Cognac label letters / THU 1-22-26 / Sporting flats, say / Pestering type / Mark’s successor / Kick butt, so to speak / Channel with the longtime slogan “We Know Drama” / Goddess depicted with cow’s horns / Prefix meaning “heavens,” as the name of a planet suggests / Band with the 2008 platinum single “Electric Feel” / Result of missing the boat / Tools requiring two people

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: TRAFFIC / SIGNALS (11D: With 42-Down, they tell you when to stop and go … as seen in this puzzle’s theme)— the letters “STOP” and “GO” are replaced in the theme answers with “RED” and “GREEN,” respectively:

Theme answers:

• COMEREDASS (“Comes to pass”) (18A: Happens)
• WORKINGREENNIT (“Working on it”) (27A: Tackling the task at hand)
• LOREDPORTUNITY (“Lost opportunity”) (45A: Result of missing the boat)
• XINGREENUT (“Xing out”) (56A: Striking through)

Word of the Day: MGMT (34A: Band with the 2008 platinum single “Electric Feel”) —

MGMT (/ɛm-dʒi-ɛm-tiː/) is an American rock band formed in 2002 in Middletown, Connecticut. It was founded as "The Management" by singers and multi-instrumentalists Andrew VanWyngarden and Benjamin Goldwasser. They later changed their name to "MGMT" in 2005. […] 

On October 5, 2007, Spin named MGMT "Artist of the Day". In November Rolling Stonepegged MGMT as a top ten "Artist to Watch" in 2008 and went on to name Oracular Spectacular number 494 in their top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. The band placed ninth in the BBC's Sound of 2008 Top Ten Poll. They were also named as Last.fm's most played new artist of 2008 in their Best of 2008 list. At the 51st Grammy Awards, the Justice remix of "Electric Feel" won the Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical. The group was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist and "Kids" was nominated for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 52nd Grammy Awards. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Dear readers, my internet service provider is doing some kind of repairs or upgrade so service is out and I’m currently writing this on my phone (torture)… Oh look I can just do voice memo. Kuhl Kuhl, why is it writing out the name Kuhl and not the word Kuhl what a weird Choice. Anyway, I’ll write more later assuming my service comes back on. For now, I’ll just say that I did not care for this puzzle. At all. There’s gibberish in the grid, the theme answers themselves aren’t that interesting, and the fill is creaky throughout. And how many UPs are there in this grid anyway? Four? At least four. That’s an insane number of UPs. An illegal number I’d say. I knew the fill was gonna be a problem at STETTED (which is what happens when you turn the proofreading comment STET (i.e. “leave in”) into a past-tense verb, oof). TSK TSK. Also balked at VSOP VOCE, although now I think it sounds like a cool rapper’s name—he could open for A$AP ROCKY. 

[warning: profanity, weirdness]

More later, maybe. Or not, if the internet doesn’t cooperate. For now, I’m done writing on my phone. Sorry for the technical difficulties. Fire away in the comments if you like. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. well it's patchy, and currently slow as hell, but Internet appears to be back chez me. As some have noted, if I'd been thinking more clearly at Very Dark O'Clock in the Morning, I could've set up a hot spot with my phone and connected my laptop to the Internet that way. Ah well.  Here are some of things I might've commented on had I been more alert and competent in the face of an Internet Emergency:

• NAH is not a "Hard pass" (30D: "Hard pass"). It's a casual, slangy, not particularly emphatic "no." "HELL NO" is a "hard pass." 
• The clue on ETCH was head-shakingly weird (35A: Cut (in)). "ETCH in"??? What is that? "Cut in" and "ETCH in" are parallel phrases only if a lawyer gets involved. I guess the phrase "etched in stone" means "cut in(to) stone," but yeesh. "Cut in" is a dance term (as in "May I ___?")
• GET UP STEAM? You can work up a head of steam. You can get up to speed. But this? Unless you know a guy named Steam who has fallen, I can't see how this phrase is useful.
• I guess the SHOD clue is technically correct (6D: Sporting flats, say), but SHOD makes whoever is wearing the flats sound like a horse.
• URANO? Whoever you are, U R in NO position to be putting this in a puzzle. "Prefix" where/when? Unless you are a 17th-century star atlas enthusiast, I challege.
• And yes, as many of you have noted: COME RED ASS is hard to unsee. Lots going on there. Might be the highlight of the puzzle (put "high" in scare quotes, if you like).

I'll see you all tomorrow.

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Fishing basket / THU 5-9-24 / Pigeon dish / Bloodroot produces an orange one / Like the smell of a pub / Body part where a sock might go? / Product identifier similar to a U.P.C.

