Rainy-day game for children / WED 6-18-25 / Bygone initials at JFK / Rely on the hospitality of friends for lodging / Gad about at a banquet / "Sound" of a point sailing over someone's head / The first one was delivered in 1984 / "Star Wars" species on Tatooine / "Decorated" as a house for Halloween / Mind-boggling designs / Fashion's Jimmy whose surname aptly rhymes with "shoe" / Medicinal name in the shampoo aisle / 2019 Brad Pitt sci-fi thriller

Constructor: Eli Cotham

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: THE FLOOR IS LAVA (58A: Rainy-day game for children, whose play is punnily suggested by 16-, 24-, 35- and 50-Across) — answers all suggest movement on furniture, i.e. actions you might take while playing THE FLOOR IS LAVA, a game where touching the ground ("FLOOR") means "death":

Theme answers:

• COUNTERBALANCE (16A: Offset, as something on a scale)
• TABLEHOP (24A: Gad about at a banquet)
• COUCHSURF (35A: Rely on the hospitality of friends for lodging)
• BARCRAWL (50A: Hit the pubs)

Word of the Day: THE FLOOR IS LAVA (58A) —

The floor is lava is a game in which players pretend that the floor or ground is made of lava (or any other lethal substance, such as acid or quicksand), and thus must avoid touching the ground, as touching the ground would "kill" the player who did so. The players stay off the floor by standing on furniture or the room's architecture. The players generally may not remain still, and are required to move from one piece of furniture to the next. This is due to some people saying that the furniture is acidic, sinking, or in some other way time-limited in its use. The game can be played with a group or alone for self amusement. There may even be a goal, to which the players must race. The game may also be played outdoors in playgrounds or similar areas.

This game is similar to the traditional children's game "Puss in the Corner", or "Puss Wants a Corner", where children occupying the corner of a room are "safe", while the Puss, the player who is "It" in the middle of the room, tries to occupy an empty corner as the other players dash from one corner to another. This game was often played in school shelter-sheds in Victoria, with the bench-seats along the walls of the shelter-shed being used as platforms joining the corner, while players crossing the floor could be caught by the Puss. (wikipedia)

• • •

The revealer really rescued this one for me. I had noticed the furniture element as I went along, but didn't see any kind of thematic coherence beyond that until the game showed up near the end and made me notice the second (action) halves of the answers as well. I never played THE FLOOR IS LAVA as a kid (or as an adult). I've never even seen it played. I know of it only from recent pop culture, and even then I don't know how the name of the game got into my brain. Some specific TV show? Apparently there is a Netflix show called THE FLOOR IS LAVA that premiered in 2020—maybe I caught sight of that title while scrolling through thousands of movie titles to find something non-mediocre. More likely that someone on some TV show mentioned it on some episode blah blah who knows how these things get in your brain? The point is, I had enough of a sense of how the game is played to appreciate the theme. I did not, however, appreciate the fill, and this is Really becoming an issue of late—grid negligence, or grid grime, or whatever name you wanna call it. I winced through a whole lot of this grid, which is just inundated with short overcommon or ugly stuff. So many initialisms! Plus tired or archaic stuff; NIGH OGLE NYMET one lone TAPA OPART ENUF USN ISAY CST TPED TSAR UMS TEAMO ERST ATOB SST ELO TGEL. You wouldn't squawk much about a few of these, but the load of them? Yeesh. The longer Downs occasionally make up for the shorter dreck (they're all pretty good, exc. maybe the improbable comparative adj. GLUMMER and the Latin ADASTRA, which are still fine). But there was a stretch there from the NW through the center of the grid (roughly OGLE to ERST) where I thought the crosswordese onslaught would never end. I still think the puzzle ends up in Positive territory in the end, but just barely.

Another unfortunate trend in recent puzzles: easiness. There should be at least a little resistance in a Wednesday puzzle. But today, only the NW and SE gave me any kind of pushback, and it wasn't much. It's always hardest getting started, so a little skidding around before you get traction is normal (I got OGLE and nothing else at first in the NW, so I just moved over to Jimmy CHOO and started there). As for the SE, I wrote in the cookware brand TFAL instead of the dandruff shampoo TGEL (not the first time I've made this mistake—there's also a medicated shampoo called TSAL, which has never been used, but which exists nonetheless, and thus adds to my confusion). Because of that mistake, and because the TED TALK clue was vaguely hard (44D: The first one was delivered in 1984) (me: "... TEST-TUBE BABY?"). I took longer in the SE than elsewhere. Everywhere else, it was just paint by numbers, connect the dots. Nothing particularly thorny.

