One-named singer with the 2016 hit "Crush" / SUN 6-26-22 / City that neighbors Ann Arbor for short / Cry from a boxing coach / Partition between nostrils / South Asian crepes / Tribe whose flag features a circle of tepees on a red background

Constructor: Matthew Stock and Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Bonus Features" — add a letter to famous titles to get wacky movie titles (clued "?"-style); the added letters, read from top to bottom, spell out "OUTTAKES" ... which are "Bonus Features" one might find on a Blu-ray or DVD ... also, I guess if you "take" the added letters "out" then, by definition, you get the actual movie title:

Theme answers:

• "THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBOS" (19A: What you'll hear after-hours at a sports car sales lot?)
• "BEVERLY HILLS COUP" (28A: Rodeo Drive uprising?)
• "PANTS LABYRINTH" (36A: Twisted jeans legs?)
• "THIGH FIDELITY" (61A: Staunch dedication to one's upper leg exercise routine?)
• "JURASSIC PARKA" (69A: Winter wear for a stegosaurus?)
• "BRIDGE OF SPIKES" (94A: Tire-puncturing way across a river?)
• "THIS IS SPINAL TAPE" (1102A: Introduction to a chiropractor's makeshift toolkit?)
• "THE BLAIR SWITCH PROJECT" (116A: Campaign to convince British P.M. Tony to change parties?)

Word of the Day: YUNA (30D: One-named singer with the 2016 hit "Crush") —

Yunalis binti Mat Zara'ai (Jawi: يوناليس بنت مد ظراعي; born 14 November 1986), known professionally as Yuna, is a Malaysian singer. Her initial exposure came through the viral success of her music uploaded to Myspace, which received over one million plays. This online success alerted an indie-pop label/management company to her music, and in early 2011 she signed with the Fader Label. She is best known for her collaboration with Usher on her breakout single "Crush", which peaked at number 3 on the US Billboard Adult R&B chart. [...] The 2012 single "Live Your Life", produced by Pharrell Williams, was a preamble to her self-titled full-length debut, which arrived that April. That summer, Yuna appeared at Lollapalooza. In 2013, Yuna returned with the album Nocturnal, featuring the single "Falling". In February 2016, Yuna previewed her third album with the release of "Places to Go", a single produced by hip-hop artist DJ Premier. The full album, Chapters, was released three months later. // In December 2016, Chapters broke into the Top 10 of the Billboard Best R&B Albums of 2016: Critic's Pick; Chapters ranked at number 7. Yuna received an award for the Most Successful Malaysian Singer from the Malaysian Book Of Records. Chapters was also nominated in the Top 20 Best R&B Albums of 2016 by Rolling Stone magazine. Yuna performed as a special guest at the 2016 Soul Train Music Awards. // In May 2017, Yuna became the first singer from Asia to be nominated for a BET Award; Yuna received a nomination for the BET Centric Award for "Crush", her duet single with Usher. (wikipedia)

• • •

Exceedingly easy without enough genuine hilarity to make up for the lack of challenge. I kinda smiled at PANTS LABYRINTH and THE BLAIR SWITCH PROJECT, but otherwise the wackiness was pretty tepid, and there weren't enough non-thematic points of interest to make the puzzle feel like a truly satisfying Sunday. I was also slightly hung up on the fact that the added letters spelled OUTTAKES but I was being asked to put them *in* to the grid, which made them more ... inputs ... but whatever, once you stop and look back, you can make a case that OUTTAKES is just fine as a bonus (meta) answer. It was clear almost instantly what the gimmick was, and after two or three themers, and since the premise was so simple (just ... add a letter), I knew the letters would spell something, and that something was completely obvious after just a couple letters, so ... it felt like it was all over but the shouting after just a few minutes. "The shouting" being "dutifully filling in the rest of the ginormous Sunday grid." Lots of black squares, super choppy, not a lot of longer interesting non-theme fill in this thing ... and what I'm seeing, on going over the grid now, isn't a lot to get excited by. GOLFTAN is probably the most original answer in here (95D: Shade that one might find on the links?), but that's balanced by the dull / odd STEERER, and then the rest of the long stuff is very unsizzly. Stuff like SO MUCH SO and EASE INTO. There really aren't many answers over 6 letters long in this puzzle at all. As for difficulty ... nope, none really. Didn't know YUNA, but, you know, crosses did their thing (30D: One-named singer with the 2016 hit "Crush"). Not sure where else you could possibly get bogged down in this thing. If you don't pay attention to famous movie titles, I can see this being semi-baffling, but if you're even passingly interested in movies, then this was a cinch. The least familiar movie to me was "Bridge of Spies," which came and went and missed me. I wanted "Bridge of Sighs," probably because the movie title is a deliberate pun on said bridge. But even that one I kinda knew, and the "K" I could figure out because the OUTTAKES gimmick was transparent. I do love movies and did not mind being reminded of some of these, but as far as the puzzleness of it all goes, I would've loved something a bit more fearsome and a lot less ho-hum than this.