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: in old Rome? — the letter strings "ONE," "TWO," "FOUR," and "EIGHT" are represented in the grid by their Roman numeral equivalents:

Theme answers:

• WALKED (I) GGSHELLS (walked [on e]ggshells) (16A: Used extreme caution, in old Rome?)
• "DON (II) RRY ABOUT IT" ("don'[t wo]rry about it") (30A: "Everything will be fine," in old Rome?)
• THE SKIN O (IV) TEETH (the skin o[f our] teeth) (38A: What we might escape by, in old Rome?)
• W(VIII) HE EVIDENCE (w[eigh t]he evidence) (57A: Do a judge's job, in old Rome?)

Word of the Day: ERG (44A: What a piece of work!) —

The erg is a unit of energy equal to 10⁻⁷ joules (100 nJ). It originated in the Centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS). It has the symbol erg. The erg is not an SI unit. Its name is derived from ergon (ἔργον), a Greek word meaning 'work' or 'task'.

An erg is the amount of work done by a force of one dyne exerted for a distance of one centimetre. In the CGS base units, it is equal to one gram centimetre-squared per second-squared (g⋅cm²/s²). It is thus equal to 10⁻⁷ joules or 100 nanojoules (nJ) in SI units. (wikipedia)

• • •

[it means "One Claudius"]

I kinda liked unpacking these theme answers. The numerals were all well and truly buried in their respective answers (all of them breaking across two words, rather than merely embedded in a single word, or appearing as the numbers themselves, which would've been boring). This is the kind of gibberish that I can accept in my grid—gibberish that isn't really gibberish if you're reading it right. And they're all a perfect grid-spanning 15, and the numbers form an orderly list, doubling as you progress down the grid. I'd've preferred "ancient Rome" to "old Rome" in the clues. Otherwise, I think the theme is aces. But man, things have gotten way, way too easy of late. For a while there, the interim editor seemed to have jacked the difficulty of the puzzles up in a pretty noticeable way (whether intentionally or not), but things have yawed waaaayyy in the other direction in recent days. Every day this week has felt like a Monday until today, which (gimmick aside) felt like a Tuesday. I really would like my Thursdays to have more punch and more flash. The fill today is smooth and uncringey (hurray), and MILD WINTER and STEEP FINES are solid longer answers, but the theme is carrying all of the excitement burden. The burden of interest? The only thing interesting about the puzzle is the theme, is what I'm saying. In a case like this, on a Thursday, the cluing could at least try to put up a bit of fight—get weird or clever or something. But I've looked this puzzle over and have marked hardly any clues as particularly tough or tricky. Fight me, puzzle!

Whatever interest ON IN YEARS and GO ON A TEAR had was negated by the fact that they both contain "ON." Normally an "ON" dupe would not be something I'd notice (or care about), unless the "ON" words intersected or there were three+ "ON"s or something like that. But when symmetrical marquee-level answers dupe a word, I notice. But as I say, moving through the non-thematic areas of this puzzle was largely a pleasant experience. A nice walk. No cool birds or beautiful foliage, but no rain or gnat swarms either. Only a few hesitations and missteps today. Got MILD W- and when I couldn't make MILD WEATHER fit, I was briefly confused. I guess the word "news" in the clue threw me a bit—I think of the weather as "news," but not the season itself. "Forecast" might've got me there. But no matter. My level of confusion, like the imagined weather (I mean winter), was merely mild. I thought a SQUAB was a kind of bird, not a [Pigeon dish]. Ah, I see it is an "immature domestic pigeon or its meat" (wikipedia) (my emph.). I was not sure if it was a dish that contained pigeon, or something the pigeon itself might eat. Also, I routinely confuse SQUAB and SQUIB, so thank god CAR (eventually) was clear (26A: Where F comes before E?) (i.e. on the gas gauge). 

Some more notes:

• 9A: Body part where a sock might go? (CHIN) — this one seems designed to get you to write in SHIN. Well, anyway, that's what I did. But SHIN would mean reading the clue in a more literal, "?"-less way. Here, the sock is not an article of clothing, but a punch. And if you're going to sock someone, I guess the chin is as good a place as any (though your hand would probably prefer the belly)
• 27A: Product identifier similar to a U.P.C. (SKU) — Me: "Uh ... CPU?" (no: that's computerese for "central processing unit”). I haven't seen or thought about SKU numbers in forever, and don't actually know what SKU stands for, so let's find out ... drum roll ... googling ... OK, looks like it's "stock keeping unit." It's pronounced "skew," right? "Skoo" seems like it would be too silly for any self-respecting person to want to say.
• 46A: Result of a failed field sobriety test, for short (DWI) — still not sure what the difference between DWI and DUI is (from a legal standpoint, that is). I went, as I always do, with DUI, largely because it's just easier to say, unless you've decided to treat them as true acronyms, in which case I believe they are both pronounced "Dwee!" 

