Dissension cause in Greek myth / MON 4-6-26 / Jedi who trained Luke, formally / Shipping company with a red-and-yellow logo / Poker tell, perhaps / Food court loiterer, say / Certain submission moves in wrestling / Fence-sitter's response

Constructor: John Ewbank

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

[11D: Jedi who trained Luke, formally]

THEME: APPENDS (37A: Tacks on ... or, when parsed as two words, what 17-, 28-, 47- and 63-Across all have?) — every theme answer "ends" with an "app":
Theme answers:

• BAT SIGNAL (17A: Gotham City SOS)
• APPLE OF DISCORD (28A: Dissension cause in Greek myth)
• "CUT ME SOME SLACK" (47A: "Take it easy, will you?!")
• EYE TWITCH (63A: Poker tell, perhaps)

Word of the Day: APPLE OF DISCORD (see 28A) —

In Greek mythology, the Apple of Discord (Ancient Greek: μῆλον τῆς Ἔριδος) was a golden apple thrown by Eris, the goddess of strife, at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. She was not invited to the wedding and threw it out of anger to ruin the gathering (after showing up uninvited). It sparked a vanity-fueled dispute among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite that led to the Judgement of Paris and ultimately the Trojan War.

In common parlance, the "apple of discord" is the core, kernel, or crux of an argument, or a small matter that could lead to a bigger dispute. (wikipedia) // 

Eris, the goddess of discord, was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. In revenge, she brought a golden apple, inscribed, "To the fairest one", which she threw into the wedding. Three guests, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, after some disputation, agreed to have Paris of Troy choose the fairest one. Paris chose Aphrodite, she having bribed him with the most beautiful mortal woman in the world, Helen of Sparta, wife of Menelaus. Consequently, Paris carried Helen off to Troy, and the Greeks invaded Troy for Helen's return. Eris's Apple of Discord (or her not being invited to the wedding in the first place) was thus the instrumental casus belli of the Trojan War. (wikipedia)

• • •

A very basic "last-words" theme type with a somewhat clever revealer and themers that not only fit the theme perfectly but that are colorful and interesting answers in their own right. In short, the theme is basic, but it's well executed, and almost nothing about it gave me an EYE TWITCH, so nice job. I've used only two of these apps (Twitch, Slack). Discord is a messaging system used primarily but not exclusively by gamers. I know there's a Crossword Discord, for instance, though I have never gone there. Signal is another messaging system. It's known to me primarily because the buffoonishly incompetent Secretary of ... is it War now? [Hard eyeroll]. Anyway, that guy violated Pentagon regulations by carrying on official business on Signal, potentially endangering service members by discussing ongoing operations in a non-secure environment. Signal is an encrypted messaging service. Aside from very dumb and careless government officials, I associate it with journalists, many of whom use it to communicate with sources. But my specific experience of these apps doesn't matter—they are all very popular one-word apps, making them perfect fodder for a puzzle like this. 

The Downs-only solve was a cinch today. The only part that gave me any real trouble was the NE, where MASTER YODA was not something that came easily to me. Not a title of his that stands out in my memory. I'm sure Luke called him that at some point, but it doesn't exactly feel iconic. Then again, I gave up caring about all things Star Wars decades ago (during the years of the awful second trilogy), and I haven't revisited the original three movies very often over the years, so maybe the phrase MASTER YODA has more currency than I remember, or gained more currency in the 21st century. I tried to write in MANDALORIAN at one point (clearly I have not seen that show). The real issue in that corner wasn't MASTER YODA so much as LEG LOCKS, which I had as ARM LOCKS (there being nothing leg-specific about the clue) (9D: Certain submission moves in wrestling). With ARM in there, MASTER would not work with the Acrosses in that corner, so I pulled MASTER for a bit. Went away to solve other parts of the puzzle, then came back, thought "this has to be MASTER," and only then did I consider pulling ARM and inserting LEG. Puzzle mocked me by giving me ARM ... later (37D: Possible causes of in-flight disputes). I really like the symmetry of LEG LOCKS and ARM RESTS. Love happy accidents like that. The only other "huh?" moment for me came with GQ STYLE, but as with MASTER YODA, it's the first thing I thought of—I just wasn't sure of it. I know GQ, but not GQ STYLE, which feels ... redundant, as I thought GQ always dealt in some way with style (i.e. men's fashion). So I was tentative with STYLE, but it turned out to be right. No other problems with the Downs-only solve today.

