Jazz pianist Hines / WED 9-9-20 / Upscale section of airport / Spice that comes in stars / Fermented milk drink / Holder of mitochondria

Constructor: Jakob Weisblat

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (low 4s)

THEME: September 9 — clues are all [99, in [some field]]; today's date is 9/9:

Theme answers:

• EINSTEINIUM (17A: 99, in chemistry)
• NAMES OF ALLAH (28A: 99, in Islam)
• WAYNE GRETZKY (47A: 99, in hockey)
• LUFTBALLONS (60A: 99, in pop music) 

Word of the Day: DFC (38A: U.S.A.F. honor) —

The Distinguished Flying Cross is a military decoration awarded to any officer or enlisted member of the United States Armed Forces who distinguishes himself or herself in support of operations by "heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight, subsequent to November 11, 1918." (wikipedia)

• • •

Nine is my favorite number, so this puzzle should've been pleasing to me. And yet. And yet. And yet this answer set feels totally arbitrary and not terribly interesting. I love remembering '80s music as much as the next person, but something about this concept felt tinny and cheap. And the fill had some highs (a few of the longer Downs), but enough awful lows that those were the things I remembered. DEP? (22A: Terminal abbr.) Is that short for "departure"??? Yikes. I generally look at a screen marked "Arrivals" and "Departures," and can't recall seeing that exact abbr. at a "terminal." I genuinely thought it was short for "DEPot" (as in "train depot") before I started writing this paragraph. Note: DEP hasn't been clued as an abbr. for "Departures" since Before I Started Blogging (mid-2006). It's always short for "deposit" (as in "bank deposit"). There's one sheriff DEPuty in there too. You'd think you'd've gone with SEP today—I mean ... look at your theme. Then there was DFC, which was just a random series of letters. I thought, after nearly fourteen years of writing every day about the NYTXW, that I'd seen the entire alphabet-soup collection of three-letter military award abbrs. (truly the junk drawer of crosswordese), but DFC, wow, you gotta go back to 1999 to find an appearance of that little gem. LLCS is probably clued correctly (56D: Hybrid business entities: Abbr.) but financial abbrs. (again, junk drawer) are not my thing and also even financial experts will have to agree (I insist) that the plural here is yuck. The worst thing about the grid for me was PEEP (1D: Look-see). I wrote in PEEK. Because that's the best answer. It swaps out perfectly: "Let's have a look-see," "Let's have a PEEK." See. Perfect. "Let's have a PEEP"!?!?! That's something you say to a baby chick who refuses to come in on cue in your poultry chorus. I get that eyes are "peepers," but yuck and ugh. I had KENCAP at 19A: Something removed before signing (PEN CAP) and just stared. All the crosses were correct, as far as I was concerned. What the hell was a KENCAP? Well, it's nothing. A typo for "kneecap," maybe.

Monday's puzzle had a gratuitous reference to so-called "right-to-work" laws, which are some anti-union right-wing bullshit, and today, right up front at 1-Across, we get a right-wing PAC: Citizens United. Look, if you thought the racism and sexism and other garbage that creeps into the NYTXW from time to time was just a matter of ignorance or well-intentioned misunderstanding about word meaning, maybe it's time you start to rethink this. There's no reason, with either of the clues I've mentioned, to showcase right-wing bullshit. You can clue PAC and WORK just fine without doing flak work for bad-faith political orgs. This kind of cluing is highly intentional. As shorthand for a landmark Supreme Court decision, Citizens United is fine. I was actually thinking "what's a three-letter abbr. for a Supreme Court decision? DEC???" But as a PAC, it's garbage. Corporations aren't people and "right-to-work" is some Orwellian nonsense. 

