___ Bradham, inventor of Pepsi / WED 8-13-25 / Newbery Medal-winning 1989 novel for children by Lois Lowry / "Too ___" (2024 #1 Hozier hit) / Covid-19, in slang / 2006 romantic fantasy novel by Stephenie Meyer / Acclaimed 2004 science fiction work by David Mitchell made into a 2012 film

Constructor: Jared Cappel

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: SKY WRITING (56A: Message from a pilot ... or what 17-, 22-, 36- and 48-Across each is?) — book titles that contains things seen in the "sky":

Theme answers:

• CLOUD ATLAS (17A: Acclaimed 2004 science fiction work by David Mitchell made into a 2012 film)
• RAISIN IN THE SUN (22A: 1959 Broadway drama by Lorraine Hansberry, with "A")
• NEW MOON (36A: 2006 romantic fantasy novel by Stephenie Meyer)
• NUMBER THE STARS (48A: Newbery Medal-winning 1989 novel for children by Lois Lowry)

Word of the Day: NUMBER THE STARS (48A: Newbery Medal-winning 1989 novel for children by Lois Lowry) —

Number the Stars is a 1989 historical novel by the American author Lois Lowry about the escape of a family of Jews from Copenhagen, Denmark, during World War II.

The story revolves around ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen, who lives with her mother, father, and sister Kirsti in Copenhagen in 1943. Annemarie becomes a part of the events related to the rescue of the Danish Jews when thousands of Jews were to reach the neutral ground in Sweden to avoid being relocated to concentration camps. She risks her life to help her best friend, Ellen Rosen, by pretending that Ellen is Annemarie's late older sister, Lise, who was killed after she was hit by a car. However, her former fiancé, Peter, who is partially based on the Danish resistance member Kim Malthe-Bruun, continues to help them.

The story's title is taken from a reference to Psalm 147:4, in which the writer relates that God has numbered all the stars and named each of them. This coincides with the Star of David, which Ellen Rosen wears on her necklace and is a symbol of Judaism.

The novel was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1990 as the previous year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children." (wikipedia)

• • •

Gonna try to keep this brief, as I found this one extremely off-putting, right from the word 'go.' It didn't help that I read this article yesterday about the shooting up of the CDC (which included the killing of a cop) by a man convinced that the COVID vaccine had made him sick (it's a paywalled WaPo article that I read via AppleNews—not hard to find) (here's a related article at The Guardian) (and another at the NYT). That clue on CDC (1D: Org. encouraging flu shots) only reminded me that the current director of HHS, who oversees CDC, does precisely the opposite of “encouraging flu shots.” He is a singular malevolence, a narcissistic anti-science conspiracy theorist who is doing his level best to get millions of people killed by gutting mRNA vaccine research. God love all the actual scientists, the decent, qualified people at the CDC, but ... the NYTXW continues to insist that public health agencies like the CDC, EPA, etc. are still committed to things they aren't committed to, at least at the top. And then to throw the repulsive TULSI Gabbard at me just a few clues later—another Trumpist conspiracy theorist currently trying to distract attention from the president's involvement with pedophiles and sex traffickers by leveling treason accusations against Obama over "Russiagate" (how many lifetimes ago was "Russiagate"?). And then a cutesy Anne Frank pun on top of that (???) (14A: Frank account? = DIARY). It's like the puzzle was doing everything it could to be unlikeable before I'd really even gotten started. And then, ugh, the slangy term for the disease that killed millions of people ('RONA) (55A: Covid-19, in slang) ... none of this is my idea of a good time. As for the theme, the idea is cute, but all I can do is think of much better books that do the same thing as these. Goodnight, Moon; The Fault in Our Stars; The Sun Also Rises. Never heard of NUMBER THE STARS (perhaps because I was no longer a child in 1990, and did not have a child of my own until over a decade later). That title and the Pepsi guy (???) (1A: ___ Bradham, inventor of Pepsi) (CALEB), and the Hozier song (???????) (29D: "Too ___" (2024 #1 Hozier hit) (SWEET)) took this one into harder-than-usual territory for me. 

