Voltaire's penultimate play / SAT 7-11-26 / Bandleader who mentored Louis Armstrong / Statue in East Asian temples / Nookie nook? / G-rated verbal double-take / Julia Child catchphrase / Angsty feeling associated with exclusion / "Splendid" things in a Khaled Hosseini title / Target of a therapeutic tea bag / Boxing ring encouragement

Constructor: Jim Quinlan

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: KING OLIVER (3D: Bandleader who mentored Louis Armstrong) —

Joseph Nathan "King" Oliver (December 19, 1881 – c. April 10, 1938^:) was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style and his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. Also a notable composer, he wrote many tunes still played today, including "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz". He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong. His influence was such that Armstrong claimed, "if it had not been for Joe Oliver, jazz would not be what it is today." (wikipedia)

• • •

So many would-be Words of the Day today, which is to say, so many things I didn't know or barely knew, starting with KING OLIVER (embarrassing, since I own a bunch of Armstrong records and have a picture of Armstrong on my wall downstairs (on a movie poster) (The Beat Generation (1959))). He died in the late '30s, so maybe I shouldn't feel too bad, but still ... gap in knowledge, revealed. Another gap: IRENE. Voltaire's penultimate play? What was his ultimate play? His first play? What were literally any plays he wrote? What else did he write besides Candide? Legit LOL'd when I (finally) got IRENE. Oh, IRENE, of course, how could I forget, penultimate, yes, I thought maybe ultimate, but no, no, silly me. I don't know JOSS as anything but a stick (23A: Statue in East Asian temples). A JOSS stick? That's like incense, right? Well, yes, but it turns out that a JOSS stick is just a "stick" of incense that you burn before a JOSS, which is a Chinese idol: "A joss is an English term used to refer to a Chinese deity or idol. It generally describes a Chinese religious statue, object (such as joss paper), or idol in many Chinese folk religions." (wikipedia). I'm sure I've heard of the SAVANNAH BANANAS, but I forgot about them—certainly forgot about the BANANAS part. Luckily I knew the plot of Sweeney Todd, I'd actually read BOSSYPANTS (Tina Fey's autobiography) and I'd at least heard of A Thousand Splendid SUNS. I still haven't seen the APU TRILOGY (throw that on my Shame Pile with KING OLIVER), but it's very, very famous, so at least that didn't give me any trouble. Mostly I enjoyed how wide-ranging the fill was today, but yeah, it asks or some very specific, often proper noun-related knowledge today, so you gotta be a polymath or else fight a little. I fought a little.

I called Thursday's puzzle "Easy," which it very much was for me, but Apparently Not For Others, as I got yelled at a lot. Well, today, let me make it up to you by highlighting the very funny (to me) initial faceplant I did at the very beginning of this puzzle. First, a run-of-the-mill mistake:

But the first thing I did after AÇAI was check the "I" cross, and it wouldn't do anything with an "I" in the first position (4D: Greek counterpart of 12-Down). I then checked 12-Down ([Roman counterpart of 4-Down]). I thought then that maybe the Greek answer might be IOTA, but ... the Roman IOTA is just "I" so ... that was going nowhere. Out went AÇAI. Now what? Well, if you're thinking about four-letter words that are Greek/Roman equivalents of one another, there's only one answer! 

And LAIR "confirmed" it! Sigh. Turns out, there's not only one answer. There are two answers. At least. It's not like POKE bowl hadn't entered my mind, but I got so excited by the ARES/MARS find that I forgot all about POKE. Weirdly, the terminal "A" now made me think TUNA, which is a common POKE bowl ingredient. At any rate, comically inept start today as the wheels came off while the car was basically still in the garage. And then I ran immediately into KING OLIVER. So yeah, getting started today was something of a challenge. But once I got going, this felt like a pretty typical Saturday puzzle of recent vintage (that is, not as hard as the back-breaking Saturday puzzles of yore, back when the NYTXW absolutely did not care about your feelings, but kind of hard; new-era hard; modern hard; sufficiently hard for a Saturday in 2026).  

