"Breaking Bad" sister-in-law / WED 10-22-25 / Natural remedy that's used to treat anxiety / David Bowie's astronaut persona / Whirling visual effects in video games / Food spread popular in England / Black prom rentals / Establishes what is, informally / Spots for cozy dates / Young woman, in Australia / Subculture associated with skinny jeans / Idiomatic sticking point

Constructor: Jesse Guzman

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: WORLD SERIES (34A: Climactic baseball event ... or what the starts of 17-, 26-, 44- and 52-Across form?) — starts of theme answers are homographs of numbers from different WORLD languages; those numbers form a SERIES (namely, "2, 4, 8, 16"); I think (??) that the exponential nature of the series is related to FISSION, a kind of nuclear chain reaction, but I'm much less clear on this point:

Theme answers:

• DOS AND DON'TS (17A: Some basic guidelines [2, Spanish])
• FIRE OPAL (26A: Fluorescent gemstone [4, Danish and Norwegian])
• OTTO HAHN (44A: Chemist who co-discovered 26-Down [8, Italian])
• SEIZE THE DAY (52A: Carpe diem [16, French])

Word of the Day: FISSION (26D: Atomic reaction co-discovered by 44-Across) —

Fission is the process by which an atom splits in two. Fission can occur spontaneously, via natural decay, or through controlled chain reactions initiated by people. Either way, the process releases a tremendous amount of energy. Nuclear power plants harness this awesome power, but so do nuclear bombs, and there are myriad environmental, social and political concerns raised by human use of this process. // An atom contains protons and neutrons in its central nucleus. In fission, the nucleus splits, either through radioactive decay or because it has been bombarded by other subatomic particles known as neutrinos. The resulting pieces have less combined mass than the original nucleus, with the missing mass converted into nuclear energy. (Live Science dot com)  

In nuclear physics, a nuclear chain reaction occurs when one single nuclear reaction causes an average of one or more subsequent nuclear reactions, thus leading to the possibility of a self-propagating series or "positive feedback loop" of these reactions. The specific nuclear reaction may be the fission of heavy isotopes (e.g., uranium-235, ²³⁵U). A nuclear chain reaction releases several million times more energy per reaction than any chemical reaction. (wikipedia: "Nuclear chain reaction")  

The dominant contribution of fission neutrons to the bomb's power is the initiation of subsequent fissions. Over half of the neutrons escape the bomb core, but the rest strike ²³⁵U nuclei causing them to fission in an exponentially growing chain reaction (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.). (wikipedia: "Nuclear weapon design") (emph. mine)

 

• • •

The FISSION part of this puzzle is confusing to me, and not ... necessary? I'm just not sure what it has to do with foreign numbers (or baseball). I mean, yes, you have a series that you have to account for, i.e. "why this series of numbers?," but FISSION? Just because your "8" answer is the guy who co-discovered it? This feels so arbitrary to me. I'm no longer asking "why this series?" but I am still asking "why?" There's no clear / natural / automatic connection in my mind between the series 2, 4, 8, 16 and FISSION. At first I thought FISSION was totally unthematic, and that the puzzle had decided to do this mutually cross-referencing thing with OTTO HAHN because he and FISSION just happened to end up in the same grid, so why not? But it seemed a big distraction. Why would you cross-reference one of your themers? Why would that cross-reference sit dead center, which is where thematic material might naturally sit? I would've ignored FISSION completely if the cluing on OTTO HAHN hadn't forced me to wonder what the hell was going on. So the (foreign, for some reason) numbers are (I think) supposed to represent a nuclear chain reaction, a splitting and resplitting (of uranium-235?). But I still don't really get why the puzzle goes nuclear at all. Or what the nuclear bit has to do with specifically foreign numbers? Or baseball? Lots of things happening in this puzzle, but their relationship to each other doesn't make much sense to me. The WORLD SERIES does start this week (Friday), so the baseball part, at least, is timely. The part where we celebrate The Bomb? Or the numbers of the world? That, I understand less. I hope you understood and (thus) appreciated this puzzle better than I did.

