Famous misquote of a James Cagney line from the 1932 film "Taxi!" / WED 7-9-25 / Squids' kin / Popular digital wallet service / California college where the writer David Foster Wallace taught English / Repeated sounds in "Hey Jude" / Redheaded boy of 1960s TV / 1970s space station

Constructor: Desirée Penner and Jeff Sinnock

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Positional wordplay — answers around the edges of the grid have clues that playfully ("?"-style) indicate that position:

Theme answers:

• MUTT (1A: Top dog?) (a kind of "dog" located on the "top" of the grid)
• LID (5A: Top hat?) (a word for "hat" located on the "top" of the grid)
• PISTOL (8A: Top gun?) (a kind of "gun" located on the "top" of the grid)
• MEMO (1D: Side note?) (a kind of "note" located on the "side" of the grid)
• BOARD (27D: Side plank?) (a kind of "plank" located on the "side" of the grid)
• PUNT (58D: Side kick?) (a kind of "kick" located on the "side" of the grid)
• LIMB (13D: Side arm?) (a category that includes "arm" located on the "side" of the grid)
• PLATE (34D: Side dish?) (a kind of "dish" located on the "side" of the grid)
• TASK (65D: Side job?) (a word "job" located on the "side" of the grid)
• TROUGH (73A: Bottom feeder?) (a kind of "feeder" located on the "bottom" of the grid)
• RAY (74A: Bottom line?) (a type of "line" located on the "bottom" of the grid)
• BUCK (75A: Bottom dollar?) (a slang word for "dollar" located on the "bottom" of the grid)

Word of the Day: Taxi! (61A: Famous misquote of a James Cagney line from the 1932 film "Taxi!" = "YOU DIRTY RAT!") —

Taxi! is a 1932 American pre-Code film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring James Cagney and Loretta Young.

The film includes a famous, and often misquoted, line with Cagney speaking to his brother's killer through a locked closet door: "Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat, or I'll give it to you through the door!" This line has often been misquoted as "You dirty rat, you killed my brother".

To play his competitor in a ballroom dance contest, Cagney recommended his pal, fellow tough-guy-dancer George Raft, who was uncredited in the film. In a lengthy and memorable sequence, the scene culminates with Raft and his partner winning the dance contest against Cagney and Young, after which Cagney slugs Raft and knocks him down. As in The Public Enemy (1931), several scenes in Taxi! involved the use of live machine gun bullets. After a few of the bullets narrowly missed Cagney's head, he outlawed the practice in his future films.

• • •

Hard for a puzzle with short themers to be very interesting. Once you grasp the gimmick, then you're just going around the grid picking up fairly obvious synonyms or rough equivalents, all of them 3-4-5s. Then, because of the theme (that is, because of a preponderance of 3-4-5s), you end up with a very choppy grid without a hell of a lot of interesting things happening inside it. The NYTXW is supposed to max out at 78 words, but this one goes to 80. What that means, for practical purposes, is there's a whole lot of short stuff going on. The marquee answer here is "YOU DIRTY RAT!," which I enjoyed seeing, and learning about—I've seen imitations of Cagney that quote the line, but I didn't know where the line was from, or that it was a misquote. But for lots (and lots) of younger (than me) solvers, that answer is going to mean absolutely nothing. You're asking people to know an iconic misquoted line that hasn't really been iconic since Cagney himself was iconic (when I was a kid, yes, still, but now ... only to TCM fans like me) (note: I don't actually have TCM anymore since I cut cable and (eventually) its streaming replacements, but I still feel loyalty—it was my old-movie University for a long while). If I had to name five Cagney movies, Taxi! would not be among them. In fact, I have never seen the movie and if I've heard of it, I forgot it. This is all to say—"YOU DIRTY RAT!" is a very deep cut for a Wednesday, and a highly anomalous answer in this puzzle for that reason. Generationally divisive for sure. I think it's the most interesting thing in the grid. Others ... are (maybe) not apt to feel that way.

