"OK," in modern slang / WED 9-9-26 / Character in "Monsters, Inc." / Equatorial ocean area notorious for lack of winds / Top starter / Creature of Egyptian myth / Bosun's whistled call signaling a shift change / Flattened against the masts in a changing wind / Part of many a shallow-water ecosystem / Plow puller of old / Jailed New York crime boss / Sicilian smoker / Old-timey "Listen!" / Roman theaters / Fiddler-emperor, legend has it

Constructor: Dario Salvucci

Relative difficulty: Medium

[15A: Ewok's home = ENDOR]

THEME: AT SEA (41A: Completely lost ... or where the now-idiomatic answer to each italicized clue has a literal meaning) — now-idiomatic expressions that (apparently) originated AT SEA:

Theme answers:

• LOOSE CANNON (18A: Unsecured artillery that can slide across the deck)
• THE DOLDRUMS (64A: Equatorial ocean area notorious for lack of winds)
• TOE THE LINE (3D: Stand barefoot in formation along seams of deck planks)
• TIDE OVER (21D: Drift with the natural flow of currents)
• PIPE DOWN (27D: Bosun's whistled call signaling a shift change)
• TAKEN ABACK (32D: Flattened against the masts in a changing wind)

Word of the Day: THE DOLDRUMS (64A) —

[from The Phantom Tollbooth, illus. Jules Feiffer]

noun

(used with a plural verb)

1. a state of inactivity or stagnation, as in business or art.

   August is a time of doldrums for many enterprises.

2. the doldrums,

   1. a belt of calms and light baffling winds north of the equator between the northern and southern trade winds in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

   2. the weather prevailing in this area.

3. a dull, listless, depressed mood; low spirits. (dictionary.com)

2. 
   

• • •

Well I definitely was AT SEA for much of this puzzle. I could not figure out what the (long, descriptive) clues were doing. I thought maybe they were trying to be funny—taking a familiar phrase and imagining it as literal (see LOOSE CANNON); but no, turns out the joke (or, non-joke) is on me, as the clues were doing precisely the opposite—they explain the literal meaning behind the idiomatic phrase. Combine the fact that I don't really have any interest in things nautical with a cluing concept that's didactic and completely humorless (by design), and the result is me not having that great of a time. I am impressed that there are this many such phrases, and that they fit in the grid in any kind of symmetrical order, and I'm impressed with how many are crammed in here. But the experience of solving was disorienting. I felt off. Faintly seasick. The theme never clicked for me, largely because I did not fully read the (long, descriptive) part of the revealer clue that followed [Completely lost], and even if I had, I don't know how much help it would've been.  Boring clues, vaguely sea-related—that's what I got. The phrases themselves were interesting, for sure—they make for really good fill, mostly. But the way the theme was executed, this was too much like being lectured to ("did you know...?") and not enough like being entertained.

Perhaps because of the theme density, the fill gets kind of ugly in places, notably the ODEA / REDD / EKED patch, but mostly it holds up. I had real trouble right out of the gate in the NW. Missed on 1A: "OK," in modern slang ("BET") (I had "DEF"), I had no idea what was meant by 17A: Top starter (ACE) ("oh, baseball") (I was looking for a word or prefix that could precede "Top," I think), and 1D: Has a happy face (BEAMS) had me thinking only GRINS. Total wipeout. Something similar happened in the SW, where I absolutely could not get THE DOLDRUMS from the clue ("THE ... COLD RUMS??"), and so had trouble with much of the surrounding fill. Thought 52A: Part of many a shallow-water ecosystem (REEF) was a REED. Couldn't get COMMA from just the "A" or HOIST from just the "T", so had to go into the far SW corner with no help from crosses to try to work it out, and the first thing I did was write in SCAR at 57D: Bite reminder, maybe (ITCH). So, not a dog bite, but a bug bite. Very last square was the "D" in DMS / DOLDRUMS. I wanted IMS before DMS (65D: Personally contacts online, for short) but that gave me the THE IOL DRUMS, which is intriguingly close to THE OIL DRUMS, but ... whatever, the "D" is what worked. It's weird—I know what THE DOLDRUMS are, and I knew they originally had to do with places of dead calm at sea, but I just couldn't see the phrase today at all. I learned the term young, from The Phantom Tollbooth. But it just wouldn't rise to the surface today, not as clued. Couldn't parse it. 

