Feature of "rendezvous" and "laissez-faire" / TUE 9-22-26 / Beetle amulet in ancient Egypt / Spy's identifier / Popular times for tacos / "Demon Slayer" or "Attack on Titan"

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy

[2D: ___-Wan Kenobi]

THEME: SONGS IN / THE KEY OF LIFE (50A: With 52-Across, double album released on September 28, 1976, that spent 13 straight weeks at #1) — ❤️❤️❤️🎵🎵🎵❤️❤️❤️ An anniversary tribute to a classic double album by STEVIE WONDER (19A: 50/52-Across musician):

#1 songs:

• "SIR DUKE" (21A: #1 hit from 50/52-Across ("You can feel it all over")
• "I WISH" (37A: #1 hit from 50/52-Across ("Why did those days ever have to go?")

Word of the Day: SONGS IN / THE KEY OF LIFE (50A) —

Songs in the Key of Life is the eighteenth studio album by the American singer, songwriter and musician Stevie Wonder. A triple album, it was released on September 28, 1976, by Tamla Records, a division of Motown. The album is regarded as the culmination of Wonder's "classic period" of recording, which began in 1972 with Music of My Mind.

By 1974, Wonder was one of the most successful figures in popular music; his previous albums Music of My Mind (1972), Talking Book (1972), Innervisions (1973), and Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974) were back-to-back critical successes. However, by March 1975, Wonder seriously considered quitting the music industry and emigrating to Ghana to aid children with disabilities. Plans for a farewell concert had already begun when Wonder changed his mind and signed a new contract with Motown on August 5, 1975. This outlined a seven-year, seven-album deal, with full artistic control. This deal included $13 million up front, a potential bonus of up to $20 million, 20% of the royalties, and ownership of the publishing rights. At the time, it was the biggest recording deal in history.

Songs in the Key of Life was released as a double LP with a four-song bonus EP. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, becoming only the third album to achieve that feat, and the first by an American artist. Both the lead single "I Wish" and follow-up single "Sir Duke" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The album spent thirteen consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, becoming the album with the most weeks at number one during the year, and was the second-best-selling album of 1977 in the US. In 2005, the album was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), indicating sales of 5 million units for a double album.

The album won Album of the Year at the 19th Grammy Awards and is the best-selling and most critically acclaimed album of Wonder's career. It is now widely regarded as one of the greatest albums in the history of popular music, and many musicians have remarked on its influence on their own work. It was voted number 89 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums and ranked number 4 on Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2002, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and in 2005 it was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, which deemed it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (wikipedia)

• • •

Look at this puzzle! Isn't she lovely? Knocks me off my feet. I wish every puzzle made me this happy. If you did not like this, I think you need to have a talk with God. Or better yet, just listen to the album. Front to back, all the way through. Then get back to me. True, it can't improve your experience of a puzzle you've already finished, but it can improve your day and your heart and your soul. Give it a shot. Once I got those first two themers today, I was beaming, and the beaming never stopped. One of my favorite constructors makes a puzzle about one of my favorite albums, and it's not even my birthday? Well, it is my daughter's birthday (happy birthday, kiddo), so ... close enough. I cannot believe that just yesterday, on my best friend's birthday, I mentioned that she (Shaun) and I, and her then-fiancé (Steve) saw STEVIE WONDER on New Year's Eve thirty-two years ago at the Fox Theater in Detroit, and that we were lucky enough to score tickets last week to see him again, later this year, at the same venue. What I didn't mention was that the name of this upcoming tour is ... The "SONGS IN / THE KEY OF LIFE Performances— Fiftieth Anniversary Tour." 

Last week, all four of us (Shaun, Steve, my wife, me), got online and tried to buy tickets to one of the two Detroit shows as soon as they went on sale. Once the sale goes live, you get (randomly?) put into a queue. My number was 4,000 something, which seemed horrible, but was actually much better than most. (I later saw screenshots from people trying to score tix to the show at MSG in NYC that showed their place in the queue somewhere in the 600,000s). But 4,000 wasn't good enough to get all the seats we needed. Luckily, Shaun drew a number closer to 1,000 and so we're going! I spent that whole day stunned at our good luck. Annnnnyway, Stevie rules, SONGS IN / THE KEY OF LIFE is perfect, and this puzzle is smooth as hell even without the Stevie content. My only complaint is that this should've run next Monday, on the exact day of the 50th anniversary. Please don't tell me "but this is not a Monday puzzle." It's very easy, and anyway ... Monday, Tuesday, close enough. No one's gonna be mad that their Monday puzzle has Stevie in it. I know this grid has TUESDAYS baked into it, but anniversary puzzles should appear on the days they're commemorating if at all possible. Then again, the fact that this puzzle got made at all is a miracle, so I'll take it on whatever day you wanna give it to me.