All the plays-on-words in the theme clues are actual things, which is nice. Sometimes when you have to use repeated phrasing like this (top top top, side side side, etc.), you end up with at least a few clues that feel forced, but to me, only "side job" feels a little off, but it's not; not really. I think it's largely been replaced by "side hustle," and that's why it doesn't feel as solid (to my ears) as the others. But it's perfectly legitimate. It's possible "side plank" won't be well known to some people, but it's a pretty common core strengthening exercise (and, as vasisthasana, a staple of many yoga classes), so there's no reason to object to it. I didn't like how the relationship between clue word and answer word was not consistent. That is, the answer is an example of the word in the clue (e.g. PISTOL is a kind of "gun") ... but then, with LIMB / "arm," the category / example relationship gets reversed (e.g. "arm" is a kind of LIMB) ... and then a few other times, the answer is just a synonym of the clue (e.g. BUCK and "dollar," PLANK and "board"). The concept still works, but it keeps changing how it works, slightly, from answer to answer.

Because the fill is so frequently short, it ends up on the weak side. LOL at LALA *and* NANANA being in the same grid. NANANA has me saying "nah ... nah, nah" (70A: Repeated sounds in "Hey Jude").That's not an answer, that's a typo of "BANANA." If you replaced that first "NA" with SHA, you'd have a band. But otherwise, just say no no no to NANANA. There's scads of other short repeaters (ANODE ATO ETA EPEE ÉTÉ etc.) and a few words I only ever see in xwords (looking at you, GNAR ... also MISAIM). But there's nothing here to get particularly mad at. Oh, except ... I expect the OCTOPI-haters to be out in force once again (16A: Squids' kin). "That's not how you pluralize ... [sputter] ... Greek! ... [wheeze] ... not Latin! ... No!" Blah blah blah, I know, I know, I don't like it either, but it's in the dictionary, so please read this fantastic discussion of the Octopus Plural Dilemma at Merriam-Webster (dot com), and then get over it. Thank you. Actually, here—a little consolation for the OCTOPI-weary: if you're persnickety about these things, you'll love this 19th-century swipe at "modern" spellings:

But as the Octopus grew and multiplied, it became necessary to speak of him in the plural; and here a whole host of difficulties arose. Some daring spirits with little Latin and less Greek, rushed upon octopi; as for octopuses, a man would as soon think of swallowing one of the animals thus described as pronounce such a word at a respectable tea-table. In this condition of affairs, we are glad to know that a few resolute people have begun to talk about Octopods, which is, of course, the nearest English approach to the proper plural. (The Bradford Observer, 1873) (via merriam-webster.com)

Round-up:

• 20A: Number with 12 zeros in the U.S. but 18 zeros in other parts of the world (ONE TRILLION) — I need to know what these "other parts of the world" are and what (in the world) they call the number with 12 zeros, then. I know that ONE BILLION, until fairly recently, had a different meaning in Britain (the "long scale" million million, or 10 to the 12th power, as opposed to the "short scale" 1,000 million, or 10 to the 9th, which is now the standard in all varieties of English). So a "long scale" billion is actually more than our standard trillion. It's absurd to me that these values weren't standardized across Englishes from the jump.  
• 31A: Popular digital wallet service (CASH APP) — according to Pew Research in 2022, 26% of U.S. adults have used this app at least once. I am not one of those adults. But I somehow "knew" this answer. It sounds like a category of app and not an actual app ("hey, what CASH APP do you use?"), but nope, that's the name; CASH APP (formerly "Square Cash").
• 8D: California college where the writer David Foster Wallace taught English (POMONA) — hey, it's the alma mater of ... me! And NYT Mini Crossword editor Joel Fagliano! I was too old (c/o '91) to have had Wallace (d. 2008) as my professor, and Joel (c/o '14) was too young.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Gillette razors / MON 10-7-24 / Fictional archaeologist with a fear of snakes, informally / Fixture at many a cash bar / Supersoft sweater material / The Gaels of the NCAA / What adequate ventilation provides / Sweeping camera movement / Something a loyal customer may redeem for a free drink / Like the slang "totally tubular" and "da bomb"

Constructor: Desirée Penner and Jeff Sinnock

Relative difficulty: Very easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: TIME AND TIME AGAIN (39A: Repeatedly ... or what can precede both halves of the answers to 19-, 25-, 53- and 63-Across) — both halves of the theme answers can follow "time" in a familiar phrase:

Theme answers:

• SLOT MACHINE ("time slot," "time machine") (19A: For which 7-7-7 might be a jackpot)
• STAMP CARD ("time stamp," "time card") (25A: Something a loyal customer may redeem for a free drink)
• OFF LIMITS ("time off," "time limits") (53A: Taboo)
• PERIOD PIECE ("time period," "time piece") (63A: Historical drama, e.g.)

