Ruined city in Jordan / FRI 5-19-23 / Subject of the first YouTube video to reach 10 billion views (2022) / One-handed put-back shot / Enemy of Lord Farquaad in film / Its offerings end around 2 p.m. / Something parents might give a teenager, colloquially

Constructor: David Distenfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Benjamin HICK (6D: English inventor Benjamin) —

Benjamin Hick (1 August 1790 – 9 September 1842) was an English civil and mechanical engineer, art collector and patron; his improvements to the steam engine and invention of scientific tools were held in high esteem by the engineering profession, some of Hick's improvements became public property without claiming the patent rights he was entitled to. [...] According to the records of Charles Beyer and an appraisal by John Farey, Hick was apparently responsible for pioneering the use of high-pressure and compound steam engines in textile mills, following the designs of Arthur Woolf. Hick's engines should probably be considered best practice for the time c.1841. // Locomotives built by Hick were of the best quality, Edward Bury considered them "extremely well made" and they were used by the London and Birmingham Railway for the very first scheme of standardisation of parts. (wikipedia)

 

• • •

Alright alright alright, looks like Friday is back on track after seemingly months of being ... off. After a shaky start in the NW (which is sadly typical, the NW being the only section I *always* enter first, before any other answers are there to help me), I came zipping down from above with not 1 not 2 but 3 fine long answers:

It's always tough to have THE TALK with your kid, especially about the YANKEE SWAP (4D: Christmas party game). They just give you SIDE EYE. Wait ... YANKEE SWAP is a sex thing, right? [looks it up] Oof, yeah, definitely a sex thing, you are not going to want to google that, trust me.* But back to the grid experience—zoom zoom zoom, whoosh whoosh whoosh, all over the place. This puzzle had the buzz and verve and energy I want on Fridays, and above all it had that great feeling of ... acceleration, where I start by hacking awkwardly at the first section, grumbling about "too many '?' clues!" and what not, and making faces at things I don't really know (HICK) or have tried to forget (BABY SHARK) ... it's like the slow climb of a roller coaster. Futzing around, getting nowhere, and then ... you go over the top and then [long drop, infinite screaming]. The momentum of this three-answer long-Down drop carried me through the entire rest of the puzzle. I plunged down and cascaded through those other corners, flooding them with answers, overwhelming even answers I didn't know (ELISE) or partially forgot ("Is ALI an ALI or an ALY?"). It was like one big "OH, NOW I SEE!" Down to the SW, over to the SE, right up the BRUNCH MENU to finish with a (pleasant) THUD back up in the NE. Actually, I never even saw the clue for THUD. I finished with CHOSE. But that doesn't make as good a story as finishing with THUD. Sometimes you embellish for effect. You understand.

The only thing that made me go "no no bad stop" was seemingly the 21st appearance of SUH-WEET in the grid this year. OK, it's actually just the third, but the third in two months, and it's such a conspicuous seven-letter word that when it repeats, you notice, and when it double repeats, you just wish it would go away for a while. PUH-LEASE go away! But that's really it as far as strong negative responses to this one. Very low REPULSE Factor. The grid is clean as all git out. IS IT OK? It is more than OK. No cringing, lots of long, colorful answers, and a grid design that gave the solving experience that ineffable thing I love: flow. Even the "quaint" answer was pleasing to me—I find quaintisms very tolerable if they are also Mr. Burnsisms:

After the NW, not much struggle to be found. I think I had the most difficulty with ... TOLD (?!) (51D: Related). I was very confident in TIED. I was less confident in the resulting alt-spelling of BISIN (55A: Bearded bovine), so TIED became TOED, which also seemed very wrong. And then ADELE came to the rescue (fun fact: I used almost this exact clue for ADELE on the crossword I made for my annual financial contributor thank-you postcards this year ... if ever have to put ADKINS in your grid, now you know how to clue it)

[___ Laurie Blue Adkins ("one-named" singer of "Skyfall" and "Hello"]

This puzzle was so nice I kinda wish it had been a little harder, so I could've spent a bit more time with it. C'MON, Will, more like this. Like, tomorrow, maybe!? Cool, thanks.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*Do not trust me (YANKEE SWAP)

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Here's a quick summary in internet-speak / MON 4-3-23 / Fictional Looney Tunes corporation / Cat also called a dwarf leopard / Football interception leading to a touchdown colloquially / Langley-based spy grp. / Beloved film character who says size matters not / Timekeeping device that doesn't work when it's cloudy / Publicist's output in the face of controversy / Charges for tipsy motorists for short

Constructor: David Distenfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy-ish

THEME: vowel progression — from SACS to SUCKS through all the other vowels:

Theme answers:

• HONEY SACS (17A: Bee storage centers) (glad I solved Downs-only and thus didn't have to read this clue—sounds like the bees are being stored, not doing the storing)
• CASUAL SEX (25A: Option in a "no strings attached" relationship)
• PICK SIX (39A: Football interception leading to a touchdown, colloquially)
• TUBE SOCKS (50A: Stockings for athletes) ("stockings"??? really????? they're not nylon, and they're not hung by the chimney with care, so ... what are you doing here?)
• "THAT SUCKS!" (62A: "Oof, sorry to hear it")

Word of the Day: TL;DR (48A: "Here's a quick summary," in internet-speak) —

TL;DR or tl;dr, short for "too long; didn't read", is internet slang to say that some text being referred to has been ignored because of its length. It is often used to refer to excessively wordy Terms and Conditions statements. It is also used to introduce a summary of an online post or news article.

