Relative difficulty: Medium (7:49 on a grid that's 16 squares across)
THEME: The Multiverse — Various references to the science fiction concept
Theme answers:
[Theoretical world coexisting with ours ... as depicted in this puzzle] for PARALLEL UNIVERSE
[Theoretical timeline where things play out a little differently ... as featured in this puzzle] for ALTERNATE REALITY
Circled letters across the middle spell out WORMHOLE, and that entry connects two closed-off corners that are mirror images of each other
E.g., TUBER at 1-Across is mirrored with REBUT at 10-Across
ENOLA at 15-Across is mirrored with ALONE at 17-Across
etc.
Word of the Day: EVITA (Hit musical set in Buenos Aires) —
A West End revival based upon the 2019 production at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre began previews at the London Palladium in 2025. Jamie Lloyd directed, with Rachel Zegler, in her West End debut, as Eva.
The production stages the number "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" on the exterior balcony of the Palladium (Argyll Street) and is broadcast to the theatre audience using cameras outside and a large screen inside the theatre; the large crowds on the street watching this balcony scene can be contextualized as part of Eva Peron's "spectacle and political theatre".
The musical is set to begin performances at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in 2027, with Zegler confirmed to reprise her role of Eva Perón.
• • •
Hello everyone! I am here for a Malaika MWednesday, and I solved this while watching Mexico beat Ecuador. Have you guys been watching the games? Last week I watched the Mexico game at a Mexican bar. Today I watched the France game at a French bar. Tomorrow I will watch the Senegalese game at a Senegalese bar. I love New York City so much and I love the World Cup soooo much.
AND I LOVE MBAPPÉ SOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH
I loved this puzzle, too! There was so much going on, yet it felt delightful, balanced, and impressive, rather than overstuffed or tortured. Oftentimes, creative themes like this seem to me like they'd be fit for a Sunday-sized grid, but it worked perfectly fine in this slightly oversized puzzle.
As I've said in the past, a marker for a good theme is if the theme entries would be sparkly even in a themeless puzzle. Both of the spanners are excellent, as well as being debuts (meaning that no NYT crossword has ever used those entries). I imagine it is easier to debut a sixteen-letter entry, given that ~85% of puzzles can't contain it. I liked how the entries ran "parallel" to each other, and how they served sort of as alternates to each other. I wondered if it would have been fun to give them identical clues, but that would have evoked more of a sense of deja vu. The point of parallel universes and alternate realities (as shown in the corners) is that things are not identical.
The show Community does some fun stuff with the multiverse
Let's talk about the corners: I did not even clock until three-quarters through that the corners are not connected to the rest of the grid! That's a big no-no in puzzles, but (like with all other Puzzle No-Nos) is welcome to be utilized in service of a relevant theme. There is a danger that a solver could get stuck in one of the corners, but the brilliant thing is that you sort of have two sets of clues to help you solve each entry! I paused on how to spell NEIL ("Neal"?) and checked my work not by looking at the down entry but by looking at the mirror entry, LIEN. I am so curious as to how the constructor put together those corners. I am extremely, almost embarrassingly reliant on constructing software while making puzzles and it seems like these would have had to be put together without it.
I'm curious what you guys thought of this one! While I love when people use the grid in a creative way, I also have a high bar for it, and this puzzle totally cleared it for me.
Bullets:
[___ Holmes, 2020s role for Millie Bobby Brown] for ENOLA — As a constructor, this Netflix series felt like a gift allowing a modern alternative to the standard [___ Gay]. Of the twenty-two times that this entry has appeared in the NYT since the movies came out, eighteen of them have referenced Sherlock's sister
[1880s-'90s veep ___ P. Morton] for LEVI — On the heels of that.... we've got a politician from well over a century ago! I was so hesitant to fill this in because I couldn't imagine why they'd pick this dude over Strauss on a Wednesday puzzle.
[Bed for fish?] for SUSHI RICE — Cute clue, and now I am massively craving a negitoro hand roll
[Posh clothing material] for SATIN — My fave fashion expert Cora Harrington talks a lot about how satin is not the same as silk. Satin can be made of polyester, in which case it is likely cheap and not particularly posh!
xoxo Malaika
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THEME: "Target Practice" — a WILLIAM TELL-themed puzzle with shaded squares that form a BOW and ARROW and a single "APPLE" square (which the ARROW is aimed at), plus a lot of related trivia and puns:
Theme answers:
SWITZERLAND (22A: Home of the legendary folk hero at 116-Across)
MARKSMANSHIP (32A: Expertise demonstrated by 116-Across in a fabled feat of precision)
ARCHERY (41A: Athletic skill mastered by 116-Across)
ROSSINI (91A: Composer of an overture dedicated to 116-Across)
SHOOTING STAR (103A: Streaker in the sky ... or a punny description of 116-Across)
FRUITFUL (38D: Productive ... or a punny description of the feat performed by 116-Across?)
