Budget airline of Ireland, informally / WED 7-15-26 / Narrator on "Euphoria" / Liam Neeson action trilogy / Ben Jonson wrote one to himself / Bold way to go when bluffing / Name repeated in a hit 1963 rock song / Giving up one's amateur status / Mork's planet on an old sitcom

Constructor: Jonathan Raksin and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: SPEEDCUBER (56A: Competitor suggested by 17-, 23- and 45-Across) — three theme answers are punny descriptions of speedcubing (i.e. competitive Rubik's Cube solving), and then there's a kind of mock-up of a Rubik's Cube in the middle of the grid, with nine letters forming a 3x3 square (one side of an implied "cube"), with those letters unscrambling to spell the name of the Cube's creator: ERNO RUBIK. You have to "solve" the "cube" in the middle yourself, I guess:

Theme answers:

• TURNING PRO (17A: Giving up one's amateur status) (speedcubers are professional turners, of a sort)
• MAD SCRAMBLES (23A: Frantic rushes) (speedcubers ... well, I would've said they 'unscramble' madly, but whatever, close enough)
• FLYING COLORS (45A: Something it's good to pass with) (Rubik's Cubes have brightly-colored sides, so presumably the colors "fly" when you solve them quickly)

Word of the Day: SPEEDCUBER (56A) —

Speedcubing or speedsolving is a competitive mind sport centered around the rapid solving of various combination puzzles. ^[3] The most prominent puzzle in this category is the 3x3x3 puzzle, commonly known as the Rubik's Cube. Participants in this sport are called "speedcubers" (or simply "cubers"), who focus specifically on solving these puzzles at high speeds to get low clock times and/or fewest moves. The essential aspect of solving these puzzles typically involves executing a series of predefined algorithms in a particular sequence with pattern recognition and finger tricks. // Competitive speedcubing is predominantly overseen by the World Cube Association (WCA), which officially recognizes 17 distinct speedcubing events.^[5] These events encompass a range of puzzles, including NxNxN puzzles of sizes varying from 2x2x2 to 7x7x7, and other puzzle forms such as the Pyraminx, Megaminx, Skewb, Square-1, and Rubik's Clock (until 2027). Additionally, specialized formats such as 3×3×3, 4×4×4, and 5×5×5 blindfolded, 3×3×3 one-handed (OH), 3×3×3 Fewest Moves, and 3×3×3 multi-blind are also regulated and hosted in competitions.

As of February 2026, the world record for the fastest single solve of a 3×3×3 Rubik's Cube in a competitive setting stands at 2.76 seconds. (wikipedia)

• • •

Did the makers of Rubik's Cube pay for this puzzle? What a weird niche thing to build a puzzle around. I knew there were speed-solving competitions, but SPEEDCUBER? Yeah, I'm not familiar with your slang, fellas. Not that that held me up at all today. I didn't solve the puzzle in 2.76 seconds (the world record for ... speedcubing, is it?), but it went by pretty fast, as most of it was composed of incredibly boring, completely ordinary fill. An avalanche (I'm gonna need new metaphors here) ... a landslide? ... of the most dull-as-ecru 3-4-5s I've ever seen. IPA ARIA TESSA UAE ISAY ERIE ADO RARER ODE ASTO ICET EST ALLIN ALIT ORATE OMIT APED IBIS OVA  ... its' like the puzzle was trying to put me to sleep. Hardly. There are only four non-theme answers longer than 6 letters. For me, this was like solving the world's plainest and easiest themeless, except for the revealer, which did its job, but ... it hardly seems worth it. The theme answers are kind of cute as punny descriptions of what speedcubing must be like, though MAD SCRAMBLES feels a little less apt than the others. Is the solver "scrambling" to solve it? Is the idea that the colored squares on the Cube are all "scrambled" up and the solver has to unscramble them? The exact meaning of that one feels ambiguous and slightly off in a way that the other two do not. Anyway, if you just take the thematic bones of this puzzle, I think it's OK. But the bulk of the puzzle felt like an afterthought. Total snooze.