The phrase dates back to at least 2002, and was added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online in 2013. (wikipedia)

• • •

We're still doing these? I can't complain too much; I did one myself ... but that was many, many years ago (Christmas Eve, 2012). I kind of figured the concept was played out by now. The concept felt pretty tired when *I* did it, frankly. But maybe the idea was that answers like CASUAL SEX and "THAT SUCKS!" are edgy enough to make the old concept worthwhile in this case. OK. Maybe. I'm not mad at the puzzle, but not thrilled either. I solved Downs-only and when I (finally) got HONEY SACS (which I needed virtually every cross to see), I thought "oof, that's an answer? SACS? Anatomical SACS? That is ... unappealing." Then when I found out that the SACS part was integral to the theme, all I could think of was "man, I'd've done anything to make that answer end in SAX or SACKS ... anything but SACS" (there's a "moist" quality to "SACS" which is to say ... there's something inherently off-putting about the word, somehow). KNAPSACKS, that's what I would've used. That, or "YAKETY SAX." At first I thought maybe the constructor was trying to make the final consonant sounds different every time, but not, there's -X, twice, and -CKS, twice, so no reason to go to the -CS there except ... I guess variety? Maybe HONEY SACS is the more appealing answer in some people's judgment. OK. It's a fine answer, a real thing, just ... I prefer SAX or SACKS is all. But overall, no strong complaints about this themer set, and I guess the SEX SIX and SUCKS answers are flashy / contemporary enough to make the theme seem worth doing. Why not?

Really helped out today, from a Downs-only perspective, by two long gimmes: POGO STICK (11D: Device for someone who's hopping mad?) and YOGI BERRA (32D: Who said "Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical). Wacky baseball quote? Think Berra first. Cardinal rule. And that POGO STICK, despite being transparent, is really wonderful—nice reimagining of a familiar phrase ("hopping mad" => "mad, i.e. crazy, about hopping"). Because those two came easy, the largish, openish NE and SW corners were a lot easier than they otherwise would've been. Usually, in a Downs-only situation, you find yourself having to hack away at longer Downs, using inferred crosses to finally make the answer come into view. But today, both long Downs when in, no crosses. Their shorter neighbors were actually the real problems. Took me a while to get EDIBLES (10D: Things to eat), and ... well, SNEAKED was a slight problem (43D: Crept), but the bigger problem was a little more toward the center of the grid: SPIN JOB (28D: Publicist's output in the face of controversy). I could see that the first word wanted to be SPIN, but I couldn't imagine what the "output" could be. I don't think I'd ever use SPIN JOB, or hear it often, though its meaning is clear enough. And the "J" cross, INPJS, yuck and uck, a prepositional phrase that has no business being a standalone answer, and, if you're solving Downs-only, is pretty much ungettable until you get that "J" (from SPIN JOB, which, as I've said, I didn't have). All other parts of the grid were fairly tractable. No hangups of more than a few seconds or so. I really should time my Downs-only Monday some time. Seems entirely possible that it might be faster than a regular Monday. I just hate the clock these days. Tick tick tick. Bah. Distracting. I like to go fast, but I don't like actually recording my time. Weird. Speaking of speeding, congrats to Dan Feyer, who won his, let's say, 73rd American Crossword Puzzle Tournament title yesterday. He's truly something else. And a very nice guy to boot.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Transition effect famously used in "Star Wars" films / SAT 1-21-23 / Alternative to bread crumbs in some gluten-free recipes / Earring Magic 1990s doll that developed a cult following

Constructor: David Distenfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Earring Magic KEN (12D: Earring Magic ___ (1990s doll that developed a cult following)) —

Earring Magic Ken is a model of the Ken doll introduced by Mattel in 1993 as a companion to its Earring Magic Barbie figure, one of six dolls in the Earring Magic Barbie line. This generation of the Ken doll featured an updated look, including blonde highlights in his traditionally brown hair, outfits including lavender mesh shirt, purple pleather vest, a necklace with a circular charm and, as the name indicates, an earring in his left ear.