Bullets:

• 24A: Creature of Egyptian myth (SPHINX) — this probably should've been easy, but I think of the SPHINX as a statue, not an actual "creature of myth," so my brain couldn't get past, like, SCARAB beetle.
• 35A: Plow puller of old (MULE) — I wrote in OXEN. Which is plural. Whereas the clue is singular. Sigh. 
• 54A: Music genre for some yoga classes (NEW AGE) — I always appreciated the classes where they played real music (actual rock/pop/jazz/blues/country songs one might now). Or better yet, no music. There's something too ... on-the-nose about NEW AGE music in yoga class. Like the music's trying too hard to convince me something cosmic is happening.

• 68A: Character in "Monsters, Inc." (COMMA) — in case it wasn't entirely clear, "Character" is referring to the literal COMMA that is literally in the title, Monsters, Inc.
• 11D: "Sofa, so good" and such (PUNS) — is that a pun? Who says "So-FAH"? "Sofa so good" is something I might non-punnily say when I hit the couch after a long day at work and I no longer feel like using energy to form complete sentences.
• 55D: Jailed New York crime boss (GOTTI) — "Jailed?" More like "Dead for 24 years." But sure, before that, "jailed" I think it's safe to say his general fame is fading, but his crossword fame isn't. That's what happens when your name has such strong grid usefulness. Five letters, four of them common, terminal "I"—that guy's not going anywhere (28 NYTXW appearances, 27 of them following his death in 2002).

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[all proceeds go to WFMU, the best listener-supported radio in the whole dang world]

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All-powerful avatar in "Ready Player One" / WED 5-27-26 / Style magnate Gucci / Pitch-altering clamps on guitars / Numbers that aren't entered on bowling scorecards / Low-lying landform / Engineering competition with two "battling" devices / He's always hard to find

Constructor: Dario Salvucci

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: PART OF SPEECH (53A: Noun or verb ... or a description of 20-, 30-, or 46-Across) — fragments ("parts") of famous lines from famous speeches:

Theme answers:

• FOUR SCORE AND ("___ seven years ago...") (ABE) (20A: November 19, 1863)
• ASK NOT WHAT ("___ your country can do for you...") (JFK) (30A: January 20, 1961)
• HAVE A DREAM ("I ___...") (MLK Jr.) (46A: August 28, 1963)

Word of the Day: RONDO (36A: Musical piece with repeated themes) —

[the '70s were full of wonders]

The rondo or rondeau is a musical form that contains a principal theme (sometimes called the "refrain") which alternates with one or more contrasting themes (generally called "episodes", but also referred to as "digressions" or "couplets"). Some possible patterns include: ABACA, ABACAB, ABACBA, or ABACABA (with the letter 'A' representing the refrain).

The rondo form emerged in the Baroque period and became increasingly popular during the Classical period. The earliest examples of compositions employing rondo form are found within Italian operatic arias and choruses from the first years of the 17th century. These examples use a multi-couplet rondo or "chain rondo" (ABACAD) known as the Italian rondo. Rondo form, also known in English by its French spelling rondeau, should not be confused with the unrelated but similarly-named forme fixe rondeau, a 14th- and 15th-century French poetic and chanson form. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one really lost me in the fill. Right from the beginning, WALDO crossed with ALDO made me wince, and then there was the awful ONLSD right on top of that. A really rough start. Not IDEAL. And then somehow the puzzle closed worse than it opened. ABORC!? You want people to end your puzzle on ABORC!? A discarded Tolkien creature? A clumsily aborted attempt to write ABORT? We haven't seen that clunker in ten years, and for good reason. There's no reason to ABORC your puzzle like this. The theme is not particularly demanding, so the fill should be, at worst, dull. Ordinary. ABORC is somewhere far, far beneath dull and ordinary. And crossing weak stuff like OBI and BON?? How do you not tear this corner out and start again? ABORC is burn-it-down territory. Are you that wed to ROBOT SUMO!?! (whatever that is) (58A: Engineering competition with two "battling" devices). Make better choices. 

