Kicks down the road, as a decision / MON 3-16-26 / Stereotypical charmers / Hypothetical (one hopes!) global conflict, for short / After the event, as an analysis / Bronx-born congresswoman elected in 2018, familiarly / City that's home to the University of Maine

Constructor: Jamey Smith

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

[⭐️ ⭐️ 1/2]

THEME: LATIN LOVERS (64A: Stereotypical charmers ... or those charmed by the answers to the starred clues?) — familiar Latin phrases

Theme answers:

• AD INFINITUM (17A: *Forever)
• SUI GENERIS (25A: *One of a kind)
• MAGNUM OPUS (31A: *Masterwork)
• POST MORTEM (46A: *After the event, as an analysis)
• QUID PRO QUO (51A: *Reciprocal exchange)

["et cetera et cetera, AD INFINITUM, ad astra, forever, and ever..."]

Word of the Day: SUI GENERIS (25A) —

Sui generis is a Latin phrase that means "of its/their own kind" or "in a class by itself", therefore "unique". It denotes an exclusion to the larger system an object is in relation to.

Several disciplines use the term to refer to unique entities. These include:

• Biology, for species that do not fit into a genus that includes other species (its own genus)
• Creative arts, for artistic works that go beyond conventional genre boundaries (its own genre)
• Law, when a special and unique interpretation of a case or authority is necessary (its own special case)
  • Intellectual property rights, for types of works not falling under general copyright law but protected through separate statutes
  • Laws of war, for types of actions that are argued to be legal due to exceptional circumstances in conflict
• Philosophy, to indicate an idea, an entity, or a reality that cannot be reduced to a lower concept or included in a higher concept (its own category) (wikipedia)

• • •

[this cover gives me grad school flashbacks]

So it's a bunch of Latin phrases? That's it? Somehow LATIN LOVERS is not nearly enough to elevate this above the level of "mere random list." No "Love" content here at all. People who do not "love" Latin use these terms all the time. They're basic terms that have made their way into the English language. The least familiar of these is almost certainly SUI GENERIS, a term I sometimes use now but one that I don't think I really understood until way into adulthood. The others I've known since I was a child. On the whole, this feels conceptually uninspired. Plus the fill is pretty stale. I like PUNTS ON alright (not pretty, but colloquial and fresh-feeling to me), and GATE AGENT's OK I guess, but OBIT PAGES felt janky ("pages," plural? That's a lot of deaths ... and anyway, I think we just call them the "obituaries" or the "obits"), and beyond that, there's just a lot of crosswordese. Haven't seen OLLAS in a while. You know it's crosswordese when Spelling Bee is like "nope, not a word" (trust me, I've tried ... a lot). ORONO is another I'd know nothing about if it weren't for crosswords, particularly crosswords from the '90s. Ha, the data confirms it!: Mid-'90s! Peak ORONO! (34D: City that's home to the University of Maine)

[1997: 12 appearances—more than all ORONO appearances in the last decade combined]

TASER is always grim. Never happy to see it. But I'm way happier to see TASER than I am ****ing WWIII right now (7D: Hypothetical (one hopes!) global conflict, for short). "One hopes!" Yes, LOL, hilarious! Fingers crossed! Somehow this answer doesn't seem that funny to me right now, coming as it does in the middle of an undeclared war being waged by total incompetents who have the most powerful military on the planet but absolutely no strategy, no end game, no organized international support, and historically low support at home. What could go wrong?! Earlier today (Sunday), I went to see SIRAT, a harrowing, brutal, relentless movie that takes place against the backdrop of a very ill-defined and never directly-shown military conflict that feels a hell of a lot like WWIII. This is all to say that I was in no mood to appreciate the cutesiness of the WWIII clue. I guess actual WWIII remains "hypothetical," but pffffffft I dunno, man. It's all a little too plausible at the moment for me to be able to chuckle at it.