The longer non-theme answers come in very solid. I appreciate that. I didn't so much appreciate the false revealer at LIBRARY (41D: Spot to find 17-, 22-, 36- and 46-Across). I can see why you'd be tempted to turn this into a "bonus" themer, but it just ended up being confusing. "That's a terrible revealer," I thought, before finding out it wasn't the revealer at all. It also weirdly made the puzzle harder, in the sense that you had to have figured out the theme, or seen that the theme answers were all pieces of literature, before you could answer it. The short fill on this one felt a little weak. OLLAS? I know the word well, from crosswords of yore, but crossing ILSA, it felt like ... well, a crossword answer of yore. AHH crossing OOHS is not great. Cary ELWES continues to be fantastically overrepresented in the NYTXW, relative to his actual fame. Has he ever been clued via any movie besides The Princess Bride? Whoa, it turns out: yes! But not since 2016. And (bizarrely) the last five ELWES clues have been identical, word for word:

It's weird to think there was once a time where ELWES was more frequently clued via Twister than via The Princess Bride. Also, what the hell is The Cat's Meow (2001)!?!? I want to say "first I'm hearing of it," but I had a crossword blog when that clue was used (2009), so obviously that wouldn't be true. This is at least the "second I'm hearing of it." Didn't quite have the cultural impact of Princess Bride (or even Robin Hood: Men in Tights), I guess.

[I dunno ... I'd watch this ... I'm *gonna* watch this. If it's terrible, Don't Tell Me]

Bullets:

• 16A: "Casablanca" heroine (ILSA) — you'd think that after 30+ years of solving crosswords I'd've figured out the ELSA v. ILSA distinction. They used to both be film clues. ILSA was "Here's looking at you, kid," and ELSA was the lion from Born Free. Frozen has changed the primary cultural reference point for ELSA. I think if I can get my brain to think "Casablanca v. Frozen" instead of "Casablanca v. Born Free," I can lick this E/I confusion, because I know that Frozen girl is an ELSA ... which makes Ingrid Bergman an ILSA. (The fact that I know the movie ILSA, She Wolf of the SS exists isn't helping, frankly!) 

• 61A: Type of word banned in North American competitive Scrabble in 2020 (SLUR) — I mean, good for competitive Scrabble, but you could clue SLUR so many ways that didn't make me think about (racial) SLURs. It's like this puzzle is going out of its way to be a downer.
• 49D: Letter-shaped fastener (U-BOLT) — I wrote in T-BOLT, is that a thing? Oh, it is? OK, I don't feel so bad now.

That's all, see you next time. And hey, if you wanna watch The Cat's Meow (starring Cary ELWES) with me, let me know. You can follow me on Letterboxd. You can follow me either way, actually. I basically watch movies non-stop, though my knowledge of movies from this century (esp. the '00s) remains very spotty. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Texter's "I can't believe this" / TUE 3-11-25 / Grasp a central idea / Compliment on the green / The Blenheim in England, for one / Frenchman who developed an anthrax vaccine / First-person shooter video game franchise / Believer in Jah, familiarly / Spooky-sounding lake / They're mined, all mined!

Constructor: Jared Cappel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: ACUPUNCTURE (27D: Traditional Chinese medicine component ... in which a practitioner might 3-, 9- and 18-Down?) — familiar phrases clued as punny ACUPUNCTURE phrases:

Theme answers:

• GET THE POINT (3D: Grasp a central idea)
• MOVE THE NEEDLE (9D: Make noticeable progress)
• STAB IN THE BACK (18D: Betray)

Word of the Day: Eudora WELTY (40D: Eudora ___, Pulitzer-winning author for "The Optimist's Daughter") —

Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Order of the South. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum. [...] Throughout the 1970s, Welty carried on a lengthy correspondence with novelist Ross Macdonald, creator of the Lew Archer series of detective novels. (wikipedia)

• • •

It's quite possibly the Daylight Saving hangover talking, but I didn't care for this one much at all. Seems like it has two major problems which some coaching / constructive feedback could've eliminated, or at least rectified somewhat. The first is that the themer set doesn't really work. Or, rather, the first themer, specifically, doesn't really work. The ACUPUNCTURE practitioner does not GET THE POINT—the patient does. GET TO THE POINT makes somewhat more sense, whereas GET THE POINT feels awfully forced / contrived / wonky—which seems to be an effect of needing to make that answer symmetrical with the revealer, ACUPUNCTURE. "GET" means "receive," which is what the person being stuck is doing. "GET" can also mean "retrieve," so I guess you could imagine that the acupuncturist is literally physically taking her needles from a drawer or something before she begins, but that's not exactly a vivid image. That first themer is not close enough for horseshoes or hand grenades, imo. 