My path through the grid was a bit odd. I normally chew up the NW and then move on, but I also normally solve short stuff and then use it to get the longer stuff. So today I basically shied away from those long Downs in the NW and followed the short stuff east. The first two themers fell in virtually no time, and the added "O" and "U" basically told me where we were headed:

No idea about U OF A (is that Alabama? ... LOL, no, it's Arkansas—nope, never in a million years would've guessed that U OF A stood for that particular "A" state; I know for a fact that UOFA has been clued specifically in reference to University of Arizona before, so, yeah, confusing) (26A: Fayetteville school, informally). I see "Fayette-" and think Louisiana ("Lafayette") and then, well, that's it. I'm out of "Fayette-" based place names. But again, as with YUNA, this answer added no real resistance to the solve. I had no idea SIMP had some special "modern" meaning. This clue sounds like a pretty regular, normal-ass meaning of SIMP (54D: One offering intense but unrequited affection, in modern usage). EAT ME and IT'S ME have me seeing double ME. Thankfully, SEE ME is not also in the grid (it's not, is it? ... no). Speaking of ME ... a word about backwards "ME," i.e. "'EM," i.e. "HIT 'EM" (23A: Cry from a boxing coach) ... What kind of preposterous answer is this. You're a "boxing coach" and your advice is "HIT 'EM"? It's boxing! That's what you do. What kind of coaching is that? And 'EM? How many people is your guy fighting? I have no idea how this five-letter inanity found its way into wordlists, but unless the clue is a partial and the clue is ["___ where it hurts!"] or (for a baseball angle) ["___ where they ain't"], maybe ditch HIT 'EM entirely. Or at least don't insult boxing coaches like this.

It's time once again for the

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

I got a few letters this week, but today I'm going with the following one because it echoes something I've been saying for a while now—something that's also relevant to today's extremely easy crossword:

Hello sir!

I'm fairly new to your column, so maybe you've explored this, but the NYT games subscription offers access going back to 93. I've worked my way back to 2006 (skipping M-W and Sunday). 

I get that some material would have been easier solving 16 years ago when events were current; discounting that, the puzzles seem to have a much higher degree of potential difficulty.

For example, I can fill 9/10 Saturdays now in 20 minutes or so, and the one I don't complete I get very close. But a puzzle from, say, 5/20/06, seems more difficult than any Saturday for the past year. There are easier ones from that time, too, but when they're tough, hoo boy.

What do you make of this? Philosophical shift at some point? The Dumbing Down? Maybe I could have solved them all then but I've been intellectually downgraded since. [...]

Thanks,

Mat

ARGALI

It's true that evaluating the difficulty of past puzzles can be difficult because so much depends on context. That is, puzzles that are made in, say, 1997, are made to be *solved* in 1997. They have (if you're lucky) a 1997 viewpoint and assume a 1997 solver, someone who is breathing in 1997 air and culture etc. A 1997 constructor is going to assume things are common knowledge (about current events, about the 20th century in general) that a 2022 solver might have either no knowledge of or (in my case) no memory of. You know things, and then time passes and some of those things fall out of your head to make room for other things. So going back in time can make the puzzles feel more difficult than they were. Possibly. But as someone who has been solving for over three decades and solving, uh, let's say, "professionally" for fully half that time, I can definitely feel the NYTXW's slow but inexorable move away from truly difficult puzzles. Have I just gotten better as a solver? Eh, probably not. I was probably at my fastest a full decade ago. But even if I am a more experienced solver, and maybe I know more ... things, now, my sense is that the NYTXW used to have no problem throwing absolute backbreakers at you every once in a while, and now, that almost never happens. It's been a Long time since I felt like I had to work because the puzzle was genuinely hard (as opposed to just out of my wheelhouse a little). I can still remember (with a trauma-induced wince) the 2007 puzzle that taught me the word OCHLOCRACY. I think there was some as-yet-unknown-to-me antelope in that puzzle too (haha, no, it was a "mountain sheep," LOL: ARGALI, wtf!?). Couldn't finish it. Brutal. I literally rated it "Infernal." Man, I miss Bob Klahn. Anyway, I don't necessarily want more of that, but I would like more difficulty than I've been getting. But ... there's probably just more $$$ in keeping a burgeoning app-based solving population happy, and you can't maintain that massive subscriber base if you're absolutely baffling them half the time. Not everyone enjoys being shredded by the puzzle. Most people probably just want something they can do easily in 15. In and out. Nuggets! The Mini! Wordle! So no, Mat, I don't think you're wrong in your general assessment that hard puzzles used to be harder than they are today. They were also for a somewhat smaller group of people back then, and I'm not sure that was exactly ideal. So ... I dunno, things change, you adapt. You want hard, there are places you can get it. Speaking of which (segue!) ... 

