Bud after Jack, perhaps? / SUN 2-9-25 / Picture of Pluto, for instance / Bit of rasta headwear / Cylindrical Mexican pastry / Scout's container / "Like ___," rap hit fueling the Drake/Kendrick Lamar beef of 2024 / Spanish muralist whose "American Progress" is in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center / Pink drink, for short / Toy inventor with a background in sculpture and architecture / Adam's apple locale / Head of a noted animal rescue project / Indian dish featuring potatoes and cauliflower / It's stranded in a cell

Constructor: Rich Katz and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Way Too Easy 

THEME: "What's It All About?" — two-word phrases where second word starts with the prefix "RE-," clued as if the prefix were actually the abbreviation "RE:," i.e. "Regarding" (or, in the words of the puzzle's title, "About"): 

Theme answers:

• SPECIAL RE: QUEST (23A: TV's "Search for the Titanic," for one?)
• MANUAL RE: COUNT (35A: Instructions for slaying Dracula?)
• SHOW RE: MORSE (51A: Broadway offering titled with dots and dashes?)
• SPEECH RE: COGNITION (70A: TED Talk about neuropsychology?)
• SPOT RE: MOVER (86A: U-Haul ad?)
• CHAIN RE: ACTION (101A: Email thread with a "Donate now!" message?)
• HIGH RE: SOLUTION (116A: Giddiness at completing this crossword puzzle?)

Word of the Day: 'Like THAT" (43D: "Like ___," rap hit fueling the Drake/Kendrick Lamar beef of 2024) —

"Like That" is a song by American rapper Future and record producer Metro Boomin with fellow American rapper Kendrick Lamar. It was sent to US rhythmic radio through Freebandz, Boominati Worldwide, Epic Records, and Republic as the third and final single from Future and Metro's collaborative studio album, We Don't Trust You, on March 26, 2024.[...]

A trap and hardcore hip hop song that is predominantly composed of lively percussions, "Like That" received acclaim from music critics, who primarily praised Lamar's performance and Metro's production. His verse, which attracted significant media coverage, is a diss aimed at fellow rappers Drake and J. Cole in response to their 2023 collaboration, "First Person Shooter." "Like That" was quickly met with commercial success, debuting atop the Billboard Hot 100, where it would spend three weeks, as well as topping the Global 200 and the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts simultaneously. It was both Future and Lamar's third number-one single on the former chart, and Metro's first as a credited artist. The song also topped the Canadian Hot 100 and peaked within the top ten of several countries in Europe and Oceania. [...] 

Lyrically, Lamar uses his surprise appearance to directly respond to "First Person Shooter", rapping: "Yeah, get up with me, fuck sneak dissing / "First Person Shooter", I hope they came with three switches". He also rejected J. Cole's idea of the three rappers representing hip hop as its "big three" and claims that he alone takes the top spot: "Motherfuck the big three, nigga it's just big me". Throughout his verse, Lamar compares his rivalry with Drake to Prince's reported feud with Michael Jackson ("What? I'm really like that / And your best work is a light pack / Nigga, Prince outlived Mike Jack"). Drake has notably compared himself to Michael Jackson on numerous occasions, including during the final verse of "First Person Shooter", and Lamar has similarly compared himself to Prince. (wikipedia)

• • •

What was that? I solved that (just now) in about 6 or 7 minutes, *without* speeding. There were answers here and there that I didn't know straight away, I guess, but not many. The main problem, though, isn't that the puzzle's overly easy—it's that it's supremely boring. Zero laughs. OK, so you reimagine the "RE-"s as "RE:"s ... and? There should be some kind of Payoff for your gimmick, but instead, there's just a mirthless "yeah, I guess that works" vibe to every single one of the themers. Worse, the puzzle thinks it's being cute and building to some grand climax by having the final themer be all meta and self-reflexive and cutesy and winky (116A: Giddiness at completing this crossword puzzle?). This felt like the one-notiest of one-note puzzles (that note being RE ... the note between DO and MI ... a SOUR NOTE, indeed) (look, I gotta find some way to amuse myself, and the puzzle is giving me very little to work with, so dumb jokes about "notes" is what you get). One-note puzzles are OK on a weekday, in a regular 15x15 grid, if that one note is a good one, but for a Sunday, you gotta do better than this. Even if the puzzle is simple, those themers have to bring a lot more heat, a lot more chuckle fuel than this. It's not bad so much as dull, and definitely insufficiently tough. It seems that no one involved in the making of this puzzle ever thought, "yes, we *can* do this theme ... but SHOULD WE?" (75A: "So is this our plan or not?"). 