Theme aside, I found the cluing hard on this one. My first pass at the NW yielded hardly anything. I'm in CAFES all the time and almost none of them are "cozy" and no one is on a date there, so no luck there. CBD OIL was also a total mystery until I had many crosses. Wanted ETHNIC before FUSION (3D: Kind of cuisine). Well, not wanted wanted, but suspected. Hey, is FUSION in here because it pairs with FISSION? Is that some kind of nuclear physicist in-joke? I feel like this puzzle is speaking a language I don't understand, or, like it's a dog whistle, and some of us are dogs but it ain't me. The colloquialisms GET CUTE (22A: Act smart) and especially "SING IT!" (8D: "You got that right!") were hard to parse. I've never called anyone named Cameron "RON" before, nor did I know that was a thing people did. I only know one Cameron personally, and he goes by "Cam," so even that little answer was giving trouble today. The clue on SUITS was baffling to me. After LIMOS and TUXES I had no idea what prom-related thing could be happening there (38A: Black prom rentals). There's no tight relationship between SUITS and prom in my mind. Of course one can wear a suit to prom. But looks like much (if not most) prom attire is not black at all. So the clue seems defensible but also kind of arbitrary and bad. 

I watched all of Breaking Bad but it's been a decade or so, so I couldn't remember MARIE's name without multiple crosses. [Establishes what is, informally] just left me staring. What a weird way to clue IDS. I would've thought MEN were [A little under half of humanity], but instead we've got the awkward plural MALES. I would never pluralize MALE unless I was talking about animals. Livestock, maybe. I like IRISHISM as an answer, but boy I did not get IRISHISM as an answer without help (32D: Expression such as "Top o' the mornin'"). The IRISH part ended up being not too hard, but that -ISM needed help. I thought a second word was coming, not a suffix. The puzzle felt not hard but harder than usual for a Wednesday. That doesn't mean it was bad. I think the longer answers were pretty nice; any time you can get ten (10!) answers of 7 letters or longer into an already heavily thematic grid, and those longer answers are overwhelmingly solid-to-very solid, that's impressive. PROP BET ASTEROIDS COALESCE GROUPIES MAJOR TOM ... I love all those. And I especially love MARMITE, not because I actually love MARMITE (we are a committed Vegemite household), but because I love remembering that MARMITE exists and some (mainly British?) people love it. One person who enjoys MARMITE is the actor Bill Nighy, who has a great new podcast called "Ill-Advised" ("a podcast for people who don't get out much...") where he gives people advice on ... well, anything. Men's fashion. Partygoing (or non-going). Etc. It's short and it's funny and it's British and MARMITE comes up. Oh, and he gives you a little music playlist at the end. Give it a listen. You'll like it, I'm pretty sure.

What else?:

• 39D: Young woman, in Australia (SHEILA) — I've been to NZ many times because that's where my wife was born and where her family lives, but in the half dozen or so times I've been Down there, I've somehow never been to Australia. I'm hoping maybe next time we get over there. Don't think I'll be calling anyone SHEILA, though. Seems like a neutral enough word. Brief online inquiry suggests that the term is maybe less commonly used today, and perhaps seen by some (in some contexts) as derogatory or condescending (the discussion on this Reddit thread is interesting), but again, not having any direct familiarity with the place, I can't say.
• 55A: Picasso's "___ Demoiselles d'Avignon" ("LES") — I knew this, and yet some part of my brain was like "are you sure it's not 'DES'?" So I left the first letter blank and eventually SOMALI confirmed the "L."
• 54D: Subculture associated with skinny jeans (EMO) — is this still true? Feels like a 2004 stereotype, but maybe the aesthetic persists. Wikipedia agrees with me about the '00s-ness of it all. "Emo fashion in the mid-to late 2000s included skinny jeans, tight T-shirts (usually short-sleeved, and often with the names of emo bands), studded belts, Converse sneakers, Vans and black wristbands. Thick, horn-rimmed glasses remained in style to an extent, and eye liner and black fingernails became common during the mid-2000s." (wikipedia)

If nothing else, this puzzle taught we the Norwegian word for "four," which I'm sure to forget by tomorrow, but for now, I've learned something. 