As usual, the longer answers were the trouble spots in my Downs-only solve. OBIT PAGES took a lot of inferred crosses. PUNTS ON was PUTS OFF at first (4D: Kicks down the road, as a decision). My [Italian cheese] was ASIAGO before it was ROMANO, and my [Rx writers] were DRS before they were MDS. Wasn't sure about the second vowel in "OVI-" (67D: Prefix meaning "egg"). Now that I write it out, "OVA-" does seem pretty unlikely, since OVA are the eggs themselves. OVO is Latin for "egg." It really could only have been OVI-. But still, I was cautious, and left the final letter blank until SISTER came along and confirmed the "I." Most dangerous error of the day was DUVET for QUILT (54D: Warm bed covering). One thing I will say about this theme—it really, really helped with the Downs-only solve. Once I got a couple of Latin phrases, I knew to go looking for them, and QUID PRO QUO ended up being a real lifesaver—one I probably wouldn't have been able to infer so easily if I hadn't understood the theme. 

Gonna go watch the Oscars now, I think, for as long as I can stay awake. Take care, everyone. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. my wife’s aunt Sandra died last week and so my wife (Penelope) is off to NZ today to attend the memorial near Auckland. She wrote a really moving remembrance of Sandra yesterday. You don’t have to know either of them to appreciate it. ❤️ 

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Friend of Forman and Fez on That 70s Show / TUE 3-29-22 / Onetime movie studio rival of MGM / Rocky outcrops / Ancient statesman known as the Censor / Valuable violin informally

Constructor: Jamey Smith

Relative difficulty: Easy (easiest Tuesday puzzle I've done in a long time, easier than most Mondays)

THEME: toponyms — specifically, toponyms that are also metonyms for industries:

Theme answers:

• NASHVILLE (18A: "The country music industry")
• K STREET (20A: "The lobbying industry")
• SILICON VALLEY (26A: "The high-tech industry")
• MADISON AVENUE (42A: "The advertising industry")
• DETROIT (51A: "The automotive industry")
• HOLLYWOOD (54A: "The film industry")

Word of the Day: toponym / metonym (see ... all the theme answers) —

Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics (from Ancient Greek: τόπος / tópos, 'place', and ὄνομα / onoma, 'name') is the study of toponyms (proper names of places, also known as place name or geographic name), their origins and meanings, use and typology. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of any geographical feature, and full scope of the term also includes proper names of all cosmographical features.   

Metonymy (/mɛˈtɒnəmi/) is a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept. [...] A country's capital city or some location within the city is frequently used as a metonym for the country's government, such as Washington, D.C., in the United States; Ottawa in Canada; Tokyo in Japan; New Delhi in India; Downing Street or Whitehall in the United Kingdom; and the Kremlin in Russia. Similarly, other important places, such as Wall Street, Madison Avenue, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Vegas, and Detroit are commonly used to refer to the industries that are located there (finance, advertising, high technology, entertainment, gambling, and motor vehicles, respectively). Such usage may persist even when the industries in question have moved elsewhere, for example, Fleet Street continues to be used as a metonymy for the British national press, though many national publications are no longer headquartered on the street of that name. (emph. mine) (wikipedia)

• • •

There's not much to this. It's just a bunch of toponyms that stand for industries. That is literally all that it is. There are six such toponyms. . . and . . . ta da!? This is one of the thinnest themes in recent memory. It's a list. An arbitrary list. The only thing about it that's even slightly playful (i.e. puzzle-worthy) is the way the themers are clued—in quotation marks, as a way of indicating that this is how the industry is known colloquially. Otherwise, list of random toponyms. It's so easy, the solving experience doesn't even last long enough to be irritating. The puzzle feels like it's barely there at all. The very definition of a "placeholder" puzzle. "We gotta put something puzzle-shaped in this space ... so sure, this'll do, why not?" The puzzle doesn't even do you the courtesy of teaching you the word "toponym" (if you didn't already know it), or "metonym" for that matter. Also, 2/3 of its answers appear to have been lifted straight from the list of such answers in wikipedia (see above). We get KSTREET instead of WALLSTREET, but that's only for reasons of symmetry. Otherwise, the themer list is virtually identical. I don't know what there is to say about this theme. Here it is! I wish there were better news about the overall grid, but there's not, really. It's somewhat below-average fare, in large part because it's almost all 3s 4s and 5s. CANOODLE is a fun word (38D: Make out), but that funness isi offset by the much less fun DIETPLAN (4D: Nutritionist's offering), and nothing else in the grid really rises to the level of notice. There's just not a lot of substance, nothing to really engage your mind or satisfy your desire for wordplay or trickery or anything. This is a display-model puzzle. Like the books and stereo equipment in department store furniture displays which, on closer inspection, aren't really books or stereo equipment at all. They just look like those things from a distance.

