Psychotherapy switcheroos / MON 2-23-26 / South American barbecue / Time machine car in "Back to the Future" / Fruit with a "bellybutton" / Rude goodbye to an enemy / Text on a red, white and blue sticker / Root used in making poi / Object hitting people's heads in old cartoons / British singer Rita

Constructor: Hannah Binney

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: ROLE REVERSALS (37A: Psychotherapy switcheroos ... or what are hidden in 17-, 25-, 50- and 59-Across?) — "ROLE" appears backward in four answers:

Theme answers:

• BACHELOR PAD (17A: Home for a single guy)
• THE LORAX (25A: Dr. Seuss book with the quote "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.")
• DELOREAN (50A: Time machine car in "Back to the Future")
• NAVAL ORANGE (59A: Fruit with a "bellybutton")

Word of the Day: ASADO (54D: South American barbecue) —

Asado (Spanish: [aˈsaðo]) is the technique and the social event of having or attending a barbecue in various South American countries: especially Argentina and Uruguay where it is also a traditional event, as well as Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul), Chile and Paraguay. An asado usually consists of beef, pork, chicken, chorizo, and morcilla, all of which are cooked using an open fire or a grill, called a parrilla. Usually, red wine and side dishes such as salads accompany the main meats, which are prepared by a designated cook called the asador or parrillero. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't think I've ever had less to say about a theme. Yes, those are "ROLE"s going backwards inside their answers. ROLE ... REVERSALS. Got it. Very literal. So literal, I can't believe it hasn't been done before. Oh look, it has: April 10, 2012 (NAVEL ORANGE was even one of the themers). Sigh. Look, no one is going to remember. *I* didn't even remember. I just have a sense about these things. But still, I do think the minimum due diligence a constructor should do before making a puzzle for the NYTXW is to run the revealer (and possibly a themer or two) through the NYTXW database to see if it's been done before. If it has, the whole thing should be D.O.A. Unless my idea radically improves on the core concept, I can't see trotting out a theme I know has been done before, even if I know almost no one's going to know. It would just feel bad. But I guess one way around not feeling bad about it is not checking at all. In that case, you might expect the editors to check. Maybe they did and didn't care. Seems possible. On the one hand, who cares, it's been a long time. On the other, there are constructors and aspiring constructors out there trying to get their puzzles published, getting rejection after rejection, and it must be at least slightly demoralizing to see some other constructor succeed with what is essentially a recycled theme. Anyway, the ROLEs, they go backward. Ho + hum. Would've been more impressive if the reversed ROLEs had broken across two words each time (as in THE LORAX or NAVEL ORANGE) instead of just half the time, but if we're not going for originality, we certainly aren't going for elegance. The grid is solid. It's a Monday. Whatever. Moving on.

The one thing that makes this puzzle stand out is "SEE YOU NEVER," a phrase I don't really get. I think I've heard it? Maybe? But it really doesn't sound like something you'd say to an "enemy." Maybe someone you don't care for and don't want to see again, but an "enemy" ... that's someone you're probably going to see again. That's someone you are involved with in some way. I want to like this phrase because of its originality, but I wouldn't use it and don't quite understand who would, so it's a bit of a miss for me. I think I'm just deeply disappointed that the answer wasn't what I really wanted it to be: "SEE YOU IN HELL!" Now that's got some real enemy energy to it.

The other long Down, LOBSTER TRAP, is also a standout (27D: Cage for crustaceans). Like "SEE YOU NEVER," it's an original. If you can't give 'em an original theme, at least give 'em original long Downs. That seems to be the theory today. For a five-themer puzzle, this one has pretty decent fill. Lots of short repeaters, I guess, but I've seen worse.