This puzzle seems to have been made especially easy, perhaps to account for the folks who will not be familiar with the Stevie content. But easy certainly doesn't mean boring. You get those little 6-7-8 stacks in the SW and NE corners, and then the 7-8 colonnades in the NW and SE. CODE NAME, "I'LL GET IT!," well-earned FANFARE (43D: Celebratory hoopla). All that and a SILENT Z, in addition to the Steviestravaganza!? I don't have any complaints. I did balk at ROOFS, but nope, that's the correct plural alright. I wrote the [Nail polish brand] in as ESI ... which is, in fact, a nail polish, if you throw another "S" and "E" in there.

I wrote in WRY instead of DRY (18D: Like some humor and runs) (clearly didn't see the "runs" part), but I think that's it as far as screw-ups go. Oh, and I had to wait for crosses on ANIME (27D: "Demon Slayer" or "Attack on Titan"). Those titles ring a bell, but clearly not a loud enough bell.

Bullets:

• 30A: Resident of Africa's fourth-largest country (LIBYAN) — oh look, another little mistake that I made. I had the -YAN part and wrote in KENYAN. Kenya is actually the 23rd-largest country in Africa. You know, in case that ever comes up.
• 53D: Ivy League school in New Haven (YALE) — once again, happy birthday to the girl, who turns 26 today. I wasn't going to tell you Yet Again that she's currently getting her MFA at the David Geffen School of Drama at YALE (Technical Design and Production), but the puzzle kind of forced my hand, sorry.
• 28D: Contents of plastic sleeves or jewel cases, informally (CDS) — I've got one of the SONGS IN / THE KEY OF LIFE CDS in the car and the other in my little Bose CD player / clock radio near my comfy coffee chair in the library. First thing I'm gonna do when I get downstairs is hit "Play."
• 61A: Whistlers in the kitchen (KETTLES) — speaking of, gotta go get my whistler in the kitchen fired up so I can have my coffee. Actually, my kettle doesn't whistle. It's one of them fancy kettles that hits whatever temperature you want and just stays there. Got a little temp read-out and everything. It is black and sleek and beautiful and my best friend in the morning. Yes, I love the cats, but they are takers and they know it. The kettle simply gives. 

That's all for today. See you next time. And I hope you give the album a spin today. It really is a thing of beauty.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Uintah and Ouray reservation people / SUN 8-9-26 / ___ People's Campaign (1968 S.C.L.C movement) / The first "C" of Vietnam's H.C.M.C. / Setting for Ghassan Kanafani's "All That's Left to You" and Mourid Barghouti's "I Saw Ramallah"

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium (I'm assuming it plays harder for most people since it's freestyle)

THEME: Freestyle Exercise — No actual theme, just a big, Sunday-sized freestyle puzzle!

Word of the Day: TONI STONE (57A: First Woman to play regularly in a major American men's pro baseball league) —

Toni Stone (July 17, 1921 – November 2, 1996), born as Marcenia Lyle Stone, was an American female professional baseball player who played in predominantly male leagues. In 1953, she became the first woman to play as a regular on an American major-level professional baseball team^[1][2] when she joined the Indianapolis Clowns in the previously all-male Negro leagues. (Two other women, Mamie 'Peanut' Johnson and Connie Morgan, would later play on the team).^[3][4][5] A baseball player from her early childhood, she also played for the San Francisco Sea Lions, the New Orleans Creoles, and the Kansas City Monarchs before retiring from baseball in 1954.^[6][5] Stone was taunted at times by teammates, once being told, "Go home and fix your husband some biscuits", but she was undeterred. It was reported that during an exhibition game in 1953, she hit a single off a fastball pitch delivered by legendary player Satchel Paige, although the claim has failed verification.

• • •

Hello one more time! It's Eli here to close out this session of Rexplacements before Blog Daddy (I know, I felt gross typing it) comes back tomorrow. I solved this one on the train home from a screening of Fritz Lang's M at the Academy Museum (I rode the D!), and when I opened the app and saw Erik Agard's name I knew I was in good hands. Being a Sunday, I assumed that "Freestyle Exercise" was going to be a theme, something like anagramming types of exercise, but I was thrilled that it was an actual 21x21 themeless (or "freestyle") puzzle. And WOW.