One feature of the theme that deserves some recognition is that the changing of "RE-" to "RE:" brings with it a change of the meaning of both words on either side of "RE:," every time. So "RE-" changes meaning (to "RE:" / "About"), but so does SPECIAL and QUEST, MANUAL and COUNT, etc. That's a nice feature. And yet, the RE: phrases were so awkward most of the time that solving them felt like a tedious mechanical exercise. CHAIN RE: ACTION was particularly clunky. Can't think of the last time I thought of an "email thread" as a CHAIN (it's a "thread," as the clue rightly says), and why would a CHAIN contain a single message ("Donate now!")? You'd think one email would've done the trick there. Not a very efficient way to get the word out. Further, if the show is about Morse (SHOW RE: MORSE), why is it "titled" with "dots and dashes?" (51A: Broadway offering titled with dots and dashes?) It's the "titled" part I don't get. Why would the "title" of your show about Morse be in Morse (code)? The whole thing just didn't resonate with me. Maybe if the puzzle had slowed me down At All, if I'd been forced to really work out the themers, I would (somehow) have had greater appreciation of them. I dunno. I just know that this was fun-free for me. It's not even enjoyably bad. There are no howlers or inanities that I can take pleasure digging into. The puzzle is just ... there. Taking up Sunday-sized space until the next Sunday rolls around.

[Sidenote of little relevance to the overall enjoyability of this puzzle, but ... why in the world are there cheater squares* in this thing!? The black squares after DAB and after SPY (and their symmetrical equivalents), why? You usually bring in cheaters when there's just too much strain on the grid, when it's hard to fill cleanly and you need to release some pressure. But ... It's not like things are particularly dense up there (or down below). Were things really so taxing that you had to add these superfluous black squares? Whoa, there's another one (under BRATT, above CHAIR). How is making short answers even shorter going to improve the overall appeal of your grid? I have to assume that without those extra black squares, the fill got real ugly ... so maybe I should be grateful those squares are there. Also, if the theme had been fabulous, I probably wouldn't even be noticing them; I certainly wouldn't be caring]

Though the puzzle was very easy, there were a few times where I had to stop and think today, outside the first couple themers. Like 96A: Bud after Jack, perhaps? (CHASER). That is (I realized eventually), Budweiser after Jack Daniels. Good one (no, really, I liked it). I had ---N for 77D: Adam's apple locale and was very very briefly mad that the answer was going to be CHIN ("what the!?"), then noticed that the "a" in "apple" wasn't capitalized ... which I'm now realizing doesn't mean a damn thing (that's how you spell "Adam's apple"), but somehow when I was solving, I thought "oh, that lowercase "a" means it's a regular apple, not the anatomical apple." Bizarre how being totally wrong (about the capitalization of "apple" in "Adam's apple") can lead to the right conclusion (in this case, EDEN). I had AWAKE and maybe even ALERT before AHEAD at 3D: Up. I briefly cast Mark HAMILL (!?!?!) in "NCIS," and then when I recast Mark HARM-N, I recast him like that (without the final vowel—totally unsure). Needed several crosses to remember ALOO GOBI, which is delicious, but the technical name of which I blanked on. But otherwise, there was almost no resistance today. Not only that, there was really no interesting or original fill to ooh and/or aah over. It was all pretty dreary. Not even dreary. Just ... plain. Unless I'm supposed to be excited about ERNO RUBIK (I'm not).

How long did it take you to figure out the theme? I needed two themers. When I got SPECIAL RE: QUEST, I thought that the first "quest' was the Titanic voyage itself, and then the "Search for the Titanic" was a separate, follow-up quest—a RE-QUEST. "Well, that first quest didn't quite work out the way we'd planned. Let's try another!" It was only when trying to make sense of the clue on MANUAL RE: COUNT that I had the "aha" moment of noticing that the "RE-" was supposed to be read as "RE:" It's not that the basic idea isn't clever, in its way, but ... there's just not a lot you can do with it. All the "humor" is in the clues, and there's just not that much juice to be squozen out of the core concept. When the grid fails to pick up the slack in terms of either interest or difficulty level, well, you get [waves hands at grid] this. 

 Not much that needs explaining, but ...:

• 11A: Place in a pyramid, say (ENTOMB) — Yesterday, I listened to the latest episode of Karina Longworth's You Must Remember This... podcast, which is about late-career Howard Hawks. Extremely coincidentally, this ended up helping me get this answer faster than I might have otherwise, as much of the episode was about Hawks's Land of the Pharaohs (1955), which is about a Pharaoh who has a robber-proof pyramid built (over the course of many, many years) so he can be ENTOMBed with all this treasure without fear of grave-robbers taking all his stuff.  William Faulkner (who did not like movies and did not watch them) is one of the credited screenwriters. He didn't know how Pharaohs talked. No one involved in the production did. Does anyone? Anyway, the movie ... did not do well.

• 48A: Bit of Rasta headwear (TAM) — can you really have a "bit of headwear?" Why isn't this just [Rasta headwear]? "Bit" is bizarre. 
• 84A: Scout's container (CANTEEN) — first thought: "Why is Scout (from To Kill A Mockingbird) in a container?" Nobody puts Scout in a container!