[I've seen this dumb billboard around town so many times, you'd think I'd've switched my default from DUI to DWI by now. True story: I first thought these were political billboards meant to smear some guy named Tom who was running for office]

• 12D: Mitchell & ___ (sports apparel company) (NESS) — No idea. It's Eliot or Loch or go to hell, NESS-wise.
• 51D: Like the smell of a pub (BEERY) — do not love this as an adjective. As a supporting actor on The Rockford Files, however, I'd love it:

[Noah BEERY, Jr. as Jim's dad, Rocky]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. SWAK = “Sealed With A Kiss”; I though this was well known, but based on some initial comments, apparently not

P.P.S. reader Daniel G. sent me a picture of his cat a while back and I don't remember why and it's just been sitting on my desktop for weeks and weeks now, so now seems as good a time as any to post it—this is Gorky. He's helping:

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11th-century founder of Scholasticism / SUN 6-18-23 / Red snapper on a sushi menu / Secondary characters, in gamespeak / Easton singer with 2009 #1 country hit A Little More Country Than That / Glinda's reassurance to Dorothy on whether her dog can also return to Kansas / Controversial org. that filed for bankruptcy in 2021 / Financial institution that lends its name to a Boston arena / Curve cutter for carpenters / Scooping since 1928 sloganeer

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "My Two Cents" — familiar two-word phrases where second word word represents an offering of one's thoughts (hence the puzzle title); in the familiar phrase, the first word is adjectival, but the clue imagines it as a noun, so that, for instance, DOUBLE TAKE is clued as as a "take" about a (stunt) "double"; GAME THEORY is clued a "theory" about (wild) "game"; etc.

Theme answers:

• DOUBLE TAKE (23A: "It's obvious the actors aren't doing these stunts")
• GAME THEORY (25A: "Hares and rabbits are really the same animal, some say") (the "some say" feels redundant / unnecessary)
• SERVING SUGGESTION (46A: "Waiter, you can hold off bringing the coffee till the end of the meal") (this isn't really "two cents" at all, or even a "suggestion"; it's essentially an order)
• BLANKET RECOMMENDATION (69A: "Wool will keep you the warmest")
• DISSENTING OPINION (94A: "Being contrarian is fun!")
• CORE BELIEF (116A: "Whaddya mean it's the pits? It's the best part of an apple!")
• SAGE ADVICE (118A: "Use it for Thanksgiving stuffing and saltimbocca")

Word of the Day: ST. MARTIN (64D: One of the Leewards) —

Saint Martin (French: Saint-Martin; Dutch: Sint Maarten) is an island in the northeast Caribbean Sea, approximately 300 km (190 mi) east of Puerto Rico. The 87 square kilometres (34 sq mi) island is divided roughly 60:40 between the French Republic (53 square kilometres (20 sq mi)) and the Kingdom of the Netherlands (34 square kilometres (13 sq mi)), but the Dutch part is more populated than the French part. The division dates to 1648. The northern French part comprises the Collectivity of Saint Martin and is an overseas collectivity of the French Republic. As part of France, the French part of the island is also part of the European Union. The southern Dutch part comprises Sint Maarten and is one of four constituent countries that form the Kingdom of the Netherlands. (wikipedia)

• • •

This just isn't my thing. It got a bit better toward the middle and end, when I realized that the theme was a lot tighter than I'd imagined at first. It wasn't til I was in the bottom half of the grid that it wasn't just that the sense (cents?) of the phrases were being reimagined, but that all the clues were themselves examples of someone's offering their "two cents," and all the second words in the themers were rough synonyms for one's "two cents." Sincerely, I thought the only thing going on was some vague "cents" / "sense" pun. But the clues, while wacky, weren't really haha wacky. Kind of groaner-wacky, at best. And without real humor, the pattern became a bit repetitive (as patterns will, I suppose). Not a SERVING SUGGESTION but a suggestion *about* a serving, not a BLANKET RECOMMENDATION but a recommendation *regarding* blankets. And on and on. Advice about sage. A belief about (apple) cores. It's a tight concept, but the highs for me just weren't that high, and the humor involved was corny to me, mostly because it could never get to a truly and genuinely Wacky place. It just sort of stayed in dad joke territory. Chuckleworthy, maybe, but it's hard to keep the chuckles coming after the fifth or so iteration of this same idea. 