This just feels like a massive undertaking in construction. A pair of double stacked 21 letter grid spanners in addition to 2 symmetrical 13 letter across answers and 2 symmetrical 12 letter down answers basically create the frame. Then there's the central stepped triple stack making a very interesting grid shape. That central step practically looks like a word ladder with the endings (ONE, ONE, INE, ING, ING, ANG, ENG) but I don't know if that was intentional or just the best way to make it work. And with the possible exception of a couple more obscure proper nouns, I thought it held together exceptionally well. Let's dig in!

15D: I definitely had the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back soundtrack in college

I struggled getting started a bit up in the northwest corner. Nothing stands out as too tricky up there, except maybe the crossing of LEGATE (4D: Papal representative) and OCEANUS (24A: Father of the river gods, in Greek myth), but it's probably more about having the two spanners in the middle. It didn't slow me down too much, I just had to move around to get a foothold. Let's talk about those spanners. CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT (23A: One of two in Hawaii) is fine, but not sparkly. CORPORATE SURVEILLANCE (91A: Controversial business oversight) is creepy, but I appreciate the clue calling it out as such. INVERTED ROLLER COASTER (96A: Amusement park ride in which one's legs dangle off the ground) is very cool to see. I do love a good theme park (though it's been a while since I rode an inverted coaster). But COME ON IN, THE WATER'S FINE (19A: Swimmer's invitation) really steals the show. It was easy and filled a lot of the grid as soon as I saw it, but it's a perfectly well-known phrase that you just don't get the chance to see in puzzles very often. Loved it.

Looking at the other long answers, I think the acrosses HAVE THINGS OUT (51A: Communicate through a disagreement) and TONGUE LASHING (62A: Reprimand that might be biting, ironically) make a very nice pairing. HONEST ANSWER (51D: Something that might not be well received when someone asks "How do I look?") tells a nice story, which you know I appreciate. ALPHABET SONG (21D: Number of letters?) bumps with me for some reason. Maybe it's because I usually call it "The ABCs," but it just reads weird to me. Even now, reading and writing it, my brain wants it to say "Alphabet Soup." Seems like a perfectly cromulent answer, and I like the clue, so it's probably just a me thing. 

34D: Last Beatles single before Paul McCartney's departure

I mentioned the proper nouns earlier, and that's probably the only real fault I can find here. I called out TONI STONE as the word of the day above. That's a name I'm surprised I don't know. Well, not surprised in a male-centric sport like baseball (especially since it involves the Negro Leagures), but it does seem like my kind of trivia. I'm also surprised I don't know SHENG (76A: Stand-up comic ___ Wang), but I guess I'm not as tuned into the stand-up scene as I used to be. I'll have to check him out. Also not sure how common LEIDEN (13D: Dutch city with a namesake jar) is, but I do know that I spelled it "Leyden" when I made a Leyden Jar in high school. None of these broke the puzzle for me, but I could see them causing trouble.

There were a couple of other fun bits I had highlighted in my notes. I feel like of the various silent letters, SILENT A (72D: Diamond component) is probably pretty rare. Nice trickery in the clue, too. Glad to see CIS (91D: Prefix with normative) highlighted after the puzzle I blogged earlier in the week. Time of day clues are always a little pedestrian, so I appreciated that the clue for TEN AM (10D: Time that's an artist's name backward) gives a bit of fun trivia. Also, 10am at 10 down is a nice coincidence (unless it was on purpose, in which case, that's crazy subtle). The clue for BEE STING (66A: Honey boo-boo?) also made me laugh a bit.

Overall, I had a lot of fun solving this puzzle, and Erik should be proud of this grid construction.

Stray Thoughts:

• 32D: Group in support of a queen (ANT COLONY)— Look, I've seen A Bug's Life, I know ants are supposed to be our friends. But we're dealing with some pest control issues at the house and I'm in no mood to think about a colony.

• 54A: Display perfect timing, much like dancers (MOVE AS ONE) — I was trying to figure out why I was hearing this as a song instead of a sentence, and I realized it's from Yorktown in Hamilton ("Take the bullets out your gun / What? / The bullets out your gun! /  What? / We move undercover and we MOVE AS ONE"). I guess that show just lives there permanently.
• 26A: Jamaican folk song about dock work (DAY-O) — I've probably posted this video on this blog in the past, but I don't care. Watch it again!

I think that's all I've got for today. I've had a lot of fun this week, and I know the other Rexplacements have, as well. I hope we've done a good job holding down the fort while Rex has been away. Until next time!

Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld

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Mideast yogurt dip eaten with pita / SAT 5-30-26 / Perpetual homebody? / Flying ___ (train between Mumbai and Surat) / Color effect of a lunar eclipse / Gathering with grills and grilles / Music recording space, informally / Mutual aid event that originated in 1920s Harlem / What's represented by a jiggled thumbs-up, in sign language / Part of a cabinet that's made overseas / Movie trailer narrator's first words, often / Rodent that lives in South American marshes

Constructor: Malaika Handa and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BREAD AND ROSES (32A: Old political slogan of the women's suffrage and labor movements) —

"Bread and Roses" is a political slogan associated with women's suffrage and the labor movement, as well as an associated poem and song. It originated in a speech given by American women's suffrage activist Helen Todd; a line in that speech about "bread for all, and roses too" inspired the title of the poem "Bread and Roses" by James Oppenheim. The poem was first published in The American Magazine in December 1911, with the attribution line "'Bread for all, and Roses, too'—a slogan of the women in the West." The poem has been translated into other languages and has been set to music by at least three composers.

The phrase is commonly associated with the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, between January and March 1912, now often referred to as the "Bread and Roses strike." The slogan pairing bread and roses, appealing for both fair wages and dignified working conditions, found resonance as transcending the "sometimes tedious struggles for marginal economic advances" in the "light of labor struggles as based on striving for dignity and respect", as American sociologist and activist Robert J. S. Ross wrote in 2013. (wikipedia)

• • •

A perfect Friday puzzle. Didn't get here til Saturday, but that's fine. It had enough bite to feel not completely out of place on a Saturday, and it was so entertaining that I didn't care what day of the week it was, frankly. I loved this one despite its being absolutely jam-packed with names, a thing that can be irritating and off-puttingly exclusionary in a puzzle. There are seven (7!) people in this puzzle. That's a lot of people for a puzzle. I don't know what the norm is, but seven seems high. But here's the thing: however you felt about those names, they were all short (5 and under) and they were all crossed very fairly. The only one I out-and-out didn't know was Jessie REYEZ (27D: Singer Jessie with the hit 2020 album "Before Love Came to Kill Us"). I can't believe anyone remembers anything that happened in 2020 (besides ... you know). The others either appear in the puzzle with reasonable frequency (CHU, NAST, ANN) or are famous enough in their fields that I managed to pick up their names (the MYERS-Briggs test is famous, BOWEN Yang has a podcast that Instagram keeps showing me clips of, and LYDIA Ko is a New Zealander, and, as someone who is married to a New Zealander, I tend to notice and think about New Zealand things more than most people Americans, probably—I've long thought that LYDIAKO's full name would look amazing in the grid). So I definitely noticed the names, and the puzzle felt a little like a crowded party, crowded in a way that usually makes me want to head for the door; but today, the longer, marquee stuff shines so bright that I didn't care about all the people. I just wanted to bounce from room to room and bask in its glow.

[17A: Movie trailer narrator's first words, often]

Also, this party had food! Like, a lot of food! Before I'd even circulated very much, I'd had SESAME OIL on NAAN and some LABNEH (which I managed to spell correctly on the first try, [fist pump]!) (20D: Mideast yogurt dip eaten with pita), and then I chased it all down with a couple of PROTEIN SHAKES, which was kind of gross, but, you know, culinarily creative. After that, cleanse the palate with a little BREAD (AND ROSES ... were the roses edible? I hope so. Too late to ask that now), and then a full DINNER (something out of the OVEN BAGS, whatever those are), and then, to round the evening off, you could choose between SCOTCH and PROSECCO. Nice. Oh, and the TINS of popcorn, forgot about them. Thought they were BINS at first, but the puzzle corrected me (53D: Popcorn holders). Overall, an enjoyable eating experience. Probably wouldn't voluntarily drink the PROTEIN SHAKES again, but the rest of it, mwah, delicious. In addition to the people and the food, there were beautiful word installations. Creamy stacks in the NW and SE, crunch colonnades in the NE and SW. I was genuinely sad to hear "PLAYTIME'S OVER!" because I was having such a good time. This grid is polished in ways that so many these days are not. Whatever common / crosswordy stuff you find is small and marginal. Scattered. Inconsequential. This means I can whoosh around the grid without wincing (my preferred way of whooshing: winceless). IN A WORLD overrun by awkward abbreviations and word parts and laugh syllables and archaic phrases no one actually says, this puzzle comes along and it feeds and it entertains, with a great sense of play and humor. I had fun. Turns out this is all I really Really want from a puzzle. SWAMP RAT! Now I remember! That's what was in the OVEN BAGS (it's an acquired taste, I'll admit, but don't knock it etc.).