In between the awkward beginning and the fiery, disastrous end, there's some good fill, there's some bad fill, and there's a theme. I did not really care for the theme. It's not horrible, it's barely there, and arbitrarily executed. The first two "parts of speech" contain the first three words of the famous phrase and omit what follows, but then the third gives you the second, third, and fourth words of the famous phrase and leaves off just the initial single-letter pronoun ("I"). So PART OF SPEECH isn't a great revealer. You're not dealing with famous "speeches," you're dealing with famous phrases within those speeches. In each case, the phrase itself—the complete phrase—would actually, technically be a PART OF SPEECH. So PART OF SPEECH, aside from being a somewhat dull phrase on its own, also doesn't quite get at what's happening. And then in execution the theme is really just "first three words of famous speech phrases, except the one where I randomly drop the 'I' from the MLK phrase and give you the next three words." Maybe solvers are supposed to feel smart for recognizing the speeches? I don't really see where the pleasure is supposed to be. So while "DARN IT ALL," "GOT A MATCH," and LEADFOOT provide some entertaining moments, on the whole I'd have to say "ABORC ANO TALIA!" (that's crosswordese for "no thanks").

Where was the difficulty today? Nowhere, really. I read Ready Player One once a decade or so ago, I guess. It was fine. Are we supposed to know the lore now? Isn't it enough to ask me to know all the LOTR and GOT characters, now you want me to remember (checks notes) ANORAK? The (checks notes) "all-powerful avatar" from a minor franchise, the second installment of which was widely panned? Extreme eyeroll for that one (28D: All-powerful avatar in "Ready Player One"). ANORAK is a perfectly good word, just clue it as the word. Anyway, I needed all the crosses there. Otherwise, the only dilemma I had was CAREEN vs. CAREER (which also somehow means (essentially) "careen")—it's really very confusing) (25D: Veer this way and that). So I left the last letter blank and TENS took care of it (48A: Numbers that aren't entered on bowling scorecards). Not seeing any other potential trouble spots. I did get slowed down / mystified by 34A: Low-lying landform (GLEN). When I see a four-letter "landform," my Pavlovian response is MESA. When that didn't work, my brain just shut down. Also, without good reason, I don't think of GLENs as "landforms." They're depressions in the earth, so they seem like ... the inverse of "landforms." Just ... empty space between "landforms" (i.e. mountains or hills). This is a personal brain malfunction. The clue is fine as is.

[This song, and this performance in particular, always makes me stop and listen all the way through]

Bullets:

• 1A: He's always hard to find (WALDO) — is he, though? "Always"? Not loving this presumptuous clue.
• 35A: Filming location for the archaeological dig in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (SAHARA) — this is undoubtedly true, but ... SAHARA???? That's ... a pretty big place. 9.2 million sq km, to be semi-precise. May as well say the filming location was AFRICA or EARTH.
• 18A: Red flag for a mortgage applicant (BAD CREDIT) — isn't this a red flag for the potential lender, not the applicant? Like, the lender sees a "red flag" and decides not to lend. I don't really enjoy whatever "for" is doing here. I also just don't like thinking about the very concept of BAD CREDIT or the credit industry in general. Grim. The opposite of fun. ABORC! ABORC!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Chick checker of a sort / THU 2-5-26 / Bible-inspired tourist attraction in Williamstown, Ky. / Levy that helped fund the Erie Canal / Meat stick brand / Racer's final go-round / Paragraph starter, perhaps / Prince Harry, per his memoir's title / Become acquainted via Gmail, say