That's all. See you next time. 

And hey, Daniel. Yes, you, Daniel Studenmund. Congrats on your 1000-puzzle streak. I've written about thousands of puzzles, but I've definitely never had a 1000-puzzle streak (when I take days off I take them off). So, good job. Please say hi to your wife and your puzzle-loving Chicago-area family :)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Rock out on stage? / TUE 7-8-25 / Place for a coin collection? / One of many on a self-driving car / What a pleasure-seeker seeks / British celebrity restaurateur Gordon ___ / Beach, in Spanish / Pop singer Ora

Constructor: Jesse Guzman

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Tuesday)

THEME: A-PLUS WORK (54A: Outstanding effort ... or a feature of 16-, 21-, 34- and 46-Across) — circled squares in four answers contain "A" + some occupation (or "work"):

Theme answers:

• LAGUARDIA (16A: Airport that Captain Sully departed from) ("a + guard")
• HANNA-BARBERA (21A: Animation studio behind "Scooby-Doo") ("a + barber")
• ACHE FOR (34A: Crave) ("a + chef")
• DOPAMINE RUSH (46A: What a pleasure-seeker seeks) ("a + miner")

Word of the Day: CHRIS Rock (35D: Rock out on stage?) —

Christopher Julius Rock (born February 7, 1965) is an American comedian, actor, and filmmaker. He first gained prominence for his stand-up routines in the 1980s in which he tackled subjects including race relations, human sexuality, and observational comedy. His success branched off into productions in film, television, and on-stage, having received multiple accolades including three Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award nomination. Rock was ranked No. 5 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time. He also ranked No. 5 on Rolling Stone's list of the 50 Best Stand-Up Comics of All Time.

After years working as a stand-up comedian and appearing in minor film roles including Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Rock gained prominence as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1993. While at SNL, he appeared in the films New Jack City (1991) and Boomerang (1992). In 1993, he appeared in CB4, which he also wrote and produced. He reached mainstream stardom with Bring the Pain in 1996. Rock continued making specials which include Bigger & Blacker (1999), Never Scared (2004), Kill the Messenger (2008), Tamborine (2018), and Selective Outrage (2023). He developed, wrote, produced and narrated the sitcom Everybody Hates Chris (2005–2009), which was based on his early life. From 1997 to 2000 HBO aired his talk show The Chris Rock Show.

Rock was cast in starring film roles in Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), Dogma (1999), The Longest Yard (2005), the Madagascar franchise (2005–2012), I Think I Love My Wife (2007), Grown Ups (2010), Death at a Funeral (2010), Top Five (2014), The Week Of (2018), Spiral (2021), Amsterdam (2022), and Rustin (2023).

• • •

[42D: Spiky hairdos]
[image by the great Lynda Barry]

This one didn't really work for me because the revealer just didn't land, or landed awkwardly. I guess I can hear someone saying "hey, that's A+ WORK you're doing there, Bob," or something like that, but the phrase just doesn't roll off my tongue or feel as coherent as I'd like a revealer phrase to me. "A+ EFFORT" seems as much of a phrase as "A+ WORK." The execution of the concept is sort of cute, but the concept itself, the phrase on which the concept is based, feels weak to me. I had A PLUS- and had to think for a bit about what might come next—not a great sign. The same thing happened to me with DOPAMINE RUSH; I could see the first part would be DOPAMINE but the first word that came to mind that might follow it was HIGH. This "what's supposed to come next?" problem happened yet again with MAKES- at 26D: Lets bygones be bygones (MAKES PEACE), although I can't really impeach the correct answer there. Seems fine. But MAKES NICE and MAKES AMENDS both tried to get in there before MAKES PEACE. And so over and over I kept having to think about what these latter parts of answers were going to be, and every time, after getting the right answer, my feeling was varying degrees of "huh, OK, sure, I guess." And I don't particularly love the clue on DOPAMINE RUSH. Pleasure-seekers seek pleasure from whatever activity they're doing. They might experience a DOPAMINE RUSH, but that's a side-effect of whatever they're doing. It's like saying thrill-seekers are seeking an increased heart rate. Not exactly. Not directly. Anyway, it all works fine, but just felt kind of lackluster. But I can't dispute the fact that there are "A"s and jobs (i.e. WORK) in those circled squares. The puzzle executes what it sets out to execute, and, if nothing else, DOPAMINE RUSH is an exciting, original answer.

