Herringlike fish / THU 7-21-22 / Destination in Hercules' 12th labor / Relative of a chimpanzee / Dish in which ingredients are cooked at the table / Nerf product that might be used to bother a sibling

Constructor: Anne Marie Crinnion and Eric Bornstein

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME: DROP DOWN MENU (46A: Options at the top of a computer window ... as seen three times in this puzzle?) — three familiar answers "drop down" for their last four letters, and those letters spell out different types of "menu" (FILE, EDIT, VIEW) that live at the top of your computer screen, in your operating system or web browser or whatever, see:

Theme answers:

• HIGH PROFILE (20A: Attracting much publicity)
• SCHOLARLY REVIEW (27A: Commentary on a scientific article)
• STORE CREDIT (56A: Alternative to a refund, often)

Word of the Day: OCELOTS (37A: Cats with the unique ability to turn their ankle joints around) —

The ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) is a medium-sized spotted wild cat that reaches 40–50 cm (15.7–19.7 in) at the shoulders and weighs between 8 and 15.5 kg (17.6 and 34.2 lb). It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. Two subspecies are recognized. It is native to the southwestern United States, Mexico, Central and South America, and to the Caribbeanislands of Trinidad and Margarita. It prefers areas close to water sources with dense vegetation cover and high prey availability.

Typically active during twilight and at night, the ocelot tends to be solitary and territorial. It is efficient at climbing, leaping and swimming. It preys on small terrestrial mammals, such as armadillos, opossums, and lagomorphs. Both sexes become sexually mature at around two years of age and can breed throughout the year; peak mating season varies geographically. After a gestation period of two to three months the female gives birth to a litter of one to three kittens. They stay with their mother for up to two years, after which they leave to establish their own home ranges.

The ocelot is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, and is threatened by habitat destruction, hunting, and traffic accidents. Populations are decreasing in many parts of its range. The association of the ocelot with humans dates back to the Aztec and Incancivilizations; it has occasionally been kept as a pet. (wikipedia)

• • •

It's got the structural weirdness of a Thursday, but the difficulty level of a Tuesday. That is the main thing I have to say about this puzzle. It felt like "Thursday for beginners." The fill is basic, straightforward, almost totally devoid of popular culture or proper nouns of any kind—feels like there's more animals than people in this grid (not necessarily a bad thing). There is absolutely nothing to trip you up, and there's really nothing in the way of your discovering the gimmick, either. I mean, your answer runs out of room, and there's really only one way for it to go. The unclued Down segments are basically neon arrows confirming that "The Rest Of Your Across Answers Go Here." The placement of the revealer is super-weird (position 3 out of 4?). It's neither at the top, where an actual DROP DOWN MENU lives, nor at the bottom, where a typical revealer lives. But for the purposes of the particular way this theme was executed, it just *fits* best where it is. That's fine. This is a perfectly decent theme idea, but I'd've liked it much better on a Wednesday. I need something much thornier and more surprising, more *involved*, on a Thursday. The toughest part of the puzzle for me was the SW, where VETOPOWER dropped in easily, but neither PARK IT nor DRYING wanted to drop, and so that corner took some fussing around with before I could get it going. I think DART GUN came to the rescue (67A: Nerf product that might be used to bother a sibling). So it was the toughest corner, but could only be credibly called "tough" if it were, say, Tuesday. Just no bite to this one today.

My main revelations in solving this were weird and personally idiosyncratic. Like, apparently I can't spell CHISEL (18D: Icebreaker?). I wanted the word, I had the first few letters, but somehow ... CHISLE? CHISTLE? Honestly, when I got the -EL I thought "well that's obvious," but, well, nothing else that sounds that way ends that way in English, really, so ... it's weird. BRISTLE ... that's got more "S" sound in it. Usually that "Z" sound means "Z"s, as in FIZZLE. So CHISEL just looks weird to me, man. Also I thought ERE was a preposition. And it is. But it's also a conjunction. Schoolhouse Rock did not tell me about ERE. The lyrics to "Conjunction Junction" aren't "And, But, and ERE / Get you pretty far." I feel betrayed. Apparently ERE (like "Before") can be both preposition and conjunction. "Before" is a preposition when it's used to mean "in advance of a specific time" (e.g. "before breakfast") or "in front of something / someone," and a conjunction if it means "in advance of the time when" (e.g. "before they got married) or "in preference to." Prepositions take objects, conjunctions connect clauses or phrases. And OCELOTS have freaky feet, apparently.