[Lil Nas X, "Industry Baby"]

I don't expect much resistance from a Tuesday puzzle but with this one I got almost none. I had one moment of hesitation during the entire puzzle, when I couldn't figure out (for a couple seconds) what followed PET at 41D: Gag gift in a ventilated box (PET ROCK). I did not know PET ROCKs were "gag gifts." I thought they were things people knowingly bought for themselves (however ironically). "Gag gift" made me think something juvenile and gross like fake vomit or PET ... POOP. I don't know if I actually wrote PET POOP in or not ... probably not, I probably just waited for crosses to take care of it ... but I definitely thought PET POOP was the right answer for at least a moment or two ... so there's your solving highlight, folks: the incorrect answer, PET POOP. I'm off for some early-morning coffee + cat time. Enjoy your Tuesday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Harold Manhattan project scientist / FRI 4-9-21 / Hit 1991 film starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss / Superpower of Cyclops in the X-Men films / When doubled a 2010s dance

Constructor: Jamey Smith

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Niecy NASH (62A: Actress Niecy on the Hollywood Walk of Fame) —

Carol Denise Betts (née Ensley; born February 23, 1970) is an American comedian, actress, and television host, best known for her performances on television.

Nash hosted the Style Network show Clean House from 2003 to 2010, for which she won an Emmy Award in 2010. As an actress, she played the role of Deputy Raineesha Williams in the Comedy Central comedy series Reno 911! (2003–2009) The series was relaunched on Quibi In April 2020. Nash received two nominations for Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series nominations for her performance as nurse Denise "DiDi" Ortley in the HBO comedy Getting On (2013–2015). She also starred as Lolli Ballantine on the TV Land sitcom The Soul Man (2012–2016), and played Denise Hemphill in the Fox horror-comedy anthology series, Scream Queens (2015–2016). In 2017, she began starring as Desna Simms, a leading character, in the TNT crime comedy-drama Claws.

Nash has also played a number of roles in films and has made many guest appearances on television shows. In 2014, Nash played the role of civil rights activist Richie Jean Jackson in the historical drama film Selma directed by Ava DuVernay. In 2019, she starred as Delores Wise in the Ava DuVernay' miniseries When They See Us, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. In 2018, Nash received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm trying to figure out why this was so unpleasant to solve. I like the longer answers OK—some of them (LAND GRAB, GROUP THERAPY, "WHAT ABOUT BOB?," PHONE TAG) are even quite good—but the grid was so choppy, so fussy, so full of nooks and crannies and therefore Short Fill (scads of 4- and 5-letter stuff), that it felt like I was having to use a machete to hack through thick, annoying undergrowth to get from long answer to long answer. There were answers I liked, but no *sections* that felt well put together or that ever felt good to be in. Also, perhaps because so much of the puzzle was short stuff, there seemed to be some attempt to amp up the cluing difficulty on it (as short stuff is often the easiest stuff to get), and when every other clue seems to be Trying So Hard to be cutesy / tricky, wow it gets exhausting, mostly because attempts to get cute tend to miss a lot of the time. Like, what the hell is going on with the clue on TERA (41A: Precursor to a big flop?)!? TERA- is a prefix meaning "a hell of a lot" (actually, it denotes multiplication by one trillion). So I've got the "Precursor" part (it's a prefix) and the "big" part (one trillion), but "flop" has me baffled. The only thing I can conceive of is a "flop...py disc," a digital storage system that I thought was not just outmoded, but primitive, and certainly not capable of carrying anything one TERAbyte of *anything*. So it can't be that. [...] ugh it looks like there is a term called "teraflop," wow, fun. Fun. "A unit of computing speed equal to one million million (10¹²) floating-point operations per second." Love to discover a word I've never heard of in a "?" clue (ugh) for a cruddy bit of fill (ugh) on what is supposed to be the most fun puzzle day of the week (triple ugh). TERA is regular old less-than-good fill; you use it if you have to, but you don't set out to use it. So again, I ask, why would you call attention to your not-strong short fill with weird-ass "?" clues like this?