Bullets:

• 1A: Sound at the beginning and end of a meditation, perhaps (BONG) — that's your clue for BONG? You'd think you'd go in a, let's say, different direction. I mean, you've got a WISP of smoke in your very next answer, so ... (5A: Bit of smoke).
• 51A: Food court loiterer, say (MALLRAT) — what year is it? I don't think MALLRATs have existed in any numbers since roughly the time immediately following the release of the movie MALLRATs in the mid-'90s.

• 52A: Shipping company with a red-and-yellow logo (DHL) — not a very evocative clue. Solving Downs-only, I made this DHS for a bit, thinking of designated hitters (in baseball), though DHS is more common as the abbr. for one of our more abolishable Cabinet departments.
• 57A: "Freddie Mercury" or "Lady Gaga" (ALIAS) — no one would call those "aliases." They're stage names. Also, weird to put those alleged "aliases" in quotation marks, since that's simply how they're known.
• 27D: Kind of deer (ROE) — I'm guessing there were a lot of DOEs out there, at least for a second or two.
• 32D: ___ Maradona, Argentine soccer legend (DIEGO) — I don't know tons about soccer, but this guy was worldwide famous when I was in high school, and his name (and face, and demeanor) have stuck in my mind ever since. His most famous game was probably the World Cup quarterfinal against England: "In the 1986 World Cup quarter final, he scored both goals in a 2–1 victory over England that entered football history for two different reasons. The first goal was an unpenalized handling foul known as the "Hand of God", while the second goal followed a 60 m (66 yd) dribble past five England players, voted "Goal of the Century" by FIFA.com voters in 2002" (wikipedia).

• 49D: Go live on the internet (STREAM) — fitting that this crosses the TWITCH answer, since TWITCH is a STREAMing service. I read the "live" in this clue as if it rhymed with "give" and I was like "you go live there, buddy, I need to spend more time outside looking at birds."

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Courting disaster, slangily / THU 2-19-26 / Spot to play baccarat / Medieval cure-all / Metaphor for a challenging puzzle / Japanese word that's sometimes translated as "planted in a pot" / Australian actor Eric / One-half of a golf partnership

Constructor: John Ewbank

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: LESSER OF TWO EVILS (60A: Better choice, given the options ... or the circled squares vis-à-vis the shaded ones?) — theme answers have two "SIN"s (i.e. "evils"): one regular-sized (in the shaded squares), the other shrunken ("lesser") inside a single (circled) square:

Theme answers:

• CRUISIN' FOR A BRUI[SIN'] (18A: Courting disaster, slangily) / CA[SIN]O (13D: Spot to play baccarat)
• SING[S IN] THE SHOWER (29A: Uses a shampoo bottle as a microphone, perhaps) / SAS[SIN]G (19D: Talking back to)
• BUSINES[S IN]SIDERS (48A: They may have knowledge of corporate secrets) / RE[SIN] (39D: Varnish ingredient)

Word of the Day: OLGA Kurylenko (58D: Actress Kurylenko) —

Olga Kostyantynivna Kurylenko (born 14 November 1979) is a Ukrainian and French actress and former model. She rose to prominence by playing the Bond girl Camille Montes in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace (2008).

Kurylenko began her career modelling in Paris before making a transition to acting. She had her breakthrough role in the action thriller Hitman (2007) after making her film debut in the drama The Ring Finger (2005). Following Quantum of Solace, she went on to star in the romantic drama To the Wonder (2012), the crime comedy Seven Psychopaths (2012), the science fiction film Oblivion (2013), the political satire The Death of Stalin (2017), the comedy The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018), the superhero films Black Widow (2021) and Thunderbolts* (2025), the Netflix spy thriller miniseries Treason (2022) and the action thriller Extraction 2 (2023). (wikipedia)