• 78D: Spanish muralist whose "American Progress" is in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center (SERT) — if you solved crosswords in the 20th century, you definitely know SERT, and if not ... probably not, I'm guessing. (This is only the third appearance of SERT in the 2020s, whereas SERT appeared eight times in 1992 alone)

I hope you enjoyed this much more than I did, or, if not, that you finished quickly, maybe even broke your personal Sunday record. Someone must have broken their record. I can't be alone in thinking this was supremely easy. Or maybe I can be alone. It's been a weird week / month / year, and a long cold lonely winter. Discovering that I'm an outlier (in puzzles, and in general) surprises me less and less these days. I'm getting used to it. Hopefully next Sunday I love a puzzle you all hate. :) Remember the "Art Heist" puzzle? Good times ... See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"Cheater squares" are black squares that do not add to the overall word count, usually added to the grid solely to make filling the grid easier for the constructor(s).   

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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"Bad you!" / MON 1-20-25 / Tween sister of Barbie / Kevin of "Shark Tank," also known as "Mr. Wonderful" / Eccentric expert / Path of advancement for a lawyer / Go along with prevailing wisdom / Geometric figures whose subparts mimic the full shape / Sensation of acceleration / "Biscuit" for cookie or "chips" for fries

Constructor: Katie Byl and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal, easy Monday) (solved Downs-only)

THEME: WORK LIKE A DOG (56A: Do one's job to the point of exhaustion ... or a hint to the ends of 20-, 27-, 36- and 49-Across) — last words of theme answers, when reimagined as verbs, are what a dog might do:

Theme answers:

• PARTNER TRACK (20A: Path of advancement for a lawyer)
• POINT GUARD (27A: Position for Steph Curry or Caitlin Clark)
• FOLLOW THE HERD (36A: Go along with prevailing wisdom)
• STYLE GUIDE (49A: Manual for consistency in writing)

Word of the Day: CHIGNONS (35D: Hair knots with a French name) —

A chignon (UK: /ˈʃiːnjɒ̃/, US: /ˈʃiːnjɒn/, French: [ʃiɲɔ̃]), from the French chignon meaning a bun, is a hairstyle characterized by wrapped hair on the back of the head. In the United States and United Kingdom, it is often used as an abbreviation of the French phrase chignon du cou, signifying a low bun worn at the nape of the neck.

Chignons are generally achieved by pinning the hair into a knot at the nape of the neck or at the back of the head, but there are many variations of the style. They are usually secured with accessories such as barrettes or hairpins. Chignons are frequently worn for special occasions, like weddings and formal dances, but the basic chignon is also worn for everyday casual wear. (wikipedia)

• • •

Didn't notice the theme while solving (Downs-only), and my first thought on seeing the revealer was "GUIDE dog, OK, GUARD dog, yes ... HERD dog? Isn't it 'HERDing dog?' And TRACK dog!? What is that, a greyhound!? Boooo to racing dogs! Or is it ... a TRACKing dog? I dunno, man, two of these don't really work." But the reason they didn't work is because I was taking the theme the wrong way, i.e. imagining those last words were all supposed to precede "dog," when they're just verbs—actions a dog might perform. Work a "working dog" might do. A working dog might TRACK or GUARD or HERD or GUIDE. Yes, taken as verbs, all is well. And a couple of the themer phrases are even interesting answers in their own right (PARTNER TRACK, WORK LIKE A DOG). I could take or leave NO-GO AREAS, but BRITICISM I like a lot. It was fun to watch that answer come into view while solving Downs-only. "CRITICISM? WITTICISM? ... nope, BRITICISM! Nice" (61A: "Biscuit" for cookie or "chips" for fries). POINT GUARD is a weird one, in that it feels like a twofer. A working (hunting) dog might POINT. FOLLOW THE HERD also has a "not just the last word" kind of relevance, in that the whole answer seems like something a (herding) dog might do. But this extra-ness doesn't detract from the basic consistency of the theme. Like the (imagined) dogs in this grid, this puzzle works. It's not the most exciting theme ever, but it does what it says it does, and cleanly, so ... fine. Good Monday.

There was only one real "!!!" moment while solving Downs-only, and that came in the NE corner, where back-to-back six-letter names nearly did me in. I can't think of a less appealing show than Shark Tank. I've never seen a single ep. You'd have to pay me to watch it. So I have no idea who Kevin O'LEARY is ("Mr. Wonderful???" Yeesh) (10D: Kevin of "Shark Tank," also known as "Mr. Wonderful"). And as for STACIE ... look, I could remember SKIPPER. Wasn't she Barbie's ... something? Cousin? Waaaaaait a minute, my instincts were right. SKIPPER *is* Barbie's younger sister! How many younger sisters does Barbie have!?!? Three!?!?!? The third is Chelsea, who was called Shelly *or* Kelly (!?!?!) from '95 to '10 before becoming Chelsea in '11. STACIE is the only "tween" it seems. Skipper started out 8 but then jumped to 14 at some point. Chelsea seems stuck at age 7. Anyway, O'LEARY next to STACIE looked like a deathtrap for me, but once I was able to run both PARTNER TRACK and NO-GO AREAS through there, I remembered STACIE's name, somehow. And once I inferred ULTA (from U-TA; nothing else works there but the "L"), I could see that the most likely name-like thing I could make from the letters I had was O'LEARY. I had DYED as DEED before O'LEARY kicked in. Problem solved. Disaster averted.

