Small appetizer in Turkish cuisine / SAT 6-1-24 / Popular news podcast since 2017 / Title woman in a 1968 Turtles hit / Catchy song, slangily / Inscribed Viking monument / Novel opening?

Constructor: Eric Warren

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "THE DAILY" (7D: Popular news podcast since 2017) —

The Daily is a daily news podcast produced by the American newspaper The New York Times, hosted by Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise. Its weekday episodes are based on the Timesreporting of the day, with interviews of journalists from The New York Times. Episodes typically last 20 to 30 minutes. (wikipedia)

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Promoting your company's own podcast in your crossword? Suddenly I feel a whole lot less bad about not knowing what the hell "THE DAILY" is. As if the subtle dumbing down and the gamification of the crossword weren't bad enough, now they're gonna use it as a self-promotion vehicle? Is this ... SYNERGY? Ugh. Today's puzzle on the whole wasn't bad—despite those sequestered NW and SE corners, it had much better flow than yesterday's, for me—but there weren't enough marquee long answers today, and what there was didn't reach the peaks it oughta reach in a late-week themeless. FREEZER BURN was the peak. SPACE CADETS was kind of a shrug, and none of the rest of it really got above middling. The whole thing just felt a little flat and tame. And once again, way too easy for a Saturday. "THE DAILY" (or, rather, the "DAILY" part of "THE DAILY") was my only sticking point, the only thing in the whole grid I didn't know and had any trouble getting besides MEZE, which I thought I didn't know, but when I got the "Z," all of a sudden I remembered (39A: Small appetizer in Turkish cuisine). I solved in perfect clockwise fashion, from NW all the way around to W, ending, tastily enough, with STRUDELS (27A: Pastries popularized during the Hapsburg Empire). I was a bit slow on the uptake with a couple answers—BACK PAY, for instance. I was 92% certain that the clue was doing some kind of thinly veiled wedding clue there, as the puzzle often uses "union" in that vague, potentially misdirective way. But no, the "union contract" is exactly the kind of thing you imagine when you hear "union contract," i.e. a labor union, and BACK PAY is just a straightforward answer. But that was sincerely the struggliest moment I had outside "THE DAILY." Saturdays really oughta pack more punch than that.

I kept expecting some bizarre or unfamiliar answer to leap out at me (or not leap out at me, I guess), but the hits just kept coming. I opened with PUPAE / AUTOS after I couldn't put together 1A: Five-star, as a hotel (POSHEST) (not a fan of that clue for that answer at all—there might be several five-star hotels in the area, but only one can be POSHEST—the superlative adjective there felt unwarranted). PUPAE was wrong, of course, but that didn't matter, as I went AUTOS to SERTA to PERVADE and by that point had enough momentum to blow through the rest of the NW and turn PUPAE to PUPAS, no problem. "THE DAILY" stopped me coming out of that corner, but then SPACE CADETS came along with the assist and from there I managed to swing up into the NE and continue my clockwise journey. From that point, it was a light jog around the crossword track, with no real difficulty and only a few unsightly moments awaiting me. ABRA is now and always has been terrible, full letter grade deduction for relying on it in any circumstance, esp. as clued (i.e. a CADABRA-less incantation). Hmm, I'm now in wiktionary looking at other possible meanings of ABRA and while they aren't crossworthy, they are fascinating:

1. a narrow mountain or mesa pass
2. a wooden boat used as a ferry in Dubai
3. maid (Latin)
4. creek, inlet, bay (Galician)
5. (Latin America) glade, clearing

If memory serves, I think it's also a Pokémon. None of these is endearing ABRA to me. Far less common in crosswords, but no less annoying, is HAYFORKS. They're called "pitchforks" and you know it (37A: Pitchers on a farm). You put "pitch" in the clue because you know it. Boo, overstuffed wordlist! 