Please do yourself a favor and, if you're not already a subscriber to the American Values Club Crossword (AVCX), go and pick up Francis Heaney's latest barnburner of a puzzle—a rainbow-colored variety cryptic in honor of Pride Month, entitled "LGBTQIA+". Then set aside a few hours and maybe get together with some friends and pray to your gods for help because hoo boy, it is an extremely complicated, multi-layered, legitimately arduous adventure. But the reward! The thrill of having fought your way to the end of such a challenging quest! I just don't experience puzzling satisfaction of that kind that very often any more. If you've never solved cryptics, then find someone who does and give the puzzle to them. Maybe they'll teach you. They will definitely thank you. And with that, thank you. And good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. almost forgot, shout-out to YPSI! (That's YPSIlanti, MI, for those of you who didn't happen to attend UOFM or (if you went to school in YPSI proper) EMU!) (27A: City that neighbors Ann Arbor, for short)

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Indigenous people of Easter Island / WED 6-16-21 / Jim Sheridan gives Daniel Day-Lewis nothing to work with in this Irish dramedy / Gossip in slang

Constructor: Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: Easy (unless you are very unfamiliar with movie titles, possibly) 

THEME: MISDIRECTED (65A: Led astray ... or like the films at 19-, 25-, 40- and 57-Across?) — theme answers are film titles in which "direction"-related words have been changed to their opposites (so the titles are "MIS-DIRECTED"); these titles are then clued as if the films were made poorly (i.e. MISDIRECTED) :

Theme answers:

• "MY RIGHT FOOT" (19A: Jim Sheridan gives Daniel Day-Lewis nothing to work with in this Irish dramedy (1989)) (from "My Left Foot")
• "KNIVES IN" (25A: Rian Johnson helms this snoozer of a whodunit starring Daniel Craig (2019)) (from "Knives Out")
• "WEST OF EDEN" (40A: Elia Kazan bungles this John Steinbeck novel adaptation (1955)) (from "East of Eden")
• "STEP DOWN" (57A: Anne Fletcher misses the mark with this first film in a dance franchise (2006)) (from "Step Up")

Word of the Day: HANGUL (55A: Korean alphabet system) —

The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul/Hangeul in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is a writing system for the Korean language created by King Sejong the Great in 1443. The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs used to pronounce them, and they are systematically modified to indicate phonetic features; similarly, the vowel letters are systematically modified for related sounds, making Hangul a featural writing system.

Modern Hangul orthography uses 24 basic letters: 14 consonant letters (ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ) and 10 vowel letters (ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ). There are also 27 complex letters formed by combining the basic letters: 5 tense consonant letters (ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ), 11 complex consonant letters (ㄳ ㄵ ㄶ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅄ) and 11 complex vowel letters (ㅐ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅢ). Four basic letters in the original alphabet are no longer used: 1 vowel letter (ㆍ) and 3 consonant letters (ㅿ ㆁ ㆆ).

The Korean letters are written in syllabic blocks with the alphabetic letters arranged in two dimensions. For example, Hangeul in Korean is spelled 한글, not ㅎㅏㄴㄱㅡㄹ. [...] 

As it combines the features of alphabetic and syllabic writing systems, it has been described as an "alphabetic syllabary". As in traditional Chinese and Japanese writing, Korean texts were traditionally written top to bottom, right to left, and are occasionally still written this way for stylistic purposes. Today, it is typically written from left to right with spaces between words and western-style punctuation. (wikipedia)

• • •

speaking of 
MISDIRECTED...

