Guitar player's percussive technique / FRI 3-13-26 / Chuck who created "Young Sheldon" / Holly or Monty, for Queen Elizabeth II / Aids for competitive marathon runners / Implement with mousse or pudding / Showed subservience, in a way / The 1930s-'40s, to a jazz aficionado / Scandinavian woman's name meaning "blessed" / President whose wife was nicknamed "Lemonade Lucy" for refusing to serve alcohol in the White House / Piece that can't movie to a different-colored square

Constructor: James McCarron and Rachel Souza

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Lucy Ware HAYES (18A: President whose wife was nicknamed "Lemonade Lucy" for refusing to serve alcohol in the White House) —

Lucy Ware Hayes (née Webb; August 28, 1831 – June 25, 1889) was the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes and served as the 19th first lady of the United States from 1877 to 1881. Opposed to alcohol, she never served it in the White House, a move that was highly controversial. She died of a stroke aged 57 after her husband's presidency. She was also, while her husband was governor, First Lady of Ohio. She served in this position two non-consecutive times, from 1868 to 1872, and again from 1876 until 1877, when her husband was elected as President of the United States. He resigned the governorship effective March 2, 1877, and was sworn in in the next day.

Hayes was the first First Lady to have a college degree. She was also a more egalitarian hostess than previous First Ladies. An advocate for African Americans both before and after the American Civil War, she invited the first African-American professional musician to appear at the White House. She was a Past Grand of Lincoln Rebekah Lodge, a body of the International Association of Rebekah Assemblies, the women's auxiliary of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, together with her husband.

Historians have christened her "Lemonade Lucy" due to her staunch support of the temperance movement. However, contrary to popular belief, she was never referred to by that nickname while living. It was her husband who banned alcohol from the White House. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

A reasonably sparkly but (once again) way too easy puzzle. Lots of Friday whoosh, but maybe too much. Puzzle seemed over before it began. I guess I had to do some fiddling to get the NW in order, but after that, yikes. I came rocketing out of that corner. Both the long Downs that come out of there (DESSERT SPOON and T-SHIRT CANNONS) were gimmes off their first letters. That initial "TS-" is kind of a head-scratcher at first, but once you accept that both the "T" and the "S" are unimpeachable, well, there aren't a lot of directions an answer starting "TS-" can go. T.S. Eliot ... TSE TSE flies ... T-SHIRT something ... and there you are. I feel like I used TSHIRTCANNON(S?) in a puzzle one time. Not an NYTXW puzzle. I don't remember, but it feels real familiar. Anyway, it's not an NYTXW debut—or, rather, it is in the plural, but it's been used two times before in the singular (one of those times it even had the same clue, or almost the same clue: [Top Gun] — the theme involved movie titles taken literally). It's a fun answer, but here, a very very easy answer (once you have the first two letters), so the middle of the puzzle opened right up and I just branched out from there into one corner after another. The quality of the longer fill picked up after that. I smiled at POETS' CORNER and actually said "nice" when I got ONE-HORSE TOWN (again, not a debut, but it's been 26 years, so it may as well be). Also really enjoyed "CAN YOU NOT?" (third NYTXW appearance). The grid seemed light on gunk and the cluing was sufficiently interesting (teetotaling First Ladies! Royal CORGIs!), so I was happy (despite its all being over far too quickly).

If I could UNLADE any answer, it would be ... guess. Guess which one. If you guessed UNLADE, congratulations, smart guy/gal! UNLADE has an ODOR. Definitely the LEPER of the puzzle. No doubt it's a real term, but it's also a real ugly term, so FIE and/or bah (46D: "Bah!," to Lady Macbeth) (would Lady Macbeth really not say "Bah!"? Had they not invented "Bah!" in 1606? "Bah"and "Fie" feel equally olde-tymey to me, but I guess Lady Macbeth said only one of them?). Nothing else bothered me on an aesthetic level so much as UNLADE. I was disappointed to get a Chuck LORRE and not a Peter LORRE today. I suppose Chuck is the less-famous (and therefore harder-to-get?) LORRE, but I'll take "remembering M or The Maltese Falcon" over "remembering Young Sheldon" any day. Wasn't there a game show host named Chuck LORRE in the '70s? LOL I just realized I'm probably thinking of Chuck Woolery, wow. Hard nevermind.

I had a single parsing adventure today, and it came at BENT THE KNEE (27A: Showed subservience, in a way). I don't know if I love the phrase, but I know I love it way way more than what I thought it was going to be at first. I could see KNEE was going to be involved and that the answer started with -ENT, but instead of going with BENT, I kept trying WENT ... so I wanted some version of "went down on one knee," just, you know, shorter. "WENT TO ONE KNEE? Nope, still too long. WENT TO A KNEE? Lord, I hope not." There was a second or two there where I legit thought the answer was going to be WENT ON A KNEE and I had an "EAT A SANDWICH" comment all cued up (one knee being my preferred stance for eating a sandwich at a picnic, something like that). So you can see how BENT THE KNEE might look very good after what I thought the answer was going to be.