Constructor: Dario Salvucci

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: ON THE ROAD (35A: Classic Jack Kerouac novel ... or where you'll find 17-, 24-, 49- and 58-Across) — theme clues are visual depictions (using keyboard characters) of things you might see on the road (i.e. while driving):

Theme answers:

17A: |$|$|$|$| (TOOLBOOTHS)

24A: | : : : | / / (FREEWAY EXIT)

49A: | : : :-| (LANE CLOSURE)

58A: |X:X:X:X| (TRAFFIC JAM)

     |X:X:X:X|
     |X:X:X:X|

Word of the Day: SPARE (10D: Prince Harry, per his memoir's title) —

Spare is a memoir by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, which was released on 10 January 2023. It was ghostwritten by J. R. Moehringer and published by Penguin Random House. It is 416 pages long and available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats and has been translated into fifteen languages. There is also a 15-hour audiobook edition, which Harry narrates.

The book was highly anticipated and was accompanied by several major broadcast interviews. The title refers to the aristocratic adage that an "heir and a spare" were needed to ensure that an inheritance remained in the family. In the book, Harry details his childhood and the profound effect of the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as his teenage years, and subsequent deployment to Afghanistan with the British Army. He writes about his relationship with his older brother, Prince William, and his father, King Charles III, and his father's marriage to Queen Camilla, as well as his courtship and marriage to the American actress Meghan Markle and the couple's subsequent stepping back from their royal roles.

Spare received generally mixed reviews from critics, some who praised Harry's openness but were critical of the inclusion of too many personal details. According to Guinness World Records, Spare became "the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time" on the date of its release. (wikipedia)

• • •

Two big problems today. First, and worst, the fill, which had me getting mad at this puzzle early, and then often. Waded through a rough but passable NW corner only to hit SEXER at the bottom of that corner and then completely mentally check out (31A: Chick checker of a sort). OK, not completely, but ... yeesh. I haven't seen SEXER in 18 years but I haven't forgotten it. Once you learn that there is someone who is specially trained to pick up baby chicks, look quickly at their genital region (is that right?), and determine their sex so they can be sorted (for future consumption or egg-laying or whatever), you don't forget it. Seriously, it's some kind of really specialized skill. Large commercial hatcheries employ sexers to weed out the undesirable male chicks, which are mostly killed because they are "useless" (can't lay eggs). Fun. Anyway, I learned this "job" existed from crosswords a long time ago, and thought "what an awful and awful-looking word, must be some holdover from the pre-Shortz days, sure hope I never see it again." But 18 years later, here we are. And it turns out that SEXER is not, in fact, a holdover from the pre-Shortz days (when short fill tended to be much rougher). In fact, it debuted under Shortz, in 1997. It was debuted by ... my friend Matt Gaffney!?!?! OK, I am going to have to have words with him about that. Although ... it's almost thirty years ago, now, maybe I can let it go. But I can't let go seeing SEXER in a puzzle in 2026, not unless it's absolutely necessary to hold together an incredibly beautiful theme or something. This SEXER holds nothing beautiful together. It's a regular-ass grid, why do I have to go from OCALA (real place, but still total crosswordese) through SALT TAX (dull) and A COUPLE (🙁) only to end up at SEXER. And let me tell you, the puzzle probably still could've gotten me back on its side, still could've righted the ship, if the theme had been great or if the fill had improved, but none of those things happened. By the time I hit E-MEET (sigh) my soul basically left my body and went into the next room to read a book. 

