on grubs and soil-based invertebrates, but also consuming cereals and other plant material. Historically, farmers have accused the birds of damaging their crops, and have made efforts to drive them away or kill them. Like other corvids, they are intelligent birds with complex behavioural traits and an ability to solve simple problems. (wikipedia)

• • •

I like birds. I never used to notice them, then I married someone from New Zealand who knew a thing or two about birds, then time passed, then the pandemic hit, and *then* I really started paying attention to the absolute Wild Kingdom that is my neighborhood. Now I'm that guy with his Merlin app open, standing on the sidewalk, wandering into the street, staring at the trees, trying to identify and see whatever bird is making that noise. Merlin (a bird sound ID app) said there was something on my block yesterday called a "brown-headed cowbird," what the hell? It's like a space alien was visiting. I didn't see it, but there's still time. Maybe. Anyway, birds, man. They're great. My main thought about this puzzle was "Whoa, so many corvids!" My first two birds were RAVEN and ROOK and I really thought we were gonna get some kind of spooky Halloweenesque black bird / murder of crows / quoth the raven-type of puzzle. And a CROW actually does show up eventually! But then a dang LARK comes along and ruins the party, but it's fine. And that's my feeling about the theme here: it's fine. It's an odd assortment of birds. Would've been cool if they'd all been migratory, particularly south-flying, but they're not. I mean, some crows migrate, but many don't, and anyway they don't "fly south for the winter." Finches, also, not terribly migratory. Again, the only thing that's important for the theme is that you've got bird names, and that those bird names "fly south," i.e. turn down. I like that those bird names were clued in non-bird ways, and so you had to figure out they were also the tail ends of Acrosses. I found this out very early, when the only horror directors I could think of off the top of my head were Hitchcock, Eli Roth, and WES CRAVEN. None of them fit ... until one of them did.

[Don't ask how many ways I spelled NEGEV before I hit on
the "correct" spelling—too many (17A: Desert near Sinai)]

I got the MIGRATION part of the revealer easily enough but had a Taylor Swiftian blank space where WINTER should go (Taylor SWIFT—missed opportunity!). Hard for me to think of WINTER MIGRATION because, well, it's not WINTER. Hell, it only turned fall ... [checks watch] ... [looks out window] ... [checks calendar] ... wait a minute, it's still summer!? Crazy. OK, so, it's really not WINTER, so the WINTER part threw me (one of the few parts of the puzzle that did). But I like the concept here, and the birds were fun and easy to pick up. The "flying south" aspect was subtle, i.e. implicit, not clumsily spelled out somehow. It's a phrase for you to discover in your own mind. I like that.

[Only just now learned that she isn't singing about 

"Starbucks lovers" (who'll tell you she's insane)]

I did not like the fill so much. ALAI AMOI ATNINE ORDOC IDIG etc. I'm not that surprised that a puzzle with six (6) themers (all of which go in two (2) directions), plus a grid-spanning revealer, would have fill that was, uh, compromised. In fact, given the thematic constraints, I'd say the grid actually looks halfway decent. Not much interest in the fill, but you do get a nice MINOR CHORD to bring you into a wintery mood (31D: D-F-A is one, in music). Watch the crows amass out your back window. Feel melancholy. Listen to sad music. Sip your coffee. Contemplate mortality. Get into the holiday spirit, basically. I DIG.

[45A: Desire for a lonely hart? (DOE)]

I got nice whoosh-whoosh feeling today when I hit "I AM NOT A CROOK," the very best of the theme answers. Just wham, straight across—and then down—the grid. My earliest political memory is seeing some guy dressed in a Nixon mask and a black-and-white-striped old-timey jailbird suit on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I was ... must've been four? Anyway, "I AM NOT A CROOK" was a much made-fun-of line when I was a kid (basically the go-to line if you were parodying Nixon), so that was easy, and fun, and thematic. It had everything. The other bird answers were a bit more cramped. Smaller spaces, less whoosh. But still a pleasure to uncover. Really glad I saw 6A: Center cut? very late, because that would've been very hard even without the turning-south trickery. Because I came it at late, I knew the theme, and had the HAWK part (8D: Peddle), which made the answer obvious. The idea that a MOHAWK was a hair "cut" that runs down the "center" of one's scalp ... would not have been obvious otherwise. Also tricky: the clue on ONES (24A: Capital of Washington?). "Capital" here is money, and Washington (the president) appears on ONES (i.e. one dollar bills). I had trouble understanding the clue on ALAI, since I've never heard of a "rhyming game" called Jai ALAI. I wasn't even sure what a "rhyming game" was supposed to be. Then it turns out that I was totally misreading the clue. They didn't want the name of a "rhyming game," they wanted a game with a rhyming name. Half of that. Half of Jai ALAI. So just ALAI. I see. Now. Hope you flew through this one, and had a good time doing it. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. WINGED MIGRATION!!! 2001 documentary! That should’ve been the title! 

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