["It's getting to the point / Where I'm no fun any more / I am sorry ..." 😊]

And speaking of imo (well, SMH, and OMG, for sure), the fill on this puzzle was in desperate need of resuscitation. Revamping. Overhaul. I kept wincing, not because any particular entry was terrible, but because of the cumulative effect of tired, overfamiliar answers. Solving this was like being gently but annoying hit with a thirty-year-old wet noodle. The grid is just choked with short clammy fill from the jump: LPGA ASEA ORES PROAM EATAT IDEST RASTA OSKAR ARTIE IOWAN ADHOC OPINE HOPESO EST CEE HESSE LOTSA ASTIN ERIE OPED ... those last four were all in a cluster, surrounding the worst longer answer in the grid: "NICE PUTT!" Ooof, what? (62A: Compliment on the green). I mean ... I guess someone might, indeed, say that. But they also might say "NICE CAR!" "NICE DRESS!" "NICE SHOES!" "NICE BRIEFCASE!" but none of those are great standalone answers either. Worse, "NICE SHOT!" does make a nice standalone answer, and it fit the clue here, but ... it wasn't right. PUTT just made that whole miserable corner hurt a little more. "NICE PUTT" had me once again tapping the "Not All Debuts Are Good!" sign. The theme answers are fine on their own, but they don't cohere enough today, and the grid on the whole needs a near-complete teardown. But again, as I say, Daylight Saving might have me somewhat less well disposed to this puzzle than I would've been if I'd encountered it last week (or might've been had I encountered it next week). 4:00AM is always early, but following DST following a vacation with one's best friends, it's particularly, affrontingly early. 

Not a lot else to say about this one. It's fairly bland. The only real trouble I had was the SHOT/PUTT miscue. Oh, and I had an odd lot of trouble getting the POINT part of GET THE POINT. Because the clue had "central idea" in it, the only thing I wanted was GIST ... GET THE GIST. But of course that wouldn't fit. POINT is perfectly fine, but GIST is ... I dunno, somehow pointier than POINT. And I see it (on its own) in crosswords a lot, so my brain just threw it at me and then looked at me BEMUSEDly when I said it wouldn't work and needed something else. I also am not fluent in Kia, and so I had to hack my way to SORENTO (43D: Kia S.U.V.). SOLERRO? SOLENTA? SORRANO? Please don't tell me those guesses are silly and then point at SORENTO, which is literally meaningless. There's a two-R SORRENTO on the Bay of Naples. But the only place you're gonna find a one-R SORENTO is on a Kia SUV. (Don't ask me about the three-R SORRRENTO, Ogden Nash never wrote about that.)

Bullets:

• 64A: The Blenheim in England, for one (PALACE) — whoa, should've made "The Blenheim" the Word of the Day today, as I've never heard of it. I actually never saw this clue while solving. 

Blenheim Palace (/ˈblɛnɪm/ BLEN-im) is a country house in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. It is the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough. Originally called Blenheim Castle, it has been known as Blenheim Palace since the 19th century. One of England's largest houses, it was built between 1705 and 1722, and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. (wikipedia)

 

• 7D: Frenchman who developed an anthrax vaccine (PASTEUR) — ah, vaccines, one of humankind's greatest scientific achievements. Enjoy them while they last!
• 14A: They're mined, all mined! (ORES) — this clue's at least trying. Respect.
• 15A: Kissing on a park bench, e.g., for short (PDA) — definitely read the first part of this clue with Extreme Jethro Tull voice:

• 37A: Signs of spring (ROSEBUDS) — I suppose. Around here, it's baseball and birdsong and (especially) daffodils, bright yellow sentinels of springtime, which suddenly appeared around our house and all over town while we were gone this weekend. Daylight Saving is the price you pay for spring, I guess. The president says he wants to get rid of Daylight Saving, which would make that the only thing I agree with him on. Sadly, I think he probably means he wants to get rid of Standard Time and make Daylight Saving permanent, which, if you need to be awake and functioning (i.e. going to school or work) in the morning, will make winters an even bleaker disaster than they already are. I'm just gonna assume he means the worse option. That seems the safest bet.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Thanks to Rafa and Eli for filling in for me while I was gone. So nice to have reliable backup.  

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