The doll is notable for supposedly being the highest-selling Ken doll in history and for the controversy that ensued upon its debut. [...] Mattel had conducted a survey of girls asking if Ken should be retained as Barbie's boyfriend or whether a new doll should be introduced in that role. Survey results indicated that girls wanted Ken kept but wanted him to look "cooler". The redesigned Ken was the result. Observers quickly noted the resemblance of Earring Magic Ken to a stereotypical gay man, from the pastel-colored clothes to the earring to the necklace, which was described as a "chrome cock ring". Kitsch-minded gay men bought the doll in record numbers, making Earring Magic Ken the best-selling Ken model in Mattel's history.

The doll received news-media press, even making it to the cover of The New York Times Arts and Leisure section. The clothing choices led to speculation that Mattel toy designers had unknowingly taken inspiration for the doll from gay raves in LA or NY. The doll debuted in stores for around $11 (equivalent to $20.63 in 2021) and had completely sold out by the Christmas season, largely due to gay men buying the doll in droves.

Despite the commercial success of the doll, a public exposé on the secret meaning of the "circular charm" as a gay sex toy from gay-community commentator Dan Savage in the Seattle, Washington, alternative weekly newspaper The Stranger led Mattel to discontinue Earring Magic Ken and recall the doll from stores. (wikipedia)

• • •

SHABBAT SHALOM running on the actual Sabbath—nice touch. That was just about the only struggle-struggle-Breakthrough! moment (i.e. proper Saturday moment) I had while solving this one, so I liked it quite a bit. The rest of the puzzle (everything outside that center stack) was a piece of cake—well made, but much more Friday than Saturday. I think the vast majority of yesterday's puzzle was easier, but I finished this one more quickly for sure (no YUVAL NOAH HARARI to contend with!). I like that the toughest knot to untangle is right in the center, and that the payoff with those answers is fairly strong. Befuddled on 29A: End-of-week greeting at first, since I had -HAB- and then wanted BENT which got me -HABB- and still I could not make anything comprehensible out of it. After "TGIF!" I'm pretty much out of "end-of-week greetings" ... and "TGIF!" isn't really a "greeting" anyway. I thought was looking at ... honestly, I don't know what. Some kind of "YABBA DABBA DOO!" variant!? And then for whatever reason my brain just toggled over to Hebrew. Maybe YUVAL NOAH HARARI had primed me for that toggling. If so, I thank him, because having SHABBAT SHALOM come to me was definitely the peak "aha" moment of the day. Second peak came with PEOPLE-WATCHES, the clue for which was befuddling me primarily because of the hyphen in it (32A: Tourist-spots, maybe?). The hyphen was annoying me. But then when I (finally) got the answer, I saw that the clue was actually trying to help me—PEOPLE-WATCHES is hyphenated, and the hyphen in the clue was trying to tell me "psst, it's a verb, not a noun, dummy." And I was slow to catch on. But not that slow, since, as I say, the puzzle was very easy overall and even these "tough" ones in the center weren't too much of a trial. More of a light, pleasant challenge. I'm grateful that I got my full Friday experience for the week, even if it did come a day late.

This puzzle features a sizable contingent of Crosswordese Greatest Hits (AGRA, APSE, OLES, NAS, SRI, SSN, MSN, ABIT, etc.), and yet you don't notice so much because they're spread out and dramatically overshadowed by the longer marquee fill. When your long stuff is strong, the short stuff can be just so-so and it's fine. INDEX FUND is the kind of finance-related answer that does nothing for me, but it's got that "X," which is kind of kicky and fun, and anyway its neighbor TINSELTOWN is a winner, so I was in a pretty good mood before I'd even left the NW ... and then whoosh-whoosh, the two long Downs out of that section exploded across the grid (HALF-SIBLING! EXTRA POINT!) and the puzzle was well and truly underway. I really do wish there had been a few more speed bumps today. AGRA was a gimme at 1A: Major Indian tourist site, as was ATTIC at 1D: Top story and then CDS at 21A: Their sales rose in 2021 and 2022, after two decades of decline; without the "C," I might've written LPS in here, though I think their comeback started earlier in the century—I had no idea CDS were making a comeback (anywhere but my own house, where, like Fred, Wilma, and the other citizens of Bedrock, I prefer physical media). 

It was very easy to move around the grid. I had SETH before even seeing the SETH ROGEN clue, so who else was it going to be. I had BEST OF- at 23D: Playoff format, and while THREE fit, USE gave me the "S" that made SEVEN obvious, and that helped annihilate the SE corner. I didn't know LIU but that hardly mattered (28A: Simu ___, star of "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"). I had NATIVE LAND before NATIVE SOIL, but that hardly mattered either. Speaking of "hard(ly) matter(ing")—we get HAILS *and* ICE PELLET, which I thought was a nice (if accidental) combo (5A: Comes down hard / 10D: Part of a cold shower, maybe). I also liked WITH CHEESE, as it reminded me of the opening of "Pulp Fiction."