[41A: Text on a red, white and blue sticker]

The Downs-only experience was pretty much a cinch. There was a brief struggle with getting the phrasing on "SEE YOU NEVER" right, and "BOOYAH!" was not front of my brain either—needed several inferred crosses to pick that one up. Beyond that, though, there were very few problems. I had ASADA before ASADO and would never have discovered that error if PASED had been a thing (69A: Sat for a portrait = POSED). That SE corner also had a cross-referenced clue (63D: 63-Down, in this puzzle) that I thought was going to be thematic. But no, it's just the last Down clue. I never END on the last Down clue, so the presumption that 63-Down is in fact the END seems, well, presumptuous. Errant, in my case. But I figured out what they wanted. In the END. HEAT UP was the only other Down answer that didn't come to me pretty much straight away, but with every other Down in place, the "H" and "E" were clear, and from there, HEAT UP wasn't hard to see. The END.

Bullets:

• 50A: Time machine car in "Back to the Future" (DELOREAN) — I know I posted this yesterday but I'm compelled to repost it today because the core premise of this movie (Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which I saw on Saturday and loved) is that the two main characters build a time machine modeled specifically on the DELOREAN in Back to the Future. There's also a throwaway Teen Wolf reference in the movie, just to intensify the Michael J. Fox content—the movie is intensely committed to its Canadianness, which is perhaps not surprising, since it's Canadian and takes place entirely in Canada (mostly Toronto, though there's some talk of going to Ottawa).

• 54D: South American barbecue (ASADO) — with an "O," it's the name of the barbecue per se; with an "A" (ASADA), it's just an adjective meaning "roasted," usually clued as the second part of the phrase [Carne ___] ("roasted meat"). The "A" version is much more common, but also much more recent (probably owing to the increasing popularity of "Carne ASADA" on Mexican restaurant menus in the U.S. in this century. There have been six (6) ASADO appearances in the NYTXW, stretching all the way back to 1948 (!), whereas there have been thirty-seven (37) ASADA appearances, but the first appearances wasn't until 2009. So ASADA arrived in the NYTXW sixty-one years after ASADO, but then quickly blew past it in terms of total appearances.
• 28A: ___ Today (USA) — OK, it's at least a little bit funny that USA is followed immediately in this puzzle by ... USB (29A: Kind of computer port). You know, there's a USC, a USD, a USE ... Note to constructors: I'm not saying you should build a theme around this concept somehow, but I'm also not saying you shouldn't.

[51D: Object hitting people's heads in old cartoons]

That's all, folks. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Actress Noblezada of "Hadestown" / MON 12-1-25 / Emu relative / Supercomputer precursor / Country where sticky rice is a staple / "Remedy" for a riled-up person / Hip person, in old slang / Third-smallest country in the world (eight square miles) / "You should come foraging with me, because I'm a ___" (bad pun)

Constructor: Hannah Binney

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: COLD FRONT (64A: Cause of some wintry weather ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 40- and 51-Across) — "front" (first words) of theme answers are words associated with "cold":

Theme answers:

• CHILL PILL (17A: "Remedy" for a riled-up person)
• FROZEN ACCOUNT (24A: Penalty for bank fraud)
• COOL CAT (40A: Hip person, in old slang)
• POLAR OPPOSITE (51A: Antithesis)

Word of the Day: NAURU (11D: Third-smallest country in the world (eight square miles)) —

Nauru, officially the Republic of Nauru, formerly known as Pleasant Island, is an island country and microstate in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies within the Micronesia subregion of Oceania, with its nearest neighbour being Banaba (part of Kiribati) about 300 kilometres (190 mi) to the east.

With an area of only 21 square kilometres (8.1 sq mi), Nauru is the third-smallest country in the world, larger than only Vatican City and Monaco, making it the smallest republic and island nation, as well as the smallest member state of the Commonwealth of Nations by both area and population. Its population of about 10,800 is the world's third-smallest (not including colonies or overseas territories). Nauru is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States.