TAKE A BOW (56D: What 116-Across did before and after this puzzle's feat?)
WILLIAM TELL (116A: Legendary figure who's the subject of this puzzle)
BOW and ARROW and APPLE answers:
42D: Many a liquor license applicant (CLUB OWNER)
66A: Chirruping bird (SPARROW)
69A: City sobriquet that might describe the target for 116-Across / 59D: Popular beverage brand (THE BIG APPLE / SNAPPLE)
Word of the Day: PEWEES (54D: Small flycatchers named for their call, not their size) —
The pewees are a genus, Contopus, of small to medium-sized insect-eating birds in the tyrant flycatcher family Tyrannidae.
These birds are known as pewees, from the call of one of the more common members of this vocal group. They are generally charcoal-grey birds with wing bars that live in wooded areas.
• • •
Grim. It's so disappointing to see the Sunday puzzle reduced to this complete non-challenge, this child's placemat of a trivia / pun puzzle. I stopped early to screenshot the moment when I could feel the bottom fall out of this thing:
From the clue on SWITZERLAND, I knew the topic immediately, and I could see that all I was gonna get, or most of what I was gonna get, was just random WILLIAM TELL trivia—assorted related answers arranged symmetrically, none of them particularly interesting or clever. I guess they eventually give you a couple of puns in there, but otherwise it's just a predictable parade of answers, many of whose clues I never even had to look at: MARKSMANSHIP, ROSSINI, WILLIAM TELL—I didn't need the clues for any of these because the rest of the puzzle was so damned easy they basically filled themselves in. The whole concept here was transparent, and even the visual gag (which is probably the best thing about the theme) offered no real surprise or challenge. ARROW / BOW / APPLE / Shrug. The APPLE was probably the "hardest" part, but it wasn't hard. THE BIG ___ made it obvious. But that answer is oddly inapt (what the hell does NYC have to do with any of this? And was the apple in the WILLIAM TELL fable particularly big? I don't remember that). I don't think the puzzle is poorly constructed from a technical standpoint, just remedial and without any real pleasure (unless the punny stuff brings you pleasure, in which case, lucky you).
The clue editing is also really uneven today. It's a small detail, but the puzzle doesn't seem to know when to use "?"s. If you tell us the answer is punny, then there is no need to put the "?" on the clue, which makes the FRUITFUL clue ... just ... not right (38D: Productive ... or a punny description of the feat performed by 116-Across?). If you don't believe me, just look at the clue for SHOOTING STAR (103A: Streaker in the sky ... or a punny description of 116-Across). See: no "?" Because it's not necessary. Because you've already (painfully, unnecessarily) told us that the answer is a pun. Now look at the clue for TAKE A BOW (56D: What 116-Across did before and after this puzzle's feat?). That clue demonstrates the proper use of a "?" (the "?" indicates the punniness). So the clue writing was sloppy. And not terribly imaginative (the clues use the word "legendary" twice, and there's a similar phrasing to a lot of the clues). And we get BOW twice? (as a visual element, inside of CLUBOWNER, and as a word in TAKE A BOW). Things are just ragged around the edges. I can see how a certain segment of solvers might find this puzzle breezy and delightful, but difficulty-wise and concept-wise, it just didn't feel up to NYTXW Sunday standards (or what I wish those standards were).