INES and GREENE could've been clued as people's names but ... weren't. The clue on GREENE was so weird that I refused to write in GREENE even though it was the only answer that I wanted and seemed to make sense. The quotation marks around "colorful" in the clue tell you "not an actual color, maybe sounds like a color?" Famous people have the last name GREENE, but we get weird vague county trivia. I don't get it, but ... it's different, I'll give it that. Maybe the idea is that alongside GARR, GREENE needed to be something other than a specific person's name, for fear of name overkill. But two is not overkill. They're not even intersecting, and the crosses are simple. Oh, there's LON on the other side of GREENE, didn't see him tucked down there. For this puzzle, that's a veritable name avalanche. OK, counties it is. Don't think I've seen CTO before. Not fond of the insane proliferation of business abbrs. along the lines of CEO (CFO, COO, CIO). I'm not even sure how the CTO's job is different from the CIO's. Also, I should stress, I don't really care (here's the answer if this is somehow of interest to you). The intersecting CHI and CHI (from CHISEL) directly on top of the intersecting HIGH (from HIGH PROFILE) and HIGH (from THIGH) is ... well, a lot of repeated and overlapping letter strings. Wow, very same section, you also get OOH on OOH (from POOH). MIC on MIC as well! (though neither of those MICs is standalone, so you're not apt to notice). Repeated 3 and 4-letter strings are fine when they aren't near each other. When they're on top of each other, that gets noticeable. And when several sets of repeated letter strings are absolutely piled on top of each other in one little section, it's possible you should polish that section a little more. Looking forward to more of a challenge tomorrow. See you then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. this is a good question (I blew through the clue without properly reading it)

[23A: N.L. Central team, on scoreboards]

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Eight pts. / WED 5-4-2022 / Diez menos dos / Elder Levy in "Schitt's Creek"

Constructor: Eric Bornstein

Relative difficulty: Easy (7:28 while typing w one finger)

THEME: Embassy staffer... or a hint to the long answers? ATTACH E — Common phrases made wacky with the addition of an E

Theme answers:

• People who acknowledge when they've been verbally bested?-- TOUCH(E) TYPES
• Ruins a shiny fabric, as a pet might?-- GOES ON THE LAM(E)
• Bad advice from grandpa?-- PASS(E) JUDGEMENT
• Managed to stomach a cracker spread?-- GOT DOWN PAT(E)

Word of the Day: DAME (Maggie Smith, for one) —

The Order of the Ermine, founded by John V, Duke of Brittany in 1381, was the first order of chivalry to accept women; however, female knights existed for centuries in many places in the world prior to this. Like their male counterparts, they were distinguished by the flying of coloured banners and generally bore a coat of arms.

One woman who participated in tournaments was Joane Agnes Hotot (born 1378), but she was not the only one. Additionally, women adopted certain forms of regalia which became closely associated with the status of knighthood. (Wiki.)

• • •

Welcome back to another Malaika MWednesday! I solved this puzzle while snarfing a bag of Flamin' Hot Limón flavored Doritos and I do not have a great spice tolerance and the citric acid / spice / MSG has destroyed my mouth and I am writing this while sucking on ice cubes and coughing up a lung. (Absolutely worth it.) Hope y'all are doing well! Suggested music while reading this post is this cover (starts at 1:17), which I put on as soon as I got to the "Schitt's Creek" clue. I'm emotionally fragile today (I'm about to lose some rights + I just read all of "Conversations with Friends" in one sitting), and I did tear up listening to it.

I liked this puzzle! For me, add-a-letter themes work best when (1) The entries are actually funny, and (2) There's a revealer that ties things together. This had both! The last one about PATE got an audible chuckle out of me (or maybe that was just Doritos powder entering my esophagus and getting choked back out). The revealer works perfectly (nothing "phonetic" or stretchy about it). It's also a nice touch that the Es are all added in the same way (to the end of a one-syllable word), and and pronounced the same way (turning the word into two syllables).

(My one slow-down-- and this is embarrassing because whenever I say that I am unfamiliar with a word one of y'all in the comments calls me unintelligent-- is that I thought an ATTACHE was a briefcase?? Like, what? Did I invent this completely?? At one point I literally thought the entry was ATTACHE based on letter patterns and I was like "But no, it can't be. That's a suitcase.")

The iffier pieces of fill were all stuff that I've learned by now (like ANAT and OCTAD), and we got those super fun "colonnades" of side-by-side nine-letter answers in the corners-- LET'S PARTY is a great entry, and cluing it as [Bacchanalian cry] is so deeply, Times-ly pretentious that I actually tip my imaginary hat to Will Shortz. Sometimes you just gotta lean into the stereotype. 