Puzzle felt easyish from the start despite my muffing not one but two answers in the NW (I had us riding on the Flying RUPEE (2D: Flying ___ (train between Mumbai and Surat) (RANEE)), and I thought the warning sign said DO NOT ENTER (3D: DO NOT ___ (ERASE))). After that, no real missteps, except when I tried to spell the Japanese island HONCHU (60A: Osaka's land) and ended up with someone named AUNT C at 42D: High-ranking women in "The Handmaid's Tale" (AUNTS). I always forget the word DEMUR exists, mainly because I never quite know what it means and (therefore) would never use it myself. It has killed me more than a few times when I'm playing Quordle or Octordle—even when I have most of the letters, I can never make anything out of them until suddenly (if I'm lucky) I remember that the word DEMUR exists (50A: Express misgivings). I think one of the things that confuses me about DEMUR is its near-identical cousin, DEMURE. That's an adjective, and that one, I know. 

Bullets:

• 1A: Man's name that, like Otto, is also an Italian number (TRE) — I guess TRE was at the party too. Left his name off the guest list. Sorry, TRE. This was a great clue. Had me running through my Italian numbers real awkwardly (the only way I can run through Italian numbers, since I don't speak Italian and know the numbers only from crosswords). The coffee place I go to nearly every day, the one where I buy all my beans (because the roaster really knows his craft), is called Otto (the Italian number, not the man's name).
• 29A: "French" or "sliced" haircut (BOB) — got this off the "B"; otherwise, no clue. "French or sliced?" sounds like something someone would ask you at the sandwich counter.
• 57A: Gathering with grills and grilles (TAILGATE) — nice clue. Grills (barbecue) and grilles (front ends of automobiles). 

• 12D: Semi professional? (TEAMSTER) — made me laugh. Professional semi (truck) drivers are TEAMSTERs.
• 28D: Like Cheerios vis-à-vis Lucky Charms, say (OATIER) — this also made me laugh. I'm gonna need to see some data here. What oatiness metric are we using here? Is it just the addition of marshmallows that make Lucky Charms (pound for pound) less oaty? Because the non-marshmallow part of Lucky Charms consists of (I'm told) "shaped pulverized oat" (wikipedia). Lucky Charms is just Doing More. OATIER sounds like something out of Cheerios PR. I can see how they'd prefer that term to BORINGER. 
• 45D: Perpetual homebody? (SNAIL) — just a great clue. Smiled when I figured it out. (the SNAIL of course carries its "home" (shell) around with it at all times)
• 59A: Part of a cabinet that's made overseas (MINISTER) — if you live overseas, this one might've been confusing. The president's "cabinet" in the U.S. is made of "Secretaries" (no MINISTERs) but overseas (UK, India, maybe elsewhere?) you get Cabinet MINISTERs.
• 31A: Music recording space, informally (STU) — again, I laughed. Mainly at how dumb this sounds. I was like "'recording space' ... do they mean like the studio ... oh, noooo is it STU!?!?!" LOL, yes. At least the clue is original. Not just another [Disco ___] or [Poker great ___ Ungar].
• 32D: Color effect of a lunar eclipse (BLOOD MOON) — a great answer—the anchor of a really terrific corner. The PRUDISH PROSECCO BLOOD MOON! ICONIC! Best observed while sipping SCOTCH in HONCHU (helps if you're RICH). Not sure what more you can ask from a Saturday corner. Just lovely.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Online publication of Vox Media / TUE 8-12-25 / Lorde who wrote "Sister Outsider" / 1990s-'00s sitcom starring Brandy / Tres o cuatro / What the Beyoncé title "6 Inch" refers to / Edible Christmas ornament / People living abroad for tax reasons / Like this: ESMCLDRBA

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: TOUCANS (63A: Birds phonetically suggested by a feature of 17-, 27- and 51-Across) — the letter string "CAN" appears two times in each theme answer ("two 'can's" = TOUCANS)

Theme answers:

• CAN'T HOLD A CANDLE (17A: Pales in comparison)
• CANDY CANE (27A: Edible Christmas ornament)
• MEXICAN-AMERICAN (51A: Chicana, for example)

Word of the Day: THE CUT (18D: Online publication of Vox Media) —

The Cut is an online publication that, as part of New York magazine, covers a wide range of topics, such as work, money, sex and relationships, fashion, mental health, pop culture, politics, and parenting, with a specific lens for women. // In 2015, The Cut published a New York Magazine cover feature by Noreen Malone that included interviews with 35 women who had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. The cover image and photo portfolio by Amanda Demme included portraits of all the women seated and an empty chair to symbolize those unable to come forward.

In 2018, The Cut published an essay by Moira Donegan in which she revealed herself as the creator of the "Shitty Media Men" list that contained rumors and allegations of sexual misconduct by men in the magazine world. Later that year, Lindsay Peoples's essay "Everywhere and Nowhere," about the challenges of being a Black voice in the fashion industry, came out, sending a "ripple of waves through the industry."