My one other almost significant trouble spot was SUN-TZU (5D: Chinese general who wrote "The Art of War"), as I could remember only LAO TZU (the founder of Taoism). Very different people. And I had it as TSE at first, not TZU. But I ended up with CUS as an answer, which looked very wrong, and so I changed that "S" to a "Z" (CUZ! 25A: Since, informally), but still had LAO TZU. Eventually NO-GO AREAS and UPDO saved me. Big "D'oh!" moment when I saw SUN-TZU's name come into view. Should've been a gimme.

Bullets:

• 41D: "Bruh" ("DUDE") — Bruh! More 'bruh!' I gave you a Bruh / Brah / Bruv lesson just a few days ago, and here we are. In Thursday's puzzle, BRUH was the answer (to ["My man!"]). Here, the vibe is less excited (no exclamation point). More of a "What were you thinking?" bruh and less of a "Nice one!" bruh. So many bruhs. Too many bruhs. Lord, please never let bruhs appear in the plural, thank you, amen.
• 48D: "Bad you!" ("TSK TSK") — Has anyone ever said "Bad you!"? What a weird ... thing. To use. As a clue. Did AI write this clue? 
• 60D: Eccentric expert (GEEK) — I had NERD. Not sure GEEKs are eccentric, per se. Their level of interest in a topic is ... unusual, sure, but many GEEKs (of one kind or another) are normie as hell. 

Try to enjoy this Monday. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Starbuck's higher-up? / WED 1-1-25 / 1990s sitcom featuring a bookstore / What you might call a tipsy friend / Stylish tote for an executive / Chocolate money won or lost in this puzzle's game / In the dark about something nefarious / Like the breeds shetland and merino

Constructor: Seth Bisen-Hersh and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Dreidel — grid features a dreidel at its center, which (when it is filled) is made out of "CLAY" (i.e. the letters in "CLAY") (40D: Material used to make the object "illustrated" here, in a seasonal song). The four sides of a dreidel are represented in circled squares toward the top of the grid ("ALL," "PUT IN," "NONE" and "HALF"), and then a couple more short answers relate to how and why the game is played (players SPIN the dreidel with the goal of winning chocolate money, or GELT). 

Theme answers:

• SPIN (52D: Take a turn with the object illustrated by the central black squares in this puzzle (leading to one of the four circled results))
• GELT (59D: Chocolate money won or lost in this puzzle's game)

Dreidel sides:

• ALL THE RAGE (3D: Super-trendy)
• PUT IN WRITING (5D: Set down on paper)
• NONE THE WISER (9D: In the dark about something nefarious)
• HALF DOLLAR (11D: Place to see J.F.K.)

(I had no idea about how the game was played, so I looked them up, here you go):

Word of the Day: dreidel —

A dreidel, also dreidle or dreidl, (/ˈdreɪdəl/ DRAY-dəl; Yiddish: דרײדל, romanized: dreydl, plural: dreydlech; Hebrew: סביבון, romanized: sevivon) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is a Jewish variant on the teetotum, a gambling toy found in Europe and Latin America.

Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet: נ‎ (nun), ג‎ (gimel), ה‎ (hei), ש‎ (shin).

Each player begins with an equal number of game pieces (usually 10–15). The game pieces can be any object, such as chocolate gelt, pennies, raisins, etc.

• To start the game, every participant puts one game piece into the center "pot". Every player also puts one piece into the pot when the pot is empty or there is only one game piece in the pot.
• Each player spins the dreidel once during their turn. Depending on which side is facing up when it stops spinning, the player whose turn it is gives or takes game pieces from the pot:
  • If נ‎ (nun) is facing up, the player does nothing.
  • If ג‎ (gimel) is facing up, the player gets everything in the pot.
  • If ה‎ (hei) is facing up, the player gets half of the pieces in the pot. If there are an odd number of pieces in the pot, the player takes half the pot rounded up to the nearest whole number. If hei is facing up and only one piece is in the pot, the player can either take the piece or not.
  • If ש‎ (shin) is facing up, the player adds one of their game pieces to the pot (sometimes accompanied by the chant "shin, shin, put one in"). In some game versions, the player adds three game pieces to the pot, one for each stem of the letter shin (ש‎).
• If the player is out of pieces, they are either "out" or may ask another player for a "loan".