Settled by Micronesians circa 1000 BC, Nauru was annexed and claimed as a colony by the German Empire in the late 19th century. After World War I, Nauru became a League of Nations mandate administered by Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. During World War II, Nauru was occupied by Japanese troops and was bypassed by the Allied advance across the Pacific. After the war ended, the country entered into United Nations trusteeship. Nauru gained its independence in 1968. At various points since 2001, it has accepted aid from the Australian Government in exchange for hosting the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, a controversial offshore Australian immigration detention facility. As a result of heavy dependence on Australia, some sources have identified Nauru as a client state of Australia.

Nauru is a phosphate-rock island with rich deposits near the surface, which allowed easy strip mining operations for over a century. However, this has seriously harmed the country's environment, causing it to suffer from what is often referred to as the "resource curse". The phosphate was exhausted in the 1990s, and the remaining reserves are not economically viable for extraction. A trust established to manage the island's accumulated mining wealth, set up for the day the reserves would be exhausted, has diminished in value. To earn income, Nauru briefly became a tax haven and illegal money laundering centre.

• • •

Happy December, everyone. This was a step down from recent Mondays, which have been quite good. The concept is fine—any phrase with "front" or "back" ("head" or "rear" or "first" or "last" or the like) is apt to set off theme ideas in a constructor's head. I'm slightly stunned that no one has seen the theme possibilities in COLD FRONT before today (at least no one in NYTXW history). Once you get the idea in your head, all you gotta do is find words meaning "cold" at the "front" or ordinary two-word phrases (ideally, phrases that are not themselves associated with "cold"). COOL, POLAR, and FROZEN do just fine as first words today, as they are all rough synonyms of "cold." Which brings me to CHILL, which is the puzzle's one weakness. CHILL is a verb, or a noun, but unlike COOL, POLAR, and FROZEN, it is much less often an adjective. CHILLY and CHILLED, OK, but even though dictionary says CHILL can be adjectival, it doesn't feel adjectival, probably because no one uses it adjectivally except perhaps in formal or poetic situations. Every example Merriam-Webster dot com gives of CHILL as an adjective has me thinking "but you mean 'chilly'? people would say 'chilly' there" (well, Thomas Gray might not have said "chilly," but Thomas Gray has been dead for 250 years).

The one common adjectival use of CHILL these days is the one that has nothing to do with "cold" (M-W's definition 2.5: "having a laid-back style or easy manner"). Today's CHILL aberration might be a lot less wart-y if the set as a whole was varied in terms of parts of speech—if ICE, for instance, had been one of the first words, or SNOW. But when your revealer is COLD FRONT and you've decided to make 3/4 of your first words synonyms for COLD, that one not-convincingly-a-synonym first word stands out like a thumb that is sore (where did that idiom come from? do "sore thumbs" really stand out so much? your thumb could be quite sore and still look just like all your other digits). Maybe if CHILL PILL had been a truly original answer, I'd've been more warmly disposed to it, but this is already the fourth time I've seen it (first NYTXW appearance: 2011!). Anyway, the concept here was basic and the execution slightly lackluster. The longer Downs add some loveliness here and there—MAINFRAME + OIL DRUM is a colorful pair, and GRACE NOTE adds a nice bit of cruciverbial flair. It's a perfectly serviceable puzzle. Just not as snappy and polished as Mondays have been of late.

[OK, it looks like Brian ENO, of all people, would like to have a word with me about "CHILL"'s adjectival potential... not now, Brian!]

The fill gets rough (tired, stale) in many places today because of the preponderance of 3-4-5s. Lots of ASLAN-TAKEI-ECO-type patches. The SW is probably the most conspicuously unimaginative. You've got a small corner there but somehow have managed to pack it with crosswordese: AHA OHARE IRENE SEXTS and ENT? Doesn't feel like the constructor's really trying here. If pulling that "X" makes the corner even a little bit less dreary, for god's sake Pull The "X." There's nothing here that's gonna make you want to quit, or throw your puzzle across the room, but there's an overall flatness to the fill that makes the solve mostly ho-hum. 