[53D: Eudora ___, Pulitzer winner for "The Optimist's Daughter"]

Aside from the preponderance of crosswordesey stuff, the only part of the puzzle that bugged me was the spelling of WOOSH (51D: "Sound" of a point sailing over someone's head). I do not believe in it. That looks like a typo. Specifically, it looks like you left out the first "H" (following the initial "W"). I realize that spelling sounds are likely to result in approximations and variations, but the dictionary entry is definitely "Whoosh." If I didn't use the word a lot to describe a certain kind of fast and exhilarating movement through the puzzle, maybe I wouldn't be so particular ... but then, maybe I would. A few online dictionaries grudgingly give "WOOSH" as a variant, but yuck and ick and "no" and "bad." Extremely ugly to look at. When WOOSH appeared in '02 and '04, the puzzle had the decency to mark it as a variant ("Var."). But since then ('18, '22, now), no more. Please go back to "Var." It's more honest. 

Further notes:

• 38A: "Star Wars" species on Tatooine (JAWA) — saw that it was four letters ending in "A," nearly (instinctively) wrote in YODA. Bit weird to have "Tatooine" in the clues and TATTOO in the grid, but I don't think that counts as a foul.
• 2D: "Ha ha ha!," on April Fools' Day ("I GOT YOU") — wanted "GOTCHA!" Still want "GOTCHA!" And unless it comes in puzzle form, man do I hate the whole idea of "getting" people on April 1. The world is full enough of fraud as it is. Please keep your April Fools' gags far away from me, thx. 

• 12D: House with a long-unmowed lawn, e.g. (EYESORE) — did an HOA write this clue? I love the variegated, slightly wild looks of unmown lawns. Yeah, some aren't so pretty, I guess, but immaculate bright green lawns are their own kind of chemically-induced horror show. 

[bunny on my neighbor's unmown lawn yesterday]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Iraklion is its capital / SAT 7-13-24 / Indie rock's Tame ___ / Org. whose members work to get tips? / Prince Harry's real first name

Constructor: ELI COTHAM

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (though I imagine your familiarity with 27A will have a pretty large bearing on whether you agree)

THEME: None - Saturday Night's All Right for Themeless

Word of the Day: NOLITA (20A: N.Y.C. neighborhood in which the first pizzeria in the United States was opened (1905)) —

Nolita, sometimes written as NoLIta and deriving from "North of Little Italy",^[1][2][3] is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Nolita is situated in Lower Manhattan, bounded on the north by Houston Street, on the east by the Bowery, on the south roughly by Broome Street, and on the west by Lafayette Street.^[4] It lies east of SoHo, south of NoHo, west of the Lower East Side, and north of Little Italy and Chinatown.

• • •

Hello, it's Eli filling in again! And I'm blogging about a puzzle from another Eli. Fun! I just got back from a 70mm screening of North By Northwest at the American Cinematheque and got a reminder on my phone that today's puzzle was mine, so here we are.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this puzzle. That triple stack in the middle sparkles. It's always good to see MAHERSHALA ALI (27A: First Muslim actor to win an Academy Award), and the fact I dropped it in instantly goes a long way toward my not struggling on this puzzle. SEVEN TEN SPLIT (35A: Alley oops?) is probably the weakest of the three, and it was still a solid answer with a fun attempt at a misdirect clue. But I loved, Loved, LOVED LIKE HELL I WILL (33A: "Fat chance!"). I've been reading Raymond Chandler's Marlowe novels (on Rex's recommendation, actually) and this took me straight back into that world. It was the first thing I wanted to write in based on the clue, and when it both fit and the crosses made sense, I got huge smile. In fact, I'm toasting it with a scotch and soda as I type.