An excerpt from E. Jean Carroll's book What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal ran in 2019 on The Cut and on the cover of New York's print magazine, in which she first shared her story of being sexually assaulted by then-President Donald Trump.

In 2022, The Cut ran a special package that highlighted resources for accessing an abortion nationwide following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The Cut is known for a number of columns, including Madame Clairevoyant's weekly horoscopes; as-told-tos in "Sex Diaries"; and the "How I Get It Done" series, highlighting the routines of influential women. The Cut has published widely read personal essays including Emily Gould on the "Lure of Divorce," Grazie Sophia Christie on "The Case for Marrying an Older Man," and Charlotte Cowles's "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger".

• • •

This is just a beautifully crafted puzzle. A beautifully crafted easy puzzle. I love it because it shows that easy puzzles don't have to be boring. The theme is simple but cute, and kinda funny. Just three themers! (plus a short revealer). Back in the day, three themers was pretty normal, but some time in this century, a theme-answers arms race seemed to start where the standard went to four and often well north of that. This was enabled by the rise of constructing software, which allowed puzzle makers to more easily fill grids with a dense set of fixed answers (themers are always fixed in place first when you're building a theme puzzle). But more is not necessarily better (as you may be aware), and there's something to be said for a theme that leaves a little air, a little breathing room so that the rest of the grid can shine a bit. And today's grid does just that. First, it's clean as hell. Polished, vibrant, lovely. Plus it opts for mirror symmetry over the more customary rotational symmetry (a feature occasioned by the theme—how else to arrange this set of answers symmetrically?), and this gives us a grid with very deep corners in the SW and SE. Deep pockets! And it's here where the grid really goes to the next level—two banks of 9-letter answers, each of them 3 wide—so (if I may show off my math skills...) that's six 9-letters answers, all of them good to great, giving this puzzle a level of non-thematic pizzazz rarely seen in themed puzzles. Six 9s?! That don't compromise grid quality at all? In addition to a full theme!? Nuts. Bonkers. It won't feel bonkers, because it just plays like an easy early-week puzzle. The craftsmanship on this one isn't showy. But if you make puzzles yourself, you know how impressive the work is here. 

In addition to the six 9s, it's got five 7s (!), and even some of the shorter fill is original and interesting (THE CUT, BLIGHT, MOESHA). I just looked at the grid sitting here on my desk and said "man, this is just a good puzzle." Aspiring constructors should study this puzzle. It's not that there's no overfamiliar short stuff, it's that the repeaters (TSAR, UAE, DES, OLE) are doing work, holding together sections composed of much stronger stuff—they allow the shiny stuff to shine. Another thing that makes this puzzle remarkable is how much it foregrounds Black women. Again, there's nothing particularly showy with how Erik does this, but yeah, four Black women (more if you count the women in the clues —e.g. Beyoncé, Kerry Washington). And precisely no white men (unless maybe you want to count ARES (?) or the TSAR). Historically, the (in)visibility of people of color generally, and Black women specifically, has been an issue that many solvers have called attention to and that (fairly recently) some constructors have tried to address. This puzzle quietly gives Black women the kind of puzzle prominence that is absolutely routine for white people (men in particular). I say "quietly" because it does nothing to the overall solvability of this puzzle. MOESHA is a bit of a throwback (55A: 1990s-'00s sitcom starring Brandy), so if any proper noun gives trouble today (beyond THE CUT), it's probably that one, but the rest are right over the plate. AUDRE Lorde may not be as well known to solvers as ANITA HILL and HARRIET Tubman, but she's in the puzzle a lot (full name earlier this month), so if you don't know her, you should. Weird fact: LORDE first appeared in the NYTXW as the pop star of that name back in 2015. The first person to clue LORDE as the poet Audre LORDE was ... Melinda Gates!? (in a puzzle co-constructed with Joel Fagliano back in 2018). Bizarrely, AUDRE has appeared fewer times (2) than the full AUDRE LORDE (3). Sorry, I'm in the statistical weeds now. My point is, this puzzle centers Black women. That may not matter to you, but it's a deliberate move, and I think it's worth noticing. (11D: Lorde who wrote "Sister Outsider")

The only trouble I had with this one was THE CUT (I know of it, but the name didn't leap to mind) and ... I think that's it. I did write in CAIN before BRAN, which made me laugh (38D: Raisin ___). Nice when a mistake makes you laugh at yourself rather than gnash your teeth or say "d'oh!" or slam your head on the desk or whatever your reaction of choice to self-stupidity is. Again, this puzzle has very few lowlights, and the highlights are everywhere. I smiled at the clue on SCRAMBLED (30D: Like this: ESMCLDRBA), raised my eyebrows at the inventiveness of "ARE WE LIVE?" (31D: "Has our broadcast started?") and nodded appreciatively at the double-X of TAX EXILES (32D: People living abroad for financial reasons)—and that's just in the SW corner! That is one hell of a stack (still not sure what to call a "stack" that involves Downs rather than Acrosses). 