The most memorable part of the puzzle was the utter bafflement and frustration I felt trying to parse A BIT ODD (61D: Somewhat off). Absolute rookie mistake, clinging to the idea that the answer would be a single word, ugh. I had this same "you ****ing idiot!" self-recrimination the other day on Wordle, when, four guesses in, I just had -A--E and couldn't do Anything with the remaining consonants; I was thinking 'what obscure word could this possibly be?' ... until I (finally) realized "Oh, look, it's that very obscure word 'MAYBE'! Aaaargh..." So ABITOFF was, yes, an adventure, made more adventurous by my completely non-knowing of TAI (77A: Red snapper, on a sushi menu). I've probably seen that answer a dozen times over the years, but it just never sticks. If you'd told me that first letter was virtually any consonant in the alphabet, I'd've believed you. I also have no memory of ever having heard of the island of ST. MARTIN. Weird that the opening section of ST. MARTIN's wikipedia page (where it is never once spelled with the "Saint" abbreviated) contains no mention of its being part of the Leeward Islands (which are never referred to on *their* wikipedia page as the "Leewards"). Does get mentioned, eventually, and it's in the sidebar, but somehow I expected that fact to be more ... forward. Lots and lots of Leewards, it looks like: Virgin Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis, etc. After I got the ST. I thought of KITTS and BARTS and then I was out of ideas. I know lots of ST. MARTINs (the publisher ... the, uh, saint, I guess), but this island slipped my mind. I've never vacationed in the Caribbean, not once, so I've never really had occasion to make sense of where all the damn islands are. Very much my bad.

I also had trouble parsing RAN ITS COURSE, but I really liked that one, ultimately (63D: Developed and finished naturally). Probably my favorite answer in the grid. Much less fond of IN STONE standing awkwardly on its own (as the latter part of SET / IN STONE), and even less fond of TOTO TOO doing the same (43D: Glinda's reassurance to Dorothy on whether her dog can also return to Kansas). That answer is counting on your "Wizard of Oz" fandom to override the sensible part of your brain, which is sensibly telling you "that's not a standalone thing, not even close." I almost (Almost) like it because it has the absolute gall to not only stand there like it's something, but to do so while crossing its near-sound-alike cousin, TOE-TO-TOE. "Yes, hello, I am TOTO TOO, have you met my cousin, TOE-TO-TOE? What do you mean our names are silly and implausible!? How dare you."

I wondered why bookstores would have SAFES until I realized they probably had CAFES (107D: Features of some bookstores). I left the first two letters of UNARM blank because I convinced myself that DEARM might be a thing (yes, it's dumb, but no dumber than UNARM—the word is DISARM!). Completely forgot that Rick was a BLAINE (27A: Rick's last name in "Casablanca"). I'll take the puzzle's word for it that an ICE BOAT is a thing (15D: Skimmer over a frozen lake). And that TD BANK is a thing (4D: Financial institution that lends its name to a Boston arena)—I mean, now that I see it, I've heard of it, but woof, parsing that, also rough (ruff!). I can accept NRA today because the clue consigns that org. to where it belongs, i.e. Loserdom (37D: Controversial org. that filed for bankruptcy in 2021). I cannot, however, accept GREEN CAR (92D: Vehicle with lower emissions) (lower ... than what?); you mean ECOCAR, or something similarly adspeaky. A GREEN CAR is just a car with green paint. In fact, GREEN CAR is the green paint of cars ("green paint" being the general term for a crossword answer that's a real enough term, but that doesn't really have standalone power; for example, I've seen sad women before, but SAD WOMEN would not make a good crossword answer). EVS, PLUGINS, ECOCARS, even E-CARS, I'd buy all these before GREEN CAR. I do not buy GREEN CAR, nor would I but *a* GREEN CAR. Probably. Our car is a kind of maroon. Do you own a green car? Is it an AMC Gremlin? If not, why not? Look at this baby!

Since I'm down to amusing myself with Google Image Searches, I should probably wrap things up. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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31-syllable Japanese poem / SAT 4-30-22 / 1977 Sex Pistols song written after a record-contract termination / Delectable made with grass / Olds that was once in the news / Claudio or Gio father and son players for the US men's national soccer team / String of typographical symbols, like @%$&!, to represent an obscenity

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TANKA (25A: 31-syllable Japanese poem) —

Tanka (短歌, "short poem") is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature. // Originally, in the time of the Man'yōshū (latter half of the eighth century AD), the term tanka was used to distinguish "short poems" from the longer chōka (長歌, "long poems"). In the ninth and tenth centuries, however, notably with the compilation of the Kokinshū, the short poem became the dominant form of poetry in Japan, and the originally general word waka became the standard name for this form. Japanese poet and critic Masaoka Shiki revived the term tanka in the early twentieth century for his statement that waka should be renewed and modernized. Haiku is also a term of his invention, used for his revision of standalone hokku, with the same idea. // Tanka consist of five units (often treated as separate lines when romanized or translated) usually with the following pattern of on (often treated as, roughly, the number of syllables per unit or line):

5-7-5-7-7.