[OCALA heat map (peaking in late '80s/early '90s before clearly tapering off starting in the 2010s)] [xwordinfo]

As for the theme, only TOLLBOOTHS made any visual sense to me as I was solving. The others ... there just wasn't enough visual context for me to see that I was supposed to be looking at four parallel lanes. I kept reading the clue as if they represented one lane, headed west to east (i.e. left to right). The colons just weren't registering as dotted-line lane dividers. As for TRAFFIC JAM, in my software, the clue represents those three rows of traffic as one line, so instead of a proper jam (three rows deep), you just get what looks like 12 lanes of traffic. The idea that an "X" was a car was hard enough to grasp. The "jam" part was lost on me completely. I just inferred that answer from crosses. I'm not opposed to the concept here, but it just isn't executed in a fully legible way. I have a suspicion that it's going to drive some solvers (esp. those w/ tired eyes, old eyes, or any kind of vision issues) crazy. My eyes are fine and I found it fussy and confusing. It was pretty easy, though, so maybe people will forgive this puzzle its infelicities. Success on a Thursday tends to give people strong feelings of goodwill.

There was one thing I really liked today, which was the clue on ALL CAPS (38D: Case of emergency?). Nice bending of "case" there. I'm struggling to find other things that elevated the puzzle above average, though, even briefly. The corners are all banks of 7s, and banking 7s rarely yields greatness. Hard to do a bank of 7s even without thematic pressure, but run themers in there and the best you can hope for is that the corner doesn't have to resort to any really ugly or awkward fill. All in all, I think those corners all hold up, at least in the longer answers, so that's something. But the glue of this puzzle is an avalanche of tired short fill. "A" is for Avalanche. "A" as in [deep breath] APSE AERO ALPO AMFM ADUE ADIN ALEE ASTO ABCS ACHE AIDS ALLY. And that's just the four-letter stuff. Twelve four-letter "A" answers. That's not gonna lead anywhere good. In addition to the unpleasantness of the SEXER helping send male chicks to a mass grave, there's the eternal grimness of TASE (15A: Give quite a shock), the absurd Creationist fantasy of an ARK in Kentucky (21A: Bible-inspired tourist attraction in Williamstown, Ky.), and the loneliness of the single SLIM JIM (43D: Meat stick brand). Is CAR FARE really a common thing for a "commuter" to pay (44D: Commuter's charge)? I think of commuters taking their own cars, or riding in car pools, or taking public transportation like subway, rail, bus, etc. Do people use CAR FARE to refer to payment for things like Uber? CAB FARE is a natural phrase to me. CAR FARE I've heard, but for "commuters," I really don't know. Seemed off. 

Bullets:

• 3D: Levy that helped fund the Erie Canal (SALT TAX) — Me: "... Eugene?" I had a weird double-levy moment in the NW corner, as LEVY was the first thing I wrote in for 20A: Charge on imports (DUTY).

[I miss you, Catherine O'Hara]

• 48A: Racer's final go-round (GUN LAP) — no idea. Never heard of this. Had LAP and just ... waited for crosses. Last lap. final lap, closing lap—heard all those. GUN LAP, nope. Turns out it's a debut [gently taps "Not All Debuts Are Good" sign] [update: looks like this is a phenomenon in foot racing (i.e. track), not car racing, as I had assumed]
• 5D: Paragraph starter, perhaps (TAB) — me: "... SIR? No, that's a salutation ..." Really wanted a word you'd use at the start of a paragraph, not a key you'd press. The clue's not wrong, just (for me) tough. Ish.
• 58D: Confucian "way" (TAO) — I got a letter last month during my blog fundraiser from a reader who had just one thing to tell me (besides the usual pleasantries) and that was that TAO is not how you spell it. It shouldn't be TAO, it should be DAO. She was very adamant on this point. When I search DAO, all I get are something called (ominously) "Decentralized Autonomous Organizations" (!?!?!). The Tao v. Dao issue apparently arises from two different modes of transliteration, the Wade-Giles (unvoiced "T") and Pinyin (voiced "D"), the latter being, I think, somewhat closer to "correct" pronunciation. But I'm out of my depth here. I've just seen TAO so often (esp. in crosswords) that I haven't given the spelling a second a thought. But apparently this is an issue that can inspire strong feelings. As someone who has strong feelings about SEXER and E-MEET, I'm in no position to judge.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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