Word of the Day: LAMAR Jackson (16A: ___ Jackson, N.F.L. M.V.P. in 2019 and 2023) —

Lamar Demeatrice Jackson Jr. (born January 7, 1997) is an American professional football quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Louisville Cardinals, winning the Heisman Trophy in 2016, and was selected by the Ravens with the final pick (No. 32) in the first round of the 2018 NFL draft. Intended to serve as a backup in his rookie season, Jackson became the Ravens' starting quarterback after an injury to the incumbent Joe Flacco. He went on to clinch a division title with the team and became the youngest NFL quarterback to start a playoff game at age 21.

Known for his dual-threat play style, Jackson led the NFL in touchdown passes in 2019 while setting the single-season record in rushing yards for a quarterback.For his success, Jackson became the second unanimous NFL Most Valuable Player(MVP) and the fourth black quarterback to win the award. Jackson followed up his MVP campaign by becoming the first quarterback to have multiple seasons with 1,000 rushing yards and led the Ravens to a third consecutive playoff appearance. Following the 2022 season, he signed a five-year contract worth $260 million. In 2023, Jackson led the Ravens to the top seed in the American Football Conference (AFC) and was named NFL MVP for the second time, en route to the team's first AFC Championship game since 2012. (wikipedia)

• • •

Really enjoyed this one. It was one of those days where all the Downs-only magic was flowing my way. SLAMS ERICA CASHMERE right out of the gate, then double back to get PIVOT (after inferring the "P" in SPEC). Slight hesitation at STAMP CARD ("is that a thing? ... oh, right, yes, yes it is") and then up and through SLOTM-, which couldn't be anything but SLOT MACHINE ... so I was flying, whooshing, without even looking at a single Across clue. But with two themers down, I still couldn't tell what the theme was supposed to be, so I tumbled down into the center of the grid (ASTI AIM LIP ATM DUE), and then, from "-EANDTIM-" ... bam, right across the grid. 

What a rush to pick up a grid-spanner from just the middle chunk, and a bigger rush to have that grid-spanner clearly, concisely, and perfectly reveal the theme to me. Didn't need to read the clue on TIME AND TIME AGAIN to know exactly what it meant. I thought "OK, if that's the revealer, then there's going to be two ... times ... probably." And sure enough, I look up, and yup, that checks out (time slot, time machine; time stamp, time card). Something about the exhilaration of flying through the grid on just the Downs coupled with the clear and clever wordplay on the revealer phrase made this one a lot of fun to move through. And the remaining themers were still fun to get because, even knowing the gimmick, I still had to pick them up without their clues. Got to experience another no-look whoosh moment later in the solve when I threw down PERIOD PIECE off of just a tiny chunk of central material ("-IOD-"):

Confirmed that answer with PAN (64D: Sweeping camera movement), and from there, it was a fairly easy trip over to the SE corner and ... done. Ended on SRSLY, and yes, SRSLY, despite some less-than-great fill here and there, I liked this one a bunch. The "both halves"-type themes can often yield two-part themers that feel at least a little bit forced, but all four of today's offerings were rock solid—rock solid as standalone answers, and rock solid as two-part "time" followers. Since "time flow" is a thing (isn't it?), I had a moment where I thought AIRFLOW was a themer (29A: What adequate ventilation provides). But then I looked at the symmetrical answer (NY STATE), and couldn't make sense of "time NY" or "time state" (although that kind of sounds like a thing). Also (going back to AIRFLOW), though "air time" is a thing, "time air" is not. So no, those 7-letter Acrosses have nothing to do with the theme. Just the four themers today—clean and clear and thematically perfect.

Moments I could have done without: OBI crossing OBIE (not a dupe, but feels like a dupe); NY STATE (I live in it but it doesn't feel like a solid phrase to me—NYS is an abbr. I've seen, but NY STATE seems to be trying to have it both ways (abbr. and non), and it just feels off); and then, because I had to stop and work for FIERY, my attention was called to the crosses on that one, which are ... not good. Weird to write in FIERY and know it has to be right but really want it to be wrong because MII and ATRAS look so bad. They really want to be MOI and ATLAS ... but FIERY > FOELY, I'm afraid, so I just had to wince and move on. Those minor infelicities, however, did very little to dampen my overall enjoyment of this one. We also get a couple of decent long downs. CASHMERE ... so soft. And who doesn't love Paul GIAMATTI? I will confess I did not care for The Holdovers, but American Splendor is one of the best biopics I've ever seen (and I don't even like biopics!). GIAMATTI is a perfect Harvey Pekar. Perfect Pekar, I say! If you haven't seen it, treat yourself! 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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What "E" stands for in golf / MON 2-5-24 / Surreptitiously give, as classified information / Legally prohibit / What quill pens are dipped in / Dipstick coating