As for difficulty, it was pretty much the kind of easy Tuesday experience you'd expect, but the SW corner was disproportionately tough for me, for a number of reasons. First, that's where the PEACE of MAKES PEACE is, so my failure to come up with that second word meant that I didn't have the stake in that corner that I would have otherwise. Then there's the touch clue on STARDOM (39D: Fame and fortune), which seems like it's going to be plural, but isn't. I would associate STARDOM much more with "fame" than "fortune," btw, so ... not in love with that clue. Then there's the supremely MACOS, which I did not know despite using Macs my whole life. I just never think of the OS written out like that. Ever. All the MAC OS incarnations have names like Lion, Ventura, and Sequoia. As I've said before, every time I see MACOS ... which isn't often, it looks like a cereal name to me (MAC O's!). No one even thought to put it in a puzzle at all until 2023, which tells me it's a pretty poor answer. If MACOS was used in common parlance, we would've seen it all over the grid, for years and years. Don't believe me? Ask MS/DOS (fifty-four (54!) NYTXW appearances). Although I will admit, I can find MACOS written just like that if I click on "About this Mac"—it's just not a term I ever hear:

But back to the rest of the SW corner. The elaborate (and admittedly kind of colorful) clue on AHEM held me up in that corner as well—not immediately clear (60A: [Um, I can hear everything you're saying, you know]). I thought [Set of tenets] was a CREED for a bit. And then there was the hardest (or at least most misleading) clue in the puzzle (for me), which was kind of blocking one entryway to the SW corner: that answer was CHRIS (35D: Rock out on stage?). The big problem there was that I had the "HR" part before anything else, and so I promptly wrote in SHRED, as in "to play an electric guitar with great skill and speed" (merriam-webster dot com). "Out on stage" is accurate enough for what Rock does, as a stand-up, but without a specific comedy angle in the clue, I missed the wordplay completely. And so the SW was trouble. I don't remember much of anything else about the puzzle. 

Bullets:

• 16A: Airport that Captain Sully departed from (LAGUARDIA) — wow, haven't thought about Captain Sully in a long time. I got this answer solely from [Airport...], and didn't even notice the latter part of the clue until just now. That famous emergency landing feels like recentish history, but it's been over 16 years now.
• 58A: Place for a coin collection? (SOFA) — see, kids, in the olden days we used to have this thing called "hard currency," and it came in metal disc form, and these discs would sometimes fall out of your pants pockets and into the cushions of your SOFA, and over time you could AMASS quite a fortune down there. (seriously, when does the "coins in the SOFA" bit become obsolete?)
• 12D: Beach, in Spanish (PLAYA) — this was a gimme for me, despite my not speaking Spanish. PLAYA is in many place names, so I just know it, as do most of you, I'm guessing. But I can see not knowing it, and I can also see not knowing Gordon RAMSAY, which means that I can imagine someone having trouble in the NE corner. But that someone wasn't me.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Depictions of Arcadia / SAT 6-28-25 / State for "The Shawshank Redemption" / Wedding presider of Greek mythology / Hungarian has 18 of them (yikes!)

Constructor: Jesse Guzman

Relative difficulty: Pretty Easy, I think? (I sliced my thumb cooking dinner two nights ago, and thanks to the bandage, I'm basically solving one-handed on my phone)

THEME: NONE

Word of the Day: ANGELICA (45A:Sweet wine of California) —

Angelica wine is a historic sweet fortified wine usually from California made typically from the Mission grape.^[1] It is often served as a dessert wine.