As a Downs-only experience, this wasn't too tough, except in the NE, where I got an extremely small country next to an actress I have never heard of (10D: Actress Noblezada of "Hadestown" = EVA). Not used to seeing actresses I've never heard of On A Monday, but ... I guess it happens. Shrug. Bummer to get shut out by what ends up being just another piece of crosswordese, but luckily I could infer all the letters of EVA with relative ease—that first letter was a total guess, but EVA seemed much more likely than IVA (a name that lives at the front of my mind because I've read The Maltese Falcon a million times, but one that is far less common than EVA irl, and in the grid).  As for NAURU ... bah. Just couldn't dredge it up very easily. Had the terminal "U" but the only thing that came to mind was MACAU, which is a special administrative region in China, not a proper country. But once I got DIG IN and SLEPT into that corner, MACAU came out, and with MAGIC ACT in place, I could see GAUGE, and somehow that "U" jogged NAURU loose in my brain. No other part of the grid gave me any real trouble. It took a lot of inferred crosses for me to see MAINFRAME, but it often takes a lot of inferred crosses to see long Downs when you're solving Downs-only. Nothing unusual there.

Bullets:

• 14A: Ingredient in some smoothie bowls (ACAI) — so glad I didn't read the Across clues, because wtaf is a "smoothie bowl"??? I know what a smoothie is and I have at least heard of an ACAI bowl, but a "smoothie bowl." LOL at the phrase "some smoothie bowls," like I've been encountering them all my life and know them by subsets. Apparently this is some social-media-driven trend—eating with a spoon what you formerly just drank with a straw? Mkay. Enjoy. I'm gonna stick with oatmeal or granola with fruit, yogurt, nuts ... unblendered, thanks. I looked up "smoothie" bowls and half the descriptions feel like they were written by A.I. Are we sure "smoothie bowls" aren't actually an A.I. hallucination. Here is a representative description. Hopefully you see what I mean.

S

moothie bowls are trendy worldwide, providing both nutrition, the possibility to enjoy them, and endless creativity. 

• 59A: "You should come foraging with me, because I'm a ___" (bad pun) (FUNGI) — again, thank god I wasn't reading the Across clues. "You should come foraging with me," that's your premise / come-on line? No one who talks like this is, in fact, a fun guy. Also, the pun sucks on the page because FUNGI is a plural. Only guys named Gus may use this pun. "I'm a FUNGUS!" Sure you are...
• 69A: Sends an eggplant emoji, say (SEXTS) — no. stop. this is corny. I get that eggplant emoji means "dick" but I thought SEXTS were supposed to be actually sexy. Is anyone getting horny from looking at an eggplant emoji? That might make someone laugh, but I have trouble imagining it would turn anyone on. I would love to retire the word "SEXT/S" in general, as it moved from novel to overused long ago, but once OOXTEPLERNON (the god of short bad fill) gets a new and useful letter combination in his maw, it's hard to get him to let go. 

That's all. See you next time. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. a reminder that ELI Selzer, one of the writers who fills in for me here at the RP blog when I'm on vacation or otherwise indisposed, is going to be on Jeopardy! tomorrow night (Tuesday, 12/2/25), so look for him!  

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Fancy one-handed basketball shot / MON 10-6-25 / Cat's little pink paws, cutesily / Skaters who do lifts and twizzles / Ralph who ran for president four times / Whoopi's role in 1985's "The Color Purple" / Sun phenomenon that can cause radio blackouts / Popular brand of hiking sandals

Constructor: Hannah Binney

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: PEOPLE FOOD (59A: What a dog desires from the dinner table ... or a hint to 17-, 25-, 36- and 47-Across) — familiar phrases made out of a body part (i.e. parts of "PEOPLE") and a FOOD:

Theme answers:

• FINGER ROLL (17A: Fancy one-handed basketball shot)
• ARM CANDY (25A: Good-looking companion on the red carpet, say)
• KNUCKLE SANDWICH (36A: Punch in the mouth, slangily)
• TOE BEANS (47A: Cat's little pink paws, cutesily)

Word of the Day: twizzle (28D: Skaters who do lifts and twizzles = ICE DANCERS) —

 

A twizzle is "a multirotational, one-foot turn that moves across the ice" in the sport of figure skating. First performed by David Grant in 1990, the International Skating Union (ISU) defines a twizzle as "a traveling turn on one foot with one or more rotations which is quickly rotated with a continuous (uninterrupted) action". It is most often performed in ice dance, although single skaters and pair skaters also perform the element. Twizzles have been called "the quads of ice dance" because like quadruple jumps in other disciplines, twizzles are risky and technically demanding.

• • •

[George "The Iceman" Gervin]

Ah, I like this one, mainly because it reminds me of my former dogs and current cats. My cats want nothing, or very little, to do with PEOPLE FOOD. Alfie will lick an ice cream bowl, sort of, sometimes, but mostly they just want their cat food. Or their treats, they really live for those Greenies. Every morning, after second breakfast (yes, second breakfast, don't ask), Ida gets up on the counter while I'm making coffee in anticipation of a little game I call "playing treats." "You wanna play Treats?," I ask. She does. So I get out the little plastic carton (we buy them in bulk), and I shake a few into my palm and then I bounce them across the counter and onto the floor and she chases them like they're prey. Alfie needs to have his Treats handed to him daintily. He does not play Treats. Too lazy, or too dignified, not sure which. But Ida goes sliding across the kitchen tiles, or the wooden floors, swatting and batting and devouring every treat I throw for her. But PEOPLE FOOD? ...  I've seen these damned cats turn their nose up at tuna. Honest-to-god tuna, and they're like "meh, where is kibble and/or Treats!?" Weirdos. My dogs, on the other hand, would eat anything. Dog food, PEOPLE FOOD, cat food, dish towels that got soaked in turkey drippings, whatever. But only the cats have TOE BEANS. Alfie has the best TOE BEANS. His paw pads are all dark except one on his forepaw, which is pink, so he has a special weird toe bean. My daughter once had a t-shirt made for me, based on the (now long canceled) TV show Alphas, that said "ALFIES" on it. It mimicked the logo of the show (multiple cat silhouettes instead of multiple human silhouettes) and then had a little cat paw icon with Alfie's signature toe bean anomaly. Here I am wearing the shirt at an Elvis Costello concert a few years back, the only time I've ever been recognized by anyone outside of a crossword tournament (Elaine here was like "I know you" and I'm like "uh ... I don't think so" and she says "Rex Parker?" and I was like "Whoa, yes, OK, hi.")

And here is Proof of Toe Bean:

Today's revealer really did its job. I thought there was some kind of hand theme going on—I had the FINGER and KNUCKLE answers and didn't recognize ARM CANDY was even part of the theme, so when I hit PEOPLE FOOD, the whole concept locked into place. I hadn't even thought about the food angle. When I'm solving Downs-only, I don't tend to think too hard about the (Across) themers unless / until I have to. So the revealer revealed, and all the theme answers are interesting phrases, and the grid is clean, and I didn't get tripped up anywhere, so I'm pretty happy.

[Dutchess and Gabby eying the PEOPLE FOOD]

I had one initial error today. I wrote in "DON'T STAND" (?) instead of "DON'T GET UP" (3D: "Stay seated"). I got out of that one when I ended up with SENE at 23A, which is obviously not a thing. At first I thought maybe EPIC was wrong (24D: "Beowulf" or the "Iliad"), but then I decided STAND was wrong, and GET UP slid right into its place. I didn't make a mistake with WENT, but I balked at it and refused to write it in because the clue seemed off (39D: Left the area). I mean ... [Left] would do just as well. What's this "the area" stuff?? It adds nothing. That's a better clue for, say, WENT AWAY, not just WENT. So as I say, I just left it, and ended up finishing with it, which is why it's highlighted in today's answer grid (above) (the highlighted answer is almost always the very last thing I entered in the grid—I just leave the cursor where it is, take a screenshot, and that's that).