The marquee fill was very good today. OAHU, HAWAII is one of those geographical redundancies that always make me roll my eyes (see TEHRAN, IRAN, whenever that was ... recently), but everything else—all 11 of the other 10-letter answers—really pop. I enjoyed the crossing of FOMO and "I'M ALL ALONE"—gave the puzzle a really angsty, modern vibe. I object to the clue on "WHAT THE HEY?" (53A: G-rated verbal double-take). "WHAT THE HEY?" is more like "sure, why not? let's do it." There's a spirit of willingness, of gameness. The G-rated "double-take" (the thing you say when you can't believe what you just saw) is "WHAT THE HECK?" Also, I'm not sure LOVERS' LANE can plausibly be described as a "nook" (56: Nookie nook?). It's a lane. Is it not a literal lane? I think it's just a figurative term for any place you can park and make out. If you don't know what "nookie" is, ask your parents. Grandparents, actually. I think I learned it from '70s movies / TV. Maude? All in the Family? The Marin County satire Serial (1980), which my family owned on laser disc in the '80s and watched a lot? Wherever I learned it, I know I didn't learn it from this alleged children's TV show from 1981:

Bullets:

• 16A: .08 for 49 of the 50 states (LEGAL LIMIT) — this clue is basically begging you to ask the question, "Which state has a different LEGAL LIMIT than all the others!?" I don't know, but I'm going to find out for you now. I thought maybe Wisconsin's would be higher ("Some of the drunkest counties in America are in Wisconsin and the state has 7 of the 10 U.S. cities with the highest alcohol consumption per capita."), but no. The one state that's different actually has a lower limit. It's Utah, at .05.

• 19A: Some docking helpers (TUGS) — I wanted USBS. Later, USBS actually turned up (28D: Some ports, for short). We call that a "malapop." I think Andrea Carla Michaels came up with that name. It's a phenomenon that happens more than you'd think. Or ... no, you probably know, since, if you're solving a Saturday, you probably solve a lot.
• 42A: Get out of Dodge (BOLT) — really thought this clue was doing some kind of wordplay and the answer was going to have something to do with disembarking from a car.
• 44D: Boxing ring encouragement ("GET 'EM!") — since the opponent you are telling the boxer to "get" is just one person, 'EM feels slightly wrong. But then "GET 'IM!" also feels wrong. Do people even say this at boxing matches? Kinda savage.
• 36D: Arkansas : Nebraska :: Argon : ___ (NEON) — one of my favorite clues in a while.  Bizarrely incongruous, and yet simple, elegant, perfect (AR : NE :: AR : NE)

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Deceitful ballerinas / THU 3-8-18 / Word that no one has ever said before / McDonald's offering since 1968 / Bomb developed in 1950s / Classic railroad name / Golden Bears school familiarly

Constructor: Jim Quinlan

Relative difficulty: No idea—I made every mistake a human could make and ended with almost 2x my normal time, but it can't be that hard...

THEME: two-word phrases where first word has final "N" sound changed to "-IN'" (g-dropped form of "-ing") to create wacky phrases that get wacky clues

Theme answers:

• LYIN' DANCERS (19A: Deceitful ballerinas?)
• MOOIN' WALKER (27A: Cow as it strolls around the pasture?)
• PLAYIN' FOLKS (42A: Band members?)
• BEIN' COUNTER (53A: Census bureau employee?) (wow, that one is really bad...)

Word of the Day: ANYA Taylor-Joy (35D: Actress Taylor-Joy of 2015's "The Witch") —

Anya Taylor-Joy (born April 16, 1996) is an American-born Argentine-British actress.^[2] She is best known for her starring role as Thomasin in the horror film The Witch (2015) and as Casey Cooke in the horror-thriller film Split (2016). She was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2017. (wikipedia)

• • •

So the theme is manifestly dreadful—you can play this little word game all day long (PAYIN' RELIEVER, SEEIN' STEALER, uh ... STOWIN' MASON? Etc.), and it never gets interesting. And there are only four of these? It just doesn't cut it. I won't remember this theme at all, but I will remember how unbelievably off this puzzle's wavelength I was. Note: this isn't why it's a bad puzzle. It's bad because, I mean, look at it. No, my ridiculous, EPIC, absurd struggles are totally my own, totally idiosyncratic, and as remarkable as they are embarrassing. I made mistakes and left them in too long and couldn't get anywhere. Over and over and over. I did a Fireball puzzle earlier in the day (those puzzles have Thursday-type themes w/ Saturday-level difficulty), and crushed it in just over six minutes, so I was feeling pretty good when I stepped up to this one. But ugh, where to begin? Well, how about with PASTA for 4D: Trattoria bowlful (PENNE), which I crossed with RTES at 16A: Routing abbr. (ATTN). How in the world did I think RTES could go there, or made any sense? Wow. Couldn't make *anything* happen in the next section over except OPS and EPA. Wanted PETR, but it was a guess and I couldn't justify it. Had OAR for ROW (21D: Do crew). And then, even with BUCS OVA and UVULA, I got nowhere in the NE. Just ... blanking. Wrote in 'ALO (!?!?!?) at 28D: Greeting in Rio (OLA), and then "confirmed" it with MERINO at 32A: Fine wool source (ALPACA), which then made me want MC-something at 32D: McDonald's offering since 1968 (APPLE PIE). At this point, having been in four different sections and gotten nowhere, I started wondering if there wasn't a rebus or some Big Gimmick that I was missing. But no.