Some varieties consist of the unfermented grape juice fortified with brandy or clear spirit immediately after pressing. Others are made like port, where the only partially fermented wine, still retaining a large amount of sugar, is infused with brandy. The relatively high alcohol of the brandy arrests the fermentation, leaving a fortified wine high in alcohol and high in residual sugar (usually about 10 to 15%). It is typically made from 50% Mission wine and 50% Mission brandy.^[2]

Angelica dates to the Mission period in California and its name is thought to be taken from the city of Los Angeles.^[3] It was produced by the Franciscan missionaries and is one of the first wines made in the state. Several California producers continue to produce Mission-based Angelica.

The wine is sometimes made in a simple style and is inexpensive. Some is made with great care from ancient vines and can be quite expensive. Bottles of Angelica as old as 1870 can still be found and show great distinction.

• • •

Hey everyone, it's Eli filling in for the next couple of days. You'll have to excuse me if I'm a little distracted today, since my wife and I adopted this 130 pound sweetheart today:

Meet Huckleberry!

But enough about me, on to the puzzle!

This played fast and pretty fun for me. I'm still learning to construct, but this seems like a pretty small word count. Nothing held me up too much, and I'm not seeing much I wasn't familiar with. I imagine solvers of the pre-Nintendo era may have trouble with the mini theme between BOWSER (1A: Fire-breathing antagonist of Mario in the Mario universe) and KOOPA TROOPA (16D: Turtle-shelled flunky of 1-Across), but anyone my age or younger probably dropped those in without thinking. My head also went Nintendo on OCARINA (2D: Light Winds) thanks to Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, and I'm guessing I'm not the only one.

The only thing that stood out to me as unknown, was ANGELICA (45A: Sweet wine of California). I live in California, I enjoy wine, and in fact I live in the city that is apparently the namesake of this wine. But I can confidently say I've never heard of it. I've almost certainly never had it. In this house, we only recognize one Angelica:

The crossing triple stacks are impressive. Of the acrosses, SANTA TRACKER (26A: Deer stalking aid?) is probably my favorite, even though it took me waaaaayyyyyy too long to realize the clue was referring to reindeer. SEALED THE DEAL (29A: Shook hands, say) went in instantly without any crosses and CAMERA LENSES (32A: They focus on subjects of interest) bores me a bit for some reason. On the downs, surrounding KOOPA TROOPA with DAISY CHAINS (14D: Midsummer head decorations) and TOUR DE FORCE (18D: Receiver of a four-star review) worked amazingly well. That's not the first definition of DAISY CHAIN I think of, and TOUR DE FORCE made me excited for the Tour de France (which starts next week), but both of those things just made it feel fresh for me.

31-Down

Other Thoughts:

• 16A: Shot (KABLOOEY) — My first thought was Don Martin from MAD, but I couldn't find any images that actually used the word "kablooey." You can see where I would assume one would exist, though:

• 13A: Colorful treat on a stick (ICE POP) — Is an ice pop always colorful? Isn't ice just... clear? Popsicles are colorful, sure, but even a lemon ice pop can be a tepid yellow. Maybe this is just a regionalism.
• 7A: Exercise with Yang and Wu styles (TAI CHI) — Bringing this up because I have a brand to keep.

I think that's all I've got for today. I didn't even call out KAREN Gillan (22D), but what is there to say except that I think she's great? Nice puzzle today; I had fun! 

I did have the pleasure last weekend to take part in the Westwords tournament in Berkeley, and as is always the case at crosswords events, I spent a lot of time hanging out with absolutely fantastic people in addition to solving some amazing puzzles. It was an absolute blast, and I encourage everyone to go to a tournament, no matter what your solving level. I'll see you all back here tomorrow!

Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Creature with over 200 tiny eyes along its shell / FRI 4-11-25 / Music genre that's experimental yet radio-friendly / Certain ephemeral social media post, informally / Makings of some homemade pipes / "Sort by" option in a credit card history / How Romeo dies, in the eyes of the audience / Simple question written with two question marks / Fitting name for a girl born in October

Constructor: Jesse Guzman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: step (in music) (31A: It's one step down from an F = E FLAT) —

In the language of music theory, a step is the distance between notes of different pitches. A half step, or semitone, is the smallest interval between notes in Western music. Notes that are directly next to each other—such as E and F, or A sharp and B—are a half step apart. Two half steps equal one whole step. The notes G and A are one whole step apart, as are the notes B flat and C. (masterclass.com)