46D: "___ Winter Sundays" (Robert Hayden poem) ("THOSE")

EYEBEAM feels very weak, although I don't know what else you'd call that thing coming out of Cyclops' head (19A: Superpower of Cyclops in the "X-Men" films) ("films"!? You know he's a comic book character, right?). Trouble with PATE (1D: Dome) and especially FLAY (2D: Severely criticize), which I had down to FLA- and still could only see FLAK, which I wrote in as FLAC at one point because I thought Cyclops might be wielding an ICE BEAM. Ugh, ALAI is up here (again? didn't we just see ALAI? oh maybe that was AÇAI) and I'm ashamed that it's the first thing I put in the grid (13A: Second word of a game name that rhymes with the first). Hate relying on my crosswordese knowledge for traction. Just a ton of scrambling around in these little corners. Worst was the TERA section in the east, because I also didn't really get the clue on PEEPER, as no one but no one would ever refer to a singular PEEPER (30A: Eye, slangily). I thought "Eye" in that clue was a verb, so PEEP AT. Clue on NASH feels disrespectful, as she has been in a ton of major stuff, on the small and big screen, and the only thing you can think to put in her clue is that she's on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. *Be Specific* about your people! Soupy Sales has a star on the Walk of Fame. Tons of people do. So what? Also, YO, DOG seems so off. If you're going to go with this phrase, I think the DAWG spelling is required. I offer this as my proof.

SAPOR is always yuck. I just have a beef with SAPOR. It's one of those "technically-a-word"s that also never shows up anywhere except crossword puzzles. Not as bad as SAPID, the related, adjectival version of SAPOR, but unpleasant nonetheless. And oof, UREY (58A: Harold ___, Manhattan Project scientist). There's a rough name. Despite having decent longer answers, this one just didn't have any flair or style or grid-craft or a sensibility that I could groove with. Some good long answers in search of a decent grid environment. The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Rules maven Edmond / FRI 10-18-19 / 2016 film about 1967 Supreme Court case / Hired one is called moirologist / Ulan Siberian capital / Epithet for uninformed / Giant in health beauty products

Constructor: Jamey Smith

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (7:17)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: VOILE (16A: Fabric for a wedding dress) —

: a fine soft sheer fabric used especially for women's summer clothing or curtains (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

This was grim. All the things that make a Friday undelightful—not a lot of sparkle, off cluing, weak fill, and (not the puzzle's fault, exactly) just way off my wavelength, both content-wise and just ... voice-wise. Not for me, at all. Hell of a lot of trouble with the top part, from referring to ITEN (bad fill, don't call attention to bad fill!) as a "lower artery" to horrid legal Latin at 1D (IDEM) to TERABIT (not -byte??) to IVORY as an artist's medium (!) to AVOCADO clued in relation to yellow (?) to AMWAY clued via health and beauty (I didn't know it had a focus ... I had ALMAY ... is that something?) to whatever that word for professional MOURNER was (not even gonna look at that clue again) to WINED (ugh) to the weak assertion that rom-coms are "typically" DATE MOVIEs—what does that even mean? I'd venture to say that the "typical" attendee of any movie, rom-com included, is not, in fact, on a date, so the cluing is ... awkward, off, weird, wrong. You mean that a rom-com is a common type of DATE MOVIE; so say that. Yeesh. This whole thing is yeesh. By EMONEY (woof! dear lord, bring back ENOTE if it means I'll never have to see the ridiculous EMONEY again ... that's not a word, that's a recently departed rock star's signature)