[10D: Music genre for Bob Marley]

Additional notes:

• 31A: Whoopi's role in 1985's "The Color Purple" (CELIE) — this seems hard for a Monday. I never saw it, as it's an Across answer. I think I would've remembered the name, but I'm not sure. It's funny (-ish) that CELIE is the second Whoopi role I can think of that appears from time to time in crosswords. The other is ODA Mae Brown, the character she played in Ghost (for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar) (ODA is also old school crosswordese, most often clued as [Harem room] or [Seraglio section]). CELIE has now appeared in the NYTXW 14 times, all of them with a Color Purple-related clue.
• 33D: Secret compartment, informally (HIDEY HOLE) — one of a very nice set of four long Downs today. Here's Chippy, our resident (front porch) chipmunk, in his HIDEY HOLE (of sorts):

• 43A: Popular brand of hiking sandals (TEVA) — the very phrase "hiking sandals" sounds like an oxymoron to me, but as someone who has developed toe (bean) blisters lately due to semi-dramatic increase in walking, I may have to look into some free-toe alternative to normal footwear. Or else just tape my toes. Or get a shoe with a wider toe box. Or just lie around on the couch watching movies and stop walking altogether. Somehow running (which I also do) has never given me blisters, but walking ... bah. I feel betrayed by walking, honestly.

Thanks to Rafa and Eli for filling in for me while I recovered from facial surgery that was way more ... involved (and gruesome) than I thought it would be. Basal cell carcinoma on the nose ... I've had better times at the doctor! Anyway, I get to wear a nose bandage for a couple weeks, so I'm gonna get a fedora and a suit and pretend I'm Jake Gittes from Chinatown. I'm sure that reference will go over Big with my students.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Wish for a romantic pairing between, in modern parlance / MON 12-30-24 / Purple yam common in Filipino cooking / Flower that reflects yellow when held under one's chin / Snakelike fish / Cry made while pointing / Waiter's imperative after bringing food

Constructor: Hannah Binney

Relative difficulty: Challenging (as a Downs-only solve)

THEME: HOLD WATER (61A: Make logical sense ... or what the ends of 18-, 23-, 38- and 51-Across do) — last words of themers are all things that can, indeed, HOLD WATER:

Theme answers:

• BUTTERCUP (18A: Flower that reflects yellow when held under one's chin)
• HOURGLASS (23A: Primitive timer)
• PRO BOWL (38A: N.F.L. all-star game)
• THINK TANK (51A: Place for policy wonks)

Word of the Day: UBE (63D: Purple yam common in Filipino cooking) —

Dioscorea alata – also called ube (/ˈuːbɛ, -beɪ/), ubi, purple yam, or greater yam, among many other names – is a species of yam (a tuber). The tubers are usually a vivid violet-purple to bright lavender in color (hence the common name), but some range in color from cream to plain white. It is sometimes confused with taro and the Okinawa sweet potato beniimo (紅芋) (Ipomoea batatas cv. Ayamurasaki), however D. alata is also grown in Okinawa. With its origins in the Asian and Oceanian tropics, D. alata has been known to humans since ancient times. // Because it has become naturalized following its origins in Asia, specifically the Philippines, through tropical South America, and the southeastern U.S., D. alata is referred to by many different names in these regions. In English alone, aside from purple yam, other common names include ten-months yam, water yam, white yam, winged yam, violet yam, Guyana arrowroot, or simply yam. (wikipedia)

• • •

Gah, I got done in by UBE, which is a bummer, because I have actually eaten UBE very recently. Well, UBE flavored chocolates, anyway. Our daughter recently brought home delicious chocolates from chocolatier Daniel Corpuz. I think she got them from the Union Square Holiday Market. I might have that part wrong. Looks like his regular location is on Canal Street. Annnnnnyway, fancy chocolates, I've had fancy chocolates before, they're generally fine, OK, but this guy's chocolates—his flavors—really stopped us in our tracks. Very special, subtle, beautiful. How does this relate to crosswords!? Well, Daniel Corpuz is Filipino-American, and one of his signature creations is [drumroll] the UBE bon-bon. Look at these babies!