Constructor: Desirée Penner and Jeff Sinnock

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: FIGHTING WORDS (37A: "Wanna take this outside?," e.g. ... or what are found four times in this puzzle's circled letters) — comic-book fighting sounds are embedded inside four answers:

Theme answers:

• SCUBA MASKS (18A: Underwater divers' aids)
• PIZZA PIE (23A: "When the moon hits your eye like a big ___, that's amore" (Dean Martin lyric))
• RUB OFF ON (55A: Influence through close contact)
• "POLKA POWER" (61A: Weird Al Yankovic medley that features "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls)

[I gave a talk on early mass-market paperback cover art at this conference in 2010]

Word of the Day: "Ta-RA-RA Boom-de-ay" (15D: "Ta-___ Boom-de-ay") —

"Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" is a vaudeville and music hall song first performed by the 1880s. It was included in Henry J. Sayers' 1891 revue Tuxedo in Boston, Massachusetts. The song became widely known in the 1892 version sung by Lottie Collins in London music halls, and also became popular in France. 

The melody was later used in various contexts, including as the theme song to the mid-20th century United States television show Howdy Doody. 

The song's authorship was disputed for some years. It was originally credited to Henry J. Sayers, the manager of Rich and Harris, a producer of the George Thatcher Minstrels. Sayers used the song in the troupe's 1891 production Tuxedo, a minstrel farce variety show, in which "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" was sung by Mamie Gilroy. Sayers later said that he had not written the song, but heard it performed in the 1880s by a black singer, Mama Lou, in a well-known St. Louis brothel run by "Babe" Connors. Another American singer, Flora Moore, said that she had sung the song in the early 1880s. [...] From 1974 to 1988 the Disneyland park in Anaheim, California, included a portion of the song in their musical revue attraction America Sings, in the finale of Act 3 – The Gay 90s. (wikipedia)

• • •

Extremely easy Downs-only solve. The theme seems fine except for two things. First, that Weird Al "medley" seems *pretty* obscure. Not exactly Monday theme answer material. The puzzle is so easy overall that the obscurity hardly matters, but still, you can feel the stretch there. The bigger problem, thematically, is RUB OFF ON. The lesser problem is that "ON" doesn't touch the embedded word, and the perfectly executed, perfectly elegant version of this theme type, embedded words touch all words in the base phrase. But like I say, that's a lesser problem. The bigger problem is BOFF, which ... I think maybe you're thinking of BIFF! Because "BIFF!" is definitely a noted comic book sound, if a lesser one. Lots of examples if you Google Image Search BIFF! Whereas BOFF ... well, it doesn't google as well as a comic-book sound effect meaning. In fact, BOFF has a different meaning, where I come from. A more ... frankly ... sexual meaning. And apparently not just where I come from. I mean, just google [define boff] and ...

You can BOP someone on the head, and that's kinda violent, but BOFF just doesn't register as a comic-book "fighting word" the way the others do. Feels like a huge swing and a miss. A fundamental flaw in the execution of the theme. So the core concept works fine, but BOFF mars the execution pretty bad.

As for the Downs-only solve, this was very much on the easy side. The only answer I really struggled with was the longer answer sitting dead center: 24D: What "E" stands for in golf (EVEN PAR). But when I say "struggled" I mean I couldn't get it from just the "E," but once I got the "N" from FIGHTING WORDS, and then mentally inserted the "V" at C_S, I guessed EVEN PAR, and was correct. I had a little bit of hesitation around the "I CAN SO" / DESTINED pair in the NE (8D: "You underestimate me!" / 9D: Governed by fate), but after getting ELK (10D: Rocky Mountain ___ (state animal of Utah)) and ALS (11D: Politicians Gore and Franken), I had --EA for 8A, so I just hypothesized IDEA as the answer there, and then from D-S- got DESTINED, and then shortly thereafter got "I CAN SO" (those short colloquial phrases that are clued as quotations are often hard to get a grip on without help from crosses). Oh, and I hesitated on the last two letters of RA-RA, fearing it would be something dumb like RA-LA or RA-TA or whatever. RA-RA is terrible fill. It's bad as Latin for "rare" (see "RARA avis," as it is often clued), and even worse as this olde-tymey song title fragment. ESTOP isn't winning any awards either (1D: Legally prohibit). The fill was mostly middling overall, but only RA-RA is likely to make anyone blink and think ra-really?

