Throws spray, in surfer lingo / SAT 3-7-26 / Dry streambed / Makeup of a plot / You might dance on one / Like the crescendo in Ravel's "Boléro" / Controller of floods in the video game Pharaoh / Low notes, but not the lowest /

Constructor: Fritz Juhnke

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: wadi (which was somehow not the answer to 28D: Dry streambed (WASH)) —

the bed or valley of a stream in regions of southwestern Asia and northern Africa that is usually dry except during the rainy season and that often forms an oasis : GULLY, WASH (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

The fact that WADI and WASH (28D: Dry streambed) are essentially synonyms is just about the cruelest joke the English language ever played on this Saturday solver. I mean ... dry riverbed, Saturday puzzle, starts WA- ... I dropped WADI in there without hesitation. Not only has WADI been in the grid before (91 times, 14 in the Modern Era), you wanna know how it was clued the last time it appeared (2024)? That's right: [Dry streambed]. Same damn clue as today's clue for WASH. The fact that it's been in the grid before is the only way I know the meaning of WADI at all. Learned it from crosswords! I was so proud of WADI. Well, not proud, exactly, but I did think "thank god I solve a lot, that's kind of a tough word." WADI has been [Dry streambed] three times, whereas WASH (which, unlike WADI, has infinite other clue possibilities) has only been clued as a [Dry streambed] once before today. So I don't know what you all were struggling with today, but for me, the WADI / WASH thing was the pro-trap to beat all pro-traps. That "D" made "AM I NUTS?" impossible to see, even with several crosses in place. And an already hard (and bizarre) clue on WHIM (43A: You might dance on one) became impossible with the "I" from WADI in the second position. So while other parts of the puzzle were also challenging, that tiny WASH / WHIM / TWOS section seems, in retrospect, like the most treacherous. 

KRONA / LAND / NOPE wasn't great either. Never know which vowel ("E" or "A") is going to end KRON-, and then LAND ... yeesh, that vague clue (24A: Makeup of a plot). A plot of LAND, I get it, now, but I wanted, like ACRES or DIRT or, I don't know, something, anything more specific than just LAND. Even with "L" and "N" in place, I didn't know. Started thinking of other "plot"s (like, conspiracies). I wish the difficulty on this one hadn't come so much in the fussy short bits of the grid (or, as this crossword insists on calling them, the DOTTED bits). I much prefer to struggle with longer stuff and then have a moment of revelation where a (preferably great) answer bursts forth and really opens up the grid. I got that feeling—struggle, struggle, pow!—only once, really: when I hacked my way to ELM ST. (45A: Location of a notorious 33-Down: Abbr.) and then realized that the answer I couldn't get earlier—the long answer starting with "N" (33D: Cause of a cold sweat, perhaps) was NIGHTMARE! That was fun. About as much fun as I've ever had with cross-referenced clues. No other moment of the solve was so thrilling, though I do think the corners are generally very strong. Loved "SPIT IT OUT!" over "HOLY MOSES!" It's like one half of a dramatic conversation. "SPIT IT OUT!" "[unheard but obviously shocking statement]." "HOLY MOSES!" 

OMNIVERSE is a stupid word since "universe" already means "Totality of everything," but whatever, I got it easily from the "M." CARD SHARK (1A: One who makes a living from fish), is always tricky, esp. if you know that the term is actually CARD SHARP. Actually, both terms get used now, but SHARK is the mutation, I'm pretty sure. 

Phrasefinder puts "card sharp" (or "-sharper") as the slightly earlier usage, with an 1859 citation for "card-sharper" and "card-sharp" in both Britain and in the US, while "card-shark" is cited to 1893 in the US. (wikipedia)

As for the "fish" part of the clue, those are the marks. Was the "fish" bit supposed to clue me in to the fact that the answer was going to involve marine life? Perhaps. That never occurred to me while solving (I actually didn't struggle much with this one because I had the "K" from KRON- before I ever knew that 1A had anything to do with cards). 