I have a question about Crossword Clue Grammar. For something like [Castle material] cluing SAND, when do you need a qualifier? I expected this to be [Castle material, sometimes] because not all castles are made out of SAND. Even in this puzzle, we get [Numb, as a foot] for ASLEEP (rather than just [Numb]). Is there a rule? Or is the idea just that one is harder than another, and on a Saturday we get more of the vague clues and on a Monday we get fewer of them?

Bullets:

• JETTA (Volkswagen compact) — I don't think I will ever be excited to see the name of a car model in a puzzle. Also, I don't think I will ever know the answer of a clue that describes a car model.
• GAL (Eight pts.) — I thought for sure this was an abbreviation for "points" rather than "pints" although I see now that PTS is in the grid (clued as "points") which should have been a giveaway
• ANA ("S.N.L." alum Gasteyer) — Are y'all watching "American Auto"? It's not quite as good as "Abbott Elementary" or "Superstore" (they will sometimes fall into the "Oh This Was A Joke On Twitter Let's Make It A Joke On Our Network Comedy" trap) but still very good! Ty White, my DMs are open. Me and my friend have a theorem that Workplace Sitcoms are always funnier than Friend Group Sitcoms because the characters can be more crazy / mean / dramatic and you don't have to justify why they all stay friends.
• ALAN (Computer scientist Turing) — Always nice to see him in a crossword! Legend.

xoxo Malaika

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Fake name given by Odysseus to the Cyclops / MON 1-31-22 / Unleavened flatbread in Indian cuisine / Makeup of some bunnies

Constructor: Eric Bornstein

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (***for a Monday***) (3:10)

THEME: PARTING / WORDS (56A: With 58-Across, what this puzzle's circled letters are .... or what they're doing) — words meaning "goodbye" (i.e. words said upon "parting") are in circled squares, and are found inside two-word phrases, which are themselves split into two successive Across answers, so those circled-square "parting" words are ... I guess they are supposed to be "parting" in the sense of "opening up" ... so "parting" is an intransitive verb ... like clouds "parting" ... huh ... OK:

Theme answers:

• ADIOS straddles RADIO / STATION (20A: With 21-Across, broadcast unit that may operate with 50,000, watts)
• TATA straddles DATA / TABLE (27A: With 30-Across, numbers displayed in rows and columns)
• LATER straddles SLATE / ROOF (49A: With 51-Across, long-lasting cover for a house)

Word of the Day: LOAM (1A: Fertile soil) —

1a: a mixture (as for plastering) composed chiefly of moistened clay

b: a coarse molding sand used in founding (see FOUNDentry 5)

2: SOIL 

specifically  : a soil consisting of a friable mixture of varying proportions of clay, silt, and sand (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

a better ERNST

This one is conceptually dubious to start with, and the inept cluing language really louses things up irretrievably. You part the PARTING / WORDS ... so there's something there. But the idea that those words are themselves "parting," I dunno, it's not quite working for me. A black square *parts* those words ... they aren't just opening up; something (namely the black square) is intervening. Doing the parting. Also, since the two-word theme answers break naturally at the black square, there's no real sense that the circled squares are actively doing anything. They have no agency. Basically this is just a typical hidden-words theme, where the hidden word is broken across two parts of a longer answer, but here you're actually showing the break, pulling the two words apart, creating a split in the hidden words. You can lawyer your way to a defense of "parting" as a word describing what the circled-square words are doing, but you shouldn't need a lawyer on Monday. The revealer should just *snap*. Those words have been parted. They aren't convincingly "parting." But more importantly, the main theme phrases are all terribly dull, and the repeated "With 21-Across...," "With 30-Across," "With with with" cross-referencing makes the solving experience tedious and somewhat slower than usual, and with no great payoff. Slowish and dullish, with a revealer (and revealer clue) that just doesn't quite land. And then there's just not enough colorful non-theme stuff in the grid to make up for the thematic wobbliness. 