This was one that got better upon further reflection. Or more impressive, anyway. Noticing things after you finish doesn't exactly change the solving experience, but can make you appreciate what you experienced a bit more. In this case, I actually had a good time solving the puzzle, but the concept seemed slightly thin to me—I thought movie titles were being changed simply by turning one word in the title into its opposite. So when I was done I thought, "Cute, but it's not a very tight themer set. What about all the other opposites out there: day/night, good/bad, right/wrong... this group feels pretty arbitrary." At this point, I thought MISDIRECTED referred solely to the fact that titles were merely wrong/changed. Sometimes, though, thinking about why something is weak can lead you to realizing it's actually strong and you (me) just missed the trick. When I realized that all the title changes related specifically to direction—that all the changed words were specifically direction-related words—well, then I was like "Ohhhhhh ... sorry, puzzle. My bad. That actually is pretty tight." I kinda want a North/South answer now. But not enough to be mad about it. Good theme!

It's an oversized grid today (16x15), so if you thought your time was fast, well, it was faster than you know. Grid had to be an even number of squares wide in order to situate the 10-letter "WEST OF EDEN" directly in the center. Seemed like the puzzle was trying to add bonus movie answers all over the place, with actors HUGH Jackman and O'SHEA Jackson forming a little JackPack there at 9- and 10-Down, and then there's DR.EVIL, and, looks, even some BIOPICS for your VIEWING pleasure. I didn't struggle very much, though there were a bunch of answers that for some reason did not leap out at me. STYMIE required many crosses. ONE just would not come. Wanted ANON. and then, weirdly, ONO (33D: Unnamed person)—I think my brain decided to process the clue as "One-named person," but even that makes no sense for ONO, so who knows. Did not know the Shak. clue for VIOLENT (and am generally hugely opposed to fill-in-the-blank Shak. quotes, as they are fussy and dull and rarely give you enough context for you to appreciate them—at least tell me the play this is from!) (47D: Word that fills both parts of the Shakespeare quote "These ___ delights have ___ ends") (it's "Romeo & Juliet," Friar Lawrence talking about R & J's teenage feelings). I had never heard (I don't think) of the movie "Step Up," but it wasn't hard to infer my way to "STEP DOWN." The one word that was totally new to me was HANGUL. Did not know the Korean alphabet had a name. Good to know! All the crosses were fair there, so even that answer didn't slow me down much. 

Only things I didn't really like today were D.I.Y.-ERS (I have aesthetic aversion to most abbr. + -ERS formulations, e.g. NHLERS, NBAERS, ATFers ... OK, that last one's not a thing. Yet. The other icky one is CRIT. Read a ton of literary criticism in grad school. Wrote some too. "Lit CRIT" is just not a term I ever heard ever. It just sounds awful. Like you're trying to say something sexual and just garbling it. Lastly, why would you ever clue ABBA as a rhyme scheme? Do you hate joy?

That's it! Fun puzz! Bye!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Online initialism of rejoicing / TUE 6-1-21 / Figure skating biopic of 2017 / Part of the digestive system in brief / Mario's love interest in Super Mario games / Tech release of 2017

Constructor: Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BORE FRUIT (34A: Turned out successfully ... or what the parents of 16-, 19-, 52- and 57-Across did?) — fictional and real people whose last names are types of fruit:

Theme answers:

• HALLE BERRY (16A: First African-American to win the Oscar for Best Actress)
• PROFESSOR PLUM (19A: He might have done it with the candlestick in the study)
• PRINCESS PEACH (52A: Mario's love interest in Super Mario games)
• FIONA APPLE (57A: Pop star with the 1996 3x platinum album "Tidal")

Word of the Day: DUA LIPA (33D: Singer with the 2019 #2 hit "Don't Start Now") —

Dua Lipa (/ˈduːə ˈliːpə/; Albanian: [ˈdua ˈlipa]; born 22 August 1995) is an English singer and songwriter. After working as a model, she signed with Warner Bros. Records in 2014 and released her eponymous debut album in 2017. The album peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart, and yielded eight singles, including "Be the One", "IDGAF", and the UK number-one single "New Rules", which also peaked at number six in the US. The album has achieved platinum status worldwide. At the 2018 Brit Awards, Lipa won for British Female Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act. [...] Her 2019 single "Don't Start Now" peaked at number two in the UK and US, and number four on the US Hot 100 year-end chart. It would become the most successful 2020 song by a female artist in the US. [...] Her second studio album, Future Nostalgia (2020), received critical acclaim and earned her six Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year. It became her first UK number-one album, with four top-ten singles including "Physical" and "Break My Heart". In 2021, Lipa was included on Time's 100 Next list about the future 100 most influential people in the world. She won for British Female Solo Artist and British Album of the Year at the 2021 Brit Awards. (wikipedia)