What else. Oh, I misspelled GRETSKY, like so. That made me think 34D: Something that just might work (CRAZY IDEA) was a CRASH ... something. I might even have written in CRASH IDEA before I got wise to my screw-up. And that's it. That's all I've got on this one. Happy September 9th, I guess.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Indian crepes / TUE 11-12-19 / 1960s activist Hoffman / Scottish funeral accompanist / Item with dollar sign on it in cartoons

Constructor: Gabrielle Friedman and Jakob Weisblat

Relative difficulty: Challenging-ish (I just woke up, but still, mid 4's is slow)

THEME: "BYE BYE BYE" (58A: 2000 'N Sync hit ... or a hint to 17-, 26- and 45-Across) — all themers start with "bye" homophone:

Theme answers:

• BI-CURIOUS (17A: Interested in experimenting sexually, maybe)
• BUY AMERICAN (26A: Stick with U.S.-made products)
• BY A LONG SHOT (45A: Easily)

Word of the Day: TEST BED (23A: Experimental setting, as for a new initiative) —

: a vehicle (such as an airplane) used for testing new equipment (such as engines or weapons systems)broadly : any device, facility, or means for testing something in development (merriam-webster)

• • •

So there are issues. Let's start with themer 1, which is gonna rub some solvers the wrong way, for a variety of reasons. Now, I'm slightly outside my area of expertise here, but my understanding is that BI-CURIOUS is kind of a dated term, with the term "Questioning" being preferred in cases of not-conventionally-fixed sexual identities. Defining BI-CURIOUS solely in terms of *sexual* experimentation kind of makes "bi" seem like a. just a sex thing, and b. not a real identity. I don't think bisexual people like it. Again, I absolutely do not speak for all or even some bisexual people. I'm just already seeing pushback online. So there's that. It's definitely a term that people use, and it's in the dictionary in a non-pejorative sense, so fair game. But you gotta be concerned about how words are gonna land, not just whether the Dictionary gives you the thumbs-up. The next major issue for me today is ... WHY make a Tuesday puzzle with a themeless grid? 70 words is Absurdly low for an early-week themed puzzle. It's the word count you'd expect to see on Fri or Sat. When you have just four themers, you should think of that as an opportunity to make the grid sparkly *and* clean. Clean, I say. This grid, ugh. Yes, there are lots of longer answers, but they are not all good, and the shorter stuff starts to come apart. Could've done without NO TAR, NOT PASS (yuck), a single TONG, DII, ARTE, LINEA, XYLO (!?), INHD, etc. ROBING is patently not a thing. HOODING takes place at Ph.D. ceremonies. ROBING ... is what I did ... I guess ... to myself ... before I walked at H.S. and college graduation? And then the activity would be ... self-robing? Do graduating people have servants who robe them? Genuinely bizarre. Wheels came off for me at LOOT BAG (43D: Item with a dollar sign on it, in cartoons). Just, no. I'd sooner accept LUTE BAG, as in, "Where did I leave my lute...?"


Never heard of TEST BED, so that was rough. Clue on YES I AM was inscrutable to me (8D: Personal affirmation). Kept wanting "Yes, Ma'am" to fit. "Personal" ... made me think ... well, not of the self. Had PHONE CHAT before VIDEO CHAT (11D: Skype call, say). ROAMS before ROVES, of course (9A: Travels here and there). Forgot what DOSAS were (my bad) (63A: Indian crepes). Totally forgot the 2013 film for which Judi Dench received a Best Actress nomination  ("PHILOMENA"). Like, completely forgot. I could see the poster, and maybe Judi's ... son? On that poster? But that's it. Put in PHILOMELA, which is a poetic word for "nightingale" (w/ a gruesome back story). Thought [Stick with U.S.-made products] was referring to an actual stick. Like a selfie stick or deodorant stick. Sigh. Very dumbly wrote in STATE TAX before STAMP TAX (53A: Colonial grievance that was a cause of the Revolutionary War). Did not (at all) expect 45A: Easily (BY A LONG SHOT) to be BY phrase. Maybe a WITH phrase? Not sure. There were likely other hiccups, but I don't care to rehearse them. The theme was an old type, but fine on its face

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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