• • •

Solid but a bit flat. Is the puzzle IRONICALLY flat if it opens with COCA-COLAS? (1A: Some pops). There just weren't enough pleasing marquee answers today. Again, it's all fine, but I don't think I ever smiled or said "nice!" while I was solving. Well, I take that back; I definitely smiled at least once, not because of something that was in the puzzle, but because of something that was not in the puzzle, something I wrote in the grid that was absurdly, ridiculously wrong. It may be the dumbest wrong answer of all time. I dare you to beat it for dumbness. I had the SEAS- at the beginning of 9D: Creature with over 200 tiny eyes along its shell and wrote in SEA SERPENT (a dumb answer, to be sure, but not the dumb answer I'm talking about); thankfully, it didn't take me long to realize that SEA SERPENTs, in addition to being maybe fictional (?!), is almost certainly shell-less. So I left that answer and came back to it. When I came back to it, I had the -ALLO- part, and after a split second of wanting SEA SWALLOW, whatever that is, I thought "oh, no, it's the seafood thing, the thing you never order at restaurants ... what's it called? ... oh yeah, shallot! It's SEA SHALLOT! (it was not, in fact, SEA SHALLOT, as a shallot is a kind of onion, as you likely know). In my defense, a shallot is roughly the size of a scallop (I'm just kidding, I have no defense, I plead insanity). 

[fearsome ... so many eyes ...]

I also wrote in ALT RAP instead of ALT POP (43D: Music genre that's experimental yet radio-friendly), which is not that great a wrong answer, but in its defense, all wrong answers are going to pale before SEA SHALLOT. Between SEA SHALLOT and ALT RAP, that's 90% of the difficulty I experienced today, and I think we can all agree, that difficulty was entirely (and extremely anomalously) self-imposed. I didn't know SNAP had STORYs, I thought just CHATs, so I needed some crosses there (59A: Certain ephemeral social media post, informally), and I whiffed at my first pass at the GROUP / BUN area (the only GRO- word that came to mind for [Party] was GROOVE, and having had no hair on my head to speak of since 2010 when I shaved it all off, I am not up on the latest BUN technology. I've got MAN BUN and then ... nothing. "Messy," you say? Cool). 

Who is making pipes out of COBS? (1D: Makings of some homemade pipes). This feels folksy/mythical. "Some homemade pipes"? Besides Frosty the Snowman, who is smoking these? COBS could have been more ... relatably clued. Corn cores! Male swans! "A crudely struck old Spanish coin of irregular shape"! "A stocky short-legged riding horse"! OK, don't use those last two, they're pretty obscure, I only looked them up just now, but ... something non-pipe-ish! The plural brands kind of soured me on this one early. COCA-COLAS was tolerable, but when you chase it almost immediately with GI JOES, now we've entered a realm of plural unpleasantness—pluralizing brand names that are not normally pluralized. And while you might say GI JOES, you'd never say COCA-COLAS, you'd say COKES (if you pluralized it at all). A whole lot of other plurals follow, OCEANS and SLAM POETS and PAEANS and TUTUS and RESALES and SEXAHOLICS ... speaking of, who uses that term? It feels like what sex addiction might've been called in the '70s/'80s. back when we were -aholic'ing everything. Remember "chocoholic?" I think that answer is supposed to be fun and fresh, but it felt odd and dated to me. Some of the mid-range stuff was fun today: "I'LL WAIT..." and DARKEST and DEAD LAST, those all hold up. But overall there's just not enough SPARK in this one, for me, for a Friday.

Bullets:

• 2D: Fitting name for a girl born in October (OPAL) — October's birthstone
• 15A: Richard Nixon or Mao Zedong, in a 1987 premiere (OPERA ROLE) — look at me, remembering that Nixon in China was an opera. I did not remember that it was by John Adams, but I remembered it, somehow.