UBE is just one of the many unconventional (to my palate) flavors he uses in his chocolates. Delicious. And yet today, I totally forgot UBE. I see "yam" in a clue and three letters, I go straight for OCA (it's a crossword thing—also a delicious thing, a very New Zealand thing, but that's another story). And remember I'm doing this Downs-only, so I'm getting no help from crosses. I can see OCA is wrong, and I get the answer down to -BE, but ... I go with OSAGE rather than USAGE, leaving me with OBE instead of UBE. And that was that. Downs-only failure. And that was after really struggling all over the place, in ways that I am not used to. Real real trouble parsing SO-AND-SO, made worse by the fact that, faced with HOL-WATER, can you guess what letter I assumed went there!?!? Yeah, you see it, I know you see it: I went with HOLY WATER. I mean, I was *super* confident about HOLY WATER. So that's one wrong letter in SO-AND-SO, and I only had two other letters that I was confident about (luckily those were correct). Lots of pulling letters and trying new letters, trial and error, before I got the huge "AHA" of SO-AND-SO ... only to have my elation come crashing down when I did not get the "Congratulations" message for successful completion. Had to check the Acrosses to see where I'd f'd up. UBE seems hard for a Monday. It's appeared only one other time in the Modern Era, and that was on a Saturday. But I'm not mad at the puzzle, I'm mad at me for enjoying delicious UBE chocolates and then totally blanking on UBE when I needed it. Real humbling experience today. But for real, if you're in the NYC area, you need to go get some Daniel Corpuz chocolates, ASAP. Phenomenal. 

The theme felt just SO-SO (side note: having both SO-SO and SO-AND-SO in the same grid feels not so good). Lots of vessels HOLD WATER. The progression here makes no logical sense to me. I guess they get ... what, bigger? ... as they go along, but CUP and GLASS are basically the same thing, and then BOWL? I guess if you're a dog, sure, water BOWL. And then TANK. I dunno. These vessels seem arbitrary. Also, these vessels hold lots of things besides water. The whole thing just didn't feel that tight. The grid as a whole, though, has a pretty springy, youthful feel, a fresh, up-to-date vibe that I kinda liked. I'm basically just proud that I nailed SHIP with no crosses, despite the fact that that bit of slang is not native to me At All (56D: Wish for a romantic pairing between, in modern parlance). I know it from my daughter and my students and, like, the air. The ambient digital world that surrounds me. I also loved MOCKTAILS and ROOTROT (I know, weird to love ROOTROT, but it's just a great-sounding term) (for context: my favorite word as a child was "mediocre"). And SO-AND-SO, despite being hard as hell to parse, is still a fun bit of euphemistic slang (43D: No-goodnik). I've got no complaints about the fill on this one. It's more challenging fare than you find in most Mondays, but it's also got more character than most Monday fill does.

There were a couple of clues, though, that just meant absolutely nothing to me. Why are you holding a BUTTERCUP (or any flower) under your chin? Like, why that location, specifically? Huge shrug there. Also, even huger shrug on the alleged expression, "All you need is love and a CAT." Uh, what? Who said that, when? It's an "old saying?" I'm old. And I have cats. Why haven't I heard it? Look, here's one of my cats now:

That's Alfie. Alfie hasn't heard this "old saying" either. It's not even a good saying. Where's the surprise, the twist, the wordplay? I just don't know why we're holding flowers under our chins and saying banal things about cats today. 