There are no tough parts to this puzzle. I had trouble nowhere. I wrote in CERA for CENA, which I do all the time, despite the fact that Michael CERA and John CENA look nothing alike (19A: Wrestler/actor John). I did have trouble with SNAPPLE ... for a few seconds. Until I checked the cross and realized I was dealing with a rebus square ("APPLE"). That was my favorite moment of the puzzle—and there's a connection between the (slight) difficulty and the pleasure. The appearance of the apple was a genuine (if mild) surprise. Nothing else about the puzzle was surprising. The handling of the ARROW/BOX squares was clever, but you can see that coming a mile away if you know you're dealing with WILLIAM TELL. The rebusing of the APPLE, however, was unexpected. Hurray for the unexpected. I needed a bunch of crosses to get the OVER part of SENT OVER (77D: Forwarded) (SENT ON is the only phrase that made sense to me), but I wouldn't call that answer "hard," exactly. Just awkward. Everything else in this grid, I blew through like it was Monday. The only part I truly enjoyed was that clue on BAR CAR (35D: Where Cary Grant orders a Gibson in a classic scene from "North by Northwest"). Peak Hitchcock, peak Cary Grant (that suit! and sunglasses!), peak train scene, peak hot people meet-cute. Cinematic nirvana. I have an 8x10 of Cary Grant hanging on the wall right behind me (along with similar promotional photos of Janet Leigh, Kirk Douglas, and W.C. Fields—I picked them all up at a second-hand store, preframed, somewhat beat up, but perfect in my eyes). Here's the North by Northwest scene in question. Never gets old.
["Think how lucky I am to have been seated here." "Luck had nothing to do with it."]
Bullets:
29A: Hero of Arabian tales (ALI BABA) — I watched Salesman (1969) yesterday for the first time. It's a classic documentary about bible salesmen. It was a hard watch for me—the relentlessness and occasional desperation of the salesmen up against the credulousness and economic desperation of the people they're selling to. Starts feeling like con men trying to rope in the suckers, only it's all done under the auspices of the Church, so ... much of the time the interactions in people's homes are so awkward and strained that I could barely look at the screen. It's hard to believe these guys and their racket ever existed. They are an amazing set of characters, though, and the movie is fascinating as a character study—lots of footage of the salesmen sitting around motel rooms smoking (so much smoking!) going over the successes and failures of the day. Speaking of failures ... the reason I'm telling you all this here is that there's a scene, maybe my favorite scene in the movie, where the main salesman ("The Badger"!) is driving around Opa-Locka, FL, trying to find an address and the street he wants is a plain old numbered street but every street he sees has some name out of Arabian Nights (including ALI BABA). And the city hall is shaped like something out of Arabian Nights. And basically he drives in circles going crazy trying to find his way out of the Opa-Locka Arabian Nightsmare, asking directions and literally getting nowhere. It felt ... like a metaphor. Ooh, looks like Documentary Now! did a parody of Salesman called Globesman, so I'm gonna have to track that down today.
74A: Appointments that may lead to better contacts (EYE EXAMS) — having just watched Salesman, I figured the "contacts" were business contacts, like sales leads, but ... no. Contact lenses! Good misdirection, enjoyable clue.
84A: $5 bill, slangily (ABE) — this remains a non-thing, despite decades of crossword insistence. No one calls a five this except me, ironically.
12D: Absolutely whomps, in sports lingo (CREAMS) — Is the "sports lingo." It feels like playground lingo. I don't think I've heard this particular expression for "soundly defeats" since the '80s. I love "whomps," though. More WHOMPS in the puzzle, please.
23D: Jasmine's tiger companion in "Aladdin" (RAJAH) — didn't know this, but it basically filled itself in. Yesterday RANEE, today RAJAH—these words for Indian royals were some of the first "crosswordese" I ever learned. You see them a lot less these days (also, in crosswords, they're somewhat more frequently spelled RANI and RAJA).
33D: Longtime jazz bandleader with an Egyptian-inspired name (SUN RA) — have you ever seen Space is the Place (1974). You should see Space is the Place.
51D: Tenth, in Latin (DECIMUS) — what are we doing here? Come on. You're debuting this in 2026? smh.
97D: Australian city named for a scientist (DARWIN) — that scientist: Pete DARWIN, inventor of the Jell-O mold. Not Jell-O itself. That was Pearle Bixby Wait. What a great name. A great man's name. Not many guys named Pearl(e) any more.*
117D: Bucket list item? (MOP) — I get that MOPs go in buckets, but how exactly does "list" work here? I mean, on a literal level. I know the term "bucket list," but if the clue is going to work in some kind of punny way for MOP, then ... "list" has to be relevant somehow. I don't see it. Is there some imagined list of "Things That Go In Buckets" and MOP is simply on that list? Who keeps this list? What a weird idea for a list. Or is the idea that the MOP "lists" to the side when you try to stand it up in the bucket? I'm sincerely curious about the rationale.