[a better ERNST]

Always unpleasant to see PALIN but especially unpleasant to see her crossed with fellow Tr*mpist Joni ERNST. There's absolutely no reason to clue ERNST that way. Even if we leave her disgusting politics out of it, you don't cross two answers from such narrow subject realms if you have other options, and with ERNST you definitely have other options. At a minimum, you've got famed surrealist Max ERNST and famed movie director ERNST Lubitsch. Mix it up. I don't know what this puzzle was trying to get at with the PALIN / ERNST cross, or with the GUANTANAMO / OBAMA cross either, but it's making me a little queasy. Speaking of making me queasy, that shouty CNBC hedge-fund guy ... his name ... I spelled it like the "Seinfeld" guy's name, i.e. with a "K," so that set me back (46A: "Mad Money" host Jim). I also had trouble coming up with DUST for 60D: Makeup of some "bunnies" because I was looking for a plural. Further, my eyes read "basketball" instead of "baseball" at 29D: Impressive feat in baseball, which made TRIPLE PLAY hard to come up with. I kept wondering why TRIPLE-DOUBLE wouldn't fit! Oh, and I wrote in MEDICARE before MEDICAID. The clue would seem to fit both (4D: Federal program for health care coverage). After all, MEDICARE is a "national health insurance program," so ... hard to know which one I was supposed to go for there. But that's why god invented crosses. Anyway, with all the cross-referencing in the themers and a handful of ambiguous non-theme clues to boot, this one definitely came in on the slow side for a Monday, for me. Not tremendously slow. But slowish.  Hoping for a tighter, snappier, funner theme tomorrow. See you then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Curving billiards shot / TUE 11-23-21 / Agricultural giant founded in Hawaii in 1851 / Rapper fronting the heavy metal band Body Count

Constructor: Eric Bornsteing

Relative difficulty: Easy (maybe Easy-Medium if your sports knowledge isn't that great)

THEME: PERSONAL FINANCE (20A: Sort of investment suggested by the ends of 3-, 11- and 29-Down) — the ends of those answers = BONDS, SILVER, and CASH ... I guess those are ... "sorts of investment"? ... it's all a bit nebulous to me; oh wait, I think maybe I just got it—those "sorts of investment" are all the last names of *people*? So they're ... PERSONAL? That's my best guess, anyway:

Theme answers:

• BARRY BONDS (3D: M.L.B. record-holder for most career home runs)
• ADAM SILVER (29D: N.B.A. commissioner starting in 2014)
• JOHNNY CASH (11D: Singer profiled in the biopic "Walk the Line")

Word of the Day: ADAM SILVER (29D) —

Adam Silver (born April 25, 1962) is an American lawyer and sports executive who is the fifth and current commissioner of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He joined the NBA in 1992 and has held various positions within the league, becoming chief operating officer and deputy commissioner under his predecessor and mentor David Stern in 2006. When Stern retired in 2014, Silver was named the new commissioner.

As commissioner, the league has continued to grow economically and globally, especially in China. Silver made headlines in 2014 for forcing Donald Sterling to sell the Los Angeles Clippers after Sterling made racist remarks, later banning him for life from the game. (wikipedia)

• • •

Can't think of a theme type that's less For Me. PERSONAL FINANCE is a term I recognize, but it's very general in my mind. I don't know the term "PERSONAL FINANCE investment," but the clue says PERSONAL FINANCE an investment *type*, so I assume that's a legit phrase. I also don't see how BONDS, SILVER, and CASH make a sufficiently tight grouping at all. Cash? I admit to being totally out of my depth when it comes to financial instruments and things people invest in (beyond your ordinary everyday IRAs, stocks & bonds, mutual funds, etc.). People invest in ... Cash? I believe you, but I just ... *have* ... cash. Hidden in a lunch box, in case we have to run. Is this ... "investing"? Cosplay? Who knows. Anyway, I think of Cash as uninvested, actually, but maybe you are investing in the "Cash" of other countries? Sigh. You can see how much I care. Look, the revealer is completely unsnappy and the theme set is arbitrary. Also, I will be stunned if the "personal" aspect of the theme doesn't elude a good chunk of solvers. I feel like I only dopily stumbled into it when I had to write all the theme answers out. People's names are used as theme answers All The Time, so it's Bizarre that you expect the "personal" nameness of today's three answers to resonate clearly at all. Truly weird. And of course the "persons" involved are all dudes. It's the financial world, I expect patriarchy. At least the puzzle's not about B!tcoin.