Bullets:

• 5D: Oranges, but not apples (ORBS) — Hmm. OK. I think I might've gone with a (far) less ORB-y fruit than an apple here. [Oranges, but not bananas], say. Apples are at least vaguely spherical, is all I'm saying.
• 31A: Film character who says "Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate" (JACK SPARROW) — pretty banal movie quote, but I guess you get the "mate" part in there to cue the pirate-ness, so it's a useful quote if not a very profound one.
• 48A: The 1930s-'40s, to a jazz aficionado (SWING ERA) — surprisingly, this is a debut. It only took 80+ years to get here, but SWING ERA finally got here. A genuinely tough clue would've left "to a jazz aficionado" off entirely.
• 1D: Piece that can't move to a different-colored square (BISHOP) — a chess clue so easy even I could get it (instantly).
• 11D: Dangerous item whose first six letters are an anagram of DANGER (GRENADE) — partial anagrams ... can't say I'm a fan. Something either anagrams or it doesn't. My brain had trouble (at speed) even understanding what the clue was saying. I can usually take in clues at a glance, but that one was like a wrench in the gears of my poor brain.

• 32D: Aids for competitive marathon runners (PACERS) — I was imagining some kind of device, but the "aids" here are just other runners who help the competitive runner keep their pace and morale during a long race. 
• 40D: Scandinavian woman's name meaning "blessed" (HELGA) — an OK clue, but it got me wondering "Are there no famous HELGAs?" Isn't Hagar the Horrible's wife a HELGA? Yes. Yes she is. There's also a character in the animated series Hey, Arnold! named HELGA G. Pataki. So apparently all famous HELGAs are cartoons. Weird. Oh,  yeah, there's the subject of the Wyeth paintings. She's a HELGA. Still famous only in two dimensions, though.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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1944 Pacific battle site / FRI 12-5-25 / Home to Kotoka International Airport / Age at which you just learned something you should have realized before, facetiously / Mohamed ___, Egyptian soccer star / Subject of the Bouguereau painting "The Abduction of Pscyhe" / Image that's just over a foot, informally / Where much of "Brokeback Mountain" was filmed /

Constructor: James McCarron

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LEYTE (53A: 1944 Pacific battle site) —

Leyte (/ˈleɪti, ˈleɪteɪ/ LAY-tee, LAY-tay, Tagalog: [ˈleite]) is an island in the Visayas group of islands in the Philippines. It is eighth-largest and sixth-most populous island in the Philippines, with a total population of 2,626,970 as of the 2020 census. // The Battle of Leyte (Filipino: Labanan sa Leyte; Waray: Gubat ha Leyte; Japanese: レイテの戦い) in the Pacific campaign of World War II was the amphibious invasion of the island of Leyte in the Philippines by American forces and Filipino guerrillas under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur, who fought against the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines led by General Tomoyuki Yamashita. The operation, codenamed King Two, launched the Philippines campaign of 1944–45 for the recapture and liberation of the entire Philippine Archipelago and to end almost three years of Japanese occupation. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's "ending on a sour note," and then there's "ending on LEYTE," which makes you yearn for a note that's merely sour. It clearly has some historical / military importance, but its familiarity to a North American audience ... I'm fairly confident that whatever that was, it has dwindled over the years. I'm old(ish) and I've never heard of this place. It smacks of the kind of geographical obscurity that used to be common currency in the crossword puzzle, before construction software came along and made filling the grid somewhat easier, and before the puzzle had an editor who explicitly sought to reduce the appearance of such things (i.e. before Shortz). And sure enough, the heat map on this one is, let's say, telling:

See that teeny tiny little blue segment waaaay over on the right there? That's today. The distance between that little blue segment and the next nearest little blue segment? Nearly twenty-three years. Twenty-Three Years. That is some real delayed back-from-the-dead action. I felt so much better after seeing how long it had been since LEYTE appeared in the grid. "How did I miss this answer?" Answer: I didn't. It hasn't appeared once in the soon-to-be two decades that I've been writing about the puzzle. The thing about LEYTE, the very bad thing, is that it isn't just the most obscure thing in the grid, it's the most obscure thing by light years. Look at the other geographical answers in this puzzle. ALBERTA. GHANA. CALI. Yeah, I've Heard Of Those. The eighth-largest island of the Philippines? Not so much. I don't know how LEYTE doesn't make you want to, need to, tear that part of your grid out and try again. If the grid were sizzling hot, loaded with bright and shiny fill, and needed a single LEYTE to hold it together, it would still be jarring, but it might seem worth it. But despite the fact that the long fill is quite good down there, overall, there just wasn't enough of it to justify LEYTE. I like parts of this grid, but all I see when I look at this grid is LEYTE. There's literally nothing else in this grid that I would insist has to go. Just LEYTE. Twenty-three years! Those were good years.