Proof

Unfortunately, I worry that those stacks strained the rest of the grid. I had a hard time getting going in the northwest corner. TOTO isn't the worst way to start a puzzle, but the clue felt a million years old (1A: In ___ (completely). COE (21A: Olympian Sebastian), OATEN (6D: Like some cereal), and PLUS (7D: Good thing) weren't helping. When ANTZ (24A: Debut feature for Dreamworks Animation) is the newest thing in your corner, it's going to feel dusty. WPA MURALS (14A: Some Depression-era public art) is nice, but not exactly pulling the puzzle into this century. COPA could have been clued as the Copa America soccer tournament that ends tomorrow, but they went with the Barry Manilow song. But I do love that song, so it gets a pass.

The rest of the puzzle improves a bit, but it's not without issues. Do people outside of New York know NOLITA? I knew it, but I don't know why, and I don't know how many people do. Also, according to the Wikipedia article that name was coined in 1996, so giving it credit for opening the first pizzeria in 1905 is a bit of a stretch. Kudos for bringing us pizza, though.

I feel like being LITERATE is kind of the bare minimum for being (34D) "Learned, perhaps." ECLAT (16A: Fanfare) is a word that always rubs me the wrong way. I don't think I've ever heard anyone use it in the real world, and it always stands out as less than ideal. And look, Latin! OMNIA probably doesn't bother me most days, but it was just another blast from the past today.

But I don't want to dwell on the negative. There was a lot I liked in here, in addition to the central answers. HAIR METAL (51A: Twisted Sister's genre) is fun. And I loved the clue on SPANX (41D: Company with a "Bra-llelujah!" line). Hooray for sexy portmanteau! The kind of thing you might see in house of ILL REPUTE. 

Quick Hits:

• 43D: Sam of "Jurassic Park" (NEILL) — Jurassic Park is legendary in my house, and Sam is a huge reason why. His delivery of "It's a bird cage" in Jurassic Park 3 has become an odd favorite amongst our friend group. Also, if you haven't seen Taika Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople, it's amazing and he's fantastic in it.

• 48D: Home of the Peabody Museum of Natural History (YALE)— Do you think the constructor used this because he's an Eli? I know I would.
• 20D: Desire for a picnic (NO RAIN)— I imagine this is not a desire for Blind Melon, since they start to complain about it.

In the end, a bit of a mixed bag, but I had fun. OK, that's enough for now. I'LL SHUT UP (32D: "Sorry, that's enough out of me").

Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Something ending in "K," perhaps / FRI 5-3-24 / Nickname for a Texas metropolis / Alternative to the online newspaper, colloquially / Phrase that inspired the title of Prince Harry's memoir / Athlete's affliction, informally / Game with a hands-down winner? / Pip's love in "Great Expectations" / Adornment for the unpierced

Constructor: Eli Cotham

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SPARE (20A: Phrase that inspired the title of Prince Harry's memoir) —

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 himself.

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" was 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) (my emph.)

• • •

So weird to have Fridays play like Saturdays for seemingly months now, and then encounter this Friday puzzle, which I blew through like it was barely there. Tuesday/Wednesday-level, tops. Difficulty-wise, this was wispy, but despite a barrage of subpar short fill, the longer answers overwhelmingly paid off, which is what's supposed to happen with a late-week themeless (particularly a Friday), so I'm pretty pleased with today's solving experience, overall. Typically, a puzzle (particularly a Friday/Saturday) will start slow or slowing, and then (ideally), there's a breakthrough followed by a whoosh that sends me careening happily around the grid. Today, the puzzle didn't even bother to start slow, and the whoosh came before I'd had a chance to even get settled, right out of the box. I wanted NORM for 1A: Average but instantly thought "maybe MEAN?" and kept that answer in my head as well as I tested the crosses. Since the first cross I checked, 4D: Juncture, wanted to be NODE, I decided to go MEAN->NODE, and then the "O" from NODE gave me ALSO and I decided that that was enough confirmation for me to write all those answers in. I've been doing crosswords long enough that ASAHI and ELENA Delle Donne are gimmes, so I was quickly ready to test my first long Across, and ... whoosh:

I should say that before I even looked at the clue for 20-Across, I had this odd moment of thinking "well, I assume the answer has something to do with ANHEUSER-BUSCH because what the hell else starts 'ANHE-'!?" So there was an extra zing to that first whoosh today—the "aha" of the odd letter-sequence revelation on top of the inherent greatness of the answer itself. If I'm stopping to take a screenshot, that either means it's very bad or very good, and here, it was very much the latter. I didn't even have time to be brought down by the rather lackluster NW before I went hurtling across the grid, and luckily the pleasing momentum provided by AN HEIR AND A SPARE largely continued, with sufficient power from smile-inducing answers to blow right through "ADIA" and NENE and ÉTÉS and the like without too much wincing.