That's Monday, then. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Newly weaned piglets / MON 11-6-23 / Amazon Handmade competitor / Travel papers for those just passing through / Home for Tolkien's Bilbo and Frodo / Home workout selection / Longtime show host known as the "Queen of All Media"

Constructor: Desirée Penner and Jeff Sinnock

Relative difficulty: Challenging (from a Downs-only perspective) 

THEME: GLUED TO THE TV (56A: Where your eyes might stay during a suspenseful scene ... or the only place you'll find the "eyes" in this puzzle) — "ITVI" appears in three themers:

Theme answers:

• TRANSIT VISAS (20A: Travel papers for those just passing through)
• HOBBIT VILLAGE (28A: Home for Tolkien's Bilbo and Frodo)
• CROSSFIT VIDEO (49A: Home workout selection)

Word of the Day: Tori AMOS (10A: Singer/songwriter Tori) —

Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full scholarship to the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University at the age of five, the youngest person ever to have been admitted. She had to leave at the age of eleven when her scholarship was discontinued for what Rolling Stone described as "musical insubordination".^[9] Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Her songs focus on a broad range of topics, including sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion.

Her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", "Flavor" and "A Sorta Fairytale", her most commercially successful single in the U.S. to date. Amos has received five MTV VMA nominations and eight Grammy Award nominations, and won an Echo Klassik award for her Night of Hunters classical crossover album. She is listed on VH1's 1999 "100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll" at number 71. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this was unpleasant. The theme is so awfully, terribly forced, starting with the shoehorning of "eyes" ("I"s) into the clue, and ending with super-contrived answers all around. CROSSFIT VIDEO? WTF? And HOBBIT ... VILLAGE? When I search ["Hobbit Village"] I just get movie sets in New Zealand. Do you mean The Shire? I only know The Shire. After that ... no idea what this is all about. When I solve Downs-only, I *kinda* need the Acrosses to be real things, and today, oof. I honestly finished the puzzle going, "NOEM .... NOEM ... NOEM ... that's ... well, that's wrong. That's not a thing. I must have an error." But then I got the "Congratulations!" message upon finishing the puzzle correctly, and I just sat there for a bit, wondering what the hell a NOEM was. NOAM Chomsky is spelled with an "A" ... what is this mystery word? Only then did I look at the clue and remember with sudden sharp and awful clarity that this was the name of that loathsome, anti-choice, forced-birth-for-pregnant-ten-year-olds, election-denying creep in charge of my best friend's home state. Why would ... why would you put her in your puzzle? There's no need. There's never a need, on a Monday, for the country's 27th best known governor. ALB, awful, NOEM, awful, SLO, awful, what is even happening here today? That is one of the ugliest rows I've Ever seen. ALB NOEM SLO. On a Monday. Just head-shakingly weak. And EROS ETAL EENY ETSY ESPY all bunched up in the S and SW. SSE? HER and SHE? I'm struggling to find where the fun was supposed to be here. I guess the "I"s "glued" to the "TV" were the fun. Well, we're gonna have to AGREE to disAGREE about what "fun" means today. Haven't seen a Monday miss this bad in a long time.

So many struggles on the Downs-only front. POISE before ... SENSE? Just SENSE!? (13D: Levelheadedness). POP TOP before POP TAB, ugh (4D: Built-in can opener). "I'M OFF," somehow really hard to come up with (29D: "Ta-ta!"). YEW TREE before ASH TREE (44D: Its wood is used in making archery bows). It's maple, myrtle, oak and (classically) YEW! What is this ash nonsense? Took a while to get AVATARS (47D: Bitmoji likenesses, e.g.) and INVEST (51D: Be an angel?). And then GLARE, yikes. I was looking for weather, like SLEET (53D: Blinding driving hazard). Not all of this struggle is the puzzle's fault, but some of it is. POP TOP! YEW TREE! POISE! These were better answers. Sigh.

It's probably best that I stop here. Usually Monday gives me a little palate-cleansing burst of freshness after the gunkiness of Sunday, but this week, Sunday was actually kind of entertaining, and whereas this ... still not over NOEM. Just an actively horrible human. Say NOPE to NOEM for all future puzzles, please. Yes, this is cancel culture, please cancel her, much appreciated. I need a drink. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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