These rules are comparable to the rules for a classic four-sided teetotum, where the letters A, D, N and T form a mnemonic for the rules of the game, aufer (take), depone (put), nihil (nothing), and totum (all). Similarly, the Hebrew letters on a dreidel may be taken as a mnemonic for the game rules in Yiddish. Occasionally, in the United States, the Hebrew letters on the dreidel form an English-language mnemonic about the rules: hei or "H" for "half"; gimel or "G" for "get all"; nun or "N" for "nothing"; and shin or "S" for "share".

• • •

Cool, a Chanukah-themed puzzle that actually appears during Chanukah (which ends tomorrow at sundown). If I've seen a Chanukah-themed puzzle before, it's been a while. Probably should've run this one yesterday or even Monday so as not to conflict with Yet Another Holiday (Happy New Year, btw), but whatever, I don't need another "BALL"-dropping theme, this is fine. Ridiculously easy, though. The center, isolated "dreidel" part of the grid is probably the only zone that might cause anyone any trouble, but if you know the dreidel song (at least the one that I learned in high school French), then you know what the dreidel is (traditionally made out of): "O dreidel dreidel dreidel, / que j'ai fait de la boue / O dreidel dreidel dreidel, / O dreidel, moi, je joue." I somehow remembered *this* version before I remembered the English version "O dreidel dreidel dreidel, I made it out of CLAY..." But I remembered it, is the point, and so that (somewhat awkwardly filled) dreidel part was not an issue. I thought maybe the specific letters in that dreidel section had some meaning, or were a visual representation of something, but I think they're just random letters—that the only thematic element there, besides the shape of that section, is CLAY. Oh wait! The whole section is made *exclusively* out of the *letters* in "CLAY." All Cs Ls As and Ys. That's nice. Doesn't make for pleasant fill, but it's a nice touch, for sure.

Was real uncertain about what this puzzle had in store for me early on. I mean, what am I supposed to think about a New Year's puzzle that greets me with the message: "ALL PUTIN!" I was like, "what the hell is this message? 'ALL PUTIN, ALL THE TIME!? That's an ominous way to begin the year."

It wasn't til I went all the way down to the bottom of the west side of the grid and hit the clue for SPIN that I had any concept of the theme. The answers were going in as fast as I could type, so there wasn't really time to digest much before then. The SPIN clue made me (finally) see the "dreidel" at the center of the grid, and helped me understand why the circled squares made no sense to me (I've never played dreidel in my life, or bothered to learn what the rules were). The theme is well-executed, but what made it actually enjoyable to solve was the fill, which was actually interesting in its own right. Sometimes when a theme is architecturally demanding, the quality of the fill suffers, but not today. Every one of those circled-square answers is at least solid, and NONE THE WISER is genuinely original. ALICIA KEYS shows up looking nice in full-name attire. I like "I'LL BITE," both as a slang phrase, and as a kind of bonus themer: "I'LL BITE that chocolate candy!"

As I say, the puzzle was remarkably easy for a Wednesday. Outside the central "dreidel" part, there were two answers total that gave me pause. First, ELMS. Sigh. This is yet another one of those occasions where the "doubled clue" gimmick (today, [Symbols of wisdom]), just doesn't work as well for one of the two answers. I plunked OWLS down off the "O," but ELMS? Wisdom? Er ... shrug. I guess? They're certainly "stately," and they line streets, but ... wisdom, you say? News to me. The other "???" moment for me today was WORK BAG (56A: Stylish tote for an executive). I have no doubt that there are "stylish" WORK BAGs out there, but lemme tell you, "WORK BAG" is not a phrase that screams "stylish!" WORK BAG sounds like something someone in a hard hat might carry. Practical. Sturdy. I'm not even sure what a WORK BAG is, frankly. Is that like a briefcase ... but for ladies? Hang on... LOL, the first hit when I search [what is a "work bag"] is a site promising "Gorgeously Stylish WORK BAGs!" So either the clue writers did the same search I did or "stylish"-ness is really built in. Interesting. And yes, WORK BAGs are fashionable briefcase equivalents for women. (I just looked at a site promising a "Man's WORK BAG Collection," but everything on offer there was actually called a "briefcase." Weird.)