The one good thing about the puzzle is the grid shape, which is bizarre in a good way. Those three long Downs all in a row seemed pretty harrowing for a Tuesday, and one of them is a proper noun, and a themer, that a bunch of solvers aren't going to know ... and yet the short crosses were all very easy, and so I can't see people getting hung up there too long, if at all. LAST IN LINE was a little hard to parse, but again, crosses make things clear (that's their job!). If this puzzle does nothing else, it gives me the opportunity to recommend that you see the movie "TRANSIT" immediately, if not sooner (d. Christian Petzold, 2018) (5D: Kind of visa for just passing through an airport). Watched it with my Monday night Movie Club last month, and it's one of the most beautiful, haunting, mysterious movies I've seen in a long time. A really thoughtful meditation on refugees, the problem of belonging, and the concept of Home. Now that I've done that ... not much more to say about this grid. The fill is weak in the short stuff, but not so weak that it made me wince. Those tiny, cut-off, isolated corners in the SW and SE are aesthetically displeasing, but they're only 4x4 and filling them is just a perfunctory exercise, so again, the harm done is minimal. I do object to the spelling of CZAR here (51A: Nicholas I or II). We all have a TACIT (!) agreement that the Russian ruler is spelled TSAR, whereas a governmental policy director is spelled CZAR ("Drug CZAR"). Otherwise, it's just arbitrary nonsense, spell it this way, spell it that way, cats are marrying dogs and pigs are flying etc. Boundaries are good for us. Please respect the TSAR / CZAR distinction. Thank you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Wryly humorous / TUES 8-31-21 / Yard sale caveat / Grassy South American plain / Mocking smiles

Hey, everyone! It’s Clare for a Tuesday crossword on the last day of August! Hope everyone had a great month and is staying safe. I keep turning on the news and see cars evacuating, and it’s hard figuring out whether it’s in Northern California (where I currently am) or if it’s in the South, where Hurricane Ida hit. All I know is emergency responders are absolute heroes. 

Now, for something a tad more uplifting, on to the puzzle...

Constructor: Eric Bornstein

Relative difficulty: Average

THEME: Food puns...

Theme answers:

• WING NUTS (18A: Good snack for a pilot?)
• TOUGH COOKIES (24A: Good snack for a gangster?)
• BARGAINING CHIPS (39A: Good snack for a flea market dealer?)
• FIRECRACKERS (51A: Good snack for an arsonist?)
• EYE CANDY (62A: Good snack for an optometrist?)

Word of the Day: SENECA (6D: Roman philosopher who said "Life is never incomplete if it is an honorable one. At whatever point you leave life, if you leave it in the right way, it is whole") —

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger, usually known as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. As a writer Seneca is known for his philosophical works, and for his plays, which are all tragedies. (Wiki)

• • •

Overall, I thought this was a good, clean Tuesday. The food-related puns for the theme were fine and clever enough. I remember from a young age being told on the soccer field that I was a TOUGH COOKIE; on another note, if someone ever called me EYE CANDY, I’d probably smack them! There wasn’t a real “aha” for me, as we’ve seen this type of theme a fair amount before. But it was well-executed. And it was nice for the sake of making my solve slightly easier that the first part of the theme answers was pretty intuitive based on the identity of the snacker in the clues. 

My favorite part of the puzzle was some of the words that we just don’t see that often in a puzzle. Like: LITHE, DROLL, BRISK, LLANO, VANISH. I thought the best word in the puzzle was PLETHORA — there’s just something about that word that rolls off the tongue and looks pleasing. I also liked both the clue and answer with C-SECTION; I did have some trouble getting the answer because the clue 41D: Delivery option successfully duped me into trying to think of something mail-related like “overnight” or “one day.” So when I got CHIPS at the end of 39A and SASSY (45A) and was confident that they were correct, I was puzzled for a bit longer as I worked out what could start with “cs.” 

I also enjoyed how the puzzle played with proximity by having related answers near each other — i.e. SETH (12D: Brother of Cain) and ABEL (16A: Brother of Cain) crossing each other, along with RADAR (55D: Speeder catcher) and STOPS (56D: Pulls over, as a speeder) being next to each other. With the former, though, I did the downs first and originally put ABEL instead of SETH in at 12D (instead of 16A), which made me spend some unnecessary time working my way out. 

There were a couple things I wasn’t wild about in the puzzle. In particular, I say NO NO NO and not OLE OLE to 22D and 14A. The repetition feels a tad lazy, as you could use as many of each of those words as necessary to fill space. How many OLEs is too many — or not enough? Having AEIOU (3D) crossing OLE OLE cemented my annoyance. I also didn’t like having both I BET (32D) and I BEG (26D) in the puzzle. 

As a whole, I still thought this Tuesday puzzle ended up being a pretty good solve.