I don't believe anyone really says ILLITERATI, and if you do, you're probably the kind of smug I'd rather not know. I misspelled TURNSTYLE thusly, and then imagined that the minor offender was a HOPPER. That clue there, again, woof, no, that pun is awful (54A: One committing a fare-ly minor offense?). There is no such thing as a C-TEAM, truly there is not, any more than there's a Y-TEAM, please stop at the letter B and go no farther. Had SAND for SURF (50A: It's a shore thing). Haven't read Vonnegut since I was a teenager so clue on ELIOT mean jack to me (27D: ___ Rosewater, recurring character in Kurt Vonnegut novels). Elaine CHAO is yet another ghoulish member of this ghoulish administration who probably belongs in jail. And UDE ... what is there even to say about that atrocity? (55D: Ulan-___, Siberian capital). Nothing. Good bye.


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Ebay ashtray / FRI 3-15-19 / Success story out of Sunnyvale Calif / Youngest French president before Macron / Onetime sister channel of CMT / Cooper's output / Players of Fiorello Dr Bartolo in Barber of Seville

Constructor: Jamey Smith

Relative difficulty: Challenging-ish? (solved on clipboard, so no clear idea, but it felt hard)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: MATSU Islands (26D: ___ Islands, archipelago in the East China Sea) —

The Matsu Islands (Chinese: 馬祖列島; pinyin: Mǎzǔ Lièdǎo; Fuzhou dialect: Mā-cū liĕk-dō̤ or less frequently, Chinese: 馬祖群島; pinyin: Mǎzǔ Qúndǎo; Fuzhou dialect: 馬祖島 Mā-cū dō̤) are a minor archipelago of 36 islands and islets in the East China Sea administered as Lienchiang County (Chinese: 連江縣; pinyin: Liánjiāng Xiàn; Fuzhou dialect: Lièng-gŏng gâing) under streamlined Fujian Province, Republic of China (Taiwan). It is the smallest county in the ROC free area.

Only a small area of what is historically Lienchiang County is under the control of the ROC. The People's Republic of China (PRC) administers the part of the historical county on mainland Chinaas Lianjiang County, which claims the entire archipelago to be its Mazu Township (馬祖鄉; Mǎzǔ Xiāng; Mā-cū hiŏng). The ROC also controls two other archipelagos along the coast of Fujian, namely the Kinmen Islands and the Wuqiu Islands, which together make up Kinmen County. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle be trash. Seriously. What the actual hell is the phrase "Be trash" supposed to mean? Is that your answer to #BeBest? Ebay ashtray, e.g. = PIG LATIN (very last answer I got), but ... how? Fire everyone. Please. Please. This was torture. Not the constructor's fault. Editors should've passed, hard. Are there really not enough Friday submissions out there? Leaving Ebay ashtray aside (PIG LATIN is a fine answer), this grid is choked with, well, trash. Partials and alt-spellings and MERRIE olde beers and OME? and ERE ('ERE?") and weird plurals (EAUX is correct, but BASSOS ...?!?!). I was in stunned disbelief as I penciled most of these answers in. It started rough and it never got better. There's not a single longer answer in this thing that seems worth even a quarter of the garbage fill. ELD! ANAL! UIE! ADAS!? And then just tired stuff like NOSIREE or name parts like CLEEF or whatever MATSU is. The clue on TENSES makes no sense (Will *will* change a verb's tense; there's no "might" to it). EMO POP remains a total non-thing. TNN!? If I could eliminate one TV channel of yore, that would be it. The Marley lyric is bizarre. 'ERE is supposed to be an h-less "here" now? Dear lord. The idea that you would take your cruddy crosswordese and try to convince me that it was some cool musical reference ... nah. No, man, sorry. Do you know how hard it is for me to out-and-out hate a Friday? My quiet early-morning ME TIME, ruined.


Everyone who's ever had a themeless puzzle rejected (especially women) have to be sitting at home going "... really?" Best Puzzle In The World! I feel bad for the people who live in this elite puzzle monopoly and just assume that whatever the NYT does is good. Get into indie puzzles, people. They're So Often better than this. That's it, goodbye. Be trash, everyone!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. all my love to Christchurch this morning...

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