[Caravaggio, The Cardsharps, c. 1594]

I had to think for a bit to understand how STAR POWER fit the clue (15A: Screen grab?). I guess the people on the "screen" who "grab" an audience are said to have STAR POWER. Yeah, that must be it. Saw a couple of movies with a lot of STAR POWER over the last two days: On Thursday, there was Crime 101 (Halle Berry, Mark Ruffalo, one of the Hemsworth brothers (please do not ask me to keep them straight), Nick Nolte, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and the great Barry Keoghan (best thing about the movie by far)), and then yesterday there was The Bride! (Bening! Bale! Buckley!—the three B's!—plus Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, and Jake Gyllenhaal). Neither film has been particularly well reviewed but I enjoyed both and really liked The Bride! STAR POWER is actually an important component of that movie, as Frankie, the monster (Bale), has an obsession with a 1930s movie musical star (J. Gyllenhaal), whose movies he goes to see obsessively, living vicariously through the star as a way of combating his own profound loneliness. That's STAR POWER.

POCO A POCO is pretty tough, as musical terms go (17A: Like the crescendo in Ravel's "Boléro"). I can hear Boléro in my head very clearly right now, but I had to infer POCO A POCO from crosses. The phrase is at least vaguely familiar to me. "Little by little"—which is how Boléro builds, at least in volume. The term POCO A POCO does not appear at all on the wikipedia page for Boléro. Someone more musical than I will tell you whether the term is apt. "NO, I INSIST" as an intriguing "OII" string (don't see those too often). Weird lot of first-person business today ("NO, I INSIST," and then "AM I NUTS?" crossing "I'M AN IDIOT"), but I don't have a problem with it. The pun on "smoking" in the RIB JOINTS clue, though (13D: Establishments where smoking is allowed)—that seems kind of forced. Smoking is not "allowed" in RIB JOINTS, it's one of the primary activities of RIB JOINTS. It's essential to RIB JOINTS. Permission is not a relevant issue. Boo to that attempted misdirection, for sure. 

Bullets:

• 19A: What travellers typically have in America? (ONE "L") — a "letteral" clue! Did not see that one coming. I guess if you have to use ugly crosswordese like ONEL, you may as well go ahead and try to make it interesting. As long as "interesting" doesn't mean "awkward and unnecessarily difficult," I don't mind.
• 29A: Controller of floods in the video game Pharaoh (OSIRIS) — had the "O," saw "Pharaoh" in the clue, wrote in OSIRIS. No video game knowledge required.
• 37D: R&B's Braxton (TONI) — I really enjoyed her music in the '90s and early '00s. Listened to this one a lot. Real Anita Baker vibes (extremely complimentary):

• 40A: Sémillon rouge and Médoc noir (MERLOTS) — had the "M" and those seemed ... red ... so guessed MERLOTS. No sweat.
• 62A: Woman central to electioneering? (IONE) — never saw this clue! Weird how you can struggle in some places and absolutely blow through others. Anyway, this is a hidden-name clue: "electioneering."
• 10D: Throws spray, in surfer lingo (SHREDS) — I know this as guitar-playing slang, but I was able to infer it easily enough today (thanks, RABBI and EMOJI!).
• 63A: "Big Little Lies" author Moriarty (LIANE) — a five-letter version of Veronica ROTH, in that she's a popular author whose name I cannot for the life of me remember, ever. I had to leave the final vowel blank here and wait for the cross, as LIANA is also a name one might have.
• 39D: Low notes, but not the lowest (TWOS) — definitely had TENS in here at some point. Completely forgot TWOS existed. I have a bunch of them stashed in the house somewhere, courtesy of someone who decided to make their annual $$$ contribution to this blog in ... unusual fashion. I should just deposit them, but they’re such weird, crisp little curiosities that I feel strangely compelled to hold on to them.

That's all for today. See you next time (and a "Happy" Daylight Saving Time to all of you) (I hate "springing forward" so much, esp. when it happens in winter and not in *&$%ing spring like it's supposed to)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Brit's "bog" / FRI 7-25-25 / 1970s "howcatchem" TV series / Shrub with a "staghorn" variety / D8 pieces in Dungeons & Dragons, e.g. / Reduced demand for refrigerated trucking, in a way / Sheer quantity of awesome / Whack to the head, in slang / Deal with The Devil? / Eponym of the A.L. batting title award / World capital next to the Sarawat mountains

Constructor: Fritz Juhnke

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: not really — there's a "revealer" of sorts, but it doesn't reveal anything except that the black square configurations in the grid are shaped like "T"s (59A: Abstain ... as suggested by the black squares in this puzzle — TEETOTAL)