• • •

Father forgive me, for I have sinned. Twice! One of them was pretty small, though, so ... We good? Awesome, thanks. I liked this puzzle for a few reasons. First of all, I like a good rebus puzzle, and this was a really original rebus variant. Shaded squares + rebus! Two puzzle types that (apparently) taste great together. I liked how the theme unfolded for me, with the "SIN" in the shaded squares going right in no problem, but then the circled square remaining more mysterious for a bit. At first I thought there was some kind of loop or wormhole in effect. Since the first themer ends with the circled square, I thought maybe I was supposed to loop back to the first (shaded-square) "SIN" to complete the answer. The next one didn't work that way, though: if I loop back to the first "SIN" when I hit the circle, I get SING-SINGS THE SHOWER, which obviously makes no sense (unless you are turning your shower into a notorious New York prison). The way I figured out what the circled square was doing was by trying to solve the crosses, specifically CASO. "What's a CASO!? Shouldn't it be CASIN... Oh!" Since I had SASSY for 19D: Talking back to, I had missed the "SIN" square on my first attempt to cross it. So ultimately it was CASINO that gave me the full picture of the theme. First time I've ever been grateful to a CASINO for anything—thanks, CASINO! All that was left after that was to understand why I was getting this Mutt & Jeff pair of "SIN"s in every theme answer. And today, the revealer really delivered. I was calling this puzzle "Two Sins, Fat and Thin" in my head, but LESSER OF TWO EVILS is definitely better. I love when a revealer is a perfect expression of the theme gimmick—or the theme gimmick is a perfect expression of the revealer, whichever. The theme answers get weaker as they go along, opening very strong and closing somewhat feebly (hard to get excited about BUSINESS INSIDERS), but they all work just fine. So, good job today, themewise. 

The rest of the grid is harder to assess. Or rather, I'm a little ambivalent about it. On the one hand, it is admirably clean. It's got its share of tired repeaters (PSST ETRE SSN TKO BANA ALI NSA ITO etc.) but in that 6-7-8 range it's got mostly solid, real words—nothing to gripe about at all. But also not a lot to cheer. Not a lot to sit up and clap for. TOUGH NUT is indeed a metaphor ("a tough nut to crack"), but not one I would use, and it's kinda weird on its own, divorced from the metaphor. ACES HIGH is good—maybe the best non-theme thing in the grid. I don't care for CASINOs, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate ACES HIGH! After that, though, there's SEA BEDS, IGNEOUS, BONSAI, GALLONS, WRITERS, PAUPER, "NO GOOD!" ... these are all perfectly fine words / phrases, and they make for a really smooth solving experience (hurray), but there's nothing that really stands out, and the clues simply aren't helping. This is true for the whole puzzle: the cluing was quite bland and straightforward. Perhaps the thought was that the theme was (somewhat) tricky, and so the clues on the regular fill shouldn't be? I dunno. I could've used more tricky, or at least clever, or at least interesting like the SSN clue (29D: You can request a new one on religious grounds if it contains "666": Abbr.). If you look the clues over, you'll see that it's mostly phoned-in, boilerplate stuff. I've been known to complain about an overabundance of "?" clues in puzzles, but this one doesn't attempt even one!? No wait, sorry, there is 54A: Big beginning? (MEGA), but that was transparent—not exactly original or twisty. Not a TOUGH NUT! I needed tougher (or at least cleverer) nuts in the fill clues. But again, the fill itself is largely solid. Maybe workmanlike, but it's doing its job—helping showcase the theme by not being a hellish distraction.

Bullets:

• 51D: Medieval cure-all (LEECH) — this one was a little tough. It was the "cure-all" that got me. I knew LEECHes were used medicinally (as they are today), but the "cure-all" part I was not aware of. Is anything used to treat a wide range of illnesses a "cure-all"? It's the "all" that's throwing me. But LEECHes did have a lot of (supposed) applications in the Middle Ages:

In medieval and early modern European medicine, the medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis and its congeners H. verbana, H. troctina, and H. orientalis) was used to remove blood from a patient as part of a process to balance the humors that, according to Galen, must be kept in balance for the human body to function properly. (The four humors of ancient medical philosophy were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.) Any sickness that caused the subject's skin to become red (e.g. fever and inflammation), so the theory went, must have arisen from too much blood in the body. Similarly, any person whose behavior was strident and sanguine was thought to be suffering from an excess of blood. Leeches, by removing blood, were thought to help with these kinds of conditions — a wide range which included illnesses like polio and laryngitis. (wikipedia)

• 24A: One-half of a golf partnership, perhaps (PRO) — if there's one thing I don't care for, besides CASINOs, it's golf. What the hell is a "golf partnership," I wondered for a second or two, Then I remembered that PRO-Am tournaments existed. Professional + amateur. There's your partnership. 
• 66A: Some colorful plastic items in the seasonal aisle in the spring (EGGS) — this is almost timely. Semi-timely. The Lenten season began yesterday (Ash Wednesday) and it will end on Easter, the day of colorful plastic eggs! (you fill these with candy, and put them in Easter Egg Baskets for kids, or whomever—such a bizarre ritual for the holiest day on the Christian calendar). 

• 38A: Makes noise like an electric fan (WHIRRS) — turns out I have no idea what the difference is between one-R WHIR and two-R WHIRR. Turns out there isn't one—WHIRR(S) is just a variant (less common, acc. to merriam-webster dot com)
• 38D: Dickens and Dickinson (WRITERS) — we're well past the middle of February and I'm still reading Dombey & Son! I started on Jan. 1 but then my blog fundraiser started and then my semester started (lots of other reading to do) and then I visited my daughter and now I have a cold ... and while having a cold might seem like the perfect time to plow through Dickens, I, sadly, have a pile of papers to grade. The goal is to be done by month's end. I'm over 700 pages in now, so ... let's see, that leaves just ... hmm, looks like well over 200 pages to go still. I really love it! It's just ... long. And my copy is falling apart. I had to duct tape it together, but it's still on the verge of disintegration at every moment. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Cult classic co-starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell / MON 2-2-26 / Film about which Harold Ramis said "He goes from being a prisoner of that time and place to being master of that time and place" / Inspiration for a 2017 Tony-nominated musical / 1993 film that featured "I Got You Babe" / Animated film featuring the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" / Actress Claire of "The Crown" / Horse with a reddish coat / African grazer / "How ___ the little busy bee ..."

Constructor: John Ewbank and Colin Thomas

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (solved Downs-only)

[25D: ___ Knight ("Star Wars" fighter)]

THEME: GROUNDHOG DAY — a holiday puzzle for today, February 2. Four theme answers, all of them GROUNDHOG DAY (the movie in which Bill Murray relives the same day, the titular day, every day, ad (almost) infinitum):

Theme answers:

• GROUNDHOG DAY (20A: Cult classic co-starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell))
• GROUNDHOG DAY (33A: Inspiration for a 2017 Tony-nominated musical)
• GROUNDHOG DAY (41A: 1993 film that featured "I Got You Babe")
• GROUNDHOG DAY (56A: Film about which Harold Ramis said "He goes from being a prisoner of that time and place to being master of that time and place")

Word of the Day: ENCANTO (9D: Animated film featuring the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno") —

Encanto is a 2021 American animated musical fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. It was directed by Jared Bush, and Byron Howard and written by Charise Castro Smith and Bush, with original songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a score composed by Germaine Franco. The film stars the voices of Stephanie Beatriz, María Cecilia Botero, John Leguizamo, Mauro Castillo [es], Jessica Darrow, Angie Cepeda, Carolina Gaitán, Diane Guerrero, and Wilmer Valderrama. Encanto follows a multigenerational Colombian family, the Madrigals, led by a matriarch whose children and grandchildren—except for Mirabel Madrigal—receive magical gifts from a miracle, which they use to help the people in their rural community, called the Encanto. When Mirabel learns that the family is losing their magic, she sets out to find out why and save the family and house. [...] The film was nominated for three awards at the 94th Academy Awards, winning Best Animated Feature, and received numerous other accolades, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film. // The film's associated merchandise has seen significant success, and its soundtrack became a breakout sensation, reaching number one on the US Billboard 200 and UK Compilation Albums charts; "We Don't Talk About Bruno" and "Surface Pressure" were its two most successful songs, with the former topping both the US Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart for multiple consecutive weeks. A theme park attraction based on the film is set to open at Disney's Animal Kingdom in 2027. (wikipedia)