That's all for today. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. a belated R.I.P. to Manny Nosowsky, one of the all-time great NYTXW constructors, who died earlier this week (obit here). He made 254 puzzles for the Times starting in 1992. I remember his puzzles as being really playful and entertaining. Looking through my write-ups of his puzzles (primarily in the late '00s), I notice I'm using the word "legendary" a lot. He was the real deal, and the puzzlescape is poorer without him.
*of course I was kidding about Pete DARWIN. But not about Pearle Bixby Wait, that dude was real.
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THEME: "Going Down Fast" — theme answers contain "HILL," the letters of which descend downward (in circled squares) with a steepness that changes. based on the ski trail difficulty rating symbol (which interrupts that answer and immediately precedes "HILL"); each "HILL" is thus a different kind of SLIPPERY SLOPE (67A: Certain fallacy .. or what's indicated by every "Sign' in this puzzle's grid):
Theme answers:
CHINC🟢HILLAS (16A: Sources of fur in some luxury clothing)
CAPTAIN P🟦HILLIPS (44A: 2013 film whose titular character is captured by Somali pirates)
BRITISH S♦HILLING (78A: Old coin worth 1/20 of a pound)
BONE-C♦♦HILLING (105A: Eerie and then some)
Word of the Day: SWAGE (102D: Metal-shaping tool) —
Swaging (/ˈsweɪdʒɪŋ/) is a forging process in which the dimensions of an item are altered using dies into which the item is forced. Swaging is usually a cold working process, but also may be hot worked.
The term swage may apply to the process (verb) or to a die or tool (noun) used in that process.
["Eccentric Swage Nipple" is my favorite '60s psychedelic rock band]
The term "swage" comes from the Old French term souage, meaning "decorative groove" or "ornamental moulding". Swages were originally tools used by blacksmiths to form metal into various shapes too intricate to make with a hammer alone. These have handles for holding or pegs for attaching to an anvil, and often a flat head for striking with a hammer. Swage blocks are anvil-like dies with various shapes forged into them, which are also used for forming metal. Swages called "fullers" are specific to making grooves in swords and knives. (wikipedia)
• • •
This was certainly inventive, though I can't say it was that enjoyable for me. I haven't skied in decades, but I'm at least vaguely aware of the trail rating system, so picking up the theme wasn't too hard, and once I did, all the HILLs just filled themselves in, which made the whole thing even easier than it already was. I guess the puzzle does the best it can to work the "HILL"s into different levels of steepness, but the final one, the double-diamond "HILL," is preposterous. That's not a hill, that's a cliff. A sheer cliff. SLIPPERY SLOPE is a fairly apt way of describing any ski slope, so the revealer was fine, if not exactly a true revelation or a genuine "aha." I feel like this is a three-star puzzle, but I'm gonna bump it a half-star for creativity. Gotta respect a big swing. But I can't say this was fun to solve. I could admire the structural and architectural elements of the theme, but in the end, the theme answers themselves were just "HILL"-containing answers—nothing inherently interesting about that. And as I say, all the "HILL"s were just handed to me on a platter, which made the theme answers easier, and thus duller, than they should've been. I hate any references to fur, so the CHINCHILLAS clue was off-putting, and I hate any references to the world of Harry Potter, so the FULL BEARD clue was off-putting (41D: Notable feature of Hagrid or Gandalf). Also, I don't really believe FULL BEARD is a thing. It's just a beard. We call that a beard. Worst of all, from an editing perspective, was the clue on LAV (10D: British bathroom), which uses "British" when BRITISH already appears as a full word in the grid (BRITISH SHILLING). So easy—soooo easy—to change that clue to [Bristol bathroom] or [Birmingham bathroom] or [Bath bathroom] for god's sake. Really conspicuous words in the grid, particularly theme answers, should not be duped in the clues. Seems negligent or lazy, and definitely inelegant.