Misc.:

• 60A as DONUT reminds me: Go get your two free Krispy Kreme doughnuts! They’re giving out two donuts (from 8/30 to 9/5) to people who are vaccinated. 
• The answer TOE TAP (68A) had me standing up to try and see just how much of my tap dance routine to “Singin’ in the Rain” I could remember from when I was six. (The answer is about half of it!) 
• I remember watching GLEE (19D) when it first aired, and it’s been funny to see old clips and realize how absolutely cringey it truly was. 
• This is a total side note, but I’ve been bingeing (and loving) “Ted Lasso,” so I have to recommend that everyone immediately go and watch — it’s a phenomenal show!
  

Stay safe!

Signed, Clare Carroll, OLE!

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Like sun bears and sloth bears / FRI 7-30-21 / Bull mascot of Houston Texans / Peak climbed in the 2018 Oscar-winning documentary "Free Solo" / Southern cocktail made with crème de menthe, crème de cacao and cream / Many a demoiselle d'honneur

Constructor: Eric Bornstein

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: RAS the Exhorter (34D: ___ the Exhorter, character in Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man") —

One of the most memorable characters in the novel, Ras the Exhorter (later called Ras the Destroyer) is a powerful figure who seems to embody Ellison’s fears for the future of the civil rights battle in America. Ras’s name, which literally means “Prince” in one of the languages of Ethiopia, sounds simultaneously like “race” and “Ra,” the Egyptian sun god. These allusions capture the essence of the character: as a passionate black nationalist, Ras is obsessed with the idea of race; as a magnificently charismatic leader, he has a kind of godlike power in the novel, even if he doesn’t show a deity’s wisdom. Ras’s guiding philosophy, radical at the time the novel was published, states that blacks should cast off oppression and prejudice by destroying the ability of white men to control them. This philosophy leads inevitably to violence, and, as a result, both Ellison and the narrator fear and oppose such notions. Yet, although Ellison objects to the ideology that Ras embodies, he never portrays him as a clear-cut villain. Throughout the novel, the reader witnesses Ras exert a magnetic pull on crowds of black Americans in Harlem. He offers hope and courage to many. By the late 1960s, many black leaders, including Malcolm X, were advocating ideas very similar to those of Ras. (sparknotes.com)

• • •

This was pretty solid. I struggled a bunch in the center of the grid, but I don't think my struggle will have anything to do with anyone else's struggle because in addition to the everyday comprehension struggles anyone might have on a Friday, I had an error that was, if not entirely my own, surely very rare. I dusted off the top of the puzzle with almost zero problems—NETS for NABS slowed me down a bit (19A: Hauls in), and I absolutely forgot that "LIDA Rose" was a song in "The Music Man" despite watching it earlier this year (2D: "___ Rose" (song from "The Music Man")), but nothing else up there caused any trouble. Then I descended into the center and lost my bearings pretty badly. I just could not get the long Acrosses from their back-end letters. I know very well what the format of "Family Feud" is, but even having -IKE at the end didn't tip me to THIRD STRIKE (31A: Last straw on "Family Feud"). Something about the term "last straw" just didn't resonate for me. I think of that term as someone's breaking point ("That's the last straw!") not as a simple limit. Would [Last straw for a batter] make sense for THIRD STRIKE? I don't know. Maybe. But the phrase just didn't translate. Worse, I had -CAN and no idea what Ivy League city dweller I might be dealing with. In retrospect, this is humiliating, as I live about an hour away from Ithaca and visit it frequently. I know that it's technically Ivy League, but for some reason when I see that term I go to Yale and Harvard first and then ... well, the others, I have to think "what are they? ... where are they? ... Penn? Is Penn Ivy? ... That's in Philadelphia, right? Wait, Brown? ... where is Brown? etc." 

But ITHACAN would've been a cinch if I hadn't made the catastrophic error I mentioned back in the second sentence of this write-up: see, I'd gotten GRASSHOPPER easy from *its* back end (42A: Southern cocktail made with crème de menthe, crème de cacao and cream), and since it was the only thing in the middle of the grid I checked all its crosses and hey, did you know that there are two rainbow (i.e. Roy G. Biv) colors that fit the pattern "____G_"!? Well, there are. And I, I took the one more traveled by (ORANGE!), and that made me fall on my face. All the wrong letters! So THIRD STRIKE and ITHACAN stayed hidden far far longer than they would have otherwise. Oh, I should also mention that I haven't read "The Invisible Man" since college (decades ago), so I had no hope for any of the letters in RAS. I rely so heavily on short fill to give me traction when I'm in trouble, and that was the short fill I needed the most, and it just didn't come through for me. Ah well.