I haven't cared about the Rubik's Cube since it first came out, when I was about 11. I think of it as a fad toy that stopped being popular years ago, but ... apparently there's this whole world of competitive solving I know nothing about. By "whole world" ... I don't know how big we're talking. But the Speedcubing wikipedia page is astonishingly, painfully long and detailed, so however niche that world is, it appears to be, uh, well established. I know something about niche hobbies, and niche competitions. I have the trophies to prove it. Nothing wrong with nerdy niche worlds. It's just ... I don't expect speedcubers (or anyone, really) to know about crossword speedsolving, and yet this puzzle expects me to know and care about speedcubing. That's a no on both counts for me. Still, I know what a Rubik's Cube is, so the basic concept here wasn't mysterious. The theme answer placement felt a little weird to me. It's not—it's just a arrangement of long Across answers, but that's the thing: because the puzzle centers around a cube and its turning sides, I wanted those long Downs to be themers, so that there'd be one themer on each side, evoking the square shape of a cube. In fact, when I was done, for a few seconds, I thought those long Downs were theme answers, and I was struggling to understand what PEDAL POWER or POETRY SLAM had to do with speedcubing. "I guess there's 'power' involved ... and maybe you 'slam' the cube down when you're done? Is speedcubing supposed to be 'poetry' in motion? Is the act of turning the cube sides called 'pedaling'?" So many questions flashing through my brain. Then I realized the themers were just arranged in a standard all-Across way, and those long Downs were ... irrelevant.

The only answer that held me up at all today was RYAN (42A: Budget airline of Ireland, informally). I have almost nothing written on my printed-out grid today except for next to the clue for RYAN, where I have scrawled a double-underlined "TF?" (that's the "TF" from "WTF"). I'm supposed to know a discount Irish airline? Sorry, the informal nickname for a discount Irish airline? Apparently, yes, I am. It seems that RYANair is a way, way bigger enterprise than I could've imagined: 

Ryanair is an Irish ultra-low-cost airline headquartered in Swords, County Dublin, Ireland. It is the largest airline in Europe by scheduled passengers carried, fleet size, and total flights. Globally, it is the largest airline by international passengers carried, the third-largest by market capitalisation behind Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, and the fifth-most profitable by net income. In 2025, the company sold 208 million airline tickets, averaging €70 in total revenue against €62 in costs per ticket sold. It is widely considered to be the cheapest airline operating in Europe. (wikipedia)

So I learned something today. I learned about a popular business that "consistently scores poorly in customer satisfaction ratings" but thrives nonetheless. Inspiring.

Bullets:

• 14A: One of approximately three million in Finland (for a population of less than six million) (SAUNA) — when I say America should follow more of a European social model, this is what I mean. You gotta admire a country this committed to health and relaxation. 
• 21A: Name repeated in a hit 1963 rock song (LOUIE) — wrote in "LAYLA" here (seven years off).

• 20A: Ben Jonson wrote one to himself (ODE) — it's a poem in which he takes himself to task for ... not writing poetry. Writing about how he's not writing. The poem opens with him beating himself up for not being more productive—basically a version of the voice in every self-loathing writer's head: "Where dost thou careless lie / Buried in ease and sloth?"
• 31D: Narrator on "Euphoria" (RUE) — I "know" this only from crosswords. It gets kind of densely pop-culturey in the middle of that damned cube: RUE, ORK, TAKEN clued as the Liam Neeson franchise. I doubt there's enough pop culture confusion there to scuttle someone's solve, but still, you might've taken RUE or TAKEN in a different, less name-y direction, just to be sure.

• 55A: One flying in to the coast, maybe (GULL) — so glad to find out this was just a bird and not some person flying into California to do business or take a vacation or whatever.
• 37D: Vampire double feature? (FANG) — A great clue, but maybe a better clue for FANGS, plural. I mean, yes, you can lawyer your way to a defense of singular FANG, but that "double" really wants FANGS. One FANG, double it, now you've got FANGS. Man, that word looks weirder and weirder the more you type it, so I'm gonna stop.

