Two farthings, informally / SUN 8-23-26 / Nursery rhyme street vendor's cry / Shoe originally known as a "Weejun" / Adage promoting thrift / Demonstrate frugality, in a way / Aggressive move allowed in some forms of kickboxing / Deuce topper / Street in Liverpool that has been immortalized in song / What a crush might make you do / "It's Your Business" sloganeer, for short / Tree where the Buddha found enlightenment / Protected space for women in the Ottoman Empire

Constructor: Jill Singer

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (actually Easy, but it might've taken some people a while to get the whole rebus angle...)

THEME: "Small Change" — a puzzle where you PUT IN YOUR TWO CENTS (121A: Offer advice ... or a hint to 24- and 72-Across); that is, you enter "PENNY" in a single square twice, in two different answers; there are also assorted features of the penny strewn about the grid:

The "PENNY" rebus answers:

• "A [PENNY] SAVED IS A [PENNY] EARNED" (24A: Adage promoting thrift) / HA'PENNY (5D: Two farthings, informally) / [PENNY]PINCH (26D: Demonstrate frugality, in a way)
• "ONE A [PENNY], TWO A [PENNY], HOT CROSS BUNS" (72A: Nursery rhyme street vendor's cry) / [PENNY] LOAFER (74D: Shoe originally known as a "Weejun") / "[PENNY] LANE" (75D: Street in Liverpool that has been immortalized in song)

Penny features:

• ABRAHAM LINCOLN (32A: Image on one side of this puzzle's subject)
• U.S. MINT (50A: Where this puzzle's subject was last made for circulation (in November 2025))
• THE UNION SHIELD (112A: Image on one side of this puzzle's subject)

Word of the Day: THE UNION SHIELD (112A) —

The 2005 act that authorized the redesign for the Bicentennial stated that another redesigned reverse for the Lincoln cent will be minted which "shall bear an image emblematic of President Lincoln's preservation of the United States of America as a single and united country". Eighteen designs were proposed for the reverse of the 2010 cent. In April 2009, the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) met and selected a design that showed 13 wheat sheaves bound together with a ring symbolizing American unity as one nation.

Later this design was withdrawn because it was similar to coinage issued in Germany in the 1920s. The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee later met and chose a design showing a Union shield with ONE CENT superimposed in a scroll. E Pluribus Unum was also depicted in the upper portion of the shield. In June 2009 the CFA met again and chose a design featuring a modern rendition of the American flag. As a part of the release ceremony for the last of the 2009 cents on November 12, the design for the 2010 cent was announced.

The design chosen was the one that was chosen earlier by the CCAC. The 13 stripes on the shield "represent the states joined in one compact union to support the Federal government, represented by the horizontal bar above". The Mint also noted that a shield was commonly used in paintings in the Capitol hallways painted by Constantino Brumidi, an artist in the Capitol active during the Lincoln Presidency.

The obverse of the cent was also changed to a modern rendition of Brenner's design. The new Union Shield design replaces the Lincoln Memorial in use since 1959. (wikipedia)

• • •

I guess I haven't really looked closely at a penny in a long time, because I still thought the image on the obverse side was the Lincoln Memorial. That was true in my childhood, and my young adulthood, and my early middle age, but apparently all that changed in 2010 for some reason. And now the penny is extinct. Weird. Anyway, I don't understand the appeal of this subject matter. The rebus thing is kind of cute (the bit where you literally put two cents (or "PENNY"s) into two of the answers), but that's a really thin gimmick, padded out with just a handful of assorted, extremely dull penny-related facts. Just ... physical features of the penny. Very boring. The definition of filler. And U.S. MINT? I mean, that answer doesn't even have a symmetrical equivalent. What a weird, extraneous, and not-at-all-interesting answer. You gotta be some kind of hardcore penny enthusiast to love this one. I am not numismatically inclined, so this was a snooze for me—a puzzle with an OK concept but only two workable answers ... and then some real obvious trivia about the penny. I love a good rebus, but there's just not enough of it, and no amount of penny-description is going to make up for that. 