[66D: "Fernando" group, 1976]
The hardest part for me today was the CLAMBER / SHARE A CAB / KEVIN JONAS stack. LO-extreme-L at the idea that I would know any of the first names of the Jonas brothers. Nick? Is one of them named Nick? Yes. How do I know that? I think maybe I also have heard of Joe Jonas. But KEVIN, oof, no. SHARE A CAB makes me want to EAT A SANDWICH ... although I suppose it's got a bit more standalone power than EAT A SANDWICH (18A: Carpool home from the bar, say). Still, I don't think of sharing a cab as "carpooling." And as for CLAMBER ... I kinda sorta wanted it, but I didn't trust myself there (9A: Move awkwardly (up)). Not a word I ever use. The more I look at it, the wronger it looks. Anyway, CLAMB over SHARE A over KEVIN was giving me issues for a bit, esp. since that whole stack was traversed by CHESS, which was very toughly clued (9D: It's all there in black and white). "There?" Where? Also, not all chess sets feature black and white men. In fact, if you do an image search (right now, go ahead) you'll find that very few of the results are black & white. There's always some form of dark and light, but the "white" pieces are often more of a light brown, made out of a light wood. Something like this:
The clue is still fair, just hard. Not much else about this puzzle was hard. Except SWAGE. LOL, SWAGE, what the hell? (102D: Metal-shaping tool). I needed every cross. Then I had to check and double-check every cross to make sure that I didn't have an error. Then I just stared at it for a second like "really?" Then I just left it there and hoped for the best. Seventeen years since the last appearance of SWAGE. That means I've seen it. I've even blogged about it. I wonder what I said about it in 2009, hang on ... ha, SWAGE didn't even make Word of the Day. The Word of the Day that day was WOLD ... whoa, WOLD and SWAGE crossed at the "W"! Yikes. Nothing so frightening in today's grid.
[76A: Hall's musical partner]
Made a few small mistakes here and there. CIA AGENT before CIA ASSET (3D: Mole, maybe). STEEL TOE before STEEL TIP (86D: Sturdy boot feature). ARIzona before ARKansas (does anyone abbr. "Arkansas" that way??) (6A: State home to the only public diamond mine in the U.S.: Abbr.). Unusual stuff like POULT (70D: Young turkey) and ILOILO (53A: Philippine seaport with a repetitive name) I know from years and years of solving. Historically, the constructor who used ILOILO the most (by far) was Eugene Maleska (who is best known as the editor who preceded Will Shortz). As a constructor (before he became editor), he used ILOILO six (6!) times, which is almost as many times as ILOILO appeared in all the puzzles he edited (7). My point is, if you didn't know ILOILO, don't feel too bad. It was way more common in days of yore. We haven't seen it for about six years. It's been a little over four for POULT, which disappeared for over twelve years there in the early part of this century, but generally appears once every handful of years. Uncommon, for sure. But worth knowing. Bound to come back ... some day.
Bullets:
30A: Like Buffalo, N.Y., about 167 days a year, typically (RAINY) — almost half the year? Really? I live only a handful of hours away from Buffalo, and I had no idea. We don't get nearly that much rain here. We do get ~150 days with precipitation, but much of that is snow. I knew about Buffalo's lake effect snow. The snowiness of Buffalo is legendary. Infamous. The rain, wow, real news to me. In fact, I'm not sure the clue is right. It's at least misleading. I'm looking at data that says Buffalo gets 166 days of precipitation, annually. That's rain or snow, not just rain. I submit to you that snowy days are not RAINY.
121A: Pertaining to conflict, in behavioral science (AGONISTIC) — I know this word from studying Greek literature. Agon is a Gr. deity who personified conflict, but it's also a term meaning "contest" or "struggle" (that's how I know it, anyway). Here's some good background information from our good friends at merriam-webster dot com:
Agonistic has its roots in ancient Greece—specifically in the agonistic (to use the oldest sense of the word) athletic contests called agons featured at public festivals. From physical conflict to verbal jousting, agonistic came to be used as a synonym for argumentative and later to mean "striving for effect" or "strained." Common current use, however, is biological, relating to confrontational interaction among animals of the same species and the responsive behaviors—such as aggression, flight, or submission—they exhibit. Agonistic is also sometimes used to describe an agonist muscle, a muscle that on contracting is automatically checked and controlled by an opposing muscle, that other muscle being an antagonist. For example, during a bicep curl in weight lifting, the (contracted) bicep is the agonistic muscle and the (relaxed) triceps muscle is the antagonist.
69D: Dark half of a famous duality (YIN) — so ... not TOM?