• • •

Happy GROUNDHOG DAY, I guess (which means happy birthday to my father (85)). Kinda glad I solved this Downs-only, because the cluing scheme on the themers today is not great, and watching that second GROUNDHOG DAY come into view as I was solving Downs-only definitely added to the "wait, this can't be happening!?" vibe. But back to the themer cluing: we get four different "facts" about the movie, but none of them having anything to do with the core premise of the movie, which is also the core premise of this puzzle, which is that Groundhog Day literally repeats, over and over and over. The clue that should've been the "revealer" is just some quote from the director. Random quote. Again, nothing directly to do with the concept of repetition. I feel bad for whoever has never seen Groundhog Day, because this puzzle really really Really assumes you have, which is weird for a movie that the puzzle itself is calling a "cult classic." It's either universally known (which is what you'd expect a movie that's the basis of a Monday puzzle to be) or it's a "cult classic," it can't be both. This puzzle assumes it's universally known. Not only doesn't it mention, ever, the main premise, it also doesn't even tell you that Harold Ramis is the director. How hard is it to add "director" to that clue? It's not like you're going for concision; that clue is massive—the longest one in the puzzle. In short, I think the premise is pretty cute (I had a big "aha" while solving Downs-only and I realized what was going on), but the random trivia in the themer clues is unimaginative. Why not really commit to the bit and have all the theme clues be the same. I know it's hard to write a clue about how Bill Murray relives the same day over and over without using the word "day" (a no-no, since "DAY" is in the answer), but there's gotta be a way: [1993 movie about a weatherman doomed to relive the same 24-hour period over and over and over again], something like that. The cluing scheme should've been more clever, and it definitely should've mentioned the repeating-day thing. Somewhere. (I say all this as someone who adores the movie and has seen it probably a dozen times).

If the theme answers were very easy (once I got the second one, I filled the remaining two in immediately), the rest of the puzzle was a little more challenging, esp. from a Downs-only perspective. On my first pass at the Downs up top, I could not get: EVERSO (2D: Really, really), SCOUR (4D: Scrub), LEADSTO (5D: Results in), ENCANTO (9D: Animated film featuring the song "We Don't Talk About Bruno"), or BOOYA (10D: Triumphant cry). I'm just lucky I'd at least heard of ENCANTO. Eventually, once I'd inferred a few of the crosses, I was able to see it, but I haven't voluntarily watched a big-budget animated movie in ... forever. Once my daughter aged out of animated kids' fare, I checked out. The song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" was apparently a no. 1 hit but today is the first I'm hearing of its existence. Worse for me was ... whatever this stupid bee song is supposed to be. Is it a poem? "How DOTH (!?!?) the little busy bee..."??? DOTH was probably the hardest thing in the grid for me. Did not expect a little children's rhyme (is that what it is?) to go all ye olde Englishe on me. And ugh, TUSHY, first of all, spelling (?!!), and second of all, cutesy childish anatomical euphemisms, not my favorite (30D: Rear end, informally). Spent more time than I ever wanted to spend (i.e. more than zero seconds) trying to think of slang for "butt." Considered BOOTY, but then decided "just wait for crosses." Once the themers all went in, the solve got a lot easier, since I had at least one letter in place for every remaining Down. In fact, nothing in the bottom half of the grid gave me any trouble at all—huge contrast to the top half. 

The fill was average. Any time a puzzle has no long (8+) answers besides the themers, the fill is likely to be meh at best. ITT and ATT are bad on their own and quite bad when they team up as successive answers, but there's really not much to make you wince today. You can take back ON A JAG, a prepositional phrase that's pretty meaningless without context (what kind of jag?), but I don't have strong feelings about most of the rest of it. Just wasn't that interesting. My favorite thing about the grid (besides the "aha" I got when the theme dropped) was the juxtaposition of DONALD and STENCH (52- and 54-Across). It feels weird saying that the "DONALD STENCH" was my "favorite" part of the grid. You'd have to be a real sicko to actively enjoy DONALD STENCH. But I do appreciate the puzzle's subtle acknowledgment of moral rot in the White House. I'm sure the puzzlemakers would disavow the political commentary, but ... that doesn't mean it isn't there.