The puzzle was also hampered by extremely ordinary fill. Standard, plain, unexciting stuff. Filler. That's how I felt about most of this puzzle. There was the rebus angle ... and when that proved thin, there was just a lot of cheap stuffing to fill the grid out. What is there to get excited about today? AL PASTOR tacos are pretty good, that answer was fun, and plays nicely / funnily off of AL CAPONE (54D: Notorious Chicago bootlegger), I liked that, but what else? LINE ITEM? TOOL CASE (shouldn't it be "kit" or "box"?)? WISE OFF? (62D: Say something fresh). Is that still an expression? Feels very '50s to me, somehow. I think we "mouth off" now. A wiseacre might make wise cracks (or crack wise), but I don't remember the last time any of this "wise" stuff had much ... currency. Maybe back when a penny could buy you candy. The fill just LIMPS along, never really offering any surprises or laughs or ... anything. Flat flat flat. Like a penny. Like a penny you leave on the railroad tracks. Did people used to do that? Am I hallucinating that? Nope, it's a real phenomenon. I feel (slightly) better now. About my brain. Not about this puzzle.

There were no real hard parts to this thing. I had trouble with "OHH" because of course I did, what the hell? (76D: "Wow!"). OMG = "Wow!" I have no idea what "OHH" is ... except a dupe of "OH FUN" (that extra "H" isn't fooling anyone) (99A: "Sounds like a blast!"). Speaking of dupes: STINK UP and ANTE UP. I'm much more likely to notice (and be bothered by) small dupes like this when the fill is monotonous and the theme isn't theming very well. Besides "OHH," the other answers I needed a little time to get were COCOONED (which I have never once used as a verb, even when talking about butterflies) (93D: Made cozy) and KNEEING (?) (96A: Aggressive move allowed in some forms of kickboxing). I had the KNEE part and figured the answer would be something technical, like KNEE HIT or KNEE JAB or KNEE TAP or KNEE POP or KNEE RIP, but no. Just KNEEING.

Bullets:

• 8A: What a crush might make you do (FLIRT) — I'm sorry, "make you"?? "Make you"???? [What you might do with a crush], sure. [What a crush might make you do]???? No. Even if the "crush" here is the feeling and not the person involved, no. "Make you," LOL, take some responsibility for your choices, yeesh.
• 55A: Genre for Siouxsie and the Banshees (GOTH) — I would've said "post-punk," but I see "gothic rock" listed among their genres there on wikipedia; in fact, they are the first band mentioned on the "gothic rock" wikipedia page:

Gothic rock (also known as goth rock or simply goth) is a subgenre of rock music which grew out of British post-punk in the late 1970s. The genre draws from gothic literature, nihilism, dark romanticism, poetry and tragedy. The style evolved through early post-punk bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus, and the Cure, who shifted their music toward darker gothic overtones through an emphasis on minor chords, reverb, dark arrangements, and melancholic melodies. (wikipedia) 

 

• 112D: Deuce topper (THREE) — since "Deuce" is slang for "two," I would've expected something like "TREY" here, not the standard/formal THREE. 
• 104A: Meeting that goes above and beyond? (SEANCE) — things get interestingly otherworldly here for a sec. Nice "?" clue. Definitely a highlight of the puzzle. Have you ever seen SEANCE on a Wet Afternoon (1964)? You can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube. A tense and creepy and beautiful film.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Maori ceremonial dance / WED 11-27-24 / Singer known as the "Queen of Tejano Music" / Good-looking couple? / Possesses a certain je ne sais quoi

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare (again)! You thought you were rid of me for a month, but I’m actually back to cover the last Wednesday of November, too. Let’s all collectively wish Rex a happy (now belated) birthday! And let’s also just forget I signed off yesterday by saying I’d see everyone in December and already wished people a happy Thanksgiving. We’ll just apply that all to this write-up, instead. The peril of doing these posts back-to-back is that I don’t have anything exciting to tell you about my sports teams, and I know how much you all look forward to that. 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Jill Singer

Relative difficulty: Medium-challenging (for a Wednesday)

THEME: THE THREE SISTERS — (39A: Corn, beans and squash, in Mesoamerican tradition ... or a hint to six answers in this puzzle) — the theme answers are two groups of three famous sisters

Theme answers:

• ANNE (5A: Member of an 1800s literary family) 
• CHARLOTTE (17A: Member of an 1800s literary family) 
• EMILY (18A: Member of an 1800s literary family) 
• KOURTNEY (45A: Member of a 2000s showbiz family) 
• KIM (50A: Member of a 2000s showbiz family) 
• KHLOE (61A: Member of a 2000s showbiz family)