As I say, the long fill on this one is very nice, particularly below, where TODAY YEARS OLD made me smile (51A: Age at which you just learned something you should have realized before, facetiously), and "HERE GOES NOTHING!" wasn't too shabby either (48A: "Might as well give it a shot..."). Up top, DON'T POKE THE BEAR also gave the grid some much-needed playfulness and color (14A: Words of caution). But between the long answers above and the long answers below was a whole lot of ... fine. OK. Not bad. But nothing memorable, nothing marquee. I like how clean the grid is (mostly!), but there's just not a whole hell of a lot going on between the poles. In fact, some of the other longer fill, I kinda balked at. ANKLE TAT made me grimace. Yes, you can get a tat there, as you can get a tat most anywhere. I've seen FACE TAT and ANKLE TAT now. You can keep changing the body parts, but ___ TAT isn't going to get more interesting. GENE SET didn't excite me much either. Solid enough, but ... I needed more ATTACK AD energy (good answer, good clue) (26A: Spot likely to smear). I needed the puzzle to slap me with more fun stuff: "TAKE THAT!" the puzzle should have been able to say to me, many more times than it did. Instead, it just sort of handed me answers: more "TAKE THAT," without the exclamation point, without the spirit of vengeance. It's a solid grid, but it's not much more than solid.

The puzzle did set me up for some great mistakes today, though. These started early, with my assumption that what "might be on a rack" was a RIB (2D: It might be on a rack = HAT) (I eventually got my RIB meat with RIBEYE!). Later, I figured that shows were being stopped by RAIDS, not RAINS (15D: Show stoppers, sometimes). I like RAIDS way better, both because it creates a more vivid image and because plural RAINS here is ... awkward. "The shows were stopped by RAINS." Meh. Not great. Just clue it as a verb. My favorite mistake, though, was probably the one where I learned ("learned") that Ang Lee had filmed Brokeback Mountain in ALBANIA (45A: Where much of "Brokeback Mountain" was filmed). "Must've been more affordable," I briefly and sincerely thought. I eventually TORE that out when TORE forced the issue (46D: Raced). But I liked "knowing" that bit of movie trivia for a few seconds. ALBERTA is so much more plausible, and thus so much less interesting.  

Bullets:

• 11A: Can't-miss purchases? (SEASON TICKETS) — good answer, but I'm pretty sure you can miss. I'm pretty sure season ticket holders do, in fact, miss games (or concerts, or other performances sometimes).
• 21A: Subject of the Bouguereau painting "The Abduction of Psyche" (EROS) — I like how this clue assumes I know who Bouguereau is. "Oh, the Bouguereau painting, yes, of course, what a master... [sips cocktail, nibbles on canapé] ..." Literally first I'm seeing his name today. But EROS was easy. Psyche was the tip-off. Cupid (EROS) & Psyche pair naturally in my brain, not because of my knowledge of classical mythology or art or operas ... but because of the title of a mid-'80s Scritti Politti album. Anyone else? No. That's fine. Just gonna press "Play" now and briefly relive my junior year of high school... 

• 31D: Mohamed ___, Egyptian soccer star (SALAH) — could not retrieve his name. Sort of kind of vaguely knew the first four letters, but was in no way sure about that "H." SALAH is the only answer that approaches LEYTE in terms of obscurity today, and by "approaches" I mean "is not really anywhere near." The key word in the SALAH clue is "star."

Mohamed "Mo" Salah Hamed Mahrous Ghaly (born 15 June 1992) is an Egyptian professional footballer who plays as a right winger or forward for Premier League club Liverpool and captains the Egypt national team. He is widely regarded as one of the best players of his generation and one of the greatest wingers of all time. He is the all-time top foreign goalscorer in the Premier League and the all-time top African goalscorer in the UEFA Champions League. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

That's all for today. Keep those 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 coming. I'll be accepting reader pictures of their pets in holiday settings through Wednesday (rexparker at icloud dot com), and then I'll need to stop taking submissions and start posting. My Inbox is already pretty inundated with cuteness, which is exciting. Here's a little taste. 

[meet French bulldogs Audrey, Louise, and Hugo, seen here wearing the skins of their enemies]
[Thanks, Claudia!]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Tales are related about them / FRI 7-11-2025 / Org. with the pioneering Artemis program / "Don't Worry Kyoko" singer / Acquirer of GeoCities and Broadcast.com during the dot-com bubble

Constructor: James McCarron

Relative difficulty: pretty straightforward, not terribly challenging


Word of the Day: BENIHANA (Restaurant chain where chefs make onion volcanoes) —

Benihana (Japanese: 紅花; "Safflower") is a chain of Japanese restaurants. Originally founded by Yunosuke Aoki as a cafe in Tokyo in 1945, Benihana spread to the United States in 1964 when his son Hiroaki "Rocky" Aoki opened its first restaurant in New York City. 