Things really got weird when I got to *actual* PASTA at 55A: Ronzoni offering. That made me go back and take out doppelganger PASTA, eventually put in PENNE, and eventually get rolling. Once I got going, it was like the ridiculous freefall I'd been in was a bad dream. Everything started falling into place. I have no idea what perfect storm of brain fall-apart happened during the first 4-5 minutes, but I really hope it never happens again. Very disconcerting. In retrospect, I should've noticed so many things much earlier:  obviously KOREA was right for 23A: Subject of reunificaiton talks, but I didn't go with it; my PETR instinct was right, and I didn't go with that, either; I'd looked at the [___ collar] clue a few times and had nothing, but did not (for a long time) *relook* at it after I got the final -EA, which made FLEA obvious, etc.); I mucked around in the SW a whole bunch without ever looking at clues for LANA and ELI—both gimmes; basic things like ERIE and AFRICAN just had (to me) inscrutable clues (49A: Classic railroad name + 39D: Like the earliest humans). I don't think of the cupcake pan as a tray (10D: Bakery trayful = CUPCAKES) ... I wouldn't have gotten BOCCE (even with the BO- in place) if I'd stared at that clue for a million years (8A: Game with a 90-foot x 13.1 foot court). ANYA someone? I'm so glad this is over, both because the theme was not good and because this was probably my single-worst solve, from a pure skill-failure perspective, in years.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Tamiroff of Anastasia / WED 5-27-15 / Jazz players are incapable / Transport in Ellington tune / Singer Perry opted out / Drying-out woe for short / Female producer of lanolin / Ipana competitor / Often-punted comics character

Constructor: Jim Quinlan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Contraction/negation — Ordinary words / phrases the end with letter strings that sound like ordinary verbs (e.g. CAN, DID, etc.) have a negative contraction (e.g. "N'T") added to the end and are reclued in a fittingly wacky way:

Theme answers:

• ANI MUSTN'T (18A: Singer DiFranco should heed a warning) (no "?" on these clues?)
• CATS CAN'T (23A: Jazz players are incapable)
• BUSH WASN'T (35A: W. never existed)
• MATH ISN'T (49A: Calculus disappears)
• KATY DIDN'T (55A: Singer Perry opted out)

Word of the Day: BUSHWA —

noun

NORTH AMERICANinformal

1. rubbish; nonsense. (google)

• • •

This is bizarre, but not without charm. The concept is creative, but the execution's a bit wobbly. ANI MUSTN'T takes the theme off the rails a bit, as ANIMUS requires the addition of T + N'T to get to wackiness. That is, ANIMUS doesn't end in "MUST," while CAT SCAN *does* end in CAN, MATHIS *does* end in IS, etc. There's the appearance of a verb at the end of all the other theme answers. Further, BUSHWAS—in the plural—is exceedingly rare. It's just not word you'd ever see pluralized. If you google it in quotation marks, you get words lists, and only 7000 or so hit total. FATWAS works better, though it would be pretty hard to clue FAT WASN'T in a plausible way (though it couldn't be much less plausible than the clue for MATH ISN'T). My point is that this puzzle's wacky ambition is adorable, but the assembled themers are not all ready for prime time. Still, I'll take the creative concept that doesn't *quite* come off over a tired concept with all its papers in order.


There are come cool juxtapositions in this grid. I like that the A-TRAIN has pulled up to the STAtion, and that VAN GOGH sits ambivalently between highbrow museum ART and lowbrow museum gift-shop TOTE BAG. I still can't bring myself to accept that a SKIBOB is a thing. I've tried. It's not taking. I had no idea who that AKIM guy was. I had him as an ARAM (8D: Tamiroff of "Anastasia"). My QUITS started out as RESTS. Beyond that, I had zero trouble with this puzzle, which was both smooth and easy. I see that there are some stray not-great answers (CDL, OLA, ITE, AKIM), but they really don't get in the way of puzzle pleasure. If suboptimal stuff is fairly rare and easily dealt with, then I don't care. So this week has started with three puzzles in a row where the fill has been acceptable or better. I have this weird feeling of optimism. I'm sure it's unfounded, but I'm going to enjoy it while it's here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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