DEAD-TREE EDITION didn't do much for me (feels like I've seen it before, so whatever freshness the term had has worn off), but I will admit that PET PSYCHIC, besides being the most absurd profession ("profession"?) on the planet, really got me, in a good way. Again, as with "ANHE-," I had this weird parsing problem where I was staring down "PETPS-" The "PETP-" part of it had me wondering if maybe there wasn't such a thing as PET PAINTING or PET PAINTS or PET PASTELS—that was how I first took "medium" in [Medium for animals]. But the "PS-" was unimpeachable and it didn't take me long to answer the question "What could possibly follow PET and start with PS-?" PET PSYCHIC. So dumb, I love it! I also have a soft spot for the term VALISES, which I did not realize until filling the answer in. "Hey, that's a nice word," I thought. And crossed with VAMOOSE! Imagining people VAMOOSE-ing with their VALISES down the AVENUES, I entered the bottom of the grid, which is the one and only area where my forward momentum stalled for a bit; I went right through the middle of those long answers, but couldn't get either of them from just their middle chunks. So I went back up to that RECOATS area and down via "NOW LET'S SEE..." (also nice), and from there quickly filled out the front ends of the long answers down below, and bang bang, big payoff there with "THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!" and (especially!) GAS STATION SUSHI (49A: Shell fish? What a clue!). I only wish that ASAMI and ASAHI had swapped places. because after that GAS STATION SUSHI you are definitely want something to wash it down, and ASAHI seems fitting. The SUSHI / ASAHI crossing would've been the cherry on top (which, coincidentally, is how they serve GAS STATION SUSHI. Me: [looks dubiously at plastic container of sushi next to the beef jerky jar] "Maraschino cherry?" Cashier: "Yup. It's sweet. Kinda hides the fishy taste, you know? You want a Miller Lite with that?" "Uh ... you got any ASAHI?"). 

Two trouble spots today. After I hit the bottom of the grid from the east, I tried to climb back up the west via the back end of 38D: One way to prepare steak, but with an -RE there, the only thing I could think was something-RARE, but MEDIUM didn't fit and I didn't know there were other RAREs besides maybe ... VERY? WAY? "How would you like your steak?" "Like ... rare." "How rare? "WAY RARE, man." Much as WAY RARE amused me, I (wisely) didn't write it in. This is the point at which I fled back to the RECOATS area and back down again. That area wasn't tough, but it did have one briefly toughish clue: 29D: Something ending in "K," perhaps (RACE). My fake-cultured self was like "Isn't that how they number the works in Mozart's catalogue—with numbers followed by K?" Yes, but irrelevant here, where we're dealing with (foot) RACEs of 5K and 10K and possibly other dimensions.

Notes:

• 25A: Athlete's affliction, informally (THE YIPS) — you know I hate it when they use the same clue for two different answers, but today was the day I wouldn't have minded, because [Golf difficulties, perhaps] is very close to perfect for THE YIPS (while being just OK for its actual answer, 60A: LIES). I know that anyone athlete can get some version of THE YIPS, but I associate it most closely with golf.
• 35A: Shared a bed with one's baby (COSLEPT) — loved seeing this rather common concept in the puzzle, though I would've liked COSLEEP or COSLEEPING a hair's breadth better.
• 9D: Game with a hands-down winner? (TWISTER) — not many "?" clues today, but the ones that they trot out really land. 

• 42A: Pip's love in "Great Expectations" (ESTELLA) — darn this girl and her ambiguous final vowel! Luckily there's no such thing as "steak TERTARE" (sounds like something you'd find next to the GAS STATION SUSHI) (eater beware)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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