I also like (i.e. love) the clue on KEN (see "Word of the Day," above), though ... "cult following" doesn't *quite* get at the particular nature of the following. Maybe "gay following" or "following among gay men" was deemed too controversial, but "cult following" feels too vague. Anyway, one of the great moments in toy history, for sure. See you tomorrow (with some ... "personal news," as they say ... it's good news ... it's four-legged news ...)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Temporarily banished from a dorm room, in a way / SAT 9-3-22 / Cartoon known for bursting out of a drum / Somers in the hall of fame for infomercials / Yas and jas / First name in gin production / Cocktail named for motorcycle attachment / Cork launcher / Sometimes-purple tuber / Lead-in to hickey

Constructor: David Distenfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "DANNY Deever," Rudyard Kipling poem (7D) —

"Danny Deever" is an 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, one of the first of the Barrack-Room Ballads. It received wide critical and popular acclaim, and is often regarded as one of the most significant pieces of Kipling's early verse. The poem, a ballad, describes the execution of a British soldier in India for murder. His execution is viewed by his regiment, paraded to watch it, and the poem is composed of the comments they exchange as they see him hanged. [...] George Orwell considered Danny Deever as an example of Kipling "at his worst, and also his most vital ... almost a shameful pleasure, like the taste for cheap sweets that some people secretly carry into middle life". He felt the work was an example of what he described as "good bad poetry"; verse which is essentially vulgar, yet undeniably seductive and "a sign of the emotional overlap between the intellectual and the ordinary man." (wikipedia)

• • •

Yesterday, VASECTOMY. Today:

That's back-to-back immediate, confident, and wrong 1-Acrosses. Quite a triumph. In both cases, my imagination was much stronger and more creative than what the puzzles ultimately had to offer in that space, and in both cases the wrong answer was so obviously wrong (once I checked the crosses) that it didn't hold me up for too long. In fact, today, nothing held me up for long. I'd say most of my stuck time was spent trying to undo ZIGZAG, which meant attacking the short stuff to start with (ADO, PASS), and then getting EXPOSE / SEXILED, and on from there. I watched "Ford v Ferrari" earlier this year, and I know one of the guides at the Petersen Automotive Museum mentioned SHELBY's name while describing one of the cars when I visited there last month, but I still needed a bunch of crosses. So the NW played like a typical Saturday—took some real work to get going, but I got there. Once I got *out* of the NW, though, things got much, much easier, and for the last 1/3 of the puzzle or so I was going at Monday speed. Ended up in the opposite corner from where I started, with the opposite amount of resistance (little v lots). 

The thing is, when you come out of that NW corner, you've got the front ends of all the long central Acrosses lined up, and those first few letters are all you need for any of them. I went DIRTY-MINDED YAM STEAMED OPEN ARMED FORCES in virtually no time. UNPIN was a gimme (36A: Remove, as a corsage) and made the SW easy to get into (though POP GUN was briefly elusive—I had POPPER, i.e. the one ... who pops ... the champagne, I guess? (38D: Cork launcher). I also had to sort out which of this century's seemingly infinite "Star Wars" movies was supposed to go in the slot at 50A: 2016 prequel to the highest-grossing movie of 1977 ("ROGUE ONE"). But after that, it was easy to whoosh, right up the middle of the grid with those long Downs. No resistance. Got RANK AND FILE without ever seeing the clue (14D: Ordinary members). Never ever heard of "DANNY Deever," so that was weird, but I just sort of tiptoed around him, which was very easy to do, and after that, the east side of the puzzle fell like dominoes. I went from top to bottom of the grid writing in answers as fast as I could read the clues. Once I hit bottom, I had only tiny details to work through—like changing SNOOTY to SNOTTY (41D: Stuck-up) and remembering that AMULETs are for "wearing in health" (I think of them as just a jewelry type). Unfortunately for this puzzle, I ended on the sourest possible note: the ridiculousness that is LET DRY. *LET*??? Do you know how dumb that sounds, esp. after you've written in the far better, far more appropriate AIR DRY (57A: Put on the line, say)? Oof. LET DRY ... I guess when you AIR DRY things, you are, in fact, LETting them DRY ... but I have written "LOL bad" in the margin there because it is. Unsurprisingly, this is the NYTXW debut of LET DRY. Congrats? 