• • •

The basics of the theme are pretty unremarkable. Last names = fruit. The names have no relation to each other, and two of them are fictional, but they're names, fine. So, four fruit names. Not terribly exciting. Also, one of the fruits is more a fruit type. If you offer me an apple, a plum, or a peach, I'll either say yes or no (probably yes). If you offer me a berry, I'll ask "what kind?" I can picture the other three fruits, but BERRY is just a blurry mash of all the possible kinds of berries. But let's say, sure, berry, go ahead, you can be in this club. The problem with the theme is not the theme set, it's the revealer, which is chalkboard-scratch grating. My minor, inconsequential, matter-of-taste issue with it is I just don't like the way it sounds. I keep saying it out loud and it sounds awful. I think the past tense-ness of it is making it seem less stand-alone worthy than BEAR FRUIT would be. But that's just my ears freaking out—not a flaw per se. The flaw is the somewhat creepy biological angle here, the fact that our attention is directed not toward the answers but toward their ... parents? ... doing it? ... and then the mothers physically giving birth to babies? Never mind that two of the names are fictional and, seriously, does PROFESSOR PLUM even have parents? I don't know. But now I'm being asked to imagine his parents procreating? What in the world? The exclusionary, biologically-determined definition of parenting here is really off-putting. But mainly my point is none of this had to be. You had a fruit name theme. It might've worked, somehow. But that revealer is a thud. The clue on it is tortured and it asks me to go places, mentally, I have no interest in going. Not too happy about the stray fruit in the puzzle, either (4D: Cantaloupes and such = MELONS).

On the plus side, it's very very easy. The grid overall is fairly smooth and has some sparkly moments (TAQUITO TRUMPET!). And the theme answers themselves are colorful (!) all on their own. As usual, if there's any real difficulty today, it's gonna come with the names. Knew them all, though forgot which fruit the Super Mario princess was, so had let the crosses remind me. Also had a weird moment where I couldn't remember which part of HALLE BERRY's last name was -E and which was -Y. My brain seriously went "are you sure it's not HALLY BERRE!?" This is the second day in a row I've seen DUA LIPA in a puzzle. I've listened to her 2020 album Future Nostalgia, watched a "Song Exploder" (Netflix) episode about her, but I still couldn't get her name from this clue (33D: Singer with the 2019 #2 hit "Don't Start Now"). I know her name way way better than any one song title, so even though "Don't Start Now" was a big hit, it didn't register. You should expect to see her name, and name parts (DUA, LIPA), a lot now. She's a vowel-heavy 7, and, when you break her name apart, you've got two previously unusable and probably irresistible bits of short fill. Either way, she's gonna be around a while.

Thought the Heidi author was SPYRO despite having just looked at a copy of this book in our house (me: "throw away?" wife: "No!"). Is the puzzle corporately winking at us by driving IMACPRO (40D: Tech release of 2017) through APPLE? I can't say I'm a big fan of corporate winking. Do people still use FTW!? (short for "For the win!") (36D: Online initialism of rejoicing). Filled that in and realized I hadn't seen it in years and years. Feels very '09 (no idea what happened that year, it just sounds right). Hardest answer for me was GIFTS because it's inaccurate (28D: ESP and photographic memory, for two). I think the concept of "photographic memory" is disputed (wikipedia: "true photographic memory has never been demonstrated to exist"), but even if it's real, I *know* ESP is bullshit, so you cannot call something a "gift" if No One Possesses It. YUK. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Mythical hunter turned into stag / SUN 9-1-19 / Archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean / Oscar nominee for Gone Baby Gone 2007 / Program starting with the fifth year of college, informally / Bygone car model anagram GRANITE / Spanish phrase meaning enough is enough / Cleaning for military inspection / Foreign capital designed by two Americans

Constructor: Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: Challenging (at least as I solved it, i.e. NOT on paper) (11:33)

THEME: "That's a Tall Order" — four orders (to a dog) are "tall" in this one, i.e. they are composed of letters that are two boxes tall (you can't tell this from my grid because UGH my grid (from AcrossLite) can't deal with this particular feature—doesn't look like the app can handle it either???)