Bullets:

• 21D: Canadian province that's home to the Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site (ALBERTA) — I almost made "Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site" my Word of the Day today. I can't begin to imagine what that is. Ah, I should've guessed. Indigenous people used to kill bison by basically driving them off a cliff. So "jump" is maybe a little bit of a misnomer. 
• 57D: Pepsi or Coke (COLA) — man that SODA / COLA kealoa* really hits hard when you're solving Downs-only. Luckily, the adjacent answers eventually made it clear which one was correct today.
• 6D: Creatures that are actually black with white stripes (ZEBRAS) — so ... not PANDAS, then? No, I know PANDAS aren't really striped, or striped at all, I was just kidding, of course I didn't write in PANDAS, shut up.
• 10D: Advances (INROADS) — another one that was super-tough from a Downs-only perspective. Think of all the things that "Advances" can mean, and think how many of those you'd list before you got to INROADS.
• 13D: "I understand you" ("COPY") — again, wicked with no help from crosses. "I SEE"? No, the clue's got "I" in it, so that's not right. OK, I see it ends in "Y" so ... ---Y? ---Y? "OH MY!"? Was not aware we were on walkie-talkies. 
• 29D: Units of force (NEWTONS) — ah, Physics. The only thing I won a prize for in college! (bizarre fact—I had to take a science course to fulfill my Gen Ed requirements, so I went with Physics I my senior year and the homework was soooooooo much different from my regular humanities courses—a lot less reading, a lot more problem-solving—that I "procrastinated" from my "real" homework by doing my Physics homework and ended up with the highest grade in the class and they somehow gave a cash prize for that at graduation?? Did I fever-dream this? (I did not). Anyway, I managed to retain the fact that NEWTONS are a thing, though I did not remember it until I got that "W" from PRO BOWL.

• 40D: Cry made while pointing ("LOOK!") — more Downs-only trouble. I had the "K" but I thought the first letter was "O" because I had inferred 38-Across not as PRO BOWL but as PRO BONO (argh). So instead of pointing and going "LOOK!" I was pointing and going "OH, OK!" and go ahead, try it, it doesn't make much sense. I did it just now and laughed out loud. It's like you're making fun and / or complimenting someone's outfit. "OH, OK! Wow. Yeah, I see you! That is ... something!"
• 53D: "The early bird gets the worm," for one (ADAGE) — in which I discover a new kealoa*: the ADAGE / AXIOM kealoa*. As you can see, Downs-only was a struggle for me today.
• 31D: Snakelike fish (EELS) — a disguised plural? On top of everything else, Monday? Come on, man. 

On to the Holiday Pet Pics now (I opened up submissions again briefly yesterday but they're closed again now—y'all are enthusiastic about your pet pics!). 

Latte is a recent adoptee spending her first Holiday season in her new home. Have you ever tried gift-wrapping a cat? It's very tricky.

[Thanks, John]

Felix the Somnolent (a properly imperial title) enjoys reigning from underneath the tree, from which his ornament minions do his bidding.

[Thanks, Roger]

Lola has already been in Holiday Pet Pics this year, but she's cute, she can get away with it.

[Thanks, Mimi]

Bunny! Bunny is a recent rescue, and he is on a "serious weight reduction diet." Here's a picture of him *not* getting the "good treats." (He will remember this indignity for years to come)

[Thanks Joe (and Emily)]

Our last two goofy furballs are Winnie and Rocky. They are brother and sister. I'm told Winnie wanted to be on the blog, but her older brother Rocky did not give a damn. "I ain't waking up to pose for no damn 'blog'! Who even reads 'blogs' anymore? You people are weird. Just take your picture and leave me alone." Winnie says he doesn't really mean it, but I think he might.

[Thanks, Ben]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. BIG IF TRUE !! —

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] => ATON or ALOT, ["Git!"] => "SHOO" or "SCAT," etc.   

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