18D: Music that's a little offbeat? (SKA) — "Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off beat." (wikipedia)
44D: Bumpy ride? (CAMEL) — embarrassed by how long this took me. It's a very good "?" clue and I just blanked and blanked and blanked and even blanked some more after I'd gotten it down to CAME-. "CAMEO?" No, not CAMEO, dummy.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
P.S. if you live in southern Michigan (as I used to) or anywhere near there, really, then guess what? You've got a regional crossword tournament coming up. Detroit! (well, Hamtramck, which is close). It's called the Grid Prix and it takes Thursday, Mar. 19 at Book Suey in Hamtramck, MI. Capacity is limited. I know I have a lot of Ann Arbor readers, specifically, so some of y'all should go check it out! Send me pictures. I miss Michigan. Go Tigers. Go Blue. Here's the info:
P.P.S. A re-reminder that the Boswords 2026 Spring Themeless League starts tomorrow (Mar. 2) with a "Pre-season Puzzle" and then starts in earnest with "Puzzle #1" the week after. You can compete as an individual or as a pairs team. There are well over 600 participants already signed up! More information here.
P.P.P.S. if you're looking for (yet another!) fun little word game to play on your phone, you might try Oroboro, where overlapping words form a circle and you use the clues to complete it. You can set the difficulty level to your liking. Check it out here.
P.P.P.P.S. if you want a cute word-related gift book, or maybe a book of wordplay you can share with your kids, check out AB@C ("a bee at sea") a new book of gramograms ("puzzles in which letters, numbers, and other symbols are spoken aloud to make words and sentences"). These puzzles were made famous by the great William Steig (I own both his CDB! and CDC?), and now author Rob Meyerson and New Yorker cartoonist Dan Misdea have teamed up for a new, modern collection. Pick it up at bookshop.com or wherever you buy books. You can pick up Steig's books while you're at it!
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THEME: "Gathering for this puzzle's attendees"— This is the clue for four theme answers; the "attendees" are just the squares in the puzzle—every theme answer is a "gathering" involving a word for "square":
Theme answers:
SQUARE DANCE (19A: Gathering for this puzzle's attendees)
CELL RECEPTION (35A: Gathering for this puzzle's attendees)
BOX SOCIAL (43A: Gathering for this puzzle's attendees)
BLOCK / PARTY (61A: With 63-Across, gathering for this puzzle's attendees)
Word of the Day: Council of TRENT (25D: Site of a historic council) —
The Council of Trent (Latin: Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation at the time, it has been described as the "most impressive embodiment of the ideals of the Counter-Reformation." It was the last time a Catholic ecumenical council was organized outside the city of Rome, and the second time a council was convened in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire (the first being the Council of Constance).
Trying desperately to figure out how CELL RECEPTION isn't a fatal flaw. The other "gatherings" are ... actually gatherings. Real names for real events where people get together and have a good time. Whereas CELL RECEPTION refers to the strength of your mobile phone signal. It's not an event at all. What am I missing? Is CELL RECEPTION a variety of party that I just don't know about? A party in prison, maybe? It just doesn't make any sense in this puzzle, where all the other themers are real parties. Those parties cohere so nicely as a set. And then you've got CELL RECEPTION flung down in here like ... like, I don't know what? Like it wants to be the revealer, maybe, but the puzzle doesn't need one ... and then so instead of leaving because it's not needed, CELL RECEPTION just decided to stick around. It's really the fly in the soup today. I mean, if the theme had involved making puns, changing the meaning of the second word in the phrase, you might have something. But today's wordplay involves reimagining the first words, the "boxes," not the parties. CELL RECEPTION is not an actual type of gathering and therefore has absolutely no business being in this grid.
I probably should've made BOX SOCIAL my Word of the Day, since that will be the least familiar type of "gathering" today, I think. I've been to block parties and I've at least seen square dances in movies, but I don't really know much about BOX SOCIALs. They feel old-fashioned. Like sock hops, but older, and with less dancing. So, not very much like sock hops at all. Merriam-Webster Dot Com tells me that a BOX SOCIAL is "a fund-raising affair at which box lunches are auctioned to the highest bidder." Wiktionary has a somewhat more detailed definition: "A fundraisingevent in which boxes are decorated and filled with meals for two (traditionally by women) and others (traditionally men) bid on them, anticipating a meal with the preparer." This makes it seem kinda creepy, like the women rather than the lunches are being auctioned off. Whatever the precise meaning, BOX SOCIAL seems like it has less currency in 2025 (soon to be 2026) than the other "gatherings," but it fits the theme perfectly. Really, truly, three of these themers are right on the mark. Shame about that fourth one.