Bullets:

• 17A: Clownfish in a 2003 Pixar film (NEMO) — you already had your animated film moment with ENCANTO. One is enough. Choose another NEMO.
• 43D: Bird that scientists are trying to bring back from extinction (DODO) — please stop. First of all, stop trying to bring back species that you (human beings) killed off. It's grotesque and it won't go well. Maybe focus on protecting remaining species!? Second, this clue is lazy, as it essentially repeats a recent clue for MOA ([Down Under bird that scientists are working to "de-extinct"] (Fri., Dec. 26, 2025)). Third, I was staring at a DODO just yesterday! At Yale's Peabody Museum, they have a DODO skeleton on display, as well as a full-color model of what a live DODO would've looked like. I believe my exact comment was, "Pixar-ass bird." 

• 59D: Spun records, for short (DJED) — I got this easily enough, but my brain almost short-circuited as it tried to reject "spun" as the simple past tense of "spin." In short, my brain wanted a different form between SPIN (present tense) and SPUN (past participle)—like ... there's drink drank drunk, so ... I wanted spin [something] spun. "Spinned?" "Span?" I dunno. Minor glitch. All better now.

Thanks to Rafa and Eli for covering for me while I went off to visit my daughter at Yale and see two of the shows she's been working on (Is God Is (Fri.) and Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha (Sat.)). Whoa, there's a film adaptation of Is God Is coming out in May, starring (among others) Sterling K. Brown, Vivica A. Fox, and Crossworld's own Janelle MONAE (eleven NYTXW appearances since 2019). Definitely gonna look for that. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Spanish city famous for its oranges / TUES 11-25-25 / Hindu deity known as the "Destroyer" / Motown legend Lionel / Organizer of events for swingers?

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday of November! Hope everyone is having a good start to the holiday season. I’ve been settling back into a D.C. rhythm after a spur-of-the-moment trip to Barcelona with my sister, Shannon, a couple of weeks ago! (She was going for work and had a free hotel room for me to crash in😊) We ate lots of patatas bravas and drank some (OK, a lot of) sangria, and now I think I’m moving to Barcelona. I just need to practice my Spanish a bit. Or a lot. Sports are a bit meh right now (as my Steelers and Liverpool aren’t doing so hot), but, hey, at least Yale thumped Harvard in The Game. 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: John Ewbank

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: DOOM SCROLLS (63A: Engages in a dispiriting online activity … or what happens in this puzzle's shaded squares?) — The shaded squares all use the letters in DOOM, and the positions of the letters “scroll” in order (with the final letter being moved to the front with each new appearance as you move down the puzzle)

Theme answers:

• VOODOO MAGIC (17A: Sorcery commonly associated with Haiti and New Orleans) 
• STORM DOOR (26A: Extra barrier to protect a house from bad weather) 
• TOM DOOLEY (38A: Traditional folk song that became a #1 hit for the Kingston Trio) 
• ZOOM DATES (54A: Romantic options for a long-distance relationship)

Word of the Day: TOM DOOLEY (38A: Traditional folk song that became a #1 hit for the Kingston Trio) —

Tom Dooley" (Roud 4192) is a traditional North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina by Tom Dula (whose name in the local dialect was pronounced "Dooley"). One of the more famous murder ballads, a popular hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, was in the top 10 on the Billboard R&B chart, and appeared in the Cashbox Country Music Top 20… In 1866, Laura Foster was murdered. Confederate veteran Tom Dula, Foster's lover and the father of her unborn child, was convicted of her murder and hanged May 1, 1868… Thanks to the efforts of newspapers such as The New York Times and to the fact that former North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance represented Dula pro bono, Dula's murder trial and hanging were given widespread national publicity. (Wiki)

• • •

WELL, I SORTA (36D) liked this puzzle. The theme was well-executed, and it’s clever how the letters in DOOM shift as you go down the puzzle. But the theme felt like a long way to go for little payoff. There wasn’t anything particularly objectionable about it, but it took some minor sleuthing after the solve to understand the point the theme was trying to get across, and the letter combinations after the first one — MDOO, OMDO, and OOMD — just look awkward. 