Word of the Day: Rod CAREW (44D: Eponym of the A.L. batting title award) —

Rodney Cline Carew (born October 1, 1945) is a Panamanian-American former professional baseball player and coach. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a second baseman, first baseman and designated hitter from 1967 to 1985 for the Minnesota Twins and the California Angels. The most accomplished contact hitter in Twins history, he won the 1977 AL Most Valuable Player Award, setting a Twins record with a .388 batting average. Carew appeared in 18 consecutive All-Star Games and led the AL in hits three times, with his 239 hits in 1977 ranking as the 12th most in a season at the time and the 16th most as of 2024, tied with Willie Keeler’s 239 hits from 1897. He won seven AL batting titles, the second most AL batting titles in history behind Ty Cobb, and on July 12, 2016, the AL batting title was renamed to the Rod Carew American League batting title.

In 1977, Carew was named the recipient of the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award for his involvement in local community affairs. On August 4, 1985, he became the 16th member of the 3,000 hit club with a single to left field off Frank Viola. His 3,053 hits are 27th all time, and his career batting average of .328 is 34th all time. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991 in his first year of eligibility; he appeared on upwards of 90 percent of the ballots. He was also elected to the Caribbean Baseball Hall of Fame, Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame, and Angels Hall of Fame. After retiring as a player, Carew served as a coach for the Angels and the Milwaukee Brewers. (wikipedia)

• • •

The showiest part of the grid is the least interesting thing about it. I could feel that the grid was oddly ... shaped? ... that there was something about it that felt highly segmented and less flowing, but I didn't think much about it. Some grids flow some don't. But then to get to the end of the puzzle and have the puzzle go "TADA! There are 'T's everywhere!"—that was a real disappointment. That's why the grid felt weird to navigate and seemed kinda choppy? All for a bad pun? Revealers should reveal something cool, not point out a completely incidental feature that has nothing to do with the solving experience and isn't really thematic at all. Plus, TEETOTAL is a terrible way to reveal the black-square "T"s. You've got the "TEE" in there, but .... TOTAL? What is that? Yes, there is a "TOTAL," that "TOTAL" is eight, so what? Is the revealer trying to say that the "T" configurations are "TOTAL," in that there are no other black-square configurations? That's an awkward way of phrasing it. Anyway, I Do Not Care about your little non-themes in themeless puzzles unless they are super-clever, and I just don't care about the "T"s or see why they're interesting. I thought the puzzle was just fine without all the "T" business. If you want to do something show-offy, make sure it lands.  Perfectly. Otherwise, just let the themeless be a themeless, and let solvers appreciate the shape of the grid on their own terms.

The cluing felt elevated today, like it was actually trying to be a little tough, a little thinky, and I respect that. I was like "oh, we're pushing back a little today, are we? Nice." I never got stuck, but I did feel like I was slower hacking through the grid than I often am on Fridays, and certainly slower than I've been at any time in the past week or so. Some of that resistance came from phrases I don't know or don't really know and certainly don't use, like DOPE SLAP (right up front!) (1A: Whack to the head, in slang) and SLY BOOTS (also up front) (5D: Shifty type). I think of it more as a "D'oh!" slap, and if I'd use any SLY phrase, it would probably be SLY DOG. The BOOTS version feels very antique, which makes an interesting contrast with much of the rest of the grid, which can lean juvenile. Bathroom stuff (LOO, DOO-DOO) and colloquial expressions (EPICNESS) (43A: Sheer quantity of awesome), although tbh I don't really know what generation "EPICNESS" belongs to. Probably not the currently young one. Feels Millennial. I kinda like its slanginess. Gives the grid character. I could've done without SKIN TAG in my grid (32A: Harmless growth). They're unsightly enough on my damn body, I don't need to be reminded of them in my puzzle. (I just have the one, and the doctor once told me how I could remove it myself, and I was like "nope, not a home surgeon in any way shape or form, thx." TMI, I know, but if the puzzle wants to bring it up, then the puzzle should be prepared to have a conversation about it. Those are the rules.