The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no-ku (上の句, "upper phrase"), and the 7-7 is called the shimo-no-ku (下の句, "lower phrase").

• • •

This was a weird and often unpleasant puzzle. It's got a few surprising bright spots, but mostly it was just hard, and hard for the wrong reasons. The longer answers, the grid-spanning 15s that cross the grid three times, were all a cinch. Just needed a few crosses to get the top and the bottom ones, and wouldn't have needed any to get the middle one: GAME SHOW NETWORK (36A: Its slogan "Get Smarter Now" matches its initials). Those 15s are all good answers, and they make a nice trellis to hang the rest of the grid on ... but the trellis was too often ratty, and what made the solving experience dreary was that the difficulty didn't come with any payoff because it all came around short, gunky stuff. I spent most of my time in two very small areas, unable to come up with 3-, 4-, and 5-letter answers because a. names, of course, or b. deliberately tenuous cluing, but again the real problem wasn't just the difficulty (it's Saturday, after all), it's that when I overcame the difficulty, I was rewarded with ... AVI? The bird prefix? And ACTII? Oof. There was no "ooh" or "aha," just "ugh, well at least that's over." So while there are some definite high points to the grid, it mostly seemed crosswordesey (ABET ERNST STENO the unwelcome return of ALERO etc.), and hard in all the wrong places, for all the wrong reasons. So I'm left not thinking "wow, GRAWLIX, that was cool!" but instead "how ... is OVER ... [During]? ... oh ... like, 'OVER the weekend,' 'OVER Christmas break,' that kind of [During]? ... [sigh], OK." 

It also seemed kinda oldish. The STENO ALERO SKAT-type short stuff was a big part of that, but very few of the longer answers seemed of-this-century either. The GAME SHOW NETWORK is built on nostalgia for the mid-late 20th century. POT BROWNIEs still exist, I assume, but I associate them with a similarly bygone era, for sure (8D: Delectable made with grass). Very 70s / 80s. The cultural center of gravity here is somewhere around when the Sex Pistols were popular. Or when "ALFIE" was popular. ALFIE is my cat's name, so I love ALFIE, but you get my point—the puzzle seemed like it was for someone sitting around eating POT BROWNIEs and watching OATERS on late-night TV. But the retro vibe isn't a problem, exactly, and I might not even have noticed it if the short fill had been stronger, and I might not even have noticed that the short fill wasn't that strong if I hadn't been forced to spend so much time with it. As I said, the bulk of my time was spent trying to figure out tiny sections that ended up containing precisely zero in the way of satisfying payoff. The first such section was the very first section, right at 1A: Certain archaeological site (BOG). Of course I wrote in DIG. This is what I don't get: designing traps so that the solver will have to linger over gunky stuff like AVI- (14A: Flying start?). Anyway, BOG over AVI, just brutal, and much more brutal before I finally got GIVEN NAME, which ... I don't really see what that clue has to do with "Americans" (scores of other countries have first names as GIVEN NAMEs). That "Americans" just felt cheap. Could just as well have been "among the French" or something, what the hell? And of course GIVEN gave me the "G" which "confirmed" DIG, so I wrong in DING (DING!) for 1D: When doubled, attention-grabbing (BANG). I also had WENT DIM before GREW DIM at first, but that was one of the first things about the section I actually managed to fix (20A: Faded). When I finally put in BOG, I didn't feel a whoosh of success; I felt like I'd been conned.

The other small section to absolutely bring me to a halt was at the bottom of the grid. Speaking of last century ... BROWSER WAR? The first one? How many were there??? I lived through that period of tech history and yet had no idea, even with BROWSER in place, what might come after. BROWSER ... W- ... BROWSER WEB? Just no clue on those last three letters (eventually two letters), and unfortunately those letters went right into the very hardest part of the puzzle for me: some soccer name I've never heard of (in fact, a name I've never seen at all, in any context) underneath a [Musical segment] that looks technical and maybe Italian but ends up just being the dumb common answer ACT II. As with "Americans" and GIVEN NAME, here we have a seemingly narrow clue being used to define an exceedingly general thing. There are ACT IIs in lots of works. [Musical segment] is so vague it's stupid. You can't tell it's a stage musical (which is probably the point), but even then ... ugh. It's like having [Part of a 1995 Lamborghini Diablo] and having the answer be TIRE or AXLE. In that same section, I had ARCH before ARTY (53D: Affected), and it took me forever to understand what (or who) the "toaster" was in the STEIN clue (50D: A toaster might hold one) (toaster = one who gives a toast, so the STEIN is ... full of beer ... I guess). So what sticks with me about this puzzle is almost exclusively BOG/AVI and ACTII/REYNA—not the greatest aftertaste. It's not that I didn't know stuff that bothers me. I didn't know TANKA, and felt only too happy to learn about it. Why? Why did TANKA play sweet and REYNA sour? Because the puzzle didn't use TANKA to bog me down in a tiny corner of the puzzle. I got it as part of the puzzle flow. You solve, you hit difficulty, you work around it. Flow! BOG/AVI and ACTII/REYNA, by contrast, made me feel trapped and suffocated. Backed into an airless corner. It was like the puzzle wanted me to learn TANKA, but wanted to make it torture for me to even get close to REYNA.