Luckily, most of this puzzle was nowhere near "LOL bad." It's sturdy and (LET DRY aside) cringe-free. SEXILED into DIRTY-MINDED is either clever or trying a little too hard, depending on your perspective, but I actually think it's the strongest part of the grid. I'll take show-offy naughtiness over dullness any day. Anything left to explain? Let's see ... ELI is the [First name in gin production?] because it's the cotton gin, not the gin that goes in a SIDECAR (just kidding, there's no gin in a SIDECAR: it's lemon juice, brandy, and an orange liqueur like triple sec, which I have typed as "triple sex" three times now) (24D: Cocktail named for a motorcycle attachment). Oh, I just remembered another mistake I made. Had the -R in 47D: Junior, perhaps (HEIR) and wrote in YEAR. As with ZIGZAG, I was verrrrry confident. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Kind of cake with layers of coffee and chocolate / FRI 5-27-22 / Film technique that accommodates wide- and full-screen display / Lures into a relationship by using a fictional online persona / Occasion for a high flute / The one in Layla lasts 3 minutes 48 seconds / Home of the largest street fair in North America / Improbable orders for oenophiles

Constructor: David Distenfeld

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: OPEN MATTE (66A: Film technique that accommodates wide- and full-screen display) —

Open matte is a filming technique that involves matting out the top and bottom of the film frame in the movie projector (known as a soft matte) for the widescreen theatrical release and then scanning the film without a matte (at Academy ratio) for a full screen home video release.

Open matte can be used with non-anamorphic films presented in 2.20:1 or 2.39:1, but it isn't used as often, mainly because it adds too much additional headroom, depending upon how well the framing was protected or if the director chooses to create a certain visual aesthetic. Instead, those films will employ either pan and scan or reframing using either the well-protected areas or the areas of interest. Films shot anamorphically use the entire 35 mm frame (except for the soundtrack area), so they must use pan and scan as a result. [...] 

With high-definition television now in common usage (with its standardized 16:9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio), the need to reformat 1.85:1 movies for television viewing has virtually evaporated, although television broadcasts still reformat 2.39:1 movies by means of using open matte or pan and scan. For films with wider aspect ratios (2.39:1, for example) the matting bars will appear on the top and bottom of the screen of the broadcast image, thus preserving each director's framing intent. (wikipedia)

• • •

This week has been ridiculously easy. I wonder if there's some kind of long-term plan to lower the difficulty bar across the board, so as to make the puzzle more generally accessible. All I know is that I would like the puzzles to have a little more teeth than they've had of late. The good kind of teeth, though. Not obscurity teeth or awful forced "?"-clue teeth. Clever misdirection teeth. Sneaky ambiguity teeth. It would be nice to meet some pleasant resistance. I dropped today's 1-Across in immediately, with no crosses in place (1A: Lures into a relationship by using a fictional online persona). Extremely literal clue on well-established slang. Whatever feeling of currency that answer might have had (and it's not exactly new anymore) is undermined by the dull, straightforward, obvious clue. The puzzle does a better job with the ALL THE FEELS clue (12D: Mixed emotions, so to speak), though in that case the answer is an expression so personally off-putting that it didn't add to my solving enjoyment at all. ALL THE FEELS is like ADULTING, a cutesy phrase that flattens the diversity and complex reality of human experience into meme-able onlinespeak. You don't have "mixed emotions," you have very specific feelings that you could probably express if you wanted to, but no, ALL THE FEELS, which basically says Nothing but wants to be seen as adorable. Pfft. That expression is, as they also say online, cringe. It's important to say here, because people seem to get confused, that when I don't like a phrase, like ALL THE FEELS, I'm writing as an ordinary solver who has Feelings about words, phrases, etc. I like some, don't like others. This is (mostly) a personal solving diary, not a rule book. If I really think an answer Has No Place In All Of Crosswords, I'll tell you. ALL THE FEELS is extremely valid. And I hate it. So that's where we've landed with that.

I love the expression IN THE WEEDS, though I don't think the clue here adequately conveys the lost-ness implied by the phrase (42A: Dealing with technical difficulties, say). Dealing with technical difficulties is a neutral activity—people who deal with technical things do it all the time, and when they do it, they're not IN THE WEEDS, a phrase which implies being over your head or talking over someone else's (i.e. immersed in details of a technical nature to the point where you've lost your audience). Looks like the phrase has some prominence as restaurant slang for when a server is totally overwhelmed by orders ... now that is interesting to me. Here's a good overview of this multivalent phrase (none of the valences seem properly represented by today's clue). The cluing was suspect in several other places today. Some HOUSE WINES are good, and there's no reason an oenophile might not drink one (7D: Improbable orders for oenophiles). It's hard to believe they chose the clue [Like households with stay-at-home spouses, typically] for ONE-INCOME, especially in a post-pandemic age when sooooooooo many more people are working from home. I don't like the weird assumptions this clue is making ("typically"). 