Bullets:

• 14A: Micronesian island that was the setting for a season of "Survivor" (PALAU) — it's fun to look at crossword history. Shortz had pretty much written PALAU off as crosswordese in the early '00s. It had only ever appeared irregularly, even in the olden days, after 2001, more than seven years or so go by with no PALAU. Then "Survivor: PALAU" aired in 2005. Then, in 2008, Patrick Berry puts it in a puzzle, cluing it as "Micronesian nation that hosted the 10th season of "Survivor"" and since then it's appeared twenty times, including three last year and four (?) in 2021. Looks like only five clues have ever mentioned "Survivor" directly, but there's no question that "Survivor" absolutely elevated the profile of PALAU, and is the reason we see it so often, even in "easy" early-week puzzles (lots of M and T appearances).
• 50D: "Yikes!" ("OH GOD!") — the Lord's name? In vain? In a Chanukah puzzle? I do not care, at all, but I did notice.
• 35A: 1990s sitcom featuring a bookstore (ELLEN) — weird how this entire sitcom (which I watched reasonably frequently) has been reduced in my memory to "that time she came out to Laura Dern!" A major moment in TV history, but one that has (for me) blocked out the rest of the show, including the fact that a bookstore was involved. (The "coming out" episode was titled "THE PUPPY EPISODE" in order to keep it under wraps, and, well, "THE PUPPY EPISODE" is 15 letters long ... come on, constructors, you know you want to)
• 7D: Starbuck's higher-up? (AHAB) — a Moby-Dick clue, obviously. Starbuck is the Chief Mate, whereas AHAB is the captain (his superior, a "higher-up").
• 33D: What you might call a tipsy friend (CAB) — hey, a New Year's Eve clue! Little late, but it's the thought that counts. I thought this answer was going to be some kind of slur, like SOT. CAB is nicer.

Got a bunch of Holiday Pet Pics still to burn, so let's burn 'em.

First up, appropriately, Chanukah Kitty! This is Mixtli. He enjoys sleeping and using random objects for pillows—highly unusual behavior for a cat...

[Thanks, Caitlin]

[For comparison, here's my cat, Ida, using an old pizza stone for a pillow:]

Here are two dog babies, Nanook and Buster, taking turns under the Christmas tree. 

[Thanks, Jim Thompson ... I love your crime fiction!]

Here's Figaro playing with a catnip toy, in a picture taken from his audition reel, I'm guessing.

[Thanks, Stephen]

Here are Baxter and Chinoag being such perfect little gentlepups that I can only imagine treats await them jjuussst out of frame...

[Thanks, Bea & Craig]

And finally, here's Miro, who sees you when you're sleeping and *definitely* knows when you're awake:

[Thanks, Jay]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Billionaire philanthropist Broad / WED 12-11-24 / Field for a Fortnite pro / Keto diet no-no / Actor who narrates "The Big Lebowski" / Detergent in a red bottle / Villainous animal in "The Lion King" / Car stolen by Jerry's mechanic on an episode of "Seinfeld"

Constructor: Kathy Bloomer and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: IN ONE SENSE (28D: Description of this puzzle's circled letters, and a clue to what they spell) — circled letters spell "SORTA," and each of those letters can be found (literally) IN ONE SENSE (i.e. embedded inside one of the five senses, which are found in shaded squares inside longer answers): 

Theme answers:

• REHEARSING (5D: Doing a musical read-through)
• TOASTER OVEN (23D: Appliance with a door and a crumb tray)
• FREELOADERS (24D: Moochers)
• HANGS TIGHT (10D: Waits patiently)
• SAM ELLIOTT (30D: Actor who narrates "The Big Lebowski")

Word of the Day: SAM ELLIOTT (30D) —

Samuel Pack Elliott (born August 9, 1944) is an American actor. With a career spanning over five decades of film and television, he is recognized for his deep sonorous voice. Elliott has received various accolades, including a Screen Actors Guild Award and a National Board of Review Award, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. [...] He achieved commercial success with his role in the biopic Mask (1985) and received Golden Globe nominations for starring in Louis L'Amour's adaptation of Conagher (1991) and the miniseries Buffalo Girls (1995), the latter of which also earned him his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Throughout the 1990s, he portrayed John Buford in the historical drama Gettysburg (1993), Virgil Earp in the western Tombstone (1993), and the Stranger in the crime comedy The Big Lebowski (1998). [...] In the 2010s, he had guest starring roles in the FX neo-western series Justified (2015) and the Netflix comedy series Grace and Frankie (2016) and subsequently starred in the Netflix sitcom The Ranch (2016–2020). He went on to headline the comedy drama film The Hero (2017) and star opposite Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in Cooper's 2018 adaptation of A Star Is Born, for which he received critical acclaim and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His role in the Paramount+ western miniseries 1883 (2021–2022) earned him further praise and a SAG Award. (wikipedia)

• • •

***ATTENTION: READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS IN SYNDICATION (if you're reading this in January, that's you!)*** : It's January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. Writing this blog is a joy, but it is also a job—an everyday, up-by-4am job. My morning schedule is regular as hell. So regular that my cats know my routine and will start walking all over me if I even *stir* after 3am. You ever lie there in the early morning, dying to simply roll over or stretch, but knowing that the second you do, the second you so much as budge, the cats will take it as a signal that you're through with sleep and ready to serve them? So you just lie perfectly still, trying to get every ounce of bedrest you can before the cats ruin it all? That's me, every morning. I guess you could say they "help" get me up on time to write, but come on, I have an alarm for that. The cats are adorable, but frankly they're no help at all. After I feed them, I go upstairs to write, and what do they do? They go straight back to sleep. Here I'll show you. This was two days ago, when I came downstairs after writing:

And this was yesterday, same time:

Those pictures are from two different days, I swear. And I'm guessing when I go downstairs this morning, I'll find much the same thing. They are beautiful creatures, but they cannot solve or type or bring me warm beverages. When it comes to blogging, I'm on my own. And look, I'm not asking for pity. The truth is, I love my life (and my cats), but the truth *also* is that writing this blog involves a lot of work. I get up and I solve and I write, hoping each day to give you all some idea of what that experience was like for me, as well as some insight into the puzzle's finer (or less fine) qualities—the intricacies of its design, the trickiness of its clues, etc. The real value of the blog, though, is that it offers a sort of commiseration. While I like to think my writing is (at its best) entertaining, I know that sometimes all people need is someone who shares their joy or feels their pain. If you hate a clue, or get stuck and struggle, or otherwise want to throw the puzzle across the room, you know I'm here for you, and that even if my experience is not identical to yours, I Understand! I understand that even though "it's just a puzzle," it's also a friend and a constant companion and a ritual and sometimes a Betrayer! I don't give you objective commentary—I give you my sincere (if occasionally hyperbolic) feelings about the puzzle, what it felt like to solve it. I can dress those feelings up in analytical clothes, sure, but still, ultimately, I'm just one human being out here feeling my puzzle feelings. And hopefully that makes you feel something too—ideally, something good, but hey I'm not picky. Whatever keeps you coming back! Hate-readers are readers too!

Whatever kind of reader you are, you're a reader, and I would appreciate your support. This blog has covered the NYTXW every day, without fail, for over eighteen (18!?) years, and except for two days a month (when my regular stand-ins Mali and Clare write for me), and an occasional vacation or sick day (when I hire substitutes to write for me), it's me who's doing the writing. Over the years, I have received all kinds of advice about "monetizing" the blog, invitations to turn it into a subscription-type deal à la Substack or Patreon. And maybe I'd make more money that way, I don't know, but that sort of thing has never felt right for me. And honestly, does anyone really need yet another subscription to manage? As I've said in years past, I like being out here on Main, on this super old-school blogging platform, just giving it away for free and relying on conscientious addicts like yourselves to pay me what you think the blog's worth. It's just nicer that way. 

How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar on the homepage):

Second, a mailing address (checks can be made out to "Michael Sharp" or "Rex Parker"):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All Venmo contributions will get a little heart emoji, at a minimum :) All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. My daughter (Ella Egan) has once again designed my annual thank-you card, and once again the card features (wait for it) cats! 

Ida & Alfie, my little yin/yang sleepers! (They're slowly becoming friends, but don't tell them that—it makes them mad and they will deny it). Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership. Please know that your support means a lot to me and my family. Now on to today's puzzle... 

• • •

Well this puzzle was certainly more elaborate than Monday's or Tuesday's, but more elaborate (in this case, in many cases) does not mean more entertaining. I found this one fussy and clunky—a puzzle built entirely around a complicated visual "joke" that doesn't really land. The revealer has no zing and comes too early—it's positioning is weirdly, and ineffectively, all the way over on the left, so I got it before I got any of the themers except REHEARSING, and then from there was able to write in "SORTA," see the "sense" in REHEARSING (i.e. "hearing"), and figure out the rest of the themers really easily. I never even saw the clue for SAM ELLIOTT (which would've been no help at all)—I just looked up and saw most of his name already written in, and since I know who he is, and I knew what the theme was, the clue was superfluous. Getting an answer without looking at a clue isn't so unusual, but the revealer placement here just made everything about the theme execution somewhat anticlimactic. Real cart-before-the-horse energy. Further, the revealer is IN ONE SENSE, but we are clearly dealing with All Five Senses, so there's an inherent disconnect between the revealer (which, again, is such a tepid, unpunchy phrase...) and the themers. ONE SENSE in the revealer, five senses in the grid. The revealer only works if you take SORTA letter by letter, i.e. it only SORTA works. Lastly, that fourth sense should be "touch," not FEEL. You have a sense of taste, a sense of smell, and a sense of touch, not a sense of FEEL. This puzzle has great thematic ambition and a lot of moving parts, but as a finished product, it's pretty wobbly and not terribly exciting.