I’m not sure VOODOO MAGIC (17A) works as an answer because it seems like it’s usually just described as VOODOO. The info I was finding had very few references to MAGIC (and didn’t combine the terms). The other theme answers seemed fine, though I didn’t know TOM DOOLEY (38A). [Side note: This song is about a Confederate soldier who was convicted of murdering a woman, and it was somehow turned into a folk legend? I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and it’s a pretty weird song.] I also think the clue for STORM DOOR (26A: Extra barrier to protect a house from bad weather) is somewhat wrong because the STORM DOOR is a glass door that protects the regular wooden door from weathering; it seems like a stretch to say it’s protecting the house. 

Beyond the theme, there wasn’t much that grabbed me about the puzzle. The longest downs were WELL SORTA (36D: "I mean, I guess …") and IPOD NANOS (5D: Music players discontinued in 2017), which, well, sorta, don’t inspire much excitement. TACO PIE (27D: Tex-Mex casserole with a crust) is blah. A LOT OF (58A: Many, many) doesn’t really match the clue and is an awkward-looking partial. And I can’t get behind that spelling of SLIER (9D: More cunning). 

I got a bit stuck on EBSEN (24A), having never seen “The Beverly Hillbillies,” and I had no idea that the STOOGES (43D) were Iggy Pop’s backup group. It also took me way too long to realize that LORES (52A: Like early PC graphics) was indicating LO-RES (as in, low resolution). I had _ORES for quite a long time before I could convince myself to put in the L, even though that was the only letter that made sense coming down. 

I liked ONE GRAM (13D: Weight of every U.S. bank note), as it’s a decent bit of trivia. PGA TOUR (11D: Organizer of events for swingers?) is clever. The clue for REVIEW (1D: "No" was a famously short one for the 1948 musical "Isn't It Romantic?") was incredible; I’ll be thinking about that for a while. The word BIZARRO (41D: ___ World, DC Comics planet of opposites) is fun. I don’t think RITA ORA (12D: "How We Do (Party)" pop singer) is a big enough name to be in a Tuesday crossword, but I thought it was clever to have ORA cross AURA (31A: Certain something). I love WILMA (29A: Flintstone with a red updo) in the puzzle. Yabba dabba doo! And OCCAM (10D: Philosopher known for his "razor") is fun.

Misc.:

• BTS!!! (41A: K-pop band that went on hiatus in 2022 when their members went into military service) You didn’t think that I’d forget about BTS, did you?! They’ve recorded some for their album coming in the spring and are rehearsing for their world tour next year!! Please prepare yourselves for the inevitable videos and tweets I will share. 
• 20A: U.K. : H.M.R.C. :: U.S.A. : __ felt like a tortured way of cluing just… IRS, but, hey, now I know that HMRC stands for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. 
• I’ve been reading my fair share of BRIT LIT (45D: Course that may cover Jane Austen and Emily Brontë, for short) this last month, as I rediscovered Agatha Christie novels. I read “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” which pioneered a concept used in mystery novels to this day, and it was phenomenal. I’ve now read (or listened to) 14 of her books in the last month. 
• It’s actually my dream to get semi-famous (or be related to someone famous — come on, Shannon!) so I can go on Dancing With the Stars and learn for a few weeks how to dance (for example, how to SALSA). 
• Speaking of SALSAS (53D: Engages in an energetic Latin dance), it did go nicely with TACO PIE (27D) and GUAC (68A: Burrito bar offering, informally). 
• I’ve been going on more, longer hikes with my pup, Red, though it’s getting a bit cold. Red’s brother Banjo (my mom’s dog) is visiting, and he and Red are quite possibly having the time of their lives. 

And that’s all from me, folks! I’ll see y’all again around Christmas.

Signed, Clare Carroll, whom you’ll find doomwatching Liverpool every weekend

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