Bullet points:

• 16A: Title woman in a 1968 Turtles hit ("ELENORE") — every morning, as I'm selecting videos for this blog, when I leave a video going, Youtube's autoplay algorithm will eventually take me to the Turtles. I don't know how it learned to do this, or why it won't stop. Perhaps because I don't turn them off. Turns out I love them, and they had way more hits than I remember. As for this hit (which has the truly classic lyric "ELENORE, gee I think you're swell / And you really do me well / You're my pride and joy, et cetera"), the one problem is spelling. Still don't have it down. Tried ELEANOR but KNEW that was wrong. ELINORE? Nope. Not sure I'll ever get it at this point. It's like EEYORE and ELSINORE had a baby—a sad Danish donkey named ELENORE, who is swell.

• 22A: Flighty sorts, in two senses (SPACE CADETS) — are non-metaphorical SPACE CADETS real? I've only ever heard the term used disparagingly of (allegedly) ditsy people.
• 10D: Britons and others (CELTS) — this answer and ERNIE (50A: Coach's first name on "Cheers") felt custom-made for me. Got CELTS off the "S" and ERNIE off the "E" and wouldn't have needed a starter letter in either case. The CELTS are part of my (early English literature) teaching regimen (see also RUNE STONE (29D: Inscribed Viking monument)), and I have watched every Coach-containing episode of "Cheers," multiple times, probably, so I can tell you that his full name was ERNIE Pantuso. He was a lovable SPACE CADET. When Nick Colsanto (the actor who played Coach) died in '85, Coach was replaced at the bar by Woody (played by Woody Harrelson).
• 41A: Kitchen concern with an oxymoronic name (FREEZER BURN) — I had the -EEZE- in place and, before looking at the clue, though the answer was going to be SNEEZE GUARD. Then, after looking at the clue, I still thought that, largely because "Kitchen" made me still think of restaurants. But then I couldn't see how SNEEZE GUARD was oxymoronic. And then the RE- of REMAP gave me the "R," which gave me FREEZER BURN, ta da.
• 53D: Novel opening? (NEO) — Never heard of a NEO-novel? That's OK, because that's not what this clue is suggesting. The prefix (i.e. "opening) "NEO" simply means "new" (or "novel").

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Haasan Indian megastar in over 200 films / FRI 3-3-23 / Queeg's ship in a 1954 film / Topping for San Diego-style fries / Comstock 1850s discovery

Constructor: Eric Warren

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: KAMAL Haasan (40D: ___ Haasan, Indian megastar in over 200 films) —

Kamal Haasan (born 7 November 1954) is an Indian actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, playback singer, television presenter and politician who works mainly in Tamil cinema and has also appeared in some Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali films. He has been recognised as an influence for actors and filmmakers in the Tamil film industry. He is also known for introducing many new technologies and cosmetics to the Indian film industry. He has won numerous accolades, including Four National Film Awards, Nine Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, Four Nandi Awards, One Rashtrapati Award, Two Filmfare Awards and 17 Filmfare Awards South. He was awarded the Kalaimamani Award in 1984, the Padma Shriin 1990, the Padma Bhushan in 2014 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier) in 2016. // Kamal Haasan (born 7 November 1954) is an Indian actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, playback singer, television presenter and politician who works mainly in Tamil cinema and has also appeared in some Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Kannada and Bengali films. He has been recognised as an influence for actors and filmmakers in the Tamil film industry. He is also known for introducing many new technologies and cosmetics to the Indian film industry. He has won numerous accolades, including Four National Film Awards, Nine Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, Four Nandi Awards, One Rashtrapati Award, Two Filmfare Awards and 17 Filmfare Awards South. He was awarded the Kalaimamani Award in 1984, the Padma Shriin 1990, the Padma Bhushan in 2014 and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Chevalier) in 2016. // Haasan started his career as a child artist in the 1960 Tamil-language film Kalathur Kannamma, for which he won the President's Gold Medal. His breakthrough as a lead actor came in the 1975 drama Apoorva Raagangal, directed by K. Balachander, in which he played a rebellious youth who falls in love with an older woman. He won his first National Film Award for his portrayal of a guileless school teacher who cares for a woman who suffers from retrograde amnesia in Moondram Pirai (1982). He was noted for his performances in K. Viswanath's Swathi Muthyam (1986), Mani Ratnam's Nayakan (1987), and S. Shankar's Indian (1996). Since then he has appeared in films including Hey Ram (2000), Virumaandi (2004), Dasavathaaram (2008) in which he played ten roles, Vishwaroopam (2013) and Vikram (2022). His production company, Raaj Kamal Films International, has produced several of his films.