Theme answers:

• PLINY THE ELDER over COLOR WHEEELS (for HEEL)
• KEEPS IT REAL over POSITED (for SIT)
• BASTAYA (???!?!?!?!) over JAMES TAYLOR (for STAY)
• SEX COMEDIES over JALISCO, MEXICO (for COME)

Word of the Day: ¡ BASTA YA ! (73A: Spanish phrase meaning "Enough is enough!") —

¡Ya basta! is a phrase in Spanish roughly approximate to "Enough is enough!" or "Enough already!" in English. It has been adopted by several Latin American insurgent groups as an expression of affront towards issues that sparked the original dissent. Its adoption by the EZLN in Mexicoas the movement's motto is exemplary of its popularity and ability to rally diverse ideologies under a common goal. Grammatically, there's little difference between ¡Basta ya! and ¡Ya basta!, and both are correct. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this seems like a cool theme but the software I use couldn't replicate it and since I never read the "Note" (they often give away too much info for my tastes, and also they take *time* to read tick tick tick), I just thought that the bottom themer in each instance was supposed to leap up and join the top themer for the length of the circled squares, leaving squares blank for reasons I couldn't fathom. So when I finished, the themers all looked something like this:

I went on to the NYTXW website, and there too, the whole "tall" thing (with single cells for answers on two different levels) was not replicated. It's a cute joke, but it sucks when your own tech can't deliver the product in a way where the joke has a chance to land.

[FETCH!]

Beyond the theme, there seemed to be a lot of (to me) pretty obscure stuff—both stuff I knew (the Acura INTEGRA—why in the world is "Acura" not in that clue!?!? (99A: Bygone car model that's an anagram of GRANITE); ACTAEON; ENJAMBMENT (45D: Flow of one line of a verse to the next without a pause) and stuff I did Not know (AMY RYAN—never heard of her, don't remember "Gone Baby Gone," whiffs all around (4D: Oscar nominee for "Gone Baby Gone," 2007); COMOROS—LOL literally no idea this was a place (34A: Archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean); GLUTENIN—if you say so ... (97A: Protein in Wheaties); and especially POSTBAC, which I'm told is a reasonably common program for picking up prereqs for a grad program you didn't get in undergrad, but I've somehow never heard the term before. Worse, the clue is a bleeping mess) (16D: Program starting with the fifth year of college, informally). Because of the technical issues with the theme, and all the longer mystery stuff, this played way harder than most Sundays have been playing for me lately. Oh, I think I like CATCAFE (111A: Establishment such as Crumbs and Whiskers or KitTea (both real!)). And I know I love dogs (and obedience!) so I should've had more fun solving this. I just didn't. I was irritated most of the time. ¡BASTA YA! (which, btw, is too long of a foreign phrase, imo) (and yet another answer I'd never heard of)

["Me and Rex took the car, / ha, ha, stay home... stay"]

Not sure why, but the clue on HAE Min Lee is bugging me slightly (33A: ___ Min Lee, victim in the podcast "Serial"). "Victim" just seems a harsh way to sum up a life. I know that that is how anyone knows her, but still ... something about that clue feels vulturish, or at least callous. Further, "victim in the podcast 'Serial'" almost makes her sound fictional. I'm *not offended*—it's just not sitting well, that clue. The long themers are all solid to Very interesting. I particularly like JALISCO, MEXICO even though (uggggh) I wrote in TABASCO, MEXICO at first (Tabasco *is* a Mexican state, just not a [State bordering the Pacific]). The most irksome part of the grid was dead center and featured a bunch of three-letter answers that made no sense to me. WOO is a [Modern cousin of "Yay!"]?? Like, online? Like, how modern? Like ... that sound is ambiguous to me, esp. as written. I can definitely *hear* it, but seeing it is ... weird. Just didn't compute. WOW clue also didn't compute (57D: Stun). I get it now. But honestly even with -OW I was like "......... POW?" And then MOW, yeeesh (56A: Charge (through)). Those two verbs imply different outcomes to me, with MOW specifically meaning knocking down. If you charge through, maybe something/one gets knocked down, maybe not. So MOW to WOW to WOO were all tough, instead of what 3-letter answers tend to be, i.e. easy. GI'ING? Sigh. I'm sure it's in a dictionary somewhere, but (again) (for like the 6th time today) I've never heard of this. I like learning new things, generally. But this one too often felt like a steroided wordlist run amok. I did enjoy BARK, though (59A: Dog sound). Nice little added (theme) touch.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Squared building stone / SUN 10-21-18 / Rapper with 2017 #1 hit Bodak Yellow / First African American sorority / Manhattan neighborhood next to lower east side / Seventh-year exam in Harry Potter

Constructor: Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:06, which is Easy, but ... there were some crosses ...)