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Video game franchise featuring 100+ species of dinosaurs / THU 5-7-26 / Counterparts to calls, in stock lingo / One's appearance after a difficult journey, say / One providing timely delivery? / Plant used to make a Mexican beverage called "pulque" / Arctic seabird nicknamed "aerial pirate"

Constructor: John Guzzetta and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: -LESS — clues are familiar phrases that are missing a letter string that forms a word; answers are cryptic descriptions of those clues. So, e.g. 17A: is CARELESS MISTAKE because its clue, [BAD ___ER MOVE], is a "mistake" (BAD CAREER MOVE) minus the "care" part: 

Theme answers:

• "CARE"-LESS MISTAKE (17A: BAD __ER MOVE) ("bad career move" w/o "care")
• "WIN"-LESS SEASON (27A: ___TER) ("winter" w/o "win")
• "AGE"-LESS BEAUTY (44A: P___ANT QUEEN) ("pageant queen" w/o "age")
• "END"-LESS STRUGGLE (56A: ___EAVOR) ("endeavor" w/o "end")

Word of the Day: ARK (48A: Video game franchise featuring 100+ species of dinosaurs) —

Ark: Survival Evolved (stylized as ARK) is a 2017 action-adventure survival video game developed by Studio Wildcard. In the game, players must survive being stranded on one of several maps filled with roaming dinosaurs, fictional fantasy monsters, and other prehistoric animals, natural hazards, and potentially hostile human players.

The game is played from either a third-person or first-person perspective and its open world is navigated by foot or by riding a prehistoric animal. Players can use firearms and improvised weapons to defend against hostile humans and creatures, with the ability to build bases as a defence on the ground and on some creatures. The game has both single-player and multiplayer options. Multiplayer allows the option to form tribes of players in a server. The max number of tribe mates varies from each server. In this mode, all tamed dinosaurs and building structures are usually shared between the members. There is a PvE mode where players cannot fight each other unless a specific war event agreed upon by both parties is triggered. [...] 

Ark: Survival Evolved received generally mixed reviews, with criticism for its level of difficulty, repetitive gameplay design, and "bloated" level of content. The initial Nintendo Switch version was panned for its graphics and performance issues. Several expansions to the game have been released as downloadable content. (wikipedia)

• • •

Once again, I start a 2026 NYTXW puzzle and I immediately hit things like KIR and EVEL and wonder what kind of crosswordese time warp I've fallen into. ARLO ALIG SAHIB ECO ELLIE ESTA ESTES etc. etc. etc. I don't expect short fill to be exciting, and I do expect a clunker or two, but lately there seems like there's been a distinct carelessness with the short fill, as if constructors are just taking the first options their constructing software is giving them without bothering to see if maybe, with a little polish, the grid could look ... better. Or at least feel somewhat less creaky. So even before I hit the theme today, I was disappointed in this one. The theme itself is clever—one of those two-way cryptic dealies that's hard to explain, where the answer is more like the clue and vice versa. The clue tells you how to read the answer ... but once you figure out the gimmick, and you know you're (always) dealing with -LESS phrases up front, you can (probably) get to the answer from the clue alone. I never did. Took a while to discover what the gimmick was—needed most of the crosses in CARELESS MISTAKE, in part because I couldn't make anything out of [BAD ___ER MOVE] ("Badger move?" "Badfinger move?")—and after WINLESS SEASON told me they were all going to be -LESS phrases, I got the remaining two themers just from crosses and then inferring that there was a -LESS word at the beginning. Got BEAUTY and inferred AGELESS. Got STRUGGLE (actually just -GGLE) and inferred ENDLESS STRUGGLE. So the gimmick was kinda hard to pick up, but once you do, the puzzle becomes very easy to close out. 

The only real non-theme issues were some proper nouns I'd never heard of. I'm supposed to know all 435 congresspeople in the House of Representatives?? I know, like, two. AOC and my own rep, whose name, honestly, at this very second, I am forgetting. White guy, seems nice, shrug. I probably do know more than that (I do know the speaker's name, for instance), but JAMIE Raskin, no, I do not know that. Also if the three-letter "video game franchise" is not GTA (Grand Theft Auto) then there is no way in hell I will know it. ARK? LOL, given the clue (48A: Video game franchise featuring 100+ species of dinosaurs) I thought it was going to be some awful, ahistorical, and possibly Creationist game about how Noah lived in the time of dinosaurs or something. That answer was the last thing I filled in because there was no intuitive connection between the clue and the answer. Luckily for me, every cross was solid. The long Downs were solid today. I particularly loved SORRY SIGHT, though I did not love the clue (30D: One's appearance after a difficult journey, say). It's clunky and it takes all the colloquial energy out of the phrase. Gotta be a better way. Also, I'm not sure why a STAGE ACTOR's "delivery" should be more "timely" than any other kind of actor's delivery. Nothing in the clue seems "stage"-specific (29D: One providing timely delivery?), so I didn't like that clue either. MARROW BONE and MUSCLE CARS are just fine ... but I don't think the longer answer set quite offsets the gunky short fill. Doubly depressing that the fill is so gunky even after the puzzle has inserted a bunch of cheater squares (the black squares above ETS and below TOE, and then after MUG and before WAR)*. Those squares (which do not add to the overall answer count) are supposed to make the grid easier to fill for the constructor. But if EVEL is still in there sipping in KIR, I'm not sure the cheaters are working well enough. 