JETÉ before LUTZ (10D: Leap with a twist) and GOING FAST before GOING ONCE (33D: About to be sold). The rest of the puzzle was (I'm recalling, as I look over it now) pretty decent. I really liked HARD PASS (4D: "That's a big 'no thanks'"). That and GRAWLIX are my favorite answers of the day (GRAWLIX is a debut) (23D: String of typographical symbols like @%$&!, to represent an obscenity). I think I might be an outlier, not only in my love for the word, but in my even knowing what the word means. I teach a course on Comics, so it's right in my wheelhouse, but it's a pretty technical term (or so I thought). I have no idea how well-known it is, generally. I remember being so happy to learn that there was even a term for the swearing symbols in comics! I later learned that expressive lines that emanate from a cartoon character (like wavy stink lines) are called EMANATA, and the "drops of sweat that spray outwards from a cartoon character under emotional distress" are called PLEWDS. I doubt you'll ever see either of those in the grid, but now you know.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Speaking of comics, I wish today's SOREL had been Edward SOREL (13D: Philosopher Georges). You've seen his work a lot, probably. Here's his cover for the 1966 Esquire that contained Gay Talese's famous essay, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold":

He's been astonishingly prolific, over a long career. Lots of political cartoons, lots of New Yorker covers. As for [Philosopher Georges] ... I got nothing. Apparently there is also a French historian named SOREL—Albert SOREL. He was the preferred SOREL of the Maleskan era. I also see that there is apparently a Canadian city named SOREL—Maleska liked that clue too. But Maleska wasn't done there. He would like you to know that SOREL is also a type of cement (!?!?) and that Agnès SOREL was a "favorite of Charles VII" (whoever that is). The protagonist of Stendahl's Le Rouge et le Noir (1830) is named Julien SOREL. So those are some SOREL facts for you today. Since 1998, Shortz has made the cartoonist his go-to SOREL clue, but he also brought in today's "philosopher," Georges, and has kept him around as his secondary, tougher SOREL option. Wikipedia tells me that "Sorelianism [!!!] is considered to be a precursor to fascism," so that's fun. Basically I'm saying please give me cartoonists, every chance you get. Thank you.

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Mandrake the Magician's sidekick / FRI 12-10-21 / 2019 rap hit whose title follows the lyric "How much money you got?" / Suffix with acetyl / Period at the beginning of the Stone Age / 1968 Peace Nobelist Cassin / Company that helped launch TMZ / Ensemble purchase that includes sheets and pillowcases / Largest sorority by enrollment (380,000+ members)

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: CHIRASHI (48A: Japanese dish of raw fish and vegetables over rice) —

Chirashizushi (ちらし寿司, "scattered sushi", also referred to as barazushi) serves the rice in a bowl and tops it with a variety of raw fish and vegetable garnishes. [...] It is eaten annually on Hinamatsuri in March and Kodomonohi in May.

• Edomae chirashizushi (Edo-style scattered sushi) is served with uncooked ingredients in an artful arrangement.
• Gomokuzushi (Kansai-style sushi) consists of cooked or uncooked ingredients mixed in the body of rice.
• Sake-zushi (Kyushu-style sushi) uses rice wine over vinegar in preparing the rice, and is topped with shrimp, sea bream, octopus, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots and shredded omelette. (wikipedia)