THEME: "You're Going Down" — theme answers are all Downs and are all familiar phrases; clues are wacky and make sense only if you take the answer "literally," i.e. mentally supply the word DOWN after the answer in the grid:

Theme answers:

• BABY STEPS (3D: Headline after a toddler C.E.O. resigns, literally?) (get it: "BABY STEPS *DOWN*")
• ELEGANTLY PUT (62D: Dissed with flowery language, literally?)
• LUCKY BREAK (7D: Car failure only a block from the mechanic, literally?)
• CUTE AS A BUTTON (34D: Like the dress shirt that's just adorable, literally?)
• PUPPET SHOW (73D: Punch vs. Judy, literally?)
• THERE'S THE RUB (14D: "For a massage, go that way!," literally?)
• JAZZ HANDS (77D: One answer to the question "What's your favorite music genre," literally?)

Word of the Day: ASHLAR (55A: Squared building stone) —

noun

1. masonry made of large square-cut stones, typically used as a facing on walls of brick or stone. (google)

• • •

I did not get this. At least not while solving. Tore through it, thinking I was getting the joke, at least a little, because, well, with BABY STEPS, "steps" can mean "leaves" or "takes off" (colloquially), so I was like "ah, repurposed phrase ... for some reason." Same thing with LUCKY BREAK. Your car "breaks" near a garage—that's lucky! OK ... THERE'S THE RUB, again, reimagining the meaning of the word, got it ... still not sure why I'm doing it, but I got it. Then I got to CUTE AS A BUTTON and I honestly didn't get it. But also didn't care. Kept going. Got to PUPPET SHOW and thought "that is ... literally ... what Punch & Judy is ... I do not understand." Only as I was writing in the final themer (which, for me, was ELEGANTLY PUT) did I realize you needed to supply DOWN for the clues to make sense. Only, as I say, several of them "make sense" without the mentally supplied DOWN, so this one felt off and weird. The DOWN just didn't reorient several of the answers enough to be interesting. Also, what is ASHLAR? I mean, it's my Word of the Day, so now I sort of know, but ... Yikes.

[WARNING: PROFANITY, right off the bat and throughout]

Was all set to tell you exactly where this grid's problems were, but then I saw this tweet, and ... it gets right to the point, so I don't have to:

AMARNA (18A: Where cuneiform was discovered) and ASHLAR are easily among the toughest answers in this grid, but that's fine. Crosses are fair, and I actually knew AMARNA from ... well, crosswords, duh. Nothing wrong with tough. There is, however, something wrong with VADUZ (48D: Capital of Liechtenstein). Now you can go on all you want about how "everyone should know every world capital how could you not know blah blah blah?" and that's fine, that's you, you're who you are and god probably loves you, but unless you are a list memorizer (you know who you are, you trivia folks, I see you) then you almost certainly don't know VADUZ. I don't even know how you pronounce that. I can't remember ever seeing it. And its letters are entirely uninferrable. Sooooo the crosses really should be fair. But you've got not one but two proper noun crosses ... and one of them is a rapper, which, you know, she had a #1 hit, and she is legit famous, but only recently so, which means millions of solvers still don't know who the hell she is.

Also, why would anyone know BRATZ is spelled with a "Z" (67A: Popular line of dolls with "Kidz" and "Babyz" spinoffs); I did, for some reason, but it's entirely plausible that a solver would not. I guess the clue is supposed to tip you to the spelling. Not sure how well that's gonna work. So VADUZ is really cruddy because, well, you know going in, if you're the constructor / editor, that you are going to screw some people (a bunch of people) on the crosses. You shouldn't feel that way About Any Of Your Crosses. And I know the constructor knows the rapper cross is dicey 'cause he did a little smiley-face social media post about it. So if you tanked it, just know he's smiling and winking at you.

Saw "Psycho" tonight with live orchestra and it was Great, except ... well, the movie is so phenomenal (I've seen it roughly 845 times) that by the end I totally forgot there was a live orchestra. I was just engrossed in the movie. And then the end came and I was like, "oh, right ... you guys! Right underneath the screen! Good job!" Anyway, film w/ live musical accompaniment is the stuff! Highly recommended.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Ancient undeciphered writing system / SUN 3-25-18 / Legal vowelless Scrabble play / Outlay that cannot be recovered / Anthropomorphic king of Celesteville / International conglomerate whose name means three stars

Constructor: Finn Vigeland

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Follow the Sun" — theme answers have SUN in them, and when the answers get to SUN, the SUN goes down (sets?) in the west (!) and goes up (rises?) in the east ... just like the actual ball of sky fire!