[I probably thought this song was cheesy as a kid but now it sounds Perfect]
Bullets:

• 13A: Plant used to make a Mexican beverage  called "pulque" (AGAVE) — "plant" and "Mexican beverage" are all you need here, AGAVE being the basis for other, more familiar Mexican beverages (tequila, mezcal). AGAVE shows up a lot in xwords—it's got that perfect five-letter VCVCV pattern that works so well in grids (OBAMA, ILANA, EDEMA, AROMA, etc.). Probably should've made "pulque" my word of the day, but the stupid video game got in the way. Pulque "is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey (agave) plant. It is traditional in central Mexico, where it has been produced for millennia. It has the color of milk, a rather viscous consistency and a sour yeast-like taste." (wikipedia)

• 46D: ___ Triangle (coastal section of Pennsylvania) (ERIE) — whoa, do ships disappear from there? Did Leonard Nimoy do an episode of In Search of... about the ERIE Triangle, the way I know he did about the Bermuda Triangle? Sadly, the answer is much more mundane. The "triangle" is literally just a triangle-shaped piece of land that connects PA to Lake ERIE, giving the state a freshwater port it wouldn't otherwise have.

[we used to have nice things... RIP Leonard Nimoy and his perfect voiceover voice]

• 40D: Counterparts to calls, in stock lingo (PUTS) — oh boy ... stock lingo ... everyone's favorite. Why clue a normal word normally when you can make it ... stock lingo ... ? 
• 9A: One who measures meter by the feet? (POET) — on the last day of classes, some of my British Literature students gave me a book they'd made filled with all the craziest things I'd (apparently!) said in class over the course of the semester. It was very sweet, if mildly humiliating. There's a lot in there about feet.

[I have no recollection of any of this, your honor]

• 39D: Arctic seabird nicknamed "aerial pirate" (SKUA) — first of all that's a terrible nickname. When you already have a cool name like SKUA! why would anyone bother with the syllabically excessive and boringly descriptive "aerial pirate"? Second of all, I want to point out that although SKUA is technically crosswordese (a bird I wouldn't have known existed were it not for crosswords), it is the official policy of this blog that all birds are given passes and will not be counted toward any puzzle's crosswordese load. Yes, that includes EMU, as well as extinct birds like MOA and DODO. All birds welcome, any time, in any amount. Yes, even TITS, of course TITS, why not? Haven't seen a TUI since '04, why not bring that one back? So many birds out there waiting for a crossword home. Constructors of the world, expand your ornithological range!

[TUI!!]

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Technically, there are two more cheater squares, after ARK and before INN, but they're less conspicuous and they're propping up the colorful longer Downs, so I'm not mad about them)  

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Spoiled girl in "Finding Nemo" / TUE 2-17-26 / Physicist Wolfgang who proposed the "exclusion principle" / Material in a classical timepiece / "Oh, that stupid little punk ..." / Workout inspired by martial arts / Tough-but-loving fathers, informally / Leafy side dish rich in vitamin K / Flavoring in an earthy whiskey

Constructor: Stephan Prock and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BAROQUE (39A: Music genre for the words hidden in this puzzle's circled letters ... or a punny description for them?) — circled letters contain forms of music associated with the BAROQUE Period ("genre"?); those circled letters are "broken" across two answers (hence the "punny description"=> BAROQUE = "broke"):

Theme answers:

• ALBINO RAT / ORION (oratorio)
• SNAFU / GUESS SO (fugue)
• PERSONA / TAE BO (sonata)
• LURCH / ORAL EXAMS (chorale)

Word of the Day: Wolfgang PAULI (52D: Physicist Wolfgang who proposed the "exclusion principle") —

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli ([...] 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian–Swiss theoretical physicist and a pioneer of quantum mechanics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle". The discovery involved spin theory, which is the basis of a theory of the structure of matter.