I am a little ... er ... cautiously, warily curious about what the hell "howcatchem" is doing in the COLUMBO clue (38D: 1970s "howcatchem" TV series), because that really feels like a mocking version of Native American-speak. Maybe it's the "How!" part that's throwing me, but "howcatchem" feels like a very typical mid-20c white person's version of how Native Americans speak English, so I hope that's not it. I've watched a bunch of early COLUMBOs and love them, but I have no memory of this particular phrase. [fires up search engine] OK wow, this phrase is not COLUMBO-specific at all. I'm being told that "howcatchem" is the name for an "Inverted Detective Story." It's the counterpart of a "whodunnit." In the latter, you don't know the perpetrator until the end, when there's a big reveal. In a "howcatchem," you know who the killer (or thief or whatever) is from the very start, and the interest in the story lies thus in figuring out not "whodunnit" but (you guessed it) "howcatchem"—that is, how the detective is going to catch the bad guy. I did not know this category of crime show had a name at all. And I've taught crime fiction for years. I have to say, where "whodunnit" sounds great, "howcatchem" sounds awkward as hell, and I will not be using it. But I'm semi-happy to learn it exists, I suppose. And I'm semi-happy with the puzzle overall. No answers really stood out as winners, but there was an overall solidness and smoothness (if not EPICNESS) that I appreciated.

Bullets:

• 9A: Noted doomsday prepper (NOAH) — I know you're being cute here, but the whole "prepper" phenomenon is something I don't even want to hear about, esp. after one of those "preppers" assassinated MN state rep Melissa Hortman in her home. Am I being unfair to the "prepper community"? Oh well. I'll be sure to try real hard to work on my "heavily armed weirdo extremist" tolerance.
• 18A: Attention magnet, say (CELEB) — this is not really a "say"-appropriate clue. "Perhaps," perhaps. Anyone might be an "attention magnet." CELEB is not another word for "attention magnet." It's a very specific kind of "attention magnet." I think the clue would actually work much better in reverse. [Celeb, say] for ATTENTION MAGNET. Also, even as I type that, I realize that there is no abbr. indicator in the clue for CELEB, and it really feels like there should be.
• 37A: Reduced demand for refrigerated trucking, in a way (ATE LOCAL) — loved this. Wordy, yes, but pointedly environmentalist, in an original way. Also, slightly tough. Approved.
• 49A: Shrub with a "staghorn" variety (SUMAC) — how would I know the "varieties" of SUMAC, I barely know what SUMAC is to begin with. Unless it's YMA SUMAC:

• 8D: Center of a drupe (PIT) — "drupe" is a great word that doesn't get nearly enough crossword love. Speaking of crosswordy words, did you know that SLOE is a drupe? It's true! I learned this while making an episode of my extremely short-lived podcast called "On the Grid" (way back in '17) with my good friend Lena. We did a whole segment on SLOE, which included making a SLOE gin fizz live ("live") on air. Extremely good times (episode 2, here). Anyway, a drupe is just a stonefruit.
• 10D: D8 pieces in Dungeons & Dragons, e.g. (OCTAHEDRA) — eight-sided three-dimensional shapes. "D8" = eight-sided die. Real "8" theme going here today, with the D&D dice and the OCTET of scorpion legs and what not. 
• 12D: When squirrels may thermoregulate by splooting (HEAT WAVE) — speaking of HEAT WAVE, we're having one, ugh. Speaking of splooting ... in the grid when??? 

[no SPLOOTING or SPLOOTED either]

• 31D: "Sometimes" has two of them (SILENT "E"s) — not the puzzle's finest hour. The SILENT [letter] is hard enough to take on its own, without its becoming a plural.
• 21A: Deal with The Devil? (TAROT) — because "The Devil" is a card in the TAROT deck (which you "deal" when doing readings)

• 47D: World capital next to the Sarawat Mountains (SANA'A) — this is just crossword muscle. Do enough crosswords, and you'll build up a good store of short world capital names. I'd venture to guess that SANA'A is the most popular (commonly occurring) of all 5-letter world capital names. Although ACCRA, HANOI, SEOUL and CAIRO might also be vying for that title. Let's check! Ooh, it looks like HANOI is way out in front (115 appearances in Modern Era). 38 for SEOUL, 56 for ACCRA, 61 for CAIRO, and just 29 for SANA'A, but SANA'A is a weird one, since it often appears in four-letter form as well. Don't ask me how that's legal, but it is. Anyway, if you add SANA's 47 appearances to SANA'A's 29 ... well, it's still well behind HANOI. All hail HANOI, king of the world capital 5s.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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