Word of the Day: H MART (3D: "Crying in ___," best-selling memoir of 2021)) —

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir is a 2021 memoir by Michelle Zauner, singer and guitarist of the musical project Japanese Breakfast. It is her debut book, published on April 20, 2021, by Alfred A. Knopf. It is an expansion of Zauner's essay of the same name which was published in The New Yorker on August 20, 2018. The title mentions H Mart, a North American supermarket chain that specializes in Korean and other Asian products. After Zauner's mother Chongmi died of pancreatic cancer in October 2014, Zauner frequently made trips to H Mart, an experience she chronicled in her New Yorker essay and in "Real Life: Love, Loss and Kimchi" which won Glamour Magazine's 11th essay contest. (Wiki)

• • •

The idea of THE THREE SISTERS (39A) is clever — as long as you’re OK with the Bronte and Kardashian sisters being put on the same level. (I’m not.) Basically, I like how the groupings are structured and that the puzzle focuses on women. And it’s executed well. But… the Kardashian sisters in the puzzle? Really? I get that the idea was to have an older reference juxtaposed with a more modern one — and there are fewer famous trios of sisters than you might imagine — but it just felt wrong to have these two families together. As much as I hate “Wuthering Heights,” I was more than happy to see EMILY Bronte (18A) in the puzzle but groaned when I realized the puzzle was going to make me put in each Kardashian sister. One family had talent! Contributed to society! Wrote some of the best books in literary history! The other… 

If you can get past the Kardashian thing, there were a number of points to like about the puzzle. In particular, I enjoyed ROOT WORDS (63A: Linguistic "stems"), ERSATZ (30D: Fake), and GATEAU (25D: Patisserie purchase). I loved TORTOISES (37A: Symbols of longevity in Chinese iconography) and how the answer was clued. Having ICU (31A: Hospital dept. that sounds like a sentence), indicating the sentence “I see you,” crossing I SEE (31D: “Understood”) was clever. There was a thread in the puzzle of words in different languages, which I rather enjoyed — BEL ESPRIT (66A) (French), ERSATZ (30D) (German), GATEAU (25D) (French), NOEL (58D) (French), EIRE (4D) (Gaelic), SAN (48A) (Spanish), OLE (64D) (Spanish), and HAKA (40D) (Maori). The foreign words did make things slightly more challenging in spots. I’m glad Anthony DOERR (29D: Pulitzer-winning novelist) is in the puzzle — he’s the author of “All the Light We Cannot See,” which is a fantastic book, and “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” which pales only in comparison with the perfection of the former. 

This puzzle was so very heavy on proper nouns. I mentioned the proper nouns yesterday because there seemed to be a fair number. But today? Wow! I counted 26 in this puzzle. I mean you have to have the six names of the sisters, but even just starting the puzzle (going with the downs), you have five proper nouns in a row (ACCRA, COHEN, H MART, EIRE, and CLARA). CLARA Schumann (15D) was one I didn’t know (even though she’s *so* close to having the perfect name). She was a German pianist and composer and was apparently one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era (at least according to Wikipedia). 

My struggle in the puzzle mainly came with BEL ESPRIT (66A: Clever person), which is a term I’ve just never heard before, and the literal translation, “pretty spirit,” doesn’t really suggest a clever person. That was atop SLED (68A: Flexible Flyer, for one), which was another challenging one for me because I’d never heard of a Flexible Flyer (though in hindsight the clue makes sense). Combine those difficulties with 46D: Fit together, where I tried to put “nestle” instead of NESTED, and I spent some precious time working that section out. I wish we didn’t need to have THE SAHARA (42A: Home to horned vipers and deathstalker scorpions), which looks especially clunky right on top of THE THREE SISTERS (39A) (even if the construction may have been deliberate). My last little gripe is with the clue for TYPE O (67A: Universal donor's classification) because O-negative is the universal donor. O-positive is not.