The theme answers themselves, as standalone answers (regardless of the theme) are very nice. Well, REHEARSING is kinda neutral, but the others have real zing, and would be more than welcome in any themeless grid, or anywhere. Outside the themers, though, there's not much of interest, despite there being a hell of a lot of real estate given over to seven-letter words (ten of them!). The most exciting part of the grid was probably the part where the VEHICLE CRASHER RAN PAST the GOOSE, but the rest of those corners (where all the 7s are found) just kinda lie there, as does most of the fill overall. Not offensively bad or rough, just ... there. There is one answer, however, that was so jarring it derailed my solve, not in the sense that I got stuck, but in the sense that I found it so disruptive that I literally stopped my forward momentum to stare at the damage. What slammed into me hard enough to make me stop and make sure everything was OK? The answer: A LOAD OF. Doesn't look that menacing, I know, and it's not ... except with the LOAD part literally crosses *another LOAD* part (at FREELOADERS). So it's not just that the grid has "LOAD" in it twice (not great, but forgivable), it's that the LOADs literally crash into each other. Awkward, ugly, bad (like OWED TO running into PRIOR TO, but worse). A secondarily bad part of A LOAD OF is that it doesn't really mean what the clue says it means. A LOT OF, yes; A LOAD OF, er, eh ... SORTA? But A LOAD OF is much more common as a phrase meaning "a look at," as in the phrase "get A LOAD OF this," used when you are directing someone's attention to ... something. Someone. Whatever. It's A LOT OF for "many" (today, the weirdly French [Beaucoup]), and A LOAD OF for "an eyeful of." So A LOAD OF is doubly bad today—triply bad if you think (as I do) that the slangy / Frenchy [Beaucoup] doesn't really match its much plainer answer.

Bullets:

• 35A: Billionaire philanthropist Broad (ELI) — can we not? There are so many fine ELIs in the world, why are you foregrounding a so-called "billionaire philanthropist?" It's easy to give some of your money away when you're a ****ing billionaire. The idea that anyone is famous for this is nauseating. Hey, why don't you become famous for Giving It All Away? You are never going to sell me on the virtuous aspects of *any* billionaire, whatever their politics. Billionaire. Philanthropy. Is. A. Scam. I have never actively wished to see ELI Manning in the grid before, but here we are.
• 39A: Fresno-to-San Diego dir. (SSE) — I am never going to love seeing a three-letter direction in the grid, but I love this clue for two reasons. First, I grew up in Fresno, so I got a little pang of nostalgia, and second, the clue is somewhat counterintuitive—you really have to know CA geography to get the "E" part, because Fresno is inland and SD is coastal, so it seems like SD should be "W," not "E." But California juts eastward as it approaches Mexico along the coast, so SD ends up being east of Fresno, not west. This is somewhat like Detroit being east of Atlanta (a fact that my brain still can't quite accept). 
• 51A: Keto diet no-no (BREAD) — [Keto no-no] is a much, much better clue. Just sounds better. The "diet" part is superfluous. Everyone knows "Keto" is a diet. You gotta have a good ear to write good clues. This one clanks. 

• 23D: Appliance with a door and a crumb tray (TOASTER OVEN) — this one made me smile because I use mine every day despite the fact that it's kinda old and banged up. But we hang onto it because of its backstory: one year we went to Colorado for Christmas and our daughter (age 10? 11?) decided to get us a TOASTER OVEN for Christmas (?!) and so somehow acquired one and ... packed it in her luggage (!?!) and gave it to us in Colorado. I do not recommend packing a TOASTER OVEN in your suitcase. It got dented in transit. And then, of course, we had to ship it back home. The shipping probably ended up costing more than the oven itself (it's not a "nice" oven). But the sheer bizarre ambition of the girl's whole gift-giving scheme endeared the oven to us, so until it conks out or explodes, we're keeping it. Good memories. 
• 50D: Epic work that begins "Sing, goddess, of the anger of Achilles" (ILIAD) — I always heard it translated as "wrath," which is ... somewhat stronger, more evocative of Achilles's destructive power, than mere "anger." If you've seen Achilles go ham on the Trojans after Patroclus is killed, you'll know what I'm talking about. 

Alright, time for more Holiday Pet Pics!

Pi Pi has never seen A Christmas Story, so he doesn't know why wearing Ralphie's bunny ears is funny, but his human insists that it is, so here we are:

[Thanks, Max]

Freya is concerned this sweater makes her butt look big. (How do you people even get your cats into these get-ups? When I imagine trying to put a sweater on either of my cats, I can already feel claws slashing my arms and (probably) face)

[Thanks, Jan]

Dogs love to show off their tongues, but cats ... you gotta time it right. Here we get some subtle cat tongue action from Lydia... 

[Thanks, Joan]

... and some loopier and more manic tongue action from Sugar

[Thanks, Emma]

Oliver's owner insists that her fur spells out the word "HOPE"—Oliver just "hopes" that you leave her in peace so she can continue maniacally shredding her spectacular quadruple-wide scratchpost platform, thank you very much...

[Thanks, Emma]

Finally, here's a cat willing to fight back against all these tyrannical holiday impositions on catdom. Kill, Remy, Kill! Fight the power, Remy!

[Thanks, Max]

And lastly, there's Woody, who's just glad to be here. He thinks his left side is his good side. All your sides are good, Woody! 

[Thanks, Matt]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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