The only slow-down I experienced today came in the eastern section, where both EDU and SEEPS had bizarro clues that made it (briefly) difficult to get both ADAPTER (28D: Item to pack for a trip abroad) and the more toughly-clued SUNSETS (29D: Down times?). That is one highly metaphorical clue on SEEPS (41A: Infiltrates). Seems to be attributing a lot of nefarious agency to whatever moisture is SEEPing through your basement windows or improperly sealed food container or whatever. I think that's it—"Infiltrates" feels active and "SEEPS" feels passive and I wouldn't put them in the same universe, though I'm sure the clue is defensible. As for state names appearing before EDU (33A: Follower of many state names) ... sigh, OK, in the few cases where the school is a flagship state school, maybe, but I got my Ph.D. from a flagship state school and the domain name was "umich.edu," not "michigan.edu," and Cal is "berkeley.edu," so ... I dunno, man. This clue seems pretty forced. Then there were two things I simply didn't know, right on top of each other, in the SE. I read the OPEN MATTE wikipedia entry several times and still don't quite get it. Modern TVs don't require conversion to "full-screen" (4:3) aspect ratio anymore, so I guess OPEN MATTE was more important in yesteryear. Anyway, this answer felt pretty IN THE WEEDS to me. RADIO DIAL is a familiar enough phrase but what "55" might have to do with it, I had no idea. Been a long (long) time since I stared at an AM dial (!). Apparently 540 Khz is the low end of the AM spectrum, and radio dials often represented this as a 54 or (why!?!) a 55:

55

54

I'm guessing that of all the clues that might befuddle people today, this RADIO DIAL clue will be the befuddlingest. I don't think there's much else that requires explanation. [Act crabby?] is SIDLE because crabs SIDLE. RONA Barrett was a gossip columnist in times of yore (52A: First name in gossip). The "flute" in 10A: Occasion for a high flute? (TOAST) is a glass and it's "high" presumably because you have raised it ... for a TOAST. I had "Is that ALL?" before "Is that A NO?" and I won't have been alone there, but I don't think I made any other errors or initial missteps, which is super-odd for a Friday (or any day). I either knew the answer, or I didn't and I waited for crosses to help, but no face-planting, no whoops I fell in a hole. It's a solid puzzle, but it didn't offer much in the way of adventure.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Tactic of radical environmentalism / FRI 3-4-22 / Civil rights activist Wilkins / Secondary social media accounts informally

Constructor: David Distenfeld

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (names names names)

THEME: Mr. and Mrs. ... — actually there's no theme, but those two answers were certainly a thing

Word of the Day: ECOTAGE (26A: Tactic of radical environmentalism) —

Ecotage (/ˈikəˌtɑːʒ/ EE-kə-TAHZH) is sabotage carried out for ecological reasons. (wikipedia)

• • •

Oh, ECOTAGE, like "sabotage" ... since it's a word I've never seen outside of crosswords (and then only once or twice) I had no idea how to say it or what the -TAGE part was supposed to mean. I figured maybe it was some kind of artwork, like collage or découpage. It's really a godawful, crosswords-only word, and a big part of what made this one less than thrilling to solve. This grid has just one real marquis answer—ESSENTIAL WORKER—and that one had such an "aren't-I-clever?" / "gotcha" trick clue that the charm of the answer's originality was ruined for me (35A: Needed help). So ... the "Needed" is adjectival. :( Big groan rather than joyful 'aha.' I had "ESSENTIAL ... R" and absolutely no concept of what that answer could be. I also had ECOCIDE where ECOTAGE was supposed to be (ECOCIDE, also an awful, only-seen-it-in-crosswords word, but I've definitely seen it more often, and anyway I could at least infer what -CIDE meant, unlike, -TAGE). And then WARTS NOBONES and TARDY were all complete blanks to me, as was (Point) REYES (Peninsula), despite the fact that I am literally (very literally) going to be there in under two weeks. Throw in the fact that the long Downs that run through that WORKER section are at least partly inscrutable if you work them from the bottom up ("let's see, sommmmme kind of FIRE .... "sommmmething LATER" ... great ..."), and yeah, huge mess. ECOTAGE really ... ECOTAGEd things up there. Then there was the fact that the puzzle was so painfully desperate to seem contemporary and hip that it just flooded the zone with pop culture names of one kind or another. No one of them is objectionable, but that NE corner, yeesh: actress, "role," "protagonist," made-up word for a type of TV show ... just off-puttingly proper-nounish. To the puzzle's credit, it is appealingly diverse in terms of gender and race. But name bloat doesn't cease to be name bloat just because the names are names you like. I object to a contemporary proper noun like FLO (54D: Popular women's health app) a lot lot lot less (i.e. not at all) because at least it doesn't come from the realm of entertainment consumed on screens—over and over and over. MRS. MAISEL, BRIE LARSON, INHD, yes yes yes, you watch a lot of things, I get it. Pass the mic to a different cultural realm. Please.