Theme answers:

• MEGATSUNAMI (26A: Catastrophic event that can be caused by a gigantic earthquake)
• ACTORS' UNIONS (56A: Hollywood labor groups)
• ETATS UNIS (98A: Amérique)
• E PLURIBUS UNUM (102A: Only words on the front of the Great Seal of the United States)
• MONKEY'S UNCLE (68A: How someone in awe might describe himself)
• GOES UNDER (29A: Folds, as a business)

Word of the Day: PEDUNCLE (60A: Plant stalk) —

noun

BOTANY

1. the stalk bearing a flower or fruit, or the main stalk of an inflorescence.

   • ZOOLOGY

     a stalklike part by which an organ is attached to an animal's body, or by which a barnacle or other sedentary animal is attached to a substrate. (google)

• • •

The theme was very easy to figure out—circling the SUNs gave (probably) far too much information away. Once I realized (at second themer?) that the circles were just gonna be SUNs, the difficulty level of the puzzle dropped considerably. I guess you sort of had to wait to figure out that the SUNs went the other direction in the eastern portion of the grid, but ... not really. That was pretty self-evident—themer heads east, hits a circled square, then heads ... in whatever the direction the circled squares go ... then heads east again. Mostly very intuitive, though occasionally my brain forgot that once you reach the "N" in the SUN, the answer zags back east again; I spent at least a little time wondering what a MEGATSUNG and a ETATSUNNI were. I've never heard of a MEGATSUNAMI (aren't regular ones pretty, uh, devastating), and I don't really believe that there are ACTORS' UNIONS, plural, in Hollywood (there's SAG, and then .... ?). Not too jazzed about PEDUNCLE at all (?) let alone the fact that it pretty much doubles the UNCLE content in that exact portion of the grid. Also the clue on MONKEY'S UNCLE is weird—it really needs some reference to the "I'll be" part of the phrase for it to make real sense. The clue (68A: How someone in awe might describe himself) almost sounds like it's asking for an adverb (?). It's awkward all around there. And yet I don't really care. I mean, the SUN thing is cute-ish, but mainly it's just A Theme, and the enjoyment resides in the rest of the grid, which is really pretty lovely. SUN up, SUN down, fine, but, REAL TALK, the rest of the grid was mostly a joy to move through.


The grid provided lots of happy moments, fill-wise, and how often do I say that? (A: not very). Even the ridiculous stuff (i.e. plural EARTHS) was making me laugh (87A: Planets like ours, in sci-fi). Creative cluing! Make it work! I HEART KUSHNER and AS SEEN ON TV and IT'S ON ME and T MINUS ZERO (!) and I think NERF WAR is fantastically made-up but sure, go ahead. At least it's made up in a way I can imagine. DON'T TELL! PROM DATES! MIC DROP! The grid was working, everywhere. Sun, shmun, this grid was fun. Shout-out to the great clues on ARMHOLE (21A: Sometimes hard-to-find shirt opening) (we've all been there...) and UNWED (103D: Not taken seriously?). I realize that last one is pretty gam-o-centric (or marriage-biased, if you're less lexically adventurous). I'm sure there are people who are taken (seriously) who are not married. Still, throw in that "?" clue, and the clever word play, and I'll allow the normativity at work here. PEDUNCLE seems like something you'd call a dangerous-to-children ... uncle. I really, really don't like any part of that word. Just trying saying it out loud. Is it peDUNCle? PEEduncle? Podunk + uncle, it sounds like.  Let's burn it and bury it and then not mark its grave and never speak of it again.


My greatest Defy-My-Age moment was plunking down NEYO at 49D: R&B singer with the hits "So Sick" and "Mad" ... but then my Nah-You're-Old moment came when I realized I didn't know how to punctuate his name. I knew there was a hyphen, but was not sure where it went (dead center, it turns out: NE-YO). I don't think KPMG is "good" fill (73A: One of the Big Four accounting firms). Totally uninferrable letters. I didn't even know the concept of a Big Four existed among accounting firms. That sounds like some accountants got a little drunk and full of themselves and said "you guys ... you guys ... you guys let's form a club, you guys!" Can you name the other three of the Big Four? I bet over half of you can't name even one without looking it up. Price Waterhouse, is that one? ... holy Krap, I'm right! Woo hoo, wild guessing FTW! Here, read about how it used to be the Big Five. And the Big Six. And before that, the Big Eight. Oh the exciting times you will have reading about this illustrious history of self-important naming!

PS Thanks to everyone who got into the streets yesterday to protest gun violence and lax gun laws. Here are some pics from the Binghamton march (photos courtesy of my wife)

 [moment of silence at the memorial for the 13 people shot and killed at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, NY, in 2009]

And here's a pic of my daughter and her friends in D.C.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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