To preserve the conservation of energy in beta decay, Pauli proposed the existence of a small neutral particle, dubbed the neutrino by Enrico Fermi, in 1930. Neutrinos were first detected in 1956. [...]

In quantum mechanics, the Pauli exclusion principle (German: Pauli-Ausschlussprinzip) states that two or more identical particles with half-integer spins (i.e. fermions) cannot simultaneously occupy the same quantum state within a system that obeys the laws of quantum mechanics. This principle was formulated by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli in 1925 for electrons, and later extended to all fermions with his spin–statistics theorem of 1940. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is more a two- or two-and-a-half-star puzzle, but I bumped it up because it made me think of Bach, whose music I love, and it took a giant swing with that terrible pun, which I don't love, but I do respect. The problem with a theme like this is there are no real theme answers (besides the revealer). That is, there's no thematic unity among any set of answers. The musicality exists only by accident, by the arrangement of letters in non-musical answers, so the whole thing ends up playing rather like a themeless (and in this case, a very dull / easy themeless). The grid has some potential as far as interesting answers go (six different Downs of 7 or more letters), but those all come in pretty flat. Meanwhile, the rest of the grid has a dreary, olden feel to it. "NEATO, an EDSEL! You don't see many of those these days. OK, time to go to my TAE BO class, byeee!" I'd also say that the added OPERA content (including the crossreferenced ARIAS) was a bug, not a feature—you have a musical theme but no musical themers ... but then you add musical content non-thematically? And BAROQUE music at that (Monteverdi's L'Orfeo = 1607 = early BAROQUE). I don't love it. Seems sloppy, or at least inelegant. 

[Roy Lichtenstein, Go For Baroque, 1979]

I have two other music-related objections to this puzzle. Well, not "objections," exactly, more ... questions. A couple of things struck me as odd. First, I would never have thought to call BAROQUE music a "genre." To me, that word describes music from a specific time period (~1600-1750), not a "genre." Also, as far as "sonata" goes, I associate that form most strongly with the (later) Classical period (~1750-1820), not the BAROQUE. I see (now) that the term "sonata" existed in the BAROQUE period, but it's not until the Classical period that it "takes on increasing importance": 

The practice of the Classical period would become decisive for the sonata; the term moved from being one of many terms indicating genres or forms, to designating the fundamental form of organization for large-scale works. This evolution stretched over fifty years. The term came to apply both to the structure of individual movements (see Sonata form and History of sonata form) and to the layout of the movements in a multi-movement work. In the transition to the Classical period there were several names given to multimovement works, including divertimento, serenade, and partita, many of which are now regarded effectively as sonatas. The usage of sonata as the standard term for such works began somewhere in the 1770s. Haydn labels his first piano sonata as such in 1771, after which the term divertimento is used sparingly in his output. The term sonata was increasingly applied to either a work for keyboard alone (see piano sonata), or for keyboard and one other instrument, often the violin or cello. It was less and less frequently applied to works with more than two instrumentalists; for example, piano trios were not often labelled sonata for piano, violin, and cello. (wikipedia) 

There are sonatas in the BAROQUE period, so there's nothing technically "wrong" with including it among today's musical form, but the other forms feel very closely associated with the BAROQUE period specifically, whereas the sonata (to my admittedly untrained ear and cursory understanding of music history) doesn't.

I wasn't really paying attention to the circled squares, even after I hit BAROQUE, so as I say the puzzle played like a rather disappointing themeless. I could see that BAROQUE was the revealer, but I didn't notice what was going on until I was already finished, and even then, it took me a few beats to figure out what was "punny" about BAROQUE (you really have to imagine some emphasizing your brokeness; there's "broke," and then there's two-syllable "buh-roke," which is obviously worse). Seeing all the BAROQUE(-ish) music forms made me slightly happier than I'd been while solving, and then that pun ... it did not make me happier, but it definitely made me groan, which is, as I understand it, the singular purpose of a pun, so ... half-star bump for the pun. I am nothing if not generous.