Bullets:

• 19D: Tres o cuatro (NUMERO) — me: "OK, so three and four is ... seven ... but ... that's SIETE! I don't ... wait, what does 'o' mean? ... oh ... right." "O" means "or," not "and," my bad.
• 40D: A dispiritingly large percentage of phone calls (SPAM) — I appreciate the commiserative tone of this clue. It's nice to have some acknowledgment of how badly polluted our lines of communication have become. We finally got rid of our landline because it was 90% garbage calls that we never answered. I don't get many SPAM calls on my cell, but email, texts ... it never ends.
• 50A: University in western Pennsylvania, familiarly (PITT) — in the near future, this answer will be clued as the (soon-to-be) Emmy-award-winning TV show, so keep your eye out for that.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, REX Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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What R-rated photos may do / SAT 7-19-25 / Crispy Crinkles brand / Stygian blue or reddish-green / Barbecued Mongolia dish whose name sounds like a disapproving canine / Large-eyed primate / Trans activist who founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project / Actions that, despite being legal, resulted in hundreds of arrests in 1961 / Vince Carter quote-turned-meme regarding his return for a 22nd N.B.A. season / Canine breed named after an English river valley

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BOODOG (21D: Barbecued Mongolia dish whose name sounds like a disapproving canine) —

Boodog (Mongolian: боодог; Mongolian pronunciation: [pɔːtɔk]) is a Mongolian cuisine dish of barbecued goat, mutton or Tarbagan marmot cooked with heated stones inserted into the carcass. It is prepared on special occasions. The meat, often accompanied by vegetables, is cooked with heated stones in the de-boned body of the animals, or in the case of khorkhog, a sealed milk can. Marmot hunting usually takes place in the fall when the animals are larger and have been preparing for hibernation.

Boodog is considered a more egalitarian dish, with meat separated from the bones. Prepared in a perishable container, it is socially less prestigious and generally reserved for household members or fellow camp dwellers. // The practice is performed outdoors and requires two or more people. The animal is stunned and then killed by severing the aorta at the neck. Blood is drained into a container, as it must not touch the ground. The skin is kept intact except for a slit at the neck. The bones and viscera are removed through this opening, except for the bones in the feet. Heated stones, along with onion, salt, and some meat, are inserted into the body cavity. The neck is repeatedly squeezed and the body pressed to ensure the contents make contact with the hot stones. The neck is then closed with a wire, and the carcass is singed to remove hair, traditionally over embers, now more commonly with a gas burner.

The meat is cooked entirely through contact with the heated stones. Once done, the body is washed and the skin slit open to access the cooked meat. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this looked a lot more daunting than it was. Erik's puzzles can skew tough (for me) to begin with, and then you've got that 4-stack of gridspanners just staring you down. So much white space. I thought it would be difficult to get, like maybe I'd do OK on the top part and then just stall out trying to access the middle. But then the opposite happened. Well, almost the opposite. I *did* do OK on the top part, and then when it came time to ... descend ... I got one answer in there.And then another. And another and another. Eventually I had the entire right side of the middle completed just from the Down. The lack of resistance was actually a little stunning. Look how much of that center I got before I ever looked at a single long Across clue:

The key to my success here was the absolute gift of ATTA and ORO—two bits of innocuous, easy crosswordese situated in *just* the right position to help me buzzsaw through the middle of this grid. Those two little answers gave me the first letters of six (6!) stack-crossing Downs, and I rattled them off in quick succession, no hesitation. ATLETA was a guess, but an educated one (25D: Sportsperson, in Italian), and then whoosh, right down the line I went, L to R. Not sure why I hadn't written 34D: "___ chic!" in yet; that was easy too. Very accommodating Downs ensured that my experience with those long answers in the middle was nowhere near the nightmare I semi-feared. Three of the four were instantly gettable to me once I got around to reading their clues. I had some trouble on the exact phrasing of the Vince Carter meme-quote, as I've literally (and weirdly) never seen it. But ultimately it wasn't hard to infer. In the end, today's spanner stack is very impressive: smooth and original, with "DON'T GET ANY IDEAS!" batting clean-up for good reason (he's got the most power). 