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This seems like a solid enough puzzle, but there were a few moments of clunkiness that kind of overshadowed the puzzle's stronger features. I never really got that whoosh whoosh zoom zoom feeling today, but I did stop several times and go "really?" and there were only a handful of answers that really shined. My feelings toward the puzzle started turning tepid right away, not because the fill was bad, but because, first, I did understand the clue on BEEP (3D: Caller's signal). Is this where you leave a message "after the BEEP"? Or is it the '90s and your BEEPer is going off? Who is doing the calling and what kind of call are we dealing with? If it's an answering machine thing, I thought you left your message after the tone. Anyway, I needed every cross there and even then (and still now) ... not sure what the specific frame of reference is supposed to be. Also, OCEANOLOGY? I have no doubt that that is a thing, but if you're doing "work [...] in the trenches" I assume you are doing the much better known word, OCEANOGRAPHY. The Village People taught me OCEANOGRAPHY, whereas they were mute on the subject of OCEANOLOGY. 

RIB TICKLER is a fine answer but it's got an avuncular folksy Ned Flanders-y quality that rubs me the wrong way. But that's not the puzzle's fault. What is the puzzle's fault is KAMAL / KATANAS, which I got because I knew KATANAS, but ... does everyone know KATANAS? (40A: Swords used by Leonardo in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" cartoons). Because I guarantee you a decided minority of you know KAMAL Haasan, who is more than welcome in the puzzle, of course, he just needs fair crosses. This looks like a bad cross, but maybe KATANAS are a much more well-known thing than I think they are. Or maybe everyone knows KAMAL, or knows that KAMAL is the only reasonable guess for -AMAL. If I hadn't known KATANAS, I can easily see myself having written in HAMAL or something like that. So that cross didn't hurt me, but it did make me wince, the way you might wince imagining someone else getting hurt by some danger you managed to avoid. The one answer that really made me wince, though, was ON CASSETTE. It's just such a horrible prepositional phrase and it's not even properly in the language. "Videocassette" would've been distinguished from mere "cassette" (an audio format), we mostly called them "tapes," and anyway, stuff was released simply "on video," or maybe "ON VHS" (or maybe ON BETAMAX if it's the early '80s). The combo of prepositional phrase and language awkwardness really marred that NE corner for me.

I liked BEER FRIDGE OK, though it took me a while to get it (clue gets cute with "Bud" there). I guess CYBERSQUAT is original, but it's such an ugly word that I can't say I was happy to see it. My favorite stuff was probably CLOWN MAKE-UP and BEAR SPRAY. I saw Cocaine Bear yesterday and am now realizing that no one, literally no one in that movie, not even the park ranger, carries BEAR SPRAY. It ... might've helped, although ... you know, if the bear is on cocaine, who knows if the BEAR SPRAY would even register. I struggled a few times in this puzzle, most notably with SWEAT / SEATS (21A: Show nerves, say / 14D: Rears). This is because I had [Show nerves, say] as SWEAR, initially. Maybe that is just how *I* might "show nerves." Also fell into the (in retrospect, obviously designed) trap at 36D: Perfect. I thought it was an adjective and so wrote in A-ONE. But it's a verb and it's HONE. Great. I think I've heard of LARB (44D: Lao meat salad) but still wanted LAMB there at first (even though the clue was asking for the "meat salad," not the meat itself). Never happy to see KETO , a fad "diet" / marketing scheme that we are going to be stuck with forever because of its favorable letter pattern :( (34A: Regimen with so-called "fat bombs"). No idea what the "R" in J.R. Ewing was (and I lived through "Who Shot J.R.?" madness), but ROSS was easy enough to guess. I don't know ... I just wasn't feeling the Friday excitement today. Again, it's a well-made puzzle. It just didn't have enough sizzle. Easier to ignore the clunkers when there's sizzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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