The MRS. MAISEL / "MR. SANDMAN" thing is cute—a mini-theme that I don't mind at all on a Friday (31A: Emmy-winning title role for Rachel Brosnahan / 38A: 1950s #1 hit with the repeated lyric "Bring me a dream). It's the only really delightful thing about the grid, for me. I was so bummed out by the thud of ISSUE in LEGAL ISSUE (3D: Basis for a case) that it was nice to get things moving in a livelier, more Friday-esque direction there in the middle of the grid with the MR./MRS. pairing. I've been a fully-alert, pop culture-consuming adult for the entire run of modern reality TV, going all the way back to "The Real World," and today, thirty-plus years later, is the first time I'm seeing the term DOCU-SOAP (6A: Genre for "Jersey Shore" and "The Real World"). What an ugly, ridiculous, ungainly, and patently unnecessary term. It is true that I turned my back on that genre a long time ago, when I realized it was designed to bring out the absolute worst instincts in everyone (participants/viewers), so maybe there's a reality TV fandom where DOCU-SOAP is de rigueur but to me it just looks like you misspelled "Duck Soup."

[was gonna play "MR. SANDMAN" here but stumbled on this and was 

too charmed to let it go by ... Curt Smith (of Tears for Fears) playing "Mad World" 

with his daughter, Diva, on guitar / harmonies]

Weirdly, and yes, hypocritically, would've preferred a pop culture clue for MOULD. Briticisms are OK, I guess, but in this case I would've preferred post-punk / alt-rock legend Bob MOULD. He fronted the bands Hüsker Dü and Sugar and has a thriving solo career as well. Tuneful, guitar-driven rock. A really cool, kinda eerie voice. Bob MOULD: definitely better than British fungus. 

And now, "Going Back to CALI," just 'cause ... 'cause I like it, and because I am it (less than two weeks!), and yeah, that's enough. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. tonight (and every Friday night for the near future) I am live-solving cryptic crosswords on Twitch with my friends, two of my favorite crossword people-about-town, Rachel Fabi and Neville Fogarty. Here is the link. If you would like to improve your cryptic crossword skills, or just watch nerds being goofy with word games on a Friday night, tune in. Here's a recording of last week's stream.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Resort locale east of Snowbird / SAT 12-18-21 / Britain's first family of harmony per Brian Wilson / Modern-day put-down popularized by a 2019 TikTok video / Lead-in to a grave pronouncement / Challenge for a free soloist / Alternative to a Lamborghini / Champagne one of Drake's nicknames

Constructor: David Distenfeld

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BUGATTI (35D: Alternative to a Lamborghini) —

Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S. (French pronunciation: ​[bygati]) is a French high-performance luxury automobiles manufacturer and a luxury brand for hypersports cars. The company was founded in 1998 as a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group and is based in Molsheim, Alsace. In 1909, namesake Ettore Bugatti founded his automotive brand Bugatti here and, with interruptions due to World War II, built sports, racing, and luxury cars until 1963. Since January 1, 2018, the company has been led by Stephan Winkelmann as President. In late 2021 the company will become part of Bugatti Rimac owned by Mate Rimacand Porsche AG.

• • •

***HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS IN SYNDICATION (if you're solving this puzzle in January, that's you!)*** . Happy Newish Year! 2022! I hope you are holding up during these cold, dark days. It's early January, which means it's time for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask regular readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. 

2021 was an important year for me, as my blog (this blog, the one you are reading right now) turned 15 years old! [noisemaker sounds!!!!]. That's a lot of years old. For a blog, anyway. 15 is also a pretty important crossword-related anniversary—maybe the only important crossword-related anniversary. The standard US crossword grid is 15x15, and now Rex Parker is also 15! Rex Parker, spanning the grid to give you the constant variety of crossword commentary: the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat (dum dum dum DUM!) The human drama of ... OK now I'm just channeling Jim McKay from the '70s-era introduction to "Wide World of Sports," but I do hope this blog has provided some insight, some entertainment, some commiseration, some solace, some sense of regularity during what are obviously pretty tumultuous and often lonely times. I hope it has enhanced your solving pleasure, giving you something to look forward to even (especially?) when the puzzle lets you down, and someone to celebrate with when the puzzle is wonderful. If it's also given you someone to shout at in disagreement, that's OK too.

A lot of labor goes into producing this blog every day (Every. Day.) and the hours are, let's say, less than ideal (I'm either solving and writing at night, after 10pm, or in the morning, before 6am). Most days, I really do love the writing, but it is work, and once a year (right now!) I acknowledge that fact. As I've said before, I have no interest in "monetizing" the blog beyond a simple, direct contribution request once a year. No ads, no gimmicks. Just here for you, every day, rain or shine, whether you like it or, perhaps, on occasion, not :) It's just me and my laptop and some free blogging software and, you know, a lot of rage, but hopefully there's illumination and levity along the way. I do genuinely love this gig, and whether you're an everyday reader or a Sunday-only reader or a flat-out hatereader, I appreciate you more than you'll ever know.