• • •

This just wasn't for me. Full of things I either didn't know, didn't care about, or actively don't like. Tone was set by 1-Across, as it often is. I just have no idea what a BED-IN-A-BAG is (1A: Ensemble purchase that includes sheets and pillowcases). I got the "BED" part easy enough, but after that, I just shrugged as I watched letter after letter go in, and even after I saw that it had to be BED-IN-A-BAG, I hesitated to write it in, so dumb a concept did it seem. SOAP-ON-A-ROPE, I know. BED-IN-A-BAG, no. Is it a brand? I don't care enough to look it up. I did care enough to look up CHIRASHI, which sounds delicious (as most food does to me, frankly), but it didn't even have its own wikipedia page. It was buried in the "Sushi" page and even there wasn't referred to as CHIRASHI, but as "Chirashizushi." Not sure how I got to be 52 years old, having eaten in all kinds of restaurants all over the world, following food writers on social media for years, etc., and not heard of CHIRASHI, but here we are! Not the puzzle's fault, happy to learn the term, but like BED-IN-A-BAG, this just wasn't from anywhere in my universe. I also actively dislike gambling (SHOOT CRAPS), have (mostly) negative feelings about (most) fraternities and sororities (CHI OMEGA) and college football (BYU) (29D: One side of a coll. football "Holy War" rivalry) and TMZ (see 45A: Company that helped launch TMZ => AOL), and wouldn't LEAN RIGHT if you paid me. You'd think ANTIFA would make up for LEAN RIGHT, politically, but the only time I ever hear the term "ANTIFA" is in the mouth of some paranoid right-wing dickhead, so ... no, that didn't help. I had one moment of "ah, nice," and that was when I got RUNNER'S HIGH (24D: Rush while racing?). I would never use the term, since the parallel to a drug high is inapt (or just unappealing to me). but I have felt great while running, and I do like the phrase as a puzzle answer. But overwhelmingly, I felt outside of whatever the intended demographic was for this puzzle. 

I kind of resented GO TO THERAPY, both the answer itself and (esp.) the non-clue it gets in today's puzzle (9D: What over 40 million U.S. adults do annually). As a verb phrase, I don't think it has great stand-alone status. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the problem is the clue. There's nothing at all therapy-specific about it. Who the hell cares what arbitrary number of millions of people do a thing. That number (40 million) does absolutely nothing to connect you to the answer. It's not colorful or fun or clever. It's blah. Further, the answer seems intended to get you to think GO TO THE... where "THE" appears to be the definite article. I had GO TO THE MALL written in there before I finally got GO TO THERAPY. So the puzzle gives you nothing on the clue end and the answer itself seems designed to be misdirective. I can tolerate the misdirection if I feel like the clue is good. But the clue is bad. Or dull. Therapy is good, my experience with this answer was not. Had another misparsing adventure in the SE, with INDIA- .... which ended up being IN space DIAPERS (53A: Untrained, perhaps). But I didn't mind that one so much, because at least that answer has a real clue. Give RITA Wilson a real clue too, please (24A: Wilson on the Hollywood Walk of Fame). The Hollywood Walk of Fame is suuuuuuuuch a bummer as clue fodder. Lazy and ultimately meaningless. Give me something *specific*. Make the puzzle vivid and interesting! Respect RITA! Sigh. 

MALAR and SACRAL made me wince, mostly because they have that "niche adjective" quality I find hard to love. Had MOLAR and SACRED in there at first, respectively. Because MOLAR and SACRED are words you might actually use. It's not the greatest feeling to write in a word but then have to scrap it for something that is far less of a word. Is HO HO HO a "cheer"? (42D: Christmas cheer?). He's not leading you in a chant ("Gimme an 'H'!"), he's expressing ... his own cheer, I guess? Is that the meaning? Santa's expression of Christmas cheer? You're torturing your clue there. There are limits to what the "?" can do for you, and you should respect them. I had BOUNCES before POUNCES (27D: Springs), but mostly my struggles in this one involved simple non-familiarity with terms / non-interest in subject matter. But I do want to try CHIRASHI now. So the experience wasn't a total loss. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Loud thudding sound / SUN 5-16-21 / Two-legged stand / Highly resistant elastomer / Breakfast drink sans creamer / Nickname for the Wildcats of the Pac-12 / Fore-and-aft-rigged sailboat with two masts / Innovation in push-ups / Johnson Sirleaf Africa's first elected female head of state

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Challenging (roughly 2x last week's time)

THEME: "A Shot in the Dark" — in addition to two answers that have the clue [Shot in the dark] (23A: UNEDUCATED GUESS / 127A: LAST DITCH EFFORT), there are six black (so, "dark") squares that actually represent words that are also types of "shots"; each of said squares is the intersecting point for two themers, and you need to supply the word in the black square to make sense of those themers. Thus:

Theme answers:

• 4D: Tools for landscapers (HEDGE TRIMMERS) / 43A: Fix for a bald spot (HAIR IMPLANT) (rim shot)
• 33A: Improved version of an existing product (BETTER MOUSETRAP) / 15D: "Hallelujah!" ("PRAISE TO GOD!") (set shot)
• 65A: Real deal (GENUINE ARTICLE) / 35D: Carefully avoid (TIPTOE AROUND) (earshot)
• 78A: Highly resistant elastomer (SILICONE RUBBER) / 57D: Phenomenon by which electrons radiate from a heated filament, so named for a famous observer (EDISON EFFECT) (one-shot)
• 100A: Detectives (PRIVATE EYES) / 74D: When the first "Peanuts" comic appeared (NINETEEN-FIFTY) (tee shot)
• 110A: Like some roller chains and ball bearings (SELF-LUBRICATING) / 89D: Very easy living (LAP OF LUXURY) (flu shot)

Word of the Day: BOP-IT (???) (59A: Hasbro game requiring increasingly quick reflexes) —

• • •

This is a puzzle with a dense, multi-layered, architecturally impressive theme, and I viscerally disliked almost every second of solving it. Torture. What made it godawful was not knowing when I was dealing with a theme answer. No clue. Couldn't see it. Over and over. The worst was obviously HEDGET, which was the first black-square-gimmick answer I came to; since I *already got one of the theme answers* (UNEDUCATED GUESS), and it didn't have any missing parts, I was not looking for missing parts. So the black square thing blindsided me. I was probably way over on the other side of the grid, at the BETTER MOUSETRAP / "PRAISE TO GOD!" cross, when I finally figured out the gimmick, but even after figuring it out, those black squares kept being a mystery, and I could never tell when I was dealing with one unless I looked at a subsequent Across or Down, which is just not the way I solve puzzles. It took *forever* for me to run into my first "-" clue (at 37A), which was the first point at which I realized I was dealing with one of these "jump or cross a black square, or maybe turn a corner"-type answers. So much of this solve was spent not being able to see I was even dealing with a themer, or else staring at part of an answer that had "-" for a clue, which kept requiring me to move the cursor back to see what the actual clue was. The amount of fussiness was staggering. 

This is one where solving on paper was probably easier, because solving in software, where you can't see all the clues at once, it was just disorienting. And the theme was so dense it never ended. And the themers often felt very forced (see "PRAISE TO GOD!" which is missing the word "BE"; or EDISON EFFECT, which, LOL, what is that? Or SILICONE RUBBER, shrug, or SELF-LUBRICATING, if you say so, etc.). I see now that all the "shot" squares are symmetrical, but during the solve, that didn't help any. It was the sloggiest slog I've slogged in a good long time. The fill was also under tremendous pressure because of the dense theme, so it was frequently not good (CIAOS? more than one CIAO?). And on top of *that*, it was clued really difficult much of the time. This never evened out. Never got better. Just pain and annoyance from start to finish. Put it in the "Great Architecture" Hall of Fame if you want, but solving it was an extremely off-putting experience. 

"Dude" is already slang, so the clue on BRAH is so weird (1A: Dude, slangily). Also, ugh, that can be spelled so many ways (BRAH, BRUH, BRO ... pretty sure I've seen BRUV, but maybe that's British ... yes, it is). What the actual [beeeeeeep] is CRUMP!?!?! (21A: Loud thudding sound). I thought there was some theme action going on somewhere there because that is not a word I've ever seen without an "-ET" on the end. Wow. The BOP-IT / BEER crossing nearly killed me, as I don't know BOP-IT at all, and the BEER clue was a Zappa quote, where the missing word could have been An-Y-Thing! (59D: "You can't be a real country unless you have a ___ and an airline": Frank Zappa). Again, ugh. The ENZI / 'ZONA cross, also double-ugh. I forgot ENZI existed (and was perfectly happy that way), and then, wow not terribly familiar with that abbr. of "Arizona." Seems reasonable, I guess, but really this crossing is a long, horrible way to go just to get a "Z" in the grid. Bizarre. You don't get a Razzy for being PANNED, you get it for being terrible, and while terrible movies do often get PANNED, the connection there between clue and answer is awfully weak. PANNED!? (98A: Like Golden Raspberry-"winning" films). Took forever, and then getting it was so disappointing. So many little short annoying answers that it felt like someone was throwing small rocks at me the whole time (the MITE / ATOMS / IOTA section was particularly noisome, but it was bad all over, frankly). Had IMS instead of DMS (direct messages) because it felt like it worked better (129D: Chats over Twitter, briefly). I "chat over Twitter" all the time but hardly ever DM anyone. DMS are specifically *private* chats. Again, appalling, sloppy cluing. So the final indignity today was not being able to see LAST DITCH EFFORT for a time because of this IMS / DMS muck-up.  I must stop writing about this puzzle now. BOOP. Goodbye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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