Misc.:

• The lyrics of “Over the Rainbow” (21D) made me think about the movie “Wicked” and its press tour. So here’s your daily reminder to really hold space for the lyrics to “Defying Gravity” today. (And if you don’t know what I mean, congrats on not being chronically online. You can see what I’m talking about here, which has been all over my social media feeds and is too iconic not to share. Holding hands is out — holding pointer fingers is in.) 
• I tried to close my window by only hitting ESC (20A: Key to close a window), but it didn’t work. I suppose that, these days, it needs to be used in combination with another key. 
• I’ve always been partial to TORTOISEs and turtles — did you know there’s a tortoise named Jonathan who hatched in 1832 who’s still alive?! And there are several mythologies that feature the idea of a turtle carrying the world on their back (either supporting or containing it), which is an idea I love.
• If you somehow managed to miss the HAKA (40D: Maori ceremonial dance) being performed in the New Zealand Parliament by MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke to protest and halt a bill being introduced, you must watch this powerful video. 
• My worlds collided a bit with "Crying in H MART" and BTS. The author was really excited when a BTS member, Jungkook, held up the book during a livestream, and she’s also said she’d love to cast another BTS member, RM, in the film adaptation! 

And that’s all from me!

Signed, Clare Carroll, who really won’t be back now until December (probably)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Extinct megafauna species whose name derives from the Greek for "breast tooth" / MON 11-7-22 / Why the troubled look / Stage name for rapper Tracy Lauren Marrow / Like thick-crust, rectangular pizza / Kind of phone signal that's nearly obsolete

Constructor: Jill Singer

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (***for a Monday***) (just a tad on the slow side is all)

THEME: "WHAT'S BUGGING YOU?" (36A: "Why the troubled look?" ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 48- and 58-Across) — metaphorical insect phrases signifying disturbance:

Theme answers:

• BUTTERFLIES / IN MY STOMACH (17A: "With 58-Across, "I'm so nervous! There are ...")
• BEE IN MY BONNET (24A: "I can't stop thinking about it! There's a ...")
• ANTS IN MY PANTS (48A: "I can't sit still! There are ...")

Word of the Day: SOBA (1D: Japanese buckwheat noodle) —

Soba (そば or 蕎麦, "buckwheat") is a thin Japanese noodle made from buckwheat. The noodles are served either chilled with a dipping sauce, or hot in a noodle soup. The variety Nagano soba includes wheat flour.

In Japan, soba noodles can be found in a variety of settings, from "fast food" places to expensive specialty restaurants. Markets sell dried noodles and men-tsuyu, or instant noodle broth, to make home preparation easy. A wide variety of dishes, both hot for winter and cold for summer, uses these noodles. (wikipedia)

• • •

Gonna have to be a quick one today because despite the "extra" hour I am somehow strapped for time this evening. Conceptually this theme is very good. As for the execution, I wasn't so into it. Really didn't care for the split first themer, mostly because it slowed me down considerably, but also because splitting a themer that badly (putting part 2 wayyyy on the other side of the grid) kind of deadens its effect. I don't *want* to go all the way over the other side of the grid in the middle of solving my Monday puzzle. So I don't. I just wait. Which means I just get BUTTERFLIES. Which isn't terribly interesting. Also, I don't know how great the whole cluing conceit is. The use of imagined quotations, where we're supposed to complete the elliptical phrases ... I guess all those theme clues are supposed to be *responses* to the central question "WHAT'S BUGGING YOU?," but again, everything is so out of order that the theme just doesn't have the impact that it should have. It truly wasn't until I was all the way done with the puzzle that I was able to go back and see how everything was supposed to work. It felt a bit labored and awkward in execution. But I do think the core concept is very clever. 

The fill, however, yikes, I remain baffled that constructors aren't held to higher standards, aren't ordered back to the drawing board to make the fill smoother, cleaner, more polished. That BUTI ENTO IONO ECRU UNUM ESE center is pretty much inedible, and much of the shorter stuff all over the grid isn't much better (MTS ICET PHYS YAYAS APRS (!!?!!?!) etc.). I liked MASTODON, especially because it's having a (social media) moment right now as untold numbers of people flee The Bird Site. Bye bye, TWEETs! (I'm on MASTODON now @rexparker@mastodon.online, by the way, not that you should care in the slightest) (10D: Extinct megafauna species whose name derives from the Greek for "breast tooth"). I liked BY MISTAKE as well—that's a prepositional phrase I can get behind. I was slow today because of UDON before SOBA and ISH before EST (4D: Approx.). Also ENDO- before ENTO- and ATMO- before IONO- and absolutely no idea about BORN until I get Every Single Cross, what a weird clue (38D: Created). That's it. 

Oh, and one last thing: please go see DECISION TO LEAVE (2022), both because it's great and because I have questions.

Oh, and one *last* last thing: Happy 30th birthday, Andrew. Keep solving crosswords with your awesome girlfriend, Sophie—she sounds like a keeper!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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