• 20A: Like Iceland's weather most of the year (WINDY) — tried to cram WINTRY in here.
• 31A: It's one step down from an F (E FLAT) — I ignorantly took "step" to mean "a single key away on the keyboard" and so couldn't figure out how I would be on a black key. One piano key down from F is E. But one "step" (as defined, above) is two keys, taking me (you, us) to E FLAT.
• 57A: Simple question written with two question marks ("¿COMO ESTAS?") — so "simple" that even I, a non-Spanish speaker, got it pretty easily. The "two question marks" is a dead giveaway for Spanish, and "¿COMO ESTAS?" is the first question that pops to mind when I think of Spanish questions (which is not often, but ... here we are!)
• 4D: One into modeling at school (ART MAJOR) — not sure I get this. Obviously the people who pose for art class, those models, are not (necessarily) ART MAJORs. Is this a reference to ... sculpting? Or are ART MAJORs "into" modeling because they ... paint (or sculpt) ... from models? Seems like a misdirection attempt gone slightly awry here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to sea to hunt the Great Onion Leviathan, the SEA SHALLOT, on my onioning ship, The Leekquod). 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Longtime college basketball coach Kruger / THU 9-26-24 / Sudden riser in status / Something found near a trap / Prominent feature of Hello Kitty / "Wake word" for an Apple device

Constructor: Jesse Guzman

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: DOUBLE / REVERSE (62A: With 63-Across, tricky football play ... as represented by this puzzle's shaded squares?) — each theme answer contains two sets of shaded squares in which the correct letters are reversed, resulting in a plausible answer ... that doesn't fit the clue:

Theme answers:

• CRUELLA (i.e. CURE-ALL) (1A: Wonder drug)
• GLOATS (i.e. GO LAST) (8A: Have the final turn)
• SET POINT (i.e. STEP ON IT) (32A: Command to a getaway driver)
• TARNATION (i.e. TARANTINO) (35A: Three-time nominee for Best Director (1994, 2009, 2019)
• LAS VEGAS (i.e. SALVAGES) (39A: Rescues)

Word of the Day: SARA Bareilles (47A: Bareilles of Broadway) —

Sara Beth Bareilles (/bəˈrɛlɪs/ bə-REL-iss; born December 7, 1979) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She has sold over three million albums and over 15 million singles in the United States. Bareilles has earned various accolades, including two Grammy Awards, as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and three Tony Awards. In 2012, VH1 named her one of the Top 100 Greatest Women in Music.

Bareilles rose to prominence with the release of her second studio album, Little Voice (2007), which was her first recording for a major record label (Epic). The album included the hit single "Love Song", which reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

Bareilles made her Broadway debut when she composed music and wrote lyrics for the 2015 musical Waitress, for which she earned nominations for the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. She subsequently received Olivier Award nominations for its 2019 West End transfer production. She released the 2015 studio album What's Inside: Songs from Waitress, in which she performs many of the musical's songs as well as some that didn't make it into the show. She has gone on to be involved with Broadway productions, including the 2016 musical SpongeBob SquarePants and a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, both of which earned her Tony nominations. (wikipedia)

• • •

Started with a bang! Boom! PANACEA! (1A: Wonder drug). First thing in the grid! Me: "Yes! Nailed it! OK! Here we go! ... Here we ... Here ... Wait, isn't it LON Kruger? (5D: Longtime college basketball coach Kruger). Or maybe LEN, I forget, but definitely not CON. And how is [Makes a note of] gonna start with an 'E'? That doesn't work. Aw, man, is it not PANACEA? Well, that's deflating." Dispiriting, really. Just an embarrassing way to open, all full of confidence and certainty, only to fall flat on your face. Luckily, there were a bunch of gimmes in that NW corner to help hoist me back up, but once I had the corner all finished, I still had no idea why CRUELLA was right. I was trying to make the shaded squares mean something (RULLA?). And then the unshaded squares (CE?). Maybe run the shaded squares backwards (ALLUR?). I'm sure if I'd kept at it for a while, I would've gotten there, but tick tock, I gotta puzzle to solve, so I just moved on, assuming future themers would be more forthcoming ... and sure enough, the next one I got to was way more transparent. The only [Command to a getaway driver] I could think of was "STEP ON IT," and I looked at an answer that clearly had to be SET POINT ... and I saw it: the "STEP ON IT" hidden inside SET POINT. You just reverse the shaded squares and voilà! The whole thing ended up being a fairly typical Thursday experience: flail around until you grasp the gimmick, then just walk easily home. After SET POINT, there was nothing that would constitute real trouble the rest of the way. 