No difficulty today except for the two names: specifically, the fish and the physicist (which sounds like the title of a popular book on physics, or else a fable by Aesop). This puzzle overestimates how much I remember about the full cast of Finding Nemo (a now-23yo movie). DARLA is the 20th (!?) listed role on the wikipedia page for this movie. This is the first time DARLA has been clued via Finding Nemo. Historically, Our Gang / Little Rascals has been the go-to frame of reference. I can see how one might wish for something more ... current. There have been a couple forays into the Buffy-verse, but otherwise, it's Alfalfa's sweetheart as far as the eye can see. There's a dearth of DARLAs, darlin' (it's a great name; more people should have that name; back in the late 20th century, I very briefly dated someone named DARLA ... I can't say her name wasn't part of the appeal; we went to see Shakespeare in Love ... and that's all I can remember) (I don't even remember the movie, frankly).

Bullets:

• 4D: "Oh, that stupid little punk ..." ("SON OF A!") — someone used this once as a crossword answer and now it lives in everyone's wordlist and I don't love it (anymore). The clue is also not really on the money—it's not partial enough, not interrupted and sputtering enough. You need something more incomplete. "Why I oughta...!" — something in that vein.
• 7D: Daniel of the "Knives Out" movies (CRAIG) — the latest installment, Wake Up Dead Man, was fantastic. I got to see it in the theater, in that brief period that Netflix allowed it to run in theaters. The place was packed, or nearly so. The only movie I saw last year that was better-attended was Sinners. I don't consider movies "movies" unless they have a theatrical run. I could barely bring myself to stream Nouvelle Vague (which I really liked, but resented not being able to see on the big screen). On TV (and esp. on Netflix, Apple, Amazon), "movies" just seem like more "content," no matter how well made they are. (Somehow, in my brain, this does not apply to old movies—how else am I going to see (most) old movies?) (I love you, Criterion Channel!). Release the movies! Let them be big!

• 58D: Material in a classical timepiece (SAND) — ah, the classical time piece, a great step forward from the time pieces of the BAROQUE period (when they measured time not in SAND but in gravel, or the blood of their enemies).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Onetime Volvo competitor / THU 12-4-25 / Tourist hot spot in Uttar Pradesh / Also + Frozen water / Precocious literary resident of the Plaza Hotel / Clutch producer / Letters on Ivan Drago's tracksuit in "Rocky IV" / When tripled, a 1962 Elvis movie title / Traditional roofing material for a Cape Cod-style house

Constructor: Stephan Prock and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (themers were the only tricky part)

THEME: Connections — two answers are linked by a (shaded) word meaning "link," resulting in a longer, unclued answer:

Theme answers:

• TOOK NOTICE (17A: Also + Frozen water)
• NINETIES KID (24A: Three squared + Slide)
• CARAMEL DELITE (36A: Italian "darling" + Top-shelf)
• CREEPING OUT (47A: Northern tribe + Toe trouble)
• CARBON DATE (57A: Auto + Consumed)

Word of the Day: CARAMEL DELITE (36A) —

Vanilla cookies topped with caramel, sprinkled with toasted coconut, and laced with chocolatey stripes. (ABC Bakers)

• • •

Hello. First off, congratulations to Eli Selzer (who did the write-up Tuesday) for his impressive showing on Jeopardy! (also on Tuesday). He didn't win, but he sure as hell won the first half—built up a huge lead only for the champion to come storming back late in the game. Penelope and I both went "Noooooooooo!" when Eli said "Ozarks" instead of just Ozark. That was the cruelest mistake. But he knew so many things I never would've gotten. And I don't know how all you Jeopardy! people are so fast on the draw. I see the answer and I'm like "Oh, oh, it's that cat ... what is ...? ... ugh, you know ... not a cougar ... kinda looks like one ... it's black ..." [time expires] "Sorry, sir, the question is 'Who was George Washington?'" "Dammit!" I hadn't watched Jeopardy! in ages, and it was kinda fun. But only because someone I knew was on it. Gonna return to not watching it now. 