The fill had highs and lows. LIBERACE MANSCAPED is a complete sentence that I would totally believe. "Did he? ... yeah, I can see that." "VIVE LE ROI!" is something I can imagine an enthusiastic French audience shouting at LIBERACE (9D: Cry of loyalty in old France + 36D: One-named performer known as "Mr. Showmanship"). Did anyone ever call LIBERACE "PAPA BEAR" (4D: Fairy tale character with a hard bed)? Seems plausible. Anyway, I like this puzzle's LIBERACEness—very festive, perfect for the occasion (which seems to be a New Year's Eve party, what with this being New Year's Eve and there being balloons and party hats all over the grid). GETS COMFY is also a nice longer answer. I don't like IDLE CHAT because the phrase is "idle chatter." It really is. Googles much better. Shows up on the first page of hits when you try to search "IDLE CHAT." I see that "IDLE CHAT" is a phrase that exists, that people sometimes say, but all it does is make me think of the real phrase, which is idle chatter. NO CARBS is an absurdity, as there is no surviving as a human without some carbs (22A: Stipulation for some keto dieters). The fill gets real ugly in the SW, which is where I finished up, unfortunately—never good to close on a low note. Ugly "a" phrase (ADAB) next to prefix (MILLI) next to absurd plural (NOGOS) two doors down from EKE. Rough stuff. The rest holds up OK.
I had a slow start because I absurdly wrote in MAC for 1A: Big name in pickup trucks (RAM) and then crossed it with MPG at 1D: Engine stat, in brief (RPM). This meant that 16A: Smaller than small (MINI) looked like it was going to be ... GIGA, a prefix that is very much not "small." I also botched the spelling of NIQAB, though that's more predictable and less embarrassing, somehow (13D: Veil worn by Muslim women). I think I conflated NIQAB and HIJAB and ended up with NIJAB? Something like that. The NIQAB extends the concept of HIJAB (head covering) to the face. Will I remember this distinction? Who knows!?
Bullets:
30A: Marketplace of ancient Greece (AGORA) — I'm not normally that happy to see AGORA in the grid (it's crosswordese of the highest order), but today, since I imagine the AGORA as a public square, I kinda like the fact that it's here, sitting pride of place, nearly dead center. Guest of honor at all the various square dances.
17A: Completely change course, in business jargon (PIVOT) — a perfectly good word—why steer the clue into "business jargon"? No one wants to think about that.
38D: Word fittingly evoked by the phrase "Together everyone achieves more" (TEAM) — turns TEAM into an acronym
60D: Book reviewer, for short (CPA) — "Book" in the singular is sort of weird here, since accounting records are almost always "books," but OK, sure [Book reviewer]. Just watched a great film noir about a CPA (unlikely, but true!). Joan Crawford works her way up from poverty to a life of glamour by charming, exploiting, and discarding a series of men, the first of whom is a mousy CPA whom she convinces to become the accountant for a mob boss. Her fortunes get better from there, until, of course, inevitably they get much much worse. The movie in question costars Kent Smith as the mousy CPA, David Brian as mob boss Nick Castleman, and Steve Cochran as a west coast mobster trying to break away from east coast leadership. The movie's title?—one of the pulpiest of all time: The Damned Don't Cry (it's on HBO Max but might be leaving tomorrow, so why not watch it today? I can think of worse ways to spend New Year's Eve)
Time now for more 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲! Note: PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE PET PICS, I'M ALL FULL UP FOR THIS YEAR, thank you.
Usually you hang lights on the tree, not the dogs, but Ruby and Poppy are happy to indulge your weird lighting fantasies ...
[Thanks, Jennifer!]
This one is entitled "Orion with visions of sugarplums." Probably actually "Orion sees a squirrel," but you gotta have some imagination.
[Thanks, Judy!]
OK, this photo is fooling no one, Maggie, but since you went through the trouble of trying to Christmasify your dog, and since your dog is so adorable, I'll allow it. Buffy is a classroom dog! They have classroom dogs now? I never had a classroom dog. I want a classroom dog. All classrooms should have dogs. "As Provost, I will..."
[Thanks, Maggie!]
Kyoshi would prefer that you back up a step or two or twelve.
[Thanks, Thomas!]
And finally, a pair of more and less successful pet photo shoots. First there's Olive, seen here in her puppy days, posing sassily for the camera (RIP sweet Olive, who died earlier this month).
And then there's Moxie, who will not willingly participate in whatever you have planned. The look of betrayal on her face. "How could you?"
[Thanks, Hannah!]
See you next time. Have a fun, safe, happy New Year's Eve.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
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