...

Benihana introduced the teppanyaki restaurant concept which originated in Japan in the late 1940s to the United States, and later to other countries. [wikipedia, and in case you're wondering, the two people mentioned here are the grandfather and father of DJ Steve Aoki]

• • •

Hey hi howdy hello, Christopher Adams here filling in for Rex today! As noted above, not too difficult. There's a lot of good longer entries in this puzzle: the entire center stack, plus the four long downs intersecting that, plus three of the four long entries crossing those! I've never heard of DRILLS DOWN, and imo the DOWN part of that feels redundant, but ymmv, and still, that's a lot of good long entries!

That said, where this puzzle missed the mark for me was that there was very little attempt to add spice to the puzzle beyond that. Not many difficult, tricky, misdirecting, etc. clues, which is not necessarily a problem per se (it's fun to have a nice and breezy themeless every so often), but you can still be easy while also fun, and while the entries themselves were fun, their clues very much did not feel like that. A lot of just plonking in answers one after the other, with the bulk of the appreciation coming from "gee, that's a great entry" after it's filled in, rather than in the act of actually figuring it out and filling it in myself, or in learning something neat and interesting along the way.

This is probably on me and my expectations; most of the puzzles I solve these days are not the New York Times, and can (and should, and do!) get more interesting cluewise than the Gray Lady does. So perhaps it's a bit unfair for me to want the puzzle to be something it isn't, but at the same time there's certainly room for clues that go beyond the house style and inject some personality and such into the clues.

Also, the long entries were great, but at the same time there were a few too many short answers holding things together that bothered me while solving: WEK, I MET, OWLY, PISH, NOR (only because it's clued as an abbreviation), IVER (only because there's really only one way to clue that). 

we would've also accepted a reference to "Half as Interesting" for HAI

A few attempts for slightly trickier clues, but none really convincing; it almost felt as if they were pretending to be harder than they were to make you feel better about seeing past their flimsy disguise. No need to have the question mark on HAI or COGS or RACE CAR DRIVER. The phrasing for SOLAR ECLIPSE, [Event requiring special specs], isn't fully convincing as a misdirect for "specifications" rather than "spectacles". I enjoyed SENTINEL and CAMPFIRES more for their reparsing of "watch" and "about" that wasn't immediately obvious from the clues. (Even then, in the first case, [One with a watch] is stilted enough to set off the "probably a misdirect" spidey sense on first pass.)

[Actress Rapp of "Mean Girls"]

Olio:

• ABA [Isaac Asimov novel "Murder at the ___"] — Possibly an attempt at finding a new angle for this entry (I hadn't seen it before), but it resulted in massive headscratching because it's not at all clear what the answer means after you fill it in. Like, if it was MANOR or something, you'd just shrug and think "haven't heard of that, but "Murder at the Manor" absolutely sounds like it could be a real title, and "manor" is an actual place..." and move on with the solve, but for me it was "what ABA are we talking about here? is this even an acronym or is there some place I've never heard of called Aba, or...". For the record, it stands for "American Booksellers Association", and the book is a metafictional tale about a murder at a convention held by the ABA, and Asimov himself appears as a character in his own book, and doesn't knowing this make it sound more interesting and make you want read the book more? That's the sort of info that should've been included with this cluing angle, not just to make the clue more fun but also help prevent the puzzled feeling of filling in the answer without knowing what it means.
• YEN [Kind of coin that features a Buddhist temple on one side] — Yes! More of this! Fun things to learn while still being easy to infer and fill in!
• ALMODOVAR [Pedro ___, Oscar-winning screenwriter for "Talk to Her"] — I've always found this format (fill in the blank for last names) to be one of the weirder parts of the NYT style guide, and wish they would do away it, especially since it's easy to rewrite to remove the blank, even if you wanted to keep the first name as an additional hint.
• OARED [Four-___ (like some shells)] — "Shell" as in a racing boat here; the clue's difficulty definitely sticks out compared to the rest of the puzzle. (And, while I'm thinking of FITB clue styles that bother me, using a FITB for half of a hyphenated word is one of them, especially since this could be something like [Rowed, rowed, rowed your boat] to avoid the FITB altogether.)
• ANTS [Colonial group] — Currently in a war against the ants who are living under the backyard patio where I'm trying to put a fire pit; such is life when you're committed to leaving 99% of your yard natural (for the birds, the bees, and especially the deers) but still want to have a small section for yourself.

Yours truly, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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