This puzzle didn't make much sense to me. I like a theme without a revealer if the core tenets of the theme are clear, but they weren't perfectly clear to me today. So ... we get two ultra-dull clues linked by a "+" and that "+" is supposed to represent the word in the shaded squares. Those shaded words are all verbs (or nouns, I suppose) meaning "unite," "fuse," something like that. And then, in each case, you get one long unclued answer. The whole premise felt shaky to me—not a tight enough connection between "+" and whatever was in those shaded squares; and those shaded words didn't feel like the tightest set, either. And I don't really believe NINETIES KID is a thing any more than any other decade + KID is a thing. Was I a SEVENTIES KID or an EIGHTIES KID? An argument can be made either way, and either way, neither one of those really belongs in a puzzle. Also, I had absolutely no idea what a CARAMEL DELITE was supposed to be. Zero. Figured it was a type of ice cream. Had to look it up after, only to discover it's basically the same thing as a Samoa (Girl Scout Cookie). Unclued answers are already operating from a joy deficit. They really need to sing. There's no pleasure in having neither a clue (as in, the clue is missing) ... nor a clue (as in, I have no idea what this answer is). The shaded squares don't always break across the two elements of each themer, either, making for an inelegant execution. "KID" and "OUT" are sitting in their respective answers completely unconnected, left out of the bonding scheme entirely. I realize the bonds are only supposed to "bond" the two clued answers (e.g. NINE and SKID), not the words in the longer phrase (e.g. NINETIES and KID), but still, when the "tie" is not "tying" the elements in the longer answer together, it looks funny/failed. Three of the answers manage to get it right, but NINETIES KID and CREEPING OUT miss. This feels like a first draft of an idea. There's potential here ... but the final product doesn't feel fully baked.

The fill is, once again, unfortunate. Bad enough that I stopped to take a screenshot before I ever got out of the NW:

As you can see, I messed up my stupid three-letter Star Wars answers because it's all crosswordese to me (it's REY Skywalker and Kylo REN, sigh). That answer + ELOISE and SERTA and "I LOSE" had me in DOOMER mode. And sure enough, the crosswordese came in buckets: SAAB AGRA OPI BAE ... and that's just the adjoining section. IMPEI, plural HORAS, that Fox ("cable," nice try) News guy NEIL (of all the NEILs, why that NEIL??) ... UGLI, indeed. The NE and SW have very solid colonnades of 7/8-letter answers—those parts, I liked. The rest didn't do much for me.

The only difficulty today was parsing the themers. That REY-for-REN mistake was easy enough to correct, and I don't remember any other missteps except USSR for CCCP (10A: Letters on Ivan Drago's tracksuit in "Rocky IV"). I did need several crosses to get MELON (33D: Noggin), but on a Thursday, I'd expect to "need several crosses" to get many answers, and that just wasn't the case today.

Bullets:

• 1A: Traditional roofing material for a Cape Cod-style house (CEDAR) — I wanted SHALE (?) and THATCH (which wouldn't fit). 
• 22D: Clutch producer (HEN) — a group of eggs laid by a HEN is called a "clutch."
• 49D: When tripled, a 1962 Elvis movie title (GIRLS) — not an Elvis film title that leaps to mind. I couldn't get the VIVA part of VIVA, LAS VEGAS out of my head. "VIVA VIVA VIVA!"—not a movie title. The part of my brain occupied by "GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS" ... has been taken (I think this means I'm definitely an EIGHTIES KID, for better or, in this case, worse):

• 15A: Tourist hot spot in Uttar Pradesh (AGRA) — location of the Taj Mahal, which, if you have solved crosswords for any length of time, you damn sure know
• 57D: Greenhorn (CUB) — couple of old-fashioned synonyms for you. I have never heard CUB used in this way except when followed by the word "reporter." I'm much more apt to use "greenhorn," which is a funny word. Curious about its etymology. Here we go ... according to someplace called etymonline (I'm just going to assume it's legit): 

greenhorn(n.)

mid-15c., "horn of an animal recently killed," also "young horned animal," from green (adj.) in sense of "new, fresh, recent" + horn (n.). Applied to new soldiers from c. 1650; extended to any inexperienced person by 1680s.

That's all. See you next time.

Wait, one more thing: For The Next Week Only, I will once again be accepting ...

🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲

... continuing what is now apparently an annual tradition of posting pictures of readers' pets in "holiday" settings (whatever that means to you). Send your pics to rexparker at icloud dot com. Please include your pet's name, as well as any info you think relevant. I'll post several of them a day in the run up to Christmas and (likely) through the New Year. Here's a teaser for you:

[Christmas crime scene ... Santa's body was never found]
[Thanks, Lesley (you didn't give me kitty's name!)]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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