Really loved PORCH SWING and COME AND GO and "HEAR ME OUT!" They gave the grid some pep (an odd thing to say about something as folksy as a PORCH SWING, maybe, but that's how it felt). I had no idea a coxswain STEERed, LOL, I thought they just shouted rowing commands (51D: What coxswains do). I also had no idea the French also had the concept of "maid-of-honor," so I just stared at 47D: Many a demoiselle d'honneur wondering what a "girl of honor" was ... sounded like maybe a euphemism for ... an old profession. So that was weird. Only worked out the wedding context once I got the ordinary French word for "friend" (f.). It seems a bit flippant and dismissive to call PETA's (or anyone's) objection to FURS a "pet peeve" (55A: PETA pet peeves). My "pet peeve" is when people talk loudly on their phones when they're out for a walk (just enjoy the walk—and the quiet—you ghouls), or when people spell it "woah" ... both things nowhere near as serious as torturing and then killing animals solely for fashion. "Pet peeves" is awful here. Something more straightforward, less diminishing is called for. That's all. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Old rival of MGM / MON 4-26-21 / Locale of many White House photo ops / Only daughter of Elizabeth II / Lady first female member of Parliament

Constructor: Eric and Lori Bornstein

Relative difficulty: Challenging (30+ seconds over my usual Monday time)

THEME: FOOD COURT (35D: Feature of many a mall ... or a place for 20-Across and 26- and 30-Down?) — fast food places that have "court"-related words in their names:

Theme answers:

• WHITE CASTLE (20A: Figurative site of a 35-Down)
• BURGER KING (30D: Figurative ruler of a 35-Down)
• DAIRY QUEEN (26D: Figurative ruler of a 35-Down)

Word of the Day: MSRP (41A: Starting point for a car sale negotiation: Abbr.) —

The list price, also known as the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), or the recommended retail price (RRP), or the suggested retail price (SRP) of a product is the price at which the manufacturer recommends that the retailer sell the product. The intention was to help standardize prices among locations. While some shops/stores always sell at, or below, the suggested retail price, others do so only when items are on sale or closeout/clearance. (wikipedia)

• • •

It's a good theme. I just don't understand why they didn't slot this on Tuesday, or even Wednesday, since it would've fit much better there. So many things make this measurably tougher than a regular Monday puzzle (still easyish in absolute terms, but way way off of Monday-average). The gigantic open spaces, for one. There's almost no way you can have a triple-stack of 9s like that (in the middle, where the revealer is) and still keep things Monday-easy. Open space like that is a hallmark of Fri / Sat puzzles. And you've got similar open space in the SW and SE too, with 10s stacked together in each case (I realize "stack" isn't the right metaphor, but you see what I mean ... they're abutting ... "pillars"?). Big chunks of white space means the difficulty level goes boop boop boop, up. Add in the fact that all the themers are cross-referenced, so there is absolutely no way to get them from their clues alone. You have to hammer away at crosses *or* go solve the revealer and then maybe, possibly, have a chance at understanding how it relates to the theme clue. That is, WHITE CASTLE clue has nothing specific to do with WHITE CASTLE, and ditto BURGER KING and DAIRY QUEEN. Themer clues with absolutely no literal, direct information about the themers themselves, that's practically unheard of on Monday ... For A Reason. It adds a good chunk of difficulty. It slows you down. Now ultimately, it was all doable, but a good Tuesday puzzle should go on a Tuesday. Not sure why that's so hard. Is there a real dearth of decent Mondays? Bah!

Also had no idea who Lady ASTOR was (66A: Lady ___, first female member of Parliament) (I mean, rings a bell, but ... shrug). Same with Chris REDD. Happy to know there's another REDD out there besides FOXX (or former NBAer Michael), but I am semi-exhausted by the idea that I should know every single current and former cast member of SNL. It's bad enough that I have to see SNL in roughly every other grid. I do not f*** with that show. I find it wearisome, and honestly I have never forgiven Lorne Michaels and Joe Pesci for what they did to Sinead O'Connor 30 years ago. Grudges: I hold them. Still, Chris REDD, cool, I'll try to remember that. Had RATES instead of RAGES at 6D: Rants and raves, which made A-GAME so so hard to see (18A: Best possible athletic performance—such a weird and mildly misleading clue; if a player "brings their A-GAME," they are playing at *general* peak ability, yes, but that doesn't mean that individual "performance" is the "best possible" (which is what the clue seems to imply, as written). Had ANYHOW before ANYHOO (4D: Informal segue). I guess "informal" should've tipped me off. ANYHOO, all these little hiccups, combined with a harder-than-usual-Monday theme, put this well outside normal Monday difficulty range. The fill is largely fine, except the SE, which is quite poor (ANGE on a Monday? In a corner that's already desperate for even adequate fill? Blargh). So yeah, if you'd given me this tomorrow or the next day, I would've liked it a lot. As it is, I like it a little. That's not bad. Could be worse. I don't really believe that WHITE CASTLE is a FOOD COURT restaurant. But I'll let it slide. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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Actress Priyanka who was 2000's Miss World / MON 3-8-21 / Big name in transmission repair / Dragon in The Hobbit / Actor Philip with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Constructor: Eric Bornstein