Over the years, I have come to expect "proper nouns you've never heard of, buddy" from Erik puzzles, and sure enough! Erik's good at being inclusive, indeed, expansive, with his proper noun choices, giving visibility to people he thinks are important and deserve to be widely known, but who might not be true household names (yet). The name that played this way for me today was DEAN SPADE (57A: Trans activist who founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project). There aren't that many activist names that I have stored away for future use. They do important work, but for whatever reason, their names don't tend to stick the way pop culture names do. As for DEAN SPADE: "In 2002, he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective in New York City that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color." (wikipedia). He seems like a very big deal in law circles, but this is the first I'm hearing his name (that I know of). There was a brief moment right toward the end where I could see the finish line in sight but then pulled up short, to a dead stop, when none of the last three Acrosses were obvious to me. IMPOSSIBLE ... what? DEAN ... who? ST. .... which one? I'm completely unfamiliar with the concept of an IMPOSSIBLE COLOR (53A: Stygian blue or reddish-green). I just wrote in COLOR because the things in the clue were COLORs, so why not? Looks like IMPOSSIBLE COLOR is a specific category of color: 

Impossible colors are colors that do not appear in ordinary visual functioning. Different color theories suggest different hypothetical colors that humans are incapable of perceiving for one reason or another, and fictional colors are routinely created in popular culture. While some such colors have no basis in reality, phenomena such as cone cell fatigue enable colors to be perceived in certain circumstances that would not be otherwise. (wikipedia)

The explanations are all too technical for me to understand. You can read about them here. Luckily, the short Downs in the SE were all easy enough that the back ends of those longer answers down there were easy to pick up. In the end, there were no real tough spots in this whole thing. It took some work, but it had good flow and there were no stumpers. Very doable. 

[R.I.P. Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025)]

I had heard of FREEDOM RIDERS but for some reason not the phrase FREEDOM RIDES (10D: Actions that, despite being legal, resulted in hundreds of arrests in 1961). Or ... I probably had heard the term (what else would the FREEDOM RIDERS be doing?) but it didn't pop to mind the way the phrase FREEDOM RIDERS. Perhaps because "FREEDOM RIDER" is a phrase I've heard many times, if only in the theme song from Maude.

["Lady Godiva was a Freedom Rider / She didn't care if the whole world looked"]

Never heard of BOODOG. Probably won't be alone there. I just got it all from crossees. I didn't need that whole explanation ("sounds like a disapproving canine"), but I admire its cuteness. I'm not sure I fully understand the clue on CORETTA SCOTT. I know that those names precede "King" in her name, but I don't quite know what concept or phrase [Leader before the King?] is supposed to be evoking. Why the "the"? She was a leader, and CORETTA SCOTT does come "before" "King," namewise. Obviously she was married to Martin Luther King, Jr., but ... the clue just feels awkward to me, unless there's some specific reference that I'm missing.  No bid deal. I got her name(s) easily. In general, the puzzle is remarkably clean and remarkably free of genuine obscurities (BOODOG notwithstanding).

More comments and explanations:

• 6D: Large-eyed primate (LORIS) — extreme LOL for all the Wordle players out there. Coulda used this answer in the puzzle *yesterday*! I've only ever seen this creature in the NYTXW and I totally forgot it existed while playing Wordle yesterday. I was not alone. People ended up getting it despite having no idea what it ... was.

• 38A: Case study org.? (TSA) — as in, they might "study" (i.e. inspect) your carry-on "case"; I got a very intimate pat-down last time I went through TSA screening. Screener: "Do you want to go in a private room for this?" Me: "LOL no, whatever you're gonna do you can do right here in front of everyone, thx." Luckily, I got to keep all my clothes on, but he sure did make ... contact ... in places I'm not used to strangers making contact. It was fine. Do what you gotta do, man, just get me through this line.
• 40A: Surname shared by a Hollywood father and daughter (DERN) — first thought: "Hey, why not Hollywood mother and daughter!?" Followed by second thought: "Oh, right, her mother doesn't share her surname"

• 29D: Surname shared by a Hollywood father and son (REINER) — got this one quickly, largely because I just saw This is ... Spinal Tap in the theater a few weeks ago, as part of its 41st anniversary rerelease. Rob REINER directed.

• 32D: Unauthorized cuts of existing movies (FAN EDITS) — I can't imagine being interested in these at all, but I am aware they exist. A good, modern answer.
• 33D: Crispy Crinkles brand (OREIDA) — I assume these are french fries ... yep.

• 48D: Assist, as a lifter? (ABET) — the "lifter" here is "lifting" merchandise from a store without paying for it. You might know such a person better as a "shoplifter."

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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