These theme answers involve interesting word and phrase quirks, but I don't know how fun they were to figure out. I guess I had to work a little for SALVAGES (i.e. LAS VEGAS) because [Rescues] feels like it applies to a person, whereas SALVAGES ... doesn't. So I needed some help from crosses there, but the others (after CRUELLA, of course) were obvious. But that didn't make them total duds. I was kinda curious about what the unclued surface answer was going to be each time, so that, at least, was a surprise, and there was still the revealer to look forward to ... but that ended up being kind of a let-down. I mean, that is a football play, and it does literally explain what's going on with the shaded squares, but it's actually a little too literal. To be interesting. There's something anticlimactic about the explanation being so plain. There's no clever wordplay. Yes, there's a reverse ... twice ... a DOUBLE / REVERSE. I guess I wanted something more colorful, a repurposed colloquial phrase or something. DOUBLE / REVERSE felt too straightforward. Kinda dull. Maybe if I liked football more, I dunno...

Pretty easy puzzle overall, especially outside the themers. I might've spelled KIROV wrong at first pass (KIREV?) (24D: Russian ballet company), I don't remember. I couldn't remember the kind of LAP I was dealing with at 58A: Final circuit in a track race (BELL LAP). LAST LAP seemed right, and it fit, but ... no (also, GO LAST (i.e. GLOATS) was already in the grid). But the grid was just too full of gimmes for me ever to get significantly bogged down: ASSANGE ANGELOU OATES ANN KOTB ... the puzzle's just handing out freebies today. The one amusing (and nearly fatal) wrong answer I had today was RAT (25A: Something found near a trap). In retrospect, this clue was obviously written to elicit precisely this wrong answer, so RAT is less an anomalous personal pitfall than a predictable design feature (and therefore less amusing), but still, I did get a half-second or so of "What the hell biblical figure is this!?" before reading the *entire* clue, seeing Faulkner, and realizing my error. Again, they really make it easy on you today with the cluing. Oh, and if LAT doesn't make sense to you yet—it's a muscle (short for latissimus dorsi), as is "trap" (short for trapezius).

Bullets:

• 22A: Civil rights leader ___ B. Wells (IDA) — any opportunity to mention my cat (IDA), I'm gonna take. She was technically named after Lupino, but I call her "IDA B." a lot:

• 43A: What has posts all around a site (FENCE) — man, that clue is tortured. The surface meaning *wants* to sound like its internet-related, but just ends up sounding like some Uncanny Valley / AI-produced gibberish.
• 3D: Sudden riser in status (UPSTART) — again, such an ugly / weird clue. Recognizable words in an order no human would put them. "Riser" here is a ... person who is rising.
• 28D: "Wake word" for an Apple device (SIRI) — I've owned an iPhone since 2012 and have never, not once, used SIRI. Don't trust her. I'm sure she's still listening and telling her overlords everything I say, but I'm not "waking" her voluntarily. Afaic, she can stay dead. I think Apple devices should make you say SIRI three times, like "Beetlejuice." I still wouldn't use it, but that seems like it would at least be fun. Maybe they can rush a "Beetlejuice" setting for Halloween. Surely there's a lucrative movie tie-in here ... somewhere. 
• 15A: Prominent feature of Hello Kitty (HAIR BOW) — I like all Hello Kitty answers because they remind me of the fact that Shortz once rejected a puzzle with HELLO KITTY in it (an Andrea Carla Michaels puzzle, I think), because he had never heard of it and didn't think people would know it. And then he read about it in an in-flight magazine immediately thereafter, and now it's everywhere, all over the grid. We even had the company that created Hello Kitty—SANRIO—in the puzzle last week, though that caused a lot of consternation because of its intersection with another not-too-familiar proper noun, LEO Rosten. So it looks like Natick now has a mayor: LEO SANRIO. Long may he reign.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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