Relative difficulty: Challenging (it's a Wednesday puzzle, just absurd that it's slotted on a Monday)

THEME: ECONOMICS (13D: Subject of this puzzle) — some stuff related to ECONOMICS is in here, including DEMAND and SUPPLY in circled squares in what is supposed to be some kind of graph, but PRICE (1D: Y-axis) and QUANTITY (62A: X-axis) are involved too ... apparently this is what is supposed to be illustrated:

ADAM SMITH is in here too for some reason (32D: "Father" of 13-Down)

Word of the Day: Priyanka CHOPRA (44D: Actress Priyanka who was 2000's Miss World) —

Priyanka Chopra Jonas (pronounced [prɪˈjəŋka ˈtʃoːpɽa]; born 18 July 1982) is an Indian actress, singer, and film producer. The winner of the Miss World 2000 pageant, Chopra is one of India's highest-paid and most popular entertainers. She has received numerous accolades, including a National Film Award and five Filmfare Awards. In 2016, the Government of India honoured her with the Padma Shri and Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in the next two years Forbes listed her among the World's 100 Most Powerful Women. (wikipedia)

• • •

Haven't despised a Monday like this in a while. First, the subject: so dull, so fundamentally uninteresting to me, that even had this been slotted on the correct day for its difficulty (i.e. Wednesday) and even if the fill had been good (it's not, really), and even if the puzzle had been carefully, thoughtfully edited (it's really, really not), I still wouldn't have found it to my taste. But leaving mere taste aside, still, yuck. I'm not even going to waste more than a few sentences talking about this. I can't. Dwelling on this thing feels like self-harm. It's Monday, so when it took me a full minute just to get the little NW quadrant, I knew something was very, very wrong. Every single one of the Acrosses required multiple crosses to understand. Even YOU'D was a total mystery, given its clue (4D: "___ be surprised"). It's a Giant corner with non-obvious clues; not not not a Monday. 

But even if we leave difficulty to the side, we're still left with the unforgivably terrible cluing on PRICE. I needed, no joke, every single cross to get it, and even then, I just stared at it. There is no indication that it is theme material. None. Remember—it's Monday. If you want to get all wacky and tough much later in the week, that's your prerogative, but this is just stupid. Again, not stupid 'cause it's tough, but stupid because you absolutely *have* to give the solver *some* indication that PRICE is theme material. In the NW corner of a Monday, to just leave a solver staring at PRICE as the answer for *that* clue (1D: Y-axis)? Awful. Awful. I'm familiar with the concept of supply and demand, but I actually had to look up the full graph—never knew the PRICE / QUANTITY part of it (or, not having had Econ since 1988, I did know, once, but forgot). So that clue for PRICE literally never made sense, even when I was done, until I looked up the graph. It makes no sense (no. sense.) that the clues on PRICE and QUANTITY give you No indication of their themeness. And your revealer is just ECONOMICS!?!?!?! Is this ... ECONOMICS? Just the supply / demand graph? That's it? Again, looking things up, it appears that supply & demand is indeed the "theoretical basis of modern ECONOMICS" but somehow ECONOMICS seems like a much, much, much broader term than this alleged graph can possibly convey. And then the fill, just an avalanche of ERE ESAU ELIE ESO ESPY ENYA BAHAI etc. And TISKET!? Oof. Look, even if you desperately wanted to make an ECONOMICS puzzle, I cannot believe that this is what you go with. I double can't believe that this is how you edit it. Or not edit it, it seems. That PRICE / QUANTITY cluing decision ... on a Monday ... I just ... my kingdom, all of it, for a new editor. Someone who is careful and who cares. Please. Please. (Actually, you can't have my kingdom; just put somebody new and hungry in the editor's chair, it's time)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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