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 two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address (checks should be made out to "Rex Parker"):

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

I'll throw my Venmo handle in here too, just in case that's your preferred way of moving money around; it's @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 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. Last year's thank-you postcards featured various portraits of my cat, Alfie, designed by artist Ella Egan, a.k.a. my daughter. They were such a hit that I asked Ella to design this year's thank-you postcard as well, this time featuring both my cats. And this is the result. Behold this year's thank-you card: "Alfie and Olive: Exploring the Grid":

We went back and forth on whether she should add more black squares to make the grid look more plausibly fillable (that's a Lot of white space), but in the end we decided not to crowd the jumping (or hanging?) Olive with more black squares, and instead just to leave the card as is, with the idea that the cats are exploring a grid that is ... under construction. Anyway, this card is personally meaningful to me, and also, I believe, objectively lovely. I can't wait to share it with snail-mailers (and oh, what the hell, if you are a PayPal / Venmo donor and you want one too, just say so in the message). 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. Now on to today's puzzle...

• • •

This one was fun, if a little desperate to establish its "Youth!" credentials. It's neck-snapping to go from puzzles that barely acknowledge the contemporary world exists to something like this that's just throwing "Dear Evan Hansen"s and Drake nicknames at you right out of the gate. The worst (by far) of the attitudinal stuff was "OK, BOOMER," a lazy agist insult that I really Really thought was behind us (23A: Modern-day put-down popularized by a 2019 TikTok video). If you spend a lot of time complaining about Millennials or GenZ, then you are a boring "in my day..." older person who would rather wallow in false nostalgia than try to understand the different social and economic situations of younger people today. *Conversely*, if your only way of registering disagreement with someone older than you is to pull out the most hackneyed of internet insults, first, your lack of imagination is disappointing, if not outright embarrassing, and second, don't expect anyone to empathize with you, ever. Generational generalizations are the lowest form of discourse. I think "OK, BOOMER" was amusing for about a week, just because of how fast it seemed to go viral and how many different contexts it spread to, but now the only people who use it are bottom-feeding trolls and unfunny middle-aged people trying to seem hip. Hacks. I think I'm much more mad at the laziness of the insult than I am at the fact of the insulting. If you're gonna hit someone, hit someone. For real. And maybe use your own words. This limp trollspeak that you're pinching from lemmings on the internet ... it's not working for you. It never was. 

Speaking of resolving generational conflict, I like that this puzzle has "DIG THIS!" and "YA HEAR!"  kind of dapping there, touching corners like "Hey what's up? How you doin'?" Although maybe "YA HEAR!" isn't as current as it sounds to my ears. I may be thinking of "YA HEARD?" (roughly equivalent of "ya feel me?" or, less slangily, "Do you understand what I am saying to you?"). Whatever generation these colloquialisms come from, they liven up the puzzle, along with their colloquial counterparts "WELL, DAMN..." and "CAN WE NOT!?" I do not understand what is "grave" about the pronouncement "NOW MORE THAN EVER" (7D: Lead-in to a grave pronouncement). Was sure that the clue was punning on "grave" somehow, and that the answer was going to be something you'd say at a funeral or graveside, but the grave doesn't seem like the right setting for this pronouncement, so I guess "grave" just means "serious." But "grave" is so much stronger than "serious," and anyway, I don't imagine this phrase having a particularly dire tone. If anything, these days, it's an overused expression that people primarily use ironically, in faux-seriousness. I just think "grave" is all kinds of wrong here. No other strong complaints, though I winced hard when the TEST PILOTS (26D: Firsts in flight) went crashing into STERE ISRED. What a mess. ISRED in particular is real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, so at least it's appropriately situated at the bottom of the grid with only the lowly ITSY for company.

More stuff:

• 26A: Vintage eight-track purchases, maybe (TRAIN SETS) — hard "boo!" on this one, but mostly I'm mad that my eyes somehow didn't pick up the "maybe." My reaction to getting this was "... eight!?!?! How big a model train room do you own???" Maybe there are simply eight track *pieces* ... which would then form one track ... I do not know.
• 36D: Furnish with feathers, as an arrow (FLETCH) — gotta believe this was a Chevy Chase-related clue that the editor overrode.

• 12D: Not-so-common extension (DOT NET) — this vague clue and Princess ATTA (?!) made the NE a *bit* of an adventure. I don't think of EDU COM etc. as "extensions," since they are necessary for the URL to ... work? I think they're technically known as TLDs, or "Top Level Domains." But I would not trust me to be letter perfect with the tech terminology.
• 48A: Challenge for a free soloist (CRAG) — a mountain-climbing term ("free soloist") that I only recently heard of, first from a movie called "Free Solo" ... and then from trailers for another movie, "The Alpinist." 

• 27A: Stress specialist? (POET) — transparent to me, but I do spend a lot of my life dealing with iambs and trochees, so no surprise
• 39A: Pieces together? (SUITE) — a group of musical "pieces" can form a SUITE. Maybe this applies to furniture SUITE as well. Nice fake-out here, with a clue that suggests a verb ending in "S" ... but no.
• 7A: Scratch-off success (INSTANT WIN) — this is a lottery ticket clue

I give this puzzle something greater than NO STARS! Enjoy your Saturday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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